Dear BlogAsheville

I know we've known each other a long time now. I know that the flush of new love comes like a hot, wet wind and that enduring love takes patience. I know.

That's why I want to write to you now. Our blog is languishing. Too many nights in front of our home blogs, too little focus on what we're all about, too much, too soon? I can't say.

All I can say is that our multidimensional relationship is worth nurturing, worth saving. I'm willing to work on it if you are.

We can start talking now. I don't know if it's right or wrong, but we need to save this crazy thing we've got going.

Talk to me.

Puppy love

Lights under BB&T

Dancing for a cause

Vice Mayor Holly Jones on Saturday night at the "Dancing with the Stars" fund-raising event at the W.C. Reid Center.

Playing the big iron

Lonely busker

While This Blog Is Busy Being Lame

Go read the Mountain Xpress blogs.

February 17th is going to be a busy day. Don't plan anything.

2/17 A.M. - Precinct meetings
2/17 P.M. - Asheville Flickr "Day in the Life" meet'em'up
2/17 Late - BlogAsheville at Joli Rouge

Asheville Drinking Liberally's First Annual State of the Union Address Viewing Party - TOMORROW NIGHT!

We hope to see you there!

Fringe Festival!

FRINGE FESTIVAL INFO IS ALL RIGHT HERE!

Lining up for $1.99 gas at BJ's

Thanks Blog Asheville!

It was great seeing all of you again. 1000 Black Lines, Virtual Inanity, Brainshrub, Hangover Journal, syntax of things, Domestic Bliss, Modern Peasant, and Scrutiny Hooligans. Thanks to Raith for taking such good care of us and loving the geek. Next gathering will be February 17th at Joli Rouge.

I can't wait to see what happens.

Moms are badasses, too

From a parent team of cheerleaders at Saturday's National Cheer Stars competition in the Ashvegas Civic Center.

Lets get together and flickr

Check out this thread that we started over at flickr.

Here's our idea:

Hey all. There are so many wonderful photogs out and about in Asheville that i thought it might be fun to see if we could get as many flickr maniacs together as possible and do one of those "Day in the Life Of" projects.

We pick a day - 24 hours - and shoot it. Maybe we have a theme. "Interpret Ashvegas." Maybe not. We should try for spring or early summer.

Then we load all the photos to a flickr group. Maybe we print some of the ones we like the most and do a little show at one of the umpteen galleries around town.

What do you think? What are your ideas? Anybody interested?

It looks like folks are up for it. We just need to pick a date.

Invader Zim, tired after a long train ride

Asheville's Wiki war

Hat-tip Mountain Xpress:

"It's probably all my fault.

In March of 2006, I posted a well-intentioned addition to the Asheville entry on Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopedia. I didn't intend to start trouble – I was just trying to add a few drops to that vast ocean of digital information.

At Wikipedia.org, anyone can make an addition to the collective pool of knowledge, as well as edit information submitted by others. So, I added a simple and relatively bland subcategory to the Asheville Wikipedia page about the local-music scene. What a horrible mistake.

You see, during the past nine months since I made that initial post, there has been a war of words on the page over just what constitutes "the local-music scene." Bitter arguments over terminology have arisen, nitpicking "flame wars" have flared up over just which bands should be considered relevant, and no one seems to be able to do much except undo the work of their fellow contributors.

Other disputes, such as which external links about the area should be allowed and which film-and-TV references to Asheville should be permitted, have only made the problem worse. (A few seemingly shameless self-promoters who have added their personal accomplishments to the page have also earned the ire of Wikipedians.)

The escalation of spite eventually got out of hand. It fact, it got to the level of being termed an "edit war" – the online equivalent of a battle royale.

Not surprisingly, at the urging of Wikipedian "Golbez," the Asheville page was "locked" last month by the Web site's administration – meaning that no new posts were permitted. Until last week, the page had its contents set in digital stone.

Now the good news: It was unlocked on Jan. 12, thanks to a compromise agreement on the discussion page. Still, major issues about how the page will be revised are yet to be addressed.

Which begs the question: What changes would you make?"

– Steve Shanafelt

----------------------------------------------

I just thought this was funny enough to post! Thanks Steve!

It's Happening Right Now

BlogAsheville is gathering at Joli Rouge in downtown Asheville. Just tell the folks at the door that you're with BlogAsheville, and they'll let you pass. We'll be upstairs. I'm the guy wearing a black fleece and green cords. Call me if you have any questions: 279/2551.

Link Here to More Information.

Laurels and brickbats for Asheville's Bus System

Here are a few laurels and brickbats to Asheville Public Transit:

Laurel: Map improvements.

On the old schedules, there was a map on the front with colored lines representing the different routes, and a schedule grid on the back with departure times. The problem was that the map-side didn't have reference numbers to make it easy to cross-check between the two.

Reference numbers have finally been added, making it much simpler to navigate the transit system. Good job APT!

Brickbat: The plastic billboards are STILL not being used.

A friend of mind waited over an hour for a bus that never arrived this Monday because there is no transit service on Martin Luther King's birthday. I'm not criticizing APT for taking the day off, but why aren't they using the plastic announcement-boards that were installed last year for situations like this?

The working poor don't get most holidays off, and they deserve better warnings if they need to find another way to get to their jobs.

Posting announcements INSIDE the bus does nothing for those waiting OUTSITE for a ride on a holiday.

Laurel: Many buses now run as late 10:30 and monthly passes are now $15.*

I've reported before how great it was when bus service was expanded to 9:30pm. Now it's expanded again to as late as 10:30pm.

Also, the monthly passes are down to $15.

All I have to say about this is: Nicccccce.

Just: niccccce.

Brickbat: No way to travel between routes without going to downtown.

This last point isn't so much of a criticism as it is an observation.

I live in West Asheville, near Haywood Road, south of Patton Avenue. I just took a job in West Asheville, on New Leicester Highway, north of Patton Avenue. By car, I can get to work in just under seven minutes.

But if I take the bus, it takes me 40 minutes.

Why?

Because Asheville's transit system works like a bicycle-wheel: There is no way to get to another spoke without first going through the center. If I want to go to New Leicester from Haywood, I have to ride to the main station in downtown Asheville - about 20 minutes away by bus.

There should be at least one vehicle that connects routes without having to make a trip to the center.

For the explanation behind the Brainshrub Bus Project, click here.

To see all posts for the Brainshrub Bus Project, click here.

Why You Should Be Careful to Never Get Your Car Stolen

A got her car back. As we recall, her car was stolen in the waning days of 2006, which was deeply weird for a variety of reasons, chief among them the fact that her car did not actually run. It sort of worked, in that every now and then you could get it going, sometimes even into 2nd gear, but not for long. A had just sold it for parts - and for $200 - to this very nice guy, actually, when it vanished, and I'm sorry to say that we kind of even suspected Very Nice Guy. However, he was as outraged as we were and even drove around looking for it. So A reported it stolen and the matter rested until last Thursday, when the police called to say that they had found the car up at Lee Walker Heights. The car was as fine as it ever was, except the radio had been taken out, but then who cares about that, since - wait for it - the radio didn't work either! It's like it was stolen by some kind of deeply compassionate organization, a strange hospice for dying cars, isn't it?

At any rate, the cops towed the car and that's when the problems began, because if you are unlucky dumb enough to get your car stolen, it turns out that you then owe all kinds of money. They charge you $100 for the towing fees (you don't get a choice about it being towed, either, like you can't call Triple A or anything) and then they charge you $20 a day to store it. If, like A, you realize that your car isn't really worth more than $120 and you don't have that much money anyway, you may contemplate leaving it right the hell where it is, which is to say in police lock up waaaaay down in South Asheville. Unfortunately, you can't do that, because you are now legally liable for every penny of that money, which will keep on mounting up every day you don't pay it, and they will in fact come after your ass for it. We know this because we asked. So A got the money together and in a feat of strategic time planning that quite impressed me, went and picked up the damn car in the window between her two jobs and then met the Very Nice Guy (remember him?) who took the car away. So now the saga has finished, although it must be noted that all the charges for being unlucky dumb enough to get your car stolen pretty much ate all the money A got for the car.

It seems somehow wrong and unfair to me that the victim should be penalized when their car is stolen, since getting even a dying car stolen is a drag, even if it was stolen by loving expiring car hospice workers. I actually think that whoever stole it noticed that it hadn't moved in 2 or 3 months and thought that perhaps we might not miss it, which kind of makes me feel guilty. But that aside, it really rubs me the wrong way to have the victim of a crime be charged a bunch of fees. Yet in a curious way this very fact seems to be in a kind of weird accordance with a particular kind of American/Puritan/Calvinist dogma that holds that all bad luck is totally your own fault, poor people deserve to be poor because they're lazy and the rich, clearly blessed, are as gods upon the earth who deserve our respect. It's this kind of thinking that makes me the godless socialist commie bitch I am, and I don't think that Asheville's finest should be subcontracting all this towing/storage stuff to a bunch of godfearing capitalists who are leeching large chunks of money off crime victims.

Cross posted from the Hangover Journals

Blog Asheville Reunites

Blog Asheville will reconvene after too long a hiatus.

Come one blogger, come all y'all bloggers to Joli Rouge, Saturday, January 20, 8pm until the last gasp is gasped.

If everyone who's coming will please make comments on others' blogs about the gathering we'll get to meet a lot of these new bloggers who've emerged since the Extravablogiversapaloozathon.

Joli Rouge map is HERE.

Know Lots Of Men?

The Scapegoat Theatre Collective's 2007 Season will open, appropriately just in time for baseball season, with the Tony Award Winning TAKE ME OUT, by Richard Greenberg, a baseball comedy/drama which takes on the difficult issue of homophobia between men. The play's main character, Darren Lemming, is a popular mixed-race baseball player at the peak of his career when he decides to come out; an announcement met with varying responses during the course of the season.

Much of the play is set in a baseball locker room, and features a diverse all-male cast; it explores themes of homophobia, racism, class and masculinity. TAKE ME OUT has realistic references in that Glenn Burke (Dodgers) was out to teammates and team owners in the 1970's and Billy Bean (Padres)came out in 1999 after retiring from eight seasons of playing in Major League Baseball, however at the time of the writing of this play no major-league baseball player had ever come out to the public during his career. This show explores what happens when America's favorite pasttime becomes a true reflection of our country's diversity, and how this affects the boys who are faced with that all important question, "which team do you bat for?"

This cast list will be challenging to fill, so please spread the word that we are looking for men who fit the following guidelines:

Take Me Out Casting Information
11 men
Skipper- male, 40-50, Caucasian
Darren- male, 25-35, African-American or bi-racial, athletic build, must be experienced actor
Davey- male, 25-35, African-American, athletic build
Rodriguez- male, 25-35, Latino, bilingual, athletic build
Martinez- male, 25-35, Latino, bilingual, athletic build
Kippy- male, 25-35, Caucasian, athletic build, must be experienced actor
Shane- male, 25-30, Caucasian, athletic build, must be experienced actor
Takeshi- male, 30-40, Japanese-American and/or must be able to speak Japanese and English, athletic build
Jason Chenier- male, 25-30, athletic build
Toddy Koovitz-male, 25-35, athletic build
Mason-male, 30-40, Caucasian

Anyone interested in casting or volunteering, can contact Taryn Strauss.

Asheville's Coolest Podcast

Mx at 1000 Black Lines has the skinny. Click over there to hear all about The True Home Open Mic Podcast, now with over 15,000 subscribers!

Asheville Couple Goes to Myrtle Beach, Has Sex in Public

This flashed across my Google alerts, and I just had to share:

AC-T: " An Asheville couple faces criminal charges in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on allegations they had public sex on a hotel room balcony.

A poolside audience that included three adults and an 11-year-old girl called Myrtle Beach police about noon Saturday to report a naked man and his naked partner having sex on the third-floor balcony."
[...]
"Officers went to the couple’s room, but were told by the couple “that they did nothing wrong and that the people outside were jealous,” according to the report.

The couple told police they have been dating for seven years and “that if the people downstairs did not want to see them, they didn’t have to look,” officers said in report.

The couple also told officers the man had recently gotten a prescription for Cialis and they were in love, police said. Police charged the 57-year-old man and the 53-year-old woman with indecent exposure."

Well, I'm glad I wasn't forced into the awkward position of choosing whether to look away from some fifty-somethings having some Cialis fueled monkey love on the balcony of their Myrtle Beach hotel. So damn glad.

How to find a parking spot on busy shopping days

(Editor's note: There is an interesting behind-the-scenes story with today's post. To read about it visit this Open Letter to the Coral Square Mall.)

Sometimes, when it gets cold here in North Carolina, my friends ask me why I left South Florida.

It was the parking fights.

Seriously.

South Florida, especially Broward County where I grew up, is essentially one huge asphalt parking deck connected by bumper-to-bumper traffic. The suburban sprawl of greater Ft. Lauderdale is almost completely devoid of personality, community or soul.

After Thanksgivings Day the parking-lot nature of South Florida is exacerbated as everyone heads to the mall for an orgy of consumerism that would make a French monarch blush.

What made the situation unbearable to me was how downright nasty Floridians get while they are looking for a spot to park for the spending frenzy. I've seen fewer fist-fights in college bars than I've seen in the parking lot of a Florida mall during the Christmas shopping rush.

No matter how huge the parking area, everyone wants a spot right next to the entrance - and they'll do almost anything to get it.

For example, the scene below is from the parking lot of The Coral Square Mall in Coral Springs, Florida:

Yuck!

The day before I took this picture, I visited several other mall parking lots. They were all the same: Frustrated drivers fighting over spaces like hyenas over carrion. I randomly timed cars as they came onto the property, and discovered that it took about 9.5 minutes for a person to drive into a lot, find a space, and walk to the front door.

Incidentally, while doing this unscientific research I also witnessed one screaming argument between drivers and three separate incidents of mommies in SUVs giving each other "The Finger."

However, there is good news! As a public service, I have developed a solution to the holiday parking crisis; not only for Florida - but also for most of the country!

Behold:

The Coral Square Mall, like most malls, has a bus stop right in front of the main entrance.

So if you park your car at an empty lot up the street, then hop on a bus - you can get to the mall in far less time than it takes to drive. As an added bonus, you won't have to deal with the stress losing your car in a vast parking deck when you'd rather go home.

Using public transit is a better way to get into the mall so that you can spend all the money on your credit-card without risking your sanity.

Dealing with the shoppers inside the mall is still your problem.

For the explanation behind the Brainshrub Bus Project, click here.

To see all posts for the Brainshrub Bus Project, click here.

Busker's corner

Boxcar

Rebuilding my List, and Calling for Suggestions

I'm not sure what the hell, but I can't find half of the email addresses I used to have for the Asheville Blogging Community.

Please send me an email at scrutinyhooligans>yahoo{}com, so I can get these things together again.

It's time for BlogAsheville to come together again. I'm thinking we all ought to get together somewhere downtown. There are a lot of new(ish) blogs in town, and I'm dying to meet the newly discovered.

Name your downtown bar of choice for an imminent BlogAsheville revival.

cbot

First drum circle of Aught Seven

In the zoning zone

Buncombe County commissioners on Tuesday said they're ready to being the process of putting zoning regulations in place in our fair county, which is being developed faster than ever. Now it's time for you residents to speak up. Here's what you need to know, from a county news release:

Commissioners Begin Zoning Process

Buncombe County Commissioners have begun the process of implementing open use zoning in all areas of the county and modified zoning standards in the Metropolitan Sewerage District Primary Service Area.

Before any zoning ordinance is approved, every citizen will be contacted by mail and notified of their zoning designation and of the seven public meetings that have been set up in area middle schools. Citizens are urged to attend one of these meetings to learn more about zoning in their area.

Monday, January 22 Valley Springs Middle School

Tuesday, January 23 Owen Middle School

Thursday, January 25 Enka Middle School

Monday, January 29 Reynolds Middle School

Tuesday, January 30 Cane Creek Middle School

Thursday, February 1 North Buncombe Middle School

Monday, February 5 Erwin Middle School.

The Commissioners have directed staff to put together a plan to implement "open use zoning" in the remaining areas of the County outside MSD and municipal boundaries where there is no existing zoning plan. Open use zoning would give land owners the same rights they currently have but would begin regulating eleven special uses that would require additional approval. These uses include incinerators, concrete plants, asphalt plants, amusement parks, shooting ranges, etc.

Maps outlining the area that will be impacted by the zoning standards are available for public inspection in the County Planning Department at 46 Valley Street in downtown Asheville.

For more information contact County Planning at 250-4830.

The old Wal-Mart building

[cross posted from 1000 black lines]

start the year right

email received this morning:

"there will be a vigil to mark the passing of 3,000 US troops in Iraq. This is under the banner of AFSC. We decided to join this vigil with the weekly Veterans for Peace vigil. This is at Pack Square from 5 to 6 PM on Tuesday, January 2, 2006."