Go See The Winners!

AC-T: "Tonight, the Asheville 48 Hour Film Project will announce winners in several categories at Cinebarre, the theater at the Biltmore Square Mall.

Doors open about 7 p.m., with the awards following shortly thereafter. The films were made July 20-22 and screened at Asheville Pizza and Brewing Co. the following week. The 7 and 10 p.m. screenings were sold out all three nights."

Somethings Asheville Has On Tap

Photo: Kyle Kett
Location: Barley's

What more could you want from a town! Good Pizza, lots of beer on tap and the Rebelle's.

Bloggers caught at Bele Chere

I was only at Bele Chere for about an hour on Friday, but I bumped into three other bloggers, two of whom I caught in action. Above is our fave Supergrrrl, What the hell?, selling brewskis, and below is maverick Ashvegas doing his thang with the Urban Challenge contestants. Not pictured is Mimosa man Jer of Virtual Inanity. Who have you run into?

asheville night road II

Photography by Zen of Asheville.

You can see more of his outstanding work at Flickr.

For that matter, check out his slideshow of Asheville pictures!

In Our Own Backyard, Asheville

Flag-defiling charge ends in fight, arrests

Mike McWilliams, of the Citizen-Times, reports " couple who said they were protesting the state of the country by flying the U.S. flag upside down with signs pinned to it found themselves in jail following a scuffle with a deputy Wednesday morning.

Mark and Deborah Kuhn were arrested on two counts of assault on a government employee, resisting arrest and a rarely used charge, desecrating an American flag, all misdemeanors. The Kuhns were released from custody Wednesday afternoon.

“This is surreal,” Deborah Kuhn, 52, said moments after her son Mark Stidham paid $1,500 bond to get the couple out of jail.

Arrest reports show Buncombe County Sheriff’s deputy Brian Scarborough went to the Kuhns’ home on 68 Brevard Road about 8:45 a.m. Wednesday to investigate a complaint of an American flag on display after being desecrated.

State law prohibits anyone from knowingly mutilating, defiling, defacing or trampling the U.S. or North Carolina flags. Lt. Randy Sorrells of the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office said the Kuhns desecrated the flag by pinning signs to it, not by flying it upside down.

An upside-down flag typically is flown as a distress signal. The Kuhns said they flew it this way not out of disrespect but to symbolize the state of the country.

Deborah Kuhn said the signs pinned to the flag included an explanation on the meaning of an upside-down flag and asked to “help our country.” One of the signs was a photo of President Bush with “Out Now” written on it, they said..."

Read the rest of the article.

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What is becoming of our democracy these days: No fly lists, indefinite detentions, torture facilities, and police state tactics?

And now here in our beloved, Asheville?

For Shame....


George Bush desecrating the American Flag by signing his name to it; no charges filed.

question

not abusing this venue i hope but maybe someone can answer a question for me (and other asheville creatives).

a couple of months ago i saw an ad posted somewhere i cannot remember and phoned the number which i also cannot remember. this concerned a local start-up which was going to supply a do it yourself place, tools both hardware and software to print large-format giclees. rent by the hour perhaps, or some such.

can anyone point me and others to this enterprise? i spoke with somebody there, and it was for real.

Chere my Bele?

Okay, I've been neglecting you wunderful Blogashevillians. Hell, I've been neglecting MY bloggie. And my kidlings and plants and closet and toenails (kidding, Screwy, about the kids!).

Uptown, thanks for the reminder about the loverly Arts and Crafts Fair (below), but, come on, aren't we forgetting what comes first? That would be like the bigggest, drunkest street fair in S.E. America.

So, who's going, who's staying home, who's leaving town? We know Asheville blog king Ashvegas will be covering the action like nobody's bizness. Anyone else got plans? I might just throw some photos and drunken observations your way. I'll be there Saturday night for the first time in years. Ash will be the one in the "I heart hot moms" tee, and I'll be the hot mom with the big lens.

Happy Chereing!

Village Arts and Crafts Fair, Coming Soon

"On August 4th and 5th New Morning Gallery and Bellagio will sponsor the Village Art and Craft Fair on the grounds of the Cathedral of all Souls in Biltmore Village. In its 35nd year, the VACF continues a long tradition of bringing high-quality crafts to Biltmore Village."

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

Y'all come if you can, All Souls raises a good bit of money for local non-profits during this festival by selling sandwiches and the like.

Thank you, J.K. Rowling

759 pages...8 hours....little sleep....wonder....tears....sorrow...joy

"Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost."
-Isak Dineson-

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Stoked about Harry Potter

This little guy was so in the moment just after midnight early Saturday morning at Books-a-Million that he just ran up to me and said, "Take my picture!" It was quite a scene, as hundreds of Harry Potter fans stood in line in the store, counted down the last seconds to midnight, then rushed to score their copy of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

So - what page are you on?

Asheville Audio Postcard #1: Friday Night Drums

(Crossposted from Scrutiny Hooligans)

This is a ten minute binaural field recording of polyrhythmic goodness captured last night at Pritchard Park. That’s right - I braved the undulating trustafarians and the patchouli stank so you wouldn’t have to!



I’ll be posting more field recordings taken in and around Asheville from time to time. As is the nature of binaural recording, headphones are highly recommended. A higher-quality MP3 file is available for download here.

Technical info: Sound Professionals SP-EMC1 microphones -> Edirol R-09 -> Cool Edit Pro 2.0. Encoded to MP3 (128kbps stream, 320kbps download) using CDex v1.70/Lame Encoder v1.32. Pic borrowed from 1000 Black Lines

A Contest and A Job

Here's a couple of things to keep you jumping:

Take 5: "f you see TV crews shooting video all over town this weekend, it’s not the news. It’s the Asheville 48 Hour Film Project.

Forty teams of filmmakers are competing for best category prizes (including best film) via four- to seven-minute films they’ll shoot, edit and produce in 48 hours. At 7 tonight at Asheville Pizza & Brewing on Merrimon Avenue, they’ll get their prompts — a genre, a character, a prop and a line of dialogue that they must work into their piece. By 7:30 p.m. Sunday, they have to turn in their work."
[...]
"All completed films will screen at Asheville Pizza & Brewing on Tuesday- Thursday."

Someone in the BlogAsheville community has to be interested and qualified for this:

Journalism Jobs: "Lead the creative vision and supervise art team behind WNC magazine—Mountain Living in Western North Carolina, a new four-color regional lifestyle magazine published by Gulfstream Communications, Inc., publishers of Charleston, Charleston Home, and Charleston Weddings magazines. WNC publishes nine issues per year.

Duties: Continue the editorial and visual relationship with the WNC reader via the existing design and bring new vision to feature layouts and design. Manage/maintain intern recruitment. Work closely with editorial staff in coordinating production of the magazine and maintaining efficient internal systems, technology, and budget parameters. Assign all photography/illustrations, edit photos, produce layouts for entire magazine, review the design work of assistant designer and interns, reviewing in-house advertising design layouts, work with color correction and RAW images. Some collateral and in-house marketing design."

Laugh Your Asheville Off: Day Two

Asheville's first-ever (?) comedy festival continues today at the Wortham with shows at 7PM and 9:30PM. Headliner Todd Barry (Sex In the City, Conan/Letterman, Howard Stern, Chappelle's Show, Larry Sanders, HBO Comedy Showcase, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Wonder Showzen...) appears with 8-10 other comics.

Saw it last night and Todd Barry rocked the house, lampooning Eaties cereal bar and a woman in the audience with the "sea creatures variety pack" set of tattoos...

Download the free Rhapsody player and listen to Todd here (NSFW!).


Laugh Your Asheville Off
Diana Wortham Theatre
$28-$24

Ushers for the late show are still needed -- call Greg at 828-279-1215 to usher for a free ticket.

(Full disclosure: The festival organizers are two of my closest friends, two local people who bet all their savings on a dream. I'll be there tonight ushering & enjoying the show, so come by and say hey!)

Nikki Talley on WNCW Today at 11AM

Attention all music fans...

According to her website, local singer/songwriter Nikki Talley is playing live from Studio B on WNCW today (Friday July 20) at 11AM. Sorry for the short notice!














Here's how Mtn. X describes her:

Local songstress Nikki Talley suffers from a rare condition -- an excess of talent. She's a stunning songwriter, combining haunting, richly symbolic lyrics about passion and love with a mastery of both guitar and piano; her music definitively sets a mood. Imagine a fusion of Tori Amos' passionate lyrical drive and Norah Jones' masterful spirit, plus an innate fearlessness that lets Talley crisscross genres from folk to bluesy rock to metal, and even take a lead role in last summer's Asheville production of the gender-bending "rock opera" Hedwig and the Angry Itch. She's not just good; she's that good.

-- Steve Shanafelt

Couldn't agree with Steve more. She's great. Check her out on WNCW (FM 88.7 on the dial, also streaming from the website).

Blogging Asheville

Photography by derek olson


I spent some time today, cleaning up the sidebar of old blogs, adding new blogs (sorry it took so long!). It is strange and somewhat sad to me that blogs come and go, but that seems to be the nature of blogging, journaling, ranting...

So farewell the old now defunct blogs but WELCOME to those who have joined our blogasheville ranks!

Jennifer Saylor [new]
She Who Eats [new]
Incidental Muse [new]
George The Bastard [new]
Petulant Rumblings [new]
Hillbilly White Trash [new]
AGirlWhoWearsGlasses [new]

We hope to see you at the Fall BlogAsheville meetup!

Elton Jr. & The Drum Dancers

This video clip was taken Saturday evening, July 14th. The boy with the 'Elton' glasses is the son of the drummer with the beard. The real fun starts about 2 minutes into the video when a van pulls up and a dance troop falls out and begins an impromptu performance. The entire video is about 4 minutes. A little glimpse of downtown Asheville on a Saturday night. Thanks to Eric for the video.

Asheville Postcards

MtnXpress, as always, let us know about this neat resource for old, Asheville postcards. Check it out!

CLICK ME, CLICK ME, CLICK ME!

(Not) Thomas Wolfe

Asheville's local political blogging has a new addition. (Not) Thomas Wolfe:

"With the deadline just 24-hours away for submitting 5,000 signatures of registered Asheville voters to allow a vote on nonpartisan elections, it's looking razor close at best and heartbreaking at worst. What will Bryan Freeborn do? Freeborn, who always seemed more like a reluctant fourth vote than a True Believer, promised Let Asheville Vote canvassers he'd sign if they needed just one more signature and repeated that pledge in public."

For more local politics blogging check out Ashvegas, Asheville On The Ground, Et In Arcadia Ego, Ashevillein, and Scrutiny Hooligans.

Brainshrub Live Blogs the Green Party Convention

There's some Green blogging going on over at Brainshrub. Paul V and Kai Schwandes are covering the event.

WNC Heritage

This site is absolutely incredible. It has the kind of history you won't get anywhere else online (until the AC-T gets its archives up... Are they working on that?). Click here for over 3,000 historical pictures of Asheville. I spent the better part of an afternoon this past weekend perusing all these old photos. Then I went back into the city with a fresh set of eyes.

WNC Heritage also has documents, drawings, and oral history in a searchable database. You'll want to bookmark this one.

The State Of Our Air

This looks interesting:

From the Buncombe County eNewsletter:

WNC Air Quality Noon Workshop

Date: July 18
Register: By July 16. Contact Grace Young at 250-4265.
Cost: $6 covers lunch.
Location: Buncombe County Parks & Recreation Services
Office at 49 Mt. Carmel Road.

"Learn how pollution and air quality is regulated in WNC including trends in air pollution levels and what is being done at local, state and federal levels to address air pollution problems and what we can all do as citizens to reduce air pollution."

Asheville Live Earth Party a Hit

Bruce Mulkey over at Talking My Walk posted about the big Live Earth party at Asheville Brewing Company on Saturday. I accidentally stumbled into the scene, too, intending to go by the bar and catch some Live Earth on the HDTV while reading a book. No way was that going to happen with hundreds of Asheville's enviroluminaries there. Here's an excerpt from Bruce's post:

"Approximately 500 people at the Friends of Live Earth event in Asheville joined two billion other folks from around the world on 7/7/07 in a gigantic wakeup call for our planet about the perils of global warming."
[...]
"Event organizers Cecil Bothwell, David LaMotte, Shonnie Lavender and yours truly were well pleased with the entire event. The representatives of environmental organizations and green businesses tabling engaged the folks attending and gave them empowering ideas about actions they can take right now to address global warming. The kids events were entertaining and educational. Local merchants provided valuable door prizes. The music from the Live Earth concerts on the big screen TVs was something to behold. The And our gracious host Asheville Pizza Company provided a lot of their fine beer and tasty pizza, plus their staff displayed grace and attentiveness in the midst of what was sometimes a whirlwind of activity."

Read the rest. That's Bruce in the foreground of the photo.

The Ellington Buildings

What's pictured here is a model of a proposed 23 story luxury high-rise on Biltmore Avenue downtown. If y'all have been following the story, you'll know that a lot of people who chant "Growth is Inevitable" like this building, called The Ellington. They see it as good density and the "right" kind of development. Many others see the building as a future blight on our economy and an unnecessary transformation of our downtown from what-the-locals-like to what-the-tourists-want. All of that will be very fun to talk about at blogs like Scrutiny Hooligans, Brainshrub, Et In Arcadia Ego, 1000 Black Lines, and the inimitable Ashvegas. Since here at BlogAsheville we're decidedly nonpartisan, hardly political (unless you count DL announcements), and unlikely to turn the place into a madcap growth and development argument, this post isn't about The Ellington. It's about the man and the building whose name and style the developers have adopted.

Most every story on the Ellington gives some background into the building's name and alleged inspiration, but HeritageWNC.org has the most thorough piece I've seen:

"Rising proudly to the Carolina blue sky with a rush of Georgia pink marble, the Asheville City Building has stood in downtown Asheville since 1927. Designed in the Art Deco style (known as the Style Modern or Neo-Romantic in the 1920s) by architect Douglas Ellington of Asheville, the Asheville City Building serves as a landmark for the city of Asheville’s unique artistic expression and as a reminder of Asheville’s progressive spirit and its economic boom before the Great Crash of 1929.5,25 Towering over the City Building in an imposing Neo-Classical style, the Buncombe County Courthouse serves as a landmark of the county’s commitment to traditionalism and security."
[...]
"Originally in 1926, Ellington had planned that twin Art Deco style buildings with a promenade connecting the city building to the county courthouse would comprise the city-county Civic Center. Later in 1926, Ellington revised the courthouse design by the specifications that county officials had requested while maintaining the courthouse’s Art Deco style that worked so harmoniously with the City Building."
[...]
"As it stands today, the Civic Center itself represents the contrast and occasional conflict between Asheville and Buncombe County. The Asheville City Building represents the progressive and artistic spirit that was propelling Asheville forward in the 1920s but also was amassing a huge debt for the Asheville and Buncombe County area, upwards of 50 million dollars.17 The Buncombe County Courthouse represents the conservative, traditional, and safe reasonability that had supported the county for so long yet was finding it difficult to adapt to the changes of the time."

Municipal Election Schedule and City Council Candidates

Joel Burgess, the AC-T's most excellent journalist, serves up a bulleted/Q&A fact sheet on upcoming municipal elections:

"Q: What are the key dates for voters?

A: Today is the first day that candidates for City Council and other offices in Buncombe County may file paperwork to run for office. Candidates may pick up forms beginning at noon. Candidate fees may apply.

- Aug. 10 — Absentee voting by mail begins for primaries.

- Aug. 17 — Voter registration deadline.

- Aug. 23 — One-stop, or early, voting begins.

- Sept. 4 — Last day to request an absentee ballot.

- Sept. 10 — Deadline for absentee ballots to be received.

- Sept. 11 — Primary election. City Council candidates will run by party for the first time in more than a decade.

- Sept. 21 — Deadline for unaffiliated and third-party candidates to turn in petitions to run in general election.

- Oct. 5 — Absentee voting by mail begins for general election.

- Oct. 12 — Voter registration deadline for general election.

- Oct. 18 — One-stop, or early, voting begins.

- Oct. 30 — Last day to request an absentee ballot.

- Nov. 5 — Last day for absentee ballots to be received.

- Nov. 6 — General

election.

Q: Who’s on the ballot?

A: Three of the seven City Council seats are up for vote. In 2009 the others will be up for vote.

Q: Who’s running for City Council so far?

A: Eight candidates have said they plan to run.

Unaffiliated or third-party — Chris Chiaromonte created his own party, the “Cannabis Party.” Tim Peck, unaffiliated Libertarian.

Republicans — Matthew Hebb. Selina Sullivan.

Democrats — Jan Davis (incumbent). Bryan Freeborn (incumbent). Elaine Lite. Brownie Newman (incumbent).

Q: What races are on ballots in other Buncombe County towns?

A: Biltmore Forest — mayor and three commission posts. Black Mountain — mayor and three alderman posts. Montreat — two commission seats. Weaverville — three council seats. Woodfin — mayor, three alderman posts and seats on a board that manages the city water system."

There's more to the article at this link.

Fireworks over Asheville

-Photographs by Tom Williams of Asheville, NC-

Doing Anything Tomorrow Night?

Come watch the City-County Plaza fireworks with the Drinking Liberally folks @ the Asheville Brewing Company (77 Coxe Ave. - Downtown). Come talk politics, down some microbrew and watch the City of Asheville celebrate our country's independence from the British Empire by launching exploding projectiles over the city's skyline.

More details here.

Speaking of Strange, Indeed!

Local ghost investigator and author Joshua P. Warren has announced that he will be hosting a paranormal conference at the Asheville Pizza Company on Saturday, September 29 2007. The conference will begin at 1pm and go for approximately 10 hours. Breaks and book signings will be included, of course. Topics will include conspiracies, secret societies, ghosts, cryptids, UFO's and ESP.

Joshua has written numerous books on paranormal topics including his latest 'How To Hunt Ghosts : A Practical Guide'. Joshua may be found hosting his own local paranormal talk show 'Speaking of Strange' every Saturday evening from 8-11pm on News Radio 570 WWNC.

Also appearing at the conference, Jim Marrs author of 'Rule by Secrecy' and Nick Redfern, lecturer and author.

Tickets may be purchased at Warren's Dark30 Tour website.

Happy ghost hunting!

Belgian Beer Bar

Beer Advocate forum rumor: "A Belgian beer bar, The Thirsty Monk, is coming to Asheville, NC this Fall where Hookah Joe’s is currently. This bar will be only Belgians and Belgian-style, starting with eight draft lines and tons more in bottles. The opening date is scheduled for September, so keep your eyes open."

Hookah Joe's is moving into the soon to be former Hairspray.