Santa Fe of the East

Cross-Country Trip, Day 13

Asheville, North Carolina

Asheville is known as the Oasis of the South or the Santa Fe of the East.  Downtown is a collection of restaurants that hold their own against L.A.'s best, live music venues, and shops owned and loved by locals.

Photograph by Lindsey O'Hare

Photograph by Jason Frank Rothenberg

The town is a haven for New-Agers, who believe that the magnetic ley lines of the Earth intersect here (or something like that) and/or that the Blue Ridge and Smoky mountain ranges in which Asheville is cradled provide a very nurturing energy and/or that the town is sitting on trillions of tons of quartz.  Personally, I think they all come here for the curried almond pate at Earth Fare.  I mean, that's the kind of thing that would draw me to a place.

Asheville is also home to a thriving and entrepreneurial gay community, which owns a lot of local businesses.  One of the country's largest remaining independent bookshops (and one of my favorite hang-outs when I used to frequent Asheville), Malaprop's, is located here.  Founded by two women, this is an important place, not just in Asheville, but as a beacon for independent retailing, and the founder's story of why she started the store and how they've managed to stick around for 30 years is short, inspiring and worth reading.

We spent the morning puttering around the shops on Lexington Avenue and Battery Park Lane (there's a Broadway street and a Flatiron building too -- Asheville seems to have a bit of a New York complex) and each one was . . . adorable.  There's no other word for it.  Every store seems to be incredibly well curated no matter whether it's selling rare jazz and funk CDs and records, artisan-created jewelry, vintage dresses and beaded skullcaps from the 1920s, hand-made leather-bound Italian writing journals, or every variety of incense and crystal known to mankind.  Then there are the street vendors making and selling jewelry, bottle openers out of used horseshoes, string instruments that look like ukuleles and miniature guitars, hand puppets from recycled fabric, the list goes on and on and on.  Just as everyone in LA is a screen-writer (or an actor), everyone in Asheville is an artist.   If you like beautiful things, you'll find it easy to shop here.

Click the picture and read the poem

  

Dinner was at Rezaz, another long-standing and outstanding local restaurant, this one serving a fusion of Mediterranean and European food.  The chef accommodated our vegan requirements graciously and deliciously, and we chatted with old friends who had all gravitated to Asheville from elsewhere as Burt continued his mission of convincing us to move here.   My only regret as we downed a few bottles of Rioja was that we wouldn't be in town longer to enjoy more of their company and Asheville's amazing food.