It’s the plight of the local musician: always wanting a chance to show their talents to a hometown audience, yet always being relegated to bar scene. It’s the out-of-town bands that tend to get the spotlight and the best slots at the biggest clubs. And in a scene where where you’ve played can mean nearly … Read more
Imagine a theater company that’s thrown its script out the window: Ensemble members hear a story for the first time and act on impulse to create a show right before your eyes. For most companies, this kind of challenge would result in chaos. But the Asheville Playback Theatre welcomes it. Stories seldom told: Asheville Playback … Read more
Designer Kaorico Ago divides her time between Japan and the United States; Asheville in particular. Her line, Little Eagle is a global endeavor, sold between Western North Carolina and Kanagawa, Japan, that’s geared toward globe trekkers and the environmentally minded. Her flowing, oceanic-inspired pieces tend to wrap or drape rather than zip or hook. Natural … Read more
Flavor: Latin/Caribbean wrung from WNC soil Ambiance: Cozy vintage soda fountain You know how sometimes you’re watching a movie and a certain actor seems intimately, yet unplaceably, familiar? Desperate to figure out in which film you saw him last, you shift into mental makeup-artist mode, picturing his inscrutable face outfitted with a villan’s moustache or … Read more
Thousands of people find themselves wandering up and down our mountain paths, captivated by the gushing waterfalls, the rhododendron-canopied trails and the smell of woodsy detritus on the air. Then, without warning, their sacred bond with nature is broken by the galloping steps, the huffing and puffing, the funky ammonia bouquet left behind by a … Read more
Pole positions: Arden-based Diamond Brand Outdoors will offer a free beginner’s hiking course on Saturday, Nov. 17, departing at 9 a.m. from the Pisgah Forest Fish Hatchery parking lot near Brevard. Attendees will have the chance to try their hand at using trekking poles and GPS units. An intermediate-level course takes place the next day, … Read more
With global warming now an accepted fact of 21st-century existence, we are finally starting to think seriously about how we as a nation might turn it around, or at least slow it down. Global warming is largely due to the buildup of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere, leading to the well-known greenhouse … Read more
Jenny Kommit, the polymath culinarian behind Stovetrotters, has added regular dinner service to her culinary arts center’s roster of offerings. In addition to catering, cooking classes and culinary tours, the center, located in the former Polar Bar on Sweeten Creek Road in Asheville, will begin serving dinner this month. A preliminary menu showcases an array … Read more
Since moving to the apex of the Eastern Continental Divide, I’ve developed ambivalent feelings toward the formidable road that intersects it: N.C. Highway 9. No wheel goes unturned on this convoluted gateway to the area’s mushrooming gated communities and the pleasures of Lake Lure and Chimney Rock. There’s no lack of traffic, from the countless … Read more
So Atlanta could run out of water in a matter of weeks. Wake up call, folks? … As we watch this area explode with development at every turn [while] the powers that be keep insisting that growth is good, shouldn’t we look at the trouble Atlanta is in and take heed? In Al Gore’s An … Read more
