Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Here’s part of a little FB essay that my friend zen sutherland wrote after learning that his friend and fellow creative soul, David McConville, had decided to move away from Asheville to pursue his work in designing immersive visualization experiences.
here’s part of zen’s post:
He talked of San Francisco, where he will be moving and how Asheville has had a fertile mix of art and open-minded and high-purposed people to develop ideas, but the time had come to put much of those ideas into a more substantial reality. And not just because he will have completed his doctorate and left us slightly hairier apes behind, but because Asheville is like a great sprouting spot, and he has friends and colleges and culminations that have nurtured him, but he needs to be planted. Needs to be nearer to the resources of action, of building, of getting things done.
And Asheville isn’t that. I don’t think David was talking of big fish and little ponds, about the diminutiveness of our potting-plant city, but of its maturity, about Asheville’s capacity, or rather incapacity, to understand it’s own identity well enough to evolve into a great city. Always the duality of tourism and innovation, Asheville has always rollercoastered between a great place to get away from the concerns of stressful life and the conduit for change of those concerns. I can see Asheville as both the land of love and acceptance of diverging views and a caricature of itself as the land of love, beer, food and tourism.
I’m no better. I don’t really know where Asheville stands on its identity and I tend to ignore the corporate and financial concerns in favor of the image of itself as a healing place, nature-rich and refreshing. And innovative. But tonight it felt as if that spark of the city dimmed with David’s moving on. I felt the sting of RAD lofts and parking decks, the many friends working two jobs, Donnie Loyd T-shirts and just gentrification in general. Innovation as approved by shareholder meetings and focus groups. Another bold and valiant step towards mediocrity. I just felt Asheville a little thinner in the profundity and even a little less interesting. Perhaps because i will miss my friendship with him. Maybe, tonight the ring of a waxing moon has, in fact, lost its diamond.
I grew up in the South, moved to Ann Arbor as a young adult and traveled throughout the USA in my younger years. Asheville is definately a special place. The city has an openness, a free spirit nature, and a beauty. These things aren’t going away. They feel inherent in the nature of the city and in those people who are attracted to moving here. Big cities like New York and San Francisco are where artists go to build careers. We are a down home place without the money, the connections, the scene, etc. And that’s ok. I’m planted here.
What “stings” exactly about the RAD Lofts project, I wonder? The fact that there won’t be as many picturesque, grafitti-covered industrial landscapes to photograph?
I think we can safely say that we are one of America’s premier craft beer hubs, and that our Bluegrass/Americana music scene is one of the best.
But I wouldn’t go much further than that.
It is a small city, a tourist destination, and a regional medical center. Stop trying (and crying) to make it any more than that.
On one hand I understand what you are saying and I too have felt the pains of change or at least the nausea of cheap tourism tricks that cheapen the over all experience of living here (downtown carriage horses anyone?) But then again, I have lived in a variety of places that experience those same problems, many with much much higher intensity. I mean seriously. Where are these great cities that don’t struggle with some of the same issues? The idea that somehow I should feel that SF’s “self discovered identity” or even its actual reality is something we should aspire towards is silly. Am I after the outrageous cost of living, gentrification like no where else, a commodified culture that markets everything from its seals to its saints. and really, do you not know anyone in SF who has had to take an extra job to pay the bills? How about almost everyone I know who lives there. Don’t get me wrong. I love San Francisco. But I take it for what it is. Just like I realize that Santa Fe’s main plaza is a racket of high end sunseting western cowboy/native spirituality tourist traps. and Times Square is filled with out of work actors dressed up in puppet suits. Maybe next time, I am in Portland, I can buy a Portlandia t-shirt. After all, at least they can laugh at themselves. We take ourselves and our importance a bit too seriously around here. Afterall, the AVL Metro is around 425,000 including Madison, Henderson, and Haywood counties. SF Metro is around 7.15 million. Is that because they “sefl-actualized”? And so I suppose I am just tired of people making large scale comparisons of Asheville to major cities around the world. Not the best art market, limited jobs, not enough parking, oh no, we didn’t win the Beer City poll! blah blah blah. Asheville is not a “Great City” but it sure is a pretty good damn town. And that is okay. All the sad self-analysis lately from Craigslist to the comment threads on this website only makes me wonder if the people that groan so much at what we aren’t realize that apples are actually apples and oranges aren’t, and that grass is gonna be grass regardless of which yard you are in.
Maybe we are a greenhouse. That’s awesome. Maybe it isn’t our destiny to be one of the world’s great cities. That’s awesome too.
I was just in SF last week. It’s a great big city, with many things that AVL doesn’t have: good and bad.
The idea that SF has some realized some identity about itself, and that said realization is the core of its success, makes people far too important.
Cities aggregate due to environmental conditions first. Nearby resources, access to fresh water, climate: these are the reasons why cities flourish and fail. Not because the people who live there conceptualize their identity.