Ruth Summers inspected smashed and scratched windows this morning, tallying the damage and chatting with the owners of the Grove Arcade’s small businesses who suffered damages in Saturday night’s vandalism spree.
Like me, she was trying to make some sense out of it.
“We may be a big building, but we’re small business,” Summers, the arcade’s executive director, said as she assessed the clean-up scene.
“We’re Asheville-grown. We may look like the establishment, but we’re not.”
That’s what’s so frustrating about the mess. If there’s a political agenda attached to the brick- and rock-throwing band of people that swept through downtown Asheville on May Day, what is it? If not, why bother?
Athe end of the day, it’s all still just shattered glass. It will be swept up, repaired. And nothing’s been accomplished. I don’t get it.
Ellen and Sidney Braverman, the owners of the Grove Arcade Copy Shop, don’t get it, either. Ellen Braverman said it will cost her to replace four big panes of glass in the copy shop’s storefront after a $500 insurance deductible.
“I’m angry because it’s going to cost us money and we didn’t do anything. And it’s really ironic,” Braverman said, in the sense that if there was some political statement, she and her husband would probably be sympathetic.
“We’re very pro-environment. We have 100 percent recycled paper,” she said. “We sell locally and we buy locally, and our customers are other small business people.”
Rob Bullock, a co-owner of Sante Wine Bar, saw the events unfold Saturday night. The past two years, groups in Asheville have taken to the streets and each year’s gotten a little more violent, Bullock said. So he was ready.
Bullock locked up his patio at 9 p.m. – that’s early for a spring Saturday night – and told the Grove Arcade security guard to be on alert. Then he watched as the group marched up Page Avenue, grabbed retaining wall bricks and tossed them into the street.
“I didn’t say a thing. I didn’t want to invite any reaction,” Bullock said.
So what did he make of their destruction?
“I guess it’s a ‘Communist workers of the world unite’ kind of a thing,” Bullock said.
“But it’s kinda like they’ve got the whole counter-culture thing completely wrong.”
I think that’s right. Asheville’s got room for a wide diversity of thought and action, but not at the expense of plain old maturity and a few small business owners just trying to make a living.
9 Comments
Craggy –
To be fair, when I was a wild, rebellious teen, putting my mom in that position would only have encouraged me. "You mean, I get to act out AND punish the hated oppressor?"
(Just for the record, my rebellion was limited to primarily self destructive acting out, not this sort of wanton dirtbaggery.)
I’m betting if this were the Tea Party folks there would not be "room for all kinds of people". You are excusing this type of violence from leftists, which is typical for the mind set of someone such as yourself. Like it or not, the most violent people alive today are leftists and Democratic party members. It’s time to start shooting back when they turn violent and destructive.
Agreed Soni! Also, require their parents to come clean up with them and when little Suzy Anarchist sees her Mommy sweeping up broken glass while crying in embarrassment out of her daughters actions then maybe, just maybe she’ll realize what morons she and her anarchist pals are.
It is interesting that the feeling about this event seems to be that it was a political act. And the question floating around is which politics? i guess the ski masks and "planned" nature the attack make this a reasonable question. Most comments have made the point that Asheville is progressive and "green" (I heard Asheville described as possibly "the most liberal city on the east cost" on the radio), with the implicit assumption the vandalism was either because of that or despite that characterization. But could it be adolescent stupidity of a copycat nature, carried out with the trappings of the rampant images of "protest" our culture is swamped with? And if so what does this say about these images? Time will tell, biut there may be no serious protest about anything involved.
Did they catch any of them?
Why haven’t any journalists interviewed people who know the students involved in this episode? Isn’t one of the students a senior at UNCA?
Because overprivileged college kids growing up in a rich first-world country have soooo much in common with the oppressed working class. *rolleyes*
They should be made to come back to Asheville to serve out sentences of community service. Let them clean up and beautify the community they failed to destroy.
Isn’t it a little odd that Rob of Sante remembered years past, and the date, but the local authorities were (or so it seems) caught off guard.
Wasn’t there a big religious rally at the Civic Center the same night … looks like there should have been a pretty decent police presence that evening.
J, how did they manage to catch so many of these "anarchists" …. good job by the PD.
Mr. Bullock should have armed himself; if not with something to stop them, then something to at least give a clear video recording of the criminals.