I own a domain and I am about to launch a site called Attack Asheville. Attack Asheville will be basically a single blog with multiple authors. Everyone is invited to join and post your complaints about Asheville. I want to go ahead and explain my motivation for making this site so I have a chance to say it before I start getting endless amounts of hate mail. Here is my list in no specific order:
- Everyone hates Asheville
- Everyone loves to complain about Asheville
- I am the only person that was born here and still lives here
- Asheville is superbly lame most of the time
- Downtown
- Homeless people begging from me 18 times a day, and I mean the same guy at least 13 of those times
- Everytime I move for longer than 30 minutes the whole place changes
- Roundabouts, we don’t live in Europe we don’t need these
- Merrimon Avenue
- People who complain about Staples on Merrimon Avenue
- My friends who are single can’t find any women worth talking to
Ok now lets go through the list so I can explain a bit more in case the list doesn’t immediately make you love me. The first two are obvious. When is the last time you sat around talking with someone about Asheville and they didn’t say something negative? Not in general but specifically about Asheville. This ties in with number three because I have talked to many people who have moved her because they love it and they always manage to say something to me, usually right after they say they are from somewhere else, about how Asheville would be better if it were more like where they came from…I am going to stop there because it is on my list of things I really, really hate. Number four is me agreeing with them, I loved it here when I was a kid and I still like it but the attempted changes to Asheville have really made it completely suck about 98% of the time.
The next few I think deserve their own paragraph. Downtown, oh downtown what do I say about you. I love you because you are different and accepting of all people but on the other hand I don’t care for most of the people that you accept. The number one thing that you are accepting of that I can’t stand are bums. We have always had homeless people, what city doesn’t, but has anyone else noticed how completely out of control they are these days. If I had every cigarette I gave a homeless person to get them to stop talking to me about tin cans controlling your mind then I could probably smoke for at least a month without buying a pack, that is not exaggerating either.
Change! Necessary, but not necessarily welcome! I don’t like change. Like most Americans I fear and hate it unless it means I will be able to pay my bills and buy big screens better. That is a joke but come on, I left for four years I came back and had to learn everything again. I left for another two years and came back to what would appear to outsiders as if Mad Max had shown up and Master Blaster was about to kick the crap out of someone. So when I hear people talking about change and how much they hate the way things change how come they tend to be the same person protesting Staples on Merrimon Avenue, makes sense, but also are the people putting together a business plan for a Costco on Airport Road. How freaking stupid can you be people, don’t give me a speech about how I shouldn’t shop at the most convenient store for me and then put in another store that is built on the convenience of how many products it caries when the only difference is that your Costco will make you money and also be far enough away not to ruin the view of the peasants below your balcony.
My last point is actually a big one and it says a lot about the area. I myself have one of the greatest girls in the world. She is awesome and perfect to me so I am lucky as a person can be. I also met her 600 miles away in Alabama while living there and going to school. I see friends of mine looking for women around here and not meeting anyone good. They are not looking for one night stands or other stupid kid stuff but for real relationships that they want to be long and meaningful if not forever. This troubles me in a society where women are supposedly still the minority. How come there aren’t at least a few good women around here? In their defense maybe they are just never around when my friends are but what are the odds. My friends are the most awesome people! They are smart, good looking, funny, and smart. I learned from the military to chose them wisely! So why do they have such a hard time finding a good person. I think that it might be because everyone who lives here is jaded with here and the state of the area. So they are just as mean as all the people who moved here now. If I don’t sound like I am mad and want things different here then I apologize because I should but I don’t ignore people because I am mad. So if you are a good girl out there the leave a comment here and prove me wrong but I doubt I will get any comments.
Allright well that was my rant on Attack Asheville, here is a taste of the visual design and please post. Post and tell me I am full of crap or that you love me and I should be the Mayor. I don’t care I just think that if we can all talk about what is wrong or at least really figure out what IS wrong then we can start to fix it as a community, maybe.
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I must say that I’m rather unimpressed by your ability to make scathing overgeneralizations. However, I’d like to make a couple of points (which you’re not likely to care about) for my own satisfaction after reading your post. Your hatred of Asheville must be truly great for you to create a website that, nearly a year after this post, continues to not exist. The fact that you spend your time with people who complain a lot does not constitute a representative sample. I could name (and will, in a private e-mail, if you so desire) at least thirty people off the top of my head who have lived in Asheville their whole lives and continue to live here. I have never met a person who lives in a place they cannot complain about. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone who can name a single thing in life about which they have no complaint whatsoever. Finally, I am curious to know where your friends have been looking for women that they haven’t found any who are worth talking to. I suspect that you would name a couple of bars and possibly even Scandals (where I am confused by the number of straight couples). Perhaps if your friends would attend college lectures, hang around the Dripolator, strike up a conversation in line for an awesome show at the Orange Peel (read: Dar Williams, TMBG, Toubab Krewe, etc), or frequent Malaprops and Mr. K’s they would find more of the amazing women I know in Asheville. Little known fact about the world: if you hang around with stupid people, you’re not likely to be or find the smart people. Your friends’ inability to date or attract worthwhile women doesn’t reflect on the women nearly as much as it reflects on them. So, there’s my defense of my fellow Ashevillains; I don’t think you’re likely to read this nearly a year after your original post, but it makes me feel better anyway. Write to my name with a dot in the middle at gmail if you happen to want to have a conversation. By the way, in case you were wondering, I found this post while looking for examples of the work of Groovy Web Design because my husband is considering taking his blacksmithing hobby and turning it into a career.
I was born here, grew up here, came back here after military service and college and still live here now. So don’t mistake me for a transplant to this area. The site never went up because I wanted to make it a pro con site where as much as people might complain, others could defend that point about Asheville.
I think maybe I was too vague or you just missed it, but this site is a joke. It is a place for people to complain about Asheville, that is the joke! Everyone here complains all the time and everyone hates everyone else for the most part but then want to say this is most friendly place on earth. For instance you are complaining about me having a site for complaining. You also complain about the places that my friends may look for women, even though it is constructive and meant to be helpful it is a complaint. You obviously have some issues with someone bad mouthing Asheville or you wouldn’t of posted at all. So it kind of proves the point that everyone here complains about everything and is ready to be vocal about it.
I thought that a one sided argument about what was wrong with Asheville wasn’t much of an argument at all if it was only one sided. So without some way to attack and defend a point it seemed less in good spirits. The site will eventually launch but I have real work to do and this obviously takes back burner. On the other hand though, I will need some moderators for the chatter on that site and if you are interested in keeping it clean let me know and I will add you to the group of people that might want to help out with the site.
My friends don’t hang out anywhere, they don’t try to meet women because in the past when they have, they meet the same old Asheville stereotype, and don’t kid your self many people move here to become that stereotype. The Asheville stereotypical girl is the one you see every time you go downtown, always reading but not comprehending what she reads, always at the dripolator using her laptop like she is important but it just reading someone else’s blog, instead of writing anything of her own, well except her Facebook status messages that are supposed to be profound but are really just catchy little one liners that she read on someone else’s page. She is probably a vegetarian in public but still occaisionally eats meat when no one but her closest friends are looking. After many years of meeting “that” girl I am sure they just gave up on it. That girl will want you to change into an Asheville “guy” who sits on a park bench and plays the same song on an old beat up acoustic all day, not his own song, just some cover of a song he thinks means something but he doesn’t even know all the words to. Then he will bum a cigarette off you, since he doesn’t work cause that is “working for the man”, and tell you about how things would be better if everyone were more like him. So that is, as best I can figure, why they don’t go to those places and look. That is me guessing though, I don’t know where they have or haven’t looked to find someone. I haven’t ever had trouble meeting anyone anywhere so I haven’t put much thought into the best places.
In all seriousness though, I wanted the site to be more open and constructive that to just be a bash fest. The site at current has a local events calendar, which is open to public suggestion for things like city council meetings you feel are important, it has sections for general talk about local venues, restaurants, etc… it is not just for complaining but hopefully the angry will show up, complain and then stay for the positive. If it goes both ways then the person who is angry about one thing will also stand up for and defend a different thing. Or, at least, that is the plan.
Don’t look for Attack Asheville anytime soon though, there is too much work to be done that actually makes money for me to spend any amount of time building a free site as a service to the community.
As for emailing and conversation, just have it here on the blog. I don’t censor anything on this blog. The comments have to be approved to avoid any spam comments but if someone writes a serious comments I will approve it. If I get made to look like and ass I don’t care at all. So just put it up here and then people will be able to see it and maybe even join in sometime.