ASHEVILLE: TOURIST TOWN
I went to Asheville and parked in the parking garage on Biltmore Avenue (the avenue going to Biltmore I realize for the first time in fifty years here) and then walked up to Pack Square. There were a lot of tents, but the tents were all of dealers, sellers of manufactured plastic art, there wasn’t any real art. It was all aimed at tourists.
And there were certainly tourists everywhere walking in one direction or another, everywhere, as if they had a direction and a purpose. Of course their purpose was to have a good time on vacation in the mountains. So I went to the Asheville Art Museum instead, going straight up to the third floor where there was a photography exhibit of photographs owned by the Asheville Art Museum. There were famous photographers like Diane Arbus and local photographers like Tim Barnwell and three photographs by Rob Amberg. I looked at a lot of them but only photographed a couple of Rob’s photographs. I guess it raises your status if you are in a museum. But since you can print multiple copies of the same negative your photographs could be anywhere or everywhere. I was worn out when done. I walked down Patton Avenue to the food hall at the art deco former S&W cafeteria and had an over priced but good chicken sandwich at Buxton Chicken Palace. The place was crowded. Then I walked back to the parking lot and for the second time had cars lined up behind me because the machine wouldn’t accept my credit card or an alternative. Under Asheville’s switch from cashiers to credit cards in parking lots my card got me in but wouldn’t let me out.
Finally I was freed and I drove home and turned on the air conditioner and fell asleep. I read just this week that Asheville was number 17 on the US News and World Report’s list of twenty most livable American cities. But maybe Asheville got elevated too late. I think Asheville’s time of being a really interesting city may be over. The stores are beginning to slide into being tourist traps. The fake art is a sign of this decline. The Madison County Arts Council exhibit yesterday was a real art exhibit, not a fake one for tourists, with local artists sharing what matters most to them and with a good number of the paintings NFS, Not For Sale, because the painter wasn’t trying to make money and couldn’t part with the painting. And everyone visiting was a genuine art lover.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 