I took this for work today: a big beautiful chunk of malachite. That has little or nothing to do with what I'm about to discuss, which is whether or not Asheville has changed for the worse in the past few years. My daughter and I are having this conversation right now and our consensus is yes, it kind of has. There are just so many damn people here now, and it always seems like more than half of them have no visible means of support yet they can afford big fancy giant homes and cars. Where do they work? Where do these people earn their money? Where do they spend it and can I get some?
I've just been priced out of my house and my neighborhood and yeah, okay, I've made terrible various mistakes in my life over the years which, if you really want, I could enumerate, boring us all to tears, but still. I've lived here for seven years. I've held a couple of fairly high profile "upscale" jobs downtown for most of those seven years. When I moved here it was still a livable if a little decrepit city where you could rent a beautiful old bungalow for not much money or a grand apartment in Montford for even less. And I look around now and everything's been cleaned up and fixed up and some people are making money hand over fist, but the rest of us are not in great shape. It's unfortunate that all my mistakes led to me not having the money or the credit or the ability to buy a house seven years ago when they were still in my price range but that's the way it was and frankly, my income hasn't risen one iota in those seven years and now I'll never, ever own a house. I don't know if I can even find one to rent.
And I don't like gentrification; I never have. Yeah, I like good coffee and good beer and those supposed hallmarks of gentrification were already here a long time ago. Better coffee and beer, actually, because I miss Bean Streets and Vincent's Ear and a couple of Starbucks and an Indian restaurant (okay, it's a really good Indian restaurant, I give you that) haven't replaced them in my heart. I confess to being tired of the eternal snotty hipster scene (who are these people? Why are they so obnoxious? Where do they buy their clothes?) and the early retirement baby boomers (to quote the Bobs, first I was a hippie, then I was a stockbroker, now I am a hippie again!) and I don't really want to live in a town where the working classes are increasingly forced out into ever more distant and depressing trailer suburbs.
So more and more, I don't know if I'll stay. I have family here. I moved here because of my family; I've been coming here my whole life; WNC is a big part of me. My friends are here and I love them; I've built a whole life here. But I'm not certain, anymore, that this is the Asheville I've known and loved and I'm not certain either whether I belong here anymore.
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'scoose me; however, I happen to be one of those boomin baby retirees. You not mad at me too, is'n you? We can't all be hippie free all our lives, as much as that may be how the good lord intended. And, yes, whilst one must provide for the betterment of one's neighbors, said betterment need not lead to the schism of your old Asheville's society. In retiring early, in fact, I have allowed there to be one less boomer who would reach eco-crunching stature, one less director of fortunes not his own and one less vortexed warped, Greenback driven, legionnaire of affluence lording over your humble abode or that of others.
Life sucks. Few are as you, F, selfless bona fide artists. Commerce has little, albeit some, need for your ilk. Your suffering is the salve our money grubbing bistered hands need. That which you condemn follows you like a sunflower coursing the sky - all would wither without you.
Have pity on us for we know not what else to do.
Sky.
Bunnyfire here...
It ain't as purty, but you are always welcome in Fayetteville.
And I bet you could afford to buy a house here if it came to that.
(I remember when I lived in Sarasota and even a hellhole was almost more than I could afford. It sucks mightily, I know.)
Calm down, sky. You didn't retire and promptly buy a house in an area you didn't know for more than its asking price, meanwhile bragging that the house you bought for nothing in 1974 sold for umpteen million dollars. You didn't then divorce your wife and start trolling the fancier downtown bars for younger women, you don't spend your time complaining about how the new town you just moved to doesn't have various stuff you preferred in your old town and you didn't decide that you were suddenly a rock star, buy a couple of very expensive guitars and take yourself out on stage. So, uh, you're not the baby boomers to whom I am referring.
It's the ongoing rental/housing price/living wage crunch here that's really getting me down. Asheville has the highest cost of living and the lowest wages in the state of NC. I love it here and I don't like being chased out of this town because I am trying to actually make a living here. You've been here, you know what people make here, you know how totally impossible it would be to actually buy a house or live on a police officer's salary in this town. At this point, I don't think many police officers or firefighters or postal workers or teachers live in or around downtown Asheville anymore. Not because they don't want to, but because they can't. And it's primarily out of towners with out of town income that have made that possible and I'm sorry, but I think it sucks.
Actually Schuyler, you're pretty much the problem. No one is asking to be "hippie free," we're asking that people who move here not destroy the community we've spent the last two decades building. You schmucks didn't want to have anything to do with this town until recently, and now you're so desperate to invest that it's running the rest of us out. Life sucks? Yeah, when you're poor and actively being screwed over by the wealthy, it does actually. Well done, but at least we had something beautiful for a while. You? You get a heap of Starbucks and an increasingly tepid art and music scene. Well done!
UnknownCity,
I ask you to accept that I understand your anger and am not really your enemy.
Fliss knows me; you can too: UnknownCitylet.me.have.it@gmail.com
Sky
Unknowncity,
You totally misunderstood Schuyler's comment.
Schuyler and I lived in and tried to save a community in Baltimore that you probably wouldn't live in. Schuyler worked for the citizens of Baltimore as a Police Officer for almost 25 years. I worked as a Firefighter.
Schuyler retired and we have moved to a modest house in the mountains of Colorado. We paid our dues and we are not your problem.
Carol
P.S. We are not afraid to post our names.
Oh, I forgot to tell you-my hubby used to live in Telluride, CO back when regular people could still afford to live there (yeah, that shows our age!) so the transformation from local's paradice to rich person's playpen is understood by us all too well.
Oh calm down, y'all. There's only two of us who are actually in Asheville and that's me and unknowncity and just take my word for it that we're entitled to be a little bitter, okay?
Yeah, I guess I did take Schuyler's comments a little too seriously, and wasn't able to see the irony. On a first read, it didn't seem that ironic, though. I've heard the exact same things fall out of the mouths of developers and recent arrivals, so it didn't seem so absurd at first.
It's just a very, very bad time to be a non-wealthy member of this community right now. People who have lived here for decades are getting evicted, long-time businesses are closing and many of the things we love are getting stabbed right in the heart because a bunch of well-off newcomers think it's a cute place to have a summer home. Or, it would be if they could just "clean it up" a little.
So, my bad Schuyler. I guess I'm a bit touchy.
And to Carol: Lady, this is the internet, not a City Council meeting. My real name is pretty much irrelevant to the discussion, in much the same way that my height and hair color are. It's the ideas and words that count. But, if it makes my angst and rage about seeing my city's culture strangled seem any more real to you, my name is Steve.
Just wanted to put my 2 little cents in here. I live in Va. near Charlottesville, and the rents here are on average $1900 a month for a one bedroom, and your talkin in a place with 40,000 people. Significantly less than Asheville's population. So in comparison, I think Asheville is pretty decent rental wise. I have been looking for a place in Asheville and have been stoked about the low housing prices of rents. The thing about C'ville that sucks too is that a lot of wealthy elitists live here driving out the people who were here originally and leaving them homeless; then having NO resources to help those in need. I think Asheville rocks in comparison to these other shitty little towns, plus I am a North Carolinian anyway!!
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