The convergence of punks, hippies, artists, and queer mountain-hipsters makes for a town with some hairstylez. Young or old, few are spared.

You might ask, how did so much hair get to the mountain towns in western Carolina?

Well, maybe it starts with captains of industry. First came a Vanderbilt. He built an estate. Then came more people with the funds to buy their own mountain retreats. The town and surrounding hills became a retreat for others seeking relief from physical or psychic frailties. Sanitariums sprang up. The Gilded Age didn’t miss Asheville, as evidenced by a number of classic Art Deco style public and private buildings. Then the economy crashed, the city locked in long-term financing on their loans and the glorious Grove Arcade became a weather station in service of the U.S. military during WW II, its collonades and luscious facade boarded securely up. Development and demolition all but came to a halt.

By the 1970s, a hive of artists, freaks, and back-to-the-landers had made their retreat to Asheville. A few neat shops in downtown, a few studios install themselves. By popular referendum, residents vote narrowly to keep the downtown experiment alive rather than build a big-box commercial center farther out. Well, they vote to postpone it. Fast forward, and Asheville is a regional hub at the center of many other smaller towns. Building trades still operate here, literally paving the roads for retreats. Art, food, and entertainment are here in plenty, giving the town the feel of a place many times its size (72,000 on record). The downtown and nearby neighborhoods are walkable, though the big boxes have made plenty of room in their own spread on the other side of the mountain.

We’re here through the end of this week completing the conversion and other repairs on Bess the Truck, after which we look forward to giving you the tour we’ve been so long in the promising.  The tour to which all of this deliciousness is but a prelude!

When I’m not replumbing brake lines, I’ll be working to capture shots of the awesome hair in this town. It’s a bit like bird watching, for that rare waist-length mullet-braid (seen this morning while repairing my brakes, far from camera!). Check the photo-transmission for sightings.