North Carolina Day 1 - Pinball, Pork, and Plenty of Art
I started out today by exploring around Asheville, which everyone told me would be a cool, artsy college town. They were not wrong. Craft beer and cold brew coffee flowed freely.
I got iced coffee and chocolate coconut macaroon at High Five Coffee. A real breakfast of champions. The coffee was great, but macaroon was really exceptional.
After my hearty, healthy breakfast, I just kinda wandered around downtown Asheville popping into different art galleries. There were a lot of them, and it was honestly a pretty great way to spend a morning and afternoon.
I started by checking out the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Gallery. Black Mountain was an experimental college founded by John Andrew Rice in 1933 centered around art and collaboration as approaches to holistic learning. It closed after only 24 years due to funding issues (shocking that artists would be bad with money), but the influence its students and faculty had on 20th century arts is undeniable. Notable alumni include John Cage, Cy Twombly, Allen Ginsberg, and Elaine de Kooning among others. The museum was small, but free and had some really cool art and artifacts from the college's heyday. My favorites were an abstract painting by Joe Fiore and this mixed media collage called Opal Gospel by Robert Rauschenberg.
After taking in the art, I took an impulsive stop at Bruisin' Ales, a little craft beer store with some very crazy festive window art. I had a good talk with the cashier about his favorite craft beers from the area and ended up buying three bottles to go, a Highland Mocha Stout, a Duck Rabbit Milk Stout, and a Steel String Rubber Room Rye Ale.
The next art gallery I visited was the Lexington Glass works. They had some really gorgeous bowls and more abstract glass works, which were unfortunately beyond my price range. They also had a full bar which was closed due to it being early in the afternoon, but it seemed like it would be a fun place to hang out.
On the way back downtown from the glassworks, I stopped at the French Broad Food Co-op to get some more coffee and fight the urge to buy every incredible looking baguette I saw.
I didn't need any more coffee but I was very tempted by Double D's, an old Double Decker Bus repurposed into a cafe and dessert store. I hear it's one of the best in the city but they're cash only, so I just had to content myself to appreciate the aesthetic from outside. My favorite part is that for some reason the driver was a skeleton.
After skipping the bakery, I got enticed by another art gallery called the Horse and Hero, partly on account of the name, but mostly because of all the truly far out pop culture and fantasy art in the window display. My personal favorite was a big painting of Dustin from Stranger Things on what seemed to be just some piece of driftwood. He's clearly the best character in the show.
The thing I was perhaps happiest to discover in Asheville was that they had a pinball museum. Much like in Asbury Park and Roanoke, it was just pay a flat rate for unlimited pinball. They also had other classic arcade games, so I got to try playing Dragon's Lair for the first time. The game is famous for it's absolutely incredible artwork by former animation powerhouse Don Bluth and its staggering difficulty. It was also featured prominently in the new season of Stranger Things which made me particularly excited to see it. I was also very excited to see my old nemesis Elvira's Scared Stiff Pinball. This time I finally completed all six scary challenges, but then instantly lost after completing the sixth challenge so i don't know what happens once you complete them all. The other game I really fell in love with unexpectedly was Creature of the Black Lagoon Pinball. It seemed like a strange movie to make into a pinball game, but the way they did it was really cool because it was super meta and was actually structured around the very idea of midnight monster movies but then also eventually confronting the creature. It was a blast.
After pinball, I got my lunch/dinner (dunch) at what I was told was a must go restaurant called Tupelo Honey. I didn't take much convincing because that's also the name of one of my favorite Van Morrison albums, and one brief look at the menu really cinched the deal. I had a blackberry habanero pulled pork burger. Yup, that's correct there was pulled pork slathered in a delicious blackberry habanero BBQ sauce and then piled on an all beef angus burger on a homemade bun. It was unreal. It came with a side of pork belly collard greens, and biscuit with actual tupelo honey. I also had their house rye ale which was a smooth, full bodied accompaniment to a delicious meal.
After dinner, I made the trek up to Charlotte for the night's open mic. It was at a really cool bar called the Evening Muse and was a mix of comedy and musical performances, but actually pretty evenly mixed between the two. They actually limited the number of comics because at the last mic there had been too many and it disrupted the balance of comedy and music. Normally these mics tend to be much more music heavy so it was nice to see a healthy mix of comedy.
I liked both aspects of the mic, and I thought it was really cool that they tried to push musicians to perform original songs instead of just covers. Artistically it was very cool, because it was great getting to see people showcase their own creativity and talent. Tonally though it made for a kind of roller coaster of an emotional night as most people's original songs tend to be sad and personal which is frequently lovely but a very different energy than live comedy. I think the comics have a slightly more uphill battle with audience approval than the musicians but really I felt like everyone I saw was quite good.
My favorite comic of the night was a guy named James R. Hustle who talked about going from being a drug dealer to being a single dad. "My tastes in movies are real unpredictable now. Scarface, love it. Frozen, love it" His bit that I liked best was: "A crackhead once offered to drive me around for $2. That's a hell of a deal, but I don't see a car anywhere".
Probably my favorite performance of the whole night was the host getting up and singing Tom Waits' Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis after he had a few shots to celebrate his tenth year hosting this mic. It was really endearing.
Speaking of endearing, at least two of the musical acts I got to see, Modern Mooxy and Von Stranz, were married couples playing together which I thought was pretty cute. They also happened to be really tight bands, so hopefully they don't go the way of Rumors-era Fleetwood Mac.
My own set actually went quite well. I ended up trying out a slower more measured delivery style, which I think was actually out of tiredness but must have come across as confidence because it worked shockingly well. I got some big laughs in places where I don't always get any just by adding a slightly longer pause. I'd say that was a lesson learned for sure, and not a bad way to close out the day.
Favorite Random Sightings: Mr. Transmission, A Fence Company with a sign that said "You must accept that Jesus is our lord", An add that said, "Sandwich Worship... Is it wrong?", Malaprop Bookstore, Salvador Deli
Regional Observation: The Bible Belt is definitely a real thing. Lots more Churches and religious advertisements than up North.
Albums Listened To: Live at Ernesto's By the Slackers; Live at the Beacon Theater by Louis CK; Live at the Comedy Store by Louie CK (Back to back Louie albums after his recent scandal was a lot to process. I still think a lot of it is funny and I'm able to separate the artist from the art, but the more sexual material is really uncomfortable and unsettling in light of everything)
People's Favorite Jokes:
Knock Knock/ Who's there/ To/ To who?/ To whom
A farmer is sitting on his porch and a young man comes up to him and says, "Sir, are these your milkweeds?" The farmer says, "Yes they are?" "Well I'd like to get some milk from them if that's alright?" the man says. "That's not really how that works," the farmer replies. "I'd still like to try," the man says, so the farmer lets him go out into his field and an hour later he comes back with a big jug of milk. "How did you do that?" the farmer asks dumbfounded. The man just kinda shrugs, thanks the farmer, and is on his way. The next day he comes by again and asks the farmer, "Sir, are these your honeysuckles?" The farmer says, "Yes they are?" "Well I'd like to get some honey from them if that's alright?" the man says. "That's not really how that works," the farmer replies. "I'd still like to try," the man says, so the farmer lets him go out into his field and an hour later he comes back with a big jug of honey. "How did you do that?" the farmer asks dumbfounded. The man just kinda shrugs, thanks the farmer, and is on his way. The next day the man comes by and asks the farmer, "Sir are these your pussy willows?" "I'll get my hat," the farmer says.
Song of the Day:
