Downtown Asheville is one of the two primary general impetuses for having traveled (or moved) to Asheville in the first place: the other being (oh, yeah) those mountains, those gorgeous mountains that shape the 2,000-or-so-foot basin (depending on where you are in town, that elevation fluctuates dramatically -- for gosh sake, there's a mountain -- albeit now with an "open cut" in it, through which six lanes of traffic travel -- right in the middle of the city limits) in which Asheville rests. Downtown Asheville was once effectively closed -- boarded up, experiencing a couple decades of serious downtime.

Not so nowadays. "Hip" is the term you're likely to most frequently hear describing downtown Asheville -- or, alternatively, "funky." And that it is (at least for now; more on that later).

There's a short stretch of I-240 along about the Montford Road exit in downtown Asheville where Democracy Now's Amy Goodman meets John Boy and Billy. This cacophonous and utterly incongruous confluence occurs at 103.5 on your dial, where the WPVM ("The Progressive Voice of the Mountains") low-power signal is unceremoniously shadowed and overcome by Classic Rock WIMZ. Welcome to Asheville.

Yep; a convergence of the old and the new, that's Asheville--and the happy news is that for the most part it works, rendering an alchemic admixture of tradition and progression … generally speaking.

WEST ASHEVILLE

Integral to the Asheville Renaissance - which dates from approximately a decade or two ago to the present - is the revitalization of West Asheville. Simply put: West Asheville quietly rocks. 

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