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2/5 Good: Weather - we have 4 seasons but nothing extreme;
mountains - scenery, recreation, hiking.
Bad: Transplants - who want to change everything to "the way is was back in ________" well if that was so great, why are you here and not there? Then the build butt ugly McMansions on huge scars carved into the side of a mountain, destroying the scenery, causing erosion, stream silting, and landslides.
local government - who want to be big city types suffering delusions of grandeur and want to regulate everything to the point of micro-managing everything;
the filth especially downtown which is a dirty unappealing graffiti covered, litter strewn hodge podge of old buildings, miserable streets, narrow uneven sidewalks, grossly inadequate parking and predatory towing. Even if you removed all of the undesirables that hang out on the streets of Asheville, visually downtown is just a dirty and visually unattractive area.
Last edited by Asheville Native; 01-10-2009 at 01:41 PM..
We are military and have been stationed here about 2 1/2 years. Moving all over the states for 18 years, i can say i really enjoy this area. And yes it is different, and I agree about the downtown. I would love to do more shopping downtown if there was parking and it was cleaned up a bit. I haven't met many people at all that are native, seems like everyone has moved here from up north or down south to be in between the heat and cold. And this is one of the most expensive places we have lived. We wouldn't dare buy a home here with our salary and gas prices are more. You can drive to Charlotte and Greenville and get lower priced housing and gas. I agree about the houses on the mountains, they are building a new subdivision up the mountain from us and we get flooded from the construction when it sprinkles and its pushing the bears down here to eat, and now the mountain looks cruddy.
But we love being close to the surrounding towns to go hiking, rock climbing, gem mining, white water rafting. The Biltmore Estates is great the first few times and so is the Grove Park inn and Grove Arcade.
I would love to do more shopping downtown if there was parking and it was cleaned up a bit.
I've lived in asheville and/or surrounding areas for 9 yrs and don't think of downtown being especially dirty nor have I found parking to be an issue. Nowadays I walk to downtown but before I moved into my current residence 5 months ago I rarely had trouble finding a parking space.
8/10
Pros: scenery, access to outdoor sports/recreation activities, culturally diverse population, weather is pretty mild year round
Cons: lack of decent jobs, tourism dominated economy, cost of living, too many 2nd homes(many of those ppl think they own this town), irresponsible development
Weather is ok although it can get fairly hot in late July/early August as well as chilly in the winter (like this week).
Cost of living is high. Home prices seem to be down a bit but salaries still leave a lot to be desired. Grocery prices aren't too bad, gas is a little bit higher.
Activities wise there is a lot to do for some. Outdoor stuff, a few clubs/pubs downtown, lots of arts/crafts.
Downtown can either be pretty or disgusting. I leave my office and it looks like a war zone, 10 min later I'm downtown and it's nicer. Graffiti is a problem in some areas but APD did just arrest something like 1 people on those charges. Lots of litter in the city/county. The entire place needs to be picked up and cleaned with a pressure cleaner.
The city is more liberal, the county more conservative. The two mix but not often well. I'm middle of the road and have some neighbors who are extreme lefties and others who are extreme righties.
The local/non local crap gets old after a while. Some harbor some serious hate for those who moved here from elsewhere. Some of it is warranted (enough with mountaintop development!), other is based on jealousy. I try to ignore most of that.
Development is unchecked and often unfair. In my neighborhood of big old homes it was ok for someone to put a tan modular in that matched nothing else. It was ok for the person down from me to put a house in her backyard. It wasn't ok for me to have a large hedgerow in the back to block it all because someone complained about the bushes because they didn't look nice (and the city actually told me I interfered with their right of way).
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