I’ve recently bumped into an unusually diverse number of people volunteering their disenchantment with Asheville’s magic kingdom.

“Is it just me, or is this place so full of itself that that everybody is blind to how unpleasant Asheville is,” said one. 

“I’m from New Jersey of all places and I don’t get where your food rep comes from,” said another. 

“Heck, I lived in Detroit most of my life – the people up there would punch you out for doing half the stuff that goes on in this phony paradise,” offered a third.

I’ve personally lived here the balance of my life. My plan is to ride it out into the next century. Although 147 might be a bit of a stretch.

My wife accuses me of staying here mostly to needle the people who’ve messed it up. She’s half-right, but I have lots of great memories and future passions to carry me over the bumps on Asheville absurdity highway.

For the fun of it, mind if I X-out a few paragraphs of Asheville’s land of bliss script?

• Our food city claims are mostly a fabrication — Yes, there are plenty of places to eat, but most are average and pretty pricey. The scatter of really good eateries requires that one wade through a phalanx of street predators, stand in line, spend an hour looking for parking, and/or tap into your retirement plan. 

Nothing defines Asheville’s mediocre food reality better than the 1,000 Mexican eateries all crafted out of the same recipe book. Would someone please burn it and thus force some culinary creativity?

• Public safety is AWOL —  Our patrol force has been cut in half at the same time the criminal element of Asheville has been unleashed by a dysfunctional judicial system, meth and fentanyl and a paralyzed citizenry. Crimes that are not receiving enforcement attention are not reported. We’re in the middle of a public safety delusion that will take years of repair by realists understanding that Asheville isn’t a utopian Disneyland. 

On the plus side, we have a new APD chief who knows how to get things back on a positive track. He’ll need help to do so.

• Sorry, a city can’t be weird, safe, affordable and elitist all at the same time — Though Ashevillians like to pretend, the illusion we can have it all is just that.

Weird is OK as far as it goes, but isn’t it weird how the weirdly – especially when fueled by fentanyl and meth – can degenerate into the dependent, dangerous and/or dysfunctional? 

Hardly anyone facing the challenges of building a normal life in Asheville can come close without being well-healed; propped up by benefactors; renting a mobile home in Marshall; and/or living with the folks or three gender–shifting roommates with cats. 

Sorry to pop any balloons, but a good metaphor for Asheville’s post-millennial culture mix is what happens when you take a watercolor set and mix up all the colors. You don’t get the bright tints of light and life we like to envision as an Asheville graffiti montage. The odds are more in favor of a rusty-looking yuck.

• We’ve got a high cost–low yield education system — Yep, it’s hard to imagine, but after all the hell and damnation Asheville went through in the sixties to integrate our expensive school system, we now have a publicly–funded charter school – the PEAK Academy – advocating segregation?

That amazing misstep can be tracked to a good mission tangled up in a bad method. Asheville’s academic performance gap with black students has been horrific for decades and there is desperation surrounding that on-going failure. That’s fair, but you don’t fix bad things with more bad things.

• Then there’s that little healthcare system deal we made with HCA — Though there will be much clanging and banging, don’t expect things to really change. Mission is now first and foremost a business. There will be many good things that go on there, but in the end the money side of things will win.

If the truth be known, in terms of under-staffing and cutting services, that had been happening a long time before HCA came in to pick up the pieces.

The people then in control didn’t sell Mission because of how well they had managed things.

 â€¢ But there’s lots of good stuff, too — Chick-fil-A still has great lemonade. Most everything one can find to do elsewhere; one can also find here – it just takes a little more effort. There’s still lots of down-to-earth, productive, and value driven people here. We have four seasons, beautiful mountains, wonderful waterways, and the grace of nature about everywhere you look.