The main event in Asheville this weekend has been the Southeast’s largest free street festival, Bele Chere. The weather has cooperated more than in past years, and the event has drawn a good crowd in its first two days. The reggae bands were the best. And, for the first time in years, people looked like they had more to do than walk from one end of the festival to the other holding a beer.

Bele Chere is kind of a free speech zone. People who don’t pay for booths can set up and do their thing. Four people posed as statues, an elderly woman did a baton twirler routine, One woman played a stringed instrument while sitting on the feet of a violin player laying on the ground with her legs in the air.

When I reported to volunteer this morning, I met up with a former fellow partisan, and we started talking about politics. He betted Mayor Terry Bellamy’s legacy would be the changing of the Staple’s sign. A couple hours later, some evangelicals came on the scene witnessing with poster-board sized messages. One read, “I now pronounce you pervert and pervert.” Another read, “Gay pride is why Sodom fried.” Some spoke against consuming alcohol. Others held or wore signs extending invitations to repent.

It wasn’t long before the hecklers showed up with messages written on cardboard signs begging Asheville to stand up and support gay rights. When I left, the evangelicals were on top of a stone wall, holding their signs as high as they could, and the bearers of cardboard signs were standing in front, trying to block their signs and overtake the high ground.

The first cardboard sign I saw read, “We can change a Staple’s sign, why not this?” It was held next to a photo of a teen in a blood bath. I was sympathetic to the complaint about government’s strange sense of priorities. But now, I’m wondering if the sign wasn’t a request to get government to silence the evangelicals. As a roving information person, the bulk of comments for the remainder of the afternoon were on the order of, “How do you make those creepy Jesus people go away?”

After I came home, I read that the Bele Chere 5K went past the crime scene of a homicide this morning. The police hung tarps to cover the ghastly evidence in deference to the runners. “We deal commonly with hangings,” remarked Captain Tim Splain to the local daily.