While newspaper headlines continue to obsess over a homicide spree in Asheville, the real villain may be signs on Merrimon Avenue.
Today, I stopped in a shop, and thought I was being really clever by suggesting they put a sign in the window to let customers know when they are open. The clerks (short for customer service representatives) said the city forbade them. (Neighboring businesses do have signs, though.) They said they tried parking a truck in front of the building with the company’s name on it instead, but every time they tried, they got a citation.
A little further up the road is the enterprise where my buddy complained that the city wouldn’t let him use a sandwich board to advertise specials, wouldn’t let him put the name of his business on a sign over the door, wouldn’t let his employees wear aprons with advertising on them – but didn’t seem to have any problem with the graffiti sprayed all over the wood fence he built to screen his dumpster as a courtesy to the local aesthetes.
After summits and protests and a trip by the mayor herself to Staples’ corporate headquarters in Massachusetts, Staples took down their sign. Staples is just a couple blocks away from where I live. I passed it the day the sign went down and didn’t notice. I was carpooling today and mentioned it to my friend as we drove by. He didn’t even notice. I questioned how his synergy had managed not to rise to a new level of awareness.
Meanwhile, a city block away, the Asheville Mural Project is proceeding with a small taxpayer subsidy. Nobody is complaining that this looks “ghetto.” It is not commercial.
