ASHEVILLE – On a Thursday evening, friends and strangers crowded the sidewalk of College Street creating a mixed cacophony of conversations and laughter that competed with the up-tempo dance music blaring from the speakers inside Imperial in downtown Asheville.
The cocktail bar’s wide storefront window was opened to create a walk-up bar as customers were prohibited from entering the establishment due to no plumbing.
Tropical Storm Helene’s destruction resulted in a citywide water outage, ravaged neighborhoods and businesses, ended lives, dealt a devastating blow to the economy and reshaped landscapes and communities across Western North Carolina.
Darrick Teeter, a business partner at Imperial, said many have found refuge at the bar and seen the storm-related stress bring people to tears.
“Everybody wants to feel normal. Half of this city is food and beverage workers and they’re all without jobs,” Teeter said. “We can’t go to work. We’re trying to rebuild each of our individual lives and the city because nobody wants to say, ‘Asheville’s done.’”
Nearly two weeks later, residents chose to escape the hardships – if only for a couple of hours – to commune with their neighbors to get through the tragedy.
A night out in Asheville
On Oct 10, bar-goers sought relief from the stress, trading chaos for the comfort of the community.
Rob Stafford, co-owner of Stafford and Sons hauling company, said he’d been working at the North Fork Dam to repair the reservoir to restore the city’s water before arriving at Imperial to end the night with a beer.
“We’ve been doing a lot of work and I know a lot of these other people out here are doing a lot of work just to bring something back to their community or to bring something back to the person beside them,” said Stafford, an East Asheville resident. “A lot of us haven’t seen each other since all this started. It feels good to be able to decompress and breathe for a second.”
Meanwhile, four friends who normally would meet socially for their weekly run group at Archetype Brewing, sat at Dirty Jack’s, sister bar to Green Man Brewery, opting to limit active activity without the convenience of at-home showers for what’s expected to be several more weeks until the city’s water supply is operational.
“We’ve been coping just with each other. We were lucky we have a lot of friends from that run club in West Asheville and we’ve been doing family dinners together every night in the last two weeks,” Lindsey Reed said.
In West Asheville, six friends at a picnic table on the front patio of the Haywood Road neighborhood bar, Haywood Country Club.
Amy Ferguson, a service industry worker at Wicked Weed Brewing and Asheville Sports Club, said she evacuated to Johnson City, Tennessee, to her parent’s home before returning to her residence in West Asheville. She said she met with friends at Haywood Country Club to ensure everyone was OK.
“When you show up somewhere where you’ve been going religiously for years and you see these faces that you normally do all the time, all of a sudden. … They’re evacuating and you don’t know if they’re coming back,” Ferguson said. “Being able to see my friends for the first time in I don’t know how long is something I can’t take for granted.”
Christy Hayes, a regular patron at Little Jumbo ― a cocktail bar on the cusp of the historic Montford and Five Points neighborhoods ― said she missed Monday night jazz nights but was invited to share a booth with two strangers-turned-new friends who are musicians, Jay Moye, a member of the local band Doss Church & the Unholy Noise and songstress Dani Beans.
The trio discussed the possibility of hosting a house party benefitting local unemployed music artists.
“I came here alone tonight, I made new friends, I connected with them. There’s something magical about that,” Hayes said.
A sense of normalcy
Communing at bars brings a bit of normalcy that hasn’t existed since Tropical Storm Helene.
Reed said it’s finding the balance and caring for one’s mental health. She said reintroducing extracurriculars, like running, can help to return to regular routines.
“There’s still so much that we’re trying to process and so many more things that we’re trying to do in a day that we weren’t doing before like volunteering or filtering water,” she said.
Isabelle Lifshutz, a West Asheville resident who works for a certified public accountant company, said the situation has been isolating but that the community has come together to be supportive.
“I haven’t seen my friend Amy here in two weeks or my friend Emily in three weeks so being here tonight is a little bit of normalcy. I feel like it was very much needed,” Lifshutz said.
Doling out hugs, brisket and beer
Charlie Reed said, that due to the storm recovery, there were fewer people at Dirty Jack’s than he’d expect on a regular night.
Some local bars have reduced their menus to canned and bottled drinks and nixed cocktails, as they require ice. Disposable cups are used instead of glassware that would require water for dishwashing.
Haywood Country Club’s coveted portable toilets and handwashing stations were enough to convince some customers to leave their homes for a night out on the town.
Free grilled cheese and brisket served in the parking lot may have kept some out longer.
Larry Lindquist, owner of Lindquist Painting, said he drove nearly four hours from his home in Clayton, Georgia, to assist with storm recovery in WNC. He said several days before, he’d aided by feeding first responders and donating pet food and animal feed to local pantries.
He said it was his second trip to Asheville, and he plans to return weekly for the next several weeks, coordinating with neighbors in Georgia to bring more supplies.
On Thursday evening, he drove through Asheville looking for anyone who may have been hungry for a free meal and in need of warm clothing and spotted the full patio in front of Haywood Country Club. He said he’d grilled and served nearly 150 grilled cheese sandwiches, cooked on a griddle on the back of his work truck, and had moved on to piling paper plates with barbecue-covered smoked brisket.
“I’m here to feed people,” Lindquist said. “I know there’s a need in the area so I can’t just sit home and watch.”
Later, Hayes said that she came to relax at Little Jumbo after a week of volunteering at World Central Kitchen’s food distribution hub at Bear’s Smokehouse on the South Slope. She said at the meal distribution camp, she has been living up to her unofficial job title as a “professional hugger.”
Hayes, a trained counselor for a trauma intervention program, said hugs are essential for coping and she’s become known for giving them out.
“I give emotional first aid,” Hayes said. “I know what people need and people need connection.”
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Tiana Kennell is the food and dining reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. She is a graduate of Michigan State University and covered the arts, entertainment and hospitality in Louisiana for several years. Email her at [email protected] or follow her on Instagram @PrincessOfPage.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Hugs, beers, friends: Asheville bars reopen amid Tropical Storm Helene
