It’s hard to go a day in Asheville without overhearing someone complain about all these people in our cozy mountain oasis.
Asheville’s a cool city, but it used to be our cool city — not the readers of Food Magazine or various travel guides that paint Asheville as America’s next big thing.
But, unfortunately, the word is out: Asheville is awesome. And hipsters, hippies, yuppies and tourists from all over want to come see for themselves — sometimes permanently, making it even harder to compete for the little affordable housing Asheville has left.
At the same time, our sister city, Portland, Ore., is struggling with a similar problem. Shows like Portlandia and other positive-yet-quirky media coverage are driving newcomers to the Pacific Northwest city in hordes — much like we see here in Asheville. That’s when a few creative Portlanders came up with a master plan to stop the madness: anti-tourism videos.
And although the influx of tourism is great for our local economy, which has been based on tourism for quite some time, it’s a bit therapeutic to laugh about anti-tourism following a morning of plowing through groups abruptly stopped on sidewalks gawking at all the quirkiness and waiting six lights to turn left onto Merrimon after work.
So where’s our video, Asheville? Where’s our “Beware the Asheville Maniacs” campaign? Check out Portland’s here:
Leave a Reply