Until recently moving to another city nearby, my sister lived in Asheville for 35 years.
She’s of the hippie generation but left it decades ago.
On one visit a few years back she was asking me why the kids and I liked going downtown at night. We put her in the car and took her for an evening tour past the hippie drum circle and and the street performers and crowds.
She hadn’t been to downtown in over 20 years and her response was “where did all these people come from”?
I attended university not too far away at WCU, and there wasn’t anything much downtown at that time but junk stores, the Wachovia high rise, the original art deco high rise government center and either NOAA or National Weather Service in the Grove Arcade. It’s all nice, renovated, clean, occupied and well-patronized now, on the whole one of the prettier downtown areas I’ve seen.