Probably the foothold held in that city by the eclectic, the wiccan, the tolerance of deviancy. There is, to "magic" much of the forbidden and taboo, though that is not as it once was. You can find an incense and pewter dragon seller in almost any city with a population over 300,000.
Asheville, downtown in particular, is also a haven of "the Homosexual Community," it simply can't go without saying, as well as a hefty drug culture and nasty homeless community. What came first, I'll leave to someone else to analyze.
Whew! That may slow things down a bit.
My stepdaughter lives in Asheville. It is now overpriced, and has more lesbians and gays than San Franciso.
In fact, I call it the "San Francisco of the South.
Across the mountains, in east Tennessee, (Greene County, Johnson City, Erwin, Jonesbough) you have the same quaint shops, less crime, not enough gays to notice, and very conservative population and values.
I stayed in Asheville in June taking care of the stepdaughter after surgery, and everything costs three times as much as it does over here in Tennessee.