In Defense of Local Color
Buccachio | 16 February 2007
Asheville has recently enjoyed a renaissance of sorts—motivated in equal parts by its upscale shopping, unbeatable mountain panoramas, art-deco architecture, and red-green political slant. However the unspoken ingredient in this Appalachian success story is something called local color.
Local color is that ramshackle barn decorated with hubcaps and rusty mid-century farm equipment… on the property beside your million-dollar-luxury-ritz-palace. Local color are Hare Krishna devotees chanting and banging tambourines outside your French bistro. Or heavily accented, flannel-clad working-class farmers selling organic tomatoes to yuppie tourists. Or the Picnics Chicken Man.
Picnics Restaurant and Bake Shop is the embodiment of local color. Established on Merrimon Avenue in 1995 by mother-and-son collaborators Minnie and Ron Smith, this local eatery is a favorite for famished UNCA students seeking a hot, off-campus (i.e. tasty) meal. Aside from chicken and barbeque plates, I think the Roast Duck with Ratatouille Provencale sounds delicious. The Great Dame informs me that Picnics also bakes incomparable peach pies. But the star attraction here is the Picnics Chicken Man—a sports-style mascot who wanders the parking lot to greet visitors and waves to passing motorists.
Last October, Grade-A Bureaucrats informed Picnics that the Chicken Man would need to cease and desist. According to city functionary Christine Logan, the Chicken Man operates in contravention of the city sign ordinance. Logan claims that the Chicken Man constitutes a dangerous distraction to motorists passing the restaurant, despite remaining strictly within the Picnics parking area. Apparently similar laws regarding mobile phone use were overlooked. The revelation shocked longtime residents of Asheville, liberal-leaning students, and loyal restaurant patrons—especially considering the innocuous nature of the Chicken Man, whose benevolent mission hardly seems a threat to anyone or anything. Picnics Attorney Wilder Wadford expressed surprise that the city would bring a legal challenge to the mascot, commenting that the Chicken Man “fits no definition (of a sign) that’s set out in the ordinance.”
Why target the Picnics Chicken Man? I would personally propose cultural imperialism on the part of recent transplants from elsewhere—people for whom the mascot is either too provincial, uncouth, or (most likely) unbearably Southern. Strange that other instances have slipped through the crack, such as the obnoxious mascots dressed as mattresses who advertise along Swannanoa River Road, or the ever-present sign-urchins who appear whenever a TJ Maxx outlet closes down. Need we remind our seasonal Floridian residents that their state extols the virtue of an equally ridiculous mascot named Mickey?
Fortunately for everyone involved, the Asheville City Counsel will soon consider an amendment to the sign ordinance which could relieve the pressure on Picnics to stop having fun… a relief for everyone who feared Asheville was about to become a suburb of New Jersey. Chalk up another victory for local color!