These days, you won’t encounter stray chickens in downtown Asheville — just one 10-foot-tall rooster with a proportionately large attitude.
The star of local artist Molly Must’s Chicken Alley mural casts a cool stare on passersby, coaxing them to pause at this side street off Lexington Avenue and wander in. Which is exactly the point: to draw modern city-goers back into the agricultural past of the neighborhood, where a family-run poultry processing plant once ruled the block in the early 1900s. As visible proof of that time disappeared, Must’s chickens pace the alley — strutting, as if boasting what we only partially knew then: They were about to be history.
Find it: Between North Lexington Avenue and Broadway Street in Asheville.
Across the globe from Vietnam, effects of the war reverberate through the state, where social and political perspectives are shifting quickly and dramatically.
These places are the stewards of some very special items: Doc Watson’s first recording, the desk Virginia Woolf used to redefine the novel, and Elisha Mitchell’s pocket watch are just some of the cherished pieces that teach us about our state’s history and the people who preserve it.
From burgers to comfort food to elegant entrées, the range of plant-based dining in North Carolina is growing. Restaurants on this list are exclusively vegetarian and/or vegan.
