Overheard on Haywood Road: Part 7

It has been a hot minute since I did another installation of Overheard on Haywood Road, my series of blogs in which I simply share with you readers the inane, should-be-satire tidbits I hear (and furiously jot down) while spending time on Haywood Road, the hipster epicenter of Asheville. 

As I wrote in the first installment of the series that I published on January 1st, 2023, “West Asheville is Asheville’s hipster epicenter, and Haywood Road is its main thoroughfare, filled with shops, breweries, coffee shops, and restaurants that use words like ‘bespoke,’ ‘mixologist,’ and ‘kimchi’ to justify a $28.00 burger.”

I hope—parphrasing what I also wrote in that first installment—that good-natured ribbing I’m doing comes across here. I like hipster West Asheville, and I have these jotted-down tidbits because I spend a lot of time there. As I said then, “I genuinely like the neighborhood, and some of my favorite spots to frequent—The Burger Bar, Archetype West (a particular favorite), Pizza Mind (another particular favorite), Cellarist, Itto Ramen, the U-Joint, my new favorite Halloween tradition, and the aforementioned Battle Cat, just to name a few—sit along Haywood Road. I’ve been spending more time in West Asheville lately, and I’m slowly learning it’s a rather insular place, which has led me to hypothesize that many of the people of West Asheville don’t realize that they’re verging on parody—it’s truly tremendous.”

For the record, all the cited spots are still places I frequent. 

I actually took a break from this series because, well, I took a little hiatus from this blog during the latter half of 2024, due to some things going on in my personal life, as well as giving both Asheville and my reactions to what was going on in it room to breathe in the immediate aftermath of Helene, but I’ve been up and running more or less since the start of 2025, and I think it’s time we return to ridiculing—and, in a sense, celebrating—one of the things that makes living here so unique: Asheville’s particular flavor of hipster nonsense. 

So, without further ado, here are the inclusions of the 7th official edition of Overheard on Haywood Road (as always, I try—not always successfully—to present these with as little context as possible): 

• “You know him, he’s the tall, polyamorous dude always smoking a cigarette, always waving his Glock around.” Ok, so I made it one entry before attempting to provide context, but this one is wild, and was said by a man in a group of people who ended up spending the bulk of the time talking about gun rights and gun trainings, but who all had multi-colored hair, dressed in drug rugs, and one of whom identified themselves as having “they, them,” pronouns; 2nd amendment enthusiasts come in ALL different sizes here in ‘Merica. Also, I wrote this one down in a phone that is no longer with us, and so I am remembering it to the best of my ability. It’s close to accurate, and legitimately wild, but I think the original was truly glorious. 
• “David hates when I take sound baths. He really hates it.”
• “I’ve been leaning hard on my chosen family lately. Being an empath is hard.”
• “I really can’t believe they don’t have macadamia milk as an option.” I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this same woman complain about this same lack of macadamia milk at the same coffee shop before. 
• “I think it would blow people’s minds if I went as a vampire for Halloween.” 
• “That’s when I was living in a bus.”
• “I’ve always been too neurodivergent for traditional academia.”
• “The price of eggs is a disinteresting talking point.”
• “No, that’s when I was fucking that farmer with a secret family.” I wish I had more context on this one so, so badly. 
• “I was breastfed well into elementary school, and I turned out fine.” I wish I had the opinions of the people being addressed to know for sure if they had the same definition of “fine” as the speaker. 

So, there you have another edition—the inaugural edition in 2025, with just 2 months left—of Overheard on Haywood Road. 

Hopefully, I’ll be able to squeeze one more out of this year. If you want to read the rest of the historical insanity, versions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 could be found there.