Beat from the street (Sept. 14, 2016)
Garrett Franklin Andrews, 25, employee at French Broad Chocolate Lounge, originally from Asheville
 |
| Garrett Andrews really, really likes pizza. Photo by Nick Haselhof. |
“I would say, wow. I’ve never been asked that before. I don’t know. Honestly, it’s just kind of a natural amalgamation of things I’m interested in, like I kind of don’t do it too much on purpose, you know? My friend gave me these glasses the other day. They actually make everything look really cool. It’s like a sunset all the time. I kind of don’t like how round they are, but whatever and then my friend made this shirt for me that’s incredibly specific. I started a cult based on pizza recently.”
What’s it called?
“The pizza church. You can find it on Facebook.”
Ok, is it like pastafarianism?
“Yeah, similar.”
What’s the reasoning behind it?
“I mean, you got the sauce, you got the cheese, you got the dough. You call that a trinity. I feel like it speaks for yourself, you know? We all like pizza. It’s just one of those things, you know? So it just kind of put itself together, my style.”
That’s awesome.
If you were to describe your profession, what would you say it is?
“Pretending to be something I’m not to appease tourists. That’s my profession.”
Why do you consider this to be your profession?
“Well, just because it’s what I make the most money doing, like, answering questions for tourists, like grabbing cookies out of a case and putting ‘em on a plate and telling them whatever they want to get is the best thing there could be. I like all the people that work there a whole bunch. There’s just a ton of some of the most creative and brilliant artistic minds I’ve ever met working there. It’s so ironic to see the heights of intellect scrubbing floors for unappreciative people. I don’t know, not to be too hating on anything, necessarily. I don’t hate on it too much, but it’s going on, you know?”
It is. So if you were to describe one thing you dislike about Asheville and one thing you like about Asheville, what would it be?
“I dislike the mosquitoes. I mean, that problem, we’ve written to the city about it as many times as anyone could. They haven’t done a damn thing about the mosquitoes and I’m kind of sick and tired of it, honestly. It feels a little irresponsible on their part and then the thing I love the most would probably be, honestly I think they’ve, and I know this is kind of a contentious issue, but I think they’ve chosen a really awesome color of orange for all these signs they’ve got here.”
It is pretty sweet.
“Not everyone agrees on that, you know? There’s a group of us who really like this color of orange.”
Tangerine.
“Yeah, yeah, citrus of some sort, no doubt.”
So if you were to describe yourself in three words, what would you say and why?
“Wow. I don’t get stumped very often, hmmm. Big-time, what’s that third word? Big-time doodler, because I just find myself doodling all the time.”
That’s cool. What inspires you artistically, creatively?
“The ambient noise of wind blowing through trash on the streets. It’s one of my biggest, I just find myself getting really into that, you know?”
Like American Beauty?
“Yeah, right and then taking that sort of sonic transmission and then, you know, ‘cause they’ve got all these machines that can pick up the vibration of the solar system and turn it into visual representation, you know? So I just try and do that with the trash. I feel kind of like a deep sense of calming to do that because you don’t see a lot of that. It’s like this whole story that’s not being told.”
So if you were to have a life motto, what would you say it would be and why?
“If I were to have a life motto, which I don’t, but if I did, I would say ‘mottoes belong nowhere’ and those are actually three words I live by. Actually, I want to take back the other three words I said and say those three words to sum me up.”
The original version of this interview was published in The Blue Banner.
Comments