Cover Story
Censored: A Horse Dies, State Keeps Details Secret
This story is from Kentucky Center For Investigative Reporting. This piece is part of a package of stories and commentary on horse racing in Kentucky and elsewhere. For more, click here. It was Kinley Karole’s first race, ever. On a Thursday nearly two weeks after the Kentucky Derby, the crowd at Churchill Downs was sparse. The 3-year-old…
10 Things To Do Under $5 This Week In Louisville (6/24)
MONDAY, June 24 Model Train Show Bon Air Library Free | Times vary For the rest of the week, the K & I Model Railroad Club will be at the Bon Air branch of the Louisville Free Public Library, showing off and operating a model train route. The group has been educating locals on the…
Belushi Speed Ball Unplugged: A Farce of Nature
“Shhh. Shhh. You’re too loud” Senor Diablo, the caricatured manager of thrash metal band Belushi Speed Ball, implored during their performance at Odeon for a special “unplugged” set. How is it that one of the loudest and messiest live bands in Louisville is playing un-amplified and asking everyone to be quiet? In a very tongue-in-cheek…
We went to the Louisville Salt Cave to relax… it worked
Let’s get right to one of the most frequently asked question about the Louisville Salt Cave, an alternative wellness center that claims its therapy has mental and physical health benefits: No, it’s not a natural cave. There are caves under Louisville, but this is a small, man-made cave inside of a strip mall, and it…
Meet the Bands of Girls Rock Louisville 2019
Photos by Kathryn Harrington The idea sounds almost impossible – taking groups of 10- to 18-year-old kids, teaching them to play electric guitars, basses and drums and having them create new bands and write their own original songs in just one week. But that’s exactly what Girls Rock Louisville has been doing since 2016, and…
5 Things To Do In Louisville This Weekend (6/21)
FRIDAY, June 21 Blues, Brews & BBQ Festival Louisville Water Tower Park $16 | 5-11 p.m. Friday, 4-11 p.m. Saturday What’s not to like? Blues. Beer. Barbecue. Under the haze of smoked meats, seven New Orleans and Memphis-style blues bands will play, including headliners Toronzo Cannon and Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials. Sample craft…
Council to consider making pot possession low law enforcement priority
Now it’s up to the Louisville Metro Council to decide if possession of small amounts of marijuana should be the city’s lowest law enforcement priority. The council’s Public Safety Committee voted 3-1 to send the ordinance to the Metro Council for consideration at its next meeting. Councilman Mark Fox, D-13, voted against the action, and…
Home Is Where The Heart Is
Story by Class Act Federal Credit Union A Class Act member’s home-buying adventure After two years of planning and preparation, Christopher Lopez finally purchased his dream home. He smiled as he recalled moving in with his six-year-old son, “He’s a funny guy,” Christopher chuckled. The first time Christopher brought his son to his new house,…
Three concerts to consider this Saturday
This Saturday, there’s an abundance of great shows, so we put together a quick guide for a few of them. And, if you play your cards right, you could probably even catch (some of) all three. Louisville Locals: 10 for $10 Riot Skatepark, Saturday, June 22 A full day of music from the local punk…
How To Save Horse Racing
This piece is part of a package of stories and commentary on horse racing in Kentucky and elsewhere. For more, click here. For decades, too many in the horse racing industry have behaved as though Thoroughbred racing is a private club they can run any way they want. Broken bones? Slaughter? Our problem, they say. Even…
What Horse Racing Is Doing
This piece is part of a package of stories and commentary on horse racing in Kentucky and elsewhere. For more, click here. “Should racing continue as is” the voice on other end of the line inquired and I — like so many in the Thoroughbred industry have — took a deep breath and tried to gather…
The ‘Game of Kings’ Continues With ‘Henry IV, Part 2’
Three years in, there’s something transportive about the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival in Central Park’s “Game of Kings” series. It may be as simple as the setting itself, the nearly bare scenic design (Karl Anderson) of the wooden stage surrounded by three, tall trees that have earned the name “the three sisters.” It may be Scott…
‘When Fishies Rain Down,’ Bracing and Witty
Playwright Juergen K. Tossmann has long been a philosopher of junkyards and garage sales, auto repair shops and race-track grandstands. Thinking back over a couple of decades of Tossmann’s plays (I think I’ve seen them all), it seems to me that the archetypal Tossmann characters usually have dirt under their fingernails and wise, well-thumbed books…
Shakespeare As Improv?
Starting this weekend, Louisville Improvisors will shake up Shakespeare with its “Late Night Shakes” series. Louisville Improvisors are partnering with Kentucky Shakespeare for one-of-a-kind comedy shows. After select Shakespeare in the Park performances, improviser extraordinaire Chris Anger and company will take the stage for Shakespeare-themed improv shows. This weekend, the troupe goes on after “Henry…
Wendell Berry’s Massive, Valuable Compilation
“What I Stand On: The Collected Essays of Wendell Berry 1969?2017” (Library of America; Two volumes, $75) Does this amount to a life’s work? Not hardly. Library of America had published a volume of Wendell Berry’s fiction last year. And only two of the chronologically presented selections making up these 1,700 pages are full book-length…
Radio Arcane Embraces The Dark Side Of Music
Since 2017, Shahn Rigsby and several other Louisville DJs have been using the collective Radio Arcane as a way to promote “dark eclectic music.” They do so through a series of events and concerts which focus on synthesizer-based music, hitting genres including goth, darkwave, industrial and new wave. Rigsby — who DJs under the name…
Soft Self Portraits — ‘Comfort Disrupt’
[LEO’s biweekly sonic breakdown column deconstructs a single song from an area musician or band.] About a year ago, Soft Self Portraits leader Cody Johnson found himself in an unhappy place. Or rather, a complacent place. He’d been humming along through life when a breakup and an unexpected job transition gave him pause to consider…
‘Disparate Justice’ Study Calls For Cash Bail Reform
At 3 p.m. on June 12, there were 55 people in Jefferson County jail who couldn’t afford their bail, with little hope of getting out until they either pleaded guilty or went to trial. By the next morning, however, they were all free. Their bails were posted by the Louisville office of The Bail Project,…
Thorns & Roses: The Worst, Best and Most Absurd
Thorn: No money? Pool-ese! Two Metro Council members say they want to reopen two of the four pools that were closed to save $272,500. Remember, the mayor spent nearly $116,000 to fete Derby guests, not including $26,000 from sponsors (pay to play, we say). The mayor won’t release the guests’ names. Which do you think…
Ask Minda Honey: Unwanted Texts Easily Exposed, So Why Send Them?
In a relationship or life jam? Send your questions to: AskMindaHoney@leoweekly.com or reach me on Facebook.com/AskMindaHoney I was texting a couple of weeks ago with a friend who was trying to figure out what to do about the co-founder of a lit mag who was sending her inappropriate emails in the middle of the night.…
Savage Love: Why Not Me?
Q: I found your column after a Google search. I saw your e-mail address at the bottom and was hoping for some insight. My issue is this: Two years into our 23-year marriage, my wife declared that she didn’t want to kiss me or perform oral on me. Several years ago, she had an affair…
Sarino Offers Meatless Tastes Of Italia
Like many in the city whose last name ends in a vowel, members of my family are incredibly picky about Italian food. I grew up wielding cutlery, arguing about the exact recipe of the family sauce and working on the 17 unique enunciations of the word fuhgeddaboudit. Great Italian food was rumored in Germantown, so…
Al Hamra’s Delicious Buffet, Tastes Of Jordan And Beyond
Here’s something you won’t often hear me say: I love an all-you-can-eat buffet. Specifically, I love the buffet at Al Hamra Halal Mediterranean Buffet at Mid City Mall. Buffet, schmuffet: This is the only place I know of where you can fill up on Jordanian specialties and pull forkfuls of tender, juicy meat off a…
Bourbon And American Heroes
At first glance, one may not see the parallels between bourbon and America’s heroes — our veterans. But there are many. Take bourbon, our nation’s native spirit. “American owned, American made and American proud,” said Chris Cruise, who served as U.S. Army paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He also happens…
The Do Not Move Off The Sidewalk Challenge: Holding Your Space In A White World
I was in the airport on the rolling walkway with clear directions posted before stepping on the sidewalk to “stand on the right or walk on the left.” There was a white man in front of me who disregarded the sign and stood in the middle of the rolling walkway, preventing anyone from passing him.…
Heyburn 9 Trial Exposes Ills
Being an American civil rights lawyer is a lot like being a doctor, except your patient has more moving parts than just one bipedal sack of meat and bones and is therefore easier to misdiagnose, as I did a couple of weeks ago. My patient is my community, a body I think I know reasonably…
Horse Racing, Save Yourself
This piece is part of a package of stories and commentary on horse racing in Kentucky and elsewhere. For more, click here. Growing up, one of my favorite things was to go to Churchill Downs. Poring over the racing forms and learning how to bet was an educational, bonding experience I shared with my parents. And…
