Summer Fun Guide – My own private Kentucky (The state”s pushing tourism. Are we listening?)
Photo illustration by Frankie Steele Pat Stites is a 43-year-old man whose job it is to be the voice of Kentucky tourism. He appears weekly on local television in both Louisville and Lexington, talking up some new event or another happening in the commonwealth. He is, essentially, the salesman for the state of Kentucky.And he…
Summer Fun Guide – The dog ate my gas can: This may be the summer to get outdoors on a budget
Matt Barnett and Anna Krippenstapel: Photo by Jane Mattingly Matt Barnett and Anna Krippenstapel, from the Louisville band Vampire Squid, know how to have fun in Cherokee Park. It’s a great place to fly a kite. By the time May rolls around, people are looking to enjoy the outdoors, and often that means getting out…
Summer Fun Guide – Return to Santa Claus
Kima Bay: photo courtesy of Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari Kima Bay is Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari’s new monkey-themed waterplay attraction Santa Claus Land was my first amusement park. I was maybe four or five years old, growing up in Evansville, when we made the trip. I don’t remember much about the rides. Some…
Summer Fun Guide – More indie than Indy: Yes, there”s stuff for you art-house types, too
Harrison Ford is busy this summer So, you’re one of those artsy types who can’t deal with the summer popcorn movies. You’re all, like, “I want something serious. Something important. Something with meaning.” OK. Fine. But, really, what are you thinking? It’s summer, the time of year made for cookouts, loud music and previously unimagined…
Summer Fun Guide – Ear to the ground: The best of summer concerts here and beyond
MAY LOUISVILLE22 Clutch, Headliners24 Sheryl Crow, Caesars Indiana25 Southern Culture on the Skids, Headliners28 Back Door Slam, Jim White, Ben Sollee, Waterfront Park 30 Nightwish, Sonic Syndicate, Headliners 31 Mudhoney, Headliners LEXINGTON30 Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hank Williams Jr., Rupp Arena 31 Sistersound, Singletary Center CINCINNATI24 Gwar, Bogart’s25 Filter, Bogart’s28 Badfish, Bogart’s30 Blind Melon, Bogart’s COLUMBUS, OHIO23…
Festivalz for the rest-of-y”allz: Summer Festival Guide
GREATER LOUISVILLEMAY22-26 — Abbey Road on the River: Belvedere, Galt House, Beatles tribute festival featuring 70 bands over eight stages, prices/times vary, www.abbeyroadontheriver.com.24-25 — Kentucky Reggae Festival: Water Tower, River Road and Zorn Ave., 1-11:30pm, with Caribbean cuisine and market, children’s activities and reggae music, $6-$9, 583-0333 or www.bisig.com.24-26 — AVP Crocs Tour: Probeach Volleyball:…
What A Week: The City’s Weekly Zeitgeist Radar
BY AARON FRANK & JANE MATTINGLY +3Can God really turn water into gasoline? Louisville was graced with the uplifting words and multimedia presentations of TV evangelist Joel Osteen, who told a crowd of 11,500 on Sunday that “it doesn’t matter if (gas) goes to $20 a gallon, … God can multiply your gas (and provide)…
Hoopdee do: Woman says she was fired over bumper stickers
Shannon Grossman: has decorated her 1994 Geo with bumper stickers that espouse her social and political sentiments. Grossman said she was fired from a daycare job after the director told her she didn’t like the stickers. Shannon Grossman admitted she may be naïve about how others don’t share her progressive way of seeing the world.…
Developer pulls Irish Hill plan
Poe Companies has withdrawn its plan for a $35 million mixed-use development on the site of a former scrap yard in the east-central neighborhood of Irish Hill. And in a letter to neighbors of the site, developer Steve Poe blamed his decision to halt the project on two residents who’ve dared to tangle with the…
Gannett Watch
Gannett Inc., which owns The Courier-Journal, reported April revenues on Tuesday. The company didn’t break out online performance, according to published reports, except to say it attracted 25.5 million uniques versus 23.1 million the year before. That’s a 10.4 percent gain, which matches the percentage for Gannett’s ad revenue year-over-year decrease. Also, a source from…
Taking a bath: Neighborhood group won”t let go of pools issue despite Metro”s assurance that it”s over
The swimming pool at Breslin Park would make a great postcard from the apocalypse. This dirty, cracked and empty concrete hole is currently the centerpiece of the Irish Hill neighborhood’s modest public park, at the corner of Lexington Road and Payne Street. It’s also the subject of a dispute between a neighborhood good at organizing…
REPRESENTIN” (A COLUMN ABOUT THE METRO COUNCIL): Catching up with you, dear reader
It has been a few weeks since I’ve written this column, so let me first apologize to my four readers for the absence. In case you haven’t noticed, politics has taken hold in our fair city, and I’ve been running around madly trying to document as much of it as is possible. And so, with…
Guest Commentary: Freedom of speech in Louisville?
BY CAROL RAWERT TRAINER I am an Air Force veteran, 60-year-old grandmother, community volunteer and member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Louisville Peace Action Community. Last Memorial Day, I was arrested for exercising my free speech rights and protesting the Iraq War at the Abbey Road on the River Festival, which focuses on…
Erosia (letters to the Editor)
LEO welcomes letters that are brief (250 words max) and thoughtful. Ad hominem attacks will be ignored, and we need your name and a daytime phone number. Send snail mail to EROSIA, 640 S. Fourth St., Louisville, Ky. 40202. Fax to 895-9779 or e-mail to leo@leoweekly.com. We may edit for length, grammar and clarity. A…
No More False Dichotomies: Let there be light
In the alternative newsweekly universe, we regularly flog ourselves over our own agingness, how the editors of many papers have been at it for a long time now and can we really put out newspapers that stay in touch with younger readers and all that when, you know, we’re swigging Geritol in the morning. Of…
¡ ASK A MEXICAN ! Who”s a Mexican sellout?
Q Dear Mexican: Why did the Mexican comedian Cantinflas never catch on in Hollywood? I thought he was supposed to usher in the Mexican wave of actors and movies that would help transform Hollywood. Instead, that movement ended up flat as a tortilla. —El Curioso A Dear Curious Gabacho: Do people even know who Cantinflas is anymore?…
Staffpicks for 5-21
May 22-26Abbey Road on the River These days, it’s tough to imagine Louisville without Abbey Road on the River. Each spring, this now four-year-old annual event here reminds me why I love the Beatles and why I love music so much — and I’m guessing this year will be no different. Highlights for 2008 include…
Cable Boxing: The season — or what”s left of it — in TV
By normal criteria — complete seasons, multi-layered story arcs and full-blown characterizations — the 2007-2008 television season basically sucked. Hamstrung by a months-long writers’ strike, FOX let Jack Bauer take a “day” off; CBS let kids run a small ghost town, and they’ll probably wind up in therapy because of it; a “Dancing With The…
CD Reviews for 5-21
Songs From Sammy LouisShake Anderson(TSM)Shake Anderson’s comforting, rootsy mix of soul, R&B and blues is somewhat reminiscent of John Hiatt’s most accessible and recognized work. Anderson makes the kind of music that, whether you fall in love with it or not, is simply impossible to hate. The mix of the warm instrumentation and the uplifting,…
Aftertastes for 5-21
BOURBONS BISTRO, 2255 Frankfort Ave., 894-8838, www.bourbonsbistro.com. Chef Michael Crouch offers thoughtful, creative dishes that may be rooted in down-home Ohio Valley flavors but travel around the world for inspiration. Bourbons Bistro is arguably bourbon whiskey’s No. 1 temple in the metro. (Reviewed 4/16/08; Rating: 89) TACO BUENO, 2909 Highway 62, Jeffersonville, Ind., (812) 284-4073.…
The Bar Belle: Late Seating shenanigans
I was asked to be a judge for an Iron Bartending competition last Friday at Actors Theatre’s Late Seating series. Basically, it’s an outlet for theater groupies and anyone looking for something different to do in the p.m. that features new work by local artists in performance, music and visual art. It takes place about…
LEO Eats: Why did the foodie cross the river?
Market Street Fish House in New Albany I went across the Ohio to New Albany last week and had me a big old batch of fried oysters, and they were fine, even though the month of May doesn’t have an “R” in it. Happily, the old wisdom about avoiding oysters from the end of Aprrrril…
Booksmart: Forgotten Fiction (CLASSICS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED): Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer Perfume: The Story of a Murderer(By Patrick Suskind. First published 1985.) Part sadomasochistic horror story, part murder mystery, wholly literary, “Perfume” is the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born with no odor of his own but with a supernatural sense of smell. As an orphaned child, Grenouille wanders the reeking streets…
Booksmart: Get a whiff of the best scents out there
Perfumes: The Guide Manufactured scent is the last thing we need to be thinking about in our greenhouse-gassed, war-ravaged world, right? Are you kidding me? We need escape. Turin and Sanchez do for the universe of fragrance what Robert Parker did for wine. They divide it; they classify it; they make it easy to understand…
Sight Unsound: Mullins Crows; Southern Culture tries new tidbits
Thursday, May 22One sure sign of a blues band’s cojones is when they take on “Midnight Rambler.” The Stones knew that track was built for arena shows as soon as they laid it down. It’s too big a strut for its own britches — and to sing it requires a performance that’s as much Jim…
Booksmart: Book Reviews (A Wolf at the Table, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex)
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex A Wolf at the Table(By Augusten Burroughs. St. Martin’s Press; 256 pp., $24.95.) “A Wolf at the Table,” the new memoir by Augusten Burroughs, treads the same ground as his previous bestseller, “Running With Scissors,” only with more horror and less humor. A lonely, sexually confused boy…
Video TapeWorm: Releases through Tuesday, May 27
THIS WEEK’S TWIN PEEKSPHENOMENA1984; $19.95, URA new Special Edition release of a fascinating shock classic from the master of the genre, Dario Argento. A very young Jennifer Connelly is sent to a Swiss boarding school because of her sleepwalking, burgeoning telepathic powers and spooky relationship with bugs. Nearby, entomologist Donald Pleasence believes he can identify…
B-Sides (MUSIC & OTHER EPHEMERA): “Prehistory” lessons from Circle X
Circle X’s Prehistory Noise Pollution’s release last year of Bold Beginnings: An Incomplete History of Louisville Punk Rock has sparked a trend of sorts. David Grubbs, of Squirrel Bait fame, has released Prehistory, a long-lost recording from Circle X, one of the city’s first punk bands that began in the late ’70s. Grubbs, now a…
