Cover Story
A Louisville union built its strength as blacks, whites took on International Harvester
They crop up right around now, along with the ads for mattress sales: the annual assessments of the state of the American labor movement. There will be a certain mournful sameness to these Labor Day reflections. While wages stagnate and inequality escalates, union membership rates continue plunging. The Trump Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress are…
10 things to do under $5 this week in Louisville (9/5)
TUESDAY Men’s Soccer: UofL vs. UK Dr. Mark & Cindy Lynn Stadium $5-$13 | 7:30 p.m. Are you ready for football? No, not that concussion calamitous one — the original football. Come out to see the Bluegrass battle on the pitch, as the Cards and the Cats play for state bragging rights. If you haven’t…
10 concerts you shouldn’t miss in September
PRF BBQ LOU Sept. 1-3 Mag Bar and The Cure Lounge The PRF BBQ brings four days of high-energy rock to multiple venues across town, ranging from slick indie to waves of heavy noise. On Thursday, ($10) the festival kicks off at Monnik Beer Co., before moving to Mag Bar on Friday ($10), and then…
5 Things To Do This Weekend in Louisville (9/1)
FRIDAY PRF BBQ Louisville 2017 (Sept. 1–3) Monnik Beer Co., Mag Bar, Cure Lounge $10-$15 | Times vary The PRF BBQ brings four days of high-energy rock to multiple venues across town, ranging from slick indie to waves of heavy noise. On Thursday, the festival kicks off at Monnik Beer Co., before moving to Mag…
Our six favorite local songs from August
Jaxon Lee Swain – “Never Takin Em Off” On the lead track on Swain’s latest record, Night Diamonds, Swain and company come out swinging, singing a love song to how righteous it is to rock a sweet pair of shades, and goddamn it’s true. Like a sonic tribute to every Deal With It meme, Swain…
Make School Godly Again!
As Kentucky kids go back to school, they might see some things around the hallways that they haven’t in the past. A T-shirt with an image of the Crucifixion. Or, a “Build the wall! #MAGA” message. The law created by Senate Bill 17 allows children in public schools to produce and distribute religious and political…
Children marrying in Kentucky, state laws lacking
At 14, Donna Pollard’s anger and outbursts landed her in a youth behavioral facility in Southern Indiana. There, she met a 29-year-old man who counseled troubled teens. He would brush up against her and smile. “I was a 14-year-old with a crush,” Pollard said. They started dating shortly after she returned home to Laurel County,…
Thorns & Roses: The Worst, Best and Most Absurd
Junction dysfunction | Thorn Following two truck crashes involving pigs and glue, the state is investigating whether the newly-redone Spaghetti Junction needs even more work. Like Courier-Journal editorial cartoonist Marc Murphy said: “You had one job.” Crock blocked | Thorn Gov. Matt “Oblivious” Bevin’s lawyers are fighting back against two Kentuckians who say in lawsuit…
8 bands that you shouldn’t miss at PRF BBQ
The PRF BBQ brings four days of high-energy rock to multiple venues across town, ranging from slick indie to waves of heavy noise. On Thursday, ($10) the festival kicks off at Monnik Beer Co., before moving to Mag Bar on Friday ($10), and then finishing up at the Cure Lounge on Saturday and Sunday ($15…
Chris Cornell, suicide and PeteFest
A friend called me recently to ask if I had heard about a new festival in town called PeteFest. I said I had only heard of it, but that I didn’t know exactly what it was. There are a lot of new festivals in Louisville, and most of them play by the same, general music…
Murder By Death’s new fine-dining, casual Italian restaurant Lupo
The two core members of Murder By Death, an atmospheric rock band that’s spent the last 15 years creating a string of gripping and ominous records, recently opened an Italian restaurant in Butchertown, specializing in wood-fired pizza and handmade pasta. Sarah Balliet (cello/keys) and Adam Turla (vocals/guitar), who relocated the band to Louisville in 2014,…
Living as a generous artist
‘The Artist as Culture Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life’ Edited by Sharon Louden (Intellect and The University of Chicago Press; 402 pgs., $42) How do you live a creative life when there is little monetary incentive for doing so? For painter Matthew Deleget, it came down to whether he could get health insurance.…
Liminal Playhouse, ‘comedy with serious intent’
When Tony Prince and Richard McGrew decided in 2014 to form a new theater company — now known as The Liminal Playhouse — they asked business and theater professionals for advice on how to make it work. Their advisers would ask questions, Prince recalled. “And we had all the wrong answers. They’d ask ‘Who is…
Meech Dog’s return to Louisville, ?‘I’m coming back to collect my people’
Born Demetrius Wheeler, Meech Dog is a Louisville native raised in The West End by a funny single mother and two grandparents. He graduated from Western High School and graduated from Morehead State University, the first person in his family to attend college. On stage, Meech Dog can be raunchy, wild and a little brash,…
The Hands of a Cook
Do you have a relative or close friend who works in a restaurant? Have you ever looked closely at their hands and forearms? First of all, their hands are likely quite strong. That happens when you’ve spent years chopping vegetables on a daily basis, flipping sauté pans and carrying crates of product to and from…
I ate a ghost pepper
I remember the first time I tried a truly-hot pepper sauce. It was sometime during the late 1990s, at a local store I’ve long since forgotten the name of, a place where I’d previously purchased sauces that remain staples for me today, such as Blair’s Death Sauce and Pain is Good Batch 37 Garlic Sauce.…
Ask Minda Honey: A match made in Louisville
In a relationship or life jam? Lemme unstuck your life: AskMindaHoney@leoweekly.com. It’s no secret that its size makes Louisville a hard city to date in. Just about all the single people I know — myself included — are one more have-you-tried-online-dating? away from snapping on someone. Yes, we’ve tried it. But what have most of…
Savage Love: Hard to Do
Q: My ex-boyfriend and I were together for a year and a half. He is a silver fox who is significantly older than me. I was 23 when we met and he was 58. It was supposed to be a fling, but it evolved into a beautiful romance. But after much consideration (he has a…
Sex Ed, another view
“Why are we still talking about sex ed?” I was interviewed by Erica Rucker, LEO writer in an Aug. 9 column with that same title. Here’s the Sexual Risk Avoidance, or SRA, perspective. Let’s begin by clarifying that SRA programs are not dogma. A common ploy of Comprehensive Sex Ed, or CSE, proponents is to…
Time for JBS Swift to pack up its piggies and go
When a truck full of pigs overturns on a downtown highway en route to a slaughterhouse that sits amidst homes, a thriving business and entertainment district and a large, therapeutic children’s home, it is yet another reminder to start talking about the future of the JBS Swift pork processing plant. JBS Swift needs to pack…
Statues highlight slavery, not history… and paying to park is… sad
All right, geezer. “All right, geezer”? When did you turn from Billy Bunter into Del Boy? When I speak to a pleb, I like to be understood. Understand? So are you going to grab your torch and pitchfork and join the baying horde looking to tear down some statues? Don’t even answer that — I…
Being flat is trending!
“When you’re hot you’re hot and when you’re not you’re not.” — Jerry Reed Everyone I know is so hand-wringing miserable, and so miserably mad all the time now, and for good reason. We’re all broke, in all the ways a person’s person can be broke, financially, physically, mentally and spiritually, and hey whatcha gonna…
