Cover Story
Pride 2018 — LGBTQ+ Louisville… more than you think
Ariel Brooks, a queer woman, says she is glad this weekend’s Kentuckiana Pride Festival is working to be inclusive and diverse. James Miguel Alcantara, a bisexual gender nonconforming trans man, says as a student, he sees hope in our youth. And, Erin E.H. Smith, a queer female, recounts conversations about intersectionality and the need to…
Cartoons in the sun: Hanging out at Adult Swim on the Green
The sun was absolutely merciless at Sunday’s Adult Swim on the Green, a traveling event for the adult-oriented cartoon TV channel with a cult following. But that didn’t stop the influx of folks eager to celebrate shows such as “Rick and Morty” through a days worth of games, stand-up and special screenings of never-before-seen material. …
LEO Podcast #65: Recently Released, featuring new music from Hot Wires, Sex Juice and Planetary Overdrive
Scott Recker and Nik Vechery talk about new music from Hot Wires, Sex Juice and Planetary Overdrive.
10 under $5 – What To Do This Week In Louisville (6/18)
MONDAY We Create Pop-Up Muhammad Ali Center Donations accepted | 5-7 p.m. Kentucky Refugee Ministries is hosting a week-long festival that is the culmination of an arts program called “We Create: Artists and Refugees Celebrate Making Louisville Home.” The festival consists of multiple pop-up art shows, all featuring refugee stories through the lens of local…
LEO’s Guide to Disc Golf in Louisville and Southern Indiana
Golf may be criticized for being too expensive to casually pick up and enjoy. That’s where disc-golf comes in! It’s a sport for the people. LEO has put together this list of nearby courses for those of you who are interested, or if you are an avid player looking for new challenges. Now, you could…
A Q&A with ‘Your Uncle’s Girlfriend Comedy Tour’
When “Your Uncle’s Girlfriend Comedy Tour” stops into Kaiju Tuesday night, Louisville will be treated to two of The Big Easy’s best comedians, Laura Sanders and Kate Mason. The New Orleans-based stand-ups are hitting the road for a two week tour through the South and Midwest with stops in Memphis, Chicago and, of course, Louisville. We caught up…
5 Things To Do This Weekend In Louisville (6/15)
FRIDAY 2018 Kentuckiana PRIDE Parade and Concert (June 15–16) Various locations Free-$10 | 7-11 p.m. Head to the corner of Market and Preston streets for the start of this year’s Kentuckiana PRIDE Parade. The parade will travel north on Preston, east on River Road and continue to the festival site at the Big Four Lawn.…
Seven Sense Festival announces 2018 lineup
All Them Witches, The Whigs, Cedric Bunrside, Tristen, Fotocrime, Curio Key Club, Jaxon Lee Swain and many other bands and solo musicians have been announced for the 2018 Seven Sense Festival, which takes place at Gravely Brewing Co. and the surrounding area Friday, Aug.10-11. It’s the first year Seven Sense will be at Gravely. The…
A farewell to glass art collector Adele Leight, who passed away at 94
Occasionally I get mildly obsessed with something and that’s all I want to eat, read or see. One of my recent obsessions is the glass artist Karen LaMonte. I have Adele and Leonard Leight to thank for that. Adele passed away on Saturday, June 9 at the age of 94. She was, along with her…
So within/So without: A talk with Family and Friends’ Mike MacDonald
Family and Friends is a musical collective from Athens, Georgia, that has brilliantly built a massive sound around the 12 songs that make up its first LP, Felix Culpa, which dropped less than a week ago. Not surprisingly, this not-quite-folk, not-quite-indie-rock band is hopeful that its long-awaited, debut album will be met with an equally…
Pride 2018 — A culture shift?: where misgendering isn’t the norm, but the exception
A NEW SERIES of reports by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health reiterate something we know to be true: Discrimination is alive and well in America. Particularly, communities of color and LGBTQ+ individuals are impacted by policies, systems and cultural norms rooted in racism, xenophobia and…
Will Lexington t-shirt case ?clean up SCOTUS’ messy cake opinion?
In the words of many lazy headlines, last week the Supreme Court “ruled for” a “Colorado cake maker” who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple based on his professed Christian beliefs. Like the case itself, this result was more complicated. In fact, the court completely punted on the tough question of…
Thorns & Roses: The Worst, Best & Most Absurd
No Poverty of Stupid Rules | Thorn A thorn goes to Gov. Matt “Elected on the Bell Curve” Bevin for allowing his state police to bar an anti-poverty group’s entrance to the Capitol yet again. State police said that, under a new rule, only two members would be allowed in at a time. Sounds Kremlin-esque.…
Where are the lesbians in Louisville?
Last Wednesday was a good one at Butchertown Social’s trivia night. It just so happened all the teams were women, and it just so happened there was a cluster of trucks and machines just outside, working to pave the Story Avenue/Frankfort Avenue intersection as quickly as possible. The trucks were powerful, and our chairs were…
Of Montreal drew inspiration from the political climate
Of Montreal singer-songwriter Kevin Barnes has worn a variety of musical identities since the band’s inception, shifting from the twee freak-folk of his earliest musings, to the danceable indie-punk of his later work. But, beneath the changing soundscapes, there’s always been stream-of-consciousness, multi-faceted lyrics that drive Of Montreal, which is emphasized by the series of…
No expectations: Bathroom Laws release Pyss in Peace
So named for laws that discriminate against the transgender community, the quartet Bathroom Laws started off when singer Severin Martinez and bassist Radet 5 met at UofL’s LGBT Center. Self-described as creating “sardonic trans music to draw poison from our psyche,” the band balances punk hooks and unflinching politics on Pyss in Peace, their recently-released…
Sonic Breakdown: Planetary Overdrive — ‘Boneyard’
[LEO’s biweekly Sonic Breakdown column deconstructs a single song from a Louisville musician or band.] Dan Sturdevant, chief architect of Planetary Overdrive and self-proclaimed gearhead, wants you to know he loves cars. As a matter of fact, he even wrote the title track of the band’s newest release, Boneyard, as a crushing rock ode to…
With Alley Theater’s curtain call, a proposal
Last week’s announcement that The Alley Theater will shut its Main Street theater in August first highlights an enormous problem facing Louisville’s arts scene. I will discuss that below, but first let’s note that The Alley is still open. This weekend, the company opens a three-week run of “Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens,” a…
Book Review: ‘Fall Together,’ confidently drawn
In many a fine short story, consequences snap shut on someone’s fate before they (or the reader) can turn around and take a breath. Those can be occasions for the writer to go on a stylistic joyride (which is part of what makes Tobias Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain” a classic). They can point to…
Comic Reviews: ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Justice League’
‘Justice League’ No. 1 Writer Scott Snyder, artist Jim Cheung Review by Kyle Thompson, The Great Escape Louisville I’m not usually the biggest fan of team books. It’s asking a lot for a 22-page comic book to have character development and conflict and move the overarching plot forward for one or two characters, much less…
Cottage Inn going strong as it nears century mark
Quick! What’s the longest-lived Louisville restaurant that’s been in continuous business at its original location? I’m going to say Cottage Inn, where we, our parents and maybe even our great-great grandparents have been enjoying hearty, down-home country fare since 1929. Just 11 years shy of its centennial, Cottage Inn is going strong, and that’s good…
My three beers to try at the Kentucky Craft Bash
The second-annual Kentucky Craft Bash happens Saturday, June 23 and the beer list, which numbers about 90, is now available. I won’t go into the entire list in this column, but let’s hit a few highlights from this all-Kentucky festival. The three beers I’m most looking forward to trying are Brothers in Arms Stout with…
Ask Minda Honey: Senior Digital Dating Woes
In a relationship or life jam? Lemme unstuck your life — send your questions to: AskMindaHoney@leoweekly.com or reach out to me on Facebook.com/AskMindaHoney Minda, I haven’t ever written one of these types of letters. Until now. I’ve had two marriages, totaling well over 20 years and a girlfriend for between four and five years (until…
Savage Love: Retroactive Blessings
Q: Without snooping, I came across texts between my wife “Mary” and a guy “Jeremy” of a very sexual nature. While I would be okay if she were doing this and I knew about it, this has been going on since before we met. (We’ve been together 10 years.) She says she has never met…
Pro Trans = Pronouns
“It’s just hard for me to use ‘they’ as a singular pronoun,” he says, smiling. “I’m just a grammar nerd and it feels wrong.” “Hard,” I say. “For you.” It’s only been a few months since I switched from saying, “I’ll take any pronoun besides ‘it,” in social-justice meetings where people ostensibly pay attention to…
Ye, Bourdain… Kanye hits again
It’s a hot and rainy evening here in Possibility City, and the suicide of Anthony Bourdain has popped up, plastered and trending everywhere, which means I’m drinking beer, smoking well and listening to 808s & Heartbreak, the somber, ultra-reflective, experimental masterpiece by one Kanye West, in an attempt to come down and sober up from…
Not fair enough in Kentucky
No other issue captures the urban-rural divide quite like issues of fairness, or equality under the law for LGBTQ people. LEO recently published the story of a coffee shop in Elizabethtown that fired an employee for wearing a T-shirt that protested violence against LGBTQ people. The employer apparently didn’t understand that this T-shirt was protesting…
