Friday, August 11, 2006
Weird Louisville
It was asked whether I did, in fact, see the second largest concrete statue in the United States, suggesting an interested readership of at least one. So it seems I have no choice but to go forward.
(Answer: yes. Details to come.)
Actually, more than one, and thanks to Pete for his kind comments. My effort to make the west coast is redoubled, Rand McNally be damned.
Also, there was a comment sent to the "You Travel Because" post, by someone who will remain nameless except to say that he is my sibling, which your humble correspondent interpreted, so far as the comment's English usage permitted, to be of the smart-aleckly genre. It suggested that a certain detail detracted from the overall point and mood being sought after, and so said detail was deleted, some measure of truth being sacrificed or at least glossed over in the interest of artistic effect. This, however, rendered the comment (further) unintelligible, and thus the comment itself was deleted as well. Also, it was unkind. I do feel bad about this in a way, seeing as I would like to encourage comments and the like, and in fact started to create a second blog in which to answer the several questions which have been sent our way. "Our" referring, of course, to me and the Element, or me and the blog, or possibly me and my tapeworm.
In sum: thoughtful comments, pro and con, welcome. Wiseacres, get your own damn blog.
On to Louisville:
I leave Fairmount near sunset, driving roughly due south on Route 9, through Anderson, Shelbyville, and Columbus. It's a pretty uneventful trip, except that somewhere south of Anderson I'm driving two cars behind a moving van with a '51 Chevy on a trailer behind. I see the trailer start to fishtail, and wisely slow down, because the next thing I know I'm watching the Chevy and its trailer go sailing off the berm and into a cornfield. Unfortunately, you just have to believe me on this one, because my journalistic instincts again fail me and I do not take a picture of a Chevy in a cornfield. Instead I stop and talk to the driver, who's a bit flummoxed but unhurt and relieved, sort of, to know that both Chevy and trailer remained upright.
I eventually get to Louisville. It's late, and the roads are confusing around Jeffersonville, and I cheat and cross the Ohio River on I-65. I meet my friend Eric at a place called Proof, which is a restaurant & bar connected to an art gallery that also serves as the lobby of a hotel, or vice versa. There's a chandelier hanging over the sidewalk outside. The parking valets are spiffily-coiffed guys in Spandex who ride around on Segways. The restroom in the lobby/gallery has one-way glass that you can look through at passersby, rather unnvervingly, while you do what you came there for. It's the sort of place that people probably say - no one does say this to me; I'm just imagining they do - that's like something you'd see in New York.
Or maybe I just get that sense because, over the course of four or five days in Louisville, I detect a certain inferiority complex in the place. People seem to apologize for the place a little bit. Which is too bad, because there's a lot of interesting, funky stuff in Louisville, enough to keep me fully entertained for five days, and more that I miss. The city's unofficial slogan, is "Keep Louisville Weird," which which is meant to inspire you to shop local businesses but hints at the way the city is nothing like anyplace else in Kentucky.
Eric lives in a neighborhood called Old Louisville, between downtown and the University. It's block after block of enormous Romanesque and Greek Revival piles. He lives on the third floor of one, a huge place called "Lion's End," in an apartment that you could range cattle in. (He's moving out at the end of the week, and his roommates have already moved out, so there are several empty rooms making it feel even larger.)
Old Louisville turns out to be a splendid place to hang, and blog, and eat. Actually, all of Louisville turns out to be a splendid place to eat. Much of what I do in Louisville seems to involve eating. Fried chicken. Fried catfish. Macaroni and cheese. Cheese grits.
At Lynn's Paradise Cafe, which someone describes to me as "a kitschy Cracker Barrel" before recognizing the redundancy of that statement, the breakfast tortilla is to die for. And from. Did I mention fried chicken? Also, the chess pie and homemade ice cream at the famous Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Bakery (two locations).
Unfortunately, I miss one of Louisville's signature dishes, the "Hot Brown" at the Brown Hotel downtown. Any dish involving bacon and whipped cream can't be bad.
They also like their bourbon in Louisville. I suppose it's no stranger than advertising "the coldest beer in town," as various taverns do, but I've never seen "whiskey" advertised quite so forcefully. (The name of this establishment, according to all appearances, is "Whiskey by the Drink.")
We drive past Churchill Downs. Some people think this constitutes historic preservation.
I also go to the Louisville Slugger bat factory and museum, perhaps to compensate for not being able to see a Louisville Bats game at Louisville Slugger field. You see a Babe Ruth bat and the like, and then you walk through the factory where they show you different machines that cut wood into bats and engrave signatures on them, and then at the end of the tour they give you a miniature bat to take home. As I walk into the lobby five or six middle-aged men are laughing as one of them demonstrates loudly "what a faggot would do" with the souvenir. That's all that I remember.
Eric's an awfully gracious host for someone who's moving in a few days, and I do my best not to be a burden. He takes me to karaoke at one of the gay bars, where, being something of a ringer, he takes Oleta Adams "Get Here" and leaves it with no doubt as to who its daddy is. The day before I leave, which is also to be the day before he leaves, he takes me to his going away party. It's the highlight of my stay there - well, maybe the second highlight after Tracy's hilarious story of the time someone dialed a wrong number from the Louisville Jail, and asked for "Pun'kin," and Tracy ended up being way more helpful than she should have been and somehow located Pun'kin and relayed the message, which act of good Samaritanship led to her phone number being posted on the wall in the Louisville Jail and an endless stream of calls for help thereafter.
But the party introduces me to all the wide variety of folks I'd want to meet in a place like Louisville, the opera divae and artists and folks about town and the crazy southern drunks from next door. It gives me the opportunity to sample a couple varieties of bourbon, one called Bulliet (the person who offers it to me pronounces it "bullet") and another called Woodford Reserve. (I'm partial to the Bulliet, which has a more peppery flavor. That's all I can tell you - ask Tonya LeNell if you want to know more.)
My last stop in Louisville, on my way out of town, is the Muhammad Ali Center, on the riverfront downtown. Everybody has talked about this place, but no one has quite known what it is. After seeing it, I still don't quite know what it is. Mostly, you get the Muhammad Ali story - his childhood in Louisville, his Olympic victory and subsequent disillusionment with America, his fight for C.O. status, his championships and decline, his final - or at least current - embrace as a revered figure. It's a classic story of personal struggle and victory and error and redemption, and of course it's set in Louisville and America in the 50s and 60s and 70s, so it's set against the story of national struggle and error, and semi-redemption, I suppose. In that respect, the Ali Center gets points for leaving a lot of the history, both national and personal, unvarnished; there are videos and exhibits displaying Ali's more outrageous comments and blatant sexism.
And then there's a whole section of the museum dedicated to peace and understanding among cultures, and some children's activities in that direction, and lighted panels revealing the concordance of different faiths' basic tenets. It'is all fine, and makes a museum about a boxer worth having, except that it's a museum about a boxer, a man who made his fortune bloodying other men, and at times nastily.
If there's anything that pulls this together, it's the quote from Ali on the wall that says if a man hasn't changed his opinions between the time he was 30 and the time he's 60, he's wasted thirty years of his life. And maybe, understanding that is in the end, how you get to peace.
One of the things the Ali Center gets really right is to show full, or nearly full, videos of his biggest fights. You can sit at one of a bunch of monitors and pull up the Thrilla in Manila or the Rumble in the Jungle, or whatever you want. I choose his 1967 match against Ernie Terrell, at the Astrodome. Terrell was the champion at the time, and before the fight he kept taunting Ali, who had just changed his name, by referring to him as Cassius Clay.
I have no idea how intelligent I think Muhammad Ali was, or is. But my god what an intelligent boxer he was. He does that dance, that float, and you can get mad and lash out at it, or you can do what Terrell does and try to cut off the ring, or whatever, but it doesn't matter, because you're already fighting the match on his terms.
The fight against Terrell goes more or less even for four or five rounds, and then a punch cuts Terrell over the eye, and slows him badly. It's when Ali should go for the kill. But he doesn't. He pounds and pounds at Terrell, who's the next thing to defenseless, stalking him and screaming "What's my name?" so loud you can hear it over the crowd. Cosell comments that "it hardly seems necessary" to humiliate his opponent, but that's what Ali does, until around the eighth or ninth round, Terrell is practically begging Ali to put him out of his misery. The fight goes fifteen rounds.
It's as vicious as anything you'll ever see. Mostly, throughout it, Ali wears an expression that's somehow devoid of anger and yet full of pure hate.
Outside, the historical marker by the river claims that this is where Lewis met Clark before heading west. I resume my own travels by leaving Louisville across the Ohio, the right way, on the steel truss bridge that carries US 31.
(Answer: yes. Details to come.)
Actually, more than one, and thanks to Pete for his kind comments. My effort to make the west coast is redoubled, Rand McNally be damned.
Also, there was a comment sent to the "You Travel Because" post, by someone who will remain nameless except to say that he is my sibling, which your humble correspondent interpreted, so far as the comment's English usage permitted, to be of the smart-aleckly genre. It suggested that a certain detail detracted from the overall point and mood being sought after, and so said detail was deleted, some measure of truth being sacrificed or at least glossed over in the interest of artistic effect. This, however, rendered the comment (further) unintelligible, and thus the comment itself was deleted as well. Also, it was unkind. I do feel bad about this in a way, seeing as I would like to encourage comments and the like, and in fact started to create a second blog in which to answer the several questions which have been sent our way. "Our" referring, of course, to me and the Element, or me and the blog, or possibly me and my tapeworm.
In sum: thoughtful comments, pro and con, welcome. Wiseacres, get your own damn blog.
On to Louisville:
I leave Fairmount near sunset, driving roughly due south on Route 9, through Anderson, Shelbyville, and Columbus. It's a pretty uneventful trip, except that somewhere south of Anderson I'm driving two cars behind a moving van with a '51 Chevy on a trailer behind. I see the trailer start to fishtail, and wisely slow down, because the next thing I know I'm watching the Chevy and its trailer go sailing off the berm and into a cornfield. Unfortunately, you just have to believe me on this one, because my journalistic instincts again fail me and I do not take a picture of a Chevy in a cornfield. Instead I stop and talk to the driver, who's a bit flummoxed but unhurt and relieved, sort of, to know that both Chevy and trailer remained upright.
I eventually get to Louisville. It's late, and the roads are confusing around Jeffersonville, and I cheat and cross the Ohio River on I-65. I meet my friend Eric at a place called Proof, which is a restaurant & bar connected to an art gallery that also serves as the lobby of a hotel, or vice versa. There's a chandelier hanging over the sidewalk outside. The parking valets are spiffily-coiffed guys in Spandex who ride around on Segways. The restroom in the lobby/gallery has one-way glass that you can look through at passersby, rather unnvervingly, while you do what you came there for. It's the sort of place that people probably say - no one does say this to me; I'm just imagining they do - that's like something you'd see in New York.
Or maybe I just get that sense because, over the course of four or five days in Louisville, I detect a certain inferiority complex in the place. People seem to apologize for the place a little bit. Which is too bad, because there's a lot of interesting, funky stuff in Louisville, enough to keep me fully entertained for five days, and more that I miss. The city's unofficial slogan, is "Keep Louisville Weird," which which is meant to inspire you to shop local businesses but hints at the way the city is nothing like anyplace else in Kentucky.Eric lives in a neighborhood called Old Louisville, between downtown and the University. It's block after block of enormous Romanesque and Greek Revival piles. He lives on the third floor of one, a huge place called "Lion's End," in an apartment that you could range cattle in. (He's moving out at the end of the week, and his roommates have already moved out, so there are several empty rooms making it feel even larger.)
Old Louisville turns out to be a splendid place to hang, and blog, and eat. Actually, all of Louisville turns out to be a splendid place to eat. Much of what I do in Louisville seems to involve eating. Fried chicken. Fried catfish. Macaroni and cheese. Cheese grits.
At Lynn's Paradise Cafe, which someone describes to me as "a kitschy Cracker Barrel" before recognizing the redundancy of that statement, the breakfast tortilla is to die for. And from. Did I mention fried chicken? Also, the chess pie and homemade ice cream at the famous Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Bakery (two locations).Unfortunately, I miss one of Louisville's signature dishes, the "Hot Brown" at the Brown Hotel downtown. Any dish involving bacon and whipped cream can't be bad.
They also like their bourbon in Louisville. I suppose it's no stranger than advertising "the coldest beer in town," as various taverns do, but I've never seen "whiskey" advertised quite so forcefully. (The name of this establishment, according to all appearances, is "Whiskey by the Drink.")
We drive past Churchill Downs. Some people think this constitutes historic preservation.
I also go to the Louisville Slugger bat factory and museum, perhaps to compensate for not being able to see a Louisville Bats game at Louisville Slugger field. You see a Babe Ruth bat and the like, and then you walk through the factory where they show you different machines that cut wood into bats and engrave signatures on them, and then at the end of the tour they give you a miniature bat to take home. As I walk into the lobby five or six middle-aged men are laughing as one of them demonstrates loudly "what a faggot would do" with the souvenir. That's all that I remember.Eric's an awfully gracious host for someone who's moving in a few days, and I do my best not to be a burden. He takes me to karaoke at one of the gay bars, where, being something of a ringer, he takes Oleta Adams "Get Here" and leaves it with no doubt as to who its daddy is. The day before I leave, which is also to be the day before he leaves, he takes me to his going away party. It's the highlight of my stay there - well, maybe the second highlight after Tracy's hilarious story of the time someone dialed a wrong number from the Louisville Jail, and asked for "Pun'kin," and Tracy ended up being way more helpful than she should have been and somehow located Pun'kin and relayed the message, which act of good Samaritanship led to her phone number being posted on the wall in the Louisville Jail and an endless stream of calls for help thereafter.
But the party introduces me to all the wide variety of folks I'd want to meet in a place like Louisville, the opera divae and artists and folks about town and the crazy southern drunks from next door. It gives me the opportunity to sample a couple varieties of bourbon, one called Bulliet (the person who offers it to me pronounces it "bullet") and another called Woodford Reserve. (I'm partial to the Bulliet, which has a more peppery flavor. That's all I can tell you - ask Tonya LeNell if you want to know more.)
My last stop in Louisville, on my way out of town, is the Muhammad Ali Center, on the riverfront downtown. Everybody has talked about this place, but no one has quite known what it is. After seeing it, I still don't quite know what it is. Mostly, you get the Muhammad Ali story - his childhood in Louisville, his Olympic victory and subsequent disillusionment with America, his fight for C.O. status, his championships and decline, his final - or at least current - embrace as a revered figure. It's a classic story of personal struggle and victory and error and redemption, and of course it's set in Louisville and America in the 50s and 60s and 70s, so it's set against the story of national struggle and error, and semi-redemption, I suppose. In that respect, the Ali Center gets points for leaving a lot of the history, both national and personal, unvarnished; there are videos and exhibits displaying Ali's more outrageous comments and blatant sexism. And then there's a whole section of the museum dedicated to peace and understanding among cultures, and some children's activities in that direction, and lighted panels revealing the concordance of different faiths' basic tenets. It'is all fine, and makes a museum about a boxer worth having, except that it's a museum about a boxer, a man who made his fortune bloodying other men, and at times nastily.
If there's anything that pulls this together, it's the quote from Ali on the wall that says if a man hasn't changed his opinions between the time he was 30 and the time he's 60, he's wasted thirty years of his life. And maybe, understanding that is in the end, how you get to peace.
One of the things the Ali Center gets really right is to show full, or nearly full, videos of his biggest fights. You can sit at one of a bunch of monitors and pull up the Thrilla in Manila or the Rumble in the Jungle, or whatever you want. I choose his 1967 match against Ernie Terrell, at the Astrodome. Terrell was the champion at the time, and before the fight he kept taunting Ali, who had just changed his name, by referring to him as Cassius Clay.
I have no idea how intelligent I think Muhammad Ali was, or is. But my god what an intelligent boxer he was. He does that dance, that float, and you can get mad and lash out at it, or you can do what Terrell does and try to cut off the ring, or whatever, but it doesn't matter, because you're already fighting the match on his terms.The fight against Terrell goes more or less even for four or five rounds, and then a punch cuts Terrell over the eye, and slows him badly. It's when Ali should go for the kill. But he doesn't. He pounds and pounds at Terrell, who's the next thing to defenseless, stalking him and screaming "What's my name?" so loud you can hear it over the crowd. Cosell comments that "it hardly seems necessary" to humiliate his opponent, but that's what Ali does, until around the eighth or ninth round, Terrell is practically begging Ali to put him out of his misery. The fight goes fifteen rounds.
It's as vicious as anything you'll ever see. Mostly, throughout it, Ali wears an expression that's somehow devoid of anger and yet full of pure hate.
Outside, the historical marker by the river claims that this is where Lewis met Clark before heading west. I resume my own travels by leaving Louisville across the Ohio, the right way, on the steel truss bridge that carries US 31.
