Last week I covered "Six favorites from six months of living in Louisville." In the interest of being fair and/or balanced, here are six aspects of life in The Ville that I'm not so keen about.
Jerry Abramson's subsidizing his vanity with our tax dollars
Travelers arriving at Louisville International are excused for thinking the airport's name was actually named Jerry Abramson International: at least two banners showing enlargements of the mayor's dapper mug greets them and a recorded welcome message with his voice provides the acoustic ambiance around the people mover.
Our tax dollars paid to string up this false idol and it'll be our tax dollars that pay to take him down (hopefully soon). And yet Mayor Jerry furloughed city employees--some of whom barely get by, closed libraries on Sundays--when students need them, and halted road paving--my street's so bad it gives me hemorrhoids, because the city doesn't have the money. Inexcusable.
Louisvillian's obsession with high school
In most places, adults, or at least the successful ones, would rather forget about their high school. experience. Early on after I moved here, I was briefed that when someone asked, "Where did you go to school?" he or she was referring to high school, not college. It seemed bizarre, but I didn't expect to hear the question often.
Wrong.
I also discovered the response "public school in Reading, Ma." is far less acceptable than St. X or that other Catholic school.
The high school obsession isn't restricted to reliving days of yore when waistlines were slimmer, heads of hair were fuller and dreams hadn't been squashed.
No, a fair amount of people in Louisville seem to worship at the alter of he who scored 14 points that night. For example,The Louisville Examiner Web site has about 35 writers covering just as many topics. Almost daily the most-read column is the High School Sports Examiner.
So many people in Louisville are interested in the physical accomplishments and attributes of boys that I'm about to call in Chris Hansen.
Need more proof that the area is a little too obsessed with high school? It might soon elect a governor based more on his prowess on the basketball court than in the political arena.
The front yard of the Barnstable Brown Party
The front lawn of one of the city's marquee events looked like it'd been decorated by committee of second graders who'd gained access to the PTA's coffers.
Winter
I'd never been to Louisville in the winter before I moved here and wasn't expecting four straight months of intolerable gray. I've been inside caskets that were cheerier.
Pizza places
It's not that the pizza restaurants in Louisville are bad, it's just that none of them are great. I'm yet to find a restaurant that serves wood-fired pizzas, much less one that serves them with DOC designations. Attention Louisville restaurateurs: please knock off Washington, DC's, 2Amys (it does a great business--yes yuppies, such as myself, are willing to wait 90 minutes for pizza that good).
4th Street Live
In the early part of this decade Louisville had the opportunity to define the inner core of its downtown with unique attractions that embody its distinct culture. Instead it added a gentrified, soulless complex like what you'll find in second-tier cities, cities that desperately yearn to be worthwhile destinations, but have so little flavor that they have to import it from Baltimore of all places. Louisville, you could have done better.
Everyone now...
Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car
Monorail!
What'd I say?
Monorail!
Got something you don't like about Louisville (beyond one of its eponymous dot com hiring some snarky carpetbaggger who's been here for six months and writes about what he doesn't like in your hometown)? Share it in the comments.
