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    This article originally appeared in the December 2015 issue of Louisville Magazine. 
    To subscribe to Louisville Magazine, please click here.

    Photo by Drew Meredith

    The factory at Breckinridge Street and Baxter Avenue, right next to the Outlook Inn, could pass for any industrial space — concrete floors, high ceilings, tools and kilns and lots of metal — until you spot one of the disco balls. Omega National Products has been making decorative glass for 70 years and the mirrored-glass spheres for the past 50. Yolanda Baker has been making disco balls since she walked in looking for a job in 1968. Today, she turns out about 15 a month. I point to one that’s 36 inches in diameter — large enough for me to crawl inside — and ask her how long it took her to make. “About 45 minutes,” she says. That’s just to glue the tiny mirror pieces on the cloth that covers the aluminum ball. “It’s just practice, practice, practice,” the 69-year-old says. Before gluing the pieces to the ball, Baker will cut the glass, which any of the warehouse’s seven workers will have silvered the back of, and lay each piece flat. “You’d think it’s really time-consuming, but it actually isn’t, and it makes your day go fast,” she says. “That’s what I like about it.”

    At the height of "Saturday Night Fever" and the Bee Gees, Baker and 27 other women would churn out 10,000 to 12,000 disco balls in a month — from two-inch ornaments to giant set pieces. Then, as Baker says, “John Travolta quit.” In the ’90s, foreign markets making the balls for cheap — often made out of Styrofoam instead of the aluminum that Omega uses — didn’t help business either. Ball production slowed, causing most of the women to be let go. Baker stuck around, she supposes, because she had been there the longest. About 20 years ago, when her grandson was born, Baker got the nickname “Disco Granny.” News stations ran with that and she made headlines. She says she was once slated to go on "The Late Show with David Letterman", but the show canceled her appearance in the wake of 9/11.

    Because the products are often sold through distributors, it’s hard to tell who has bought and used Omega’s disco balls. Recently, a Raising Cane’s restaurant in California purchased seven large ones. Madonna once performed while hanging from a ball Baker had made. A few years back, the Super Bowl bought a bunch of balls from the company. Coca-Cola once commissioned a 10-foot ball, which required Baker to work from a forklift. (For comparison, a four-foot disco ball weighs 105 pounds and retails for $4,000; a 12-inch ball retails for $130.) On her phone, Baker scrolls through photos on recent projects — black disco balls sent to Singapore, an American-themed ball, and some that the buyer is making trophies out of. How much longer does Disco Granny plan on working at Omega? “Till they throw me out, I guess,” she says.

    This article originally appeared in the December 2015 issue of Louisville Magazine. 
    To subscribe to Louisville Magazine, please click here.

    Mary Chellis Nelson's picture

    About Mary Chellis Nelson

    Mary Chellis Nelson is the managing editor of Louisville Magazine.

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