05.01.08

There is a map of the world in the local restaurant, Lynn’s Paradise Café, with a sign attached that says “It’s not where you’ve been. It’s where you’re from.” 

Visitors are then invited by the sign to peel off a colored dot and place their sticker on the map to show where they are from, where they were born, the place they represent. I stood there, looking at the dots in some of the places I’ve been in the world . . . Barcelona, Montreal, Kingston, London and New York City where I lived for 18 years. But I was born in Louisville, Kentucky and just like the sign implies . . . that is what really matters. 

I took Louisville with me to all those places whether I was aware of it or not. But how does the saying go — The best journeys are ones that lead you home? Well, I have settled back in Louisville again after clocking in years away longer than those I spent here. I thought it was time to balance the scale back in my hometown’s favor.

What I expected was nostalgia — familiar places like the Twig-n-Leaf with the same sign and menu from my childhood here in the 70s; sounds like Cessnas flying low having just taken off from Bowman Field the way I used to hear them while playing in my grandmother’s back yard; and smells like cut grass and stale liquor from dive bars. What I found was community — a diverse and dynamic community of professionals, artists, activists and entrepreneurs that has taken root in the bluegrass in the last 20 years. 

The first sign of it came when I plugged in my grand daddy’s old radio just in time to hear WFPK broadcasting the World Café, an international show produced out of WXPN in Philadelphia. The band being featured was one that I had photographed in New York and I didn’t feel like I was too far off the map even though I had just moved nearly 1,000 miles away from Manhattan. It’s true that anyone anywhere can live stream the program on a computer. But I’m talking radio. Radio was about community long before the internet came about. And Louisville has three public radio stations all within the same company — the only triumvirate of its kind in the U.S.

Traditional Kentucky is now playing host to a new cosmopolitan contingent — and the guests seem to be staying. This past decade Louisville can celebrate the appointment of the Speed Museum’s first Contemporary Art Curator (transplanted from Austria); the locally created and internationally significant IdeaFestival, which gathers high-minded thinkers from around the globe; and a place among the country’s fastest growing cities. Just recently, an independent film that received a Grand Jury nomination at Sundance this year had its premier here; an Argentinean artist was featured as public art on billboards around the city; and the Kentucky Center for the Arts sold out a raucous burlesque show. 

These things I know after moving here just a few weeks ago — and I arrived during the off-season. That’s the other 364 days of the year that the Kentucky Derby doesn’t run. To the tourists, that is. 

As for me, I know better. Because now
I live in Louisville.

— Leslie Lyons