Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
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28 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 5.16 You Are Here By Arielle Christian Illustration by Kendall Regan Messin' with the Colonel's hair at the Visitors Center. England through the door. Thailand, too. Last week it was Japan dropping by the Louisville Visitors Center, on Fourth Street downtown, to fgure out what to do in the 5-0-2. Sweet Cyndy Douglas — middle-aged but still "young and hip" — helped, then added Japan's name to the list of foreign visitors. Six days into April and already fve countries in the shop of answers and maps and bustle. Sixty percent of Louisville visitors come for leisure. Like those NCAA basketball fans, the store abuzz with Kansas and Villanova rooters sifting snifters, fascinated with fascinators, eyes on the ball — the bourbon ball. Those Indiana and Ohio kids down for spring break, their Urban Bourbon Trail passports stamped and Douglas handing over the free T-shirt. "We can't compete with the beaches and we don't want to," manager Susan Pass says. "We sell Southern-ness." She calls the recently redesigned store "bourbon chic," never chintzy. The sky- blue ceiling has words like silver clouds: Looavul. Luhvul. Loueville. Looaville. Looeyville. SHIFT Some visitors are locals curious about what's in their own backyard. (May is Hometown Tourist Month.) The rest: folks in town for business. Like the Humana ladies in now. Two blondies swarm the sales table. Another buys her baby a stuffed bumblebee, a nod to Ali. More than 10,000 people come through the Visitors Center in a year, sometimes 700 in a day. "You can't be shy and work here," Douglas says. Employee Susie Gayle, a little eastern Kentucky frecracker of conversation, never seems shy, tells this story: "One time this woman comes up to me and says, 'Can I ask you somethin' and you won't get upset?' And I said, 'Sure, you can ask me anything.' And she goes, 'Have you ever seen a hillbilly?' And I said, 'It's your lucky day! You're looking at one!' Turns out she was crazy about Loretta Lynn." A Humana blondie joins in. "Instead of 'hillbillies,' it's 'redneck' where I come from." "Where's that?" Gayle asks. "Alabama." "Oh, yeah, you're all redneck." They all laugh and agree that "it is what it is." Colonel Sanders is what he is. His wax fgure stands poised in front of his timeline in the Yum! Brands section of the Visitors Center. He holds a bucket of fake chicken, gazes at everything, nothing. Glass eyes, distant smile. He looks so real he sometimes scares kids. Colonel Sanders like Santa Claus. People always want pictures with the Colonel. Ladies lean on his shoulder and their makeup rubs off, which sends his suit to the dry cleaner. Gayle has seen him down to his long drawers before. Mostly it's his chin hairs — inserted by hand — that need replacing. Sometimes the thick white hair on his hair is a mess, the Colonel disheveled. "Did you see the Colonel this morning?" Gayle says. "Looked like he'd been out partying all night. I had to fx him up." Toy Story: Colonel Sanders Edition. A dude walks in, sees the Colonel, and immediately says, "Whoa, he's freaky lookin'." "Aw, don't say that," Gayle says. "You'll break his heart. I'll have to clean up his tears." THE BIT A BIT TO DO I'm naked, eyes wide open, trying to fnd light in the darkness. None except the trick of my stare. No weight either. My body not a body, just a foating thing. The 1,000 pounds of Epsom salt holds me buoyant as the Dead Sea. The salt's magnesium calms me, literally — pushes down levels of cortisol, the primary stress hormone. My eyes close, silicone wax plugs my ears. I'm no pro at meditating, but my breath is loud like wind around a mountain. I expect nothing. It's my frst time in the sensory- deprivation tank at the Weightless Float Center ($65 for a 90-minute foat session), in Distillery Commons off Lexington Road. The pod I'm in is like a big, white, glossy bathtub with a lid, almost spaceship-y with its neon glow, which I turned off when I stepped inside. "You're probably not going to go in your frst time and lift up the cosmic rug," co- owner Greg Ellis had told me. "It's like running your frst mile. You've got to get used to it." Ellis is like the bionic man — more than one of his bones held together with metal, plates and screws. He foats to heal, feel better, stop the gravity.