Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/111400
COUNCILWOMAN ATTICA SCOTT on itself? I just need somebody to explain that to me.��� He didn���t like it.��� She presses the button on a remote, which raises a bar and lets her into the parking lot behind Metro Hall downtown. We take an elevator to her ofce. I tell her that I don���t think there���s one unifying voice in the West End. ���We���ve moved on from the days of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis,��� she says. ���It���s irresponsible to put it on one person. Tat���s the antithesis of doing it for ourselves.��� Soon, we���re talking about what life is like in Parkland. She says she wishes the houses were more colorful. She says she���s a vegetarian without a microwave and shops at the First Choice Market in Park DuValle for fruits and vegetables. Does she go out to eat in the West End? ���I just took my kids to Olive Garden on the Outer Loop. I have to leave west Louisville to have a sit-down meal,��� she says. ���Why can���t anything open in west Louisville? We saw Amazon go to Southern Indiana last year. How awesome would an Amazon be in west Louisville? Every time we hear of an opening, it���s not in the West End. ���I asked some kids what they would want, and they said somewhere to get shoes. I didn���t know if I should cry or laugh. Because how simple is that?��� B eecher Terrace is one of two publichousing projects in west Louisville (the other is Parkway Place, in Park Hill). Muhammad Ali Boulevard and Jeferson, Ninth and 12th streets contain Beecher���s almost 32 acres, on which stand 59 buildings, a total of 760 dwellings. Te waiting list is 3,000 applications long. ���Living in Beecher is like its own little world,��� says JoAnn Cosby, who has been in a two-bedroom apartment here, in building 41, for a year. For work, she says she does ���odds and ends ��� cook, clean, babysit.��� She estimates that rent ��� 30 percent of her income ��� costs between $25 and $160 a month. Cosby tells me she worries when she hears gunshots and her nine-year-old daughter is outside riding her bicycle. When I ask her how often she hears gunshots, she says, ���Ain���t been too bad this year. Tree or four times.��� I interviewed her in early February. Cosby, 31, grew up in west Louisville. She says a drunk driver killed her mother in Florida and her dad���s brother murdered him when she was 18 months old. ���My parents been dead and gone a long time,��� she says. Cosby lives with her nine-year-old and boyfriend. She sent her 14-year-old daughter to live with her godmother because she was getting into that ���Beecher lifestyle.��� I ask where her older daughter lives now. ���Far away,��� she says. Cosby wants out, too, but says she must frst become fnancially stable. Te children of Beecher Terrace call Cosby ���Miss Shortie.��� Since January, Christopher 2X, the activist and founder of the Fight Crimes Against Children Partnership ��� you���ve surely seen the man���s face on TV speaking for the families of homicide victims ��� has been meeting with several kids inside her apartment on Wednesday nights. ���If they���re willing to come to listen,��� Cosby says, ���I���m going to give them a place to go.��� On a recent Wednesday, 2X tells me to meet him in Beecher Terrace���s courtyard, where the exposed guts of on overturned couch spill onto the asphalt. A few Cheetos are embedded in a bucket of frozen water like insects in am- ber. One of those familiar orange-and-yellow Little Tikes cars looks as if someone sawed it in half. All that���s left of a skateboard is two wheels attached to a jagged piece of wood. A pack of men hold brown paper bags, take swigs from tall cans. ���Hey, X!��� more than one person shouts when 2X arrives. He hugs everybody. 2X opens the storm door to Cosby���s place and points out a connect-the-dots of bullet holes. ���45 cals,��� he says. Immediately inside, a long staircase ascends to the main foor, which has a TV room and kitchen, and there are two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Nine kids are here ��� on the couch, standing, in plain chairs. Not one thing decorates the walls. Closed blinds. A PlayStation 3 3.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 4 1