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/532701
LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.15 41 Photo by Chris Witzke Best Mural The Waterfal in Portland To promote their new album, The Waterfall, My Morning Jacket partnered with an initiative called Beautify Earth and commissioned artists in fve cities — Louisville, Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angles and Nashville — to paint a mural inspired by the album's cover art. "The point is to take a surface that is kind of forgotten or not that attractive and put something beautiful there," MMJ's Jim James says. "If you ride by it, it doesn't say 'My Morning Jacket' like a huge advertisement. I like the thought of somebody seeing it and saying, 'Whoa. Let's go see a real waterfall.'" Earlier this spring, it took Louisville native Chris Chappell 25 hours to spray-paint the mural on the side of an industrial brick building in Portland. (We don't want to tell you exactly where it is because part of the fun is having the colors just sort of appear as you're driving west on Main Street. Start looking up and to your right at 12th Street.) "The lift reached 80 feet. My hand was just barely able to reach the top. The last click on the lift. I'm so glad the building wasn't another foot higher," says Chappell, who also did the surreal animal scene on the side of Hilltop Tavern in Clifton. "Blank walls are just annoying," Chappell says. "One of my personal missions is go get more murals on the walls, to make Louisville more colorful." — Josh Moss Throughout this package, several BOL winners from the past 30 years — including Forecastle founder JK McKnight (left in picture) and My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James — have shared thoughts about our city, from the silly (determining the all-time best Louisville head of hair) to the serious (bridging the gap between the East and West ends). A lot of folks mentioned how the city should continue to promote Louisville as the Napa Valley of bourbon. And, yes, several people mentioned landing an NBA team. Some things never change. McKnight: "I'm pretty stoked about the whole City Parks initiative. I think it's a super- progressive move to say, 'Hey, we're going to stop the growth of our city here.' I think it's a model for other cities to follow." James: "It would be so awesome if there was a reliable train system that went from Louisville to Nashville or from Louisville to Chicago. Even Louisville to Lexington. You could zip to Lexington in 30 minutes, go to dinner, and zip back." McKnight: "I'd also like to see our city break down the whole West End divide on Ninth Street. I think that has to happen if we're not going to be a second- or third-tier city. I already see the Warehouse District vision in Portland; that's defnitely going to happen. It'd be nice to see the rest of Portland past 15th Street, and even farther down into the West End, on a similar trajectory. And it'd be nice to see Waterfront Park West happen. There are gorgeous houses in the West End that I'm sure 80, 90 percent of people in the Highlands don't even know exist." James: "One thing people have been saying for years: I wish somebody would put an awesome grocery store down at the end of the Highlands, in Nulu, or in the middle of downtown. I was walking through NuLu the other day — I try to eat down there all the time — and people were talking about how the neighborhood kind of goes up and down. Nobody will food in and move there because there's no grocery store. "One thing JK and I always talk about is this place in St. Louis called City Museum. I think something like that could bring people from the West and East ends together. It's like a giant museum, but it's built out of all these lost materials like school buses and airplanes. There's two bars in it. There's caves in it. There's a 10-story slide. There's fsh swimming around. It's kind of like if you exploded the Science Center on acid." McKnight: "You would hate to see a situation where downtown continues to grow, revitalize, prosper, and then there's this whole section that's right there west of downtown that's ignored. You can't take it for granted that economic prosperity downtown will automatically spill through Portland and the West End. It just needs one big thing, and then everything can start snowballing around it. What is that thing?" James: "It's a grocery, goddammit." Bes of Louisvile's Louisvile CRITIC'S CHOICE Photo by Chris Witzke