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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16 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 3.16 THE BIT HAIKU REVIEW CITY IN A SENTENCE LOU NEWS SHIFT By Arielle Christian Illustration by Kendall Regan Even the sourest of spirits can't deny the cheer of the St. Paddy's Day parade in the Highlands (3 p.m. March 12). Beer, beads and beer intensify Irish pride. And this parade's most raucous bunch? We're looking at you, Ironworkers Local 70. The foat, with plenty of "beverages" onboard (and $800 in beads, candy and culturally signifcant potatoes, cabbage and carrots to hand out), draws cheers like no other. Last year, a wiry fellow scaled a 14-foot column, simulating the steel version they climb for work. (This one was plastic; steel would've weighed 1,000 pounds.) Originally, the column was supposed to be 20 feet tall. Damn power lines. John Joseph, Local 70's apprentice coordinator, says they started marching in the parade back in 2006. Just some guys with a banner back then. A f ew years ago, Joseph punched up the excitement. Everybody wore welding masks and had sparklers glistening from their welding tools. "Parents were holding their kids' eyes telling them not to look," says Joseph, who explains that the arc emitted from actual welding can damage retinas. The foat, Joseph says, is "open to pretty much any journeyman or apprentice, along with their kids, wives or girlfriends — preferably one and not both." — Anne Marshall "Woodford Reserve has to stop bragging that their bourbon has 200 distinct favors. People don't drink bourbon to taste subtle hints of marzipan, pear and nutmeg. They drink it to forget that their life peaked in high school." — Comedian Bill Maher on a recent episode of his HBO show As Seen on TV Papa John is worth some $700 millon. That's a lot of dough. At least U of L can't lose in the frst round. Fixing fngers with Billy Willis. Thunder rolls and lightning strikes the 10 pins — and again, and again. League night at Fern Bowl, the bowling alley way down Bardstown Road, is packed. Billy Willis stays in the back, waits for any problems — the stubborn ball that won't return to its owner with the perfect-300 bling ring, wires shorting (the worst), pins jamming in the distributor, distributors breaking and Willis hand-feeding pins like in the old days. Even if you were to squat at the end of a lane, squint down its glossy-smooth topography, past the pins dusted clean and the whirling fan of the monstrous AMF 82-70 pinsetter, you couldn't see Willis, the mechanic waiting for a repair call. Wouldn't know the 35-year-old Bullitt County native — "Yeah, I'm redneck; I'm sorry" — was even there. Last week it was trouble with lanes 2 and 20. Willis ran from one lane and back and back, called the front desk, said, "We got an eight pin that won't pick up. Got a fnger broke." (Fun homonyms on the Fern Bowl's machines as old as the '60s. "Fingers" pick up pins from their numbered arrangement, clamp each side of a pin's neck between the two red circles and lift. The "sweep" rids the fallen ones. A "table" places a new rack of pins on the lane for the next frame.) The fnger's a quick fx for Willis. Five minutes, maybe 10. He turns the three switches so the machine can't run, takes a half- inch wrench and loosens four bolts, pulls the broken fnger out, puts a new one in. Ta-daah. Willis, who has been bowling since he was 11 (thanks, Grandpa) and hit his frst 300 at 16 (made The Pioneer News for that and felt like a little celeb), has had bowling-mechanic jobs since he could drive. (Soon he'll be working at the Main Event Entertainment — bowling and laser tag and a ropes course, oh my! — in Blankenbaker Station, scheduled to open early this month.) Been plenty of times when Willis was fxing something and the bowler bowled anyway. Ball straight at him. Nineteen stitches in his pinky from working on a ball return one Friday seven years ago and boom! "Shot 300 in my league that morning; went to work that night and damn near cut my fnger off," he says. "Blood on the pins, everything. Damn near passed out." Te Bowling Mechanic WE LOVE