(Kaelin’s, and their famous “Please WAVE” sign, from lie_inourgraves’ photostream on Flickr.)

According to a thread on the Louisville HotBytes forum, Kaelin’s Restaurant — allegedly the birth place of the cheeseburger, opened in 1934 — closed for good last night. We haven’t seen confirmation from any local media just yet, and their web site is still active, but the HotBytes forum is usually a good authority on such matters.

Needless to say, the closing of a great Louisville institution is something we’re not thrilled about. When we find out more details online, we’ll update this post.

UPDATE, 10:45 PM: It appears we may have been misinformed as to the permanence of Kaelin’s closing. Michelle at Consuming Louisville informs us that Kaelin’s is closing for renovations. We can only assume for now that means an updated Kaelin’s.

WHAS 11 aired a whopper of a story last night, that Louisville Metro Parks spent over $600,000 on new mowers last year, just before spending cuts were announced by Mayor Abramson in December. Here’s the full story (you can watch video of the story by following the link above to WHAS 11):

Louisville, Ky. (WHAS11) – WHAS11 News has learned that as Louisville Mayor Abramson was closing Otter Creek Park to save a half million dollars, the Metro Parks Department was spending more than that on new lawn mowers.

It’s your tax dollars, and critics are saying its misplaced priorities.

But the parks department says the mowers are a great deal for taxpayers for the future.

The parks department says the fancy new lawn mowers are more efficient and were purchased just before the price went way up.

But spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawn mowers in tough budget times has got some folks flabbergasted:

You’ll be seeing these all-in-one Toro lawn mowers on Louisville’s public golf courses this summer. The metro parks department bought eight of these new mowers last fall to replace the old tractor and pull behind blades currently being used.

Those eight faster, easier mowers were purchased last October. The total cost was $507,000. The next month, in November, metro parks purchased nine of these tractor pulled blade mowers which are designed to bushhog and cut high grass. Total cost on those was $96,000. More than $600,000 spent on new mowers just as Mayor Abramson was announcing a huge budget shortfall and millions in spending cuts.

Nowhere in the parks department’s capital budget is there any mention of cash for new mowers. Storch says that’s because the money is coming out of metro government’s depreciation account. Councilman Downard still wonders how the mower purchases will sit with city workers who face four mandatory furlough days without pay.

And yes, it is true, that $600,000 price tag on the new mowers is about $100,000 more than metro government expects to save by closing Otter Creek Park. Downard says that’s one less park to mow with more lawnmowers.

One minor note about this story: Louisville Metro only predicted to save on the order of $180,000 for this fiscal year by closing Otter Creek Park, so the $500,000 figure cited in the story is a bit misleading. Louisville may save $500,000 in the next fiscal year if OCP remains closed, but closing OCP also ended a revenue stream, as well the potential for more. Either way, spending $600,000 during a recession on lawnmowers that, no matter how nice they are, will depreciate is not what we’d call fiscal responsibility.

Just when we’re lamenting the lack of much of anything newsworthy in our lives, lo and behold the bar down the street from our house catches fire. That’s right, around 4:10 PM today, the Old Hickory, a Schnitzelburg institution, was heavily damaged by a fire. Here’s the Courier-Journal’s story:

Old Hickory Inn, a bar that has been a landmark of the Germantown area for decades, was destroyed by fire this afternoon.

Firefighters received multiple calls about the fire around 4:10 p.m. and found heavy smoke and flames coming from the building at 1038 Lydia St.

The cause of the fire is unclear but it was complicated by a broken gas meter that fed the flames and by alcohol in the bar area.

Sgt. Sal Melendez, spokesman for Louisville Fire & Rescue, said the fire “proved to be very challenging. Alcohol and flames don’t mix.”

It took 40 firefighters about an hour to get the fire under control in the two-story building, which was unoccupied when the blaze started. The second floor of the building was vacant.

No one was injured in the fire, Melendez said.

An older neighbor was evacuated from her home next door as a precaution, but the fire did not spread to the residence.

David Hoffmann, who has run the bar for about 10 ½ years got word of the fire while he was at his home. “I’m destroyed. I don’t have no insurance,” said Hoffmann, who did not own the building.

A neighbor, Dave Sidebottom, 40, said he had lived in the neighborhood his entire life as he took photos of the damaged building. He said he recalled his grandfather going to the bar at the corner of Hickory and Lydia streets.

“It’s always been a tavern, like a landmark. I hate to see it go,” Sidebottom said.

At least eight firefighting trucks were on the scene. Arson investigators were also present, seeking a cause of the fire, which is normal procedure.

But seriously, this is a bummer for the neighborhood, but we’re glad nobody was hurt. We missed the bulk of the action, arriving on the scene after work, sometime around 5:20 – 5: 30 PM. Lots of residents, policemen and firemen milling about, the requisite TV news truck here and there, etc.

See the rest of our photos after the break…

(Photo of the Portsmouth Rock from nytimes.com.)

Now it’s gettin’ good. Remember the Portsmouth Rock? And how officials from Ohio and Kentucky have been squabbling over it for the past year? Well, the Associated Press (via the Courier-Journal) is reporting this morning that Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway is takin’ it up a notch:

Kentucky’s squabble with an Ohio city over a historic rock that lay for years at the bottom of the Ohio River is rolling into federal court.

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway has filed a federal civil lawsuit in Ashland, Ky., against the city of Portsmouth, Ohio, and three men over the 8-ton boulder known as Indian Head Rock.

The lawsuit claims a violation of Kentucky law and is seeking, in part, the return of the rock to Kentucky.

The rock bears numerous carvings of initials, names and a crude face and once was an attraction for locals. It had been submerged in the river since about the 1920s until September 2007, when a historian in Ohio led a team to extract it.

The boulder now rests in a city garage in Portsmouth, Ohio, about 110 miles southeast of Cincinnati.

Thank goodness, we were tired of reading nothing but serious news!

Since Barack Obama was inaugurated at the end of last month, we Kentuckians have been used to seeing our senior Senator, Mitch McConnell, grab lots of media attention as the Senate Minority Leader. (Nevermind our junior Senator, Jim Bunning, whose actions over the past month seem like what could charitably be described as a “senior moment” — link to today’s Joseph Gerth column in the Courier-Journal.)

Unfortunately for Kentucky, not all of McConnell’s time in the spotlight has been positive. Some of Mitch’s actions and comments in the public eye have been downright tone-deaf to the overall mood of the nation. Case in point, today Mitch is calling for a provision in Obama’s stimulus package that would require government to buy American iron and steel to be stripped (from the Associated Press):

The US Senate should strip a “Buy American” clause from President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan, the chamber’s top Republican said Monday amid anger at the restriction from US allies.

“I don’t think we ought to use a measure that is supposed to be timely, temporary, and targeted to set off trade wars when the entire world is experiencing a downturn in the economy,” said Senator Mitch McConnell.

Asked whether he would support trying to strip the measure from what is now roughly an 888-billion-dollar economic stimulus package, the Republican minority leader told reporters: “I think it’s a bad idea to put it in a bill like this, which is supposed to be about jump starting the economy, yes.”

The House of Representatives last week voted to require that public works projects funded by its 819-billion-dollar stimulus bill to use only US iron and steel. The Senate version extends that restriction to all manufactured goods.

McConnell’s comments came as Canada Trade Minister Stockwell Day warned that US protectionism “can only trigger retaliatory action” as he urged Obama to fight the provision.

The Republican leader also urged Obama to lean on his Democratic allies in the US Congress to accept or at least accommodate Republican ideas for how best to pull the US economy out of a paralyzing recession.

“I hope he can get through to them that the way to build this package is, indeed, to do it on a bipartisan basis, which doesn’t mean just talking to us, but including ideas that we think would work,” said McConnell.

That would include plans for government-backed, four percent fixed mortgages to qualified homebuyers, and cutting the bottom two income tax bracket rates from 15 percent to 10 percent and from 10 percent to five percent, he said.

McConnell also denounced the amount of social safety net spending in the stimulus plan and indicated Republicans would like to see fewer zeros on the overall price tag.

“We’ve been throwing figures around like it was paper money,” he said. “We all agree that we need to do something, but I don’t think we should just completely act like the amount is irrelevant.”

While Senate procedures give the minority Republicans powers to slow or stall legislation, McConnell made clear his party’s goal is not to stymie passage of a bill that might revive the US economy.

“Nobody that I know of is trying to keep a package from passing. You know, we’re not trying to prevent a package from passing. We’re trying to reform it — reformulate it — put it in a different place,” he said.

Given how the US steel industry has been decimated over the past twenty years, McConnell’s comments seem downright mean. Though to be fair to Mitch and his fellow Republicans, the only thing that kept the industry alive in the past eight years was the weak dollar. Still, we gotta wonder what Mitch is thinking here. Telling American workers that their own government shouldn’t buy their products isn’t exactly a confidence-boosting measure.

(Marker image from 5th Regiment Cavalry, United States Colored Troops site.)

On Sunday, out in Simpsonville just east of Louisville, a new historical marker will be dedicated along U.S. 60, telling the tale of the “Simpsonville Slaughter” that occurred in 1865. We’ll admit, we’d never even heard of this terrible part of our nation’s history until we read the Courier-Journal’s story on the dedication this morning:

A historical marker noting a Civil War massacre called the Simpsonville Slaughter will be dedicated Sunday along U.S. 60 at Webb Road, one-half mile west of Simpsonville.

On Jan. 25, 1865, while driving a herd of cattle to a slaughterhouse in Louisville, elements of the 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry were attacked near Simpsonville by Confederate guerillas.

Twenty-two soldiers were killed and at least 20 others wounded, including four of whom died later of their wounds.

The cavalry was based at Camp Nelson, and nearly all of the soldiers were former slaves.

The ceremony dedicating the marker will be at 2 p.m. on the 144th anniversary of the incident.

The ceremony, which is open to the public, will begin indoors at the Whitney M. Young Job Corps Center gymnasium; the center is just off U.S. 60.

The marker will then be unveiled at the intersection, less than a quarter-mile from the center.

The keynote speaker at the 2 p.m. service will be W. Stephen McBride, director of interpretation and archaeology at the Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park in Jessamine County. Civil War re-enactors will participate in the ceremony.

Jerry Miller, the volunteer Simpsonville Slaughter project manager with the Shelby County Historical Society, said most of the victims of the attack were buried in a mass grave near the site of the ambush and near where the marker will be erected.

Pretty interesting stuff, to be sure! There’s much more information available both at the 5th Regiment Cavalry site and at the Camp Nelson site.

(Photo of Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson by Frankie Steele for LEO Weekly.)

From our sister blog, Save Otter Creek Park – The Friends of Otter Creek Park Blog:

If you haven’t seen it by now, we wanted to make you aware that LEO Weekly’s issue this week includes their extensive annual interview with Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson, who has quite a bit to say about both the controversy surrounding the closing of Otter Creek Park, and our group, the Friends of Otter Creek Park. Here’s the relevant parts of the interview (you can read the entire interview here):

LEO: Another group that is getting louder by the day—

JA [Jerry Abramson]: Otter Creek.

LEO:Yes, the Friends of Otter Creek.

JA: It is very simple to explain to you why we moved in that direction. For many years, I’ve had this discussion with six governors — I’ve been mayor a long time — we have thought that this magnificent park, this very, very unique jewel of a wilderness setting and just gorgeous landscape, needed to be a state park. Because we don’t do a very good job running it, because we know how to run municipal parks — we can handle Cherokee Park, we know how to do Iroquois Park, we can handle Shawnee Park, we know how to handle Hays Kennedy Park or Long Run Park, etc. — but we don’t do very well in terms of a park that has cabins and hookups for RVs, for electricity and water.

So we have said we lose money every year; we used to lose $500,000 a year. We’ve tried to get governors to take it over. There was always a reason not to. I tried to work with the federal government, to have Fort Knox take it over; there was always a reason not to. We talked with the Meade County judge — it’s in Meade County — several judges ago, and asked him if we could serve wine. Maybe if we could serve wine and champagne, there might be an opportunity to host more events, which would help cover some of the expenses to defray the cost — because if you’re spending $500,000 out there, you could’ve spent the $500,000 at … parks within Louisville-Jefferson County. We tried to get the liquor license; the county judge made a commitment they would vote it wet, and then at the fiscal court meeting, he voted no.

… At this point in time, when you’re looking for a half a million dollars, and you’re also looking for money that you can save for these six months that will roll forward because this next budget’s going to be even tougher, we said we’re going to close it, and see if that would generate interest. [emphasis ours]

And you know what? The state parks are going out there, the state Fish & Wildlife [department is] going out there, I met with the garrison commander of Fort Knox — they’ve been out there twice. So all of a sudden, there’s a lot of energy around in terms of what can we do to ensure that the park is open as soon as possible? The county judge in Meade County is interested, he’s said, in making it an industrial park, or a residential area. Well, we’re not going to allow it to be developed into an industrial facility. We want it to be what it is: a beautiful wildlife preserve, an opportunity for folks to commune with nature. We’ve also got nonprofits that have contacted us: the Y[MCA] has a facility out there, [Boy] Scouts, saying what role can we play?

Suffice to say, we’re working on crafting a response to Mayor Abramson’s comments, to be published in LEO as soon as possible. We’re also very interested in meeting with him to discuss Otter Creek Park, anytime. However, there’s some elements of this interview that, based on just our initial impressions from reading it, we have to respond to.

According to Mayor Abramson above, closing Otter Creek Park was actually a ploy to save it! Somehow, we’re not buying this argument. Louisville has a number of private/public partnerships and quasi-governmental groups dedicated to serving citizens. Off the top of my head, I can think of the Olmstead Parks Conservancy, the Downtown Development Corporation, Greater Louisville Inc., Waterfront Development Corp., etc. If Otter Creek Park has been such a drag on the city’s budget year after year, why wasn’t any initiative taken to fix the problem before closing the Park? The savings of closing OCP reportedly only comes to $180,000 per year — why was there no effort to try to find that money from sources other than Louisville Metro’s budget?

Which goes on to the second problem of finding a group — whether governmental or otherwise — to run the Park now: how does closing the Park complicate the problems it already has? What hidden costs might be added as a result of the closing? Certainly while closing Otter Creek Park to visitors has kick-started our group’s activism on behalf of the Park, it has also hurt interest in OCP by both local residents and visitors from elsewhere. Sure, it’s winter, and that’s the slowest season for outdoor recreation, but closing the Park entirely has to have had a “chilling effect” (pardon the pun). Additionally, since the Park isn’t being maintained, what start-up costs will a potential buyer/operator have to contend with? Wouldn’t the Park be more attractive if it was still open and being maintained?

The Mayor goes on to discuss Friends of Otter Creek Park within the context of “citizen enragement”:

LEO: I was at a community meeting [last] week in the southwestern part of the city. It’s been my experience at some of these meetings, including some where you’ve been there, that they start off on issues — and this one was about Otter Creek Park — and they get derailed into criticism of you, conspiracy theories about you and your administration. It seems to me this is the only part of the city where this happens with such regularity and drama.

JA: Citizen engagement is great. The fact that there are individuals pulling together to set up a Friends of Otter Creek, to look at options, to work with me ultimately on how we can keep it open. I think citizen engagement is great.

What troubles me are those that are involved in citizen enragement, and I’m afraid that in the area you’re referencing, there are two or three individuals who take much more pride in involving themselves in citizen enragement rather than citizen engagement.

… Citizen enragement, with sometimes not sharing the facts, framing the issues in a way that enrage rather than involve — unfortunately there have been a couple of folks out there in that area that have done that more than once, on more than one issue. And so it is what it is: We work with the folks who want to work with us.

I can’t speak for anyone else involved in Friends of Otter Creek Park in terms of their feelings towards Mayor Abramson. Given that our group consists of a large, diverse group of individuals from all over the surrounding region — including people who don’t live in Louisville Metro — it’s fair to say that there is probably not one, monolithic point of view given Louisville’s Mayor.

Speaking for the group, however, I will say that Friends of Otter Creek Park is ready to work with Mayor Abramson or any other government official, organization, charity, or group willing and interested in reopening Otter Creek Park. Period.

That said, our meetings are open to the public, and we value what everyone in the community has to say — otherwise we wouldn’t bother with public comment periods at our meetings. As far as I’m concerned, Friends of Otter Creek Park is about finding a solution to the problem through democratic and transparent means. The citizens of Louisville Metro and Jefferson County don’t deserve any less than that.

(Above, the cover of the Endtables 7″, from the excellent Last Days of Man on Earth blog.)

Wow, here is a cool instance of, y’know, someone actually reading State of the Commonwealth. Thanks to our post back in early September about Joan Osborne name-checking the Endtables in the New York Times, we’ve been contacted by Stephen Driesler, who confirms the rumored Endtables discography that we’ve been hearing about (and expressing enthusiasm for) elsewhere. Other aspects of the discography we can confirm is that it will be released by the excellent Drag City record label of Chicago, Illinois, and that it will include all six known Endtables studio recordings plus an undetermined amount of bonus material (as such, neither the tracklist nor the release date have been finalized).

As regards any reissue project of this nature, there is a good chance that there are a lot of undiscovered materials that might be usable, perhaps just lying around in your basement or archives. Steve is asking us to help spread the word, in order to see if there’s anybody out there in Louisville or beyond who has any Endtables memorabilia, photographs, stories or ephemera they’d like to share for the project. And anything of interest related to the Endtables is fair game. So if you do have something you’d like to share, or know anyone else who does, please contact Steve through his email address: luna_pier@yahoo.com. Be sure to get it to Steve by January 25th!

(Hot Brown by James Baigrie for Saveur.)

For part four in our irregular series called Choice Cuts (excerpts from longer pieces either by or about Kentuckians), we’re highlighting a fantastic article in the January/February issue of Saveur about classic bar food from Louisville establishments (thanks to Louisville HotBytes forum contributor John Ribar for the tip). In this issue’s Dinner and Drinks column, Beth Kracklauer samples great bar food — from old standbys such as Mazzoni’s rolled oysters (Mazzoni’s has closed but you can still get their oysters at Flabby’s) to new favorites such as the Bristol Bar and Grille’s green chile wontons — and discusses a fair amount of Louisville history and culture in the process (links to recipes are included):

When I was growing up, my family made regular trips to Louisville, Kentucky, for two reasons: visiting my grandmother and eating fried chicken livers. Grandma was what’s known in those parts as a firecracker; she loved a good manhattan and a lively debate, and she would take us around to local neighborhood joints that served up both, along with an array of bar snacks, including the crunchiest fried chicken livers I’ve ever tasted. So, it seemed appropriate that my father and I should pay homage to his mother’s memory on a recent return to Louisville with a tour of some of the city’s most venerable tippling establishments.

Louisville is a drinking town. A social town. The local bourbon industry is one factor; the julep-fueled Kentucky Derby season is another. This is the home of the old-fashioned, that glorious concoction of bourbon, bitters, and orange, and of majestic hotels, like the Seelbach and the Brown, both of which boast grand old bars. But one cannot live on booze alone, and so Louisville’s bars have become great places to eat; they’re where the genial tavern culture of the Midwest meets the fried-food mother lode of the South. The union constitutes one of the country’s best bar-snacking traditions, of which livers are just the beginning.

Some of the bar snacks we sampled are unique to Louisville. Take the rolled oyster, a fist-size cluster of mollusks cloaked in cracker meal and deep-fried; the specialty was invented in the 1880s by the tavern owner Phillip Mazzoni and is served to this day in bars throughout the city. In the late 1970s, the Bristol Bar & Grille began providing its own incentive for ordering another round: green chile wontons, fried parcels filled with jalapeño-spiked melted cheese and served with a cooling guacamole dip. Then there’s the hot brown, an open-face turkey-and-bacon sandwich smothered in mornay sauce. It was created in 1923 as a late-night snack for guests at the Brown Hotel, and the best place to order one is still the bar in the hotel’s elegant lobby.

“There’s a real loyalty to place,” says Amy Evans, an oral historian with the Southern Foodways Alliance, who visited Louisville last year to research its vibrant bar scene. “Folks there tend to be monogamous with their drinking.” My father and I realized almost immediately how true that is. In the historically German neighborhood of Schnitzelburg, which is home to many of the city’s oldest bars, we stopped in at Flabby’s, a cozy, 57-year-old tavern where the bartender knew every patron but us. The crunchy fried chicken livers, piled high in a plastic basket, were amazing. So was the smoky white bean soup around the corner at Check’s Café, where we also tried a sandwich of fried, thick-cut baloney and a Bluegrass Brewing Co. bourbon-barrel stout. And in the nearby Highlands neighborhood, at the friendly half liquor store, half grocery called Morris’ Deli, we made a detour into the walk-in beer cooler before settling at the counter for a succulent shredded lamb and pork sandwich.

Dad and I were gratified to discover that some of Louisville’s most acclaimed chefs are upholding the city’s bar snack traditions. At Lilly’s Bistro, Kathy Cary featured an entire menu of “Kentucky Tapas”. At Jack’s Lounge, Dean Corbett’s fried calamari with caponata complemented bartender Joy Perrine’s infused-bourbon cocktails. We even sampled house-made bison bresaola from the bar menu at Michael Paley’s Proof on Main. Truth be told, were Grandma here today, she might raise an eyebrow at the practice of serving such exotic offerings as bagna cauda at the bar. But after a few bites (and a cocktail, of course), I think she’d recognize their fresh flavors as her kind of food.

Our only point of contention is that, when at Check’s, we always go for their chili! And we’ve never had the fried chicken livers at Flabby’s, but their fried chicken (weekend special on Fridays and Saturdays), chicken wings (Tuesday’s special) and schnitzel sandwich are amazing. We’re lucky, we live right down the street!

(Otter Creek Park sign from whas.com.)

From our sister blog, Save Otter Creek Park:

84 WHAS aired a short story on Friends of Otter Creek Park this morning. You can read the story here, and listen to it here. There’s a short clip of audio in the piece from when I was interviewed by Suzanne Duvall of 84 WHAS last Friday. Obviously they couldn’t use everything, but the short bit where I point out that Otter Creek Park is one of the things that makes Louisville “unique” was nice.

Both WHAS-11 and WDRB-41 (clicking on the WDRB link will open Windows Media Player) mention the meeting tonight in news stories as well. Links courtesy the Valley Report.

And as the story points out, please don’t forget tonight’s meeting at the Southwest Government Center, 219 Dixie Hwy #106 in Southwest Louisville at 7 PM!

UPDATE: The agenda for tonight’s meeting has been posted here: http://saveottercreekpark.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/agenda-for-tonights-meeting.