Sir Grump Munch

November 30, 2006

Moving to Louisville, KY

After researching (climate, cost of living, transportation, amenities, job markets, housing, etc.) the places listed in the previous entry, talking to people who have lived in all of those places, receiving feedback via e-mail and this website, and mulling it over in my head for a long while, I've made a decision: I'm moving to Louisville, KY.

It was not an easy choice, the chorus of siren songs made it difficult to isolate just one of the many great places I've seen (and some I'd only heard rave reviews about, like Portland and the Pacific Northwest). But Louisville has most of what I'm after in the next few years: a better climate, being out of the midwest (though not too far away from my aging grandparents and the rest of my family), fairly progressive politics, availability of health food and organic produce, decent vegan food and cultural offerings (it's no Portland or NYC but it's pretty good for a city its size), cute and hip young ladies, a low cost of living and affordable housing (I'd like to live alone again and have a workshop or studio space set up for printmaking), etc. I plan to fly out and see the Pacific Northwest and could very well end up moving there in the future, in my pattern of moving I will probably only be in Louisville for 1-3 years depending on how much I like it there.

Unfortunately I only spent a couple of days in Louisville and didn't get to see or experience the city thoroughly, and I don't have friends there besides the wonderful painter Kathleen Lolley, who attended MCAD with me. I know a couple of people with scooters in the Louisville area but they don't have the kind of scene that Cincinnati or Nashville has. Maybe I can help it grow, plan a few rides, help newbies with their scooters (with my limited mechanical knowledge), and make some nice excursions to Lexington and Cincinnati, both within 100 miles and down some very pretty roads.

I will travel down there to look at apartments sometime in the next couple of weeks, not sure yet if I'll fly down or rent a car and drive...if it weren't winter I would ride a scooter down, but the weather/snow is too unpredictable at this point. No matter what I do I'll have to get around to look at stuff once I'm there...maybe Kathleen has a bicycle I can use, the city isn't that big and my searching will probably be confined to a few contiguous neighborhoods. December or January 1 is a strange time to be moving, with the winter and holidays and all, but that seems to be how it's shaping up, so I'll go with it. Could be an advantage or a disadvantage, we'll see.

In closing, I'd like to reprint an excerpt of an e-mail written to me (campaigning for Louisville) by a reader of this site, a photographer named Michelle.

I'm from Southern Kentucky and after college lived in Louisville for a total of 7 years...

Louisville has the charm of the South but a lot more progressive people and politics than other places in the South. It is a great food city, including for vegetarians and vegans. It's a city that supports local restaurants which after living in Indianapolis I can tell you is a really amazing thing. It also supports local music, and live music. There are tons of places to see bands. It has 3, yes 3, amazing NPR stations. One for AA music, one for classical music, one one for talk. What else? Louisville is a city that knows how to have a good time. Every April & May things really slow down in terms of business and ramp up in terms of partying in preparation for the Derby. There is a small but growing arts scene that offers a little something for everyone.

More specifically about living in the city, the greatest neighborhood is the Highlands. 1-2 bedrooms apartments are readily available in the Highlands and reasonably priced. In that neighborhood you can walk to shops, cafes, and restaurants and be a short bike or scooter ride away from almost anything you need. St. Matthews and Old Louisville are also great neighborhoods but there isn't as much retail and commercial stuff in walking or biking distance in those neighborhoods.

Louisville also has a really great parks system. It was the last one designed by Frederick Law Olmstead. Cherokee Park (in the Highlands) is massive and has a little something for everyone. Walking trails, bike paths, creeks, woods, swings and fountains, you name it.

Louisville has the amenities of a larger city (symphony, opera, theater, a fair share of overpriced hipster boutiques and hair salons, independent coffee houses, independent gallery shops, independent music stores [a big plus in my book], citywide recycling, progressives, etc) and the comforts of a smaller down (by car you can be from basically any point in the city to any other point in 15 minutes or less, people are very friendly, traffic isn't horrible, pollution isn't horrible, the city is clean and safe)...

Thanks to Michelle and everyone else who took the time to tell me about their places, it really wasn't an easy decision. To get more people's opinions on where I should move, I also posed this question on the StellaSpeed.com and ScooterBBS.com forums. Now, back to the RAMBLE updates, still going through and tagging/organizing the photos into a leaner, meaner "best-of" set and working on a couple of related projects (music compilation and book ideas). Thanks to everyone for following along, talk to you soon.

Posted by pj at November 30, 2006 01:57 PM