Can the city afford NOT to demonize the homeless? It's the GREEN MOUSE with NAWBANY WEEK IN REVIEW.

On Monday our city council met remotely by means of Zoom, and once the body's president Tiberius Severus Octavian Elagabalus Septimius Augustus Claudius Hadrian Gluteus Maximus Caesar -- Protector of Fitting and Proper Scribnerian Values, Deliverer of all Downtown Datedness, Master of the Ex-Mercantile, and Guardian of the Gates -- also known as Bobby Bicentennial -- was convinced to surrender the tin cans and string, things went fairly smoothly.

Hanson's newspaper seems to be in transition as it approaches a date with room temperature, and our coverage comes courtesy of Noah, Diane and others who commented on Facebook.

As is its ancient, hallowed custom of indifference to the most vulnerable in our community, the Democratic Party-controlled council is opting to interminably delay any consideration of the annual outsourcing of homeless assistance funding to agencies in Clark County.

Recall that the city of New Albany's contribution to homeless assistance generally takes the form of demonizing them and bulldozing their tents. Why? Because the homeless induce gastrointestinal distress in Mayor Gahan and fellow (purely partisan) social architects like Squire Adam and David Duggins.

How can we be an All-Gahanian City when poor people keep embarrassing the purported left-wing "leadership"?

On Monday there was a vote to consider a vote to provide money to Catalyst Rescue Mission Homeless Shelter (the topic first was broached in February).

On Gahan's perennial instructions (he was socially distant long before it was cool), pretend-Democrats Collier, Caesar, Phipps, McLaughlin and Applegate poo-pooed the idea. Republican David Aebersold gave his internal consistency wheel a spin and joined the Democrats, leaving Republicans Knable and Turner, and the Independent Blair, to vote in favor.

I asked Mr. Phipps to explain his vote, coming at a time when unemployment and homelessness are up, and societal health and well being down, and he returned this dry, bureaucratic verdict.

We need to have a public hearing and find out more about how the large grant money they received will be used.

But at some point, isn't pinching more than a few pennies going to be necessary? Homeless funding might be put to better use polishing the rotors at River Run, at least when the Gahan's most wasteful achievement is allowed to reopen.

That's because the most fascinating aspect of Gahan's deeper-than-ever bunker residency during our COVID lockdown has been the ostensible continuance of "business of financial profligacy as usual" at the same time as virtually every other municipal entity in America is preparing for extreme pain.

From Houston to New York, America’s Muni Finances Are in Tatters, by Amanda Albright, Danielle Moran and Fola Akinnibi (Bloomberg)

In Dayton, Ohio, Mayor Nan Whaley has furloughed a quarter of the city’s workforce and is warning that more cuts may follow. In Baltimore, which has one of the highest murder rates in the nation, Mayor Bernard Young is negotiating layoffs with the police union. And in Houston, Mayor Sylvester Turner is deferring all five police cadet classes.

New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, may have only been referring to his state when he declared on national television in March that “we are broke,” but he was, in a broader sense, speaking for the vast bulk of city and county and state governments in America.

Never before have U.S. municipalities been hit so hard or so quickly or in so many different ways as they are right now by the coronavirus pandemic.

Maybe HWC Engineering will bail us out for a change.

ON THE AVENUES: COVID tolls for thee -- whatever, so hurry and get your ass back into this seat.

“Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
-- John Donne

Wearing a mask doesn’t make you smart, it makes you a slave to oppression from draconian leaders. Wake up! #NoMasks
-- guy on Twitter ... or was it Facebook?

Put asses in seats, people!

We need to pack this place every night, or it’s gonna be curtains for us. What sort of event, concert or promotion can we plan to get this joint filled?

And people, we gotta upsell!

Once our customers are crammed together tight enough to get the fire marshal’s antennae quivering, they need to be so very damn happy that they spend an extra buck or three -- have another shot, eat some fries, buy a t-shirt.

Why? Margins, dummy. They’re so tight that we’re already hand to mouth, and any extra bit helps -- besides, there’ll be more tips for you.

Mind you, don’t do anything illegal.

But get some asses in seats, people!

---

There can be no doubt: COVID-19 has mercilessly exposed the majority of America’s socio-economic fault lines. While the restaurant and bar business has been devastated by containment measures, at least numerous overdue discussions finally are taking place about topics like sustainability, pay rates, pricing, supply chains and a host of other matters previously acknowledged but generally deferred substantively.

This being said, the single most jarring piece of evolving reality for those of us with careers in the restaurant and bar business has been the need to think differently about those asses in seats.

Our careers have been predicated on getting large crowds of people through the door, into the building (or out on the patio, into the garden, and so on). Asses in seats translate into profits, and of course those are required, even for the most reluctant of capitalists like me.

Yet there’s more to it than that. It’s not about the money alone. Rather, it’s also the energy, the vibe and the adrenalin. There’s a place for a quiet date by candlelight -- and places where the pulsating scrum is the whole point, when you squeeze into that last available seat and let yourself be carried away by the proximity of other human beings.

Sure, there’ve always been potential customers scared off by a restaurant or bar operating at cheek to jowl capacity, but far more of us have tended toward judgments to the contrary, thinking to ourselves that a deserted eatery might not be very good to begin with.

As a server or slinger of beers, being in the weeds can be horrible; it’s been quite a while since my own time regularly spent bartending and waiting tables, yet the literal nightmares about not being able to catch up with orders still consistently plague me.

Conversely, there’s nothing like the feeling of accomplishment when the staff just plain rocks a full house. It’s better than sports, if not sex.

Notwithstanding early bartending and package store gigs, I gravitated to the restaurant business later than most, at around the age of 30. What I came to like about it was the immediacy and relatively instant gratification. Serving folks on premise, you usually knew whether they enjoyed the experience or didn’t.

It wasn’t like a sales job where days or weeks might pass before you know the deal has been sealed. Of course, those were the times before poison pen anti-social media reviews and the all-purpose tomfoolery of the internet. Folks ordered food and drink, ate, drank and paid.

Usually you could tell if they were satisfied with it. They’d tip well, we’d thank each other, and most of the time we’d see them again.

Alas, it hasn’t been that simple for a good while, although one fact is crystal clear: for the foreseeable future, the marketing situation for the dine-in food and drink segment has been flipped on its head as humanity grapples with a novel virus.

These days we can put only 25%, 33% or 50% of your ass in a seat -- spaced, masked, sanitized and hygienically sealed from the other half- or quarter-ass located socially distant from you.

It’s not the same, and I’m anguished, but in spite of this overwhelming feeling of loss, I’ve mourned long enough. Intellectual honesty demands principle, not blinders, whether it's surveying local politics or fathoming a pandemic.

COVID is very real. It’s dangerous. It’s not a coin toss conspiracy touted by dimwitted dupes, and by the way, if you’re buying into that "viral" Plandemic video, unfriend me now, because I must question your sanity.

In my view, the economic reopening is coming too soon, whether in Indiana or Kentucky. As attorney/educator Joe Dunman remarked at Twitter, “This is all going to end up being the biggest disaster capitalism boondoggle in the history of disaster capitalism.”

Yes, it is my fervent wish to awaken tomorrow to a one-off, shot on the dark miracle, one that means we can go back to putting the entirety of your ass in a seat.

Except I’m not a fantasist.

Some sweet day we might get back to a semblance of the joy, pain, revelry and aching feet that characterized my life’s work as it worked it earlier in my life, right up until March of 2020.

It may well be the case that the food and drink business survives, but moving forward exactly the way we were?

Nope. That’s gone. Let’s bury it and create something new. It’s really the only choice, because whether we want to admit it or not, everyone isn’t coming “back” to the future.

The question: Who will?

---

I say this not because it pleases me. Facts are facts, and people are people; at times the facts elude the people, and at different times it’s the other way around.

Next week, subject to “distanced” terms of engagements, those restaurants in Indiana that so choose may reopen to the public. Kentucky follows shortly thereafter.

Some places will reopen. Others won’t, at least yet. Bars are supposed to be shuttered for a few more weeks in both Indiana and Kentucky, with the key consideration in these establishments being the presence of food … and the persistence of the prohibitionistic impulse in government.

(As an aside, for those bars in Indiana cannily contemplating the ploy of using their statutorily required frozen weenies, cup o’ soup, dehydrated milk and instant coffee as “food” in order to reopen, be aware that the Alcohol & Tobacco Commission already has publicly frowned on it.)

Given the limitations of on-premise patronage imposed by the state as a prerequisite to begin again, most observers are focusing on numbers: will restaurant economics even allow profitability if -- yes -- all those seats can’t be filled with asses?

I’ve been thinking about it differently. For me, it’s attitudinal as much as numerical. Next week, when the doors at certain eateries are unlocked, who will their customers likely be?

If we’re to believe the piquant graffiti adorning the blue state, red state anti-social media silos, two points of view already are selected, divided and entrenched.

One is made up of the clamorous COVID doubters, who haven’t believed the epidemiologists from the start -- never conceded the need for social distancing, or stay-at-home orders, or mask-wearing as a simple courtesy to others, or hand washing. Simply stated, they can’t wait to pick up precisely where they left off on St. Patrick’s Day Eve.

The other camp is populated primarily by those who’ve chosen to trust modern medical science on COVID, accepting the need to flatten the curve now as well as expressing a willingness to modify future behaviors until testing, treatment and vaccinations make headway against COVID. They’ll be doing curbside pickup for quite some time to come.

In my view, these two pandemic-driven polar opposites are absolutely real. But I also see the existence of a middle ground. It might not be a majority, just a sizable minority: Americans who believe the science, are willing to be cautious, and also would like to ease their own asses back into regular seats at their favored haunts to enjoy a meal.

I think they’ll be waiting and watching to see how the reopening goes, and their perception of the outcome will go a long way toward determining the extent of their participation in the reopening.

As such, what’s in store?

---

If there exists one sizable group of potential diners who’ll refrain from returning to on-premise restaurants owing to an excess of caution, and another segment that might be willing to leave the house, although surely not in droves from the outset, can we assume that the bulk of patrons returning during the first few weeks of renewed operations will be those same COVID doubters who’ve been flashing their #NoMasks memes and protesting on behalf of their right to pretend that nothing ever happened?

And, if so, isn’t it perfectly reasonable -- if horribly disconcerting -- to assume that this contingent of COVID deniers taken to emitting primal screams of eternal hostility against matters of pandemic protocol, probably will be openly and aggressively manifesting their feelings as they reappear in restaurants?

(They've taken to saying “my body my choice,” an odd sentiment for folks who also are anti-abortionists, but okay. Americans always struggle with logic.) 

How conducive will the “it’s just the flu, libtard” crowd be to the restrictions embraced by restaurateurs in terms of capacity and spacing -- not to mention masks and an absence of bar stools?

How cooperative will they be with modes of conduct they’ve spent the past months violently denouncing?

I can hear it loud and clear.

“Whaddya mean, you don’t want all 20 of our asses to come inside, be seated and spend money? Isn’t our money GOOD enough for you? Why are you letting the guvmint tell you what to do? It’s a plan-damn-demic, anyway. Now are you gonna seat us, or what?”

If rejected, will they smirk, sulk and slither away … to the other establishment down the street with fewer scruples about covidiocy, and a willingness (understandably, perhaps from financial desperation) to bend these recommendations?

In perfect candor, I hope I’m wrong. Unlike the mayor of New Albany, if I’m proven wrong then I’ll take my medicine and admit it publicly.

However, based on the current level of antebellum degradation, the likeliest outcome for the first weeks of restaurant reopening will be shrill scenes repeated in the upholstered booths of eateries and atop their tables, riotous tableaux eerily similar to the dunderheaded drone-bot triumphalism of Trump rallies, accompanied by a determined pushing of FOX news envelopes and a mass flaunting of whatever safety guidelines strike "down with science" diners as disposable.

By the way, the first party of 46 asses has arrived, and they're waiting to be placed in seats. They'd like to bring their flags inside.

I almost forgot -- we also heard from the McMichaels, and well, unfortunately they had to cancel their reservation. Something about an unexpected reckoning, but at least their asses have seats ... in a courtroom somewhere.

---

Recent columns:

April 30: ON THE AVENUES: A week that was wooden like Pinocchio and dry as an unused water park or an unfilled glass.

April 23: ON THE AVENUES: Hemingway in a time of mercifully silent thunder.

April 16: ON THE AVENUES: Bunker mentalities, bunker abnormalities; bunker dreams, bunker screams.

April 9: ON THE AVENUES: #VoteEwwNoMatterWho, or when being realistic means being radical.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: The PLANdemic is hokum, doofus.

Here's the best current definition of the word "hokum."

It's so obvious that even the namesake of this column understands it. The etymology is somewhat mysterious, not unlike the reasoning of pandemic conspiracy nutjobs.

hokum (n.)
1917, theater slang, "melodramatic, exaggerated acting," probably formed on model of bunkum (see bunk (n.2)), and perhaps also influenced by or based on hocus-pocus.

And, a standard definition:

hokum [ hoh-kuh m ]

noun

out-and-out nonsense; bunkum.

elements of low comedy introduced into a play, novel, etc., for the laughs they may bring.

sentimental matter of an elementary or stereotyped kind introduced into a play or the like.

false or irrelevant material introduced into a speech, essay, etc., in order to arouse interest, excitement, or amusement.

"There are layers of tragedy inherent to that capitalistic notion that all is a commodity."

Aarón Cantú:

"This gets it wrong imo. These white Americans are begging for others to return to work and risk death so they can resume their previous levels of consumption - this is clear in other clips."

Here's another quote, attributed to "radical philosopher" Miguel D. Lewis -- who may or may not exist.

"Capitalism is religion. Banks are churches. Bankers are priests. Wealth is heaven. Poverty is hell. Rich people are saints. Poor people are sinners. Commodities are blessings. Money is god."

Prepare to continue sacrificing your bodies to suit the prerequisites of capital accumulation.

Capitalism’s Voracious Appetite: Bodies are the Commodities, by Kathleen Wallace (CounterPunch)

 ... There are layers of tragedy inherent to that capitalistic notion that all is a commodity. These wonders can be extracted, whether it’s through destructive mining, plundering oceans, destroying old-growth forest…….but then this accepted practice carries over from these natural resources to human resources (yes, that phrase is loaded with symbolism—it’s no accident that’s what your job calls you). This has never been more evident in modern America than the push-pull of human worth versus the voracious, victim-hungry economy demands during this pandemic. A testimony to the success of the immersive brainwashing of our capitalist society would be the pro-covid rallies (what else can you call them?) Screaming signs being held by screaming protesters—those demanding that restrictions be removed so commerce can continue despite the risks. The rallies don’t ask for the kind of support the corporations get during these times–no, they request the right to die in order to keep the wheels greased. It’s really pretty astonishing. Like an Aztec saying, please, please take me instead…..”I want my heart cut out for the needs of the sun god!”

Cut to the conclusion.

The only answer is to revisit everything we’ve been taught—all that we have been immersed in from childhood. From that, perils exist, some start to question these things only to be led to an even darker, vindictive place in their minds. The more difficult path is allowing an opening up to new ways of thinking—understanding that the path out will only be through extending rights to others and confronting terrible truths about ourselves—that we feel it’s our right to take from others. It is not. We need to start respecting those who are human, animal, even the mountains and rivers. This is not our usual way of thinking. But this is the only way to get to a future will look like something worth having.

"A few reasons why those suggesting the coronavirus is no worse than the flu are making a false assertion."

Brief, clear and easy to understand.

Five things to tell someone who insists coronavirus is just a bad flu, by Christina Prignano (Boston Globe)

The United States is entering its fifth month since the coronavirus first appeared here and though the caseload and death toll continue to rise, there are still those who insist the virus is no more severe than a bad flu. Some protesters of virus restrictions in Massachusetts and beyond have used that argument to advocate for reopening businesses and lifting stay-at-home orders.

Here are a few reasons why those suggesting the coronavirus is no worse than the flu are making a false assertion.

1. The coronavirus is more severe than the flu, more deadly than the flu, and it appears to spread more easily

According to a CDC study, a higher percentage of older people required hospitalization during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic compared to the early part of the previous five flu seasons. Among adults 85 and older, between about 2 to 6 people per 100,000 required hospitalization for flu, while more than 17 people per 100,000 required hospitalization for coronavirus, according to the study.

The mortality rate of coronavirus is not yet fully known. Without a solid idea of how many people have been infected, it’s not possible to reliably determine what percentage of those with the disease have died. But experts say the coronavirus is almost certainly more deadly than the flu.

Finally, according to the CDC, the coronavirus appears to be more easily transmitted from person to person than the flu. People who do not show symptoms can still be contagious and can infect others for several days before they know they are sick, if they develop symptoms at all. With influenza, people are most contagious in the days following the onset of symptoms, according to the CDC, though it’s still possible to infect others the day before symptoms begin.

2. Even with severe lockdown measures, the virus has killed nearly 70,000 Americans in just over three months

Much of the country has been in an unprecedented lockdown for several weeks. Schools are closed, and some states are only now beginning to allow people to patronize nonessential businesses. Even with those measures, tens of thousands of Americans have died since the first official coronavirus deaths in early February, overwhelming morgues and funeral service providers in New York and elsewhere.

And it could continue to get worse as states begin to reopen their economies: An internal Trump administration document obtained by the New York Times projects a daily death toll of 3,000 by June 1.

3. There’s still a lot we don’t know about how the virus behaves

— Is it airborne? We don’t know for sure. Some research suggests the virus could remain in the air even after an infected person has departed, but it remains unclear if the virus can be transmitted through aerosol particles.

— Are people who have been exposed to the virus immune from it? Probably, but it’s too early to say. “It’s a reasonable assumption that this virus is not changing very much. If we get infected now and it comes back next February or March we think this person is going to be protected," Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, said last month. But it’s still an assumption that hasn’t yet been proven.

— Do we have a full sense of all the symptoms of the disease? We are starting to, but as doctors treat more patients, they’re finding previously unknown symptoms like the loss of smell, blood clots, and other issues.

Compare those unknowns to the flu, which has been studied for decades and whose behavior scientists can generally predict.

4. It’s true younger people are at a much lower risk of death from the coronavirus — but that doesn’t tell the whole story

Those clamoring to reopen the economy often point to statistics that show most fatal victims are older and have underlying health issues, and argue that younger people should be allowed to resume their activities. But even if you ignore the fact that young people who resume their normal lives could go on to infect vulnerable people (and you shouldn’t), younger people can get seriously ill from the disease. A CDC report in March found that among those who were hospitalized with COVID-19, 20 percent were aged 20 to 44. And the Washington Post reported recently that younger people, even if they are not suffering severe symptoms of COVID-19, are still developing blood clots that can lead to strokes.

5. There’s no proven treatment and no vaccine

A number of anti-viral drugs are being tested in hopes of finding an effective treatment for the coronavirus, and at least one has shown some early positive results. But unlike the flu, there is no treatment available that has been proven to reduce the severity or shorten the duration of COVID-19. And a vaccine is still many months away, whereas a flu vaccine is widely available every year.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Hip Hops and doing another evolution.

This fact will shock and amaze some readers, but from 1990 through 2001, or thereabouts, I edited a monthly FOSSILS homebrewing club newsletter called "Walking the Dog," so named from the purported English male custom of tending to his canine's critical exercise needs as a pretext for visiting the pub and having one pint of elixir, maybe two.

During this entire 12-year period coinciding with the advent and growth of the Public House, "Walking the Dog" was produced with a photocopier, paper, staples and STAMPS (pub regulars received theirs along with the daily tipple). When it became apparent that a majority of the members had e-mail, we went electronic, a move I've never regretted, not even once.

As with putting up hay the old fashioned-way, one bale at a time on the hottest day of the year just before a thunderstorm, it's something I vowed not to do, ever again.

The point is that "Walking the Dog" began as a simple single-sheet meeting reminder that ballooned into a six-page (or more) monthly collection of beer writing, much of it mine but with quite a few contributions from others over the years.

Looking back, the experience reminds me that in the beginning, I was only barely aware of what beer writing was. It likewise informs me that writing about beer, and having my beer writing perused by folks of like-minded interest, was important enough to me that I tolerated the drudgery of producing it. One writes to be read. Consequently, I kept doing it.

If memory serves, the digital version of "Walking the Dog" was called "The Not Dog," and it would seem to have kept me occupied during the period 2001 - 2005, although I can't recall when I finally gave it up. Perhaps my involvement ceased around 2003, when NABC had started brewing and available time was becoming an issue. 

From 2005 through 2016 was the effective life span of my beer blog, The Potable Curmudgeon, which more often than not dealt with New Albanian Brewing Company news because we were too disorganized to do it at a web site of our own. Concurrently from 2005 - 2008 came a weekly blog called Publicanista! It functioned as a newsletter for NABC, intended to separate the business from the opinionated writer.

I still love the title. However, distinguishing between business and publican never seemed effective in practice. Synonymity? It's a real word.

After my departure from NABC, an aggravating three-year-long negotiation that began in 2015, the beer chat shifted entirely to NA Confidential, where it went from "Potable Curmudgeon" to "After the Fire," back to "The PC" and eventually "Beer with a Socialist" (the title is a joke deriving from a hurried misreading one morning of AtG's "Beer with a Scientist" promotion).

In addition, for roughly a year (2009 - 2010) I wrote a column in LEO called "Mug Shots," until the publication's then-editor tired of me ritually bashing Budweiser -- which spent lots of money on advertisements. Life lessons are hard, especially when swill wins. There also was the relatively short-lived Louisville Beer Dot Com web site, where I did a column by the "Potable Curmudgeon" moniker circa 2011 - 2012, maybe 2013.

At least I think so. They all mix together after a while.

The preceding is a ludicrously lengthy prelude to an announcement that isn't to be described as earth-shattering, but matters to me. I've been contributing beer columns to Food & Dining Magazine since its second year of operation, somewhere around 2005. In the beginning the columns were not given a title. Eventually the magazine's founder and publisher John White chose "Hip Hops" to identify them. 

Given my throwback proclivities of late, "hip" strikes me as deliciously ironic in tone and I intend to keep it.

Last July came the opportunity to serve as F&D's digital editor, a glorified way of describing the task of writing, editing and organizing the web site's face to the world.

And now ... drum roll please ... yet another weekly format for my fermentable musings.

I hope you enjoy them. Henceforth I'll be signposting F&D, not reprinting the contents here. In fact, at this moment, I'm not sure what "here" even means, or "there," and it's not just pandemic uncertainties speaking.

Reinventions come and go, as they must, and the gist that remains is beer. I'll keep commenting about beer. Even better, I'll keep drinking it.

---

Hip Hops: Introducing weekly scribblings about beer and brewing

For more than a decade, "Hip Hops" has been the title of my column for the quarterly print-edition of Food & Dining Magazine. Now it will be deployed on a weekly basis here at the web site to signal Monday afternoon posts about beer: news and notes, events, ruminations and probably a beer travelogue here and there.

Ironically, as the 40th anniversary of my involvement in various sectors of the beer business draws alarmingly closer (2022), "hip" in terms of the avant garde isn't exactly the way I always feel, especially as the word pertains to aching knees and a sagging jowl.

It remains that beer is my life's work. All of my interests collide while savoring a lovingly rendered pint: history, sociology, geography, pub architecture and just the sheer cultural depth of it. Is there a word for this obsession?

Some people call me a beer “expert,” although being painfully aware of how much I don’t know about the topic would seem to preclude it. “Geek” is too techno-adolescent and “snob” is a nasty pejorative. “Connoisseur” and “aficionado” both strike me as pretentious, and Jerry Seinfeld's “soup Nazi” didn’t improve a horrible and objectionable word that should not be used in any context, let alone one pertaining to a beer drinker.

Hence I'm left with simplicity: "I'm a professional beer drinker, and here are a few local beer news items of potential interest to you."

On May 1, three huge components of the Indianapolis beer scene departed all at once: Nuvo, the independent weekly newspaper where my friend Rita Kohn has written for many years about the confluence of beer and society; Brugge Brasserie, since 2005 a Belgian-themed brewery and eatery in Broad Ripple; and the Indiana Microbrewers Festival, which was postponed until a projected return in 2021.



Best future wishes to all the folks involved with these entities. These are tumultuous times for craft beer in America, as noted by the New York Times:

Demand for draft beer dried up, and Bauhaus (Brew Labs, Minneapolis) kegs and cans filled its distributor’s warehouse, with no need for new inventory. On April 21, in a scene reminiscent of Prohibition, the brewery decided to send more than 900 gallons of perfectly good beer down the drain. For Bauhaus and other craft breweries, kegging or canning beer that can’t be sold would be a wasted expense. And the beer is quickly approaching the dates set for peak freshness and quality, which then start to decline.

To my knowledge such a scene hasn't been witnessed in metropolitan Louisville, at least yet. In fact, there's an opening to report. Gallant Fox Brewing in Clifton is open for to-go beer sales.



"We will be open Thursday through Saturday each week from 12-6pm until things return to normal," according to the brewery's Facebook page. "We will post more permanent hours for our taproom at that time."

Louisville Business First has been chasing local stories about the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding, and reporter Haley Cawthon learned that Against the Grain Brewery, Goodwood Brewing, Gravely Brewing Co. and Monnik Beer Co. all were approved for PPP loans. The breweries are pursuing different strategies to make use of these loans.

"I do wish there was a little more leeway for businesses in the use of the funds, because it’s really hard to make a blanket statement and say, 'This applies to every business,'" Gravely's founder Nathan Gravely told Cawthon. "Obviously, every payroll and lease structure are all so different from business to business and it’s hard to say ‘Oh here’s this one thing — everybody do it.'"



Personalized improvisation is the watchword of Beer 2020. Mile Wide Beer Company announced its forthcoming Owensboro location back in February, then the pandemic put these best-laid plans on temporary hold, as with the new Monnik facility in New Albany. But Mile Wide's brain trust has found a way to keep their expectant Owensboro fans supplied in the interim.

Owing to COVID-19, it isn't entirely clear when Louisville City FC fans will be able to celebrate in person the advent of their new Lynn Family Stadium. However Falls City Beer has collaborated with the team and the playing field to produce a drinkable commemoration "in limited-edition cans that feature images of the 11,700-seat stadium."

It's a Kölsch-style beer in the fashion of straw-gold ale made famous by brewers in the German city of Köln (Cologne), coming in at 5% ABV and 18 IBU (or, squarely in the range of mass-produced American lagers).

“With the excitement of the stadium opening this year, we decided it was time for a new beer in our collaboration with Lou City FC,” said Falls City Brewing Co. General Manager Drew Johnson. “Our new Lou City Kolsch is a crisp, easy-drinking beer that will be perfect all season long.”

This week's cover photo is from the brewhouse of the Pivovar (brewery) Eggenberg in the lovely Bohemian town of Český Krumlov (Czech Republic), as snapped during a visit in 2004.

Memo to Team Gahan: "Nine Things Local Government Needs to Do Right Now in Response to the Pandemic."

Charles Marohn has some really good advice for local leaders. The only question is whether his words are equipped with the latest in bunker penetration technology.

Nine Things Local Government Needs to Do Right Now in Response to the Pandemic, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

Local governments are on the front lines of our nation’s response to the combined public health and economic crisis created by COVID-19.

Local leaders are being forced to adapt to new realities in an environment where the individuals, families, businesses, and civic organizations within their community are under extreme stress.

And, for the most part, local governments have found themselves on their own, without financial support from the state and federal governments, spectators of a clumsy response.

To make it through this crisis with the least loss of life, to set ourselves up for the strongest possible economic recovery, and to keep our community dialogue productive and healthy, local government must fill the leadership void.

It’s time for local governments to be the leaders their communities need. Here are the first steps to making that happen ...

You get only the first one -- this being the tip City Hall will find most difficult to wrap its avarice around.

A Necessary Mental Shift for Local Leaders

We’re in a time of transition, the process of defining a new normal. The way things used to be, local governments were largely the implementation tool of state and federal policy. In the emerging reality, our systems need to become more bottom-up.

To build strong and prosperous communities, a local leader must:

Step Up. Recognize that local government is not the lowest form of government in an ecosystem of governments, but the highest form of coordination and advocacy for your community.

Orient Horizontal, Not Vertical. Firmly ground yourself in representing the people in your community. Orient yourselves to zealously serve their needs, particularly in the face of established top-down systems that are not.

Be a Voice of Unity. Understand that, in such an emotional and volatile time, with so much difficult work to be done, divisive language will slow you down. Be your most generous self. There is too much to do -- you can’t afford to needlessly alienate anyone.

Seize the Moment. In such volatile times, small steps taken now will ripple through time and dramatically change the course of future events. You can’t wait around for others to show the way. The cities that will emerge strongest are those that take decisive action now ...

So far, here's how we've dealt with the pandemic in New Albany.

In our town, reality and satire are inseparable.

Georgia restaurateur nails premature reopening: "This is about screwing the working class and small business, not about helping us."

Who is John Gianoulidis? At Mother Jones, Maddie Oatman tells us: Reopening a Restaurant Will Take a Lot More Than a Governor’s Order.

For the last five years, John Gianoulidis satisfied Atlanta-area residents’ craving for Greek food with gyros and baklava from his two diners, both called Kafenio, and a coffee shop. As paralysis from the coronavirus took hold last month, he made the tough decision to shut down one of the diners, which catered heavily to now-furloughed Delta Airlines employees, and laid off 14 employees from all the locations. He turned another location into a counter-service-only affair, and is now working seven days a week at both the diner and the coffee shop. Though he’s seen some demand for takeout meals, business has dropped off dramatically. “I’m just keeping my head above water,” he says.

But Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s announcement on April 20 that certain businesses in the state, including restaurants with dine-in service, would be allowed to reopen at the end of the month—and that no local ordinances can prevent them from doing so—did nothing to assuage Gianoulidis’ angst.

Kemp, backed by new guidelines released by President Donald Trump for reopening the economy, framed his decision as an effort to “get Americans back to work.” But as far as Gianoulidis was concerned, Kemp’s policy was just a way to shift the burden of the virus from the state back onto people like him. “Guys, this is about screwing the working class and small business,” he posted on Facebook that night, “not about helping us.”

Following is the referenced Facebook post by Gianoulidis.

April 20 at 10:18 PM

Here’s the deal.

Kemp mandates restaurants reopen, whether I reopen dining rooms or not.

I file for business interruption insurance, it does not go through since I am “allowed” to operate full capacity.

My landlord can demand all their money, since I am allowed to fully operate.

Furloughed staff that is collecting unemployment insurance have to come back to work or I have to let them go. Their unemployment insurance then goes on my tab.

If things blow up again, they are still on my tab not on the states, since they are no longer employed.

Guys, this is about screwing the working class and small business, not about helping us.

Thank you so much to everyone that voted this malignant tumor into office.

Before you don your camo and march off to protest scientific reality, take a moment and read the piece at Mother Jones. There remains a distant possibility you might learn something. The closing paragraph is striking.

Gianoulidis doesn’t feel ready to follow suit. When he does, he imagines he’ll pull half of his tables and make sure to continue asking himself: “Have I served the public in good conscience?” He thinks often of his parents, Greek immigrants who emigrated to New England in 1963. They “worked their tails off” in factories to save up enough to open a little pizza joint in Connecticut. Their story reminds him to keep moving forward right now. And if things in Georgia continue to unravel, he says, “Thankfully, I also have Greek citizenship.”

Georgia "is about to find out how many people need to lose their lives to shore up the economy."

It would be fascinating if not for the gruesomeness.

Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice, by Amanda Mull (The Atlantic)

The state is about to find out how many people need to lose their lives to shore up the economy

At first, Derek Canavaggio thought he would be able to ride out the coronavirus pandemic at home until things were safe. As a bar manager at the Globe in Athens, Georgia, Canavaggio hasn’t been allowed to work for weeks. Local officials in Athens issued Georgia’s first local shelter-in-place order on March 19, canceling the events that usually make spring a busy time for Athens bars and effectively eliminating the city’s rowdy downtown party district built around the University of Georgia. The state’s governor, Brian Kemp, followed in early April with a statewide shutdown.

But then the governor sent Canavaggio into what he calls “spreadsheet hell.” In an announcement last week, Kemp abruptly reversed course on the shutdown, ending many of his own restrictions on businesses and overruling those put in place by mayors throughout the state. On Friday, gyms, churches, hair and nail salons, and tattoo parlors were allowed to reopen, if the owners were willing. Yesterday, restaurants and movie theaters came back. The U-turn has left Georgians scrambling. Canavaggio has spent days crunching the numbers to figure out whether reopening his bar is worth the safety risk, or even feasible in the first place, given how persistent safety concerns could crater demand for a leisurely indoor happy hour. “We can’t figure out a way to make the numbers work to sustain business and pay rent and pay everybody to go back and risk their lives,” he told me. “If we tried to open on Monday, we’d be closed in two weeks, probably for good and with more debt on our hands.”

Kemp’s order shocked people across the country. For weeks, Americans have watched the coronavirus sweep from city to city, overwhelming hospitals, traumatizing health-care workers, and leaving tens of thousands of bodies in makeshift morgues. Georgia has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, and the state’s testing efforts have provided an incomplete look at how far the virus continues to spread. That testing capacity — which public-health leaders consider necessary for safely ending lockdowns — has lagged behind the nation’s for much of the past two months. Kemp’s move to reopen was condemned by scientists, high-ranking Republicans from his own state, and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms; it even drew a public rebuke from President Donald Trump, who had reportedly approved the measures before distancing himself from the governor amid the backlash.

Public-health officials broadly agree that reopening businesses — especially those that require close physical contact — in places where the virus has already spread will kill people ...

COVID-19 has no idea who is running for president.

I went out yesterday to pick up Chinese food at Green Tea, which worked out wonderfully. There were 12 - 13 persons waiting to approach the ad hoc window for payment or gathering their orders. Interestingly, the folks waiting were aware of distance, and spacing. I told my social worker wife about this.

She said it's an example of peer pressure, indicating there was a cultural expectation of which these persons were aware, thus their obvious conscious effort to comply. I thought about this and replied, but then isn't the problem that we actually have two major cultures?

Isn't it inescapable after two months of COVID that reactions toward an apolitical virus as yet are predicated on previous political/cultural identities? I've resisted mightily conceding this point, but the evidence seems clear to me. Same crap, different pretext.

Peer pressure is working within these distinct sociopolitical cultures, not crossing them -- or isn't it, if polls consistently show a clear majority in favor of caution in opening the economy, as opposed to haste?

I worry about these things in the context of the food and drink industry. It's been bad enough for us, and now the industry itself could be split between the camps of rev-it-up-now and let's-wait-for-safety's-sake.

Mind you, this division always existed. Like so many other areas, COVID has acted as a diviner of innermost convictions. What you were before, you remain -- only amplified, and in many ways rendered into parody, as with the white guys with guns "protesting" science-based public health.

I don't have an answer. But personally, I believe the economic reopening is happening too soon. Personally, I lament the probable consequences. At the same time, COVID has been conducive. Now I can see who and what you really are, and I'll base our future relations accordingly.

H.L. Mencken wrote, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." This is overly simplistic. In the decision to reopen the economy too soon, the so-called common people are getting what they neither want nor deserve. They'll be used as always by the architects of capital accumulation, and ground underfoot.

These next two or three weeks likely will be more divisive than before. Both arms of our "us versus them" culture will be responsible; we're all self-centered narcissists, just facing different altars.

The coronavirus is laughing at us, and your choice of presidential candidates means absolutely nothing.

The newspaper's Chris Morris: "A great opportunity came to me a few weeks ago and I grabbed it."

I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.
-- Christopher Hitchens

I don't think that my kind of journalism has ever been universally popular. It's lonely out here.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

Officialdom is hostile to inquiring outsiders.
-- Martha Gellhorn

Two months shy of his 35th anniversary at the News and Tribune (formerly the New Albany Tribune), Chris Morris has departed the newspaper. He's not retiring, but taking a new job, which the Green Mouse believes is at the hospital.

Here are his parting words. 

MORRIS COLUMN: This long and winding road comes to an end, by Chris Morris (News and Tribune)

It’s been a little strange being in the office in recent weeks. It’s mainly dark with little human life around, except for me. Thanks to the coronavirus, I have been flying solo at 318 Pearl St. for six weeks now as reporters work from home.

The walls have been good listeners, though, and the page designers in Anderson have provided some company, but the last few weeks have been spent in solitude.

In some ways maybe that is the way it is suppose to be. It’s helped me think about what I was going to say in my farewell column. It’s allowed me to reminisce about all the co-workers and friends I have made thanks to my 34 years working here.

I knew this day would come, either voluntarily or by being told to leave. Many of you have said they would have to carry me out of here, that I would die at my desk.

There have been days when I thought I might.

But thankfully I am leaving on my own terms. A great opportunity came to me a few weeks ago and I grabbed it. And thankfully, I don’t have to move, so I will still be around town. That is a good thing because what has kept me here all these years are the great people who reside in Southern Indiana. I never wanted to move from my hometown.

It would be impossible to name all the people who have helped me along the way. There are just too many folks to thank after 34 years ...

Non-Derby 2020: You keep singing "My Old Kentucky Home." I do not think it means what YOU think it means.

In the world of sports, there is not a more moving moment than when the horses step onto the track for the Kentucky Derby post parade and the band strikes up "My Old Kentucky Home" and 160,000+ people sing along.

Indeed, this moment never fails to move me -- right off the couch and straight to the fridge for another beer.

Thank you, Pat Paulsen.

Today is the day the Kentucky Derby would have been held, except it was moved to September in the hope that pandemic conditions will allow the tradition to continue. There is some sort of plan later today to encourage the world to sing along with "My Old Kentucky Home" virtually, perhaps on a mass Zoom-cast.

I'll just position myself at the fridge. It saves time. The following was most recently published on May 3, 2018.

---

“It was a fantastic way to market Kentucky, which at the time had this reputation of being violent and corrupt and poor and a mess.”

The more things change, the more they stay exactly the same ... look, I'm always reluctant to trouble the revelers with facts, but here goes.

Everyone sings 'My Old Kentucky Home' at the Derby. Few know its controversial story, by Tom Eblen (Lexington Herald Leader)

On the first Saturday in May, as the Kentucky Derby is about to begin, 150,000 people at Churchill Downs and a worldwide TV audience pause to sing or at least mumble along as a band plays the sentimental strains of “My Old Kentucky Home.”

The words of the song’s first verse — the only one sung then — speak of the beauty of Kentucky, a longing for home and hard times “a knockin’ at the door.” But what is the song really about? Who is this lady, and why is she weeping?

Before anyone can think too deeply about it, the horses are at the starting gate, the two-minute race is over and it’s time for another mint julep.

Emily Bingham grew up in Louisville as the eldest daughter of The Courier-Journal’s publisher. But she never thought much about Kentucky’s state song until she moved back home after graduating from Harvard and earning a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina.

Friends would visit for the Derby, and Bingham would field their questions about Kentucky history and tradition. She finally started researching “My Old Kentucky Home,” a song about place and race that for nearly 170 years has been loved, hated, rewritten and selectively used by both blacks and whites for very different reasons.

Bingham, the author of two acclaimed books, has spent several years researching a book tentatively titled “Sing One Song.” It will explore the complex feelings and endless controversies “My Old Kentucky Home” has evoked.

“You can look at the song as kind of a sonic monument; it still lingers in our ears,” Bingham said. “But it’s a very slippery subject, because part of the story is about race. A big part. I want to know who sang the song and what it meant to them.”

Stephen Collins Foster, an enigmatic songwriter from Pittsburgh, wrote “My Old Kentucky Home” in 1853 for Christy’s Minstrels, one of the nation’s most popular traveling blackface music and comedy troupes.

"The song was a hit, but it might not have remained in the public ear so much if it hadn't been picked up as a chief part of the soundtrack of ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin’,” Bingham said. "Everybody saw 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'" ...

Ghost juleps on non-race day: "Sadly, the Kentucky Derby no longer is decadent and depraved. It’s just another vacuous capitalist bait ‘n’ switch."

This one's from May 3, 2019, but it goes back considerably further. For those just beaming to Earth from the Starship Whatever, the pandemic has pushed Kentucky Derby 146 to Labor Day weekend in September. This hasn't prevented phantom celebrations of the race that isn't, at least just yet. All of it is suitably surreal, but as Hunter S. Thompson observed a half-century ago, the Kentucky Derby hasn't ever been exactly as it appears -- even when it disappears.

---

ON THE AVENUES HORSE RACE REHASH: Sadly, the Kentucky Derby no longer is decadent and depraved. It’s just another vacuous capitalist bait ‘n’ switch.

Everybody's working for the weekend.
-- Loverboy

(Ralph) Steadman wanted to see some Kentucky Colonels, but he wasn’t sure what they looked like. I told him to go back to the clubhouse men’s rooms and look for men in white linen suits vomiting in the urinals. “They’ll usually have large brown whiskey stains on the fronts of their suits,” I said. “But watch the shoes, that’s the tip-off. Most of them manage to avoid vomiting on their own clothes, but they never miss their shoes.”
-- Hunter S. Thompson

It’s getting better all the time, except when it isn’t. That’s why the Great Pumpkin invented gin.

The insipid cacophony of Blunder Over Louisville has receded from view, and the most recent iteration of Kentucky Derby Festival hyperbole approaches its yearly sell-by date.

Soon our peculiar institution, otherwise known as the Run for the Roses -- or, the greatest two-minute anticlimax in all of sports -- mercifully concludes, freeing the dazed masses to return to exurban multiplexes for repeat viewings of whatever comic-book-derived motion picture drivel currently diverts their attention from facing up to the daily challenges of this decidedly uncivil society.

By then the two-week expanse of festive revelry will have rendered half a month null and void as they pertain to any semblance of useful activity.

Insightfully, though not judgmentally, visitors entering the gates of European cities in medieval times wrote of rampant public drunkenness, especially during celebrations, with people sprawled insensate in the streets amid mounds of garbage and excrement.

Mud, blood and beer; all merely natural states of urban occupancy. Consequently 700 years later, on Sunday, numerous residents of Louisville metro likewise will find themselves lying prone on the toasty tarmac; chewed up, spat out, and duly prepped to begin queueing at local rehab clinics. Let’s hope they bathe first, but maybe cynics like me will get lucky and it will rain all day Saturday.

Meanwhile the world’s foremost horse pimps, with their entourages of low-paid attendants and exploitative regalia, already will have traveled to fresh drugging grounds elsewhere in pursuit of the Triple Crown, which now trails full-contact tiddlywinks in the spectrum of TV sports ratings, but almost made sense back when previous masters like Heywood Hale “Woody” Broun appeared on black and white television doing commentary at Churchill Downs, Pimlico and Belmont Park.

If you’re getting an impression of personal distaste about the Kentucky Derby, that’s only because it’s entirely true. 

As I’ve often observed, ruinous mint juleps and atrociously unflattering hats don’t function as aphrodisiacs in my rarefied world, and yet someone always asks if I’m excited by this most over-rated time of year in Louisville metro.

Nah, but hey -- I’ve mellowed and shit.

It’s fine by me if the Kentucky Derby is your kind of gig, so please go forth and have right at it. Just count me out, and kindly refrain from stepping on my lawn this Saturday unless you’re bringing delicious bottles of Schlenkerla Rauchbier to accompany our projected roast beast.

Then everyone can be happy, as opposed to the flag-waving idiocy of Blunder, when the noise is impossible to muffle no matter how much I drink.

And I drink a lot whenever warplanes strafe my house.

---

For some, especially non-gamblers, the Kentucky Derby is a time to admire the innate beauty of horses. Indeed, they’re splendid animals, albeit regrettably subjected to criminal interference by humans when it comes to thoroughbreds being genetically engineered for the sole purpose of maintaining the custom of wagering and the devastating addiction it often spawns.

Kentucky Derby fest season also is a time for lowlifes like me to straighten up, fly right, and obey the one-percent’s finger-wagging instructions by displaying a proper veneration for upstart new money, inbred old money, ephemeral showbiz glamor, ostentatious (read: tacky) parties, and conspicuous consumption by our presumed “betters” of such a vapid intensity that by all rights the spectacle should impel us to commence the instantaneous honing of curative pitchforks.

Happily, the Kentucky Derby is a time for filling the Crescent Hill Reservoir to the rim with bourbon, and here, at last, we find a genuinely positive attribute of the season, so please do me a favor and save that detestable mint for chewing gum or some of the wonderful chilled yogurt soup the Greeks do so well in summer.

As a lifelong contrarian, I’ll take my bourbon ration served neat, then immediately trade it for requisitely peaty drams of Scotch. On the big day, I plan on stocking plenty of hooch and keeping the doors to the 1117 East Spring Neighborhood Association firmly bolted, because in addition to the horse races, May 4 in the year of 2019 doubles as the last Saturday of invasive voter canvassing prior to the Indiana primary election on the 7th.

I just might be compelled to booby trap my porch with tarantulas and other deadly cargo.

But recall that the calendar was even less favorable to civilized existence in 2018, when Derby Day coincided with Cinco de Mayo, which is fast approaching St. Patrick’s Day as an expression of sheer amateurism among my fellow Caucasians. This year Cinco de Mayo arrives on our post-Derby Sunday, encouraging the oblivious party to keep right on going, and lending a whole new meaning to Day of the Dead.

---

Last year at Insider Louisville, Susan Reigler -- musician, educator, former local restaurant critic and bourbon expert -- sat down with Sara “Bar Belle” Havens for a few questions.

(Reigler’s) affinity — or awareness, we should say — for bourbon came much earlier in her life, when she would spend Saturdays at Churchill Downs with her family.

“The track in those days always smelled of old wood, cigars, popcorn and bourbon — quite a special combination,” says Reigler.

In spite of all my cranky bluster, I can relate to these sentiments. There’s a part of me that genuinely appreciates the old-school, tactile joys of the pre-intravenous ponies, the shabby and dung-laden track, and the laid-back Southern culture that used to characterize this scene.

The native Louisvillian writer Thompson grasped it better than most, and his 1970 account remains essential reading precisely because it deconstructed the mythology and described what the Kentucky Derby symbolized -- what it "was" -- with what it very shortly would become:

(The Texan) had, after all, come here once again to make a 19th century ass of himself in the midst of some jaded, atavistic freakout with nothing to recommend it except a very saleable "tradition."

Around the same time, I can remember Broun doing his televised racing commentaries -- and the man could write, too.

To be great, a horse must have metaphorical wings. In mythology we punished wax-winged Icarus for flying too close to the sun, but in recognition of the nobility of their singlemindedness, mythology has let the chariot horses of Apollo traverse the sky. Race horses do not chaffer over money, get into bar fights or endorse horse blankets and aluminum shoes. They combine strength, grace, beauty and speed as perhaps no other link in the Darwinian chain can manage (cheetahs have funny-looking shoulders).

There was a certain poetic flair, albeit oblivious, to the way the Courier-Journal of old used to cover the varied expressions of Churchill Downs pageantry, a quality of an indefinable “something” both venerable and genteel involving rites of spring, colorful flowers, exclusive balls and parties, and as a last resort, the horses themselves. Customs were handed down from one generation to the next, and honored.

Compared to what the Downs and the Derby have become in this time of celebrity-besotted, Disney-cum-Vegas plasticized swipe-card, UPC-tattooed entertainment experiences, 1970 might as well have been 1905.

Listen, I’m not delusional. Breeding horses for racing, wagering on them, smoking, drinking, eating and all the social constructs draped around the experience always had to do with shaking down suckers, first and foremost.

That's understood, although I submit that during the course of my own life -- perhaps as a result of globalization, or Reagan’s trickle-down, or the entire business of America’s business becoming a 24-hour-per-day psychological waterboarding designed to sell, sell, sell -- most of the tradition and authenticity have been drained away, or perhaps stripped and flipped like the Yankee Stadium demolition and rebuild, yielding an improved model in which every last corpuscle of sculpted cement, fake wood and pastel color is calculated for one reason and one reason alone -- to ensure that fools and their cash are expeditiously parted now, as a racetrack, and then even more so later, somewhere down the way, as a casino.

---

But enough of the Kentucky Derby’s deleterious implications for human civilization.

Let’s talk about beer.

From 2012 through 2017 the “official” beer of the signature institution known as Churchill Downs was Stella Artois, chosen import of AB-InBev’s payola empire. In 2018 the title passed to Corona, perhaps the most vile mainstream corn-choked Mexican lager atrocity known to man.

In 2019, pay-to-place reaches glorious new heights of Goebbelsian categorization, although I'm crushed to learn that there isn't (yet) an Official Hard Seltzer Water of the Kentucky Derby.

• Corona – Official Import Beer of the Kentucky Derby
• Budweiser – Official Domestic Beer of the Kentucky Derby
• Blue Moon – Official Craft Beer of Churchill Downs, the Kentucky Oaks and the Kentucky Derby

The Brewers Association reminds us that Blue Moon cannot be "craft," but no matter. While the Kentucky Derby has spawned or embraced many intrinsic traditions since its inaugural run in 1875, locally brewed beer hasn’t ever been prominent among these predispositions.

After all, bourbon gets you there way faster.

Still, we can surmise that in the oldest of far-off times there’d have been plenty of local beer to celebrate the annual race, at least prior to the idiotic onset of Prohibition, which rendered the United States a planetary laughingstock.

After restorative Repeal, local beer returned, but when the original Falls City swapped its fermenters for a fleet of semi-trailers in 1979, there was nary a single drop of hometown beer left to drown a wretched punter’s sorrows until 1993, when Sea Hero’s triumph may have been marked by a few hardy and pioneering microbrew fans drinking David Piece's Silo Red Rock Ale from a growler on their porch with a radio nearby, because then, as now, the very last situation you'd expect to experience in this life is local beer at Churchill Downs -- where first Stella, then Corona and now Blue Moon is the this-that-or-another "official" mass-market creation of choice, and there’s barely any incongruity worth noting because the multinational track itself has little to do with the schizophrenic city and increasingly impoverished state in which it resides.

Here, there and everywhere: when the real money is at stake, you can be sure that soulless neoliberal capitalism will be oozing through the keyhole, breathlessly drooling in anticipation of sponsorship opportunities, with conceptual coherence always taking a back seat to the sheer weight of numerically amassed ending zeroes.

Maybe next time it will be Michelob Ultra. Anyway, there’s plenty of time for an experiment, so go out and assemble a committee of horse pimps. We’ll see if any of them can spot the difference between the watery, beer-scented banality of Corona and those equally reeking buckets of equine drug-testing residue over there where the inspectors are being paid off.

It’s not a trick question, you know.

ON THE AVENUES: A week that was wooden like Pinocchio and dry as an unused water park or an unfilled glass.

This is what happens when you realize (a) the draft of your weekly column isn't writing itself, and (b) the Green Mouse already has 900 words for the weekly Nawbany news wrap.

Besides, I've mostly stuck to my pledge to refrain from telling the truth about local affairs, a task made easier by the pandemic-borne restrictions and the general weirdness following in their wake. It's time to loosen up a little, a la Holcomb.

Consequently, this week ON THE AVENUES and GREEN MOUSE presents NAWBANY WEEK IN REVIEW have merged.

And what a wild damn week this proved to be.

Friday afternoon Governor Eric Holcomb chose the international May Day celebration to announce a five-stage plan to reopen Indiana almost entirely by July 4 -- probably a coincidence, that national holiday of a date. There are so many moving parts to it that the Green Mouse prefers to return at a later date and explain ... once the drugs have worn off.

---

On Thursday, as ever wishing to appear like he's socking it to those nasty Republicans, Mayor Jeff Gahan released one of his patented, socially distant videos -- because when you're agoraphobic, your whole life has been about keeping others as far away as possible.

Except that in this video, Gahan failed utterly to find his footing.

The upbeat ebullience and jingoism no longer comes naturally. He can still come out with the same words, but he can no longer even bring himself to believe them. For the first time in his life, there are signs of self-doubt. When he looks in the mirror, he now sees his reflection beginning to fragment. His persona that has been carefully constructed over 55 years to protect himself from the pain of being himself is falling apart. Yet still he can’t quite access the humility that might go some way to healing himself.

Okay, so the preceding passage was lifted word for word from The Guardian, speaking not of Gahan, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson. However, the parallels are both instructive and striking.

With nothing whatever to do for six weeks since pandemic curve-flattening measures were imposed -- just about all of the responses have come from GOP-controlled county, state and federal governments -- the congenitally bunker-bound mayor seemed wooden, listless and uninspiring.

The font on his cheat sheet may have been too small. He also seemed distracted and sad, as if in mourning.

What about the odd ball cap -- can you make it out?

Yep, it's a municipal parks and recreation logo, right there on Gahan's pate covering, but why this of all things?

In the current time, shouldn't it be an ambulance driver's emblem, or a first responder's or hospital nurse's?

Ever since 9-11, when every politician started popping up dressed like firemen and cops, symbolism like this is carefully scripted -- and we already know that Gahan can't so much as take out the trash without post-it notes.

The answer, of course, is that the mayor surely is mourning. 

At a time when numerous townspeople are suffering, jobs have been lost, social inequalities exposed and the groundwork laid for pervasive revolution, the primary reason for Gahan's video Thursday was to inform his adoring public (cue the somber violins) that there cannot possibly be a season this summer for the River Run Family Water Park, our glorious aquatic center.

Fabric is torn and teeth ground together. The coronavirus dunnit, ya know.

Goat herders in Kosovo understand that the parks and recreation department is Gahan's baby, with a budget that went in a very few years from zero to somewhere around $3 million. Right now, with these park units mostly closed and the majority of functions suspended by the pandemic, the mayor's baby is under siege.

Not a word in six weeks about the homeless, the hungry or the vulnerable. But there's a video lamenting the enforced absence of a three-month water sports calendar at a catastrophically expensive facility built to cater to the better-off among us.

Bizarrely, seeing as River Run has hemorrhaged tax dollars since inception, even in the best of climate-altered Ohio Valley heat waves, keeping it closed and eliminating operating expenses might actually save the city money in 2020, even if we continue making the bond payments (assuming the city has the spare change lying around to do so).

We shouldn't assume that. At last Gahan faces a crisis, and if he somehow bluffs his way through the pandemic, there's the Sherman Minton idiocy coming next year.

---

I thought occurrred to me, and I did a Google search: When was the last news item in which "HWC Engineering" and "New Albany Indiana" both appeared?

You'll really love this: it was in the Seymour Tribune in December, 2019.

After 12 years as mayor of Seymour, Craig Luedeman will embark on a new career in 2020.

Luedeman, 43, has been hired by HWC Engineering in Indianapolis. He will serve as a community business development manager for the firm beginning Jan. 6.

HWC is a full-service planning and infrastructure design firm with offices in Terre Haute, New Albany, Lafayette and Muncie. Although he will be based out of the Indianapolis office, he’ll be working remotely from his home, too, and will have to travel a lot, he said.

“Basically, I’ll be going to cities and counties and communities and trying to help them with getting grants and any kind of business development HWC does as far as transportation, bridges, wastewater, stormwater, all those areas and design services,” he said.

He will meet with mayors and other leaders across the state to discuss projects they may have and how HWC can assist with getting those projects accomplished.

Wondering what Slick Jeffie would be doing now if David White or Mark Seabrook had beaten him in 2019? Look homeward, Seymour, and remember this graphic from last year's mayoral campaign.

So, are Gahan's well-heeled revolving corporate donors (including but not limited to HWC) now lining up to contribute to local relief efforts in a time of 20% unemployment?

Is Mayor Gahan reminding them about the optics?

You know, "hey, um, guys -- well, thinking back to all that pay-to-play money you gave me, then I gave tons more of it back to you, um, uh, couldn't you maybe, like, send a little of it this way, you know, to taxpayers in their time of need?"

A city shakes with laughter. The mere thought prompts hilarity. Which comes first, being unable to imagine Gahan ever once thinking to ask them, or those well-dressed campaign donors conveniently failing to conceive of the idea on their own?

---

But wait -- there's much more.

For instance, it appears that Extol Magazine now owns a stake in the New Albany Housing Authority. Hard to miss a privatization of such size; has Ben Carson already cashed the check?

I blame it all on COVID.

It's the NAHA monthly newsletter at the Joomag website, boasting a new cult of overpaid administrative personality in the offing, and I'm sure the official explanation will include trite Business First-speak about strategic partnerships in communications, synergy, and charitable backpack blessings.

Still, this would constitute a relationship, and ever since January 1, lifelong Republican Jason Applegate is destined to find these LinkedIn affairs troublesome owing to a nagging topic called "ethics."

Presumably he still owns Extol, and may or may not continue to serve as the magazine's chief ad sales person during the first year of his term as Democratic councilman-at-large.

As such, any connection whatever between the business affairs of a public agency like NAHA, with its yahoo poobah and sycophantic board both appointed by the mayor, and an outside entity owned by an elected official like Applegate is deserving of scrutiny.

Donald Trump may be president, and Gahan persist as mayor-for-life, but conflicts of interest have not magically disappeared from the planet. The newspaper in its pathetic death throes won't help us, pandemic or otherwise. Rather, ordinary citizens must keep their eyes fixed on the clique's gyrations, and demand answers to their pertinent questions.

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There's yet another news item: our new three-story tall anchor symbol on the south side of the parking garage. It's horrendous, but there is consolation in the absence of Dear Leader's gleaming mug.

Oft times in the past I've joked about the way Team Gahan's fondness for anchors has resulted in ubiquitous imagery alarmingly similar to the vainglorious shambles of Mussolini's Italy, spreading like a virus throughout the city.

For those just tuning in, all these anchors weren't ever submitted for approval to the city council -- and we already have had a city symbol on the books. But David "Bag Man" Duggins, previously referenced above as the newly buttoned-down overlord of NAHA, thought anchors looked cute.

Hamster wheels spun, a "marketing device" was born, and now we're drowning in the inanity of its ceaseless citywide repetition. The governing clique routinely scoffs at me for mentioning Mussolini's name, and yet the plain fact that few of them have bothered reading books implies an unfamiliarity with the way totalitarian systems use symbols. It's precisely the same, as with Gahan's parks department cap.

However, at this late date it has become evident that I may have been wrong slightly mistaken all along. It was pointed out to me recently that anchors can symbolize conditions quite apart from being deployed at water's bottom to prevent forward progress.

Life, stability, a connection: over time, it was only natural that the anchor became a symbol of love. This object is often depicted as a symbol of fidelity: the anchor gets firmly planted into the bottom of the ocean floor and provides the ship with the stability it needs. This is the same stability that two people who are in love with each other rediscover day after day.

Many couples get matching anchor tattoos to symbolise their eternal love. Or they wear jewelry embellished with this meaningful nautical symbol.

Turns out that Duggins is a devotee of the Hallmark Channel.

Anchor soft as an easy chair
Anchor fresh as the morning air
One anchor that is shared by two
I have found with you

Who'd have guessed?

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Recent columns:

April 23: ON THE AVENUES: Hemingway in a time of mercifully silent thunder.

April 16: ON THE AVENUES: Bunker mentalities, bunker abnormalities; bunker dreams, bunker screams.

April 9: ON THE AVENUES: #VoteEwwNoMatterWho, or when being realistic means being radical.

April 2: ON THE AVENUES: Pandemic, pornographic, pecksniffian. Just three random words until the booze kicks in.