A Love Affair with Louisville

We got married, our friends stayed in a wigwam, I ate cheese wontons, we bought a giant Godzilla toy and a Patrick Jilbert painting, and Bernhardt saw Passion Flowers; that’s why we moved to Louisville.

It was the summer of 2009.  Freshly married, but hot from living in sin for 5 years, Bernhardt and I decided to forgo the usual honeymoon on a beach and get back to our Midwestern roots.  We packed up our red van named Sin-amon and headed from Charleston, South Carolina to Chicago, Illinois to see our old home of 7+ years.  We’ve taken the Charleston to Chicago roads many-a-time and often hit our peak of sleepy around Louisville.  After mentioning this sleepy to our friend Missile (she’s fast), she told me about her recent trip to the Cave City wigwams.  She and her husband checked out Louisville along the way and for some reason, they thought I would like it.

STACY

Let’s check out Louisville on our way back to Charleston.  Missile says it’s pretty, and I want to look at a place I’ve never seen before.

BERNHARDT

Ok.  But I don’t want to stay in a hotel.

STACY

I’ll google stuff.  Perhaps I will find us a B&B in a hip spot of town?

I eventually found a Bed and Breakfast called The Roost Inn above the Italian Restaurant Le Gallo Rosso on Bardstown Road.  The price was right and we were up for an adventure!

I’ll never forget how beautiful it was driving on Grinstead Drive to The Roost Inn.  It was that perfect time of day in Louisville when Cherokee Park shows off.  We checked into the Suite Alice, which ended up being a tiny one-bedroom apartment that looked like my Mema’s house.  That night, much to Bern’s chagrin because Le Gallo Rosso smelled so good, I insisted we dine on spicy cheese wontons from The Bristol next door [a suggestion from a friend who grew up here]. We ended the night on Suite Alice’s back deck drinking Chartreuse and watching the moon.

Louisville felt easy. And happy.  And creative.  

Charleston wasn’t like that for us.  My husband, a talented artist, was working as the worst waiter at a sad French restaurant in town, and there wasn’t a teacher’s union in South Carolina.  Each week I’d go to work wondering if they were going to furlough us again.  Our rent was sky high, and some weeks we could barely eat.  Those were dark days for us, and our road trip/honeymoon was, in a way, our quest for a new life.  After Missile told me I’d dig Louisville, I started romanticizing, even before we got here.  I think I wanted to feel hopeful.  Ever since college graduation happened, the economy happened, and then growing up REALLY happened, life was hard.  Walking down Bardstown Road with Bernhardt, I felt really happy, but I also noticed how many small businesses were thriving.  I’m no entrepreneur, but my past two cities were full of corporate bullies and no little man.  They were full of wealthy and poor and no middle class.

BERNHARDT

Look at all of these great stores.  

STACY

All of the store owners look really happy.

BERNHARDT

Isn’t it crazy that we just passed 3 vacuum stores?

STACY

Indeed!

We ended up having a Louisville shopping/food spree.  We bought a giant Godzilla from Ultra Pop, and Paul LePree, our first friend in Louisville, told us to go to the Zeppelin and eat beer cheese and drink Bourbon Barrel Ale.  So we did.  We bought a nice leather bicycle seat from Parkside Bike Boutique, and the owner told us how much he loved Louisville and how people can make it here doing what they love.  We stopped in WHY Louisville, bought a painting by Patrick Jilbert, and got cheery about how local artists were able to expose their talents in so many places in town. We went and saw the befitting movie Away We Go at Baxter Avenue Theatre and got a little sweet about the protagonists’ plight to find their own perfect place to live.  Bernhardt bought Nestlé Quik at the ValuMarket, we checked out Mid-City Mall’s Nearly New Shop, walked around the Highlands and Cherokee Triangle until my platform sandals hurt my feet, drove around the hilly streets and looked at cool old buildings and store signs, giggled at hillbillies, and then on our last day in town I went and bought a fateful cup of Heine Brothers’ Coffee.

I can be cranky without a morning cup, and Bernhardt spotted Heine Brothers’ on Longest Avenue the day before.  He suggested we buy coffee and go to Carmichael’s to look at books.  When I came out of the coffee shop, Bernhardt was standing by a bush with a tiny smile on his face.  Usually I’m the hokey sign spotter in our relationship, but this time it was Bern.  The bush he was standing next to was full of Passion Flowers, a flower used heavily in our wedding because of its wild beauty.

BERNHARDT

It’s the flower from our wedding.  It means we can live here.

STACY

I was trying not to ruin the trip by begging you to move here with me, but now you said it, so YES!

BERNHARDT

But it’s not an escape.  We’ll have to work really hard.  And it will be scary to move with nothing – no jobs, not a lot of cash, and no friends.  But we always land on our feet AND we have each other.

To make a long story short, Bern and I got second jobs, saved money, moved to Old Louisville the following summer, and pushed forward.  Within one week of living here, I got a teaching job and Bernhardt became the printer at WHY Louisville. In this first year here, Bernhardt started making plastic toys, a dream of his, and I made it through the most growth-filled year of my teaching career with supportive, loving colleagues and friends.  We finally ate the delicious food at Le Gallo Rosso and have long since enjoyed the food, art, and culture that makes up the whole of Louisville.  I love remembering what brought us here and how the people we meet here every day help us find its charm.  I think it’s fantastic that there’s something new to find here every day.  For Bern and I, it’s a love affair with possibility…of spending our time with people who want to do something great.  When I write about Louisville, I’m celebrating these people and every little thing that makes living here fantastic.  Because it’s true.  The life you dream of IS possible here, and that positive way of being changed my life in a very big way.

– Stacy Geyer

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