You've hit it right on the head about Louisville. I moved here from a smaller city in Indiana and I would much rather go back to that city or even Indianapolis. Indianapolis area especially on the outskirts of the city area beats anywhere in Louisville hands down. Even the East End of Louisville with its nice shopping areas and other things to do isn't even close to the similar areas of other nearby cities like Cincinnati, Nashville, Indianapolis, Columbus, OH, St. Louis. Frankly I would much rather live in a suburban area of any of those cities than Louisville.
The problem in Louisville is that most of the population of Louisville has never really lived anywhere else except in their insular little city. They don't have much world experience with other cultures or societies. They don't think that the world exists outside of Kentucky. Sorry, but I've never seen such a bass ackwards place before especially in a city of 750,000 people. By the way, over the past 20 something years I've been to just about every major city east of the Rockies all the way to Canada and to the Gulf Coast. I've spent a lot of time in Nashville which compared to Louisville is a smaller city by 125,000 people but acts like a major metro. The same can be said for Indianapolis, St. Louis, Atlanta, etc. They don't act like a bunch of hayseeds.
The writer also mentions the drivers in Louisville. I do not exaggerate this in any way but I don't think that I've seen drivers in places like Indianapolis, Cincy, St. Louis, Chicago drive as badly as they do in Louisville. Constantly driving up your rear when you are 5 mph over the speed limit, no usage of turn signals, cutting people off, dozen wrecks a day on the interstates, etc. I've never seen such bad drivers and something else is that my premiums also went up by about 50 bucks a month for moving here. Its crazy because the people here cannot drive. Give me any other Midwestern city and at least most people have some sense. Not here.
The school system in Louisville, KY is horrid. So horrid that the general manager of a tool and die company in business 90 years can't find people that want to take jobs at his facility in SW Louisville. Because? Well they find out about the busing agenda of the local schools to put some students from as far as 15 or 20 miles away into ghetto schools and put the ghetto school students in the suburban district. Its laughable. Meanwhile with the Louisville schools recently finished 134th out of 171 school systems in the whole state of KY which is one of the bottom 5 states in educational achievement.
The snobbish attitudes that you find here seem to be a cultural trait. I find that people from other states like IN, OH, PA, NY, NJ, MA, IL, MI, etc have a better attitude towards outsiders. Not to mention they always seem to be the people who are the friendliest compared to the natives in Louisville. This was prior to my complaining about the city so not because of my lack of enthusiasm for Louisville. If anything, Louisville out of every city I've been to other than Memphis and New Orleans is probably the armpit of all those cities and I've been just about everywhere from Denver on East to NYC and DC and Philly. If you are not from here or don't have the money to buy friends, you will not be accepted here. Same goes for marrying one of the locals. You will not be accepted by their family because you are not one of the local good old boys. Its a Louisville thing. If you don't act as a Kentuckian but as your own person, you will be treated differently and if you don't think like these people, then something must be wrong with YOU and not them. They like to think their city and surrounding areas are so progressive but they're not. I've seen more progressive mindsets even out of Midwestern Conservatives than in Louisville which is in the south. Maybe not the DEEP SOUTH but still the south. The paternalistic mentality is well in force here. Its like living back about 40 years ago and asking permission to marry their daughter. Sorry, but things aren't that way these days. The poster that said that Louisville has to brag about itself is correct. They have to brag about themselves because their city has really nothing to offer anyone who has lived anywhere else of metropolitan origins. Frankly, Im looking to move back to the North or East where they at least have enough sense to try to better themselves through education, culture, hard work. I'm not into their passive aggressive Southern mentality where one time you're their best friend until they can figure out how to stick a knife in your back. Its strange because they talk about their Southern values and Southern hospitality here but they're about as suspicious of outsiders than some people in the 5 boroughs of New York.
Louisville is so lame that over the past 5 years they have been running commercials in various cities across the country and on cable channels bragging about their accomplishments. The commercials state that Dallas is boring or Atlanta has too much traffic or Chicago is too cold or that Louisville is a Possibility City. What a laugh it is to hear that because Louisville has a high rate of unemployment and underemployment in the past 5 to 10 years. Not just since the economy crashed in 2008 but even back to 1999 or 2000. Its quite strange to see all kinds of college graduates in Louisville working at temp agencies for 8 to 10 dollars an hour and now many of them are working for the same but in restaurants and other low wage service jobs in order to try to keep up with rent. I've talked to many of them and their personal goals are to leave Louisville and not come back. Why? Because they know they can go to other surrounding areas and have a much better quality of life, be able to buy a house instead of living in a dumpy apartment for 500 a month. The reason why Housing in Louisville is so cheap is because no one wants to live in Louisville and many people are forced there by their ties to family, low wage jobs, and lack of decent opportunities to the point they get stuck in Louisville.
Its also quite comedic to make comments about Louisville and watch how upset the uneducated types get about commentaries on their city. Usually you might get a response elsewhere of something to ponder. In Louisville, its usually you must have too much time on your hands because our city is great. But most of these neanderthals have never lived anywhere but Louisville or when they did, they were mere children. Nothing is more laughable than the stupidity of so many people in Louisville. They think they live in a first class US city but I've seen much better even in mid sized cities or smaller cities of 40,000 to 400,000. Even the supposedly nice areas of Louisville are lacking compared to other regional cities like Indianapolis, Nashville, St. Louis, Cincy, Columbus, OH, etc. Why they are lacking has to do with pride, community involvement, decent behavior, and common sense. When 2/3 of the city of Louisville Metro looks like a garbage dump alongside the roads something is wrong. I'm not talking about ghetto areas of the city. I am talking about even in lily white suburbs that have 90 plus percent white population of middle class people that make 50k to 100k a year. Trash alongside the roads everywhere. Every stop light intersection looks like an ashtray because of all the cigarette butts littering the ground. Same with the population that seems to throw their trash down all over the place. I lived in an apartment complex in Louisville and it wasn't uncommon to walk out at various times during the day and see the place littered with plastic or styrofoam cups, fast food litter, and other refuse that people are too stupid or lazy to pick up. Especially where there were two dumpsters within one hundred or two hundred feet of where they threw the garbage. This wasn't a nasty apartment complex either as far as the conditions of the buildings, etc. We're talking apartments with 600 a month to 900 a month rent. Not exactly that of section 8 or other undesirable places.
When people from Louisville compare themselves and their cities to Austin or Phoenix or Denver or Atlanta, they really think they are something. But I mean this wholeheartedly when I say that Louisville, KY is a disgrace of a city and I don't mean just some of the people but probably at least 1/3 of the total population. They don't have any values, morals, common sense, etc. Its strange because its a stark mixture of bombed out buildings, shuttered manufacturing plants, ghetto areas that permeate probably 2/3 of the city, pothole lined streets, streets that are so rough it makes your car feel like you are in the ocean, and lack of basic repair of infrastructure.
When it comes to jobs, this city is one of the worst cities in America for finding a job. I'm talking about jobs that make a difference. Jobs that pay 30k to 60k a year. There are tons of jobs in low wage service industry work between 8 to 10 dollars an hour. They hire everyone through the temp services and it doesn't matter if you have a college degree or a trade skill through some apprenticeship or an associate's in a field. They will still hire you through the temp services and good luck on promotions. Doesn't matter how hard you work because of the paternalistic mentality of the people in Louisville and people getting jobs because of who you know or who you are related to. It was laughable that my experience was turned down after 10 years of business ownership, 4 year degree in business, account experience in billing, collections, AR, AP, General Ledger, and such for a local to tell me that he was going to hire his son that just graduated from college with no experience. That's the type of society around Louisville that you are dealing with. Like many places, its not what you know or what you have done, but its all about who you know or are related to. What's even more comical is that these same people will be so stupid to sit and look at a resume and critique it for a alleged spelling mistake yet they don't even know that it is actually spelled correctly. The public schools in Louisville, KY produce tons of illiterate and ill educated people of various stripes. People that cannot even spell correctly or even use spell check to fix their problems. This problem is not intentional but instead is a consistent issue. Whether it be in your workplace or in professional positions dealing with interviewers and so called professionals. The idea that some of these people in Louisville consider themselves professional is laughable at best. They are really backwoods type of hayseeds dressed up in a nice 200 to 500 dollar suit or dress ensemble. In my dealings with some Louisville residents, I've even been told of offices where half the women in the offices are on all kinds of prescription drugs and depression medicine. Yet they are making the hiring decisions and job placements that determine others futures. Kentucky is known for being one of the worst states in the Union statistically for prescription drug fraud and other issues with illegal usage of prescriptions. Regularly, they are one of the bottom five states for drug abuse regarding prescriptions and fraud in obtaining the pills.
Another thing that must be mentioned about Kentucky is the high level of governmental corruption and graft that comes from the state and local level. Add that into a nonexistent justice system that regularly lets out felons within 2 or 3 years of their crime which includes felonies such as drug manufacturing, murder, armed robberies, etc. Its well known that Kentucky judges let off these thugs and murderers on a regular basis and after which they turn around and commit more crimes. Not a surprise but the Commonwealth of Kentucky let out 1000 supposedly non violent offenders about January 2012 yet already in June 2012 there were half of them that already had broken their agreements and probation.
This is in summary that Kentucky and especially Louisville is one place I would not even venture to move to again. One reason has to do with the atrocious public schools in Louisville which are in the bottom 25 percent of all the state which is 47th in education and 47th in incomes. Add in the fact that the Louisville economy has lost 18,000 jobs net since 2008 and never regained many of them. Add the lousy mayoral administration of Greg Fischer and the lack of interest in getting the economy back on its feet so that those graduates and others can pick up the pieces. Instead, he's worrying that the city is one of the best for art in the USA. Starving artist anyone? Lets also factor in the crime rate which is a problem in other places too. Not to mention an antiquated 1950s tax code that keeps large and medium businesses out of the city and in other states. In fact, many Louisville businesses have moved to Indiana over the past 5 years or so to take advantage of the lower costs of doing business in Indiana and be able to employ more people without paying extra taxes. Thereby boosting production and boosting payrolls. However, Louisville's response is to sit on its collective duff and let the rest of the country and other countries pass it by rather than being a major technical, manufacturing hub, business center, etc. Their policy is to prop up the economy with 8 to 10 dollar an hour warehouse jobs sticking labels on boxes and packing them into jumbo planes to send things off to the world. That's their idea of economic progress. No new manufacturing jobs are really created since the city relies on Ford Motor Company and GE which are now bringing in a couple thousand jobs at a time when 18,000 jobs were lost from 2007 to 2009 and there are 60,000 unemployed people for a city that has a workforce of about 450,000 to 500,000 actual people that would qualify to be in the workforce. So that makes the real unemployment rate around 12 to 15 percent. Plus add in youth unemployment and underemployment which is spiking at the time and its not a good situation. Not to mention the wages for a metro area are dismally low and even worse for relatively well educated people with jobs. We're talking about wages around 20 to 25 percent lower than other surrounding cities for most jobs and in some cases 30 to 40 percent for seasoned professionals. Stay away from Louisville. In fact, if you are from Louisville and reading this, send it to the mayor and the rest of his incompetent gaggle of good old boys. Another thing to tell you about Louisville is that in 2008 the city began construction on a new 22,000 seat basketball arena known as the Yum Center after KFC Yum Brands the famous fast food corporation. The arena is currently at junk bond status because of the mismanagement of the local Kentucky State Fair Board, Louisville Arena Authority, and others. The city set up a tax increment financing district of a dozen blocks or so around the arena that would collect entertainment and food taxes from all businesses. The result is that the business environment is so bad that these businesses do not have enough taxes to help pay for the arena. Add in the fact that the arena is operating at a loss right now with only around 20 University of Louisville basketball games a year and a smattering of concerts. This city has no NBA team, no NHL team, no professional sports. Just a following of the University of Louisville teams and the University of Kentucky 70 miles away in Lexington. The issue that I am bringing up is that eventually Louisville taxpayers will be getting ripped off to pay for this new monstrosity that will eventually have to be repaid in 2020 to pay in full the principal and interest built up. The agreement is set up that it will cost around 25 to 30 million a year to pay for this at current bond rates. This is what I mean when I talk about political corruption in Louisville. Just do yourself a favor and stay away from Louisville. They prove on a daily basis their incompetence and corruption that rivals Chicago just with a Kentucky twang. If anything, there should be more federal oversight of Kentucky state government and Louisville government. The Louisville culture and mentality promotes sloth, laziness, corruption, and a society where the best and brightest leave and do everything not to return. I will write more about reasons to stay away at a later date.
Kim |
Indianapolis, IN |
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