Downtown Louisville is a place blessed with an abundance of ghosts. The ghosts of slaves sold at auction stare warily at those of bourbon barons and colonels of yore as sportsball fans stagger past, oblivious.
Wander a bit and you can pick out traces of the successive waves of rebirth and redeath. If you're so inclined, you can even drink your fill of history-as-branding down on Whiskey Row.
Used to live downtown, back at the tail end of the aughts. Would go wandering on the weekends, place was a ghost town, just empty office buildings and the occasional tourist when a convention was in town.
Covid killed the corporate appetite for office space, on a recent Sunday stroll downtown seemed to be reserved for the tourists and ghosts.
That's it, feed the tourists on the ghosts of public transit. Don't you fret though, there is always hope.
At least that's what the nice new sign on the 2nd Street Bridge tells me. Don't you worry downtown, gentrification will be back around again soon.
In the meantime, the all seeing eye of Sauron Big Brother has your back. And front. And your license plate.
Now if you'll excuse me, it's time to get back to kicking stones at yesterday's ghosts.