Louisville offers family entertainment and adult pleasures
By William Thompson
Department of Communication
University of Louisville
SSCA Local Arrangements Chair

I think you'll find Louisville, the host of the 2007 SSCA conference next March 28-April 1, to be a surprisingly entertaining city.

As befits a Bible-belt city in a state with a heritage of horse racing, tobacco raising and bourbon producing, Louisville offers family entertainment and adult pleasures.  And, with the return of the conference to a downtown hotel, the city's many attractions will be much more accessible to conference goers.

Within walking distance is the West Main museum district, center for the city's family fun.  Four city blocks host the Louisville Slugger Museum, which features a seven-story baseball bat leaning against the adjacent building; the Louisville Science Center; and the Frazier International History Museum, which is the North American home of the British Royal Armouries Collection, another part of which is exhibited in the Tower of London.   In that same complex, Louisville's own Muhammad Ali is profiled in the new Ali Center.
 
While Churchill Downs' spring meet will not have begun, the Kentucky Derby Museum south of downtown lets you explore the excitement of one of the world's premier horse races.  To celebrate Louisville's river heritage, immediately across the Ohio River is the Howard Steamboat Museum as well as the Falls of the Ohio, which lets visitors explore a large fossil bed on the river's floor.

The city also has adult attractions too.  Actors Theater, which at the time of the conference will be staging its new plays series, is a short walk, as is the Kentucky Center for the Arts, which has a full schedule of Broadway musicals, plays, dance performances and concerts.

Louisville is also a superb restaurant town, with several four-star restaurants within walking distance, and many more located on two major "Restaurant Rows," Frankfort Avenue and Baxter Avenue/Bardstown Road.   Baxter Avenue is home to some of Louisville's premier nightclubs, but the conference hotel is also within blocks of Fourth Street Live and its tribute to one of Kentucky's famous products in the upscale Maker's Mark Bourbon House.

The conference will also coincide with Louisville's First Friday Gallery Hop.  A free trolley takes you to most of the downtown art galleries, and to bars, clubs and restaurants along the Market and Main street corridor.  That includes the innovative Glassworks, which houses a working glass studio, galleries, and a jazz club in a single building.

As is to be expected, transportation is also a little easier at a downtown conference.  Downtown Louisville is only eight miles from the airport, and 25-cent trolleys run along the Main Street corridor and down Fourth Street all day long.

And with a car, the area's tourist sites include bourbon distillery tours, significant botanical gardens, a major casino, the horse farms of the Bluegrass and the Kentucky Horse Park, as well as the Patton Armor Museum at Ft. Knox, scores of historically significant homes, and Mammoth Cave and other natural attractions.

If you want to explore Louisville via the Internet, there's a lot of information at www.gotolouisville.com.  You can click here and get an early peek at the conference hotel.