So I’m at the Louisville airport, walking beside the pedestrian walkway as I make my way from security to my gate on Sunday. On the walls on both sides of the hall are screens with a rotating collection of shots from Louisville.
“Come visit here,” they beckon. I notice the images are all Louisville at its best. The skies are clear and sunny on the summer shots and equally clear in the many fewer winter ones. Twenty-somethings laugh over coffee outside a cafe. Two women laugh as they exit a shopping center. A handsome chap is caught laughing and chatting into his cell phone at a work site. Happy crowds laugh and mingle at the St. James Art Fair. Everyone is so happy here! The buildings are all pretty, too, from the historic downtown ones to the federalist house in Butchertown to the Victorian and Arts and Crafts ones in the Highlands.
I can’t help but notice that it looks like the café is one in my neighborhood. And one or two of the houses is very close to me. Then I realize that a park scene is from a park I frequent quite often. Then I notice a family at a park that looks familiar: A tall-ish man is holding a boy, about a year and a half old, over a creek so the boy can dip a toe in. A short, dark-haired women stands to the side and looks on.
“Hey!” I say to myself. “That’s Big Rock. I love Big Rock.”
Then I look closer.
“Hey! That boy looks like Simon. And that guy, he sort of looks like Matt… And the woman, that’s a familiar face…. And the boy’s shirt… Does Simon have the same shirt? All so very familiar…”
Then it registers.
“HEY! That’s us! At Big Rock! On the airport screens!” We’re a freakin’ tourist attraction, baby.
I wait ten minutes for the video to cycle through again. I may be delusional after all.
Nope, there we are. Based on Simon’s age and my hair, I place the video at late spring/early summer 2008.
There you have it folks. Come to Louisville and see the sites. In other words, us!
Now I have to find someone who works for the city that can get me a still from the video. Because even having seen it twice I need third-party validation that it’s not all in my mind.
I would be willing to make a trip to the airport to check it out, only without a ticket to somewhere to get past security, I could not get to the location. Care to buy me a plane ticket. Actually, you can check it again on your way home.