by Ibrahim Jadoon

This past Thursday was an interesting anniversary for me. Two years ago, on May 1st, 2011, at about 10pm, I was working on a paper when a friend texted me; he wrote, “they caught bin laden; obama’s gonna have a press conference.” I looked online and found the broadcast. President Obama said, amazingly, we had found him after a decade of searching—and we found him in Pakistan. I was born in Pakistan, in a small, mountainous town in the northeast. In fact, Eastern Kentucky’s mountains are what made my dad want to move here, because the hills and mountains reminded him of home.

The broadcast continued; President Obama said, “Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.” When I heard that town’s name, “Abbottabad,” I remember thinking, “hmm…that doesn’t sound familiar…gosh, this is a little embarrassing, I don’t even know what province that’s in!” I found a transcript of the speech, hoping it might give a map, but then I saw the town’s name spelled out. President Obama, like most other Americans, pronounced the town’s name as “uh-bot-a-bod.” But no Pakistani calls that town “Uh-bot-a-bod” or even “Abbot-a-bad,” even though it’s named after an Englishman named Abbott. In Pakistan, it’s actually pronounced “abt-ta-bad.” Why do I know all these things about Abbottabad? I was born there and our house is about six blocks from bin Laden’s compound.

Of course, it’s an utter coincidence—I just happened to be born there. But, that night made me think. I realized I was lucky to be here in the United States. Of course, most people in Abbottabad are wonderful, kind, and peace-loving. I feel confident knowing I would have been brought up well by my loving parents if we had stayed. But, this little coincidence, this little connection of my life in Danville, KY, to something quite bigger, reminded me that there was a chance my family might not have moved to the United States. There was a chance I might not have gone to college.

That night it seemed like someone suddenly put a mirror in front of me and made me examine myself and how I got to be where I was. It was reflective—if you didn’t get the mirror analogy. I realize this example might not be the most relatable. But, if you’ve ever done service or met someone whose life seemed a little harder than yours—whether here, at home, or abroad—you’ve probably had one of those moments where a mental mirror suddenly appeared. For example, I volunteered in an HIV/TB clinic in South Africa the summer after my first-year at Centre. On the last day I had an urge, an urge I don’t get that often, to write a poem…of sorts. If you’ll indulge me, here’s a little bit of it:

Today, I met a man who had not seen his family in 61 years. Yesterday, I couldn’t wait to see my family after four weeks.

Today, I met a blind woman with diabetes, breast cancer, and hypertension and she greeted me with a smile. Yesterday, I had trouble getting out of bed.

Today, I met an HIV+ man who had come to the clinic two days ago with a headache; today, I carried his body into the morgue. Yesterday, I was afraid to say hello to someone on the sidewalk just in case maybe they wouldn’t like me.

These are the types of events we usually associate with reflection, these epiphanies. Ostensibly, moments like that seem few and far between. But, the most impactful lesson I’ve learned at Centre is that reflection isn’t tied to “life-changing moments.” Every day is reflect-able and deserves reflection Why? Each of us made somewhere between 70 to 35,000 decisions today (the number varies a little bit depending on what study you look at). We decide how much time to give ourselves, how we talk to other people, how we think about stress, what we want, what we eat, what’s a priority and what’s something we can leave for later.

For example, one day last semester, I had one of these particularly reflect-able days. I realized that sometimes I felt relieved just to sit alone in my room and simply think. I realized I am an introvert—I kind of like hanging out by myself. I really do recharge when it’s just me alone. I realized it was perfectly normal that I am an introvert and it wasn’t something to feel guilty about. That’s just me. Reflection doesn’t always have to change our actions, but can instead change our thinking.

President Roush’s maxim, “Do your best. Be your best. No regrets” is deeper than I gave it credit for initially; at least for me, now I’ve realized it’s beautifully complex. As a BMB [biochemistry and molecular biology] major, I like beautifully complex things, trust me. Or maybe I’ve made something simple very complex, something I’m apt to do. But, let’s assume for a minute I’m right. Initially the quote seems like an inspirational proverb, maybe a pick-me-up for a rough day, maybe a boost for finals. It fills that role well, but I think it has quite a bit more to offer. I realized that, if we wanted to frame this quote, we wouldn’t put a picture above it. Instead, we’d put a mirror. This quote won’t answer many questions, but instead it will make you ask the right ones. Am I happy with how I spend my time? Who am I becoming? Have I done something for myself lately? Can I do everything I want and still be happy? The answer to that one is probably “no,” speaking from personal experience. Did I leave my comfort zone today?

Talking about comfort zones, I went to Air Guitar [an annual party] for the first time a few weeks ago. Hey, I’m an introvert, remember? It was a blast, at least for the 30 minutes I was there. Made me wonder about not going the last three years.

But, sometimes the quote brings up uncomfortable questions. For example, am I a part of a majority, whether by gender, age, income, religion, nationality, race, hobbies? If so, does that membership give me certain responsibilities? Or maybe does it give me privileges? Or maybe both? Am I bystander when something wrong happens? From vandalism to gender violence to oppression to disrespect. Am I ethically consistent? Is it acceptable for me to buy things that aren’t produced in a way that respects the workers as human beings? Am I actually obligated to vote? And, this is my favorite “uncomfortable” question because it actually stopped me from procrastinating a few times: “Would the five-year-old-you look up to the person you are now?”

When I came to Centre, I heard and attempted to internalize at least the “no regrets” portion of President Roush’s quote and I wound up doing lots of unexpected, but kind of really cool things. I starred in a YouTube series where I was without a shirt in one episode (ladies: please, see me later), I volunteered at a Vice Presidential Debate, I danced on top of a bar in Turkey (hey, I have a penchant for some of Eminem’s songs), and I mentored a boy at Toliver, where I taught him to tell time and he tried, he tried so hard, to teach me how to throw a spiral.

Internalizing “No regrets” can actually be a communal activity. I discovered a few years ago that older people, I mean wiser, are usually a little better at reflection. Now, I’ve realized that asking someone if they have had any regrets is, first, a rather personal question, but also one that often yields thoughtful advice.

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that I am some great reflect-er—there have been plenty of times in my life when more reflection would have been well advised. Like, when I decided not to study abroad my senior fall because I was going to apply to medical school, but then I realized mid-summer I didn’t want to go straight to medical school. No, it’s OK; I actually really like Danville, Kentucky. Now that I’m getting older, I have begun to reflect more often and it’s definitely a great thing, so I want to share this slice of happiness with you all.

During one of these quiet moments, I questioned whether “wishing for the weekend” was a good thing—did I really not care about the other 4/7ths of my week? Was that actually bad? A friend recently said this thought process might be why college seems to go so fast: we want the weekends to come faster, and eventually, one day they do.

Centre students are pretty smart. We are the TED talk watchers, the dinner table philosophers, the “let me prove you wrong” debaters, though, on some days, the hard-core procrastinators. But, after reflecting, I’ve realized I should reflect even more! I reckon our lives and the world would be better off if we spent a little more time reflecting and a little less time doing “things.” A Buddhist monk advised me during a dinner my first-year I should be more mindful, meaning I should fully experience the present moment. I should feel my body sitting in a chair, hear the up-and-down cadence of my professors, see the whiteness of the clouds, and even feel the pressure in my feet when I walk.

A few weeks ago I read a list of the most common regrets of the dying, as recorded by a hospice nurse. The number one regret of the dying was, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” Those people with that regret are probably the same people who kept thinking, “Well, I’ll reflect tomorrow. I don’t have time to seriously reflect today.”

After so-called “turning points” in our lives, we usually ask “what if?” What if my parents hadn’t reflected thoughtfully about their lives and stayed in Pakistan? What if I had been born in another town? What if I never visited South Africa? But, we can ask the same “What if?” questions about our lives every day: What would happen if I left my comfort zone? What would happen if I made tomorrow the best day it could be?

I’d like to end with a quote: “Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip? Yo.”

Ibrahim Jadoon will graduate from Centre College on Sunday, May 19, 2013, as a recently naturalized U.S. citizen, then head to Malaysia as a Fulbright scholar. This essay was adapted from his recent speech at Centre’s  2013 Honors Convocation.

Centre College, founded in 1819, is a nationally ranked liberal arts college in Danville, KY. Centre hosted its second Vice Presidential Debate on 10.11.12. Click here for related Ace archive.

Welcome to this week’s Ace Picks  for Lexington, Kentucky — Ace’s highly curated and selective to do list for the next eight days in the bluegrass (also delivered to your inbox every Thursday morning via the Ace e-dition click here to subscribe.)

Three popular Lexington theatre productions continue this weekend,  William Shakespeare’s Land of the Dead by Actors Guild of Lexington, Funny Money, by Studio Players, and On the Verge’s  Love, Loss and What  I Wore, at Apres Vous.

THURSDAY (May, 16, 2013)

Tonight is the Release Party of artist JT Dockery’s work ‘Despair Vol. 1′ at Institute 193.  The event will also feature a musical performance by Dockery’s band The Smacks!, and a multi-media puppet performance by the Baltimore artists Eamon Espey and Lisa Krause titled “Ishi’s Brain.”

The Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation is hosting a Pop-up preview and art party at the former Henry Faulkner House featuring over 40 works of art by Henry Faulkner.

FRIDAY (May, 17, 2013)

Vandaveer’s at Willie’s Locally Known tonight.

Popular annual fundraiser, Taste of the Bluegrass is at Keeneland’s Keene Barn with more than 60 food and beverage booths to serve.  There will be live music and a silent auction benefiting God’s Pantry Food Bank and The Kentucky Restaurant Association’s Scholarship fund.

Fountain Films on Friday kicks off the summer downtown series with its first film Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure at Triangle Park, 8:45 pm.

 SATURDAY (May, 18, 2013)

Bike Lexington family fun ride event begins at 10 am with thousands of cyclists reclaiming the streets.  The Sprout Sprint, a bike race coordinated by the YMCA starts at 8:30 am.

 

The 19th annual Founders’ Day Celebration at McConnell Springs  is a family event that commemorates Lexington’s history with pioneers reenacting the 1775 era, historic music, exhibits, and Native American programs.

Craft Beer Week  is winding down with Brewer Bonanza at the Wine Market on W. Second Street, with several specialty kegs being tapped hourly.  Each ticket includes ten 4 oz pours of beer to enjoy.  A few blocks north on Jefferson is the Think Local, Drink Local #2 event at Lexington’s West Sixth Brewery.

SUNDAY (May, 19, 2013)

Local artist and activist Bruce Burris will soon be leaving Lexington for Oregon. The ElandF Revival at Third Street Coffee is a going-away celebration weekend of  live music, food, art, and surprise appearances.  On Sunday at 4 pm, the March Madness Marching Band will perform and there will be a very special celebratory cake.  The full story on Bruce here.

Northside Neighborhood Association’s Historic House and Garden Tour will be a self-guided tour of approximately 15 historic homes and/or gardens all located in the historic Northside Neighborhood.

The Dalai Lama will  speak in Louisville Sunday and Monday, beginning today at the Yum Center.

Ford Theatre Reunion plays at Al’s Bar tonight.

MONDAY (May, 20, 2013)

The Dalai Lama will conclude his stay in Louisville with a two-part public Buddhist teaching in the morning and afternoon.

Tonight’s Woodsongs performance is with Joe Lewis Walker and Aoife O’Donovan at the Lyric Theatre.

TUESDAY (May, 21, 2013)

Troubadour Concert series presents  The Wailers  at the Lyric Theatre.

WEDNESDAY (May, 22, 2013)

Tonight’s Red Barn Radio features Driving Rain at ArtsPlace.

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Ace Picks and calendar recommendations for Lexington are compiled from the Ace Calendar Lexington, KY calendar by Mic Hardman, with Ryan Winstead. Click tosubmit.

Click to subscribe to the Ace e-dition (delivered to your inbox every Thursday),

BY KAKIE URCH

I had a better view of Jamal Mashburn against LSU with Shaquille O’Neal from Section 16 in Rupp Arena in 1991 than I did from the faculty seats Sunday night at UK Commencement, where Mashburn received an honorary doctorate of humanities.

But Mashburn’s personal experience at Kentucky from 1990-1993 gave me an early glimpse of the view we now have of this remarkable man from the Bronx who has made Kentucky proud and made it his own since he took the risk of coming here to play for a program down on its luck (hell, we were down to 3 scholarships) with a brash new coach from Providence named Pitino.

Now I am not what we call, in Kentucky, a basketball fan. A true fan has, or has had, at some point in his or her life, the UK wallpaper. By this measure, I have cousins who are basketball fans. I have cousins who are children of those cousins who are basketball fans. I have an uncle who has built a whole lot of roads and bridges across the Commonwealth but no project was done with more care than his two equally impressive mancaves that are shrines to the Wildcats, complete with the wallpaper. They have season tickets. And they are — by the wallpaper test — basketball fans.

So, what am I, not really a “basketball fan,” just some odd graduate student in English, doing sitting in Section 16 in 1991? The point is, in 1991, those seats were AVAILABLE. For free and at the last minute and folks like me were like, sure, basketball game, I’ll go. I went to nearly every home game in 1991 and 1992, when Mashburn played his heart out for University of Kentucky.

The Wildcats had been slapped with three years’ probation, a two-year ban from postseason play and a ban from live television in 1989–90. The coach and AD were fired. The “death penalty” was avoided by the width of a matted hair of the mascot’s suit and the neck of a fine university president, who also departed.

New coach Rick Pitino offered one of the three scholarships to Jamal Mashburn, Mr. Basketball for the state of New York for 1990. And Mashburn said “Yes.” And then for the next years, he was the big man (at 6′ 8″) who teamed up with the indefatigable Coach Pitino and the remaining “Unforgettables” to fireman’s carry the program from TV ban in 1990 up 20 flights of stairs to the Final Four versus Michigan in 1993. And that, Christian Laettner aside, should be enough.

Help save the program. Be a three-and-done player. Have a killer fade haircut. Be named All-SEC and All-American, All-NCAA Final Four, be drafted No. 4 to Dallas. You’ve done right by us, #24, thanks and here’s a cigar. You’re our legend. You could just bomb in the NBA, because we don’t really care about those stats. The pinnacle is here in Rupp, and you’ve reached it. But Mashburn goes on to a record-setting and long-lived NBA career, followed by a long stint as a well-regarded ESPN on-air analyst. (More difficult than it looks, if you’re doing it right, as my multimedia students can attest.) And that would be enough.

But as those attending Commencement on Sunday learned, if they didn’t already know, Mr. Jamal Mashburn, in coming from the Bronx to a place as different as it could be from the five boroughs of New York, brought with him, developed, burnished and has for 20 years lived the qualities that UK as an institution calls its “Kentucky Promise.”

Before he played one game in the NBA, Mashburn endowed $500,000 for a scholarship program that to this day, identifies students in the 9th grade in Fayette County schools and offers them a scholarship to UK or Bluegrass Community and Technical College, while nurturing them to excellence. Mashburn’s foundations do work with latch-key children, children of single mothers and children of alcoholics.

He was recently featured in an ESPN documentary called “Broke,” held up as an example of a professional sports player who had turned the brief largesse of the game into an investment on a viable and thriving business. Planning to create financial stability for himself through business from early days, Mashburn now owns 38 Outback Steakhouses, 40 Papa John’s restaurants, three Dunkin Donuts stores, including the one on Main Street in Lexington, Toyota on Nicholasville and Lexus of Lexington. The Outback and Papa John’s franchises were started by Kentuckians and several of Mashburn’s businesses, by doing their retail business in the Commonwealth, contribute heartily to the state’s economy.

In that LSU game, Mashburn played only 14 minutes and got 5 points, low for him. But in March of that 1991 season, the Wildcats, with Jamal Mashburn, beat Auburn 114-93 to claim the SEC title as two years of probation ended. I watched that from Section 16, too, electrified.

It is true, as past and current coaches say as they criss-cross the country talking to recruits, that the University of Kentucky Men’s Basketball program has a lot — maybe the most — to offer. But Jamal Mashburn is one player who has given back far more to the University and the Commonwealth than he has taken away.

We’ve awarded him a much-deserved honorary doctorate of humanities, which makes us a little closer to even. 18-year-old Jamal Mashburn was a thing of joy to watch on the basketball court, but it’s the 43-year-old Jamal Mashburns that mark the true goal of the University of Kentucky.

Kakie Urch is an assistant professor of multimedia in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky.

This article appears on page 6 of the May 9 print edition of Ace.

Welcome to this week’s Ace Picks for Lexington, Kentucky — Ace’s highly curated and selective to do list for the next eight days in the bluegrass (also delivered to your inbox every Thursday morning via the Ace e-dition click here to subscribe.)

THURSDAY (May, 9, 2013)

Actors Guild of Lexington premieres William Shakespeare’s Land of the Dead, a comedic marriage of zombie homage and Elizabethan history (through May 19).

Studio Players grand opening of Funny Money at the Carriage House Theatre.

Chris Kattan performs his comedy act at Comedy Off Broadway (through May 12).

FRIDAY (May, 10, 2013)

Deb’s Social Stimulus presents Gen Silent at the Lyric Theatre, a documentary depicting the challenges LGBT elderly may face in discriminatory elder-care systems.

Erik Reece, a UK professor, discusses and signs his book The Embattled Wilderness at Morris Book Shop.   

SATURDAY (May, 11, 2013)

Lexington Humane Society hosts Mutt Strut, its annual dog-friendly 2k walk at Keeneland.

Lexington’s First Annual Crawfish Festival, including a crawfish boil with 1,500 pounds of live crawfish, will take place at The Red Mile.  Live music will be played.

SUNDAY (May, 12, 2013)

Grammy award winning singer-songwriter Anita Baker will perform a Mother’s Day concert at the Singletary Center.

On the Verge presents Nora Ephron’s Love, Loss, and What I Wore at Apres Vous, 2 pm matinee.

MONDAY (May, 13, 2013)

Tonight’s Woodsongs: The Willis Clan and The Church Sisters will be performing at the Lyric Theatre.

TUESDAY (May, 14, 2013)

Troubadour presents Time Jumpers with Vince Gill at the Lexington Opera House at 7:30 pm.

Mark Jensen of Fork in the Road food truck teaches a lesson on how to cook with local beer at Country Boy, part of Lexington Craft Beer Week.

WEDNESDAY (May, 15, 2013)

Tonight’s Red Barn Radio: Ana Egge performs at ArtsPlace.

Ace Picks and calendar recommendations for Lexington are compiled from the Ace Calendar Lexington, KY calendar by Mic Hardman, with Ryan Winstead. Click to submit.

Click to subscribe to the Ace e-dition (delivered to your inbox every Thursday),

“My paintings tell stories. They are the stories of people who feel disconnected and powerless. They are stories I have heard at work, or in the newspaper, on TV, or from friends. You have heard these stories too. I try to repeat them as directly and honestly as I can. It somehow seems important to do this.”

-Bruce Burris, 2003 Ace interview

Artist and activist Bruce Burris might not be the mother of all arts and accessibility movements in Lexington, but he has definitely been the midwife. Arts, accessibility, community gardens, parades, murals, safer sidewalks and streetscapes — if you love it in Lexington, the odds are good that Bruce Burris was at least there coaching the birth of it. When he leaves Lexington this summer for his new home in Oregon, he will join a long list of Lexpatriates who’ve made Lexington better in the time they were here, and then moved on. But he has touched more lives than most.

As Jim Gray put it in 2006 when he was a vice-mayor elect, “Patiently but persistently, Bruce Burris pedals his way toward making Lexington better…through projects that rarely announce themselves as significant…but always are.”

***

Over a long chat last week at Third Street Stuff, he talked about his path here over the past two decades, and what might be next for Lexington? Always a visionary, always able to see what others couldn’t, what might he imagine for Lexington’s destiny? Where has it been and where is it going?

“Mass. That is what we finally have downtown,” he says. “It creates its own energy after awhile.” Twenty years ago, he points out, “nobody was talking about downtown.” But he adds candidly that Lexington has taken a pretty predictable urban path to get where it is now. “Downtown follows a model, and it’s happened so often now it’s boring. First come the community gardens and then you get the urban chicken coops and then come the donuts and the sidewalks and the bike trails and the tattoos and the food trucks. And next, it will be the goats.” He says, “this cookie cutter hipster template has been stamped out and downtowns have followed it everywhere — and don’t get me wrong, I still remember when we had to explain what a community garden was — but that model has been so successful it is kind of boring.” He describes the model arts program that Latitude was based on, which originated in California, “but we adapted it, we fine tuned it, and we made it better. Lexington can do that.”

He points out, in Lexington, “we live in the suburbs.” (He and wife Robynn just sold their home in the Southland neighborhood.)

“More of us live [in the suburbs] than live downtown, and more of us always will. This is where Lexington could get ahead of the curve, where it could be visionary. That model has not been stamped out for us. How do we re-imagine life in the suburbs? It is where we live, so how do we live well there? We surely have more to offer the world than strip malls and franchises, don’t we? How do we do that?”

He says that there are some dividends to the persistence he’s been a part of and a witness to over the past 20 years. He laughs, “there are a lot of hipsters who apparently have a lot of time on their hands who are benefiting from the determination, the stick-to-it-iveness” of those who came before. He says, “when I came here 20 years ago, Van Meter Pettit was already in the middle of his Town Branch Trail project, and it is gonna happen. His work will pay off, and everyone will benefit.” He talks about first meeting ideaFestival founder Kris Kimel, “before there was an ideaFestival” and now it is an annual conference (though it did relocate to Louisville).

“More people support the arts now,” he says. “There are more people contributing directly and participating directly. It’s more fashionable than it used to be,” he says. (Though not enough proportionate to a city this size, he notes.) He mentions the Lexington Tattoo Project, organized by Kurt Gohde and Kremena Todorova, who will continue to collaborate with him on ELandF Projects. Avenues like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo offer more prospects for seed money that wasn’t available decades ago.

Support was “dicier 20 years ago, and harder to come by.” He says now you can see an environment that’s more willing to show up for “an Institute 193 or a Land of Tomorrow or a Ben Sollee or a Broke Spoke [community bike shop].” Asked if social media has played a role in this, he smiles reassuringly when he says, “oh you can fail just as easily today, it’s just that there are more avenues open, if something doesn’t work the first time. In the past, A and B might not have worked, and they would have been closed off anyway. Now there’s C and D and E. More avenues, more paths, more routes.”

***

Burris has come a long way — from his early work founding ARTREE and Minds Wide Open before Latitude — to his current omnipresence as a persistent voice for “those considered to have disabilities” (he doesn’t label anyone disabled) and as an activist for the arts. Has Lexington?

The streetscapes might be a little safer than the days when he and the “Brick Squad” provided inaccessibility tours of Lexington. But he remains passionate about how far Lexington has to go. He tasks anyone to try to really navigate Victorian Square or UK’s Singletary Center from the perspective of a wheelchair. Where do you see steps and stairs? Where do you see signage directing you to accessible doors and elevators? Or an entrance that can easily accommodate a wheelchair?

“Lexington is a pretty generous place for making your voice heard,” he says. “Citizens can play a role in taking UK and LFUCG to task and forcing them to do a better job.” Without naming names, he says, “When Crystal and I started Latitude, with the idea of developing creative potential, [the city] could not have been less interested. It wasn’t even part of the conversation, and it is now.”

He says Lexington will always be Lexington though, and not, for example, Santa Cruz, “where everybody has a voice and everybody knows they have a voice, and…” he laughs,  “your councilperson walks into council with a guitar, and it all breaks down from there.”

***

What will his legacy be here? Of all the projects… the murals, the gardens, the performances, the canvases: what does he hope to leave behind that will last?

“It’s a small thing and you could miss it, but it means something to me. The Eastern State Hospital Cemetery. Protecting it is important. And it is still at risk. Thousands of people are still buried in unmarked graves. And we always hoped to educate people about how recent the poor treatment there was.” He adds, “the sorry history of Eastern State shouldn’t be forgotten. There’s a role citizens can play in taking the city and the state and UK to task and make them do a better job. There is a role for citizens to take in improving things, even when they’re not sure of their own expertise.”

***

In 2012, Burris received the Governor’s Award for the Arts for his work with Latitude Artist Community, which he co-founded with Crystal Bader more than a decade ago. He says, “it’s no surprise to me that people can flourish when they are supported.” He tells the story of when he was a young artist, doing exactly what he was told not to do, and walking into what is now the Fleisher/Olman Gallery in Philadelphia, with his art. They not only accepted his art, they provided a stipend for his work. He says that “although it was a generous thing, it was not a crazy thing.” He is not surprised that artists from Latitude exhibit in New York and Paris and Moscow. That’s easy, he says. The rewards, at Latitude, come when you work with a person all day and they have constructed “a pile of dust bunnies and pennies” into something. Then the case has to be made (to Medicaid) that “that person is also flourishing.” He’s disheartened that within social services, “there’s still surprise that people can succeed. There is a problem when you’re still looking at that success as the exception.”

He adds, “it comes back to you, whatever you invest. We’re not begging people for charity. By making it easier to create, what you’ll get back is a hundred times what you put in.”

On May 18 and May 19, 2013 there will be a celebration with Bruce at Third Street Coffee with live music, pop-up performances, art and more. Full lineup will be updated at the ace online calendar.

A shorter version of this article appears on page 11 of the May 9, 2013 print edition of Ace. 

The two-year anniversary of the formation of Lexington’s Itinerant Merchant Task Force was April 20. While progress has been made, Lexington’s Food Trucks are not quite yet free.

Lexington Council Member Shevawn Akers, chair of Lexington’s Food Truck Work Group announced a Pilot Program just before Food Truck Friday, “The Food Truck Work Group has agreed upon a Food Truck pilot program. The Food Truck Work Group was formed in late January, with the purpose of crafting a new Food Truck Ordinance. The group has already been successful in passing a partial ordinance streamlining the permitting process for food truck vendors; however, they are currently limited to operating on private property. The group has since focused on crafting a resolution which would allow these vendors to operate on public streets. This pilot program will be presented as a resolution to the Urban County Council, following approval from the Lexington Parking Authority. The proposed program would allow food truck vendors access to designated parking areas downtown, in order to provide new and diverse food options to the citizens of Lexington.”

The first phase of Lexington’s food truck resolution was passed in February, and was followed by a Food Truck Friday at Cheapside Pavilion. The first phase:

• Eliminated the requirement and subsequent $15 fee for mobile food vendors to update the Division of Revenue with every address where they set up;
• Removed the requirement to obtain a Certificate of Occupancy from Building Inspection; and
• Required business owners to obtain a free Zoning Compliance Certificate valid for two years from the Division of Zoning and Planning to ensure retail food sales are permitted in their zone.

A second Food Truck Friday was held in Cheapside Pavilion on Derby Eve, with most vendors again selling out within a couple hours (as the first one did). Food Truck Fridays are on the first Friday of each month at Cheapside Pavilion, and a portion of proceeds benefit God’s Pantry. Participating vendors have included Ogata’s Hawaiian, The Hub, Athenian Greek Grill, Cluckin Burger, J Renders, TNT BBQ, Bradford BBQ, the Snack Shack, and others. The trucks park on the corridor near the old Courthouse where vendors park during Farmers Market and Thursday Night Live, and they pay a fee to use the space.

Although crowds line up early and stay late for lunch, not everyone is a fan. A few brick and mortar establishments have been vocal in their opposition to food trucks, suggesting that mobile vendors cut into their dining dollar demographic, while paying less infrastructure freight. The long lines at the trucks are conducive to bystander chatter, and several customers who came down to the Pavilion from the nearby office towers pointed out that they are longtime patrons of downtown restaurants, while simultaneously supporting the diversity the trucks provide, and the elevation of downtown as a culinary hub.

Several customers wondered aloud if the new Pilot Program would mean Lexington’s streets will now be blooming with food trucks this summer? One young man who worked in the Fifth Third tower across the street commented on a banner he’d seen while he waited in line, “Free the Food Trucks…that’s funny… Aren’t they free yet?”

Not so fast.

Bluegrass Food Truck Association director Sean Tibbetts says, “While this resolution looks good on the surface it actually forces food truck operators to seek permission from every open business within 100 feet to operate, restricts us to an extremely limited number of parking spaces downtown with very little foot traffic and eliminates our ability to serve anywhere on public or private property within 100 feet of a residence without written permission from the Home Owners Association. Even if we manage to navigate this myriad of hurdles and actually operate, this is only a resolution and is set to expire in six months.”

Many of the vendors are optimistic that this summer will represent an improvement over last summer, but have strong reservations about the proposed resolution. Tibbetts says, “We hope that more trucks will be able to be out and serve various places and times around the county. Our fear is that we will see the same stagnation due to the introduction of many new hurdles to enable us to operate even on private property where we’re allowed to be now.” What would they like to see? “Our sincerest hope is that before this season ends food trucks will have been granted the same rights to use public and private property with appropriate regulations that focus on protecting public health and safety.”

After two years of task forces, and a flurry of activity this year, Tibbetts describes goals for next Summer that sound like the goals put forth by the mobile vendors in 2011. He says, “We would love to see Lexington’s leaders embrace our industry and encourage our participation in a progressive, vibrant and desirable city for the deserving consumers that are food truck fans and the innovative entrepreneurs that are food truck owners.”