A few months back I whined commented that I hadn’t seen more foursquare adoption by businesses in Louisville. I’m pleased to report that slowly but surely that’s changing.

Last week I came across two foursquare specials I hadn’t seen before. First one from Derby City Espresso rewarding the mayor with beer:

and one from Dundee Candy rewarding folks for leaving tips:

Share the wealth, what are some of the best foursquare deals and rewards you’ve found in Louisville?

This Wednesday is September 1st so that definitely means it’s the first Wednesday of the month and that means IceBox Co-Labs is offering you the chance to try out their very cool co-working facility for free.

Starting September 1st, Icebox Co-Labs will be opening it’s doors for anyone to come in and get a free desk for the day. We will continue this every first Wednesday of each month. For those of you on the fence about the whole coworking concept, come try us out with no obligation and see how you like it. We’ll be open from 9am-5pm for you to try us out.

Please RSVP to reserve a desk.

Ice Box Co-Labs
217 E. Main
Louisville, KY

by Ashlee Clark

Special Monday edition of $10 Challenge!

I love food because of how it can create and elicit memories.

Every restaurant has significance. Every dish has a story. Every bite has a feeling.

I’ve visited restaurants for the $10 Challenge based upon fond experiences. Moby Dick reminds me of my working, single (at the time) mother coming through the door with her arms full of stained brown paper bags. Annie’s Pizza evokes memories of long discussions about TV and pop culture in the kitchen with my uncle, who would order Annie’s on the nights he babysat me.

This week’s Challenge, Dizzy Whizz, holds those memories for my boyfriend, Rob.

(I gave up trying to come up with a quirky name online moniker for him.)

Rob and I have known each other for nearly a decade. Since the beginning, Rob has wanted to take me to Dizzy Whizz, an Old Louisville diner known for its Whizzburger, cheap prices and down-home feel. Old Louisville is the neighborhood where he spent his childhood, and Dizzy Whizz is where he ate many meals with his parents. I was happy to use the Challenge to not only seek out some inexpensive food in my new neighborhood, but to learn more about what made Rob so giddy when he was a kid.

/sappy lovey dovey stuff

/onto the food

The sign says it all.

Dizzy Whizz has served breakfast, lunch and dinner across from Walnut Street Baptist Church for more than 60 years. The place is small, but there are lots of options for how you can enjoy the food – dine-in, carry-out (which carries a 25 cent fee for certain specials) or curbside.

The variety extends to the menu, which features lots of sandwiches that can be eaten at all three meals. The featured player on the menu is the Whizzburger, a double-decker cheeseburger dressed with tartar sauce for $2.89 (make it a basket with fries and coleslaw for $5.34). There’s also the Super Whizzburger Double Decker ($3.99), the Dizzinator Double Decker ($6.76) and the Dizzy Whizz Quarter Pounder Deluxe ($2.83). This is on top of your basic hamburger ($1.19) and cheeseburger ($1.29).

And those are just the beef selections – the menu also includes a selection of chicken, fish and even breaded veal sandwiches that are all less than $6.

A hearty breakfast at Dizzy Whizz is easy to score for a low price – the most expensive item is the Big Whizzy Special at $4.19, a feast of three eggs, four pieces of bacon or three sausages, grits or hash browns, and toast. The menu also features hot cakes ($2.49 for three), which I would order just for the chance to say “hot cakes” instead of “pancakes.”

This visit brought Roscoe, Rob and I to Dizzy Whizz for dinner. Since Rob has talked about the Whizzburger since we were in high school, we both ordered the burger with cheese and fries. I ordered a basket, so a side of slaw came with my burger.

The fries were fresh from the fryer when the waitress brought our order to the car. The crinkle-cut delights had just enough salt and lots of crunch.

The Whizzburger was initially daunting with its two beef patties and three pieces of bread.

The Whizzburger, the stuff of legend.

But a little smash and the burger fits right into the ol’ piehole. The sandwich is similar to the one I had at Burger Boy because of the addition of tartar sauce, but the bite of the relish helps make a basic burger more interesting. The patties were slightly crisp on the outside, a sign of being cooked on a well-used griddle that has plenty of years of use. To my delight, there was little grease coming from the meat, so the fresh buns didn’t get soggy.

The coleslaw wasn’t anything to write home to Mom about, so next time I might opt for a soft drink instead. But the meal was pleasing to the pocketbook. It might belong in a super category of Challenges, because Rob and I (and Roscoe, I guess) ate for just over $10.

Had I known the food was going to be so cheap and fantastic, I would have considered ordering from Dizzy’s Dairy Bar, a selection of frozen treats like flurries ($2.79 for a small), waffle cones ($1.99) or a piece of fruit pie ($2.09 for a slice). But there’s always more times, and hopefully more memories for Rob and I.

/really finished with the mushy stuff

Notes about Dizzy Whizz:

• There are a few tables for outdoor dining.
• The restaurant seemed pretty dog friendly. Roscoe sat under the table while Rob and I ate, and no one seemed to care.
• You can call your order ahead of time at 502.583.FOOD (how awesome is that number?).

The Stats:

Mission: Accomplished

A night of really excellent local music and great art awaits you next Saturday night at the CD release party for Tamara Dearning’s new CD.

Doors at the Vernon Club open at 8PM. Dearing will of course be playing as will Squeeze-bot and IamIs. And there will be art art booths by the Female Art Collective.

It’s a 21+ show.

The folks at Kin Ship Press tipped me off to a new music and art festival that I hadn’t yet heard of: Cropped Out.

Cropped Out is a locally and independently developed music festival set to take place in Louisville, KY on the first weekend of October 2010. The fest is designed to highlight the creative efforts of Louisville natives, friends, family, and fellow thinkers from Nashville to Chicago to Brooklyn and beyond.

The Decibel Tolls is the media home of the event so check with them often for more updates on this cool new thing in our city.

Reminder: Next Saturday September 4 the Frazier Museum is aiming to break the Guinness World Record for “The Largest Gathering of Pirates.”

Everyone is welcome to this FREE, fun-for-all-ages street carnival, which also includes food, games, inflatables, live music by the Louisville Leopard Percussionists Steel Leopards, educational crafts and exciting live shows by costumed performers. Museum admission is also free, including the temporary exhibit, “Pirates: Treasure & Treachery.”

Founder’s Day is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Pirate registration for the record attempt takes place until 11:30 a.m., with the record attempt immediately following from 11:35 to 11:50 a.m.

The current record is 2646. So come bedecked in your pirate best, ready to pillage, plunder and claim the record as ours!

Pirates of all ages qualify, so kids are welcome. According to official Guinness guidelines, all participants must be dressed as a pirate, and costumes must clearly resemble a pirate and consist of the following:

a. a pirate style hat (or bandana/kerchief)
b. an eye patch
c. an accessory: sword, hook, musket, skull and crossbones flag, or parrot
d. an appropriate shirt: striped shirt, white t-shirt or shirt
e. appropriate trousers: pantaloons, tatty trousers or rolled-up trousers

Participants must:
Be able to sign the official Log Book
Agree to be photographed/videotaped
Be gathered for a full 15 minutes after counting.

This family-friendly event is a great conclusion to the summer, and one you will not want to miss. Founder’s Day is free to the public, which includes admission to the museum.

Dear Fairdale Bigfoot,

-Undecided in the East-End

Dear Undecided,

Fairdale Bigfoot loves Democracy. Fairdale Bigfoot also loves patronage, though, and will vote for whichever candidate cuts a backroom deal to make Fairdale Bigfoot a high-level political staff member. However, any candidate who would hire an inhuman brute like Fairdale Bigfoot doesn’t deserve Fairdale Bigfoot’s vote. Also, Fairdale Bigfoot isn’t allowed to vote.

Sincerely,
Fairdale Bigfoot

It’s been a while since I’ve told you about a Midnights at the Baxter offering. We just haven’t been on the same page this summer so I haven’t been excited about one in a while. That all changes today because they’re showing a fun movie I love: Serenity.

Saturday August 28, 2010
11:55PM

Baxter Avenue Theaters
1250 Bardstown Rd
Louisville, KY 40204

Trailer after the jump.

But also? “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! ”

More…

Despite it still being so very hot outside Fall is around the corner so your summer CSA share is going to be expiring soon. Time to start thinking about how you’re going to get awesome, local foods for the Fall. Look no further than Grasshoppers CSA.

In the signup form they have what they call “Design Your Own Grocery Basket” that describes the various subscription options. The Staples share caught my eye. For $34 a week you get:

• 4-5 chemical-free, seasonal produce items
• ½ gallon milk (whole, 2%, skim)
• 1 dozen eggs
• 1 rotating item: butter, maple syrup, honey, gourmet mushrooms, sorghum, salsa, chow chow (a southern relish), drinkable yogurt

Milk! Eggs! Vegetables! Butter! fresh from the farm to you. That’s good stuff.

Can we talk about the difference in eggs that you get direct from farmers and the regular eggs you get at the grocery store? World of difference there, world of difference says the baker and scrambled egg maker.

For $3.60 a week you can add a fresh baked loaf of Blue Dog Bread into your weekly share or for $8 per delivery you can get fresh goat cheese biweekly. Good, good stuff.

There are lots and lots of pickup locations so I’m betting there is one that’s convenient to you. So now go forth and eat well!

Consuming Louisville’s Carnivorous Correspondent Jay Garmon gives us the inside scoop on Louisville’s sci-fi convention in his occasional column “ConGlomeration Chronicles.”

ConGlomeration 2011 faces a dilemma — for financial and scheduling reasons, we chose to hold our next convention on Easter weekend. While a fair number of our loyal members have thanked us profusely for an alternate way to spend the long weekend, an equal number are uncomfortable at having to choose between traditional Easter festivities and modern geek merry-making.

ConGlomeration wants to ease that choice by offering an informal Easter Service as part of our programming activities on Sunday morning. The trick here is to have a non-denominational service that appeals to our rather eclectic audience but doesn’t veer off into offensive excess or inadequacy. That’s pretty tough needle to thread.

If done right, however, I think this could be a meaningful event. First, we’d like to offer our religious attendees — and they are no small number — an outlet for worship and acknowledgement of the religious holiday. Second, the messages inherent in the Christian resurrection story are resonant and instructive, even absent membership in the faith itself.

There’s a reason that characters as diverse as Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia, Neo from the Matrix trilogy, and even Superman are modeled as explicit Christ allegories — right down to the resurrection tale. The story is powerful. A meditation on the power of that message could be intriguing even for non-Christians. (I write this as an non-Christian myself.)

I’m curious how the community at large would feel about a Christian worship ceremony conducted at a science fiction convention. Our purpose here is outreach and understanding but if the effort itself is offensive that would defeat the point. Is offering an Easter service at ConGlomeration 2011 a sound idea? If so, what aspects of worship are worth including in our on-site services? If you are an ordained minister and would like to contribute to these services — either as an advisor or an officiant — we’d love to hear from you.

We’re breaking new ground here. I look forward to your feedback either in the comments below, or in an e-mail to the ConGlomeration programming staff.