Devil's In The Details

After the Bridge Brigade action wrapped up on Sunday, swung by the the house to download my photos and then headed for downtown. Had seen a screenshot of a flyer for a protest outside a University of Louisville building connected to doing research for the Department of War, but at the appointed time and place found myself the only one there.

Doublechecked the flyer, had the time and address correct but there was nary a mention of a date. Found a revised one on social media, with a date. . . for the next day. It's just one of those days.

Wasn't quite sure what to do with myself, it was a grey, cloudy day with little hope of a golden hour and most of the folks out and about on the streets appeared to live there. Don't think it's ethical to take photos of people who have nowhere to go to escape the camera's gaze, so even street photography didn't seem too promising. Was snapping shots of this shop that's still holding out against gentrification on the way back to the car and noticed the infamous Dosker Manor in the background.

Dosker Manor is Louisville's only high-rise public housing project, or rather was, as earlier this year the last of its residents were relocated in anticipation of its demolition. Originally built in the 1960s for low income seniors before transitioning to housing adults of all ages, it was already notorious for the neglect, crime, and terrible conditions there when I arrived in Louisville in 2004.

Only took another twenty years to convince the city to do better. Never set foot inside the place myself, it was well known that if you were as pale as me, you were almost certain to be detained by LMPD upon leaving and who needs imperial entanglements? Couldn't let them demolish it and not at least document it a bit.

Wandering amidst the fenced off, derelict and deserted buildings, there was an eerie quiet and stillness that seemed out of place in the city. Made you wonder what ghosts still linger here, what lives and stories have passed through these places about to be erased.

Louisville is a city known more for its sprawl than its high density housing, the three high rises just east of downtown were always a bit of an aberration. Originally built for whites at the tail end of Jim Crow, desegregation and white flight changed the demographics entirely.

For seventy years, First Link was an independently owned and operated supermarket. When it closed its doors for the last time in 2016, the city stepped in and bought the property across the street from Dosker Manor for $3 million, before it could go up for auction. The head of the housing authority at the time claimed it was to protect their investments in Dosker Manor and another nearby housing project and that the city planned to sit on the property. Sit they did, while the area became a food desert without a grocery store for miles. Seems a curious use of taxpayer money while Dosker was in dire need of capital investment. (Just discovered all this as I was writing, going to have to do some more digging but it all reminds me of how the good ol'boy network does corruption where I grew up.)

Don't know if it was all the chain link fencing and decaying buildings or what but in some weird way it reminded me of vibe of Route 66. Maybe it was just the ghosts, the history begging to be told before it's gone forever.

For all its poverty and problems, you could still make out the community it'd once been, a place plenty had called home.

Was left wondering what it was like to live here then, like some voyeuristic visual anthropologist trying to tease out clues from the brutalist homogeny.

The devil's in the details. Now that the city has dispersed relocated the folks who called Dosker home, they're going to redevelop the site. With the move away from high-density housing here it will likely look nothing like it does now. Whether that's good for the community or just our property developer of a mayor's friends remains to be seen.

Only thing that's certain is that we won't be seeing Dosker much longer.