We are on the eve of Sojourn’s Cultivate Beauty Festival.  Be sure to check the the930.org for a complete lineup of public events.  And if you’re wondering about places to eat, read below for a profile by Matt Ralph of a great Louisville barbecue place located a few minutes’ walking distance from The 930, Smoketown USA.  But first, here is the vision for the Cultivate Beauty Festival, written by Sojourn’s Elders:

The Cultivate Beauty Art & Film Festival is part of an annual celebration started by Sojourn Community Church known as Kill Your TV / Cultivate Beauty Month. This is a month when members of Sojourn and the surrounding community are challenged to make space for beauty in their lives by turning off their TVs and engaging with something else - like a relationship, a creative task or a walk in the park. The idea is to put energy into cultivating something beautiful, something that lasts, something more satisfying than the shallow instant-gratification that fills most of our days. The Art & Film Festival serves as part of the month-long celebration, taking the opportunity to celebrate works of beauty that are emerging in the community around us.

Many have asked why a church cares about beauty and more specifically, why a church would celebrate works by people who don’t share their spiritual beliefs. The answer is actually quite simple. Christian belief begins with the idea that God is a creative Being who made everything in the universe. The story of history is one of God making things and restoring things. He made humanity in His image, as creative creatures that follow His pattern, making and re-making things. Because of this belief, we believe that Christians should be the first to celebrate works of creativity and beauty because we believe them to be reflective of the Creator’s own nature. We don’t believe that this creative gift was given to Christians only - instead, God gives all kinds of people this gift and means for all of it to be celebrated and shared.

It is our hope that the 930 Art Center and the Cultivate Beauty Art & Film Festival can provide a space where people can come together from various backgrounds and worldviews to find common ground, community, and gain a vision for a more beautiful world.

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Barbecue, Tex-Mex and neighborhood change on the menu at Smoketown USA
By Matthew Ralph

Good food, good people and neighborhood change.

It’s not on the sign or in any of the promotional material for local Tex-Mex and barbecue joint Smoketown USA, but it’s a motto that gives a glimpse into why Eric David Gould and his wife Lynn would invest close to $300,000 into opening a restaurant on a city corner otherwise devoid of economic activity.

Gould, a self-described “Jewish redneck massage therapist that hunts and fishes and now owns a restaurant,” opened Smoketown USA on the corner of Logan and Oak streets last May in hopes of offering his neighbors in Smoketown and Germantown a place to “mingle and eat good food.”

“It’s something other than a bar,” Gould said of his restaurant, which is also something more than just a run-of-the-mill barbecue joint.

Though he does sell beer, it’s for washing down a $6.95 pulled pork sandwich or an $18.95 full slab of ribs.

Occupying a pair of Civil War era buildings that in a previous life were home to a grocery, candy store, blacksmith and feed supply store, Smoketown USA’s less noticeable and perhaps most unique feature is that it doubles as a thrift shop. The tables, chairs, wall hangings, coffee pots and just about everything else in the restaurant all carry price tags.

According to Gould, this “yard sale” effect serves two purposes - it brings in supplemental income and keeps the Gould’s upstairs apartment from being overcrowded with items Lynn brings home from her frequent yard sale trips.

The quirky decor and community focus of the restaurant has attracted a host of regulars from Sojourn, many of whom share the couple’s vision for rejuvenating the Smoketown and Germantown neighborhoods. Before rehabbing the 146-year-old buildings for the restaurant, the Goulds fixed up a residential property on Mary Street.

Sojourner Jeff Rogers, who lives down the street from the restaurant on Logan, has visited the restaurant enough to hear Eric call himself a “reformed, reformed, reformed Jew” more than once to justify his serving of barbecue pork.

“I like Eric quite a bit,” said Rogers, who also happens to “really, really” like the greens and barbecue. “His living above the restaurant makes him a part of the neighborhood and not just an outside investor. It’s good to have those kinds of folks around.”

Gould has similar feelings about Sojourn’s commitment to the neighborhood through community service initiatives like SEED and said he hopes to see more church members starting businesses and relocating to the church’s immediate community.

From Gould’s view, family and community should be at the core of the practice of religion.

“I’m not very religious at all but I believe in God,” said Gould, who credits a higher power with helping him beat the odds and survive a potentially fatal brain aneurysm in the early ’90s.

“I think the word ‘love’ covers every boundary,” he said. “The problem in today’s age is we try to spell love with five letters, m-o-n-e-y.”

With a year full of valuable business lessons and new friendships under his belt, 38-year-old Gould said he looks forward to seeing and being a part of continued neighborhood change.

That, after all, is a big part of Smoketown USA’s unofficial motto.

thanks to Matt Ralph for this feature on Smoketown USA

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