Clothes Encounter

Right next door to Scrub A Dub Dog. Wash your clothes, wash your dog, one-stop washing. It was a perfect block. And now it's all gone. Sad, I tell you, sad.

Smith's Furniture

I'm going to miss Smith's Furniture, and those old commercials with the owl... "Smith's Furniture, that's whoooo!" The last of their locations was here on Shelbyville Road and it finally followed its departed sister stores and gave up.

Of course, I never bought so much as a lampshade or a bobeche there; I just liked that the place existed, for its own sake.

The Patron

Aaarrgh!! One of my top five restaurants of all time, The Patron, has given up the ghost. They were unfortunately just too cool to live: in a nation with a dying economy and an increasingly dullard population, The Patron delivered stunning cuisine and specialty drinks (remind me to do a full feature on Lee Look, their supremely multifaceted bartender, one of these days on one of these blogs).



Someday, if I ever open a high-end cafe, I'm going to pattern it exactly after the way they did things at the Patron.

Kentucky BBQ Company

Well, I'll be damned. I just wrote about these people on Louisville Mojo a couple months ago and now they're gone. When I interviewed the guy there in December, he was enthusiastic and gave no sign that the ship was taking on water. Did they just move somewhere else, perhaps? Maybe. But their website's gone too.

Ray Parrella's Italian Cuisine

Ray Parrella's Italian Cuisine, a Louisville area institution since 1961, has closed its doors. The building at 2311 Frankfort Avenue is for sale, complete with fixtures and ready to go as another restaurant.