Day: June 25, 2016

Travel

Das ist schön! Louisville to Berlin for a $32,000 gay tango festival weekend

An occasional look at premium travel from Louisville.

Tango has always been an art form friendly to same-sex couples — hardly surprising, when you consider one possible origin of the traditional Argentine dance is in Buenos Aires brothels, where men danced awaiting their turns for sexual assignations.

Now, with June’s gay pride month kicking off a busy summer of events for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender folks, The New York Times suggests the International Queer Tango Festival, July 28-31.

Let’s dance!

When: July 28-31. Airline: American. Route: Louisville to Washington to Berlin; total travel time: 16 hours and 30 minutes. How much: $7,720 per business-class ticket. Reservations.

For accommodations, the Waldorf Astoria Berlin ist schön, especially the King Presidential Suite — a large, luxurious apartment on the 31st floor. It sleeps four adults in two bedrooms with en suite bathrooms; a living room with a piano, fireplace; panoramic views from two balconies; a kitchen; separate office and service access. Here’s the view from a bedroom . . .

Corner bedroom
A corner room with Berlin at your feet.

. . . and the living room. Continue reading “Das ist schön! Louisville to Berlin for a $32,000 gay tango festival weekend” →

Jobs

$30,410 a year: How much you’d earn as a Louisville dog catcher — if you have a license to kill

time-clockBoulevard reports extensively on executive pay at big local employers. But we also look at what folks make down in the trenches — or in the animal kingdom. Here’s an opening listed on the City of Louisville’s help-wanted website.

The job: animal control officer.

The duties for this Louisville Metro government job appear fairly straightforward: explain to the public procedures, laws, codes and ordinances; patrol an assigned geographic area year-round; investigate complaints and issue citations, violations and warnings; and capture and impound animals with a net, rope, trap, food, other equipment or other technique or method.

But then there’s this special requirement: “Must possess EBI (euthanasia by injection) certification issued by the Kentucky Board of Veterinary Examiners or obtain within six months of employment.”

What it pays: $14.62 an hour. At that rate, working 40 hours weekly for 52 weeks, you’d make $30,410 a year.

Your net income after taxes would be about $2,007 a month, according to this tax calculator.

But can you live on that?

Continue reading “$30,410 a year: How much you’d earn as a Louisville dog catcher — if you have a license to kill” →

Cops and Courts

In these Papa John’s holdups, ‘it sounds like they got out of control with their addiction and spending’

The latest crime news across the world of 48,000 restaurants.*

Crime scene tapeSalt Lake City police arrested a man Thursday on suspicion of robbing “several” Papa John’s restaurants just outside the Utah city during a robbery spree this month involving as many as 20 businesses.

At first, Mathew Kuepper, 32, was robbing businesses about once daily, said Unified Police Lt. Lex Bell. But over the last week, police believe Kuepper was committing two or even three robberies a day to support his addiction to heroin and crack cocaine. His ex-wife, Kellie Kuepper, 31, was also arrested in connection with the alleged armed robberies.

Kellie and Matthew Kuepper_edited-1
Kellie and Matthew Kuepper.

“It sounds like they got out of control with their addiction and spending,” Bell said. Police say Mathew Kuepper displayed a firearm during each robbery. But he told detectives after his arrest that he used a “plastic toy that looked realistic,” according to the Deseret News.

Texas Roadhouse

In Paducah, police arrested 34-year-old Anthony Davis on suspicion of assaulting a Texas Roadhouse employee with a beer mug two weeks ago.

The victim told police he was walking through the restaurant when Davis hit him with the mug and kept hitting him until restaurant patrons pulled him away. The employee’s face was cut, there were cuts inside his mouth, and one of his teeth was knocked out, according to police cited by WPSD.

* Yum has 43,000 KFCs, Pizza Huts and Taco Bells in nearly 140 countries; Papa John’s has 4,900 in 37 countries, and Texas Roadhouse has 485 restaurants in five countries. With that many locations, crimes inevitably will occur — with potentially serious legal consequences for the companies.

Latest Headlines

B-F’s Welch in $183K stock transfer; and no overtime for Marta and Bruno: Tech exec develops all-robot pizza shop

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 8:53 a.m.

James Welch
Welch

BROWN-FORMAN: Retiring Director James Welch sold — sort of — 1,741 class A shares on Thursday at $105.17 each for a total $183,000, according to a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In fact, the SEC Form 4 says, Welch surrendered the shares “to satisfy withholding obligations associated with the vesting of restricted stock upon [his] retirement” (SEC document).

PAPA JOHN’S and PIZZA HUT: A former executive at the maker of FarmVille online games has started a pizza restaurant in the heart of Silicon Valley where he hopes all pies will someday be made by robots. The process at Zume Pizza in California’s Mountain View involves two robots — named Marta and Bruno — that spread sauce “perfectly but not too perfectly, so it looks just like an artisan product,” says owner Alex Garden. The robots then move the pizza into an 850-degree oven to pre-bake. From there, the pizza is given a final bake in a bank of ovens inside the delivery truck on its way to a customer’s door. Traditional humans are still required for tasks like sprinkling cheese and driving the truck, however (Grub Street).