Chaz Rough: Welcome everyone to this edition of Looking at Louisville. My name is Chaz.
Stacey Yates: And I’m Stacey.
Chaz Rough: And we’re at beautiful Waterfront Park in downtown Louisville.
Stacey Yates: That’s right! We’re here on a gorgeous Spring day and just right around the corner is the opening celebration for the Kentucky Derby Festival.
Chaz Rough: Now, hopefully during Derby week and all the festivities, we will have beautiful spring weather like we have here because there are so many things to do.
Stacey Yates: That’s right! And Thunder Over Louisville is just the kick off. It’s the nation’s largest air show and firework show. It’s an all day event. It’s the kick off for two weeks—well actually three weeks this year of Derby Festival fun. There are over 70 events plus which you can get in free.
Chaz Rough: And you’re going to be on pick up the Pegasus and all the stories throughout the city.
Stacey Yates: And the entrance of most events, a lot of which take place on the great lawn.
Chaz Rough: Now, we’re going to also speak with Mike Berry the President of the Kentucky Derby festival and we’re going to go to kick off party.
Stacey Yates: He’s going to give us a little preview of the events ahead.
Chaz Rough: We’re going to take you with us. You don’t even need a pass to get in.
Stacey Yates: No, but you should have a pen.
Chaz Rough: You should have a pen, and we would also take you around Louisville at some of the key places where some of the big events are going to happen.
Stacey Yates: The Pegasus is where it started in 1946. And then of course we have to eat, so we’re going to—for all you people who are here for the mini marathon we’re going to show you one of our favorite carbo Louisville tickets.
Chaz Rough: Let’s get started!
Stacey Yates: Start viewing!
We are here with a very good friend of mine and my former boss, I won’t say old—this is Mike Berry. He is the President/CEO of Kentucky Derby Festival.
First of all, tell us why we are standing in front of a globe.
Mike Berry: We’re standing in front of the globe because the theme of this year’s festival is a “World of Fun”. So it’s all going to be about making culturalism diversity a big world class party!
You know you’re going to see lots of international units. We’re working with the mayor’s office of international affairs. You're going to see cultural groups both in floats where a lot of the inflatables—the giant inflatables that we do during the parade, they’re going to be you know like go ahead and explore it and that sort of thing.
Stacey Yates: I’m going to run my second mini marathon this year.
Mike Berry: Are you going to finish it this year?
Stacey Yates: I’m going to finish the whole thing.
Chaz Rough: I’ll watch, waving
Stacey Yates: Yeah! tell us a little about that?
Mike Berry: We run a full marathon and a half marathon. Both of them start at Iroquois Park and run the same route including a loop through the in field the Churchill which is very cool because the horses are on the track and it’s the whole stick. We always have a lot of world class runners. We had runners just last year from 49 states, and we also had from 12 different countries.
Stacey Yates: Where else can you get that finish?
Mike Berry: That’s right.
Chaz Rough: Now, what is it? I can’t remember—there’s a small little event. It’s Thunder Over Louisville, I think they throw a few firecrackers in the air right?
Mike Berry: That’s it, me on the bridge with the sparkler. That’s about it.
Stacey Yates: That’s flashlights.
Chaz Rough: That has become a sparkling over the years.
Stacey Yates: Some of the years we thought we’re going to have to do that.
Chaz Rough: Now, how many years have you done this?
Mike Berry: Actually, Thunder Over Louisville is probably about 19years old now.
Chaz Rough: And it is huge! It shakes the—
Mike Berry: It really does. Thunder is our largest event and it actually is a component of two things. Number one, there’s a huge air show that starts about two or three in the afternoon. It goes all afternoon and you’re going to see, not only the usual collection of military plane, the best, the biggest and the loudest that United States Air Force, in the Army and the Navy has to offer. But also we’re going to do a little nod to this world fame again and in fact the Thunder is out of this world.
And we’re going to be having some international acts that are going to come in and do some of the judge. We’re also going to soundtrack this really big when we go to the fireworks at 9:30. And we’re going to be doing a lot of international music and cultural music and then of course, fireworks are different country to country1. So we’re going to have fireworks from Spain and from Japan and from China, and different places over the globe. Believe me they really look different.
Stacey Yates: Now for people they are used to knowing two weeks before the Derby and mark their calendars right.
Mike Berry: That’s right! We’re April 12 this year. That’s three Saturday at Derby. That’s three weeks before Derby and we’re a week early.
Chaz Rough: And it’s about 750,000 people on the river bank?
Mike Berry: Actually, Stacey last time she counted came up with a few more than that but you know.
Chaz Rough: Give or take a couple of hundred thousand.
Stacey Yates: And the best things that you can wear during the whole entire month of April that we’re celebrating Derby Festival is one of this, a Pegasus pin. That’s going to be your ticket to a bunch of entertainment, including an event that started last year. That’s sort of a sister to the Chow Wagon if you’re familiar with that and that is Fest-a-Ville.
Mike Berry: That’s right. Fest-a-Ville, think about Chow Wagon. People are familiar with Chow Wagon. It’s been around for a long time. And we have a completely separate entertainment stage, a lot for kids to do. We’ve incorporated some of our events down there. We’ve got wine fest is down there which is wine tasting.
Stacey Yates: Another good Kentucky product!
Mike Berry: That’s right. We’ve got Bourbon there, and thanks to the bureau we are doing a Bourbon Country again this year and it’s great. You can go down there and you can do tastings, you learn all about—
Stacey Yates: Do the master of doing your favorite Bourbon.
Mike Berry: That’s right! You learn about Kentucky’s Mother’s Milk.
Stacey Yates: Mike, thank you so much. It looks like we’re getting ready for something where you’re probably needed, so we’ll see you on all 70 events of this year’s Kentucky Derby Festival.
Chaz Rough: Alright Stacey, we’re here on Broadway. We have a nice little vantage point here for the Pegasus parade, give us some idea what the Pegasus parade is about and exactly where we are.
Stacey Yates: Sure! It’s kind of an insider’s knowledge here. We’re actually at the broadcast booth where live television does the whole parade entirely live on television. It’s where John Belskey hang out.
There’s going to be over a hundred units that are going to march down Broadway from Campbell to 9th Street. Free viewing in most all areas around. About 250,000 people will arrive in Broadway on the Thursday before the Derby. There's really an inexpensive ticket if you want to make sure that you got a spot reserved and you want to come early and lay out your blanket and your lawn chairs.
You can also, probably one of the best things that I think to share with our viewers is, right across the street there is a review stand. And tickets are really—they’re about $25.00 where you get a lot for that value. You are right at the heart of the action right across from the broadcast area. And people may not know this, but they’ve got signs about a bluff up that are telling the parade participants from the marching bands to the celebrities to wave a little stronger, play their band the instruments a little louder because it’s the television zone and it’s really a lot of energy that goes out right here during those two hours of parade.
Chaz Rough: You know, of all this journey festivities coming out I’m developing his huge Derby appetite.
Stacey Yates: You know, I am too and I’m training for the mini. So let’s go to race and carbo loads.
Chaz Rough: It’s carbo loads and we can be ready for the race.
Stacey Yates: That’s right! Let’s go.
Chaz Rough: We find right here in the Ray Parrella’s restaurant and we have of course, Ray Parella here the owner and Stacey.
Stacey Yates: And running champion, one time runner of the mini marathon which is kind of—while we setup this segment, we are carbo loading and in training. I’m never going to beat any of Ray’s stats though. This is a world class runner. Tell us a little about your running history.
Ray Parella: I didn’t start running till I was 45 and I set most of my national records in the age of 50 and 60. The Papa John’s was a national record. I ran 63 minutes at the age of 67. But most of my records were not set until I was 50 years old.
Stacey Yates: And how many minis have you run, do you remember?
Ray Parella: About 25.
Stacey Yates: Are you running this year?
Ray Parella: No, I’m just recovering from knee surgery.
Stacey Yates: Okay, do you have any tips?
Ray Parella: I’m coaching some people at the downtown and you should start loading up on plenty of liquids starting like Thursday night the day before. Plenty of fluids.
Chaz Rough: You come to that, right?
Ray Parell: We’ll be busy.
Stacey Yates: If you don’t have tickets to running well then—
Chaz Rough: This is Italian, they got pasta.
Ray Parell: All pasta makes you run faster.
Chaz Rough: Well look at him, look at how many records he’s broken.
Stacey Yates: And an excellent caffucino.
Chaz Rough: Listen, he actually made our caffucino’s for us.
Stacey Yates: Well thanks for having us.
Ray Parell: I’m so glad you showed up and congratulations on your training and I hope you do well.
Stacey Yates: I hope I do too.
Chaz Rough: And as always—
Stacey Yates: You’re looking at Louisville.
Chaz Rough: See you really soon.
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