How did you spend your summer? One Louisville man in Louisville visited all the public parks to learn more about the city.
McKenzie Gary is a 31-year-old entrepreneur originally from Maine. He checked out every Louisville park over the course of four months. LPM’s Giselle Rhoden spoke to Gary about his adventure visiting at least 120 parks.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
How did you find time to go to all the parks in Louisville?
I was at a nonprofit's event, and Louisville Metro Parks and Rec had a booth there, and they had this magazine or pamphlet. Flipping through it, they had a map of all the parks in Louisville. And I realized: “This might actually be achievable, going to all of the parks in Louisville.” I realized I probably wouldn't be able to get to it if I casually was going about my daily routine. I knew I had to make time for it. And I primarily did it on weekends. My overarching goal was to finish before winter got here and it got too cold. I think I started getting into it, and I realized, “Well, I think this would be pretty cool if I got a video of all of the parks.” It started off as, like a personal project, and just through my background and what I do for my day job. So I do photos, video, video editing. I had the idea to start recording, and then got all the clips after I finished going to all of the parks. I had all of the videos and then I just edited them into separate videos.
Take me through the process of how many parks you would go to a day. Which one was your favorite?
I started going early June, and then I finished early October. You know the whole point was to do it in a laid-back way, I guess, something that wouldn't stress me out or add unnecessary stress onto my plate. Downtown here, it's easier because all of the parks are fairly close together. It didn't take a long time to visit parks until we got further out from downtown, where most of the time spent was in travel. It might be 30 minutes to a park and then 15 minutes to a park.
A lot of people ask me what my favorite park is, and I've been kind of reluctant to tell people. Most of the parks had, like, a distinguishing characteristic or feature or something special about it. And so I think if you want to know about that, you should go.
You posted your journey on Tiktok and how you went to all of the parks and how many you went to each day. How did viewers react?
I could tell by the response after posting that people really love parks. And it was really neat to see that, see how much people care about the parks here, and see the amount of energy people had around the parks. But I think the most interesting thing is the number of comments. How many people are commenting, talking about their favorite parks, talking about nostalgic experiences when they were kids at certain parks. Some people came in with some history for why parks exist [in those] places. And all of that was, I think, really special.
What did you learn about the park system from walking through all of them?
I'm from Maine, so after moving here, this was primarily a way to get to know the city. I got to see a lot of Louisville as a city. I mean, a lot of my daily routine brings me up and down Broadway or down Bardstown Road, NuLu area. It was really nice to see more of Louisville, going out to Waverly Park and seeing that whole area. There's one park by Fort Knox. So it took me all the way out there. I was all over the city of Louisville, and I thought that was really special.
What's the difference between the parks in Maine and the parks in Louisville?
I'd say the density of the parks. The park I went to a lot growing up for hanging out after school or whatever, meeting up with friends or playing frisbee or whatever we were doing. I think that park was maybe 20 [to] 25 minutes away from me, but [in Louisville] there are so many parks so close. They're everywhere in Louisville. There's a ton of variety in parks. There was one park that was just on the side of an alley. It looked like a lawn. All the way to these giant Olmsted parks. It had some form of a structure, be it a gazebo or a bathroom or something like that. Most parks had a field or a court of some sort, or a jungle gym, or a combination of all of those based on the size. Some of them had fields as well on top of those things.
If you're interested in learning about the parks, I think that one of the best ways to do that is to go to them and check them out. And it doesn't take too much time to go to a bunch of parks. So if you want to see what's going on around the city, and maybe see some things you might not have seen before. I'd say, check out some parks.
