business spotlight
Wild Brew Yonder
With Tailspin Ale Fest , Tisha Gainey ’ s long voyage finally came in for a landing at Bowman Field – after , shall we say , a number of hops .
BY STEVE KAUFMAN | PHOTOS BY TONY BENNETT
Tisha Gainey ’ s career has often taken the form of one of those Warner Bros . cartoon characters who steps off the side of a cliff and lands safely on a ledge , or on a bird , or on a passing cloud .
As Gainey took her journey – trying this , discarding that – she kept coming back to certain totems from her undergraduate life at Purdue University : marketing , computer programming , graphic design , real estate and beer .
Unsure of what she wanted to do after graduating in 1997 , with a degree in marketing and communications , Gainey impulsively joined some college friends in Portland , Oregon .
She got a temporary job in customer service with an online startup called SHN . net , providing chat rooms and forums for people with serious and chronic diseases .
She liked the job well enough , but not the continually gray , drizzly Portland weather .
When she told her bosses that she had decided to move back to the Louisville area , they told her that they were just writing her a permanent job offer . But her mind was made up , so she declined the job offer and headed home .
“ That company became webMD . com ,” she said . “ I would have been in on the ground floor of something big .” It was not the last time Gainey looked back and wondered . But if you listed her personality traits and joys of life , you couldn ’ t find a better place for her to be , roughly 20 years later , than where she is now : running an events company called HB Productions and producing , among other things , the popular Tail Spin Ale Fest , held every February at the Louisville Executive Aviation hangar on the grounds of Bowman Field . It has history , it has people , and , most of all , it has beer . Beer has been central to Gainey ’ s life since she started exploring various brews while in college . But not for her , even on a student ’ s budget , the cheap pitchers of beer available in most campus bars . Her hangout was Lafayette Brewing Co ., an off-campus establishment across the Wabash River from Purdue . And her first drink of choice was a sturdy , flavorful English cask ale .
The whole culture intrigued her so that she switched from her computer programming major and dabbled in the hospitality and tourism management school .
Not that it was a straight line from campus tavern to ale fest . There were side tracks and plenty of those steps into the unknown . After returning home from Oregon , she created ads in the weekend home sections for ( at the time ) Paul Semonin Realtors , and developed the very first web site of all the local MLS listings .
But in 2002 , she moved again ( an affair of the heart ), to Orlando , Florida , and found work with Walt Disney Imagineering as project engineer on Disney ’ s “ earport ” store at Orlando International . She also helped Disney produce the first Lights , Motors , Action , Extreme Stunt Show in the park , at MGM Hollywood Studios .
When the show opened , her job ended , so she went to work with Ginn Development Intl . in Orlando on the pricey , luxurious Bella Colina housing development on Lake Apopka . “ Everything seemed to be taking me back to real estate ,” she said . “ These were $ 2.5 million lots , $ 10 million homes . Oprah Winfrey , Tiger Woods and some Arabian prince took the helicopter tours and bought lots there .” But her affair of the heart soured . So , back home again in Indiana . Through her cousin , Todd Antz ( owner of The Keg Liquors in Clarksville and New Albany ), she found a job as a beer rep for World Class Beverages , covering the southern third of the state . At least she had a job when she stepped off the cliff this time . But it was not a job she ’ d ever expected to have .
62 EXTOL • FEBRUARY / MARCH 2018