COVertNKY
Exploring Northern Kentucky’s hidden, forgotten, and erased stories. YouTube: @COVertNKY
- I wonder what this 1830s Kentucky anti-gambling society did for fun?
- A conversation with Sister Janet Sister Janet Bucher, July 2025. Photo by David Rotenstein. Sister Janet Bucher was one of the first people I met after moving to Covington, Kentucky, last summer. Before the move, I had subscribed to City of Covington email lists promoting future events in our new…
- A gambler who played a key role in regional & national sports betting history died while living in an apartment inside this Northern Kentucky building.
- Assembling sites for new crime history tours in 2026. One site that should be on the bike tour but won't b/c it's too far afield is this brick building (left). It has ties to the birth of syndicated horse race betting, Churchill Downs, and key Cincy area casinos. If only its walls could talk!
- How much more criminally corrupt was Northern Kentucky than Pittsburgh? Where do you see "Pittsburgh" in this 1985 graphic?
- Did Jakie Lerner ever gamble in Northern Kentucky? He was friends with and did "business" with many of the region's big-name racketeers, including Moe Dalitz & the Lookout House's Sam "Gameboy" Miller. Are we going to find his footprints here? pittsburghquarterly.com/articles/fin...
- As you get to know COVertNKY, you can either blame or thank Hank Messick for its arrival.
- The largest urban redevelopment project in the Midwest is underway in Covington, Ky. The city is transforming an IRS processing facility built in the 1960s into a mixed-use development. I wonder if folks see the irony in the IRS locating there & the many IRS gambling busts, 1950-1980s? 🗃️
- Did you know that in 1950, Covington had the most (legal, sort of) slot machines in all of Kentucky? Starting in the 1940s, the IRS required gamblers to buy licenses for coin-operated vending machines that paid cash prizes or tokens redeemable for cash. Covington had more than Newport!
