Up north in Indy yesterday, several fellow board members asked me if I was excited that the Kentucky Derby festival season was underway.
Bleh.
But, okay; if it's your gig, have right at it.
Meanwhile, Derby Festival season is a fine opportunity for me to accomplish other objectives. The simple fact is that while these two weeks are good for businesses like mine, they're all in Louisville, and the ripple is barely discernible on the Indiana side of the river. Understandably, the Derby is about as Louisville-centric as events can possibly be.
Derby also isn't so much of a beer-advancement proposition, although the upcoming Houndmouth show at Iroquois surely will be.
Nowadays the year-round availability of locally-brewed beer in Louisville is something many of us take for granted, except for those of the "beer geek" persuasion, for whom beer is only good if it comes from several thousand miles away, but Derby is a time for thoroughbred horses, gambling addictions and maybe the Crescent Hill Reservoir filled to the top with bourbon – as long as you keep that accursed mint out of it, and sip the liquid neat, the way your deity intended.
The Derby has its own intrinsic traditions, as befits a pageant that has taken place each year since 1875. Fair enough, even if local beer hasn’t always been prominent among these genetic predispositions, although back in the oldest of far-off times, there’d have been plenty of local beer to celebrate the Run for the Roses, until the idiotic onset of Prohibition rendered the United States a planetary laughingstock to all but certain Indiana congressmen named Bill Davis.
After glorious Repeal, local beer returned, but when the original Falls City swapped its fermenters for semi-trailers in 1979, there was nary a single drop of hometown beer left to drown a wretched wager until 1993, when Sea Hero’s triumph may have been marked by a few hardy and pioneering microbrew fans drinking David Piece's Silo Red Rock Ale from a growler on their porch with a radio nearby, because then, as now, the very last situation you'd expect to experience in this life is local beer at Churchill Downs -- where Stella Artois is the official payola-beer-of-choice, and the punters barely notice the incongruity, anyway.
For me, Pavlov’s notorious canine, who quite possibly was a racing greyhound, always springs to mind during the waning days of April, when crowds of revelers – many of whom surely know better – inexplicably salivate in anticipation of chugging overpriced, mass-market swill at the Chow Wagon … wait, sorry, now it’s the MEGA-Chow Wagon, with the Miller Lite Stage as part of the aural experience, and that’s fitting, given there’s no oral sensation to be found in light, low-calorie American lager.
Whatever. I have things to do. See you in May, about the 6th or 7th.
The Derby has its own intrinsic traditions, as befits a pageant that has taken place each year since 1875. Fair enough, even if local beer hasn’t always been prominent among these genetic predispositions, although back in the oldest of far-off times, there’d have been plenty of local beer to celebrate the Run for the Roses, until the idiotic onset of Prohibition rendered the United States a planetary laughingstock to all but certain Indiana congressmen named Bill Davis.
After glorious Repeal, local beer returned, but when the original Falls City swapped its fermenters for semi-trailers in 1979, there was nary a single drop of hometown beer left to drown a wretched wager until 1993, when Sea Hero’s triumph may have been marked by a few hardy and pioneering microbrew fans drinking David Piece's Silo Red Rock Ale from a growler on their porch with a radio nearby, because then, as now, the very last situation you'd expect to experience in this life is local beer at Churchill Downs -- where Stella Artois is the official payola-beer-of-choice, and the punters barely notice the incongruity, anyway.
For me, Pavlov’s notorious canine, who quite possibly was a racing greyhound, always springs to mind during the waning days of April, when crowds of revelers – many of whom surely know better – inexplicably salivate in anticipation of chugging overpriced, mass-market swill at the Chow Wagon … wait, sorry, now it’s the MEGA-Chow Wagon, with the Miller Lite Stage as part of the aural experience, and that’s fitting, given there’s no oral sensation to be found in light, low-calorie American lager.
Whatever. I have things to do. See you in May, about the 6th or 7th.
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