Kentucky Day 1 - Bourbon, Brats, and Big Ol' Horse Statues
I started my first full day in Kentucky by going to the Daily Offerings Coffee Roastery in Lexington. It was a cozy spot, the coffee came in snazzy little mason jars, and the barista was wearing a Vulfpeck t-shirt so we got to geek out a bit together about weird jazz. Basically what I'm saying is it was a good start to the day.
I had not even planned on this, but as I was walking back to my car I discovered that I happened to have just parked across the street from Mary Todd Lincoln's Childhood Home which was pretty exciting so I decided to investigate. I had just missed the start of a tour of the house, so I just sort of did the free self guided tour of her garden. The garden and what I saw of the house was beautiful. I never knew much about Mary Todd other than that she was married to Lincoln and she went a bit crazy after losing a kid or two. Apparently she was also completely brilliant, and, with the help of her family's considerable fortunes, she achieved an almost unprecedentedly high degree of education for a woman in her time. They even had her authentic air conditioning unit.
For lunch, I took my friend's suggestion and went to Ramsey's Diner. Their lunch special is one choice of meat and two vegetable dishes. I got chicken'n'dumplings, because it felt the most Southern. These dumplings were pretty different than the ones I had in West Virginia. Those felt more like biscuits with a gravy sauce, and this was more like a chicken and wanton soup. It was great though, and hit the spot on a fairly cold day. The veggies I got were broccoli and mashed potatoes, and they were superb. I paired it all with a Kentucky Kolsch, which came in an ice cold stein that added an aesthetic pleasure to the light refreshing beer.
I was hoping to work off the meal by playing a round at possibly the world's only completely biblical themed mini-golf course, but it had closed for the winter season. I still managed to take a few pictures of such obstacles as the whale that swallowed Jonah and Delilah's scissors. It was real strange.
Unable to get my exercise golfing, I walked around a few beautiful parks. The first was Ashland, the estate of former Senator and Great Compromiser: Henry Clay. The main building is closed on Mondays, but the lush spacious grounds were open and free to the public to walk along. The grounds were dotted with little plaques of historical facts about Clay's political work, his influence on Lincoln, and how the grounds were used historically. He was a slave owner, despite his work attempting to bring about the gradual abolition of slavery in the country, which feels to me like a bit of a contradiction albeit one that was not uncommon at the time.
The next park I walked is called Thoroughbred Park, which is just a small public park in downtown Lexington with several large and incredibly lifelike statues of Horses running, relaxing, and playing throughout. They also had a walkway with littl etchings of figures that were famously affiliated with horse racing in general, but also specifically races in Kentucky. My favorite fun fact was from the etching of George Washington who considered himself "a perennial loser" because he could never pick winning horses.
After all the nature, I decided to take in some man-made art at the Living Arts Museum and Science Center. It's a free community museum, that runs a lot of workshops, family events, and classes as well as hosting a few exhibitions. The Science center aspect was definitely geared more towards to younger kids, but the art exhibitions would appeal to anyone. The major exhibit was a showcase of winners from the Scholastic Awards for Young Artists and Writers, awards for excellence in arts for kids from elementary to high school. I couldn't believe the talent some of these kids had at such a young age. My favorites were a short comic book by a fifth grader, a photographic critique of censorship by a highschooler, and my absolute favorite, a painting called "How Aliens Return the Cows they Abduct".
The other exhibit was on the works of a woman named Lucinda chapman. Her works explored the idea of memory and the syntax of language. I'll be honest her paintings were nice but didn't do much for me personally, but I found her sculptures to be really fascinating and beautiful despite my fairly crappy photos of them.
After the Museum, I went to the Woodford Reserve Distillery. The distillery is on an absolutely beautiful tract of land surrounded on all sides by horse farms. They like to joke that it's Kentucky's two biggest exports maturing side by side. Besides taking in the scenery, I decided to take in a tour of the distillery. The tour was fun and informative, and ended with two tastes of bourbon (the original and the double oaked) and a bourbon chocolate, so what's not to love? They explained that part of what makes Woodford Reserve different than other bourbons is the that they have local well water that is pure, iron-free, and nutrient rich, which makes it good for the whiskey and also for the nearby horses, and they also distill their bourbon three times using copper Irish-style stills whereas most American whiskey is only distilled once. Also while the distillery was not always owned by the Woodford Reserve Brand, it is one of the oldest functional distilleries in the country and has a Historic Landmark Status.
After trying some of Kentucky's finest specialty, I met my friend Sonya for dinner at World of Beer. On Monday nights, they do $5 Burgers or Bratwursts. I went with the Brats because I was still recovering from that Donut burger from the night before. Their signature Guinness-infused bratwurst came with sauerkraut, onions, and a house mustard. I don't normally like mustard, but even I'd have to admit theirs was pretty damn good. For beer, I got the West 6th Cocoa Porter, which was my kinda dark flavorful beer. Sonya happened to know the bartender, so when he found out that I liked porters and stouts he gave me a tasting of all the ones they had on draft. Unfortunately I didn't think to write down any of their names, but they were right up my alley.
After dinner there was just a bit of time to kill before the open mic, so Sonya and I stopped at a nearby coffee shop called Coffee Time. It was a nice little place to sit and get some writing done.
The open mic was at a restaurant called Willie's Locally Known. Because it was a good local sports bar and grill, there was actually a pretty decent crowd the whole night. I think they mainly came by to see the University of Kentucky Basketball game, but they stayed for the comedy and were actually a really receptive audience.
It didn't hurt that the open mic also happened to be really solid. The next week there was going to be a competition in the same bar to determine the funniest comic East of the Mississippi, but local comics had to perform tonight to be eligible for the real deal. I think even though it wasn't actually a competition, something about that generally brought out the best in all the performers leading to a really solid night of comedy.
I really liked the host, Josh Sardam, he was very helpful, friendly, and easy to talk to before and after the show, and during the show he did a great job with crowd work and keeping the audience's energy up even for a relatively long show. He also happened to have a killer Gilbert Gottfried impression that he trotted out around the halfway mark.
My personal favorites of the night were two guys named Jacob Redwine and Justin Adkins. Jacob had a bit about how he got made fun of by a white guy with dreadlocks, which resulted in what I thought was the funniest line of the night: "There's a lot of racial tension in this country, but I think we can all agree that white guys with dreadlocks' lives don't matter." Justin's set was very silly and my favorite part of his set was about a time when he was so high he ate a bar of soap. "That one wasn't on me though. It said Dove on it, so I thought it was a new flavor: white chocolate with little black hairs"
My own set went pretty well, and Sonya got picture of me performing which my mom has been complaining that I haven't been including on here so here they are:
Favorite Random Sightings: A Small Extravagance; A Truck with a "Bad Influence" sticker; Mad Mushroom Pizza
Regional Observation: There are horses everywhere.
Albums Listened To: Jazzical Moods Vol. 1 by Charles Mingus; Jimi Blues by Jimi Hendrix (a collection of various live and studio cuts of Jimi playing the blues)
People's Favorite Jokes:
"I'm too hungry for jokes"
An old couple is sitting in church. The wife lets out a fart. It's silent, but she's very embarrassed, so she turns to her husband and says, "I let out a silent fart, what should I do?" and he says, "Put new batteries in your hearing aids"
Song of the Day:
