The Kentucky Derby
The Kentucky Derby is one of the world’s premier horse races; it’s also, as Hunter S. Thompson put it, “decadent and depraved”. Derby Day itself is the first Saturday in May, at the end of the two-week Kentucky Derby Festival. Since 1875, the leading lights of Southern society have gathered at Churchill Downs, three miles south of downtown Louisville, for an orgy of betting, haute cuisine and mint juleps in the plush grandstand, while tens of thousands of the beer-guzzling proletariat cram into the infield. Apart from the $40 infield tickets available on the day – offering virtually no chance of a decent view – all seats are sold out months in advance. The actual race, traditionally preceded by a mass drunken rendition of My Old Kentucky Home, is run over a distance of one and a quarter miles, lasts barely two minutes and offers around a million dollars in prize money.
The original fried chicken
In 1940, “Colonel” Harland Sanders, so titled as a member of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels, opened a small clapboard diner, the Sanders Café, alongside his motel and petrol station in tiny Corbin, ninety miles south of Lexington on I-75. His Kentucky Fried Chicken empire has since spread all over the world. The original hundred-seat restaurant, at 688 US-25 W (daily 10am–10pm; 606 528 2163), has been restored with 1940s decor and an immense amount of memorabilia. The food served is the usual KFC, but it’s an atmospheric little spot.