The Kentucky Derby is Still Decadent and Even More Depraved

The Kentucky Derby is Still Decadent and Even More Depraved

Written under duress by the Ghost of Hunter S. Thompson

READ THIS FIRST: The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, Scanlan's Monthly, vol. 1, no. 4, June 1970

Image credit: https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1540073

Arrival: Apocalypse in a Seersucker Suit

I got off the plane around midnight, carrying a bag full of unstable credentials and three doses of existential regret. The air hung like bourbon breath in a confession booth.

Louisville sagged in the heat like a wet cigarette... or maybe that's just the Ohio River flooding again. No one said a word as I dragged my bag across the shimmering tarmac toward the terminal. A city pretending not to drown in its own sweat.

In the arrivals lounge, Doc Askins stood sipping mezcal out of a repurposed Mountain Dew spitter. He was dressed like a cult leader in exile: desert boots cut down like Crocs in sports mode, autobiographical past life Punic War memoir in his back pocket, and a “Jesus Died for ChatGPT’s Sins Too” patch stitched over his heart. He’d been waiting. Steadman emerged behind him, eyes bleeding from three time zones, clinging to a sketchpad already defiled by airport faces.

"Welcome to the epicenter," Doc muttered, handing me a mezcal-soaked mint julep in a gas station coffee cup. “They’ve weaponized nostalgia and glued roses to it.”

“Where’s the car?”

“There is no car,” he said. “We’re walking. Everything else is underwater...

"I got us press passes,” he said. “Kind of.”

Behind him, Steadman sketched a TSA agent with a neck tattoo that said "MAGA 'til I Die" and a complete absence of irony. The sketch and tattoo both bled like an infected wound.

Doc handed me a laminated credential that looked like it had been printed in a meth lab.

“Is this real?”

“Real enough to get us maced by security or kissed by an Honorary Kentucky Colonel.”

I nodded. We were going to Churchill Downs—not to report on the race, but to document the ongoing psychospiritual meltdown of Americana in its purest, most bourbon-drenched form.

Thursday: Sacred Hellscapes and Press Passes for Ghosts

We spent the day playing hacky sack with our dignity while trying to score media badges from Churchill PR flacks whose brains had clearly been replaced with QR codes sometime mid-pandemic. Eventually, Doc flashed his veteran-cum-psychedelic trauma therapist certification. That got us into the medical tent and, somehow, the press box too. Steadman cackled like a burnt-out howler monkey.

“They’ve confused us with professionals,” he said. “We must honor that mistake.”

Outside, Louisville unfolded like a VR fever dream—blockchains and bourbon, lab-grown mint, evangelical influencers live-streaming their spontaneous orgasms in front of giant horse statues.

The Derby wasn’t an event anymore. It was a simulation glitch with corporate sponsorship.

Friday: Baptism by Fireball

We started early. Breakfast for me was LSD microdots on leftover Derby Pie. Doc had the usual: nothing. Lunch was a nihilistic debate about human consciousness screamed into a lav mic behind a Chick-fil-A stand. Doc had converted a Bible Belt preacher to seeing the Annunaki in the Old Testament by 2pm.

“He was ripe,” Doc said, cleaning blood off his clipboard. “Told me Jesus came to him during the fourth round and said, ‘Start betting on second coming exactas.’”

In the infield, they’d constructed a new “Influencer Zone” guarded by ex-Special Forces podcasters and monitored by an AI-piloted drone that flagged insufficient vibe alignment. We bribed a guard with an autographed copy of Anti-Hero’s Journey and a half-eaten Clif bar.

Inside: unregulated cosmetic surgery, NFT tattoos, and coked up priests offering absolution through PayPal.

Friday: Baptism by Bourbon and Biohacking

We woke up in the back lot of a VR wellness spa that doubled as our motel. I had a hangover like a war crime. Askins was microdosing aspartame and reading The Book of Job out loud to a stray dog.

“Whoever wins tomorrow,” he muttered, “loses.”

At the track, the crowd was a fever dream of TikTok influencers, crypto burnouts, military contractors, spiritual bypassers, and one guy in an inflatable horse costume screaming about lizard people. Everyone smelled like ambition and Axe body spray.

We met a hedge fund manager named Reggie in the paddock bar. “I’m here for the vibes,” he told us. “And to see which horses are on ketone supplements. You can always tell by the sheen.”

Doc handed him a sticker that said: The Hero’s Journey is Bullshit. Reggie didn’t blink.

Saturday Morning: A Race Through the Abyss

Derby Day. We arrived at Churchill Downs wearing stolen clergy robes and sunglasses that made everyone look like William Faulkner mid-stroke. The air smelled like dead roses, piss, and legacy money.

The crowd was already at war with itself. One section was chanting for MAGA Jesus, the other twerking to a DJ's remix of the National Anthem. Someone had released two dozen feral peacocks into the paddock.

Doc handed out ketamine nasal sprays to the jockeys. "This’ll level the playing field." In the owner’s suite, a biotech billionaire bet $100,000 on a horse named  BryanJohnson'sJohnson. The horse collapsed at the gate. No one noticed.

Steadman drew what looked like a goat orgy in hell.

Saturday Afternoon: The Race to Oblivion

By the time the race began, Churchill Downs had become a sentient being—an anxious, bloated god tripping on its own nostalgia.

Steadman was sketching feverishly, his lines more erratic than usual. “The faces here,” he whispered, “are what Dorian Gray would look like after a decade of deepfake filters.”

Doc had infiltrated the medical tent, offering “existential triage” to influencers in sequined hats hyperventilating from too much manifestation.

He emerged wearing a lab coat that read MDMA MD. “Nobody’s okay,” he said. “But some are starting to notice.”

Mid-Race Madnes: Time Collapses

As the horses charged, reality buckled under the immensity of the scene. The horses ran like missiles through the smoke of tradition. Nobody saw who won. It didn’t matter. The crowd screamed, cried, puked, copulated—in an order that would surprise you.

Somewhere on the infield, a militia broke into a conga line. The Governor fainted into a vat of Maker’s Mark. Doc and I chased a horse named Blood Dividend through a parking lot while Steadman screamed at a churro vendor about moral decay. EMTs were resuscitating a X/Twitter executive who overdosed on fentanyl and fried chicken. No amount of blue check marks and stacked defibrillations could revive him.

Someone shouted, “Vivek’s here!” and a stampede began toward an AI-generated holographic betting kiosk. Later, it was revealed to be a porta-potty with a smart speaker duct-taped inside. Odds were still better than Vegas.

Sunday: Aftermath in the Ashes, Debrief in the Ruins

We woke up spooning a pile of Derby programs and existential dread in a storage container behind the Churchill Downs media tent. The sun was an accusation.

Doc was performing guided breathwork for three sleep apneic security guards. Steadman was trying to tattoo Nothing Is Everything onto a plastic flamingo with a penknife.

The headlines were already lying. “A Beautiful Day at the Races,” said CNN. “A Return to Grace.”

Grace was dead. She’d overdosed in a portable toilet named after a crypto casino.

“I think I saw God,” Steadman mumbled. “She was wearing Yeezys and smoking a clove.”

Doc lit a cigarette with a page torn from the Racing Form. “Yeah? I think I saw the Antichrist. He left in disgust with BryanJohnson'sJohnson's jockey.”

I looked down at my stained notebook. The ink was smeared, the facts irrelevant, the truth intact.

The Kentucky Derby is not just decadent and depraved. It is sacred theater—American myth playing out on a horse-shaped crucible of flesh, finance, and fantasy.

And if you look close enough, behind the juleps and the jowls and the Instagram reels, you’ll see it: the Zero with a thousand faces, the black hole inside the bowtie.

And standing at its edge with a grin, a jar of Kentucky jelly, and a middle finger: Doc Askins.

Final Notes from the Void

We never saw the Governor again. Our press credentials dissolved in mezcal. Someone uploaded Steadman’s sketches to the dark web and started a religion.

I asked Doc what he learned.

“That humans are what happens when you give monkeys shame and a credit score,” he said. “And that Churchill Downs is the perfect temple for it.”

Then he lit a cigar with a piece of holy writ and wandered off into the smoking crater where the infield used to be, whispering something about turning entropy into art.

I watched him go. Then I turned to the crowd, still drinking, still gambling, still pretending the horses were real.

The Kentucky Derby isn’t a race. It’s a mirror—and this year it cracked wide open.