Andre Ricciardi, Creative Director here at Mek SF, went to the Kentucky Derby to shoot last week. He bribed police officers and almost got kicked out of an airport. This is his running diary of the week.
Wednesday 4/29 7:15 pm
Within hours of arriving in Louisville Kentucky, I set out from our rental house and walked down to the corner store on Bardstown Road in the surprisingly liberal and artistic Highlands. I thought it would be educational to sample the local cuisine, so I stopped into an authentic-looking spot called “Hometown Liquors.” There I bought a bottle of Kentucky whiskey and as I was paying, the clerk looked me in the eye and, apropos of nothing, announced “My brother went home to take a shower.” My blood froze. This was my first actual Kentucky interaction, but I had no clue what he meant: clearly, this was coded language, but for what? Sodomy? Drugs? Or maybe something sinister… I held his gaze as long as I could, then replied “Nice.” He smiled and offered me my receipt, which I declined as I prefer to not leave a paper trail. As I stepped onto the sidewalk and had my first sip of real Kentucky cooking, I mulled his admission: it was intensely private, yet somehow familiar. It was useless, but interesting. What he said, how he said it, and the level of personal information he revealed all felt perfectly natural. And then, after just a few more sips, it dawned on me. He was Twittering. With his mouth. How brilliantly lo-fi. This could be huge. These people are geniuses.

View from the roof of Churchill Downs. Note the mud on the track and the cake-eaters on the terrace.
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