Longreads

In the summer of 1856, Edward Payson Weston was struck by lightning and fired from his job at the circus. He was 17 years old and had been traveling with the big top for no more than a few weeks…

Two detectives walk into a café in Helena. They remove their sunglasses. They dislodge the chaw from their cheeks. "We don't flash our badges till we get the food," Lawrence tells me. The other…

What does Foggy Noggin Brewing and ESPN analyst Brock Huard have in common?  On the day of this interview a neighbor brought Mr. Huard and his family by Foggy Noggin Brewing for a short…

Looking back on Hunter S. Thompson's classic work of gonzo journalism:

"The telephone rang at Warren Hinckle's San Francisco home at about 3:30 in the morning on Wednesday, April 29, 1970. When Hinckle picked up the receiver, he heard the unmistakable voice of Hunter S. Thompson, calling from Aspen, proclaiming, "Goddammit, Scanlan's has to cover the Derby. It's important."

The pitch, even at the late hour and the late date (barely 72 hours before the race itself), was fairly irresistible.1 Send Thompson, still finding his distinctive voice in countercultural journalism, to his hometown of Louisville to cover the drunken, debauched scene at Churchill Downs for Scanlan's, the anti-establishment (some would say subversive) monthly magazine for which Hinckle was co-editor.

Hinckle agreed on the spot, booked Thompson a ticket, wired him expense money, and then set about finding an artist to provide illustrations for the story. Originally, he had hoped to send a photographer to shoot the event, but after haggling with Thompson, he instead hired the English illustrator Ralph Steadman."