25 CommentsBwog editor Lydia DePillis hitched a ride with the College Democrats on their annual campaign trip. Her dispatches follow, wireless permitting.
LEXINGTON, Ky.–We’ve touched down in the South, and my minivan might as well have been a spaceship for the distance I feel like we’ve traveled in the last 18 hours. The sun rose and set on the road as we hopped from gas station to gas station, as the population grew in tattoo to tooth ratio with every passing mile.
“I want to see southerners! Where are they?” one girl yelled as kids getting lunch poured out of the various eating establishments at a barren strip mall somewhere deep in Maryland.
We rolled into Lexington as the sun was fading, dumping our stuff at a bare-bones Econolodge–right next to Spearmint Rhino Gentleman’s Club and the simply named Waffle House–before piling back into the vans for a quick pit stop at the Beshear campaign headquarters. An advance group of CU Dems had been there for most of the day already, making up the canvassing routes for tomorrow and raking leaves from the parking lot in preparation for a rally with the man himself in the morning.
Then through the student ghetto of Lexington to the Tolly-Ho, perhaps one of the most wonderful dining establishments I have yet to visit. Imagine Tom’s, but larger, darker, with detailed murals on the walls, and no single item over $5.00. The Tolly-Ho’s signature meal is the Ho and its variations, the Super Ho and the Mega Ho, which are basically like burgers–but Kentuckian.
The staff of the Tolly-Ho shifted into high gear to handle the flood of decidedly New Yorkish young people who suddenly formed a line extending out the door. One kid, pants sagging and sporting a wavy ‘do under his UK hat, asked “Are you being serious? This is like Christmas!”
We sent UK kid to the front of the line, and later a few Dems recounted to me a conversation they had struck up with him over dinner. According to UK kid, students at the university do three things: have sex, get drunk, and watch football. They also have only about 30 minutes of homework per day, and about half the freshman class gets Ds and Fs.
“You guys speak like 10 languages, right?” he asked them. “This is Kentucky. People barely speak English.” UK kid, who’s from Cleveland, says the key to blending in is speaking really slowly and pretending you’re on painkillers.
We left, sated and tired. Tomorrow, painkillers are going to come in handy.
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25 Comments
@sigh “as the population growing in tattoo to tooth ratio with every passing mile”
I don’t even know what to do with this one.
@Lydia Ugh, you’re right–a clumsy mistake in the lede, too. Apologies for the nonsensical construction.
@well its not the construction, you write very well, its the style which screams “parochial cosmopolitanism.”
@love You gotta love those College Dems. Whenever a red state is about to elect someone blue, they fly in at the last moment and pretend they made a “difference.”
@Kentucky is hardly a red state. Ohio and Virginia, obviously not red states. Just saying…
@em"bedded" Why does Bwog need to be “embedded” with the Dems? They’re in bed with them all year long anyway.
@... “According to UK kid, students at the university do three things: have sex, get drunk, and watch football. They also have only about 30 minutes of homework per day, and about half the freshman class gets Ds and Fs.”
Thanks to grade inflation, these kids would at least get Cs at Columbia…
@grades Grade inflation at Columbia is not quite that generous at all. Besides, those people would never get to Columbia anyway, even if they were great football players or whatnot.
@... Oh, LBD, what a journalistic eye for detail… They have establishments called ‘Waffle House’? No?!?
From the pictures, the Tolly-Ho looks a lot cleaner than Tom’s.
@Lexingtonian The Ho is amazing, and fuck the kid from Cleveland (as if being from Cleveland wasn’t reason enough) for saying football is one of the three things we do. Clearly he doesn’t no shit, when UK is the most storied basketball school in history, and has only been good at football one half season (i.e. currently) in the last 40 years.
I hope you guys announced you were Ho virgins when you ordered so the staff could harass you (though from the terrified looks in the pictures it was probably obvious).
Also, the tattoo-tooth thing only worked when you were in Appalachia. Lexington has among the highest rate of college degrees and available quality of health care per capita in the nation. Love LBD, but the bizarre, pseud-Orientalist view of the South as full of bizarre, backwards people with quaint, ultimately meaningless customs and addictions to pills and alcohol isn’t very fair. Many Kentuckians, at least outside of metropolitan Lexington, would have the same horrible revulsion by the thought of setting foot in New York.
@ugh too tired to be coherent (despite waking up at 12:40). Doesn’t “know shit,” “availability of quality healthcare,” and “pseudo-Orientalist.” I defeated my entire argument in favor of my people with grammar errors. I hang my head in shame.
I’ve been doing too much of the second thing apparently all UK students do, despite going to Columbia in the midst of the War on Fun.
@Yeah! Bare-bones Econolodge FTW!
@noo Lydia may be a good writer but she is basically the only one. Bring back Addison!
@well if you want a (relatively) unbiased, 10th grade-quality news source, you can go read the spec. bwog may be slightly offensive, but at least the people can write.
@Anonymous spectator have a blog too!
@Anonymous Typical liberzional redherringanda. Why don’t you report both sides of the story? You’re too busy killing babies, that’s why.
@coogan God knows that’s right, never written a positive word about me…gotta get famous somehow…
@Y'know Yeah it’s elitist, but by God Lydia can write.
@coogan The South is the new Oriental.
@ugh though it’s my own fault for expecting something better, after the kind of shit people have said to me upon finding out i’m from the south.
@spec commenter This article is clearly the mark of Marxist liberal Anti-White, Anti-American traitors. [boldbold] Lydia DePillis should be expelled for her treasonous writings! [boldbold]
@northern lib elite making fun of southerners is fun!
@come on do we really care about anything else?
@and what on earth do these pictures have to do with anything columbia students care about, regarding the dems or otherwise, except of course the fact that nellie bowles is hot?
@Nellie Bowles is hot.