I saw Hunter S. Thompson perform in a bar in Baltimore on February 5, 1991, and he was awful. He was drunk and incoherent. My buddy and I (along with others) walked out. Here’s the Baltimore Sun account. I was a big admirer of his Fear and Loathing books and this was very disillusioning.
I thought of Thompson yesterday because of this Instagram post:
The first time I read anything by Thompson was his account of the Kentucky Derby in Scanlan’s magazine in 1970. It was the first time he had illustrations by Ralph Steadman that were the perfect match for his writing.
Here’s an annotated copy of the article, unfortunately without the illustrations.
Sad! 