While on the subject...it seems right to eulogize him with some of his best:
Thompson is showing a British writer (Ralph Steadman) around the Kentucky Derby on some stolen press credentials. Steadman has never been to the Derby before so Hunter is giving the rundown:
Later Friday afternoon, we went out on the balcony of the press box and I tried to describe the difference between what we were seeing today and what would be happening tomorrow. This was the first time I had been to the Derby in ten years,but before that, when I'd lived in Louisville, I used to go every year. Now,looking down from the press box, I pointed to the huge grassy meadow enclosed by the track. "That whole thing," I said, "will be jammed with people;fifty thousand or so, and most of them staggering drunk. It's a fantastic scene -- thousands of people fainting, crying, copulating, trampling each other
and fighting with broken whiskey bottles. We'll have to spend some time out there, but it's hard to move around, too many bodies."
"Is it safe out there? Will we ever come back?"
"Sure," I said. "We'll just have to be careful not to step on anybody's stomach and start a fight." I shrugged. "Hell, this clubhouse scene right below us will be almost as bad as the infield. Thousands of raving, stumbling drunks, getting angrier and angrier as they lose more and more money. By midafternoon they'll be guzzling mint juleps with both hands and vomiting on each other between races.The whole place will be jammed with bodies, shoulder to shoulder. It's hard to move around. The aisles will be slick with vomit; people falling down and grabbing at your legs to keep from being stomped. Drunks pissing on themselves in the betting lines. Dropping handfuls of money and fighting to stoop over and pick it up."
He looked so nervous that I laughed. "I'm just kidding," I said. "Don't worry. At the first hint of trouble, I'll start pumping this 'Chemical Billy' [his can of mace] into the crowd."
