Ernie and the Hot Chicken

Ernie had a full day of excitement in Franklin, Tennessee today.

He showed Uncle Sam how clean he likes to get. Sam was nice enough to wear his Star Wars shirt today to help me grieve the end of my adventure.

Disney is savage. They've already dismantled the Galactic Starcruiser website!

I added a Starcruiser watch face to my Apple Watch. It's the little things that help me hang on.

I was very excited to visit Prince's Hot Chicken Shack South. I thought it was too clean/corporate in here though. The Prince's we went to in 2016 was so beautifully run down and dirty.

Southern Grist Brewing Co. is my kind of brewery. I want those weird flavors and ingredients I've never heard of. How many friggin' IPAs does one person need before they walk out a window?

I picked a sampler platter and got real weird with it:

Liquid Karma

Imperial sour ale w/ lactose and rainbow sour candy belts

Georgia Dreamin'

Unfiltered American lager with peaches. Made exclusively for Ben Chapman's Peach Jam

Cinnadust

Brown ale with lactose, vanilla bean, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch

Practical Substitutes

Oated New England IPA with motueka, huell melon and strata

Back at the house Ernie got to use Uncle Sam's former high chair as a special treat.

After googling "what to do with one's life now that Starcruiser is closed" I found a couple of good ideas. I feel like Starcruiser may be my entry into a subculture. For example this article is mentioning New York's "Sleep No More" as an influence. That is a "participatory theater" show that is still running. Very interesting...

I saw Meow Wolf's offerings mentioned in the same breath as well. I had a great time at the Omega Mart installation in Las Vegas. This was an epiphany for me that so many of the things that I enjoy actually have a common thread running through them. It may even explain why I occasionally dress as a British school boy.

Hot Chicken and Nashville Honky Tonks

We went down to Nashville for the weekend to visit Lydia's family. 

We went to a Nashville hot chicken joint that I hadn't tried yet: Hattie B's. 

It was B-licious. See what I did there?

We made our obligatory trip to downtown Nashville to do some honky-tonkin'.

Luckily there was plenty of AB advertising so I didn't get homesick.

I was initially worried that going to a bunch of bars during Sober October would suck but it ended up being a good time. The fun was within me all along.

Evan's favorite honky tonky artist Sarah Gayle Meech was playing at Evan's favorite honky tonk, Robert's Western World, in a real alignment of the stars.

Hot Chicken in Nashville

We hadn't been to Nashville to see Lydia's family in a bit so we popped on down to the land of cotton for a good time that shan't soon be forgotten.

Prince's Hot Chicken Shack has been on my "to eat" list for quite some time. We gave it a try.

A few other people had the same idea. This place was so out of the ordinary that it felt like we were in a different country. There were a couple of damn soda machines inside the restaurant five feet away from the order window. Who does that?? There was a lady to the other side of the window who was selling cakes who also seemed to be running her own business. Is this a restaurant or a swap meet?

What place in the US do you see this?

The chicken was quite spicy, even at the low levels of hotness we specified. I've had quite a few spicy chicken parts in my day, but this was unique because it was all dry rubbed.

We hit the downtown Broadway honky tonk strip as we've been known to do.

We came upon an ice cream food truck with some interesting concoctions.

I am a slave to the local thing, be it silk worms or ice cream. We ordered a Float of the South which is Cheerwine soda and vanilla ice cream. 

We walked past the Ryman Auditorium, old school home of the Grand Ole Opry. We went there before, no big deal.