Fort Cat, USA

Guntown Mountain and the Slalom of Doom

Cave City, Kentucky is my favorite town on i-65 that boasts a life-size, road-side tyrannosaurus. Perched over the walls of the Appalachian interstate, the faded tan Jurassic giant earns Cave City the prestigious honor of being the only town on i-65 with a replicated reptile acting as rather unorthodox member of the highway patrol. Be that as it may, the watchful eye of the tyrannosaurs, a destitute dinosaur well in need of a paint job, is just one item on the kitsch-list that cites a peculiar kind of charm you’ll find only in Cave City.

I don't shoot photos while driving unless 20-foot-tall dinosaurs are around, I swear.

The name itself, Cave City, is kind of an overstatement. The U.S. Census Bureau cited a population of only 1,800 in the year 2000, and until four years ago, you couldn’t order liquor in any restaurant in town. At a 90 minute drive from Nashville (and even closer to the pseudo-civilized Bowling Green, Kentucky), Cave City is far from cut off from modernity, even taking into account the dinos and dry-spell. You won’t find any Applebees or Hard Rock Café in Cave City. For the small mountain town that depends on tourism, their number one industry, commerce depends less on the commercial than the curio.

Capitalizing on the introduction of the interstate, coupled with the National Park movement and the post-war revival of the great outdoors, Cave City quickly became a hit in the middle of the twentieth century. As the link that connected Nashville with the north, the small mountain town was a perfect pit-stop. With nothing but hills for miles, Cave City wasn’t as much a diamond in the rough but more of a stalactite in the cavern, as it were. Though the city didn’t offer much on the surface, the hype surrounding the commemoration of their subterranean cavern (which encompasses some of the longest cave system in the United States) in the 1950s as a National Park drew many people to the rural mountain town in hopes of taking in beautiful Kentuckian scenery and the prehistoric cave. As more people flocked, the town was epitomized as the genuine American tourist trap. While there was little augmentation to make to the natural majesty of Mammoth Cave and its underground labyrinth of limestone, the influx of curious travelers allowed a rather opportune moment for Cave City residents to capitalize on a proverbial gold mine.

Today, Mammoth Cave National Park in Cave City still receives a fair share of travelers: camp-happy families and budding geologists alike. It’s the tacky tourist spots though that lend a peculiar charm to Cave City.

Dinosaur World, nestled just off of exit 53, boasts over 150 life-like dinosaurs in a “realistic” setting just a quarter mile from the A & W, adjacent to Shell Diesel. At 12 dollars a pop, you can pose for a photo alongside a stegosaurus and still make it to Nashville before the last tour of the day at the Opry. Down the road, Guntown Mountain offers an “authentic re-creation of a wild west town from the days of the frontier,” according to their website. On my last visit, the parking lot resembled more of a deserted ghost town than 49er gold mine. Entry requires a five minute trip up a staggering ski-lift to the pinnacle of what I assume is the Guntown mountain itself. There’s a similar lift just down the street that, while lacking cowboys and bronco ropin’, does maintain a petting zoo on the premises, and, in what was perhaps the most terrifyingly unsafe tourist attracting I’ve ever seen, an unkempt, concrete track that meanders back down the bluff in what best defined as a horrifying slalom of doom.

Bourbon, whiskey, candy and crap. Only a small offering of what Cave City gift shops have to offer.

Some attractions, like Big Mike’s Mystery House, are indescribable. “You will sense things that will baffle your mind,” is the only information listed on the city’s tourism website. The attraction has been around since the 70s.

Around the corner, evidence exists of the few landmarks that couldn’t make the jump into the twenty-first century. Golgotha Bible Mini-Golf is now a mere relic of what it once was, and the wax museums that once dotted Mammoth Cave Rd are long since boarded up and gutted out.

A few attractions, like Wig Wam Village, have stood the test of time. The teepee-themed budget motel has allowed passersby to rest in air-conditioned, free-standing rooms, modeled after the Sioux reservations of South Dakota, for over 70 years. Maybe if Noah had built a longhouse you’d still be able to land a birdie on a par four. As they say, nothing lasts forever.

Fortunately for the residents and entrepreneurs of Cave City, that’s sometimes just not so. Human remains inside the cavernous walls of Mammoth Cave date back to 4,000 B.C. Clearly, this destination-spot, while not necessarily the Cancun of Kentucky, has been a big hit for quite some time.

Over the course of the last few years, I’ve managed to detour through Cave City every time I’m en route to Manchester, Tennessee. Nothing new has sprouted up since my initial excursion in 2006, and, in fact, the landmarks leftover seem to be deteriorating most rapidity. Even still, the shoddy gaud of yesteryear remains far from gone in most cases. Drawing a parallel between Cave City in actuality and the fading boomtown of Guntown Mountain seems almost too literal, and I hope is unfortunately not the case. A Cave City gone the way of the Wild West is something I wouldn’t care to see.

As long as Americans are cave-curious, and until flying cars eliminate the need for i-65, Cave City will seemingly always exist as a perfectly placed pit-stop in the hills of Kentucky. As tourism booms come and go, some landmarks, like Wig Wam Village, will most probably remain. As far as the odds of Guntown Mountain beating the recession, I don’t just darn tootin’ know. But for every Golgotha Mini-Golf the closes down, there will hopefully be a bumper-boat pond on the horizon.

Cat’s Pajamas

A few photos from a series I was working on…

Cat's Pajamas - Andrew Blake 2009

Cat's Pajamas - Andrew Blake 2009

Cat's Pajamas - Andrew Blake 2009

Cat's Pajamas - Andrew Blake 2009

Cat's Pajamas - Andrew Blake 2009

Cat's Pajamas - Andrew Blake 2009

Ben Folds and the Buffalo Philharmonic

Ben Folds - October 10, 2009 - click for full gallery

Conor Oberst – July 19, 2009 – Lewiston, NY

Conor Oberst at Artpark - click for full gallery

Here are a few of Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band. They opened for Wilco at Artpark during the summer.

Wilco – July 19, 2009 – Lewiston, NY

Jeff Tweedy of Wilco - click for full gallery

Oops. I forgot to post these. Check out these pictures of Wilco from a few months back.

Art Brut – June 6, 2009 – Philly

Eddie Argos of Art Brut in Philadelphia - 6/6/09 - click for full gallery

Between shows on the NINJA tour, I caught one of my favorite new groups, Art Brut, at a small club in the East side of Philadelphia. Click the above link or right here for a few photos. An interview will be posted, um, shortly. MusicSnobbery.com has a neat little review right here.

The Generation Sack

Geoffrey Antsey at Artvoice name-dropped me in an article he put together last week about the on-going troubles we’re having with Generation. Go give it a read when you can.

Jane’s Addiction – June 10, 2009

Perry Farrell in Burgettstown, PA - 6/10/09 - click for full gallery - apblake.com

The last of four Jane’s shows during the month of June was a Wednesday night gig outside of Pittsburgh. Like the rest of the tour, it rained all night. Once the last chord of “Jane Says” finally faded out I hopped in the car and headed South. I had a 12-hour-drive ahead of me to make it to Bonnaroo.

Nine Inch Nails – June 10, 2009

Trent Reznor in Burgettstown, PA - 6/10/09 - click for full gallery - apblake