"Hit me in the chest, give me money, and I'll give you a strip club card"

The first night in Memphis we spent a lot of time on Beale Street. Memphis is a really cool city and everything is very close to each other. Most of the bars in town are lined up on Beale which has been turned into a car-less pedestrian mall. That means drinking without the prospect of being the victim of vehicular manslaughter, which is ALWAYS a plus.

You can tell that the area gets crazy, definitely a much bigger version of 4^th street in Louisville, on a Friday or Saturday, but during Chevron Adventure Week you can’t pick your nights. On a Sunday night though, the town is mostly dead. To the credit of most of the bars though, they had lots of karaoke and live bands going on, so all wasn’t lost.

As the night starts winding down for the other 46 people who have to head home because they have “jobs” and “lives” to deal with the next day, we keep looking for the next wave to ride.

We planned for two nights in Memphis and we were not about to forfeit one of them because of the real world everyone else lived in. So we hopped from bar to bar just to keep the night going: took shots of whiskey and pickle juice (the shot pair is called a Babaloosa and came from somewhere in the south that “To Catch a Predator” can’t even find; don’t knock it ‘til you try it), ordered the first round of “Fucking Yankees” (a drink I helped pioneer in Nashville last week and is a shot of Jaeger, Coke, and Rum), and learned that Tennessee has no local beers and we should be ashamed for trying to order anything other than Whiskey.

At about 3, Ryan’s still singing “Walking in Memphis” as we walk down Beale. Beale at this hour is littered with panhandlers and homeless people but also cops (apparently after Katrina a lot of criminals from New Orleans spread out to nearby cities and Memphis’ crime rate “quintiplied” (actual word used by our bartender the second night who “didn’t need this fucking job because [she’s] in the medical profession.

These homeless guys come up to you to try and shake your hand and get some money, most of them giving the “help me out” pitch. Then we met the Billy Mays (RIP) of beggars.

This guy comes up to me, tries to shake my hand, turns, plants his feet and proclaims “Hit me in the chest, give me money, and I'll give you a strip club card." HOLY. SHIT.

What an offer. I could imagine not being able to fall asleep, turning on the TV and seeing this guy yelling “For some money you can punch me in the chest. But wait, there’s more! If you hit me and give me money now, I’ll also throw in a strip club card!”

He didn’t even have an amount in mind; he just wanted to be paid anything. Wow.

We realized that on a Sunday, we weren’t going to top that moment, so we went back to the hotel.

In the lobby we remembered about the product of our newest sponsor, AlcoHAWK, the finest breathalyzer available at Walgreens.

With the security guard, a friend of his, and one of the hotel managers watching and cheering, the competition began.

I posted a very respectable .17 for the clubhouse lead. Everyone cheered.

Kasey followed with an “I thought it would be much higher” .14. There were boos.

Then Ryan, in the moment of truth, batting in the 3-hole, blew an astounding .18. The crowd went crazy.

Not quite homeless Billy Mays, but what a moment.