Air Devils Inn

It's not often you encounter a saloon with such old-school cool as Air Devils Inn. Even now in the 21st century, they are a strictly cash-only business. I worship them for that luddite stance every bit as much as I appreciate that they keep the joint dark as a coal mine. I'm a great fan of dark bars.

Their neon sign is awesome-O, and by night even more so. (Some say it's the oldest neon sign in Jefferson County, though I'm not quite ready to bet the farm on that factoid.) Their name derives from its proximity to Bowman Field, and harkens back to the truly good old days when pilots where pioneers; when aviation’s most distinguished hell-raisers, dizzy from their aerial antics, would march directly to the pub to hoist a few beers and sober up.

They were one of the first and most ferocious resisters to Louisville's ridiculous smoking ban, and one of the last to wave the tattered flag of freedom of choice to the very end when everyone else had considered the battle lost.


Strange as may seem, there are many - inside city Government and outside of it - who would dearly love to see Air Devils Inn cease to operate. Why? I honestly am not sure. Chalk it up as proof that true evil does indeed exist in this world.

Friend, I advise you to go and make your pilgrimmage to Air Devils Inn now while you still can, before it's just another entry in the hallowed hall of great Kentucky landmarks that got torn down for the sake of someone else's sinister and short-sighted agenda.

DJ Dockery's Dreadful Discs

Our ally J.T. Dockery (artist, musician, Transylvania Gentleman), will be making a rare public appearance at a swank Fayette County drinking lounge called Lower 48.

Lower 48 is located in the Steampunk-approved crumbling 19th century building reclaimed as snooty-hipster hangout Victorian Square, 401 W Main Street in Lexington, and Colonel Dockery will be pickin' up beers and puttin' down platters on Wednesday, September 23, "from approximately 10pm until nobody wants to hear any more Tennessee Ernie Ford songs".

If I know Dockery, he'll also be layin' down the finest in lowest garage, exotica, rockabilly, punk, glam, doo-wop, dixieland and desperate rock and roll. Swing, twang, sturm und drang.

The Southgate House

Newport's Southgate House is a historic old edifice that is currently home to a rock club that has a strong reputation for being one of the region's best.

It also has something of a reputation of being haunted, but this is not so strong and not so well-founded. Reports on the web are sketchy and among people I've made inquiries to in person, most are of a highly anecdotal type: "Dude, a friend of mine said he saw a beer bottle fall over by itself", and so forth. If someone has some
seriously detailed and verifiable reports of paranormal hauntings, I'd love to hear them.

According to the bar's website, the Southgate House story is drenched with historical goodies: built in 1814, it has hosted Abraham Lincoln, John Taliaferro Thompson (he was born here, in fact) and troops of General Sherman's soldiers on their way to fight in the Texan War for Independence.

You can find the Southgate House at 24 East 3rd street, Newport, KY.

Bobby Mackey's Music World

In Wilder, KY, just across the Kentucky border from Cincinnati, lies Bobby Mackey’s Music World, a nightclub that some have called Kentucky's most haunted location.

The building was built in the 1850s as a slaughterhouse and meat packing plant. The well in the basement, where blood from the animals was drained, still can be found there. After the slaughterhouse closed, the building became a ritual site for occultists who supposedly sacrificed animals there. In 1896, the discovery of a naked and headless female corpse ended up leading police investigators to the occult group. The subsequent Pearl Bryan murder case made national headlines and reportedly spawned a brief craze of Pearl Bryan commemorative souvenirs and merchandise. I have yet to see any examples, but would love to.



During the 1920s to the 1970s, the place was inhabited by a number of sleazy nightclubs, and several murders took place here over the years, including a pregnant stripper named Johana who committed suicide on the premises in the late 1930s.

In 1978, it became Bobby Mackey's Music World. People have had every type of ghost experience here, from hearing noises and screams, to objects being moved, to actual sightings. One person even tried to sue after claiming to have been attacked by a ghost or demon in the bar's restroom. And in 1991, an attempted exorcism was held, to no avail.

There are reports of the building's caretaker actually being possessed by the ghost of Alonzo Walling (one of Pearl Bryan's murderers), although some reports call him Claude and others call him Carl.

Although the hauntings at his bar have brought throngs of curiosity seekers into his establishment, Mackey himself has mixed feelings about the whole thing. For many years he refused to discuss or even acknowledge the hauntings to reporters, and definitely didn't seek any publicity about it - the publicity sought him. In the 1970s the talented Mackey was on his way to becoming a major Nashville country music star, and it's unfortunate that his fame has been eclipsed by that of his club's notoriety. Perhaps this, too, is part of the curse of Pearl Bryan's head.


Bobby Mackey's Music World is located at 44 Licking Pike, Wilder, KY. Visit Bobby's website here.

The Maverick Club

The Maverick Club is a country-and-western nightclub on the outskirts of Richmond, KY, well known to locals as a local nightlife institution.

Many, many years ago, the Maverick was a pretty rough place by all accounts. When Jerry Lee Lewis played here in the late 1960s, he placed a wall of chickenwire between himself and the audience to protect himself from flying beer bottles, just like The Blues Brothers.

We've heard from a former employee that the place is haunted and that is it's not a happy haunting. We've also heard a story that in the 70s, someone was murdered in the club after closing time by someone he knew named Clarence, and that this Clarence left the stabbed man in the walk-in freezer to die as he went about robbing the place. But, as the story has it, the poor unfortunate fellow managed to write his murderer's name in his own blood on the wall inside the freezer. As the story goes, this, along with circumstantial evidence, was enough to convict the murderer. We'd love to get more details and verification on this story if anyone's got the scoop.

The Maverick of today, however, has been under new ownership since 2005 and is a much safer, comfier and cooler place to be, with national acts such as Confederate Railroad, David Allan Coe and T. Graham Brown. Check out their website and drop on in next time you're in Richmond. They're on 1507 East Main Street as you're headed out of town towards the Depot.

Photo above: The Maverick today. Below: The Maverick, back in the day.

Johnny Allman's Restaurant

Johnny Allman's Restaurant was located along the Kentucky River in Boonesboro, not far from the present location of Hall's Restaurant. From the 1940s to the 1970s, it was a immensely well-loved spot, with mobsters, businessmen, bikers and "river rats" side by side, enjoying the fine food and the fine view overlooking the river. Even Sweet Evening Breeze was a regular diner there (and sometimes caused a stir by choosing to use the men's restroom).

Beer Cheese was invented at Allman's Restaurant in the 1940s. There are many who would have you believe that Hall's invented it. They did not. Today Hall's offers a very similar, but not quite the same version of Beer Cheese in their restaurant. The "Hall's Snappy Spread" sold commercially in stores is a totally different formula and nothing like what you get in the actual restaurant.

Allman's went up in a gigantic fire in the 1970s. I'll never forget the day my family and I drove down there about 6pm for dinner, only to find nothing left but a charred skeleton of the building, still smoldering. Allman's was such an institution that it was unthinkable that they wouldn't rebuild. So everyone waited. And waited. But the new Allman's never came.

All that remains now are the memories of that Beer Cheese that can never be tasted again, and scraps of effluvia such as those pictured here. We are attempting to track down pictures of the restaurant in its heyday. Do you have photos of Allman's Restaurant? Please e-mail us if so!

Did I say their beer cheese could never be tasted again? Well, that's not exactly true. Bob Tabor of Winchester is keeping the original Allman's recipe alive with his River Rat Beer Cheese which started out available strictly in the central Kentucky area but now is branching out all over the state. When I first tasted it, I almost cried. It is indeed, as their slogan states, "Just Like Johnny's".