Gerth: Streakers and strippers? The Kentucky Derby infield is nothing like it used to be

Anymore, you’re more likely to see seersucker suits and sun dresses in the Kentucky Derby Infield than tank and tube tops. More straw fedoras and fascinators than ball caps and visors.

Sure, there will be plenty of drunk people there — as drunk as $22 mint juleps will get you. And on rainy days, you’ll still have some yahoos out there doing belly slides in the mud.

But, to a large degree, the infield at Churchill Downs has changed.

It might be the $80 to $130 price tag people paid to get in this year. It might be the higher-priced bleachers Churchill Downs installed in the section of the infield adjacent to the grandstand.

It might be the fact that it’s the same crowd that came when I was in my 20s and getting toasted and sunburnt while dodging two-liter bottles of pop on what we called the third turn. (Purists will tell you there are only two turns at Churchill Downs, but some of us know the wildest parties were in the third turn.)

When I say it’s the same crowd, I’m not saying the infield is full of 20-year-olds.

No. No. No.

It’s the exact same people who were in the infield 35 or 40 years ago. They’re just gray headed and bald and, well, old. (That’s not a criticism. I’m old too.)

At least that was who showed up early and camped out in the grass.

Today, it's less like Woodstock and more like summer stock.

You get the picture.

It’s more refined than it was exactly 50 years ago when — at the height of the streaking craze and two weeks before Ray Stevens topped the Hot 100 chart with “The Streak” — one infield reveler climbed the racetrack’s flagpole and stripped off his pants.

Another sprinted — naked as a jay bird — in front of the track’s tote board.

Boogity, boogity.

The great Red Smith described the scene this way:

“They were mostly kids of college age, attired mostly in skin and packed so tightly that the infield looked like a jellied mass, a vast tract of sunburned pelt. There was so much hide visible that it was hard to pick out streakers, though some were present.”

Race fans had been allowed in the infield going back to the very first Kentucky Derby in 1875, said Darren Rogers the track’s spokesman.

The drunken debauchery, however, didn’t start until much later.

For years, biker clubs would party all night on Central Avenue and just roll straight into the infield as soon the gates opened Derby morning, setting the tone for a pretty wild infield party.

Up until 1968, people were allowed to carry their own booze into the infield, when Churchill Downs officials banned it.

That really didn’t stop the boozing.

When Hunter Thompson wrote his groundbreaking piece, “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved,” for Scanlan’s two years later, he wrote of the infield:

“Total chaos, no way to see the race, not even the track … nobody cares. Big lines at the outdoor betting windows, then stand back to watch winning numbers flash on the big board, like a giant bingo game. ...

“Thousands of teenagers, group singing ‘Let the Sun Shine In,’ ten soldiers guarding the American flag, and a huge fat drunk wearing a blue football jersey (No. 80) reeling around with quart of beer in hand.

“No booze sold out here, too dangerous … no bathrooms either. Muscle Beach … Woodstock … many cops with riot sticks, but no sign of riot. Far across the track the clubhouse looks like a postcard from the Kentucky Derby.”

For the last 56 years, infield patrons played a game of cat and mouse, trying to sneak bottles, flasks and other containers full of liquor into the infield.

I’ve heard stories of people hollowing out baguettes and shoving bottles of booze in them and even trying to sneak a pony keg of beer in under a wheelchair. That one may be apocryphal.

Rogers said people have even tried burying bottles of liquor in the infield months before the Derby, with plans to dig them up on Derby Day.

The first time I ever went to the Derby infield was sometime around 1986, back in the days when the whole reason for going there was to get drunk. Real drunk. Real, real drunk.

Without paying a cannon bone and a calcaneus.

Back in those days, you could bring in coolers full of whatever you could get past the guards.

We’d show up with ice chests full of 46-ounce cans of Hi-C or Hawaiian Punch, an assortment of fruit and a couple of paring knives.

Others involved in our conspiracy would bring the booze — Everclear or more likely some cheaper brand of pure grain alcohol.

Sometimes, we would put the booze in zip-lock bags and duct-tape them to our torsos, which became painful for the hairier of our friends when it came time to make our jungle juice.

Other years, when we planned better, we’d use large hypodermic needles and syringes to remove the water from 1.5 liter bottles of Poland Springs water and replace it with the 190 proof liquor.

Those were back in the days when we’d go through The Courier Journal the morning after the Derby looking for the story about the number of arrests at Derby.

In 1993, it was 57. That was after folks started throwing two-liter bottles of pop, 46-ounce cans of fruit juice and oranges. It wasn’t us. I promise.

“It looked like Iraq for a while,” Louisville Police Lt. Walt Tangel told the newspaper.

For years, men would stand outside the women’s restroom and shout at them to show their breasts. A story 40 years ago traced that tradition to 1979 when a mother with an 8-month-old child strapped to her back, bared her bosoms for dollar bills.

Now, there is a “lactation station” in the infield where newish mothers can breastfeed or pump in privacy.

Churchill Downs even hired a consultant in 1984 to try to determine how they could clean up the infield. That year, the racetrack removed large flowerpots that, according to the newspaper, “had served as stages for lurid behavior in past years.”

At the time, Al Schem, who was Churchill’s director of safety, thought the cost of drinks in the infield would help calm the crowd, too.

“With the prices our caterer charges for beer and mint juleps, people can’t possibly get as drunk,” he said.

They got as drunk.

Two infield denizens that year were charged with sexual abuse when they tried to pull off women’s clothing. One was charged with disorderly conduct for biting 15 women on their butts, and two women where charged with exposing themselves near the restroom.

The infield still has its moments.

There’s occasional nudity and plenty of drunkenness, but nothing like it used to be.

Churchill first banned coolers in the infield following the Sept. 11 attacks. They let them back in starting in 2009 but then banned them again following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

That’s made it tougher to sneak booze into the infield, but not impossible, said Rogers.

“I’ve got an 18-year-old son,” he said. “I know.”

Rogers said the changes in the infield over the past 40 years or so has largely been organic.

“I think it’s been a byproduct of the overall growth of the Derby itself,” he said. “The Derby absolutely skyrocketed over the last 15 years.”

Some would argue that it has become more controlled and more corporate.

But it’s no doubt safer than it used to be — if not a little less colorful.

Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: The Kentucky Derby infield is nothing like it used to be