Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl (by HUNTER S. THOMPSON, 1974)". . .and whosoever was not found written into the book of life was cast into the lake of fire..."
— Revelations 20:15
This was the theme of the sermon I delivered off the 20th-floor balcony of the Hyatt Regency in Houston on the morning of Super Bowl VIII. It was just before dawn, as I recall, when the urge to speak came on me. Earlier that day I had found — on the tile floor of the Men's Room on the hotel mezzanine — a religious comic book titled "A Demon's Nightmare," and it was from the text of this sleazy tract that I chose the words of my sermon.
The Houston Hyatt Regency — like others designed by architect John Portman in Atlanta and San Francisco — is a stack of 1000 rooms, built around a vast lobby at least 30 stories high, with a revolving "spindletop" bar on the roof. The whole center of the building is a tower of acoustical space. You can walk out of any room and look over the indoor balcony (20 floors down, in my case) at the palm-shrouded, wood and naugahyde maze of the bar/lounge on the lobby floor.
Closing time in Houston is 2:00 AM. There are after-hours bars, but the Hyatt Regency is not one of them. So — when I was seized by the urge to deliver my sermon at dawn — there were only about 20 ant-sized people moving around in the lobby far below.
Earlier, before the bar closed, the whole ground floor had been jammed with drunken sportswriters, hard-eyed hookers, wandering geeks and hustlers (of almost every persuasion), and a legion of big and small gamblers from all over the country who roamed through the drunken, randy crowd — as casually as possible — with an eye to picking up a last-minute sucker bet from some poor bastard half-mad on booze and willing to put some money, preferably four or five big ones, on "his boys."
Go Read More »This is the real Hunter S Thompson's 1974 Rolling Stone piece. I was living in Virginia Beach, VA, when this article came out. Gas was being rationed; I was 6 months pregnant. The Exorcist had just come out at the movies. Hunter framed this period of my life. If you got Hunter you got me. Besides Dylan, he was my Guru and every time he would hold forth I'd devour every single morsel. You've got to remember that this kind of writing (gonzo journalism) was rare in the 70s. 
