Pretend it's Johnny Cash's bucket list...

August 19, 2010 3:36 PM

I'm making a tourism list of things involving smoking, drinking and shooting for someone who loves all three. Where would I find places that fit the bill?

I'm making up a tourism list for work that involves places to go in certain cities - mainly southern and midwestern but NOT limited to them - that have activities that someone can do that let someone really smoke, drink or shoot at stuff.

My dream list? Things like: you get to shoot antique handguns, drink thousand dollar a shot bourbon straight from the barrel and you get to smoke cigars with guys who tried to kill castro...or something.

It's an open list and I'm looking for ideas for it. Do you have any ideas? Or are there any places online that specialize in these areas where I can grab some ideas?

posted by rileyray3000 to travel & transportation (6 answers total)

I can suggest the annual Knob Creek machine gun shoot in Louisville KY. We also have more bourbon than anywhere else you could ever want to go. I would post links, but my phone won't allow!
posted by broadway bill at 4:08 PM on August 19, 2010

Gonna be hard to find a place that mixes booze and guns. It's one of those "fundamentally" stupid things like pointing a weapon at someone's face. I think you'd either have to find a private party or get out of the country and go to Cambodia or something.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:10 PM on August 19, 2010

Hold on. I don't mean MIXING booze and guns. I mean separate events. One booze, one gun, one cigarettes or cigars
posted by rileyray3000 at 4:24 PM on August 19, 2010

here's the Knob Creek hookup, and it looks like a partay.
posted by toodleydoodley at 4:29 PM on August 19, 2010

Gonna be hard to find a place that mixes booze and guns.

Las Vegas. I'm not suggesting drinking and then going to The Gun Store, I'm just saying that people have done that in the past.
posted by betweenthebars at 6:01 PM on August 19, 2010

Okay, now that I am home, I can go more in-depth on what Kentucky has to offer you.

For starters, toodleydoodley has linked you to the KCGR site. That is, literally, ground zero for all your shooting and drinking needs. If I was in your shoes (and, being that I live 20 minutes from KCGR and love both bourbon and guns, I am almost in your shoes), I would plan to come to the machine gun shoot, and do some touring of the whiskey distilleries around the area. Go see where Knob Creek, Woodford, Jim Beam, Makers Mark and all the others are made. Almost all of the tours include tasting rooms that will happily get you absolutely hammered and sell you cigars. The bars are open until 4 am, and you can go into a pawn shop and buy a gun in minutes and walk out the door with it in your pocket.

At KCGR, you can bring your own items to shoot to hell. Bring a TV. Bring a washing machine. Whatever. They also rent all sorts of guns, and they do not seem to frown on the common practice of using the range as a testing ground for homemade fireworks. In fact, I would wager that on a normal day there, they would excitedly allow you to toss some grenades, if you brought your own.

The machine gun shoot is absolutely insane. You can run belts of .50 rounds through a BAR, you can shoot gallons of kerosene at night with tracer rounds... basically whatever you want. One word of warning about that place though; you will see some things that will make most people... uncomfortable. Things like zealous WWII "buffs" in full SS regalia, lots and lots of stars and bars, and some straight up wingnut folks hawking anti-Obama stuff that is pretty far into the wrong side of morality and logic. That said, the majority of the folks there are there to party and shoot crazy guns, and are not nearly as scary as you might imagine.

I would rent a hotel room in Louisville, do the "Urban Bourbon Trail" bit, see some Hunter Thompson landmarks, eat a hot brown, go to Churchill Downs, go to KCGR, and hit some of the distillery tours.
posted by broadway bill at 10:09 PM on August 19, 2010 [1 favorite]