In 1956, Hunter S. Thompson was in the Air Force and transferred to Elgin Air Force Base. He began taking classes at Florida State University, and became the sports editor of the base newspaper, The Command Courier. During this time, he followed the base football team (the Elgin Eagles) around the country, covering their games. In early 1957, Thompson started writing an uncredited sports column for The Playground News out of Fort Walton Beach, FL.

Thompson was honorably discharged from the Air Force in June of 1958.

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Another shot of a favorite watering hole of Hunter S. Thompson.

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After the aftermath of the Kentucky Derby in 1970, Thompson flew to Manhattan ("as soon as he could walk").

Warren Hinckle, editor of Scanlan's Monthly at the time, put HST in the Royalton Hotel where:

"...where we locked him down for five days in a room in the Royalton Hotel, just up 44th Street from the Scanlan's office in an abandoned ballroom above an Irish bar a block from Times Square."

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The Pendennis Club is a members-only social club located in Louisville, KY.

In the debauchery of Hunter S. Thompson's "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved," Thompson and Ralph Steadman arrive at The Pendennis Club:

"One of my clearest memories of that vicious time is Ralph being attacked by one of my old friends in the billiard room of the Pendennis Club in downtown Louisville on Saturday night. The man had ripped his own shirt open to the waist before deciding that Ralph wasn't after his wife. No blows were struck, but the emotional effects were massive.

Then, as a sort of final horror, Steadman put his fiendish pen to work and tried to patch things up by doing a little sketch of the girl he'd been accused of hustling. That finished us in the Pendennis."

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On the side of bar/restaurant in Louisville known as The Monkey Wrench, there is a mural depicting Hunter S. Thompson.

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