Thought you would be interested in this...

[misanthrope]

...big shocker

[miketorse]

1. You can...

say that again.

[Syrinx]

2. and yet...

When I hang around the UA campus, I feel like I'm in a liberal oasis surrounded by the freedom-hating Republican desert.

[nealmhughes]

3. Oh, the whiskey bottle in the boot, ties to football games boys are

all enamoured with their date rapes tales and how to gladhand properly at the country club at UA. Fortunately, except at the Law School and the Business School, they are largely viewed with contempt by the entire faculty and most of the rank and file student body.

Remember that there are an awful lot of history, English, and art and hard science majors at Bama...and a very liberal graduate program, with the exception of a few old loners. McWhiney was chased off to other parts, Gary Mills is dead, and Forrest McDonald is retired, the entire League of the South loonies in the history dept. Larry Clayton has replaced Howard Jones (of Amistad fame) who reorganized the dept. after the McWhinney days. There is John Beeler, a Marxist naval historian and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Kari Fredrickson and Lisa Door, both feminist souhern scholars, and a lot of new people I don't know. The Library School has great open minded professional faculty, as does the entire English and Communications Colleges. There are a lot of wackos in Philosophy, but some really good ones, too. It's that damned business school! And the law school has some great guys, too, as does American Studies and Black Studies. It is a great grad school, overall.

But now that the Chukker is closed, Tuscaloosa will never be the little bit of Nirvana on the Black Warrior it once was...

[Syrinx]

4. I really miss the Chukker -- and I never even went there much

I loved that place. The crowd was eclectic, to say the least.

Lawyers. Gays. Laborers. Straights. Drag Queens. Students. Blacks. Professors. Whites. Stoners. Doctors. Jocks. Mexicans. Artists. Plumbers. Eccentrics. Rich. Poor. Geeks. Middle-Class.

The only group that I never saw there much: Conservatives.

Man, I loved that place! Tuscaloosa is definitely the poorer for its loss. (Thank you, Senator Shelby. :sarcasm: )

Like I said, I never went to the Chukker a lot. But I was always glad to know that it was there.