Serpentine Park Nights

[Irma Tchakian]

ThisFRIDAY 5 JULY join our friends @SerpentineUK and artist-poet Precious Okoyomon for the first of #ParkNights 2019. Her poetry and performance examines a history of the criminalisation and racialisation of light, darkness and the sun.

Precious work examines a history of the criminalisation and racialisation of light, darkness, and the sun and for this Park Night she will be presenting a new play, The End of the World. -events/cos-x-serpentine-galleries-park-nights-2019-precious-okoyomon-end-world

Cradled by mountain lakes, with a 5,000-acre national park and 47 hot springs, an unexpectedly fine documentary film festival and a smattering of global cuisine, this is a Norman Rockwell town of 40,000 with a streak of Jackson Pollock, a sort of Ma Kettle-meets-Billy Bob Thornton kind of place. It has drawn Hollywood moguls, generals, gangsters and presidents to soak in what is said to be some of the purest mineral water outside Baden-Baden, Germany.

I followed scenic Arkansas 7 into town until it segued into Central Avenue. A narrow artery that snakes through lichen-and-ivy-covered bluffs with trickling springs, Central hugs the west side of Hot Springs National Park, the oldest park in the country. Central is the main drag, with striking turn-of-the-century structures; among them are seven early 20th century bathhouses, including the Buckstaff, which provides old-style treatments, and the splendidly restored Fordyce, now a visitors center and fascinating four-floor museum.

They invited me for a nightcap at the cavernous basement-level Brau Haus, a onetime brothel circa 1889, with dining niches, live music and a reportedly mean jaeger schnitzel, made from a family recipe. We sipped peach schnapps and sampled the German beer (three on tap and 50 bottled), and after our goodnights I walked back to the Arlington, accompanied by the sounds of crickets and the trickling of springs.

Inside Oaklawn, horse fever set in. Wizened codgers gathered around the paddocks, eyeballing the ponies and watching the odds change on the electronic post boards. The wealthier set headed to the Jockey Club, a VIP lounge at the top of the track, while regular Joes crowded into the Carousel, a cafe and bar with beautiful hand-painted vintage carousel horses.

After dinner we took in the ballroom scene at the Arlington, which on weekend nights transforms the lobby into a mecca of dancers swirling to a swing combo in a multigenerational pageant: octogenarians waltzing, young tourist couples trying to keep time and bemused sophisticates who wind up becoming seduced by the whole affair.

Between galleries we stopped at the Belle Arti for lunch. The Caesar salad ($4.75) was fine, but the homemade sausage in my spaghetti ($7.95) was bland and the marinara tinny. Locals later told me the place for authentic Italian is Pompeii, closer to the track.

The Exchange, co-owned by Ken Lumpkin and Chris Rix, has a funky retro-furnished bar and weekend pianist and is popular with the arts set. Lumpkin learned his magic with fresh seafood from his Japanese mother and studied French cuisine under chef Jose Gutierrez at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis.

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