Blogs

Welcome to Kutsher's!

Let's start with the Kutsher's Country Club lobby. The walls are the color of salmon. The carpet: salmon catfood. Around one corner, there's an air hockey table. Around another, a department-store-style glass-display counter promises Mary Kay-style make-up demonstrations twice a day. This afternoon, a woman who looked like Delta Burke’s great aunt was seated behind the case, though she had no customers—the art-rock sojourners here are far more interested in stocking up on Budweiser cases for tonight's post-rock summer-camp festivities than discovering the perfect grandmotherly blush. They're also interested in Steve Albini, who last night ran a poker game in the "Executive Card Room" and just now walked by with a small digi-camera crew in tow.

Kutscher's isn't just ATP's lodging—the main stage is just past the make-up counter. ATP founder Barry Hogan wasn't kidding when he described Kutsher's Country Club as The Shining meets Cocoon. “I keep expecting to walk into one of these rooms and seeing a dude in a bear suit blowing a guy in the bed,” Patton Oswalt joked last night on Stage 2. The hallways seem to go on forever, the adjacent “lake” cries out for Jason Voorhees, and I think I can hear Edith from Grey Gardens voice in the bathroom. “Every room smells like a fart gave up,” said Patton last night. That time, he wasn't kidding.

Everybody loves the lobby make-up stand.