Lexington’s 2nd Annual Burger Week wrapped up last night and waves of people, who stood in line all week to stuff their faces with $5 burgers at local restaurants, have now moved over to another long line. While the results have yet to be announced, the mob of people outside the building have made it pretty clear that the unofficial winner of this year’s Burger Week competition is UK’s Gill Heart Institute. Like a Walmart prepping for Black Friday, the cardiologists and staff are reportedly bracing for their busiest day of the year, “Blockage Monday.”

“We’ve learned that many Lexingtonians over the past 7 days have actually visited multiple burger joints EVERY single day, “explains cardiologist Dr Cole Esteral. “They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing here. Especially when these folks go on a 15 to 25 burger bender over the course of one week. It’s great for business though, so were not complaining,” finished the doctor as he made angioplasty balloon animals for the kids in the waiting room.

While Lexington Cardiology ran a “Buy 1 Stent, Get 1 Free” Groupon this week, the Gill Heart Institute just relied on good ol’ fashion word of mouth to mouth resuscitation to attract the masses.

“Yeah, we had quite a few people come through this year,” says Gill Heart nurse Jackie. “It puts a lot of pressure on our staff, but the participating restaurants rely on repeat business from this event after pretty much giving those burgers away. So if we don’t do our jobs, and drop the ball like we did during corndog week back in ’09, the restaurants won’t be seeing those customers back anytime soon either.”

Many other businesses were impacted by the Burger Week competition as well.  Restaurants that don’t serve burgers, such as Lexington’s vast array of pizza joints and many of our other health food stores, saw a sharp decrease in sales.

“The problem isn’t the buzz and excitement surrounding Burger Week or the low cost of the burgers. The problem is, with all these people eating burgers, they aren’t taking the time to eat anything healthy…like pizza,” said Little Caesars owner Pappy Julius.

Despite this year’s event being even bigger than last year, the Gill Heart Institute was better prepared to handle the heavy traffic, which minimized many of the issues they saw in 2015. While there were still some injuries reported from people pushing and shoving their way in, this year Lexington police were happy to report far fewer cardiac arrests.

The Forecastle Music Festival, now entering its 14th year, will take place this weekend in Waterfront Park up in Louisville, and frankly, Lexington officials have had enough of it. For the past fourteen years dirty hippies from all around Southern Indiana make the annual trek south for the Louisville music festival, and they bring their parents’ money with them – and now it’s Lexington’s turn to get a piece of that action.

Former Vice Mayor and avid clarinetist, Jim Gray, has helped form a task force for Lexington to get in on the tourism cash cow that is outdoor music festivals. The group has hit the ground running and plans to have their own startup festival, “Fivecastle”, begin later this weekend.

“Fivecastle – not only is it better than Forecastle, but it’s a full one better,” says Festival organizer Chris Cross.  “The festival will take place all over our fair city, on 5 different stages, that big castle out there on Versailles road, both White Castles, and a couple of the Castle Jewelry store locations.  If you like music, just come on over here.”

Cross loves the festival format, but feels that the Louisville based Forecastle has grown a little stagnant with booking acts over the last 7 years.  He opined, “Look, what Forecastle did a million years ago was great, but we think Kentucky is missing out on a whole new group of millennial hippies with their most recent lineup. I mean, who booked this one anyway, someone that was into music back in 2009?” Forecastle being headlined by the likes of the Avett Brothers, Dr. Dog, and Death Cab For Cutie has many asking, “What, was Jason Mraz busy?”

Fivecastle would certainly be breaking new ground here in central Kentucky given Lexington’s limited experience with hosting outdoor music festivals.  Lexington’s only previous attempts at hosting an outdoor music event would be that time Billy Gillispie parked his SUV right next to you at Keeneland with his windows down blasting “Wagon Wheel” on repeat for 3 hours or when Twitch and the Z-Rock morning crew did a live broadcast outside of Platinum Plus.

No one is expecting Fivecastle to be an overnight, runaway success. Forecastle has a huge head start and can hang their hat on media clippings like when Rolling Stone called Forecastle “one of the coolest festivals in America”. However, Fivecastle is already starting to see some buzz since Tops In Lex is hailing it as “another place for us to take photographs of rich white people”.

Lexington’s 2nd Annual Burger Week kicked off on Monday and according to officials, after yesterday’s dinner service, over three quarters of the beef that was salvaged from the February stockyard fire has been consumed. While the fire was tragic, the aftermath has proven to be both juicy and savory.

Officials say most of the preparations for this year’s festivities centered around evenly dividing up the pre-cooked beef supply that remained from the fire earlier this year. “The hardest part of our year was making sure everyone got their fair share of beef,” Organizer Dan Berger said. “We had to keep kicking the folks from the Applebee’s on Nicholasville Road out of line. It’s like ‘buddy, this isn’t even you’re neighborhood!'”

Among those not participating were all area Chick-Fil-A locations. Their attorneys advised them against participation since their main spokescows remain the USDA prime suspects in the ongoing arson investigation according to Lexington Police.

The increased availability of beef has led to some unusual entrants in this year’s festival. Yankee Candle attempted to put another feather in their cap by entering the ‘Called It Macaroni And Cheese Burger.’ Taco Bell attempted to get in on the action with a Burgerito, but the venture was a failure due to their cooks being unaccustomed to working with real beef.

Burger week seems to be getting good reviews so far. Jared Lorenzen was spotted celebrating by sampling burgers from five separate restaurants Tuesday night and, when we notified him it was Burger Week he responded, “What a great idea, that’s why I got these five burgers here. Do they do this monthly or…” Lorenzen trailed off as he took a bite from a Frisch’s Wildcat Bleu Burger. Chris Cross lobbied for his favorite burger place by telling patrons “You won’t get any hassle when you eat at White Castle.”