OnlyHens
By a quarter to seven on Tuesday evening there were already eleven people signed up to speak before the Wichita City Council about potholes, three about property taxes, two about an abandoned refrigerator behind a Dollar General, one elderly gentleman carrying a manila folder approximately the thickness of the Warren Commission Report concerning a sycamore tree.
The room was mostly brown or variant shades of the same. Two hundred or so fixed seats. A 45 foot daïs with seven seated areas for the council members and mayor. A podium center for speakers. Two massive tv screens on either side to indicate the time countdown (from five minutes to ‘get the fuck outta here’) and clumsy promotional videos promoting the city’s initiatives.
The final scheduled speaker, and the one most of the audience of forty-five came for, was Mr. Randall “Randy” DeVore, forty-two, divorced twice, wearing a cobalt-blue blazer over a black T-shirt reading CONTENT IS KING, who had come to petition his municipal government for the constitutional right to fill his house with adult OnlyFans models and make them compete for fried chicken.
Not some fried chicken. Not a bucket. Not even a year’s supply.
A LIFETIME OF POPEYES CHICKEN.
🐣
Randy was a specific American species dedicated to both conspiracy theories and what he called ‘goldmine ideas’ which were just a name for the screwiest plans to make money without actual work he with which he could claim.
He’d tried jobs. He had spent twenty-two years in what he described as “marketing-adjacent spaces,” including regional radio sales, promotional beverage distribution, two months managing social media for a trampoline park, and a brief but tumultuous period selling NFTs representing cartoon hippos dressed as American presidents.
Jobs didn’t suit him.
In 2001, he invested a small fortune on chunks of granite from a local quarry and tried to sell them as Authentic Pieces of Ground Zero.
A year later, he built a library box on his street, incorporated it as a nonprofit library, and managed to receive four grants from the state before someone thought to actually inspect the library. He had to return most of the grant money, pay a few fines, and was barred from incorporation for seven years.
He had started so many random GoFundMe campaigns that he was permanently banned from the site.
During the COVID debacle, Randy started his own OnlyFans with pictures of his feet in various fluids. His feet in a bucket of vanilla pudding garnered seven subscribers—six gay men and a single eighty-six year old widow who tried to negotiate reasonable fees for in-person fetish play.
His LinkedIn profile identified him as:
VISIONARY | DISRUPTOR | CREATOR | ENTREPRENEUR | BRAND EVANGELIST | CULTURE HACKER
His actual taxable income the previous year had been $18,441. Taxable income is an accounting metric. Visionary insight was not a skill that went on an Indeed application.
🐣
A lifetime of Popeyes chicken it was. Randy had calculated this benefit at $31,025 based upon one three-piece combo per week for fifty years, although, as Councilwoman Marlene Graves would later point out, this calculation failed to account for inflation, mortality, changes in franchise ownership, the possibility of Popeyes discontinuing the three-piece combo, or the winner eventually developing what she described as “some kind of sodium situation.”
Randy considered these objections bureaucratic. To be fair, he considered most objections bureaucratic. He considered bureaucracy to be anything standing between Randy DeVore and whatever Randy DeVore had thought of approximately forty-five minutes earlier.
His project was called OnlyHens.
The concept, as described in the thirty-eight-page proposal Randy submitted to the city’s Planning Department, was “a disruptive digital entertainment property combining creator culture, competitive reality programming, food-based aspirational branding, and the democratization of female entrepreneurship.”
The Planning Department described it somewhat differently.
Residential zoning violation.
And thus began one of those peculiarly American civic disputes in which every person involved believed himself to be defending the Constitution while absolutely nobody had recently read it.
Randy approached the microphone.
“Good evening.”
The mayor looked at him.
Randy looked at the mayor. The mayor looked down at Randy’s application. Then back at Randy.
There was a pause of approximately three seconds during which the entire political philosophy of Western civilization appeared to reconsider whether democracy had been a mistake.
“Mr. DeVore,” said the mayor.
“Randy.”
“Mr. DeVore.”
“Randy’s fine.”
“I’ll stick with Mr. DeVore.”
“Whatever makes you comfortable.”
Nothing made the mayor comfortable.
Randy placed both hands on the lectern.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m here tonight because the City of Wichita has decided it has the authority to tell a private citizen what he can do inside his own home.”
From the third row came a small but unmistakable:
“Good Christ.”
This was Mrs. Evelyn Krieger, seventy-three, Randy’s next-door neighbor, who had spent the previous three months photographing vehicles parked outside Randy’s house and maintaining what she called a traffic log.
Randy continued.
“I purchased my home.”
Councilman Peter Sloan leaned toward his microphone.
“With a mortgage?”
“That’s not relevant.”
“You said you purchased it.”
“I am purchasing it.”
“So the bank purchased it.”
“I don’t understand why we’re discussing my financing.”
“I don’t understand why we’re discussing Popeyes.”
“We’ll get there.”
And they would. God help them. They would all get there.
The origin of Randy’s brainstorm had occurred six months earlier when Randy, unemployed following what his former employer characterized as “a restructuring” and Randy characterized as “corporate retaliation against independent thinkers,” watched seventeen consecutive episodes of a reality dating show while eating leftover General Tso’s chicken.
Sometime between episodes fifteen and sixteen, inspiration arrived.
This is the dangerous thing about America. Inspiration is available to everyone. Inspiration is free to all. Randy sat upright on his sectional sofa.
“What if,” he said aloud to nobody, “the prize was chicken?”
This was not yet the idea. It was merely the egg. The chicken would come later.
Randy understood something the old institutions did not. Nobody watched television anymore. People watched CONTENT.
Content differed from television because television required writers, producers, directors, editors, sets, unions, standards departments, insurance, accountants, lawyers, permits, and some vague pretense that the people making it knew what they were doing.
Content required a phone.
Randy owned three.
His original concept involved twelve women, all adults, all professional online creators, living in his four-bedroom split-level for thirty days while participating in what the proposal called “provocative but platform-compliant competitive challenges.”
The city attorney had circled platform-compliant twice.
The challenges included:
THE PILLOW FIGHT OF TRUTH.
HOW ‘BOUT THESE BREASTS?
WHO WORE IT WORSE?
GOING DOWN ON THE DRUMSTICK.
THE BIKINI SPELLING BEE.
And Randy’s personal favorite:
SEXY GRANDMA, in which contestants baked cookies and attempted to persuade three actual grandmothers that they worked in insurance while wearing thongs and half shirts.
The winner would receive free Popeyes chicken for life.
“Why Popeyes?” The mayor asked.
“Brand recognition.”
“Are they sponsoring this?”
“We’re in conversations.”
“Have you spoken to Popeyes?”
“I tagged them.”
“So no.”
“You have to understand how modern marketing works.”
“I understand how tagging works.”
“You’re thinking traditionally.”
“I’m thinking legally.”
“That’s the problem.”
Mrs. Krieger made another noise. This one sounded like a teakettle discovering Cubs traffic.
The first shutdown occurred before filming began.
🐣
Mayor Reginald Case had only been in office for the first half of his first term.
Case had decided to run for the top position in Wichita after his wife, an investment banker, sat him down and explained that he needed to do more with his life than play Call of Duty and go out to Merle’s bar every day.
Yes, he understood that he was a trophy husband. He understood that his wife had him by the balls. His only real obligation to the marriage was to keep fit and stay under the radar.
Reggie’s weakness was powerful women. There was something in him that was turned on by being emasculated and Alice Case-Chau was the prize that fed into his masochism like a professional dominatrix. When she said “Run for mayor,” he did and her money made it so.
He hated every second of it.
🐣
A city inspector arrived at Randy’s home on a Thursday afternoon and found seventeen folding chairs, six ring lights, two inflatable palm trees, a portable stripper pole still inside its Amazon packaging, twenty-four cases of bottled water, four Costco-sized containers of mayonnaise, and a handwritten sign taped to the basement door:
CONFESSIONAL — DO NOT ENTER WHEN RED LIGHT ON
The inspector asked Randy whether he was operating a commercial television studio.
“No.”
“A production facility?”
“No.”
“A business?”
Randy hesitated.
“Define business.”
The inspector closed his clipboard. This was the moment Randy knew he was dealing with fascism.
The notice arrived three days later.
CEASE AND DESIST.
Randy immediately posted it to Instagram.
Caption:
WHEN GOVERNMENT FEARS CREATORS, CREATORS BECOME REVOLUTIONARIES.
It received forty-three likes. Seven were bots. One was his mother.
His mother commented:
Randy call me.
He did not call her.
Instead, using the name of a drinking buddy in Andover, he launched a GoFundMe called SAVE FREE SPEECH IN WICHITA, raising $285, of which $200 came from a man in Tampa who apparently believed Randy was being prosecuted for refusing a COVID vaccine.
Randy did not correct him. Every revolution needs patrons.
By the second City Council meeting, the story had escaped. This is how American public policy now works.
An event occurs.
Someone records seventeen seconds of it.
The seventeen seconds are stripped of context.
The seventeen seconds are uploaded.
Someone adds furious captions.
Someone else adds music.
By sunrise, twelve million people have chosen sides in a dispute they learned existed while sitting on the toilet.
The clip that changed everything featured Randy declaring:
“IF I CAN HAVE A SUPER BOWL PARTY AT MY HOUSE, I CAN HAVE TWELVE ONLYFANS MODELS COMPETE IN A BIKINI SPELLING BEE.”
The clip went viral.
Conservative accounts reposted it as evidence of moral collapse. Progressive accounts reposted it as evidence of government policing sexuality. Libertarians reposted it as evidence of zoning tyranny. Christian influencers reposted it as evidence that Revelation was proceeding approximately on schedule. OnlyFans creators reposted it because, frankly, a lifetime of Popeyes was a pretty good prize.
Within seventy-two hours Randy had been interviewed by four podcasts, two local television stations, one British newspaper, and a YouTube channel hosted by a nineteen-year-old millionaire named Zaxxon whose principal journalistic technique consisted of saying “Brooooooooo.”
Randy’s subscriber count went from 611 to 184,000.
Now something changed. Randy was no longer a nuisance. He was an influencer.
21st Century America recognizes no transformation more sacred.
One moment you are a man screaming at municipal employees. The next moment you have an audience. And once you have an audience, screaming at municipal employees becomes a business model.
The third hearing was packed.
There were Free Randy shirts.
There were Stop Randy shirts.
There were two women carrying signs reading SEX WORK IS WORK who became visibly confused upon discovering that nobody was actually being prohibited from doing sex work.
There were four church groups, six libertarians, thirteen local reporters, twenty-three aspiring contestants. There was a Popeyes franchise operator named Curtis Bell sitting silently in the back row.
And there was Randy.
Cobalt blazer.
Black shirt.
Hair freshly trimmed.
America had called. Randy had answered.
“My home,” he told the council, “has become a symbol.”
Councilman Sloan rubbed his forehead.
“Of what?”
“Freedom.”
“It’s a split-level on North Garland.”
“Freedom can happen anywhere.”
Mrs. Krieger raised her hand from the audience.
“You leave your trash cans out.”
The mayor banged the gavel.
“Mrs. Krieger.”
“Every damn Wednesday.”
“Mrs. Krieger!”
“I have pictures.”
Of course she did. Mrs. Krieger had enough pictures to reconstruct Randy’s garbage collection history back to the Obama administration.
The city attorney explained again that the issue was not pornography, free speech, OnlyFans, chicken, bikinis, spelling, or the First Amendment.
The issue was land use.
Randy smiled. This was perfect. Land use sounded boring. Freedom sounded exciting.
Nobody ever marched through downtown carrying a sign reading:
RECONSIDER MUNICIPAL LAND-USE CLASSIFICATION.
“This is censorship disguised as zoning,” Randy said.
“No,” said the attorney. “It’s zoning disguised as zoning.”
The crowd laughed.
Then something happened. Curtis Bell stood up. The Popeyes franchise operator. A businessman. A taxpayer.
A man who was the face of seven restaurants run by his family and understood that Americans could be persuaded to eat virtually anything if you described it as LIMITED TIME ONLY.
“I’d like to speak.”
The mayor looked at the clerk. The clerk looked at the mayor. The mayor sighed.
“Go ahead.”
Curtis walked to the microphone.
“I’ve been following this.”
Everyone turned.
“I think it’s ridiculous.”
Randy’s face fell.
“But we’ve also sold fourteen percent more chicken this week.”
Randy’s face rose. Curtis looked toward him.
“Mr. DeVore, you say you’re looking for sponsorship?”
The room changed temperature.
Randy leaned forward.
“Yes, sir.”
“How much?”
The city attorney said, “Oh, for God’s sake.”
🐣
Curtis Bell was not much different from Randy with the sole exception of a bit of generational wealth which is an academic way of saying his family had money.
Bell had fashioned himself as an entrepreneur and had spent mountains of his father’s cash seeking his niche business. He had opened a cold plunge spa. He purchased a car wash facility. He had owned a chair massage store in a mall.
All of these ventures failed because, while Curtis had access to funds, he was a terrible businessman. He understood spending money but had no head for the elusive ROI. By the time Curtis had gone belly up on his ninth attempt, his father purchased a Popeyes franchise, put his daughter in charge, and made Curtis the ‘face of the restaurant’ which meant mostly sitting in the place with his laptop open and hitting on the barely legal counter staff.
One Popeyes became two. Then five. Now seven. Curtis’s sister was a whiz at the business of selling chicken. Despite two dismissed lawsuits from the families of two young women levied against Curtis, she managed to make a serious profit in Wichita and kept her brother on a relatively short leash.
🐣
With Bell financing Randy’s concept, the dispute entered what municipal officials later called the sponsorship phase.
Popeyes corporate was not officially involved.
This was repeated constantly.
POPEYES CORPORATE IS NOT OFFICIALLY INVOLVED.
Curtis Bell, however, possessed the independent authority to purchase advertising.
He offered Randy $40,000. Randy countered at $100,000. They settled at $62,500 plus chicken.
The lifetime prize became legally defined as one qualifying meal per week for a maximum of forty years, nontransferable, subject to participating locations, excluding holidays, with a cash value of zero.
Freedom had terms and conditions.
The show was renamed:
“ONLY HENS” PRESENTED BY BELL FAMILY POPEYES LOCATIONS.
The city objected. Randy appealed. The city issued another shutdown. Randy sued.
A free-speech organization expressed interest and then quietly disappeared after reading the bikini spelling bee rules.
A civil-liberties attorney agreed to represent Randy.
A neighborhood association retained counsel.
Mrs. Krieger purchased a better camera.
And then, inevitably, the city discovered money.
Randy’s projections estimated that production could generate $1.2 million in local economic activity. The council did not look too closely to his projections as Randy had effectively worn them out.
Suddenly zoning became more nuanced.
This is another sacred American transformation. A thing is immoral until it generates sufficient revenue. It becomes economic development.
The compromise was announced at a press conference. The mayor stood behind a podium. Randy stood six feet away. Curtis Bell stood beside Randy.
Behind them was a banner reading:
WICHITA: OPEN FOR INNOVATION
Nobody could explain where the banner had come from.
The mayor cleared his throat.
“The City has reached an agreement allowing a limited production period under a temporary special-use permit subject to strict occupancy, parking, noise, safety, sanitation, and operational requirements.”
Randy nodded solemnly as though accepting the surrender of Japan.
A reporter asked:
“Does this mean Only Hens is happening?”
The mayor closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
Randy raised both fists.
“LET’S GOOOOOO!”
Curtis applauded.
Somebody in the crowd yelled:
“CHICKEN!”
Someone else answered:
“FREEDOM!”
Within thirty seconds the chant had become:
CHICKEN! FREEDOM! CHICKEN! FREEDOM!
The mayor walked away from the podium, out to the parking lot, lit a cigarette, and sighed.
His assistant followed him out. “Well, there’s that.”
Case took a drag. “Yeah.”
“So, what’s on the docket now?”
“I’m hungry. I’m going to KFC.”
∞∞∞
Don Hall is a writer, storyteller, and creative mercenary whose wildly varied career—from homeless busker and Chicago public school teacher to theater producer, jazz musician, radio executive, and front-of-house manager at some of Chicago's most iconic venues—has given him an endless supply of stories and an abiding distrust of certainty.
He is the author of Belief Is a Thermonuclear Warhead, co-editor of The Literate Ape, and publisher of the Substack The Attention of Fools, where he writes about culture, politics, creativity, and the glorious absurdity of being human.
