I was there for a wedding. It seemed nice. Nobody got really plastered drunk because this was the California part of the family and apparently growing up in California turns you into the kind of people who have two glasses of wine and then stop.
I was there for a wedding sixteen years ago, when Sally was a baby. I remember thinking it looked as if it had been neutron-bombed: giant wide straight streets with no one driving on them.
Only the flesh-eat roaches were missing.
I have some kneejerk skepticism about this piece, but I also haven't spent time in Indianapolis in the last five years. The walkway shown looks like it would go past the really excellent yarn shop, though, so maybe I should go fact check. (The stuff about the Monon bike trail getting a lot of use has been true for a long time, I think.)
I think Indianapolis is more like Columbus than Pittsburgh. For one thing, they both have the state government, which really helps for getting infrastructure that doesn't suck. Also, both are mostly flat and new (that is built after 1960).
My Chicago relatives call it "Indiana-no-place," because it's in Indiana and thus must be made fun of*.
*Exception: Notre Dame
My brother got a job in Atlanta because of Notre Dame. It really does matter.
Indianapolis has the kind of consolidated government I adore (procedurally).
Indianapolis is a terrible, no good, Colts-stealing hellhole.
At least Baltimore would never, ever stoop to stealing a football team.
It all began in 2010 when the city sold its water and sewer utility to a public trust, reaping a $500 million windfall.
How does that work? It sounds like they got money for privatizing their public utility, but somehow its still public? Whaaa?
At least Baltimore would never, ever stoop to stealing a football team.
Stealing? Of course not. Taking back that which was wrongfully pilfered by the Midwest? Absolutely.
11: Pittsburgh did the same thing. Or a similar thing. Except it was to avoid going broke.
The portion of that bike trail through Broad Ripple is really quite lovely. Several times I've walked the bit between the Belgian brew pub and the ice cream shop, and it's very pleasant. The portion near IUPUI, on the other hand, is kind of depressing and vacant (at least one weekends). One nice bike path aside, I think Indianapolis has a long long way to go before it can become the new Pittsburgh, and I'd bet on Louisville (more old and compact) or Columbus (because it has the state flagship) instead. The combination of the three just-far-enough-away university towns and the proximity of Chicago, is just going to make it hard for Indianapolis to ever really be cool.
I don't exactly understand it either, but I think the water and sewer authority just took on a bunch of bonds to pay for the city for its own creation and the bonds get paid out of the utility bills. It's robbing Peter to pay Paul, except that Paul can borrow money at better rates because it has a fixed asset (the water/sewer infrastructure) and doesn't have a whole bunch of other obligations (e.g. an underfunded pension system).
The problem is that Paul operates with much less public oversight and also fucks up your water bills by trying to get their programming done on the cheap in places that use commas for decimal points and vice versa.
This is confusing. Let's change "Paul" to "Wolf Cub Authority".
I guess that's alright, except for robbing the utility of democratic control to favor the whims of the bond vigilantes.
14: The Broad Ripple part is what I was thinking of. And are you saying Indianapolis could become Louisville or Louisville could become Pittsburgh? I'm inclined to put flat cities against flat cities and hilly ones in a different category. I do think you and Moby are right that Indianapolis is Columbus minus OSU.
I mean, I guess its better than when Chicago just up and sold all its parking meters to Goldman Sachs.
Indiana sold its toll roads to a private company but I don't know that Indianapolis proper has done anything. I also don't pay much attention.
They always do these snapshots during spring/summer, but being an ex-northerner, winter and snow are 4-5 months of the year, and have their own kind of beauty. And I miss it.
And well, snow may not be around much pretty soon.
Columbus minus OSU
And OSU is most of the point of Columbus.
I was saying Louisville is a better candidate the new Pittsburgh, aka the new new Brooklyn. Not saying it will, but I find it more plausible than Indy.
We stop in Indy occasionally on long drives. The children's museum there is excellent, and there are some revitalized retail sections with cute shops and restaurants. But about 95% of what I've seen looks desolate and dilapidated. But if they're trying to be more walk and bike friendly, more power to them.
Also, Indiana generally really sets off my "scary white people" alarm.
How can you say that, ogged, when Visit Indy managed to get at least two black men (well, okay, it could be the same one in a change of clothes) into their two promotional photos? AND the closeup has at least one other person whose hair isn't light brown! It totally looks like 40%-nonwhite gentrification!
I've heard Indianapolis disparaged much of my life, certainly often in Chicago.
On our way to Columbus, we've often stopped at Shapiro's, a remarkable deli downtown near the Hoosierdome.
What I have heard is that it is considered a black-friendly city, at least by some Chicagoans who've relocated there specifically because of it.
It's true that OSU is woven into the fabric of Columbus so deeply that it's hard to think of without it. Biographies of Columbusites, such as LeMay or Thurber usually have a lot of OSU in them.
partly pwned by Thorn, whose opinion is valuable reinforcement.
29 -- is there a confessional blog post somewhere from an "I staged this multi-ethnic photo for the college promotional brochure" photographer? It feels like there should be.
I know nothing of Indy, but I've heard it was a fun downtown.
What I love about Indianapolis is that it was located by putting a straightedge on the state map and making an X in the center. We don't need no stinking natural resources: it's the Midwest.
I'm pretty sure I've never been there; maybe I drove around it en route from Chicago to Columbus IN?
Anyway, the Pirates' top minor league team is in Indianapolis, which seems a little on the nose for this discussion.
33: The Islamic Society of North America is just outside town, and they used some sort of choosing-the-center-of-the-US metric to pick a location. You can see them from the road but they decided against a sign at the interstate exit since the only other noteworthy destination is a winery.
Given that they invented algebra and all, you'd think they would do some kind of population-weighted metric.
I think they may have, actually, Moby, but I don't remember the details anymore.
Algebra is Muslim. Calculus is Christian. Math is Jewish.
I was in Indy for a (work) convention - it seemed nice enough, at least on a sunny summer day walking around that big downtown park.
39: GenCon! I've only been to Indianapolis once, during GenCon, which meant it was overflowing with game lovers of all types. From the little I saw, it seemed nice enough.
Not so much GenCon, no. The world (maybe N. American) Pokémon championship was the weekend before, though.
Holy crap it autocorrected Pokémon.
38. The Babylonians were Jewish? Daniel got it all wrong then.
One time I was going on about how Hammurabi was a stupid punk who wouldn't know a Code if it bit him in the ass, and I got called out for being Anti-Semitic.
The Code of Hammurabi: Up, up! Down, down. Left, right; left, right. B. A. Start.
45: friggin Indo-european chauvinist.
I was born there! I know I pose as a Jersey girl, but I'm technically a Hoosier. (We moved to NJ when I was 1½.)