XLVI: Pennies from Heaven for Locals
Everyone’s doing it—cashing in, that is. Unwitting visitors showing up in Indianapolis for the Super Bowl festivities will find themselves in a fishbowl. With a bunch of hungry cats staring in at them, licking their chops.
A quick search on VRBO.com (“vacation rentals by owner”) turned up pages of local listings, most at truly eye-popping rates. One place in Broad Ripple, a furnished half-duplex with three bedrooms, is being offered at $18,000 per week. A colleague tells me he knows of a downtown condo that has already rented for $8,000 per day, for six days. You do the math.
The Indianapolis Star has reported that downtown parking spaces are being offered for as much as $399 per day. And that’s unfurnished.
“I got mines,” as they say in hip-hop. A few weeks ago, an editor at American Way, the in-flight magazine of American Airlines (estimated readership: 4 million), called my office. He was desperately seeking an Indianapolis writer to knock out a Super Bowl-related cover story for the January 15 issue. Fortunately, I picked up the phone and got the assignment. Cha-ching! My regular employer, IM, even made a few simoleons selling photos for the piece. Cha-ching! Cha-ching!
A week or so later, another desperate editor, this time from NFL Magazine, called the office looking for someone to write a last-minute “local’s guide” to the city. Cha-ching! Cha-ching! Cha-ching!
Go check out the articles—or don’t. I get paid either way.
