Amid national news last week that federal funding for bike trails is in danger of coming to a screeching halt, Indianapolis announced progress in the other direction. The Indy Bike Hub YMCA, including the city’s first commuter facility for bikers, is on track to open in August.
“I can’t tell you how many people walk up to them, touch them, and just bow their heads,” says Greg Hess, an Indianapolis firefighter who was part of Indiana Task Force 1—a FEMA search and rescue team that joined the recovery efforts 16 hours after the two towers came down in 2001. “You don’t really get it until you actually see them,”
As the Circle Citizen ambled around the Monument during lunch today, she noticed a sidewalk sign advertising a free organ recital inside Christ Church Cathedral. “Free” being one of her favorite words, she stopped inside the chapel—by far the oldest building on the Circle. And it embarrassed her a little that she had never visited this spectacular landmark. The first chords of Bach’s “Prelude and Fugue in E Minor, BMV 548” w
Go figure. Just when Indy was getting some flash-mob momentum (both the IMA and Butler dance students, pictured, busted hot moves on the Monument’s steps last year), the city’s best stage for these impromptu performances went dark for the whole season. With the Monument closed for repairs, the exhibitionists have been going elsewhere to spring song-and-dance numbers on the masses. In case you missed it, an unidentified group performed “Do-Re-Mi” in Circle Centre on January 3; members of the Dead Unicorn Society stood still for a freeze mob in the airport on April 2; the Indianapolis Opera made dramatic use of the City Market mezzanine on May 4; and the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir powered through “Carmina Burana” at the airport on May 28.
I grew up on the south edge of my hometown, through the woods and over the railroad tracks from Joe Johnson’s farm. I knew little about Joe Johnson, whether he was married or had children, except that he drove a gray pickup and had a ravine in his woodlot filled with rusted farm implements, lard cans, worn tires, sagging bed springs, the odd toilet or two, and the everyday detritus humanity leaves scattered in its wake.
It was late on a Thursday evening in Austin, Texas, and, anticipating a pre-dawn flight home the next morning, I was eager to settle into my hotel room, watch Grey’s Anatomy, and call it a night. The desk clerk at the airport Embassy Suites handed over my key, and I made my way to my assigned room at the end of the hallway. Trouble was, the room was not a suite—at the Embassy Suites! Instead, it occupied an awkward corner, with no separate sitting area, and featured an old-fashioned tube TV situated at an odd angle to the bed. If you can’t even score a suite at an all-suite hotel, you’ve encountered some pretty bad luck, as travel accommodations go.
Had the pedestrians and shopkeepers of a less-enlightened metropolis complained about aggressive panhandling (as they did in Indianapolis a few years ago), their leaders might simply have opted for rousting the offenders. Not here. In 2008, we also got donation boxes on downtown sidewalks for the benefit of the homeless. They seemed an admirable symbol of compromise: While pledging to keep an eye on problem beggars, the city also acknowledged that combating homelessness is a cause worth raising money for. Even the boxes’ signage echoes the compromise, managing to scold (“No one should be bullied to give a handout”) and implore (“Give Real Help”) all at once.
Rooftop envy is now in season on the Circle. You can’t tell it from the street, but several low-rise buildings boast decks that employees can use. Maybe you’ve never even considered the concept, because Indy isn’t one of those overcrowded cities where the use-every-inch lifestyle prevails. Most of our rooftops are forgotten tar-ritory.
Although First IB holds a lease on the prime street-level location until 2014, building management is shopping the space around–and evidently not having much luck. When CC emailed agent Stephen Adams, he replied, “Are you interested in leasing the corner space?” No, the Circle Citizen is quite comfy in his 40 Monument Circle digs, thank you. But he’d be delighted to call a bar his neighbor.
