Feature Stories

Editor’s Note: This story is a companion piece from our archives to the April 2012 Local Beer issue of the magazine.

Editor’s Note: Indiana Pacers hero Reggie Miller was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame on April 2. Here, his companion interview to the cover story from IM’s April 2005 issue.

Stevie McGuire sought safety and peace of mind living on the streets of downtown Indianapolis. Instead, he met a tragic—and shockingly burtal—end.

The Internet is still in its infancy. We haven’t even reached Web 3.0 yet, so just imagine what Web 10.0 will look like. Crowdsourcing will be a huge part of what comes next. I flew back from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas recently, and I’m beginning to think there will be no more secrets. There are even shirts that say “What happens in Vegas, stays on Facebook and Twitter forever.” I just ordered a new video camera that you wear on your ear like a Bluetooth headset. It’s uploading video constantly. I think a lot of people will wear jewelry that records every minute of their lives and uploads it to the cloud.

Even now, on off-duty drives through downtown, some of them will seek another route, any other route, to avoid the shadow of the nine-story building at Meridian and Vermont streets. For most of the city, the Indianapolis Athletic Club is an elegant landmark from an earlier time, an old-boy haven where Democratic Party elites once hosted parties and presidents. But for firefighters who crouched in its halls 20 years ago, it is still an imposing reminder of one of the Indianapolis Fire Department’s darkest nights.

“This isn’t the first time he has faced adversity—on the field or off it,” deputy editor Daniel S. Comiskey wrote in IM’s 2012 profile of Jim Irsay. “His addiction to prescription painkillers made him an unpredictable presence in interviews before he publicly admitted and beat the disease.”

“It’s a tough situation for Peyton. He’s not used to being in this situation. We rode the elevator together after the Tampa Bay game, and I told him he has to cover himself with optimism. He knows he can’t will his way through this. It’s not like having a broken leg, and if he were tough enough, he could play through it. It’s not that kind of injury. And the number of years he has left is unknown. He’s 35. You hope that he can play until 38, 39, 40.”

A tiny blonde who looks nowhere near her years—she is sometimes mistaken for one of the hip, youthful servers—Hoover has achieved success through a variety of means. The type of restaurant she introduced to the city came at the right time. She ignored the cautions of industry veterans who told her that she could not prepare foods the way she wanted to. And, above all, she focused on details to an extraordinary extent.

“Okay, what are we doing here?” shouts conservative pundit Tom Rose as his three boys and several dinner guests pull up chairs for a Friday-evening meal at his northside home.

“Zach is the model of a modern LGBT candidate,” says one political observer. “He has done it all on his own. He didn’t wait for the party boss to tell him it was okay.”

Editor’s Note: Somehow, despite his hailing from England, the loss of Dan Wheldon has hit our community close to home. For years now, we have felt especially attached to him. There are the two 500 wins, certainly—including this past edition’s dramatic and improbable finish—but it was his warmth and humor that made him a favorite with fans and media alike. Once, in July 2007, he even invited us in to his home, letting us showcase his condo in our pages.
As a tribute to his all-too-short life, we offer our May 2005 profile, published in the same month he first won our race. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the IRL and to his family.

Editor’s Note: As Richard Lugar has lost his battle for a seventh U.S. Senate term, we look back at our trip to Russia with him, published in December 2007.

“Our leverage is a moral argument,” says King. “It’s about money being siphoned from an important local institution.” Although the Guild has never gone on strike, King planned to go into negotiations with every available option in his briefcase.

Editor’s Note, Nov. 7, 2012: Despite outspending his opponent, Glenda Ritz, by a 10-to-1 margin, Tony Bennett was unseated as Indiana’s schools czar on Nov. 6. Here, our September 2011 feature profile on the man who catalyzed a lot of visceral responses—both for and against him

Five miles east of Monument Circle, on the far edge of Irvington, the railroad runs past factories and warehouses and a tiny asphalt racetrack. There is no infield, just a rubber-streaked oval two-tenths of a mile in circumference, little bigger than a hockey rink, surrounded by a wire fence and grandstands of bleachers and folding metal chairs. During the week, the Indianapolis Speedrome stands as empty as many of the abandoned buildings on the industrial east side. But every summer Saturday night, the place comes alive with beer-swilling fans who’ve paid $11 to watch four  hours of action, semi-pro drivers trading paint in everything from go-karts to jalopies, all of it just prelude to the mayhem that is the main event, a little-known battle royale of bent metal that may just be auto racing’s truest spectacle: the Figure 8.