NEVER in a million years would I pick Indianapolis as a vacation destination! But I was sent there in early June '98 to a librarians' convention. My short stay in "Nap Town" (as it's sometimes called...aka "India-noplace") only reinforces why I left the midwest to begin with. Indianapolis prides itself as a free market, privatized, Republican urban center that "works". Its stifling boosterism, sports mania that is cultlike, and overwhelming dependence on cars didn't work for me. I tried to make the most with what I was presented with: a nearly empty but well scrubbed city center of boxy bank towers and chock-a-block hotel buildings, surrounded by a no-man's land with warehouses etc, with a loop expressway a mile and half out, and then mile after mile of low rise housing areas, some of them quite troubled, and almost all of them completely devoid of character.
Yes, I know I'm being harsh. There ARE some pleasant areas in Indianapolis: the remnants of a residential neighborhood on one edge of the downtown has a few blocks of pretty houses, and an old industrial canal has been cleaned up and turned into a nice place to stroll.A galleria shopping mall has been built between, on top of,and through many of downtown's older buildings. Inside the mall there are clumps of: PEOPLE! But mostly I saw a sea of blandness and mediocrity with people here and there getting into or out of cars. But these things are of course a trademark of Republican America, and Indianapolis is Republican to its core.Fortunately there were interesting things to see and learn at the conference, and several former colleagues were also in town. We could try to "explore" Indianapolis as best we could.
My flight from Newark was very uneventful, and I got a cab from the airport right away. I noticed the driver had a foreign accent and thought I'd try to chat with him a little. It turned out he was from Qatar,and after a few pleasantries, he got on to his main topic: his advocacy of the destruction of Israel, and I would assume, the annihilation of its Jewish population with the help of Saddam Hussein...I humored him as he continued ranting and helpfully pointed out that the Hyatt was just a few blocks away once we finally got to the city center. One thing I agreed with him about: he said, "there's only one kind of person in Indianapolis", and that he wasn't one of them...My hope was that there wasn't only one kind of person from Qatar.
Next morning, I registered for the conference, ran into several people I knew, and looked at a huge variety of online related exhibits for several hours. When my eyes began to glaze over in the exhibit hall, I left to walk around the city center a bit.
Indianapolis has wide streets downtown, and not much traffic on a Sunday afternoon. There were even fewer pedestrians. Actually quite a few of the walkers looked like they might be conventioneers. I went into the gigantic galleria called Circle Centre Mall. Immediately I noticed that every hundred feet or so were huge televisions with loudspeakers on top(!) blaring out a sporting event. I'd never seen such a thing and thought it utterly ridiculous, but Indianapolis is sports-crazed, and I noticed the locals glued to the sets in the food court, although the acoustics were so bad that it was nearly impossible to understand anything coming out through the loudspeakers. I really wondered how people might have a conversation through this din, but nobody seemed to be bothering with something as human as a chat.
The mall was clean as all malls are, and had all the same chain stores as all American malls do. Nothing wrong with convenience, and I'm always happy to see central city malls that succeed in bringing downtown people who otherwise wouldn't do it. But apparently every one of the shoppers drove in, and it didn't look like any of them took a stroll beyond the interior of Circle Centre. So the streets outside were empty, and as I later discovered, that was largely true even on weekdays.
After another look at the exhibits at the conference, I met up with former co-workers for an evening at Planet Hollywood. Planet Hollywood is a theme restaurant, and like most of them, this one celebrated celebrities. Their handprints were embedded on an outside wall with their signatures and often platitudinous words of "wisdom" for the legions of fans that line up to be "near" their favorite stars. In other words, just the sort of place I never go to. New York has a street with half a dozen of these "eateries", each with adjacent celebrity boutiques. In Indianapolis, Planet Hollywood is quite a draw, providing a "cachet" to an otherwise pretty cachetless city center. Conveniently it was built into the side of a huge parking garage.
Inside, the place wasn't really very big and had the look of a cheap movie set. I have no idea if that was the intention, but it was completely unelegant. The acoustics were terrible, but that didn't stop a very untalented band from belting out movie theme songs and other hits I didn't recognize. For some reason a whole dinner was catered, although there were only a few tables to sit, and conversation was practically impossible. I located the old gang, and we stayed as long as we could stand it, and ate our plates of pasta while leaning against a wall. We decided to go for a little walk to escape this oppressive atmosphere.
We walked through an empty Monument Circle, the focal point of downtown historically. We walked to an empty parkway to the north of the Circle devoted to various monuments celebrating American military prowess, of which several were baldly priapic. And then we walked through a nearly empty neighborhood called Lockerbie Square, with some very pretty little houses that were renovated. We all found this area much more pleasant than anything else we'd come across. There were even a few cafes and restaurants there that weren't bland steakhouses.
In the end we settled for a fast-food steakhouse to while away some time. We went to the Steak-n-Shake chain's branch downtown for a late dessert. Other than the Kinko's copy center, this was the only place downtown open all night. We all had shakes and sundaes and then parted. I walked Candy, a former colleague at ABC back to her hotel. Amazingly we were harassed by a very aggressive panhandler, something neither one of us really expected. He followed us nearly to Candy's hotel. I really got the feeling he was up to no good, but fortunately he didn't mug us. I actually felt less safe than I do in New York, which has the advantage of really being a 24 hour city and lots of people in the streets. I took a taxi back to my own hotel, a distance of about 800 feet. Better safe than sorry...
On Monday I went to several seminars on library topics, and that was to be the case on Tuesday and early Wednesday as well. My schedule wasn't too onerous though, and there was some time to look around Indianapolis a bit more. Late Monday afternoon, I decided to go look at a second hand bookstore listed in the yellow pages. There were only a few in the whole area, and I love to browse in used bookshops wherever I go. So I set out along East Washington St. As soon as I passed the last bank tower, I got a little discouraged. That "transitional" area that so many American cities have just beyond the downtown began. What this means for a pedestrian is block after forlorn block of shabby warehouses, infrastructural buildings of unknown use, parking lots, and inevitably, passing through garbage strewn and urine soaked underpasses for expressways and unused railroads. I'd had to pass through just such an area to get to my first real job in high school at a local supermarket on the edge of my hometown. This walk in Indianapolis brought back the unpleasant memories of this job. Finally I gave up and boarded a bus I saw coming down the road. I rode that no more than a quarter mile, because the bookstore was right past the last of the underpasses.
I hesitated actually going into the place. It looked like it was an old trailer expanded with several cinderblock rooms tacked on the back. It reminded me of one of those favelas I've seen in National Geographic: shantytowns filled with homes made by the poorest of the poor in Brazil out of any old pieces of tin and wood they could find. But there was a display window full of books, so I figured I should go in and take a look. It would be another hour before the bus came back to take me back downtown anyway.
Inside the place was stuffed floor to ceiling with books, and not all of the merchandise was girlie and gun magazines. There were actually some good books. I even found a book about Iceland I'd been looking for! By the cashier was a newspaper clipping about the store from the local paper, describing the unprepossessing look of the place and it's inconvenient location, and saying that there didn't look like there was much of a future for secondhand bookstores in Indianapolis. I guess I was lucky to get here before it was swept away in a windstorm or expired from neglect.
The next day I went to a very early seminar and then went to Steak-n-Shake for breakfast. As I crossed a broad street I saw Peter Edelman, a former colleague from my public library days. I stopped in the middle of the street and waved my arms to get his attention. This wasn't dangerous because there wasn't a car in sight on this major Indianapolis street on a working day. A dog could sleep overnight in the middle of this street and wake up next morning unmolested by traffic... We compared notes on the conference, and Peter mentioned he missed the crowded streets of NY. I could only agree, and then I went in for my breakfast. After another seminar and lunch later in the day, I was on my own again. I walked up to the Indianapolis Public Library, housed in a monumental building on the north end of the park with all the military statues etc. After I passed the world headquarters of the American Legion(!), I got to the library. It was a very old-fashioned place, looked underfunded but well used, and had a decent collection of books.
After looking at the library, I went back downtown to catch a bus to an area called Broad Ripple Village. Several tourist bureau brochures touted this as the "Greenwich Village" of Indianapolis, but I wasn't getting my hopes up. The busride took close to an hour, since Indianapolis is so thinly settled, and Broad Ripple is more than 6 miles from the downtown. We passed mile after mile of neglected neighborhoods, with ramshackle houses and many empty overgrown lots, and hardly a car or person in sight. After passing over a creek, the neighborhood suddenly changed. The houses were well kept and there were more cars, but I nearly missed Broad Ripple Road because it looked it was just part of another interchange of two stripmall type commercial streets. So much for an atmosphere similar to Greenwich Village. On one corner was a gas station, on another was a drive-thru bakery, and another corner was just an empty lot.
I ventured further into the "Greenwich Village" of Indianapolis hoping it might at least get a little cosier, but no such luck. Broad Ripple Road itself is lined with one story high buildings of no architectural interest and a dozen or so "eateries"(and "drinkeries"?) with sidewalk terraces--all empty. Probably on a Saturday night, this was the primary straight singles bar area for Indianapolis. There were some streets nearby with boutiques built inside old houses, but with the gravel driveways and spread out lots, I felt like I was in a small country town in Connecticut, or worse, some commercial highway in New Jersey. I found another secondhand bookstore, which I guess made the whole trip worthwhile although I do feel like writing a letter of complaint though to the Indianapolis tourist office about their comparisons to Greenwich Village.What chutzpah!
A few months ago, a book appeared on the giveaway table at work written about Indianapolis by its Babbitt-like mayor. I took a look at it before tossing it back on the table, reminding me of a poem I once read in the New York Times Book Review titled: "The Book of Mine Enemy hath been remaindered!) It was written in pure Chamber of Commercese lingo, extolling how successful Indianapolis has been "overcoming"its urban problems by privatizing everything in sight and "partnering" with the private sector on just about everything not privatized outright. Anything unpleasant is just tucked under the rug. The result is a role model for cities everywhere, according to the mayor. I certainly hope not! Indianapolis IS an example of what Republicans do to cities, which by nature they are suspicious of to begin with...Indianapolis is the most suburbanized "urban" place I've ever come across, although of course I haven't been to Atlanta or Dallas yet.It's the antithesis of the ideas of Jane Jacobs, who has been so influential in Toronto, and to a degree in New York and other real cities. If she were dead, she'd roll in her grave at the ideas of the Indianapolis mayor. It would be interesting to know her opinions about a place like Nap Town. A hodge-podge of suburban developments arranged around a sterile and mostly empty downtown is not a real city, but some kind of perversion. Sadly, this is the trend in America these days.
The conference would end the next day for me, and I decided to go take a look at Bloomington, the seat of Indianu University's main campus, and a college town that I'd heard was one of the best. It's only 50 miles away from Indianapolis, so I boarded the one and only Greyhound bus going there on Wednesday afternoon. An hour later, I got off in the sweltering heat, and dragged my bags two blocks over to the only hotel in Bloomington's city center. After checking in I went for a walk to get a feel for the place. The 30,000 students were mostly gone for the summer, so Bloomington felt as empty as Indianapolis. I noticed there were quite a few ethnic style restaurants and plenty of interesting little stores catering to the student crowd, but I was surprised to see how small the city center of Bloomington is, just a block or two of stores in each direction from the courthouse square. I felt like I was in Maysville, Ky where my mother was from. It's a town of under 10,000. I think that was the case for Bloomington too until not very long ago. All the recent development is around a shopping mall on the other side of the University campus.
I passed the Monroe County Public Library's main branch on the way to the university campus. Obviously Bloomington is full of educated residents who don't mind taxing themselves to build a first class library. It really is a very nice place. Also, Bloomington has a full-fleged bus system that seems much better thought-out than the inadequate buslines in Indianapolis. Most streets had lanes marked for bicycles, and the town is compact enough to be able to walk around easily.
With all its suburbs, Bloomington has about 100,000 people. But it didn't feel that way at all. I'd hoped that since it's a college town, it might feel more like Dutch towns with their wonderful mix of bicyclists and walkable city centers. A town like the Dutch provincial city of Middelburg, which is a place I know quite well, is much smaller than Bloomington, but far livelier, and visually so much more interesting. Again, it's probably better in Bloomington during regular term time, but still, I felt my hopes nixed that Bloomington would be a special place, perhaps even the kind of college town I might want to live out my retired rheumatic years in someday. With a tinge of disappointment, I mentally crossed Bloomington off that list. I felt isolated in this semi-rural area, with Indianapolis being to only nearby big city. The liberals, the gays, the "misfits" of all kinds seem to flock to Bloomington from all over the state, because it is more of a safe space than other places in Indiana. I don't blame them for seeking a safe haven, but I knew I wouldn't be joining them.
I was already ready to leave after a long walk through the IU campus. It's a well cared for and beautiful place, and IU's music programs and foreign language departments are first class. The university library is one of the best in the country, and I could spend a lot of time browsing there. But I'd seen enough in just one day to know Bloomington isn't really my kind of town, just as Indiana is not my kind of state. I decided to cut short my intended two day visit, and backtrack to Indianapolis. I'd originally planned to go to Cincinnati for a few days, so I thought I'd just make a quick visit down there to go to the Ohio Bookstore, one of the biggest used bookstores I know and a favorite haunt.
Since public transportation is so bad between most places in the heartland, I had to take an airport shuttle from Bloomington to Indianapolis, and then take a cab from the airport to the downtown bus station so I could continue on to Cincinnati. I got to Cincinnati in the late afternoon, and stayed at a very, very modest motel chain in Newport, Ky., the very town I grew up in. The motel was known pretty much as a "house of assignation" when I was growing up, and it really hasn't changed much. The working class town full of mostly German-descended Catholics that I remember is now mostly people from Appalachia, what are known in America as "poor white trash" (my background and Elvis Presley's roots, among others.) As I walked around the familiar streets of Newport, huge souped up pick-up trucks or rusting old model cars from the seventies passed me by blaring country music. One of them had a bumper sticker declaring: "My boss is a Jewish carpenter." This vehicle at least did not have a gun rack...
It hasnt been easy to become an elitist snob considering so many of these people are related to me by blood. Just lucky I guess, although I attribute it to being sent to Catholic school, where the idea that an education was the ticket out of Newport took root in me. It'll always be home, but my heart isn't in Newport. It never was to begin with, and I really was fortunate to get away from my hometown.
Cincinnati brings out strong feelings of hatred as well as true love in me, and my travel diaries about a week in Cincinnati in 1997 are now in preparation and will discuss all my feelings about what Cincinnatians love to call the "Queen City". For this trip, Cincinnati was respite from the low level nausea I was beginning to feel in Indiana. It has more of an eastern feel to it than people in Cincinnati would like to admit. They feel their city is a bastion of Midwestern civilization, and compared to New York it's representative of most of what New York definitely is not. It's certainly a more urban, and urbane place,than quite a lot of American cities, at least downtown. I visited the wonderful Ohio Bookstore, and spent some time at the excellent Cincinnati Public Library's main branch, still my favorite library anyplace I've been. I enjoyed the so-called "five-way chili", one of Cincinnati's unique foods at a genuine chili parlour, and I sat in Fountain Square, one of the best central downtown squares anywhere in the US. It was a short visit, but a pleasant one: familiar territory and an atmosphere that I didn't find alienating.
I was only in Cincinnati overnight though. Late on Friday, I took the bus back to Indianapolis, since my flight back to New York would leave from there early Saturday morning. My taxi driver to my hotel outdid the lunatic from Qatar I'd encountered when I first got to Indianapolis. He regaled me with a denunciation of the local mayor as a "fascist bastard asshole". I probably would agree with him, but he wouldn't let me. He just talked right over me. He went on to denounce the mayor of Cincinnati as a "lezzzzzbiun", and then went into great detail into how "those witches" were drowned in lakes in the middle ages. I assume he thought that was a good idea for today...
I wouldn't say I'd miss Indianapolis. I know I'll never be there again, and that's OK with me. I did see some old friends at the conference, and learned some new things to use at work. And I learned more about why I came to New York to live 18 years ago, and why that wasn't a bad decision at all.
The flight back was pretty rough. A phalanx of storms was moving east, and we were right belind it. I thought the growing nausea I'd felt during the flight was under control, but as we landed, I got sick. The noise I made was frightful. A boy of twelve or so behind me yelled "Jeeeeeezel!"as I retched and heaved. The woman next to me commented to her husband: "I guess he's someone who likes to fly less than we do." I felt fine immediately after, particularly since I got all that out of my system (including Nap Town) and was heading home.