Time for local love

The latest Indianapolis Monthly has a depressing cover for fans of local food. I haven't talked much about local food or businesses lately, and this article has re-motivated me. Here's a few places I've been recently that I recommend:

Taiwan Tea House. I have to say that it is the best Chinese place I've visited in Indy. I don't get to Castleton much, but now if I happen to get stuck there I have a go-to place.

Zest. This gem is only a few blocks from my house, and do they ever serve some rocket fuel for coffee. Great breakfasts.

Brugge. Can't go wrong with quality craft beer, crepes, and fries with 12 dipping sauces.

Sam's Saloon. What a sweet atmosphere. Former brothel built in 1873 that has been beautifully preserved. Hope they get better beer, though.

Vaquero Chicano. Freshly made chips, right out of the frier. Tacos are the real deal.

And a place to keep an eye on in Fountain Square:

Brass Ring Lounge. Has anyone been there yet?

Randomly Miscellaneous

Link thread:

• That 10th Street post seemed to garner a lot of interest, and I was led to this link. That link eventually led me to these grand plans for East Washington Street, as well as this. The internet is cool.

• A new Urban Times is out. The print version led me to this project at 22nd and Talbott St. How messed up is it that the project has to apply for a variance in order to build a structure that is similar in size to the one that was torn down? Also, the Fringe Festival will restore the structure for their new home. I'm very glad this festival has been so successful.

• A first-hand look at a green roof installation.

• Worth Your Attention continues to rock my world with it's small-town and good food love.

• Dig-B proves that the Allen Plaza building is older than I had expected.
  

East 10th Street

10th Street, from Woodruff Place to Sherman Drive, might be the longest stretch of dense semi-commercial development in Indianapolis. It does not have the best reputation for safety; however, during my walk, the street was alive with activity. I have always wanted to feature it on this blog, as I feel it has great potential, as long as it isn't abandoned.

The new community center. I like the integration of the bus stop with the building:

Community Center's Extension, which is an historic apartment.

Across the street:

More of the community center building:

Just beautiful:

I like peace:

Tick Tock lounge. I love that checkerboard pattern:

The corner of Rural and 10th. Somebody has put a lot of time into this area. Later, I saw a cop car careening around this corner with its lights on, right out of a movie.

The original "green roof":

Character:

Here was a surprise, a new, modern looking school:

Some good stained glass in this building, didn't get a very good capture of it:

The old Rivoli is still standing. May it continue to do so:

Someone decided to paint some of the boards:

Looks in good shape:

Can Do Neighborhood Initiative

I found this flyer at Yat's at 54th and College. This looks like the same group that is working on the Uptown project; however, at a larger scale. I've commented on my mixed feelings on this project before, but I must admit that I'm a sucker for their optimism. The flyer includes a tiny rendering that is new to me, and it looks to be a larger building than is shown on the website. The older commercial building that faces 49th Street has been painted recently, which is interesting because I believe the developer plans to take it down.

It is interesting that they push for an IPD station at that corner for a couple of reasons:

• IPD recently left their station at 42nd and College.
• 49th and College is not a typically high-crime corner. I lived there for almost 2 years and never felt unsafe. Perhaps this is to battle perceptions as opposed to actual crime. A search into the city's crime data for the past 90 days seems to confirm this, although there have been a few armed robberies in the area. However, there seem to be other areas of the city that are crying for an IPD post much more than 49th and College.

Overall, I admire the initiative to revive College Avenue's nodes. I would be interested to see what would be discussed at the meetings.

Riding the Rails to DC

This is the time of year when wanderlust tends to kick in for me. I looked back on my calender and notice that I haven't traveled for more than a weekend. However, this year, I finally decided to put my money where my blog is and reserve tickets on Amtrak. I look forward to taking pictures of some rarely-seen scenes in Indy, such as actually boarding a train. The train heads to Cincinnati, then down the Kentucky side of the Ohio river valley, and down the New River Gorge in West Virginia before heading into Virginia near the Shenandoah Valley. The trip will end for us in Washington DC, where we'll spend 5 nights before heading back on Amtrak.

The trip takes place Labor Day Weekend. I plan on posting a recap of the state of our passenger rail system afterwards.

A Sense of Place in South Indianapolis

A strange phenomenon that I have noticed is the propensity of Indy citizens to refer to almost everything south of Troy Avenue as "Greenwood." This may be because a driver down US 31 or Meridian Streets will not notice much of a difference once they cross the county line, so that it blurs together. However, there are many other cases in Indianapolis where the county line is blurred, and you rarely hear of the Marion county portion of the west side as "Avon" or the north side as "Carmel". The west side is generally just called the "west side", whereas the north side is "Nora" or "Castleton".

Fortunately, the south side has a perfectly acceptable small-town name in "Southport." Southport is actually a city (not a town), with its own mayor and business district. It is in better shape than the historic towns of Nora, Avon, or Castleton. It even has its own Street Addressing system; only Beech Grove shares that distinction. Yet you rarely hear the south side referred to as "Southport". I'm curious of the thoughts from this blog's readers as to why this has happened.

Indy Fantasy Land

Time to indulge in a Strange Maps-style posting. As a life-long map geek, this map from the Skyscraper City forum was quite exciting to me. The map does not mention which mode of transport this is, so that is left to the reader. I'm going with a subway, because I can't imagine something of this scale above the ground.

Map notes:

• Union Station is not the hub, in fact, there is no true hub. Perhaps the four main downtown stations suggests that that loop will connect with a bus route similar to the sadly defunct blue line.
• The light gray and mustard yellow routes would probably not attract much ridership.
• "James A Allison Memorial Stadium". I had to look up who that was, but it makes sense. I did figure it had something to do with Allison Transmissions. It looks like this map predates the naming of the LOS.
  
• If I could take a train to the racetrack, I might actually attend the 500 one of these years. I'm actually considering riding a bicycle there, which defies a normal person's logic, but makes perfect sense to me.
• Connecting IUPUI to Broad Ripple on a single line is a stroke of genius.
• Who needs more lanes on 465?

The Pickens Plan

T. Boone Pickens has released a video and plan for our energy future. It certainly looks interesting. I have a few issues with this:

1. Natural Gas is still a non-renewable fossil fuel.
2. Can the auto-makers, which seem slow to adjust to changes, update their fleets?

However, I also think there are some good points here:
1. Wind power can help rural America. Also, Pickens doesn't mention this, but there are also some exciting new technologies where smaller vortex-like turbines can be placed on the tops of buildings in the cities.
2. This section:

"In 1970, we imported 24% of our oil.
Today it's nearly 70% and growing.

As imports grow and world prices rise, the amount of money we send to foreign nations every year is soaring. At current oil prices, we will send $700 billion dollars out of the country this year alone ? that's four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.

Projected over the next 10 years the cost will be $10 trillion ? it will be the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind.

America uses a lot of oil. Every day 85 million barrels of oil are produced around the world. And 21 million of those are used here in the United States.

That's 25% of the world's oil demand. Used by just 4% of the world's population.

Can't we just produce more oil?

World oil production peaked in 2005. Despite growing demand and an unprecedented increase in prices, oil production has fallen over the last three years. Oil is getting more expensive to produce, harder to find and there just isn't enough of it to keep up with demand.

The simple truth is that cheap and easy oil is gone."

I think this is a very important point. He may just be looking out for numero uno, but I also happen to think he's right. ANWR and offshore drilling are estimated to produce about 1-2 million barrels a day. Even in the most optimistic scenarios, there just isn't enough oil there for us to "get off of foreign oil".

Downtown Carmel

My wife and I took a bike ride up to Carmel on Sunday.  Carmel seems to ignite firestorms on Indy-related blogs.  I just think it's a nice termination for a bike ride.

This building may be a bit too much, but they've still put quite a bit of thought into it.

This is a continuation of the above building:

There is a bit of history on Main Street.  I like the color of this brick.

I really like this:
Some more history.  I'm guessing this was a general store:

If this building was proposed in Indy, would you look forward to it?  I know I would:

On the other side of the Monon:

A little Pre-Holiday Inspiration

Streetsblog has posted an excellent 10-minute long video on Copenhagen's evolution towards a more livable city. Enjoy.

Harmoni Midtown

The Indianapolis Business Journal has an article about a new project known as Harmoni. Possibly taking their cue from Project for Public Spaces, the group's intent is to reclaim neighborhoods from speeding vehicles to make them more pedestrian and bicycle friendly. 3 of their first 4 proposals focus on North Meridian Street (the 4th is at 39th and Illinois). The group even has a longer term goal of adding a streetcar in the area. I've added their upcoming meeting to my calender if you're looking for more information.