So begins my cross Indianapolis walk (from beltway to beltway), in a strip mall with lots going on
Metaphor alert!
Ps; once again, Indianapolis is another reminder just how diverse, most of “ fly over America” is
Just next to the Family Development Services is the check cashing place. Great
A+ name
Them damn midwesterners and their, uh, array of stores catering to the lived reality of large & diverse resident immigrant groups
Indianapolis has a Limelight nightclub also. Just like NYC. Take that urban elites!
No credit needed
Feels like this style brick wall used to be everywhere at one point 80s?).
American cities are far more diverse than most know, but I still wasn’t expecting to find these in an Indianapolis strip mall
Ps; the huge strip mall just across the busy road has even more stores for an Arabic speaking population
Found a sweet smal breakfast place the locals just love
There is a lot of hurt in this country
I like fish!
Feels like the cart collecting crew did their bests, then just eventually gave up
Scooter Parking Only
Right next door to Fat Cat Bar
Yes there is a strip mall bar called Sakitumi, yes it is already open, & no I won’t go in. Yet
Really sweet neighborhood of smaller well kept homes
Just me being artsy
Across the street from each other
Metaphor alert!
In middle class African American neighborhood. Reminder (to mostly my conservative friends) just how important religion is in these communities
this cart has a face. You can’t tell me otherwise
These two buildings are straight out of Hospital central casting.
Christo lives on!
Wait. Indianapolis has/had a monorail??!!!!
What in gods name
Guess the canal makes up for this
This is an absolute hot mess
This can’t be right. And you call yourself the heart of America?
Last tweets hard on downtown Indy. But, architecture aside, it has a very nice, friendly, & spacious vibe. And this park is nice.
This kinda came out of nowhere
Ps: for those asking, I do talk to lots of people on my walks, but don’t include them In these live tweets, because not really fair to them given this is mostly silly off the cuff stuff.
Include the talks (in some form) in my longer pieces
Don’t wanna be that guy all the time, but it is amazing how colorful & cool things are if stop and look
Including old Vern’s
Both wanna and don’t wanna know what’s going on here
Give this pole a rest!
Driver, who stops to let me cross (a real rarity), yelling out window after I gave him a thumbs up — “Oh, I am an asshole, but I try to be a considerate asshole”
Metaphor alert!
Neighborhood just dramatically changed. Amazing how quickly & often that happens (not only in Indianapolis)
Three miles of a street pocketed with all the usual signs of addiction & desperation, of people tweaking on sidewalks, then boom, artisanal brewing companies
There are some pics I can’t pass up, even if they don’t say anything
It was a brutal sidewalk free car intense last mile, but there it is. My goal. Done. Across Indianapolis From beltway to beltway. 19 miles all told.
Thanks for all the kind words. Going to go have a beer.
Please subscribe to my Substack, where I write longer pieces about these walks. (& will eventually post something about this and other walks in Indianapolis)
Since I walk about 3 hours a day, I try a lot of audiobooks & podcasts and so I stumbled onto this weird podcast about the history of rock music and after five minutes I was about to eject it because it sounded like it was made by a crazy guy in his basement, but his absolute dedication, encyclopedic knowledge, and understated enthusiasm for the history of the rock music won me over and now I think it might be the best podcast ever.
I’ve never seen a better example of amateur professionalism. No corporation would allow him to make the choices he has made, and that is a such great thing because his intense passion is on full display
Believe me. Give it thirty minutes. You are going to want to eject after two. Stick with it.
Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) is one of the most unique cities I've walked. Almost zero tourist, because very few people even know it exists.
I wouldn't recommend it for someone looking for a relaxing vacation, but if you want to really feel your in a different place, a bit detached from the rest of the world, it's safe, inexpensive, and interesting
About ten miles outside of Bishkek is a 3 square mile market, built, lego like, from shipping containers.
Almost entirely self-regulated, it started after fall of USSR as a place to swap goods -- where they came from, and how, nobody asked, or cared
Slapped down in the middle of an otherwise bland neighborhood of mud roads and single homes it's now Central Asia’s largest marketplace.
A complex of stores inside freight containers selling anything and everything you want: Toys, TVs, Jeans, Bras, Bikes, Spices, Trinkets, X-mas decorations, Tools, Gas Masks, Hijabs, Watches, Wall clocks, Slippers, Shampoo, Stuffed Animals, and on and on.
All of it imported from China, Russia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, South Korea, India, Iran, etc. Carrying on, in a very modern way, Kyrgyzstan’s Silk Road tradition.
It’s a microcosm of our very material global supply chain world. A visceral picture of how our world of stuff works. How the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the things that fill our homes, come from all over, shipped across the globe in rectangular metal boxes.
It has it's own restaurants, a mosque, and keeps expanding.
Traveling to places like Bishkek has helped me understand history better. Not from going to museums, or historical sites, but from seeing how people physically live, especially those without a lot of money.
The marketplaces of Bishkek, or Istanbul, are not that removed from the marketplaces of ancient Rome, or Paris in the middle ages. They are crowded, loud, busy, colorful, communal, and self-organized. Or to put it simply, messy.
When you go to a historical monument, like the ruins of an ancient building, or a preserved cathedral or mosque, you get the entirely wrong image of the past. You see quiet, dignified, empty, sterile spaces. Places where you are scared to touch something. Places where people walk around in hushed voices.
That’s nothing like what the past was, and you can see that in the present in places like the shipping container market.
Update on this: I went to eye-doctor, & no I don't have cataracts. The doctor did mention, almost all her customers now complain about same thing, to extent some have completely stopped driving at night.
The primary offender is newer cars with very bright headlights -- Tesla's are particularly bad, & with them, it's not about the height, but only strength of beam.
There's also less awareness on when to use high beams, especially with younger drivers.
The combo of it all is, driving at night, especially in rural areas, has gotten dangerous. It's not some silly annoyance thing, but a real problem.
Limiting beam intensity, is an example of what competent Government regulation is supposed to be about -- curtailing selfish individual behavior, with limited benefit, that's directly dangerous and harmful, in a clear physical way, to the larger community.
Even hard core libertarians can get behind this one.
we'll be up against the Big-Beam-Industrial Complex. But think of bugs life. We can overcome!
Why is this happening? Spend more than one week, not visiting, but residing, in any big city poor neighborhood, or in a depopulating mid sized city anywhere in US, and you will get it.
Unless you have the strongest ideological blinders on
Pundits need to add Anomie to their list of buzzwords.