Centerstage - Chicago's Original City Guide

Articles Sections >> Arts + Words Bars + Clubs Dating Festivals Fitness Food Lifestyle Music Theater Travel + Tourism Who's Who > View All Campus Road Trips Chicago Guides Day Tripping Untrapping Tourism Virtual L Guides

A trip to Indianapolis will show Chicagoans that there's more to Indiana than corn.

Thursday Jan 10, 2008.     By Nola Akiwowo

Travel + Tourism Feed

This here's Indianapolis—home of the Indy 500, a two-hundred-lap race, with toothless denizens and toothsome prizes, and the Super Bowl XLI champion Colts. When my editor asked why Chicagoans would want to visit a city located three hours southeast of a much larger, seemingly more exciting city, I decided to set out to find something sexy about this suburban-city sprawl of over one million people.

As a homegrown Hoosier from Indy (or "Naptown" as the cool kids call it), I'll throw out the fact that hometown boy Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds is so revered there that he has a strip of highway named after him, and the company that brought you Prozac was founded in the Circle City. We also gave you David Letterman and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Jealous yet?

But, seriously folks, why take the time to make a pit-stop when traveling on I-65 through Indianapolis? Because the city is home to a burgeoning art and music scene unknown to many in the Midwest.

Wicker Park, Part Deux

Welcome to Broad Ripple Village, a small part of town that 20-somethings run to for guaranteed nightly activities. Initially founded 200 years ago as its own functioning town, it's seen as a cultural and artistic haven for aspiring creative souls and yuppies trying to unwind after work. Bars, clubs, boutiques, restaurants and holes-in-the-wall festoon the main road, aptly named Broad Ripple Avenue.

The Indianapolis Arts Center, a nonprofit community organization that hosts classes and exhibits, resides a few blocks north of the neighborhood on 67th Street, where today's angst-ridden teens go to become tomorrow's avant-garde singer-songwriters or installation artists. Their worth mentioning in this piece because your trip to Broad Ripple Village will inevitably have you crossing the graffiti-ridden bridge over Central Canal, a favorite post-school and nocturnal hangout for the Village's 21-and-under crowd.

The piece de resistance of Broad Ripple, in my opinion, is The Vogue on College Avenue, a concert hall that doesn't discriminate based on a band's genre or popularity. In the last five years alone, it has hosted John Mellencamp and Joss Stone on the same night, as well as Ciara, Jurassic 5, Cake, Angie Stone, PJ Harvey and Willie Nelson. National band line-ups rotate with a bunch of local groups, keeping the doors open on a nightly basis and luring customers back with drink specials and the promise of checking out some unknowns. Every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday night, it turns into a top 40 dance club.

Goodbye drunken debauchery, hello enlightenment

Venture further southwest in the city to stimulate your mind creatively without the looming fear of a hangover. And, surprise, do it in the nation's fifth largest art museum! (Hoosiers, can I get a snap?) The Indianapolis Museum of Art, home to more than 50,000 pieces of art, is even free!

As a Nigerian-American whose parents speak Yoruba, I may be slightly biased, but it's refreshing to find a space where African art, specifically Yoruba art (of West Africa), holds a place of prominence in comparison to Western art. The Eiteljorg Gallery displays about 350 objects from IMA's library of over 2,000 African artifacts. And keeping in the international stride, the IMA also features Asian art that covers a span of 4,000 years.

If you're not looking for a history lesson, a nice juxtaposition arises in the recently acquired modern exhibitions. "Project Runway" will seem like child's play after strolling through a display of Dior's couture collection. Make an appearance before March 2008 to witness an L.A. artist's vivid take on the Indy 500. (It's almost enough to make me recant my use of "toothless" earlier.)

There it is you skeptical Chicagoans: two great cases out of thousands to meander down to Naptown for some audible and visual gratification. Enjoy!