Tag Archives: signs

So Many Signs: Indianapolis Redecorates for the 2024 Coming of Taylor Swift

October 29, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments
Giant Taylor Swift mural on the front of a Marriott whose face is all blue glass. She has a pink guitar.

Attack of the 300-Foot Taylor Swift!

TAYLOR SWIFT IS COMING! TAYLOR SWIFT IS COMING! TAYLOR SWIFT IS COMING!

Here in Indianapolis, our local media are positively ecstatic to have anything to talk about besides politics, homicides, and the city’s increasingly toxic levels of road construction. For those just joining us: Ms. Swift’s Eras Tour will be stopping in Indy this weekend to play three nights at Lucas Oil Stadium. While she and her entourage take over the place, our Indianapolis Colts will be staying with buddies in Minnesota until someone calls and gives them the okay to come back, which will depend on how they do Sunday against the Vikings.

Tickets to her sold-out Hoosier trilogy are still available through the usual auction sites and scalpers for four-digit sums, so don’t expect live coverage from me. Downtown hotel rooms are sold out across the board, though some are available around the edges of town and in the suburbs. Tourists are welcome to fill those up as well, but please be aware, when planning how to get from your hotel to the stadium, the first several hundred Google results for “mass transit Indianapolis” are a long list of pipe dreams sprinkled with a few nice tries.

In preparation for the influx of hundreds of thousands of folks into our modest city, they’ve gussied up our downtown! In addition to the amazing colossal Swift temporarily pictured on the giant blast-shield Marriott on West Street, thirty-two new street signs have been posted at various intersections, pretending to rename them after her songs and albums. I work downtown four days a week and own four of her CDs, so I felt I ought to do something resembling participation. Monday afternoon I sent myself on a side quest at lunchtime to take a long walk and see how many of those signs I could spot before my feet were ground into mulch. Please enjoy this gallery of results, a fraction of the total signage out there for the gawking all this week!

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The Road to Dragon Con 2021, Part 8 of 8: The Welcomes Back

August 16, 2022 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Doughnut Dollies donuts!

Donuts: our consolation prize as we sadly left Dragon Con behind once more.

It all comes down to this, as every MCC miniseries does: the final chapter in which our energy levels are shot and we have to make the laborious reverse transition from heightened fun times to workaday responsible adult life via a less exciting path that carries us back to the humble holder of all our stuff.

But first: donuts!

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The Road to Dragon Con 2021, Part 6 of 8: A Taste of Tennessee

August 12, 2022 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Goat burger!

A most righteous burger alongside a side dish that looks like a sandwich that got mugged and had its bread stolen. It tasted better than it looks.

Chapters 6 and 8 are short, easy ones to scroll through by design. This one’s meant to celebrate The Second-Best Meal We Had on This Trip. Longtime MCC readers who followed our last two Dragon Con trips — or, for that matter, anyone who’s been to D*C themselves — knows full well no one tops Aviva by Kameel. Anne suggests I should call this micro-mini-gallery The Best Meal We Had on This Trip at a Place We’d Never Been to Before, but that’s just too awkward, even by my standards.

My secondary objective was to highlight the nice place we found in Tennessee. Hence the title. However, I made the mistake of fact-checking a few minutes ago and discovered it’s part of a small chain, not the local independent stalwart we’d assumed it was. And the chain isn’t even based in Tennessee. Clearly this entry was never meant to be a winner, but I maintain it is meant at least to exist. On we go, then.

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Are We Cured Yet? Are We Cured Yet? Are We Cured Yet? Are We Cured Yet?

November 18, 2020 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
COVID-19 Vaccine!

“…but we might have some toilet paper and Clorox wipes left, if you ask nicely.”

“COVID-19 VACCINE NOT YET AVAILABLE” read the dual MS Word signs that have been hanging on the doors of our local Walgreens for at least a week, possibly longer. I can only imagine the conversation that sparked them, probably held a thousand times daily:

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The October 2020 Birthday Trip, Part 3: Woodland Signposts

November 12, 2020 By in Indiana, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
trail 5 pink hat!

“Hi, I’m Posty the Trall Post! It looks like you’re trying to take a walk! Can I help you choose a direction?”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a one-day road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

Well, at least we did before 2020. Anne turned 50 this year, but for work-related reasons involving the Age of Coronavirus, I’m currently not allowed to leave the state of Indiana for the foreseeable future. Anne did some local travel research, a longtime hobby of hers (you have no idea how many of our future road trips she’s already mapped out), and came up with a few things she thought would be fun to do on a Saturday in autumn. Naturally we had to start with a long walk around someplace with millions of leaves changing colors. When you live in Indiana, it’s what you do. After picking up some sugar for breakfast, our first attraction of the day was McCormick’s Creek State Park, southwest of Indianapolis…

…which was a pleasant place to hang out and get some exercise, but also oddly had far more signs than the average state park. Someone in charge thought, what better way to liven up nature than by footnoting it every few hundred feet?

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Our 2019 Road Trip, Part 1: Southern Accents

September 16, 2019 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Bojangles chicken sandwich!

Bojangles tosses its hat into the great internet chicken sandwich war of 2019 with their new Cajun Filet Biscuit, a spicy patty topped with pimento cheese.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, there was a prologue:

Every year since 1999 my wife Anne and I have taken a trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. My son tagged along from 2003 until 2013 when he ventured off to college. We’ve taken two trips by airplane, but are much happier when we’re the ones behind the wheel — charting our own course, making unplanned stops anytime we want, availing ourselves of slightly better meal options, and keeping or ruining our own schedule as dictated by circumstances or whims. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

For years we’ve been telling friends in other states that we’d one day do Atlanta’s Dragon Con, one of the largest conventions in America that isn’t in California or New York. We’d been in Atlanta, but we hadn’t really done Atlanta. Hence this year’s vacation, in which we aimed for a double proficiency in Atlanta tourism and over-the-top Dragon Con goodness…

We’ve already shared the fun true story of our very first Dragon Con in twelve excessive parts, seven of which were devoted to Best Parade Ever. We have a few outtakes tucked away for later use, but for now we’re ready to move on, a week after everyone else already did.

Before we went to Dragon Con, there was the road trip to get there, and the good times to be had before the great times at the big show.

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A Maudlin Moment about Moribund Marquees and Missing Metropolis

June 4, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

State Theatre, Anderson, Indiana

Every empty marquee tells a story:

Once upon a time, there was a community gathering place where citizens and neighbors shared adventure, laughter, heartbreak, tension, jingoism, victory, sorrow, dreams, and amazement in a cozy, rarefied atmosphere bereft of stereo sound, digital imagery, comfortable upholstery, or ads teaching you baseline smartphone manners. Many a childhood memory was born there, many a relationship begun there, many a care in the world set aside for two hours inside a temporary escape hatch offering inspiration or respite.

Something something something, and then it closed forever and now it’s an eyesore, and did you hear about the acrimonious lawsuits raging behind closed doors as we speak, but hey, at least we have a Redbox kiosk on every other corner. And they all lived in isolation ever after.

The name of the town changes like a Mad Libs answer. Sometimes the part about the lawsuits is redacted because no one cares enough to sue anyone else over its demise. But the rest of the story is frequently the same.

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