Elections are coming

A Walk in the Park

Today is a concert date. This means the Park has been looking like a disaster zone for the past couple of days. It's also Sunday. That's the day of the week that families often go out for some 'quality time'. What better than to take ths kids down to the park and play?

Come on kids! Let's go to the Park!

Whoa! What's this? It seems the Police has blocked our entry into the Park. Not to worry, there's plenty of alternatives. We'll just have to hike 5-10 blocks. Great exercise for the toddlers!

Come on kids, let's hike to the Park!


First stop - the Vistor's Center. We'll find directions to all sorts of neat things to see and do. All we need are directions on how to get into the Visitor Center!

Come on kids! Let's hike to the Visitor Center!


From the Park, you can find several museums. You have to look carefully, but yep, there they are back behind the dumpsters, PODS storage bins, and several hundred feet of chainlink fences.

Come on, kids! Let's hike to the Museums!


Security is tight. I guess concert-goers are well known scofflaws and harbingers of dangerous items (like water bottles). Everybody gets frisked going in. I studied their procedure for awhile. It seems that men only search men. Women search women. Sometimes, women search men. Not sure why that is, maybe it depends on how much you pay for the ticket?

Come on, kids! Let's assume the cowboy-under-arrest position and get frisked!


During today's outing, I kept wondering who thought this was a good way to run a Park. Then, just around the corner, there seemed to be a clue. I think we found a bust of the 'head-honcho'.

Come on kids! Enough of this. Let's go home!

The grassy knoll

OK, so maybe I'm focusing on portable toilets too much. But, there ARE a lot of them to look at.

These are strategically place on another sidewalk, but with the added benefit of being right below a raised viewing area (the concrete retaining wall in the background.

This is an ideal photo-opportunity, to be sure. Be sure to select your spot early up above, and you will be sure to have excellent viewing of brilliant fireworks exploding in the air, with the foreground attractively filled with dozens green potties. They are green to coordinate with the grass. Yes, a lovely view!

Oh, was that a burst of fireworks going off, or something else?

Proper disposal is important

So we have a tree-lined and dumpster-lined area of the park, it's frontage onto Washington Street. That, for anyone not familiar with the area, is the main westbound thoroughfare through the center of downtown Indianapolis. Could there be a better location for a row of dumpsters (and trash trucks and 'PODS' storage bins)?

Why no, hide them in plain sight, of course.

Reflections

There are lots of water features around the area. reflecting ponds, obscured by floating scum that looks like many visitors engaged in a mass bulemia demonstration recently. Well, at least it doesn't smell too bad.

Diesel power

What would a public event be without lots of diesel generators to power everything? We have a decent mix of small generators with light towers attached to them, and some really serious trailer-style generators. Mmmmm, those exhaust fumes will make your baked beans and greasy spare-ribs even more appetizing.

Hey, where are the kids? Look around, there plenty of light. They must be somewhere. Don't bother calling their names though, no one can here what anyone else is saying because of the clattering engines on all those powerplants.

Let's see generator, food vendors, portable toilets - all within feet of each other. Yes, an ideal arrangement.

Honey, let's go to the park

That's 'honey' as in 'honey wagon', portable toilets and the machines that clean them out. These make for terrific ambiance, assaulting the senses of both sight and smell. For everyone's benefit, these have been strategically located along main sidewalks to guarantee that the throngs of sated barbeque-eaters awaiting their time 'in the box' make it impossible for anyone trying to escape the foul stench to pass through the area.

Truck stop or park?

A real identity crisis here. An inviting greenspace torn asunder by stuff you normally only find on construction sites or in truck stops. The areas designated for parking, and driveways to get you into them, are barricaded and filled with all sorts of heavy equipment: Bobcat loaders, mini haulers, forklifts, gas-powered light towers, cable television trucks with lift buckets extended as makeshift flagpoles and the ever-lovely 'honey wagons'. <

Tents and fence, where once there was a lawn

All the prime viewing areas for today's fireworks are occupied by this shanty town, which will become row after row of food vendors. There appears to be 2 square feet of vendor space for every 1 quare foot of spectator space. Well, that ratio could be more in favor of spectators, but only if people choose to sit in the tree-filled areas. You don't have to be a genius to understand trees and aerial fireworks don't work well together. Generally, people want to see the fireworks, and that's tough to do with a tree in the way.

Beautiful White River State Park - NOT!

Actually, it's a very nice park in Fall, Winter and Spring. But in the summertime, when people really WANT to be outside, the park gets overrun by various commercial ventures. The net result is, when people would like visit the park, it's overflowing with stuff that gets in the way.

On top of that, the Park's parking lot is barricaded and limited to having dumpsters, port-a-potties, delivery trucks and a few "VIP" parking priviledges.

A one-day concert typically leaves its mark on the park for almost a week, counting the setup and teardown times. What's worse, if there are events scheduled a week apart (or so) then the park gets screwed up for half a month or more.

This blog will document the mess and crass-commercialization of White River State Park in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana as these various events unfold in what used to be a clean, quiet and open greenspace that 'regular folk' could enjoy anytime they had the time to bring the family down. Now, it's a crapshoot, and you neve know when your carload of disappointed youngsters will be turned away because some Big Corporation has taken over the public park for their own financial gain.