Monday, April 21, 2014

Local gossip...

It has been noted that the husband of The Mouth of Bloomberg, Mrs. Shannon Watts, has (or rather, had) an art gallery in Zionsville, a suburb north of Indianapolis. Just to provide a little local color, downtown Zionsville is made of art galleries and antique shops the way Broad Ripple is made of hair salons and vintage clothing stores:
Zionsville is lousy with "hobby businesses". Mrs. Doctor or Mrs. Esquire has an antique shop or a gallery as a tax write-off.

Seriously, get in your Google car and take a virtual drive around the main drag; it's the sort of painfully twee small town square on the fringes of the big city that has been preserved by the kind of people who love old Victorians and do not wish to dwell in the thunderously gauche McMansions of Bedroomville next door, but don't want to risk living in a trendy in-town neighborhood, either, because there might be black people nearby.
Mrs. Watts' hoplophobia is amusing for multiple reasons. For instance there's the entrenched view of the dwellers in the northern bedroom communities along the Zionsville-Carmel-Fishers arc that the area south of I-465 is some sort of blasted wasteland, a la Robocop's Detroit, a view greeted by bemused headshakes in the leafy streets of Meridian Hills. Proximity to The Big City gives the northern suburbanites an almost pathological fear of crime; the Monon Trail extension into Carmel was opposed on the grounds that it would be an artery of urban crime, apparently for criminals too dumb to use the hundreds of existing streets.

The other is that Zionsville is not in Hamilton County, like Carmel, but rather in Boone County, which is something of a mecca for Midwest gun nuts, since the (sadly, term-limited) sheriff is an adjunct Gunsite instructor and brings trainers like Louis Awerbuck, Steve Tarani, and Pat Rogers to the sheriff's department range for open-enrollment classes because he thinks armed and trained citizens make his job easier. Shannon should look into taking a class.
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10 comments:

  1. My parents' farm is located in what used to be the sticks between Zionsville and Lebanon. They are having to deal with Bloombergian encroachments that would have been unthinkable when I was growing up there. Golf balls in the hay bales. A proposed ordnance to ban discharge of firearms. A neighbor who wants the road paved, because, I am not making this up, he doesn't think it's safe for his daughter to drive her convertible at 50 mph on a gravel road. Oh, and they don't like horses or cows, and complain about both.

    I do not begrudge anyone's right to be a city twit who disapproves of all things redneck and/or rural. But I do have to wonder why they don't just stay in the city where they'd be so much happier.

    All this is, of course, just making my parents even more eccentric and reactionary, which is one thing on the plus side.

    Alath
    Carmel IN

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  2. Yeah, gotta love those 'boutique' places (e.g. tax writeoffs)... And that is sad that the sheriff is term limited.

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  3. Alath,

    "A proposed ordnance to ban discharge of firearms."

    Sucks to be them, because preemption FTW! :D

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  4. I agree it's a shame Sheriff Ken is term limited. He's truly one of the good guys. I see the urbanite invasion where I live in East TN (just outside Knoxville). I don't understand why Urbanites move to the country then try like heck to turn it into where they came from. If that way of life is so great, why did they leave?!???

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  5. Ken is damn good people. Took 150 from him, and it opened up the world as it really is.

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  6. Ha -- Ken (I suppose I should say "Sheriff Campbell") was my 250 instructor. How funny to see his name again, almost 20 years later.

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  7. "apparently for criminals too dumb to use the hundreds of existing streets."

    Yeah, but ya gotta remember: In Carmel, they arrest you on those existing streets for Driving While Black and Driving While Hispanic.

    Hard for Officer Krispy Kreme to do that from his police cruiser on the Monon. He'd have to ride a bike, ride a Segway, or (horrors) leg it.

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  8. My GOD these people are bigoted! ...but don't want to risk living in a trendy in-town neighborhood, either, because there might be black people nearby.
    Apparently there's NO other reason not to want to live in a 'trendy' neighborhood than racism...

    What a disgusting world they live in.

    Sigman, I have family in Colorado and that attitude is exactly what they're fighting all the time; people move there from Oregon or Californicated or wherever to 'get away from (fill in the blank)', then start agitating for laws to make it more like where they're getting away from.
    Also, their precious little flower they 'want to keep away from the gangs' is, often, a member. And starts a branch. And the clowns wonder why their kid is considered worthy of being told 'Screw with my land/family and I'll kill you' by some horrible troglodyte who doesn't understand their specialness.

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  9. Firehand,

    It's okay. I understand that NASALT. (Not All Suburbanites Are Like That.)

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  10. I understand that NASALT

    Yeah, having lived in Zionsville for 10 years (which makes me a rank newcomer), and have had family here for that much again (making them not quite 'old townies', but getting there)...

    ...we're mostly not like that. Mostly. ZPD isn't nearly as hostile as Carmel's Finest.

    As for the shops on Main Street...if I had a dollar for every vanity art gallery, boutique or restaurant that has come and gone, I could afford to live here! (Rent/payments are stupid high, I'm lucky.)

    Also, if Boone Co. residents like Sheriff Ken (as I do), he's tapped Nielsen to replace him. So, vote early and often.

    Alath,

    Yeah, I feel your pain, at least in sympathy. Too many want to live in West Carmel.

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