It’s funny to read what I wrote almost three years ago about my time at the Star, how much and how little has changed over that time. After I left the Star I spent almost a year and a half as the online editor at FIGHT! Magazine, immersing myself in the rhythm, stresses, and strains of daily online publishing. I build large social media followings for the company, learned how to edit other people, and became obsessed with metrics and data.

A year and a half ago Clay Robinson asked me if I’d be interested in using my skills to help manage Sun King Brewing Co.’s growth, so I brought my toolbox to 135 N. College and did what I do, learning a lot about marketing, market research and public relations in the process. I’m happy here. I will always be a part of the Sun King story, a proud veteran of the early days of what I am confident will become one of central Indiana’s defining enterprises. I wasn’t looking for a job but one found me. One I couldn’t say no to.

Sun King is in my heart but Indianapolis is my heart. There’s a lot of hard work ahead of me but I couldn’t be more content. Take this job and love it.

Keon and Alea doing footwork drills.

Some of you might remember a flurry of calls from me last May to help Indy PAL MMA win a Pepsi Refresh grant. Well, we won, securing $50,000 in funding for a not-for-profit youth martial arts gym on the east side. We moved into our space in October 2011 and began growing quickly. We offer free boxing, wrestling, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes for kids and low-cost training for adults who are willing to help out with coaching, mentoring, and gym upkeep. We’re currently serving almost 100 kids and we haven’t really promoted the fact that we’re there beyond creating a Facebook page and Twitter account.

That all changes on Saturday, March 10 when we’ll host a grand opening at our facility. Indy PAL MMA will be open to the public from noon to 2 p.m. and we’d love for you to come check out the facility, meet the coaches and the kids we work with. If you want to learn how to box, come in and check it out. If you want to learn how to wrestle, come in and check it out. If you want to learn Jiu Jitsu, come in and check it out. If you’re curious about one of the weird things I do in my free time (beer, crafts, mixed martial arts, whatever), come in and check it out.

Indy PAL MMA is only the second Police Athletic League-affiliated MMA club in the country and we are 100% privately funded. I think it’s a game changer in the way inner city youth athletic programs are structured, promoted, and funded, but time will tell if I’m right or not. The New York Slice (Facebook | Twitter | Yelp) will be on hand serving up pizza and garlic knots so come out, have lunch, and say hi. We’re located at 700 N. Sherman Dr. in the old RCA plant. Look for the red food truck. Tweet me for directions if you can’t find it. See you there.

It’s no secret that outside of the area immediately surrounding Georgia St., the Super Bowl didn’t deliver the bar and restaurant business that central Indiana’s hospitality industry was told to expect. I don’t think that the city or the Host Committee made claims in bad faith, and even my hidden inner cynic doesn’t believe that we were duped by the dastardly NFL. I think that there was an honest belief, based on the size and geography of previous Super Bowl host cities, that there was no way that Indianapolis’ downtown could handle the expected crowds. The assumption was that the crowd would swell and expand and move out to the Celebration Sites out of necessity. It made sense on paper but like so many things in life it didn’t play out that way. So whose fault is it? No one’s.

I sympathize with the impulse to point fingers and place blame. But at the risk of sounding glib, shit happens. The city – and by that I mean everyone, public sector, private sector – did everything it could to prepare. Some merchants saw a storm of business and barely handled it. Some looked out at empty restaurants and were left handling excess inventory and bloated payroll. It sucks. It hurts. But there are several reasons why it happened and there’s not a whole lot of blame to go around.

1. The weather was beautiful. Big win for the city, bad for bars, restaurants and shops. If it was snowing all week Super Bowl visitors would have had to seek refuge indoors. They didn’t. In fact, they didn’t even seem to worry about food that much, they just bought bottled water and kept moving through the Village. Who’s to blame for that? God? Al Roker?

2. Crowds like crowds. It’s simple psychology. When people see a big crowd they want to be a part of whatever all of those other people want to be a part of. Which is why when the news reported crowds in the tens of thousands packing Georgia St., tens of thousands of people got in their cars or boarded buses and headed downtown to check it out. Crowds also have gravitational force. Once you’re in you stay in until you want out permanently. And once you shear off from the crowd you don’t go looking for another one – you go home.

3. The consumer gets to decide what he or she wants. As much as I’d like to steer people toward craft beer, artisanal produce and heritage meats, the Joe Six Pack doesn’t give a fuck. He may never. So while we can kick and scream about what “shouldacouldawoulda happened if we had just did x,y,z,” you can’t force people to do anything. Nothing that we do in the short term will defeat the billions of dollars of marketing that fast food, cheap booze, and crappy merchandise manufacturers have used to shape the attitudes and behaviors of the public. It’s a long process and we have to keep telling our story in an inviting way and accept the fact that the payoff might be five, 10, 25 years down the road.

Losing money sucks and it’d be nice for it to be someone’s fault. That way you could heap abuse on them and shun them and pretend that anger and resentment serve a productive purpose. But you can’t blame the seed company for drought.

Next…Past Is Prologue

Read more:

Bowled Over Part Four: Us vs. Them
Bowled Over Part Three: Blood In, Blood Out
Bowled Over Part Two: The $100 Million Ad Buy
Bowled Over Part One: Let Us Give Thanks
Naptown To Super City (Video)

I spent several months working with Indianapolis City Market and the Mass Ave and Fountain Square merchants associations to plan, fund, and execute a free Super Bowl circulator shuttle. And the process reinforced a very simple truth that applies to all areas of life.

There’s no business owner versus merchants association dichotomy, no tenant versus versus landlord division, no merchant versus resident opposition, there’s just neighborhoods, communities. A business owner might succeed for a bit while only thinking of herself, her immediate needs, her bottom line. But the moment she falters she’ll reach out to the very people who needed her when they struggled and she might find herself without a net.

Be a good neighbor. Find ways to satisfy your needs in the context of your place and your community. Take responsibility not just for yourself but for the things at the periphery of your reach. Don’t let ‘adversarial’ be your default position. Because there is no us versus them. There’s just us.

Read more:

Bowled Over Part Three: Blood In, Blood Out
Bowled Over Part Two: The $100 Million Ad Buy
Bowled Over Part One: Let Us Give Thanks
Naptown To Super City (Video)

Building on yesterday’s theme of “was it worth it” it’s important to stress that securing a Super Bowl and hosting it successfully wasn’t an end in and of itself. It’s a membership card, a letter of reference, the beginning of a new chapter.

Was it expensive? Yes. Was it painful? In many ways, yes. But there’s always a cost of entry. Whether it’s a personal seat license, membership dues, or a kick in the teeth, you have to get jumped into the gang. Blood in, blood out. Once you are in the club the real work begins. You don’t pay thousands of dollars to join an exclusive club and then sit at home complaining that you’re not seeing any benefit. You can pay all the money in the world to become the official sponsor of an event or an athlete but if you don’t have the time, money and energy to market that relationship, you’re wasting your cash. You have to activate your membership/sponsorship. Indianapolis is the newest member of an exclusive club. Now we have to schmooze, play a round of golf, order a cocktail, have dinner.

Many people around the country doubted that we could pull it off. Many residents of central Indiana doubted that we could pull it off. A small number of fuddy duddies actively discouraged the city’s efforts to secure a Super Bowl, but of course they weren’t successful because fuddy duddies are never successful at anything but being unhappy. Our situation is not unlike the one Chicago found itself in when it hosted the World’s Fair in 1893. Against the supposedly better judgement of many citizens and critics, the event was staged and carried off with great fanfare and city leaders used that momentum to become one of the great cities of the 20th century. Indianapolis can use the momentum from Super Bowl XLVI to own the 21st century but we have to want it. We have to activate our membership in this exclusive club to attract events and employers and investment that will give Indianapolis the tools to improve its infrastructure, transit, and educational system.

We’re here. Let’s do something with the opportunity. More on that tomorrow…

Read more:

Bowled Over Part Two: The $100 Million Ad Buy
Bowled Over Part One: Let Us Give Thanks
Naptown To Super City (Video)

The question of whether hosting Super Bowl XLVI was “worth it” was being posed days, weeks, even months before the event took place. It’s a valid question but the underlying assumptions rarely are. That’s because when many people pose the question of whether or not hosting the Super Bowl was “worth it” they actually mean, “did having the Super Bowl in Indianapolis profitable for me / the city this week?” The hard truth is that even if it wasn’t, having the event in Indianapolis was still well worth the time, money, and effort expended to carry it off. That’s because the true return on investment can’t be measured now or maybe even for months or years to come.

Hosting the Super Bowl is equivalent to a $100 million-plus ad buy. Our city was featured on television screens, newspaper pages, and radio frequencies worldwide and thanks to many of our guests, was the recipient of quite a bit of online buzz. Indianapolis could never purchase advertising, editorial coverage, and goodwill on the scale that we enjoyed for the last few weeks and will continue to enjoy as long as people remember Super Bowl XLVI. That value cannot be understated.

Consider for a minute how you feel about places like New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Mexico City, Bangkok, and Cairo. Chances are that you have traveled a bit but you haven’t been to all of those cities. But I’ll bet that you know something about them, you have a general sense of what they are like, a feeling about the character of the place. But how could you possibly know what New York is like without walking the streets of Manhattan or Williamsburg or Flushing? You know what you know in large part because of the story that the city tells about itself and that media companies tell on its behalf.

Super Bowl XLVI was Indianapolis’ chance to tell our story to an international audience. While Indianapolis is unlikely to become a global city like New York, Chicago, or LA, it still needs to have an international brand. We are starting to build one now because of the Super Bowl. I guarantee you that I will never again have to explain to someone on a plane that I don’t live in Minnesota.

It sounds silly and it’s hard to measure, but you cannot underestimate the emotional and psychological power of having an international identity. Why would anyone want to come to a place they’ve never heard of, and why would anyone want to stay in a place that’s flown over and ignored? Historically they don’t and they won’t. That tide has started to turn and will likely reap benefits that we still can’t predict.

Marketing is part magic and we cast a spell on a lot of people last week. Just because it will take time and a lot more work to make that pay off doesn’t mean that it won’t happen.

Read more:

Bowled Over Part Three: Blood In, Blood Out
Bowled Over Part One: Let Us Give Thanks
Naptown To Super City (Video)

I’m generally critical of our culture’s rush to analyze every event to death and then pick the carcass clean on cable news but the Super Bowl has had a profound impact on Indianapolis and will likely have long-lasting implications for our city and region. Because I am a small business owner, an employee of a small business, was intimately involved with a small element of the larger planning and execution of a Super Bowl Host Committee project, and retain (some) of the objectivity of a reporter, I am in a unique position to comment on the events of the last few weeks and what they might mean. A number of thoughts have rattled around in my skull but rather than try to synthesize them into a single post, I’ve decided to make each thought an individual post and will continue posting them until I’ve run out of things to say.

Before I get into the meat of it I want to extend a thank you to the people who helped Indianapolis shine this week. Thanks to the Super Bowl Host Committee for the years – YEARS – of work that went into pulling off Super Bowl XLVI. Thanks to the visionaries who saw a brighter future for Indianapolis and had the courage to push their plan through despite the grumblings of those who didn’t understand or believe. Thanks to the Indiana Sports Corp for keeping that vision alive. Thanks to the police officers, firefighters, and paramedics who worked overtime – in many cases mandatory – to make sure that downtown could go apeshit in as safe a manner as possible. Thanks to the 8,000-plus volunteers who helped make visitors feel welcome. Thanks to the merchants who prepared for a deluge of business – whether it came or not – so that they wouldn’t be caught with their pants down if and when the crowds came. And thanks to everyone who came out and enjoyed themselves and helped us collectively put our best foot forward.

Read more:

Bowled Over Part Three: Blood In, Blood Out
Bowled Over Part Two: The $100 Million Ad Buy
Naptown To Super City (Video)

Several days ago I saw a note in the Indianapolis Star about WFYI’s “Naptown To Super City,” an hour-long look at how the vision of a small group of city leaders, capital from the Lilly Endowment, and a little luck helped transform Indianapolis from a dying place with no identity and no future to a place that has the ability to host the Super Bowl and the confidence to pull it off. I caught most of it last night when it aired; I learned, I laughed, and I cried a little, too.

Having lived through the transformation – I was a year old when Indianapolis hosted its first NCAA Final Four and I remember peering down through bus windows into a giant hole in the southwest quadrant of downtown – I am deeply invested in the idea that my hometown is a work in progress. While other mid-size American cities stall or decline, Indianapolis continues to find creative ways to grow and improve. I stayed in Indianapolis in part so that I could help build it into a first tier place to live even if it will never be a first tier media market. If you love Indianapolis half as much as I do, or if you’re skeptical about positive ripple effect of constructing convention centers, arenas, and stadiums, please take an hour and watch this.

And if watching the Hoosier Dome implosion all over again makes you feel nostalgic, I know where you can buy a piece of history.

What do we want? Magical solutions! When do we want it? Now! What do we want? A return to an imaginary past! When do we want it? Now! What do we want? Something unrealistic and unattainable! When do we want it? Now!

Indiana’s socialist son Eugene Debs purportedly said that, “The American People can have anything they want, trouble is, they don’t want much of anything.” And the next worst thing to not wanting much of anything is to want something unrealistic and unattainable. So what exactly do we want? What do we want for ourselves, for our families, for our communities? I can only speak for myself, for my kin, for my city, but it’s a conversation that we need to start having privately, publicly, and regularly.

At his swearing in, Mayor Ballard called for Indianapolis to become the capital of the new midwest. While the goal may be vague it’s definitely not unrealistic or unattainable. There’s every reason to believe that in 20 years Indianapolis, and Indiana at large, can be a national model for educational excellence and urban renewal, a regional center for sustainable agriculture and manufacturing, and a national hospitality hub because we have the resources and expertise needed to achieve those goals.

Indiana is home to many, many fine colleges and universities, several of which are research centers for social science, engineering, life sciences, incubators for small businesses of all kinds. They play a huge role in improving life in the state but they are the last stop on the Build-A-Brain assembly line. There can be no long-term economic growth and social progress without a serious and sustained commitment to early education and public K-12 institutions. Indianapolis has has done it before and I believe that if we set the egos and personal interests of adults aside we can make public high schools like Arlington, Arsenal Technical, Crispus Attucks, Howe, Manual, and Shortridge into national models of excellence again. We need free, compulsory pre-school. We need better administration, better funding, more effective use of that funding, and we need more buy-in from parents. Indiana may never be the higher education hub that Boston is but given the resources at our disposal there is no reason that Indiana shouldn’t have one of the best-educated populations in America. We have the way but we have to have the will.

Center Township’s eroding property tax base played a huge role in the decline of Indianapolis Public Schools. As long that revenue plays a major role in public school funding there has to be a focus on home ownership and full occupancy of our city-center neighborhoods. There is so much surplus housing in this city, so many brownfields, and the fact that it’s not being taken advantage of on a mass scale is a failing of the private sector. It’s much easier to build and sell a cul-de-sac in a soybean field than it is to revitalize existing neighborhoods. But Indianapolis has to fill in the thousands of unused or underused lots in its urban neighborhoods. Home ownership isn’t a magic bullet but it’s a key ingredient in the social and economic stability of a neighborhood. Business follows residents, not vice versa. Productive properties generate higher tax revenues. Higher tax revenues make higher levels of city services possible. We have the technical expertise, the creativity, and the capital to transform blighted neighborhoods into models of integration and urban sustainability but we have to want to do it. We have the way but we have to have the will.

Indiana’s capacity, resources, expertise and institutional memory position us perfectly to take the lead in urban/sustainable agriculture. In 50 years, American agriculture will have to look a lot more like Trader’s Point Creamery than the corn or soybean monoculture of the last 50 years. There’s no reason our automotive manufacturing plants can’t be retooled to churn out parts for alternative fuel and mass transit vehicles, there’s no reason why assembly plants can’t be assembling those same vehicles. It’s already happening in small pockets but we need a state-wide initiative. Private capital and public servants need to be a little less willing to continue investment in and subsidization of unsustainable business practices and a little braver when it comes to identifying what’s next and setting course for that destination. We have the way but we have to have the will.

Local news media report tourism numbers on a regular basis but I don’t think the majority of Hoosiers realize just how crucial conventions and tourism are to the Indianapolis economy, and by extension, the state economy. Millions of people visit Indianapolis each year to visit our arts and cultural destinations, take in sporting events or participate in conferences and trade shows big and small. Without this business and the investment it inspired, downtown Indianapolis would have dried up and blown away when I was a kid. We do a great job of attracting and retaining special events and attractions but there’s no reason we can’t do more. I’m confident we will – much of the investment in downtown amenities that was justified for our role as a Super Bowl host site is really aimed at attracting more large conventions and retaining them for long periods of time. To put it another way, the pedestrian mall on Georgia St. was finished for the Super Bowl but it was built for FFA.

There’s no reason that in addition to expanding the calendar of conventions and conferences that Indy can’t return to it’s mission to be a hub for Olympic and amateur sports. Yes, the Super Bowl is a huge get, but did we have to abandon all the events that got us there? It kills me that we demolished the RCA Center. It kills me that the Natatorium is no longer a gem in the U.S. Swimming and Diving program. It kills me that we let the Velodrome decay for a decade before getting Marian University on board to revitalize it. There’s no reason why Indianapolis shouldn’t be in the regular rotation to host NCAA and NAIA tournaments and championships in all sports and U.S. Olympic Trials in summer games events. Hell, there’s no reason why 10 years from now there isn’t a Major League Soccer franchise sharing Lucas Oil Stadium. We have the way but we have to have the will.

There’s no shortage of people here doing good work and fighting the good fight. But there needs to be more of us and we need to be collaborating on a larger scale. We can have anything we want but we have to want something first. What do you want? And how badly do you want it?