Visitors can tackle history within blocks of stadium
INDIANAPOLIS — You’re just in time for the Lucas Oil Stadium neighborhood tour, where we find out how many different things can be within 12 blocks of a Super Bowl.
The New York Giants are staying three blocks north, the New England Patriots 11 blocks northwest. The governor is four blocks away in the statehouse.
This must be the first Super Bowl with a bean factory in the south parking lot. That would be N.K. Hurst, a three-generation family business in that location since 1947, and not about to move, even when authorities unsuccessfully tried to sue under eminent domain when Lucas Oil was built.
So there it sits, this brick bastion of defiance, in the very shadows of Super Bowl XLVI.
“It was about 18 months of tough moments, but the public really stepped up for us,” said company President Rick Hurst, a football fan who turns his parking lot over to tailgaters for Colts games. “The NFL has been great to work with. They wanted us to move out for the week, but we just can’t do that. Dry beans sell in the winter. So we’re closing for a four-day weekend next Friday.”
Elvis Presley played his last concert 12 blocks away. Mike Tyson went to prison for raping a woman in room 606 of the Canterbury Hotel, four blocks away. Next to the Canterbury is St. Elmo Steak House, in business since 1902. The website lists all of the famous names who have dined there, including 10 Super Bowl-winning coaches.
The NCAA passes judgment on naughty schools from its offices four blocks northwest. Seven blocks east is Lilly pharmaceutical company, which gives the world — and possibly some coaches — Prozac.
Two blocks east is the Slippery Noodle Inn, the oldest bar in Indiana, serving drinks since 1850.
“We’ve had a couple of murders inside the place. The last one was 1953, so it’s been awhile,” said Hal Yeagy, owner with wife Carol. “They did shut down the brothel at that point.”
John Dillinger’s gang hung around the bar, and Yeagy can show you bullet holes in one of the walls.
Slippery Noodle will be open at 7 a.m. on Super Sunday, bullet holes and all. Or you can go to Mass. Not 800 yards from the Super Bowl and all of its secular excess sits St. John the Evangelist Church, amid the Super Bowl Village, where the music is loud, the beer flows and the customers line up to ride the zip line, which basically is getting attached to a wire 100 feet in the air and then flying down the street for 800 feet.
The Rev. Rick Nagel will keep his church open all week, with friendly volunteer greeters and three Masses on Super Sunday. A sign outside says, “If you thought the zip line was a thrill . . . Come inside and spend some time with JESUS!!!”
First thing you find inside is a giant cutout of Benedict XVI, for photo ops. What says Super Bowl more than posing with the pope?
Given some behavior you see at a Super Bowl, a handy church is not a bad idea. “The line for confession hasn’t been long,” Nagel said. “But maybe later in the week.”