Stripping for the Super Bowl

Will weather spare us? Will we have enough hotel rooms? Enough buses? Enough restaurant seats? Will the volunteers show up? Will the circuit breakers hold?

These are just a few of the questions which will plague us through Sunday, Feb. 5, when football actually happens at Super Bowl XLVI. Or through Monday, Feb. 6, when the circus packs up its metaphorical tent and shuffles out of town.

We think we’re ready for the tsunami which will sweep into Indianapolis as early as Friday, Jan. 27, when the first festivities begin and hopefully when the first wave of tourists arrive to spend their money as quickly as a submariner on his first shore leave in six months.

But we may not be, because we surely haven’t thought of all the questions to be answered. Such as this one gleaned from the Dallas headlines before last year’s Super Bowl: Do we have enough strippers? Turns out that the folks in Dallas worried mightily that they might not have enough strippers, if indeed there really is such a thing as enough strippers. (It also turned out that they should have been worried about snow. They were not, ha ha.) One news outlet reported that “Dallas-area strip clubs, expecting a boom in lusting patrons, are scrambling for exotic dancers to meet the expected onslaught.” One club owner said he was searching for 100 to 120 lap dancers for the big football weekend. He was further quoted that the 60 or so Dallas-area strip clubs would require approximately 10,000 strippers combined.

So while the members of the Super Bowl Host Committee worry about that critical issue (as I am), some time should be spent thinking about how the Super Bowl has already changed our lives – and especially the lives of people on the Near Eastside. Many of those programs are outlined in the news report on page 26, and have previously been chronicled in Urban Times.

But enough of long-term improvements. Let’s think about how the Super Bowl will affect us on Sunday, Feb. 5, and the 10 days before that. How much money will those danged fans really spend? How many breaded tenderloins will they eat? And will there be food left for the rest of us?

How will we drive around Downtown? Will we even be allowed Downtown without being strip-searched? Will the strippers be strip-searched? Where will the Homeland Security agents sleep? Do Homeland Security agents like breaded tenderloins?

Most importantly, will I be invited to any of the hip parties? A year ago, the list of parties in Dallas was enough to short-circuit a smart phone.

The guest list at one party included entertainment by Maroon 5, and guests such as Matthew Morrison of “Glee” fame, Marlon Wayans, soccer hero Landon Donovan and actress Hayden Panettiere, plus some other folks whom I am sure if I googled them would turn out to be famous.

Another party drew the Jonas Brothers, actress Olivia Munn, football legends Barry Sanders and Marcus Allen, basketball great Kevin McHale, and a performance by Wyclef Jean.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban threw a bash which drew Spike Lee and others, while another party drew the likes of Hugh Jackman and Kid Rock. Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank threw a party. So did Chad Ocho Cinco. Porn legend Ron Jeremy even had his own party. (Cue the strippers.)

Sounds as if you can add celebrity-watching to the list of activities coming to Indy in about two months. But who else is coming to Indy? In the meetings and briefings I have attended, two facts stick out the most:

- 65 percent of the Super Bowl ticket-holders will be corporate decision-makers.

- No Super Bowl host city has ever been within a one-day drive of more NFL cities.

The first is important because it means that the throng will include people who can in the future make things happen for Indy. No offense to the Joe Six-Pack crowd which comes to the Indianapolis 500 or the Brickyard 400, but they can’t bring us a new factory. If we’re using a racing metaphor, the Super Bowl crowd will be more like the Formula One crowd, only with English as its first language.

The second is also key, especially for the sideshow attraction, the NFL Experience, which will fill the Convention Center for a record 10 days. The theory is that our lack of a beach and/or scenic mountains will be offset by our proximity to eight, count ‘em, eight NFL cities. Ten if you’re a really determined driver. I’d list them, but you’ll have more fun trying to think of them yourself.

Once here, those fans will have a chance to experience much more than the heart of Downtown. Early fears that the core of Downtown would get the only boost are allayed by the mere size of the onslaught. Restaurants in all corners of the metropolitan area will be needed to feed this frenzy. Mass Ave has been designated as one of the official “Super Celebration Sites,” along with Fountain Square, and at this writing leaders of those two merchants groups are working together to get funding for shuttle buses which will have access to the central core of the action.

Fans will come, and there will be an economic impact. Exactly how much remains to be seen, and of course much depends on how many of those folks stay overnight. (For the record, even if you could book a Downtown hotel room for the Super Bowl, which you can’t, you’d face a four-day minimum.)

Local businesses, of course, will know instantly. They’ll be counting the bucks even as the fans leave town. But gauging long-term impact is a much tougher challenge. A year down the road, when a major enterprise announces its move to Indianapolis, we may not really know if the Super Bowl played into the equation.

Truth is, the Super Bowl will allow us to show the outside world our many strengths. But the scrutiny will be intense, and we’ll surely show our warts as well.

And speaking of warts, where will we hide our homeless guys? All the hotel rooms are full. Maybe the strippers have a spare room.

One avid Urban Times reader has brought a problem to our attention: the lack of street addresses on buildings. Dr. Jose N. Tord said he was searching for an address on Massachusetts Avenue recently, “and I was surprised that about 30 percent of the doors, businesses and offices alike, had no number on the street. He observed that the city has an ordinance requiring visible addresses, but no penalty for not obliging. The problem is as bad or even worse in other areas. Businesses lacking those street numbers should fix the problem, if they care about new customers. Anyone – businesses or residents – should fix the problem if they want the ambulance or fire truck to find them in an emergency. “We are not a small town,” Tord noted, “but a complete city.”

Need a place to park near Mass Ave? Try the 400 block of Michigan Street, across from the Athenaeum. Since that strip of spaces was shifted to a “reverse-angle” format, requiring motorists to back into those spaces, they have been consistently underused. The change was made as a safety precaution because of the bicycle lane running through that stretch, but it has obviously intimidated most motorists. Know those irritating guys who back into spaces in parking garages? Where are they when you need them?