I’m also an Indy resident of over 25 years, so feel free to PM me, also. You get used to the traffic, although it sucks, it doesn’t suck as bad as Detroit. 
The time issue is pretty much solved. No one is on that ridiculous “we don’t participate” plan anymore. It’s just the Lake County (Gary) and the Evansville areas that are on Central, everyone else is on Eastern.
As for traffic - 465 is terrible, as is anything outside of it. Once you start travelling/living within it, you’re fine. A lot of people commute from areas that triple their drive time, and I never understand it.
The confusing time is a thing of the past. We now change our clocks just like everyone else around us does. Most of the state is the same time as New York but some in the NW corner are aligned with Chicago.
I’ve lived in or around Indy for all of my life. The last 15 have been very happily living and raising my kids in a northern suburb.
The traffic comments confuse me somewhat. Someone mentioned being in the Castleton area which does get bad with holiday shopping, but there are plenty of other options that aren’t as bad. Of course traffic around the track in May is bad but if you aren’t going to the race or one of the related events you probably won’t even notice it. 465 is the loop around the city and even though the posted speed limit is 55 nobody goes that slow. It has been expanded several lanes in several places so it doesn’t normally seem to crowded to me other than specific areas during rush hour.
Let me know what your interests are and I’ll try to give you some ideas.
Say, your job didn’t give that to you as a choice, did it? Like, as in, “Move to Indy and work the phones or get canned?”
'Coz that just happened at my job the other day to a bunch of folks.
Indianapolis is a nice mid-sized city. It’s a bit conservative for most cities of it’s size. It’s the 14th largest city in the USA but that’s a bit of a trick. Indianapolis was losing people so in the 60s the city annexed almost all of Marion county and boosted its population. So it has an urban/suburban feel in many areas. There are still a few cities in Marion County that refused to be annexed.
Anything you find lacking in Indianapolis can be got in Chicago only a few hours to the north.
The only really bad thing about the city is the public transit, which in my opinion is shoddy for a city of its size. But if you own a car you’ll be fine
I’ve heard the Bluegreen office here is very nice though.
(may be a different company, but I just heard today they did that to several people in Florida yesterday)
Let me say welcome as well. Greenwood checking in.
Yup. But it really is improving. If you live near a line, it’s great. They’re trying to re-add busses and lines to the system that have slowly been taken away over the years. There are also a lot of campaigns right now trying to highlight very liveable neighborhoods within the city to start stemming the tide of the rampant suburbanism that is creating all that traffic.
Good luck; hope it fits you well.
I lived near Indianopolis from December of '93 until March of '94.
We lived in a little town that was only about 15 minutes SW of downtown Indy, but felt like it was completely isolated and in the middle of nowhere (that was actually kind of cool; I’d be interested to hear from the locals if that area is still rural.)
PROS:
Rural environment with a large city just minutes away. Lots of streams, lakes, woods, etc.
Downtown Indy is pretty cool.
It was the only place I ever lived where I could walk to a comic book shop, which is ironic because it’s the most rural place I’ve ever lived.
Our house was huge and had a pond and a creek on the property
CONS:
It was unbelievably, absurdly cold. As far as I could tell at the time, that was the coldest winter on record. It was the first time schools closed due to weather since the Magna Carta was written. We literally got frozen into our house because the snow piled up outside all the doors, turned to slush (either from heat escaping from inside or direct sunlight) and then froze solid again.
I found the people to be incredibly rude in general. Waiters/waitresses, shopkeeps, etc.; I was still in school at the time and the kids were just brutal. I faked being sick several times just so I could go home and get away from the bastards. I moved around a lot and never had trouble making friends or fitting in or getting along in school except for there.
Represent Dryfreeze! Grew up on the Southside of the city and remember well when the stripmalls used to be cornfields. I don’t live in Indy any more, but my Mom’s still there, and my sister is a Northsider. I always liked the size of the city, not too big and crowded, with a wide variety of activities for just about any taste, and small enough to feel a part of a community.
They have them downtown, one of the only areas of Indianapolis that has heavy pedestrian traffic.
The city’s success in attracting conventions and events over the years has made downtown a little frustrating for me, as well as for friends who are long-time residents. 500/Brickyard, GenCon, the Black Expo, NCAA conferences, FFA, huge religious groups; it seems like nearly every weekend something “big” is in town that causes the city to bag up and make off-limits half of the parking meters downtown, while garage owners jack their rates, streets get blocked off for concerts or rallies… and those living downtown get to deal with ridiculous noise levels into the early morning (dated a few women who lived in luxury apartments downtown, and couldn’t believe how bad the pedestrian and vehicular traffic noises carried up at 4 in the morning), screwed up bus schedules, overly packed businesses…
…I suppose I should be happy, since downtown was nearly a ghost town in the 1970s and 1980s, and the renewal effort has been a stunning success. Broad Ripple is fun for nightlife and restaurants in addition to downtown, and there are multiple outlying shopping/dining clusters, so even if downtown is congested, there’s always someplace to go. Louisville, Chicago, and Cincinnati are all fairly close-by, when you need to get out of the city. (Me? I’m avoiding this weekend’s GenCon crowds entirely by heading to Louisville this evening.)
465 is no worse than any other medium-size city’s loop, like 270 around Columbus or 494/694 around Minneapolis. With Indianapolis’s nearly-Cartesian address system (x/y axes are approximately Washington St./US 40 and Meridian Ave.), criss-crossing of interstates, and the 465 loop, it’s pretty easy to get within a few blocks of an address you’ve never visited before with an educated guess.
Oh, people answered this thread! Sorry–for some reason it didn’t send me any alerts in my e-mail.
I asked about subbing on behalf of my wife, who was thinking about applying for substitute teacher positions while also applying for… better things…
We gather that if you’re flexible, you can have as much work as you want as a sub, so that’s good.
Why Indianapolis? Because my brother and his wife live there and have two extra bedrooms for us. (A few other reasons besides but that was the main causal factor.)
(If there’s anyone here who knows that I’m a grad student, I’m still a grad student at UCI, but it’s just gotten too expensive out there and funding and jobs have become too scarce and I don’t really need to actually be physically near the faculty anymore so… away we go.)
Thanks for the pointers everyone.
-Kris
Not to make the dope a blog, but I did want to give one small update. I’ve landed an adjunct position at IUPUI, starting in Spring. It’s probably not going to give me enough classes to really support myself, but it’s better than the nothing I was getting hired for in the two other places I’ve lived recently while looking for teaching work. It’s important for me to get courses on my CV, and professional evaluations, so this is a Very Good Thing. It makes the whole Indianapolis move worth it. (There were doubts, I admit.)
Also, I like Indianapolis. They have great museums, college-town-y areas and nice neighborhoods that aren’t too expensive. Thanks again for the advice, everyone.
I believe I was in or near Downtown Indy while visiting IUPUI yesterday, but I didn’t get to look around much. Can you elaborate on this?
Since you’ll be based out of the IUPUI campus, you’re in a great position to do a quick walking tour next time you’re in the area.
Walking from IUPUI, you’re within a 10 minute walk of:
NCAA Headquarters (and the NCAA museum)
White River State Park
Indianapolis Zoo
Eiteljorg Museum (Native American focus)
Indiana State Museum (and IMAX theater)
Beginning of the Canal Walk
Victory Field
Within 15-20 minutes of:
Several good restaurant/bar options
the full Canal Walk
Indiana Historical Society
Within 25 minutes of:
Downtown proper
Circle Center Mall
all downtown attractions (Monument Circle, etc.)
Do you know how I can get info from one of these campaigns?
Just wanted to add another welcome to Indy! I moved here about a year ago and I love it!
Unsung Indy highlights several urban neighborhoods. Here’s a short article on it. IACED also used walkscore.com as an occassional tool.
It’s been 15 years since I lived there, and I was in middle school at the time, so I’m not the best person to ask. But for what little it’s worth, I just remember walking around a lot downtown and going to cool restaurants, stores, the soldiers and sailors memorial, Pacers games, an ice skating rink, etc. I would almost doubt that it’s even still there after all these years, but at the time there was a little independent video store downtown that had EVERYTHING. Even at least some movies that must’ve been bootlegs like Captain America and Fantastic Four.