Indianapolis is my home. This is a fact that I have detested my entire life. Not due to anything terrible, I’ve had an amazing family life where I have been given immense opportunity and have always been supported in everything I’ve chosen to do. I’ve also met individuals from all walks of life that I consider to be lifelong friends. But, growing up in a racist, bigoted suburban town where I was considered an outsider for not caring to be a down-home country boy was not ideal. My close friends and I were scorned and incessantly teased for dressing fashionably and for playing music; for being into any cultural activities outside of sports; for wanting a meal to consist of something more than a burger and a Bud.
That is until the past few years. Maybe I’m just getting more nostalgic. Honestly though, I think I‘m actually beginning to connect with this city. Indianapolis is becoming cultural. New restaurants, worthwhile restaurants, are entering the city monthly; this goes the same for bars. An array of microbreweries are popping up everywhere and creating stouts, pilsners and IPA’s that I thoroughly enjoy. There are burlesque-bingo shows and Shakespearian plays. Gastro-pubs are on the rise and while it is still a process, it makes me enthusiastic.
I remember the first time I ever noticed my city changing. It was 2009. I’m sure it started before then, but that’s when it came to my attention. I started noticing places that my groups of friends from Chicago and New York would actually enjoy. The first, for me personally, was a little bar in Fountain Square called The Brass Ring.
Fountain Square is just south of the downtown center. My whole life it was a place where one went for two things, to get drugs or to go duckpin bowling. In its hay-day it had been a little area for families to live, thriving with plenty of shops and also the primary theatre district of the city.
Then, due in large part to the construction of the interstates the area deteriorated. The original immigrant residents, mostly German, were forced to move out as their homes were demolished which paved its road to ruin through the 80’s and 90’s.
But in 2009, it had become a haven for the hipsters of the city. One optimistic axiom about the hipster culture is it has a knack of taking destitute areas and making them “hip” again.
This is what had happened in Fountain Square and to my knowledge it started with the Brass Ring. The Brass Ring was the first of the now unrelenting rise of pre-prohibition bars in Indianapolis.
You enter the place and you’ve stepped into the 1940’s, yes technically its post-prohibition era, but you find yourself looking around wondering where Nucky Thompson is. There’s a piano to your right where on many nights a person is plucking away at the keys sending out jazz and big band tunes into the crowded bar. Behind the lively bar there invariably will be a relatively attractive hipster-esque man or woman pouring drinks in front of two illuminated pillars. A mass of alcoholic bottles rises up between the pillars, culminating at a mirrored wall. On each end of the bar a television plays Turner Classic Movies, without fail.
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One of the many cocktails I've enjoyed in the Brass Ring, in front of the illuminated pillars.
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