Moving to Bloomington in a pandemic is a deeply depressing endeavor, almost as much as moving to Indiana any time. Indiana is the proud home of highest percentage of Kard Karrying Ku Klux Klan members. Every fact one learns about Indiana is somehow more depressing than the previous, like, for example, living near the famous Subway Sandwich Shop at IUB (Atwater and Woodlawn), where the then 450 pound freshman Jared Fogle began his epic subway diet on his way to becoming a distinguished celebrity pedophile. Yup.

That said, I met a lot of great people in Bloomington, and met even more not-so-great people. Or rather, I met some of the Best people I’ve ever met, and most of the very Worst people I’ve ever met in Bloomington, Indiana… and definitely had a ton of interesting (though not necessarily good) experiences. I’m going to keep this post open as a repository for some of those memories/experiences.

I lived in Bloomington from August 2020 to December 2022, which was marked by three major phases.

I) Entry Phase – 111 Wylie Street [August – April 2021].
Arrive with my U-Haul of things.
Realize I live next to The Shalom Center, which means a never-ending supply of used needles around my house and people trying my door periodically.
Realize I’m being tremendously ripped off on my rent.
No car, only a bike, so no particularly great way to get around town.
Pandemic, so nothing is open. No one is on campus. Do I have a cool office? Yes. Is anyone in the building? No.
TV? Yes. Lots of bad TV.
Lots of bike rides on the B-Line. Lots of playing Pokemon Go.
Lots of very deliberately making food for one.
Doing extraneous chores.. like power-washing stuff.
I wrote a brutal article about Human Extinction, which, as you might imagine, didn’t help my mood.
Beginning of pretty ruinous anxiety:
Slowly but steadily — the constricting feeling of having absolutely nothing to do, no reason to be here, no way out, all contrasted with having just left the lively and lovely Lowell House with it’s fantastic (even in a pandemic) community.
This was far and way the toughest period.

Resolution?
First my dad helped me buy an 1997 Oldsmobile Aurora, a shitty but pretty cool car at the same time. This made it so I could at least have a slightly bigger radius of travel around town.
Then I took a crazy-despite-COVID roadtrip across the US to visit my brother and nieces in NYC and then up to Boston, during which that car broke down twice, before driving back to Indiana and adopting a dog.

The dog helped. But the real resolution was moving to…

II) Settled Phase – 209 S Dunn Street [April 2021 – Dec 2022]

III) Exit Phase – [August – Jan 2023]

Some Bloomington Characters

People who live in small towns often don’t have much to do, so they drink, do drugs, and generally start conflict.

A sign of good character is having a plan to leave town. The opposite is true for people who have no plan to leave town.

Patrick (many patrick stories)
Patrick “PFord” was the highlight of Phase II and Phase III. He became one of Tempo’s best friends and regularly took him out when I was busy. Drove a light blue Jaguar (2002?) and would pick me up to grab dinner / drinks / sports at Brothers. He was one of the many people who knew the codes to my house, but no one quite abused this power as much as Patrick did. That dude would just bust in at 6am on a Game Day, pull me out of bed, and drag me to Brothers or Upstairs Pub in the name of free Game Day-themed t-shirts. There was a while there where we were seeing Colts home games nearly every third week. I’d find him exhausted / passed out in my house, or pregaming whatever on his way to the next thing. Patrick was a force of Bloomington Nature. This man single-handedly defended 209 S. Dunn Street against an onslaught of some of the worst people I’ve ever met while I was out of town in San Diego — it was amazing, I have the whole thing recorded on my RingCam — just the very worst people coming to take advantage of my house, and Patrick, at the door, no, Patrick: The Door is Shut — kicking people out who should have never been there in the middle of the night. That’s how I knew I could trust this guy with my life. Never have I met someone who could get himself in so much trouble — honestly he probably should have been murdered — and do it with such class. Patrick worked a 6am-5pm, so in Phase III, when I also had a normal job, I’d see him at 5:01 at Brothers for post-work drinks before going to bed no later than 9:30.

Some Characters:

Matt (pogo, soup, bdays, best)

Nick (good ol boy, whiskey,

Tim (drawing, cooking, mustang, king of bbq)

Peyton (brick prognosticator, heart of btown)

PoGo (bbw, yarbian)

Max (dependabilibuddy)

Byron (dependabilibuddy)

Danny/Alex/Michaela/Stathis

The PTSD Angry Marine

The tipsy Professor / his lecturer friend

The Grifter

The strange rich-kid class, now in their 30s.

The Jacket Thieves.