If Indy hosts the Indianapolis 500 and the Brickyard 400 with larger crowds every year, why is the Super Bowl a big deal? The fan base for Indy car racing is dominated by middle class working families with some amount of disposable income and time to travel to Indy, camp for a weekend, and purchase food and beverages to enjoy the race. While this may mirror the broad fan base for the NFL, access to the Super Bowl comes at a high price. Tickets start in the thousands and closer to the game and nearer the field, tickets can cost $10,000. This draws a different crowd than does Indy car racing. Super Bowl visitors are upper class with connections. They utilize the Super Bowl as an opportunity to make professional connections, facilitate business deals, and increase their social capital. These fans are accustomed to a certain level of service and traveling to a major event doesn’t change these expectations. I suspect this classism is the reason why the Super Bowl is designated a National Special Security Event with the 200,000 fans while the Indy car races with two to three times the visitors garners almost no federal intervention for safety and response.

The early part in the week in downtown Indy has been dominated by locals and families. Parents with strollers and folks wearing Colts gear are everywhere. The weather has been unseasonably warm making this already walkable city a dream combination for the temporary attractions and businesses downtown. As the week progresses more and more visitors, including celebrities like Katy Perry and Ryan Gosling, can be spotted downtown. By Friday and Saturday I suspect the crowds will shift from locals and families looking for photo ops and group corn-hole games to out-of-towners looking for high end shopping and dining and exclusive parties. 

I am sitting in the Emergency Operations Center in Indianapolis. I am surrounded by more screens than I can count with all the emergency response plans and real-time updates at the fingertips of the people at each screen. This is the place where all the appropriate agencies can respond to anything from a cluster of illness to a car accident to a major disaster. This is designed to be the command center of a city to direct resources to respond to needs. Every city of substantial size, including Lexington, has a similar room. This is where the response efforts are coordinated. Obviously, access to this area is restricted. The information available is restricted and the response efforts need to be protected from outside influences. 

Last week the creative content/social media functional team of Hive, presented work-flow to other Hive team members. The podcasters created a demo interview featuring Christain Ecker called “On the Spot.” The social media writers showed their interactive pages created through facebook, twitter etc. connected to the A&S page. And to show what I do in terms of photography here at A&S, I took portraits of all Hive team members at the meeting in yearbook style! Brian and I provided everyone with funky clothes from our closets and everyone had a lot of fun, because the creative content/social media team has a lot of fun doing what they do.

I have chosen the best dressed out of our portraits at the meeting, your prize is pride. Here you go…

1. Brian Connors Manke

2. Dustin Mays

3. Luyi Su

4. Adrian Booker

5. Scott Horn

6. Cheyenne Hohman

7. Christina Buckner