Sabbatical, the Indianapolis bar/restaurant in Broad Ripple,
on the Strip at 921 Broad Ripple Avenue, closed its doors for good on July 12,
2015, victim of struggling business fortunes and an only-three-year lease set
to expire. But it leaves behind many
fond memories for being an arts-and-original-music venue that was especially
attractive both to aficionados and to inveterate square-pegs-in-round-holes
such as myself. And it went out in a
splash, with four days of partying and special music events that featured some
of Indianapolis’s most talented “other alternative” musicians, plugged-in
acoustic folksingers and folk-rock bands, and ended its final night with the regular
Sunday-evening show sponsored by Rocketship Comedy. All in all, it gave us a good run for the
money in its three-year tenure, a mightily unorthodox business finally felled
by the humdrum of “business as usual” in
a burg never friendly to alternative voices that weren’t safely tamed by conventionality.
So the building that housed independent Sabbatical now
stands empty in Broad Ripple, Indianapolis’s supposedly “hip” business
venue-neighborhood that, despite the patina of picturesque pseudo-vintage
storefronts, is dominated by conventionally-upscale chain boutiques and bars
catering to frat rats and suburban shoppers who prefer a “hipster” ersatz to
any really bohemian, creative, or unorthodox substance. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s We’re
Only in It for the Money LP delineated
with eerie prescience just what Broad Ripple has become: “Every town must have a place where phony
hippies meet.” Indianapolis itself—its
smug complacency exposed in novels by its two most-talented Native Son contemporary
authors, Dan Wakefield’s Going All the
Way and Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions—killed
Sabbatical, though the apparent cause was a limited lease that was only the
tail end of the lease held by a previously-failed Mexican restaurant. Yes, Indianapolis itself, characterized in
the Vonnegut novel above as “the asshole of the universe,” really killed
Sabbatical. That and, of course,
commercial greed; but a commercial greed above all seeking to maximize profit
by kowtowing to the lowest-common-denominator conventionality and generic
standard. This is simply standard
operating procedure in Indianapolis, also known as IndiaNOPLACE: a big city bereft of any kind of truly urban
ambience outside of staid business districts and a plethora of shopping malls
where everything looks essentially the same because everything is essentially
the same. Because, at bottom, Indianapolis
is a burg straight out of those angry novels by Sinclair Lewis, cities that are
really only overgrown small, insular towns which Lewis immortalized in his
telling phrase, “dullness made god.”
But the three owners of Sabbatical tried—Dave Queisser, his wife
Jeannie, and their associate, Kevin Phillips.
Queisser, an experienced bar owner, had previously owned the Hideaway
and Locals Only, places where those who were unconventional and loved original
art and music always felt at home. To
Dave, hanging original artwork on the walls by local artists and having bands
play music of all genres that was different from one which one heard on the
radio, and was more often than not originally composed, was just part and
parcel of the way he did business.
Certainly he wanted to make a living at what he did; but that was not his
sole raison d’etre. Creating a quality
ambience was. Creating spaces where
artists, musicians, and the unconventional and unorthodox could feel
comfortable and belonging was as integral to his business models as was having
a bottom line that didn’t end in red ink (which, unfortunately, Sabbatical
did). Call him a businessman with a
vision; and yes, a vision that in the end, both for Locals Only and for Sabbatical,
was undermined by landlords focused on high-profit “economic development” of
their properties.
From its beginning in late summer 2012, Sabbatical tried to
be a bar/restaurant that was different.
But its very location in Broad Ripple was antithetical for that—because
over-commercialized Broad Ripple already had too many bars, far more
conventional bars that catered to a far more conventional clientele than the
type that would find Sabbatical congenial.
And there were space limitations in the building that housed Sabbatical
that interfered with making Sabbatical the kind of place that the owners had
really wanted it to be. It was much
smaller than Locals Only had been, and lacked the stage that Locals Only had for
the musicians and bands. That meant that
the musicians had to make do in a corner on the floor of the second room,
walled off from the bar area, which was in another room; thus, a built-in physical
setup that separated the patrons of one room from those in the other—an obvious
hindrance for musicians and audiences alike.
Further, Broad Ripple is plagued by lack of parking space, and the space
that is available is either almost always metered or, if on private lots,
expensive. Though Sabbatical did have a
small parking lot in the back, space was readily taken up—often by people who weren’t
customers of Sabbatical; but it was just too expensive and bothersome to
regularly patrol for miscreants and tow them away. Moreover, the exotic, rather gourmet, menu
Sabbatical tried when it first opened did not suit well the burgers-and-fries
tastes of the regular Broad Ripple denizens, and had to be regularly downsized
and conventionalized lest food rot away unsold.
So even the large crowds eating and drinking on the front patio the
first two years of Sabbatical did not translate into profitability—and because
of the thick stucco walls that trapped heat and humidity Sabbatical’s inside
was never much of a draw, and was usually only sparsely occupied.
Last, the square-pegs-in-round-holes ambience of Sabbatical
itself simply did not attract because it was far too unconventional for the
conventionality that is at the heart of Broad Ripple’s present-day bar and
partying-hangout appeal—as a place where white fraternity types and business
majors can rub shoulders with the white upscale suburbanite young and not be
disturbed by those who are brazenly different, who lack mainstream aesthetics and
values, and who, moreover, are decidedly of a darker skin color and cultural
sense. It is telling that the two bars
in Broad Ripple most noted for their overflow patronage, Kilroy’s and Brothers,
are both chain establishments with studiously antiseptic décor, bar versions,
essentially, of a Steak ‘n Shake!
Now Sabbatical’s building is empty—but it’s not the only
emptiness Sabbatical left behind. I felt
this keenly on the Tuesday and Wednesday after closing, when I became
distraught that there was now no longer a Sabbatical to go to for a friendly
brew and banter with Gina, the regular bartender those two days. And that I deeply missed both that and
her. Along with TJ, Jeff, Krista, Damon,
John, Chris, Steve, Jeannie, Kevin, and the other good friends I felt I had
there, some of whom I may never see again.
And how I will miss the friendly-mocking banter of Dave Queisser, his
genial insults that paradoxically made me feel appreciated, his chuckling “dismissal”
of me as one utterly lacking in social skills, but nonetheless intelligent,
accomplished, and a valued customer all the way back to Hideaway days. Now I had lost another ambience where square-pegs-in-round-holes
were welcome, because in Indianapolis few places welcome
square-pegs-in-round-holes. They even
try to get rid of them despite their being paying customers, as was true with
the Sinking Ship, transmogrified by the greed of the owners from a hipster bar
to yet another frat-rat sports bar. Here I had been deliberately insulted and
told never to return by the manager sitting five seats down, despite being a
paying customer, because I was no longer
the kind of ultra-conventional customer the owners wanted! There
just aren’t many places in this justly-named IndiaNOPLACE that want offbeat
poets and writers coming in. Now I am
left with only the Melody Inn, primarily a late-night music venue that is accepting
of both me and my writing, and where I am greeted and made to feel welcome by
the socially-liberal-yet-fiscally-conservative libertarian owners—when the
place is open. Yet that is but all there
is now, unless I settle for a generic bar just for a brew absent any sense of belonging,
of feeling truly welcome; but if it’s only brew I wish, better to just stay at
home and drink by myself! Another
emptiness that has enveloped me now that Sabbatical’s gone.
And there is a bigger loss also: the art and music that
Sabbatical had, something carried on by Dave from the Hideaway and Locals Only
that made them places that both the customers and the musicians enjoyed. That certainly was something that was felt
those four days of Sabbatical’s final partying; and was felt by me personally
when local musician Jethro Easyfields invited me to the mic to do some Lenny
Bruce/George Carlin-inspired stand-up comedy.
Because only at Sabbatical would I have been so invited, and only at
Sabbatical would I have been appreciated for that. Alas, now it’s gone. The crowds just aren’t there for those who
publicly perform the offbeat. Only poets
come to poetry readings, effectively making them read only for themselves and a
small coterie of others, never for broader audiences; and the same for comedy
also. We who do original spoken-word art
aren’t welcome by the general crowd, who only want to hear karaoke and DJs. Even live music, especially if it’s original
and not just copies of what’s heard on the radio, isn’t much wanted anymore
here in IndiaNOPLACE, to the chagrin—and unemployment—of my many musician
friends. Ah, sad but true—only the
staid, the familiar, the derivative, and the conventional has market appeal
anymore.
It wasn’t always that way, but is now, and what
was once a vibrant scene in Broad Ripple precisely for what Sabbatical offered
has now been absent for a couple of decades.
Back in the 1980s Broad Ripple had a vibrant live music scene, where
punk and alternative predominated, throngs of the young walked the streets, the
Patio nightclub drew enthusiastic crowds for unconventional music and ambience,
the telephone poles and city light posts were pasted over solidly with colorful
fliers advertising alternative cultural events.
But all that was too much for the conventional merchants, who wanted to
clear the place of the “clutter” of improvised fliers and skateboarding youth
who weren’t twenty-one and big spenders in the bars and boutiques, and didn’t patronize the strictly commercial
ersatz the merchants offered. So the
youth on the streets were chased off, new venues opened that served alcohol and
thus forbade youth to enter, posting on telephone poles and city light posts
was punishable, and black youth in this predominantly white part of town seen
as potential “criminals” The police
“helped out” by aggressively prowling for those suspected of partying too much,
and ever-so-“helpfully” arrested them for drunk driving or public
intoxication—putting yet another chill on the street scene, and thus ensuring
“respectability” for the merchants, who weren’t selling anything original, but
were only franchising national and regional chains. Loss of innocence to commercial “reality”—the
vibrancy of youth and experimentation giving way to “proper” old-age stodginess
and devoted dullness in the name of profit.
In such an environment a Sabbatical could not last, and didn’t; but,
needless to say, it will be sorely missed—and the good times, as well as the
loss and emptiness left behind, well remembered
