Saturday Night, Special
For the last eight years it’s been a tradition of mine to work as a bouncer at Nicky Blaine’s on the second Saturday night of Indiana Black Expo’s Summer Celebration.
I did it back I 2006 when the owner, as well as other downtown businesses, would tell me stories of teenagers running the streets and getting out of control . Things got really bad back in 2010 when Shamus Patton decided to shoot several people.
My, how times have changed.
Thanks to the collective work of IMPD, Indiana Black Expo, the Ten-Point Coalition, parents stepping up and young people getting the message, downtown was the best it had ever been.
The crowds were not only bigger than before, but a lot more diverse as well as a lot more families.
And what made it even better was not only was the police presence a lot smaller, but there were numerous times while talking to officers, random people would come up and thank them for what they were doing and told them to stay safe. And that says quite a bit in the wake of a lot of what we’ve seen in the news today regarding tensions between law enforcement and certain segments of the community.
The only “issue” I saw was a group called Indy 10, a poor man’s version of the Black Lives Matter Movement was mad at police for having crowd barricades nearby in case they needed to move a lot of people.
But otherwise it went very well. In fact for the past 2-3 years, that second Saturday night has been clam, peaceful and quite enjoyable. So if I might make a recommendation, if you get a chance, come on down. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
Luckily, I wasn’t.
