By Andrea Sachs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 25, 2008

In Indianapolis, a town full of athletic cheer, sports ranks somewhere between entertainment and breathing. Therefore, to fit in with the Hoosiers, I needed to pick a side.

I chose the underdogs: Team Culture.

The Indiana capital is trumpeted as the "Amateur Sports Capital of the World," due to a year-round calendar of college contests and Olympic trials. The town isn't hurting in the pro department, either. When I visited during football season, "Go Colts!" signs adorned shops and buildings like campaign posters; even the Japanese restaurant Mikado, which cowers in the shadow of the RCA Dome football stadium, claims to be the home of the Super Bowl XLI champs.

For the sophisticated sports fan, there are tuna rolls and Sapporo during "Monday Night Football." In addition, no race car devotee could come to Indy without a visit to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Kissing the fabled bricks is not allowed, but no one will stop you from genuflecting.

Yet Indy isn't all about flying pigskins and 200 mph whiplash. While the city lays claim to 10 world-class sports venues, that is just a fraction of its cultural institution tally: 14 museums (I included the National Art Museum of Sport but omitted the NCAA Hall of Champions -- my rules), 21 galleries and 25 performing arts centers and theaters. Perhaps the hot ticket isn't the 92nd Indy 500, held today, but the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's Brahms and Beethoven concerts with Dutch conductor Lawrence Renes.

"There are more contemporary art venues operating in Indianapolis today than there are professional sports venues in the entire state," said Phil Barcio, who with other artists helps run the Big Car Gallery, a contemporary art collective that fosters citywide projects. "There are more than 30 working contemporary artists living in Fountain Square right now, not counting the musicians and the writers, and that's just one neighborhood."

With those kind of stats and that kind of deep bench, I wondered if Indy culture could stand up to a little competition. So, during a recent visit, I pitted Arts vs. Sports. May the best scene win.

* * *

I have to admit, I was a bit worried at first when I arrived in this flat, faintly country-flavored capital, population 876,804. As I aimlessly searched for Fountain Square, a budding arts district a mile and a half southeast of downtown, I could not imagine any creative juices burbling among the dilapidated buildings and seedy lots, unless it was a photo essay on urban dissolution.

But just as I was about to activate my backup plan -- the Indianapolis Museum of Art and its 50,000-plus works -- I noticed a lanky teenager sitting cross-legged on a street corner painting on a box of Fruity Pebbles. Idling my car through two light changes, I watched him splash bright pigments across the cardboard canvas, the drips adding a touch of Pollock to a familiar breakfast treat. As I continued to creep through the small wedge of a neighborhood, I suddenly noticed dozens of artists of varying ages and art/fashion/rock star influences creating pieces in impromptu studios -- against a dumpster, on a grassy median, beside a sweaty man grilling sausages. By chance, I had stumbled onto a festival where the process was as important as the final product.

"I finished my mural in about 20 hours. I painted a landscape. No naked ladies; it's a family place," explained Sarah Thomas, a 29-year-old bank employee who participated in a grass-roots mural project in Fountain Square and was selling her paintings in the Family Dollar store's parking lot. "I wanted the neighborhood to be nicer, prettier, cleaner than a dirty old alleyway."

Fountain Square is a visual lesson on one area's rise, fall and slow climb back. Such buildings as the Fountain Square Theatre (built in 1928), still graceful with columned arches and stained-glass windows, hint of a once-prominent past as a theater district. (Between 1910 and 1950, the quarter had the most stages in the city.) Eventually, though, the demise of the railroad yards plus other economic downturns led to an overall neglect, in the form of boarded-up houses and abandoned storefronts. Fertile ground for starving artists, who started moving in about six years ago.

On this particular day, though, many of the artists were visiting from elsewhere in the city. The draw was Masterpiece in a Day, a competition in which participants had until 5 p.m. to knock out an artwork, song or piece of prose that could stand up to a panel of judges. With the clock ticking loudly, not a second could be squandered.

"I think I will write a tragic country song using street names," said a beret-capped chap with a guitar as he waited at the intersection. "Morris loves Shelley, so Virginia has Prospects."

If he finds a rhyme for Mitthoefer, he deserves the prize.

* * *

Indianapolis's layout has more than just a whiff of Washington to it: It was planned by Alexander Ralston, who assisted Pierre L'Enfant in designing the nation's capital and employed the Frenchman's signature style of gridded streets and traffic circles. (Somehow, though, Indianapolis lucked out with only one of Dante's rings of hell, Monument Circle.) The city is further divided into cultural neighborhoods, each characterized by a particular flavor, scene and set of denizens. There's Mass. Ave. for imaginative galleries and restaurants, Fountain Square for up-and-coming artists and old-timey attractions such as duckpin bowling, and Indian Avenue for African American heritage. The Wholesale District is frenetic with shopping and sports venues, while the Canal and White River State Park area is a calm oasis of museums, green spaces and lazy waterways. A sixth, Broad Ripple Village, is linked to downtown via a greenway rail trail; its personality is split between rah-rah rowdiness and bohemian mellowness. (Translation: You can chase your Bud with a flavored hookah.)

To unite the neighborhoods, the city is constructing the 7 1/2 -mile Indianapolis Cultural Trail, a $50 million bike and pedestrian route that ribbons through multiple landscapes. "It will connect every arts, cultural, heritage, sports and entertainment facility in our downtown," said Brian Payne, president of the Central Indiana Community Foundation, the nonprofit group behind the project. "Once on the trail, you can figure out what you want to see on a very spontaneous basis. You can stop and have a drink, or go to the theater, or eat in an outdoor cafe."

At this early stage, even Magellan would have a tough time figuring out where to navigate. The trail will be built in six stages, with completion targeted for 2010. (The group is putting the finishing touches on the first half-mile.) During my visit, chewed-up sidewalk blocks and heavy machinery were the most obvious signs of the trail-in-progress. Yet with Payne leading the way on his mountain bike, and a green line marking about 80 percent of the planned route, I could almost connect the dots.

The off-street path is urban, paralleling major thoroughfares, yet it seemed bubble-wrapped against the usual hazards of metro biking. I never feared errant car doors or potholes, and I could hear birds chirp in the trees. As Payne and I swept corners and hopped on and off sidewalks, I glanced fleetingly at the slide show blowing by: a 19th-century church that would fit well in a French village, war monuments august and tragic, pubs worthy of ditching the bike for. Halfway through our ride, the city clatter quieted to a pastoral hush: We were entering White River State Park.

One way to access the park is by Canal Walk, a peaceful promenade lining a narrow waterway evocative of Venice, complete with gondolas and romantic bridges ideal for proposals and serenades. Rolling along, I dodged dogs on leashes and wobbly children on bikes, and nearly toppled over myself trying to spot Garfield (the cat's creator, Jim Davis, is from Delaware County) in the Indiana State Museum's exterior. (The institution's outer wall contains sculptures representative of each county.) From the canal, the route peeled off in many directions, leading to the White River, or the zoo and gardens, or back downtown. However, I chose to dismount and stand for a moment in the hollow of an outdoor amphitheater, beneath a ceiling of blue. In the distance, the hulk of the old football stadium and the frame of the new one loomed like graceless beasts. I simply turned my back on them to focus on Indy's more artistic views.

* * *

"Are you here for the baby shower?" asked the woman staffing the booth at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Who opens breast pumps and plays "How Big Is Mommy?" at a racetrack? Apparently, the owner's stepson.

Despite not being on the guest list, I was granted entry to the venue, which includes a museum, a hall of fame, restaurants, a gift shop and a $3 bus ride around the track. No fire-retardant suit required.

The driver, probably dizzy from circling this route so many times, was a man of few words; the taped narrator did all of the talking. As we crawled along the track at a sloth's pace -- lead-foot it, man, the voice in my head screamed -- I half-listened to the history of the famed Turn 1, Gasoline Alley and the 13-story pagoda where the winners kiss their trophies. An excitable passenger asked to get off the bus and touch the bricks; he was denied.

The tour lasted no more than 15 minutes, though it felt three times as long. Driving under the speed limit has that time-bending effect. Had Andretti been behind the wheel, we would've completed 16 laps to the bus's one.

Getting off the bus, I hardly felt a sports fan's adrenaline rush, yet I knew exactly where to get the pickup I craved. I raced downtown and flew through the doors of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. I had only 30 minutes before closing, but that was all the time I needed to take the lead.