Stop #20: Pendleton Pike, Indianapolis (#30)

June 3 took me to the 20th stop on this quest, a Steak 'n' Shake that I had previously tried to visit but ultimately failed with thanks to the incorrect hours listed on the Steak 'n' Shake website that resulted in our frightening trip to the Steak 'n' Shake on Post and 25th: the one on Pendleton Pike.


And friends, this trip was almost as scary as that one. Although not really due to anything that actually happened IN the Steak 'n' Shake (whereas with the Post Road trip, it was stuff that happened in the Steak 'n' Shake as well as the stuff that may well have gone on in the parking lot outside the Steak 'n' Shake).

For any readers unfamiliar with Indianapolis, the city's "good areas" are never necessarily terribly far from the city's "bad areas." I've heard this time and time again because Butler itself is in an area that's a prime example of that. You know whose house is well within walking distance of the campus? The governor's. You know what else is also within walking distance of the campus? The BP where a friend's boss was once approached and asked "Crack or head?" in a "paper or plastic?" tone of voice.

If our governor were a "Governator," this might be appropriate, as then we would have lofty dreams of him becoming a movie character bad-ass and going nuts on local crime. Sadly, we have no "Governator." We have "My Man Mitch." Whose most notable destructive action was putting an end to Indiana's use of a consistent clock by bringing in Daylight Savings Time. Which I still haven't forgiven him for. And which surely has no impact on the local crime -- I don't think the fact that we fall back every year is going to deter them from, you know, offering people crack or head in gas station parking lots.

But I digress. The point is, there some areas of the city that are nice, and some areas that are not really all that nice.

And as Adam and I drove to the Steak 'n' Shake on Pendleton Pike, even before we got lost, we drove through some that are really, really, really not that nice.

If you wanted to, you could get your money from your paycheck early. Which is in and of itself not necessarily a bad thing.


But you had few options of places to spend it.


I should rephrase that: You had many options of places to spend it, but only a very few types of things you could spend it on.


And, of course, once you had your fill of liquor and discount liquor (which I promise you would have; there were many, many others that we drove past, all within close vicinity, which are not included because the photos taken of them were too blurry for me to use here), you could feel safe and secure, knowing your resting place was covered, too.


Yes. That says "Discount Casket."

But as you can tell, we made it to the Steak 'n' Shake unscathed, and managed to enjoy ourselves there. And it was fun catching up with Adam, who will be going to Europe at the end of the summer but who still currently works at Butler in the IT area and listened sympathetically as I described the problems my work computer (lovingly called "Junky Junior," after a laptop that experienced ... entirely different but still debilitating problems) had been having lately.

For those curious about Junky Junior's health, let me just say that he's seemed fine today, but that doesn't change the fact that he randomly crashed himself yesterday, and suffered a bout of "blue screen of death" the day before. Let us not forget how, maybe two weeks ago, he had an actual virus that prevented me from doing anything online, and just a couple weeks before that, he faced several bouts of "blue screen of death," including one he really just could not recover from. I've actually started keeping a pad of notes on my desk to track every time he does something that vitally problematic. Nevermind that he tends to freeze pretty much every time I try to switch programs (i.e., Excel to Firefox) and routinely crashes the circulation program I use at work (I don't think I've actually closed it once this past week).

But again! I digress. We were at Steak 'n' Shake, merely discussing these topics.

We experienced a bit of sadness when we sought coupons and discovered that more than half had expired.


I did, fortunately, have some that had not yet expired, and we were able to continue our Steak 'n' Shake visit enjoying each other's company and good food. Well, I enjoyed my good food.

Guacamole Steakburger, we meet again!

And Adam enjoyed his good food.

Adam felt as if he were conquering California.
Guess that's what happens when you eat a California Steakburger

Of course, in addition to my Guacamole Steakburger and fries, I had to get a Key Lime milkshake, 'cause that thing is just fantastic.


After my description, Adam was sold. Not that my description was all that great. It primarily consisted of, "Oh, I tried on the last stop, and it was good!" Maybe the fact that I was willing to pass up a chocomazing shake in order to get this was what sold it, actually ....


All in all, our visit was a good one (though one of the servers lied to us about coupons; I'm not sure which, but the result is, the next Steak 'n' Shake trip with Adam? It's my treat.) and we successfully made it back through some of those scary, scary parts of town without dying.

Though if we had, we would have been covered.