Tonic Ball #9: All You Need Is Love

Indy music and art fans lined the four corners at the intersection of Virginia and Woodlawn in Fountain Square last Friday, necks craning northward, following the sounds of "Get Back", which blasted from the rooftop of the Murphy Art Center.  A faux British bobby, in full regalia, paced through the collected crowd, while fans waved placards emboldened with the Fab Four's philosophic proclamation: "The love you make is equal to the love you take."

Performing under the "You Are Beautiful" sign was Beatles cover band, #9, an ensemble of local musicians  featuring Matt Mays, Scott Woolgar, Brian Deer, Bill Mallers and Andy Teipen, who formed especially for the event.

The street theater was all part of a guerrilla marketing effort announcing this year's Tonic Ball, at which local bands will perform their favorite Beatles' songs to help fight hunger in Indianapolis. The rooftop concert, an obvious nod to the notorious scene from Let it Be, was the brainchild of Ken Honeywell, creative director at Well Done Marketing and founder of Tonic Ball, an event that over the past nine years has become one of Indy's most popular nights of music and art -- benefiting one of the city's best charitable causes, Second Helpings.

"We started Tonic because we wanted to do something that would start to cross-pollinate the local music scene and give back to the community -- and hunger was the most important issue we could think of." Honeywell told Indy Social Media. "We took the idea to Second Helpings, they loved it, and here we are -- year nine."

Every year the city's best musicians and artists donate their time and work to the community kitchen which converts surplus food from local restaurants and groceries into nutritious meals for thousands of hungry children and adults every day.

"Hunger isn't going away," Honeywell noted. "Sadly, the need for Second Helpings' services continues to grow.  Second Helpings still does amazing work: feeding our hungriest neighbors and training underprivileged people for jobs in food service, all with food that was going to be thrown away."

Over the past decade, Tonic Ball has grown dramatically -- with some 40 local bands expected to take their turns on the stages of the Fountain Square Theater and popular nightclub Radio Radio on November 19th.

"Every year, the event becomes becomes more popular. More bands want to play, more artists want to donate, more people show up to be part of it all. We always want to make sure the show lives up to the hype," Honeywell said. "It always has. It's the one show of the year that, were I not involved, I'd still tell everyone they had to see."

 

Weekend Wiener: Sausagefest 2010

Local bands, beer and brats. Who could want anything more than that on a beautiful summer weekend in Indianapolis? How about a little gambling and a chance to dunk your favorite priest? The sixth annual St. Thomas Aquinas Sausagefest 2010 was that and more.

A wiener of a weekend! Indy's own Sun King Brewery provided the excellent beer, and a host of local bands (including Indy Social fave The Reacharounds -- Scott Sanders, Keith Carey, Ben Wah Salami with special guest guitarist John Byrne sitting in for master axeman Scott Ballantine -- pictured above) provided the goove. Parishioner volunteers and donations made the event possible, with all proceeds going towards maintenance and repair of the parish.

Pig in a Port

 
Anyone who has ever had an Indiana tenderloin knows that Hoosiers are hog-wild about their pork. This year, that love has been taken to a new level. Officials declared 2010 the "Year of the Pig" at the Indiana State Fair,  and to celebrate all things swine, a pig statue -- painted in the colors of the Hoosier Flag -- has been erected center stage at the Indianapolis International Airport.

Indy Lets It's Geek Flag Fly at Gen Con

 

Calling all nerds. They came from near and far to let their geek flags fly: video gamers, fantasy freaks, card-playing kids and adults alike. Some came in costumes, outfitted as their favorite characters, others in kilts or covered in blood. They came for the promise of "the best four days in gaming" to the Indiana Convention Center this week to play Magic the Gathering, World of Warcraft, Dungeons and Dragons, Spoil or hundreds of other entertainments that made up Gen Con Indy.

Thousands of roleplayers filled the auditorium and corridors of the convention center, and spilled out into the halls and across the skywalks to the connected hotels. There were large rooms where attendees set up their games on long tables. There were official tournaments, draft games and pickup games alike. Not just fun and games. When not playing, Gen Conners gathered in an adjoining hall where a huge trade show took place. A full fledged bazaar where new wares were showcased, and festively-clad merchants and advents engaged in the the buying and selling of cards and dice, books, art and all things for the gamer enthusiast.

Brickley and DeMyer Rock Greek's Pizzeria

Local singer/songwriter Tim Brickley and fellow Bleeding Heart Larry DeMyer take requests from the patio crowd at Greek's Pizzeria in Broad Ripple, Indianapolis. Here Indy Social features an inspired rendition of "Sweet Jane." We particularly dig the loud horn that hoots approval as it speeds by the village eatery.

Brickyard 400 Smallest Ever

Image via Wikipedia

What if you threw a party and nobody showed? Well the 140,000 people who made it to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the annual running of the Brickyard 400 certainly do constitute a party, but a much more subdued one from year's past. This year's attendance was 23% lower than last year's NASCAR event, and 30% down from the 200,000 who showed up for the first Brickyard 400 in 1994. In fact, it was the fewest number of race fans to show up in the event's 17-year history.

Some blame the economy, some blame TV and the fact that many stayed home to watch the race on ESPN from the HD comfort of their living room sofas. Some say the bloom is off the NASCAR rose, in part because of rabid corporate sponsorship that covered every inch of the cars, the track, the drivers and the layers of the sport.

Corporations now seem to have grokked this, and so sponsorship dollars are way off as well. Allstate, which for the last 5 years had title sponsorship of the Allstate Brickyard 400, let it expire this year. The race ran simply as Brickyard 400 without a sponsor. All this is part of a national trend -- 20 of the top 50 sports ad spenders cut budgets in 2009. Some, such as AT&T Wireless and Chevrolet, cut them as much as 30 percent, according to a SportsBusiness Journal analysis of data from The Nielsen Cos.

And those lack of sponsorship dollars meant there was less money to spend on advertising and promotion.
The Brickyard 400 digital footprint, which includes a web site with archival footage and a blog and flickr page, was adequate but not enough to make up the lack of awareness from a dearth of TV and Print.

Meet the Tweeps

Ever wonder who the heck those folks behind your favorite tweets are in real life? Can these clever communicators handle a social world that extends beyond 140 characters?

Find out this and more, and get a chance to mix and mingle with Indy's twitchy thumb set this Thursday night,  as Metromix celebrates the Circle City's Top Ten Tweeps. The twittering event starts at 5 p.m. at Scotty's Brewhouse, 1 Virginia Avenue, downtown.