Indy 500 Traditions

May 27, 2021

Indy 500 Traditions

The Indianapolis 500 is all about tradition. Tradition imbues just about every aspect of the event itself and also extends to what each individual or group that attends each year practice on their own. The city has its own traditions surrounding the race, some of which were canceled this year due to Covid 19 pandemic concerns such as the 500 Festival Parade through downtown, but others resumed again this year after taking the year off last year when the race was moved to August.

Since there was no parade, the speedway did something different, offering a short parade of the drivers that wound through the town of speedway before each driver was whisked off to visit a specific Indy 500 decorated home that had entered a contest, so 33 Indianapolis area residents had drivers come visit them in their homes which is a pretty cool alternative to the parade.

For my part, I happened to be in Speedway when the parade of drivers was driven down Main Street in a much smaller and condensed version of a parade that was nonetheless thrilling for the residents of Speedway and other fans who lined the street to see the drivers. I was there to visit the various shops and galleries that line Main Street and had Indy 500 displays and merchandise as well as original artwork related to the race.

This happened on the Saturday prior to the race itself and of course myself and my friends have our own traditions that we honor each year, beginning with the annual Calcutta auction of drivers gambling event that we have held for many years at various locations. Since its recent home at Brugge Brasserie sadly was no more as my favorite Indy restaurant was closed so the property could be converted to condos or some other such horror, my friends rented out another bar in Broad Ripple to host the event.

There was a huge crowd on hand as it was dedicated to our late friend Danny Weed, who had passed away recently and was a constant presence at both the Calcutta and the race and is dearly missed by all who knew him. He would have loved that the Calcutta was in his honor. The money was big and a new record take was had to make the pot huge. I was priced out of getting my own driver, but went in with some friends to get the entire ninth row of Marco Andretti, Simon Pagenaud and Sebastian Bourdais.

I was pretty pleased with that draw and felt like at least one of them could place in the money. Held immediately following the Calcutta, my friends Rick and Becky host a huge Crawfish Boil/ Street Party in front of their home on North Broadway where tons of my good friends can always be found.

This year there were a couple of hundred pounds of imported New Orleans Crawfish, a plethora of other food and beer provided by my friend and brewer Kevin from his restaurant/bar Twenty Tap. It was as crowded as I have seen it on a beautiful sunny Indiana afternoon and as always it is a ton of fun. This year there was even live music as a band was on hand to play and provide additional entertainment.

This is one of my most favorite traditions and I have literally watched my friends’ kids grow up over the fifteen or so years that I have attended and it is always good to catch up with so many people and to meet many new people who attend each year. It is also one of the events that Kathy enjoys the most because she loves the crawfish and can eat huge piles of them so I am certain she was sad to not be on hand.