Bloomington Kirkwood St (#0279)

COVID-19 update: Given concerns over the coronavirus, I debated whether to keep posting pictures that are, themselves, documentations of a place that I knew 35+ years ago. But, Bloomington was a place that I knew best during the period of another deadly virus that was particularly important to me (HIV) and the pictures thus, in various small ways, indicate how we survive strong fears of infection.

The descriptions on these pictures were written some month ago, long before the coronavirus became such a concern. I'll do some minor editing, but mostly the reflect thoughts before the new virus scare.

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One comparison to the newness of the other campuses that I had attended in the past was that there were no commercial student-centered business zones near those campuses. IU has dominated the culture/economy of Bloomington for quite some time and the key ‘student’ commercial strip is Kirkwood (this street) coming east from the historic main gate of campus. I was surprised on this visit that the street looks basically unchanged, with very many of the same businesses, from when I was a student there in the early 80’s. Looks, though, are slightly deceptive – both here and in other areas Bloomington has somehow managed to integrate new buildings and new businesses in with the old in a way that doesn’t hurt the charm of the old. If you look on the right side of the picture you see a fairly new building – there’s a Chipotle and a chain sandwich shop in there, and across the street there’s a new building with a Panda Express.

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The church on the corner to my right, Trinity Episcopal, was important for gay culture in Bloomington since the minister had created a chapter of Integrity, an Episcopal gay group popular in larger cities – the one in Bloomington usually has something like 10-12 attendees for its meetings. More important for me (I didn’t attend the group), the minister was also a good source for insights whenever some local gay or HIV issue arose.