Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Brickyard Inn closes

During Sunday night’s Speed Freaks show, Crash Gladys speculated that more bad news was coming henceforth from Indy Car, but she didn’t know what it was, only that Joie Chitwood had left the PRI event early and the bad news would be announced on Monday.

So, I spent the day checking the newswires, internets and blogosphere and um? Whale Nothing! And after a quick check this morning, this is the only bad news I can find regarding Indy Car...

The Brickyard Inn motel behind Turn 2 at the southeast corner of IMS is closing immediately, after 45 years of business and will be raised early next year.

According to the Indy Star report, the motel simply couldn’t keep up in these hard times, which to me isn’t surprising, having stayed there in 2007 when I went to ride around Mecca in the Indy Racing Experience’s two seater. Having guessed that the décor hadn’t been changed since the 1970’s, (Ok, so I wasn’t far off, eh?) nevertheless, I enjoyed my room as you actually had to use a real key to unlock your door and the wake-up calls were done by a real “live” person on a telephone with a rotary sounding bell tone.

Indy Celebrities

Yet, it was clean and the staff was most pleasant, even though when I asked for suggestions on where to stay, the person sheepishly mentioned the Brickyard Inn, saying... Uhm? Whale, it’s NOT exactly “State of the Art!” And there’s much nicer hotels in downtown Indiana... But the price was definitely right and it was next door to the Speedway. So perhaps a new, more modern hotel/motel will emerge in the future?

Brickyard Inn motel closes