Sports Editor, Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press

Evansville's an acquired taste for people who aren't from here.

One riverboat, TBF. Two malls, though only one of them's worth going in.

It can be cold as shit in the winter and hotter than hell in the summer.

On the good side, Tim's a good dude to work for, and the editorial staff is a dedicated bunch with a lot of good people who want to keep getting better.

 

Evansville is a shithole, but as shitholes go, it's not that bad. The size of the metro area alone means it will have at least a few nice things to offer.

 

To piggy back off what Moddy said, Donnie Baseball, aka Don Mattingly is on my all-time list of good guys in baseball. Always gracious, even if he's in a pissed off mood. He once gave me a Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation tour hat for my daughter. (I know, I know, we're talking many moons ago). My daughter thought so much of it that she wanted to know EVERYTHING about Donnie Baseball. I later told him how much she enjoyed the hat and he said jokingly, "Yeah, that's what I need, another fan." I said, "Yeah but this one is different, you're not her biggest fan." He smiled and gave me a wink.
Evansville is a good town. There is some things to do for fun and you're not far from other cities such as Louisville and Indy.You could do worse.

 

Casino Aztar, right? I went in there once. Awful, tacky, smelly thing. I bailed pretty quick.

Evansville is one of 4 or 5 towns on our short list to move, so I am not bashing the city. But it's definitely not for everybody.

 

If you want to get a look at the paper, the Courier and Press is switching to a new subscription system for its e-editions... they've thrown open the door until April 15 to look at the e-edition free of charge. Seems like space is a bit limited some days but staff does a good job getting stories in there.

http://customerservice.scripps.com/evansville/

 

There's far worse Midwest river towns than Evansville. And the area has been helped in the past decade or so by a huge Toyota plant built just north of Evansville, providing a much-needed injection of jobs and money.

 

I know a lot of people who work at that Toyota plant.

You're also right on the Kentucky border and it's much cheaper to live in say, Henderson KY as opposed to greater Evansville, and you still only have a 20-minute commute. Or for that matter, any number of small Indiana towns around Evansville.

 

I know a girl on the Evansville team... They stink.

 

The Washington Square Mall is the shit. Or it is shit. Whatever.

This job gets the seal of approval here. Great people and he's right about the newsroom there, they work hard.

And a shithole? C'mon. Every place can be called a shithole if you try hard enough to label it that way. What makes a place escape shithole-dom is the character and amenities it has in spite of its rundown areas and Evansville has plenty of that.

My past joking about it with OTR aside, there's a lot of charming areas of Evansville.

To wit, I've been going to Evansville for years and never even saw the neighborhoods on the west side until some trips I've made in the last few years. Neat area on a bluff overlooking the Ohio River.

The city is laid out weird and its highway system is flat-out bizarre, mainly because the city is "horizontal" as it follows a river, so it's hard to accidentally drive through some of those areas. U.S. 41's stretch through Evansville does it no favors, but that stretch of road isn't really representative of the city.

Evansville is fine. I like southwestern Indiana. Always have. And you're exposed to a lot of big events there (Kentucky Derby, Indy 500) you just can't get exposed to in many other places.

 

Somehow, someway, I-69 will get built. Maybe not in OUR lifetime, but...

Ya, the closest road for these two cities is what? Indiana 37?