Right Wing Nation

In 1957, Ted Ladyman opened Ladyman’s Cafe at 122 East Kirkwood in Bloomington, Indiana. Ladyman’s was an old-fashioned diner, and the homemade pies had no equal anywhere in Monroe County. In the 70s and 80s, Ladyman’s was an institution, somewhere every undergraduate was told about. Ladyman’s even has a wikipedia entry. Over the decades, Ladyman’s never changed. It was staffed by local waitresses in old-fashioned aproned uniforms who addressed patrons as “sweetheart” and “honey.” The only thing about the menu that changed was the pricing. Here’s a menu from October, 1957–and the food was great:

• Fried Chicken Giblets with Cream Gravy .85
• Roast Sirloin of Beef with Brown Gravy .95
• Home Made Ham Loaf with Mustard Sauce .85
• Roast Pork with Brown Gravy .95
• Oven Browned Beef Hash .75
• Home Made Bean Soup .25
• Home Made Pie .15
• Pie A*La*Mode .20
• Vegetable Plate (Choice of Three) .60
• Fresh Strawberry Tarts With Whipped Cream .30

On December 12, 2006, Ladyman’s closed for business. Here is a picture of Ladyman’s on their last day open:

Here is a picture of Kirkwood taken from the edge of campus (at the Sample Gates) looking toward the square downtown. Ladyman’s was at the far end, on the left.

There were a couple of incidents that sped the demise of this once-great local institution, but the process began in the 90s. Perhaps I should say that we started to notice during the 90s that business was falling off there. We also began to encounter a new phenomenon: People who had never heard of Ladyman’s, or thought maybe they had heard of it, but had never eaten there.

What was going on? It’s always a mystery, and as much as I’d like to blame the highly overrated though popular Uptown Cafe (a very unpleasant place to eat, by the way, unless you like EXTREMELY LOUD ALL THE TIME SO YOU CAN’T HEAR YOURSELF THINK MUCH LESS EAT dining, not to mention mediocre-at-best food at ridiculous prices, or Bloomington’s most annoying, most pretentious crowd), I can’t. The Trojan Horse opened long before Michael’s, and like it, on the same block as Ladyman’s, and did not cut into their business. So for whatever reason, Ladyman’s was in decline through the 90s.

Then in 2000, the Bloomington City Council decided to tear up Kirkwood to work on the storm sewer. That in itself is commendable, if destructive to the businesses along the street, but the Bloomington City Council being idiots, elected by university idiots, felt it necessary to prolong the damage to businesses by using the opportunity to further narrow the street by putting in exactly what Bloomington does not need: More trees! Bloomington has so damned many trees that if you cut down every other one, nobody would notice a single tree was gone. Bloomington has so damned many trees that in thirty years, I never had even a tiny spot of full sun. Bloomington has so damned many trees that instead of the Tree City they should call it the Hosta City, because that’s one of the few things you can grow.

And it’s not like they’d never done this before. For all you locals here, Bloomington’s equivalent of Atherton, the main artery through town, is two parallel, one-way streets, Walnut and College, which converge into one street at both the north and south ends of town. The south side of town, along South Walnut, was one of the large business districts in town. No more. Why?

Because the Bloomington City Council decided to tear up the street–for well over a year–on both sides. Nobody could pull into, much less park at, the businesses. Guess what happened to them?

They went bankrupt. Kaput. Out of business. But the Bloomington City Council idiots were too stupid to learn from their past mistakes–that, or they didn’t care that they’d put businesses out of business. So they turned around and did it again to Kirkwood.

The real travesty here, however, is that what was once Ladyman’s is (from what my contacts back in Bloomington have told me) being turned into a hoity-toity museum for student art. Can’t you see it now? What’ll you be havin today, sweetheart? The Piss Christ? Or how about the BVM slathered in a cow dung reduction?

Shameful.

At least there’s still Wee Willie’s. I hope, anyway.