Is Southern Indiana going cosmopolitan?

Dale Moss

A bagel shop is coming to New Albany. I had hoped that would say something about us.

Actually, it says more about bagels. If they can be sold in Southern Indiana, they can be sold anywhere...and pretty much are.

"Bagels are not an ethnic food anymore," said Scott Vowels, director of operations for Dooley's Bagelcatessen, which will open on State Street near Target in December or so.

The cream cheese-smothered, chewy, round roll I learned to love from my Jewish grandfather I now toast and butter for my Catholic daughter.

To have a bagel store indeed is not enough to have a claim to be cosmopolitan.

But add it to such neophytes as Creekside Outpost in New Albany, which sells exotic meat, as well as 300 kinds of spices and herbs, and Cajun Cafe in Jeffersonville, about whose jambalaya I can vouch, and our long-predictable region seems to be headed in a daring direction.

Are we ready? "It's a hard sell, that's the fact," said Steve Manning a Cajun Cafe co-owner. "If we can survive long enough to let the word float around..."

We've got marvelous new locals to celebrate culture (the Paul Ogle Center at Indiana University Southeast) and history (the Falls of the Ohio Interpretive Center); a regional retail and restaurant mecca (Clarksville) that not coincidentally grows like my credit-card balance; hospitals in perpetual modernization; industrial parks filling up; and, before you know it, a place to shoot craps without looking over our shoulders.

All are supported in part by those moving in to more and more big houses than any of us natives could have imagined. The growth spotlights the scenic, attractive alternative to Louisville that Southern Indiana continues to be.

Being close yet far can be fickle, however.

We hit Louisville for specialties we deserve here, but we sure don't mind leaving the hustle behind when we return home. In no small measure, the lure of our area is that it isn't quite so busy with business.

"Maybe it's a double-edged sword," said Diane Biery, a New Albany-based real estate executive.

Biery nonetheless regrets having to go to Louisville for her favorite bread, baked ham and bite-sized muffins. She wishes she didn't find more upscale clothing lines in at least one Louisville department store than in its sister store in Clarksville. And, of course, she finds no Banana Republic or, any longer, so much as the Gap, for instance. We're still a lot more Sears than Gucci, or at least we're pegged to be.

"We get our basic needs met," Biery said.

Greg Fitzloff, president of the Southern Indiana Chamber of Commerce, would like more choices in fine dining, men's clothing and computer stores. John Rosenbarger is a planner in a city (New Albany) with a nice theater but nowhere to see first-run movies. He wishes the Grand would be used to show films, especially ones he calls "off the wall."

Rosenbarger understands the reluctance of businesses to test us and to settle instead in proven parts of Louisville. "They go where the market is," he said. "They can't make the market."

Wayne Estopinal, a Jeffersonville architect and one of my favorite frequent fliers, tells me of great delis and light-fare restaurants where he eats when out of town. We're largely still a meat-and-potatoes crowd, but Estopinal isn't alone in yearning for more variety.

"Sometimes I just want to go someplace where the food is fresh, and crisp," Estopinal said.

He senses the evolution I not, however, and encourages that it be hurried along: "To enrich life, people have to push the envelope."

Did Biery mention bread? Tamsie Meurer, a public librarian in Charlestown, misses the good break she grew up with in Northern Indiana. More ethnic restaurants would remind her of her fond days of youth as well.

But Meurer also ponders the costs. "there's urban, and urbane," she said.

There's all kinds of possible diversity, too, something we'd need work on even if every corner had a bagel shop. At the time we talked, Paul Elzer, who runs Hospice of Southern Indiana, needed a Hispanic to participate in a panel discussion and was having a hard time finding one.

Not that there may not soon be a bagel shop on every corner, by the way.

Vowels doubts the Dooley's in New Albany will be the only one in Southern Indiana for long. "It's extremely exciting," he said.

I agree, if probably for different reasons.