West Lafayette

There's a pedestrian bridge that connects Lafayette and West Lafayette. When the sun begins to set you can find what seem to be lovers huddled along the dark edges of the bridge, but I've also heard of some stabbing incidents there, so I walked over the bridge briskly. The bridge concludes into a shopping mall, replete with a Borders, Panera, and Starbucks, giving you the impression that West Lafayette is a kind of commercialized suburb of Lafayette. West Lafayette has a resident population of 28,000 people, mostly associates of Purdue, which during the academic year floods the town with its 40,000 students. Still, West Lafayette does not strike you as a college town, the only thing college-like about West Lafayette is, well, the actual college and the strip of bars and burrito and burger joints.

Purdue University is located on top of what is known as Chauncey Hill. The hill is small and steep, but to get to the actual campus you have to walk through a bar-lined strip of State Street. Purdue has one of the largest fraternity and sorority communities in the nation, a fact that becomes supremely apparent as one muscles through the Greeks that seem to constantly pour out of the college bars, Jake's, Harry's, Where Else? Bar (my favorite title), and Brother's. I was getting thirsty again, so I decided to go to Where Else? because, well, the name rings true. My visit was quick, I went in, ordered a bottle of beer, and received an aluminum bottle. A fight broke out between two frat guys near a pool table, and I left, having immediately realized that the aluminum bottles were perhaps a legal issue, as the clientele of Where Else? are liable to hit each other over the heads with proper bottles, if supplied. I decided to get on with my intended tour of Purdue, and so I excused myself through the red-faced guys in pop-collared polos and the blonde-haired tube-topped sorority girls all the way to campus.

The first of Purdue's buildings I went into was the Union, it's suddenly handsome, lots of dark wood and white pleated curtains. Some non-fraternity students were walking through the high-ceilinged wide corridors, and some were studying in the big chairs of the Union's lounges and halls. Most university ceremonies and conferences take place in Union ballrooms, and it doubles as a university hotel. The Purdue Union is one of two good looking buildings that Purdue's campus has to offer, the other one being the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering, Purdue's most architecturally innovative building, which is located at the other end of campus. In between the Union and Armstrong hall are several rows of ruddy brick boxes that, when surrounding you, begin to take on the aspect of government housing.

Now, I'm not saying that Purdue's campus looks like the projects. But if you dropped me into the heart of Purdue's campus without telling me where I was and asked me a kind of survey question, say, whether I thought I was in A) a prison, B) government housing, or C) a university, I might have chosen B. Of course, it's clear that it's a university, there's really no other reason for so many people to be walking around with backpacks in prison or in the projects. It's just not immediately clear that it's a university in comparison with east coast universities with their ivied brick or southern universities with their oaks and limestone. Still, in a way it's appropriate for a largely engineering and agriculture school, as I imagine the practical engineers are practical about their buildings and surely no one cares what the agriculture buildings full of dirt and shit look like.

What's strange is that they actually do care: when ivy began to grow on those ruddy brick boxes, making them ivied ruddy brick boxes, Purdue scrambled to tear the ivy down because they didn't want to resemble an 'ivy league school'. I don't think Purdue was ever near the terrible danger of being thought of as an ivy league school, but I'm also happy to know that there's a movement to keep Purdue's campus ugly, lest it begin to take on the aspect of Harvard, because, let's face it, no one wants to be associated with Harvard. In any case, after wandering through the ivy-proof ruddy brick boxes for a couple hours, I began to get a little sleepy, and since there's nothing like getting out of the hood, I decided to leave academia for some coffee.

There are two coffee shops on Chauncey Hill, Greyhouse and Vienna. The shops are next door to one another, and both shops offer outdoor seating, but Greyhouse's patio is more attractive, so I decided to have a macchiato there. Walking into Greyhouse one feels as if they're in a Barnes and Noble, not because of the size of the place or the books, but just the general vibe of that class of place. Everything is comfortable in Greyhouse, everyone seems strangely happy, it's the kind of place that would make an appearance in the blog, "Stuff White People Like," alongside New Balance shoes and ugly sweaters. I would later find out that Greyhouse is owned by Campus House, a Christian organization of Purdue, and this makes decided sense. At first, I didn't recognize the comfort of the place as that of the religious variety, but retrospectively it's clear that the clientele doctored their coffee and chatted in big black chairs with the particular comfort of knowing that their souls were going to spend eternity in heaven.

I took my macchiato outside with my map and notebook, taking in the college scene, remembering my own college experiences, four tender years followed by the post-collegiate trauma of having to go into the real world. Eventually nighttime arrived and brought with it a swarm of revelers and, oddly enough, a handful of Evangelists set for battle against the heathens, armed with loudspeakers to belt the word of God down the bar-lined pagan street. I didn't have much experience with such demonstrations until I came to Indiana, but in Indiana, at least, the demonstrators employ adorable little smiling blonde haired girls in red dresses to deliver their pamphlets, which makes perfect business sense because no one can resist adorable little smiling blonde haired girls delivering pamphlets. Still, it's a bit of a strange experience because you get a piece of paper stating, in caps, "You are going to hell," from a rosy little girl, which can toss you into a bit of an existential crisis in front of a five-year old. In any case, the mosh-pit block of revelers were far too steeped in senseless debauchery and reckless abandon to notice that they were at a crossroads between heaven and eternal damnation.

I was a little sleepy from the day's adventures so I decided to turn in early to my hotel in Lafayette. The wilted lettuce from LBC had kept me from eating anything all day, the way a stomachache keeps you from eating. But on the trek back across the river the stomachache subsided, and I decided to hop into a pub for some late-night fare.

I went to DT Kirby's, a local Cheers-type pub where the regulars all know each other and the bartenders greet you and make small talk when you come in. The bar doesn't play music but the drinkers are loud enough watching televisions broadcasting sports, so it's a lively place. The menu offers hotdogs and burgers of all sorts, in fact the only kind of burger that isn't on the menu is the Luther Vandross, a bacon cheeseburger with glazed Krispy Kreme donuts in lieu of buns. Nonetheless, DT Kirby's has its own creative take on burgers, exemplified by the 'grilled cheese cheeseburger', a bacon cheeseburger shoved in between two grilled cheese sandwiches. I'm not sure why I decided to order it, maybe I thought possible slogans for such meal, like "hurts so good," or "sometimes you just need something gonna do you wrong,"but in any case I went for it.

The rest of the night is foggy. I do, nonetheless, remember being surprised by the weight of the basket when the server handed it to me. The burger itself was around nine or ten pounds and had apparently been dipped in the deep fryer, as the first bite I took caused bacon grease to spurt two feet in front of me. I kind of remember the feeling of my arteries getting clogged, and the work out of lifting the heavy burger and lifting a great mug of beer to try and wash it all down. Beyond that, however, all I have left to report is the first black-out from a burger I've ever even heard of, much less experienced. Notwithstanding, one thing is clear: DT Kirby's is a lawsuit waiting to happen, for the following reasons.

The establishment of DT Kirby's opened in early 2008. Since early 2008 the heart attack and obesity rate in Lafayette and West Lafayette have increased substantially. Now, I'm not saying that DT Kirby's is making people fat and prone to cardiac arrest, I just juxtaposed two plain facts. But if we begin to work under that correlation, it seems safe to say that DT's will eventually have to hand out their deliciously greasy nine pound burgers with cards for a cardiologist. Or perhaps just print some cardiologist information on teh wax-paper-made-transparent-by-grease that sheets the burger basket, perhaps something along the lines of, "If you've eaten this much, call this number..." Maybe also include some information for nutritionists and dietitians, perhaps a weight-loss specialist. I'd just hate to see such a friendly place sued by the township of Lafayette for criminally increasing town obesity and cardiac complications.

Needless to say, I woke up from the food-coma, as one does, hazily, lethargically, and needing to take the most monstrous ten pound shit of my life. I struggled toward the bathroom with my newly acquired girth, and emerged in a transformed state, ready to leave Lafayette and West Lafayette for Bloomington, the town surrounding Indiana University's flagship campus.