A Stromboli Like No Where in the World

Nearly every region or city has its signature sandwich. Maine has the lobster roll, Philadelphia has the Philly steak sandwich, Chicago has the hotdog and San Diego has the fish taco. In Bloomington--its the Stromboli sandwich. Available in the whole and half versions, crusty, French-like bread with sesame seeds is coated in side with pizza sauce, then piled high with crumbled Italian sausage, onions and mozzarella cheese. The sandwich is then slide into a pizza oven to melt the cheese and slightly toast the bread.

Then comes the service. No strom can be served without a heaping handful of bread and butter slices--not dill pickles or sweet gherkins--bread and butter pickles. I don't actually know why. But I do know its not a strom until the pickles are added.

Back in the day, before college co-eds shunned cholesterol and meat protein, stroms were the "delivered-to-you-door" late-night favorite snack. The lenght of the sandwich was directly related to the date situation of the evening.

Whole, 12-inch versions were usually eaten by us poor souls who were left at the sorority house on a Saturday night. In between bites, we'd grumble and curse the frat jerks we'd been dating for months who then decided to invite other chickies to the world's greatest college weekend.

Smaller sandwiches were reserved for Sunday nights or mid week snacks. Being smaller, they were easier to eat and caused less guilt in front of the 90 pound "sisters".

Where do you go for the best Bloomington Stroms?

The answer is simple--Kirkwood Avenue. If you're under 21 or prefer soft drinks to hard ones, it's The Cafe Pizzaria, and Nicks English Hut if you're over the legal age. They're only a few doors apart. Both are authentic and delicious. Your choice depends on the type of beverage you prefer to wash down every morsel. Most of us prefer a cold beverage of the hops and malt variety. More important, both Nicks and the Pizzaria have been landmarks in Bloomington for generations...and sometimes you'll see representatives of each one sitting all at one table gobbling up every crumb of sausage and fightening over the last pickle.

Preparing for the Yearly Migration

In only a few weeks, the IU students will begin their annual migration back to town and swelling our population by a mere 30,000. Streets are crowded. Parking places disappear and the inventory at the local Target, Bed Bath and Beyond and other student-frequented stores swells to keep up with the additional bodies. Its not uncommon to see microwaves and dorm-sized refrigerators stacked to the ceilings at Kroger, lines in cell-phone stores out the doors and parents totally bewildered by the thousands of items their kiddy-widdy winkeys have to have to successfully complete at four years of school with a college degree.

The foreign students have it really hard. They have a difficult time learning "Southern Indiana" for words like "warshing your clothes,"" squarshing a bug" or having Chinese "carry out", rather than "take away." Asian students have told me that ordering at the local golden arches is particularly stressful. "Do you want fries with that?" just doesn't fit nicely into their hand held translators.

So as the last few weeks of summer continue on, we "locals" are starting to prepare--eating at all our favorite restaurants, parking in as many slots as we can find and enjoying all the strained and painful looks on the freshmen parent faces.

Welcome To The Town Around IU

Bloomington, Indiana is a unique and extremely diverse community--often called the Berkley of the Midwest. All the nuts on the east and west coasts have rolled to the middle and landed right here in Southern Indiana. But there's another side of Bloomington. While the "Gown side" as it"s called is populated with ivory-towered scholars, the "Town side" are good, hardworking, salt-of-the-earth Hoosiers (whatever that is). They eat bisquits and sausage gravy with a side of hash browns and ketchup and teach their children that hard work and a good education is what they need--not a MP3 players,cell phone and the like.

In the days and months ahead, this special blog will bring to life the people and community I've loved overlast nine years I've lived here. Thursday and Friday night Happy Hours at Nicks, our ageless pub. Wednesday nights on the lake watching John Mellencamp and his family water ski, the loss of a favorite football coach, the winning of a NCAA Basketball Championship and all the little things that make Bloomington, Indiana one of the most eclectic and memorable communities in Indiana--the Midwest and maybe even the United States.

Stay tuned. There's more to come.