Volunteering at Super Bowl Village

The Super Bowl Village is a free outdoor event that started last Friday. Indianapolis is unique in that this started so early, allowing the locals to go down and enjoy it before the huge crowds arrive from out of town. Usually the festivities don't start until just a few days before the game. We worked Friday and Sunday nights, and last night was our last "official" shift. We may work additional shifts as needed, but our commitment is now done. The Village covers several blocks and is right in the middle of downtown.

In some of the photos you'll see a lot of Indy cars. These are retired cars that have been painted in all the teams' colors and themes. For a couple of days, they were all parked right in front of the Monument, which is the literal center of town. They are now scattered all over the city, so I'm glad I got to see them all in one place before they were moved.

There are two free stages in the Village, and there's usually someone playing at one or the other. Last night the Village People played, which was amusing. And yes, it was the original band. They were all old farts, like us.

For our last shift, we worked at the zipline, taking harnesses off of people after their ride. It was really fun to see their huge smiles! As much as we could, we'd ask if they had a camera and wanted a picture of themselves in the gear. Most of the time they were very happy to have their picture taken. I think the family with Grandma was the best - Grandma was maybe 4 feet tall and was holding a pinwheel (like the pig in the Geico commercial).

As volunteers, we got an added unexpected bonus: a free ride after all the paying customers were done at 10pm! This is a huge benefit; online tickets have been sold out for days, and if you want to buy a ticket for the same day, you have to be there several hours before the ticket office opens. Even then, you will still have about a 2-hour wait to ride, if you are lucky enough to get a ticket. We were able to just go right in, climb straight up, and hop off.

The zipline is done off an 80' temporary structure that they built just for this, and it goes down Capitol Ave for two blocks, right over a lot of the activities. People on the ground cheer and whoop as people go zipping by overhead. It's lots of fun to just watch the entire scene. One woman (who was definitely heavy enough to get all the way across) managed to get herself stuck about 50 yards from the end, and some poor guy had to hand-over-hand go fetch her and pull her the rest of the way. The way she was carrying on, you'd have thought she'd been stabbed or something. It was humorous to watch the crowd standing right under her taking pictures. I think she was secretly enjoying the attention.

More photos are posted at the links below!

General pics of the Super Bowl Village

Ziplining pics