Traveling to Patty Grffin’s concert at the Vogue theatre in Indianapolis this past Saturday, I wasn’t sure what to expect, and my enthusiasm was not all that high. Truth was, I wasn’t overly familiar with her music. A friend, whose musical opinion I trust very much, is quite the fan of Ms. Griffin, but the two disks I had heard of hers, had not overly impressed me.

It wasn’t that they were bad, the songs were interesting, and I could sense some excellent musicianship in there, it’s just that none of her songs really spoke to me. Nothing really stood out as something magic.

But like I said, I trusted my friend’s opinion and bought the tickets.

Oh Patty, you broke my heart, and taught me to love again - and that within the first three songs.

Normally, when my wife and I make the 60-mile trek to Indianapolis for a concert, we head straight to the venue for the show. This time, being a beautiful Saturday we figured we would make a day of it. Noticing that the venue was in the district known as Broad Ripple, and that I had heard good things about this area, we made this our destination.

I didn’t actually know anything about this district other than I heard commercials for various stores and restaurants in the area and my friend Heather had once praised it’s name.

I should have taken into consideration that Heather is about ten years younger than myself and her idea of a good time involves dancing and copious amounts of legal and not so legal substances.

Expecting a quaint shopping district where I could find great local cuisine and interesting shops, I instead found what looked more like a college strip. The streets were lined with pool halls, dance clubs and bars. There was one music shop, and a couple of clothing stores, the rest was ready for debauchery, but not for me. The bars all served food of some sort, and there were three Mexican restaurants. Other than that it was bupkis. And not the good kind of bupkis that you can take home to your parents. No, this was the get down and dirty kind of bupkis only good after a month of solitude and a night of heavy drinking.