I watched this movie way back in 1979 whern I was a Marine stationed overseas and was really impressed by the beauty of this little town. I live in a big city and hate it here and was wondering if Bloomington had changed much in the past 33 years. I sure hope not. It just seems like a great place to grow up. Anyone familiar with Bloomington IN today??
shareWell, I'm certainly qualified to answer this question. I went to school at IU in the mid to late 80's, then lived in Chicago and Indianapolis for awhile, before returning to Bloomington in 1995, so I've been here the better part of 29 years.
The town is still nice, but if you've actually experienced it back around the time the movie was shot, I'm sure you'd say it's changed. In fact, the town was still about the same as it was in 1979, up until the late 90's. Around 1997-98 was when things really started to change and the population began to grow. I would guess in the late 70's the population was around 50-60,000 and now it's probably closer to 85,000. A lot of the outlying farms have been bought up, developed and are now nice apartments and condos, for students and new residents. There has been an overall expansion of the town and we now have legitimate suburbs. It's really become spread out, since I arrived here in 1983-84 as a freshmen. However, the downtown SQUARE is still pretty much the same as it was and the old Courthouse that the square surrounds has been renovated (although the actual working courthouse is now housed in a more modern building about 2 blocks away)and looks great. The town has become much more commercial over the past 15 years and probably doesn't have the same creative vibe it once did. Back in the mid 90's Billboard magazine actually published an article asking the question; "Is Bloomington, Indiana the next Seattle?" Of course, the writer should've used Athens, GA (REM, B52's, Widespread Panic) for a better comparison, but the amount of local original bands being signed by some major labels at that time was nonetheless impressive. Now, the music scene is still here, but not nearly as prolific.
Overall, it's a great place to live. The public schools are top notch, largely because of the influence from the university and town still (somewhat) has the same "small town" charm it always had. The nearby surroundings are just as nice as ever, with the rolling southern Indiana hills, the largest lake in the state, Lake Monroe, and Hoosier National Forest, with bike and hiking trails for your pleasure. You're close enough to a large city (50 miles from Indy) and the winter weather is not too bad, since the town lies just south of the snow and bad weather patterns. Then of course you have Indiana University, which is now over 40,000 strong. The campus is more beautiful than ever (one of the best looking campuses in the country) and campus and town are filled with old oaks, maples and elm trees.
You could do a lot worse than Bloomington, Indiana for a place to call home.
Oh... the quarries are still here and occasionally I see kids trekking out there to take a swim. The local scuba dive shop uses a quarry for the diving certification test. I went out to the "Breaking Away Quarry" (Sanders Quarry) once as a freshman and at that time the famous slanted stone was still there, but the refrigerator was gone (actually, the film folks put that there just for the movie).
Bloomington Square today: http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/09/0905_indiana/image/11_bloomington01_1.jpg
Wow! Thank you so much. I'm planning to move there in a couple of years. Your information was very helpful friend. Thanks for taking the time to answer my question.
Blessings!
Its interesting the way you describe Bloomington, Indiana. It seems so many midwestern college towns are very similar. Towns like Lincoln, NE, Colombia, MO, Iowa City, IA, etc. all seem to have the same characteristics. Towns like these also are experiencing the same growth. Still, I will always think of Bloomington as the quintessential college town.
sharewent to bloomington a couple times, it was nice actually liked purdue better. mainly for the golf course. amazing pete dye design at a rate that is insanely cheap for the quality. also, always think of univ. of colo.-boulder being midwest, very enjoyable.
The food I've liked in my time is American country cookin'-Colonel Sanders 🇺🇸
It's funny that you mention Athens, GA. The short-lived 1980 series based on this movie for some reason couldn't be filmed in Bloomington, so they shot it in Athens.
shareI was at IU from 81-85. My son is now a junior there. I love to visit him, because it still evokes great memories of my time there. I love Btown.
share
I went to college AND graduate school at IU. I was there from 1997-2001 then 2002-2004, and I'm not even from Indiana, I just loved it that much.
Bloomington is still a beautiful, cultural, wonderful town. I have visited it over the years, and it's still a great place.
I live in SC now, but one day, I would love to go back and retire there. They still do the Little 500 Bike Race. My freshman year the team I was rooting for one, and I was good friends with the guy who did the winning laps!
Go back, trust me.
Yes- athletics have ruined the spirit and intentions of both the university and the nation.
http://thehearpe.tripod.com/index.html
The campus and area up to the town square looks like the movie still.
shareI've lived in Indianapolis for the better part of my 29 years, and I've been visiting Bloomington my whole life. My mom graduated from IU in 1978. A lot of my friends went to IU or were "townies."
I concur with the comments above. It's a wonderful town, one of my favorite places. Artsy and eclectic. It has become a little more commercial and corporate since I was a kid, and certainly since my mom lived there. ("It's not the hippie town I loved," my mom said after a walk down Kirkwood Ave. a few years ago.) Still, it's got a ton of quirky local businesses, and it's just a beautiful place. It also has a really impressive food scene, including tons of international cuisine. Some of the businesses shown in the movie are still there or look similar. One of the best towns in the Midwest.
It's the peaceful easy feeling I found in Bloomington when I came to school there in the early 70's- before this movie- that prompted me to write my comment above. I transferred from Purdue after one semester after being born and raised on the northeast side of Indianapolis. My older sister conversely started at IU in 1967 and followed her future husband to Purdue and graduated there. I followed the bike race and my cycling friends and my writing ambitions to Bloomington and fell in love with it.
Being race track city born, Bloomington more exposed me to the other side of Indiana that suburban Indy was paving over. returning home in summers my first two years of school to work at a new bike shop out near the Speedway, the most peaceful summer I ever spent I found in Bloomington in 1975, when I stayed for summer classes and lived in the Delta Chi on Third street across from Mother Bears Pizza, with only a couple of other people.
Life was about bicycles and totally empty back roads, and the cowboy rock of the time- the Eagles, John Denver, Michael Murphy, Bill Wilson, oatmeal raisin cookies and sasafrass tea at the Tao restaurant and late nights with a book and coffee at the Runcible Spoon. I have one specific memory of being alone in the big house- or nearly so- and hearing the music wafting down from Bear's Place a couple of blocks down Third street- "Radar Love" was playing, and being totally amazed by the lack of traffic passing my third floor window on that hot summer night- very different now- yes.
I'd wander over through the empty union building to stand in awe at the photos still there I think, by Frank Hohenberger and others that were on the wall- I was taking photojournalism and fascinated by it all
I'm not done yet- but will leave you with some period music
Indianasong Bill Wilson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6fjFyY_WHw
Summer Breeze- Seals and Croford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsHuV3Aj1os
Peaceful Easy Feeling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n00g71TySS4
Ten years ago I found myself living in Brown County, after living much of the 80's and 90's in Southern California and Los Angeles, and it occurred to me that I had somehow straddled the areas of my home state that had probably changed the very most and the very least within my lifetime. Much of the area near where I lived and went to Lawrence Townships schools as a child were totally different from what I'd known a few years earlier: The area near I69 and 105 street the most striking, for back in early 70's I could ride up Hague Road and up past Castleton the road veered along I 69 and then turned right and east- and at that point I might -literally- see a car every a half an hour along the roads there. It is now a commercial strip and wall to wall traffic for decades now.
In contrast, the roads of Brown County, many of them photographed by Frank Hohenberger a hundred years ago, were often much the same as they appeared in his ancient photographs- enough so to know immediately the spot, and likewise areas west of Bloomington I got familiar with the summer I drove vans for the Area 10 Agency on Aging the summer after the filming of Breaking Away, between Bloomington and Spencer, transporting seniors into town to buy groceries and needed items. The Helmsburg Road was something I had discovered back in the 70's and one of my favorite roads to cycle on, was virtually still unchanged, except for the proliferation of HUGE pick-up trucks moving at high rates of speed. The road was the same - the feeling was not, and more dangerous- as all cycling territory had become since the days they called the Cycling Renaissanceat the dawn of the 70's.
The same could be said of Bloomington. The buildings still stood- newer ones among them and others gone- The old D-Chi house was leveled about then and had stood since 1925 I think. One thing had become more clear- the town, whose roads had been primarily laid out a century earlier with IU nestled among them, had not been designed anticipating the amount of traffic there then. Little can be done I suppose without really tearing things up and changing the place even further. Yes- much area just beyond town had now become less rural and more a part of the metropolitan area. When I rode the bike in the 70's we could leave the house on the eastside of town- and a mile or so, just past the college mall, be out of almost all of the traffic. The quarries near the westside which had been a popular sight for skinny dippy had been totally closed and the roads out to Ellettsville a more modern highway to accommodate those more precious large trucks. My own opinion was that television and sports had turned it all more "rah-rah" as we called it back then. Even the Little 5 had a feeling of being something else, and I'd lament to people after Breaking Awa came out that "They've all come to look for America" a line from the Simon and Garfunkle song that seems to evoke the feeing one gets when something loses it's innocence.