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Congratulations, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett! Our potholes are famous!

The New York Times published an article this month entitled, ‘Here to Ruin Your Daily Commute:’ A Plague of Potholes Jolts the Midwest, and our beloved Indianapolis is featured quite prominently.

Please to enjoy selected highlights from the piece:

For those who live in snow-prone regions, driving in the winter can feel like an exercise in futility: Unsuspecting, and then it appears, a crater in the asphalt, just waiting to blow out a tire. You try to swerve, brace for impact, and then: Kathunk.

But commuters of America, take heart: Indianapolis has it worse.

Much, much worse.

The capital of Indiana (whose state motto is, ironically, “the crossroads of America”) has essentially become one large pothole, compliments of wild temperature swings this winter. The metropolis is so pockmarked by decaying asphalt that local officials have said that more than $730 million is required to repair over 8,100 miles of streets — nearly six times the city’s current budget for transportation infrastructure.

Decades of neglect and underfunding, combined with the brutality of Midwestern winters, have left the city’s roads resembling the surface of the moon. To assist motorists, the city last year posted an “Indy pothole viewer” map online, which currently shows 4,388 open potholes, marked by a swarm of angry red dots.

Ah, a moment of national pride for the Circle City. Good times being had by all, no?

WIBC host Tony Katz has a few words of insight to share at this time.

Katz:

“The best is where they get into how people have been Photoshopping pictures of potholes and creating memes out of them. It goes on and on and on. And then one of the tweets is from Gigi’s Cupcakes, which was a tweet to me that made it into the New York Times piece about potholes. And then there is a ‘Potholes of Indy’ Twitter account that has endorsed Joe Hogsett in his re-election campaign because they love the potholes.

…If you’re running for re-election and the New York Times mocks you for the potholes in your city, you’re in a bad position. If I were running against Joe Hogsett, I’d be putting this article out everywhere.”

You want and NEED to hear more. Click on the link below to satisfy your ‘Katz Craving’ at once! And don’t forget to thank Indy Mayor Joe Hogsett for making our city’s potholes famous when you vote for Jim Merritt this November.