We could go up on the tracks? is one of my favorite texts to send. Last year, I made a short film about what happens next. Today, here’s episode two, produced by Ryan Blaske.
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A couple of weeks ago, I met up with Ryan Blaske and Nik Guiney for a Saturday morning stroll in Miami Village, a neighborhood on South Bend’s southeast side anchored by a string of storefronts, churches, homes, and a cemetery along Miami Street.
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Life during a South Bend winter is life under the permacloud. As the city wakes up with signs of spring, we reflect on the tolls and strange blessings of this uniquely cold and lonely season.
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Over the past year, Ryan Blaske’s stories with us have centered around his simple practice of walking the city with a camera in hand. Today, he continues this thread with a new friend along for the stroll.
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In 1919, Busse Baking company built a new, modern bakery in the heart of South Bend's Near Northwest neighborhood. Today, a team of incremental developers is reimagining the building as a collaborator village.
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On Christmas morning, after coffee and monkey bread with my wife Kristen and friend Ryan Blaske, we bundled up, grabbed a couple of film cameras, and set out for a snowy stroll down Prairie Avenue.
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Last night, South Bend City Church released a new film called A South Bend Christmas Eve. The 38-minute film intends to offer a sense of communal participation on Christmas Eve since the church has not gathered indoors since March.
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South Bend should control its own narrative. If we don’t tell a story, we are living in someone else’s. In Midwest Futures, author Phil Christman sketches a history of our region, its frontiers and utopias, in the hopes that we can settle the coming decades just a bit better.
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Around 4:00 in the afternoon on the day we filmed Ms. Adeline—two hours after the shop was supposed to close—things slowed down enough for us to ask Ms. Adeline some questions about her life, faith, and business.
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Today, we’re releasing a selection of behind the scenes photographs from our short film Ms. Adeline, and for West.SB members, 28 Minutes with Ms. Adeline, an extended interview with a wealth of memories and wisdom, as well as some of the film's most memorable quotes.
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South Bend lost 50,000 people in 50 years and lived to tell the story. Today, we’re a city of 100,000 people, including many who chose to stay and new immigrants who moved here. How?
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Nimoy Vaidya is a b-boy, originally from Kathmandu, Nepal, who moved to the U.S. in 2015. He breakdances as an avenue for personal growth and a way to help kids in South Bend.
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While many Americans spend this pandemic at home, crews of essential workers continue to set their alarms and take care of South Bend's parks and public spaces. Today, Jessica Spoor takes us around town to meet a few on the job.
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Ms. Adeline Wigfall-Jones has been cutting hair at 1131 West Washington Street in South Bend since 1976. She is 91 years old. We spent a typical Saturday, from 6:57 am to 4:49 pm, at the barbershop with Ms. Adeline and asked: “when are you going to stop?”
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Population decline is the root cause of many problems facing South Bend today. It’s about time we understand the real cost of this fabled decline.
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Welcome to the party Trader Joe’s, but let’s not pretend that you’re bringing the booze.
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Today, tens of thousands of people work in South Bend and enjoy her amenities, but deliberately live just outside the city limits. Why? In the early nineties, the city and her suburbs fought a war over this question.
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South Bend is full of signs, and as we live our lives alongside them, they become something more than just markers for a business. Today, Ryan Blaske introduces us to South Bend Signs, a new Instagram account documenting the signs of our city.
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In October of 1985, the South Bend Tribune editorial board published a glorious tribute to autumn in the American Midwest. We submit it to you today, the first day of autumn, as encouragement during this otherwise troubling year.
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