Indianapolis Greyhound Bus Station

Description

The smell of stale diesel fumes is omnipresent, along with that of festering garbage from overflowing trashcans. There is a distinct undercurrent of the pungent odor of human sweat and urine. The ground is littered with broken glass, cigarette butts, syringes and other detritus. Expansive concrete shelters, almost completely covered in graffiti, provide deep shadows in which the homeless sleep, while the occasional addict shoots up, or a prostitute services a john. Buses, however, are nowhere in sight at this late hour.

Rumors

Quite a bit of money was once made in this rundown and polluted area. It's said that the Prince sees this area as an unholy eye-sore and is considering its future.

Traits

Physical: Access +4, Safety –3. The station is a plaza, at the hub of all of the city’s bus routes, an area populated at night largely by the criminally desperate.
Mental: Information –1, Awareness –3. The whole neighborhood is covered in flyers, but the majority of them are weeks or months out of date, while most of the locals are willfully oblivious to nearly everything, keeping their eyes down to avoid inviting contact with strangers.
Social: Prestige –3, Stability –3. Folks assume that everyone from this area is a pimp, crack whore or homeless lunatic who’d step over a dying man before offering to help him. For the most part, they’re right.

Haven Qualities

Location 5, Security 1, Size 1. There’s plenty of feeding to be had, but precious little secure space.

History

Greyhound was the waypoint for all visitors coming to or leaving Indianapolis 50 years ago. The buses used to stream into the station from all points of the compass, full of bright-eyed tourists and hopeful businessmen with the Next Big Idea. Now, not so much, since rail and air travel is more dependable and less desperate. A handful of the brownstones in the neighborhood still have some of their Jazz Age grandeur about them, but most of the neighborhood has slid into apathetic neglect.

Nobody takes the buses anymore. Nobody good, that is. Only the dregs come or leave by bus, and the Grand Junction neighborhood looks it. Even the one-way streets and highway on-ramps are pitted with decay, just like the people forced to live here and the people who ride the dilapidated cattle cars into and out of Newcastle. The whole place smells like diesel and bum piss, and the oil in the lingering smoke makes sure both of those smells travel with a person into other parts of town, in his nose and on his clothes

Type

Transportation hub

Parent Location

Greater Indianapolis