The NFL has taken some heat for hosting this year’s Super Bowl in a smaller city than normal, but Indianapolis is trying to combat its small-town reputation by busing in homeless people from larger nearby nearby metropolitan areas like Chicago and Detroit, hoping first-time visitors will mistake Indiana’s capital for the big city it strives to be.
“We were hoping to call Indy America’s Biggest Little City, but apparently those hacks over in Reno already claimed it,” said mayor Greg Ballard. “And then we got to thinking: What do big city’s have that we don’t?”
Ballard said that at first his advisors rattled off things like mass transit, major bodies of water, industry, diversity and culture, but he knew there was no way his fair city could replicate any of those.
“Then it hit me: Every time I go to big cities I see tons and tons of homeless people,” said Ballard. “We could get them here no problem.”
Ballard then sent a few dozen Greyhound buses to Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland to pick up as many homeless people as possible and bring them into Indianapolis, where they’ll be stationed in high-visibility areas throughout the city’s downtown area, hoping to trick visitors into believing the city isn’t some quaint, stale, boring flyover town, but rather a once-booming Midwestern metropolis that’s fallen on hard economic times just like so many other American cities Indy wishes it was.
The only problem with the plan is what to do with the displaced homeless people once the Super Bowl is over.
“Yeah, we haven’t really thought about that,” said Ballard. “Where do you send a bunch of people who have no place to call their own? I’ve never had to deal with homeless people before so I have no clue what to do. Maybe some of them can find temporary work helping Peyton Manning move out of town when he retires in a few weeks.”
