Milady enjoys hot chocolate and her companion for the day.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: sometimes we celebrate holidays! Sometimes we leave the house! Sometimes we celebrate holidays by leaving the house!

With Valentine’s Day on a Saturday this year and our schedules cleared, my wife Anne and I made plans to grab an early breakfast before the rest of the world woke up and packed every restaurant in central Indiana for the next eighteen hours. We put our heads together, looked up places that we hadn’t been to before, and loved where we wound up. We didn’t cross-index our search results for sightseeing options in the vicinity, but were pleasantly surprised to wander into some. We ended up taking many more pics than we’d expected that day.

A mural welcomes us, a prologue to our forthcoming art walk.

The two of us are lifelong Indianapolis west-siders and don’t hang out in Carmel too often, that most prominent among the the well-to-do cities and suburbs up on the northeast side. At times the relationship between Indy and Carmel bears more than a passing resemblance to the Pawnee-vs.-Eagleton rivalry (as it’s always seemed to this class-underdog, anyway), but the fact remains their non-chain culinary creators outnumber the west side’s by roughly 10,000-to-1. We made reservations, made the half-hour drive, and made ourselves at home at Goodness Gracious Kitchen & Cupboard, a breakfast-and-lunch spot that celebrated ten years of coziness last year.

Note the winter and valentine flourishes harmonizing in their windows, including an entire Valentine’s Day tree in one corner.

For Anne, the lemon ricotta pancakes, dusted with powdered sugar,

For me, the Chick(Hen) and Waffles — with touches of hot honey and topped with an entire buttermilk-fried Cornish hen.

We figured that’d be the end of our expedition and we’d be heading straight home to binge some King of the Hill or whatever. Au contraire: Goodness Gracious is in the heart of the Carmel Arts & Design District, which overflows with each and every item in its name. Temperatures had risen into the 40s and the two-week-old suffocating snowstorm blanket had mostly melted away throughout the week. This happy couple took advantage and took ourselves a nice stroll to walk off those breakfast carbs.

Among our missed opportunities: down the street was the Museum of Miniature Houses and Other Collections, which wouldn’t open for a couple more hours.

Free sights in their windows included Kwanzaa figures.

Miniature average Carmel house.

The museum’s tiny library, probably with different books than their gift shop sells (assuming they have one).

Last time we were in this specific neighborhood was some 15-20 years ago when we visited Bub’s Burgers & Ice Cream for my birthday and I had my very first elk burger. Bub’s is still rockin’ on, but Main Street Carmel has built up a lot around them since then. Their stretch was revamped into the Carmel Arts & Design District, with public art on just about every block and the Monon Greenway trail blazed north-south through one end for pedestrians and bikers to enjoy to their hearts’ content.

The art assortment includes 23 statues by a single artist: J. Seward Johnson II, grandson of one of the founders of Johnson & Johnson (whose “no more tears” shampoo was a childhood household staple I endured under protest), whose son J. Seward III was one of BuzzFeed’s co-founders. Under the aegis of their previous mayor, the city purchased the statues between 2005 and 2023, the last one installed after Johnson himself passed away in 2020. These entries from his “Man-on-the-Street” series, dispersed across multiple localities, illustrate a sort of throwback community mostly conforming to a “Forever Small-Town 1950s” motif. Carmel hasn’t been a small town in decades, and definitely didn’t spend like a small town to acquire these. The Indianapolis Star compiled a complete list of locations, dates, and price tags.

If we’d known we would be in the middle of all this, I might’ve done the legwork so we could track down all 23. On our own without any online guidance, we approached 16 of them in all, in the following order:

There, Now You Can Grow. (The kid’s got work to do.)

Sidewalk Concert. (That’s fake money in his violin case, not real.)

Who’s in Charge, the nearest statue to Goodness Gracious.

Things To Do, plus a bonus Indiana-flag-themed deck chair.

Unconditional Surrender, based on the amazing true story of that one famous WWII photo.

Strolling Professor, whose textbook is turned to a chapter about chemical motion, illustrated with parabolic graphs.

Captured, the most recently installed Johnson statue as of 2023.

Holding Out, demonstrating how folks in the good ol’ days used to go buy their groceries themselves in person from fellow live humans.

Confirming Predictions, demonstrating how there used to be companies that printed entire news sites on paper and delivered them to your house every morning. The best part was that angry troll replies sometimes took days to show up.

Waiting to Cross, attached to a real stop sign.

The 2005 inaugural Johnson statue First Ride, with a father encouraging his daughter.

Shaping Up, appropriately along the Monon Greenway.

Wine, Food, and Thou. Fortunately for her there’s no Yogi Bear statue nearby.

Oh, It’s You, Welcome! Gee, Officer Krupke, you shouldn’t have!

One Man’s Search, featuring wardrobe by the Carmel High School bookstore.

Ambassador of the Streets and its pet human.

A selection of works by the outnumbered other artists:

Sail by Owens & Crawley, near the southern entrance to the District along the Greenway. I understand it lights up at night.

Brickhead Human by James Tyler.

Gavin – Aspiration by Jason Myers. The latest in his worldwide series, the 30-foot Gavin – Divergence, has been causing quite the fuss among Broad Ripple residents.

Swing Me Higher, Mama by Dominic Benhura.

Eternal Spring by Jerry Joslin.

We couldn’t resist one last stop along Main Street before returning to the car: a round of snacks from Tous les Jours, a chain of French-Asian bakeries that originated in South Korea and have apparently been around since 2004. We’d never heard of them till last year, when we had breakfast at one in Huntsville, Alabama, on our 2025 road trip. (Someday I’ll post those pics too. Someday! Lord willing!) Until this very Saturday we didn’t know they have at least three Indiana locations. We had no idea because of course none of them are on the west side. This Valentine’s Day was just full of learning experiences for us.

Sample luscious cakes.

Sample macarons, including double-stuffed options, because Indiana.

Our haul: one chocolate creme donut, one matcha creme donut, a strawberry croissant snack sandwich, a hazelnut-filled chocolate muffin, and a loaf of mascarpone cream bread.

…and then we returned to our malnourished side of town, ran errands, went home, exchanged gifts, and enjoyed the rest of our weekend except for the part where we didn’t stumble across any more surprise gourmet delicacies.