Good luck avoiding vomit on Downtown Indianapolis sidewalks. There's a lot of it.

This story was initially published on Feb. 26, 2018.

Warning: This story is gross. Do not read over breakfast, or over lunch, or over dinner, or maybe at all.

It is an indication of Indianapolis' vibrant nightlife, but it is also disgusting. It is the lasting consequence of a too-big night out, the gut-wrenching culmination of overdoing it.

It is vomit, and on Saturday, Sunday and Monday mornings it lies splattered on Downtown sidewalks to such an extent it has become an issue.

"We get complaints about this," said Bob Schultz of the nonprofit group Downtown Indy Inc., which, breaking from decorum, last week sent a flyer to Downtown businesses that included a photograph of vomit on a sidewalk. The group's point was to urge support of a funding initiative, common in other cities like New Orleans, that would pay for frequent power-washings of Downtown sidewalks, among other cosmetic measures.

"It's sad but true, we're not clean enough," Schultz said. "We're not spending enough on beautification."

Beautification may sound lofty in the context of vomit remediation, but even the loveliest touch — a public sculpture, a mural — can be undone by even the smell of regurgitated matter, let alone the sight of it. And if it is not attended to promptly, it can prove to be surprisingly tenacious.

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Near the Indianapolis Star offices on South Meridian Street, for example, the silhouette of a major deposit is still visible two weeks later — despite several rainfalls.

"There's a lot of it (vomit) around here, there's some right there now," said a Department of Public Works staffer Sunday morning, motioning a few doors south as he policed the corner of Georgia and Meridian streets, a stone's throw from a half dozen bars — Tiki Bob's Cantina, the Slippery Noodle and Punch Bowl Social, to name three. "They're always throwing up in front of the clubs."

"I guess that's pretty typical for a Friday or Saturday night at 3 a.m.," said Jack Shepler, who owns a marketing company and does some deejaying. "It's especially South Meridian, but it's also Broad Ripple. I'd like to think of Mass Ave as a little classier, but I've had to dodge (vomit) there too. It's a good idea not to wear your favorite shoes to the bars."

But whose job is it to clean it up?

If you complained to the city's Department of Business and Neighborhood Services, formerly the Department of Code Enforcement, BNS "would more than likely contact DPW and ask them to send a crew out to clean it up," said Brandi Pahl, a BNS spokesperson.

The DPW staffer at Georgia and Meridian last Sunday morning, who requested anonymity because the DPW rank-and-file aren't supposed to give interviews, swept up cigarette butts, jalapeno peppers and other typical day-after detritus.

Vomit, however, was not his job, he said. (He added, though, that when he encounters it and is running ahead of schedule he'll sometimes heave a bucket with water and wash it into the street and from there into the sewer. But that's going above and beyond.)

"It's not on us" to clean up vomit, said DPW spokesperson Betsy Whitmore. "That might be something the health department might have to get involved in."

The Marion County Health Department does indeed have a Hazmat crew, but they deal with things like chemical leaks, said spokesperson Collette DuValle. "Street vomit, that's something else," she said. "You might check with DPW or Downtown Indy Inc."

Downtown Indy Inc., Schultz's group, has an agreement with the city to keep Georgia Street clean. Georgia Street, with its wide walkways and plantings and overhead lighting, is a Downtown showplace, the frequent scene of city-wide galas like on New Year's Eve. Visit Indy, the convention bureau, on its website describes Georgia Street as "a pedestrian-friendly, European-inspired promenade."

A Downtown Indy Inc. staffer power-washes the European-inspired promenade regularly, hosing away bodily fluids, grease from food trucks, gum and even coffee spills (Schultz notes that a spilled latte, if it freezes, can resemble something much worse).

But Downtown Indy's responsibility ends with Georgia Street.

So whose job is it to remove vomit from the rest of the sidewalks? The municipal code contains lots of rules about sidewalks. None specifically mentions vomit, but Sec. 361-307 seems to hang responsibility on the owners of adjacent businesses:

"All owners or persons controlling premises in the central business district of the city shall, at least once each twenty-four (24) hours, except when the business is closed, sweep the sidewalks in front of their premises down to the curb, and gather up and remove all loose paper and refuse."

You could say that's not fair on two levels: 1) the offender himself gets off scot-free; 2) he (or she) might have departed the bar that over-served him (or her) and staggered some distance before vomiting, which means he (or she) would befoul the sidewalk of a perfectly innocent business.

No matter to the management at Kilroy's, at Georgia and South Meridian streets. "On the rare occasion we have vomit in front of our building, we clean it up," said managing partner Chris Burton. "I'd expect any place would do the same."

Not every place does. The ordinance is violated practically every weekend, and it has been like this for several years, said Sara Risley, a freelance public relations adviser who blogs about Indianapolis' and Indiana's fun side on the Get Lost Facebook page.

Risley worked Downtown in 2002 and again in 2013 and has awful memories of walking north on South Meridian Street Monday mornings. "You get professionally dressed in heels, and you have your laptop" — you're trying to represent — "and you're walking, and you'd have to step around it."

"It's not a very pleasant way to start the week," she said.

Contact Star reporter Will Higgins at 317-444-6043. Follow him on Twitter @WillRHiggins.