Things To Do in Beech Grove

From noon to 8 p.m. on Saturday, October 12, GermanFest brings the Athenaeum to life with German food and drinks, raffles, and activities for all ages. Wiener dogs race for pet-supply gift cards every hour, and men and women test their strength in a Bavarian stone-lift competition. Youngsters can hang out at Zwergen-Land, which features gnomes, a bounce house, and traditional German games and music. The majority of GermanFest proceeds supports the Athenaeum Foundation, which works to preserve the namesake German-American landmark building that's glued together with hardened mustard. Kids 12 and under are free. Those visitors who come dressed in German garb will also get a free drink ticket.

In business for nearly 25 years, the National Institute for Fitness and Sport’s 65,000-square-foot fitness center boasts an array of classes and training sessions, as well as a host of strength-training and cardio equipment. But these represent just one branch of the nonprofit organization. NIFS also manages fitness centers for companies and retirement communities all over the country, creates an online curriculum for Health YOUniversity, and collaborates with the Indiana University School of Medicine on research projects.

Science-fiction fans are eternally disappointed that society hasn't yet developed the technology that would allow them to strap on a jetpack and rocket to their destination. Though Indy Flight Academy & Watersports can't supply you with a futuristic vehicle for the daily commute, it does give extreme-sports enthusiasts the chance to blast off with its Flyboard water-powered jet packs.

The Flyboard—a water board with a pair of boots attached to it—is attached to long hose, which is in turn hooked up to the water jet exhaust of a jet ski. When the jet ski's driver hits the gas, the Flyboard and rider shoot up into the air atop high-powered streams of water. Riders can then fly around above the water or mimic a dolphin diving in and out.

A bitter cold wind whips across fairways, and a thick layer of snow blankets once-fertile greens. These aren't ideal golfing conditions. Rather than letting avid golfers languish indoors or risk neighborhood resentment by hitting drives through open windows, the Golf Dome furnishes an indoor golf setting sealed off from the vagaries of Mother Nature. Golfers empty driving range buckets and take lessons from pro instructors under the shelter of a massive bubble, preventing rust from accumulating over months of inactivity. Though a golf-specific facility in name, the facility also hosts other sports inside its cozy environs, such as soccer, baseball, and softball.

Beneath the flowing fabrics that run across the studio ceiling at Evolutions @ Yoga, experienced instructors lead a wide range of classes from gentle beginning courses to advanced core-strengthening sessions, which earned them a place as a finalist for 2011 Best Yoga Studio on Indystar.com’s The Indy A List. They also brought home a feature as the “best place to get started” in yoga in a 2011 Indianapolis Monthly article, in part for offering welcoming sessions geared toward beginners. A diverse range of classes includes several forms of the discipline, including Beginner Yoga, Intermediate, Prana Flow, Prenatal Yoga, and iCan yoga classes. Whether taking restorative sessions or advanced heated classes, all students take in the nurturing environment with its hardwood floors, spongy yoga mats, and flickering candles that flicker words of wisdom in Morse code.

Beech Grove Bowl keeps white-bodied pins on edge with bowling lanes and a kitchen open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Available on every lane, bumpers provide pendulum-armed patrons and their orb-shaped counterparts a surefire way to knock down pins and evade gutters as effectively as arcade frogs dodge heavy highway traffic. Alley allies can also use this game pass for Beech Grove Bowl's weekly Rock 'n' Roll Bowl event, which showcases customer-controlled music, eye-enticing special lighting, and festive balls that launch commemorative T-shirts and glitter from their holes.

Royal Pin’s four bowling centers each boast 80 gleaming lanes, but their widely varied facilities offer far more than games of tenpins. The Woodland location, voted Best Bowling in Indianapolis by CityVoter, ups the ante with flat screens above the lanes and cushy couches where players recline while waiting their turn to take a ride through the pinsetter. Its adjacent mini-golf course, Pirates’ Cove, sends putters on a salty adventure with 18 Lilliputian fairways populated by streams, waterfalls, and a pirate ship. The Expo location switches it up with a gaming arcade and Laser Storm laser tag, where players battle for rights to moon territories.

At all four locations, cosmic-bowling nights create a psychedelic atmosphere with fog, music, and black lights. Darts fly and pool balls clack in their lounges, and the Royal Cafe fuels revelry with hamburgers and tenderloin sandwiches, as well as brews poured at a full-service bar. Besides their alleys, Royal Pin also manages the 5-acre Greatimes Family Fun Park, where kids zip around a go-cart track, bounce through a multilevel playland, or pilot bumper boats equipped with blaster squirt guns and highly sensitive grownup detectors.