![]() The B&B where I am staying, the Pleasants Rose Mansion Inn, was formerly owned by “Medical Mafia” ringleader Howard Awand, who reinvented himself in Vevay as a Victorian innkeeper until the FBI tracked him down. It’s so welcoming to whoever or whatever you are.”Įven scoundrels. “It is one of things that makes Vevay unique. “Vevay has had a cool counterculture to it for a long time, and people are now starting to appreciate it more,” says Angie Priest, whose store, Vevay Vintage Prop & Shop, sells everything from midcentury barware to Holy Crap Fortune Cookies. Though Switzerland County is 97 percent white, it has surprising cultural and religious diversity, from its three Amish communities to Whitewater Christian Service Camp to Camp Livingston, a Jewish summer gathering. Īround every corner is an artist or expert like blacksmith Jerry Wallin, whose metalwork has been featured in movies taxidermist Jim Day, whose bald eagles were once judged “Best in World ” and Donna Weaver, a wax portraitist, who designed and sculpted more than 40 coins and medals for the U.S. It’s like an Indiana version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. All weekend, I hear stories about prescient dreams, ghosts and mermaids, swingers and swindlers, FBI raids, art collections, and buried archaeological finds. Real estate is being snapped up by outsiders drawn to the beauty of the Ohio River, affordable houses, and a community with a reverence for history and irreverence for most everything else. Three new restaurants, an Ind圜ar museum, a bakery, and a botanical shop are all in the works for downtown. Fueled by the energy and vision of newcomer Jon Charles Smith, an Indy native who oversaw historic preservation for the Department of the Interior for 16 years, and by a pandemic-induced awakening to the joys of small-town living, Vevay is experiencing a full-blown renaissance. Photo courtesy Switzerland County Tourism OfficeĪT FIRST BLUSH, the idea that the goth goddess from LA Ink who started a cosmetics line, a vegan shoe company, and just released her first album, was moving to a town with a single traffic light, where the sign outside Cuzz’s, Indiana’s second-oldest bar, reads, “Where the good ol boys and gals hang out,” seems, well, crazy.īut spend a little time in Vevay, even a whirlwind weekend, and you’ll see that Von D is joining a community as colorful as she is. Later, Von D teased: “I wonder if Vevay, Indiana, would mind if I opened a little tattoo shop up here …” Fred the Goat was a beloved town mascot. “It’s official! Vevay, Indiana, here we come!” she posted on Instagram. Von D saw the town’s historic 35-room Schenck Mansion online, flew in, and purchased the Second Empire–style castle filled with antiques for $1.5 million. This hamlet of 1,700 Hoosiers nestled along the Ohio River made national headlines last year when celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D announced she was leaving Los Angeles and moving here. “We post about things going on in Vevay, post Fred the Goat festival pictures, other goat-related stuff. Death, seemingly, is a larger obstacle to Facebook fame than being a goat. ![]() She tells me Fred’s Facebook page has more than 1,000 followers. Kappes takes a photo for me out her window. There was talk of taxidermy, but instead, a concrete statue of a white goat was placed on his favorite hillside. A search party was dispatched and discovered his remains inside his favorite ramshackle house. Then, in fall 2013, the regulars at AJ’s Diner worried they hadn’t seen Fred around. Some claimed he looked at them with mystical intensity. Fred climbed trees, licked salt off the road, befriended deer and horses. “He gets in and out in 45 minutes, and they can get back to watch basketball games.”Īs we pull alongside an abandoned house, Kappes recounts the legend of Fred the Goat, a white, hornless, 4-H runaway with a Houdini-like talent for escaping fences. “They call it ‘The Quickie,’” Kappes says. Kappes points out the Catholic church, which holds Mass, oddly enough, on Saturday afternoons when a priest comes over from Madison. We are pretty sure the nudists will keep their clothes on, but as everything in this tiny town in southeastern Indiana is what Smith calls “funky, artsy, quirky,” you never know. Kappes and I are dressed in layers of down. Jon Charles Smith, executive director of the Switzerland County Tourism office, has kept my itinerary packed tighter than the gift basket he left on my bed. We’re on our way to a nudist Christmas party in Vevay, but first, my tour guide, Andrea Kappes, wants to show me the Amish discount store and check out the grave of the town’s beloved mascot, a dead goat named Fred. At Vevay’s Catholic church, the priest leads a short Sunday service called “The Quickie.”
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