Mascot Hall of Fame and El Taco Real
Cooperstown has the Baseball Hall of Fame, Canton has the Football Hall of Fame and Springfield has the Basketball Hall of Fame. Each draw people from around the world to pay homage to the best of the best in their respective sports. Now Northwest Indiana has its own claim to fame. We spent our recent Date Day at the Mascot Hall of Fame!
Mascot Hall of Fame
The Hall was founded by David Raymond (the original Phillie Phanatic) as an online place to honor the best mascots from professional and collegiate sports teams. The list of inductees to the Hall grew steadily over the years, but with no physical presence it went largely unnoticed. That all changed On December 26, 2018 when David’s dream of a physical home for the Hall became a reality, and the Mascot Hall of Fame opened in Whiting, Indiana.
The Hall is the sole occupant of a new 25,000 square foot building near Whiting’s lakefront. It’s clean and modern, with silly mascot-related creatures adorning its walls and entryway. If driving up to the building doesn’t get you a little excited, you might be soulless.
Our extended Date Day crew this week included our three sons and two of their girlfriends. Everyone had a good time. Even Nate, who tried to pretend he didn’t want to go, managed to crack a smile or two.
First Floor
The atrium of the Hall is bright, airy and filled with oversized floating mascot heads. There’s a small giftshop, a snack bar and a children’s play area where kids and adults alike can test their skills at basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer and football. We learned that Sara and Theresa have nice, if awkward, jump shots, Katy can shoot the puck past Seb at will and Alex would’ve never made it as a catcher.
The best part of the first floor is the t-shirt cannon game where up to four people get to shoot electronic t-shits into a crowded stadium. Alex quickly established his dominance at this game and spent the better part of 30-minutes beating up on the little kids that dared to challenge him. Way to go son!
Second Floor
The second floor is the heart of the Hall and filled with fun and interesting mascot games and memorabilia. You can try on a mascot head to see how heavy they are, watch how mascot uniforms are made and even challenge someone to a mascot dance-off. Sara challenged Theresa and they happily embarrassed the rest of the family with their ill-conceived mascot moves. Quickly Seb and Katy snuck away and the rest of us followed. Too bad no one captured any video.
The second floor is also where the actual Hall of Fame is located. It was fun to see how many of inductees we recognized – not as many as we thought we would. There are no Chicago inductees yet, but there is plenty of memorabilia from the likes of Tommy Hawk, Benny the Bull and even Ribbie and Roobarb. Thankfully, we saw no sightings of Clark. We did, however, get a chance to meet Reggy, the Hall’s very own mascot. Reggy seems to spend his day endlessly roaming the Hall, trying to sneak up on people to scare them.
The second floor also boasts two small theaters where you can see mascots in action, a place to dress up as a mascot and a build-a-bear like contraception where you can design and build your very own mascot – for a rather hefty fee.
We did not visit the third floor which holds the Funtorium. This space is geared more towards school groups and special events.
Overall the Hall is silly, fun and quirky. It’s definitely more for smaller kids, but our older kids enjoyed it as well. It will likely be a once every few years destination that we save for when friends are in town, but we’re glad we got to see it. Remember to keep a bottle or purell handy when you visit, as the exhibits are VERY hands-on.
After spending a fun 90 minutes, it was time to eat. None of the kids had been to El Taco Real so we decided to treat them to some great Mexican food.
El Taco Real
For those of you not familiar with it, El Taco Real is hands-down one of the best Mexican restaurants in the area. They’ve been serving traditional Mexican dishes (carnitas tacos, pozole, chilaquiles, menudo, ….) since 1974 and are still going strong. If you’re ever in the area, we highly recommend it.
We arrived around 2:30 (it was the day after Christmas) so the restaurant wasn’t very crowded. The staff quickly set up a table for seven and took our drink and appetizer orders. Margaritas for Tom and Theresa and soda for everyone else. As for the appetizers, we went with the queso fundido and the guacamole.
The guacamole was fresh, not too spicy and went perfectly with just about everything. The queso fundido was a HUGE concoction of Mexican cheese, sautéed onions, tomatoes and jalapenos. It was served with warm tortillas and made us all stop talking for a minute as we enjoyed the flavors.
We moved on to lunch/dinner with four of the kids opting for various combinations of tacos, Seb going for the Mole, Theresa the huevos ranchos and Tom the enchiladas. Everything was fantastic and most of us renewed our memberships in the clean plate club.
After our feast, all for less than $100, we had no room for desert. As we left, we noticed the restaurant had gotten quite full as it neared dinner time. Little Nate punctuated a perfect ending to our day with a great comment; “Wouldn’t it be great if this place had a mascot, so they could be in the Hall of Fame”?
December 2018
Mascot Hall of Fame
1851 Front St, Whiting, IN 46394
$12 Per Person
1.5 Hours
Free Parking
El Taco Real
935 Hoffman St, Hammond, IN 46327
1.5 Hours
$95 (for 7 people)
