The Spirit’s in St. Louis, but where’s mine?
Yikes, who needs a drink?
Well, it has been four or five days since returning from the South, and I haven’t had an adult beverage since we crossed back over the Mason Dixon Line, which in my book is Highway 62 in south Minneapolis. And believe it or not, I believe the lack of spirits is hampering my hankering to describe our trip to the city of St. Louis. Which is a crying shame, considering all the things we saw and the people we met and the parties we crashed and the hotel room we destroyed. Straight cash homey.
After a total of 10 treacherous, white-knuckle hours driving through southern Minnesota and Iowa, and then into Missouri, get off Interstate 70 at Grand Blvd. and hang a right, heading further south, beginning to notice the blight that massacred north St. Louis in the 90’s, building after building after building bombed out, no windows, no doors, just empty black sockets like those of skulls, and after about a mile of this the guilt starts to burrow into the belly, and we are going to a freaking art museum conference for crying out loud, oh there it is, the big shiny metal structure, with giant windows to boot, standing out like a brick of white gold in the pile of shitty crumbled up bricks that we just drove through with our heads hung so low you’d have thought we were working on the car’s exhaust.
Did I bum you out? There’s no beer in my house, so go to hell.
Seriously, St. Louis needs a hand. Fortunately, there are a few pretty sweet individuals down there that are attempting to do some pretty sweet stuff, fixing up buildings, activating neighborhoods, exhibiting some art that is totally out of place, but what the hell? Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand the whole ‘gentrification’ cycle and how the decimated neighborhoods that were once thriving, usually minority neighborhoods get neglected by city and state officials who have developers whispering in their ears about how in five years they can turn that ‘crummy, crime-ridden’ part of town that is always giving them grief in the newspapers into a great big civic hand-job if they play their cards right. And I understand how the artist types are usually the unintentional foot soldiers in this war on the poor and their homes and maybe they should share some of the blame, but usually they are renters and they have no choice when the warehouse is sold and ‘River Heights’ or ‘Greenwich Metropolitan’ are conceived.
St. Louis has a little different story that is only beginning to be told. The artists are just buying the buildings themselves. Which, sure, is a testament to how rotten it must have gotten, for the developers stuck to the downtown portion of the city. But out in the neighborhoods, the artists are stepping up, no more renting for them. They are going all in, as they say on the riverboats, investing in their projects, themselves and their neighborhood, not to mention the city that will certainly come calling in the future. Just don’t sell out, don’t sell the fuck out!
A couple quick shout outs to Boots Contemporary and the BootPrint they are leaving behind. It’s the real deal. Yeah I’m talking to you Juan and Georgia. Also, I gotta mention the Cheshire Hotel, in all its 18th century English Inn glory, thanks for the towels and painting. And lastly, to one hot momma running the Shangri-La on Cherokee St, damn you got it going on. (p.s. I’m the one who had the Moroccan stew).