City of a Thousand Scars
February 10th, 2006 | Posted by Shannon
Even though I don’t have much experience with it, I have always had a fascination with the American heartland. Could be the reading material of my youth, could be my overactive imagination, or a combination of both; I have the past in my mind’s eye. Clay-like, life-giving soil under thick leather workboots by the river’s edge. The plaintive wail of a an unnoticed diva emitting from a dive bar in a shitty town. The smell of burnt sugar. The feel of a hot penny in a child’s dirty hand.
Whatever. I’ve spent a week in Missouri and it’s made an impression on me. There haven’t exactly been any divas and certainly no Addie Pray type kiddies that I might have envisioned in my crazy dreams. But this is a cool place, and a trippy place, commonplace and enigmatic at the same time. And in the country, driving through a fresh snow, it is unbelievably beautiful. I can’t believe how much empty space there is here, even just outside St. Louis.
In St. Louis, I have been lucky enough to have two incredible guides, my friend Deborah from the slowtalk message board, and Jonathan Parker who owns a food and wine shop here. Between them, they’ve taken me to streets of gothic opulence, ghettos of no return, killer art deco penthouses, the church with more mosaics than anywhere in the world, a supermarket of ethnic foods that has no rival anywhere, the bar where Chuck Berry plays once a month, a Harrah’s casino where I lost fifty bucks, an Italian restaurant with a $10 plate of risotto as good as I could eat in Venice, a massive park where, in the summer, they have Broadway shows at an outdoor theater.
St. Louis is hella fucking cool, and it doesn’t even know it. St. Louis could be a world class city. St. Louis has all this riverfront on the Mississippi that is not even developed. All around the downtown, is this crazy ghetto where there are all these killer houses in various states of fucked-upped-ness. It’s already a cool town – it could be a KILLER town. I’m not a developer or an opportunist, but man oh man, is this place awesome-waiting-to-happen.
Of course, I haven’t been here in the summer yet. The summer, that screams promise.
February 13th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Shannon, It was a blast giving you a tiny taste of my city.
Your comments here are so spot on that I’d like to e-mail your blog to every mover & shaker in the entire St. Louis metro area.
I’d like to say, “Look you ostriches! An outsider, someone who didn’t ‘go to high school here’, can see in one day what the whole passel of you are too busy wallowing in to appreciate!”