Travel to St. Louis!

This is for my friends Jeff and Patrick, who (hopefully) will be returning the favor and coming to visit the Gateway to the West soon. Since St. Louis is pretty spread out and favors the over-21 set, our options are limited, yet exciting. I'm going to give as comprehensive of a list (St. Louisans please add on) as I can for them for them to choose from when they come to visit:

The Obvious:
- the Arch (w/ ride to the top)
- Cardinals game (schedule)
- Ted Drewes Frozen Custard (menu)
- The City Museum (crucial)
- Westminster Christian Academy

Neighborhoods:
- the Hill (Italian neighborhood) (restaurants)
- East St. Louis (guided tour)
- North County (guided tour)
- The Loop (shopping/bars)
- Central West End (shopping/bars)
- Laclede's Landing (mostly bars, some restaurants - kind of seedy)
- South Grand (shopping/restaurants)
- Downtown walkabout
- the Fox/Moolah theater area (SLU)?

Restaurants not by anything else:
- Carl's Drive-In (not actually a drive-in, just a tiny diner kind of like Town Topic in KC) (City of Manchester)
- Crown Candy (for the milkshakes) (Old North St. Louis)

Forest Park:
- St. Louis Art Museum (free)
- STL Zoo (free)
- general running around (map)

Places I've never been:
- St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum

Other necessities:
- riding on the Metrolink
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(all images - STL Style)

"I'm going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come": brief review of Kansas City and Lawrence, KS

emmy, patrick, and I in front of the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum

So, being lame, I went to Kansas City for my last spring break of my college career. I had the lowest expectations possible for any city on planet earth. I have been raised in St. Louis, and so have been raised with the lowest of views of Kansas City. They are smaller than us (metro area: 1.9 million vs. our 2.8 million), have a crappier airport than us, do not have Forest Park, do not have the Cardinals, do not have the City Museum, do not have our history (Gateway of the West, Lewis and Clark, etc.), and generally suffer from an inferiority complex that is pitiful.

However (and this pains me greatly to say this), after this spring break I think Kansas City is better than St. Louis. While St. Louis has very cool parts of town, they are all 20-minutes away from each other. St. Louis is very fragmented, each county harboring a suspicion of all the other counties. Never will I give up on St. Louis, but KC's downtown and midtown are in far better states than St. Louis' right now. Their Power and Light District that is being built looks super-cool, they have more gay people, more art events, more hipster kids (how I love those hipster kids), and as sad as their Royals are they still love them, which is cute.

It is almost as if the ego of St. Louis is standing in its own way. As I'm looking forward to moving to the great city on May 18th (maybe for good), I am trying to figure out exactly what St. Louis' problem(s) is/are.

One problem is the stubbornness/corruption of the city politicians. They don't like change. (as can be seen in this article about the Metrolink).

Another problem I want to find out more about is how the city is split up, tax-wise. Somehow, the tax money from the counties does not reach downtown. Why? This adds to the cultural/geographical/psychological fragmentation of the city. We are a house divided and we don't let our kids go downtown.

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Also, another blow to my city-love ego came when I found out that Lawrence (home of the hated Kansas University) has an Urban Outfitters downtown and is generally cooler than Columbia. Go ahead and stab me in the heart.