Posted on 08/18/2019 3:08:23 PM PDT by Allen In Texas Hill Country
We're on a Mississippi cruise from Minneapolis to New Orleans. Going to write a little synopsis after we get home. Today we spent touring St. Louis and was amazed. What a vibrant, busy, active and accommodating city. So much so I wanted to post this tiny bit. One could come here and spend a week touring in a lot more detail.
I don't have my laptop on much so I might not be able to respond to entries but can read them on my tablet.
We were right down town on a Sunday. Stopped in at a diner and it was at least half full. Cars buzzing around. But there were empty buildings. Not sure I want to say many. What was cool is that 10 or more buildings had been converted t apartments.
We were downtown for 2 or 3 hours and then a 2 hour tour of the county. It was explained that physically St. Lois is a small city. If I remember maybe 300,000. Whereas the county is between 2 and 3 million. Yes, the country does support the city.
But there was industry from the river to the west end of the county. And St. Louis is the home of several/many(?) national companies.
We lived in the St. Louis suburbs 1965 to 1969 when I headed off to college and Mom & Dad packed up and headed to Pennsylvania. The arch had just been built and opened. The second “Busch Stadium” (actually Busch Memorial Stadium) was brand new opening in 1966. Kiel Auditorium was only 30 years old, in good shape, and hosted great concerts for teenagers. You were smart enough to not head to East St. Louis or go anywhere near the north side Pruitt-Igoe projects.
It was the first city I was old enough to drive to by myself. I never thought much of the place and left Missouri as soon as I graduated from Mizzou. Seven years there was enough.
I guess I did. :<(((((
If St. Louis is such a dangerous place I wonder why I have never seen it in the news like Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore and many other cities but not St. Louis?????
Better stay in tourist areas.
ESL is mostly empty fields with overgrown grass and trees.
The city itself, which once had almost 900,000, is now down to at or below 300k. The county (which they’ve repeatedly tried to annex over the decades, and are trying again at present) has just under 1 million.
Didn’t the previous scene show the Family Truckster crossing over the bridge into Missouri?
..”Broussards ..”
Is that the place you yell “Hey, trow me a roll?” And a roll flies your way.
Is that the place you yell “Hey, trow me a roll?” And a roll flies your way.
Gateway Electronics is still there (different location, tho’.)
Very interesting thread on the topic of St. Louis’ population, here:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/st-louis/1414328-why-population-st-louis-less-than.html
The city itself is small, and was badly overcrowded with 900k residents. Plus major roads and such have chewed up a lot of land. The contributors at that forum who think St. Louis would be “about right” at 500k people in the city are likely correct.
Incidentally, check out the long post from 2012, by “Mokan” on page 2 @ the above link. Mokan is largely correct (and would likely be called a racist for trying to understand the problems objectively!) However, I think it needs to be pointed out that most US industries CANNOT be competitive with overseas industries unless those US manufacturers are highly automated. A lot of the overseas competitors ALREADY have a large degree of automation and semi-automation. This is a problem for the cities in particular, because “Mokan” correctly points out, indirectly, that a large portion of the cities’ population(s) do not have the skills, demeanor, etc., needed to be worth much of anything, in a business sense, to a modern industrial concern. This has been going on for generations, strongly encouraged by Dems / libs success in creating a captive “dependent” voting base. It is literally sinister, and I wish some conservative (or even moderate) black / latino / white / etc. politicians had the guts to stand up and tell their people the truth. Even then, a lot of the problem is now cultural (oh, boy, I’m a racist too!) and will take time even with the best of efforts to correct.
Anyway, while I do for many reasons support the reinvigoration of US industry, I’m afraid those efforts may be of very limited success in reducing the ranks of those no longer even in the job market.
St. Louis is NOT all bad. As you saw, it has some very cool / nice / etc. spots. But it (and some areas in “the county” too) have nearly intractable problems, made worse by current and likely future leadership.
The town I was born in was once thriving with industries, shopping, ethnic neighborhoods (Polish section, Italian section, Irish section, black section, etc.)
Back in the late 60s politicians realized there was big money in redistribution. They reportedly put up billboards in Puerto Rico encouraging immigration. They started building welfare housing all over (remember “urban renewal”?).
Now the place is an empty shell, propped up by government handouts and that’s about it.
My cousin’s name was mentioned in this thread, Mayor Kiel. He presided over the city during its boom times when people were flooding in just before its zenith. He’s considered to be the city’s greatest Mayor (1913-1925), and was, not surprisingly, a Republican (as the city was in those days).
He would be horrified to see what 7 decades of interrupted Democrat rule have done to the place. The North End (the mostly Black area) has been emptied out of people. Some neighborhoods are still mostly intact, but if you look at aerial shots and see that section, you have a couple of houses on a given block (if that) where once there were dozens. I would venture a guess over 300k people alone have been emptied out of that part of the city. Only Detroit (which was Republican-leaning until the 1950s) lost more people, now about 1.3 million, from 2 million down to at or below 700k. Having reviewed both cities, it’s hard to believe Detroit still has that many residents.
Yes. The place they landed up (which was really shot at Warner Bros. studios, I believe) would’ve been the north side of St. Louis, but nothing up there would’ve been intact enough and having that many people about in reality. It’s largely empty and crumbling in many streets, so they’d have been driving around empty lots.
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