[mountaineer]

I remember when I lived in St. Louis the fun we had watching the news for the latest adventures of East St. Louis' then mayor, Carl Officer (he of the many armed bodyguards). That city's been messed up for a long, long while.

[RVN Airplane Driver]

E. St Louis has been a $hithole beyond comparison for time immortal. It was the first recipient of the Dem's destroying the black families and producing a product of ignorance, crime and neglect. I can remember in the early 60' driving through there and it looked like a war zone then. Went through there a couple of years ago and nothing had changed. It don't do no good to buy lipstick for a pig!!!

[Lawgvr1955]

...the fun we had watching the news for the latest adventures of East St. Louis' then mayor, Carl Officer

As I recall, Officer came out two days before the election as the head of some Democrats for Bush organization. (For what its worth)

[toddlintown]

ATTENTION BEER DRINKERS!!
Another reason to bypass East St. Louis:

On December 14, 1953, the Illinois Appellate Court made a ruling on the Heimsoth versus Falstaff Brewing Corporation case, a civil lawsuit that certainly made beer drinkers in Illinois take a second look in their beers before going "bottoms up!" This is one of those case studies that never come up at the De Paul College of Law.

Some background information on this important event in legal history that began in early 1953 in a small neighborhood tavern in East St. Louis, Illinois is certainly warranted before the reader passes judgement. What follows is a segment from the court's ruling, based on eyewitness accounts of this beer drinking travesty:

"The bartender said he took the cap off the bottle and when he took the cap off it was a live bottle of beer, made a popping noise, and foamed. Another witness confirmed the fact that the beer had foam on it and was a live bottle of beer. The bartender testified that no one tampered with the bottle during the six hours he was on duty, from 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. on April 2, 1951.

The plaintiff testified that he drank about half a bottle of beer and as he was drinking it he felt a slime go over his throat and he immediately had to vomit. After he had vomited and come back to the table he asked a friend who was sitting with him, who also testified, what was in the bottle, and both he and the friend, and the bartender, and other witnesses, looked at the bottle and saw that it contained a foreign substance which was a substance often referred to as a 'rubber prophylactic contraceptive latex.'

The plaintiff, another witness, and three doctors, testified that plaintiff became ill and suffered nausea, sustained a fixation neurosis, and had considerable loss in his business as a result of having consumed the bottle of beer with the latex prophylactic in it."