Opportunities to visit St. Louis, MO don’t pop up very frequently, which is where I happened to find myself last weekend. How was it?
The full effect of the Recession didn’t really materialize until I tried to find a barbecue restaurant that wasn’t out of business. That’s how bad the economy is. Fortunately, we found an excelling one (Bogart’s) one block from an excellent pub. The St. Louis style is apparently pretty sweet, which is good, if you like pork candy.
City planning-wise, there’s clearly an old, entrenched debate about property rights and redevelopment in this sleepy rustbelt city. Underneath the St. Louis Arch, a sprawling museum tells the tale of Manifest Destiny and westward expansion. The documentation isn’t as progressive as that of say, Idaho Falls, but it does acknowledge that the Americans may have swindled a bunch of “Indians” out of their land.
Which is why I found it interesting that the the museum praises the scale of the Arch project by the 40 blocks the city had to raze to make way for the park.
Later, from the highway, I noticed a building (carved at an odd angle, likely for the highway), with a two-story painted sign: “End Eminent Domain Abuse”.
It’s sad to see how far we’ve come and how far we have left to go.