Hey there, everyone. I'm really excited to discover this forum and get involved with the community. Big fan of forums and the old, slower internet so I'm glad to see this place is alive and kicking!
I wanted to share a project I'm working on - it's called St. Louing, and it's an independent guide to St. Louis food, neighborhoods, culture, and just everything local. In an increasingly globally focused world, I find myself wanting to focus more on my real life local community and interact with it as much as possible.
I moved to St. Louis a few years ago, and I wasn't immediately on board. Some things were different and unfamiliar, but I kept seeing how much to locals love St. Louis and have so much pride, and I was really intrigued. My first interactions with STL were just being downtown, and I wanted to challenge myself to discover all there is to see and learn about all the neighborhoods and experience the food scene that I kept hearing punches above its weight.
So first and foremost, I made the St. Louis food map, a map of all the restaurants/cafes I've been to or heard about, and I've started filling it out with my personal reviews and now community ratings and photography (example - I recently went to Farotto's and took pictures of the food and atmosphere. I have a lot of catching up to do with the photography.) The map is filterable by cuisine type (pizza, burgers, Thai, etc) and neighborhood (within the city and county and metro east) and sortable.
I have a whole system set up interlinking the neighborhoods and the food, where from any restaurant you can discover other nearby spots or other similar cuisine, and from any neighborhood page you can discover the food within, relative links and information, writeups, and soon I'll start taking pictures and adding photography of each neighborhood.
I want to help highlight the various neighborhoods in St. Louis, and make an area online where you can learn about each neighborhood, what there is to do there, what it's like living there, how walkable or bikeable it is, see pictures of the retail corridors and housing, etc. I'm not fully there yet, but that's the vision.
I've also been taking notes on various topics such as the Great Divorce (the city-county split), regional foods of the area, St. Louis-style pizza in specific, field notes of random information like pronunciation of streets, slang, customs, etc. St. Louis's Most Walkable Streets is a recent article where I've tried to highlight all the main streets and retail corridors throughout the greater STL area to show people where there are things of interest (and I know, this article needs a lot of work to actually highlight livably walkable neighborhoods as opposed to just food/restaurants/things to do along one strip).
One of the biggest things I miss since moving to St. Louis is having a continuously walkable or bikeable area, but I figure the more I learn the more I can discover where those pockets are (and document them!) City exploration has long been a major hobby of mine. Ultimately I hope I can highlight the good things about St. Louis and give people answers and possibly in my very small way help encourage people to move here (if it makes sense for their situation), and help out the local businesses that I've enjoyed. Obviously, St. Louis has a lot going for it and a lot of potential (and issues as well) and I want to be honest about it all, but it seems to have a way of making me want to get involved.
Anyway, making something for myself but hoping it's interesting and/or helpful and sharing it via a website is something I've been doing online for a long time now and I've been excited about working on this project and taking my camera around the city. I'm basically trying to build an old internet fan site in a modern world. A lot of inspiration from Built St. Louis type sites from the personal website project perspective. I hope over the years to build up more and more on the site and improve it with any feedback.
I wanted to share a project I'm working on - it's called St. Louing, and it's an independent guide to St. Louis food, neighborhoods, culture, and just everything local. In an increasingly globally focused world, I find myself wanting to focus more on my real life local community and interact with it as much as possible.
I moved to St. Louis a few years ago, and I wasn't immediately on board. Some things were different and unfamiliar, but I kept seeing how much to locals love St. Louis and have so much pride, and I was really intrigued. My first interactions with STL were just being downtown, and I wanted to challenge myself to discover all there is to see and learn about all the neighborhoods and experience the food scene that I kept hearing punches above its weight.
So first and foremost, I made the St. Louis food map, a map of all the restaurants/cafes I've been to or heard about, and I've started filling it out with my personal reviews and now community ratings and photography (example - I recently went to Farotto's and took pictures of the food and atmosphere. I have a lot of catching up to do with the photography.) The map is filterable by cuisine type (pizza, burgers, Thai, etc) and neighborhood (within the city and county and metro east) and sortable.
I have a whole system set up interlinking the neighborhoods and the food, where from any restaurant you can discover other nearby spots or other similar cuisine, and from any neighborhood page you can discover the food within, relative links and information, writeups, and soon I'll start taking pictures and adding photography of each neighborhood.
I want to help highlight the various neighborhoods in St. Louis, and make an area online where you can learn about each neighborhood, what there is to do there, what it's like living there, how walkable or bikeable it is, see pictures of the retail corridors and housing, etc. I'm not fully there yet, but that's the vision.
I've also been taking notes on various topics such as the Great Divorce (the city-county split), regional foods of the area, St. Louis-style pizza in specific, field notes of random information like pronunciation of streets, slang, customs, etc. St. Louis's Most Walkable Streets is a recent article where I've tried to highlight all the main streets and retail corridors throughout the greater STL area to show people where there are things of interest (and I know, this article needs a lot of work to actually highlight livably walkable neighborhoods as opposed to just food/restaurants/things to do along one strip).
One of the biggest things I miss since moving to St. Louis is having a continuously walkable or bikeable area, but I figure the more I learn the more I can discover where those pockets are (and document them!) City exploration has long been a major hobby of mine. Ultimately I hope I can highlight the good things about St. Louis and give people answers and possibly in my very small way help encourage people to move here (if it makes sense for their situation), and help out the local businesses that I've enjoyed. Obviously, St. Louis has a lot going for it and a lot of potential (and issues as well) and I want to be honest about it all, but it seems to have a way of making me want to get involved.
Anyway, making something for myself but hoping it's interesting and/or helpful and sharing it via a website is something I've been doing online for a long time now and I've been excited about working on this project and taking my camera around the city. I'm basically trying to build an old internet fan site in a modern world. A lot of inspiration from Built St. Louis type sites from the personal website project perspective. I hope over the years to build up more and more on the site and improve it with any feedback.
