streetsabby wrote:University City, South Side, CWE, Soulard and now I live Downtown. To this day, I have never been to a Wal-Mart.
Damn, streetsabby! You're a city neighborhood ho! (As in, you get around!)
Damn, streetsabby! You're a city neighborhood ho! (As in, you get around!)
- 1,000
Lived in U City til 3, a couple of years in the Boston area then WG until leaving for college. After a bit of traveling, I moved back, first to the Loop, then Southwest Garden (just west of MoBot), SoHa, Bevo, FPSE and now Shaw.
- 137
STLgasm wrote:streetsabby wrote:University City, South Side, CWE, Soulard and now I live Downtown. To this day, I have never been to a Wal-Mart.
Damn, streetsabby! You're a city neighborhood ho! (As in, you get around!)
Hee hee!
You know it!
My history.....born NYC. Moved to Long Island then Upstate NY by 10. Went to college at SIUC. Discovered STL by then. Moved here in 1992. In chronological order - Soulard, Benton Park, Downtown -Washington ave (pre-condo days), Lafayette Square, Carondelet, Carondelet again, Downtown, Benton Park.
I'm a central corridor ho-- I currently live in the CWE, and used to live in Skinker-DeBaliviere and DeBaliviere Place. Although I live in the West End, I am proud that my business, STL-Style, is located in McKinley Heights.
- 1,517
For as obsessed a St. Louis urbanite as I now am, my beginnings were very humble and non-urban.
I grew up in a pretty urban neighborhood, Bevo, but didn't live the most urban of lifestyles. I like to up the urban ante by bragging that I didn't get my driver's license until I was 19 (meaning...I walked everywhere). Yet my walking destinations were highly suburbanized: Shop N Save, fast food joints on Kingshighway; formerly, Venture.
My real awakening came when I went to SLU High as a kid with not a lot of money from the South Side. The school was putting on a food drive for newly arrived Bosnian immigrants. I decided I would volunteer, considering these were likely my neighbors. Sure enough, every house we hit was within 5 blocks of mine. We took a bus to Bevo to deliver the food, and all of my classmates were making comments like, "Let's count the crackhouses!" and "bus driver, please pull up right to the door" and "I wonder if we'll get shot before we can get the food inside."
I remember being enraged and confused at these people's ignorance. They had little to no experience in a truly urban neighborhood--and for the first time I felt a sense of difference and isolation from people who should have been my peers. SLU High, being a regional draw, tended to divide up by geography--no kidding. I knew all of the city kids, because there was definitely a stigma about being from the city. Much of it came from the surrounding neighborhood, where idiot kids would park their cars with the most expensive CD players exposed; keys in the ignition; guitars; you name it, only to find their stuff or their car stolen or broken into. I guess that was reason enough to call the quiet/small neighborhood of Kings Oak a ghetto and to generalize to the wider city.
Anyhow, going to SLUH really taught me that I needed to be able to respond to people's irrational fears and hatred of the city. I started going to the downtown library to research St. Louis history; my life has never been the same. The grandeur and the volume of the city's history, character, and culture just knocked me off my feet. So began my long and ongoing obsession with learning about every facet of the city. I arrived at the conclusion that those who couldn't appreciate such an awesome, urban place were simply ignorant and needed to be educated.
I know St. Louis has many drawbacks and a piss-poor attitude about itself, but it's given me a level of passion I could never really find in anything else. It's why I'm still on this forum despite now living/studying in New Orleans. And I'm not alone. There are plenty of obsessed expatriates who lurk here, bizarrely still interested in what's going in at X corner in a random neighborhood. This one's plotting his return--ASAP.
I grew up in a pretty urban neighborhood, Bevo, but didn't live the most urban of lifestyles. I like to up the urban ante by bragging that I didn't get my driver's license until I was 19 (meaning...I walked everywhere). Yet my walking destinations were highly suburbanized: Shop N Save, fast food joints on Kingshighway; formerly, Venture.
My real awakening came when I went to SLU High as a kid with not a lot of money from the South Side. The school was putting on a food drive for newly arrived Bosnian immigrants. I decided I would volunteer, considering these were likely my neighbors. Sure enough, every house we hit was within 5 blocks of mine. We took a bus to Bevo to deliver the food, and all of my classmates were making comments like, "Let's count the crackhouses!" and "bus driver, please pull up right to the door" and "I wonder if we'll get shot before we can get the food inside."
I remember being enraged and confused at these people's ignorance. They had little to no experience in a truly urban neighborhood--and for the first time I felt a sense of difference and isolation from people who should have been my peers. SLU High, being a regional draw, tended to divide up by geography--no kidding. I knew all of the city kids, because there was definitely a stigma about being from the city. Much of it came from the surrounding neighborhood, where idiot kids would park their cars with the most expensive CD players exposed; keys in the ignition; guitars; you name it, only to find their stuff or their car stolen or broken into. I guess that was reason enough to call the quiet/small neighborhood of Kings Oak a ghetto and to generalize to the wider city.
Anyhow, going to SLUH really taught me that I needed to be able to respond to people's irrational fears and hatred of the city. I started going to the downtown library to research St. Louis history; my life has never been the same. The grandeur and the volume of the city's history, character, and culture just knocked me off my feet. So began my long and ongoing obsession with learning about every facet of the city. I arrived at the conclusion that those who couldn't appreciate such an awesome, urban place were simply ignorant and needed to be educated.
I know St. Louis has many drawbacks and a piss-poor attitude about itself, but it's given me a level of passion I could never really find in anything else. It's why I'm still on this forum despite now living/studying in New Orleans. And I'm not alone. There are plenty of obsessed expatriates who lurk here, bizarrely still interested in what's going in at X corner in a random neighborhood. This one's plotting his return--ASAP.
- 10K
Matt Drops The H wrote:SLU High, being a regional draw, tended to divide up by geography--no kidding.
Very true.
- 137
Matt Drops The H wrote:For as obsessed a St. Louis urbanite as I now am, my beginnings were very humble and non-urban.
I grew up in a pretty urban neighborhood, Bevo, but didn't live the most urban of lifestyles. I like to up the urban ante by bragging that I didn't get my driver's license until I was 19 (meaning...I walked everywhere). Yet my walking destinations were highly suburbanized: Shop N Save, fast food joints on Kingshighway; formerly, Venture.
My real awakening came when I went to SLU High as a kid with not a lot of money from the South Side. The school was putting on a food drive for newly arrived Bosnian immigrants. I decided I would volunteer, considering these were likely my neighbors. Sure enough, every house we hit was within 5 blocks of mine. We took a bus to Bevo to deliver the food, and all of my classmates were making comments like, "Let's count the crackhouses!" and "bus driver, please pull up right to the door" and "I wonder if we'll get shot before we can get the food inside."
I remember being enraged and confused at these people's ignorance. They had little to no experience in a truly urban neighborhood--and for the first time I felt a sense of difference and isolation from people who should have been my peers. SLU High, being a regional draw, tended to divide up by geography--no kidding. I knew all of the city kids, because there was definitely a stigma about being from the city. Much of it came from the surrounding neighborhood, where idiot kids would park their cars with the most expensive CD players exposed; keys in the ignition; guitars; you name it, only to find their stuff or their car stolen or broken into. I guess that was reason enough to call the quiet/small neighborhood of Kings Oak a ghetto and to generalize to the wider city.
Anyhow, going to SLUH really taught me that I needed to be able to respond to people's irrational fears and hatred of the city. I started going to the downtown library to research St. Louis history; my life has never been the same. The grandeur and the volume of the city's history, character, and culture just knocked me off my feet. So began my long and ongoing obsession with learning about every facet of the city. I arrived at the conclusion that those who couldn't appreciate such an awesome, urban place were simply ignorant and needed to be educated.
I know St. Louis has many drawbacks and a piss-poor attitude about itself, but it's given me a level of passion I could never really find in anything else. It's why I'm still on this forum despite now living/studying in New Orleans. And I'm not alone. There are plenty of obsessed expatriates who lurk here, bizarrely still interested in what's going in at X corner in a random neighborhood. This one's plotting his return--ASAP.
Very Cool!!!
- 284
I'm urban from an early age. But a St. Louisan fairly recently.
Born in Manhattan. We moved to Boston when I was five and I grew up in the city there. Went to college in the midwest and lived in downtown South Bend, Ind., for a couple of years after I graduated. Then followed my now-wife to STL where she was in grad school. Like most northeastern transplants here, I moved to the CWE. Lived there for a couple of years and developed a deep appreciation for the 'Lou, for its quirks, its faded glory, its incredible potential.
But then we moved, for work, to a small town in the far northern suburbs of NYC. Three years there was my longest-ever stint of non-urban living. I drove home to Boston or took the bus to NYC at every opportunity.
Wound up getting a job back here in St. Louis about three years ago, by which point the CWE had become too hip for me. Settled in to Tower Grove East and now we live in TGS.
Born in Manhattan. We moved to Boston when I was five and I grew up in the city there. Went to college in the midwest and lived in downtown South Bend, Ind., for a couple of years after I graduated. Then followed my now-wife to STL where she was in grad school. Like most northeastern transplants here, I moved to the CWE. Lived there for a couple of years and developed a deep appreciation for the 'Lou, for its quirks, its faded glory, its incredible potential.
But then we moved, for work, to a small town in the far northern suburbs of NYC. Three years there was my longest-ever stint of non-urban living. I drove home to Boston or took the bus to NYC at every opportunity.
Wound up getting a job back here in St. Louis about three years ago, by which point the CWE had become too hip for me. Settled in to Tower Grove East and now we live in TGS.