The Post-Dispatch writes:

Blue skies and open roads greeted travelers Wednesday as the holiday crowd made its annual trek out of town.

emphasis mine.



Is there a little something wrong with that sentence??

Of course there is. Whoever wrote this acts as if it is a given that everyone leaves St. Louis for Thanksgiving. But is that true? Has anyone ever done an empirical study on this? Perhaps counting traffic going out versus coming in? Or a random survey that asked people if they were going out of town for Thansgiving, or if people were coming to their house?



Of course not. I would imagine that in any given city or town it's a wash -- some people leave for other places... others host those who are coming in. Who really cares, and why does it matter?

Actually, most of the people in STL are empty nesters or yuppies (or students I guess). Most of them (should) have families in the burbs. That amounts to one of 2 things. Have a Thanksgiving in your loft DT, which may not hold many, or go on to the burbs to a family house.



The parade was great. I think that DT has a bad rep, but is also coming up FAST in the mind of people in our region as a viable living option.......as long as there are alternative schools to the public school crap we have.

I should have quoted more of the article. It was not about the City proper, but rather people leaving the metro area en masse via the Airport, Amtrak, and highways.

We might be getting a little sensitive here. Every now and then, people leave St. Louis. No big deal.



A lot of people come in town for Thanksgiving too. In fact, I know more people who come in than people who leave.

Steve, you know that, and we all know that....but the article was written in such a way that the holiday travel season was referred to as a 'mass exodus' out of the area. It did use the word exodus. Rather than a dig at the area, it might just show an instance of really poor reporting. The same reporter writes this morning:

The women were clutching collages of sales items, clipped from the advertising inserts in Thursday's Post-Dispatch. Kempf pointed to a picture of a $200 DVD that Kohl's was offering for $49.99. "

At 10 minutes past opening, he was already handing out rain checks for sold-out items -- but not for those $49.99 DVDs.

Wow, a $200 DVD.

Examples of $200 DVD can be found at BBC America box sets (or some of the US TV market box sets). Unfortunately, it is true.



BTW, cost to "produce" a DVD in a production line is $0.07 (this is cost of material ONLY). With labor, fixed, variable and marketing cost, it goes to $3.70 average per DVD.



Don't you love the production companies making all that money....... not that there is anything wrong with that



Now..... a nice production company HQ in STL DT would be good

bsharmastl wrote:Examples of $200 DVD can be found at BBC America box sets (or some of the US TV market box sets). Unfortunately, it is true.



BTW, cost to "produce" a DVD in a production line is $0.07 (this is cost of material ONLY). With labor, fixed, variable and marketing cost, it goes to $3.70 average per DVD.



Don't you love the production companies making all that money....... not that there is anything wrong with that



Now..... a nice production company HQ in STL DT would be good

Again I didn't quote enough of the article It was definitely in reference to a DVD player.

No problem. The tangent of me complaining about high priced DVD's was a nice outlet

Actually, most of the people in STL are empty nesters or yuppies (or students I guess).

Not true.



Strangely enough I was the only one of the dozen or so people I asked that was leaving StL.

steve wrote:We might be getting a little sensitive here. Every now and then, people leave St. Louis. No big deal.



A lot of people come in town for Thanksgiving too. In fact, I know more people who come in than people who leave.

Yeah, I think we're making a mountain out of a molehill here. The reporter certainly exaggerated the amount of outbound holiday travel, but it's no reason to lose sleep, especially when many people visit (or return to) Saint Louis for the holidays.

Not sure anybody was "losing sleep". Just verifying that the report was, indeed, misinformed or confusing.

^ Exactly. It may be subtle, but it's the difference between portraying the city as a destination or as place people routinely leave. I do understand that it's a small point, but my hunch is that more St. Louisians stay in St. Louis for major holidays than those in other major cities.



Think about Denver or Seattle. A very large population of residents aren't from those cities (many, many more than here in StL) and do not have family there. I seriously doubt that families travel to visit a single family member for a holiday because they live in a 'cool' city.



It just seems that St. Louis is portrayed as a somewhat unworldly place where just about everyone is from here and those who aren't rarely move here and at the same time, as a place where people leave for the holidays.

bprop wrote:Not sure anybody was "losing sleep".

I don't really think so; I was speaking (eh, posting) with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Ihnen wrote:It just seems that St. Louis is portrayed as a somewhat unworldly place where just about everyone is from here and those who aren't rarely move here and at the same time, as a place where people leave for the holidays.

It's an interesting contradiction, isn't it? If everyone is from here -- they rarely move away and few people move here -- then why would people leave for the holidays? Wouldn't all of their relatives, naturally, be here as well?

Parisians flee Paris in the summer. That city doesn't have any problems with its image or self-esteem.



Why are some making such a big deal out of this?

I was going to say, if anything this means that lots of people moved here from other cities and are going back home to the families they moved away from. That doesn't bother me. I don't exactly take that line in the paper as anything more than an empty comment though.

steve wrote:Parisians flee Paris in the summer. That city doesn't have any problems with its image or self-esteem.



Why are some making such a big deal out of this?

"Not within 30 miles of a warm coast or lake" EUROPE empties out in the summer (in August, specifically).

I don't exactly take that line in the paper as anything more than an empty comment though.

I just wish there were positive empty comments.

"Not within 30 miles of a warm coast or lake" EUROPE empties out in the summer (in August, specifically).

TRUE. This is what happens when a large portion of businesses shut down for a month and employees get 8 weeks vacation every year. Not to mention that Europeans (Parisians included) have traditionally fled the city in part due to lack of air conditioning - but I digress . . .