urbanSTL

urban_dilettante wrote:^^ just want to point out that that article is from last October.

gary kreie wrote: I have never seen anyone wearing an "I am Darren Wilson" shirt.

i saw a number of them, particularly around city hall during protests and around Busch stadium during games.

in any case, the people of Baltimore do seem to be rallying behind Freddie Gray to a much greater extent than St. Louis did for Michael Brown even before the Grand Jury failed to indict Wilson. IMO, most metro St. Louisans who weren't of the "Brown got what he deserved" camp were in the "we're tired of hearing about it; we just want it all to go away so we're not inconvenienced" camp.

Every case is different. It should be easier to get convictions in Baltimore -- at least for the unlawful arrest.

From the New York Times: The Best and Worst Places to Grow Up:

http://nyti.ms/1GVfJbd

St. Louis doesn't fare well. Surprise!

I had no idea growing up poor in rural Nebraska was such a treat.

Not surprising. St. Louis needs to do more to remove the obstacles preventing our poor from moving up.

^ Seems like we are more concerned with adding obstacles and cutting people's feet from under them. Not a recipe for success.

^ that assumes the powers that be want to do that or its all by design. It seems too often a lot of policy ideas are about isolating the poor socially, economically, and physically from the broader community.

^ I think a lot of these policy ideas had the original intention of oppressing people (think Jim Crow era laws), but now the fight is to get these policies overturned but unfortunately most of the "old guard" and their minions defend the status quo. I think of issues like city/county consolidation and transit expansion. I bet most people under the age of 40 would vote for these issues, but most of the 40+ crowd would be vehemently against these ideas, especially as their age increases. I mean you would get 80 year old people voting against Metrolink or unigov, because they fear "thugs", which is really a code word for black people. As if these artificial boundaries we create cannot be breached....go figure.

I think the fact that St. Louis is already so heavily fractured makes getting anything positive done extremely hard. Its almost like this police reform thing. Does anybody honestly think we could get 90+ munis to agree on any reasonable standards without a higher form of govt. coming down with the big stick and forcing change? Would the munis have accepted a 10% cap on ticket revenue without state intervention? That's why I think any major consolidations or changes to St. Louis govt. structure will likely come from statewide referendum or legislation.

^^Agreed. Large scale housing projects, lack of efficient transportation and access to it, lack of or underfunded educational/social programs and training outside of the public school system.

I don't see a lot of areas where we are putting poor children in a position to succeed.

pat wrote:^^Agreed. Large scale housing projects, lack of efficient transportation and access to it, lack of or underfunded educational/social programs and training outside of the public school system.

I don't see a lot of areas where we are putting poor children in a position to succeed.

Low cigarette taxes though!

goat314 wrote:^ I think a lot of these policy ideas had the original intention of oppressing people (think Jim Crow era laws), but now the fight is to get these policies overturned but unfortunately most of the "old guard" and their minions defend the status quo. I think of issues like city/county consolidation and transit expansion. I bet most people under the age of 40 would vote for these issues, but most of the 40+ crowd would be vehemently against these ideas, especially as their age increases. I mean you would get 80 year old people voting against Metrolink or unigov, because they fear "thugs", which is really a code word for black people. As if these artificial boundaries we create cannot be breached....go figure.

I think the fact that St. Louis is already so heavily fractured makes getting anything positive done extremely hard. Its almost like this police reform thing. Does anybody honestly think we could get 90+ munis to agree on any reasonable standards without a higher form of govt. coming down with the big stick and forcing change? Would the munis have accepted a 10% cap on ticket revenue without state intervention? That's why I think any major consolidations or changes to St. Louis govt. structure will likely come from statewide referendum or legislation.

You did hit on the generation gap aspect which is a big factor. In terms of change from above, I am doubtful of it from the state level since most of the people there would have the same if not more hardline views than the old guard. If that's the case then it would have to be federal intervention which would be even more controversial and could have constitutional issues in play. Mainly could the feds force consolidation of local government or is that an overreach of state powers.

I'm not sure if this a good spot for this article, but it's always nice to have good press...

http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/best-cities-jobs/

Drink up shriners cuz....

Esquire's Bar City of the Year: St. Louis

...St. Louis looms large in the history of American drinking, and not just because Adolphus Busch started pasteurizing his beer there and shipping it around the country in refrigerated train cars when nobody else was doing that. The Planters' House hotel, on Fourth Street, had for a time the most famous bar in the West (the great Jerry Thomas was its head bartender in the mid-1850s) and the nearby Hole in the Wall, with its single-piece mahogany bar and crystal punch cups, was one of the most elegant in the country. The saloons, brothels, and gambling halls of Deep Morgan—a mostly black neighborhood just north of Downtown—were the cradle of ragtime, and places such as Henry Bridgewater's billiard saloon and Bill Curtis's Elite Social Club were as lively as any in the country. I twas in Curtis's that on Christmas Night, 1985, William Lyons snatched Lee Shelton's John B. Stetson hat and refused to give it back, whereupon "Stack Lee," as he was known, produced a Smith & Wesson .44, shot Billy Lyons, and took his hat back...

Source: http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/bars/ ... year-2015/

About time our bar scene got noticed

^ Very true.... We take our bar scene for granted. It is diverse, plentiful and awesome.

In relation to the crime issue, it seems this is something popping up in a lot of areas and in many cases moreso than in St. Louis

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/02/us/crime- ... index.html

I will say it did seem to happen here a bit sooner than in other places but it isn't just a local phenomenon.

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/4/8730465/st- ... nimum-wage

An article about how what works in San Francisco or Los Angeles "won't work in a much poorer Midwestern city."

I love how they call us poor.

Well, they call us "poorer," which is a relative term, and in this case a very accurate one (the frame of reference being Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, and us).

Mound City wrote:Well, they call us "poorer," which is a relative term, and in this case a very accurate one (the frame of reference being Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, and us).

The city is poor, with a downtown that "suffers from an abundance of the opposite of density: parking lots" and has plenty of abandoned buildings.

LA Times interview with Ferguson interim chief.
Ferguson Police Department from interim chief's point of view
http://lat.ms/1eWtieF

^

We are looking to hire more minorities. But one thing I'm adamant about is that they meet certain standards and pass certain tests, background checks.

I sure hope he doesn't become the permanent police chief in Ferguson (or nowhere else).

100 new free speech billboards in St. Louis today.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... d-cartoon/