I have noticed an increase in rowdy teens in the evening hours hanging around the Loop, and it does create a rather intimidating environment. Large groups of teens block the sidewalks and you you have to walk right through them in order to get through.
The big "R" is inevitably going to come up in this conversation, so let her rip. Thoughts?
The market will fix things. My wife and I refuse to go to the Loop at night because, frankly, we're scared. We now go out in other urban neighborhoods for dinner and drinks.
So less people in the Loop, less business, less tax revenue..It's very self-correcting.
This news piece always breaks right around the time the weather turns good and summer approaches. Black or White, in my opinion, its totally fine for teens to gather down on the Loop, as long as they're not causing a problem. As a teen growing up in Florissant, the Loop was definitely my first "urban hang-spot" with all of my friends, and we rarely bought stuff down there. I would eventually move down to the Loop (Cates @ Eastgate) after my undergrad.
It might benefit the Loop businesses to plus up security personnel if this is the case...More to keep pedestrians moving and legitimate laws enforced than because of any great threat posed by teens doing what they tend to do...
Personally I don't mind hordes...But they've got to be moving and doing something...The safest I've ever felt are on the crowded streets of NYC...But everyone is rushing/going somewhere...
RobbyD wrote:Personally I don't mind hordes...But they've got to be moving and doing something...
Why?
RobbyD wrote:The safest I've ever felt are on the crowded streets of NYC...But everyone is rushing/going somewhere...
Really? Nobody just hanging out? That's not my experience of NYC or any other "real" city.
I just don't believe in the concept of "loitering". If I'm not free to just sit around in public space doing nothing in particular, then it's not public space.
Yeah, crowds of rowdy teenagers are a problem. But there are other ways to deal with it without restricting everyone's right to public space. Blocking the sidewalk, for instance, is a legitimate nuisance. Simply being on the street is not.
Loitering laws are up there with single-use zoning and "urban renewal" as major factors in de-urbanizing American cities. They're based on, and help foster, the assumption that anyone who hangs out on the street with no apparent purpose must be a criminal. Is that really what we want to say about our cities?
It’s a problem that I noticed last summer. Large groups of teens walking around and using their numbers to intimidate people. It could also be a reason that Edwards recently stepped down as chairman of the Loop district. However you would like to think he would be calling for a solution since he has multiple assets to protect. I was listening to a radio show on NPR which a listener calling in to complain about this same problem. His response was that if you stop coming to the loop it will only make the problem worse. This is true, however you still need to solve the problem driving people away.
-The UCity police on the western side need to work together with the STL City police to fix the problem instead of shooing to teens back and forth as stated in the KSDK report
-The business owners need and Loop heads need to put intense pressure on law enforcement to resolve the issue
It’s my understanding the Loop has a curfew. Are cops not enforcing the curfew? If they are, why are we still experiencing the loitering issues?
What is the age of the curfew? Might be time to adjust the age and time of the curfew. Maybe make it 18 and under after 6pm daily.
We cannot be guilty again of neglecting our regions assets or they will fade into distant memory.
This is a tough, and real, issue. I've had two experiences in the Loop that have made me much, much less likely to go there. Both involved a group of 5-8 black teens. The first time I was walking with my daughter in a stroller and we had to walk through the group coming towards us on the crowded sidewalk - no problem with that. But, as we walked through one said "*****, white babies get pimp strollers." By itself, maybe not the worst thing to hear, but why would I want to hear it if I can just go somewhere else? The other time I was by myself and one person from a similar group asked me what time it was, as soon as I looked at my watch, he yelled "I DON'T GIVE A *****!" and flexed and stared me down. I put up with a lot of sh*t around the city, but again, I'll avoid those kinds of interactions if I can.
RobbyD wrote:Personally I don't mind hordes...But they've got to be moving and doing something...
Why?
RobbyD wrote:The safest I've ever felt are on the crowded streets of NYC...But everyone is rushing/going somewhere...
Really? Nobody just hanging out? That's not my experience of NYC or any other "real" city.
I just don't believe in the concept of "loitering". If I'm not free to just sit around in public space doing nothing in particular, then it's not public space.
Yeah, crowds of rowdy teenagers are a problem. But there are other ways to deal with it without restricting everyone's right to public space. Blocking the sidewalk, for instance, is a legitimate nuisance. Simply being on the street is not.
Loitering laws are up there with single-use zoning and "urban renewal" as major factors in de-urbanizing American cities. They're based on, and help foster, the assumption that anyone who hangs out on the street with no apparent purpose must be a criminal. Is that really what we want to say about our cities?
I did just re-watch the video. One could make the argument the only "public" space for these kids are the sidewalks and the Metrolink stop and 50-100 kids occupying the street corners and the Metro link could be a disturbance, especially if they're rowdy.
It would be interesting to know where these kids are from. If North City, where? Did they take the Metrolink to get to the Loop? Do they live north of Delmar? Why don't they want to hang out on street corners in their own (possibly urban) neighborhoods.
This could be another thread topic but does anyone on the forum have teenage kids? Where do they hang on the weekends? Better yet, what percentage of "new" urban dwellers have teens in the City? I would imagine the City is pretty unfriendly for kids of this age, especially if they're not driving.
It’s funny how this story just broke, as I was at the Loop Friday night for the first time in a long while.
I went to the Tivoli and saw an incredible movie, Kill The Irishman (trailer: which I highly, highly recommend, one of the best mafia films I’ve ever seen. I arrived there solo before meeting my friends for the 945 show. So, with time to kill, I parked in the lot behind Cicero’s and walked around for some shopping & some food. And wow, there were a whole lot of kids around. I used to hang out on the Loop when I was in high school all the time, but there was nothing like the scene of high schoolers out there last Friday, by numbers alone. Mix them in with everyone else (i.e. the over-21 crowd), and it was a mad scene, with random acts of unruliness all over the place.
Example: I walk past the Qdoba and hear a couple people yelling out: “Stop! STOP! STOOOOP!” I look over my shoulder at the street to see a line of very shiny, expensive sport motorcycles about to be backed into by some dude driving a sedan with the stereo pumping some serious bass. He came less than three inches from knocking all the bikes down like dominos, completely oblivious to them. Two of the sport bikers had by now run up behind the car, waving and yelling for the driver to stop. The driver puts it in park, jumps out of the front seat, and starts yelling at the bikers, why are you jumping around behind my car. They point to the bikes, say he almost knocked them all down, and tell him that, if he didn’t have the windows tinted so much and the radio so loud, he could’ve seen what he was doing. At this, the driver jumps into the biker’s face, calling the biker an obscene racial obscenity (note: driver & bikers are all black), and a shouting match begins. I’m waiting for the first punch when a U City police officer going the other way on Delmar makes a quick u-turn & hits the strobe lights. The shouting & posturing between the biker & the driver continue right up until the officer gets out of his car & walks up to them. From here, the officer pats down the sedan driver (not the biker, who was just eating a burrito beforehand). A good size crowd of formerly walking pedestrians had stopped & stood around; once the officer was addressing the driver (and ending the possibility of a fight), most people started moving again, myself included.
After this fun little scene, I grabbed a quick bite at Fitz’s, sitting at the empty upstairs bar while watching Masters hi-lights. The bar staff, which I must credit as being solid servers, noted to me that the crowds of kids were getting worse than before, ostensibly with the improving weather, but that they were increasingly hard to deal with. With all the non-patron traffic outside, they seemed understandably flustered and clearly anxious for the curfew to not only kick in (9PM), but to be enforced.
Finished, I made a couple quick stops at Vintage Vinyl (which wasn’t crowded) and the comic book store (where kids were really being pains in the ass, darting in and out of the front repeatedly) before heading to the Tivoli, where the rest of our party was just arriving. Catching up outside the theater, the ticket lady (a librarian-esque middle aged woman reading a book) calls over one of the gals with us, telling her that she better wear her purse in front of her arms. The reason, she said, was that kids had been known to swarm people, kind of like a flash mob, in groups of 20 or more, just showing up; in the confusion, purses are grabbed off arms but unable to be found within the swarms. Best way to keep track of a purse, then, is to carry it facing the torso inside the arm. The theater, by the ways, was damn near empty; noting how many kids were outside, it was amazing how this contrasted to business patronage.
Yeah, the Loop on a Friday night’s much different than it was when I was a high schooler hanging out there. There were easily half a dozen patrol cars along Delmar when I was walking around before 9, and they were all needed. The crowds of high schoolers didn’t really disappear by 930 (when we left the street as our movie started); after the movie, it was much better. And I got to say, I haven’t heard “n***a” said so much in a long time by so many people walking down the street. Regardless of any context, I loathe hearing that word.
It must be said that most kids weren’t causing trouble, just hanging out like high school kids do, looking at the girls, getting a bite to eat, and all the stuff kids do. What struck me as the biggest difference was how so many just stopped at a place and claimed room to stand around, just hanging back as the crowds walked by as if the front of the Foot Locker was the stoop of their front door. I saw a few times groups of kids stepping up to each other along sidewalks in front of businesses, which I bet sure drives away customers. Yes, some groups were big enough to occasionally block off sections of sidewalk to all others.
Are these kids just dislocated mallrats? I don’t know about that, but I do know there sure were lots of them.
It really made Downtown on a party night feel, by comparison, like Chesterfield Valley.
Alex Ihnen wrote:This is a tough, and real, issue. I've had two experiences in the Loop that have made me much, much less likely to go there. Both involved a group of 5-8 black teens. The first time I was walking with my daughter in a stroller and we had to walk through the group coming towards us on the crowded sidewalk - no problem with that. But, as we walked through one said "f***, white babies get pimp strollers." By itself, maybe not the worst thing to hear, but why would I want to hear it if I can just go somewhere else? The other time I was by myself and one person from a similar group asked me what time it was, as soon as I looked at my watch, he yelled "I DON'T GIVE A f***!" and flexed and stared me down. I put up with a lot of sh*t around the city, but again, I'll avoid those kinds of interactions if I can.
Stuff like that is absolutely ridiculous...I have, a couple of times, had to take more aggressive postures when walking the Loop in the evenings...I try not to put up with that crap......But patrolling eastern Baghdad in 07 gave a crazy gene...It's all basic stupidity and obviously it is wisest to let it go.....Still boggles the mind that anyone would say that to anyone without any kind of provocation at all!
Last summer I ate on the patio w/ friends at Riddles. Hordes of teenagers were milling around and it was a bit chaotic. Next thing I know the pepper spray comes out and everyone starts running. To be clear, it was a civilian and not a cop that pepper sprayed the area.
I dunno about you, but dinner isn't so enjoyable with pepper spray. I'm staying away from the Loop on nice nights like these.
Are these kids just dislocated mallrats? I don’t know about that, but I do know there sure were lots of them.
Yes, they have a curfew at the Galleria.
If African American teens had quality places to hang in their neighborhoods perhaps they wouldn't come here, but then again this is an interesting proposition. Teens have as much of a right to the City as anyone else before curfew. Delmar sidewalks are not corporate owned. While business owners have a stake in ensuring law an order, we do not need profiling as I have witnessed many times in the Loop.
Frequently groups of African Americans, even those older than 18, are hassled by the police for simply standing around. I've seen groups of white people doing the same, blocking sidewalks and talking, yet the police never tell them to "keep moving." The police should do everything to ensure this remains a safe area, though I've been hanging out in the Loop since 2005 without any incidents impacting my safety. We should think about how safety is ensured so it's not simply by keeping sections of the population from feeling welcome under the argument they might do something.
I don't doubt that children do and say stupid things. I can name a few times when white "kids" from out west were shouting racial slurs after realizing that Delmar Lounge is more African American than Caucasian. Regardless I would urge people to continue visiting the Loop. It is our arguably our region's greatest commercial corridor. I think I will be there next Saturday in fact.
You all are welcome down on South Grand. It was jumpin on Saturday eve w/o hordes of teens. And the expanded sidewalks will be awesome once in place.
I disagree. They seem to congregate at Petra since they changed ownership and music genres.
I was there Friday night at 9. The cops were doing a good job of enforcing the 9pm curfew for kids 16 and younger. There was zero tolerance for crazy loud music coming from cars. There was probably one or two cops for each block.
If you look younger than 17 and you're there after 9, you'll probably get asked for your ID. Police presence is definitely needed down there if anything, just to keep the crowds moving. The 'loitering' starts when kids just sit down at patio furniture when they're not buying anything or when they're just standing on the sidewalk in a group of 15 or 20 just chatting or flirting.
If the cops keep up the good work, it should be okay. I don't believe anyone who tries to frame what's going on down there as racism. It is a serious pedestrian traffic issue. It's Mardi Gras-level crowded. If you don't think the overcrowding/loitering on the Loop is a problem, you either haven't been down there on a nice weekend night or don't care.
I was on the loop Saturday evening. I witnessed and sat through most of the teens roaming the streets. It didn't bother me at all, but will agree it was crowded at times. Nothing was said to me in the three hour time frame I was there. I overheard talk about lining up fights, and smoking pot, but nothing that would affect me or my family. It was very interesting to see some families and couples walk through the crowd, some of their faces were priceless. The ones who looked real worked up would be the target of a smart as-s remark, some would yell back racial remarks and show their true character.
It seemed like most of the kids were just hanging out meeting some new women / guys and talking. It isn't practical to expect them to only hang out in groups of 2,away from all popular places, and not speak until spoken to. I would say smart as-s remarks when I was that age as well, it isn't anything out of the ordinary. They need something to do, and banning them from everything isn't going to get them accustomed to life. Not all of the kids are shooting each other or carrying weapons.
The only disturbing scene was one small younger cop who was very aggressive with the kids, pushing them in the back trying to separate the groups. I wonder if he was the cop that was hit in the head?
Autocratic management doesn't work in a business environment, why does everyone expect it to work in a societal environment? I feel for the businesses, and the people that do not feel comfortable going there, but just pushing the kids elsewhere isn't really solving the problem.
^ So what's "the remedy"? It seems that some see the behavior discussed here as no big deal - perhaps people should just deal with it. If you don't like it, then don't go to the Loop?
