The Symphony

My grade school music teacher was an older lady who dyed her hair the same shade as her black Lincoln Mark VII. A car that, to 9-year-old me, looked like the bat mobile.

She took her job very seriously, had a hunchback, and didn't seem to care much for boys. The feeling was pretty much mutual.

I did not look forward to music class. I had no discernible musical aptitude or interest. My greatest achievements in grade school music class were successfully playing Hot Crossed Buns, in its entirety, on the soprano recorder, and witnessing Mrs. McCormick scream "Blake! Booyah!" one time when Blake Wolfson was talking in class. I also learned, if memory serves, that glockenspeil is German for angel's song. So, no, it wasn't a total waste.

If I dug my soprano recorder out of one of the dusty boxes in my parent's attic I'll bet I could still knock out a spirited version Hot Crossed Buns given an afternoon to practice. I might even be able to figure out the first 5 or 6 notes of Ode To Joy. These are skills I retain thanks to Mrs McCormick. She also taught me, with three grade school field trips to Powell Hall, that I like going to the Symphony.

I don't like going to the Symphony so much that I buy tickets. But when free tickets appear I put on a clean shirt and a belt and I rub elbows with high society. A night at Powell Hall is high class all the way, a St. Louis rarely seen. Where proud citizens wear neck ties and pearls. High-brow St. Louis making the case that such a thing really does exist.

The case is made with marble, gold leaf and pleasant conversation in the lobby. Champagne is available for purchase.

Witnessing a demonstration of mastery is thrilling.  It's affirmative. It reminds you how we got here. On opposable thumbs, wits and practice.  Everyone in the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is very good at their job. This is something they've been training all their lives to do. Each has their own chair, instrument, and style. Together they play classical music like motherfuckers.

I've never seen the New York Philharmonic, I'm sure they're good. The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is the best I've ever seen. See them for free the next time they perform in Forrest Park.  If you find yourself complaining hurry up and move to New York. Around here we root for the home team.

*Please excuse the blurry photograph, photography is prohibited inside of Powell Hall. You're also not supposed to go there stoned.

Riverside Salvage

I like history but I've never wanted to be an archeologist. I prefer artifacts that you don't have to extricate from the soil with a horse hair brush. The kind that you find in other people's attics and curbside piles of furniture and picture frames. The stuff they're about to give to goodwill or set next to the dumpster. Precious relics in disguise. The kind that end up in soggy cardboard boxes and trash trucks. They're so much more affordable.

For low cost acquisition of genuine artifacts from 21st century American life, I recommend Riverside Salvage on Hall Street.

If you've never been to a self service junkyard, you're overdue. Whether or not you are in the market for used auto parts is inconsequential. It's about exploring.

The junkyard is the only place I know where you can pay a dollar, get your hand stamped, and rifle through the glove boxes of the dead.

Cars come to the junkyard in one of two ways.

The first way: A car breaks down. When the owner looks into having it fixed the cost of the repair is more than they are willing to spend. So they take their sunglasses out of the center console, get the road atlas out of the seat back pocket and sell it to the junkyard.  The owner gets two hundred bucks from the junkyard and the junkyard gets a 1991 Acura Legend with a bad transmission. Great news for you if you happen to own a 1991-1995 Acura Legend and came to the junkyard looking for a passenger side window.

The second way: A drunk wraps his car around a traffic light. He goes to the hospital, the morgue or jail. His car goes to the junkyard, beer cans still littering the floor.

Experiencing the junkyard for the first time is revealing. It's equal parts playground, workshop, museum and cemetery. Well worth the dollar you placed in the filthy hand of the man sitting in the shack by the entrance. He's been all through every one of these cars, but feel free to look through his leftovers. The really good stuff is already at his place.

Your dollar buys access to a world of broken automobiles and lax supervision. Drinking beer is decidedly not frowned upon. You're going to get dirty. I'd advise against white sneakers. 

Hand stamped, walking away from the gate you wade into a moderately sized lake of cars. The ground underfoot is slimy with fluids and spiked with small shards of automobile. Your head is just above the roof line. All kinds of cars stacked in rows, hoods mostly up, interiors wet from rain. Cigarettes still in the ashtray, religious pamphlets in the trunk, liquor bottles, a plastic baggie of captain crunch. Distributor caps, side view mirrors, trans-axles. All gathered for inspection.

Take the time to look inside the cars. Notice the steering wheel cover and the Bill Withers tape. This is somebody's car.  Its full of their stuff. Their fast food trash, their gym bag, their yellow pages. Sometimes the airbags are deployed. Other times there's been a fire. These cars lived in the real world, get inside one and you can almost go where it's been. In an hour in the junkyard you can go a lot of places. 

Nobody will mind if you take a souvenir. I've got a box of them.

Bigfoot

There are so many things to love about St. Louis that once you start noticing them religiously it gets time consuming.

I love that St. Louis doesn't want to be any other city. St. Louis moves at its own pace. We've got inertia from all of the bricks. And we're doing just fine thank you. We don't need the beaches or the mountains or the high rent. Everything here is dirt cheap and the people are fun. That's almost everything.

And there is history. And weather. And a beautiful city. Big trees. And on top of all that, the cherry on top, is that St. Louis County is full of cool shit too.

Ever hear of Castlewood State Park? Ever been swimming there at dawn? Have you ever been inside the Carl Donnelson Motorcycle Museum? Did you know that Bigfoot lives in North County? He's got a sick van in his driveway.






Yes, St. Louis is the home of the Original Monster Truck. This can not be oversold. Put Bigfoot in your St. Louis hall of fame. He's already in the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.* Without Bigfoot the mural on the side of Grave Digger would never have been painted. We never would have walked in through the fire exit of the TWA Dome on a cold winter night and drank whiskey in the upper deck while Maximum Destruction tore itself to shreds for our amusement. There would be no Monster Jam. The world would be worse.

Thankfully Bigfoot is real. Real and a sterling representative of the St. Louis spirit. Backyard ambition.



It's no wonder this thing got printed on pillow cases and bedsheets for suburban bunk beds. Any kid with half a brain would give up candy for a month to sleep atop this beauty. Imagine their dreams. Now look at those wheels. They came off of an Arctic Train used by the US military in the 1950's. Cold War tires. How is that for provenance?

Bigfoot was the first truck to drive over a car. Bigfoot jumped over a jumbo jet. Bigfoot is the older bother to the world's sickest Ford Aerostar Van, the one with tank tracks. His semi truck has a killer paint job. Bigfoot has a machine that puts his likeness on a souvenir penny.




The American Dream. In St. Louis you don't have to wake up from it.



* So is my Grandpa.

Kinloch

Ghost Town.

A pair of words that set my young imagination on fire. The same thing happened the first time I heard the words Motor Bike. And Keg Party.

But Ghost Town struck early. It still gives me a spark to think about.

I learned about ghost towns during those boyhood years when I was a cowboy for three consecutive Halloweens. I imagined pushing open swinging doors to empty bar rooms with dust covered player pianos and half bottles of whiskey. Snooping around the Sheriff's office. Nobody around to tell you what, and what not, to do.

I wanted to break bottles. And go through the stuff people left behind.

The first real ghost town I ever heard about was Times Beach, Missouri. My parents told me about it every time we drove West on 44 on our way to a float trip, or my fake uncle Fred's house. Between Fenton and Eureka, Times Beach was a not very interesting community that was abandoned after some sheisty goofball sprayed large amounts of the toxic chemical, Dioxin, on the town's gravel roads to keep the dust down.

Everybody moved out. Cancers developed. The houses got plowed. By the time I came around there was nothing left to see. Just Meremec river flood planes. For me one of the requirements of a ghost town is that it resemble a town.

The second ghost town in my life was on a cliff in the Rocky Mountains. It exceeded my expectations. It was a mining town that was abandoned after the water supply got contaminated. My buddy, the comedic, meteorologicaly-untrained weatherman who interviewed people in lift lines for Good Morning Vail, brought me there.

We didn't even have to climb a fence. Just duck under a barrier. There were still dishes in the cabinets. Unbroken windows. An old fire truck in the Fire Station. We rolled a sealed 55 gallon drum off a hundred foot cliff. The perfect old west ghost town.

One day, back in St. Louis, Cole and I were exploring North County in the Death Wagon. We got off 170 North at the Scudder road exit and found our local ghost town.



Stay right off the exit, make a left on Scudder road and you are greeted by rolling green hills peppered with vast piles of concrete. Adolescent trees bursting through roadways. A ghost town by the airport.

The lost colony of Kinloch.

Driving the few roads not blocked by highway dividers it gradually becomes apparent that Kinloch is not actually a ghost town. The residents are not all dead or gone. A fearless few remain, living in a vegetative state.

Rich with history, brimming with illegally dumped garbage, and mostly forgotten, Kinloch refuses to have its plug pulled. Mostly there is empty space and piles of the stuff that used be houses. But few and far between are houses where people live.



Fantastically failed suburbs look almost rural. Nobody around to tell you what, and what not, to do. Wide open spaces. Big gardens. Loud music. Shooting guns. By the airport.



Kinloch maintains a functioning fire department. Though the evidence leads me to believe that the Kinloch Fire Department is not known for its quick reaction time.

Fire is cheaper than a bulldozer and a dump truck.

The Bike Path Bench

I don't think one can overstate the importance of recognizing a good spot when you see one. When you know the perfect place to do something, you're that much closer to actually doing it.

Imagine someone comes up to you some Saturday morning while you're out garage sailing with John in the big red truck. The guy says, "I sure wish there was some place nearby to ride my new dirt bike. The closest place I know of is in the Ozarks! You fellas wouldn't happen to know anyplace, would ya? We got some beers."

If you are the kind of person that knows more than a few places to ride dirt bikes within 50 minutes of here by highway, then make a few courtesy calls and prepare to get some dirt in your mouth.

It's not just dirt bikes that require a special spot. Any activity is improved by its proper venue. Imagine a solid earthen cup of fragrant steaming tea in the botanical garden's Japanese tea house on a snowy winter morning. Beside the arching bridges of the coy pond. Now, the cup of tea from the vending machine in the basement of the municipal courts building on day 3 of jury duty.

Good spots are crucial. Without knowledge of, and easy access to good spots, doing anything interesting is difficult. St. Louis is resplendent in spots. Good St. Louisans appreciate them.



Imagine your self sitting on this bench. Your eyes are closed. The afternoon sun is warming your left shoulder. A gentle breeze matches the sound of mostly well-maintained traffic. You open your eyes, St. Louis is strolling by.

It's a parade. From minute to minute its hard to tell if the circus has come to town, or if you've stumbled across the jog wear portion of the Ms. STL College Student Pageant. Either way, you're not grabbing for the remote.

Sandwiched between the Bike Path, gravel running path and picturesque Lindell Boulevard, in one of the largest and most beautiful urban parks in the country, this bench has a prime location. It offers many nice views.



And there is a tree that works as a urinal.



And a trash can.



And you can bring a drink, non-alcoholic or otherwise. Have you ever had a King Dewey? Its Budweiser and Mountain Dew mixed together. Like an Arnold Palmer. Probably two thirds Beer, one third Mountain Dew. On ice.

I like to make one at the Mobil on Hampton in a 32oz Styrofoam cup before I go to the bench. Just get a 24oz can of beer and a 32oz fountain Mountain Dew. Pour the beer into the soda and maybe grab a bag of pretzels. Its nice to have a salty snack when you're using other people's work out regiments in the same way you would a moderately entertaining television program.

I'll bet the bench would be a good place to meet babes.

Its definitely a good place to spend a sunny weekday afternoon. You get to hang out in Forrest Park, but with more interesting traffic and fewer people laying on blankets then at the World's Fair Pavilion. You might encounter a Dance Walker, or a Rolls Royce or a three legged dog. If you're there early enough the Compton Drew Investigative Learning Center Middle School Dolphin Bicycle Club might ride by on there matching black red and silver Mountain bikes. I wanna be a kid in that club so bad, I could do something crazy.

Ice in Styrofoam cup.

I'm not gonna make the hard sell on this. I don't know if this is the best bench in St. Louis or not. But it's a good one and we've been coming here for a while. It's on the map. A good meet up spot.

Don't take my word for it.



Roger Brockman knew this was a perfect spot.

As Seen At: The 2010 Easter Car Show

The Upper MUNY Parking Lot

I try to live my life in a way that when someone comes up to me and says, "I've got this go-kart, do you know anyplace we can use it?" The answer is yes.

For basic go-karting, donut spinning, motorcycle learning, stick shift practice and general parking lot sessioning I recommend the Upper MUNY Parking lot. It's close, huge and rarely used as a place to park cars. A perfect place to ride and drive things of questionable legality.

The thing that makes a parking lot good for motorsporting practice is size. The Upper MUNY is a big parking lot. The surface is not perfect. But it offers plenty of room to dabble with chaos.

By car, the approach is winding. Adult trees conceal the lots' true size until the next to last moment. At the moment of reveal, she is stunning. Long enough to blur the edges on a sweltering August afternoon. Long enough to use as a quarter mile drag strip for slow vehicles with small wheels.

At the Upper MUNY you feel atop a plateau, vistas to various styles reveal themselves at the cardinal directions. A moat of mature oaks and turf grass immediately below. It was surreptitiously designed by some unknown genius of the drug-soaked 1970's civil engineering underground as a playing field for things with wheels and motors. Two of the best three things.


The Upper MUNY Parking Lot


Reverse Angle


People Know

I'm not letting you in on some great secret. Ask around. People know the upper MUNY is a dialed spot. Those beer bottles didn't empty and break themselves. That Spiro-graph of cauterized rubber isn't from parked cars. This lot has seen the business end of fat meats. J's were done, and the fuzz knows it.

Relax man, the cops have other stuff to worry about. Not gonna waste their time on five beer-spitting low lifes racing a go-cart in an empty parking lot. They're gonna be happy we're not giving each other blow jobs in the woods, or shooting rich white ladies.

Since this whole thing was conceived as a guide to St. Louis, let me fill you in on some the details. The Upper MUNY is one of two parking lots for the Municipal Theater in Forrest park. For those of you not familiar with St. Louis, the Municipal Theater, or MUNY, is where old people go on summer nights to sit. Their Cadillacs and Buicks wait patiently in the lot. Anticipating the return trip west.


The MUNY

Once a year, after 40 days of penance, the Upper Muny Parking Lot gets its moment to shine.

The Easter Car Show is a St. Louis tradition. Held Easter Sunday on the Upper MUNY parking lot it's the place to see interesting cars and St. Louis' car people. Originally organized by the old rich guys with British roadsters and shiny Model A sedans, The Easter Car Show now belongs to St. Louis. We took it over by driving hose clamped together Donks and Hyundai Tiburons with $5000 stereos and $50 airbrush murals, and parking them proudly next to whatever trailer queen the banker in the Hawaiian shirt brought.

Do yourself a favor and go to the Easter Car Show this year. Don't sweat seeing the Concourse D'Elegance, the real show is what the spectators bring. Two years ago Cole and I watched a fire breathing pro-street Camaro get loose right into the lower MUNY's stone retaining wall.


The Lower MUNY Parking Lot

The man with the Camaro made one critical mistake. He chose the wrong parking lot. The Upper MUNY is the lot for getting loose in $50,000 street legalish race cars. The Lower MUNY is for getting romantic with some guy you just met behind Steinburg Ice Rink.