My Take on St. Louis

It was great being back in St. Louis last week, although I didn't have time to see nearly as much as I wanted. Here's what I remember most about the River City.

Favorite Park: There are many to choose from. Forest Park, which was the site of the 1904 World's Fair, is great, but my favorite is still Tower Grove. Its most unique feature is a series of ornate pavilions, but it also features lawn tennis courts, a ruin fountain, a wading pool for children, and a Victorian greenhouse devoted to palm trees. It's beautiful and romantic, and it was just a few blocks away from our apartment. During the first winter after we got married, we spent a great afternoon walking through it after ten inches of snow had fallen.

Favorite Neighborhood: The Loop is the funkiest area, but I prefer the sophistication of the Central West End. It has lots of great places to eat, beautiful Victorian houses, and also my...

Favorite Bookstore: Left Bank Books. I still have a couple bookmarks from this store. It's not huge, but they have both new and used books, and their used fiction collection was quite good. Philosophy wasn't so great, but I can count on two fingers all the bookstores in the world that get that section right.

Favorite Season: Spring. It starts with daffodils and forsythia, continues with tulips, tulip trees, and Bradford pears, and culminates with crabapple and cherry tree blossoms. After the dismal month of February, it's especially glorious. Every spring we would wait for the peak of the color and stroll through the Missouri Botanical Garden. Runner up: Fall.

Least Favorite Season: Summer. It's super-hot, and super-humid. Oh, and one year our air-conditioning wasn't working.

Favorite Pizza: You wouldn't guess from looking at it, but the inconspicuous corner bar called the Blackthorne Pub makes some incredible pizza. The thick crust version weighs half a ton, and the sauce is spicy. Runner up: Fortel's.

Favorite Frozen Dessert: It's Serendipity, as I mentioned in my last post. But you've got to at least try the legendary Ted Drewes' Frozen Custard.

Favorite Ethnic Food: Pho Grand. It was my first foray into Vietnamese food, and it's still my favorite. Maybe it's the slight French influence. They moved into a swankier spot on South Grand and still kept their prices dirt cheap. I loved them for that. There were four or five other Vietnamese places on that stretch of Grand, but Pho is my phavorite.

Favorite Place that is No More: The Chocolate Bar. Alas. They served the best hot chocolate ever.

Favorite Place that I Would Never Step Into for all the Money in the World and Absolute Power over Space and Time Combined: Some place on South Grand called "The Buttery Restaurant." It looks like they took a Waffle House back in the seventies, soaked it in grease, and set it out in the sun to rot.

Least Favorite St. Louis-style food: I griped earlier about St. Louis style barbecue, and I stand by that gripe. But by far, the hands-down worst St. Louis food is what goes by the name "St. Louis-style pizza." Imagine a cracker lightly coated with ketchup and then covered in molten vinyl, and you'd be pretty close. People who grew up in St. Louis love it. The rest of us cower in fear.

Favorite Awesome Place that is Full of Astounding Awesomeness: The City Museum. They bought an old factory, and then turned a bunch of artists loose in it and let them go wild. Click here to see pictures of just part of the fun that is to be had, and know that they don't even begin to capture how cool it is. That airplane is about four stories off the ground, by the way. If I were ten years old, they'd have to drag me away from the place, and I'd be kicking and screaming.

Favorite Theater Troupe: Magic Smoking Monkey Theatre. They do stage productions of bad movies (and sometimes good ones) and TV shows, and they feature the cheapest production values possible. When Watoosa and I saw their 1-hour Star Wars trilogy, I ached from laughing so hard. Without a doubt, it remains the funniest thing I've ever seen, and I pity everyone who missed it. Here is a list of their past productions.

Favorite Free Entertainment: It's a toss-up between the Zoo and the Art Museum (both in Forest Park). I'll pick the Art Museum since it's air-conditioned.

Favorite Famous Person from St. Louis: There's a surprising number. T. S. Eliot, Redd Foxx, Ike and Tina Turner, and Chuck Berry, just for starters. But I'm going with Miles Davis.

The city is not without its problems, and no one's going to mistake it for New York or Seattle or San Francisco. But I still think it's a pretty great place to live.