population 350,705 (metro area 2.7 million)
nickname: Gateway to the West selling point: well, they've got that arch... Every city should have a symbol, emblem, or sigil so memorable.

Saint Louis could be Any City, USA. It's a real place. It doesn't try to wrap you up in its spell. Maybe it did in 1904, when the World's Fair was held here in what's now Forest Park. Glorious palaces built from plaster-of-Paris and hemp fibers celebrated the Louisiana Purchase, the Olympics, foreign nations, mining, agriculture, fine art, Progress and Western civilization.

St. Louis today is gritty, but it has traces of a glorious past and a promising future. It's full of ghettos, and racial tensions here are high. Gentrification is an issue, as this city is finally gaining in population again. St. Louis is a twenty-first century city; the future of America lies here if anywhere... read the notes below to find out why.

Coffee:
There's Mokabe's (3606 Arsenal), a hip cafe with good food in an area of walkable shops, and if you're on Delmar (another hip-walkable neighborhood), try Meshuggah (565 melville). If you just want good morning coffee and wifi, without a coffeehouse-scene, try Shugga's-- very much a neighborhood cafe.
Food: There's a lot of good food to be found here. In the historically French neighborhood of Soulard, visit the farmer's market. Blueberry Hill, on Delmar is an iconic St. Louis burger joint-- think Churck Berry. There are great Vietnamese places on the 3200 block of S. Grand, and apparently the Krishnas have a restaurant on 3926 Lindell.
Nature: St. Louis has a number of good city parks; Forest Park is the largest. The river, though industrial and brown in this section, still counts as nature-- there's a trail alongside much of it and a park where the Arch stands.
Other Things to Do: Go book-browsing on Delmar, where the Subterranean Bookstore and other shops can be found... Check the local newsweekly, the Riverfront Times, for happenings in the city. Ride a bicycle around the lovely Forest Park, visit the free zoo, walk along the riverfront trail and talk to the Mississippi.
Nearby: Heading east, you could visit Cahokia across the river, and see the site of an old Native American city and the mounds that they built. South along the river, St. Genevive is a charming village; if you're going west, stop for coffee or lunch in downtown Columbia.

field notes: st. louis / 2 October 2005

based on my recent expedition to st. louis, i have concluded that urban is the new suburban. anybody with any amount of money will be fleeing to the city to escape the bland, traffic-ridden suburbs, especially with the impending oil crisis. quaint, old, fixable homes in cute urban neighborhoods will be super in-demand. this was the case in st. louis, where there used to be a lot of money, during the turn of the century... the grand old houses there are testament to this. however, this influx of wealthy white people isn't without a price / namely a lot of (poorer) (black) people can't afford to live in their newly-yuppified neighborhoods. i saw old corner bars turned into dog-washing salons... yet: isn't a yoga studio better than an empty, burned-out row house? (i didn't get shot at this trip, but there was a lot of "hey, white girl" shouted at me as i rode my bike around... will this city gentrify peacefully, or break out into a race war? all the rich people with their refurbished homes seemed selectively oblivious to the tension a few blocks away.)