Transcript
Speaker: Meet me at the Muni, the Muni in Forest Park. Relive the excitement and romance of the World's Fair as the Muni presents Meet Me in St. Louis, August 1st through 7th, starring Kathleen Roe McAllen and St. Louis' own Joe Neal Joplin. Tickets start at just $5, so order yours today. And meet us at the Muni for Meet Me in St. Louis.
Speaker: Meet me at the Muni, the Muni in Forest Park.
Speaker: um Well, this is a Chamber of Reason episode, but this is an unusual Chamber of Reason episode because instead of my co-hosts, there are two different other guys here.
Speaker: The guys' names are Devin and Kevin. And ah they're both from the the area I grew up in, which is called St. Louis. And so we're going to talk about that city, America's ah first city in crime, I believe.
Speaker: And America's maybe be like, what, 80th city in terms of economic output or cultural output. I mean, maybe even lower. Savage introduction. Savage.
Speaker: And that's but not so fast, because Devon has added to the culture output. He might have bumped it like five five points by just having written a book, which is, I think, the first ever book written by someone from St. Louis.
Speaker: ah Yeah. And also, to be fair, the book is sort of like harvesting the decay of the city in order to like produce something from it. So, you know, only so much that you can do. Yeah. It's a little bit of a detritus eater, which is a good thing because there's a lot of detritus from St. Louis. And let's you know let's not beat around the bush. let's Let's plug that shit right away. What's the name of the book? And what's it about?
Speaker: it's It's The Veiled Prophet. It's about a secret society in St. Louis that... worships a guy named the Veiled Prophet who comes from Coruscant on a magic carpet to give gifts to St. Louis once a year, except he's also a Klansman from the 1870s. And then Ellie Kemper got in all that trouble about it you know Do you remember where you were, Derek, when Ellie Kemper fell? I think I found out who Ellie Kemper was from from you telling me about this. Because I because i wasn't like an avid watcher of ah The Office.
Speaker: Oh, you didn't watch every episode of The Office? I thought you said you were like sort of ah really into that for a long time. I said I really want to work in an office. Okay, and I was picturing sort of Michael Scott when that was going to happen, but I see. There's actually a lot of St. Louisans who are on The Office. We also had Phyllis. Who's the other one, Kevin?
Speaker: ah Pam, whoever played Pam. I don't remember the name. John Hamm. john am John Goodman. John Goodman, St. Louisan. Did you ever hear about the fraternity thing with John Hamm, Derek? Yeah, he like stripped a man naked and then led him around by the back of a hammer. is that right? Yeah, like something about a hammer and his nuts. yeah yeah but what's What's the sharp side of a hammer called?
Speaker: kevin Still the hammer, right? isn't the It's all hammer, but I thought the sharp side had like a specific... The forks? He put the forks on some guy's nuts. Oof.
Speaker: That seems bad. Did we ever find out if that guy got into the frat? Or was he just one of the frat's victims? i I think if you get the hammer, they got to let you in after that. That's traumatizing enough, right? That would just be such an insult. If I were in charge of a frat and a guy let me hammer his nuts, i would say, dude, you can't get in the frat.
Speaker: That was... Why did you let us haze you? Are you crazy? Yeah, that's the ultimate test of manhood for joining a fraternity is are you going to be let yourself be hazed by another man? That's kind of gay. I don't know. Yeah, you're out of the frat. You're in momentarily and then we started hazing you.
Speaker: Yeah. ah Who else we got? Are we just naming every celebrity from St. Louis? Because I don't want to do that. Why not? ah We're going to run out very quick also.
Speaker: No way. I got the Wikipedia pulled up right here. We're going get that. The most famous, I guess, in the news person from St. Louis is Sam Alden, right? Yeah, that's true. That's probably the most zeitgeisty St. Louisan right now.
Speaker: He's making us all proud. It's true. Yeah, being like the biggest confidence man of the era and then also threatening to like annihilate humanity. That's pretty good, you know? and Threatening to annihilate humanity with a chatbot. The guy from St. Louis who is like a huckster, I mean, I don't know if this is like a common trope, but it feels like a guy from St. Louis would be the one who who invented like the hula hoop.
Speaker: Yeah, I can see that. If we're doing St. Louis lore, John McAfee lived in St. Louis for some time. so you know i don't know if that counts. i don't think he was like raised in St. Louis, but he lived in St. Louis and worked somewhere. He got the stink on him.
Speaker: He got the stink on him. and yeah From what I've read, he was normal before he lived in St. Louis and then he became John McAfee. ah Something in the water got into his brain. Well, I mean, all the water is like poison by like, um is it, is it poisoned just by Monsanto or does Anheuser-Busch also poison the water?
Speaker: I mean, when you guys were going, I had always heard that there was like, Anheuser-Busch actually made the St. Louis area water really good, like invested in treatment plant.
Speaker: Is that propaganda? It has to be. I think they did it. I think St. Louis has really clean drinking water just because like, you know, they pushed the, you know, the the responsibility onto public utilities or whatever, you know? Yeah. I mean, to be clear, I say it's propaganda, I don't mean it's not true.
Speaker: Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. Oh, sorry. It's just sort of, yeah, it's ah it's information. Yeah. yeah in Just raw. And it might have an agenda attached to it.
Speaker: That's what we're trying to flag here. But St. Louis does have, i mean, it has its own, you know, because you're thinking of probably like the Coldwater Creek stuff and then also Oh, yeah. And for the folks at home, what is Coldwater Creek? Is that like an ice cream chain? Yeah. Is it like an amusement park? Is it something cool and fun? Or is it horribly depressing? I think, Devin, you wrote about this, right?
Speaker: Yeah, there were a bunch of the Veiled Profit guys in the mid-century. This would have been in the nineteen forty s early or late thirty s where like a Manhattan Projects guy came to St. Louis to Edward Mallinckrodt was like, all of these other chemical company barons are too cowardly to refine uranium for this giant bomb we're trying to make. And Mallinckrodt was like, I'll do it for sure.
Speaker: And then they refined a bunch of uranium in downtown St. Louis in an old stove factory. And then they were just dumping half of it down like the drain. so the downtown got irradiated and then they put it all in barrels and shipped it up to north of St. Louis out by the airport. And then they buried it in the ground. we're like, all right, all right.
Speaker: We're done with that atomic stuff for now. And then it got immediately into the groundwater and poisoned people for like 50 years before the government was like, shit. Got to do something about that. So related to the the fire under the dump, right?
Speaker: Is it the same stuff? The Westlake landfill. The fire under the dump. They should just rename St. Louis to the fire under the dump. It is very much Springfield in that there is like a tire fire happening, except it's with all of this atomic debris in one landfill and then the landfill right next to it has a subterranean smoldering event, which just means that there's a long smoldering fire under there and...
Speaker: Every once while, Josh Hawley has to come out and look at it and say, i don't think the fire's gotten to the radioactive stuff yet. And then we all go, okay, if you say so. We all say, who was that? Yeah, that too.
Speaker: A lot of people don't realize this, but um St. Louis is kind of like America's Chernobyl. And the reason they don't know that is just because Midwesterners are pretty bad at self-promotion. Because this could be like a tourist attraction. You know, people should come and ni they should do urban exploring in St. Louis. Yeah, there's tons of it. You could do cement land. It's because we're too humble. That's our problem, you know? Yeah. Don't like to showboat. We don't like to brag about how there's more super fun sites, I think, in like East St. Louis per mile than anywhere else in the the country, but. I mean, it would be a really great marketing ploy if they went to like people who like love ah the Fallout game series and they said, do you want to do that but for real?
Speaker: Come to St. louis There was, Derek, ah Fallout 3 map of Alton, our hometown, Alton, Illinois. So someone did put it into the game. Don't dox me. Oh, really? That's it. Okay, bleak bleep that.
Speaker: From some unnamed town. so No, no, we'll talk about Alton. Yeah, there's cool stuff in Alton. ah Did they have like the Piasa bird and like what's to the fucking the riverboat that's right as you come over the bridge? The Argosy, yeah, the casino.
Speaker: Yeah, that's cool. That's that's another thing about ah the area too, is all of the gambling boats and the reason that they exist, you know, is that it was for a time, because i remember this, it used to be in order to have a gambling casino, it had to be on a boat and the boat would have to go out into the water for like some amount of time. So like you'd be on land for an hour and they would have to, by law, go out and like paddle around a bit and come back in order to not be illegal as a gambling establishment.
Speaker: And at some point, they ah they were just like, well, this is stupid. Let's just make them casinos. So now all the casinos are on boats. Sure. Yeah. ah ah Sometimes when I tell people like where I'm from or the area I'm from, they have this weird reaction where they're like, oh, St. Louis, heard that's pretty cool. Maybe I'll check it out sometime. And I always have to be like, yeah what? Yeah.
Speaker: You're lying. No one's ever said that. and it It just becomes a thing where I'm trying to convince them not to go. Maybe you're not like me. Maybe you actually go like, yeah, dude, go come to St. Louis. It's awesome.
Speaker: I don't know. well Devin, you know because like we're all turncoats because you know I'm in Chicago. You're in LA. Devin, you're still in St.
Speaker: Louis. I'm the real one. You're the crab still left in the pot. That's right. i want to point I don't consider Chicago part of the coastal league. You wish, buddy. I'm salt of the earth still. I still count. That's the third coast.
Speaker: Everybody knows. Yeah. I will say, I think St. Louis is an acquired taste. And the one thing that I do like about St. Louis, and this isn't just what St. Louis has going for it, but because it's kind of like a blown out, economically deprived area, I have to say, like I had culture shock when I moved because like Chicago, it's like a place where it's like you need licenses to go to the dog park and stuff. And I've just never been around this level civil society before. Louis,
Speaker: In St. Louis, you can do whatever you want. You can do anything. No one's going to stop you. Devin, what happened? Someone was its own someones doing whippets and ran a car into a building. what you told me recently? Yeah. That was the mayor. Spencer.
Speaker: She was doing whippets and listening to Insane Clown Posse and she crashed her SUV into the heavy anchor, one of the only economically viable businesses in Bevo.
Speaker: ah No, it wasn't the mayor, but it was somebody who said, yeah that they got out of the car and were clutching a can of ah of air duster. And Kevin's saying this is a good thing about St. Louis.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, this is a selling point. is that A lot of people are... It's kind of like gummo. It's kind of like going to live in the gummo village. It's like GTA Online. It's like Bedlam. like It's like you can you can literally do whatever. i mean, like cops run red lights. It's just like, you know, it's there's no... you know There's nothing... No one's stopping you. know mean? So...
Speaker: I mean, cops will you to run a red light. I mean, everybody has a story about like driving around in St. Louis at night, stopping at a red light and then a cop pulling up next to them and then saying, what are you doing? Go.
Speaker: Come on. Yeah. Because you shouldn't be stopped at red lights in St. Louis at night in certain areas because you might get carjacked. This is true. It is. It's got some edge to it for sure. Yeah. I gave someone, I and i was like in the the central West end.
Speaker: um I gave someone like a ride because I was just like feeling, I was just like, you know what? I'm going to give, going to help someone out. I gave them ride they were like, and I was like, where are we going? You know, it was like me in an Uber with this guy. He's like North St. Louis.
Speaker: I look at my watch I'm like, it's midnight and I'm like, okay. so i was like It was like me and the Uber driver and this guy going to North St. Louis. and I remember talking to this guy. He had moved to Kentucky. He was a construction worker.
Speaker: and he was at He was actually at the chess ah building. ah the Sidebar, St. Louis is the home of chess. That's fucking right, baby. That's right. A crazy millionaire invested a lot of money into making St. Louis the home of of chess.
Speaker: And this construction worker was there. He was like checking out the chess stuff. Yeah, he was really into chess. ah But yeah, I will say- Why were you down there? What were you doing? Why you- don't know. one died Kevin sometimes starts telling stories and it's like, yeah, I was just having one of those listless points of my life where I was riding the bus around aimlessly. or like Literally- I would do that. I would just be like, i don't i need to like fucking get outside. why were you riding with him in the Uber to a place you didn't want to go? Don't worry about it, but it was quite a journey. But accept the air zone, I want to say something, which is that
Speaker: You said crazy millionaire. This guy's a crazy billionaire. okay He's an index fund pioneer. Well, every billionaire is also a millionaire. that's Okay. yeah you You make it sound like any any any person with a million dollars can just come and run St. Louis. It's like, you need more money than that. i don't know. st louis st Louis, you might only need like You might be able to run the city.
Speaker: There was a controversy it's like three years ago where like three prominent St. Louis politicians like got wrapped up on bribery charges. And when they figured out how like the total amount, it was something like ah like for $9,000, this person was completely bought. And it's like, yeah, dude, for a used Toyota Corolla, you can buy a St. Louis Alderman for life, basically. It's cool. this
Speaker: That's the other cool thing about St. Louis is because used to be such a huge, important city. I think at the turn of the the turn of the 20th century, whatever, It was the fourth largest city in the country.
Speaker: It was very, very powerful, very, very important. And there are there's like the infrastructure for that. There's still these grand buildings and like, you know, all of this, these these bones of a once great city. You're just like, it's like it's like living at what I imagined, like living in Rome in like the 1200s or something, where you're just like, something really happened here.
Speaker: you know yeah it was it was It was really popping off. And now that's long over. We don't do that anymore. That's ah actually a soft spot I still have for St. Louis even now is the um the dashed hope. you know The dashed greatness. the this The shadow skeleton of like what would would have been like a like kind of a world-class city. Yeah. could have looked I mean, that's the weirdest thing about going to visit Chicago. was like, oh, shit, look at all the stuff that works. like The public transit system and just everything looks like it's developed. It's very crazy. But wait, Kevin, you have to finish telling us about why you went to North St. Louis in the middle the night. Yeah, because I want to talk about the alderman, too.
Speaker: Okay, yeah. The alderman was driving the Uber. Yeah, right. Jeffrey Boyd. I was actually being kidnapped to be turned into an alderman because they were like a short one. um no yeah That's the thing about St. Louis is that ah because it used to be such a grand, important machine-style city, used to be a Tammany Hall kind of like political city back then, there's still 800 aldermen. like Everyone in St. Louis has an alderman. That's cool. They like distributed responsibility so much to the aldermen that the mayor can't do anything.
Speaker: So like the mayor has to get all 800 aldermen to agree on something before anything can get done. and And it's... I mean, did they ever finish the North-South Metrolink? Is that because ah is that happening? you know No. They... like No, that's not happening. Why would something good happen, Kevin? If you have good things happening in the city, people will get their spirits up and they must be crushed. We we live in the sacrifice zone, you know. St. Louis doesn't have public transit, but you are allowed to just get into anyone's car.
Speaker: he's yeah You can commandeer a vehicle, yeah, at will. yeah ah It's pretty cool. The last time that there was money put into the public transit system in St. Louis was in the Clinton administration. And there is a Bill Clinton plaque on one of the Metrolink cars that still exists.
Speaker: They were going to do this expansion. They did leverage the sales tax that's got millions and millions of dollars in it to do a north-south green line. And they nuked it because Pete Buttigieg couldn't get it done. They couldn't get it done during the Biden administration. and then Trump has just cut everything.
Speaker: And so then the mayor is like, ah what if we did Waymos? Which basically, Derek, you're right. Yeah, it's just, it's going to be robotic cars. They're going to take care of that during the first Buttigieg administration. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: Once we get Pete in there, he's going he loves public transit and especially light rail. But then we got the trolley. Have you been on the trolley, Derek? I think the trolley was like, was that like under construction our entire childhood?
Speaker: Yes. For like 20 years, they were working on the trolley and we were hearing about how the trolley was coming back. I've never been on it. It costs like $30 to ride. and you It's a carnival ride. It doesn't like move people really. Right.
Speaker: yeah no. It goes in between the university city library and the history museum. So if you live at the library and you work at the history museum, you're fucking set. Uh, and everyone else is screwed.
Speaker: Uh, they They did have, when they were trying to get people to write it, when they were having like a crisis of writership, they had like a stand-up comedy set on the trolley. so you could It was the hottest in town.
Speaker: yeah It's hard for me to even conceive of what the St. Louis comedy scene is like. A little bit of everything. And that special panache that St. Louis gives to things where it's like, yeah, there's only 30 people who live here. And so of chances are, if you go to the version of the groundlings they have in the Grove, you're going to see like three people you've worked with before, you know?
Speaker: Right. And these are all the people that couldn't scrape together $45 for a Greyhound bus ticket to Chicago. Exactly. like I think I need to yeah do it out in the sticks and make it work in the in the heartland before we get to Chicago. But the good thing about, um I think, art scenes in cities like St. Louis is that everyone has a chip on their shoulder.
Speaker: and i like I do like that because you know so there's something about like knowing you're not reaching anyone that I think that steals it it builds character. Yeah. yeah and it's I think it's true because like you know when you when you're in ah you know like it' Chicago, new York, LA, there's people doing improv and stand-up all that and there's like ah a thing of like a support network. and yeah was St. Louis, like you're the only person trying to do it there. you know So it's like you're fighting the tide. i i feel like you know part of the reason you kind of go insane after a while living there is because you'll run into people.
Speaker: And ah like a lot of a lot of the Midwest is like this where i think people are just like, you know well, i I got married at 25 and I work at one of the Fortune 500 companies that are headquartered here. And it's like a lazy Susan. I just keep swapping into and around these companies that happen to be in this metro area until I'm dead. Sure.
Speaker: And that's that's the kind of vibe it gets. And if you're trying to like do anything outside of that, people are like, okay, man, sure. you know You're going to be an actor or be this or be that or whatever. It's like kind of ah dispiriting a bit. Whereas, yeah, I think...
Speaker: You need some amount of delusion. Otherwise, you kind of go crazy. But that's what's cool about St. Louis is that you can't even muster up the ability to hope too much. That's a problem with LA is people are drowning in hope. They'll be chasing their dreams um for way, way after it's too late.
Speaker: you know yeah but But in St. Louis, you you kind of don't have that luxury. Yeah, maybe that's what i I automatically respond to people who have hope as just like, where do you fucking get off? you know let's just say i know if that's I don't know if that's St. Louis or Catholic coming through, but it's just like, you know you shouldn't have any pride. God fucking hates that.
Speaker: And you know what we say when something good does happen for somebody? we all We all know ah those three magic words, right? ah hate you or... Must be nice. Must be nice. Must be nice. That's a good one. That should be the motto for St. Louis. There's it just there's nothing you can do to impress anyone here. You could become like emperor of earth and they'd be like, ah, well, good for you, man. Yeah.
Speaker: To each his own. But I don't know. I mean, I think most people probably can relate to like you know their hometown feeling like kind of stifling or you know looking around to like the local scenes and things growing up and and feeling maybe a little bit discouraged or like they've outgrown it at some point, perhaps.
Speaker: But I think what's interesting about St. Louis maybe, you know, just in a theoretical way is like the ruinous nature of it. Like the fact that it is like this fallen city, you know, my experience of like going to the city when I was growing up was always sort of like, you know, it was the only city I knew.
Speaker: So I thought that every city had areas that were like completely bombed out with abandoned houses and overgrowth and like the city being kind of like a wilderness of uninhabited buildings and in parking lots and just you know decay. Yeah, it's it's striking, right? I mean, like half of the city has been left to the dogs. you know like Literally, there are wild dogs in North City that are just roaming the streets.
Speaker: well i mean one One of my first times coming to North St. Louis, was I remember just driving by a house that I... First of all, you know all the windows are blown out so you could see through it. But the thing that you could see you know through it and out the top of it was an entire oak tree had grown through the center of this building.
Speaker: and so This building, it had been dilapidated for so long that a full-grown tree had grown through it. you know and it's like Half of the city looks like ah like a war happened. like There's just rubble in in in the streets. like It's...
Speaker: It's crazy. And it's like, there's only a handful, even, and it's like, it's tempered me a little bit. Cause like, like you say, Derek, like, you know, when I go to different cities now and people tell me like, uh, so it's a bad area, man, you know, or whatever. And I go there and i'm like, this is perfectly pleasant. I don't know. yeah What do you mean? Like this house has all the walls. Yeah. All the walls are here. You know, there's a roof on this building.
Speaker: I'm not being chased by dogs. Must be nice. Must be nice. But that's also what's interesting about St. Louis is it it has like the post-apocalyptic areas, but it also has castles.
Speaker: Yeah. One thing people might not know is if if they, even if you just like look at the economic stats of St. Louis or whatever, you're like, okay, this is a poor city in the Midwest, boring, but they won't realize that there are these like pockets of insane wealth. I mean, like you said, Sam Altman is from there.
Speaker: You know, you have the Anheuser-Busch family. or I guess you just say the Bush family. And they all live in like these weird gated ah suburbs. think Ladue is the most. country But the really rich people in St. Louis have like, they have a kind of like pretension to them that I don't think you were even really see on the East Coast so much, you know, but there's something that's like vaguely continental about the way they regard themselves, almost like minor royalty.
Speaker: And I don't know if if that's just like my perception. Maybe I'm like projecting that a little bit. But every time I saw like those houses in Ladue, they're not just like distasteful McMansions.
Speaker: They're like, they aspire to be castles. To paint a picture of Ledoux, because I think Ledoux is like the specific one, right? When I think, you know, there's like, I think Ledoux Blue Bloods, home Ledoux Blue Bloods. But these are families that have been rich since the Spanish owned St. Louis.
Speaker: Like these are... insanely wealthy families and everyone, it's kind of like a point of pride. Like once you've made it in the socioeconomic order, you have a giant compound in Ladue.
Speaker: So the the richest, most powerful families Ladue. ah Yeah, the Bushes, are they have a big compound in Frontenac, which is also right next door.
Speaker: But this is also, this is kind of what the book is about also. It's like the Veiled Prophet Society is a secret club that worships a monarch who's a Klansman.
Speaker: And i think it it is there is something perverted about the St. Louis elite that is different from elsewhere. And it's because i think the the city is shattered, especially the county is shattered into a million little municipalities. So that you, it's it's a city that is laid out at least politically so that you can extract as much wealth as possible from the urban core and the what was the industrial areas.
Speaker: and take it across a county line into Ladue and basically never pay taxes into a common system because the thing at the root of that is like a terrible, horrific, like racism and this worship of whiteness and this total fear of blackness that like...
Speaker: You hoard all your wealth in Ledoux then basically creates the economic conditions of Ferguson 2014 and the Michael Brown murder. Those are two counties that are really like a half an hour away from each other and they are different planets.
Speaker: I mean, that's the story all over St. Louis. There's a famous BBC article where people from England came over to St. Louis to gawk at it because Wasn't that so offensive? That was so annoying. I can't believe the Brits would do that to us. They came and made documentary about how we created the largest economic cliff in the nation. You know what? Fuck them. I'm going to make my own documentary. I'm going to to fucking Blackpool and be like, oh, this place sucks. What happened? Oh, you know?
Speaker: Oh, you guys really fucked up this place. so You know, like ah shut You got your own town. At least they have the decency to make entire cities suck. And what St. Louis did, which is a real innovation, is have one side of the street be castles and mansions and the other side of the street be bombed out buildings.
Speaker: That is true. and that And that's... We'll do another bit of lore, which is, you know, what they came to talk about was the Del Mar Divide, right? and Which is like... you If you're on Delmar Boulevard in St. Louis and you're on the this the southern side, if you cross the street, life expectancy drops by about 20, 25 years just by crossing the street.
Speaker: That's how stark the segregation is in St. Louis. And I think north North St. Louis in particular... has a lower life expectancy than Baghdad.
Speaker: yeah Baghdad during the Iraq War, I'm sure it's like even higher now, but it's extremely and economically depressed and deprived. Strategically destroyed, yeah. Like most places in the Midwest,
Speaker: It goes back to like the Great Migration and then the ah segregation of the cities from the Great Migration from the South coming for manufacturing jobs that were here. that was like you know I was thinking about this because there was like that brief moment where there was like a a black middle class in the United States in the seventy s and eighty before NAFTA and the deindustrialization that happened. But...
Speaker: Yeah, that's the Ville. The Ville was like a parallel city. There was like a pretty well-functioning black middle class and upper class. And you could go and become a doctor at an all-black medical institution, Homer G. Phillips. And then you could go to college at an all-black college and get a job as like a lawyer in North St. Louis or something like that. And then that was the first thing to be de-industrialized was everything north of Del Mar.
Speaker: Yeah. And speaking of deindustrialization, we should talk about the Metro East, Eric, where we're from. Yeah. I mean, as you mentioned earlier, we're from Alton. And ah I mean, we're kind of British in our own way because our relationship with St. Louis when we were growing up is we came over to gawk at it. That's right. Yeah.
Speaker: ah Sorry, Devin, but of course that's what we're you know that's what we're doing even now. True. um But I mean, i' I'll state for the record, Alton is even shittier than St. Louis. Yeah.
Speaker: Is there still an Olin ammunition factory there? Is there still Olin stuff going on? There's an Olin Brass Factory. i don't it's not it's like on the outskirts of Alton, and then there was Alton Steel, which I think reopened. Alton is propped up on the Olin, like or at least in the mid-century it was, of just like making bullets.
Speaker: Washington University's business school is called the Olin Business School, which I think is awesome. They'll be like, okay, here's how we make money. ah You get a... You get a product that you have to fire out of a gun and then it's totally useless and then you have to buy another one. Okay, great business model. Sick.
Speaker: Thank you. Yeah, like most of the Metro East is like, um is or was former industrial areas. And this is a common pattern in the United States because the wind blows west to east. So all the industrial zones are on the eastern side of cities. You think Oakland,
Speaker: or the Metro East or whatever, Gary in Chicago, like you know everything is on the eastern side of the city because no one wants the smoke blowing into the the actual city. My dad's family were coal miners in southern Illinois, and then they all moved to the Metro East in the 40s and 50s because of all the defense contracting post-World War II boom manufacturing stuff.
Speaker: I mean, all of my aunts and uncles worked at steel mills and brass factories and you know whatever um up until they couldn't anymore. um I don't know, Derek, if you had a similar similar family constellation of industrial stuff.
Speaker: ah My family were all cavemen. I was the first one my family that learned how to talk. which you know, gotta hand it to you. You're doing a pretty good job. You're making the family a long way. Yeah. It came a long way. First first of one in the family to wear clothes. Yeah.
Speaker: That's progress, baby. It's beautiful. Alton being like, kind of like so rinky dink, nothing going on there. it It did mean that like the limit of our imaginations for like a city was St. Louis. St. Louis is the blueprint for us. Yeah. It's The blueprint is, i mean, that is really, i had not thought about it in those terms too, but like, yeah, I've always had a synonymous feeling of like, yeah, downtown, that's where all the empty abandoned buildings are, or just like the scrub grass lots.
Speaker: There's like a, i have a bunch of my St. Louis University writing students are listening to that 99% Invisible they have to write about St. Louis. And so they're listening to this episode about the red brick, like structure that also is in East St. Louis and sort of just in our neck of the woods.
Speaker: And all of the stuff that was built is made out of this red brick um because of the soil quality around the city. And like, the there's all this like anxiety about stealing bricks and like when um and the tornado hit North St. Louis, there's a lot of like trying to salvage all of this red brick and stuff.
Speaker: ah But the like worst part of that episode is that at the end of it, There's this problem of when you knock down a red brick building of all the exterior bricks are harder. and so they insulate the building and all the interior ones are softer so that the temperature is ubiquitous. And when you mix all of them up, they're hard to like differentiate. So you can't build like another red brick thing right there if you have a cold winter to withstand. And so they shipped all of these red bricks south ah to like Louisiana primarily, where it just was hot all of the time. And that was part of a ah an architectural trend the called plantation revival.
Speaker: ah So there's there's also... I think this is a fascinating thing about St. Louis is it is the bombed out, the industrial zone, but it keeps... like creating perfect metaphors for American racism and hatred and stuff like that. It's funny you say that too, because isn't it there's like a booming trade in that. I mean, there are people that steal bricks from like houses and stuff to sell them. I mean, I think it's like a point of pride. Like I remember reading somewhere that it was like, you know, people in like Texas or whatever will be like, yeah, that's real red brick from St. Louis on their like nouveau riche patios that they have in their McMansions or whatever. Yeah, it is good quality stuff. And there's like I have seen people pushing like grocery like ah carts full of bricks like down to the salvage before. There's a whole thing where they would...
Speaker: If you were really trying to harvest some bricks, you start a fire in one of the houses, right? And then the fire department comes and blasts the brick walls and that removes all of the mortar from between the bricks. So it's also cleaning them for you to then come back later and salvage the rest of them. This is St. Louis's economy stealing bricks to sell to richer parts of the country.
Speaker: Primarily what we're pumping out here. Yeah. I want to say something about ah Alton, though, going back to Alton for a second. But growing up, Kevin, did you did you always hear that Alton was like America's most haunted city?
Speaker: Yeah. I wanted to ask about this. Yes. There's Alton ghosts. That's what they say. Like when when we were growing up, they would tell us this in school. So that's all we learned. it and It wasn't just like playground shit. It was teachers being like, by the way, did you know Alton has the most spirits? Okay, cool. what Have you ever seen a spirit? No, because they're not real. but ah That's your opinion, man. Spoilers.
Speaker: yeah Spoilers about the afterlife. but Alton has all these like um hotspots for ghost hunting um and people would come in and do TV shows.
Speaker: You know, tourists would come to look at these like supposedly haunted places. And ah even at the time i was like, isn't it suspicious that our town is a dump?
Speaker: And we're trying to sell this as an attraction. Like, oh yeah, the McPike Mansion. It's haunted. it's like I'm pretty sure it's just a shitty house.
Speaker: There was that. I remember there was like a story about the old Milton school where like a janitor killed one of the students and like the janitor haunted it. Jesus. there was like a There was a funeral home or something in downtown Alton for a long time just had like a mummy of someone and they would show people. They'd be like, yeah, i got a mummy in there.
Speaker: and then you can look at the mummy. Cool. i don't know what that was about. I'm pretty sure that's illegal. I don't think you can just have a ah dead guy you've mummified. But what else? what else what else about Oh, Robert Wadlow.
Speaker: That's an Alton guy. Yeah, but that has nothing to do with a Alton being haunted. Well, he could be haunting. he could be a very tall ghost. ah Yeah, he was cursed by a witch to become really tall. Robert Wadlow is the tallest man that ever lived for people that don't know. yes Hometown hero.
Speaker: does not haunt the town. this This is very indicative of Alton, Illinois to me. It's that A man who was very tall was venerated, had a museum made about him, had documentaries that people studied, like people would talk about this guy. And Miles Davis is also from Alton, Illinois. Nice. And no one talked about that. Yeah.
Speaker: that's good I've had people accuse me of lying when I said that.
Speaker: About how tall he was? About how tall Miles Davis was. yeah know People who I've said Miles Davis is from my hometown. He's from Alton, Illinois. And they'll be like, m I don't think so.
Speaker: What? They don't believe that? Not even because they know anything about Miles Davis. Somebody that doesn't give a fuck about jazz. But they'll just be like, I'm pretty sure no one's from your hometown. Yeah.
Speaker: I even think you're from your hometown. I think you're full of shit. yeah and i Yeah. Yeah. Miles Davis one of the greatest musicians ever. And there everyone was just like, holy shit, that guy's tall. Look at that guy up there.
Speaker: yeah You guys also have the Reverend Lovejoy, the famous abolitionist who died in spectacular fashion. Yes, and the Lovejoy Monument, the trumpeting thing. Which is pretty cool.
Speaker: Yes. It's a grand monument. Have you ever been to Belafonte Cemetery, Devin? Uh-huh. The cemetery itself is okay, but the thing that strikes me every time I went there was you can see just how important of a city St. Louis was at the turn of the century because there are so many Freemason graves in that cemetery. Oh, yeah.
Speaker: like half of the people buried there are like high ranking Freemasons and like captains of industry and just like, you know, insanely influential people that are just like lost to to time. And we're all on the same page. We want to bring back the Freemasons to their glory, right? Yeah.
Speaker: And we are all members, I believe, right? We are all members. Right now, Derek has the Freemasonry bib on and he's sort of like also doing occult ham symbols at me right now. I can't really understand what they're saying. think Derek just always wears a bib, if I'm not mistaken. I've only got the one shirt. I better protect it.
Speaker: That's Good point. Wasn't that part of like um the Veiled Prophets' success? Is that secret societies were already such a big thing in St. Louis? Yeah.
Speaker: Secret societies in general were just like... That was the shit in the eighteen ninety s like you There was a ton to choose from and like you could just...
Speaker: ah the new ones were sprouting up all of the time. There was also like they would share like the Freemasons built obviously because they're like built a whole lot of stuff.
Speaker: And then there's a story that didn't make it into the book about how the owner of the Cardinals was at a Veiled Prophet initiation ceremony at the Mullah Temple, ah which is also right near St. Louis University. And he stepped out a door in the alleyway and fell and hit his head and died.
Speaker: ah But the drop was only like four or five feet and everybody was kind of like, oh, that was weird. like You guys were just hanging out and then this guy died and that's cool. Yeah, lucky for his enemies. Yeah.
Speaker: I do want to talk about a few St. Louis items. The cuisine. we talk about that? Yeah. Devin, are you are you tired of talking about St. Louis? You wrote a big book about St. Louis and now you're going on a bunch of podcasts.
Speaker: No, never. ah The Van Profit stuff is still fresh in my mind and I'm a little like, I've said the interesting parts of that many, many times in a row.
Speaker: But we've hardly talked about the St. Paul sandwich. Have you ever had a St. Paul sandwich? I've had one once because I had to try it because it's such a weird thing. It's weird. I don't know. What is this?
Speaker: Oh, you don't know? I don't know. is To be fair, I didn't know about it until like two years ago or something like that. But it's like, it's a sandwich that was supposedly invented here and then named after St. Paul. But it's like a batter fried thing that has slapped between two pieces of white bread.
Speaker: It's not a batter fried thing. It's egg foo young. Egg foo young. Yeah. Yeah. It's egg foo young between two pieces of white bread. And I think sometimes they add onions. Yeah. And shrimp sometimes. So it's a, it starts between starch, you know? Yeah. But I, I had one and I thought, uh, I thought it was pretty bad. It felt bad to have bread and egg foo young in my mouth at the same time. And I thought whoever invented it was like sadistic.
Speaker: and I like egg foo young and I like white bread. I'll defend white bread to the, to my dying breath. Sure. But putting those together is fucking crazy. What about a slinger? i love slinger. Now a slinger, I can get fully behind. Yes, i agree.
Speaker: Kevin, what's a slinger? Kevin, for the folks at home, what's a slinger? A slinger. don't, you know, so I think it's like gravy and then hash browns and hamburger. is that right?
Speaker: think it's chili usually. Chili. Okay. I always got a hangover. So I never, I was never in the slinger camp. I was, I was team hangover. Okay. I'll do both. But the hangover is just a variation of the slinger. Yeah, that's fair. The hangover is a chicken fried steak on top of hash browns with gravy and an egg on top. But it's all just in a big pile.
Speaker: And I think the slinger too. I mean, this is just the St. Louis area specific version of like in other places. It's maybe called like a garbage plate. Yeah. that right? Something like that. i mean, it's not really an invention. It's just a bunch of crap on a plate. Yeah. No, it's like, yeah. And as far as it's an invention, it's just like the guy at the diner had all this stuff at his disposal. was like, all right, I invented. we used to go to Tiffany's and, um...
Speaker: maplewoods because they had a cigarette machine in there. And so you could buy cigarettes before you were 18. ah and then you could sit at the bar and smoke inside and then be served as slinger, which, yeah, hash browns, eggs, and then just a single beef patty with like big slices of orange cheese on top. And then they just dump a bunch of chili on it.
Speaker: I forgot about Tiffany's. Is Tiffany's still open? Oh, yeah. Still going. I have not been in there in years, though. It's like kind of a... It's an atmosphere. Derek and I went to a courtesy diner, though. That's a beautiful diner. Oh, yeah. A legend.
Speaker: That's an That's the best. The best. More important to me than the St. Louis Zoo. You think so? It's a free zoo? Free zoo. I thought all zoos were free growing up. Another thing about St. Louis...
Speaker: Yeah, that is true. Yeah, we do have, for some reason, the commons are intact when it comes to the zoo and the art museum and yeah ah the history museum and stuff. There's a bunch of free stuff you can do here.
Speaker: for For a city that feels like it puts everything behind gates and it's so segregated, it is weird that it has some free amenities. Yeah, it is strange. I'm not sure. almost feels like it gets the spirit of St. Louis. I almost feel like we should start charging 100, 200 bucks to go to the zoo just to make sure everything is spiritually aligned.
Speaker: no i let Let me just say that spiritually I think it is aligned because it's funded, the zoo is free and it's funded by taxes only from the city. So people from the county don't pay taxes to enjoy the free zoo.
Speaker: And the impoverished St. Louis City where I think it's one out of three people live at or below poverty, their taxes fund the free zoo. So yeah it's spiritually aligned. Yeah.
Speaker: The ultimate the ultimate like zoo experience is getting stuck in the traffic in Forest Park on a weekend where 30,000 people from St. Charles have driven their gigantic gas-guzzling diesel trucks.
Speaker: The dad is going to buy 13 Budweiser's for ah his entire paycheck at the cafeteria, and they're going to like heckle the penguins. Do either of you remember the controversy when the zoo said you can't bring guns inside?
Speaker: yeah I do not remember that. that There was this huge controversy because it was like, please don't bring firearms inside. and all these people were like, what?
Speaker: What do you mean I can't bring my gun into the Yeah, this is for self-defense. What if one of these lions gets out of their cage? Those lemurs work in pats. If you don't pick a couple of them off, like they could come right out. That's sick.
Speaker: Yeah, i just I just remember that when i still lived there. There was just all this hand wringing and like, wow, you can't bring your guns inside. I was like, ah who's doing who's bringing their guns to the zoo? Turns out a lot of people. A lot of people were doing that There's a lot of guns here. you know There's a lot of guns.
Speaker: There's a big thing like in St. Louis of having a big barrel clip on the end of your like automatic pistol. Like a Tommy gun sort of canister. don't know. It makes the gun look crazy, but...
Speaker: That's cool. Yeah. that's That's the other thing too is like ah the amount of suburban paranoia in like the suburbs, saying it was like everyone goes to the Cardinals games like strapped, you know? Yeah.
Speaker: It's just like it just insane to I mean, it is the narrative that is advanced by the local media and just like the reactionary politics of the state. It's just like, if you go to a Cardinals game and you park your car, you're going to get out and the have the most violent crime in the universe happen to you. It's going to be a tragedy. Your catalytic converter is going to be stolen. And the truth is that there's not enough people downtown for that to be happening all that often. You would really need a more population down there.
Speaker: But of course, that also always goes back to segregation and the way that you advance segregation by just making sure everybody's terrified of ah poor people.
Speaker: I mean, we're all college educated and very smart and we know the causes of crime, the root causes. But I mean, growing up in the St. Louis area, um like when you're a kid, the way people talk about crime is like,
Speaker: Crazy. i mean, you really think like, I'm a child and I think I might get assassinated at any time. Because yeah people have told me about the danger. yeah Yeah. It's also a city, I think that all comes from the suburbanization happening here so much more intensely. i mean, this happened in every American city, but like the abandonment of downtown for the West and that like the entire city is basically built so that you can be terrified in a suburb that looks like every other suburb you've ever seen, and then get on the highway, go to a Cardinals game, freak out about the three blocks you have to walk to get there and back, and then drive as fast as you can back down the interstate to the suburb. It's very weird. The violence, it's just, it's very weirdly ambient. Like twice when I worked downtown, like someone shot through the windows and
Speaker: Like there were bullet holes in windows. Not because of any animosity. i think people were just driving down 64 and just shooting their guns in the air. And one of the one of the bullets just shot through the window twice at where I work.
Speaker: that's ah That's a major problem on the 4th of July. Also, New Year's, there's always a lot of like... I have to express my celebration at the end of the year. And so I go outside and fire off a couple rounds.
Speaker: Yeah. It's a surefire way to keep the property taxes down. Also, was just kind of go out in the alley and do some test pops. you know it's it's it's just like It's just weird, the the ambient level of just like social dysfunction that you just get used to living there.
Speaker: You do get used to it. You just get used to it. mean, it feels like a random Pokemon encounter where it's just like, you know, the the crime feels kind of so just happenstance. That's like the odds of you just seeing something happen when you're out walking around does seem high.
Speaker: yeah And you kind of learn to not freak out about it because if you're freaking out... dumpy um There's a ah there's very funny... like There are certain spots where the chance and that you will encounter the craziest thing of your life goes way up. And it's usually around like a gas station, right? Oh, the murder shell. Oh, absolutely. The murder shell. But also just like any For the folks at home.
Speaker: Where was the murder shell? i I think it's closed now. I think they finally were like, maybe we shouldn't have something called a murder shell. It's cursed. I mean, in that way, the St. Louis area it feels a little haunted. Yeah. um and I mean, not to bring up ghosts again, but I think people would like come to the area maybe and they they'd walk around like, i don't know. I feel a little uneasy. It's like, well...
Speaker: You don't need spirits to explore that. Why are you feeling uneasy? We're just going to the murder shell to get some, uh, some power aids. So he's going to be upset. Literally Andrew, our friend Andrew and I went to the murder shell to see if there was a, uh, a rare, um, flavor of Mountain Dew that was only available at the murder shell. So we drove that down to Tucker Avenue to get it. It was like disgusting and not worth it. This will turn this place around. Yeah. Mountain Dew Corporation to the rescue. Pepsi. What flavor?
Speaker: you know what flavor it was? was orange. I forgot what it was exactly. But this is the only innovation we're doing in this country. and if I catch a bullet outside of the murder shell because I had to get the birthday cake flavored Mountain Dew, ah then that's just the way that the Lord planned for me to go. Yeah.
Speaker: um I just realized we haven't even uttered a sentence about the arch. and I don't want to talk about the arch. I don't want to talk about it because there's really nothing to say. Sure. But I just want to point out that we haven't we haven't said anything about it. And I think the reason we haven't said anything about it is because there's nothing to it.
Speaker: It's big. It's a parabola. It was built by or designed by a guy who was in the OSS. Does it give as we control the weather? is it part of some sort of ray antenna that's giving us all very interesting and mental illnesses?
Speaker: We're not sure. What's great about the arch is you can go up into it and look out the window and see East St. Louis. Yeah. yeah That is, there was that's always been the problem of the downtown like waterfront of like, there's always somebody who's like, we've got to do something to make people want to come down here and see this river. and it's like, Oh, the hyper-polluted Mississippi River that's like directly downstream from the Procter & Gamble plant. Like the brownest water around. And like, ah it's not fun to look at. And so there's all this industrial stuff along it also.
Speaker: But we did used to have the riverboats. I think we should bring back the riverboats. It's just not very... We have the McDonald's boat as well. Did you ever go to the McDonald's boat? Oh, yeah. I think there was a field trip from my school to go to the McDonald's book. You kids are going to learn something. I don't know how they justified that educationally. We're learning about small businesses, the McDonald's Corporation.
Speaker: Yeah, we're learning we love this. We love cheeseburgers. Yeah. The steamboat thing growing up has always been very strange about St. Louis because there's so much nostalgia for it even now. And it's like, yeah, that was the last time that we were on the cutting edge of like capital and technology. It was just like when steamboats were the primary way of circulating goods. That's why they're calling um AGI ah St. Louis's Revenge because Sam Altman, St. Louis' native son, is going to create the technology that kills all humans. It'll be kind of like St. Louis's greatest achievement. yeah
Speaker: Yeah. That's what people don't because no one no one covers St. Louis who what goes on here. We're all cheering for him. We're like, yes, retribution. get back at them. They've neglected us from too long.
Speaker: so Yes. I want to before we go, maybe we could go around because I feel like we've been pretty negative. But i i don't you know I don't even want to like retract anything I've said. Because I think if you're being honest about the place you grew up and it's a place like St. Louis, you should be pretty negative. If you're trying to scare people away or you're just trying to tell the truth, you have to be a little bit negative.
Speaker: But maybe we could all say something we like. about St. Louis? thing I like about St. Louis is ah it's a very green city. it's it's yeah because Because it's situated between three rivers that come together, there is nature can't help but like grow over everything. So everything is just very lush and like green and natural. That was something I I remember coming back from New York and and coming back from Chicago and and just seeing St. Louis. I mean, there's like just plant life growing through the cracks of everything. It's just like very, very... It feels very like just nice to be in And it's also... um I know, I think growing up in St. Louis or somewhere like it, you get ah also like very, very funny people because you have to be funny to cope. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah It's either you get funny or you go nuts. You know you have a mental breakdown and go insane. So um I do think people have a nice black humor to them.
Speaker: you It's always disorienting when I go to other places because it's like things function. Right. So that people are like, well, why? It's weird when you don't meet somebody with that pessimism. Yes, exactly. The the the lack of ne negativity like throws me off because just like, why are you being so happy? you know Yeah.
Speaker: yeah But that those would be mine. What about what about you guys? um I think that, yeah, i agree. The nature thing is like really under sold about like, there's just like a big, there's lots of interesting ecosystems happening in the city that also are like, I don't know. It's ah like a fascinating place because there's tons of stuff. There's a ah whole lot of egrets that are constantly flying over the city that kind of have this like poetic, give a nice poetic atmosphere to what is otherwise just like dilapidated, rust belt, the industrial zone.
Speaker: But then there's also the thing of like, all st Louis, too, a lot of people in the Midwest who grew up in like very rural towns are like, that is the city. And like especially if I want to be an artist or I want to be an intellectual or I just have to get out of my hometown because they won't allow you to be openly gay here. like All of those people end up kind of in St. Louis, especially as we had mentioned earlier, like if you can't quite get to Chicago, you're not quite in that socioeconomic ah range.
Speaker: Everybody ends up in St. Louis because it's cheap. And then it ends up being like kind of cosmopolitan in that way. There's a ton of Bosnians who were settled here after the war. There's a ton of Afghan refugees here. There's like... um and like St. Louis being a black city is also just like, the city is so ashamed of that and has been historically. And it's like, that's the coolest thing we have going, dog. Like, what are you talking about? Like St. Louis's blackness is like kind of the only cool thing we have here. And it's weird when it's not pumped up or like, i don't know, it's not put front and center, but it's like, it's a strangely cosmopolitan place.
Speaker: I mean, we didn't even talk about, yeah, the Bosnian thing. I mean, St. Louis has, I think, the most Bosnians outside of Sarajevo. That's so confusing to a racist like Republican guy from Missouri of just like, well, they're white, but they're Muslims. you know It's like, um they have a mosque, but they're they're a bunch of white people. so I think if that Republican went to one of those Bosnian restaurants where they're playing like Euro club music at 5 p.m., it would absolutely hate them.
Speaker: Probably, yeah. We got got a shout out too Speaking of Bosnians and St. Louis, go to Balkan Treat Box. if you Oh, yeah. It's the one of the best restaurants. It's great. It's fantastic.
Speaker: Yeah. Derek, you're up. i Yeah, I guess the thing I like about you guys have really good ones. The people. That's really nice. Sure. um the The deep green of the nature that the overgrowth that even like grows over ah buildings and empty lots. Those are those are cool things.
Speaker: um I do like I mean, this is just me as like a guy who's like so motivated by food. But there are a few St. Louis things that I can't help. but still have like a strong attachment to.
Speaker: And one of them is a St. Louis style pizza, which is derided the world over. If anyone's ever heard of it, they hate it. Yeah. Yeah. And there are a few people who like it and I'm one of them. um And just to quickly ah describe it and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, but it's thin cracker like crust um topped with a artificially smoked waxy peas.
Speaker: And if you don't eat it when it's fresh out of the oven, it instantly... ah it gets It gets the texture of almost like Halloween fake flesh.
Speaker: It turns into like a candle-like wax that when you bite into it, it it covers your gums and it in it is not good. but But if you're eating it hot or out the oven...
Speaker: It has a a strange flavor that nothing else tastes like. and Also, the sauce is kind of sweet. It almost has like a ketchup-y sweetness to it. Yeah, sweet sauce.
Speaker: Do you you prefer from Emo's? Emo's is like the big one, right? Or is there a better... I'll fuck with Emo's. I like... it is waxy. There's something about Provel cheese that is... Which also, if you get a salad from Emo's, it's a bunch of iceberg lettuce and then like a whole handful of Provel cheese just thrown on top.
Speaker: Pulled... It looks like ramen noodles, uncooked ramen noodles. um It's, yeah, very strange. Kevin, do you like of the St. Louis style pizza? Yeah, I mean, i don't know. I never... Emo's is okay. I used to like to go to like places on the hill to get it. um Sure.
Speaker: But, yeah, it's ah it's definitely an acquired taste. Prevel itself is like... One of the most processed cheeses I think I've ever eaten. Wikipedia says ah it's a combination of cheddar, Swiss, provolone, and liquid smoke. i Cool. If you look on a package for provolone cheese, that's they all say that. Liquid smoke. Liquid smoke? What is that?
Speaker: It's awesome. Are you supposed to eat that? I guess it's not smoke that they turned into a liquid. I guess it's some kind of like perfume. It's like a flavor additive made in a lab. Interesting. It's supposed to taste like the cheese has been smoked when it has not.
Speaker: Strange. You can also get at Emo's toasted raviolis. I think that the toasted ravioli is the premier St. Louis cuisine. like If you're going to come to St. Louis, you should try a toasted rav.
Speaker: I totally agree. Toasted ravis seem like the thing that could be the the major export from St. Louis. It feels like people around the country would all enjoy these if they tried them. If that's good marinara sauce, delicious. It's our regional form of dumpling. It's a it's just like a regular ravioli from like a a pasta, except it's it's been battered and then toasted or fried, and it's full of meat, and then you dip it in a little bit of marinara sauce. It is deep fried, right? I mean, toasted is like... That's just a name.
Speaker: Yeah. It's also dusted with Parmesan cheese, you know. Processed Parmesan, not like freshly grated. No, not freshly grated. It's got to be the stuff that comes from, yeah, ah from the green canister. Yeah. Yeah. Another cool St. Louis thing that we didn't mention and is pretty much the first thing I will recommend to people if they have to go to St. Louis. First, I'll try to get them not to. But if they have to go to St. Louis, I will always say, try to go to the city museum because yeah yeah yeah it's like an obstacle course. It's like a dangerous concrete filled labyrinth.
Speaker: and They sell beer there. As you do. And it was built by a crazy guy. Yeah. who What was that guy's name again? Bob Casaway. Oh, yeah. Who died under very mysterious circumstances also. Do you think he was ah taken out?
Speaker: What do you think? do you think he rolled his dozer down a hill, like they say? It does track that he would be working with heavy machinery while drunk, alone. Sure, yeah. Doing an insane pet project on cement lands.
Speaker: i think I think, because you have to give context here, because this guy, ah he made the City Museum, which is not a museum about St. Louis City. It is a former warehouse that this guy has fitted with hidden caverns, an aquarium, slides that go like three stories down. There's a skate park.
Speaker: There's a skate park. He made a jungle gym out of old airplanes and like rebar. It is a madman's delight and it is... insanely great to go there. And I think they've started, i i think the last time I went, they started doing this where they make you sign an insurance waiver before you can go in now.
Speaker: Oh, really? Because everyone was like, you know, being namby-pamby about it or whatever. It's crazy they ever let people into that place without signing an insurance waiver. But that gives you an idea of how lawless St. Louis is.
Speaker: Yeah. yeah It's also, it's one of those things too of like, it's made out of the detritus of the city. Like all of this stuff is falling down, all of this architecture that is overbuilt city. Like it all ends up bric-a-brac, like re-collaged in the city museum. And then it ends up being really cool. There's like a school bus that's hanging off the top of the building. It's crazy. Yeah.
Speaker: it's It's nuts. And then he he has the thing he did after that, which he called Cement Land, which is just cement sculptures. I don't even know what's in Cement Land.
Speaker: It was supposed to be an old cement plant. And then... so this is further up north near the river. Somebody just dumped a body there, which is not the best place to hide a body. But... Because it is like a famously condemned place. There's always YouTubers going in there with like a drone to like...
Speaker: the abandoned theme park that now is overgrown. And there's also a bunch of wild dogs in there too. But yeah, it was just going to be a bigger version of Cementland.
Speaker: There's a bunch of people, architecture students who are coming through like Washu or SLU will go up there and poke around because it is really cool and it's half finished and it's very dangerous.
Speaker: um And then Bob was you know operating his dozer one day and allegedly flipped it down a hill and that killed him. But some people say that he owned a bunch of money to the mob or that he was in debt with somebody that they came and killed him over it.
Speaker: Crazy. That guy, fun fact, also saved the Pieta, the same guy that made the city museum Cementland. So I think in the 70s, some crazy guy ran into...
Speaker: wherever in Italy the Pieta is, it was smashed with a hammer and this guy, Bob Cassidy, happened to be there and stopped him. And then later went on to make the city museum museum in cement land and was killed under serious mysterious circumstances.
Speaker: The guy that was attacking the Pieta was Laszlo Tos. He was a Hungarian schizophrenic guy who jumped over like and he thought he was Jesus Christ. you know And that he was like, I'm going to desecrate this idol. Easy mistake to make. Yeah, sometimes you get a little carried away.
Speaker: ah And so he was like desecrating it in order to call attention to the fact of like, I'm back, I'm Jesus. And then Bob Cassidy had the the gall to wrap wrap him up in a linebacker tackle. and ah Which is crazy. He only did that because he hates Jesus. And he thought, i'm going to I'm going to thwart the Lord's comeback. Yeah, and he did, basically. And then everybody was like, Bob is really cool instead of Lazlo Toth, the next Jesus. ah You know, going as we talk about St. Louis, I think, i think Derek, your your original point and there earlier we we were talking about it being like Chernobyl, every time I read about the Soviet Union or whatever, it reminds me of St. Louis, you know, the kind of decline and decay. and like like When I see like photos of like you know abandoned Soviet plants or something, I'm ah, it's home. Yeah.
Speaker: It's a sacrifice zone. And I think that is like, i don't know, kind of interesting. It is important to study what happens when capital contracts as the way that it did here, because there's a bunch of places that are going to end up looking like that eventually. I don't know. There's lots to learn.
Speaker: But that's what's cool about like ah the Veiled Prophet Society in your book is that you know growing up, I didn't know anything about the secret society. But if you had told me about it As a metaphor, I would say, yeah, that's a great meta. You know what mean? It feels like a metaphor. It makes perfect sense. It explains everything, but it is real. It's a metaphor that came to life. Yeah. It's like stranger... Because the original idea, i was going to write like a novel about the Veiled Prophet Society and have it be like a crazy, kooky, Thomas Pinchon-style thing. Except then it's like it was founded by an ex-Confederate cavalry officer who
Speaker: got in a bunch of trouble for like ah making a bunch of racist parade floats in the first few years, and then was shot and killed by the editor of the Post-Dispatch during like a duel. And that's how the founder of the Veiled Prophet Society died.
Speaker: then...
Speaker: So it was like wild westlands. It is like a perfect metaphor. He's both he's a patriarch. He's like a symbol of the patriarchy. He's a symbol of white supremacy. And he's a symbol of like the business executive class and also an orientalist figure. It's very bizarre. And now he's a cowboy ghost.
Speaker: Yeah. Cool. Why did the editor of the Post shoot him? Alonzo Slaback was going to shoot him. He like showed up to the office after hours and was going to murder John Cockrell because John had had run a story about how Alonzo's guy for Congress was kind of ah ah a seedy piece of shit. And so Alonzo was like, I'm going to finally have it out with this guy.
Speaker: eggs they found the gun afterwards and there's a big court proceeding and it turned out that Alonzo's gun had jammed because he hadn't been cleaning it enough so there's like mold on the bullets and stuff and then it wouldn't really fuck you up to get hit by a moldy bullet don't you think Oh, man, yeah. It goes into the wound and then you get like an infection right away. That would suck. This is crazy. This is crazy alliteration. So this former Confederate called Alonzo Slayback tried to kill someone with a moldy gun. Uh-huh. Yeah.
Speaker: this He had killed many before. so it seemed like, I think he just got overconfident. It was just like, I don't need to clean my gun. This is literally like the guy from, who who did the, who made the big steampunk tarantula in Wild Wild West? Like this kind of like weird, you know what I mean? Like the weird Confederate figure of these like these these like sickly losers, you know?
Speaker: and then he invents the the thing that goes around your neck, they're like a big buzzsaw thing flies around and cuts your head off. Oh, yeah. i I really want to get into this um because there's a lot to say there. um But I have to go. I have to cut this off early. But everybody stay tuned to part two where we will be doing a full rundown of Wild Wild West.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: It's the new year, and you should resolve to get thin. Emo's Thin Crust Pizza, of course, and resolve to save money, too, by taking advantage of Emo's new price of only $9.95 for a large two-topping pizza. That's right, a two-topping large Emo's pizza topped edge-to-edge for only $9.95. No limits, no restrictions, no coupon needed. A large two-topping Emo's pizza for just $9.95. Everybody knows it's Emo's the square beyond compare.
Speaker: You can somehow make it like all the rest. No need to scrounge around for someone else. Torn between the unknown and the place that you call home. And the life you want, but have never known. There was a time to it out your mind.
Speaker: What has left for fifty years In this time long time for you? Such a one-name place On a far stool
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Community is remembering a woman who entertained generations of St. Louisans on TV. When you put as many miles your carpet as I have on mine, you'll know it's time for new carpeting.
Speaker: Becky Rothman, the queen of carpet, was known for these commercials on a flying carpet right over the Gateway Arch. Her nephew telling us here in News 4 that she passed away on Sunday at the age of 67 following complications from kidney disease.
