Saint Louis

[warwickland]

Yeah, it is cleaner than it used to be.

In fact, I'm going there tomorrow to interview with a firm in St Charles.

Having spent a decade there, I doubt you'd like living in St. Charles County compared with JoCo, especially due to the congestion (bad compared to KC, anyway) and schizophrenic sprawl...save for the historic but quiet/dull very old areas of St. Charles City. If anything, I hope you cruised this area if you didn't venture into StL City/County.

[Louman]

I went to St. Louis for the Mizzou game, first time since Fall 2005 I have gone to St. Louis during a fair time to make any kinds of judgement (the only other time I went was Mardis Gras 2007 and that was awful, mainly because of the weather).  So here are my thoughts.

1.  My high school buddy lives in Central West End and in 2005 there was the Drunken Fish and that was about it.  Most everything else around there was old homes being redone and empty store fronts.  Today, a complete 180, I'm very impressed with the area. 

You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but don't come on here telling stupid ass lies because you can be proven wrong with that dumbass assertion. With the exception of a sliver of Maryland Plaza, the CWE - particularly the Euclid Corridor - has been very healthy with full storefronts for years.

Don't make me bust out pictures PRE-2005 on your silly ass.

[chrizow]

Don't make me bust out pictures PRE-2005 on your silly ass.

OH SNAP!

[Maitre D]

Having spent a decade there, I doubt you'd like living in St. Charles County compared with JoCo, especially due to the congestion (bad compared to KC, anyway) and schizophrenic sprawl...save for the historic but quiet/dull very old areas of St. Charles City.

You're right - St Charles really didn't strike me as being another JoCo.  I'd compare West County to JoCo moreso, altho (and I'm biased here), JoCo seems to be far cleaner/better designed than the Lou burbs.


At any rate, the assholes I interviewed with weren't worth pursuing.   It was an exec-level job and they acted like I should be jumping for joy that they were considering me.   Then, at the end, the main interviewer states, "So - what do you think?  Are you interested, it's a great company."   The hubris!

If anything, I hope you cruised this area if you didn't venture into StL City/County.

I go to the City several times per year, and decided to spend THUR nite-Sunday evening downtown.  STL's grime used to bug me, now I've gotten so used to it that it won't.   It's grown on me quite a bit, and their DT development is so far ahead of ours now, I'll give them props.  I even toured DT condos....some amazing AMAZING views.

[bahua]

‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‮҉This forum is weird!

[jlbomega]

You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but don't come on here telling stupid ass lies because you can be proven wrong with that dumbass assertion. With the exception of a sliver of Maryland Plaza, the CWE - particularly the Euclid Corridor - has been very healthy with full storefronts for years.

Don't make me bust out pictures PRE-2005 on your silly ass.

You can bust out all the pictures you like, but the area still sucked in comparison to what it is today. 

[mean]

I prefer the Delmar Loop.

[rxlexi]

ahh, hanging around the Tour of Mo start/finish line with my beloved StL girlfriend and petting the clydesdales got me thinking about that city again.  Now that my gf has moved to KC (score one for the good guys!), I'll be making far fewer trips into StL, and I find myself saddened by that fact.  More weekends to spend in my beautiful MO metropolis, I suppose .  Hey Maitre D, did you ever post a trip report about your last cross state journey?  I was anxious to hear your opinion of St. Louis's progress...

[schugg]

Does anyone have an Italian restaurant they can recommend in st. louis?

nothing to fancy just some place you would take a family.  somewhere on or near the hill will do. 

[GRID]

One of my favorites is Favazza's.  It can be upscale for couples or very casual as if you just came from a Blues Game.  We take the kids there all the time.  It's a very classy place IMO, good food and nice price point.

5201 Southwest Ave
St Louis, MO 63139

[schugg]

One of my favorites is Favazza's.  It can be upscale for couples or very casual as if you just came from a Blues Game.  We take the kids there all the time.  It's a very classy place IMO, good food and nice price point.

5201 Southwest Ave
St Louis, MO 63139

Thanks grid, will do.

[PumpkinStalker]

I will second Favazza's.  Don't miss this place!!  I make it a point to go every time I am in StL

[warwickland]

I will second Favazza's.  Don't miss this place!!  I make it a point to go every time I am in StL

yeah i go to favazza's now and again, watch out though and dont eat too much, the provel will get ya. i think its a good "representation" of what there is to eat at the hill. i often hear though that the best Italian restaurants in st. louis city arent on the hill... i'll admit, i don't know much about the giant gaggle of "the hill restaurants" even though i live very close by and walk the neighborhood often.

[DaveKCMO]

quick weekend trip. not bad considering how freaking cold it was...

departed saturday morning on amtrak. only about 30 minutes late arriving into the new intermodal station. while i applaud the city's attempt, the station is functionally a failure:

1. no displays indicating which bay/track your train/bus is departing from.
2. not enough seating for peak activity.
3. not well integrated with the civic center light rail stop (you have to walk down a long ramp and across the tracks to get tickets... why not a single ticket machine indoors?).
4. shoddy construction obviously done on the cheap.
5. no storage lockers.

we got a room at the hyatt at union station for $60 on priceline. unfortunately, we got a room on the first floor and it was incredibly cold (and out of date). the common areas, however, are still quite stunning.

we took metrolink out to the galleria for some shoplifting (j/k!) and were quite pleased to see that it really is a popular way to get there, even in this weather. lots of new urbanist strips appear to be popping up between the mall and the light rail station. good news for richmond heights!

back to downtown we caught a cab to lafayette square for dinner (eleven eleven mississippi) and drinks (bailey's chocolate bar). we ended up getting pretty wasted then caught a cab back to the hotel in time to watch SNL and pass out. it was simply too cold to be out and about!

sundays in downtown st. louis are a struggle. after a mediocre breakfast buffet in the hotel, we made the most of it with lumiere place (seriously beautiful casino! we actually left with winnings!) and then an hour or so at macy's. a stop at city grocers provided us a nice food alternative to amtrak's cafe car for the ride home... BUT! got a phone call from amtrak telling us of an equipment failure and that we would be bused to KC. meh. while buses suck for longer than 20 minutes, ours contained only KC-bound passengers and was non-stop after leaving kirkwood. thus, we arrived at union station EARLY via I-70. i must say it was nice having a conductor on a bus. why don't they do that all of the time? oh yeah... buses suck!

[mean]

Oh brother, yeah, that Hyatt sucks horribly. Would not suggest it to anyone. When the Hyatt's lease is up it is being rebranded as something else, as Hyatt moved into the old Adam's Mark downtown.

[DaveKCMO]

Oh brother, yeah, that Hyatt sucks horribly. Would not suggest it to anyone. When the Hyatt's lease is up it is being rebranded as something else, as Hyatt moved into the old Adam's Mark downtown.

LOL. probably radisson.

[Louman]

quick weekend trip. not bad considering how freaking cold it was...

departed saturday morning on amtrak. only about 30 minutes late arriving into the new intermodal station. while i applaud the city's attempt, the station is functionally a failure:

1. no displays indicating which bay/track your train/bus is departing from.
2. not enough seating for peak activity.
3. not well integrated with the civic center light rail stop (you have to walk down a long ramp and across the tracks to get tickets... why not a single ticket machine indoors?).
4. shoddy construction obviously done on the cheap.
5. no storage lockers.

we got a room at the hyatt at union station for $60 on priceline. unfortunately, we got a room on the first floor and it was incredibly cold (and out of date). the common areas, however, are still quite stunning.

we took metrolink out to the galleria for some shoplifting (j/k!) and were quite pleased to see that it really is a popular way to get there, even in this weather. lots of new urbanist strips appear to be popping up between the mall and the light rail station. good news for richmond heights!

back to downtown we caught a cab to lafayette square for dinner (eleven eleven mississippi) and drinks (bailey's chocolate bar). we ended up getting pretty wasted then caught a cab back to the hotel in time to watch SNL and pass out. it was simply too cold to be out and about!

sundays in downtown st. louis are a struggle. after a mediocre breakfast buffet in the hotel, we made the most of it with lumiere place (seriously beautiful casino! we actually left with winnings!) and then an hour or so at macy's. a stop at city grocers provided us a nice food alternative to amtrak's cafe car for the ride home... BUT! got a phone call from amtrak telling us of an equipment failure and that we would be bused to KC. meh. while buses suck for longer than 20 minutes, ours contained only KC-bound passengers and was non-stop after leaving kirkwood. thus, we arrived at union station EARLY via I-70. i must say it was nice having a conductor on a bus. why don't they do that all of the time? oh yeah... buses suck!

1. The station has been a work in progress. Apparently when you visited, the station hadn't been completely finished, but was operational. It's likely you were there when the restaurants/store were not open. There was a rush to get passengers out of the old temporary station into better confines.

2. New signage is being added on a regular basis.

3. The new station was not designed to be Grand Central Station. MetroLink is accessible directly behind the new station (see photos below) by a ramp. Passengers switching to/from Metrolink and Amtrak is definitely better than before.

...why not a single ticket machine indoors?

Because the MetroLink CC station is right next door. There's no need to put a ticket booth in the transit center for MetroLink.

4. The 700-foot long station was built for $32-million bucks, which is not a lot of money. But the new station is a better structure than the last temporary structure. Again, when you visited the station, it was not totally complete. Believe it or not, work continues.

5. Storage lockers at a major transportation center nowadays are a dangerous incident waiting to happen.


Article

[chrizow]

this thread's resurrection reminds me that my gf and i went to STL for a weekend visit last weekend.  we had a great time.

we arrived at my friends' place in soulard around 9:00 on friday and headed to dinner at frazer's brown bag.  http://www.frazergoodeats.com/  it was a pretty decent place.  the menu had around 10 pretty basic entrees - salmon, steak, pasta, etc - but the server spent about 7 minutes listing all the daily specials of apps and entrees they had.  at least 8 apps and 8 entrees that were not on the menu.  wtf?  i got duck confit and it was pretty tasty.  my gf got trout or halibut or something moroccan style and it was delicious.  good service, good wine, we liked it.  we sat outside b/c it was a gorgeous night, but the inside scene looked kind of douchey.  (side-note: i didn't realize benton park was a hotspot for the Ed Hardy/Escalade-Dude w/Clayton Handbag Chick set?)

saturday we checked out the antique stores on cherokee street.  i had been through this area by auto before, but never on foot.  quaint antique stores, but not much else (on this stretch anyway).  we got some sweet vintage 60s lawn chairs at a place called retro 21 or something like that.  after that we headed to a tacqueria on cherokee street, where we sat outside and had some delicious street tacos and watched the street scene.  the street seems to be a popular cruising spot: even though it was only about 1pm, there were people circling the block cruising in their ghetto-fab vehicles.  little did they know that people at the tacqueria (the only potential onlookers on the block) were mocking them.  the area had a vibrant, urban feel though, and i liked it.  it seems to be the most hispanic-centric area of STL, which is nice.  i wanted to go to apop records nearby to browse for noise records (their specialty) but my cohorts did not enjoy the prospect of watching me sift through records for a half-hour.  we then walked around tower grove park, which as always was beautiful. 

saturday evening we had dinner at bar italia.  http://www.baritaliastl.com/  again, we sat outside, which was great except for the gale-force winds that were blowing everyones' menus, napkins, and in some cases glasses of wine (!) off the table.  the food was tasty - nothing exemplary but all pretty solid.  i had organic, free-range half-chicken in a pomegranate sauce with mashed potatoes and vegetables.  it was pretty good but the chicken was kind of bland.  everyone else liked their food.  after dinner we went to an art opening in the grove neighborhood at the white flag gallery.  it was a great space.  the show was good, even though we learned that the pieces were not actually finished (love that artist work-ethic).  it provided for interesting people-watching (i was asked twice how the STL art-crowd compares to the KC art-crowd in terms of hipness.  i'm not an authority on either, but from what i've seen art openings draw the same ratio of people:  10% genuinely very hip/too-cool-for-school, 35% typical hipsters, 35% older arts patrons who have a lot of money, and 20% other.).  it's nice that in KC our art galleries are for the most part concentrated in the crossroads area, whereas in STL they seem to be sort of everywhere (and there seem to be far fewer of them there).  after the opening we went to the Billiken Club, basically a food-court area in the SLU student union where there are sometimes cool/free shows.  we saw Junior Boys there and it was good, though it is weird to see shows in that venue.  it's nice though b/c it's non-smoking (how the hell is STL still a smoking city?).   

in our driving around we pretty much stuck to the soulard/benton park/s. grand/grove type areas of south city and it was great.  just a totally different vibe, architecturally, from KC.  it's fun to visit, but this trip reminded me again that i am just not cut out for that kind of city.  i prefer more space, trees, hills, etc.  the brick is beautiful but i like more color.  as has been observed a million times, STL is in the baltimore camp of urbanity, whereas i think i am more in the portland/seattle camp, which probably loosely includes KC. 

[DaveKCMO]

louman: please visit the similarly-modest, yet ultra-efficient intermodal center in downtown fort worth for the best implementation of what STL is trying to achieve. glad to see they're continuing to add features. i realize they were constrained by cost and footprint and that future HSR investments in the STL-CHI corridor will also help the station.

[KansasCityChiefs]

Planning a little trip to STL in July... Wanting to stay someplace downtown and looked at priceline to find the Millennium across from the ballpark to be one of the cheapest. I guess my main question is does anybody have any other hotel recommendations that are in the same price range of a little under $100 that is still w/in walking distance to most of the entertainment downtown? And also how much is it to park in the big parking garage across the street from the Millennium? Thanks.