The Slow Death of a City Block: “A hundred years ago, fifty, even 30 years ago, the city was full of life, the streets vibrant and bustling, the neighborhoods full of people and activity. But today you can walk around many of the streets in the old city and they’re empty. Nobody’s there. Four decades of urban decay have left the city of St. Louis, Missouri with some of America’s most devastated urban landscapes.”
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (Bat Segundo interview with Murphy)
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (Bat Segundo interview with McClear)
Guess they haven’t been to Pittsburgh. Or Baltimore.
It’s Bush’s fault.
Or Buffalo.
Not true! St. Louis is a vibrant city.
Your photo of one street in north city doesn’t represent St. Louis as a whole.
A huge generalization and without merit. St. Louis is pretty typical for most aging, post industrial urban areas: A lot of blight and poverty, but also a vibrant preservation effort and well-gentrified areas.
St. Louis actually predates a lot of major eastern cities in terms of original settlement – the Spanish came first, than the French. A settlement of some sort was on the banks of the Mississippi in early 1700′s. With the 1904 World’s Fair and some pre emininent architectural examples by Louis Sullivan and many others, St. Louis holds its place as a preserve of significant architecture and design trends at the dawn of the 20th century.
And as I tell everyone I can, those abandoned brick buildings that populate the landscape in St. Louis are there for the taking, and fixing up.