Picnic in Forest Park STL

ST dereLictOUIS

St Louis, you overwhelm me.  Between the gorgeous Forest Park, French Colonial mansions, beautiful brick town houses, artsy hipster bars, farmers markers, green suburbs and the up market streets of Clayton there is a mess.  A huge mess.  A mess that I can't help but fixate on whenever driving around the city.  I've grown up and worked around the East End of London which has many of it's own problems and higher than desired rate of crime, but i've never seen anything like the city of St Louis before.  There are streets upon streets of derelict houses. factories, schools, hospitals and unmaintained roads.

One minute you are driving past a gated, far above upper class community, the next you are smack bang in the middle of a ghetto in the adjacent street.  It is awful to see how segregated the city is between the poor and the wealthy. The city comes across as segregated in other ways too.  At home everyone mixes together like a multicultural soup in London.  We all ride the tube, we all take the bus, we all have a freedom to walk into a place and not be made to feel unwelcome.

The cause:  The population of St Louis hit its peak in the 1950's with an estimated 856,796 people living within its borders.  In 2011 there was an estimated population of 318,069.  Over half the population of St Louis packed their bags in the past 60 years. It's incredibly sad to imagine exactly how many of the existing buildings must be entirely vacant now.  The people that could leave appeared to have along with their business's and jobs and the people that couldn't were likely left behind without much to keep them out of trouble. Crime statistics sky rocketed with St Louis winning an award for being the most dangerous city in the country for several years in row now.

If you look past the damage and despair you can see that there was once something quite special about this city.  Unfortunately, no importance is placed upon preserving the architecture of the past and too often you see buildings torn down after years of being left in wreck and ruin.  The most unfortunate part of it all is that I find it difficult to imagine that things will improve until he city is populated again and i'm not convinced there is a big enough draw to the city to encourage that to happen any time soon.

Forest Park

Last night we took another trip to Forest Park.  In part for some exercise during the cooler hours of the day, but probably mostly due to my desire to see some more owls. Either way both Nick and I agreed that we very much liked being only a 5 minutes drive away.  Sadly our lone owl prowl was fruitless, obvious that we hadn't paid enough attention to the previous nights lessons.  Despite initial disappointment we continued on a walk up to the outdoor theatre and then around to the top of a very large hill where we watched the sunset and listened to an artistically dressed, interestingly hatted man play his flute in a building on top.  The building acted as a sort of amplifier so the sound projected into everyones night.

The Owl Man

The night before last we went for an evening wander through Forest Park.  Home of the largest world fair it once drew more than 19 million visitors from around the world.  On site there is an Art Museum, Science Center, Zoo, Jewel Box Greenhouse, History Museum, The Muny Outdoor Theatre, restaurants, lakes and the such.  Whilst casually walking I happened upon something which furiously vibrated beneath my sandal.  Instinctually imagining that my foot was now pressed upon the neck of a rattle snake I made a small scene and let out a squeal.  The scene attracted the attention of a man a short distance away who I had actually spotted a while before as he had been holding a camera.  The man asked what we had found, and on closer inspection it turned out not to be a rattle snake at all but a giant pair of mating cicadas.  Quite awful.

The man, seemingly disappointed with my Attenborough-esque natural discovery asked immediately if I would like to see something else.  Well at this point I am standing by some woodland and there is little light left to the day.  Generally speaking if an individual i'd met in this situation offered to show me "something" I would kindly decline and make a dash before he would have chance to open his trench coat and show the world that he wasn't wearing any knickers.  Uncharacteristically I accepted the invitation for both Nick and myself and followed the khaki dressed man of into a space in the trees.  He turned out to be The Owl Man.... An owl enthusiast who had been following a pair of Great Horned Owls in Forest Park for the last 5 years.  He knew everything there was to know about these owls and spoke with a great deal of passion.  As promised he did show us something, impressively we were presented with two of his owls, dubbed Charles and Sarah, sitting bold as brass in front of us.  

Well, I have to admit, it made my night.  The Owl Man showed interest in my Commonwealth nations accent and promptly scrawled his details down on a fitting owl notebook. 

Lesson of the day:  Don't follow strangers into the woods, unless they are wearing khaki.  

Pre-Owls.