St. Louis et alles

If one wants to get the inside scoop on the weird side of St. Louis (and it is weird, very, very weird), check out this website:
http://www.stlstreets.com/
It's owned by my friend, Steve Smith, who is the biggest hustler(in a good way) in the city. He and I are often on opposing sides of many issues, but he's a capitalist at heart and so we always find more to agree upon than not. Plus, he got me into boxing.
Steve is one of the epi-centers of the burgeoning young/hip (24-35) crowd in St.Louis and just one hell of a human being. The discussions on his blog are always respectful and good spirited. Mike will opine there from time to time. It is funny to see these many of these young, progressive hipsters talking about city issues and wishing that the disease of their whiteness (I'm not kidding, they often apologize for being white and moving into minority neighborhoods) will not kill the city. They often fail to realize that we need all kinds of people and having purely white, black, brown, whatever neighborhoods does nobody any good and doesn't help the city. Their hearts are in the right place, but have been trained to see themselves as the enemy and, therefore, feel the need to offer mea culpas for their presence. The best discussion was whether anarchist graffiti is good for the neighborhood or not. Never bothered to ask the property owners if they felt that way. Never bothered to ask if the majority of people want to live in an area where graffiti is tolerated. It's OK to be a tad judgemental sometimes.
Sorry, went off on one of my tangents. Trust me, if you have any interest in St. Louis, especially the city (and you should) then check it out.