Clownvis Still Has Talent

I took the opportunity being in St. Louis to hit my favorite restaurants. Sugarfire is pretty darn good barbecue.

The sauces... the sauces.

I checked out the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park.

I love an opportunity to immerse myself in the 1904 World's Fair.

This was a weird thing that I don't remember learning about before. They have some jars of preserved fruit from an agricultural exhibit. If I was a supervillain I think I might break in the museum in the dead of night and feast upon 120 year old pears.

Our annual pumpkin beer tasting was coming up so I was excited to stock up on delicious St. Louis beer.

I got a little carried away though... I couldn't make it all fit in my suitcase. Sacrifices were made.

I was super excited about this event. Silver Ballroom is maybe my favorite bar in town, and Clownvis is a very fun and unique local act... plus free pinball? I'm there.

I suited up for the occasion.

It turns out that the event was promoting a new Clownvis beer from 4 Hands Brewing Co.

Seago and Nora joined in the fun. It was fun talking to Clownvis a bit about the olden days. He recognized my shirt as being a relic from an earlier time. I discovered Clownvis very early in my St. Louis life so there was a fair bit of nostalgia involved as well. Good times.

Andre was there too.

Clownvis even gave me some swag. What a good night.

Bringer of Doom

Today was the first day of seminars at Strange Loop being held at Union Station.

Friends don't let friends go to Illinois College.

I always liked this view driving toward the arch.

There were plenty of contests for me to enter. 

Seago and I were checking out some booths when I spotted the keynote speaker for the whole conference: John Romero! He's a big ol' deal.

"Alfonso John Romero (born October 28, 1967) is an American director, designer, programmer, and developer in the video game industry. He is best known as a co-founder of id Software and designer for many of their games, including Wolfenstein 3D, Dangerous Dave, Hexen, Doom, Doom II and Quake. His game designs and development tools, along with new programming techniques created and implemented by id Software's lead programmer John D. Carmack, led to a mass popularization of the first-person shooter, or FPS, in the 1990s. He is credited with coining the FPS multiplayer term "deathmatch"."

One of the things I miss the most from St. Louis is the bbq. It seems to be pretty terrible in the Seattle area. So I went with Seago for lunch at Bogart's Smokehouse.

I was excited to hear what Romero had to say.

It was fun learning about his experiences in id Software's early days. It's funny as a kid I would play some of these games and imagine the building full of geniuses it would take to create them when in reality it was a few dudes sitting in their underwear in someone's mom's basement.

St. Louis' new professional soccer stadium seems to be coming along nicely.

Zoe was entertaining some random in town for a wedding. We checked out Takashima Record Bar. This place was funny because there's a DJ who plays records but you aren't allowed to make requests. Then there's a separate tip line for the DJ on the bill at the end. For the guy I'm not allowed to talk to. They apparently have a house collection of 8,000 LPs.

Parlor arcadey bar with the greatest game ever made: Tapper.

HandleBar is mostly chill and restauranty during the day but turns into da club at night.

I was numerous drinks in at this point but I believe the story with this was that there was a wedding after party in attendance, and one of this guy's friends told us that he had a special dinosaur dance. So Zoe was trying to get him to replicate it.

There was a man rapping in the middle of the street because this is St. Louis.

Zoe's random wedding man was still with us and I have to assume having the best day of his life.

Well we were already in the Grove so we checked out a couple of gay bars.

I mean, the place is called Just John, how am I not going to go in there?

I saw one of my old coworkers from PillarRx, Kyle at the bar. I'm sure this will result in zero gossip amongst our mutual acquaintances.