Goodbye Arch

Our plan to escape from St. Louis involved driving a moving van from here all the way to Seattle, then my very kind parents driving my car over to meet us. After considering several scenarios, including towing a car behind the moving truck, we decided to just sell Lydia's car to simplify things. The pandemic has created a lot of new car supply chain issues, and so the price of used vehicles is super high right now, so it seemed like a good opportunity in that respect as well.

There are services now that you sell your car to online, and they even come by and pick up the car. Very painless.

We walked over and said goodbye to the Arch. One of my favorite parts of living downtown was that we could pop over to the country's smallest national park anytime we wanted. Often our next stop after that was to stop by the nearby Lumiere Casino and sip some of their free sodas before returning back home.

2020 STL Women's March

We started off our day attending the 2020 STL Women's March. One nice thing about living downtown is that all of the political marches happen there so it's really convenient to walk over and raise a ruckus.

Some shots of me marching like a real American hero made it onto the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's website.

After the march we popped into the Old Courthouse across the street. It is part of the Gateway Arch National Park and has a lot of good history. When it was completed in 1864 it was the tallest building in Missouri. Slave auctions took place here as well as the Dred Scott case, where Scott sued for his freedom because he had been transported from Missouri to Illinois, which was a free state. Scott lost here and lost again in the US Supreme Court, which ruled that the Constitution didn't grant citizenship to black people regardless of whether they were enslaved or free. The ruling went on to also strike down the entire Missouri Compromise.

Another bit of history that I thought was interesting was that the land that the courthouse sits on was donated under the terms that it was to be "used forever as the site on which the courthouse of the County of St. Louis should be erected." Well when the city left the county the courthouse ceased to be located in the county. So the descendants of the donors sued to have the land returned to them. 

There was some very archy Fitz's root beer in the gift shop.

Lydia was real scared of looking over the railing on the upper floors.

All of that history made us thirsty so we went on a beer sipping war path starting with Bailey's Range.

Played a little Oregon Trail card game at 2nd Shift.

Later in the night we headed to Ballpark Village to watch a sneak peek of Birds of a Different Game, a documentary about the 1980s St. Louis Cardinals.

Afterwards there was a live event thing "hosted by MLB Network's Fran Charles" that featured "a Q&A with Hall of Famers Whitey Herzog and Ozzie Smith and 80's fan favorites Tommy Herr and John Tudor".

The mechanical bull at PBR had seen better days. Sad.

We had some dinner at Drunken Fish and then went home. Busy night!

Colonial Politics, Cuban food, and Ill Gotten Ski Gear

We're weird and we went to the Old Courthouse for the 1769 Twelfth Afternoon Ball.

"Celebrate the end of the holiday season as St. Louisans did in 1769. The Twelfth Afternoon Ball at the Old Courthouse recognizes the completion of the Twelve Days of Christmas, which leads to Mardi Gras. This year’s ball highlights music, food and dancing from 1769. Dennis Stroughmatt et L’Esprit Creole will perform 18th-century music, Deborah Hyland will lead dances from the time period, and food historian Suzanne Corbett will demonstrate historical food recipes common to St. Louis dinner tables during the 1769 holiday season. King’s Cake will be served, and the king and queen of Mardi Gras will be crowned. Historical clothing is not required to participate."

"Fort San Carlos and the Battle of St. Louis

On May 26, 1780, St. Louis was attacked by an allied force of American Indians and a small number of British and French-Canadian fur traders. The British hoped to gain control of the Mississippi Valley by occupying the Spanish-governed settlements on the west bank of the river.

St. Louis had been warned to expect such an attack, and had on hand an organized militia of citizen-soldiers, regular troops of the Spanish Army, and reinforcements from Ste. Genevieve, a village 80 miles to the south. Still, they were outnumbered more than two to one. The village was protected by an encircling entrenchment and a stone watchtower named Fort San Carlos. Led by Lieutenant Governor Fernando de Leyba, the defenders repelled the attack with musket and cannon fire. The battle lasted over two hours, but the attackers finally withdrew. DeLeyba reported 21 villagers killed and 71 captured out of a total St. Louis population of about 700. Spanish control of the west bank of the Mississippi was retained."

Atlas Obscura:

"ON MARCH 10TH, 1804—213 YEARS ago today—the city of St. Louis went through a brief, well-organized identity crisis. The day before, it had been Spanish. In the morning, it was French. And as soon as noon hit, it was American, as it has remained for all the days since.

This multi-part switcheroo, which historians call “Three Flags Day,” was the symbolic and bureaucratic culmination of the Louisiana Purchase, in which France sold a massive swath of territory to the United States for pennies on the acre. The deal came as a surprise to the American government, which had only been trying to buy New Orleans. Instead, they got a piece of land that effectively doubled the size of the country and today makes up 15 U.S. states.

The deal was equally surprising to the Spanish, who had ceded the land in question to the French very, very recently—so recently, in fact, that they were still effectively running most of it. The sudden need to play catch up led to a strange 24 hours for St. Louisans."

Lydia's been wanting to eat at Mayo Ketchup for a while so we finally made an appearance. I personally am not a fan of mayo so the name of the place makes me sad, but the food was pretty good. It's a Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban mix, but I think I was personally most interested in the Cuban fare. I went there and beat Obama, don't like to brag though.

We played Settlers of Catan at Zoe's house.

Vinny played too.

So I found this Breckenridge Brewery contest where you get amazing prizes. I tried with like 8 different emails addresses using incognito mode on my browser and all sorts of other dark internet arts. All I got were these damn "sorry here's some coal" messages.

As usual I sent the link to my dumb friends and they proceeded to effortlessly win all sorts of dumb stupid prizes.

Joel won a holiday pint glass and even sent me pictures of himself opening the comically large box.

Zoe won a pair of friggin hundred dollar ski goggles with a custom Breckenridge Brewery head strap.

Next we went to Parlor and we beat the Simpsons arcade game. It's amazing what I can accomplish when my mom isn't being stingy with the quarters. 

The girls like Tapper because it's free. I agree.

Later Trevor and Kyle came over for some board games.