A Little Fun in Metro East

Lydia had been cooped up all day with her mysterious illness, so I figured she probably needed some fresh air. And where is the air fresher than East St. Louis?

During our drive I exclaim "wait a tic, I do believe there's something on our St. Louis Magazine's "101 Things Every St. Louisan Must Do" list nearby!" And there was.

Many many times I've taken I-55 to Edwardsville, or Springfield, or wherehaveyou. I've noticed a couple of awesome buildings in East Saint that I always thought were awesome but I'd never seen up close. Turns out they look better far away, but they are still pretty badass.

I've wondered many a time what type of church this was. Turns out it's Lithuanian Roman Catholic, which doesn't make any sense to me. My guess was some sort of Eastern Orthodox.

On my dream list is to dig this building up, move it someplace awesome, and make it into a theater that plays only Bill Murray movies.

We finally arrived at the Mississippi River Overlook. It's pretty new, and pretty fancy. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere, and the road to it is pretty rough, so I don't think I'll be making a second trip.

The view was very nice though.

We enjoyed a meaty dinner at Fast Eddie's.

 We stopped by Alton's Argosy casino and then went on back home.

Some Chop Suey on the North Side

Lydia wasn't feeling well, so I took her to urgent care. The earliest opening we could find was at a place in North County. North County is quite a bit different than the parts of town I usually play in, so why not eat someplace new?

I had been interested in the St. Louis chop suey tradition for some time. There was a story about it on NPR which only furthered my interest. According to the story (here), St. Louis had a Chinatown in the downtown area that was demolished in order to build Busch Stadium. This sent Chinese restaurateurs into black neighborhoods where "rent was low and demand was high".
Well we strolled into Yet Bun II Chop Suey and took a look at the menu. Many of the items seemed commonplace for a typical Chinese place but there were some exceptions. Tripe sandwich, cheese fries, and Jack sandwich were some unexpected additions. I couldn't even find chop suey on the menu, but I ordered it anyway. It consisted of chopped beef and vegetables with a dark sauce served over rice. It wasn't super exotic, but delicious. We also got a St. Paul sandwich.

The place even had the protective Plexiglas shield like in the NPR article. So authentic. After finishing our order the guy let me choose a free Vess soda. Peach sir, peach.

The St. Paul sammich is like a St. Louis delicacy, which brings to mind the horseshoe of Springfield, IL fame. Does every city have it's own sandwich? A St. Paul is basically a Chinese omelet on bread. It was an egg foo young patty with mayo, onions, and maybe some lettuce. It looked and sounded kind of gross but tasted pretty good.

As for the origin of the St. Paul sandwich's name, an NPR humorist theorized: "You know how this got its name? St. Louis fixed himself an egg foo young sandwich, and somebody asked him, "Who made that monstrosity?""

A St. Louis Fort Night

We've been working diligently on St. Louis Magazine's "101 Things Every St. Louisan Must Do". We've gotten to the point where they are becoming more difficult to cross off our list because they are farther away or time restrictive (Skip Work for Opening Day is #1, which is on my calendar!).

Today after work I got home a little later than planned, but I wasn't about to miss a chance to follow the path of the perfect St. Louisan. No sir. To the Mystery Mobile!

By the time we arrived at Fort Belle Fontaine the daylight was fading fast. We'd burned valuable time finding the place, as it's a bit remote.

 

As we entered the grounds there was a guard station with a stop sign, and a guard came out of it. She curtly handed me a clip board with a visitor sign in sheet through my car window. "We have to sign in?" I asked. A weird "Yeah" was the only response. Ok... Signed in and continued. There were lots of little buildings spread around, one labeled "school", "administration", and several little living quarter buildings. What the heck was this place?

The place had a mysterious dearth of signage. Was some sort of training camp? Insane asylum? Weird religious organization compound? I saw a sign that read DYS but with no explanation as to what the heck that meant. Well DYS stands for Division of Youth Services. Turns out we were cruising around the grounds of a juvenile delinquent rehabilitation center. So weird.

We finally got to our destination after successfully navigating the winding roads of the Hamlet of the Flies. Well it turns out the fort was made of wood in the early 1800s, and so doesn't strictly... exist. There were a couple of historical signs that I took pictures of but it was too dark and so their contents will remain a mystery, except that the fort was the first west of the Mississippi. What is worth seeing is large stoneworks which struck me as pretty fort-like to the point I was confused that it wasn't the fort itself. There were a whole lot of stairs, and some spots where fountains at least used to be. It seemed a bit opulent for a spot in the middle of nowhere facing a river.

These giant cakes are hidden like Easter eggs all over important St. Louis area sites to celebrate the 250th anniversary of St. Louis.

The fancy stone part was build in the 1930s as one of those quasi make-work projects created by the WPA.

Eleanor Roosevelt visited the site in November, 1939 and wrote about her visit in her six-a-week newspaper column My Day (here).

St. Patrick's Day

This year for St. Patrick's Day I skipped both Dogtown and Downtown, with their crazy crowds and difficult parking. My friends invented their own little bar crawl in Soulard so I took part in that. It was pretty awesome.

One friend of a friend makes his own beer, and had a little soda-keg of a bright green variety in the back seat of his car. So we stood around outside next to a parked sedan with it's door open, creating our own little block party until the beer ran out. It was fun and free.

A beatbox and flute battle broke out at one point.

Earlier in the day I went to a cool lunch mixer thing with a Japanese buddy of mine. Everyone there was either from Japan or was learning Japanese. It really made me want to brush off my rusty Japanese skills!

The Museum of Transportation and De Soto, MO

Lydia and I went to the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis. It was a lot nicer and more interesting than I had anticipated. Our Groupon included a free ride on the miniature train, but it was closed for the day because it was too cold out. Weak!

Especially interesting to me is the fact that St. Louis was the biggest auto manufacturer before Detroit, so there were a solid number of locally manufactured vehicles.

It was a tad chilly outside.

There was a cool little exhibit about the evolution of dashboard displays.

We had seen all the treasures that the museum had to offer, but I just wasn't ready to go home. Where should we go? We took a peek at a map and decided on a place that we hadn't yet been to: De Soto, MO. Why the heck not?

The drive over there was hilly. Hilly billy.

The city was interestingly set up, with sort of two main drags on either side of a railroad track. It was fitting after we had just spent all of that time scoping out old trains. We popped in to an antique store on the strip. These days I like to just stroll through antique stores and rarely buy things. I had just about escaped when I saw a case of treasures from the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. I usually pride myself in not buying pointless things but I ended up acquiring a smashed penny from the fair for $10. It was even smashed on to a 1904 Indian Head penny! I'm a nerd.

The antique store had some old-timey candy displayed, so we tried some Valomilk.

NPR did a story on Valomilk in 2012 entitled: "Valomilks: A Sweet Treat That Runs Down Your Chin".

On the way home we saw a sign for a Sandy Creek Covered Bridge State Historic Site.

Wowza. So covered.

The signage said that a big reason for covering the bridge was so that horses wouldn't look over the side and freak out.