"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." T. S. Eliot
Whatever you do if you live in St. Louis and it's Cinco de Mayo, do not go to the Mexican neighborhood. Turns out a lot of other people will be there. The cinco parade in the Cherokee hood was really hot and really crowded.
The citizens of Cherokee are a bunch of lovable weirdos and their parade showed it.
Cinco de Mayo falls on a Saturday this year so at the office we were forced to celebrate Cinco de Cuatro. There was a ton of Mexican food in the break room for lunch but for me that was all a distraction from the real reason for the season.
I knew there was a case of brand new Pine-Apple-Ritas in the freezer getting nice and cold for me.
The beer case also had ritas for days.
They were a hit with my neighbor.
After work we volunteered at St. Louis Microfest in Forest Park. I wanted to volunteer because the fest was raising money for a good cause. The unlimited free beer had nothing to do with it, I can assure you.
Each tasting area had a bucket where patrons could dump out unwanted beer or wash out their glass. We volunteered to carry the full buckets to the dumping area. You might think it strange that I didn't volunteer to be a beer pouring person. Well...
A situation had developed. We came across a couple free tickets to the U2 show that night and so... we needed to sneak out of the fest a teensie bit early. So on one of our walks to the beer dumping area we just kept walking to our cars. We're naughty.
There was a massive screen smack in the middle of the Scottrade Center.
I was impressed with the level of city-specific visuals they went to the trouble of producing. This is a map of St. Louis.
Bono crushed it. He did not however sing my favorite U2 song which I'm pretty salty about. A Bono fun fact that I learned leading up to this show is the reason he's always wearing crazy sunglasses is that he suffers from glaucoma.
I was excited to hear my favorite podcast, Slate Political Gabfest, was coming to St. Louis for a live taping. The show was at the Sheldon Concert Hall.
As a US Senate candidate Jason Kander had amusing political ads where he assembled a rifle while blindfolded. The Gabfest wondered if he could assemble something even more complicated: IKEA furniture. Hilarity ensued.