The New York Times Visits St. Louis for 36 Hours

Its not a lot of time, but that’s all it took New York Times reporter Dan Saltzstein to find 12 notable items for the world to visit if they happen through the gateway to the west you now just fly over since very few planes actually land here anymore.

St. Louis is more than just a Gateway to the West. The famous arch, of course, is still there, along with plenty of 19th-century architecture and an eye-opening amount of green space. But St. Louis is a lively destination in its own right, full of inviting neighborhoods, some coming out of a long decline and revitalized by public art, varied night life and restaurants that draw on the bounty of surrounding farmland and rivers. Add to that a mix of Midwestern sensibility and Southern charm, and you’ve got a city looking to the future.

Good. We fool’d em. Just kidding we’re good people with fun stuff going on here, its just hard to see sometimes through to large piles of shit dotting the area. How did Saltzstein come away so cheery from his St. Louis  encounter? Lets look at that travelogue shall we?

  1. Cherokee Street

  2. Soulard

  3. Iron Barley / FSFU

  4. SweetArt

  5. Botanical Gardens

  6. Pappy’s

  7. the Citygarden

  8. Forest Park

  9. Local Harvest Cafe

  10. the Royale

  11. Winslow’s Home

  12. Washington University

Well now this makes perfect sense! If you stick mainly to South City and don’t venture much more west than Wash U and no more north than Delmar, St. Louis is pretty damn amazing. If you go past those boundaries though, barring a few oasis-type exceptions, you’ll have to burn that shirt because the stink just doesn’t come out of your clothes.

How many of those activities have you done? We’re rocking a respectable 9/12, but other’s, as evidence on the Reddit comment thread, aren’t as good:

I live in Saint Louis and have done, like, 2 of those things…. #

Just for that guy, we set up a little map of the New York Times’ travels if you want to start really experiencing St. Louis, or if you have someone coming to town because they accidentally fell out of their plane headed for a real airport.

Link to map:

via New York Times