St. Louis News Blog

The Internets are abuzz over a St. Louis pet spa owner's call to arms via social media.

Wikimedia Commons

​Yesterday a little after two o'clock, Mark Langevin, a co-owner of A Walk in the Park Grooming, a new pet boutique in Tower Grove South, asked patrons and friends to rally up against PetSmart for serving A Walk in the Park with a lawsuit at its grand opening party on November 8.

Langevin said PetSmart was suing him and his partner, Chris Lee, over a non-compete that Lee had signed as an employee of PetSmart between 2002 and 2008.

"A protracted legal battle may have the very impact that PetSmart desires," Langevin wrote in his missive. "Conceivably, the costs associated with this could drive us out of business. Although we are prepared to do what we must, we believe that there is another way to stop this whole thing. We must bring pressure to bear on PetSmart in order to convince them to withdraw this suit. In order to accomplish this, we must have community support."

Astute city-watchers will have noticed some changes on the six-block stretch of South Grand Boulevard between Arsenal and Utah in the past few months: fewer driving lanes, new stoplight patterns, wider crosswalks and those weird little bulb things to keep impatient drivers from trying to cut ahead and mow down a few pedestrians. The changes were all part of the St. Louis Great Streets Initiative, a plot by a cabal of urban planners to turn St. Louis' streets into "interesting, lively and attractive streets that serve all modes of transportation."

Now, two months in, the new and improved South Grand has been earning praise from urban planners nationwide as the future of city streets. (Imagine: St. Louis in the vanguard!)

Design Workshop

An architectural rendering of the new, improved South Grand Boulevard.

​The goal of the Great Streets Initiative echoes the philosophy behind "complete streets", which, as described by the urban planners on the National Complete Streets Coalition, gives equal priority to all forms of transportation.

The idea is, encouraging people to walk or ride their bikes through urban corridors (like South Grand) is a way of cutting back on carbon monoxide emissions and accidents. (In the first half of 2009, South Grand saw 80 car accidents and one pedestrian death.) Also, if people pass by stores at a slower pace, they may be tempted to buy things and support local businesses.

South Grand is the first street to be transformed into a "complete street" under the Great Streets Initiative. (On the docket are Natural Bridge Road, the swath of Manchester Avenue that cuts through West County and the small Missouri River town of Labadie in Franklin County.) And apparently its success has been, um, complete.

The changes to the streetscape, originally intended to last just 30 days, have been made permanent.

Photo of Lester Miller via St. Louis Business Journal

​Lester Miller knows a thing or two about being filthy rich. He also knows what its like to be dirt poor. Maybe that's why he's taken such an interest in the rags-to-riches-to-orange-jumpsuit story of Bernie Madoff.

Miller, a 77-year-old Ladue resident, grew up in New York in a family of first generation eastern European immigrants. He sold newspapers until he dropped out of high school to become a traveling salesman. At age 23 he moved to St. Louis and started a family. His first businesses were companies that cleaned toilets and operated condom vending machines in public restrooms.

Eventually, he made a fortune in the plastic and battery industries and became known locally as a wild spender who indulged in vanity projects such as renovating the Old Busch's Grove restaurant, building yachts, and opening a sports bar bearing his name in Ladue that features a six-foot six-inch statue of Stan Musial and roughly 5,000 flat screen TV's.

But last week Miller trumped even Donald Trump with a spending spree in New York City. Miller caught the attention of the New York Times when he dropped a cool $100,000 on 20 bracelets that once belonged to legendary swindler Bernie Madoff and his wife Ruth.

Last week Unreal revisited our favorite local sex blogger, The Beautiful Kind, a 36-year-old divorced mom who was recently ranked #5 on a fellow sex blogger's list of the 100 best on the Internet.

Remain non-broke all the way through Monday with the following suggestions for having fun on a budget this weekend.

Looking for live music? We have that for you too, with our weekend concert calendar. It's also one of the best weekends all year long to see a movie in St. Louis.

​Everything is Terrible!: The Movie at Antarctica (Friday)
A group of students at Ohio University compiled the worst video footage they could find, found footage "ranging from the hilariously arcane to the blissfully obscure," so says promotional bulletins about the film. Unreal interviewed Commander Gilgamesh, one of the group's founding members, to find out more about this movie. Those interested in seeing hilariously bad, the worst of the worst, can do so on Friday night. It costs $8 for the public, $6 for students, and begins at 9 p.m. at Antarctica, a new venue/space on the South Side (5226 Gravois.)

So Many Dynamos at Off Broadway (Friday)
We locals can be forgiven for feeling mighty proud of So Many Dynamos right about now. After all, we've seen the post-everything quartet grow from a spazzy-behind-the-ears band into a formidable live act that's opened for Ra Ra Riot and Death Cab for Cutie. The Dynamos, with new guitarist Nathan Bernaix, play Friday night at Off Broadway. The show starts at 8 p.m. and admission is just $8. Annie Zaleski has more details about the show here.

​ It was 20 years ago today that the Berlin Wall fell. Tonight the Berlin Wall will fall again, sort of, this time at Westminster College in Fulton.

Westminster has a special connection to the wall; it was here, in 1946, that Winston Churchill delivered his famous Iron Curtain speech, and the college owns eight sections of the wall, the largest contiguous piece in the world outside Berlin.

Last spring the German Embassy contacted Westminster officials about participating in some activities to commemorate the falling of the wall. This week, there will be films and debates and a poster contest. But undoubtedly the highlight will be at 6:53 this evening -- exactly when the original wall fell 20 years ago (Missouri time) -- when students will topple a replica of the Berlin Wall they built themselves.

Rob Crouse

A replica of the Berlin Wall, built by students at Westminster College.

​

Wikimedia Commons

Wash U. kids show big balls in protesting reception attended by energy executives, including some from the coal (above) industry.

​Actually, it was a flash mob.

Some 100 students clad in yellow T-shirts and arm-bands paraded into the "America Energy First Conference" cocktail reception being held at Wash U. on Monday night and staged a flash mob to protest what they said was an "over-representation" of dirty-energy sources at the conference.

A campus group called Green Action led the protest. Not only were they dismayed that the renewable energy sector did not appear to be represented at the conference, Green Action members said they're uneasy about the university getting in bed with two coal companies: Peabody Energy and Arch Coal.

The CEOs of both firms -- Peabody is St. Louis-based -- joined Wash U's Board of Trustees this past summer.

As Green Action member Will Fischer put it: "We will not stand aside while executives from Arch Coal and Peabody paint a dirty energy future for our school and our nation. We believe that America's real energy future uses renewable, socially responsible energy sources."

So, how did the big-wigs react to the mobsters?

​ ​A Southwestern High School teacher in Piasa, Illinois, (outside of Alton) is back in the classroom today after a multi-day suspension for an assignment about homosexual behaviors in animals.

English teacher Dan DeLong was placed on paid leave last week after someone complained about the optional homework assignment he provided his sophomore students.

The homework had students read an article that challenged Darwin's theory of sexual selection by documenting hundreds of animals species that engaged in seemingly homosexual acts. 
 

Sure thing. Toys for Tots is a worthy charity providing holiday gifts to less-fortunate children. And this year, when you bring in a toy to one of dozens of local restaurants, you get free or discounted food.

Not a bad deal, we thinks.

Still, for some reason the PSA (below) reminded Unreal not so much of Christmas cheer. Instead, we're remembering why we could never hack it in the military. 



Tell us, does Lt. Col. Tomko remind you of anyone? Perhaps the following figure?

​Today the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an interesting story about the Missouri Department of Revenue's determination that yoga studios are fitness centers and therefore subject to the state's 4 percent sales tax on the latter.

image courtesy Minerva Lopez

​Halloween is a pretty sweet holiday. Literally. Candy of every shape and flavor is heaped into the baskets of small children, providing a much-needed excuse for a suger-fueled cavity-inducing bender that's been lining dentists' pockets for decades. Adults, in addition to sneaking their own sugar-fix, get to dress up in silly (or slutty) costumes and drink themselves silly.

The Mexican Día de los Muertos-- the Day of the Dead-- takes all those things and ups the ante with better food, more drinking, and some existential spiritual pondering.

This Sunday from 1-7 p.m., for the third consecutive year, the Latino-owned businesses of Cherokee Street will celebrate the holiday with storefront ofrendas (shrines with offerings to the dead), free samples of traditional Day of the Dead food (mole, tamales, day of the dead bread), and music (described by one event organizer as "something very happy where we mock death.")

Darin Slyman, a.k.a. D-Sly

​Apparently there was more to the story we reported last month regarding St. Louis' only LGBT newspaper, The Vital Voice.

In September the monthly tabloid published its last issue for 2009. At the time publisher and owner Pam Schneider told Daily RFT the reason was because she needed time to concentrate on a redesign and office move.

Turns out, Schneider left out a key detail: she was also selling the newspaper. Effective yesterday, the new owner of the Vital Voice is Darin Slyman, a.k.a. "D-Sly the Style Guy."

A St. Louis media veteran who has written fashion columns for Riverfront Times, Ladue News, toastedrav.com and Alive Magazine, Slyman joined Vital Voice earlier this year as a style contributor. That gig eventually led to a spot as associate publisher of the paper. Then, two months ago, Slyman says Schneider asked him if he wanted to take the reins.

"She's done a great job building this paper up over the years and felt the time had come to pass it on to a new generation," says Slyman, 36. "My response: Let's do it!"  

Courtesy of Stephen Walker

Wanna know where Saturn stands in relation to the sun, kiddies? Do your astronomy homework in the Delmar Loop!

​On a scale of one to 5 billion, where does Uranus stand in relation to the sun?

Well, if the sun is the Moonrise Hotel, and "5 billion" is Cicero's Restaurant, Uranus would be parked right at Brandt's Cafe.

That's the gist of the new Delmar Loop Planet Walk opening on November 8 with a "Big Bang" party and ribbon-cutting. The interactive walk - a la the Loop's already-popular St. Louis Walk of Fame - represents a scale model of the solar system.

Instead of stars molded into concrete, the Planet Walk is comprised of five-foot-tall signs bearing fun facts of astronomy.

At 2,800 feet long, the walk will begin at the Moonrise with a model of the sun and follows west, ending at Cicero's, with Neptune's likeness.

And what about Pluto, you ask? "Pluto has been demoted," explains Stephen Walker, the Planet Walk's creator. "The International Astronomical Union met in 2006 and decided Pluto would be downgraded to a dwarf planet."

flickr.com/photos/34443508@N08

​C'mon down! Bob Barker, the erstwhile host of The Price is Right and longtime animal rights activist, has just donated $1 million to his alma mater, Drury University in Springfield, MO, to establish a professorship in animal rights. Barker hopes it will be the beginning of a full-fledged program in animal rights, the nation's first.

The professorship went to Patricia McEachern, a professor of French.

"I think some students would become full-fledged animal rights activists," Barker told the Associated Press. "Some will become lawyers and doctors who will always be interested in animal rights. And some will have more respect for animals."

economicsociologist.files.wordpress.com

​Or at least we're the top tippers.

The food/travel guide Zagat published its annual "America's Top Restaurants" edition last week and the book includes a survey of which cities leave the biggest tips by percentage. St. Louisans beat out the highfalutin cheapskates in Seattle and San Francisco to be named the nation's most generous diners.

Via the St. Louis Business Journal:

St. Louis diners tied with those in Philadelphia as the best tippers in the nation -- leaving a gratuity of 19.6 percent on average, according to a Zagat survey released Wednesday.

The results were culled from polling more then 145,000 surveyors who ate 24 million meals at 1,533 restaurants in 45 cities over the past year.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26129297@N02/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Bikers on the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge

​How's that for progressive! This week the League of American Bicyclists named their Bicycle Friendly Communities for 2009.

St. Louis was one of 15 cities new to the rankings and was singled out in the league's press release for improvements the city has made to encourage pedal-powered transportation. 

St. Louis, Mo., for example, is one of the 70 largest cities surveyed in the ACS and a new BFC. The community nearly doubled their number of bicycle commuters from 2000 to 2008. The city has completed several noteworthy projects within the past year, including 53 new miles of on-street additions to the bikeway system, a $10 million investment, and an expansion of bicycling education offerings for children and adults. "St. Louis like cities across the country, is making smart investments in building a welcoming community for biking that will inevitably lead to more, healthier and sustainable transportation options and increased recreational opportunities." stated Bill Nesper, League Director of the Bicycle Friendly America program.

Read more about what the judges liked about St. Louis and check out a map of all bike friendly communities on the league's website.
 

Superintendent Kelvin Adams

​If all goes according to schedule, the St. Louis Public Schools will regain state accreditation in 2011. But first the Special Administrative Board that's running the district must approve an accountability plan designed to get the school back in the good graces of the state.

Earlier this week, the administrative board was presented the lengthy, 48-page plan that aims to improve conditions in five key areas:

• Student Performance
• Highly Qualified Staff
• Facilities, Instructional Programs, Support
• Parent and Community Involvement
• Governance

And Superintendent Kelvin Adams has a homework assignment for all teachers, parents and city stakeholders concerned with the district: Take a look at the plan and its supporting documents (viewable here), and let the district know what you think.

The New York Times just posted an obituary of Theodore R. Sizer, founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools, who reportedly died yesterday at his home in Massachusetts.

Sizer was best known as the father of the Essential Schools movement, which he founded in 1984. The movement's umbrella organization, the Coalition of Essential Schools, spans a diverse array of public and private schools united by their adherence to a set of common principles.

The principles hold, among other things, that a school is an egalitarian community and that the student is a valued worker in that community, with the teacher in the role of mentor or coach. Depth of knowledge is emphasized over breadth, with the mastery of a few core subjects preferred over the scattershot spate of electives the modern high school seems to favor.

media.photobucket.com/image/we suck/emilyandbobby

​At first it seemed like an aberration that St. Louis and the Show-Me State consistently came in last (or first in a bad way) in every national poll, study, and ranking under the sun.

First we topped that dubious "most dangerous city in America" poll. Then we found out we're just the 24th most intelligent city (tied with Chicago!). Hell, pollsters even tell animals they shouldn't live here: the Humane Society called Missouri one of "the five worst states for exotic pets."

Well, three new studies are out and none of them are flattering for our neck of the woods. Unless you consider being one of the cheapest places for old people to retire to as a compliment.

Here are the latest slaps in the face:

Portland: A place white people like.

​Those are the questions essentially posed by urban affairs blogger Aaron Renn in his latest posting, titled "The White City." 

"Why is it that progressivism in smaller metros is so often associated with low numbers of African Americans? Can you have a progressive city properly so-called with only a disproportionate handful of African Americans in it? In addition, why has no one called these cities on it?"

http://www.flickoff.org/system/files/u8/methane.jpg

​St. Louis has a meth problem. Methane, that is.

The highly flammable greenhouse gas, most famous in the form of cow flatulence (hence the lovely picture above), is causing a scare for a handful of North St. Louis residents.

The St. Louis Demolition Landfill, located just east of Hall Street adjacent to the Mississippi River, has "potentially explosive levels" of the gas seeping out of the ground.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources was working with the City to close the dump when testing revealed more than 18 times the allowable levels of methane present in the air.

Details after the jump...

An e-mail arrived in my inbox late yesterday from Tsila Schwartz, whose husband Howard Schwartz is a fixture in the graduate writing program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming college student murdered in 1998 and an inspiration for the revised hate-crimes law.

​You've probably heard by now how the House of Representatives passed a measure last week that broadens the definition of a "hate crime" to include incidents committed because of the sexual or gender orientation of the victim. 

Kit Kellison

Greenberg and some of his art in 2007.

​As far as the local judicial system is concerned, Lewis Greenberg's art is still a danger to society. A St. Louis County circuit judge yesterday upheld a ruling by the Ballwin municipal court that Greenberg's yard installation, The Holocaust Revisited, may be art, but it's still dangerous and needs to be removed.

Judge Lawrence Permuter told Greenberg that he has 30 days to remove the sculpture from his yard or pay a $1,000 fine. David Howard and Veronica Johnson, Greenberg's attorneys, plan to take the case to the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Greenberg, who was recently declared Best Geezer by the RFT, began assembling The Holocaust Revisited in 2004. His neighbors in the Whispering Oakwood subdivision protested that the sculpture, which contains twisted metal and pointed sticks, was a health hazard and lowered property values. The case first went to court two years ago.

"I'm very disappointed," said Howard. "Neither of the judges [Permuter or Ballwin municipal judge Kathryn Koch] addressed the Constitutional issues. They let an ordinance trump the Constitution."

It may not be the Olympics or even the All-Star Game, but St. Louis will get a chance to bask in the international spotlight for three consecutive Aprils starting in 2011 when the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) finals will come to the Edward Jones Dome.

flickr.com/photos/silkegb

​
Well, OK, it's a very narrow international spotlight. But it's an intense one, sort of like the National Spelling Bee for math and science nerds.

FIRST, which stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, as a way to encourage young people to get involved in math and science. Kamen calls the robotics competition "the varsity sport of the mind."

A still for Up in the Air features Goerge Clooney at Lambert Field.

​[Editor's note: As many RFT readers know, for many years Randall Roberts was a fixture at this paper, first as a freelancer, later as music editor and then as a staff writer, before he packed up his quill pen and ink bottle and hied to the left coast, where he now music-edits our sister paper LA Weekly.

Well, you can take the boy out of St. Louis, but you can't take St. Louis out of the boy. So it was that Randy found himself at a screening of Up in the Air earlier this week, and just had to check in with us folks back home...]

It all makes a transplanted Angeleno a little homesick. Tuesday night at International Creative Management's screening room in Century City, director Jason Reitman introduced his new film, Up in the Air, to a small group of interested parties. Much of the film, which stars George Clooney, was shot in St. Louis, even scenes that purport to be Chicago and northern Wisconsin -- even though the movie's story only lands in St. Louis for maybe ten minutes.

​Highlights, without giving any plot points away?

builtstlouis.net/industrial/gasometers

​If upon driving down Interstate 44 through Shrewsbury you've looked off to the north and asked yourself "What in God's name are those towering cages!?", here's the answer: They're gasometers.

The steel structures were built by Laclede Gas in the 1920s and '40s and once held millions of pounds of natural gas in storage tanks that would rise and fall (depending on how full the tanks were) inside the skeletal steel sleeves. 

Laclede Gas quit using the gasometers in 1995, and for the past decade they've sat there rusting with their storage tanks no longer visible.

Now the gasometers days are numbered.

The Vital Voice has ceased publication until January 2010. 

​Author Salman Rushdie is to become the 42nd recipient on the Saint Louis University Literary Award at a book signing and reception next month.

Rushdie, is the best-selling author of ten novels including Midnight's Children (Booker Prize, 1981), The Moor's Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet and three non-fiction works. Though he is perhaps best known for the Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini calling for Rushdie's death following the publication of his novel Satanic Verses in the late 1980s. (And for being briefly married to our favorite Hardee's pitchwoman Padma Lakshmi.)

Rushdie will receive the 2009 Saint Louis Literary Award on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 5:30 pm in the Wool Auditorium in SLU's Busch Student Center, 20 N. Grand. Blvd. The program is free and open to the public.

A reception and dinner will be held at 7:00 pm in the Coronado Ballroom, 3701 Lindell Blvd. Reservations are required for the dinner.

More details after the jump.

Donald Bryant

​True story. I used to work for a St. Louis publication that each year came out with a supplement profiling the "Wealthiest St. Louisans."