OT: Finally Some Good STL News

[almaman]

cool thnx. I want to go  sometime. Can't beat the price.

[Old guy]

And lets not forget Shakespeare in the park each summer, it is great!

[3star_recruit]

Bonwich,

The difference is a matter of degree.  That three-bedroom ranch just outside of Silicon Valley that cost about twice your parents' U-City home in 1978 now costs 1.5 million.  You can get a nice 4 bedroom with a garage in U-City for 350K.  I realize that St. Louis has always been a better deal than San Francisco but the multipliers are now beyond absurd. A SF millennial five years removed from college routinely shares a two bedroom apartment with 3 other people.  You didn't have to be upper middle class in the San Francisco of 1980 just to afford your own apartment in a decent neighborhood.

[bonwich]

3 hours ago, 3star_recruit said:

Bonwich,

The difference is a matter of degree.  That three-bedroom ranch just outside of Silicon Valley that cost about twice your parents' U-City home in 1978 now costs 1.5 million.  You can get a nice 4 bedroom with a garage in U-City for 350K.  I realize that St. Louis has always been a better deal than San Francisco but the multipliers are now beyond absurd. A SF millennial five years removed from college routinely shares a two bedroom apartment with 3 other people.  You didn't have to be upper middle class in the San Francisco of 1980 just to afford your own apartment in a decent neighborhood.

Well, of course it is (a matter of degree). But that degree also affects ebbs and flows. During the most recent crash, housing prices in St. Louis fell at a much less precipitous rate than prices in SF. The differential between STL and SF will similarly tighten during the impending crash. 

Also, if we're going to compare Apple to Apple, my parents' home sold last year for north of $500K.

Yeah, there are factors that have priced SF out of the many people's reach in the past few years. At the same time, even though an increasing number of young talent has been choosing the midwest recently, if SF's home prices and rents moderate (as they will probably have to), Millennials will again have a net positive inflow, assuming they don't already. 

[thetorch]

I've actually experienced the exact opposite in my industry.  Experienced managers from the coast, workers in late 40s or early 50s are moving here, taking cuts in pay and forcing out younger managers.  They can take a cut of 10-20k in salary per year and still save way more for retirement than they could out on the coast.  

[Box and Won]

13 hours ago, Old guy said:

And lets not forget Shakespeare in the park each summer, it is great!

It really is wonderful. They do a tremendous job.

[hsmith19]

18 hours ago, bonwich said:

And I don't know exactly how old you are, but I didn't say that neighborhoods hadn't changed dramatically. The CWE was just an example I was using. 

Soulard is an interesting case study, because I'd argue that, back in ancient times (~1980), Soulard and Hyde Park were on the same trajectory. However, one of them is north of Delmar. Also, Soulard back then still had a reasonable mix of lower middle class and Yuppies, which has since then been tilted heavily toward the middle middle to upper middle class.

Also in the '80s: We used to go frequently to a place we called "All Night Barbecue." I think it was still around through the '90s -- the VFW Post did bbq on weekends late into the night. I'd pretty much argue that the area roughly southwest of Broadway and Gasconade really disintegrated since then. I do think that's an example of a part of South City that went from working class to bad. 

As far as the North Side, I dated a girl in the early '80s who lived just off of the corner of Goodfellow and McLaran, and I had a large number of friends up there at the time. From my perspective, I might replace "bleed" with "hemorrhage." 

BPW/Cherokee? Jefferson Avenue Boarding House. 

Anyway, I'm streaming-of-consciousness, and I hope you now understand that CWE was simply an example, and one that I used because I lived through a lot of that. (I had actually put a deposit down on a place in Soulard prior to moving to the CWE.) But I stand by my conclusion: It ain't a helluva lot different now than it was then. 

 

Not sure I follow. Your conclusion is that a whole ton of neighborhoods have changed, but other than that everything is the same?

As for your Broadway and Gasconade example, I go back to the '80s but can't remember a time when it wasn't already considered bad. I would say areas like Carondelet and Boulevard Heights bottomed out in the mid '90s. Demographically, they're still very poor today (although not Northside poor), but there's a much more diverse mix of residents and a whole lot more businesses. It's a much slower improvement than trendy neighborhoods than Cherokee, but it's still a marked step forward from when it looked like Escape from New York ca. 1995.

[hsmith19]

11 hours ago, bonwich said:

Well, of course it is (a matter of degree). But that degree also affects ebbs and flows. During the most recent crash, housing prices in St. Louis fell at a much less precipitous rate than prices in SF. The differential between STL and SF will similarly tighten during the impending crash. 

Also, if we're going to compare Apple to Apple, my parents' home sold last year for north of $500K.

Yeah, there are factors that have priced SF out of the many people's reach in the past few years. At the same time, even though an increasing number of young talent has been choosing the midwest recently, if SF's home prices and rents moderate (as they will probably have to), Millennials will again have a net positive inflow, assuming they don't already. 

To call the story of housing costs in SF "ebb and flow" is a little like saying Hurricane Katrina had ups and downs.  Quite simply, prices fell less precipitously in StL when the bottom fell out of everything just because they didn't have nearly as far to fall.

Yeah, the prices will have to "moderate" eventually, but barring something really unforeseen (like Roy's secession scenario) there is no way relative prices between SF and Midwestern "legacy cities" like StL will ever return to the ratios in the '70s.

[bonwich]

6 minutes ago, hsmith19 said:

Not sure I follow. Your conclusion is that a whole ton of neighborhoods have changed, but other than that everything is the same?

As for your Broadway and Gasconade example, I go back to the '80s but can't remember a time when it wasn't already considered bad. I would say areas like Carondelet and Boulevard Heights bottomed out in the mid '90s. Demographically, they're still very poor today (although not Northside poor), but there's a much more diverse mix of residents and a whole lot more businesses. It's a much slower improvement than trendy neighborhoods than Cherokee, but it's still a marked step forward from when it looked like Escape from New York ca. 1995.

Net, yes. Neighborhoods rise and fall. Some get, as you say, "trendy." But frequently they lack traction and fall back into a negative trajectory. The Wedge, or whatever that place at 55 and Bates was called. That whole stretch of Virginia was one of those rising-trendy mini-neighborhoods 10-15 years ago that I'd argue reversed its trajectory. 

Again, all that said, my entire premise has been that the current upward trends in terms of Millennials choosing the middle of the country over the coasts (the 3_Star assertion that drew my comment) isn't very different than what was going on 40 years ago, and off and on ever since.  

And Escape from New York was filmed here in 1981 -- at the Fox, in front of one of those Masonic-looking buildings across from (and probably now part of) SLU, at Union Station and in large part what was then a fire-devastated set of blocks around what's now Schlafly. 

[Slu let the dogs out?]

15 hours ago, 3star_recruit said:

Bonwich,

The difference is a matter of degree.  That three-bedroom ranch just outside of Silicon Valley that cost about twice your parents' U-City home in 1978 now costs 1.5 million.  You can get a nice 4 bedroom with a garage in U-City for 350K.  I realize that St. Louis has always been a better deal than San Francisco but the multipliers are now beyond absurd. A SF millennial five years removed from college routinely shares a two bedroom apartment with 3 other people.  You didn't have to be upper middle class in the San Francisco of 1980 just to afford your own apartment in a decent neighborhood.

My uncle had a job interview out in the Bay Area a few years back. The CEO of the successful company for which he was interviewing picked him up in the biggest POS car ever. It was then he realized even with a healthy 6 figure salary out there, his disposable income would take a significant hit. Friends of mine just bought a small house in East Bay (over an hour commute just to get to the city) and comment every time I talk with them that they are incredibly house poor (even with two incomes) and cannot do much without increasing debt. 

As far as city neighborhoods go, several of them have seen significant investment the past 10 years. The Grove area, in just 10 years, is night and day.  One example: A building in the Grove area recently sold for over $5M. The buyer purchased  it from a guy that paid $900,000 for it in '95. Cherokee Street is another great example.

[hsmith19]

Yeah, I know the history of Escape from New York, but they really missed the boat by not filming a sequel on South Broadway in the '90s. Frenchy's Auto Parts would still make a great scene for a climactic battle, but overall there are far fewer vacant storefronts and more non-bar businesses.

I was at the Wedge every week for Stag Night, but I would not have called that area trendy at any time, and certainly not trendy on par with Cherokee. Iron Barley (RIP) was a destination in and of itself, but there was never really a district around it. There's a reason Stag Night packed up and moved to Cherokee after its brief dalliance with the Wedge. A good lesson that it takes more than one hip business by itself to build momentum around.

[bonwich]

18 minutes ago, hsmith19 said:

Yeah, I know the history of Escape from New York, but they really missed the boat by not filming a sequel on South Broadway in the '90s. Frenchy's Auto Parts would still make a great scene for a climactic battle, but overall there are far fewer vacant storefronts and more non-bar businesses.

I was at the Wedge every week for Stag Night, but I would not have called that area trendy at any time, and certainly not trendy on par with Cherokee. Iron Barley (RIP) was a destination in and of itself, but there was never really a district around it. There's a reason Stag Night packed up and moved to Cherokee after its brief dalliance with the Wedge. A good lesson that it takes more than one hip business by itself to build momentum around.

Anything that Thomas Crone is directly associated with is by definition trendy.

There were some prior businesses down there (the costume shop comes to mind) that drew a reasonable amount of traffic and, given Iron Barley, the Jesuit-trained Dr. Skosky's dental practice and a few other things I need to strain out of my failing memory, I would have cited the street as at least pre-trendy.  

In any case, Mr. Smith, our discussions and even our disagreements have led me to conclude that we should meet sometime at, say, Sump and then do a major driving tour of the City. I can tell you ancient tales (like, just for one example, how I believe that this is the Second Age of Trendy for Cherokee) and you can provide me with a relative young'un's perspective. I'll drop you a PM sometime.  

[almaman]

1 hour ago, hsmith19 said:

Not sure I follow. Your conclusion is that a whole ton of neighborhoods have changed, but other than that everything is the same?

As for your Broadway and Gasconade example, I go back to the '80s but can't remember a time when it wasn't already considered bad. I would say areas like Carondelet and Boulevard Heights bottomed out in the mid '90s. Demographically, they're still very poor today (although not Northside poor), but there's a much more diverse mix of residents and a whole lot more businesses. It's a much slower improvement than trendy neighborhoods than Cherokee, but it's still a marked step forward from when it looked like Escape from New York ca. 1995.

There couldn't of been too many people who went to that all night bbq more than yours truly. Wasn't great but was cheap constantly there and the only real place you could see the river at night. My regularness never acknowledged over 20 years of going there. Almost always same guy at the window. Jumped in front of the ongoing Moonlight Ramble in Soulard when it was heading south on Broadway once and stopped there around 2 and was only one there as 10k bikes road on by. Was always amazed that it wasn't more of a "thing". Picnic benches for at least 100 looking out across all the way to Cahokia bluffs and there was nobody there ever. They did seem to have a bar thing on the inside.

[almaman]

59 minutes ago, bonwich said:

a fire-devastated set of blocks around what's now Schlafly. 

That was one crazy fire. If it had happened in the social media age we'd still be talking about it. It was close to being a much bigger disaster.

[almaman]

54 minutes ago, hsmith19 said:

Yeah, I know the history of Escape from New York, but they really missed the boat by not filming a sequel on South Broadway in the '90s. Frenchy's Auto Parts would still make a great scene for a climactic battle, but overall there are far fewer vacant storefronts and more non-bar businesses.

I was at the Wedge every week for Stag Night, but I would not have called that area trendy at any time, and certainly not trendy on par with Cherokee. Iron Barley (RIP) was a destination in and of itself, but there was never really a district around it. There's a reason Stag Night packed up and moved to Cherokee after its brief dalliance with the Wedge. A good lesson that it takes more than one hip business by itself to build momentum around.

Not RIP on the Iron Barley but relocated least last I heard to House Springs? out hy 30. should be opening right about now last I heard

[bonwich]

1 hour ago, almaman said:

Not RIP on the Iron Barley but relocated least last I heard to House Springs? out hy 30. should be opening right about now last I heard

This is accurate. But the RIP is appropriate for the loss of a long-time City institution and a neighborhood anchor. 

[RiseAndGrind]

16 minutes ago, bonwich said:

This is accurate. But the RIP is appropriate for the loss of a long-time City institution and a neighborhood anchor. 

Last time I went it was dead and the food wasn't good. Sad to see that happen. 

[bonwich]

https://www.stlmag.com/dining/owners-comment-on-iron-barleys-closure-and-relocation-to-high-ridge/

 

[Glorydays2013]

Das Bevos is pretty good if ya'll haven't tried it

[STL Hoops Insider]

Bad news: the murder of another unarmed black person by law enforcement  again went unpunished.

[wgstl]

Just now, STL Hoops Insider said:

Bad news: the murder of another unarmed black person by law enforcement  again went unpunished.

you know, I thought he was for sure guilty.  But now that they are releasing additional info that was kept within courthouse walls, ya im not sure it was the wrong call. 

[Old guy]

I went to the Iron Barley with a group once, about 8 years ago, the son of a friend was playing with a band at the place. The place was packed, the food was at best (being kind to them) mediocre, the prices would have been adequate for much better food than what I got. Not a pleasant time, hotter than Hades that day. We waited a long time and were seated outside (or else would have waited a lot longer). Nope, that place was not for me, never went back. Not planning to go to House Springs either, not for the new Iron Barley.

[Quality Is Job 1]

7 minutes ago, STL Hoops Insider said:

Bad news: the murder of another unarmed black person by law enforcement  again went unpunished.

It seems the judge felt he was not very likely unarmed.

Quote

[Wilson] later continued, "The court observes, based on its nearly 30 years on the bench, that an urban heroin dealer not in possession of a firearm would be an anomaly."

 

[Cowboy]

6 minutes ago, Quality Is Job 1 said:

It seems the judge felt he was not very likely unarmed.

 

-this happened in 2011, why just getting through the courts now? 

[Quality Is Job 1]

9 minutes ago, Cowboy said:

-this happened in 2011, why just getting through the courts now? 

The case went dormant and the new prosecutor just started pushing it.