I did not fully appreciate my home town until it was about time for me to leave it. I remember when I was younger somebody told me that everybody from St. Louis always comes back, and at the time I thought that was ridiculous. I thought, why would anybody want to live here their whole life? But after the most memorable summer possibly in St. Louis history and after moving about seven hours away, I completely understand.
So, what is so great about St. Louis? If you’re not from the Lou, it’s definitely difficult to explain. For one, St. Louis is sports. Everybody knows it’s a huge sports city, but what does that mean to someone from St. Louis? A lot of people like to attempt to poke fun at St. Louis by saying we only have two sports and that our football team hated St. Louis so much it left the city. Sure, maybe we were never a football city. We knew that. St. Louis has always been, and always will be, a hockey and baseball city. We have the Blues (and we have the Cup) and we have our Cards. Where I’m from, these two teams are our most prized possessions. We will cheer on and defend these teams whether we have a losing record (like the Blues had for most of the season) or whether we are winning championships (like the Blues did). There is no St. Louis without the Cardinals and the Blues.
St. Louis is #1 in a lot of things. Like hockey, as I humbly mentioned earlier. But also, we’re #1 in murder rates and STDs. We try to ignore the latter. We might only go downtown to go to our stadiums or concerts because we don’t want to get shot, but St. Louis truly has so many other cool places to go to. We have the Delmar Loop, the hub for all hipsters in St. Louis. The Loop has a record store, my favorite concert venue, really unique and iconic restaurants, cool thrift stores. St. Louis also has Forest Park, which, THE Central Park was modeled after (thank you very much). Forest Park has our zoo and our art museum, which are both free. It also has paddle boat rentals and the perfect hills for picnics. St. Louis also blessed the world with Toasted Raviolis, which originated from a restaurant in our Italian neighborhood called The Hill. And, of course, St. Louis has Imos, which I am missing very dearly.
St. Louis has a lot of cool places, great food, and even better teams. But honestly, the thing I miss most is the people. If it’s a small world, St. Louis is even smaller. Everybody knows everybody in St. Louis. The only way I know to explain it to my friends who aren’t from St. Louis is that it’s almost like a cult. But a really friendly and non-dangerous cult. You can talk to one random stranger in St. Louis and find out that the two of you know about ten of the same people just from coincidence. I love that about my city and it’s what I miss most.
Anyway, to make a really long story short: I love my city and I can’t imagine living anywhere else for the rest of my life.
Claire's Blog 