SPLAT

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Iron Barley is a bar and restaurant in a blue collar neighborhood way down on the south side. Its tone is somewhere between funky and biker. I've had lunch there and enjoyed it and I've never met a biker who wasn't happy to have me take his picture (more about which later in the week).

Its big annual event is Tomatofest. Every year as the crowds grow they make a bigger and bigger BLT sandwich - I mean from here to the horizon. However, this year's big attraction was what was euphemistically called tomato dodge ball. There was a playing field marked out in the street, an actual referee, backstops to limit the spray onto the crowd but, to my great surprise, no sponsorship deal with a laundry detergent. More red stains tomorrow.

Tom Coghill, King of Tomatofest

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Seems like there's a festival of some kind going on every weekend during the summer in St. Louis. Sunday brought one of the most quirky and fun. Deep in the south side of the city proper where suburbanites fear to tread, Tom Coghill runs the very cool bar and restaurant Iron Barley. For the fifth year in a row, Coghill has sponsored Tomatofest, a celebration of the delicious fruit you should not eat while wearing white. I asked him why he did this during the worst of our August heat. Because it was his wife's idea, he told me.

This year's festival attempted to break the Guinness Book of World Records mark for the largest bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich ever. I don't know if the book will recognize it, but the one they made (before I got there, unfortunately) was 179 feet long, 16 inches wide and 3 inches deep (that's 54.56 meters by 43 cm by 7.6 cm for the rest of the world). It produced 1,092 servings. I found out the hard way that you can't eat one while driving.

The event was for the benefit Lift For Life. This started out as a weightlifting gym for inner city kids and has become a big athletic facility and a charter school, soon to provide full junior and senior high school education. I spent some time with the staff and should be over there soon to photograph their activities.

PS TO TOM, IF YOU SEE THIS: I tried to email your picture to you at the address on your web site, as we discussed. It bounced back as no such user at that domain.

TOMORROW: STL DPB photo caption contest!