FINAL APPROACH

Another stripped private jet in the Monstro City section of the City Museum. A complex kid's climbing tower, modern sculpture, or both?                

AROUND AND AROUND AND AROUND IT GOES

And where it stops nobody knows.

Hard to top the response to yesterday's theme day picture of the Arch, but it's time to return to earth. This is another part of Monstro City at the City Museum. You can see why kids love it.              

CLEARED FOR TAKEOFF

Another thing to climb and crawl on in Monstro City at the City Museum, the stripped fuselage of an old private jet. It's not going to fly through the buildings any more.           

METAL CRANE

Seen in the outdoor area at City Museum known, for no apparent reason, as Monstro City. There are lots of metal constructions to climb up and through. This metal crane is fanciful and just for decoration.               

INTERESTING, BUT NOT TODAY

Late post. We lost Internet and phone service yesterday afternoon and it just came back up. We didn't get a lot of snow but there were high winds and an overnight low of -6 F / -21 C. Much of the country had it worse.

The outside of the City Museum is covered with a complex system of passages, tunnels and slides called Monstro City. Note the shell of an old corporate jet at top center. Kids love to climb on and through it but it won't be open today.                 

COMING IN FOR A LANDING

 

I know I'm kind of beating this series from the City Museum to death but it's one of the more interesting things around town. And it's going to have to do until I get some new material.

The area outside the building, for some reason called Monstro City, is covered with with tubes to climb through, catwalks, parapets and the shells of a couple of old corporate jets. This one looks like it needs some agile maneuvers to avoid the surrounding buildings. They are all old industrial spaces, now converted to loft apartments.

                

YOU CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE

Another perspective on the maze that is Monstro City, the outdoor part of the City Museum. You would have to be on an adjoining rooftop with a wide angle lens to get the whole thing.

This is an an area of old light industrial buildings and warehouses just west of downtown. The museum's structure was a shoe factory or warehouse or both, I forget which. Decades ago, this town was the center of shoe manufacturing in the United States. And we used to make more beer than anyplace before Anheuser-Busch was the last player standing. Back in the day when we were important enough to have two Major League baseball teams, it was said that St. Louis was "first in shoes, first in booze and last in the American League."                       

COMING IN FOR A LANDING

Yesterday's photo was inside the City Museum. This (obviously) is outdoors and again only a small part of the structure. It's called Monstro City for no obvious reason. There are all sorts of catwalks and tubes and tunnels in no order at all, other than it doesn't fall down. That's the scrapped Learjet I mentioned. You can mess around inside. The tube at the upper left is steel mesh and you can crawl through it. I'll have to shoot this again on a brighter day. 

No St. Patrick's Day celebrations in town and there are usually lots. My father's family is Irish (County Clare) but I'll have to drink my Guinness at home.    

The City Museum - Ball Pen

.

Under the bridges, turrets, tunnels and derelict Sabre jets featured in yesterday's post about Monstro City are a couple of pens or cages or I don't know what, full of light plastic balls. Kids love it. They tumble around on the spheres, bury themselves beneath the balls and then suddenly pop up, barraging their friends. Adults were sitting on the edges, just watching. Why didn't any of them dive in? I probably would.

WHAT MADE ME FEEL GOOD TODAY: I was leaving a legal hearing in the suburbs to drive back to my office downtown. I turned on the Vox channel on XM Satellite Radio and they were playing Philip Glass' Satyagraha, about the life of the young Gandhi in South Africa. It's my favorite opera of the 20th Century. This is a minority opinion but I think it's fabulous.

TOMORROW: the City Museum's homage to the corn dog.

The City Museum - Monstro City

Every kid's favorite part of the City Museum is Monstro City. The museum's web site asks the question, "What happens when you mix two Saber 40 aircraft fuselages, a fire engine, a castle turret, a 25' tall cupola and several 4' wide wrought-iron slinkies, and the creativity of CITY MUSEUM Creative Director Bob Cassilly and his crew? The result is MonstroCity, the most monumental, monolithic, monstrous montage of monkey bars in the world." I'm a bit old and creaky for this but that"s U "R" Us in the picture just below on the right.

WHAT I'M GLAD FOR All the family social obligations of the last week and a half are over. I love to see them but I'm happy the quiet is back, too.

TOMORROW A ball game, of sorts, at the City Museum.