KANSAS CITY POSTCARD

 

An iconic view of Kansas City, taken from the hill that contains the Liberty Monument and World War I museum. In the foreground is Union Station, which still gets a few trains but now contains other attractions. Downtown is behind. The four narrow towers at left center support the roof of the convention center.             

SUPERSTRUCTURE

What holds a Ferris wheel together through turn after turn? It better be well-engineered and the bolts better be tight. I wonder how often all of this is inspected.                    

FROM THE WHEEL

The current version of Union Station has a number of attractions, including an aquarium, a ropes course, a mirror maze, mini golf and a big Ferris wheel. (More are under construction.) Ellie loves to go up the wheel. At the top, there is a view over the reconstructed train shed and the western part of downtown.                    

ALLEGORY OF THE RAILROADS

I’ll continue with images from our trip to Chicago until something else comes along. In its day, St. Louis Union Station was the busiest in the country. With the advent of air travel and the Interstate highways, rail travel went into great decline. Union Station became decrepit and empty. More recently, it has been gloriously transformed into a fine hotel and something of a small amusement park. This window is an allegory of the American railroads, with San Francisco on the left, St. Louis in the center and New York on the right.                      

NIGHT IN THE CITY #2

Looking west on Clark Street toward Union Station, with the hockey arena in the shadows on the right. Lots of big trucks because the main post office is in the background.            

WINTER BAUBLE

It seems like every city of any size has a big Ferris wheel. We have had one at the Union Station complex for a few years. The lighting is all computer-controlled LEDs. It pulses and changes constantly. I think it looks best at night.            

THE LONG VIEW

I took this while standing near the southwest corner of the new soccer stadium, looking east on Market Street, one of the main thoroughfares downtown. The landscaping and bits of architecture are interesting. The red roof structure in the center is Union Station, now a swanky hotel. To the right is the old train shed that today covers a variety of restaurants and entertainment. The tall building in the center with a dome is the home of the local and regional federal courts. Then, moving left, some office buildings, the Arch and a state courts building.  

The area will be packed tonight for the opening game of St. Louis City Soccer Club. Hard to believe, but I read that the team received 60,000 deposits on season tickets for a stadium that holds 22,500.          

FOUR BASIC FOOD GROUPS

What's not to like? It may not be endorsed by your doctor but maybe you will die happy. Or senseless. Seen at Union Station.            

MADELEINE MONDAY

I took this picture of my granddaughter at the St. Louis Aquarium a couple of days ago. She's 9, but somehow this gives me an idea of what she may look like as a young woman.              

RING OUT THE OLD

Would that life were so simple, but after another typically miserable year in the annals of humanity any comfort is welcome. On a damp, chilly day yesterday, I took Ellie to Union Station for the afternoon. It was once one of America's major railway junctions. Now it's an overpriced mini amusement park. We had lunch at a place that offers awful burgers and fries, a cornucopia of bulk candy and elaborate ice cream dishes, some of which are laced with alcohol. So, not all bad, but is there a way we can send a shipment of our nations's best ice cream to Putin?

Remember theme day tomorrow - photo of the year.        

RAILROADS

Moving on. I'm not particularly a railroad aficionado, other than having commuted to high school on the New York subway. I've loved trips on the TGV in France and the Shinkansen in Japan but the U.S. has nothing that compares. Of course, before the day of ubiquitous air travel it's how we got around. St. Louis' Union Station was one of the great junctions of the nation.

I went out yesterday trying to shoot a railroad event worth seeing but had limited success due to crowds and the heat. I'm going to make another attempt this morning and hope to have something to show tomorrow. This old passenger car parked behind Union Station will do for today.            

THAT WHEEL, ETC.

One of our City Daily Photo colleagues commented yesterday that it seems mandatory for cities to have a Ferris wheel these days, and it's nice to have one here. It is built on the side of Union Station, now a hotel and entertainment complex. There is an aquarium, a mirror maze, mini golf and more. Expensive but fun. But two things to note about this scene:

Something in this image is totally fake and it would take a Photoshop nerd to spot it. The newest version of the program has a tool called Replace Sky. It precisely finds the edges of everything in front of the sky and drops in a new background of your choice. These clouds weren't there. The actual sky was empty (see yesterday's post).

The tall building just right of center is vacant and has no immediate prospect of reuse. After the breakup of the old AT&T into the regional "Baby Bells," STL was the home of Southwestern Bell. It bought up some of the other regional carriers and then acquired the rights to the AT&T name. This building was, for a time, AT&T's world headquarters. Then they decided that St. Louis was Podunk and moved the operation to Dallas. I read that it is hard to repurpose a large building built for a single tenant so it just sits there.                  

CITY DAILY PHOTO MARCH THEME DAY - MIRRORS

Hall of mirrors, Union Station, St. Louis. I kept going around in circles. The family had no trouble finding their way through.

See the reflections of other City Daily Photo members at https://www.citydailyphoto.org/category/theme-days/          

ADVENTURE

You have to be 48 inches / 122 cm tall to go out on the ropes and zip line course and our tyke just makes it. Children 12 and younger need an adult to accompany them. No surprise that Ellie made a beeline for the ticket counter. Mom wasn't so crazy about being a few meters in the air, harness or not. The kid would gladly have swung from the rafters.

She's been active lately and I have a few choices for a Madeleine Monday tomorrow.          

I SAW THE LIGHT

The whole family was supposed to go to the Garden Glow at the Missouri Botanical Garden Saturday night. I had several posts about it recently from my first visit. Unfortunately, there was cold rain all evening and we decided to try it another time. Ellie wanted to see something entertaining so we drove around looking for entertainment.

We heard that Kiener Plaza had a special display. Bogus. There were some white lights strung in the trees. We heard that there was a block in St. Louis Hills where every house had over-the-top displays. Nuh uh. Only one or two houses were done. We heard that the huge Anheuser-Busch brewery was festooned with illumination. Sorry. No one had flipped the switch yet.

Our last chance was Union Station. Some web page said there was special stuff under the old train shed, where there are various entertainments. There wasn't much beside the usual stuff, but the usual stuff is okay. There is always the Ferris wheel, open 365 days a year, and it had a a few customers. The lights are state of the art.              

I COULD USE SOME OF THAT

Part of what has become of St. Louis Union Station, once one of the grand railway junctions of America. It fell into disuse and great disrepair, after which it was remodeled into a restaurant and rather cheesy shopping center. That did okay for a while but after a time it  stopped drawing people from the suburbs and failed. The current iteration has a variety of entertainment attractions, a big Ferris wheel, mini golf, a rope climbing course and an aquarium. All quite overpriced but it was doing well enough until the pandemic. The wheel is open but I wouldn't go in it unless each car was fumigated between groups of passengers.

There is a restaurant simply called The Soda Fountain. It has a retro look, plays 50s and 60s music, and has a huge variety of ice cream concoctions. Apparently  you can get them laced with vodka or a liqueur. I might try that when it's safe to eat indoors.        

MAY I SEE YOUR PAPERS, PLEASE?

Another "this reminds me of something" moment. Santa was working his way down the train car at the Polar Express. I shot what I could in a very cramped space. At one moment he seemed to be looking right at me with a suspicious expression. It made me think of old WW II or Cold War movies in which someone demanded identity documents or safe conduct passes from the hero, or the time many years ago when we crossed the German - Czech border by train. Gonna find out who's naughty and nice.              

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Merry Christmas from the Crowe household in St. Louis to all our friends and colleagues around the world. May all your images in the new year be brilliant.

                 

TOY FACTORY

My paralegal told me not to bother going to work today because there is nothing particular needing my attention. Since she runs my professional life I decided to follow her sage advice    

A better shot of the light projections on the barrel vault over Union Station's main hall, showing Santa's legendary toy factory. I wonder if the elves are organized. I tried  to add a short phone video but *&%&* Blogger keeps crashing during the upload, The work around was to copy it from Flickr.

  

HOW ABOUT A DING DONG?

What we call the headhouse of the old Union Station is now a spectacular hotel lobby with luxury rooms to the left and right, and more out under the train shed. A little hard to tell since I was using a very wide angle lens but the view is straight up into a beautiful barrel vault ceiling. In the last couple of years the management has added light shows.

I tend to have loose associations, which is not a bad thing unless you are psychotic. Watching this part of the display, I couldn't get a certain old Monty Python bit out of my head. Sorry for any offense.