Thursday Arch Series

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Arch in a puddle: the temperatures crept over freezing last weekend, making a sloppy mess out of the last snowfall and turning this view of the monument upside down. Of course, if I really wanted this viewpoint, I could take a picture directly while standing on my head. Mmm, or hire an acrobat to do it for me. Just using Photoshop would be easier on my scalp.

Anybody who likes snooty, intellectual art analysis might have a look at Downtown St. Louis 365 today.

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming...

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American TV weather reporters like to whip the public up into a frenzy. Must be good for ratings. Around here, they almost always overestimate the bad stuff. We had freezing rain all day Tuesday but little snow. It was way worse to the north and west.

The pictures of Union Station are set aside for the moment. Instead, let's look at a bit of what caused STL to nearly shut down yesterday. Above, playground equipment in a local park. Below, a robin who seems much too fat for this time of year, oblivious to the storm; ice coated evergreens; and the Missouri Department of Transportation hard at work on Interstate 44.

Even puppets are frozen over today, as noted on Downtown St. Louis 365.

 

Possibly The Most Beautiful Room In America

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My brain is so crowded I sometimes forget simple things. This blog is almost four years old and I keep meaning to go to this place and I never remember to do it. Until Sunday.

This is lovingly restored great hall of Union Station, once one of the country's largest railroad terminals. It fell into grim disrepair as passenger traffic collapsed. Eventually, the tiny number of passenger trains run by Amtrak were moved to a double-wide trailer a few blocks away (known locally as Amshack; it's been replaced with a permanent structure). It is also the lobby of the Hyatt Hotel that now occupies the "head house." I think it is among the most beautiful rooms I've ever seen. Sure, it's not Versailles' Hall of Mirrors and there must be lots of other fabulous rooms in the U.S. but I have not seen the equal. (I must say, though, that I am fond of the main reading room at the Boston Public Library.) It is turn of the 19th to 20th Century grandeur at its most brilliant.

We will explore this over the next couple of days. However, according to hysterical TV forecasters, we may be sliding into the worst ice and snow storm since, I don't know, Lewis and Clark last went looking for a beer in Laclede's Landing. If so, and the local streets can be walked without crampons, I may have to go out and document it.

We question reality today on Downtown St. Louis 365.

TUESDAY MORNING UPDATE: the National Weather Service has issued a blizzard warning for the first time in the history of the St. Louis office. We are expecting significant ice followed by heavy snow and high winds into tomorrow morning. I closed our office today. Got to get out with my camera if walking isn't unsafe.

8 AM this morning outside my house.
Tiny pellets of ice are falling now, bouncing off surfaces. Snow later.

Classic

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Out cruising yesterday, desperate for material for the week. This beauty was sitting at the side of the road in Forest Park. It is a restored 1959 Chevrolet Impala, a serious piece of classic Detroit iron. Strange, though, that General Motors named this model (it's still in use) after a slender and agile East African herbivore. This baby isn't any of those things.

We have a severe ice, then sleet, then snow, then plunging temperatures and howling wind storm moving in on us today. The clairvoyants say we may have .75 inch / 2 cm on ice on the ground by late tonight. Who knows, maybe I won't be able to get to work. May have to sit around the house, editing pictures and writing comments. But I'll probably get to work.

There's a photograph in need of a supply of Zoloft on Downtown St. Louis 365.

Mid-Winter, Mid-Latitudes

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On the Arch grounds yesterday afternoon. We are not having nearly as bad a winter as the Northeast. It's above freezing during the day this weekend and the recent snow is melting (although I hear some bad stuff is on the way). The reflecting pools near the Arch are drained but some big puddles remain. The shapes and subtle color of late afternoon on a mostly cloudy day got my attention.

We take the long view today on Downtown St. Louis 365.

Motherboard

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An image from the Riverfront Times St. Louis Web Awards: the sound mixing console for the audio engineer when there is a live band. I've seen these before but I couldn't begin to remember what all those knobs and buttons are for.

Speaking of which, I once had the chance to visit the New York recording studio of Sean Combs or Puff Daddy or P. Diddy or whatever his name is. A good friend of my son had become the absolute bottom flunky sound engineer. He had the key to the non-descript West Side commercial building and took us up one Sunday afternoon. No one around. The control rooms looked like the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise. Oh, and there was a one-for-all WC whose walls were covered with pictures of the man himself.

We discuss the pleasures of fine dining today on Downtown St. Louis 365.

First Annual Riverfront Times St. Louis Web Awards

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Most U.S. cities have a so-called alternative newspaper, a free weekly with some investigative reporting, articles of interest you won't find in the regular paper and lots of stuff about entertainment and nightlife. Ours is The Riverfront Times. It's been around for years and years and it's a good read.

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from someone at the paper saying that I was a finalist in a category of their first annual web awards. What? Was this a scam? Never heard a thing about it. It was for real, though, and I was a finalist in the category of best Flickr stream. What? Out of the thousands of St. Louisans' Flickr streams? Not for my blog. They didn't know about the blog and, besides, there was no category for best local photo blog. (!) There were categories for things like best sex blog and best tweet. How could any tweet be best?

Anyway, they invited me to their awards party and said I could shoot pictures. It was at a nightclub on the edge of downtown, someplace I would never go on my own. It was a cavernous space with black floors, walls and ceiling. On the left was a stage where a DJ was working. On the right, a sound engineer's station. In the back, a gloomy bar and lounge area. People milled around, talking to their friends and drinking. Eventually some guy got up on the stage, thanked everyone for coming and said he wasn't going to bore us with the names of all the nominees and winners so we should just look at their web site in the morning. Then back to milling around and drinking. I was there alone. I may well have been the oldest person in the place. Took a few more (photographic) shots and left.

Still, it was an interesting experience. Above, two guests who enjoyed dressing like kids and wearing weird makeup. Below, the trophies, made from old computer circuit boards; the bar (Lurch...want...daiquiri...) and an overview of the crowd. They damn well better have a photo blog category next year.

We think about Roman architecture and crossing the Mississippi today on Downtown St. Louis 365.

Again, apologies for the lack of comments. The work days have been long. I come home, eat dinner, prepare the next morning's posts and go to bed. It will change. It better.