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A Toybee tile. Photograph by Thomas Crone
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Let’s face it: jury duty can be a touch stressful. If you can find a way to bring that worry in line, you should definitely do so. And making up a game in your head can be an effective way of doing that. Yesterday’s culture walk made a single-day visit to the legal system that much more bearable.
Pre-Jury Culture: City residents that drive know that the routine of getting to the Civil Courts begins with a visit to the Kiel Center Parking Garage. And as you depart that grim venue, there’s a series of statues that greet your early morning arrival. Three are St. Louis Blues hockey players; the final one, just across Clark Street is the Nijinsky Hare, a piece of Barry Flanagan sculpture brought to St. Louis by the Gateway Foundation. Tension dissipates as you stare at the hare. The placement of the whimsical rabbit might always be found a bit curious, but it was a welcome sight yesterday morning, as culture picked up a point before the selection process was even underway.
Lunch Culture, I: It’s time to seek out the Toynbee Tile. These mysterious bits of street art are scattered throughout the U.S., occasionally with multiple locations in one town. In St. Louis, a couple have been paved over, but there’s a piece that sits on the edge of 8th Street at Market. It took a few minutes of lunch break to find the Toynbee, even based on the very clear evidence provided by a photo on Flickr. Trying to eyeball that shot with the street proved a little vexing, but directions were even harder to come by: a couple of nearby building workers had never heard of the enigmatic tile, while a meter reader erroneously sent me down the block to Mike Shannon’s. Turns out, I was just a few yards away when getting the bad info; had I looked into the street, the weather- and traffic-beaten tile would’ve presented itself a bit more clearly. To be in the presence of a Toynbee Tile is a marvelous thing, indeed.
Lunch Culture, II: There was a need for food tied to my need for culture and the search for a bite turned up a pair of food trucks, each of them humming next to the Citygarden. My choice was Guerilla Streetfood, a Filipino-themed truck serving a big, vegan, combination lunch for only $9. Truth be told, the massive food truck hype train had kept me to sampling the wares of St. Louis’ trucks until yesterday, but giving in to the trend was a treat to my taste buds and pocket book. An awesome meal, with almost too many noodles for this jurist to contend with... almost.
Lunch Culture, III: It’s been written about in countless places over the past few years, but Citygarden deserves a special bit of praise whenever space permits. With the day not quite as broiling as recent editions, yesterday was a perfect day to people watch in the garden, with many of them engaged in the same activity as myself: eating. But the gazing about was rich, too. For example, while sitting on a communal piece of granite, I noticed a real, live artist, Daniel Shown, walking through the garden. He was on jury duty, too, and I should’ve cried out to get his attention. Instead, I watched him like a TV program, as he glided through the space. I wondered what an artist thought about when in a space so given over to art and then I saw that his quarry was, in fact, lemonade. Smart man!
Lunch Culture, IV: Trundling back into the business district, I stopped by Left Bank Books’ Downtown location, purchasing a copy of the latest New Yorker. I considered walking through the remainder of my trip with the cover of The New Yorker conspicuously public, the masthead readable by all who passed me. I thought that the magazine would give me a sense of gravitas in the jury lounge; if chosen, I didn’t want to just be a juror, I wanted the power and the glory of being foreman and The New Yorker was a major piece of that plan. As it turned out, the big lunch and extensive walking make me sleepy, and I forgot to take the magazine out of my shoulder bag after purchasing it. But simply by visiting Left Bank, I had added another notch to my culture collection for the afternoon. Bravo, me!
Lunch Culture, V: There was a guy on the corner, banging on a homemade drum. I wanted to go up and ask for his picture, but someone beat me to it by one second. So I crossed the street, and bought a plum at the crazy-busy Culinaria. I ate the plum and walked back over. As I approached, he stopped playing and pulled out a cell phone. Then, with another approach in mind, a passing pedestrian engaged him conversation. Oh! To be a street musician’s stalker, how weird! At just moment, I pulled up and asked for the okay to take the pic and we simultaneously broke out in hepcat-speak.
“Can I snap a pic?”
“I’m a gonna do if for you live.”
“Right on, do that.”
“This is how I do.”
Now that was a cultural exchange, one that would send me back to the court with a full handful of authentic street experiences to write about.
Post-Jury Culture: Now, you can always push your luck. After sitting in on an afternoon selection meeting, I was sent away from the courts for at least the next year, without being selected. (Maybe that tucked-away New Yorker would’ve changed that, I can’t be sure.) Frankly feeling the need for celebratory drink, I ambled over to Washington Avenue for a sip at the Side Bar. Oh, that was alright. The Bud was a buck and the place was empty, allowing for a few dozen pages of the day’s jury pool book to be read in piece. But I’d gone that one step too many, hoping that some zip-a-dee-do experience on Wash Ave., not getting much pop for my efforts.
The lunch break, though? Fantastic. No need to be shy about a little boosterism: pockets of Downtown really have it together. If you haven’t in a while, take a day and see for yourself.
