Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
We are one region, with many disorders.
Of late, we are a broad municipality showing the same signs of stress as an individual; it’s understandable, really, as we’re constantly showing up in magazines and website polls among the ranks of the fattest, laziest, most violent, and otherwise egregious cities in the United States. (But have you compared our home prices? Hi-yo!) We are a civic body afflicted by enough negative publicity to give anyone a complex—or two, or three.
Currently, we’re exhibiting an unappealing emotional side effect, brought on by more tangible embarrassment than a Buzzfeed listicle: an unseemly rash of band van break-ins. Along with this crime spree has come the loss of basic empathy. Let’s use social media and the most-recent incident to illustrate the point. The Denver group Jimbo Darville & The Truckadours was robbed while stopping for lunch at Pappy’s in Midtown. As originally reported by Sarah Fenske of the Riverfront Times, the group left one member behind to keep an eye on the van, but that person made the lamentable mistake of going for a walk, which left just enough of an opening for our town’s expert van-emptiers to make away with thousands of dollars in gear and personal artifacts. (Adding insult to injury, they didn’t even get to enjoy Pappy’s, as the line was too long, a sort of robbery of the palette.)
Fenske quoted band member Traci “Sweet T” Morin at length. Their most damning statement: “I can assure you I have absolutely NO interest in coming to or even through St Louis again.” Among a laundry list of thoughts on the incident written up by Morin, these words served as chum to a local Facebook audience already tiring of the negative press. In short order, local social media was having none of it. Let’s pull some quotes from a thread that came across my news feed, thoughts culled directly from the authors.
Let’s start with the group’s naming choice. (“They may have deserved it because of their band name.” “More like Vanadours.”) The fact that they performed at the Angry Beaver? (“ISNT THAT A STRIP CLUB?”) The idea that someone who spends his life in a cramped van would take a meander? (“Who the f___ takes a 15-minute walkabout in Midtown? ‘Ooh look, another SLU parking garage.’’’) The notion that the group wrote about their situation and not St. Louis micro-politics? (“Be cool if bands wrote long, passionate, angry diatribes about all the young black men being shot/killed by the police in STL.”) How about a summary in totality? (“You are an idiot and left your shit in your van with no one watching it…because you travelled with some of your most prized possessions and knew the risks going in. I also like the part where there was someone near the van watching but went on a 15-minute walk. LOL. Why aren't you blaming the guy who stopped watching the van to go on a walk after you had been warned. I love these cry baby posts, it's always the entire city and never any responsibility to take for leaving things unattended.”)
Remember: all of this is from one thread.
Plenty of other threads hit upon the same notes, though, primarily focusing on the fact that the band took shortcuts with their own gear safety, while bringing expensive, theft-ready, personal items on tour. As victim shamings go, this incident was a pretty inclusive one, with a lot of ingredients available for mockery. Possibly the most damning knock came with the idea, presented a couple times during my readings: these awful moments have a silver lining, as bands become almost famous and can recoup their losses via crowd-funding sources. Someone really thinks this? And chooses to share?
Oh, well. We all have our own ways of coping with civic shortcomings.
Might I offer some possible solutions to this continuing embarrassment to our city’s name? Thanks, I appreciate your time, as I know I’m rambling. First, another quick, uh, ramble:
Recently, I took a seat on a bus for a two-state, weekend tour by the group The Schwag, aka The Grateful Dead Experience. The band hits the road most weekends, in a bus they’ve customized to live in while playing dates across the country, with bunks for seven players and crewmembers. Even within the span of 72-odd hours, I learned a bunch about touring. For example, A.: don’t sleep with your head facing away from the driver when the bus is in motion; flipping around helps you avoid a broken neck, if the bus were to slam on the brakes. For example, B.: even though the bus is equipped with a toilet, certain needs are best met at a stationary stop; forgive the indelicacy, but a buncha guys in a confined space gotta be decent to each other. For example, C.: the band not only doesn’t pay for hotel rooms, it has a nightly place to park, compliments of the nearest, 24-hour Wal-Mart Supercenter. On these lots, dozens of trucks, busses, RVs, campers and other, assorted vehicles park in close proximity. In bunching together, they give a sense of added safety, with everyone having personal access to 24-hour facilities and supplies; in return Wal-Mart receives the dollars of these nightly guests. Not making this up: I made my first-ever purchases at Wal-Mart last month, only because of the Schwag’s sensible, practical approach to tour lodging. Back to the main story...
So, I said I have ideas. As with any good liberal, my ideas involve spending others people’s money. Here they are in various stages of being fully cooked.
Maybe the Obvious: There’s a Target on Hampton. It’s a store like a Wal-Mart, if you’re not familiar, but it’s not open 24-hours. It does have a big parking lot, but Target doesn’t have a nationwide rep as a Nightly Inn for Buses. So there are holes in this plan. But would the Hampton Target find any appeal in having a ready-made audience there to shop in the morning? Perhaps the SLMPD, unable to crack the case so far, would find it civically useful and beneficial in public relations to provide an on-duty officer to simply monitor the entry to the public restrooms near the front door during the few, overnight hours of closure? I’m sure there are many flaws in this one, just as there are flaws in the ability of the SLMPD to close this theft cycle. I’m sure you’ll let me know what they are!
Which is the Coolest Neighborhood? The Grove’s got nightclubs, street lighting, solid branding and, seemingly, a vast tract of open space on the eastern end, tabbed for upcoming housing/retail. The Cherokee neighborhood has a giant parking lot, courtesy of a closed Hood’s. The Loop’s got a substantial parking pad in the area behind Cicero’s. The Tap Room downtown has a lot, but more limited hours; still, providing space at a music-friendly venue (one that suffered a band van break-in) seems like a PR win. Each of these half-thoughts come with wrinkles; it’s not as if “open space” equals “usable space.” There are property rights, of course, what with our being in America and all; neighbor concerns over noise are ever-present; the simple idea of an overnight crash-pad for musicians immediately kicks those up a notch. But there have to be clean-lit places with centrality to music districts that could be converted into a short-term landing zone for bands. I mean, this is a crime spree that’s gonna be solved, right? This isn’t a forever-thing, right? Sometimes, you just gotta ride out a storm. A quickie-fixey.
My Gift to an Entrepreneur: Let’s go off-grid for a moment. There are something like five bars for sale on South Broadway. One is Slo-Tom’s, made quasi-famous by a Bottle Rocket song. A beloved dive for years, it’s currently got a decrepit second floor, but one that could be whipped into a sort of nuts-and-bolts, spartan, bunker-style B&B. Imagine six cots and a kitchen and a lit parking pad out back; and, yo, its own bar downstairs. (And, to be honest, there’s a dude living in a tent back there, anyway; a decent developer could kick that guy a courtesy fiver every morning after a crime-free night.) There’s another bar for sale nearby, the old No Wake Zone/Jo Netti’s. More decrepit second-floor residential, multiple first-floor storefronts and, again, a turnkey bar. Did we mention a big parking pad in back, with room for a barb-wire-topped fence? This one’s not pie-in-the-sky. These are places. That could be fixed. And could be rented out to bands for an evening in the right context, with lit parking, in an industrial zone that sees traffic all day and night. If I had $10,000 lying around, I’d be on this one, already. Plus, everyone knows that the Broadway Flats are the Next Cherokee, anyway.
So, there. You’re welcome. Mock me and these ideas. At this point, it’s expected and is part of the grieving process. Humbly, I am here to serve our collective neuroses.
