Photograph by Dilip Vishwanat
“Conventional St. Louis thinks of the riverfront as the space between the legs of the Arch,” says Tim Tucker, co-owner of the Cotton Belt Building, located near the river. When he bought the building, the site had 3,000 railroad ties on it. “I employed various homeless people over the course of time,” he says, “and we stacked up the railroad ties, cut down the trees. We played industrial croquet down there with sledgehammers. We had the wickets set up over a four- or five-block area.”
Both of St. Louis’ riverfronts, north and south, are hidden worlds to most of us. Their cultures, like the river, are in continual flux, yet also exemplify slow, geologic change: Mallinckrodt occupies the same spot as it did in 1867. Chili Mac’s American Diner sits across the street, and the interior hasn’t changed since the big-band era; the menu includes a midcentury glossary of diner slang
(e.g., “Nervous pudding = Jell-O”). A waitress there says most business comes from Bremen Bank next door. A guy calling himself Jeremiah the Amish Hobo set up “Hobo University” in the Cotton Belt Building in 2008. He wanted to plant gardens and teach people how to live self-sufficiently, so he flew his smiley-face flag there for a little more than a year before moving on. Then there was Mickey Goldstein of Golden Railroad Supply, who was on the river until he recently retired, rotating train wheels and filing them round again.
One group that’s always been on the river is the fishermen. Among them is Carl Roberts, who angles for trophy catfish and serves as a guide on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. “I’ve caught up to 83 pounds,” he says. “A lot of the people I take out, they’re happy if they can catch a 10-pound catfish, because they’ve been fishing from the banks and small lakes all their life, and all they’ve been catching is what we call eating-size catfish, 2 or 2 ½ pounds.” Roberts started fishing 15 years ago, when injuries precluded contact sports. He went to the banks of the Mississippi with a fishing pole, hung out with the guys there, and (pun intended) got hooked. Three years later, he bought a boat to access the entire river.
“There are some banks fishermen who live on the bank; they even camp out at night... And there are boaters, pleasure boaters, who will pull their boat up to a sandbar, and they’ll get out and start a campfire and fish
from the bank all night,” he says. One of his favorite spots is below the Melvin Price Locks and Dam. “As you go farther downriver, the water calms down, and you have to find other structures in the water, like trees,” he says. “Sometimes there are cars and all kinds of things in the river. The fish congregate there for shelter.” (To go out on the river with Roberts, call 314-341-0572.)
Motorcycle riders like both ends of the riverfront, where it’s easy to get onto the Great River Road. Favorite spots include Shady Jack’s Saloon on the north side, Cross Bones Bar & Grill on the south side. Bicyclists prefer the north end, for the Riverfront Trail and the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge. “I see a wide variety,” says Ann Mack, executive director of Trailnet. She rattles off a handful of types: athletes, workers on lunch break, those who don’t cycle a lot, residents from nearby neighborhoods, fishermen with tackle in a backpack and basket, parents pulling kids in bike trailers. “The Chain of Rocks is one of the few places, before the McKinley Bridge bike lane was opened, where [pedestrians] could cross the river,” says Mack, “so people around the world have contacted us to make sure the bridge was open.”
The artists of Artica are both transitory and permanent: They visit the north riverfront once a year to build sculptures, play music, dance, or project films onto the buildings and flood walls. Organizers Hap Phillips and Nita Turnage used to live above Hibdon Hardwood in north St. Louis. One time, as the pair were walking their dogs to the riverfront, they noticed football tailgaters leaving trash and unchecked fires. “We thought, ‘Well, if those people can just squat on this property and leave it unattended and neglected, then maybe we should do something that’s more positive,’” Turnage recalls. In 2001, during a Memorial Day potluck, the couple gave their guests disposable cameras and told them to take pictures and think of art projects for the north riverfront area. In 2002, they organized the first Artica, which included a Parade of Dreams, in which people built tiny biodegradable boats and released them into the Mississippi River, and a performance-art piece from The Untitled Group.
There are also cool sites on the south riverfront, says Turnage, including Sugar Loaf Mound and the bluffs. But as for accessing the river, “you can’t really get down there because of the industry.” One of Artica’s goals is to connect people to the river and change the way they relate to it. But the group has its own magic. “Every year, someone will appear out of nowhere,” Turnage says. “Last year, it was the Unseen Ghost Brigade. They’re an acting troupe. Their goal was to float down the Mississippi River on a raft, and stop off at different towns and tell stories of the history of people on the river.” In 2009, Artica held “a very small [festival] during the winter, in December... After everything was over...some gypsy band from Minnesota showed up and played around the fire all night.”
Which is not to say that interesting things don’t happen closer to the Arch. March 5 was the 26th consecutive Sunday that “Brad, Servant of the Lord Christ” (the name he provided) stood at the foot of the Arch’s Grand Staircase. Dressed all in white, except for the patterning on his head kerchief and an embroidered cross on his hat (right about where the priest would mark your forehead on Ash Wednesday), he looks a little bit like an astronaut—but his thoughts are with heaven, not outer space. Brad says his mission is to “stand for God” until he’s asked “to pray for one of my brothers or sisters.” Stand he does, stock-still, holding a white Christian flag with a red cross on it, until he’s approached by someone who would like him to pray for them—or pose for a photo. He kindly accommodates both. He is keeping a journal of his experiences, and says he will continue to visit the spot every Sunday between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. until the spirit moves him otherwise.
For Tucker, the time he’s spent on the north riverfront “was a spiritual experience. It was so isolated, but so close to the city. You would see deer tracks, and red foxes hopping through the weeds. There were nine Indian mounds in the vicinity, basically between Biddle and Florida streets along the river. It was a sacred place. There were burial mounds there. I don’t know what it is about it...but to me, it’s good.”
