Reuter Rules

My friend and contemporary Thomas Crone has republished my interview with Bob Reuter over at his new Web venture, Creative St. Louis.

Thomas is a very prolific writer and has a wealth of knowledge on the happenings and places and people of STL, and the new site he's editing is pretty cool. I'm honored to have my material published there, and I totally recommend adding it to your weekly- if not daily- reading.

I always miss all the fun

I was invited to attend an Urban Explorers Labor Day Picnic this afternoon, but due to my rock n' roll party lifestyle, rolled out of bed just a tad too late to make it to the meeting place, and missed the expedition. On top of that, I also missed this little bit of excitement while the UE folks were on their way to their location:



Video courtesy of Thomas Crone from 52nd City.

And another vantage point captured by Steve Smith can be found here.


I always miss the fun. Poop.

Urban Exploring Film To Be Screened

Thomas Crone over at 52nd City posted an entry today telling of the screening of a film about Urban Explorers. I've seen bits and pieces of it on YouTube, and it really looks fascinating. Here's the skinny:

On Thursday, September 11, 52nd City is proud to co-present "Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness" at the Webster University Film Series. The film, by noted documentarian Melody Gilbert, follows urban explorers in a variety of settings, throughout America and Europe. A visual treat, the project does a wonderful job of introducing the UE "hobby" to the uninitiated, while serving as a call-to-travel for those already taking part in the scene.

The film will screen at the Winifred Moore Auditorium at 7 p.m.

Post-Dispatch finally takes an interest in preservation. Kind of...

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch today has a series of articles posted on stltoday.com that deal with the architectural preservation of endangered buildings in the metro area.

The only beef I have with these aticles is that it seems like the editors of the P-D approached this in a way that made it seem like they were more interested in the story itself, rather than the subject of the story. I mean, this isn't exactly "news" in the strictest sense of the word... so some journalistic editorializing would've been acceptable in this case. I would have liked to see reporter Diane Toroian Keaggy inject just a wee bit o' personality into her articles in this set. The story she wrote about Thomas Crone and Michael Allen's recent trip to the Armour Meat Packing Plant in East STL was interesting, but her writing was very flat and uninspired. Writer David Bonetti got it a bit more right with his articles. His articles seem to have a little more meat, and therefore make the avereage reader really want to care about these endangered and crumbling buildings.

But really, the fact that the P-D is doing a story, let alone six plus a video, is pretty cool.

Here's a slideshow of some endangered and demolished buildings in the area.

Video of Thomas and Micheal's trip to the Armour Meat Packing facility.

The accompanying story by Diane Toroian Keaggy.

Keaggy's other story about brick thieves on the North Side.

David Bonetti's article about the quest for preservation.

Cheeky "interview" with The Moolah Theater. Not the manager or owner... the actual building.

Bonetti's other article on developer Craig Heller and his vision for downtown living.

What's also cool is that the P-D gives a shout out for Ecolgy of Absence and Built St. Louis, two of my favorite sites dedicated to documenting the city in which we live.

Hopefully more people will understand just what is at stake here, and demand more from our elected officials. Better still, let's hope that the residents of STL realize that a large part of the solution rests in their hands. The politicians can only do so much. We as a community need to attack the problem of decay and entropy together, in addition to fighting vociferously any plans to tear down historic buildings so that Walgreens can build yet another store. And above all else, let's hope that more and more people document- either by photo, video or the written word- this beautiful city and its beautiful landscape.

Now if you'll excuse me... I'm off to take some pictures.