I just sent off a resume to a company in St. Louis, Missouri. I’ve only driven through St. Louis and I know nothing about it.
I know the climate is either hot and muggy or cold and miserable. Are there any decent center city neighborhoods? I’m a huge sports fan and I know the fans there are fairly enthusiastic. I’m going to guess that the cost of living is reasonable. What else should I know about St. Louis if this job hunt goes further?
St Louis isn’t as bad as people make out. It suffers from severe population flight. In 1950 it had 850,000 people and was a top ten city in the USA. Now at 350,000 people it’s not even in the top 50. But the metro area is much larger, with 2.8 million.
So it definately has some “urban flight” issues.
In terms of weather, St Louis is a city of extremes. It can get VERY hot and muggy and VERY cold and snowy. Though the snow and heat rarely sticks around long, it definately has all four season, which can be good if you like to live in an area with definate seasons.
For most of it’s existence, it has been a key city in the USA and in the top ten so it has everything a major city could want, culture, sports etc.
The cost of living is good, public transportation is do-able but a car is nice.
A lot of St Louis’s problem is that it’s an independent city and not part of the surrounding “St Louis County.” So it can’t get any tax benefits from the richer suburbs, like other cities do.
As I’ve stated it used to be one of the major US cities so it doesn’t lack anything really. Chicago is like a five or six hour drive north, if you simply MUST have a big city 
It sucks.
I suppose I should go into more detail. The weather sucks; the grocery stores suck; the restaurants suck; the library sucks; the bookstores suck; the traffic sucks; the newspapers suck; the local TV news sucks.
The zoo is pretty good, and of course there’s the Arch, which I do find to be an amazing landmark.
It’s bland and boring; it’s Middle America. But frankly, there are a lot of people who like Middle America, I’m just not one of them. If you are, you’d probably enjoy it here.
All that said, there are a lot of people who like all the rivers and lakes. If you’re into watersports or camping, it’s a good place for that. The Central West End is a hot spot for the younger crowd, both for living and nightlife.
It’s fairly safe if you’re not into gangs or hard drugs, otherwise it’s very dangerous. The murder (and other violent crime) rate in the city (and in East St Louis) is quite high. Where I am (more or less in central St Louis County) is fairly peaceful.
ETA: Yes, sports is major here. The Cards are a very good team, and the Rams are very bad, and the Blues are mediocre, but the fans of all are fanatic.
Go into more details. I’ve lived in Columbus, OH for a long time, so I do know about the Midwest.
Is there a center city area with decent restaurants, bars, and culture? I have some CDs with the St. Louis Symphony so I’m guessing there is an arts scene there. I love the symphony, opera, musicals, reading, good restaurants, exercise, and reading. Is there a nice center city area with older buildings sold as condos?
They’re trying to reinvigorate downtown, with some success I guess. At least there are a lot of loft apartments for rent, and Schnuck’s just opened a regular grocery store in downtown, the first for quite some time, apparently. I think the Central West End fits what you seem to have in mind. It’s in the city proper, a few miles west of downtown, and bordering Forest Park.
Someone else will have to respond to the symphony and theatre options; I’m ignorant of those.
The few residential areas downtown are mostly loft-style, and frankly they’re a little sketchy outside of a few core blocks. I’ve a few friends who have downtown lofts, and love 'em, but visitor parking is an issue, and I wouldn’t go jogging in the area, for example. They also have to schlep to the county to go grocery shopping; not much available downtown.
The city is great for sports fans – not just the professional teams (except basketball), but lots of organized sports leagues. However, unless there is something going on downtown (like a game) the city tends to empty out after-hours.
If you’re not going to live downtown, you need to consider where you’ll live, and what your commute will be like. Most of the really nice areas are in the west county area, along I-40/64 and moving west all the time. Oddly, the most desirable places have French names that no one pronounces as though they were French. If you’ve got kids, you’ll want to be aware of school districts, or look into private schools (very popular in StL) – find a good real estate agent. If no kids, or single, you’ll have a few more options – I’d look near the Central West End, or Clayton (unless you’d like to be closer to work), as they’re closer to the college and just-past-college vibe. More expensive than the 'burbs, of course.
Cost of living is probably comparable to Ohio. As far as I know, real estate is still a buyer’s market, but the area was hit no worse than any other area, so I don’t know that there’ll be amazing bargains.
Quite a bit of the “arts” stuff is near the Central West End/Forest Park area. The symphony is pretty good, the Muny at Forest Park and the Fox in the Central West end have musicals all the time – and the Muny has free seating available at the back every show. There are some local theater groups – like Stages – that occasionally do musicals. There’s also a music scene around the Loop, plus more eclectic stuff at various bars and nightclubs (Central West
End and Laclede’s Landing, plus others I’m too old to be familiar with now).
Good restaurants aplenty – the Hill has fabulous Italian food at every price point.
There are some gems scattered about, but you kind of learn about them by word-of-mouth. Out in the ‘burbs it’s more mainstream chains, with some fabulous local places (e.g., Anne Gunns’ in Chesterfield valley).
Alas, St. Louisians tend to be not great at exercise – game of washers (“warshers”) is about it for most; I’d recommend joining a league or something. Although I’ve friends who regularly jog through Forest Park. Since I find the weather horrid, I just belong to the Y, and work out indoors.
Speaking of horrid weather – if you have allergies, God help you. Pollen and mold counts are usually astronomical, except for a short period in the winter.
Unfortunately, there’s not much in the way of good bookstores. Finding a good Borders or B&N, and ordering from Amazon is about it.
edit to add: for God’s sake, if you’re working on the Missouri side, DO NOT look to live over in Illinois. Cost of living is much cheaper over in IL, and there’s some good bedroom communities, but the commute is horrid going that way. If you’re going the other way – working in IL, living in MO (as I do) – traffic is opposite to that commute.
Try to avoid a commute that requires you to take I-270 for a good way, particularly if it crosses the I-270 interchanges with I-70, I-40/64, or I-44, which jam every rushhour.
I was there last fall for my Uncle’s funeral, so granted I was around a lot of older people, but the general feel of the city to me was that it was well past it’s glory days. A lot of buildings seem like they were built prior to the 1960’s without much new around.
I left on a Sunday, which is a busy travel day, but the airport was completely dead. One very long concourse was almost completely empty - there were only two or three flights leaving out of about 25 gates.
That would’ve been the “B” concourse, which is almost completely unused. Lambert used to be a hub (for TWA), but got downgraded from hub status years ago, and so now looks way overbuilt. Also, rather out-of-date in appearance… although when built it was considered innovative and stylish.
(secret trick to getting through security at C-concourse – go through the B-concourse security, which serves mostly airline personnel, is much faster… and then just walk the connecting corridor from B to C.)
There is no such thing as St. Louis style pizza, so you’ll miss out on that. There is no such thing. Anyone that tells you otherwise is probably evil. If you move there, you will probably have to go up in the Arch. You won’t go back. There is some great italian food on “The Hill”. I know how to get there, but I don’t know where it is.
It’s a really mediocre city. Hot and humid all summer, bad winters, pretty much zero culture.
At least they have the Cardinals? It’s better than Kansas City, but that isn’t saying much.
I’ve lived here 30 years. Before that I lived in Kansas City for six years. Those are my only long term adult experiences with cities, so what do I know?
My impression is that St. Louis has pretty much everything a person needs as far as culture goes, but again, hey what do I know?
If you want to hang out with painters, or theater people or musicians it isn’t hard to do. It doesn’t have musicians like Nashville has musicians, but not many place do. It doesn’t have theatre like New York has theatre, but ditto.
If you want to hang out with soccer players, or baseball players or cyclists it isn’t hard to do.
You probably won’t find many restaurants open all night apart from Dennys and diner, but the rest of the time it’s a very good restaurant town.
As has been mentioned before, the Central West end is the mid-town culture center, but there’s also interesting discussion to be had in University City, Clayton and Soulard. (CWE was revitalized by gays, the U-City Loop is counter culture and youth culture, Clayton is upscale and YUP, Soulard is old architecture and down scale… but there those are generalizations, and there are cultural pockets everywhere.)
The weather is bad in the summer. Mass transit is bad. Streets are not bike friendly. Blacks are whites are generally segregated, but there’s not much racial tension.
The Botanical Garden is world class. The City Museum is amazing. The newspaper is very liberal (but getting smaller all the time), river canoeing is a nice local summer tradition. There’s good thrift stores. There’s a good community radio station.
And contrary to what Frank says, there are fine supermarkets. Nothing wrong with Dierbergs or Schnucks.
The thing about St. Louis is that each municipality/neighborhood are all pretty different. And the good things in STL (restaurants, bars, stores, culture) are all located in different places. Yes there are hubs like Delmar, Central West End etc that tend to cram a lot of good into a definable area but all in all you have to know what’s out there.
Going along with what I said above, it requires more specificity on where your job would be located to give you more specific advice on where to live - lots of people lump in Chesterfield, St. Charles, Fenton, O’Fallon in with STL and the area you’re talking about (and possible commute times) skyrocket. I live in a very northern burb and areas like Webster, Chesterfield, South County, South City etc are quite damn far away - 30 minutes with no traffic up to about an hour or so with traffic. But I also live very close to St. Charles, Delmar, Maryland Heights etc.
Really enjoying what St. Louis has to offer requires sometimes significant travel. Our Metro kind of sucks, and we recently had significant cuts to buses and Metro. I live outside the 270 loop and they completely cut off bus service out here, but did find enough money to restore routes into next year. Almost everyone here has a car - and there are not too too many areas you’d want to live where you wouldn’t need one. We are definitely a driving city.
I’d disagree about St. Louisans not working out. Yeah a lot of people do it in gyms - they are sprouting up everywhere. But hit up Forest Park on a nice weekend day and there are people walking/biking everywhere. And at least here in the burbs all the bigger public parks and municipalities/sports complexes offer tons of sports for kids and adults alike. Creve Couer Lake park’s paved loop is bustling on nice days with rollerblades and bikes, joggers. You just have to know where these places are.
Central West End/South City are probably the best areas to live if you want to be near downtown. A friend recently moved close to DeBalivere near Forest Park and likes it. And I freaking love Forest Park. And he is close enough to a Whole Foods, Trader Joes, etc all in Brentwood, and he might have a Schnucks reasonably close too. The outer burbs I’ve been in all have usually amazing access to Dierbergs, Schnucks etc. I have some friends in Soulard/Benton Park too and love that area but don’t know about grocery/regular life type stuff. But my friends used to live down the street from the brewery. I also love Clayton and Brentwood but they are pretty pricy.
I’d advise to mostly stay away from downtown, except like the “lit up” part of Washington Ave and similar. It’s still pretty sketchy and a few wrong turns you can very easily end up over the bridge into a very sketchy part of IL or start heading into the notorious North City area. Stay the heck away from there! But if there is an event like a Cardinals game, Live on the Levee, etc the crowds and therefore police presence make it better; I wouldn’t bother otherwise except for a few choice places.
Our weather sucks but some years we luck out. This summer has had some pretty horrible days but honestly this summer overall has been wonderful. Lots of cooler days. Last winter wasn’t too crazy snow wise but the winter before was shitty. But it’s what you get when you actually have 4 seasons.
Stringer - how can you say St. Louis has zero culture? What do you consider to be culture?
Visit some Tier 1 US cities - New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle. You’ll see what I mean. I can’t name one rock band from St. Louis, for example.
Chuck Berry?
Just because no rock bands “made it” necessarily from St. Louis doesn’t mean much. A lot of bands are from random ass towns and cities. The Urge is a rock band I love that’s from St. Louis. There is a LOT of music here.
I won’t argue St. Louis isn’t in the same league as places like New York, Chicago, San Francisco. And I won’t lie that I’d rather live somewhere like that. But it doesn’t mean that just because St. Louis isn’t as big and centralized as those other big cities that it sucks and has no culture.
We have music, and lots of it. We have art, lots of it. Theater. It’s all somewhere here. And ever go to Delmar random weekends? You might see ice carvers, street music, dancers, and a friend of mine used to spin poi down there. You cannot say we don’t have culture, but yeah you can say we have less culture than “tier 1” bigger cities.
St. Louis is a very spread out city. And I don’t mean city by the technical term - St. Louis proper, which is a wasteland mostly. Every big city has different neighborhoods and areas yes, but I’d say we’re pretty damn spread out in comparison to most if you count all the St. Louis county municipalities as part of St. Louis.
Chuck Berry didn’t “make it”? Any history of Rock is incomplete without him for the rest of time. That’s culture by any definition. How about Sheryl Crow and Uncle Tupelo? It may not have blues the way Chicago does, but it does have an rockabilly scene. I personally don’t care for rockabilly, but it is culture.
St. Louis isn’t my favorite city by a long shot, but saying it has no culture is ignorant.
My mistake myskepticsight, that post comes off as if I’m chiding you for saying St. Louis has no culture when you said no such thing. I’m chiding you for not knowing that St. Louis is integral in the history of Rock and Roll.
St. Louis doesn’t really have a “downtown”. It’s a city of neighborhoods. Central West End, Delmar Loop (most of which is actually in University City), Soulard, Lafayette Square, Shaw, The Hill, South Grand, etc. All have their own character, and generally a pretty good selection of restaurants and shops. The in-between bits of the city are getting better, but are often barren and abandoned.
The symphony is not just pretty good; it’s world class. The current principal conductor is one of the most sought-after conductors in the world right now (both Chicago and New York were trying to get their hands on him before he joined St. Louis). Two principal conductors ago brings us to Leonard Slatkin. Opera is a disappointment. Opera Theatre of St. Louis is a top notch company, but they’re a festival company, which means they only perform for about six weeks in the summer (and all in English). The second biggest company, Union Avenue Opera, performs three shows in the summer and one in the fall. There are a smattering of smaller, pseudo-amateur companies that put on shows sporadically during the year, but quality is pretty much up in the air as far as they go, and they tend to fold quickly.
As far as musical theater and straight theater, while there’s nothing to compare to Broadway or other, larger cities’ theater districts, Grand Center provides a number of venues, large and small. The Fox is the only major venue that operates all year, but the Muny, which seats over 13,000, operates in the summer.
Overall, the charge that St. Louis lacks culture is sort of bizarre. Beyond Chuck Berry (who stills performs once a month at Blueberry Hill on the Loop), there’s Ike and Tina Turner and Miles Davis, technically from East St. Louis but still within the cultural area of influence. Sheryl Crow started out in St. Louis. Nelly grew up in University City. That’s not to say that other cities don’t have richer cultural histories, but for a relatively small city in the middle of the country, I’d say they’re not doing too badly.
The summer weather does, indeed, suck. I’d disagree that winter is especially cold and snowy, but then I grew up in New England. It’s fairly cool during most of the winter. The snow comes in irregular bursts of a few inches here and there that generally disappears in a day or two. Snowfall of over a foot is a once-in-a-decade occurrence. Most winters you won’t even see a six-inch storm. Spring is very pretty when the dogwoods and magnolias bloom. They’re disappointingly short-lived. Fall is nice. The foliage is pretty if not especially notable.
I mostly enjoy it here. I don’t know that I’d choose to live here forever if it weren’t for jobs and my wife’s family sort of tying us here, but it’s a nice enough place to live.
ETA: In response to Frank’s assertion that the restaurants suck, I have to disagree. Largely the restaurants in the suburbs (the county) suck, because they’re mostly chains. There are, however, many excellent restaurants in the city, in the aforementioned neighborhoods. You may have to look around a bit, but they’re there.
Can I ask a question, since you’re all here?
Is there a KC vs St Louis rivalry, similar to LA/San Francisco, Seattle/Portland, etc.?
Fairly much, yes. I was in college at Mizzou during the I-70 World Series (KC vs. St.L) which was the last time I can recall it played up really big. In the main, the big rivalry between the two is over state funding, of course.