The Great American Reach Around - The Midwest & Greece & Turkey

St. Louis, Missouri

Located on the Mississippi river on the border with Illinois, St. Louis is the closest thing Missouri has to a world city. It has long been a center of science and industry in the United States, but as the industry has disappeared St. Louis had struggled to find more of the science part. After decades of decay and rampant crime the city is in the early stages of an upswing. It has a long way to go to fight itself out of the decay (anyone who even drives through St. Louis can see that) but it seems to have finally put itself on the right course.

St. Louis has a very dark side lurking just across the river. Residents of St. Louis, Missouri can try to blame Illinois, but East St. Louis is a creature of their own creation. The slowly-shrinking pool of St. Louis vomit on the Illinois side of the border has been a cancer of destitution and decay since the 1950s. East St. Louis is slowly managing a comeback as well, but it owes it all to riverboat casinos. Stripping your population of their wealth to rebuild your town is a hollow victory, at best.

Visitors to St. Louis don't have it all bad. You can go to a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game (they're kind of like the Yankees of the Midwest) or check out the arch that looms over the city like a space-age door knocker. There are a lot of historic buildings and museums, or you can just sit down with a picnic by the Mississippi river and watch a barge loaded with garbage drift slowly past. What's that smell? Oh, looks like someone left another dead body in one of the abandoned HUD houses on the north side!

A little side note on St. Louis: St. Louis was the location of the 1904 World's Fair. One of the main attractions was the first Ferris Wheel…the main attraction of the famous Chicago World's Fair of 1893. Way to go, losers!