Near Dead Passenger Brings My Thoughts to City Drug Policy and Clubbin Lifestyle

It was around 4 in the morning and long after a popular night club on Olive in Midtown had closed when I was part of a two cab order to pick up a group of party-goers.

The group of about ten was made up of all fashionably dressed young whites (maybe college students or just out of school) and at least one of them had a Bosnian accent. Within the group there was a thin young woman in a black dress that had to be carried to my cab. This happens quite often and I just figured she had too much to drink and it was no big deal as long as she didn’t start puking (as my last passenger did…thankfully out of the window).

It took me a couple of minutes to realize that this girl was not merely passed out from drinking; rather she was seriously ill from a drug overdose. This reality came to me as I looked at the females in the group who were crying and one began checking her pulse (she could not find it). While everyone looked at the girl while she showed no movement very intently one guy was saying loudly that the girl was fine and everything was OK (I am going to assume this is the asshole who gave her the drugs).

The group pulled the girl out of my cab and decided to call an ambulance or drive her to a hospital. That was the right thing to do (after a long night of bad decision-making I am sure). People often call cabs when what they need is an ambulance, getaway car, police car, or free ride to the nut house.

I don’t know what happened to this girl. What I do know is that drug use is rampant in these night clubs whether it is ecstasy pills or cocaine and mixed with alcohol the consequences can be deadly.

Night clubs are opening left and right in St. Louis and the whole clubbin lifestyle has become the norm for those 40 and under. Some people go out every night and some only on the weekends and many believe that if you are not engaged in that activity, intoxicants included, that you are somehow not living a fulfilling life. Of course I disagree; I see the whole clubbin lifestyle and the bad behaviors surrounding it along with the delay of marriage, extension of adolescence mixed with the removal of any social or sexual taboos, as an empty and soulless lifestyle that will not bring any meaning to those engaged in it in the long run.

On a further note what I witnessed was criminal. Like a lot of young people in these clubs who are young professionals or college students from middle to upper class families this group was engaged in the usage and purchase of illegal drugs. Whether you believe drugs should be legal or not the fact of the matter is they are illegal at this point and as the affluent are partying and high in fancy clubs guarded by the St. Louis Police and operating (with not only the blessing of the city but the encouragement) drug enforcement teams are raiding homes and rounding up mostly poor and black people in the same city on a nightly basis.

Why the disparity? If drugs are illegal and police are kicking in doors of those involved in the drug trade and usage why are they guarding the doors of other places where drugs are known to be used? Is it solely a matter of tax dollars being paid, alderman’s pockets being lined, and the encouragement of redevelopment and gentrification by City Hall? We will see where this development strategy will lead and insha’Allah what happened to this girl is not a sign of things to come but I fear it is.

To Be Pro School Choice is to Be Pro-City

I have been driving like crazy the last couple of days and when I have not been driving I have been taking care of some family issues. It has been a combination of those two things and the fact that the heat has just taken something out of me that  haven’t written about the primary election results of this Tuesday.

In retrospect I am glad that I have had a minute to think about the election results before I write. For the most part the candidates I wanted to win won with the exception of Rodney Hubbard narrowly losing to Robin Wright-Jones.

That result kind of hit me hard. Not only because I like Rodney a lot; but because I was almost positive he was going to win. I had several passengers tell me they were voting for him and only one stated her support for Wright-Jones (and she was a campaign worker). Driving around I saw many times more Hubbard signs than Wright-Jones signs and Rodney was all over the radio ( even Cedric the Entertainer endorsed him).

I knew that Wright-Jones had some support from the teachers union over Hubbard’s support of school choice; but I did not know that issue was big enough to doom him. So, I have been thinking a lot about this over the past couple of days, and to be quite honest the more I think about issues of education and how they effect out local elections the angrier I become.

Am I mad because teachers unions want to have a political say and protect their jobs? Absolutely not; although I know for a fact there are a few old hard-line Marxists in key positions in the local union and that they still cling to the long defeated notion that a quality education, and indeed success in life, is solely a by-product of how much money is thrown around. I am mad at the fact that, amongst the people I know, the stiffest opposition to school choice comes from those with no children. They are opposed to vouchers based on their political and social ideologies and possibly their hostility towards religion and will vote on that issue. Yet, as they have no children in the home, they are not forced to make the tough decisions about where to send their kids to school or where to live. There is the further issue of some on the left wanting to engage in social engineering and indoctrination in the public schools and fear that children being reared in religious schools would not conform to their values.

Primary Voting in the Heat

Maybe I am a political joke and maybe I am befitting of the look given to a nerd that my wife gave me when I told her I was excited about casting my first electronic ballot; but I am excited.

This morning I voted at the church on Park and South 10^th in the Democratic Primary after working a few hours in the cab on a Board of Elections account taking poll workers to their respective stations. Most of the workers came from the projects on the near north side or directly from the Board of elections and were going to south side polling stations. At any rate, due to the long rides we had the chance to talk a lot about politics.

Election days, even primaries, are special to me, almost like holidays. In a world where many cannot vote and were many who do vote are pawns in sham elections I value the voting system we have in this country. I try my best to never miss an election and I have only missed a handful since I was 18 (when I voted in the 1992 Presidential election for Bill Clinton in my first vote).

On today’s ballot there were only a couple of close races. Rodney Hubbard, the candidate I support for State Senate and a man who has a bright political future, has a challenge from Robin Wright-Jones who was backed by the teachers union and some other yuppie elements. Be that as it may Rodney has the support of the people and when I heard him on 104.1 yesterday doing his thing I said this is the future of St. Louis politics. Rodney Hubbard, bringing the hip-hop generation to the State Senate. I can also say that I have ran into so many people over the last week or two who told me they grew up with Rodney and have known him their whole lives and that he is a man that moves amongst the people which is rare amongst politicians.

I also voted for Tisharu Jones (I think that’s how you spell her name), Andrea Simckes for state treasurer as I feel she represents the exciting new generation of local public servants, and Chris Koster for Attorney General as I feel he can mount the best general election campaign.

One interesting note; this morning I talked to a black woman from the north side who told me she hated going to southwest St. Louis because she could feel the racism in the air. Before talking to her I talked to a very blue-collar white man who is also a Vietnam veteran and he told me he hadn’t voted in years but was planning on voting for Obama. Will men like him bring about a change not only in Washington but in St. Louis?

Cop Fights, STL Hooker Watch, and North of Delmar?

Now I know that all of the craziness going on in St. Louis is not just in my cab. It turns out the even cops, in this case the current and former chief of the Wellston PD, are feeling the heat of the hot STL summer and are pulling pistols out on one another.

Another sign that things are getting bad locally is the increase in traffic amongst street hookers. There was a time when you would only see hookers on the ho strolls on Cherokee and Cass and your crack ho’s thoughout the city around dope sets. Over the past week or so I have noticed hos all over the city plying their trade. It has also occurred to me that Da Lou may not be able boast the claim of the nations ugliest hookers for much longer. I have called STL hookers the “Dollar store of hos” for a long time and have never seen anything remotely close to appealing on the street, until this week, so I am wondering? Has the bad economy and high gas prices led to an increase in the talent pool for hookers? Maybe it is Mayor Slay’s and the developers job creation solution after they get done putting a bar, nightclub, and overpriced restaurant on every corner.

There are plenty of cheap things to do in the city if you are broke. For example, last night there was an Urban Revenge of the Nerds Bike Ride aka/ Nude Bike Ride. This is what nerds do when they want to be cool when they are grown. Ride around in the city with no clothes after loading up on tofu at Whole Foods. Ever wonder why city-dwellers are not often fond of their new young white neighbors? Exhibit A…they don’t care if you wrote on essay on Martin Luther King, Jr. in high school that moved fellow students to tears if you are riding on a bike naked in front of their kids.

Eddie Hassan is a good man who has done what few could. May Allah make his ordeal easy on him insha’Allah.

And finally, my last trip was an extremely nice and smart young African-American man from LA who is out here in Da Lou rehabbing houses. He just worked on a building on the north side of the 4400 block of Delmar on the traditionally black side of the divide. I am going to watch with interest if this is a sign to come and the globos are gradually moving north. If so it could alter the political and social landscape of the city.

Soccer Legends in My Cab and Local History Lesson

I was fortunate enough to have two St. Louis sports legends and two huge names in the world of professional soccer in my cab this morning. Harry Keough and his son Ty caught my cab on the way to the airport. They had a flight to the Soccer Hall of Fame in upstate New York.

St. Louis is a powerhouse in American soccer and there may be no one individual more responsible for building that base than Harry Keogh. H. Keough was on the 1952 and 1956 US Olympic teams and was on the famous 1960 team (along with 4 other St. Louisans) that beat England in the 1960 World Cup 1-0 ( watch the film The Game of Their Lives or read the book to get a better picture). He went onto coach soccer at Florissant Valley Community College and then to lead St. Louis University to 5 NCAA national championships.

What I enjoyed most from my conversation with him was how he told me of growing up in the Carondelet Neighborhood in deep South St. Louis and being taught soccer by Spanish immigrants ( Keough is an Irish-American) and then playing for a pro club team sponsored by Kutis Funeral Homes. He said when he was young there were two sources of power in local soccer; the Carondelet neighborhood and the north side teams around Fairgrounds Park (which led the way for North County, in particular Florissant, to become a soccer power).

His son Ty should be known to those who have watched soccer on American TV for a while. After playing on the US National Team in 1979 and 1980 he went onto a pro career before coaching soccer for Washington University and then broadcasting for ESPN and ABC where he covered 4 World Cups. He agreed with me that Major League Soccer can succeed in St. Louis; but it has to be done in the right way

BTW, unlike a lot of famous people I have had in my cab, particularly baseball people, both of these men were very friendly and nice to talk to.

Crazy Woman With a Knife, A Drunk Fool and a Young Brownshirt

Sorry for the low quality we are still having problems.

Granite City Thoughts, Sub-Prime Victim to Be and The Delmar Divide

A friend of mine in Brooklyn has been asking me a lot about Granite City lately. The place has somewhat of a mixed local reputation. A few years ago it was ranked the worst place in America to live, it has a reputation for being very racist, and Granite City High has been under investigation in the past for discrimination against the few black students they have (or had at the time). In general, after all is said, Granite City is just an old blue-collar white industrial town that has been hit hard by American deindustrialization. It is a victim of the global economy and the high rates of poverty amongst the white population often lead to bitter resentments between them and African-Americans in neighboring communities and the increasing number of Mexicans in the area.

None of these things are what interested my friend in Granite City. What drew his attention to the area is the fact that it houses one of the most elite training facilities for mixing marital artists, the HIT Squad Gym founded by grappler Matt Hughes. Granite City also has a decent boxing gym which in recent years housed the Australian fighter Robbie Peden. My friend asked why Granite City? My answer has always been, more than the fact that Granite City is a tough town ( which is a factor, no doubt),  there is a long and storied tradition of amateur wrestling in Granite City ( famous for housing the Granite City Invitational for high school wrestlers around Christmas every year). Wrestling has produced more MMA talent than any other fighting art it can be argued and Granite City has produced more wrestling talent than most.

I speak of Granite City because I took a passenger there last night. He was a friendly gentleman from Tennessee. The guy was nice enough but let it be known he had little use for blacks or Mexicans. He said “if there was a war between Mexico and America in my town there is no doubt Mexico would win”. Regarding blacks he spoke of neighboring Spencer, TN. He said there is a billboard there that reads “niggers don’t let the sun set on your black ass in our town”. Since coming home I have googled that and haven’t found nothing so I don’t know if that is true or not; but whether there is a sign or not I am sure there are many locals who feel that way.

Not Getting the Message on Sub-Prime

A little while later I picked up an extremely attractive young black woman from a private party along an industrial stretch of 9^th street just north of downtown and dropped her off in Old North St. Louis as they call it now. She told me she was going to look and buy a home in the Holly Hills section of South St. Louis because the neighborhood has got too bad and she will not even let her kids out to play. When I asked her how she found out about the property she said she read about it in the Thrifty Nickel and called a 1-800 number and was qualified after giving them $89 even though she has bad credit. Obviously, despite all that is in the news, there are some still falling prey to the bloodsuckers in the mortgage industry.

Blood Line

Around 6AM I was winding it down and driving down Delmar headed towards Kingshighway when I saw a group of about 50 people standing in line in front of a storefront. When I looked over I saw they were standing in line for a blood bank. The type of place that gives you 10 or 20 bucks to give blood or plasma. I snapped a photo on my cell from a distance but didn’t want to get an up close shot, it just didn’t feel right. Maybe I will bring my buddy Frank Friction one day and we will shoot the scene and actually talk to the people. It is one sign of a worsening economy and another example of America becoming a nation of haves and have not’s. Just a few blocks away in the Central West End the globo LDR crowd (Latter-day Rome) sip imported European wines, smoke illegal cigars, snort cocaine at night clubs full of debauchery, buy overpriced goods, eat expensive foods they may not even like, call cabs and then jump in cabs they didn’t order with no respect for the driver who just burned gas to pick them up and worry about the sun hitting them the wrong way at the sidewalk café.

…

btw, if you missed the fight Saturday night between Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito ( Margarito won in the 11th)  you missed an instant classic that will re-air this Saturday night on HBO with the Zab Judah-Joshua Clottey bout.

Obama Supporter Doesn’t Mind “giving them more balls” and a Passenger Remembers Ryan Hummert

We all know the stereotypes and generalizations of who supports the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama; the young, the educated, and African-Americans. It is also known that stereotypes and generalizations are often not entirely accurate and you cannot easily categorize every person. Because of this, combined with my nosiness and my interest in politics, I often ask passengers who they are going to vote for in the presidential election.

The other night I picked up a young white male of about 21 or 22 in the Central West End to take him to a strip club in Sauget. He got in the cab with a little bit of an attitude and was dressed like a gang-banger saying he was paying by credit card so I didn’t really talk to him that much weary of the fact that the card may not be good.

About half way through the ride he asked me “so what of you think of Obama?” I responded that I intend to vote for Obama and he said he was too and then he let me in on some of the arguments he was having with his family. He said ” my father and uncles say that voting for Obama and making him president would give them people more balls and they already are trying to take over…I’m not worried about it because my nuts are bigger than anyone’s” and then he went on to say a lot of other things that I didn’t understand. Maybe he was high or maybe the MF was just crazy, who knows, but in the little bit that I did understand I was able to draw something from.

His arguments with the older members of his family are very typical of white working-class families of the last 15 or 20 years. Those who have grown up in the Hip-Hop Generation (Generation X) and now the next generation have radically different racial views for the most part than the older members of their family. Because of this, and the awkwardness to which many approach hem, these young white people are often made fun of and ridiculed by the snobbish elitist entertainment industry, West County types, racists, and yuppie globo elitists in places like the CWE and Lafayette Park. How many young men like this there are there that are voting for Obama I don’t know. The studies show that young people of his demographic do not vote in high numbers and many vote in the same patters as their parents (i.e. Kid Rock) and never develop a political philosophy attached to their lifestyle. Time will tell.

Ryan Hummert Remembered by Passenger

If you are in the St. Louis area by now you all know about the tragic case of the Maplewood firefighter Ryan Hummert. The 22 year old rookie and son of the former mayor was shot and killed in an ambush after a deranged man set fire to his own property. The same day that it happened I picked up a young couple a few blocks away from where the shooting took place. The young male told me that several weeks ago he had been stabbed in an attempted robbery in Maplewood and that Hummert had been one of those who saved his life. It is written on which day we shall all die; but who knows, if he would have not fallen victim to such a heinous act, how many other lives Hummert could have touched.

Geriatric Obama Fan, Legs in the Street, and Local Cage Fighter

Ever since the beginning of the Barack Obama Presidential candidacy we have heard about the enthusiastic millions of young supporters that he has particularly on college campuses. While there is no doubt that is true a passenger in my cab illustrated the point that fervent Obama supporters are not limited to the young.

I picked up an elderly African-American woman from a bank in U City and brought here to a retirement home on North Kingshighway. On the way there the lady told me of her undying love for two things; Obama and the Cardinals. She said she has been going to Cardinals games since the 1940’s when the Cardinals played at the old Sportsman’s Park on North Grand.  She said she still goes to the stadium on a regular basis but has been embroiled in controversy with her fellow church ladies in her Sunday school.

She routinely goes to Busch Stadium on Sundays after church and some other church ladies have deemed that to be a violation of the Christian Sabbath.  In order to clarify the issue the lady went to her pastor who informed her that as long as she attended church services there was nothing wrong with enjoying herself at the ballpark. Besides, she told me, even if going to the game was wrong she had never slept around with married man like some of the other church ladies had.

Obama also excited her. After going on and on about how good looking he was she told me she just loved him and had sent him 30 dollars (a real life example of the small donors to Obama you are always hearing about in the media). There is only one thing Obama could do to upset her and that is to make Hillary Clinton his VP choice (she likes Edwards). Along with being a lover of Obama her take on most local candidate’s was ” does Clay support them or not” except for Mayor Slay who she had words for that cannot be used in church.

Pevely Closing City Location

Maybe you have driven by the Pevely Dairy on Grand just south of Chouteau a thousand times and never paid to much attention to it and maybe you have purchased Pevely products countless times at the store. What you may not know is that after 100 years at the South Grand location Pevely (owned by Prairie Farms) is moving out to Hazelwood in North County to the old Schnucks diary. I found this out from a passenger who had been working there for 27 years and lived in the Metro East. He told me when they make the move he will take his retirement.  He speculated that St. Louis University would buy the location.

Accidents

A lot of people read or heard about the bad accident on Highway 40 in West County this week involving a semi-truck that killed two people and injured a dozen others. On that same day a fellow driver and friend of mine while working witnessed a 3 car accident on the North Side resulting from an illegal street race up West Florissant. One cars lost control at the intersection of Union went airborne, crashed, ripped in half and ended up near a liquor store parking lot. This left one guys leg in the street and the rest of his body about 50 feet away. Guess his car was not “Death Proof” and maybe it is not a good idea to race on city streets but then again all of us do things we shouldn’t. Of course, as tragic as these two accidents are, today at Imo’s on Forest Park and Taylor I heard of one even worse; a lady lost her young child in a car accident connected to a police chase (not sure when it happened).

Cage Fighter

Being a huge boxing fan I only pay mild attention to the world of Mixed Martial Arts and I have stated many times in the past that the biggest draw for MMA is the league format which helps to make good fights for the fans and the fact that unlike in boxing most of the MMA grapplers have the complexion for the connection. Last week I had a local cage fighter in my cab and asked him his thoughts on the youtube street fighting phenomena turned MMA fighter in the EliteXC league Kimbo Slice and he stated “Kimbo is  a punk…I could kick his ass”. Apparently, there is a lot of animosity towards Kimbo from grassroots MMA guys because they feel he has not paid his dues in the sport and is making money other guys should be earning. But, like in boxing, in MMA you are paid based on your marketing power. For the record, I agree with my passenger, Kimbo would be crushed against any top-ten MMA fighter or boxer. The guy in my cab told me he got his start in the biz competing in unsanctioned street fights for money in Sauget…and I thought the strippers with attitudes in my cab had a tough job over there.

Lessons from the Inbev Takeover and What it Means to St. Louis

Having just gotten back to St. Louis I am getting my first local reaction to people to the sale of this quintessential St. Louis institution. I had written on the pending Inbev takeover from the East Coast but now that I am back in St. Louis I have a better idea of how locals are taking it.

There seems to be a sadness from many people to the takeover. After all St. Louis is famous for very few things and beer is one of them. Now that AB is no longer locally owned ( making Schlafy the largest locally owned brewery, as stated in a memo the owner sent out to employees) Da Lou has lost a little bit of luster. STL tourists in Rome, Jerusalem, Bangkok and Rio may no longer be able to point to a bottle and say “look this is where I am from” to people who know nothing of the St. Louis Cardinals and the Arch.

I am not a drinker so my feelings on AB have always been mixed. They have been a good corporate citizen and done a lot of good in the community; but they make and sell a product that is clearly harmful. While they pump millions into local charities and into the tax-base they cost the region countless lives through drunk-driving and beer-related violence. Having said all of that, at the end of the day, Americans like other Westerners like to drink and beer is the beverage of choice for many Americans and as long as there is a multi-billion dollar company that provides thousands of good paying jobs to hard-working locals I was glad to have them in St. Louis.

Mayor Francis Slay has said that his first order of business with CEO Carlos Brito will be do try and convince him to move their corporate headquarters from Belgium to St. Louis (not going to happen). I think locals should be more realistic and instead of asking for the impossible focusing on what can be salvaged; good paying jobs to blue-collar union workers and corporate charitable efforts. In particular, two things locals should petition the new ownership to do is keep Grant’s Farm open (which is a local treasure) and to continue the world famous brewery tours.

If Inbev is unwilling to keep these two things going, it will send a sign that they may pull out of St. Louis. St. Louisans keep on saying that AB will never close the brewery because St. Louis is centrally located in the United States and the cost of living and business here is low. When they say this they are missing one huge point; Missouri is a union state and St. Louis is a pro-labor city and relocating to a Southern right-to-starve state would save Inbev millions every year in labor costs. Don’t think this could not happen.

What the local media is not telling you to any significant degree is this;

- St. Louis used to have one of the largest companies in the world in McDonnell-Douglas based locally. They laid off thousands of people and were bought by Boeing, devastating the North St. Louis County economy. Sons of middle-class professional workers of McDonnell-Douglas have now come out of broke North County schools and are more likely to be in prison than have a job like their fathers had.

- TWA was based in St. Louis and was one of Americans largest airlines. Ten years ago you could get a direct flight from St. Louis to London, New York or Miami. Today, unless you wan to fly a discount airline, it is extremely difficult to get a direct flight from St. Louis to either coast. Because of this St. Louis has a beautiful convention center that can only attract second and third rate conventions because accessibility is a major issue for convention planners. Most importantly when TWA was bought by American thousands of locals lost their jobs. You can find ex union members who worked at TWA with good benefits now greeting you at Family Dollar or Wal-Mart.

- AG Edwards was the largest financial services firm based outside of New York and was bought by Wachovia. Thankfully, Wachovia made a major investment in St. Louis, but STL no longer has the prestige it did in that industry despite Edward Jones still being based here.

- St. Louis used to have the second highest concentration of jobs in the automotive industry. That is no longer the case. The old GM plant on Union on the North Side is long gone having moved out to Wentzville with an iffy future. Ford has closed its doors in Hazelwood and Chrysler is gradually shutting down its operation in Fenton. Ex auto workers with no college degrees have to take a major cut in their pay and lifestyle. Guys who were making $30 per hour are now lucky if they make $12 and have any benefits at all.

While the city of St. Louis is getting cleaner, easier to live in, more full of life, and in some areas safer, the prospects for the local economy in the long-haul are not looking great. While everyone is partying away at the Mandarin or the Pepper Lounge the local economy is on shaky ground.

What is going to come to replace the jobs we have lost? Bio-tech is often mentioned. The problem with bio-tech is it is great to have as a source of tax-revenue and jobs but those jobs are few as it is not labor-intensive. Coffee shops? High-priced restaurants? Night clubs? How many of you know more that two people with a green job? I am not trying to be pessimistic but St. Louis needs to do some serous soul searching.

The national corporate media is telling you we are in a recession yes and people are hurting and companies are bout and jobs are lost and yes all of that is true. What they are not telling you is that America is not the country it was 10 or 20 years ago. We are not as dominant. In the new global economy many Americans will loose and that means that a sizeable chunk of Americans may just be looking at less comfortable lifestyles more on par with the working and middle-classes in less affluent nations. For a handful of wealthy Americans the global economy is working just fine and it is precisely for them that such a system was created.

Next…

I have an interesting cabbie tale of an enthusiastic Obama supporter who is over 80, been going to cardinals games since the Sportsman park days, and is vociferously arguing the merits of watching baseball on Sundays with other church ladies. Ill mix in that a tale from a fellow cabbie of a detached leg in the middle of the street in Walnut Park and a cage-fighter in my cab.