Who is Umar Lee and Why The Hell is he Bloggin Da Lou?
For the past 4 years or so I have been operating a popular blog dealing with Muslim issues. I am starting this new blog to deal with all things local in St. Louis. As the URL states I am a STL cabbie and you may see me rollin through the alleyways or highways late at night. I may have given you a ride him or threw your drunk ass out of my cab, it just all depends. My interests are varied; but with regards to St. Louis I am most motivated to talk about the issues I care about most. Those issues are race-relations in St. Louis, politics, history, the streets, poverty, cultural matters and occasionally sports.
My vantage point is unique. I am first and foremost a Muslim, an adherent of Islam, and I am a white person who came of age in this racially-divided city that still has a lot of bitterness between the races. If you are engaging in any conversation on public life in St. Louis and not talking about race you are not being real because everything in Da Lou is about race.
I would not say that I am a conservative because I support the role of government in helping the people, a less robust and violent American foreign policy, regulating business, redistributing wealth, and am a proponent of things such as universal healthcare and unionization. In the world we live in today I would also not say I am much of a liberal. I am in favor of gun-rights and a supporter of the 2nd Amendment, support school choice, and am fairly conservative on most social issues.
In the past I have worked almost every job known to man from political work to media work to factory work to shoveling shit and now I am a cabbie ( which I have done on and off for years). While it was still running I authored a column in the Arch City Chronicle about driving a cab. That column was dedicated solely to observations emanating from discussions with my passengers and things I had seen. This blog will deal with those issues but it will also deal with much more than driving a cab.
Due to the fact that I am a working man and am the son of an auto-worker and was raised mostly by my grandfather who was an ex-marine and pipefitter my outlook is blue-collar in a venue that is white-collar. I am big and masculine in a world of the frail and feminized. I am traditional in the world of the post-modern. I shoot from the hip and say what I feel with little concern for offending anyone in the world of the politically correct. I am religious in the world of skeptical agnostics. I am a family man in the world of those who may look down on traditional families.
If I drank I would be a beer-drinker (American) and not a wine-sipper. I have never drunk a cup of coffee in my life and never had a full salad. I drink Diet Dr. Pepper mixed with cherry and vanilla from Quicktrip on Gravois or Souh Kingshighway. You will never find me dining at fancy joints in the Central West End or Clayton where Midwesterners give each other phony European pecks on the cheeks. No, you can find me at joints like Hodaks on Gravois, Courtesy Diner, or if I am on the North Side Goody Goody or Crown Candy. If I am with my Muslim brothers or family you may find me at the kabob joint on Kingshighway and Christy. I don’t eat European chocolate but I love Ted Drewes. Not a big fan of French pastries but I can go for some doughnuts at World’s Fair or down on Chippewa and Watson. I don’t patron Barnes and Noble, but you will find me at Subterranean books on Delmar.
You will not catch me out on the town much as I am not a fan of night clubs and the clubbin lifestyle and have seen enough foolishness in my cab from those who are for me to never want to step foot in any of them. I pick up passengers from every club and watering hole in Da Lou; but if you see me out and I am having fun I am at the St. Louis Public Library- Carpenter Branch with my man Mike, at any area Masjid (mosque) or with my Muslim brothers out, sitting somewhere talking of big things with the philosopher chef Ben, out with the family, or at the movies.
I am someone of a film buff and have a taste for independent and foreign films so you can catch me at the Tivoli, the Hi-Pointe, sometimes the Chase, and yes God-forbid even Plaza Frontenac at times. On TV I am either watching some news or educational programming or am watching sports (boxing is my main sport but I also like baseball, football, soccer, old school wrestling and basketball). The only shows of the last ten years I liked were all on HBO (The Wire, The Sopranos and Curb Your Enthusiasm). I do not watch any current show airing now and never saw an episode of Friends, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, Weeds, Sex in the City, Entourage or ER as I seem them all as a little too yuppie for my taste.
While I enjoy music 90% of the time in my cab I am listening to KWMU (the local NPR station). Since I have no CD player in the cab the only time I turn on the music is when 100.3 or 104.1 are playing old-school hip-hop, when Selena J. is doing her Soulternative show on 104.9, or the Friday night hip-hop show on KDHX.
Other than that I am home or working. When I say work I am talking about driving a cab which means I work 70 or 80 hours a week every week. The money can be good (or bad) and the benefits are nil. There are pluses and minuses to the cab game; but for me the big plus is I see everyone and am a part of every major event in St. Louis. As a cabbie you live and breathe with the city and you ride high when it is high and are low when it is low. I may pick up a homeless person and the next passenger is a pro athlete. Next I may have a GOP official and my next call could be to Novak’s. You may pick a degenerate gambler from the boat and drop them off in the projects only to pick up a car full of stunnaz from The Loft.
From time to time my English may not be great. However, what can you expect from a guy who spent more time locked-up as a teenager than he did in school and who was kicked out of school for assaulting the principal?
This city is alive and booming once again after decades of decline. St. Louis is an exciting place to live (for my part I live just off Lafayette Square) and there are many issues out there locally that need to be discussed and I hope to add to the discussion insha’Allah.
July 16, 2008 at 11:02 am
Salaam ‘Alaikum
I never knew you were a Dr. Pepper person — and the cherry shot too… only a true connoisseur would know this!
July 16, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Looking forward to reading your stuff Bro. Good luck.
July 17, 2008 at 7:41 pm
What with the DeathRow color scheme I’m going blind
July 24, 2008 at 5:07 am
Since you’re writing about da Lou, perhaps you’ve heard of this story?
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/news/stlouiscitycounty/story/00834845f12de2cb8625748c00110686?OpenDocument
miscellany101
August 7, 2008 at 6:01 pm
First of all, congrats on the RFT mention. It caught my eye there and is the reason I’m sending you comments here.
While I greatly admire the theme, structure and diligence of what you’re doing here, I have to point out a couple of things.
1) You mention the line at the blood bank being another sign of a weakening economy. Sorry, but I’ve been to that (or one very close to it) to give blood as part of a college requirement. If you had driven by on the day I was there, a-way back in ‘96, you would seen fourty of us and that is just counting the people I was there with. I know the same group goes quite often and usually takes multiple carloads. A line at a blood bank means nothing, so there’s no “signs” here.
2) You mention America becoming a nation of have and have-nots. I believe you meant to say country or state, as nation has nothing to do with geo-political boundries. Regardless, I would ask you to point to one state in the world right now that is not a collection of have and have-nots. In fact, I would say, relative to regional norms, one will “always” find have and have-nots anywhere you look, especially taking into account the context of local ideals of wealth. Always has been, probably always will be. This is not defending or supporting anything. Simply pointing out what I feel is a hole in the logic you apply.
3) Every is always about race. Really? Despite the fact that I’ve never been able to find one single professional biologist or anthropologist that gives any serious scholarly credence to there being different “races” of humans (sorry, that’s a hotbutton with me, much like misuse of the word “decimate”), you could easily make the same claim about religion, economic class, education, number of limbs, etc. The point is, its all about the human condition and extreme depths and highs therein.
This isn’t to say that people don’t make serious decisions based in large part about the way other people look, but, lets be honest. That’s got less to do with the color of someone’s skin and more to do with the decision-makers past experiences with said group, or that decision-maker’s concious or sub-concious stereotype about how a given group of people will behave. And let’s be further honest. A lot of those stereotypes hold at least some water, some of the time.
Sorry to drag on and on, but as I become older and more experienced in the world, I have less and less patience for the sound-bite civilization (in the broadest sense) that we live in. Intelligent responsible discourse should be our ultimate goal and we should do everything we can to pursue that goal.
All that being said, I will peruse the rest of your website as it looks like a very interesting read, to say the least.
August 8, 2008 at 1:52 pm
1)
These guys were not college students. Most were middle-aged and by the looks of it down and out. I have also donated blood and plasma before for money bu it has been years.
2) You are correct in saying hat every place is a nation of haves and have nots. What you want to call a country is meaningless to the discussion. However, there are some societies, particularly in Europe, where the gap is not as wide. The question is what are we doing to create the conditions to bring about a more equitable society.
3) What biologist and the like means nothing. What is real is what people think and how they perceive others. How many of these Wash U biologists live in East St. Louis? The technical definition to the word race means nothing in peoples lives what is important is the understood meaning.