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.

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.

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.

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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.