Besides Cahokia, which we are visiting today (day three) and the game, anything we see or do in St. Louis is an extra. So our enjoyment on our first day in the city was unexpected and really fun.
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In the morning we headed out to a supermarket to pick up a few things to keep in the apartment for breakfast. The store was the gigantic suburban variety, the kind I drool over. Allan said he actually shared my supermarket-envy. In these kinds of places, I always want to over-buy. I assume I'm not alone, that the store is created that way. We were very restrained!
Southwest Diner
Then we drove around looking for a place to eat from the list Allan made of old-fashioned diners. Each one was out of business or somehow not where it was supposed to be. This turned out to be great, because we ended up at Southwest Diner, where the atmosphere, decor, food, and service were all amazing.
Southwest Diner is a cross between an old-fashioned diner and a Mexican cantina, with an authentic and unpretentious vibe, super-friendly staff, and a really interesting menu. The food was delicious, and of course nothing I can get at home -- not only in Port Hardy, but ever. I have never lived anywhere with good southwest or Mexican food, so I love to eat that when I travel. I see huevos rancheros on a menu, and I can't order anything else. We really enjoyed this place.
Gateway Arch National Park: the Arch
We made a quick stop at the apartment to put away groceries, then drove downtown to see the arch: Gateway Arch National Park. This is the city's most famous attraction, the image that is most associated with St. Louis, so of course we're going to see it. But my expectations were very low. I don't know what I was expecting, but I can say "not much".
I was completely surprised to immediately find it impressive and beautiful. I had that instantaneous feeling I get from certain great art or architecture, an emotional response that that I cannot describe. It just hits, like a fullness, a little intake of breath like an inaudible gasp. That probably sounds either weird or too vague, I think because it's an intuitive, emotional thing; it comes from a place where words don't apply.
Walking from the parking lot where we left the car, down to the river, we could see the pieces of the arch between downtown buildings. We passed the Old Courthouse, which has been closed for renovations and is having a grand re-opening the day we leave the city. There are statues of two people: Dred and Harriett Scott, the two Black Americans who fought for their rights all the way to the Supreme Court, in the famous case known as the Dred Scott decision. This is one of US history's most defining and shameful moments. The case was argued in this courthouse.
There are historical markers all around the courthouse and the adjacent park, as this is the oldest part of the city.
Then you see the arch, this huge, shiny parabola framing empty sky. The sky is part of the picture. The arch was built to commemorate the Corps of Discovery -- the launching of Lewis and Clark's journey west, both the symbolic and literal beginning of westward expansion. Through the arch, you see nothing but sky, the endless emptyness -- which is how the dominant culture of that time thought of the west. An empty world, waiting for them to "discover", claim, and conquer it. Western expansion is a heartbreaking story, and it's also integral to understanding the US and all American history. (Canada's expansion story has many similarities, but also many differences.)
The arch itself is graceful and absolutely beautiful. The arch -- not the shape it describes in the sky, but the actual material object -- is pyramidal (a three-dimensional triangle) and slightly torqued. It was designed by Eero Saarinen and was an engineering marvel of its era.
Inside the arch, there is a tram: you can ride to the top for panaromic views. We aren't interested in doing that, but it's kind of crazy that it even exists. The structure itself does not seem designed to transport humans! Allan could never tolerate the claustrophobia, and although I enjoy exploring tiny, closed-in spaces, the idea of this ride did not appeal to me.
After you ascend the hill that the arch is built on, you see the Mississippi River below it, and a famous railroad bridge that was once a symbol of St. Louis. There's a processing plant and a casino on the other side, so unfortunately the words "Casino Queen" and "Cargill" are part of the view. The Mississippi itself is not impressive, but like all famous rivers, it's all about the context. This is the river of Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn, of the slave trade, of the end of a way of life for the original inhabitants of the west, and the beginning of all the mythmaking.
This arch thing, it is really something.
Gateway Arch National Park: Museum of Westward Expansion
Under the arch is the Museum of Westward Expansion. It is huge, with an enormous amount to read, see, and explore, much of it interactive. It interprets every aspect of western expansion -- the Indigenous peoples and what happened to them (including present cultures and conditions), the struggles between the three imperial powers for control of the continent, the experiences of the white settlers, the Lewis and Clark expedition, the natural environment, some of the history of the city of St. Louis, the class divisions of the time, the myth of the American West in literature and movies, the architectural competition for the commemorative monument, and the building of the Gateway Arch. And probably 20 other things I can't think of right now.
The museum does a beautiful job of telling American history honestly, with perspectives of Indigenous people, Black people (both free and enslaved), and women, and providing context for everything. Of course much of it is horrifying and heartbreaking, and the very definition of injustice. Some pieces of the story are about amazing feats of courage and strength -- because the individual settlers who set out into the vast unknown, to try to create a better life for themselves and their families, are distinct from the imperial powers that led them to be there. I thought the narratives did an excellent job of simple honesty, presenting multiple, factual perspectives.
More than once, I wondered how a national historic site like this will survive the fascist takeover of the country that is now in progress. Federal funding will be withdrawn. Will the actual exhibits be shuttered? Will they be destroyed? If it's destroyed, will it ever be rebuilt? The US finally is facing a more truthful reading of its history, and we are witnessing the powerful, intense backlash.
We experienced the museum as much as we could, sampling information throughout, not just walking through it, but also not reading every word, which would take an entire day and would be a huge information overload. What we did see and read was very impressive, truly excellent.
Naturally there is a huge gift shop, but it was shutting down just as we arrived. When we are downtown for the game on Friday night, we want to return to the gift shop, and also get some photos of the railroad bridge visible from the arch, and see a historic church in the same park.
We were planning on going to dinner, when we were caught in a sudden, massive thundershower. In the few blocks between the arch and the parking garage, we got completely soaked. We managed to protect our camera and my phone by ducking under some trees near the Old Courthouse, but ended up soaked straight through to our underwear. We had to go back to the apartment to change clothes and re-group.
Cherokee Street for Mexican Food
We discussed the various options for authentic Mexican food for dinner, and settled on Tacqueria Bronco, in the Cherokee Street neighbourhood. In all the neighbourhoods that we've driven through, where we're staying and in several adjacent areas, the streets are lined with small brick houses, very old but well kept up, and huge, mature trees in full leaf. It's beautiful. Some of the houses are bigger, but those seem to be duplexes (or semi-detached, or two-family houses, depending where you're from), and there are even some triplexes. All small brick houses, all large leafy trees.
The Cherokee Street area is full of antique stores, Mexican restaurants, and rainbow-pride. Tacqueria Bronco is a basic, working-class kind of restaurant, with simple, inexpensive, homemade food, the kind of place we like to eat in wherever we are. It's in an area full of Mexican restaurants and grocery stores (one store called Mexico Vive Aqui), a Mexican bakery (sadly or perhaps fortunately closing as we arrived), Mexican music spilling out of kitchens, and people grilling and selling homemade tamales on the sidewalk. There were some signs for community activism around ICE raids, reminding residents that both undocumented and documented people are being rounded up and deported.
Dinner was great, and I'm loving the time change in this direction. It seems like I'm staying up so late!
3 comments:
Provoking that intuitive emotional response is what great art does. I also felt the visit to the Arch was perfunctory. I've seen pictures and I've seen it every time I watch a game featuring the Cardinals (such as the 2004 and 2013 World Series(es?) in which the Red Sox dispatched the Cards with ease, both times!). And like Laura, I was extremely happy to see this artwork up close. Like so many works of art, the Arch has to be seen in person. For our entire walk around the Arch, the structure presented itself in an interesting way from nearly every angle.
I was astonished by the size, the range, and the quality of the material presented in the museum exhibition. I expected it to be mostly about the Arch. It was not. Every bit of it was fascinating and I'm sure I skipped by things I would have enjoyed. At the very end, one of the arch pictures was of several people standing on the top, which was flat-ish, and one guy was buffing the steel! Not with the big buffers you see used in malls and office buildings, it was more vaccum cleaner sized. I saw no ropes or any safety devices. It almost looked like a guy cleaning the carpet in his living room was inserted into the picture.
As I read what you wrote about the museum and its inclusion of differing perspectives, my first thought was, "Well, there goes any funding they get from the federal government."
Yes. Or worse.
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