chesterfield
When two outlet malls opened in Chesterfield Valley in the summer of 2013—within a couple weeks and miles of each other—naysayers said ‘Nay’! With the metro’s biggest mall just up the hill at Clarkson and Interstate 64 / Hwy. 40, one would certainly fail, the naysayers added. Fast forward five years, and Chesterfield’s retail landscape is way different. Chesterfield Mall is virtually a ghost town. Taubman Prestige Outlets, as such, is no more. (Nary a naysayer could be reached for comment.) Under new ownership, it’s now Chesterfield Outlets—but only for a little while. Next summer, the outlet mall will begin a metamorphosis into The District, an ‘experiential’ destination, with TopGolf its eastern anchor attraction. Meanwhile, the survivor of this retail cage match, St. Louis Premium Outlets, has added three new retailers: Attic Salt is open; Slackers will open this month and Vans in early December. There’s a Brooks Brothers there, as well as a second location a hop, skip and jump away at Chesterfield Outlets. What’s that all about? It appears that Brooks Brothers—unlike another legendary retailer, Sears, which is closing stores left and right—must have learned something in the 200 years since it opened its first store in New York City. Chesterfield Mall, alas, continues to wheeze and cough up tenants. One was Sears.
downtown
Once upon a time, I stayed up all night to teach myself how to juggle three tennis balls. Had I watched someone else do it? You bet. Anybody can do that, I snickered to myself, 19 and cocky. At the price of a good night’s sleep, I managed to keep three balls in the air. But then the sun was coming up, so I crashed. (Never have figured out four.) Anyhow … you can watch real jugglers really juggle at one of the world’s coolest places, the City Museum, this Saturday (Nov. 10), 7 to 10 p.m. Guests at Circus Harmony’s 6th Annual Juggling Ball will help children throughout the metro defy gravity, soar with confidence—and, at the same time, leap over social barriers. This casual gala is an eclectic evening of dining and dancing … highlighted by performances from some of Circus Harmony’s awe-inspiring students. Of the 1,400-plus children served by Circus Harmony each year, more than half come from low-income homes. Buzzfeed has named it one of ‘17 Circuses Changing the World’. Visit circusharmony.org/the-juggling-ball.
dogtown
Dozens upon dozens of disabled, busted-up Lime Bike cycles are stacked atop one another between two buildings in a narrow, grassy area on West Park in Dogtown, behind chain-link fence topped by barbed wire, blocked from view by flattened cardboard Lime scooter cartons against the fence. It’s a metaphor for what’s befallen the vibrant green and yellow bikes, which rolled out here in April … as a direct result of the Lime scooters’ arrival a few months later. I drive by Tower Grove Park most every Sunday, and had begun to wonder where all the bicycles were. Usually they’d be lined up on the sidewalk at the northwest corner of the park. I’d see people riding on the trails. A few of the pay-as-you-go machines would be ready to ride out front of A&M Bicycle. Now, the scooters are everywhere. (By the way, we’ve seen nobody wear a helmet; the potentially gruesome result of such stupidity is for our esteemed metro daily to report.) Lime Bikes can’t be too cheap to manufacture—they’re equipped with GPS units. Right after Lime delivered about 700 bicycles here, coordinates needed to be recalibrated because it looked as though some of them had been dumped into the Mississippi. They hadn’t. Today, the jumble of Dogtown’s green-and-yellow junkyard is a hot mess. Clipped wires dangle from where the electronics used to be attached. Other machines were repainted black, now peeling, by would-be thieves. As dumber crimes go, this is even dumberer, when you consider the bikes cost $1 to unlock with an app, then 5 cents a minute to ride.
frontenac
If your nose is hypersensitive, when you walk through the doors of the Reliance Bank branch in Frontenac, your olfactories will detect two distinct aromas: Paper money and coffee. Park Avenue Coffee celebrated the grand opening of its first county location here on Nov. 5. But why would a bank welcome partners as diverse as St. Louis Frozen Custard Factory in Rock Hill, the USPS branch in Manchester, or Lion’s Choice in O’Fallon, Ill.? “With the availability of mobile and online banking, banks end up with branches that are far larger than they need to be,” says Thomas H. Brouster Sr., the bank’s chairman and CEO. Along with a cappuccino or espresso, you may enjoy a treat that’s made the StL famous. No, not toasted ravioli, silly, but your mouth should still be watering: gooey butter cake. (The cream cheese icing-topped carrotcake muffins are to die for.) The coffee shop debuted on Park Avenue in Lafayette Square and now has five other city locations, including on The Hill and in the Cortex district. And this Reliance branch, 10301 Clayton Road, opens as early as most any coffee shop: Monday through Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday, 8 a.m. to noon. Amenities include a community conference and data center for public use, a technology bar and an interactive teller machine.
notable neighbors: clayton
Less than halfway through Will, Paul Steinmann’s compelling historical novel about runaway slaves and the ruthless bounty hunters on their trail, a steamboat explodes! The captain pushes it too hard in pursuit. And that’s where I stopped. I couldn’t put it down … rather, I felt I had to. If a review gives away too much of the plot, why buy the book? I often get all I need to know by reading the New York Times Review of Books. Will hasn’t been reviewed in the Times. But it’s received thumbs up elsewhere, most recently in Kirkus Reviews: “Steinmann provides a picture of the abolitionist movement that is as historically accurate as it is thrillingly dramatic.” Not shabby for the first novel by a retired education professor at Webster University, who started his 45-year career teaching history at a U. City junior high. Steinmann’s style wasn’t for students to memorize dates and events, then regurgitate them for tests, only to be forgotten. “History is telling stories, vignettes,” says Steinmann, who lives in Clayton. “Once people learn about somebody interesting, maybe they’ll want to find out more about the period.” And the time he writes about is the absolute worst in the American experience: Lincoln didn’t issue the Emancipation Proclamation until 1863, midway through the Civil War. But history books didn’t always document the torment slaves endured: The 1958 textbook Steinmann remembers from high school doesn’t mention concerted efforts to abolish slavery, much less a prominent black abolitionist like Harriet Tubman, famed for the Underground Railroad. “A lot of educated people still think it’s a railroad that ran underground,” notes Steinmann. A secret network of brave Americans, many of them whites who abhorred slavery, the Underground Railroad helped slaves escape to the North. In the late 1950s and ’60s, Jim Crow remained the practice, if not still the law, in the former Confederacy. Civil rights were a dream. Lynchings were common. Today, unfortunately, Will is relevant, especially if one senses our country is creeping toward a ‘nationalist’ mindset. “Heartwrenching. Shocking. Profound,” exclaims a writer for San Francisco Book Review, giving the book five out of five stars. Will evolved over five years following Steinmann’s retirement in 2011 from Webster U. He wrote 500 pages, which his editor said wouldn’t fly; 300 would be more suitable for a first novel. Steinmann trimmed interesting, yet inessential, details like a typical slave’s plantation diet. He also took out the 1849 fire on the St. Louis levee that leveled 418 buildings on 15 blocks. Now, it’s 389 pages. Too many historical details might have impeded the immediacy of the tale, which includes a cruel, mendacious plantation owner and brave Underground Railroad ‘conductors’ who risked not only their own lives, but those of their wives and children. There’s unbelievable heroism. Oh, and a great love story. The nods to antebellum St. Louis will intrigue anyone who comes to realize what a bustling metropolis our ‘flyover’ was when the river and railroad meant the Gateway City was one of the only ways to go west or get back east. Anyway, that’s enough words from me about Will … time to stay up and finish it!
