midtown
Well, Scottrade is no more, and Kiel Center is no longer Scottrade Center. Hold on a sec … it was Savvis Center for a while, at least until Savvis got into financial trouble partly because of the sordid ‘monkey business’ top execs were putting on their corporate AmEx cards. Strip club charges, to be specific. Shareholders kind of frown on that; most investors prefer companies not managed by party animals. It was Scottrade for a decade, then TD Ameritrade acquired the StL-based (Town and Country, specifically) firm in September.
Enterprise Holdings bought the naming rights, so it’s going to be Enterprise Center for at least the next 15 years, with an option on five more. Whew, what a relief—a solid, no-nonsense, St. Louis company with a name that should be around a while. (One can only hope.) Enterprise Holdings is parent of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, along with the National and Alamo car rental brands. Late in May, one dangling letter at a time, the Scottrade logo came off the building, and an Enterprise banner has been fastened to the curved concrete in anticipation of the new logo’s attachment. Now I wonder how long it will take most of us to start calling it Enterprise Center and stop calling it Scottrade, if not Savvis … if not Kiel. Pay no mind that what’s up there is bright green for everyone to see. The parking garage itself, actually, may have the last word on this: At the entrance off Clark Street, a permanent metal sign has clearly read ‘Kiel Center Parking’ for decades now … the characters in stencil, light showing through so it’s often easier to read the shadows. Very retro, and cool as vintage neon. Kind of like the StL itself. Now, about that Kiel Opera House …
maryland heights
Great Rivers Greenway kicks off its Life Outside Festival, a free-free-FREE event from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday (June 9) in and around Creve Coeur Lake. This, the third annual fest, encourages metro residents to spend less time chillin’ on the couch or looking down at a phone to actually, like, do outdoorsy stuff. For real. No, Pokémon Go doesn’t count. Free activities added this year include electric bike demos, archery and paragliding. Climb a real fake-rock wall, accept the challenge of a ropes course through the trees, kayak, stand-up paddleboard (in the 21st century, it’s a verb … like ‘impact’), listen to three live bands and savor samplings from eight food trucks. Set your GPS for 13236 Streetcar Drive, then head to the Tremayne Shelter area on the lake’s north side. Pickup and drop-off shuttles will run from the Hanley, Shrewsbury and Civic Center transit locations.
Vivid yellow ofo ride-share bikes finally have made it to The Lou. LimeBike’s bright green and yellow two-wheelers rolled into the metro in late April and began wending their way hither, thither and yon whenever riders used an app to unlock, ride a while and then set it up on the kickstand for the next renter. In a perfect world. Just like little kids, some slackers just dump ’em on the ground or sidewalk, which is why pessimists contend that we just can’t have nice things. Curiously, soon after LimeBike’s 750 units arrived and started moving place to place, wonky GPS readings made it look as though a few had splashed into the Mississippi River and sunk.
That glitch was corrected. But bureaucratic snags kept ofo, a Chinese company, from rolling until more than three weeks later, and we’re pretty sure it had nothing to do with the president’s plan for punitive tariffs. Ofo’s machines are only $1 an hour to ride, whereas LimeBikes are $1 for a half hour. So far, not one has made it out of the city, to our knowledge. But they are easy pickins most anywhere in the local parks and throughout adjacent neighborhoods. One afternoon over the holiday weekend, we spied eight ofo cycles and only one LimeBike awaiting riders at a Tower Grove Park entrance off Grand near the 1884 statue of Christopher Columbus (who revisionist historians tell us was really a racist creep). But, should we be hesitant to ride an ofo? Our intelligence community and bipartisan voices in Congress warn that Chinese telecom giant ZTE stole U.S. technology, intellectual property and maybe even a few gumball machines. Despite the president’s curious tweet about saving Chinese jobs (Person 1: ‘MAGA!’ Person 2: ‘Whut?’), could they be using American hardware and software to illicitly gather information on us? OMG—they’re harvesting data by the seat of our pants, because saddle-sore riders are easier to turn into double agents … said no one, ever.
the riverfront
Nearly everyone has a favorite memory of the Gateway Arch: Maybe your father or grandfather helped build it. Or your mom worked there. Maybe you had one of your first dates there (much cooler and less forgettable than a movie). You could be among the hundreds of thousands who have celebrated July 4 there, year after year. Perhaps your favorite performers have sung with the national monument as a backdrop. Now, you can make the future of our very own stainless steel-clad catenary curve part of your own personal history. All it takes is a photo or two: Either you’ve already got ’em, you can go shoot ’em or both. The Gateway Arch Park Foundation has launched a crowd-sourced collaborative photo campaign to commemorate the official, very grand reopening of the new Gateway Arch. Well, what to do? When posting your photo(s) of the Arch to Twitter and Instagram, use #YourArch. Or, if that’s technobabble to you, just upload your photos of great experiences at or near the Arch to yourarch.org. (Now, if that’s still beyond your technological ability, would you tell us what Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were really like once they got upriver a few hundred miles?) Your special moments will be integral to a mosaic masterpiece of the newly renovated Gateway Arch National Park: Producers are pulling together an untold number of images to create a monumental video spectacle July 3 at the renovated, expanded ‘Museum under the Arch.’ Well, that’s what many of us were accustomed to calling it. Its new, improved name, suitable for a national park: Museum at the Gateway.
Three gray, late-model Volvo station wagons are always parked, just so, at Delmar Boulevard and McKnight Road in the lot for Half-Price Books and Jilly’s Cupcake Bar. They’re lined up like a happy family … except when one is parked far from the other two, like there’d been a squabble over who was supposed to wash them. Or Li’l Joe is finally leaving the Swedish automotive nest, like the little kid who runs away from home but doesn’t get past the driveway. Anyhow, for much longer than a year, my wife and I never saw one pulling in (so we could stop and ask) or out (so we could follow behind until it eventually stopped for gas, somewhere hopefully this side of Akron). So when either one of us got home, there’d be a daily Volvo report: “Mercy me, a Ford has come between them!” Meanwhile, we both wondered what the heck there was to the three-Volvo ‘statement.’
Maybe it was just a coincidence. Perhaps a teeny-weeny dealer annex. But the auto arrangement has been such a curiosity, way out here on the western end of U. City, that your faithful scribe slipped his business card under the wiper blades of all three Volvos. Since that’s universal shorthand for ‘Hey—I just sideswiped your car!’ I figured the owner of at least one would promptly call for insurance information. Instead, crickets. Until I spied, in disbelief, a gray Volvo wagon pulling into the lot. I followed it in, slowed as it settled in next to the other two and hailed the driver, who paused at first … perhaps questioning the sanity of a stranger’s puppy-like eagerness to approach him. Then, he grinned and handed me a couple of business cards. Joe Gustafson is operations manager for Rent-A-Relative, a small outfit perfectly situated to drive oldsters to doctor appointments or the store. The McKnight Place and Brentmoor retirement communities are just on the other side of I-170. Gustafson and his cohorts also can make the short jump to the airport, do school dropoffs and pick-ups, you name it. Plus, Volvo wagons are nicer than most any taxicab. Plus, we’d wager their drivers aren’t as prone to pointless chatter as much as a somewhat desperate Uber operator.