st. louis
Strauss Park, the tiny, triangular piece of real estate tucked on the corner of Washington and Grand across from The Fox, was quite a happening pocket park this summer. There was musical entertainment, events ranging from chess matches to yoga, and temporary installations, including sand sculptures and chalk mandalas … the latter of which are intricately created and meant to be destroyed. Sculptures made of sand also are temporary by their very nature. Parking used to be hard to come by, especially for events at The Fabulous Fox, Grandel Theatre or Powell Hall, and the nearby Chinese restaurant made a bundle after hours by charging $5 or so (as I recall) for use of its lot. But the parking crunch has been eased quite a bit with the opening of the brandspanking-new, $9.1 million Fox parking garage at 3637 Washington Blvd. There’s 205,935 square feet of parking space, which doesn’t mean squat until we tell you there is room for 600 vehicles and 20 bicycles. There are two entrances and exits on Washington, plus another in the alley that separates the garage and Grandel Theatre. There are three elevator cars in two locations, and three staircases. When the crowds stream out after an event, it remains to be seen whether it will be as annoying as trying to escape downtown following a baseball game. But anything’s an improvement, right?
glendale
Joe Clote of Glendale and his brother Mike were part of a grand mission when a vintage DC-3 twin-propeller airplane— now owned by Breitling, the manufacturer of a watch that’s been a cult fave for decades among pilots—landed July 20 in the metro during its bid to break the world record and become the oldest plane to circumnavigate the globe within seven months. (Take that, Amelia Earhart!) Their late father, Capt. John W. Clote, took off in the plane—in spirit— when it roared into the StL skies: Dozens of photos of the elder Clote and his Douglas C-47 Skytrain (military version of the DC-3) were aboard, along with several poems the WWII airman wrote when he came home after 1,900 flight hours in the Pacific theater. John W. Clote received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service, carrying everything from prisoners of war to lumber, perhaps only armed with a handgun in the cockpit of the workhorse transport. It was otherwise defenseless against Japan’s agile and heavily armed Mitsubishi Zero fighters. The Breitling DC-3 made its maiden flight in 1940 before delivery to American Airlines. It then was pressed into U.S. Army service from 1942 to 1944, when DC-3s/C-47s towed gliders and dropped thousands of paratroopers into Nazi-occupied France. Capt. Clote had one memorable mishap during his 600 combat flight hours—the landing gear collapsed beneath him on a very short runway in New Guinea. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Joe Clote recalled that his dad, who passed away in September 1989, told his family that all the runways were too short! The record-breaking tour, which began in March in Geneva, Switzerland, will finish at the Breitling Sion airshow in September in Sion, Switzerland.
brentwood
Want to get your ride ‘pimped,’ to coin a tired MTV phrase? Well, eight episodes of a classier TV series on the Velocity network—Speed Is the New Black—were produced in the metro at Classic Car Studio, an A-to-Z automotive shop on Hanley Industrial Court in Brentwood. The series follows owner Noah Alexander, 37, and his team as they perform full restorations and custom builds for clients who want their rides fast and furious. The show takes viewers inside the shop to see how beloved cars like a 1962 Corvette, 1990 Porsche 911 and 1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1—and everything in between, including a rusted shop truck just one coat of oxidized paint this side of the junkyard—are revived for the open road. Some of the show was filmed right across the river (on the ‘right’ side of the Mississippi, as MetroEasterners are wont to say) at Gateway Motorsports Park in Madison, Illinois. (Honey, now hush—it’s not all that far, you provincial, parochial St. Louisans who still think Illinois is Indian territory.) Spurred by Noah’s intricate creative vision and love of artful automotion, for 11 years now, Classic Car Studio has taken on most any daunting task to deliver a custom piece of highperformance highway art. (Wonder what they’d do with a 260,000-mile, ’02 Honda Odyssey minivan that has a few love taps?). Velocity is re-running the series, and it’s available on Amazon and iTunes. And Noah et al have their somewhat greasy fingers crossed that a second season will be produced.
clayton
If the contract holds, the vacant school building that’s been languishing at 7501 Maryland Ave. in Clayton, an albatross around the neck of the city’s school district since 1980, will be purchased by Centene Corp. as part of its ambitious HQ plans. Company officials reportedly have said it will be used for employee development; a company childcare center is also in the offing. Many options for the site have been floated over the years, including condos or townhouses, which have been successful as school retrofits elsewhere in the metro. Meanwhile, the 1930s building has gone to seed, with peeling paint and bumblebees visiting the invasive flora that all but obscure the entrance. The mailbox is empty, save for a crumpled plastic Ice Mountain water bottle. Whenever managed-care giant Centene starts its renovation, it appears traffic flow also will need rerouting: The school is only accessible from the east on Maryland Avenue; it’s one way where it is separated from the adjacent residential area. Eastbound drivers on Lee Avenue, where Washington U.’s west campus is—and the old Boyd’s and Famous-Barr stores used to be 30 years ago—can only go so far before they must turn around. At any rate, the lion’s share of the planned Centene development is right across Forsyth where the ‘Clayton Hole’ used to be and The Ritz-Carlton and Plaza Clayton residences are now. It remains to be seen whether filling the remainder of the ‘hole’ in this manner will be a good thing for Clayton in the long run, as the future of health care seems so uncertain for the foreseeable future.
sunset hills
Sculptor Tony Tasset already has poked one big ‘eye’ into Laumeier Sculpture Park. The spooky, humongous eyeball soon will have another largerthan-life piece for it to stare at, unblinkingly. Eye (2007) is already one of the most eye-conic sculptures in the park. Oh, deer … one hopes the ‘punography’ gets no worse. But there, it just did: Soon to join Eye on the grounds is Deer (2015), a 12-foot-tall Tasset sculpture of a white-tailed doe in painted, steelreinforced fiberglass. This major acquisition, which celebrates the nonprofit’s 40th anniversary year, will join Laumeier’s permanent collection and be installed in the Way Field this month. Deer celebrates the unique environment created when art frames nature. Not for the Bambi at heart, the sculpture’s sheer size suggests how nature is out of balance in today’s urban and suburban spaces, and how we human types affect other species around us. The surreal juxtaposition of the jumbo deer emerging from the woods dramatizes the relationship of what it means to be human, the identity of sculpture, and their respective places in nature. Laumeier shouldn’t worry about losing a few leaves from the bushes or a host of hosta to this immense critter. But if a tree or two disappears overnight, and there are huge bite marks on the trunks left behind, Laumeier will have experienced its own Night at the Museum, the movie in which inanimate objects move at will. (Meanwhile, put Sept. 23 on your calendar for The Big Dinner, a fundraising event to benefit Laumeier, 12580 Rott Road in Sunset Hills. We haven’t sussed out the menu, but will bet dollars to doughnuts venison chops aren’t on it. Dinner is under the stars, weather permitting.)
