I drove down to St. Louis last Saturday to see
Dave Matthews Band. A friend of mine and I had some cheap-but-awesome tickets literally dropped in our laps two days beforehand and, in commemoration of the end of the school year and the resulting "free time", we decided to throw caution to the wind and make the 8-hour trek from the Twin Cities.
We had some great seats in Busch Stadium. I took this picture from the Gateway Arch (which will come up later).
Here's the view from our seats. They were right along the first base line (I could have spit on the first baseman if this had been a Cardinals game). One of my guitar idols, Tim Reynolds, made a surprise appearance to play most of the show and it was therefore understandably and absolutely amazing. Dave Matthews is one of the musicians (along with Lindsey Buckingham) that caused me to pick up a guitar out of curiosity and paved the way to my career as a musician. In fact, I think the first thing I ever notated on staff paper was the guitar part for Satellite.
On Sunday we took in as much of the city as we could. Here's a view of the Gateway Arch from the Metrolink station downtown.
The other part of the national park is the Old Courthouse (near the bottom of the picture). If you're standing in front of the building facing the Mississippi the arch actually frames the courthouse. It's way cool.
The inside of the observation deck at the top of the arch is small and butt-filled.
It's 630 feet tall at the apex and it lends to some pretty good pictures.
After the arch we stopped at the Morgan Street Brewery in the Old Downtown area. I grabbed the crab cake sandwich and an IPA micro brew.
I had been to St. Louis before when my high school art club took a trip to see something I don't remember. However, I was able to recall that we had visited a wax museum while we were there. I told this story over lunch and, almost unbelievably, it was
immediately across the street as soon as we walked out the door. It is
no Madame
Tussaud's but it seemed adventurous and, at only $4, the price was right.
Here's a "Buddhist."
Who could this possibly be? Creepy, anyone?
This is either a weird approximation of Jesus with sparkly butterflies or a terrible representation of
Gandalf. You pick.
Okay, it was supposed to be Jesus. They actually devoted more than half of an entire floor to scenes from the Bible. Here's a little 2-for-1 tableau that combines both the crucifixion
and the Last Supper (which can
not be very sanitary). In the same enclosure and immediately to the left is the Sermon on the Mount.
Here's Snow White and Creepy Dwarf.
Ronald Reagan. This one is off just enough to make you laugh. It was a familiar theme by the end.
The basement was billed as the infamous/ubiquitous-in-a-wax-museum Chamber of Horrors. Here's Frankenstein's monster. I think he just looks desperately in need of some sleep.
Maybe a Red Bull?
How about a poorly constructed Freddy
Krueger?
Mike Myers.
And no chamber of horrors is complete without a demonically-lit mannequin of Adolf Hitler (making his first Shank blog appearance ever!). He's labeled in case of confusion, folks.
My personal favorite was the last stop in the Chamber of Horrors. This exhibit was known only as "Drug Victim." She's dead on a beanbag chair with an unlit cigarette in her mouth, old style beer keg on the floor, tourniquet and sores on her arms along with spare change strewn about the room. The best part, however...
...is that she was apparently a
huge Bob Marley fan. Boy, when I think of
No Woman No Cry, my brain immediately goes to people who have died of a drug overdose.
After the wax museum we made the trek through Forest Park to the
Saint Louis Art Museum. It's free and they let you take pictures!
This is a picture of the change that has been thrown into the fountain in the central atrium of the building. Because of the way the flash reflected off of all the coins the picture ended up looking like a tile mosaic. (Click the picture to get some
really cool detail.)
A 2-ton bronze statue of the Buddha.
Detail on Picasso's 1931 still life,
Pitcher and Fruit Bowl. I've always wondered if he meant for that little white speck near the iris of the eye to be there or if it was just an unintentional droplet (my money's on the latter).
Picasso's
Seated Woman from over 20 years later.
Museum Security Guard Frozen in Place. Click this picture to get a better look. It was a fortuitous snapshot.
I've said it before but it bears repeating: Vincent Van
Gogh is my favorite artist of all time. I love looking at his paintings up close. Unfortunately they had suspended their Van
Gogh collection under glass and, although it wasn't as up close as I would have liked, they were still amazing. Here's the picture I snapped of
Stairway at Auvers. He painted this during the last year of his life (1890).
We got some
Mamma Mia tickets for later that night so we grabbed supper at
The Jazz Bistro (
sans live jazz) across from the
Fox Theatre. I had the
tilapia with
chipotle sauce.
The theatre was built in the 1930s (I think?) when the "talkies" were going to be big. They spared no expense.
Inside was one of the most ornately decorated spaces I've ever seen. (None of this is that crappy, fiber glass casting either. It's
all carved and original...and filled with Buddhas for some reason.) This is looking from a balcony towards the street entrance. The big Buddha tapestry is the window in the facade from the previous picture.
Here's a view looking up from the opposite direction. It's one hell of a lobby. I can't imagine what it would cost to build something like this today.
While we were at it, I found this place. If anybody needs directions I can help you out.
St. Louis was amazing. Dave Matthews Band can serve as an excuse for travel any time they want. Check that one off the list.
Now to that opera I've been talking about...
