Home » Site Info » Recent Articles:

Sunday Poll: Should 9th Street Through Citygarden Remain Closed or be Opened to Traffic?

June 30, 2019 Featured, Sunday Poll Comments Off on Sunday Poll: Should 9th Street Through Citygarden Remain Closed or be Opened to Traffic?
Please vote below

Ten years ago today Citygarden, an urban sculpture garden in downtown St. Louis, was formally dedicated. No ribbon was cut, instead the water features were turned on.

Citygarden is an urban park and sculpture garden in St. Louis, Missouri owned by the City of St. Louis but maintained by the Gateway Foundation. It is located between Eighth, Tenth, Market, and Chestnut streets, in the city’s “Gateway Mall” area. Before being converted to a garden and park, the site comprised two empty blocks of grass. Citygarden was dedicated on June 30, 2009, and opened one day later, on July 1, 2009.

Citygarden is 2.9 acres (1.2 ha) in size—occupying two square city blocks—and cost US$30 million to develop. St. Louis’ Gateway Foundation, a not-for-profit organization supporting public art, funded the design and construction of the garden. While the city owns the land on which Citygarden was developed, the foundation owns the statues and covers all park maintenance costs except water and electricity. The Gateway Foundation is also in charge of providing additional security for the garden. (Wikipedia)

Two city blocks, divided by 9th Street  In fact it was 9th Street where the stage was set up for the dedication. However, 9th Street never reopened for more than a day or two after the stage was dismantled. The Gateway Foundation had attractive movable barriers made to block off each end of 9th, preventing vehicle traffic from traveling northbound on the one-way street. Eighth & 10th streets are both one-way southbound.

This one block of 9th Street, Market to Chestnut, is the subject of today’s poll.

Today’s poll will close at 8pm tonight. Results and pros & cons on the topic will be online Friday morning.

— Steve Patterson

 

Sunday Poll: Who Do You Think Will Be The Final Four Democratic Presidential Candidates Running In 2020?

June 23, 2019 Featured, Politics/Policy, Sunday Poll Comments Off on Sunday Poll: Who Do You Think Will Be The Final Four Democratic Presidential Candidates Running In 2020?
Please vote below

Today’s poll is similar to a poll here just over 4 years ago. At that time the GOP field was huge, most picked Jeb Bush as the GOP candidate most likely to be on top. Yes, a lot can change in the year prior to nominating conventions!

The 2020 election cycle is in full swing, President Trump launched his campaign for a 2nd term and more than twenty candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination.  It’s too early to know who the Democrats will nominate at their July 2020 convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin — that’s the point — to later be able to compare 2019 perceptions with 2020 reality.

For today’s poll will use the list of the 20 declared candidates that met the criteria for the first debate.  This debate is later this week, split into two parts:

The back-to-back debates on Wednesday and Thursday nights could be a pivot point in the Democrats’ primary campaign, which for months has seen candidates refraining from criticizing one another — or doing so only in veiled terms.
It will be a high-stakes test for the biggest primary campaign field ever, which includes three black candidates, one Latino, six women, two Asian Americans and an openly gay man. (Los Angeles Times)

This week’s poll question isn’t who you want to see make it to the final 4, but rather who you think will be the 4 who’ll survive the next 9-12 months of campaigning.

Please be sure to pick 4 answers, the poll closes at 8pm tonight. The non-scientific results ands my own thoughts on Wednesday morning. First night of the first Democratic debate is Wednesday night, 7pm St. Louis time on 5.1 (NBC).

— Steve Patterson

 

 

 

Sunday Poll: Should PrideFest Parade Allow Uniformed Police to March?

June 16, 2019 Featured, Sunday Poll Comments Off on Sunday Poll: Should PrideFest Parade Allow Uniformed Police to March?
Please vote below

Earlier this month an announcement caused some controversy:

Local police will not be participating in the 2019 St. Louis Pride Parade.

Pride St. Louis will not allow uniformed officers from the St. Louis City and St. Louis County police departments to walk in the June 30 celebration. (KMOV)

This is the subject of today’s poll.

This poll will close at 8pm tonight. My thoughts on Wednesday. The PrideFest parade is two weeks from today.

— Steve Patterson

 

Married In East St. Louis Five Years Ago

June 10, 2019 Featured, Metro East, Steve Patterson Comments Off on Married In East St. Louis Five Years Ago

Saturday was my 5th wedding anniversary, we spent the weekend in Chicago to celebrate. At the time we got married Missouri recognized same sex marriages performed in other states, but we couldn’t get legally married in Missouri. No problem, we just borrowed the St. Louis skyline as the backdrop. We had a great day and our wedding was inexpensive thanks to borrowed audio equipment and dear friends volunteering to help.  A beautiful wedding need not cost a fortune.

Our wedding was held at 9am at the Malcolm Martin Memorial Park in East St. Louis, Illinois — one of our favorite places.

We posed for a selfie with friend/officiate Chris Reimer (center) during the ceremony.

Chris read an appropriate paragraph from ‘Wild Awake’ by Hilary T. Smith:

“People are like cities: We all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but most of the time all we let each other see is is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a polished square. Love lets you find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn’t know were there, even the ones they wouldn’t have thought to call beautiful themselves.” 

Friend Jesanka French read a poem she adopted from Edward Monkton’s Lovely Love Story
Friend Dionna Raedeke sang ‘The Very Thought of You’
Here we’re smiling in the back seat of a new friend’s Tesla. She drove us carbon-free from the wedding in East St. Louis to the brunch reception in South St. Louis
Arrived at Bevo Mill

Our guests paid for their own brunch. In the 5 years since our wedding the building was purchased, renovated, reopened as Das Bevo, then closed except for special events. Plans to have a few guest rooms upstairs never materialized, we’d hope to spend the night there on our 5th anniversary.

It amazes me how quickly times goes by.  I’ve lived in St. Louis almost 29 years, this is the 15th year of this blog, it has been over 11 years since my stroke. And something I never thought possible when I was younger — I’ve been legally married for 5 years! Speaking of time passing by quickly, today is my oldest brother’s 69th birthday.

So many great memories of our wedding day, thanks to our friends & family for attending & helping.

— Steve Patterson

One of the songs we played before the ceremony:

 

Sunday Poll: Do You Think Credit Card Magnetic Strips Are As Secure As EMV Chip Cards?

June 9, 2019 Featured, Sunday Poll Comments Off on Sunday Poll: Do You Think Credit Card Magnetic Strips Are As Secure As EMV Chip Cards?
Please vote below

Chances are good that every credit/debit card in your wallet now has a tiny EMV chip, something none of our cards had a decade ago. If you’re a merchant you’ve likely had to change credit card equipment to allow customers to insert their card rather than just swipe the magnetic strip on the back.

Card companies, like Visa, began requiring chip technology by shifting fraud liability:

Starting October 1, 2015, that liability for fraud shifts from the bank to the store in cases where the bank has provided an EMV credit card but the store has not upgraded to an EMV terminal. The logic behind this is that the credit card issuer did everything in its power to protect the consumer, and the store ultimately dropped the ball, so to speak. This creates the incentive for both the bank and the store to upgrade to EMV — so the bank can avoid refunding fraudulent transactions and the store can avoid losing money on fraudulent transactions. If neither the credit card nor the store is EMV-ready, then the traditional liability rules apply. (NerdWallet)

Our cards here in the US still have magnetic strips on the back, in many cases still there is no chip option — Metro’s ticket machines, for example.

Here’s today’s poll:

This poll will close at 8pm tonight. Wednesday I’ll have the results and more on magnetic strip vs EMV cards.

— Steve Patterson

 

Advertisement



[custom-facebook-feed]

Archives

Categories

Advertisement


Subscribe