A Weekend of Bicycle Racing in St. Louis

Last Saturday night thousands of casual bike riders were on the roads after Midnight (Sunday morning) for the 46th Annual Moonlight Ramble:

Starting tonight and continuing through Monday racing cyclists take over the streets.   The annual Gateway Cup is 4 days of racing that attracts riders from across the country to compete for cash & prizes.  They always put on a good show.  Monday is the start of the Tour of Missouri, a pro-level bike race.  The first stage will take place in St. Louis Monday.

Here are the details for interested spectators:

Friday 9/4/09:

The nighttime start to the weekend.  Lights are set up on the four corners around Lafayette Park for the Tour de Lafayette.

Join the Lafayette Square neighborhood and business district for a Friday night festival  celebrating an evening of racing under the lights! Lafayette Square is known as one of the country’s best preserved examples of Victorian “Painted Lady” architecture dating from the 1870’s and 1880’s.  It is also St. Louis’s oldest historic district. The neighborhood (and tonight’s race course) surrounds the first public park in the city of St.  Louis as well as one of the first public parks west of the Mississippi.  The neighborhood took a hit during the Great Depression and after WWII,  but thanks to the restoration efforts of a determined group of urban pioneers,  Lafayette Square saw a renaissance starting in the early 1970’s. Today it is  one of the crown jewels of St. Louis, with condo and loft developments as well  as a business district blossoming with restaurants boutiques and art galleries. Enjoy!

Bring a lawn chair and pick your corner and enjoy the neighborhood as the riders speed by or enjoy food and beverage from the many vendors.  Parking is tight so carpooling, biking or taking transit (Union Station MetroLink) is advised.

Saturday 9/5/09:

A first this year, racing around Francis Park in the St. Louis Hills neighborhood.

The St. Louis Hills Francis Park Criterium For the first time the historic St. Louis Hills neighborhood is host to the second leg of the Gateway Cup! Francis Park, named after David Rowland Francis- President of the Lousiana Purchase Exposition in 1889, is know for its wide, tree lined streets and for having beautiful churches on every corner. Today the St. Louis Hills neighborhood showcases gingerbread bungalows, stately homes and some of the tidiest landscaping in St. Louis. Home to St. Louis cultural and iconic Ted Drewes- our homegrown ice cream oasis. We hope you enjoy the new and improved race course selection for this second stop of the Gateway Cup!

Please join us for bands and a post race par-tay just behind the finish line in Francis Park. Featuring local band Ship of Fools during the day and followed by local hero Steve Ewing of the Urge, one of St. Louis most revered musical acts. We encourage everyone to stay until 8:00pm before heading to the Tour of Missouri Women’s Soiree event later in the evening.

Should be a fun day around a wonderful park in a beautiful neighborhood.  First race 11am, last race starts at 4:30pm.

Sunday 9/6/09:

No park to race around.  Even better are is the dense neighborhood known as The Hill.

The Hill is proud to once again host the longest standing bike race in the St. Louis Metropolitan Area – the Giro Della Montagna – the third stop of the 2009 Gateway Cup!

The Hill boasts the finest Italian restaurants anywhere. It is the boyhood home of such baseball legends as Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola. It is a neighborhood that acts as a model for community as generations of families continue to maintain their residence creating a close-knit feel. The neighborhood was settled by Italian immigrants starting in the late 19th Century. The anchor for the community continues to be St. Ambrose Catholic Church, the Start/Finish site for today’s race. The Italian heritage continues to thrive with the Hill’s variety of Italian restaurants, bakeries, taverns, groceries, community organizations, and social clubs. One of these such clubs, the Bocce Club, hosts the traditional pasta dinner for the cyclists Sunday evening after the completion of the last race of the day. Giro Pasta Dinner, Sunday, September 6th 4:00-8:00 pm, St Louis Bocce Club 2210 Marconi @ Bischoff on race course. Menu includes all the Pasta you can eat, plus 2 meatballs, salad, Italian Bread, and dessert. $7 adults/$4 children. Tickets available at the door.

First race at 12:15pm, last starts at 5:50pm.

Monday 9/7/09:

Labor Day will be a busy one downtown with both the Tour of Missouri Criterium finishing the Gateway Cup series plus the start of the Tour of Missouri.  The Criterium’s first race starts at 7am with Pro 1 & 2 starting at 10am.  At 1pm is the start of Stage 1 of the Tour of Missouri.  Both can be viewed from Citygarden on Market Street. The Tour of Missouri stage extends into Soulard & Lafayette Square so plenty of places to watch the race go by exist.

Parking will be scarce so if possible use MetroLink, or your own bike, to get downtown.

The routes all four days use city streets, which will be closed to traffic.  It is possible to cross the route on foot but not by car.  When crossing on foot look for the volunteers which will help you cross safely.

If you haven’t been to Lafayette Square, St. Louis Hills, The Hill or downtown in a while this is a good excuse to do so.   Hopefully the rain will come at times the riders are not competing. Have a great weekend and Labor Day!

• Gateway Cup Schedule w/route maps
• Tour of Missouri

– Steve Patterson

What Downtown Has Gained

In my first month of blogging I did a post on November 20, 2004 called What Washington Avenue is missing…

Here is some of that post:

The emerging loft district along Washington Avenue, as well as the blocks between Olive & Washington between say 8th & Tucker, are becoming increasingly diverse. I don’t mean diversity of population but of activities.

The blocks West of Tucker received a major streetscape makeover in the last few years that included widening the sidewalks, new curbs, paving, lighting and signage. A few bike racks are sprinkled along the streets. It looks picture perfect but something is still missing, people.

To be fair, many of the loft buildings are just now finishing while others are just now starting. Once these buildings are full lots more residents will call the area home. In the age-old saying, which comes first the chicken or egg question, it is clear the residents come before much of the other amenities.

The trick to getting more people to Washington Avenue has less to do with paving and more to do with diversity of uses. In the Loop I know I can get a quick slice of pizza for $3 or an impressive entree at a nice restaurant for $20, and everything in between. However, on Washington Avenue I am more limited to the high-end meal. But suppose I want that high-priced dinner but I want cash to have drinks before and after, where is the ATM machine? I wouldn’t know where to walk to get cash.

In the nearly five years since I wrote the above we’ve seen a lot of positive change, including the addition of many of the items I listed as missing at the time.

Besides a walk-up ATM or two, here is an incomplete list of businesses I’d either like to see in the loft districts (in no particular order):

• Pizza by the slice joint
• Late night fast food places (not drive thru types either)
• Tattoo & body piercing studio(s)
• Newsstand & Bookstore
• Street vendors selling coffee & hot dogs (including veggie dogs)
• Florist
• Public bulletin boards
• Kitchen gadget store
• 24-hour coffee house
• Cell phone store
• Good diner serving breakfast
• Smoothie shop
• Produce stand
• Furniture stores where you can buy a futon or a $600 sofa.
• Small Branch US Post Office
• Greeting cards, gag gifts
• Bike Shop
• Sporting Goods/Outdoor store
• Vespa retailer
• Apple Computer Store (even the new mini concept store would be OK)
• Urban Outfitters
• Ben & Jerry’s (or similar)

My focus in 2004 was on Washington Ave West of Tucker (12th to 18th) but downtown living has grown well beyond these six blocks.  In November 2007 I moved into a downtown loft so I’ve seen recent change as a resident.

Pizza by the slice is covered by Papa John’s at Tucker & Locust during the weekday lunch but Bridge & Tunnel Pizza on Washington Ave just East of Tucker has excellent slices at lunch as well as late into the evening.  Other late night options are still too few.     A new tattoo & piercing studio just opened at 14th & Washington Ave.  The building once had a single shoe store with a pull down security gate now holds four locally owned businesses.

In addition to the AIA Bookstore at 911 Washington Ave we now have Left Bank Books at 10th & Locust.  The number of street vendors has improved greatly both during the day and on weekend nights.  We have a florist in the 1300 block of Washington Ave.

No bulletin boards anywhere — the powers that be would see those as clutter.   We briefly had a kitchen store but the owner moved out of state.  12th Street Diner, next to B&T at Tucker & Washington, is now open and should go 24 hours soon.  Sprint has a store now at Tucker & Washington Ave.  I’d still like to see AT&T have a retail store downtown.  Numerous smoothie choices now.

No produce stands like I’ve seen in other cities — small storefronts spilling out onto the sidewalk.  Washington Ave Post serves as a mail center for many.  I’ve sent a few packages from there in the last year.  Cards and gifts are available from a wide variety of retailers.

No bike shop yet but I hear one is in the early planning stages.  No outdoor shop either as yet.  Scooter dealers are all away from downtown, hopefully that will change soon.  I’d still love to see an Apple store downtown.  We still don’t have the foot traffic they require.  I can picture an gleaming Apple Store on Market at 10th — next to Bank of America and across from Citygarden.

Urban Outfitters and some other chains offer inexpensive basic clothing.  This we are still missing — at least for men.

And finally downtown has numerous choices for gelato, including Gelateria Tavolini at 14th & Washington.

So in five years my wish list has been whittled down nicely.  We’ve seen places open and close.  That will continue to happen as retail is a tough business.  We simply cannot afford to subsidize new places as Culinaria was.  The progress in the last five years has been outstanding.  We cannot rest, however, if we want to see as much or more progress over the next five years.  In that spirit, here is my new wish list:

• Some chain stores that compliment, not duplicate, existing retailers.  Apple, for example.
• More street vendors and at times other than weekday lunch, late weekends or game days.  A typical Tuesday at 3pm.
• On-street parking on Washington Ave all the way East to the Eads bridge.
• Completion of the Gateway Mall Hallway — the spine running along Market.
• Reduced open space.  Building new construction on non-park green and asphalt lots.
• A small market West of Tucker.
• A skate park.
• Redevelopment of the 22nd Parkway area just West of Union Station (part of McKee’s plan).
• A moratorium on new stand-alone parking garages.
• Renovation of the remaining vacant buildings downtown.
• Firm planes to remove the depressed section of I-70 once the new bridge over the Mississippi River opens.
• Construction start on the sites of Ballpark Village and the Bottle District.
• A decision on the future of the Edward Jones Dome.  Are the Rams staying?
• Streetcar loop through downtown connecting to neighborhoods North, South and West.
• New construction around Union Station.
• High-speed train to Chicago departing from our new downtown Amtrak station.
• Low vacancy rate on street-level retail spots forces some non-retail businesses up above street level.
• Bike Station with showers, lockers and secure indoor parking.
• Hundreds of bike racks (inverted-U) on every sidewalk.
• Our first demolition of a parking structure — perhaps one North of Kiener Plaza? New mixed-use structures in the place of the garage.

I could go on.  We’ve come so far in 5 years I just want to set the bar higher for the next 5.  If you have ideas, suggest them below.

– Steve Patterson

The Corner Bakery

Few things are more urban than walking down the street to the corner bakery to buy a loaf of bread that came out of the oven just an hour before. Sadly, few of us live in places where doing so is still possible.  This post is, at the same time, a discussion of urbanity and a book review.  Not a book on urban life, but a cook book on baking bread.  The subjects are related.

Jeff Hertzberg, co-author of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, wrote the following in the introduction:

I could finish half a loaf of very fresh, very crisp rye bread by myself.  The right stuff came from a little bakery on Horace Harding Boulevard in Queens.  The shop itself was nondescript, but the breads were Eastern European masterpieces.  The crust of the rye bread was crisp, thin, and caramelized brown.  The interior crumb was moist and dense, chewy but never gummy, and bursting with tangy yeast, rye, and wheat flavors.

The handmade bread was available all over New York City, and it wasn’t a rarefied delicacy.  Everyone knew what it was and took it for granted.  It was not a stylish addition to affluent lifestyles; it was a simple comfort food brought here by immigrants.

I left New York in the late 1980s, and assumed that the corner bread shops would always be there, waiting for me, whenever I came back to visit.  But I was wrong.  As people lost interest in making a second stop after the supermarket just for bread, the shops gradually faded away.  By 1990, the ubiquitous corner shops turning out great eastern, central and southern European breads with crackling crusts were no longer so ubiquitous.

Great European breads, handmade by artisans, were still available, but they’d become part of the serious (and seriously expensive) food phenomenon that had swept the country.  The bread bakery was no longer on every corner — now it was a destination.  And nobody’s grandmother would ever have paid six dollars for a loaf of bread.

St. Louis, like Queens NY, once had bakeries on corner after corner.  Today our choices are very limited.

Vitale’s Bakery, pictured above, is one of the few places left in our region where you can buy bread made on site.  Sure we have St. Louis Bread Co. (known to Panera Bread to readers outside the St. Louis region) but a publicly traded franchise company, even if local, is not what I have in mind.  Of course Vitale’s bread is trucked to our supermarkets as well.  Companion used to have retail sales at their bakery on Gustine before they opened high-end shops in Clayton and the Central West End.

Three years ago today I visited one of the few small bakeries built in the image of those from decades earlier:

222 Artisan Bakery on Main Street in Edwardsville, IL is the corner bakery reborn.  Here is how they describe their bread:

Our fresh baked breads are crafted in the style of the French masters. We use a levain to create long fermented sourdough and rustic culinary masterpieces. Our breads are started days before they go into the oven using natural stone ground flour and the finest ingredients.

Most breads are ready by 9 am but there are no rules when dealing with naturally leavened bread-some days the dough wants to rest and some days it’s ready to roll. If you are having a party and would like to order something special,be sure to let us know 72 hours in advance so we can get started early.

Sounds good, but I’m not going to drive to Edwardsville IL for fresh bread.  Those in Edwardsville are fortunate.

For the last month I’ve been trying my hand at baking my own fresh bread, following the simple process described in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

I learned of baking bread this way after my friend Dustin Bopp posted a link to an article from Mother Earth News on his Facebook wall. Note, if you follow the recipe and use yeast in packets you need to use two packs to get the required 1-1/2 tablespoons.

I’ve emailed with the other author, Zoe Francois.  My plan is to make the Mennonite Zweiback rolls like my grandmother used to make.

These were the bread I loved as a child.  The last time I tried was 20 years ago. Way too time consuming.   I recall my Mom saying how, as a child of the depression, store bought bread was a luxury they couldn’t afford.  Today home baked bread is a luxury we all have time to afford.  If you live close to one,  please support your local bakery.

– Steve Patterson

Preferred Parking for Hybrids

Out of Chicago comes an interesting discussion – preferred parking for hybrid vehicles in the retail environment. Apparently Whole Foods is attempting to receive a LEED rating for their new stores, and one way they’re doing this is by designating parking spots near the front door for the exclusive use of hybrid vehicles.  Chicago Tribune articles here and here.   And yes, the LEED process does give points for providing preferred parking for alternative-fuel vehicles.

Most of the previous applications I’ve seen have been in places of employment, where the goal is to wean commuters away from their single-occupant vehicles. I don’t have much of an issue with providing preferences in this environment, since providing and enforcing them over time seem to be two very different things. Seeing this applied in a retail situation is, to me, a much different dynamic, much like my negative reaction to designated parking for new or expectant moms – any time you designate spaces for specific uses, you both diminish the actual supply (since most “special” spots are rarely fully-utilized) and you force everyone else further out.

We can obviously discuss the larger issues of whether free parking should be limited by the government (to force people to use other modes) and how free parking is making most of us fatter and lazier, but I’d like to focus on the apparent movement away from everyone being considered equal. We already provide special parking for people with documented disabilities, as we should. And I don’t have a problem with any business providing reserved parking for anyone they choose – it’s their land, their money and their business model. But I do take exception with any public program that creates special incentives without a strong basis in reality.

Short term, these spaces may provide a small incentive for some people to consider more-efficient vehicles, much like how “compact” spaces were meant to encourage people to buy smaller vehicles. Longer term, as hybrids become more common, the Law of Unintended Consequences WILL kick in. Much like how many cities have seen increased demand for hybrids when they can be driven by solo drivers in HOV lanes, or how transit agencies in Illinois have had to accommodate the unfunded mandate of allowing all seniors to ride for free, these spaces will soon become oversubscribed.

Where this issue stands now is in sort of a gray area – it’s not the law of the land, yet, but I can see it becoming that fairly quickly. Whole Foods has every right to do this; the real issue comes down the road, where LEED compliance is either mandated by local legislation, or, as is the case in Chicago, going green gets you an expedited permitting process. And I’m not aware of any applications around here (yet), but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it tried fairly soon.

– Jim Zavist