At least until there's another "I-70" World Series with the Cards and the Royals, right? That doesn't appear to be a threat in the immediate future, as the Royals have been far from those glory days. But you never know.
I get interested in stats like this "dissimilarity index," which I didn't even know existed until I read the above post. That list reads like a rogues gallery of rust belt/northern cities with real economic problems. And I say so as a New Yorker, dismayed to see my city's region in fourth place on that list. I haven't yet looked into how it's calculated, but it seems like lots of southern and western cities are conspicuous in their absence like: Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, etc.
I think it's time to kill this thread or move it out of Show Discussion, or Tom will be angry.
The Royals were actually offered the chance to move to the National League before the Brewers. MLB thought a rivalry with the Cards might help their slumping ticket sales. They rejected the offer, citing some imaginary rivalry they had with the Yankees. Well, imaginary to Yankees fans, anyway. But yeah, a real missed opportunity there.
As for the index, it is interesting that some of the most integrated areas are in the South. I think its probably because in the 40s and 50s while some people in the North and West were getting rich and suburbanizing, NO ONE in the south was, so cities remained much the same til the banking booms in the late 80s and 90s. I don't quite know how to explain the West, other than that there are generally less black people there. Keep in mind this is only the dissimilarity between whites and blacks, not whites and Hispanics, Native Americans, Asian Americans, etc
So now MO is a drive-through state too? Jeesh...j/k
I recently moved to St. Louis and work in NYC.
It’s the only place I’ve been where the wealthy, literally, have giant fenced-in neighborhoods to keep out the “undesirables.” They even go so far to hire private security firms to patrol their blocks.
Now, I’ve had the misfortune to do U-Turns in “private communities” in NJ, CT and RI, with their own moonlighting cops on patrol. But usually they're off the beaten-path. Not so in St. Louis. They’re dropped right in the center of working class neighborhoods and border "blight."
This makes me believe the only the difference boils down to visibility. For the most part, St. Louis isn't hiding its poor with highways (as NJ does so well), or public works projects (good job Manhattan) or good public transportation systems (excellent job ‘L’).
From what I can tell, they didn't have a visionary like Robert Moses, or the tax base, to due all the dirty work for them.
Those private streets in St. Louis you're talking about were actually built in the 1910s and at the time had the goal of protecting the super-rich from the "undesirables" which were the merely rich. All of that area deteriorated pretty quick in the 50s and 60s, but the houses on those private streets got rehabbed in the 80s largely by wealthy professors from nearby Saint Louis and Washington Universities. They have to have private security because everything, including the streets, are privately owned. If you own a house there, your property line extends out to the middle of the street. The owners have to pay in common to have it repaved, plowed, you name it. The police don't patrol private property. The point is the "blight" popped up around the gated private streets, nothing was plopped down in the middle of working class anything. The County certainly does have the private communities you're describing, though.
And visibility really is the issue here. That's why I was saying go check out Cabrini Green. In cities like NYC and Chicago it really can become "out of sight, out of mind."
St. Louis' greatest problem is its pizza...seriously.
The real problem is PAYING for St. Louis pizza. Same price as anywhere else, but its like a cracker with pizza toppings on it. I do like provel cheese though, and there are a few places that incorporate it into Chicago-style with amazing results. Feraro's "Jersey Style" is by far the best in St. Louis though.
