Category: Media

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Media Mid-Century Modern

Building Geeks Tonight on "The Wire"

Tonight on KDHX’s The Wire, Claire Nowak-Boyd, Michael Allen and Toby Weiss will discuss current events related to the built environment in St. Louis.

Topics that will come up: Buildings, St. Louis, blogging, and modernism.

Topics that may also come up (no promises on this whatsoever): Marilyn Monroe paintings, Government Hill in Forest Park, dead malls, the Chainsaw Kittens, pit bulls, Old North St. Louis, Panorama Lanes, and modernist restroom photography.

The program airs at 7:30 p.m. on 88.1 FM and online.

Categories
Fire Hyde Park Media North St. Louis

Post Slacks on Coverage of the Turnverein Fire

by Michael R. Allen

The Associated Press had a great story on the Turnverein fire. Which daily papers ran it?

The Belleville News-Democrat, on the front page of its July 6 St. Louis edition.

The Kansas City Star. The Columbia Daily Tribune.

Guess which daily paper did not run the AP story, while also not updating its own scant coverage. That’s right, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which had earlier ran the pathetic headline “Firefighters battle blaze at old athletics complex.”

Once again, the Belleville News-Democrat has better coverage of the city of St. Louis than the Post.

Categories
Media

52 is Only a Number

by Michael R. Allen

You don’t think that St. Louis has much to offer you culturally. You blame the city for an innate conservatism that is as much an American defect as it is a specifically St. Louis one. But you don’t care — complaining about this city’s inadequacies gives you plenty of cover for your own. Maybe you are even booking a one-way ride out of here. You are frustrated to be in a city without bright lights and long nights, and you don’t hesitate to tell everyone as loudly and as often as you can muster.

If this sounds like you, chances are you have never heard of the mode of cultural production called 52nd City. This glorious enterprise — including an honest-to-goodness print magazine, a smart blog and cool events — didn’t have to revive St. Louis’ cultural landscape, the one that hypothetical you are ignoring. Instead, the folks behind 52nd City are drawing together parts of that landscape to create new connections between parts and people that make St. Louis an exciting city. We have started to see the results: a must-read blog that points out events and places that often are new to me, an awards program honoring people that are probably new to 99% of the general public but whose work helps everyone, and one of the most interesting online magazine issues that I’ve seen. These folks are celebrating what we have so no one can leave town without being made aware of the wonderful local version of those fabled jazz clubs and obscure bookstores of Those Other Better Cities.

If you want to get hip to this city, join the 52nd City crew for their magazine launch party tomorrow at the Atomic Cowboy, 4140 Manchester Avenue, from 7:00 p.m. ’til 9:00 p.m. Otherwise, you’ll probably just leave town without looking back — until your new buddies start talking about all the cool things happening in some old river city, and golly how cheap housing is there…

Categories
Hyde Park Media Mullanphy Emigrant Home North St. Louis Old North Severe Weather

Media Catching Up on Mullanphy and Turnverein Stories

by Michael R. Allen

Yesterday, Tom Weber at KWMU covered the great effort the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group is putting into finding a new owner for the Mullanphy Emigrant Home.

KTVI Fox 2 News will air a story on DHP Investments on its Monday 9:00 p.m. news program, with the Nord St. Louis Turnverein featured.

Categories
Media Severe Weather

Mainstream Media Ignores City Storm Damage

by Michael R. Allen

No mention of any storm damage in the city of St. Louis in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The most recent story on KMOV Channel 4 also does not mention any damage in the city. While any storm damage is sad, their aerial shots only show damage to suburban locations — and personal motorboats — in the region. In addition to St. Louis, Granite City and East St. Louis received damage on Sunday. On the 6:00 p.m. news program, KMOV did show a shot of one of the flag poles at Kiel Opera House that was blown over.

KSDK Channel 5 and KTVI Fox 2 also omit the city from their coverage.

All outlets are reporting the tragic death of Delancy Moore, an East St. Louis civic leader who was inside of the K & G store in Fairview Heights when a tornado struck. Moore was purchasing Easter suits for poor boys that attend the church where he was pastor.

Categories
Historic Preservation Media Southwest Garden St. Aloysius Gonzaga

National Trust Covers Plight of St. Aloysius Gonzaga Church

Houses Could Replace St. Louis Church – Megan Hogan (Preservation Online, February 1)

The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s online magazine offers this coverage of the proposed demolition of St. Aloysius Gonzaga Church, featuring quotes from my report for Landmarks Association of St. Louis and from Steve Patterson. I’m glad that they actually care about this historic St. Louis building.

Categories
Century Building Downtown Historic Preservation Media Mid-Century Modern

“Form Over Function” Transcript Available

CBS New Sunday Morning has posted a transcript of this morning’s program, Form Over Function, which featured preservation battles over Edward Durrell Stone’s 2 Columbus Circle building in New York, historic homes in the Chicago suburb of Kenilworth and the Century Building in St. Louis.

Categories
Media Theft

The Case of the Stained Glass Bandit — And His Patrons

by Michael R. Allen

In the latest Riverfront Times comes this article: The Case of the Stained Glass Bandit by Kristen Hinman. Hinman does a good job of reporting on the story, and talked with the right people. Yet the fact that she doesn’t mention which dealers bought the stolen windows is distressing. The captured thief surely divulged his patrons’ names, and that would be available publicly.

The article seems to imply that this thief is more responsible for the rash of stolen windows than the unscrupulous dealers who fuel the thievery by fencing stolen goods. Ten guys will step in to fill Tanter’s place — and the dealers will buy from them, too, so long as out-of-town buyers can be had…

Categories
Media People

Save William Stage

From Eric Seelig:

Did you ever like Street Talk, the man-on-the-street section in the Riverfront Times? Did you ever like William Stage’s old running column in the days when the RFT had editorials? Now might be a good time to write to the RFT. As you may have read in last week’s issue, William gave a goodbye message at the end of the “Best of Street Talk 2004,” but as I found out last night, this is not his choice, and if possible, he’d like to keep his job with the RFT. The only real reason given for replacing the column is because the higher-ups wanted a new column, and saw getting rid of one that’s been running for 22 years as the only way to accomplish it. I don’t know about you, but I always liked Street Talk, and I don’t see any point to eliminating it except possibly “eliminate personality from the newspaper.” If you’d like to see Street Talk continued in the RFT, or would at least like to see William keeps his job instead of being dropped just because the RFT could, NOTIFY THEM, and tell other people who might be unhappy about this to do likewise:
feedback@riverfronttimes.com
Tom.Finkel@riverfronttimes.com

Eric