Line #7 UsefulNotes/StLouis


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/st_louis_5720.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Meet me at the Arch.]]
3
4	St. Louis, {{UsefulNotes/Missouri}}, is known for the Gateway Arch and... well, actually, that's pretty much what it's known for now[[note]](though nearby Ferguson did gain major national attention for the 2014 protests associated with the UsefulNotes/BlackLivesMatterMovement)[[/note]], which is a real shame considering its history. St. Louis sits just south of the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, a naturally prudent place for a major settlement; the ancient UsefulNotes/{{Native American\|s}} city of Cahokia, the largest pre-Columbian city in what would become the US, was more or less just on the other side of the river. The [[UsefulNotes/{{France}} French]] were the first Europeans to [[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchColonialEmpire settle in the area]], officially founding St. Louis in 1764. The town then almost immediately passed into [[UsefulNotes/{{Spain}} Spanish]] hands (though it remained culturally French), before going back to France in 1800 and then being sold to the fledging UsefulNotes/UnitedStates as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Keeping up so far? The city's location at the convergence of the two longest rivers in North America made it a strategic and commercial hub, which in turn helped it grow into a huge city and made it an especially big deal back when riverboats were considered a speedy form of transportation. At the start of the 20th century, St. Louis was the fourth-largest city in the entire country. However, the city has been declining in importance (and population) for quite awhile now. It's lost population in every census since 1950, is no longer even in the top ''fifty'' largest cities in the U.S., and is no longer even the largest city in Missouri.[[note]]There's an asterisk there, as we'll discuss below: Many of those people just moved to the suburbs, and the total metropolitan area still has a larger population than UsefulNotes/KansasCity's.[[/note]]
5
6	St. Louis is nicknamed "the Gateway to the West" (''cf.'' the Gateway Arch), in reference to its history as a staging ground for westward expeditions by Lewis and Clark and others and its historical position as the last major urban enclave en route to the western frontier. It has sometimes been called "the westernmost eastern city" for similar reasons. (Though Missourians who live more than a couple of dozen miles from the Arch may instead call it "the Exit from the East.") Politically, St. Louis is a fairly deep blue stronghold in an otherwise mostly red state, a trait it shares with Jackson County (Kansas City) and Boone County (the University of Missouri–Columbia). Speaking of counties, the City of St. Louis is ''not'' in any of Missouri's 114 counties. It used to be part of St. Louis County but voted to secede in 1876. Besides affecting the city's tax base and infrastructure, this separation has also contributed to St. Louis's population shrinkage by comparison with other major U.S. cities--since the borders of the city itself are fixed, the common practice of incorporating outlying suburbs has been halted for the last century and a half. The full metro area is actually the 21st most populous in the U.S. to this day--still a major downgrade from its earlier prominence, to be sure, but not nearly as bad a drop as it looks on paper. Part of that metro area lies across the river in Illinois; those go by the description "Metro East" for obvious reasons.
7
8	St. Louis has a [[TheRival running rivalry]] with fellow Midwestern giant UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} dating back to when they were the biggest cities in the Midwest. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition (more widely known as the "St. Louis World's Fair") was held there in 1904, which also hosted the [[UsefulNotes/OlympicGames third Olympic Games]], the first held in America--Chicago's still kinda mad about this, since ''they'' were supposed to have the games before they switched to take advantage of the fair. Today, the only thing St. Louis really competes directly with Chicago (outside of sports) is its crime rate; St. Louis' violent crime rate is regularly the highest in the nation.
9
10	The Gateway Arch has a viewing area at its apex which can be reached by so-called tram cars that ascend either leg of the arch. Each tram consists of a chain of cars with circular cross-sections, which remain horizontal as they travel up and down the changing inclines. Definitely not for the claustrophobic, however, since each car holds five people with no standing room and looks a bit like a washing machine drum.
11
12	St. Louis is home to:
13	* [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball The St. Louis Cardinals]] ([[UsefulNotes/{{Baseball}} MLB]]). The Cardinals are second only to the UsefulNotes/{{New York\|City}} Yankees in total World Series titles and have a strong following. Indeed, in many ways they punch well above their weight in terms of prominence for a market of their size, largely due to the historical circumstances of having been the MLB team furthest west and furthest south for the first half of the 20th century. That landed their games on a large network of first radio and then television stations for "local" broadcasts, which they still maintain to a surprisingly large extent. Especially prominent is radio flagship KMOX, which, because of the flat topography of the American Midwest, the nature of AM broadcasting on medium wave radio, and the power of the signal, can be heard as far away as Canada.
14	** St. Louis used to be home to another MLB team, the St. Louis Browns of the American League, which played in the city for the entire first half of the 20th century but moved to Baltimore right around when it became clear St. Louis wasn't going to stay big enough for two teams. Unlike the usually successful Cardinals, the Browns were a perennial bottom-dweller that often resorted to gimmicks to sell tickets, especially when the team was owned by the infamous Bill Veeck (whose named rhymes with "wreck", as his autobiography was titled). Veeck once signed Eddie Gaedel, who was only 3 feet 7 inches tall, to a contract so the opposing pitcher couldn't strike him out because of the small size of his strike zone. Gaedel even wore the fraction "1/8" as his uniform number.
15	* The St. Louis Blues ([[UsefulNotes/NationalHockeyLeague NHL]]). One of six teams that joined the NHL when it doubled in size in 1967, they went to the [[UsefulNotes/TheStanleyCup Stanley Cup]] Finals in their first three seasons, aided greatly by a league format that saw the "Original Six" in one conference and the expansion teams in the other. However, they lost all three, twice to UsefulNotes/{{Montreal}} and once to UsefulNotes/{{Boston}}. In the middle of the 2018–19 season, it looked like they'd continue their ignominious streak of being the only active team from the 1967 expansion never to lift Lord Stanley's Mug, seeing that they were ''dead last'' in the league. They then pulled a dramatic comeback, making the playoffs and then winning their first Stanley Cup.
16	* St. Louis City SC ([[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueSoccer MLS]]) – Started play in 2023. The city has been a hotbed of U.S. soccer for decades; in fact, for a time in the early 20th century, the de facto top level of the sport was a St. Louis city league. While the league folded during the Depression, the passion never went away, with several relatively short-lived teams operating in various U.S. leagues over the years. College soccer was and still is big in the region as well. The Saint Louis Billikens (Saint Louis University) were a dominant men's side from the 1950s through the mid-1970s, winning a still-record 10 NCAA Division I championships.[[note]]Most of these were in the predecessors to D-I.[[/note]] The Billikens are half of a big local rivalry in the sport with the SIU Edwardsville Cougars (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) across the river in Metro East. The city had been on MLS' radar almost since the league was founded, but plans for a St. Louis team fell into {{development hell}} until 2019, when City SC was announced with a planned 2022 start date, [[ReleaseDateChange/COVID19PandemicRelatedExamples later pushed back]] to 2023.
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18	The city ''was'' home to two notable [[UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeague NFL]] franchises. The Chicago Cardinals moved to the city in 1960. They played there for 28 years and were quite mediocre; they only visited the playoffs thrice in that span, never actually won in the postseason, and left for Arizona in 1988. The city put up the bill for a new stadium in the '90s hoping to attract a team and brought in the UsefulNotes/LosAngeles Rams when owner Georgia Frontiere, a St. Louis native, thought the team would do better in her hometown than the crowded LA market. For a time, it actually did: "The Greatest Show on Turf", which lasted from 1999 to 2001, won the Super Bowl in 1999 by one yard against the Titans, and made it to the Big Game again in 2001 only to lost to the Patriots on a last-second field goal. After Frontiere's death in 2008, however, they didn't put up a single winning season. Since their lease allowed them to depart if their stadium was deemed subpar and the economically struggling city couldn't afford to renovate it, the Rams eventually hightailed it back to LA in 2016.
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20	Anheuser-Busch was founded in St. Louis, and it is still home to the international brewing conglomerate's North American headquarters. (Maybe that has something to do with the whole crime thing?) These days almost nobody says "Saint Louie" unless they're joking or referencing WesternAnimation/YogiBear.
21
22	----
23	!! People from St. Louis (and vicinity):
24	* Music/{{Akon}}: Born in STL, grew up mostly in UsefulNotes/{{Senegal}}.
25	* Creator/MayaAngelou
26	* Creator/NoahAntwiler
27	* Creator/JosephineBaker
28	* Creator/ScottBakula: Born in St. Louis, attended Kirkwood High School.
29	* [[UsefulNotes/HistoricalPeopleToKnowInMLB Yogi Berra]]: Born and raised in the heart of the city's Italian-American community, The Hill.
30	* Music/ChuckBerry
31	* [[Wrestling/EvanBourne Evan Bourne/Matt Sydal]]
32	* Creator/SterlingKBrown
33	* Creator/WilliamSBurroughs
34	* Creator/CedricTheEntertainer: Born in Jefferson City, MO, moved to the Berkeley suburb after junior high.
35	* Bob Chandler, who founded a shop in the suburbs where his personal pickup truck evolved into Bigfoot, the first ever monster truck, creating a whole new motor sport.
36	* Creator/KateCapshaw (born in [[UsefulNotes/DFWMetroplex Fort Worth]], but raised in St. Louis)
37	* Creator/CJCherryh
38	* Creator/KateChopin
39	* William Clark: Supplied and launched the Lewis and Clark Expedition from St. Louis and nearby St. Charles, respectively; returned to the area after the Expedition and lived there the rest of his life, while holding various prominent government positions.
40	* Creator/SarahClarke
41	* Creator/AndyCohen
42	* Jimmy Connors: UsefulNotes/{{Tennis}} great from Metro East (born in East St. Louis, raised in Belleville)
43	* Creator/BobCostas: Born in Queens, New York, but relocated to St. Louis to begin his broadcasting career after attending Syracuse University.
44	* Music/MilesDavis: Born in Alton, Illinois, grew up in East St. Louis.
45	* Creator/PhyllisDiller
46	* Creator/ColinDonnell
47	* Jack Dorsey (Website/{{Twitter}} co-founder and CEO)
48	* [[Literature/AnAmericanTragedy Theodore Dreiser]]: Worked as a reporter in St. Louis in his early 20s, and later wrote about the experience in his memoir ''Newspaper Days''.
49	* Creator/TSEliot
50	* Eugene Field (poet and essayist)
51	* Creator/JennaFischer: Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, grew up in St. Louis (as did her ''[[Series/TheOfficeUS Office]]'' co-stars Ellie Kemper and Phyllis Smith).
52	* [[Series/SanfordAndSon Redd Foxx]]
53	* Creator/JonathanFranzen: Born in suburban Chicago, his family moved soon after to Webster Groves, MO, where he grew up.
54	* Nikki Glaser (comedian): Born in Cincinnati, grew up in St. Louis.
55	* Creator/DavidGonterman
56	* Creator/JohnGoodman
57	* UsefulNotes/UlyssesSGrant: The site of his farm is now a popular tourist attraction, complete with a petting zoo.
58	* Dick Gregory (comedian, actor, and civil rights activist)
59	* Creator/JamesGunn
60	* Creator/SeanGunn
61	* Creator/JonHamm: Born in St. Louis, grew up in nearby Creve Coeur.
62	* W.C. Handy (blues composer and musician): Lived in the city briefly, inspiring the iconic standard "Saint Louis Blues"
63	* Music/ScottJoplin: Lived in St. Louis for a time, though he spent much more time in Sedalia, in the north-central part of the state.
64	* Jackie Joyner-Kersee: Track legend born and raised in East St. Louis.
65	* Wrestling/{{Kane}}: Born in Spain to an [[MilitaryBrat Air Force family]], grew up in and near St. Louis (though he went to high school in Bowling Green, just outside the metropolitan area).
66	* Faye Kellerman (bestselling novelist)
67	* Creator/EllieKemper--perhaps best known as Erin from ''The Office'' and now starring as the title character in ''Series/UnbreakableKimmySchmidt''--was born in Kansas City but moved to St. Louis as a child. Fun fact: she went to the same high school as Jon Hamm had, and he taught her eighth grade acting class.
68	* Kelly Klein
69	* Creator/KevinKline
70	* Creator/AnnLeckie
71	* Charles Lindbergh: Worked as a pilot based out of St. Louis prior to his famous solo transatlantic flight. The flight itself was financed in part by St. Louis businessmen, and was carried out in a custom-built plane called ''The Spirit of St. Louis''.
72	* Patricia Lockwood (poet and novelist): Born in Fort Wayne, IN, grew up in St. Louis and Cincinnati.
73	* The members of Music/{{Ludo}}
74	* Michael [=McDonald=] (singer most famous for his time in Music/TheDoobieBrothers): Born in a St. Louis hospital to a family that lived in Ferguson, and raised in Florissant.
75	* Creator/TaylorMomsen
76	* Marianne Moore (poet): Born in nearby Kirkwood and lived in the St. Louis area until age 16.
77	* [[UsefulNotes/HistoricalPeopleToKnowInMLB Stan Musial]]: Born and raised in western Pennsylvania, but played his entire MLB career with the Cardinals and lived in St. Louis County for the rest of his life.
78	* Music/{{Nelly}}: Born in Austin, TX, grew up in St. Louis and University City.
79	* Dan O'Bannon: Creator of the ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' franchise.
80	* Music/AngelOlsen (indie singer-songwriter)
81	* Wrestling/RandyOrton: Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, but raised in and billed out of St. Louis.
82	* Creator/EvanPeters
83	* Creator/VincentPrice
84	* [[UsefulNotes/PulitzerPrize Joseph Pulitzer]]: Born in Hungary, made his career in St. Louis (where he founded the ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'', still the city's most prominent newspaper).
85	* Dred Scott: The infamous 1857 [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCourts Supreme Court]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford decision]] which ruled that African Americans did not count as US citizens and which is often credited as a catalyst for the outbreak of the [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar American Civil War]] four years later occurred when Scott sued his enslaver for bringing him back to St. Louis (where slavery was legal) after a period in (free) Wisconsin. The courthouse where the case was first tried is still a prominent St. Louis landmark, and a statue of Scott stands outside of it.
86	* Sexyy Red (rapper)
87	* [[Theatre/ForColoredGirls Ntozake Shange]]: Born in Trenton, NJ, lived in St. Louis between ages 8 and 13.
88	* William Tecumseh Sherman
89	* Phyllis Schlafly (conservative activist and the subject of ''Series/MrsAmerica''): Born and raised in St. Louis; lived most of her adult life in Metro East (specifically Alton), and spent the last 20 years of her life in St. Louis County (specifically Ladue).
90	* Slayyyter (pop singer-songwriter): Grew up in the Kirkwood suburb.
91	* [[Literature/AThousandAcres Jane Smiley]] (Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist): Born in L.A., grew up in the Webster Groves suburb.
92	* Phyllis Smith (Phyllis from ''Series/{{The Office\|US}}'')
93	* Music/{{SZA}}: Born in St. Louis, grew up in New Jersey.
94	* Sara Teasdale (poet)
95	* Music/TinaTurner: Born and mostly raised in Tennessee, but lived in St. Louis at two different times during her childhood and graduated from high school in the city. More significantly, she started her music career in St. Louis.
96	* Creator/MarkTwain: Grew up 100 miles upriver in Hannibal, MO and spent plenty of time in St. Louis throughout his life, especially as a steamboat pilot in the years when the city was a major river port. Today there's a neighborhood in the city named after him.
97	* Creator/AnnieWersching
98	* Beau Willimon: Born in [[UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC Alexandria, VA]], but mostly raised in St. Louis.[[note]]He was a [[MilitaryBrat Navy brat]]; his father settled in St. Louis after he finished his Navy service to be a lawyer.[[/note]] Creator of ''Film/TheIdesOfMarch'' and the [[TransAtlanticEquivalent American adaptation]] of ''Series/{{House of Cards\|US}}''. Also a veteran of Jon Hamm's 8th-grade drama class.
99	* Creator/TennesseeWilliams: Born in Mississippi, but lived in and around St. Louis from age 8 until graduating from high school.
100	* Creator/MykeltiWilliamson
101	* Both members of Music/HundredGecs
102
103	!! St. Louis in media:
104
105	[[AC:Film — Live Action]]
106	* Creator/StevenSoderbergh's 1993 film ''King of the Hill'' (no relation to [[WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill the show]]) is a coming-of-age story set in the city during TheGreatDepression. The film is based on a memoir of the same name by A.E. Hotchner.
107	* ''Film/MeetMeInStLouis'', of course. Specifically the film takes place during the lead-up to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.
108	* The city appears along the travel route of ''[[Film/NationalLampoonsVacation National Lampoon's Vacation]]''.
109	* Given that it's based on the career of Tina Turner, some of the early sections of ''Film/WhatsLoveGotToDoWithIt1993'' take place here.
110
111	[[AC:Literature]]
112	* Huck and Jim float past St. Louis on their way down the Mississippi in ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfHuckleberryFinn''. As mentioned above, Mark Twain frequented the city in his days as a steamboat pilot.
113	-->''The fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in St. Louis, but I never believed it till I see that wonderful spread of lights at two o’clock that still night.''
114	* St. Louis is Literature/AnitaBlake's home base.
115	* In the post-apocalyptic novel ''Literature/ACanticleForLeibowitz'', the site of New Rome--i.e. the new seat of the papacy--is heavily implied to be in what was once St. Louis. (Though it later relocates to UsefulNotes/{{Denver}}.)
116	* Creator/HermanMelville's lesser-known novel ''Literature/TheConfidenceMan'' takes place on a steamboat bound downriver from St. Louis.
117	* An important (and traumatic) section of Maya Angelou's memoir ''Literature/IKnowWhyTheCagedBirdSings'' takes place in St. Louis.
118	* The novel ''Jack'' by Marilynne Robinson (the third sequel to her Pulitzer Prize-winning ''Gilead'') has a St. Louis setting.
119	* In ''[[Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians The Lightning Thief]]'', Percy goes up the Gateway Arch, then in an emergency ''jumps straight'' into the Mississippi River. [[WritersHaveNoSenseOfScale No, really]]. In real-life, he would have been swatted before he even reaches the street separating the complex from the river, because there's a freaking stairway in front of the arch. A ''gently sloping'' stairway.
120	* The serial killer villain in ''Literature/RedDragon'', Francis Dolarhyde, lives and works a day job in St. Louis.
121	* Henry Winter, the leader of the Greek students in ''Literature/TheSecretHistory'', is the only child of a St. Louis construction tycoon. The narrator is surprised to learn this, given the group's predilection towards East Coast snobbery.
122	-->''"If Henry's from St. Louis," I said, "how did he get to be so smart?"''
123	* ''Sparring Partners'' by Creator/JohnGrisham is set here and features the skyline on its cover.
124	* Jonathan Franzen's debut novel ''The Twenty-Seventh City'' follows the career of a fictitious St. Louis County police chief. As mentioned above, Franzen himself hails from St. Louis County.
125
126	[[AC:Live-Action TV]]
127	* ''Series/{{Defiance}}'' is set in the city formerly known as St. Louis -- the Gateway Arch survives (and is host to a radio station) while much of the city ended up buried underground.
128	* ''Series/TheJohnLarroquetteShow'' is a WorkCom set in a St. Louis bus station.
129	* In ''Series/TheLastShip'', St. Louis [[SuddenlySignificantCity becomes the new capital]] of the United States' restored post-plague federal government, due to its centralized location and the fact that the local government's quarantine actions managed to keep the city's infrastructure and population more intact than anywhere else.
130	* ''Series/MastersOfSex'', based on the real-life studies of Masters and Johnson at Washington University in the '50s.
131	* An important first-season [[Recap/SupernaturalS01E06Skin episode]] of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' takes place in the city, and is referred to frequently afterwards.
132	* ''Series/{{Superstore}}'' is set at a St. Louis branch of a big-box store and FictionalCounterpart of UsefulNotes/{{Walmart}} called "Cloud 9".
133	* The sitcom ''Series/WorkIt'' is about two St. Louis men who see no option but to dress as women to get employed.
134	* The ''[[Series/TheXFiles X-Files]]'' episode "[[Recap/TheXFilesS07E21JeSouhaite Je Souhaite]]", written and directed by Creator/VinceGilligan, has a St. Louis setting.
135
136	[[AC:Music]]
137	* "My Summer Vacation" by Music/IceCube tells the story of a drug dealer from UsefulNotes/LosAngeles who tries to move his operation to St. Louis to get away from the violence and competition on the West Coast. [[DownerEnding It doesn't end well.]]
138	* The W.C. Handy [[{{Blues}} blues]] standard "Saint Louis Blues" has been performed by Music/LouisArmstrong, Music/BessieSmith, Music/CabCalloway, Music/BingCrosby, Music/CountBasie, Music/GlennMiller, Music/ChuckBerry and many others, in addition to lending its name to several [[Film/StLouisBlues films]] and the city's NHL team. Handy himself lived briefly in St. Louis.
139	* The {{folk\|Music}} and blues standard "Music/StaggerLee", which has been performed by... well, just about everyone (see the song page for a partial list), is based on a real-life shooting that happened in St. Louis on Christmas Day, 1895.
140
141	[[AC:Theatre]]
142	* ''Theatre/TheGlassMenagerie'', by St. Louis native Tennessee Williams, is set in the city.
143
144	[[AC:Web Originals]]
145	* ''Webcomic/{{Lackadaisy}}'' is set in Prohibition-era St. Louis.
146
147	[[AC:Western Animation]]
148	* The ''WesternAnimation/SpiralZone'' episode "Island in the Zone" is set in St. Louis.

Context UsefulNotes / StLouis