Unreal contemplates a slippery question, then considers joining a biker gang and/or selling our blood

Unreal: Have you considered leaving the door open overnight? That seems to work pretty well for vacant buildings in St. Louis — which by the way, don't pay a dime for their art.

Leslie Klingaman: We need to see what it's going to look like before they put anything on the walls. I've seen some of that stuff.

Local Blog O' the Week
"St. Louis Pariah"
http://stlcabbie.wordpress.com/
Author: Umar Lee

About the blogger: Umar Lee is also the author of umarlee.com, a blog about Muslim issues, and wrote a column about being a cabbie for Arch City Chronicle. He writes: "My vantage point is unique. I am first and foremost a Muslim, an adherent of Islam, and I am a white person who came of age in this racially-divided city that still has a lot of bitterness between the races. If you are engaging in any conversation on public life in St. Louis and not talking about race you are not being real because everything in Da Lou is about race."

Recent Highlight (July 28): Blood Line
Around 6 a.m. I was winding it down and driving down Delmar headed towards Kingshighway when I saw a group of about 50 people standing in line in front of a storefront. When I looked over I saw they were standing in line for a blood bank. The type of place that gives you 10 or 20 bucks to give blood or plasma. I snapped a photo on my cell from a distance but didn't want to get an up close shot, it just didn't feel right. Maybe I will bring my buddy Frank Friction one day and we will shoot the scene and actually talk to the people. It is one sign of a worsening economy and another example of America becoming a nation of haves and have not's. Just a few blocks away in the Central West End the globo LDR crowd (Latter-day Rome) sip imported European wines, smoke illegal cigars, snort cocaine at night clubs full of debauchery, buy overpriced goods, eat expensive foods they may not even like, call cabs and then jump in cabs they didn't order with no respect for the driver who just burned gas to pick them up and worry about the sun hitting them the wrong way at the sidewalk café.

Know of an Unreal-worthy local blog? Send the URL to unreal@riverfronttimes.com