Local Color >>

• Best St. Louisan of 2000
  Nelly
  As a North Side teenager plotting his future, Cornell Haynes Jr. tested three options in his quest to make millions: He made tentative moves toward a pro-baseball career; he worked on his rhymes and lyrical flow in the hope of becoming a rap star; and he attempted to make it the old-fashioned... More >>
• Best Continuing Saga
  Convention-Center Hotel
  Like Knights Templar searching for the Holy Grail, city leaders have been contemplating, proposing and planning a convention-center hotel since sometime in the Dark Ages. (OK, we mean since the Schoemehl administration. Same difference.) From the ashes of many failed attempts, Mayor Clarence... More >>
• Best Scandal
  Bel-Ridge Police
  It's been a good year for scandal. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration makes Andrew Chambers of University City the nation's best-paid snitch, despite a history of arrests and lying in court. Post-Dispatch sports columnist Kathleen Nelson steals quotes from the Associated Press and,... More >>
• Best Protest
  I-70 Blockade
  Any protest that gets local Republican, moderate, well-reasoned activist Jim Buford to join ranks with nationwide, left-of-center and anything-but-moderate activist Al Sharpton has something strange and powerful going for it. And then the protest on July 13, 1999, actually blocked Interstate 70... More >>
• Best 15 Minutes of Fame
  Howard Mechanic
  In February, Howard Mechanic, an anti-Vietnam War protester, was apprehended by federal authorities in Scottsdale, Ariz., after he revealed his identity to a young reporter. Mechanic, who had taken the alias of Gary Tredway, was wanted for his involvement in the burning of the Air Force ROTC... More >>
• Best Local Boy Made Bad
  Steve Diet Goedde
  The part of bad that feels good is integral to the vocation of erotic/fetish photographer Steve Diet Goedde. The 1983 St. Louis University High graduate first turned his camera on the world of dominatrices, vamps and vixens about 10 years ago and has built a serious reputation for his skills at... More >>
• Best Local Girl Made Bad
  Darva Conger
  The connection here may be somewhat tenuous, but when you think about it, it's no worse than the links to our city of some of the local folks made good who are enshrined on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. For half-a-decade -- 1990-95 -- Darva Conger, of Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire? infamy,... More >>
• Best Window Display (1 Comment)
  The Birds, Arrangements in the Loop
  On the right side of the front door of Arrangements in the Loop stands a traditionally designed dried-flower bouquet of regal reds and blues that cascades down onto a pristine-white wrought-iron garden table surrounded by handpainted clay pots. Then there's the other side. The left side. The... More >>
• Best Celebrity Visit
  Tippi Hedren
  There's never been a shadow of a doubt that St. Louisans are simultaneously in awe of and comfortable around movie stars. We're notorious for getting celebrity visits here in St. Louis -- hell, we have stars on the sidewalk -- but Tippi Hedren's appearance, in terms of both physical beauty and... More >>
• Best Raconteur
  Pops Farrar
  Most RFT readers first encountered the surname "Farrar" by reading about Jay Farrar, a local musician famous for his cryptic songs and infamous for his extreme shyness. So to hear that a Farrar -- James Paul "Pops" Farrar, Jay's father -- is our best local raconteur may come as a shock. But only... More >>
• Best Role Model
  Bill Willert
  If more business owners followed the example of Bill Willert of Willert Home Products Inc., oh what a wonderful world it would be. Willert, who runs the business his father started in 1946, has two people employed full-time who do nothing but cut grass and pick up litter on and around his plant... More >>
• Best Alderman
  Craig Schmid
  Although the city considers the office of alderman a part-time position (and pays accordingly), the good ones spend at least 50 hours a week just taking care of the routine business of the ward: attending countless neighborhood meetings, writing letters to slum landlords, allocating block-grant... More >>
• Best Politician
  Florissant Mayor James J. Eagan
  Politicians are birds of passage; they test the wind, flap their wings, chirp and crow and often leave an offensive mark. Sometimes they soar; sometimes they don't. But the most successful members of the species manage to stay aloft, just out of target range. And, for sheer endurance, there's... More >>
• Best Community-Service Program
  Humane Society of Missouri's Docents
  Last month in St. Louis, a 10-year-old boy used a belt to beat to death his docile Pomeranian-mix dog. A boy in summer camp boasted that his unspayed cat had given birth to more than 20 kittens. A woman brought her tabby to the veterinarian after a dangerous infection developed beneath the cat's... More >>
• Best Parade
  Veterans Day
  Often overlooked and woefully underattended, the Veterans Day Parade, held downtown on the closest Saturday before Veterans Day, has lots of color and action, plus free chili, coffee, soda and doughnuts. More than 100 units of active and retired military pass muster at the reviewing stand --... More >>
• Best Up-and-Coming Neighborhood
  Benton Park
  A neighborhood is at its best when it's not yet "up" and just barely "coming"; when it's yet to be completely gentrified, there's a willful, renegade atmosphere in its air and the creative, adventuresome types are on full display. Benton Park is at its best right now: It's diverse, safe and... More >>
• Best Historic Building
  Merchandise Mart
  The Merchandise Mart, at 1000 Washington Ave., is a designated city landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The brick seven-story commercial building takes up the entire block bounded by Washington Avenue and St. Charles, 10th and 11th streets. The building occupies a... More >>
• Best New Building
  Bohemian Hill Project
  Rather than the Big Pink violating the city skyline in the guise of the Thomas F. Eagleton Federal Courthouse or the glass-and-metal addition to the Missouri History Museum -- a postmodern greenhouse grafted onto a romanticist skin -- we favor a more modest contribution to the St. Louis... More >>
• Best Church (1 Comment)
  St. Francis de Sales
  On the corner of Gravois and Ohio, amid humble four-families, storefronts and biker bars, looms a monstrous structure of soot-stained buff brick: St. Francis de Sales, one of the most glorious churches in St. Louis. A prime example of Gothic Revival architecture, it's a majestic anomaly in its... More >>
• Best Rabbi
  Abraham Magence
  Best rabbi? Obviously it's a subjective call, like when a man insists that he's "married to the world's greatest woman" or some restaurant has "the world's greatest hamburger" (this article is kosher, so no cheese, thank you). It takes more than a great rabbi to impress someone like me --... More >>
• Best New-Building Blueprint
  Forum for Contemporary Art
  Most spaces for contemporary art were not designed for that purpose. Contemporary art resides in old industrial zones -- Pittsburgh's Mattress Factory is a good example -- where wide, vast empty spaces in which workers once toiled to produce a boom economy are now the empty lofts that provide... More >>
• Best Vacant Building
  710 N. 15th St.
  Though the Washington Avenue club district seems to be less thriving than its boosters would have us believe, a few weirdo spots in the area, in the land grab and club fiesta currently under way, should be developed, and we're baffled as to why they're not. The best of the lot is 710 N. 15th... More >>
• Best Place to Retain Water
  Compton Hill Reservoir
  You barely notice it as you fly by on I-44, and you may hardly care while stuck at the traffic light at Grand and Russell. But nestled within winding, scenic walkways, discreetly tucked into an earthen sheath, is the Compton Hill Reservoir. The original stone-lined reserve, completed in 1870,... More >>
• Best Neighborhood
  Central West End
  With due respect to Soulard, University City, Lafayette Square, South Grand and other places in which I spent pleasurable time during my year in St. Louis, my selection of the "best" neighborhood in town is unquestionably the Central West End -- first, last and always. There is hardly another... More >>
• Best Riverfront Attraction
  Two Pecan Tree Pond
  Two Pecan Tree Pond is a 15-acre wildlife area that is part of the Riverlands Environmental Demonstration Area in St. Charles County along the Mississippi River. Created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers when it constructed the Melvin Price Locks and Dam, the pond hosts a raptor hacking... More >>
• Best Lily Pads
  Tower Grove Park
  If aquarium algae is the last water plant with which you were intimate, the wacky lily pads in Tower Grove Park will be a revelation. Situated in the most absurd, overly civilized corner of the park (nearby points of interest include an antique bandstand surrounded by busts of grumpy classical... More >>
• Best Duck Pond
  Forest Park
  Murphy Lake is sheer bucolic splendor. Accessible yet secluded, it provides an ideal spot for gazing wistfully, walking leisurely or attempting to feed the beautiful wild ducks that sometimes alight but want nothing to do with you or your bread. Fuckers. The best place in town to feed ducks is... More >>
• Best Sunflowers
  Corner of Lewis and O'Fallon, St. Louis Riverfront
  There's no explaining them, save sunlight, soil and abject vacancy. In downest downtown St. Louis, just up the gravel road from the corner of Lewis and O'Fallon, in an abandoned warehouse-and-train-track district, next to the 1964 Dickson Pumping Station and stretching all the way to the Trans... More >>
• Best Monument
  Mother Jones Memorial
  If Mother Jones were still alive, she would probably curse the magazine that bears her name for not being radical enough. The hell-raising labor organizer is buried in Mount Olive, Ill. In 1936, six years after her death, the Progressive Mine Workers of America built a monument in her honor at... More >>
• Best Monument in New Clothing
  Cannons in Lafayette Park
  Just north of the lake in Lafayette Park, the three pitted bronze guns seem steeped in romance. But until recently there was no explanation of their origin and purpose. Now, thanks to the Lafayette Square Restoration Committee, any passerby with the curiosity to stop and read the newly installed... More >>
• Best Bi-State Bus Route (3 Comments)
  No. 70 Grand
  In the beginning, there was a bus stop, across the street from the neon steer above Don's Meat Market on Broadway, catty-corner from an abandoned Wendy's with a broken sign out front exposing vertical fluorescent bulbs. It's 9:45 in the morning on a Friday, and the Bi-State bus sits empty, its... More >>
• Best Cemetery
  Confederate Prisoner Cemetery
  In 1862, the first 12,000 Confederate prisoners of war entered the federal military prison in Alton, Ill., and over the next three years, more than 1,500 of them died of smallpox, dysentery and malnourishment. Although some of the prisoners were shipped to Small Pox Island in the Mississippi... More >>
• Best Roof
  Ethical Society of St. Louis
  It would be easy to get into a car accident driving along Clayton Road just west of the Galleria if you weren't prepared for the sight of the Ethical Society and its shocking roof. The top of the building slopes gradually up to a central spire, which then shoots violently heavenward, tapering to... More >>
• Best Memory
  South City's Sidewalk Vendors
  Today everybody drives everywhere, and when the Jehovah's Witnesses come, they ring doorbell after doorbell in vain. But 50 years ago, when only a third of the block even owned a finned Chrysler or Ford, there was street life, and nowhere was it livelier than in South City. The Irish cops walked... More >>
• Best Sidewalk
  Downtown Kirkwood
  Just down the street from the feeding frenzy of Wal-Mart, Kmart and Target, that unsightly discount troika where Dodge Rams lock horns over parking spots, there lies tranquility. If you miss the sunlit, unfuddled serenity of a Father Knows Best main street, you'll find it in downtown Kirkwood.... More >>
• Best Underground Parking
  Westfield Center
  Mall parking is like an intergalactic war, what with many people battling over one space. They do things like wait for a car to pull out, even if it takes 10 minutes, so they can grab a choice spot. Underground parking has the connotation of being something secret or radical. We think it might... More >>
• Best Place to Get Arrested
  Francis Park
  Francis Park, when it's deserted early in the morning, and the sun's shining golden, and life seems as simple and serene as the long lily-pond promenade -- until helmeted "Officer Kiwi" pedals up on his bicycle and threatens you with a $100 ticket, grim as Sgt. Friday busting a drug dealer.... More >>
• Best Shortcut
  Forest Park Expressway
  Is it a highway? A glorified road? Nobody seems to know. Maybe it's a video game. From the I-170 exit, you hop on the Forest Park Expressway, and you're zooming along, feeling very interstate-ish, when you come to a -- STOP! -- red light. That's right -- the speed limit varies, but it's never... More >>
• Best Combination Highway Entrance/Exit
  Highway 40 at Forest Park Expressway and Jefferson Avenue
  Only do this when you're feeling lucky. Try entering Highway 40/I-64 east coming off the Forest Park Expressway and exiting at Jefferson Avenue. You're dumped into 40/64 in the fast lane, and you have just a half-mile to cross three lanes of dense traffic while every bozo is trying to pass on... More >>
• Best Place to Make a Left at Rush Hour
  University City Loop
  Home of whimsical eight-hour parking meters and its own quirky rush hours, like late afternoon, when Washington University cuts loose, and just before the live music starts on a Friday night -- the University City Loop is congested, but without the rage. The Riverfront Times staff tests the... More >>