Things '80s and '90s Kids in St. Louis Can't Forget

Crestwood Mall was the St. Louis hangout all through the 1990s. The food court was huge and a major social spot, but the best place to hang there was the Atari Adventure arcade. Later called Exhilarama, it was the coolest place for kids to go play games and get lost in screens before we all started carrying around little screens in our pockets.

Every St. Louis kid had the same dream: to eat a Happy Meal at the floating McDonald’s on the Mississippi River. But kids who were lucky enough the live the dream soon found out about a harsh reality. Yeah … that floating McDonald’s was filthy. Even by kid standards. You were much better off just getting drive-through from any other McDonald's location.

That Bigfoot truck parked just off of Highway 270 in north county was a constant source of fantasy for kids as we zoomed past, begging our moms to take the next exit and take us to see the big blue Bigfoot truck up close.

Raja the elephant being born in 1992 might've been the decade's biggest cultural moment in St. Louis. Sure, we've been visited by a pope and Beyoncé, but it was an event when Raja was born and every school-age kid in St. Louis tried to help the Saint Louis Zoo name him. All of the elementary schools held contests to help out. Eventually "Raja" became the name for our favorite little elephant. (Want to feel old? Today he's a father of three.)

Baseball in St. Louis had one king in the 1980s: Ozzie Smith. Known as "the Wizard of Oz," this All Star shortstop was with the Cardinals from 1982 until 1996. Smith was a fan favorite, not just because of his baseball skills, but also because of his kind nature and his attention-catching acrobatics on the field. Who didn't thrill to that backflip?

Wrestling at the Chase was a professional wrestling TV series that aired in St. Louis for 24 years, from 1959 until September 1983. Promoted by the St. Louis Wrestling Club, the show was a great place to catch all of your favorites including some of the most famous wrestlers in the National Wrestling Alliance like Ric Flair, Harley Race and more. Anyone else remember watching it with their grandma?

If you grew up in St. Louis in the 1980s or '90s, chances are you saw your first "big" concert at Mississippi Nights on Laclede's Landing. The riverfront club opened in 1976 and hosted major bands all the way through 2007. The club is famous around St. Louis as the one local venue that Nirvana played during their few short years as a band.

The Blizzard of '82 buried parts of the St. Louis area in up to two feet of snow and closed some roads for weeks. If you were a kid during this time, you were probably overjoyed at getting so much time off of school. If you were too young to remember the blizzard, you still knew about it because your parents have never stopped talking about it.

Ted Drewes never tasted as good as it did right after the last day of school. If you had a cool mom and you did a good job in school that year, it was common for '80s and '90s kids to be rewarded with a Ted Drewes concrete at the end of the school year. It would melt too quickly in the summer heat, of course, and you'd be covered in sticky stuff, but your mom wouldn't even mind. She was already distracted trying to think of what, exactly, she was going to do with you bothering her until August. (South county kids had their own version of Ted Drewes, the late, much-lamented Spanky's.)

Brett Hull was every kid's favorite hockey star for a long while. He was talented, he was badass and he had a sick mullet, too. As a member of the St. Louis Blues, Hull led the league in goal-scoring and he had the second-highest three-season total goals of any player in NHL history. Hull is still around today. He's the current executive vice president of the St Louis Blues.

If you saw a concert in St. Louis in the '80s or '90s, chances are you rubbed elbows with Beatle Bob. The St. Louis dancing legend was at thousands of shows over the years, always dancing in the front row and definitely getting in your way. If you remember pointing to him and asking your friends "who's that guy with the weird hair," you spotted Robert “Beatle Bob” Matonis before he became the subject of press coverage. Matonis died earlier this year, leaving a big hole in concert crowds all across town.

The Creepy Crawl was known for its punk shows and for showing love to smaller bands across town and giving them their first gigs. They also hosted up-and-coming touring bands in the late 1990s and beyond. This club held two different spots in St. Louis, one on Tucker Boulevard and then later on Washington Avenue at Grand Center.

If you were a kid in 80s and 90s St. Louis, you definitely attended more than a few parties at roller rinks. Depending on where you lived, Coachlite, Great Skate or Rollercade were the hot spots. And then when you got a little older, roller rinks were the best place to do a little teenage flirting, too.

The St. Louis Globe-Democrat was a daily newspaper in St. Louis from 1852 all they way until 1986. Kids in the 80s will remember using those newspaper pages for art projects in school and for researching facts for school assignments. If your parents voted for Reagan (or even just wanted a morning newspaper), this is the one they got delivered.

Mid Rivers Mall was definitely the cool mall when you were growing up. Even if you didn't live near there, you still begged your parents to drop you off to hang out there because they had the one thing you needed in your life: Tilt. Computers weren't awesome yet, so the arcade was the only place to get your dose of big bright gaming screens.

School field trips to the Saint Louis Zoo were the best field trips ever. You got to get away from the daily grind and see a bunch of animals that you'd only heard about in science class previously. The penguins and elephants were particularly intriguing, but you were bummed to find out there were no dinosaurs on site.

You weren't an '80s or '90s St. Louis kid if you didn't ruin your trip to Six Flags by getting terrified on the Screaming Eagle or absolutely drenched on the Log Flume. St. Louis summers are so hot that getting wet on a ride always looked like it would be a good idea, but it never was. You'd spend the rest of your day with your clothes squishy and gross and you'd still be hot — only now you were damp too.

Union Station has totally upgraded in recent years to become a world-class St. Louis tourist attraction and one of the best places in town to entertain your kids. But it used to be a gigantic mall where '80s and '90s kids would go to goof off and be mesmerized by the workings of the Fudgery, where people would do the oddly fascinating job of making fudge for an audience.

If you were a good kid and got good grades on your report card, it was common for parents to take you out to a "fancy" meal a the Old Spaghetti Factory, located by the river in Laclede's Landing. Kids were always impressed by the ambiance and parents were impressed by the price (much cheaper than the nice Italian places on the Hill), so it worked out.

Seeing the Cardinals in the '80s and '90s was a special time. The team was awesome, the stadium was vintage and if there was a more perfect view of the Arch, we've never seen it. For kids who were raised in the county, going to a Cardinals game was often one of the few times they were in the city and Downtown seemed bright and big and beautiful.