Home of Anheuser-Busch brewery, where my dad worked for a quarter-century. Beer runs through my blood.
I love STL because it’s my home, but it also has a weird story.
German/Midwestern core
STL’s two big rivers (the Missouri and Mississippi) means it’s a shipping hub of the interior USA. At the turn of the 20th century, STL was the 4th largest city in the USA. STL was strongly influenced by the presence of the then-largest brewery in the world (Anheuser-Busch) and shares a lot of Midwestern culture due to the large presence of German immigrants.
Southern surroundings
STL was a union city in a slave state, surrounded by antebellum slave plantations. The STL Cardinals baseball team was the only popular pro sports team for much of the Southeastern USA until the 1960s expansion teams came to Atlanta.
Blues history: Chuck Berry.
Food: barbecue porksteaks, toasted raviolis.
Industrial decline
Originally founded by the French (hence the name Saint Louis, after Louis XIV, the “Sun King”), surrounded by antebellum Southern slave plantations, and heavily influenced by German industrial brewing heritage, STL is an anomaly in modern America. In the early part of the 20th century, STL was the 3rd most important city in the USA
Climate
The climate of STL is humid subtropical, which basically means somewhat cold and occasionally snowy in the winter, and hot as balls in the summer.