Page 2 of 2
St Louis, Missouri
Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun, but mama, that’s where the fun is
I had already been to St Louis maybe five, maybe six times, so I had already seen a lot of the city’s four and five star attractions. Gateway Arch, check. Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, check. That crazy ass (and totally awesome) City Museum, check. St Louis Art Museum, check. Pulitzer Foundation, check. Contemporary Art Museum, check. Cahokia Mounds, check. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t more to see, it’s really more of a warning that for anyone looking for pictures from the Gateway Arch or Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis or that crazy ass (and totally awesome) City Museum or even the Cahokia Mounds- you’re going to have to look elsewhere.
A bit out of downtown (we actually decided to drive there during a slight summer storm), the Fabulous Fox Theatre is so fabulous that it actually has the word fabulous right in its name. The theatre offers tours that cover its history and take you to all levels, including backstage areas, always a constant reminder that no matter where you go, the back of house is never going to feel like you’re in the same building as the of the front of house does.
This slightly distorted picture is a constructed panorama of the inside of the theatre, on a level so high that the ceiling feels almost more important than the stage below.
In the maybe five, maybe six times I had been to St Louis, I had seen a hockey game but always missed out on a Cardinals game. Either it was off season or it was an away weekend or time was otherwise just not on my side. This time however, the Cardinals and the cosmic ballet of the eclipse coordinated with a home game against the visiting San Diego Padres, who ended up destroying the hometown Cardinals 12-4.
I have been making a concerted effort to take my father to out of town hockey arenas for his birthday for years now, but have not been really trying to visit out of town baseball stadiums. That said, our visit to Busch Stadium was the nineteenth (out of thirty) Major League Baseball stadium that I had been to. If I was ranking the stadiums (and I’m not), Busch Stadium would do well- it’s in a great, all Cardinals neighborhood and the in game (and in stadium) experience was really fun.
In the maybe five, maybe six times I had been to St Louis, I had never really stayed at a memorable hotel (other than the time I stayed at the Moonrise out at the Delmar Loop, highly recommended). Normally I would just stay somewhere that was cheap or somewhere that I found on Hotwire. This time was different, and we chose to stay at the Hilton at Union Station, where we were just a quick trip away on the light rail line from Busch Stadium, only two stops down the line.
Union Station is a crazy place. The original, historic station is still there, complete with its amazing facade and its gorgeous lobby. The train shed is also still there and its massive. It’s so massive that the hotel is built underneath it, along with an artificial lagoon, a generally dead mall, some stand alone restaurant buildings and a lot of parking and empty space. And at night, the lagoon hosts a light show involving plumes of fire shooting out of the water while the historic lobby hosts a projection mapped video show where you can imagine being underwater even though you’re clearly not.
The light show at Union Station’s historic lobby certainly is fun, but truthfully the lobby looks just fine when the projection mapped video show is off.
So after suffering through eighteen pictures and stories about giant rocking chairs and projection mapped video shows and college student athletes playing football without helmets, we’re finally here to see that total eclipse of the sun. Yes, finally.
My initial plans to see the eclipse involved driving down to somewhere near Carbondale, Illinois. It was pretty close to the dead center line on the eclipse maps, meaning that it would have a longer period of totality. All this changed that morning. First, I saw news reports about a lot of people headed that way and overloading the local road system and even the Weather Channel decided to hold a big rally there. What really changed my mind however were the hyper local weather forecasts that morning which put Carbondale and Illinois under a higher risk of cloud cover, but farther north, areas west of St Louis looked clear. I quickly searched for potential locations on my phone and settled on Kirkwood, Missouri- specifically a Target parking lot. They had a shorter length of totality there- only about a minute and a half versus two minutes- but in the end, the clear skies mattered more.
We got to the parking lot about an hour early, ate at a nearby Raising Cane Chicken Fingers (pretty good) and then waited for the moon to show up. The skies were mostly clear, and by the time the eclipse started, there were about 50 people or so who quietly emerged from their parked cars and stood in the parking lot wearing eclipse glasses and looking up. The actual eclipse was even more magical than I imagined. First the light color dramatically changed and everything looked a lot more cold, then when totality hit, everyone took off their glasses and briefly you felt the entire world stop and just enjoy that minute and a half (or so) of being totally awestruck in a parking lot at the Kirkwood, Missouri Target.
As for the picture… Well, I made a conscious decision not to take pictures. I didn’t want to do the whole telephoto lens and filters and tripod thing, for once I wanted to just enjoy the damn thing without having to bother with a camera. After a minute of standing totally awestruck, I gave in and took a few quick pictures, including this throwaway iPhone one, which (for whatever reason) added all on its own that completely non visible (or I guess possibly invisible) magic glowing arc to the sun and the moon and the clear, cold blue sky.
