Wines, photo by MilliGFunk

Angela Ortmann of @StLWineGirl was kind enough to take me as her guest to a St. Louis Cellars Wine Club event in February, and I had a great time.

photo by MilliGFunk

St. Louis Cellars only carries wines that are $20 or less per bottle, and they have some really fun labels in stock. Some of my favorites were a line of wines that had rock & roll labels (Pink Floyd, etc.). As I looked at the rock & roll labels, I couldn’t help but think of the friends those bottles would make good gifts for.

The label in the next picture made me think of the beef I had a year or so ago with Metro Mix St. Louis for listing a prime rib buffet as an “event” in St. Louis. If my dad were a wine drinker, this bottle would be for him:

Beef, photo by MilliGFunk

I think my brother – with his penchant for monster movies and old school science fiction – would really appreciate the Big Red Monster label:

Big Red Monster, photo by MilliGFunk

The St. Louis Cellars folks are super nice, and are a great resource if you need help choosing a wine to pair with a specific meal or to give as a gift. The Cellars carries a variety of cheeses, wine accessories, and foods as well, so the next time you’re in Maplewood, I really do suggest stopping in. St. Louis Cellars takes some of the snobbery out of wines, and for that, this small town girl offers her accolades.

St. Louis Cellars is located at 2640 Big Bend Boulevard in Maplewood, Missouri. Hours of operation are Monday-Thursday 10:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 10:30 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. Visit St. Louis Cellars online. Follow St. Louis Cellars on twitter.

St. Louis Wine Girl Angela Ortmann offers fantastic courses and tastings that make wine approachable for everyone. I highly recommend trying one of her tastings, offered at various venues in and around St. Louis. Visit Angela online. Follow Angela on twitter.

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Note:  All photos were taken with my Blackberry Storm, rather than my usual Fuji Finepix DSLR, and some clarity is lacking as a result.

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More posts on Maplewood, Missouri:

Maplewood Arts Walk

Maplewood Arts Walk I: Joining a Dance Troup

Maplewood, Missouri

St. Louis Area WiFi Hotspots

Foundation Grounds Coffee

St. Louis and Social Media

NYC Food Lover Lost in SEMO

Memorial Tree, photo by smalltowngirl

The holidays have passed, but I can’t resist blogging about this little memorial tree in Bonne Terre, Missouri’s Bicentennial Park. The tree was planted in memory of a specific man whose name my fingers were too cold to write down on the 10 degree day I wandered this small Missouri town. It seems as though, during the Christmas season, people from Bonne Terre place Christmas ornaments on the tree in memory of loved ones.

I enjoy the sentimentality of small town people. This little tree inspired me toward a moment of very, very cold (it was 10 degrees!) silence for those I’ve loved who are no longer here with me.  Here are a few more photos of the tree and the ornaments on and beneath it:

Audrey and Marcus Maybery, photo by smalltowngirl

Frosty, photo by smalltowngirl

In Loving Memory of Mabel Barker, photo by smalltowngirl

In Memory, photo by smalltowngirl

Kaldi’s is one of two coffee companies in St. Louis that I’m aware of that roasts its own beans (Northwest Coffee is the other). Kaldi’s also has delictable sweet treats and lots of vegetarian food options for full meals.

I ordered a black bean burrito and cozied into a table near a window, ready to upload and edit the 200+ photos I’d taken at work that morning in Shaw Park. When the barista called my name to give me my burrito, this is it said:

My Name is Not Alyssa, photo by smalltowngirl

For those of you who know me only as smalltowngirl or @milligfunk, I’ll fill you in on a secret; my name is not Alyssa.

That said, the coffee, the burrito and the cookie I got for desert (a giant one with chocolate chunks) were all good, and I really liked the no-wireless-internet, authentic-coffee-shop feel of Kaldi’s.

Kudos to local, independent businesses, even if they decorate their burritos with the wrong name.

On Thursday evening, a LinkedIn networking event will be held at Bar Louie’s in the Central West End from 5:30-8:30 p.m. The event is hosted by www.therisetothe top.com, and $5 will be charged at the door. This one looks like a substantial event, with 468 people on LinkedIn giving “yes” RSVPs and an another 222 showing interest in the event.

@RiaSharon has been promoting an #stl #tweetup this Friday at 5 pm at Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood. You can’t go wrong with Schlafly’s. This place is the real St. Louis brewery now that A-B isn’t locally owned. Schlafly’s has a large weekly farmers market, and even purchases some of its ingredients locally. If you order the Bison Nachos, your bison meat is actually coming from my area of small town, Missouri, from a ranch called Sayersbrook.

There’s another event on Friday that’s being marketed towards McCleur High School grads, as well as Twitter and Facebook friends of the organizer. I’m not sure how open or closed this event is to new people (St. Louis people can be funny about inviting new friends into their old-friend  mix), but here’s the link in case you’re interested.

On Friday, July 3rd, @rex7 and @prebynski hosted “The World’s Largest Tweetup” at McGurk’s in Soulard. Here’s what @Tojosan had to say about the event.

I met an old friend for dinner on The Landing, a strip of restaurants and bars just north of the Arch. We made our way down The Landing’s red brick streets to the riverfront, claiming a spot to stand beneath the Arch.

As we stood side by side, the stainless steel of the Arch reflected the vivid colors of the fireworks in the sky above us. The structure’s steel face magnified the cracks and booms of the fireworks, vibrating the walls of my chest with each explosion.

The finale came, and the gunpowder from the fireworks hung tight to the still, damp summertime air. I smiled, happy to be back in my home city, celebrating my freedom with an old friend by my side.

The coffee shop is lovely, with refreshingly happy and down to earth staff (no snobbish yuppy baristas here). There is a quirky turquoise mural of a tree with white flowers blossoming on the wall, and mismatched (but coordinated) upholstery covers high-backed chairs.

The pear and brie sandwich I had for lunch was lovely (fair warning though – it was onion heavy, though the onions were raw and easily removable). The iced mocha wasn’t bad either. Foundation Grounds gets brownie points for using biodegradable plastic cups, made from corn.

In the cold case, I found Kambucha, organic juices, Honest Tea, and Stonyfield Farm yogurt – a fairly forward-thinking collection of foods and drinks for this part of the country.

To top off my visit to Foundation Grounds, I overheard someone speaking Mandarin Chinese, and turned to find a husband and wife speaking Chinese to one another. The husband, a St. Louis-born acupuncturist and his wife had just moved back to St. Louis three days ago from years in Seattle and Asia.

His Chinese was far more fluent than my own (embarrassingly rusty) Chinese is, but it was so uplifting to meet another person who has moved back “home” to this part of the country after seeing the world in hopes of contributing something to the communities we grew up in.

Today’s coffee shop encounter is a reminder that when things happen (like servers crashing), there’s often something better in store. It’s been a rough last week for me, but with my hope and optimism restored, I’m looking forward to what the rest of this week holds.

Black rod-iron railings line the second and third floor balconies of buildings, and gardens and courtyards hide quietly between houses. Soulard is one of the only neighborhoods in St. Louis where you can truly park your car and hop between restaurants, galleries, venues and bars. 

Lunch was at McGurk’s. 

Before I go any further, I need to say how much I wish I hadn’t chickened out on taking my camera out with me yesterday. Pictures would really help in capturing the feel of Soulard.

We sat on the back patio at McGurck’s. The Patio was large, with a fountain in the center that’s turned to a fire ring when the weather is cooler. This photo belongs to Metromix St. Louis, and is actually taken the table we sat at during lunch.

Photo Credit Metromix St. Louis

After lunch, we headed to Washington Street for an emerging musicians street festival, but the music wasn’t playing and the crowd wasn’t hoppin’ when we arrived. On a whim, we headed to City Museum instead, and had what was probably the most fun I’ve had in years. Stay tuned for a full blog about that.

After the museum, we found ourselves back in Soulard at a street festival/block party that seemed to be sponsored by The Riverfont Times. $20 at the door bought live music until midnight and all the cajun food and Budweiser Select you could eat/drink. 

Soulard had an energy and a self-pride that made me think of neighborhoods I’ve lived in in other cities. It felt great to get out of small town, MO for the day and hang out in urbanland. For another nice blog on Soulard, go here.

I attended an alumni event last week for my organization’s summer campers and camp staff at Cicero’s on Delmar, and I spent the hour before the event wandering the neighborhood.

More than one storefront boasted the naming of Delmar as “One of the Ten Best Streets in America” by the American Planning Association.

All photos by smalltowngirl

The APA says this of their Best Streets/Great Places awards:

APA Great Places exemplify exceptional character and highlight the role planners and planning play in creating communities of lasting value.

It’s nice to see one St. Louis’ more interesting neighborhoods recognized nationally.

When I step out of my “NY vs. MO” mindset, I can grant Delmar Blvd. the hipster and diversity kudos it works hard to earn, although I have to admit that the area felt a little sterile to me after life in NY.

(Look closely, and you can see the Delmar Blvd street sign reflecting in the window of Rag-o-Rama)

Shops like Ragorama and Vintage Vinyl (named one of the country’s best indie music stores by Rolling Stone), bar/restaurants like Blueberry Hill (whose owners are responsible for much of Delmar’s development), and venues like The Tivoli call out “cool” to me.

(Check out the pink Vintage Vinyl bumper sticker on the backside of the crosswalk signal in the upper right corner of the shot)

Places on Delmar like the Panera Bread Company are too St.-Louis-Shopping-Mall-esque for my liking. I like malls, but I don’t want to feel like I’m in one when I’m walking a city street. Panera started in St. Louis as “The St. Louis Bread Company”, and for years, you would see it called Panera on the East Coast and “St. Louis Bread Co.” in the Midwest.

Now I’m reminiscent for Panera’s brazen St. Louisness. Somehow the bagels stopped tasting as good in St. Louis when the store changed its name to Panera here. (A rose by any other name, is, indeed, not as sweet, Mr. Shakespeare.)

I hope that some of the parts of Delmar Blvd that strike me as wealthy, sterile and overdeveloped will mellow and gain chracter with age. Still, Delmar is one of my favorite spots in the city, even after 10 years away, and I agree with the APA that Delmar Blvd adds “lasting value” to the city of St. Louis. I just hope that in time, it gains the grit and urban texture of some of the world’s most famous city neighborhoods.

The funky title can’t rain on my parade though. I just had an exciting hour-and-a-half phone meeting with our web designer, who is bright and knowledgeable, and living in the St. Louis neighborhood I didn’t know existed (but that I’m head-over-heels in love with).

There is a bit of Brooklyn in St. Louis. Check it out:
Old North St. Louis

This neighborhood is essentially a renovation district, and while it’s still in its building phase, I can’t express to you how excited I am to see a real community in St. Louis proper.

From what our web designer told me, most of the buildings here had become very, very run down. The homeowners’ restorations are labors of love. Check out this blog about the restoration of a home that was missing an entire wall.

Another website, seemingly dedicated to property sales in the area, has some great photos of the commercial district (under renovation) in the neighborhood.

And on my “Must-See, Must-Eat, STL” list? Crown Candy Kitchen, an ice cream shop and restaurant founded in St. Louis in 1913.

My car accident brought on a lot of “I miss New York” sentiments for me, and honestly, I spent my weekend pretty down in the dumps. Having my eyes opened to this St. Louis neighborhood has, thankfully, lifted my spirits.

Yay, St. Louis!

MO and NY = TIED.