I Love Soulard

A Bi-Monthly Column by Ryan Brockschmitt

A couple weeks ago I picked up a St. Louis-area magazine with the words “25 Best Neighborhoods to Live In” or something like that plastered on the cover.  Being an Islander, I had picked up the magazine to see what they had to say about our fair neighborhood. I flipped through the magazine because, as a man, I don't think to look at the index first.  That would be like asking for directions or reading the instruction manual.  

        I hit the back cover and didn't see anything about Soulard.  I flipped the magazine around and upside down thinking it was one of those weird “double issues”.  I still didn't see anything.  I held the magazines upside-down and shook it.  I don't know what I thought would fall out.  The subscription cards were certainly not the chicken strips or Schlafly Hop Toddy pints I was hoping for.  

        I was wondering what could possibly knock Soulard out of the Top 25?  Are there neighborhoods in St. Louis with streets paved with Kit Kats?  I reckoned there had to be some neighborhood out there with a fountain of flowing Hop Toddy.

        If the traits from above had been real, I probably would have put on my ninja gear and moved said items to the Island on a flatbed trailer one night in the darkness of night.  However, after reading through the issue, I realized that neither of those fantasies had come true.  Apparently, magazines can arbitrarily pick random streets from “Point A” to “Point B” and call them neighborhoods.  To top things off, said magazine can call the “proximity to Soulard” a positive trait in rating the neighborhoods.

        At first, I was quite upset by this article.  I talked to other Islanders to make sure that my displeasure wasn't just unique to me.  I wasn't alone.

        I started thinking of all the ways Soulard is awesome.  I thought of homemade chicken strips, happy hours, shuttles to sporting events, Soulard Market, Bogart's, iTap, parks, dog parks, Soulard Gyro, Paste, and street parties.  Most of all, I thought of all the people I know in Soulard. I thought of the people I've bet through my church, the people I've met who live around me; the people I've bet randomly in a Soulard establishments who happened to be my neighbors.  The Island redefines awesomeness like the sharp-dressed-Asian man on the Soulard karaoke circuit redefines what it means to be a sharp-dressed-Asian man.

        There’s no reason to be upset about our exclusion in this listing.  Look at it more as an opportunity.  I would gather that the people putting lists like these together love us when they are coming down here to party like a rockstar, but for some reason don’t think of us as a great place to live.

        Is this how we want to be viewed?  Of course not.  We know what the truth is.  We see it when we’re boarding a shuttle to the Cards game.  We see it when we are having a beer on a patio while our dog laps water out of the doggy bowl.  We experience when we are walking around the Island with a plastic cup and run into a neighbor.

        The best way for us to respond to this is to show our love for our neighbors and this neighborhood every day.  Keep your porch light on at night.  Call 911 if you see something suspicious.  Make a point to know your neighbors.  Take your headphones out of your ears and talk to people on your next walk/run.  A great neighborhood is defined by the love its residents show for it.

        Until next time, folks.  Check me out online at iLoveSoulard.com and most importantly, stay fly.