St. Louie Louie

Jet Lag magazine was an alternative music fanzine published in St. Louis by Steve Pick and John “the Mailman” Korst between 1980 and 1991. In fact, it was one of the first Midwestern ‘zines in existence. A few years ago, Steve set up a website where he began scanning in some of the earliest issues of Jet Lag, and he got up to issue #22 and then, for some reason, quit. There’s also a link to a blog there that has also been apparently abandoned. But those first 22 issues of the mag are a lot of fun to read, and give a great snapshot of the St. Louis punk and new wave scene of the early 1980s. Hopefully Steve will get around to scanning and adding more issues soon. In the meantime, enjoy reading what’s there.

I really dig this new blog. Reminds me of the old “Lowlife Guide to St. Louis.” The only thing that bugs me is the mysterious lack of an apostrophe in the title. Hmmm… oh well. Still a cool blog!

Parents in the City of St. Louis looking to get their kids started with youth baseball should check out the various City Recreation facilities for Redbird Rookies T-ball programs. Buder on the south side is one that is accepting players now, and if you live in South St. Louis and have a kid between the ages of 4 and 7, you should give Art Watley a call at (314) 664-0327. Lots of these rec. centers participate in the program as City Recreation is one of the leagues that has participated since it was launched in 2004, and the greatest thing about it is it’s completely FREE. The leagues are part of the St. Louis Cardinals’ excellent Cardinals Care program, which is the team’s charitable arm whose purpose is to give back to the community in various ways that help kids, including building many beautiful, state-of-the-art ballparks where kids can play baseball with other kids from their neighborhood. This program is helping to promote baseball in urban areas where kids don’t play much sandlot baseball as they did in decades past. The Cardinals also provide all of the bats, balls, gloves, and uniforms (which include nice hats, shirts and baseball pants) for the kids to use… the idea being that you can basically just show up without any gear at all and play! To find out which of the City Recreation centers are participating this year, give Charles Tyson a call at (314) 589-6120 (it’s best to call after noon). By the way, if there are no City Recreation centers in your area that are participating in the league (for example, I could not get anyone at the Soulard Rec. Center to answer their phone), then you might want to consider some of the other leagues in the area. A complete list can be found here. Play ball!

Bill Streeter, the Chicago native-turned-St. Louisan behind the award-winning LO-FI SAINT LOUIS video podcast, is working on a documentary about the history and importance of brick in Saint Louis. The film is to be called Brick by Chance and Fortune: A Saint Louis Story. You can follow the progress of the film by reading the film’s production notes blog here, and also follow the Twitter account: Brick_Film and become a fan on the Facebook page. Knowing Bill and the excellent work that he’s put into Lo-Fi Saint Louis lo these many years, I expect this to be quite good. The film is slated for completion by sometime this fall.

There will be a protest for the public option on Wednesday in St. Louis.

Tomorrow afternoon, President Obama will be in St. Louis to raise money for Sen. Claire McCaskill, who hasn’t said whether she’ll vote for a public option in reconciliation on the Health Care Reform bill.

There will likely be a lot of media coverage of this fundraiser, so some local activists are holding a rally outside the event demanding that Sen. McCaskill take a position.

It’ll be a great chance to focus the national spotlight on Sen. McCaskill and her unwillingness to take a stand for the public option. And it’ll also be a great opportunity to show her that you care about this issue.

Here are the details the St. Louis crew asked us to pass on to you.

WHEN: 4:30 p.m. Wednesday

WHERE: Renaissance St. Louis Grand Hotel, 800 Washington Ave., downtown St. LouisInterested in participating? For staging location and exact details contact the guy that commented below:

Join the STL Fish Fry Crew on Facebook (the brainchild of Steven Smith of The Royale on S. Kingshighway) and keep up-to-date on the latest and greatest fish fries happening in St. Louis this spring! By the way, sorry if you missed last week’s Mexican Fish Fry at St. Cecilia’s… it was great! But if you did, don’t fret, you can still go any Friday from now through Easter. Dig in!

I’ve owned this domain for years yet could never really figure out what to do with it… I have to admit that I still haven’t quite figured out what I want to do with it, but I’m willing to give it another go with a new blog of stuff that I find interesting, bizarre, weird, funny, crazy, or just plain fun about St. Louis. Who am I? That’s not important. You may even already know me and remember the old message board that existed at this Web address. If so, cool. If not, no big deal. I’m just a local resident who loves his hometown and has a domain that he can’t quite figure out what to do with, and that’s really all ya need to know… well, at least right now. I’ll be sure to give you lots of information on stuff that I think you need to know in the future, though, you can count on that. Thanks for poking your head in, now get back to work.