Before tonight I’d never heard of the White Flight from St Louis. According to St Louis Bob who I talked to extensively tonight, it happened when the white population decided to move out to the suburbs because they didn’t like the growing black population.
The predominantly wealthy white population then built ugly huge houses with an inch of garden in order to impress fellow shallow whites. There followed a black flight when inner city slums were cleared and middle class black families moved out to their own suburbs.
After talking to Bob, I looked into it and, it seems, St Louis was big on segregation at the turn of the 20th century. They held a referendum about it and the decision to segregate was passed by a two thirds majority. (I assume that the majority of people voting were white.) This segregation seems to have persisted to the present day.
I was talking to St Louis Bob at New Year drinks. We had an invitation with our Christmas card from Fiona and Bruce across the road. It’s always an excellent chance to meet up with the people from our street for a longer chat than “Good Morning.”
That was much later in the day. First thing I was off and into town.
I didn’t have to go food shopping so, rather than going to Starbucks, I decided to try the new coffee shop in the Borough. That was a mistake not to be repeated.
Mirinda went last week and had problems with the Whispering Waitress and being over charged. Today I was harangued for wanting an extra shot then was served a cold latte. To be clear, I didn’t order a cold latte.
I’m not sure why having an extra shot was such a shock, particularly in a grande sized glass, but the final nail came with the announcement that they had every syrup except hazelnut. As I’ve stated a million times, the only syrup that truly compliments a decent coffee is hazelnut. Anything else is a pale substitute.
I was forced to substitute vanilla.
I sat in a comfortable chair and read. It was not the most enjoyable latte I’ve ever had.
Back at home I prep-ed dinner so we could go for drinks then home to dinner. As it turned out we wound up eating at 9.30pm so the prep-ing was necessary. In the meanwhilst, Mirinda worked in the garden, something she hasn’t done for a while. This is ahead of the gardeners coming tomorrow.
Then, eventually, we went for drinks where I heard all about St Louis, New Orleans and the Mississippi River.
I’ve included two photos I took in the park on my way into town. The beautiful blue sky was very soon replaced with grey clouds and, while it didn’t rain, the day was mostly dull.
