Is St Louis the most Blue Collar city in the country?

[FrankMiller]

I don't think there's anything wrong with calm simplicity. Whenever I'm in a city like NYC I'm always exhausted.

[Hector2]

Originally Posted by STL2006

Here's the standard methodology for posters making these comments:

1)Make sweeping generalizations full of extremes about St. Louis crime and racism.

2)St. Louis posters respond noting that the problems aren't as extreme, wide spread, or unique to St. Louis as previous poster is trying to make them to be.

3)Poster attacks through straw man argument, saying St. Louis posters don't care about the problems (see above).


NO ONE is saying St. Louis doesn't have its issues. NO ONE is saying they don't matter. EVERY city has these issues (especially older Midwest cities) and St. Louis is not unique in that matter.

Hardly a straw man argument when I was responding directly to another poster who claimed that social ills did not affect a "significant" portion of STL.

Of course every city has *some* problem with poverty and crime, but we're talking about degrees of difference. Not every city has the degree of problems that we do. As an example, as the NY Times recently reported, murder rates in NYC and LA and most other cities are flat or going down, but skyrocketing in places like STL and Chicago. So STL is in a basket of cities with greater problems than most others in that regard. I don't see what you could argue with.

[Old Trafford]

Originally Posted by kcmo

Spent the weekend in St Louis and while I have been there dozens of times, probably over a hundred times, plus living there for a short period, It really hit me this weekend just how blue collar StL really is.

Even compared to Pittsburgh and Cleveland and possibly even Philly, I think St Louis is the most blue collar city.

Just walking around the city you can tell the demographics are very different than what you typically see in major cities. The tourists that are around the arch, landing, casinos etc seem to be very rough and blue collar, kinda redneck or biker types. The urban locals, especially the blacks, also a very blue collar demographic. Also there are just a lot of people driving really crappy cars too, right in the heart of the city. I love StL, but it's almost like it lacks sophistication in some ways.

It's not a bad thing, I find it interesting actually. I'm really not trying to be hard on StL. Again, it's one of my favorite cities and I talk it up all the time. I also don't think this really applies as much to areas like CWE, Clayton, West County etc. But Downtown and the metro as a whole as a very noticeable blue collar vibe that you don't see any many large cities.

Even Baltimore and Philly, which are very blue collar, have more diverse tourists and have more affluent white collar type people around downtown.

Just an observation.

I think you were probably downtown the day of the Big Muddy Blues Fest which tends to attract a more blue collar crowd - overall the city has probably marginally more affluence then the other cities you mentioned.

It would be a lot like showing up in southern downtown KC during Rock Fest which anecdotally would give you a misleading picture of the city

[Jjmars]

Classic Big Muddy Blues Fest excuse!

[marigolds6]

Originally Posted by kcmo

Just walking around the city you can tell the demographics are very different than what you typically see in major cities. The tourists that are around the arch, landing, casinos etc seem to be very rough and blue collar, kinda redneck or biker types. The urban locals, especially the blacks, also a very blue collar demographic. Also there are just a lot of people driving really crappy cars too, right in the heart of the city. I love StL, but it's almost like it lacks sophistication in some ways.

Well, part of the issue here is that downtown is not actually a tourist area to most people. The tourist area are CWE, Forest Park, etc.
The people who would go to the downtown attractions other than the arch (landing and casino) will be more blue collar.