To Nice To Be True

We start this story out by driving down to St. Louis. And now Iowa is I the way of Minn and St. Louis. Another state that is the south. I don’t know if I’ve said this before but everything under NY and Michigan, and some parts of Illinois is the South. This shit is ridiculous. Confederate flags, no teeth, and incest lol. We stop in BFE Iowa and this is a ding dang do part of the country. We walk into this small ass place off the freeway. Pops and I walk in a the hick at the bar turns and looks and already knows we aren’t from around here. And duh it isn’t to hard. Because of the SF stuff I’m wearing and the fact that everyone knows everyone in this town. I don’t really want to have anyone pay attention to us, again pretty hard to do, but I don’t want to have someone go down their beer list so I see what the other guy is drinking at the bar and order 2 PBR’s. We order our burger and fried pork sandie. Apperently with me and my pops drinking 2 per and this guy next to us drinking PBR, they might run out. Not many people drink this beer often. I say I usually drink it just cause it’s pretty cheap. And the guy sitting next to us says “cheap? This stuff is expensive here” Holy Shit these hicks are funny. I try and get out of this place quite quickly and we head the rest of the way to St. Louis.
Now we pull into St. Louis about 9 and we need food and a drink, but it’s a Monday and it’s hard to find place to eat at 10 on a weekend let alone a Monday and it being Memorial Day. I punch in a couple things in yelp and we start driving fast. And every place we drive by is closed. We make the decision to just go back to the hotel, but on the way we see a place with lights on and people in it. Amazing. I throw my dad out of the car, and tell him to get in there make sure we can get some food. We run in and we make it by 4 min. Already liking this place. Great bar and you can smoke at the bar, but not at the table’s right behind the bar. The rules in some places are ridiculous. But whatever. They are giving us food and drink. They know how to make an old fashion and pour a happy shot. We have some great steaks and caesar salad. Pops is thinking of getting dessert but doesn’t want to bother them since they did let us get food quite late. But as he says that I see food coming out and I point and say, don’t worry about it see they are still doing food. But then I see who they are dropping the food off to. It’s Dusty Baker. The coach of the Cincinnati Reds. They are in town against the Cards this week. It was awesome seeing a celebrity, especially one I’ve hated for 8 years for losing us the World Series. But we buy him a drink anyway. After he’s done eating he gets his drink and raises his glass to us and we tell him we are from SF. He gets up and comes over and starts talking to us. His friends end up getting up and coming over and sit with us. We are sitting at the bar talking to Dusty Baker for about an hour. He turns out to be a nice guy. He buys us drinks and chats about baseball, and SF. He lives outside of Sacramento. It was awesome to have someone who is a celebrity that was really nice. So it was really hard to stay angry with Dusty after all these years. He’s just too damn nice. We finish up a bunch of drinks and close down the bar with the staff, who are ridiculously nice. They are done but need to clean up so they let us have one more, like we need it, lol and we head to the hotel. We are staying at the Millennium Hotel which from out hotel room you can see the Arch. But the hotel is absolutely shit. They windows are dirty as hell, there is nothing to the room, the TV screen is as big as my laptop screen and the shower head is spitting on me, and $10 for internet. For an expensive place it looks like a 15 story Comfort Inn. The paint job was even bad. It looks like when there was a crack in the wall they just painted over it. It was bad. I’ll never stay at one of those again. After looking for some BBQ places for lunch tomorrow I hit the sack.
We wake up and make our way slowly out of the hotel. I found this place called Pappy’s on Yelp and apparently voted best BBQ in the city many times. And they didn’t disappoint. I’ve been waiting for BBQ since I left Raleigh, NC. We had baby back ribs, pulled pork sandwich, baked beans, potato salad, and sweet potato fries. While I was standing in line there is a picture of Adam Richman, who does Man v. Food. If you haven’t seen this show, watch it, it’s great. The picture says “thanks Pappy; I’ll never be hungry again.” I thought it was cool, but just a line. He wasn’t joking. We finished up and I could barely move. The food was top notch, the people and service were so nice, and the food was cheap to. Everything seems cheaper in St. Louis. All that food plus 2 drinks cost us like $25. The only bad part is we are going to the top of the Millennium to eat at the rotating restaurant for dinner and feeling like I am now, I don’t think I’ll be able to eat tomorrow let alone tonight at 5, before we go to the game. We lift ourselves up from the table and head to the Bud brewery. I’m not to stoked on Bud, this crap beer gives me the worst drunk and hang-over. I can drink 14 Coors Light’s and be great I can drink 13 Coors Light’s and 1 Bud and I’m falling over and waking up with my head pounding. I think it might be the rice they put in their beer. I don’t know, maybe it’s just that it sucks complete ass. The tour takes about 45min, and wasn’t too bad. But didn’t really tell you anything significant. “Here is the horse stables, let’s go, here is the bottling part, let’s go.” Really kinda boring but they do give you 2 free samples on the way out, which I guess is cool, but if you hate their beer then it’s more like torture, LOL. I found on called Beach Bum, which is good and like a wheat beer. They did have Stella but I wanted to try something new. We head back to the hotel to relax and try and let the BBQ settle and digest and hopefully be able to eat something at the top of the hotel. My dad was smart he only had a couple bites of the BBQ, but you put BBQ in front of me I can’t stop till it’s all gone. We take a nap, and kill some time before dinner. 5 comes to fast for my stomach, but we go to the top anyway, cause you have to sacrifice sometimes you know. It is gorgeous up there. We get sat right as it is in front of the stadium. You can see them taking batting practice. Our waitress is a tad bit slow in the head, and on her feet. We continually wait way to long for everything. It rotates around to the Arch, and we are taking pics and there are greasy hand prints all over the window and a leak from the roof onto the window. These are not from today, cause there are 4 other tables sat at the time and it opened when we got there. It’s just not taken care of like it should. If it was just a window that looked out, it would be different but this is your shtick. If you want people to look out your windows onto the city and they are nasty and make me not want to look out the windows, we have a problem. The food is pretty good, I just had some duck tacos, and dad had the duck breast. I ask for a beer and that never comes, and she stops coming around and now it’s getting close to game time and we need to get going and she is gone. It was a bad experience at this place. I’m sure if I went up again it would be different but it rubbed me the wrong way today and had the wrong waitress and then things just started piling up. She was really nice but just not a good waitress. If I was with someone who had never been I’d go again, but other than that not a chance. We head over to the ballpark. The second you walk in you know this park is great. The outside looks amazing, you walk out to see the field and you are in awe. They have the Arch cut into the field, and the real Arch is right behind the stadium. Great view great looking stadium and everything is close to you. I get up to go get beer and of course I had to be the asshole and ask the beer guy if he had any Coors Light. I thought it was funny, LOL. He liked it to but after meeting many people in this city he was probably just being nice and had probably heard that one once or twice before. Last night Dusty wasn’t too happy at me after I told him about my record with home teams. He told me not to come that night, and I told him I was going to be in Seattle in 2 weeks and he wasn’t too happy at that either because apparently I’ll be there when the Reds are in town. LOL he tried to get me to change my plans. Awesome. But even with my killer record, the Reds pull it out. There was like 6 homeruns, 17 runs and a bunch of ties and lead changes. A great game all together and having talked to Dusty last night I was happy to see him win. I had tried to find good cocktail bars in this city and couldn’t so we are gonna go back to Mike Shannon’s the place we were last night. When you find a cool place, go back when you can if you don’t find anything really special, it usually works out very well. And it did. We sat there and the same bartender from the night before was there, very good looking girls, and then Dusty walks in again. And right when he walks in he comes right over and says hi to us, I think before anyone else. Just classy man, just really really classy dude. He gets a drink and chats with us some more. Even though I think he came over to us not only because of the night before but because their where really hot girls sitting next to us. He was just having a closer look. LOL. A couple min later 3 Reds players come in. 2 pitchers I couldn’t tell from a hole in the ground and Johnny Gomes. He’s the leftfielder, and a Petaluma guy. He is a really nice dude also. Chatted up with him for a couple min. We had our drinks and chatted with Dusty throughout the night and Evan and Jen the bartenders. Told us where to go in KC, and chatted cocktails. I had some interesting ones. That was a brain cell killing night though so I don’t remember, buts that’s why I took the cocktail list. That pile is getting bigger. While we are outside waiting for a cab, Dusty comes out and asks what we are doing, and he offers us a ride to our hotel. Are you kidding me!!!! My dad is freaking out. LOL. He can’t believe what is going on. I’m just taking it all in. It’s quite amazing how nice this guy is. He drops us off, and we are both in awe at this point. We are quite drunk so we can’t believe this shit just happen. In 25 other cites, and a month and a half nothing close to this has happened. And probably won’t ever happen again. Thank God I was drunk though cause I was so excited I don’t think I would have been able to get to sleep.
We get up the next day and we are gonna go up to the top of the Arch today. This is something I’ve been looking forward to. I’ve already seen the city from up high but to see it in this monument is so cool. I was expecting a regular elevator you stood in and it just kinda pulled you up sideways. I was expecting the elevator to be as big as the width of the Arch. It’s not LOL. You go into this space pod looking thing. I wasn’t expecting all the room on the side of the elevators. You get up to the top and get to see up and down the Mississippi, and so much of this beautiful city. It was a quick up and down. Once you look out and look down, that’s pretty much it. Then you head down and get out of town. I was looking forward to St. Louis because of the BBQ and got so much more than that. This is one of my favorite cities now. The people are so nice. And yes I’m the asshole who can’t take it. I was getting mad at people for being so nice and continually asking if I needed anything or help with anything. Between the BBQ spots, stadium, restaurants and just people walking down the streets, this place lands top 5 cites I’ve been to and will definitely be back sooner rather than later. I recommend this city to anyone and everyone!!! Go and go now!!! It’s cheap, fun and drunk. These people like to drink, eat and have a good time. I’ve only scratched the surface. *****, 2 thumbs up. I can’t say enough. Now it’s time to drive to the podunck ass town of KC, MO