Charming. Breathtaking. A modern marvel that never failes to impress.
A shame the city sucks.
It is time to come out the closet and state my opinion on this city:
I hate it.
As part of the territory I work, I have always groaned inwardly whenever my work took me into this city. I could never put my finger on the reason why; there was always just a heavy weight in my stomach, like I've just eaten at Denny's, whenever I saw that on my itinerary.
I am in this city right now, and want to expel this bile before I catch my flight. I can do this, because here at the Lambert airport lobby, my flight was bumped and I am going to miss my connecting flight home.
Oh, St Louis, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways:
1) You are by far one of the dirtiest cities I have ever seen: you even beat Omaha, NE and Sacramento, CA in terms of grungy, ramshackle buildings and empty lots filled with weeds.
2) Your citzens are either smug, ignorant, or smug in their ignorance ('I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm sure that if I could comprehend it I would find it distasteful').
3.) After spending a couple nights in one of your more luxurious hotels (Cough... Crowne Plaza... Cough, cough... what? I didn't mention any names: I was coughing), I found myself wishing I had found a Super 8 or Motel 6 somewhere along the way. Here, in brief, was my experience at this 3 1/2 star hotel:
- In order to get to the reservation desk, if you had a car you needed to park in the lot behind the hotel. They graciously had one floor devoted entirely to guests at the hotel. Nice, except that the designated floor was on parking level 6. You had to find the elevator, take it to the lobby level, exit the elevator and circlethe building to get around to the front of the lobby. Carrying your luggage all the time, mind you.
- You have two phones in your room. It would be overkill, if it wasn't for the fact that neither of them worked. Oh, sure, you could call long distance (anything to add more $ to your bill), but everything else was not hooked up. In order to get room service, I had to find the number to the hotel, call the front desk, and ask them to transfer me to room service. When I explained how the phones didn't work, the front desk had this helpful question to ask: 'Oh, didn't they tell you when you checked in?'
- As I complained to my wife, I may be just a whiny American: one of those 'privilege/entitlement/'gimme what's mine since I paid for it' kinda guy, but I don't think I am out of line when I check into a 'luxury hotel' AND IT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE HOT WATER.
Seriously. There is no exaggeration here. I got up in the morning, turned on the water in the shower, and waited for it to turn hot. And waited some more. And then some more. And then fiddled with the damned thing. Regardless of how much coaxing, fussing and punching I did, the water remained just slightly above 36 degrees. I call the front desk (from my cell phone, naturally) and explain the situation. No apologies, no 'I'm so sorry, sir, let me send someone to check on that.' No, here was the helpful advice I received: 'Oh, yeah. Turn on both the tap AND the bath faucet to high, and wait 5 minutes. ' 'You mean you already knew about this?'
Worthless.
Add that to the charming lady at the airport who tossed my luggage on the conveyor belt after I turned it over to them (never mind I had a $1000 projector in there for presentations) and then snapped at me when I pointed out that I'd only received one boarding pass when I needed two, as well as the first mate of our 6am flight who could not be found and a replacement had to be brought in an hour later, and all I can say is
I AM DONE WITH THIS CITY. Done. People must thrive on mediocrity here, or love the everyday surprises of what services are down on this day. I am not one of them. The only thing I find surprising is that people actually choose to live her, voluntarily.
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