St. Louis Day Off
Fri, Oct 3rd, 2008
posted by Barry Kooda

We had a day off in St. Louis so I hit the bricks pretty early looking for something to do. I ended up at the arch and took a bunch of photos before suddenly realizing that every friggin' tourist who ever comes here ends up with a million standard arch shots so I deleted almost all I'd taken and went looking for a less obvious angle. I found the wrong side of the tracks, which is where I belong and looked for a rooftop I could access. I found this gutted building right next to the elevated tracks and spotted a couple of bicycle cops checking me out. I pretended not to see them and set up my tripod and took some shots of the tracks and graffiti and the cops lost interest and went on their way. I found my way around the building where the fence was easier to get over and climbed the boarded up 1st floor windows to the open holes on the second floor. The basement was flooded and there was lots of light through all the huge holes upstairs where windows used to be so I had a good time looking around and shooting through the broken windows and such. It was pretty cool overall and a lot more fun than walking around the mall like most of the rest of the crew did.
I get really tired of malls, airports, buses and arenas and most of the people I work with just don't see the attraction of sneaking into abandoned buildings......Weirdos....
When I was walking back to the hotel I found this little bat on the sidewalk near the stadium. I thought it was dead or sick but when I picked it up it seemed OK. I tried to figure where I could hide him until night and picked a huge planter of ivy that had just been watered. I stuck him in out of site and he started licking droplets off the leaves so I figured that dehydration might have been the problem that put him on the sidewalk in the first place. I hope he made it.