Isn’t this good that we are getting away from segregating groups of minorities? You start out with pockets so you can build an alliance and feel empowered and then hopefully the ignorant will learn they have nothing to fear, and then the businesses blend in with all that surround. I like the idea of breaking down barriers in STL…..about 50 years lagging.

The effort to concentrate in The Grove is fairly recent. LGBT businesses still exist elsewhere such as South Grand, on Euclid in the CWE and in Soulard.

“labels that arise out of hateful intentions to disparage others is obviously problematic”.  Absolutely.  The problem is that many labels cut both ways, most obviously in the black / white divide that colors many issues in the St. Louis region.  Italians and Irish may self select, as do many Bosnians and Hispanics, and as do white supremicists and black nationalists.  We all have our histories and we all have our characteristics that HELP to define each of us.  The nuance is the help to part – once you accept that you are solely or primarily “X”, you have created a divide between yourself and the larger society.  And whether or not that is “hateful” depends on who you’re talking to or with. 

The N word gets tossed around freely among younger members of the black community, but god forbid that a white person use it in civilized conversation.  You can open a gay-friendly, black-oriented or smoke-free businesses and be considered PC.  Try doing the opposite and be prepared for significnt blowback.  I embrace diversity, but there needs to be a level playing field.  if we can’t discriminate equally and “fairly”, the only solution is to move beyond the labels that create the discrimination in the first place.  Or, to put it another way, I really don’t care if Steve is gay, disabled or an okie, I only care that he is passionate and articulate about urban design issues in the region.  Until a significant portion of the white community here moves beyond equating black with crime and poverty, we’re going to be stuck with vast swaths of our community decaying and dying.

Somebody should be shot for painting that building pink…along with the one at Sarah(?) and Vandeventer–the bar.

Really, what idiot thinks Pepto-Bismol is a good color to paint a building, much less a brick one?

Put another way, the Grove is the gayborhood after 9pm on weekends.  The rest of the week, the gay population does most of their living elsewhere.

Because why?  They have money to invest?  They’re willing to move into vacant retail space?  They’ll be hiring local workers?  They have a proven track record?  They offer a predicatable product?  They’ll attract customers?  They have no “soul”?  Their profits won’t stay local?

Chain restaurants include everything from Dewey’s to Pizza Hut, Hamburger Mary’s to Burger King, Lion’s Choice to Arby’s, the St. Louis Bread Company to Subway.  Some chains are obviously better than others.  To say that every chain restaurant is bad is just as disingenuous as saying that every individually-owned establishment is the best thing that could ever happen to any neighborhood corner.  There are good owners and bad owners, good managers and bad managers. 

If a chain comes to an established neighborhood and plays by the rules, why should they be excluded?  Why, in the Delmar Loop, are Chipotle, Noodles & Co. and Snarf’s “bad” and Cheesology and the Gyro House “good”?  Explain how having only one location is inherently better than having two, six or a thousand?  The customers will ultimately decide whether any one location succeeds or fails, and few will care how many other locations are somewhere else on this planet!

Please elaborate.

I’m Matt Herron with Scottrade Compliance.  I am a little fruity and like the smell of feet.  Just wanted to let ya all know!  Sweet, sweaty feet turn me on.

Panera, aka St. Louis Bread  Co. started as a local business, now a top 50 restaurant chain in the USA.  Should we boycott because they are a chain or patronize them because they are local?  And they are still local…their headquarters is in Sunset Hills. 
In my opinion, it is the management that makes a chain a good neighbor, not the name above the door and not the food coming in as both get their food from the same sources.

Steve laments chains in one post, yet in the same week welcomes another.  I’m sorry sarcasm is hard to detect in cyberspace.

“Gays are not friendly to the environment and to the success of St. Louis.”

What a load of shite.

In my experience suburban municipalities and home owners associations can be just as limiting/controlling as the big bad inner city. It’s false to suggest otherwise.

Huh?  Where did asbestos enter the discusssion?

And, to quote, “Frankly I’m not one of those hyper-sensitive property-rights nutjobs. If you want to do something on your property, and it offends, pollutes, or damages in any way, you should expect some criticism” and “somebody should be shot for painting that building pink”.  There’s a big jump between “some criticism” and “somebody should be shot”. 

Sarcasm is harder to convey in print than it is face-to-face, which is why I began my original response with “I know you’re being sarcastic”.  The problem is words need to be taken a face value.  If you had said the owner should have been cited or sued, there would be less baggage, especially when we live in a violent city, one where one can and does get shot for much, much less (like a hamburger).  Advocating for violence does nothing to further the discussion.

Which gets back to the original point, that you don’t like buildings painted Pepto-Bismol pink.  What colors do you like?  Shades of beige?  Deep accents?  Pure white?  Solid black?  Primary colors?  Metallics?  And if you don’t like a color choice, what recourse should you have?  Just bitching about it?  Getting the city involved, with some sort of design review?  Suing the owners and/or tenants for bad taste and/or emotional distress?

It’s hard to have minimal design review, you either have none or you have total review.  I choose to live in a city with no real design review since I don’t want to live in one with stringent regulations, since stringent requlations almost always equals “safe”, bland and boring.  Creativity happens on the edges, not in the safe middle.  Will you sometimes get bad, ugly results?  Absolutely!  But you’ll also get quirky, unusual, even cutting-edge solutions – you gotta take the bad with the good.

What exactly is a LGBT friendly business and why does it need to be in a special part of town?  Do the “gays” like their coffee just a bit more strong than I do and prefer that their local shop know this without requiring that they ask for it?

Its not 1950 anymore, I would think that LGBT money is just as good as cranky old white man money at any business.  No need for segregated commercial districts or special LGBT shops is there?  The only people left discriminating against LGBT folks are dinosaurs like bed shitters and backwards Christians.