Not to kick the city when it's down, but controlling crime is not one of its strong suits. This year was especially bad — almost eye-poppingly so, with the massive rash of 69 restaurant and small-business burglaries that happened throughout the fall.
Sometimes we need to be forced into self-care. The ongoing pandemic has done so much to injure our mental health, but the ways we've found to cope will stick with us forever.
There's no soft way to say it: The pandemic really lobbed a loogie at the arts. After all, if we're all staying inside to avoid contagion, then we can't be sitting thigh to thigh in a packed theater or breathing in each other's bacteria in a concert venue.
October 24, 2022, is a day St. Louis will never forget. That day, we lost an innocent and vibrant young woman who, before a broken 19-year-old shot and killed her, had big dreams for the rest of her life. That day, we lost a beloved teacher and mother who gave her life to save her students.
By the spring of 2021, it seemed like restaurants had reason to celebrate. Vaccines were readily available, dining rooms were back to unrestricted capacity, and hungry diners with money to spend were eager to return to their favorite spots.
Cannabis companies are finding increasingly creative ways to get us high, and it's been one of our favorite things about 2022. Even if you don't partake, you have to admire the entrepreneurial spirit that brought the world treats such as marijuana-infused Red Hot Riplets. Riplets have long been a favorite snack of St. Louis stoners, so to be able to buy Riplets that get you stoned is just efficient, really.
There's a lot to celebrate when it comes to Missouri's recent approval of legal recreational weed. The notion that we'd no longer lock people up over putting a relatively harmless substance into their own bodies is at the top of the pile; that those who've already run afoul of the legal system over a plant will have their records expunged is right up there with it. But while we'll certainly be among those partaking now that it's legal to do so, we still think the road to legalization could have ended in a better place.
In 2022, St. Louis stank — often quite literally. The problems seemed to start way back in June 2021, when a worker shortage had the city throwing away the alley recycling and asking residents to bring their recyclables to designated drop-off points.
In June, two Starbucks, one in Ladue and one at Kingshighway and Chippewa, voted to unionize, becoming the first in the St. Louis area to do so. At the time, they were joining 150 other Starbucks locations across the country that had voted to unionize, but that number has since grown to over 250.
St. Louis should consider itself lucky that when Norwegian Chess Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen lobbed thinly founded cheating allegations at San Francisco-born professional chess player Hans Neimann, our fair city was the metaphorical board upon which these greats would play their ultimate match. The brouhaha began in September when Carlsen abruptly withdrew from the Sinquefield Cup tournament held here, making cryptic remarks that were widely interpreted as accusations against Neimann for cheating.
St. Louis already had its fair share of problems when three now-former aldermen were indicted in June for accepting bribes from a local developer. The city was still reeling from the aftermath of the worst of the pandemic.
From the moment gun dumbass Mark McCloskey waddled his ass out onto his front yard holding an AR-15 to threaten a crowd of people who were doing nothing more than walking past his house, it's been clear that he's not quite playing with a full deck. In the fever dream that is the Republican Party in 2022, though, that's not exactly what you'd call a liability — it's a prerequisite to hold public office.
In August, 17-year-old Matthew Nikolai was walking across Chippewa Street to get some Ted Drewes when a pickup truck struck the Christian Brothers College High School student. He fell into eastbound traffic, where a Ford Fusion also struck him.
We have a lot of secrets here in St. Louis. We don't tell people that our ravioli is actually fried, not toasted. We don't tell people that we're judging them because of what high school they attended.
To absolutely no one's surprise, as Missouri continues its red-ward trend, Republican Eric Schmitt bested Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine in November's Senate election. But at least the Republican primary provided a little bit of 11th-hour excitement as both Schmitt and former Governor Eric Greitens fiercely courted an endorsement from Queens-born family businessman Donald J. Trump. The primary had drama not unlike that between two boys vying for the same prom date.
This year was a magical one to be a St. Louis Cardinals fan: the final year of Albert Pujols. It was the cliché storybook ending that, if you wrote for a movie, would seem fake.
If you've been partying into the wee hours of the morning, the thing you're going to need ASAP is some food to line your stomach. If you've said, "No, thank you, please," to the hullabaloo of a New Year's Eve celebration, you also probably would like some sustenance.
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