67th State Candidate Questionnaire

So there is a race in the 67th. That is this here part of the state of Missouri, south central city STL. There are five candidates, and four of them are actively campaigning. There have been no polls, only yard signs. But as we know, yard signs do not go to the polls. That is for damn sure.

All of them have come in and I have talked to them. It is always hard to figure out anything substantive in casual bar conversation. I wanted to know more. There are already a lot of ways to find out information, but I have been unable to do all the research I wanted.

So I sent the candidates Chad Beffa, Mike Colona, Joan Landmann and Rob Stelzer each a Questionnaire.


This is Steven Smith from the Royale.

We never got a chance to talk much about the issues in our state. I have not made a decision on who to vote for in this election.

Here are some questions I have of the field of candidates for the 67th. I am sending these questions to each candidate. I really need to know a bit more before I vote. I know this is a lot to ask when you are running tight to the election, but I want to make an informed opinion.

Most questions I see you being asked in the press, neighborhood groups, special interest groups etc have to do with health, education, abortion and taxes. I have a few different ones. Don't feel you have to go into great detail. A sentence or two maybe three is enough per question. I hope that you can take the time to answer. I would like to publish the answers on my blog. Thanks.

==

What are your thoughts on undocumented immigrants? Illegal Aliens? Is there a difference in the definition between the two?

Should Saint Louis City Police Department/State Police assist the Federal Agencies on "roundups" of undocumented workers? Would you support legislation that would bar city or state law enforcement from assisting Federal agencies in "roundups"?

What do you believe are the best assets in the 67th?

Would you support legislation to make Missouri smoke free state wide?

Why have we failed in the past to retain young people in Saint Louis/Missouri? What can we do to change this?

What can be done to improve economic opportunity in Saint Louis/Missouri? And for young people?

How can we increase tax revenues in our city/state?

What can we do to save money in our state budget?

What are your thoughts on biofuels? Corn being used as biofuel? Government subsides that drive corn as a biofuel?

Do you support charter reform in the city of Saint Louis?

Do you support the merging of the city and county? Would you support statewide legislation mandating the merger?

Do you support any change in Missouri's transportation policies? If so, what change would you like to see?

What sort of business/personal recycling policies would you like to see the state become involved in?

What are a few things a citizen of the 67th can do bridge the racial divide in this city?

What are your thoughts on the public funding of ballparks? Downtown parking garages? Stadiums? Hotels?

What is your thought on the use of TIFs? Would you support change? What change?

What are your thoughts on the Blairmount wholesale purchasing of properties?

Steven Fitzpatrick Smith
Proprietor
The Royale Food & Spirits
3132 South Kingshighway
STL, MO 63139
314-772-3600

www.theroyale.com
www.stlstreets.com

Video of the Obama Royale!

Click To Play

Here is the video of installation of the painted Shepherd Fairey designs on the side of the Royale. We interview Richard Rodriguez, the creator/painter of the pieces that are now on the side of the Royale.

Here is the invite once again to Saturday's party:



Young Democrats of Greater St. Louis invite you to the unveiling party for three Obama Campaign Billboard sized paintings on the exterior of the Royale Food and Spirits Saturday July 19th from 4p-10pm.

Richard Rodriguez has created a series of 9 foot by 6 foot paintings based on the print artist Shepherd Fairey's renderings of the Barack Obama presidential campaign posters: Hope, Change and Progress. See the set here.

Here is more about Shepherd Fairey from the Washington Post's article on the guerilla nature of his work:
Who knows how many do-it-yourself reproductions of Fairey's Obama have been scanned off the Internet. "I have no idea. I think a lot," says the artist, who put the image on the Web in a downloadable file. "I've seen it on stencils, fliers, shirts, Web sites, places we had nothing to do with." Copyright infringement? No, no, no. "This is exactly what I wanted to happen." This isn't a limited-edition print. It's unlimited. He charged $25 to $45 for the first runs of 950 posters, to pay for the printing of the all the rest, which were free. Fairey says he hasn't made a dime off Obama nor does he think he has unfairly glommed onto the candidate.

Richard Rodriguez created these paintings "to do my small part to get Obama elected president...."

What: Obama Royale!
Where: The Royale Food and Spirits
3132 South Kingshighway
Saint Louis, MO 63139
www.theroyale.com
314-772-3600
When: Saturday July 19 4pm-10pm

Obama Royale!

Young Democrats of Greater St. Louis invite you to the unveiling party for three Obama Campaign Billboard sized paintings on the exterior of the Royale Food and Spirits Saturday July 19th from 4p-10pm.

Richard Rodriguez has created a series of 9 foot by 6 foot paintings based on the print artist Shepherd Fairey's renderings of the Barack Obama presidential campaign posters: Hope, Change and Progress. See the set here.

Here is more about Shepherd Fairey from the Washington Post's article on the guerilla nature of his work:
Who knows how many do-it-yourself reproductions of Fairey's Obama have been scanned off the Internet. "I have no idea. I think a lot," says the artist, who put the image on the Web in a downloadable file. "I've seen it on stencils, fliers, shirts, Web sites, places we had nothing to do with." Copyright infringement? No, no, no. "This is exactly what I wanted to happen." This isn't a limited-edition print. It's unlimited. He charged $25 to $45 for the first runs of 950 posters, to pay for the printing of the all the rest, which were free. Fairey says he hasn't made a dime off Obama nor does he think he has unfairly glommed onto the candidate.

Richard Rodriguez created these paintings "to do my small part to get Obama elected president...."

What: Obama Royale!
Where: The Royale Food and Spirits
3132 South Kingshighway
Saint Louis, MO 63139
www.theroyale.com
314-772-3600
When: Saturday July 19 4pm-10pm

Steven Fitzpatrick Smith
Proprietor
The Royale Food & Spirits
3132 South Kingshighway
STL, MO 63139
314-772-3600

www.theroyale.com
www.stlstreets.com

RIP Lee Nixon and Cody

Last week I was in an alley off Arsenal talking with some friends, drinking beer and watching kids play basketball. This is when I found that Lee Nixon, AKA the Rose Man died last weekend. This is so sad. He was gunned down in front of a club on the east side. An unintended victim of the insanity of violence that plagues our town.

I didn't know him well, but I would see him at the many different taverns in town, mostly up on the north side or east side. The Zodiac, My Way, Club Elite, the Imperial Palace, Wishing Well etc. Red Bones also told me about Nixon and how he had been doing this for decades. They were good friends from what I could tell. Red Bones also told me over at Palace that Nixon had done very well and didn't even need to sell flowers.

I remember chatting with Nixon at Red Bones(which according to RB had their last night of business tonight after 35 years). The Rose Man told me about his business. I told him to come down to the Royale. He never did that I know of, but he was friendly. He had a truck, a shop and was constantly out selling. He gave me a rather odd promotional calendar that had inspirational sayings on it along with short bio bits on his life including pictures of him from his tour of duty in Vietnam. It is people like Nixon is what I love about Saint Louis. The real character of Saint Louis.

**********

Such a tragic end for Nixon. So unnecessary. We really need to get a grip on this violence. It has been out of hand. Our murder rate is spiking again. We haven't seen murder like this since the early 90s. It was pretty awful in the 90s. I may jest from time to time about being a dangerous city or a murder capitol, but this is not something I am proud of. This is very serious and this really sucks about our city. Our town is violent. Our people are being gunned down wholesale.

When I was younger, when I was about 17 to the age of about 20, right when the murder rate had the spike in the early 90s I took notice. We were averaging well over 200 murders in the city alone every year- in fact we were well over 250 if I remember correctly.

I read the Post every day. And every day I would clip out the murders. Sometimes twice a day. Sometimes more. My closet door became covered with short news clips about murder. I am not sure exactly why I did this. I think I did it because it didn't seem to make any impact to me personally and I needed to remind myself what was going on around me.

These murders were hardly confined to the city. Back around '90 I had my car stolen in Kirkwood after a double murder just a few blocks from where I went to grade school. It was a beautiful 83 Chevy Impala. While the violence reached out geographically, the murders were primarily in the city. And the one thing that struck me most about the murders is who was getting killed.

For the most part young men were being killed. Young men, teenagers. Kids my age. 17, 18, 19. Not all that unlike me. But something was different. They did not have the same support structure. Every day kids were killed in our city and my life would continue w/o a beat. And all to show about this was just a few sentences on a clip taped on my closet door. Such news stories about a murdered kid would read something like this:

"Tuesday night around 11pm John Doe, 19, was
shot twice in the chest by an unknown assailant in front xxxx block
of xxxx street. Police are searching for a male 6 foot tall wearing a sweatshirt.
Doe was pronounced dead on arrival at midnight at the hospital."

That was it. Not unlike a petty crime report. This would happen over and over and over. And the small cut out articles would cover both sides of my door and into my closet.

Yet it still happens. It is happening again.

*********

As most people know I ran a boxing gym, the Panda AC for a few years. The operation is currently suspended. The Panda was located for most of our time in North Saint Louis near Cass and North Broadway. We had a youth team. I still stay in touch with many of the kids. It sucks that I don't run the gym anymore. I miss it.

I tried to more than I was able to keep up. The boxing game is not exactly lucrative. In fact it is the opposite of lucrative, even though everyone assumed I was making mad cash running a fight card every six months or so. And to properly manage a gym, we needed to pay intense attention to the kids. There was a lot to manage for we had attempted to start a tutoring program and more. These kids needed a lot of attention. Most were from the neighborhood, mostly Old North, Murphy Blair, O'Fallon, but we had kids from as far south as Carondelet and the county. The team was great. Dennis, Derron, Willie, Chase, Montrell, Demetrius, Lorenzo and more. It was a regular Our Gang. There are many great stories I could tell. But with all this awful violence in our town, there are some not so great stories I have to tell.

There was one kid that came down who I took notice. His name is Cody. He lived in the neighborhood. He was one of the few white kids that lived in this neighborhood of north Saint Louis who came to the gym. He was a good kid. I could tell he was troubled. He came in to the gym with the other kids. He wanted to box, but he never came in with enough consistency to compete.

I remember finding him down on the southside. He was also living near Hartford Coffee. I would see him down on Cherokee. I could tell that the path was not good. The older kids he was with, his brothers I think, were not a positive influence. And I had many discussions with him. He would hang out at the gym for a week straight. He would sweep up, put away the gloves and roll up the handwraps. We got to know each other.

Cody confided in me. He needed help. Cody couldn't read. He was only about 13 or 14 at the time. He would get in fights at school and get kicked out of all of them, but he was never trouble at the gym. He had a great attitude at the gym. He wanted help. I tried getting a tutor down to the gym, but the logistics of getting the tutor down there on the days he would show up was not easy. I tried. I would see him from time to time and I would ask him about school and what he was up to. He was always really pleasant to me. I think he sort of looked up to me. He was kicked out school regularly for fighting and he said he wasn't going to school, but I knew that you can't just not be in school at that age. They have to put you somewhere until you are old enough to drop out, but I don't know the exact ins and outs of schooling. Cody was not on a good path, but I knew he wanted to be in a better place in life.

So I got an update on Cody from Willie Little. Willie is another young man who I see around regularly, and he is now a going to Vashon. Willie is a good kid and comes from a good family and lives up in Old North. I have been trying to find Willie a job in the past few weeks. In fact he just left me another voice mail earlier tonight. So Willie told me about Cody about two weeks ago. Cody is in jail. Cody killed a kid. Willie told me Cody got upset. He got into an argument. According to Willie he went up to the guy and shot him in the back of the head and killed him over on Cass near 14th. I have been unable to find an official report of the murder. I think Cody's file is in my storage space with the rest of the boxing gear. I don't recall his last name.

This is stupid. This is awful.

We talk as a society about how to reduce murder. More cops. Heavier sentencing. More prisons. More laws. But it is not that simple. That is passive and does little to stem future murders. We need to get to the roots first. There are many reasons why murders are up. Easy access to efficient illicit killing tools, stressed social/family structures, no social connections to help them out, schools without enough resources to effectively handle the kid's issues. We need a way to help vent the youth's frustrations effectively. That is why I love boxing. It is a great way for youth to learn how to deal with anger and a positive connection how you can control your own physical self and mind under duress. It is tough being young, and under rough circumstances it can go bad. We can do a much better job as a city, as a society, as Americans. We have particularly tough obstacles particular to a diverse historically divided town like ours, but if we really want to address these issues we have to get to get to the root. We really need to open up on a social and economic levels to embrace as one city. The rest will fall into place much easier and we have so much to gain if we really work together. Being divided will not help us.

We must do better.

the photo is by Kevin Manning of the Post-Dispatch, thanks Kevin

New content

Okay, I got regular stlstreets.com content coming, but here is some stuff I have embedded from my MTV gig. I actually really like these pieces. I hope you do too. They are fun. They take a while to produce, so I haven't been able to blog all regular like I want to. So check these out till I get my really funny regular blog out soon.



This is the best edit so far and the content is pretty strong as well. I am still working on everything. Let me know what you think. This is an interview with Scott Ritter, a former USMC Intelligence Officer and UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq, the former Soviet Union and Mid-East. He is a really interesting cat and has a real straight take. I got to make these interviews short, so it doesn't quite do justice.




So this is the interview with Pamela Merrit of Angryblackbitch.com. She also came along to the convention and gave some really great insight to just how screwy the whole deal was.

Welcome to the STL-Google Maps

You can check out any address in the city and see a high res 360 pic of the street. It is pretty sweet. You gotta love the rich street life of the STL.

So for example, go to google and punch in:
2013 Arsenal St, St Louis, MO 63118, USA

Check the picture on the google map. It is always a beautiful and active day in the STL.

RIP Tim Russert

This is so incredibly sad. I love Tim Russert. How can I not? A good Irish Catholic, Jesuit educated, sharp observer of politics, loves his family, from a rust belt city and hard nosed. He went to the same college as my father, John Carroll University. He was a "small d democrat" and "big C Catholic" which is the best kind, and his politics never factored in his reporting. And he could be incredibly aggressive and do it with such a cool and focused demeanor. I listen to Meet the Press on podcast every week. Even the theme music is great, so inspiring just like Russ. I really admire the man. So sad. He will be missed. My condolences to his family.

So the other thing I need to tend to

Sometimes there are two events that are on the same night, and next Tuesday I have one of those quandaries. One is a celebratory event and the other is a neighborhood/political issue. I know I posted about the party on Tuesday, but unfortunately I will need to pass on it for I have to tend to this community discussion on the policy regarding the future of business on Cherokee.

I Cherokee Street Liquor Moratorium
II Beacon Bash

I Cherokee Street Liquor Moratorium
First is the issue I must attend to on Tuesday(copied from an email of the Cherokee Biz Assoc Prez):

The following is an important meeting to discuss Board Bill #47(liquor moratorium) is scheduled for next Tuesday, June 17th at 6pm in the Cherokee Business Incubator (2715 Cherokee). The purpose of this meeting is to share input from residents, business owners, property owners and other stakeholders in the community regarding Board Bill #47 (see attached). Alderman Craig Schmid will be in attendance. There are also links to a couple of articles that have been written about the issue. Please come out and share your thoughts about the bill and/or possible revisions, and feel free to forward this information along to anyone else who may be interested. If you can, this is the essential "big public meeting" to discuss and be heard. Please pass this along to any in the surrounding neighborhoods of the greater Cherokee area.

A few updates on the liquor bill sponsored by Ald. Schmid:

RFT Article

The following is a link to the copy of the original bill that was proposed to the board of Alderman. The bill is now on hold while this discussion takes place.

http://stlcin.missouri.org/alderman/eventDetail.cfm?Siteid=31&DocDayOfWeek=2008-05-26

II Beacon Bash

Carrie Zukoski, Tim O'Connell and Steven Fitzpatrick Smith

invite you to meet writers and editors on the staff of St. Louis's new online publication

The St. Louis Beacon
www.stlbeacon.org

Tuesday, June 17

at the pace-setting, news-making
gathering place

The Royale
3132 South Kingshighway

from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

* $10 suggested donation

* Special drink prices

* Free nibbles

* Bring friends, relatives & neighbors

MTV Piece

In this installment of the Missouri Homefront, from my MTV blog project. In this piece we follow Saint Louis Extraordinaire Rob Thurman on his mission to become a delegate at the State of Missouri Democratic Convention for the National Convention in Denver. This is my favorite piece so far.

If you look at any of my old videos you can see the evolution of my editing skills. They have improved dramatically.