*laughs* Which, ah, have so little to do with what St. Louis is. Particularly if your base of comparison is New York. (I've at least been through New York. I believe my first take was "wow, it's big".)
Have some local freebies:
1) There's a road in North County (around the Florissant/Hazelwood area) called Sinks Road. It's called that because the area is full of sinkholes - the steep dips in the earth you get when a cave collapses. That whole area was/is owned by Laclede Gas, was used for natural gas, and few houses get built there because the ground is, yep, uneven/unstable. The road itself has many twists and turns to avoid said sinkholes.
Net result: One of the most beautiful back ways in the St. Louis area, with a paved road kept in great repair that twists and turns through thick forest that, especially in autumn, is breathtaking with color. It's only a few miles from end to end, really, and hemmed in by your more usual wide throughfares, so it's a bit of a quite-local secret. Any lycanthropes could have an effing blast in there.
2) There's St. Louis City and St. Louis County. Unless you're going to SLU or are a highly poor/urban background sort, you're living in the county. (I always laugh at how the fanged and furred got the riverfront - they so got it because nobody with normal human attributes could survive the area too long. Hell, by the look of Anitaverse, they really cleaned the area up.) The county has all the suburb-cities, which can expand to the south and west, but in the north is stopped by the Missouri River. In general, to the east (read: near Mississsippi River) are the poor, and the South County, to the north are the middle class, and to the west/southwest are the area's very well-to-do. (Again, I laugh because yep, the southwest, west county area is sooo where the better vampires would want to live. Very pretty, quite expensive for the area, generally wrapped in little woodlands.) Of these, I think Ladue still holds the record for the most 'select' area, but I might be wrong.
3) Most of the little suburb towns have little festivals - those parking lot carnivals - in the spring, on the weekends. If you're a teenager with a car, you can pretty much hit a different one every weekend from april through june, but only if you're reeeeally bored. (Which, this being St. Louis, you probably are.)
4) Unless it's Denny's or Steak 'n' Shake or Wendy's, the entire. city. is largely in bed by 10pm. Hence why teenagers get bored.
5) Local quirk: The north county, middle class town of Florissant is pretty much owned and run by one man, who's run it forever, (read: I think at least the past 20, 30 years, when it stopped being farmland) and the cops really do stop anyone who looks under 18 if they're on the streets past 10 or so. Curfew law.
6) Most suburban residential streets have a speed limit of 25 (meaning people drive at 30 mph most of the time). The relatively poor town of Dellwood, however, deliberately set their street signs to a speed limit of 20 and put stop signs at every. friggin. intersection. as a kind of permanent speed trap - since if you habitually go 30, in that area you're therefore speeding.
7) In this town, if you're local, people know how much money you came from by what high school you graduated from, and most locals know at least the top five and bottom five school districts off the top of their heads. Racism is, unfortunately, alive and well in the area and most white people will leave an area that blacks are moving to. (I *think* the mayor of the City is still black - I do recall a quiet but widespread "oh, there goes the neighborhood" when that first happened. Sad but true, and one of those things that makes me look at LKH sidelong when she writes about black lycanthropes being rare. She's a St. Louis native, I've gotten used to double-checking locals for things like that.)
no subject
Have some local freebies:
1) There's a road in North County (around the Florissant/Hazelwood area) called Sinks Road. It's called that because the area is full of sinkholes - the steep dips in the earth you get when a cave collapses. That whole area was/is owned by Laclede Gas, was used for natural gas, and few houses get built there because the ground is, yep, uneven/unstable. The road itself has many twists and turns to avoid said sinkholes.
Net result: One of the most beautiful back ways in the St. Louis area, with a paved road kept in great repair that twists and turns through thick forest that, especially in autumn, is breathtaking with color. It's only a few miles from end to end, really, and hemmed in by your more usual wide throughfares, so it's a bit of a quite-local secret. Any lycanthropes could have an effing blast in there.
2) There's St. Louis City and St. Louis County. Unless you're going to SLU or are a highly poor/urban background sort, you're living in the county. (I always laugh at how the fanged and furred got the riverfront - they so got it because nobody with normal human attributes could survive the area too long. Hell, by the look of Anitaverse, they really cleaned the area up.) The county has all the suburb-cities, which can expand to the south and west, but in the north is stopped by the Missouri River. In general, to the east (read: near Mississsippi River) are the poor, and the South County, to the north are the middle class, and to the west/southwest are the area's very well-to-do. (Again, I laugh because yep, the southwest, west county area is sooo where the better vampires would want to live. Very pretty, quite expensive for the area, generally wrapped in little woodlands.) Of these, I think Ladue still holds the record for the most 'select' area, but I might be wrong.
3) Most of the little suburb towns have little festivals - those parking lot carnivals - in the spring, on the weekends. If you're a teenager with a car, you can pretty much hit a different one every weekend from april through june, but only if you're reeeeally bored. (Which, this being St. Louis, you probably are.)
4) Unless it's Denny's or Steak 'n' Shake or Wendy's, the entire. city. is largely in bed by 10pm. Hence why teenagers get bored.
5) Local quirk: The north county, middle class town of Florissant is pretty much owned and run by one man, who's run it forever, (read: I think at least the past 20, 30 years, when it stopped being farmland) and the cops really do stop anyone who looks under 18 if they're on the streets past 10 or so. Curfew law.
6) Most suburban residential streets have a speed limit of 25 (meaning people drive at 30 mph most of the time). The relatively poor town of Dellwood, however, deliberately set their street signs to a speed limit of 20 and put stop signs at every. friggin. intersection. as a kind of permanent speed trap - since if you habitually go 30, in that area you're therefore speeding.
7) In this town, if you're local, people know how much money you came from by what high school you graduated from, and most locals know at least the top five and bottom five school districts off the top of their heads. Racism is, unfortunately, alive and well in the area and most white people will leave an area that blacks are moving to. (I *think* the mayor of the City is still black - I do recall a quiet but widespread "oh, there goes the neighborhood" when that first happened. Sad but true, and one of those things that makes me look at LKH sidelong when she writes about black lycanthropes being rare. She's a St. Louis native, I've gotten used to double-checking locals for things like that.)