[edale]

I haven't spent a ton of time in St. Louis, but in the visits I've made to the area, it did feel like the real locus of control is decidedly west of the downtown core. There is next to nothing just across the river in Illinois, which is not at all what I was expecting from a city situated right on a state boundary. Downtown feels not all that important and was pretty sleepy, dated, and honestly somewhat unimpressive. The really great parts of STL were the Central West End and points west of there...Forest Park, Del Mar Loop, area by Wash U and Clayton. This discussion of how the county has been trying to wrestle control of the region away from the city seemed pretty evident in my visits, even without knowing much of that history.