Culture shock in the Lou
I have lived in California for most of my life with limited travel to other parts of the country. In fact, I’m quite sure that I’ve traveled to more foreign cities than US cities. I have quite a few Japanese colleagues who have been more places in the US than I have despite them living here for a much shorter amount of time. Pretty sad, but I hope to change that.
Diversity in the US can easily be taken for granted so when we went out to St. Louis for the MLB All-Star game, I experienced a little culture shock.
Though it’s only about a four-hour flight away, St. Louis is a very different place than California. Driving from the airport to my friend’s place, there were rows of quaint, cute brick houses surrounded by lots greenery. I noticed that on our way from the airport, we were forced to taking side streets—a result of a one-year freeway closure of the main highway. More surprisingly, these closures hadn’t caused any major problems with traffic or delays. Freeway shutdowns would be unthinkable in California, as they are nightmares already as it is.
Living in the Bay Area, I am spoiled with all the choices of varying cuisine. Just within a one-mile radius of our apartment, we can get American, Indian, Mexican, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Peruvian…the list goes on. In St. Louis, the selection is much more limited. Admittedly, we didn’t go too far out of our way, but our friend who has lived there for more than a year wisely suggested that we stay away from anything ethnic. We did find some awesome barbecue at Pappy’s Smokehouse. We also enjoyed frozen custard from the famous Ted Drewes.
The racial and political make-up in St. Louis is also very different from the Bay Area. Based on the reactions we received when we went places and the boos and cheers during the video clip of past presidents at the All-Star game, red doesn’t just represent their love for the Cardinals. Perhaps that was just in the area we were sitting, because on TV, the boos for the President were not quite as apparent as they were for us. Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to criticize, it was just a shock coming from the San Francisco Bay Area where things are much different.
St. Louis is a great baseball city. It was awesome to see a city so unified in their love for the team. If anyone’s seen the attendance at A’s games this year, you know this is a shock for us, too. Everywhere we went we would see someone wearing Cardinals gear. It seemed like the whole city was off on the day of the All-Star game based on the masses of people present at the parade. It was really great to feel that energy.
Overall, we had a great time with our friends exploring St. Louis and all the sights and sounds that were there. It was nice to be able to explore another part of this vast country of ours.
