Tag Archives: StL

Greening the Festival of Nations

Thanks to our BYO everything (water bottles, utensils, plates) strategy, we produced just one piece of trash on day 1 of the Festival of Nations last weekend.  I spent way too much time debating weather to trash that cardboard serving dish or recycle.  The sign on the recycling said they accepted cardboard, but this was dirty cardboard, despite our best scraping efforts (we don’t lick our plates clean in public), so I reluctantly deposited it in the trashcan.

Props to St. Louis Earth Day’s “Recycling on the Go” program for providing recycling at the event.  And by “providing recycling,” I don’t just mean setting out the bins.  They actually had people (volunteers?) walking around and removing recyclable items from the the trashcans to place in the recycling bins (don’t worry, they were wearing gloves for this activity) — really taking it to the next level!

Although I didn’t attend, the LouFest Music Festival (also last weekend) really pushed the greening theme, and I would love to see Festival of Nations implement a few other key programs, a water station for refilling water bottles being the main one.

Bike parking also makes the wish list, although this item is for Tower Grove Park in general, not specifically the Festival of Nations.  I heard through the grapevine that Tower Grove’s excuse for the lack of bicycle parking is that bike racks “don’t fit the Victorian theme of the park.”  Wha???  Of course, all of their accommodations for motor vehicles are perfectly in keeping with that time period, because there were lots of cars around in the Victorian era. Yeah.

Clothing optional?

St. Louis boasts a multitude of outdoor entertainment in the summer, most of which is free.  We favor the Whitaker Music Festival at the Botanical Garden and The Muny free seats.

Last week, we ventured out to our first Muny show of the season, The Sound of Music.  The first few shows really didn’t appeal to me this year, and, though I wanted to see Cats, that week ended up being pretty busy and it just didn’t happen.

I insisted on biking, despite the fact that it made a late night even later.  The actual time difference between biking and driving there is pretty minimal for us, but I know the biking will leave me too keyed up to fall asleep immediately.  Ah well, we enjoyed the show, and riding home under a full moon was worth it.  It’s hard to properly enjoy the night sky from inside a car.

Anyhow, we scored some good tickets to Footloose tonight.  Actual tickets, not free seats!  The only problem?  101 degrees.  Actual temperature.  Add in heat index, and we’re looking at 110+.  Does The Muny have a policy against nudity?