k l a t OF THE TOWNS
by bill beggs jr.
u. city
Interface Construction has had a chain-link fence up around the site of the late, lamented, flagship Pasta House at Delmar and Bonhomme in U. City for months now, much heavy equipment and a porta-potty sitting on the dirt and at the ready for workers. Another new Total Access Urgent Care (TAUC) is to be built on the lot, which has languished with little to no activity since that warm little slice of suburban-style Tuscany closed last November and was razed; a
the metro
A lame T-shirt you’ve probably never seen says: “Q: Do you wanna taco ’bout it? Q: No, I donut. It’s nacho problem.” Groan. Dozens of sophomoric spins on this are lurking out on the interwebs, a magical place somewhere up in ‘The Cloud’ you can find with this nifty new electronic doodad called Google. It’s right here on my laptop. What, pray tell, will those I.T. wizards think of next? OK, OK; please excuse me. I’m back to the future now, full analog. I’d slipped into a time warp back to 1995 while searching online for just what the heck is going on with taco joints in the metro. Seems it’s one up, two down at present. Club Taco in Kirkwood may be ‘donut wanna taco ’bout it’ beyond a Facebook post announcing they had to throw in the towel after being unable to renegotiate an acceptable lease. They opened at 200 N. Kirkwood Road in 2016. Taco Circus, a trendy Tex-Mex eatery—read, Austin style—gave up the ghost Nov. 20 at its location on The Hill, open since 2019; no word on their Tower Grove spot. Then there’s Tacos 4 Life, a Conway, Arkansas, taco joint that made its first foray among our river cities by taking over a shuttered Steak ’n Shake location in St. Charles. They’re bona fide, from south of the border—the Show-Me State line, anyhow. Certainly, all is not lost. You should visit Hacienda on Manchester in Rock Hill on a day that isn’t Cinco de Mayo. They have yummy fare beyond frozen margaritas. Lunch business was brisk a few Saturdays ago at Taco Buddha on Pershing in U. City. And 24/7 almost anywhere; just drive thru a Taco Bell. Do I have tacos on the brain? Donut ask. It’s nacho problem.
chesterfield
new Pasta House popped up in January at 8831 Ladue Road. At any rate, a city official says the construction process has been somewhat delayed because of U. City’s need to complete ‘due diligence.’ Just spitballing here, but could TAUC be saturating the market? Interface has built many TAUC clinics in the last several years: One on Page in Overland, near the Home Depot at I-170, was completed post haste. TAUC on North Kirkwood Road due south of the CVS at Manchester seemed to pop up overnight. At least two dozen have opened throughout the metro. To the casual observer, there seem to be about as many TAUC clinics as Starbucks or McDonald’s. (OK; so, a casual observer exaggerates. But only a little.) All that said, it’s got to be better just walking in for emergency medical attention than waiting perhaps hours in a hospital ER. (BJC on Kingshighway in the wee hours of a Saturday? No, thank you very much.) Emergency medicine physician Matt Bruckel, M.D., founded TAUC in 2008, fueled by the belief that there should be an efficient and cost-effective alternative to
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TOWN&style
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DECEMBER 1, 2021
It’s not easy to maintain ‘social distance’ at a sporting event or concert. Although two recent shows we saw at The Sheldon were elbow-to-elbow (one sold-out), projected above the stage before showtime was a reminder to keep 6 feet away from everyone else. Ushers approached anyone whose mask did not cover both nose and mouth—still, folks were seated close enough to suffer their neighbors’ halitosis. Proof of vaccination was required before entry, which we assume is de rigueur for most any venue. Judging from the schedules at The Pageant et al., the StL music scene has gradually returned to its robust, pre-plague levels. Which brings us to an exciting new development in Chesterfield Valley: The $150 million Gateway Studios & Production Services (GSPS), a 32-acre campus at 900 Spirit of St. Louis Blvd. broke ground last month. GSPS is projected to be one of the largest production services and rehearsal facilities in the country. Its strategic location, smack in the Midwest’s midsection, will allow for productions to be designed here before moving on. Adjacent to Spirit of St. Louis Airport and I-64, the campus should make arrivals and departures a snap. Gateway Studios, a 330,000-square-foot complex employing 100-plus entertainment veterans, will feature conference and dressing rooms, on-site catering, sound stages, green-screen studios, live streaming, audio, lighting and video manufacturing and production services. Studio 80 will accommodate stadium-size tours, with 52,500 square feet of open space and an additional 50,000 square feet of adjacent support space. Studios 75, 65 and 50 will be able to simultaneously accommodate the development of arena-size tours and incomparable corporate events. The senior leadership team at GSPS has rocked and rolled with big acts including Bon Jovi, Phish, Kenny Chesney, Maroon 5, Drake, Jimmy Buffett, The Eagles, Aerosmith, John Mellencamp, Florida Georgia Line and Prince … as well as the oft-maligned Nickelback. There’ll be a new hotel, a large private courtyard suitable for outdoor entertaining and even a six-lane bowling alley, ‘B. Goode Lanes.’ Visit gsps.com.
TTia ☛ triv WHICH COMPANY
HAS THE LARGEST FOOTPRINT, IN TERMS OF TOTAL NUMBER OF U.S. LOCATIONS: M CDONALD’S, STARBUCKS OR WALGREENS?
LAST ISSUE’S Q&A Chutzpah and mishegas, or mishigas, are favorite Yiddish words of your scribe, a lapsed Protestant. What does it mean? (‘Mishegas,’ not ‘lapsed Protestant,’ although it’s a valid question.) ‘Mishegas’ in this case means ‘all this mess here’ since the water main burst a month ago right at the end of our sidewalk. ‘Chutzpah’ is suitable Yiddish for the action Missouri-American Water has taken on our case since then. Different workers have shown up to spray-paint arcane white, blue, yellow, orange and green markings on the grass, concrete, gravel, dead leaves and dried mud. We still wait. What ‘chutzpah’— oy; have they got nerve! We’re just about ‘meshuggeneh’ around here. Crazy, that is!
