8 hours in st. louis

We made it to St. Louis yesterday and our first stop was a tour of the Anheuser-Busch factory.

We saw the giant Clydesdales, learned about the unique brewing process and even watched the factory bottle and label thousands upon thousands of beers (the best fact of the day was that their storage unit that holds 500,000 cases of beer is kept with only 200,000 cases. However, if they were to stock up and fill the hold to capacity it would only last......16 HOURS). Mid-westerners drink a LOT of Budweiser. More to follow on the factory tour once Avi compiles the Budweiser movie montage.

The best part of the tour was the end...FREE BEER..and pretzels for all tour attendees. It was an awesome time but we were all completely FLOORED by the fact that the whole thing was free. Free to get in. Free to drink. We just walked right in and were entertained...for FREE. amazing.

After the brewery we went into town to find something to eat and were greeted by some hilarious St. Louis bums. After parking at a 15 minute only meter and making friends with a meter man and convincing him NOT to ticket us, wandering men kept coming to the van telling us we were going to get a ticket, that we should trade CDs with them, and that we should give them money. After entertaining the ideas for a moment and deciding they weren't in our best interest we locked up the van (and taking out ANYTHING we thought was valuable) we headed towards the restaurant and behind us this funny bum said..."ooooooh i HATE people from Pennsylvania". undeserved abuse. undeserved.

Regardless, we enjoyed dinner and then went to starbucks so Cory could re-string his guitar in the air-conditioning instead of the sweltering 105 degree st. louis weather. In starbucks we ruined their scissors, relaxed for a half an hour, and then made our way to the venue.

The venue we played was a really really cool, I might even be inclined to say...swanky, place but was not in such a great neighborhood. Everything BUT this bar and venue was either closed down, or behind bulletproof glass...EVERYTHING. The bums on this side of town must have been co-conspirators with the bums from downtown because they sucked too. We asked for a place they would recommend to eat and the guy gave us a look and said, "I'm not telling you"...nice. Very nice.

Anyways, we were a bit surprised by the other bands we played with on account of they were all classic punk rock...a bit out of our genre. Regardless, it was a great show, we were solid on stage, the bar gave us some delicious pizza, and I had some wonderful friends come to see us (thanks so much Sharol and Rob!!!).

While we weren't so thrilled with our experiences in st. louis (mainly those HARSH harassing bums) we were Pisssssssed when we couldn't get out! At around 12:45 am we ATTEMPTED to leave, but miraculously every highway we tried was closed. Our GPS freaked out, got very upset with us, and we just kept trying to follow absurdly confusing detours. Finally we stopped at a gas station for directions and were on our way. Avi sang counting crows at the top of his lungs while we all slept and when that didn't work to keep him awake John took the wheel and threw on some Reggae to get us the rest of way to Columbia.

Finally in Columbia at 3:45 am we unloaded our stuff into my friend Jordan's house and fell asleep pretty quickly after a bit of TV and bad movies.

This morning we woke up late (ranging between 1-3 pm) and went out to breakfast at an awesome place on Mizzou's campus. Tonight we'll being playing @ Mojo's with some local acts. Bigger acts like Tapes 'n Tapes, Girl Talk, Mountain Goats, and Cold War Kids have played this stage so we're pretty pumped.