St. Louis is the kind of place where people still buy Buicks new. Where they trick out Malibus, tinting the windows and driving them into the ground. You can always find parking in St. Louis. The downtown is like a tree chopped down and the municipalities blow and bustle as though you had only trimmed a hedge. There's breakdowns in St. Louis. And there's chaos. Traffic jams up tamely on certain roads at rush hour. And poor kids come over the bridge, wave guns, and ride off in stolen cars at certain intersections. The conditions are fine unless it's summer. A few cyclists are killed per year. It's ok to be a wage worker. And it's ok to be a burnout. And it's ok to be old money. The river forgives all of this. The wide, tremulous, forgotten river marked only by the Casino Queen and a century of freighter hulls.