Well great. How are we supposed to get amazing AA-list celebrities to come to St. Louis now without the Ameristar Casino’s HOME nightclub?! The club announced Sunday it has closed its doors, taking with it the chance to see HOME veterans again like Paris Hilton, Danny Masterson, Kim Kardashion and, talent oozing from every pore, Wilber Valderama…oh god…that’s not talent is it? I think that’s infection left over from Lindsay Lohan. Gross.

Though the press release, sent to a few media outlets on Sunday afternoon, has yet to appear on the Ameristar Press Release page (Update: Its up now. Link.), the Riverfront Times quoted this chunk:

Ameristar Casinos, Inc. has closed HOME Nightclub at Ameristar Casino Resort Spa St. Charles. The venue’s last night of operation was Aug. 22. Ameristar Sr. Vice President and General Manager Jim Franke said that while HOME had met Ameristar’s standards of quality and excellence in becoming one of St. Louis’ premiere nightclubs, the venue was unable to sustain profitability. “We want to thank our guests and appreciated their patronage and loyalty in making HOME one of the top nightclubs not only in the St. Louis area, but throughout the Midwest region,” Franke said. There are no immediate plans to physically change the HOME venue. Franke said Ameristar will continue to use the facility as an exciting high-energy venue for the property’s group sales business. Despite changes to improve the financial performance of HOME – including programming and scheduling formats – the venue was unable to achieve successful financial results, Franke said.

If you can’t turn a profit with $13 vodka tonics, we aren’t sure what else can help you.

The real losers in all of this news are the Jersey Shore kids. They lost one of only a few places that would bring them in to “host” a party. All they have left now is InsideSTL events at Fifteen.

Click through the jump to see photos of the HOME hall of fame.

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We found this video via The St. Louis Egotist yesterday, and had to do the re-post. It’s really a very well done video with great shots of City Garden, City Museum, Forest Park, and all the other good places around town.

Notice how steady they keep the camera despite all the dead bodies and homeless people they had to step over to shoot it.

Editor’s Note: This post was sent to us from a guest writer, Lance K. I gotta say when I first read this, I thought “I don’t remember writing this!” so I thought this was the perfect post to ease in our Guest Author feature. If you have any interest in guest authoring a post here, drop me a line at editor@punchingkitty.com

…also love that he’s clinging to the “VP Fair” name. We are too.

Tips For Chicagoans Visiting St. Louis for the VP Fair

* The VP fair is this weekend, so downtown will be a hellish menagerie of boorish suburbanites, grifters, confused tourists and gangsters. Being from Chicago, you likely won’t notice. Also, please remember it’s “VP” not “VIP”. I’d explain what it means but no one here really knows for sure. It’s some sort of quasi-cultic frat prank gone mainstream – that’s all we can say for sure.

* St. Louis is like Australia for Chicagoans. Just remember that if you get lost while in STL and have to choose between going north or south, choose south. Always err to the south.

* If you’re using public transit and you get lost, wait for a bus and ask the driver if he’s heading toward the train. 50% of the time he will be. If you can get to the train, you’ll be able to find just about anything.

* If you’re not using public transportation and you want to go to Forest Park on a gorgeous holiday weekend, change your mind and use the train. People from west county go there on the weekends, and all of them drive massive SUVs. You will not find parking and will spend the entire day watching Finding Nemo through the back window of an Expedition.

* Find Cherokee street and have lunch. If you see antique stores, you’re on the wrong end. Head west until you hear Tejano music. Get some tacos at La Vallesana and poke around the hipster doodad stores. You’ll see a little store that seems to sell only cotton balls and white t-shirts. Things are not what they seem.

* On Saturday morning go to Tower Grove park and follow the trail of granola moms to the Farmers Market. There will be music and fresh crepes and amish men selling beets. There will be children laughing as they splash about in a fountain on a beautiful, warm Saturday morning. Pretty girls will walk by lugging yoga mats while a man who looks like Allen Ginsberg considers his carrots. You will sit on stone steps in the dappled shade while life careens and darts around you in a never ending swirl of colors and light. There will be goat cheese.†

* Find Fred’s Six Feet Under. Bring ears and a personality.

* There’s a place called Crown Candy that would be fun to visit as long as you are escorted there by someone who knows exactly how to get there.

* The City Museum is our Shedd’s Aquarium. If you tell people you’re visiting St. Louis they will all recommend you visit it. Upon returning everyone will ask if you went there. It’s really the only thing we have that isn’t a down market copy of something in another city. We’re very proud.

* If you go to the top of the Arch, be sure to describe the experience to a native St. Louisan as they have likely never had the experience.

† Upon further reflection, I’m starting to think the guy who was selling the “organic mushrooms” from a blanket on the outskirts of the market was *not* a real farmer.

St. Louis has a very odd relationship with soccer. Sometimes it seems strong, like on fall days when every single minivan in town is shipping a load of kids and a bucket of orange slices to one of the hundreds of soccer fields. Other times, like when we have soccer times just die on the vine because no one gives a damn you think, wait aren’t we supposed to be some kind of an oasis in the universal malaise of soccer that shrouds the vast majority of the United States?

All that is put aside however when the World Cup spins back up. Anyone that once played soccer is in to it again. The whole city seemingly tries to remember the soccer of its collective youth…and then promptly try to destroy those memories with beer after beer.  Soon the game you had to go watch at the pub around 6:45am, is merely background noise to the spinning room and the annoyed waitress you are trying to get to blow you in the bathroom after the lunch rush is over.

So where’s the best places in St. Louis to watch the World Cup? We came up with a top 5 list. Pretty much the only requirement to be in the running was to have an “event” of some kind gear toward the World Cup. Wondering why some obvious “Irish Pub” players aren’t on the list? They decided “trivia night” or a Nickelback coverband would be a better use of their time.

5. The Dubliner – 1025 Washington Avenue | St. Louis, MO 63101

Standard fair, but always a nice place.

4. Tigin Irish Pub – 333 Washington Ave | St Louis, MO 63102 | 314-241-8666

“On Saturday, June 12, fans will experience a day long party for much anticipated England vs. USA match up. Pub opens at 6.30am for the first of three World Cup matches. England vs. USA kicks off at 1.30pm. Party goes all night with live music with Playback Duo after the game on the patio.”

3. Amsterdam Tavern – 3175 Morganford | St. Louis, MO 63116

“The Tavern will be open for EVERY World Cup game, AND all Sunday games with breakfast and lunch to keep everyone fed!”

2. Barristers – 15 N Meramec | Clayton, MO 63105

Apparently its been named “Soccer Central” by some website we’ve never heard of. Those are the best kind of sites. Worth a #2 for us.

1. Scottish Arms – 8 South Sarah Street | St Louis, MO 63108

“This year we will be open for ALL GAMES, yep even the 6.30am kick off matches. We will have light breakfast selections available of Panini’s, bagels, fruit and yoghurt for the fans.” Nice. Oh and there’s this: “The Scottish Arms is proud to present the largest Whisky Selection in St. Louis. In March 2006 we received a Certificate from Whisky Magazine, based in the UK, which recognized the Scottish Arms as one of the… GREAT WHISKY BARS OF THE WORLD!”

Head out! Get drunk! Pretend to be able to name even 5 players on the US team! …oh and send some photos.

Maybe you’ve seen the blog Hot Chicks with Douchebags, well guess what?  We have a few examples of this meme in our very own town…and all it took to find them was a quick trip to the InsideSTL photo gallery!  Shocker right?

You know guys, I’m guessing most of you are sports fans. There’s a sport expression that falls inline with this: “Act like you’ve been there before.” You don’t need to get this excited just because someone pointed a camera at you while you happen to be standing next to a girl.

If any of these are of you, I’m sorry, but you made me do this.

If I didn’t recognize the two on the left as St. Louis Cardinals Brendan Ryan and Colby Rasmus, I would say this picture appears to be the start of an amazing douche collection.

It has it all, the guy that throws the peace sign everywhere, the “I’ve been rocking this so long it can’t possibly be ironic any longer” mustache and a straight up classic “Me Play Sports Good” face on young Colby in the middle.

Don’t get us wrong, Rasmus and Ryan are solid young players, but photos like this make us miss Larry Walker and Reggie Sanders.

We can’t speak on the details of the little girl’s room at St. Louis favorite Blueberry Hill, but in the Dude’s Room, they have these awesome pieces of wood where you are free to draw anything you want, or if you prefer, just try to inspect while you are giving back that beer you just bought.

I thought it would be fun to snap a photo [Editor's Note: This is the first time I've taken photos in the boy's room, I swear!] and take a closer look.  Get a real feel for the art work of St. Louis’ one handed artists.

Here is what you see if you are rocking one of the urinals at Blueberry Hill, see if you can find anything interesting in there…

If you take a closer look, like we did with some of the amazing, Bat Cave-level image analyzing tools we have here at Punching Kitty HQ, here’s what we found:

Pretty damn amazing huh?!  I know we were shocked by that Mona Lisa.  Really nice work being has he had to keep the aim going the whole time.

Such amazing work hanging mere feet from a constant stream of piss!  I wonder what they do with these things with they are “full”?

Saturday we went to go checkout PlaybackSTL‘s music festival that took place in the Loop this weekend.  This was the most interesting thing I saw:

One might think its weird that you would go down to one of the more fun areas of St. Louis to see a music festival and you hear no music, see any signs of a festival, but instead just see a scary, chain smoking clown, but that’s apparently the way PlaybackSTL wanted it…a secret music festival.

The idea of the festival is a good one.  Get a bunch of bands, both local and outside, and get them to come play and in the process highlight both good new music, and some of the great University City venues.  However, they missed the part about letting people know about it.

Seriously.  I came to the Loop Saturday afternoon to see how it was going and check out some of their panels on different topics that could help young bands.  I knew it wasn’t a good sign when I got a parking spot with no problem.  It got worse from there.  The streets weren’t any more filled than a usual Saturday, and to my shock…no stage, no bands playing outside, no music at all.  None.  So I head in to Cicero’s, where the panels are to take place.  Once again I have to check my phone to see if this is the right day/time. There were maybe 10 people in the place and the panels were tucked away on that back stage with the door closed no less.

As you can see, the panels weren’t even close to full, despite the streets being full people that had no idea any of this was going on!

I don’t understand this at all.  Why bother having a music festival in the Loop if you aren’t going to bother using that great street atmosphere?  I asked around and I heard the same thing from a few people: The organizers thought a free, outdoor stage would take away from wristband sales.

Yes, thats a moronic way to look at it, and if thats how you feel, go do the damn thing in St. Charles, but whatever at least there was some sort of thought put in to that decision.  What about the decision to not promote the damn thing at all?  No one had an answer for that, but I did talk to several people that had no idea whatsoever that the festival was going on!  Well done.  To make matters worse, the best show of the night at the Pageant, featuring several great local acts, wasn’t even a part of the PlaybackSTL line up!

I’m not taking away anything from the bands, which I hear many of them felt guilted in to playing, rather than actually wanting to, and I’m not taking anything away from the panelists.  They all did great work, its just too bad PlaybackSTL didn’t give them the support and audience they deserved.

Last year’s attempt was much better.  There were people in the streets, a stage next to Vintage Vinyl, and a feeling of an actual festival.  This year it felt like a secret club meeting.

I do hope they do this again, and I hope they do it right the third time around.

Joe Edwards, Loop Godfather and owner of Blueberry Hill has decided to celebrate Abe Lincoln’s 200th birthday by sticking a flag in to his already amazing burger and call it the Gettysburger!  For an added touch, the burger also comes with a copy of the Gettysburg Address, because why not right?

We had one earlier today and it was of course great.

“Ugly Friend” (noun):

the friend of the hot girl who is never chosen first. She is always left alone and is very angry about it. When given the choice between the 2 the guys always chose the prettier friend and leave the ugly big nosed one out of the cold.   

You literally have to beg guys to touch the girl to give her a pity screw. 

Example: Sara is a real ugly friend.