I think we all can agree the St. Louis’ monument the Gateway Arch certainly has some special powers. For example it’s pretty clear that thing is some how a super magnet for attracting street crime, crappy hockey goalies and cheesy tourist calendar photographers, but maybe there’s something else going on there…

The St. Louis Arch, a 636 ft. monument on the west bank of the Mississippi River, has stood for nearly forty years. It is a shining monument built to convey St. Louis’s role as the Gateway to the West. Only now has the reason for its construction as well as its true purpose been revealed.  It seems that some of the same scientists responsible for the doomsday weapon research in the deserts of the Southwest U.S. during the forties, were also interested in controlling the weather. They hoped to use weather control as a means to aid in troop movement and logistics for the Allies, as well as use it as a tactical weapon against the enemy. This, they hoped, would bring about a quick end to the war in Europe.

Thus, the design for the arch was conceived.

Ok, lets just slow it down here for a second there crazy. The government wanted to win World War II, so they decided the best way to do that was to:

1. Control the weather… (No one likes to march in the rain!)

2. …and they decided to build their weather controlling machine in the middle of the continental United States, instead of anywhere near Europe…

3. …and they decided to build it 20 years after World War II had ended?

Hmm.

Well this all checks out, so lets see what proof Professor Screwball has of our local weather manipulation device actually doing anything.

As storms roll across the plains of North America they cut a path of destruction. The midwest has a notorious reputation for severe and dangerous weather. Powerful thunderstorms, tornadoes, and severe ice and snowstorms pummel the area year round. But, for some odd reason, as these storm systems approach the St. Louis metro area; they seem to “split” in half. One half of the storm system will move to the north, while the other half will move the opposite direction; creating an area in the middle without any severe weather. This area in the middle, you guessed it, the St. Louis metro area. These storms then “rejoin” again over Illinois and Indiana, well past St. Louis.

We’ve had this the whole time and no one thought to turn down the f*cking heat this summer?!

You know what though, we have had a few storms smack around the city a bit. We certainly remember losing power a few times over the last 5 years. Could maybe, this be all bullshit?! Gee, we hope not. Finding something false on the internet could really hurt it’s credibility.

Does this happen every time, you may ask? The answer, put simply, is no.

Ah! Of course!

Obviously the device cannot be used frequently during business hours as many tourists are inside the arch, but also the ‘Powers that be’ use this device at their own discretion so as not to draw too much attention.

Naturally. Plus to activate the weather Arch you’ve got to solve the Pharaoh’s riddle, get past the Black Knight, fight off the giant spider from that creepy Punky Brewster episode, and then turn turn the two keys simultaneously before the cursed skeleton army made up of the 1996 Rams offensive starting lineup is awakened, so it’s just not feasible to active the thing for every little storm. Sorry Lambert Airport, next time you come up here and fight the spider.

So why are we just hearing about this now you might ask? Well…blah blah blah government secrets or something like that we bet.

The government has long since tried to cover up the details on this secret research project.

Nailed it.

To this day, very few people know of the existence of the ‘Weather Control Experiments’ taking place in the Midwest.

How’d you find out? Ah, nevermind. Secrets make the day more fun!

But the next time you watch the weather, pay close attention to the strange weather patterns and movement of storm systems in the St. Louis area.

…except for when nothing special happens, which means no one turned on the Arch that day. Remember that. All of this falls apart if you start thinking there can’t be exceptions, or if you’re not a moron.

Oh but that thing about it attracting crappy hockey goalies to St. Louis is actually true. Look it up.

via Failed Success.com and our tipster who protects us from “What the hell am I going to write about?!” storms all the time.

An employee of the St. Louis Arch was pinned for 30 seconds between the south leg tram and the top of the shaft while working on electrical upgrades yesterday. I bet that hurt. One time we stubbed our town on the south leg of our coffee table and it hurt like hell. Like really hurt and still hurt the next day, probably just like this guy’s injury. The good news for him is that after two days we were fine and we got to limp around at work and make people ask us what happened. Yea! People talked to us!

Frank Mares, deputy park superintendent, said [John Leslie, 55, of Robertsville] was doing electrical upgrades to the south tram system when he was pinned at the top. Mares said Leslie was standing atop a platform mounted on the front tram car while the tram climbed and failed to stop. Mares said the tram was being controlled by a person at a work platform below, but he said it’s unclear whether the accident was the result of mechanical or human error. Mares said Leslie was in radio contact with the person at the platform below.

Leslie (Which is a girl’s name! LOL!) is said to be fine and his injuries were not life threatening. In fact, one visitor to the Arch, who should really think about getting a job instead of visiting monuments during the work day, said they say him walking with assistance from one tram to the other right after being freed.

The Arch is currently undergoing a $3 Million dollar upgrade specifically to the tram system. Wouldn’t it be totally ironic if the new Don’t Smash Employees with the Tram Sensor 3000 was going to be installed tomorrow?

via STLToday

One of the most frequent questions we are asked is: “Why doesn’t your site name have anything to do with St. Louis?” to which we always reply “It doesn’t need to. If the site does well, the name won’t matter and it will just seem St. Louis-y regardless. Having to put “STL” or “river” in every damn thing created around here is lame and lazy.

That question is actually #2 to one other question though: “Why don’t you have the Arch on your site anywhere?” which is interesting really since that’s the exact opposite question we have for nearly every business or organization in St. Louis: Why the hell do you think you need to put the Arch in all your logos?! Yes, we get it that the Arch is St. Louis’ nationally recognized symbol, and because of that, it makes sense for tourism logo’s to include the arch visual…it still makes no sense as to why anything else has the arch in it. Quite simply, the Arch doesn’t really mean a lot to actual St. Louisans. How many of you have actually been up in the Arch? We bet fewer than you might think. Flat out, the Arch is not something the average St. Louisan thinks about at all. Hell, only a small fraction of the St. Louis area can even see the arch and a regular basis and even city dwellers don’t give a crap.

As is now the norm for any societal obsession, there is now a Tumblr blog for it, illustrating our madness: “Logos Featuring the St. Louis Arch” is exactly how it sounds: A huge list of all the different logos that look pretty much identical because they all use the arch as their defining feature.

None of which are even the least bit clever. Just once would we like to see a veterinarian use the arch as a looping stream of piss coming from behind a dog’s stretched leg, or even a…um…ok, the dog peeing thing is really the only decent idea.

We can assure all you out-of-town graphic designers that few here in town think of the Arch as a symbol for westward expansion anymore as you might assume. To us, it’s become like a giant Star Gate that opened a portal to the ugly and violent land of Illinois. We’d close the gate, but now we need them for strip clubs.

The forums at SkyscraperPage.com have some great old photos of downtown pre-Arch.  You wouldn’t think it would look that foreign, but it does.

This is like looking at a clean-shaven KFC’s Colonel Sanders or watching a Brendan Ryan that can play baseball.