What?! It happens!  Sometimes people move to the city.  Maybe they are athletes or maybe they just want to fill their Foursquare feed with more hipster places…either way, it happens.

Here are some tips from Punching Kitty skewed towards people from the area that are moving to the city. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

10. If you called it Missou-rah, that’s fine. Stop now though.

9. We’d like to say “Get rid of your truck.” but we can’t. Lots of people have them, though we aren’t sure why.

8. If you’re from out west, this is a black guy:

They’re cool, so you be too.

7. Hey, nice trendy neighborhood! …Guess what though, 6 months ago an old lady was shot so someone could steal her food stamps 2 blocks away from your fancy place. No matter how many tapas restaurants you have in walking distance, it all St. Louis. You want to be an uppity little bitch about your neighborhood? Move to Ladue. Otherwise, don’t compare neighborhoods you don’t know about. City veterans hate that.

6. Cardinal games are great when the “trip” home is all of 10 minutes max.

5. You want to eat a restaurant? Tons of options. You want to go to a grocery store? Your options are too ghetto or too fancy. The county still has us beat on this one.

4. This is an example of two dudes kissing. It doesn’t happen all the time, but if you wander by Manchester & Sarah on a Saturday night, we don’t want you to be surprised.

Again, they’re cool, so you be too.

Click through the jump to read the top 3!

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A recent opinion piece posted in the Post Dispatch recently is making the rounds. The piece, written by UMSL professor Charles D. Schmitz is entitled “St. Louis is a world-class city” it’s a well-written rah-rah piece that someone from another town might brush off as self-aggrandizing, it makes some pretty cogent points.

The focus of the piece is one major issue: St. Louis City should swallow St. Louis County. Schmitz ran the data as if that was the case and came up with the following:

- St. Louis would suddenly fly from 53rd to the 7th biggest city in the US. Seventh!

- Including the county in all metrics and our high crime rate drops to below the national average.

- Same with our currently high dropout rate and shittastic (our word, not his) schools. Adding in the country and we peak above the national average.

In the world we live in, our failure to do this simple act will relegate us to the ash heap of history. On the other hand, merging the city and county into a “city” as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, will increase our status, bring us unimaginable opportunities and change the perception that we are a third-rate city with a rank of 53 to our deserved lofty ranking of seven.

You can’t deny the data points here, adding the County to the city limits seems like a great idea from the city perspective…but its going to be crazy difficult to get the county to go along with this.

Let me put it to you this way. If you were an old crack head with no education and someone said “Wouldn’t it be awesome if you were banging that younger, attractive, but kinda prude chick over there?” Of course it would! No brainer. …not a great thing for that chick though. It might turn out great, but just try to convince her of that now.

The free ride might be over for St. Louis city residents who have been living the good life with “free” trash pick up.

On Wednesday, city leaders released a proposed budget that includes a provision for homeowners to pay $8 a month for trash services. The city said the move would raise $10 million in the next budget.

City leaders claim that many county residents currently pay for trash service. In some communities, trash collection costs homeowners up to $20 a month.

…and do those county residents also have to give 1% of their income over to their local government every year? Ok, great. Douchebagsayswhat?

We here at Punching Kitty are all for the city relieving it’s monetary woes, but potentially picking up less trash because someone didn’t pay their bill is a slipper slope to Detroit. Make your money, but keep picking up all the trash you can as often as you can. You accidentally compact a bum? Eh, it happens.

Also, maybe trash pickup shouldn’t be all that much of a focus right now. Things seem to be going pretty good there. Oh by the way I drove past four kids in the street at 11am on a Tuesday being taught how to hunt for food by a ferrel dog, but yeah, lets make sure that trash pick up is making the bank.

via KSDK

The city of St. Louis is launching an advertising campaign to help with the chronic issue of car break-ins within the city limits.

The crime has blossomed in recent years, with the advent of GPS devices and MP3 players. The thrust of the new initiative is to alert motorists to not leave anything in sight inside their cars. The campaign will be managed through window posters and billboards paid for by the police department, a total of about $7,500.

The campaign announces “free beer,” or “free food,” or “free smokes,” indicating that’s what motorists offer when they leave valuables in sight.

The St. Louis tourism board must be thrilled.

Other aborted slogans for the campaign included “I hear the Royals are getting better, go park in Kansas City” and “Please police yourselves, because we’ve run out of options.”

Things like this make our city look horrible and more importantly waste funds that could be helping in other areas.  Clearly our fair city has a crime issue and we at Punching Kitty see no better option that creating our own Robocop!  He could patrol the streets 24/7 eating baby food and cracking down on car thefts and random ass shootings.  This is the perfect plan.  We realize the money on the table here is only $7,500 so the initial Robocop version would be more like a gun duct taped to the top of an radio controlled car toy than the movies Robocop, but look thats just version 1.0 dude.  Give the city a little more jack and soon enough we will have a robot with a human face walking around the city that can kill everyone but Mayor Slay and hopefully us for thinking of the idea.

via KSDK

Take that every other United States city list that always has St. Louis at either the bottom or at the top when the list starts with “Worst…”!  Someone just got named to the “Distinctive Distination” list!

St. Louis was named among the 2010 Dozen Distinctive Destinations by the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) and could be named a “favorite” if the city garners enough online votes.

The NTHP has recognized, since 2000, cities and towns that offer “an authentic visitor experience,” according to the organization.

The NTHP refers to St. Louis as “one of America’s great cities,” pointing out that looking beyond the city’s hallmark offerings shows “a vibrant, ethnically diverse city full of unexpected treasures and one-of-a-kind attractions.”

Ya hear that?!  One of “America’s great cities” with “unexpected treasures and one-of-a-kind attractions” besides thats the city-version of how I would describe the hot girl’s fat friend to my buddy, thats pretty high praise!

What other major metropolitan cities are we next to in the list?  New York?  Chicago?  San Francisco? Pffft.  They wish. Baller cities like us roll with The Crooked Road, Va….and Chestnut Hill, Pa….or uh…Sitka, Alaska. God damnit!  What kind of crap list is this?!

We get the distinct feeling that Mayor Slay got us on this list along with a free tote bag after donating $500 to PBS.

via St. Louis Business Journal

Which street that you regularly cross do you find most difficult?

• Forest Park Parkway
• Tucker
• Washington
• Grand
• Euclid
• Kingshighway
• Oakland
• Chesnut
• 11th
• Market
• Southwest
• Macausland
• Arsenal
• Manchester

No, thats the not list of every major street in the city of St. Louis, thats the list we pulled from the complaints.

So…

Your best bet in St. Louis is either to never leave your house, or get your poor ass a car.

Such a lovely city.

We all know from our experiences at the post office or DMV that some people can be pretty damn rude, but this is some cold shit right here:

Four or five homeless people have made Interco Park on Tucker near Cole their home for the last few months, but Wednesday night, were told the park was going to be cleaned up and out Thursday.

At 10 a.m. Thursday, a city garbage truck backed up to the tents and employees of the parks department started dismantling tents and dumping bags of personal possessions into the gaping maw of the truck.

Karen Wallensak went to the workers and identified herself, and offered to take control of the possession to return them to their owners. However, Wallensak says the city workers said it was too late, and the possessions were now trash. Among the items in the dump: one homeless man’s heart medication. He was there, but the city crew would not stop to get his drugs.

Seriously?  Wow.

The nerve of that guy to leave his heart medication just lying around a park and then to get all mad when someone throws it away?!  Screw you homeless guy!  Oh did your tent get thrown away?!  Maybe you shouldn’t have made a homeless guy shanty town in the park then!  I hope you don’t cry because the city threw away that big leaf you were using as a tissue, so now you’ll have to use the other big leaf you use as toilet paper.

Go screw homeless people that are only trying to sleep!

Except for the exact opposite.

via KSDK

Through 2009 so far, the amount of all violent crimes have gone down 20% in St. Louis County according to this STLToday article.  No word yet if there was also 20% less beer purchased as well.

Areas patrolled by St. Louis County police are experiencing a dramatic drop in crime compared to a year ago, with all major categories down significantly through the first half of 2009, officials said.

County police report that murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, car theft and arsons all are down compared to the same period of 2008.

Alright guys!  Good job out there!  How’d the city do?

In the city of St. Louis, officials said reports on crime are mixed through six months. Crimes against people — such as robbery and assaults with guns — are up, with the notable exception of murders, which are down. Burglaries, larcenies, auto thefts and arsons are all down this year, according to the St. Louis police.

…dammit.  At least murders and arsons are down.  Of course if we could just figure out a way to cut the north half of our fair city off we’d be good…Albuquerque good!  Just take a look at the 2009 Murder map from STLToday below:

You’re really dragging us down North St. Louis.  Hey, how did we break East St. Louis away to something separate?  Think we can dust off that plan?

“Civic Leader” Jim Cloar of the Downtown St. Louis Partnership says that about 600 new people moved to downtown St. Louis over the last year.

Hmm, ok.  So it seems like thats an easy statement to just throw out there especially when you clearly have a vested interest in downtown sucking less.  I mean maybe its true…but its hard to believe a guy coming from his place.  Well look, maybe he just said it quietly to a reporter or something…it wasn’t making a big deal out of it.  That would really be odd if the guy was basically bragging…I mean how could you believe that?

Cloar made the remarks last week at the opening of Lindenwood University’s satellite campus downtown.

Oh.  Uh…ok.  Hmm.

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