While seemingly every other blog was off covering the weekend’s “Cardinals Winter Warm-Up” we decided we’d grab our camera and cover the weekend’s forgotten event, the Loop’s Ice Festival.

We took a bunch of pictures which we could post here and have a few people find mildly entertaining, but we just can’t do that. It just wouldn’t hold a candle to the photos (and video!) we have of the man we’re calling the “Mysterious Running Wilderness Man” who came in a very close second in the morning’s 5k race only to promptly dance to the music and try to high-five people that had little to no interest in high-fiving him.

Here he is high-fiving this guy who was out of breath and had his hands on his head. A little thing like that isn’t going to stop our man from going for the elbow high-five anyway, which prompted the polite but late return you see here:

Here’s another shot of our wilderness man trying a second time to high-five this young girl after his first attempt was decidedly unsatisfactory, all while three people stared at the situation from afar.

Despite his early failures, the rate of runners crossing the finish line started to increase and he saw his chance for high-five glory…as well as a chance to dance to a Michael Jackson classic. Luckily, we have video:

We’re not sure we’ve ever been that happy, especially after running 3 miles on a Saturday before noon, but we’re glad someone is. Dance on Wilderness Running Man! High five!

Hey neighbors! It looks like Mr. Joe Edwards is getting his trolley!

[T]he federal government is pitching in $25-million toward a trolley car that would run between University City and western parts of St. Louis.

This $44-million total project would run trolley cars between City Hall down Delmar, then south on Debaliviere to the Missouri history museum on Debaliviere in Forest park.

For a while it looked like it may never happen, but now it looks like it could be in place as soon as 2012, according to Edwards.

We love Joe, who has always been very nice to us, because we love what he has done for the Loop area, but this Photoshopping idea just wouldn’t leave our heads and when the news of the $25 million government grant came down it was time to finally make our dream come true of turning Joe in to “Mr. Edwards”.

…the only difference being that when Joe’s trolley takes off it doesn’t go to a magical kingdom, it goes past 2 closed gas stations and a Wellfare office.

We don’t know what it’s for, but it’s awesome. Apparently someone said there were words on it describing what it was about but we don’t remember seeing any words. Just perfectly drawn nipples on cartoon boobs with crazy flame hair and crotch grabbing. All for only $7 + a minor surcharge!

Found in the Loop.

“Crap. They’re back.”

“Who?”

“Come see.”

The two of them stand up and look in to the window facing the parking lot, each of them looking through their reflections, focusing on their respective cars.

“They didn’t get mine yet.”

“Well the bastards got mine double and their heading your direction.”

“Maybe they’ll miss it.”

The crowd at the window has now grown to 6.

“Can someone set off their alarm? That would freak them out.”

“Could we call the cops for something like this?  It has to be some form of littering.”

“Well the cops just drove by and they sure didn’t seem to give a shit.”

“No! No no no no no…damn. They got my car now too.”

There are lots of reasons parking in the Loop sucks. On a particularly nice Friday, just finding a spot is nightmarish enough, then you have to worry about whose going to take a poke at  you on your way to Blueberry Hill.  Once you get there and settle in to your booth, yet another annoyance is hard at work: Those damn flyer people.

They would say they are serving a valuable purpose. Who else would tell you which washed up reality start is “hosting” a party at Home Nightclub next week?!  We would say their “service” of making random high school drop-outs walk around and plaster crap all of our cars that no one cares about and will most certainly end up on the ground isn’t serving anyone but yourselves. We’ve tried really hard, but no matter how much we think about this problem, we still have three nagging questions.

1. Who are these people?

Who are these people that take a job that involves spreading crap around your own town? …a job that can’t pay much more than $.25/hour. Also, why aren’t these people smart enough to just trash the whole pile of flyers, take a long lunch, come back and say “All done!”

2. This can’t be a very successful advertising method…can it?

How often can this work as a successful advertisement method? Admittedly when you pay next to nothing for your base costs, even a 1% success rate is a win, but still. Also, how can your success rate even be proven? I rarely see any identification-type info so that the band or whatever knows I came from a flyer stuck to my car.  Are people just going to up businesses (Home Nightclub) and saying “Hey, give me a bunch of money and I’ll pay my army of homeless people to put them all over cars in the Loop. I can’t prove that it works, but trust me.” …and people (Home Nightclub) buy this load of crap?!

3. Shouldn’t this be illegal?

The disgusting legal irony of this is that while its clearly not illegal for them to stick little pieces of paper all over my car, if a cop sees me take off and throw it on the ground I’m the one that gets a littering ticket!  This practice basically makes paper to basically turn it directly into litter. It’s amazing.

Long story short: Screw you flyer people.

We at Punching Kitty love being in the city during the spring. Walking down the streets of the Looop, with that cool nip in the air that makes it so you can’t decide if you should have brought your coat. Looking at the shine of the streetlights coming off the rain puddles on still on the streets from the night below takes your focus to the point where you don’t even see the little bitch about to sucker punch you as you walk past the Subway.

I was dressed in athletic shorts and running shoes, carrying a gym bag and wearing headphones because I’d just left the new Club Fitness over the old Blockbuster.

It was very nice of your group to move out of the way without me having to say anything or really even make eye contact for more than half a second. Perhaps you felt I should have said “Pardon me, kind sir,” or simply “Sup,” because when I was walking away you ran up from behind and punched me in the jaw, knocking my headphones and glasses off and making me very pissed off.

God sometimes we really hate people.

The problem of Roving Retarded Children or RRC is one that has a long history in St. Louis particularly in the areas of: The Loop, Central West End, Midtown and select chunks of South City. It involves anywhere from 3-8 retards standing around, usually around a door and also usually around an inexpensive eating or refueling establishment, Quiktrip, or in this case Subway. Most of these groups appear to operate on the idea that people are scared of them for some reason, and when people aren’t, they tend to lash out in an attempt to make people scare of them. The sad fact is this though: They are still retarded and you aren’t. You can get in my face with your adolescence all you want, but its not scary and you are still retarded. Sure you may say you aren’t, but you’re in a group standing outside of a Subway at 9pm, not eating sandwiches…guess what? You’re retarded. Also, know that retarded people don’t know they are retarded. If they did, they wouldn’t be retarded (wrap your head around that one).

So what can we as a non-retarded city dweller do about RRC? Sadly not much. Your best options are to stay alert and remember that no matter what they do, at best these retards will be greeting you at a Wal-Mart visit in 20 years. Sure, when you remember who they are and begin to kick the crap out of a retarded 41 year old Wal-Mart greeter when they offer you a cart, people will think you are the asshole, but you’ll know the truth and so will we.

via Riverfront Times

Not sure if the sorta-thaw we had yesterday loosed up the frozen crazy, but in some crazy crap was going down in the Loop around lunch time.

First at the corner of Leland and Delmar we saw a 70+ year old woman land a punch on a van as it sped through the intersection.  I mean a punch too, nothing accidental.  A freaking punch.

Not more than an hour later, we saw a woman beat the living hell out of a “gentleman” over a video game.  After raining blows to the top of his head, ignoring his pleas to the contrary, she capped off the exhibition by hawking a little lung butter on the top of his head.

Now as if getting whooped by a girl on the street at noon wasn’t bad enough, he had to be watched from less than 2 feet away by a group of onlookers.  His only exclamation, repeated countless times, was simply “Hoes be trippin man!”

Indeed.