Wish I Were There

This past weekend, we missed what looks to have been a great party down on Cherokee for Cinco De Mayo. I don't want to steal these fabulous photos, but please go take a look. You can read more about this wonderfully wacky neighborhood and see more photos here. Cherokee Street is a bit an odd place for St. Louis, but also a miniature of some of the forces that move about St. Louis. It's the epicenter of the city's growing Hispanic population (although there are Hispanic areas in the county and the city has several other immigrant populations that are larger), there's a thriving arts community that lives here too with some folks who are a bit outside the political mainstream (anarchist collective bakery anyone?), there's a bunch of just everyday folks on the lower end of the socio-economic scale who may or may not be pushed out as this neighborhood gentrifies, and there's also a bastion of more politically connected shopkeepers hunkered down on the eastern end of the street called antiques row who aren't quite so sure about the folks just west of them. Some of the blog posts talk about the tensions, and it really shows just how segmented and neighborhood idenfitied our city can be.