St. Louis Strassenfest Has Had Its Last Oom-Pah-Pah for Awhile

St. Louis has always been a city of immigrants. It currently has over 50,000 Bosnians, more than any other city in the United States. It seems like everybody landed in New York and then headed west until they ran into the mighty Mississippi, then decided to settle. The fact that St. Louis was the shipping and trading center of the country and a great place to establish a business certainly helped also.

We have a number of ethnic neighborhoods. The Bosnians are centered near the Mid-Town Arts Center, in Dogtown there seems to be an Irish bar on every corner, and everyone is familiar with "The Hill," St. Louis's Italian community where all the Italian restaurants shops are located and all of the street trash receptacles are painted the colors of the Italian flag.

Another big group of immigrants in the city are the Germans. German neighborhoods are usually found in the southern most part of the city near Dutchtown. The most famous of the immigrants to bring the German heritage to the city were the beer barons of the late 1800 and early 1900's. The Lemps and the Busch family were two of the biggest of the brewing families. St. Louis is still home to the biggest brewery in the world, Anheuser Busch. They, along with the Barnes-Jewish hospital complex and Boeing Aircraft Company are some of the biggest employers in the area.

So it's really not that hard to see that the city of St. Louis would have a huge Strassenfest every year, that annual celebration of German food, music, gemutichkeit, (German hospitality) and beer. And for the last 35 years or so that has been the case. The Strassenfest, which is also a harvest festival, usually takes place in the first week in August and is held on Tucker near memorial Plaza downtown. But now according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, (www.stltoday.com) the Strassenfest will not be held this year.

The festival has struggled before and has suffered from a bad reputation as being an "adult" affair with a lot of excessive beer swilling and urinating in the streets, so much so that in 1990 it was moved out to West Port after complaints from City Hall. Lack of parking out there kept it dormant for a couple of years, but then in 1993, it was back downtown. Over the past few years the festival has lost money, some $50,000 last year alone, even though the organizers have worked hard to make it more "family" friendly.

Last year the organizers added carnival rides, game booths, and an arts and crafts fair as well as a "Children's Village with petting zoo, storytellers, and jugglers. The fair's organizers say that they still envision St. Louis having some sort of Strassenfest in the future, but they want to take a year off to think and regroup.

Since St. Patrick's Day and Mardi Gras are tremendously successful in St. Louis and they both have a parade, maybe that's what the Strassenfest organizers might consider, or maybe they should consider just losing that Polka music.