The Misadventures of Liz & Steve: The City Museum

ATTENTION, READERS:

THIS IS NOT BORING, REGARDLESS OF THE TITLE. FOR REAL.

For those of you who know Liz well, you know that Liz is drawn to exploring abandoned places that we have no legal right to explore. For those of you who know me, stuff that even sounds illegal scares me out of my mind. Even though I try to act cool. Before you get too excited about reading a story about me breaking the law, alas, it didn't happen.

Veteran's Day, Liz and I both had the day off so we went to St. Louis (a mere two-hour drive, not bad at all). I had been talking to staff and students to figure out what St. Louis had to offer and one place that would give Liz the ability to explore to her heart's content and give me the false feeling of abandoning all of the rules and laws us grown-ups are supposed to follow. The place is called City Museum (for insanely awesome photos that we did not take, check out the link).

Let me fill you in a bit. City Museum is built in an old International Shoe Factory. The building is at least eight stories high and has been filled with creations by some crazy architect who must be a nine-year old boy stuck in an aging body. The content of the place is completely random (caves, slides, a performing circus, a store that sells toy zombies, an aquarium, and a frightening playground located at least thirty feet above the ground) and is only tied together by being created completely out of objects found within city limits. No lessons here, only an escape from reality. It's pretty much like a mix between Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Mr. Magorium's Wonder Imporium.

I've done my best to explain it, so all I can do now is share photos (and this is only a small sampling of the pictures taken).

So once you walk into this place, no map is provided (although you can find one online). The first area you see is a mixture of landing in an ocean that happens to be surrounded by a forest.

This is me cowering in fear from the pteradactyl (I actually spelled that correctly, frightening, huh?). The whale you see in the background actually ended up eating Liz which appears in a photo that won't be posted.

Interestingly enough, Liz thought it would be best to share the photo of the whale giving birth to me.

While I was cleaning myself off, Liz was climbing through trees like a monkey.

That's right. That's Liz as a little girl that you see in her smiles in these photos.

There were a number of caves behind this area, which led to other floors if you decided to give somebody a boost or go down a slide with no light in it. I'm not sure how we got to the next level; this isn't a place that you need to use stairs in. Anyway, though, we found ourselves in a place that felt like a prison that was built on a dinosaur burial site that was in the process of melting.

Thankfully, no tetnis shot was required. Like a dream, it's hard to explain how we found ourselves in new areas. At some point, we walked through a vault, a hall of mirrors, and through some gargoyles. Eventually, we found ourselves passing the circus that we missed and ended up in what appeared to be an abandoned carnival town. Highlights not included in the following photos include The Great Wall of Corndogs (tracing corndogs back to the Stone Age), a train that takes children through outerspace, and a lifesize Rock'Em, Sock'Em Robots boxing ring.

Instead, we thought we would show you some underwear.

You're missing two details in the picture above: the look of disgust on my face and the look of disgust on the underwear. Also for your viewing pleasure, a giant robot monkey. Liz decided to crawl inside because she could.

While there were great many other places, such as Skateless Park and an Make Your Own Artworld, we will leave you some photos from outside so that you can find the place yourself. This is the "playground" that we didn't get to play in because it had been raining. And yes, that's two planes and a school bus. All fun, check it out if you get a chance. Liz and I would be glad to join you.

We know it has been a bit since we've blogged. Over the next few days we'll be blogging a little more often to catch up. We've got GLACUHO to blog about, Thanksgiving, and this coming weekend.

(Happy to see the number of us blogging increasing, pretty much gives us something to read all the time!)