(upbeat music) - [Announcer] It's a game with a long and rich history in St. Louis, but it has never been like this until now.

And it's more than just a major league soccer team and a new stadium.

It's also about downtown, the city's image.

And when it comes to that, they're playing for more than a draw.

New Year's Eve a hundred years ago.

What started out as a raid by Prohibition police turned into a riot in one of the city's fanciest ballrooms.

And what better way to spend an evening than a movie night with those who share your passion, and at every meeting, they are always the guests of honor.

It's all next on "Living St.

Louis."

(upbeat jazzy music) (jazzy music continues) (jazzy music continues) (jazzy music fades) I'm Jim Kirchherr, and this is "Living St.

Louis."

We're kicking off our 20th season, so we thought we'd freshen things up a bit.

So, yeah, it looks different.

We've moved indoors, but it's the same show story-wise.

In fact, we've never really strayed very far from where we started.

Here's how we introduced our very first show.

This was back in January of 2004, and explained what we planned to be and not to be.

I wanna say upfront about this show we're doing called "Living St. Louis" that we probably won't be covering any celebrity scandals or trials.

There won't be traffic reports, and certainly, no live car chases, because, as we like to say, chopper nine is in the shop.

And look back at what we did in our first program.

We made it clear this was not, well, it wasn't frontline.

We profiled a colorful, quirky, and sometimes controversial street entertainer who went by the name of Baton Bob.

- They don't know anything about me, but they really like that happy spirit.

- [Jim] Baton Bob left St. Louis a few years later.

He moved to Atlanta.

He's still there performing and available for events.

(explosion bangs) In show number one, the first of our many history stories.

The Lewis and Clark Bicentennial was underway, and a group of volunteers was retracing the journey, met by crowds, media and family members left behind.

- [Speaker] And originally, he was gonna do three weeks on and three weeks off.

Do you really mind if I go back?

I said, no.

- [Jim] We met artist and sculptor Mel Meyer.

I hardly use a brush on it.

It's all more trial technique.

- A Marianist monk working out of a studio on the campus of Vianney High School.

Brother Mel died in 2013 at the age of 85 after creating some 10,000 works of art, which you can still find all over town.

And we caught up with another group pursuing their passion.

We introduced our audience to the tuneful renditions of the Gateway Harmonica Club.

The Harmonica Club, it's still around, and will be hosting a national harmonica convention later this year in St. Louis.

(upbeat music) And that's how "Living St. Louis" started.

And now, this is how we continue.

Often, the first show of a new year, we look back at something big from the previous year or we look forward to something big in the coming year.

Well, Anne-Marie Berger has a story that I think fits both categories, so, she's gonna kick things off.

(upbeat music) - [Anne-Marie] In August of 2019, Major League Soccer announced what soccer fans in St. Louis had been campaigning for for years.

- It's hard to imagine that we were able to have a thriving professional soccer league and that it could exist in the United States and Canada without having the city of St. Louis being a part of it.

Well, imagine no more because St. Louis, which is, with its incredibly rich soccer history, not only deserves an MLS team, but has earned one.

(crowd applauds) - [Anne-Marie] This was validating news for our region, especially after Stan Kroenke took off with the Rams and cursed our city as not being able to support three major league teams.

- Let's go!

City!

- St. Louis soccer fans proved Kroenke wrong.

Season tickets for the 28th MLS expansion team, St. Louis City SC, sold out immediately, and in November, when the brand new state of the art City Park Stadium hosted a pre-season friendly between the City 2 team and European powerhouse Bayer Leverkusen, the 22,500 seat stadium was at maximum capacity.

(crowd chants) It is a cold 30 degrees tonight, but it hasn't stopped the crowds and it hasn't stopped their enthusiasm.

- St. Louis, we love it.

Soccer's here.

Yes!

- This would not have happened if it wasn't for all the support we got from the people of the region, truthfully.

- Carolyn Kindle is the president and CEO of St. Louis City, a team her family, the Taylors of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, are the majority owners.

I guess it's not really surprising, because I know the history of soccer in St. Louis, but the immediate fan response is a little bonkers.

Like, it was an automatic buy-in.

There was was automatic loyalty.

There was automatic, whatever's coming out with the logo on it, people are buying it, people are wearing it.

Were you pleasantly surprised or did you absolutely know that all of that was coming?

- Oh, I was blown away.

I knew we were gonna get support.

I did not expect it at the level that we got it.

- [Anne-Marie] St. Louis has long been associated with soccer.

Back in 1950, six of the starters on the US World Cup team were from the East Coast.

The other five were from St. Louis, four of them from the Italian neighborhood known as The Hill.

The president of the US Soccer Federation at the time, Walter Giesler, was also from St. Louis and viewed his hometown as a hotbed for soccer talent.

In 2010, Nine PBS produced a documentary recounting St. Louis soccer history.

- [Announcer] In 1959, the National Collegiate Athletic Association first offered colleges the opportunity to compete for a national title.

For the past 80 years, college soccer had been dominated by teams from the northeast, Penn, Harvard, Princeton and Penn State.

But the first NCAA championship was won by a Midwestern school.

(crowd cheers) - [Sports Announcer] The NCAA championship playoffs at the University of Connecticut on a wet Thanksgiving weekend.

Sloshing toward the title, the Billikens of St. Louis University as they played the University of Bridgeport.

This was the first full season for varsity soccer at St. Louis, and when they finally spliced that sodden ball into the goal, they had placed an unusual story in the annals of sports.

- [Announcer] College soccer had joined the big leagues.

And this first championship in 1959 marked a historic turning point showing colleges throughout America that soccer had been taken to a new level.

- [Speaker] St. Louis, they set the bar, and it was so much higher than the rest of us.

- Since that college championship, St. Louis has had multiple professional soccer teams, but the game's national popularity fluctuates, competing with other major league sports like the NFL and NBA.

Major League Soccer has spent the last few decades working to gain national loyalty by increasing the number of teams, adding star power and the construction of brand new dedicated stadiums and practice amenities.

St. Louis already had a soccer fan base, and now, along with its very own team, has a brand new state of the art stadium and training facility in the heart of the city.

Let's talk about the intentionality of everything from the location, the name, it's all city.

So, we've got the practice fields.

We've got the stadium, all in the city.

City's in the name.

- Well, so we actually asked for people to submit names.

So, we had over 5,000 people, and city or some form of city was clearly the number one choice.

But then we started to see how city really kind of fits into the entire region.

- This isn't the first time the Taylor family has backed or initiated transformative projects in the region, City Arch River, Forest Park, Great Rivers Greenway, just to name a few.

They view an MLS team as a way to put St. Louis on the international map where it belongs.

How did the family come up with this?

Just sitting around the table one day and like, hey, let's go do this?

- No, but it's a great story to tell.

So, you know, my family obviously is very passionate about St. Louis and the region, and we were sort of looking for what's our next big project.

So it was really 2018 in the summer that my uncle came to my mom and I and said, "I have this crazy idea.

What do you think about going after a professional soccer team?"

And not knowing what I was saying at the time, I'm like, I think that's a great idea.

And he's like, "Perfect.

Meet me downstairs in a half an hour."

And I think what we found as we started to do our homework was, first of all, it has a huge international draw.

So, we thought it was a great way to bring, you know, some of these amazing micro communities together to celebrate, you know, a team in their backyard, but also, it's a great way to recruit people to the St. Louis area.

And so, we were just so excited when we found out more and more about the sport.

- This is a business.

So much private funding was put into creating this, which is also rare.

How is this a profitable business?

- This has never been about profit.

It's been about elevating St. Louis back to where it needs to be with all the geospatial activity, you know, the agriculture activity.

We really wanted to find a way to make sure that people not only stayed here, but we were also recruiting, whether it's businesses and families and students.

And so, we just, again, go back to, we thought that this international sport would be one of the many things that the region has to offer to be something that is attractive to, like I said, families, businesses, so on and so forth.

(upbeat music) - [Anne-Marie] The stadium seats just under 23,000 fans.

Every seat will be within 120 feet of the pitch.

The pitch sits 40 feet below street level to intentionally create a loud fan experience.

(crowd shouts) City Park will host about 20 regular season MLS games each year.

(crowd shouts) And the first official home game for St. Louis City SC will be March 4th, 2023.

(upbeat music) - So, Major league Soccer, more than a game, more than a business.

It's about St. Louis's reputation as a big league city and Ruth Ezell is here to dig deeper into that issue.

- Well, Jim, there are plenty of things on the plus side for St. Louis, but also some things that need to be addressed, fixed and remedied.

And joining us is Kitty Ratcliffe, the president of Explore St. Louis, which promotes conventions and tourisms in St. Louis city and county.

Before we get into that, did you watch the World Cup?

I could not.

I was glued.

- I think everybody in St. Louis was glued because there's an identity now that we can all relate to.

- Precisely.

And now you can imagine maybe one day.

- Maybe one day we'll be there.

- Yeah, yeah.

So, we have a new soccer team, but that's not the only new sports that's coming to town, new team that's coming to town.

- No, we also have the BattleHawks.

We're seeing the return of the XFL.

That'll be in the, playing in The Dome on, about the same time as the MLS team starts.

So a lot of new activity in the downtown area.

- Yeah, so, it's been about a month since a deal was reached to divide up the settlement money from the lawsuit against the Rams in the NFL.

Now, I know Explore St. Louis isn't gonna see any of that money, but there is some money that's gonna benefit a facility that your agency operates.

- We do.

We, the city owns the convention center and the RSA, the Regional Convention Sports Authority, owns The Dome.

We manage both of those as one combined complex, the America Center complex.

So, as you said, none of the money's gonna come to us directly, but our whole goal in utilizing those facilities is to attract people from outside of St. Louis to come in.

That economic activity, that's new money coming into our region, puts our people to work, supports our businesses.

And so, we're very pleased that there's some money that is coming to both of those facilities, that The Dome will have some long-term maintenance, which was, has been a concern of ours, that there, that would not be the case.

There was not really a provision for any new money coming in to maintain The Dome after 2024.

But now, there will be some maintenance money, because we've got events booked in there all the way through 2030 right now.

And then also some improvement money, a little bit of improvement money for The Dome and about $30 million of improvement money that will go into the convention center expansion and improvement plan that's undergoing now that the city owns.

- A few days after this interview was recorded, Radcliffe told a city agency that while phase one of the project could be completed, there was not enough money to complete phase two, leaving the future of the City County project in question.

A later statement expressed confidence that the project's full scope would be resolved.

Meanwhile, the business of events, conventions, and promoting St. Louis moves forward.

- I know you've been quoted as saying, "Just because the Rams aren't in The Dome, it doesn't mean it's empty."

So, what's been going on?

- Well, it never was empty.

You know, I think a lot of people in St. Louis thought the only thing that was ever in it were the football games that they went to and loved, enjoyed and had a great time.

But it was a football stadium, and that's all they ever could see it as.

But we always had control of the space outside of the football season.

And so, every year since it was open in the non football season, we had conventions in there.

We had amateur sporting events.

We had public shows like, you know, the car show or the RV show or the home and garden show, dirt shows, Monster Jam, Supercross.

So, lots and lots of activities.

What the NFL departure gave us the permission to do was provide additional weeks of availability, which has really meant that we've been able to bring some concerts in and some other things that book more short term that we wouldn't have been able to do before.

So, it's never been empty and it's still not empty.

- Okay.

In terms of the challenges that you face, I would imagine the single biggest thing is downtown crime.

I don't know what kind of relationship you have with public safety officials.

Are they keeping you in the loop as to what's being done to remedy that?

- Yeah, I mean, we're a marketing organization for both the city and the county, as you noted.

But the, you know, the big hub of the tourism activity that comes in in large numbers, is around the largest venues.

And those are mostly in the downtown area.

So, you know, you just profiled the new MLS stadium, which is so exciting.

But also Busch Stadium, and Enterprise Center and the convention center and The Dome.

And so, when we have large groups coming in, anywhere from a 10,000 person convention to a 30 or 40,000 person convention, or 43,000 people at Busch Stadium, you've got this large influx of people coming in, which also might bring out, you know, some of the unsavory types who view it as an opportunity.

So, we work very closely with the police department themselves and also with the Downtown CID, which is the Downtown Community Improvement District.

They have a contract with the police department and with third party to provide supplemental public safety.

And we just work with them to identify what groups we have coming in, when, what their hours are, where they're staying, where they're meeting.

And so, everybody works together to try to make sure that the visitors who come have a really good experience.

- So, can you give us an idea of what kind of things are coming up for 2023?

- [Kitty] Oh my gosh.

Well, we just talked about two of them.

- Yeah.

- The new MLS team coming in, the new BattleHawks coming in, you know, but there's so many other things that are happening in other venues around that bring people here.

So, everything that's been happening at Union Station is absolutely amazing in these past few years.

And they're adding some more venues under the Shed in Union Station that will help to attract new people.

You've got all the development that's been happening at the Foundry, and they're adding more things in.

And the Armory just opened this week, which, you know, we haven't seen the Armory open in a couple of decades, and what exciting things.

- [Ruth] Amazing.

- And those are all in, you know, kind of in that, the downtown to midtown area of St. Louis, but many other things happening all around the region.

Everything that's happened at The Factory and out in Chesterfield Valley and in Chesterfield with the development of all kinds of new venues, it's just, it's booming.

So, we're really pleased.

There's lots of things to bring people to our community for many different experiences.

All the great visitor attractions that we have and all the improvements that the zoo and Six Flags and all of them are continuing to do.

So, lots to look forward to in 2023.

- Thank you so much, Kitty Ratcliffe, for joining us today.

By now, you've probably recovered from any New Year's celebrations, but a hundred years ago, Anne-Marie Berger tells us a lot of folks were still picking up the pieces.

(upbeat music) - [Anne-Marie] A hundred years a the hot topic was the raid of a New Year's Eve party at the new Chase Hotel's fancy Palm Room.

Okay, this is not film of the actual party, but you get the idea.

Prohibition was in force, and federal agents led by Chief Prohibition Officer Gus Nations came with a warrant to search for illegal alcohol brought into the New Year's celebration.

The agents were not welcome and were outnumbered by the hundreds of guests.

A riot broke out as revelers threw chairs, glassware, cutlery, and, of course, the newspapers reported that the women screamed.

Police reinforcements came, and a city detective fired his gun, injuring three people.

An anti Prohibition group was demanding a grand jury investigation, charging that law enforcement officers were disrespectful and high-handed as they searched for liquor.

The manager of the Chase said the raid was illegal, that the warrant not properly obtained.

One of the gunshot victims sued, and at the hearing, Prohibition Chief Gus Nations testified that he spent most of the time during the raid trying to disengage himself from a drunk woman who wanted to dance.

Gus Nations had his backers, and there was the opinion that Prohibition should be the law for fancy parties on Lindell Boulevard as well as taverns on Market Street.

That was this week in history, 100 years ago, 1923.

- And finally, a story that might fall into the either you get it or you don't category.

We stopped into a monthly meeting of people who have a shared passion for the practitioners of an art form that can be as subtle as a glance or as direct as a pie in the face.

(gentle music) They get together once a month, some in fezzes, some in bowler hats for talk, dinner, drinks, toasts and movies.

And not just any movies.

No, they're here for one reason.

Well, actually, two.

- I'm totally crazy about Laurel and Hardy.

(playful music) - [Jim] Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made more than a hundred films together, shorts and full length features, from the silent era until the early 1950s.

- My best suit is in there.

Throw it over your port shoulder and full speed ahead.

- Aye, aye.

- Oh no!

- Oliver Hardy died in 1957, and before Stan Laurel passed away in 1965, a New York film enthusiast worked with him to form what became the Sons of the Desert.

Stan Laurel wanted his work to live on, but he made it clear that he did not want merely a fan club.

- Well, we want something that would be like an appreciation society and that would be scholarly and would talk about our films and what we did.

But I also wanted to have half-assed dignity.

And I think the motto should be two minds without a single thought.

- Well, that's that.

Let's go get something to eat.

- You got any money?

- [Jim] The idea spread with chapters called Tents popping up all over.

Laurel and Hardy have fans around the world.

Tent leaders are called grand sheiks.

Phil Steinberg is the grand sheik of the St. Louis Tent.

All of this, including the fezzes, come from the Laurel and Hardy Film "Sons of the Desert."

In the 1933 film, Laurel and Hardy belong to a fraternal organization, the Sons of the Desert, and they scheme to trick their wives so they can sneak off to a national convention.

- I go places and do things and then tell my wife.

- If you think that you are going gallivanting off with a lot of hoodlums to any convention whenever you want to, you're not.

Not for a minute, you're not.

- I've joined in recent years.

I've been a fan of silent film and comedy for a long time.

And, but, as Trudy said, this group is just so much fun.

- [Hardy] And we're up like this.

(audience laughs) - [Jim] So, from a serious standpoint, how good are Laurel and Hardy?

- They can take no premise or the thinnest premise in the world and give you 10 or 15 minutes of funny stuff, you know, washing dishes, just domestic issues, they can go forever with on just the thinnest of premises.

- Lima beans, buttered beats, a combination salad.

Now, for this desert, I think I'll have a double portion of apple pie with a large piece of American cream cheese.

- Yes.

- And a flagon of coffee.

- I'll have the same.

- Yes.

- [Jim] There was more to this meeting than showing the two Laurel and Hardy movies.

The members' appreciation of these films extends to the supporting cast members, including the actor who plays the villain in both of this meeting's films.

- Our theme this evening is the menace of Walter Long.

Walter Long, who died in 1952, is an actor that has a face that makes him look like a villain.

Okay?

- [Jim] They were the classic big guy, little guy duo.

And they could do physical comedy with the best of them.

Once, they produced the pie fight to end all pie fights.

But it was really those faces, Laurel's childlike whininess, Hardy's exasperation.

That's what made them iconic figures.

Iconic, but perhaps not immortal.

So, I gotta tell you something that you're not gonna like to hear, but I was mentioning this to a young colleague about Laurel and Hardy, and the question was, who?

Never heard of 'em.

- That's why we're here.

That's why we're here.

We've been, introduced Laurel and Hardy to a bunch of younger people.

Some of the members when they get here tonight, you'll see, are not old fogies like me.

- [Jim] So, your job is to carry this on.

- Oh yeah.

It's quite the yoke to bear.

- Well, it's another nice mess you've gotten me into.

- [Jim] After the second film, the monthly meeting of the St. Louis Tent of the Sons of the Desert wraps up just the way the fictional Sons of the Desert wrapped up their meetings.

♪ Sons of the Desert are we - [Jim] Proudly ending just the way Stan Laurel would've wanted it, with half-assed dignity.

♪ Sons of the Desert are we - Yay!

- [Phil] Good night, all.

Best evening ever.

- And that's "Living St.

Louis."

We wanna continue hearing from you, so feel free to let us know what you're thinking.

You can reach us at NinePBS.org/LSL.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Jim Kirchherr, and we'll see you next time.

(relaxed jazzy music) (jazzy music continues) (jazzy music continues) (jazzy music continues) - [Narrator] "Living St. Louis" is funded in part by the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation and the members of Nine PBS.