(upbeat jazz music) - [Kirchherr] What started out with these guys as a big idea has turned into a big deal, because March 14th is more than just another day in St. Louis.

It's officially 314 Day.

- Changing the narrative and showing the real St. Louis.

(attendees cheering) - [Kirchherr] People often complain that good ideas for St. Louis too often just end up on a shelf, but that's exactly what one program is aiming for.

And bragging rights, well, when it comes to flags, St. Louis has a winner, thanks to this guy.

- This is Long Distance.

- [Kirchherr] And back to 314.

We wanted to know when, how, and why the area code, and we made just the right connection.

It's all next on "Living St.

Louis."

(upbeat jazz music) (energetic music) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) - Hi, I'm Anne-Marie Berger.

March 14th is a day when people across the U.S. celebrate an icon of math nerd culture, the number pi, 3.14.

In fact, it's actually a national holiday.

But here in St. Louis, we celebrate 314 Day for a different, yet equally as nerdy, reason: our love for St. Louis and the region.

And let's be honest, we could use a little love and self-care.

Brooke Butler takes a look at how 314 Day St. Louis-style came to be.

- [Butler] If you could pick one thing to represent all of St. Louis, what would it be?

- So, today, of course, it's the arch.

- Course our probably our biggest would be the STL logo for the St. Louis Cardinals.

- Ferris Wheel.

You got the soccer stadium right across the street now.

- The Apotheosis of St. Louis statue.

- When people get off the plane, they're going right to Imo's Pizza.

- The steamboat, which you can still see on the city's Common Seal today.

- [Butler] No matter where you live in the city, there is one thing that seems to connect us all: our phone number.

Well, not everyone has the renowned 314 area code, but it has become one of those symbols that encompasses the widely diverse people who call St. Louis their home, and so what better day to celebrate our city than March 14th?

(group cheering) - There we go.

- [Butler] This year, local influencers kicked off the season of St. Louis pride with a night at Busch Stadium.

- 314 Day has really taken a life of its own, right?

But there's two people who got it started.

This is the man behind the idea of 314 Day.

(group cheers) - Y'all don't got to do that.

First off, I appreciate everybody coming out, man.

This is a beautiful thing.

- [Butler] 314 Day was created in 2006 when Tatum Polk, alongside Terrel Evans, who goes by Young Dip, wanted to spread more positivity around the city.

- What he said.

I really do appreciate everybody coming out.

My name's Tatum Polk, for those that don't know me, It is amazing... 314 Day is an opportunity to really dive into the history of St. Louis and kind of remember the nostalgia of the great things that we were and kind of to build up the excitement of where we're going to be, and so that's kind of where it all started.

- And you were born and raised- - Just a love for the city.

Yeah, born and raised here, right on the north side of St. Louis.

- And you've stayed here.

'Cause there's a lot of people who are really trying to get out of the city.

- Yeah, so that was intentional, too.

We have some negative things, right?

And we can't shy away from that, and so that's a part of our initiative, too, is changing the narrative and showing the real St. Louis.

- But what I think is interesting about 314 Day, some might think it's been done in the past and it's failed.

- Yeah.

- This came from within the community.

There were no leaders or politicians coming in and saying, "Okay, 314 Day, everybody."

- Yeah.

It was just a couple guys with some ideas, and we expanded on those ideas, and expanded on those ideas, and we whispered to a few people, and they said, "Oh, that's a great idea."

And then they joined, and then just kind of snowballed and snowballed.

- Well, 2006, that was probably pre-Facebook, wasn't it?

- It was.

- Pre-social?

- Probably MySpace-ish, those days?

- Gosh.

- But I think that it was organic.

(dancer hyping up mascot) It changed a lot since our original inception of what it looked like.

We were just kind of throwing parties and kind of everybody kinda having a good time, and it was an opportunity to see how many people had their own memories and their own favorite foods and their own things that they were really excited to talk about.

And so one hashtag leads to another, leads to another, leads to millions of impressions.

And then we said, "Okay, how do we make the city better?"

Like "How do we impact it year-round and it's not just a one day of celebrating what St Louis was, but how can we use the other 364 days to make St. Louis better?"

- [Butler] But even though Tatum and Dip were able to organically spread the word about 314 Day on their own, they needed a boost in order to reach the level of impact they knew the holiday could make.

So, in 2022, they joined forces with Greater St. Louis, Inc.'s initiative STLMade.

- [Young Dip] Yo, this Dip, the founder of 314 Day.

- [Butler] Through this partnership, they're able to promote local businesses, host volunteer opportunities, and really leverage their original mission with boosting civic pride.

(attendees cheering) - [Event Host] The celebration continues to grow larger.

- [Butler] Another major lift in 2022, March 14th was officially declared 314 Day.

And even though 314 Day is a fairly new idea, as we found out from our friends at the Missouri History Museum, the concept of community efforts to build civic pride goes much further back.

- We have all of these really fantastic sort of moments of history when the city becomes a focal point that the whole world is sort of looking to.

Obviously, the World's Fair in 1904 when 20 million people come to St. Louis, the first Olympics held on American soil, (rhythmic music) of course, the Pageant and Masque, which happens in 1914 on the 150th anniversary of St. Louis's founding.

It was an unbelievable spectacle.

It was one of the largest theatrical performances ever staged in the world up to that time.

(rhythmic music) Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, this incredible moment where Lindbergh truly becomes one of the first worldwide global celebrities.

In the mid 1960s, the Arch begins rising on the riverfront, but it became this beautiful symbol unlike any other of the city.

And I think a lot of these moments kind of point back to that.

St. Louis has always been a place that it feels like is sort of struggling to prove itself to itself, and I think that's an important part of civic pride today, as well.

You can both love St. Louis while still admitting that it's a place that has faults and things that need to be made better.

I think it's important to keep those in balance, that those are both part of loving this place.

So, 314 Day, from my experience of it, is just this wonderful day where we sort of look deeper under the surface of St. Louis and sort of find all those things that make this city unique and special.

(funky music) - So, what are we?

What is St. Louis?

What is that culture?

How would you describe that?

- It is a big small city.

- Yeah.

- Or a little big city.

It's a melting pot.

I mean, you're right in the middle of the country, and so we have The Hill and you have North St. Louis and you have Southside, and everything kind of feels different, and you can be 15 minutes away from the Arch and it feel like totally different cities.

And I think that we can be seen as one of the more creative cities in the country because of our history, our heritage, and the blend of so many peoples and cultures.

- And so where do you hope the holiday goes from here?

- I think, selfishly, I'd like for people to be off on 3-15.

- [Butler] Yeah.

I'm here for it.

- Let you celebrate 314 Day however it feels, and then on the 15th, you should be off.

- So, chances are St. Louis probably won't get an official day off next 314 Day, but whether or not the holiday sticks around for years to come, it's yet another moment for the history books to show how St. Louisans really know how to come together.

What about the people who have 636 phone number?

- Then you should move to South City, near you, go to T-Mobile or Apple and say, "Hey, I'd like to get a 314."

- But, you know there's no more 314 numbers.

- Good.

- Did you hear that?

- Yeah, we are who we are.

No.

(Butler laughs) Whoever, wherever.

St. Charles or 618 in Edwardsville or Belleville, whatever.

I mean, this is is our town, right?

So, I say the whole St. Louis metro area is welcome to celebrate 314 Day.

- [Butler] Yeah.

(funky music) (funky music continues) - All this got us wondering about area codes.

When were they introduced?

When did we start using them and why?

If only we had a telephone museum.

Hmm.

Oh, wait, we do.

And do you know who went there?

Jim Kirchherr, and he got the 411 on the 314.

- [Kirchherr] This is the Jefferson Barracks Telephone Museum.

The name tells you where and what it is, and it's a place filled with telephone history.

Some of it you might remember from years gone by.

Some of it might be only familiar from the movies.

- While we're in this room here with the- - [Kirchherr] Ken Schaper and Carol Johannes showed us around the museum, and we stopped at one of those old switchboards to learn how operators first were able to connect a caller to the callee.

- And plug it into that place where the light was on.

She takes the matching pair of those cords and puts it into whatever slot matches who they need to talk to.

- [Kirchherr] This was for a business, but the same system was used on a much larger scale at the phone company originally for every single call.

- Hello?

Ed?

- [Kirchherr] Long-distance calls, though?

- This is Long Distance.

- [Kirchherr] They had to go through multiple connections and multiple operators.

- One moment, please.

- [Kirchherr] The callers had to wait some time before the connection was complete.

- [Narrator] Time required?

About five minutes on the average.

- [Kirchherr] But new technologies were always in the works.

- When you operate the dial, bringing it around to the finger stop and then release it... (mechanism clicking) (phone rings) - And it puts a ringtone on that phone.

- [Kirchherr] This really sped things up, but first, for local calls only.

Long-distance, you still had to go through an operator.

You could tell her, always a her, the number and the city, and she would make the call.

But after World War II, more and more people were getting phones, more people were moving around the country, and the number of long-distance calls just began to overwhelm the system.

- Well, area codes were put into place because there actually were not enough telephone operators to handle all of the calls.

- [Kirchherr] In 1947, every part of the country got an area code.

St. Louis and half of Missouri, 314, Central Illinois, 217.

And when local equipment was updated in your area, you could call the long-distance operator and she dialed the number directly using the area code, bypassing all those other operators and speeding things up.

The phone company had to instruct people about how all of this worked, selling the speed, the convenience.

"And," the ad said, "it's fun too."

- Oh, hello, Mother?

This is Jane.

Oh no, Dear.

We're all fine.

- [Kirchherr] But it wouldn't be until the early 1960s when people throughout the area would be able to bypass the operator and use the area code to dial a long-distance call themselves.

There came a point in some big cities when most all the numbers in the area code were being used up.

Keep in mind, this was back when most people, most families, had just one phone number.

- Today, an average family of four, every single one of those, Mom, Dad, and the two kids probably has a cell phone.

- With all these devices we have, whether it's cell phones, whether it's tablets, Apple Watches, they all have to be assigned a phone number.

- So, you have doubled or tripled the amount of numbers that are required.

- [Kirchherr] And more than tripled the number of area codes.

Missouri went from two to seven, Illinois from four to 15, and now there's the need to give the same area two codes.

In St. Louis, 314 and now 557.

- All of a sudden, you had to start dialing the 314 area code even though you were dialing someone right here in the city.

- [Kirchherr] Of course, we're not really dialing anymore, and in some ways, the area code often isn't a code for an area.

You can move and take your cell phone, and 314 is just a part of the 10-digit phone number.

And yet for some people, those three little numbers still complete a connection home.

(funky music) - Cities are defined by the people who live in them.

Here in St. Louis, scores of residents from a cross-section of the community have been captured in thoughtful photographic portraits accompanied by candid, revealing, and sometimes heartbreaking quotes.

You'll find them all in the book "Humans of St. Louis: The People of St. Louis One Photo and Story At a Time."

It made a splash when published in 2022 and is in its second printing.

Joining us now to tell us about the book is co-author Lindy Drew.

Welcome, Lindy.

- Thank you for having me.

- It's such an exciting project, and I have so many questions, starting with what inspired you and co-author Dessa Somerside to create this book?

- Well, we had so many photo stories that we were sharing on our social media platform, and we realized that over time, they kind of get buried, and so we thought, "Why not do the work justice 'cause it's still relevant, and we'll kind of pull it back up, add some new work in there, and make a publication?"

And other "Humans Of" sites around the world, there's hundreds of them, we've been following their work from New York to Amsterdam to Minneapolis, back over to Ireland.

Sorry, yeah, it was Dublin, I think, yeah.

And we thought, "What would it look like if we attempted our own?"

So, we got a group together and decided to self-publish, and we found creatives in the St. Louis area to do it.

And then from there, it just became this rich project that, thank goodness, we finally finished last year.

(both laugh) - And I would like to address a little bit of the process, but first let's talk about a couple of stories in particular.

And it was hard.

It's so difficult just to pick out one or two or three, but there was a young girl, young white girl with an older friend, Black man.

She introduced him as her uncle.

- Yep.

- And he told the photographer, whoever he was talking to, "Well, she just thinks of me that way," And she said, "No, you're my uncle."

What's the story behind that?

- Yeah, so all the photo stories in the book are ones that I've taken, so I can speak to this one, and I was near Tower Grove, and I saw them hanging out out front on the stoop, and I asked if I could interview them, and they said, "Yeah, it's fine."

And so I started with her, and I said, "Who is this person?"

And she said, "He's my uncle."

Just very matter of fact.

And I looked at him for more of the story about the relationship, and he said, "I'm like an uncle."

And then she said, "No, you're my uncle," and it was just such a beautiful moment.

She's kind of an old soul.

I tried to ask her other questions.

She didn't really want to talk about her life personally, but when I went to take the photograph, they had such a warmth between them, how she puts her arm around him and the way they smiled back at me.

You could tell there's a real relationship there.

So, they're neighbors.

They grew up together, and when Mom needed help, he always came through.

And the interesting thing about them is that photo was taken years ago, and literally just this week, Mom reached out and she said, "I could really use two other copies of the book.

I already gave this one away."

Everyone in the book received a complimentary copy, so for her daughter Trinity, she wanted to get another one for her and for another family member.

So, I went in the other day to her work and I dropped it off, and she showed me an updated picture of Trinity, and now she's teenager.

Looks completely different.

I would not have recognized her on the street right now.

But yeah, just a beautiful moment between two strangers that says a lot, I think, especially for a city like where we're at in St. Louis.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- So, you have all these stories, all these photos.

You have to compile them.

What was the process like just to get it all together and organized?

It looked like you organized these photos and stories by subject matter, kind of.

- A little bit.

We knew that as we started to pull photos stories from the feed that there were these themes that were happening.

There were issues about racial equity, racism, sex, sexuality, sex trafficking, LGBTQ issues, immigration, and we had to figure out a way to put all of that together and not turn people off from reading the heavy stuff, 'cause sometimes our interviews get super heavy, and we figured, "Let's start to come up with chapters of some sort," but they flow evenly because that's what the stories do, and that's how the people, when you read what they've shared, their stories and their images really start to do regardless.

So, it's kind of like a puzzle, and we realized there were some pieces that weren't there yet, so as we were making the book, I'd go out and get additional content to feed the book.

So, we had two editors, two designers who were just marvelous and worked with us, and they would keep giving feedback for how things were being built.

You know, the designers, Audra Hubbell and Becca Leffell Koren from the Sam Fox School, they would say, "We need to figure out the colors of this and the typography and how we're going to blow up the photos or keep them small to make more room for these extensive quotes."

And so even that was a process of figuring out what goes on what page and what does the full spread look like?

And who gets the real estate of being on a full spread?

You know, when you start to flip through the book.

So those were some of the questions that came up.

And then of course there was the editors that weighed in on the details of the story and the themes, but over time, we started to come up with these drafts and iterations, and we landed on this, which the book could have looked so different.

- It is, and it is so beautiful.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

- Lindy Drew, "Humans of St.

Louis."

Congratulations.

It's a beautiful project.

- Thank you so much.

(bright music) - St. Louisans, you know how we are.

We love anything St. Louis.

We wear our local proudly.

We are also pretty great when it comes to supporting our friends, neighbors, and surrounding communities in their endeavors, because when things are going well for a local business, nonprofit, or even a farmer, we all thrive.

(percussive music) Located in the Tower Grove South neighborhood of South St. Louis is Local Harvest, and by its name, it's no surprise that this small independent grocer tries to source as much as they can from within 150 miles of St. Louis.

- We have a lot of demand for local produce and we also do a lot of local dairy, local meat.

Local eggs are a big thing right now.

And anything else in the grocery realm, we try to get as local as we can.

- [Berger] Local harvest chooses food producers that grow their products and raise their animals humanely, ethically, and sustainably, but who's to know?

What are the benchmarks a farmer needs to meet, and who's checking?

- Our whole purpose as an organization is to educate, organize, and advocate and- - [Berger] This is Jared Opsel, he's the executive director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment.

- We're really focused on people's interaction with the environment, and public health, as well.

- [Berger] MCE's been around for decades protecting our state's environment, but it was three years ago they started Known & Grown, a program supporting sustainable farmers and connecting area consumers with eco-friendly local produce and meat.

- And we're up to over 60 farmers now that are part of it, that are all doing those things that I think a lot of people think of when they have in their vision of an idyllic farm.

That's what these places look like.

- [Berger] Farmers in the Known & Grown program are required to follow their Good Stewardship Practices, including antibiotic-free animals, no synthetic sprays, no animal confinement, no added growth hormones, and prevent drift from neighboring farms that use chemicals.

- The whole food industry, if you look at it across the entire world, is responsible for about 20 to 25% of all greenhouse gas emissions that are produced.

So, that's all the farm equipment, all the shipping and the production, the distribution, all of that is associated with it.

And if we can start addressing that with these better practices, start improving what we're doing, and we're starting to see even larger farms starting to implement some of these practices, we can reduce that impact on our overall environment and make things much more sustainable for ourselves.

- [Berger] So, Known & Grown is doing the legwork for both stores like Local Harvest and consumers like you and me, ensuring what we buy meets sustainable requirements.

They've created a local food locator where consumers can connect with farms and find available retailers, including restaurants, carrying Known & Grown products.

Next time you're in the produce section or farmers' market, look for the purple beet.

And for the farmers, to be Known & Grown is a choice.

It's not just rules and regulations.

They receive so much more.

- This is Sunshine.

Anybody want to hold her?

- [Student] Yes.

Me.

- [Berger] This is Farmer Antajuan of New Roots Urban Farm.

- New Roots Urban Farm.

It's a urban farm in North St. Louis, one of the oldest urban farms in St. Louis.

- [Berger] His business model is a little different from the others who participate in the Known & Grown program.

He gives everything he grows away.

- The last two years I've been giving everything away.

I think that's the easiest way to get people interested in eating fresh kale or fresh Swiss chard.

That's a food apartheid area.

A lot of those folks in their neighborhood is on government assistance or don't make a lot of money, so to invest in Swiss chard and kale, kind of silly for them, so I find that if I give it to 'em for free, then they'd be more inclined to try it.

- I'd say the hardest thing is we're going up against a system that's now developed over the past 80 to 100 years of industrial farming, but one thing I don't think people have realized at the time was that impact on their overall community and their environment.

And we're seeing that impact in places with lack of access to fresh, healthy foods for their community, and that's something that we realized with this program is even though we originally came into it with that environmental lens, we saw the impact this could have on providing that access to a lot of communities that did not have it.

- I'm all about building new farmers.

We need way more urban farmers of all kind in this area.

I focus on BIPOC farmers, Black specifically, but we need more farmers in this area, and that's what MCE and Known & Grown offer is education for me to pass on to those folks who don't have that access to information.

(funky music) - [Student] Wow.

- Both Farmer Antajuan and Opsel believe that farmers in the Known & Grown St. Louis network are a thriving and essential part of our greater food system, and more farmers are needed to make access to locally grown and raised food the standard in our region.

The good news is Known & Grown recently received a grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health, which means buying local should be a little easier in the coming year.

(bright music) And we're in luck because farmers' market season is right around the corner, and I need some recommendations, so comment on our latest Instagram post and let us know which ones are your favorites.

You can find us at NinePBS.

And finally, Jim Kirchherr has another story about a St. Louis thing that is highly regarded, often seen, but maybe not often thought about.

But we wondered, just how did the city of St. Louis end up with its awesome flag?

(energetic music) - [Kirchherr] As St. Louis approached its bicentennial in 1964 with a brand-new Gateway Arch going up on the riverfront, it was decided that it was also time for a brand-new city flag.

This is the one that had been flying since 1916.

In the center, the image of St. Louis himself, the crusader King Louis on his horse, based on the statue standing on Art Hill in Forest Park, a bronze version of a plaster statue created for the 1904 World's Fair.

There were those who still liked that flag, but the Mayor's Bicentennial Committee decided a new flag would be chosen and unveiled on February 14th, recognized as the day St. Louis was founded in 1764.

A retired Yale art professor named Theodore Sizer got a $1,000 grant from the St. Louis Art Museum to come up with a design.

Sizer was an expert in heraldry, the symbols in coats of arms and flags, that sort of thing, and he had designed a lot of banners for Yale, so he was kind of the go-to flag guy.

And Sizer rejected the idea of using literal images, no man on a horse or the steamboat, like on the city's seal, not even the Gateway Arch going up on the riverfront.

He opted for symbols for simplicity and visual clarity that could be seen from a distance.

Wavy blue lines, the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, the fleur-de-lis on a gold disc, the city of St. Louis, and colors representing St. Louis's French, Spanish, and American roots.

But two other local residents submitted flag designs to the committee.

They also used the fleur-de-lis, but not really much else.

This delayed the selection, but really, it was no contest.

The committee chose Sizer's flag and it was made official with the passing of an ordinance on February 3rd of 1964.

Section One repeals the designation of the old flag.

Section Two establishes the new city flag.

And as part of the bicentennial celebration, you could buy a new flag license plate and a little St. Louis flag you could attach to your car's antenna.

And let's give Ted Sizer and the Mayor's Bicentennial Flag Committee some credit here.

The so-called Three Rivers Flag has stood the test of time.

It is considered by many in official and unofficial polls as a really good, in fact, one of the best flags out there.

- That's all we have for tonight's show.

Thanks for joining us, and from all of us at "Living St. Louis," Happy 314 Day.

(upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz continues) (upbeat jazz continues) - [Announcer] "Living.

St. Louis" is funded in part by the Betsy & Thomas Patterson Foundation and the members of Nine PBS.