15. Free Museums

It's a midwestern thing, I heard on NPR a couple days ago. Free art museums. Wouldn't it be wonderful, the man being interviewed was saying, to go to an art museum for just an hour or so. Go, see something, and leave to contemplate it.

But of course.

St. Louis has a free art museum--a good one. It's not as big as some, but St. Louis isn't as big as some. We have all the standards--a Water Lilies, medieval art, more Max Beckmann than we deserve, ancient stuff from China and Meso-America. Art museum stuff. And I can walk in with a baby in a stroller, take my 7 year old to look at the mummy in the basement, and then walk out without feeling like I have to get my money's worth. I already have.

The parking is free, too--as it is that the free History Museum in the same park. The zoo is free, although you either pay to park or hunt down a spot on the street. We can (and do) go to the zoo and only see a third of it. Then we go have lunch and aren't so totally exhausted that everyone breaks down and cries on the way home. The Science Center is free, although we don't go there as often. Probably only two or three times since Sophia came along. Mike used to work there; once you know the inner workings of a thing (law, sausage, the Science Center) it isn't as enjoyable.

I love free cultural institutions. It makes me not begrudge the fee for the zoo train. Or getting something for my toddler to eat while we're there. It means that we go to these places, instead of just talking about going to these places.

But the other thing it does, the negative thing it does, is it makes my teeth fall out of my mouth when we go to Chicago or Houston or San Francisco or wherever we're visiting. And it's not free. What do you mean it's $7 to park and $10 for children under 8? What the hell is that all about? Do we really need to go there? Isn't there a park with a playground instead? But we go, at least to some of the places--I don't go to zoos elsewhere, but I will visit other art museums. Children's museums make me insane, but I like the one in Houston well enough. And I like specific museums, like ones dedicated to baseball or dogs or steamships.

There's something to be said for my tax money supporting cultural institutions, so that the art museum can live up to its tag line: dedicated to art and free to all.

14. Graffiti

Graffiti (from the Italian, for scribbling) occurs in two different categories here on the south side. The first is true scribbling--gang tags and wannabe gang tags. We walked out of the house one day to find Mike's car tagged with a sharpie marker, reading "Big Ass." I didn't take it personally. Bus stops, mailboxes, newspaper vending boxes (what do you call those things?), billboards, and occasionally something more intricate on the side of an abandoned building.

When one happens close to home (like my car), I report it to our local precinct, and sometimes I get a call from the gang taskforce. Big Ass, by the way, isn't any known mover or shaker--a wannabe. For now. Other times, like in 2000 when the back building on the corner was cleared of its squatters and drug dealers, it does mean something--the sidewalk running in front of the building was spray-painted with the gang equivalent of a change of address form.

The other graffiti is anarchist. Yes, anarchists. They spray-paint slogans. Cryptic slogans like "The underground railroad is still running" with a huge question mark below it. Or, on a boarded up building at Lafayette and Compton: "Things are still not equal," with the same punctuation. The standard A in a circle symbol. They interest me in a way that the taggers do not. For instance, they seem to be trying to communicate with ME, not with other anarchists (or, at least, they aren't writing in code). I may not know exactly what they mean most of the time, but when they write "Die yuppie scum" I sure do. Methinks they perchance would not like me.