I heart STL

"We're not going to get those people to live here for our mountains or our oceans or great lakes. Our weather can suck. But if the arts and culture scene is vital, people will want to be here.

We're blessed with a great university (and a couple of very good ones), a world-class symphony orchestra and opera company, fabulous layers of architecture from antique to cutting edge, a vital network of free art museums, zoos, theatre and nature preserves. We have one of the greatest public library systems in the country. We have Chuck Berry playing live every week in the Loop, and hip hop and blues and jazz and bluegrass and old time music and ragtime and funk. We have one of the world's greatest pieces of design rising 630 feet as our city's welcome mat.

The arts are so pervasive and ubiquitous here that we natives stop seeing them; they become part of the furniture. That's too bad. We St. Louisans sometimes become immune to how special this city is."

From TOKY's interview by The St. Louis Egotist