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A Burrito Awakens St. Louis From A Siesta

Melody | Culture, st louis | Tuesday, 15 July 2008

So, InBev’s bid for AB has been approved by the board of directors and everyone in St. Louis is freaking out.  I am not saying that St. Louis didn’t feel different immediately after the news was announced.  I am not saying that this isn’t going to permanently change the cultural landscape in St. Louis - it will because all of the sponsorships and philanthropy that have been such a major part of being in St. Louis are out the window.  But there are a couple of things that I would like to say:

1) St. Louis needs to calm the crap down.  The buyout has been approved by the board, but it still has to be approved by the shareholders (which it probably will be) and the government needs to approve it as well (which I don’t know much about so I am not sure what will happen with that).  It has been gloom and doom here, end of the world madness I tell ya!  I went to the grocer last night and everyone in front of me in line had cases of Miller and Coors (it was a late night run), something rarely seen before in St. Louis.  You used to be peppered with questions if you walked into a party around these parts with a case of anything that didn’t start with the letters B and U (Bud or Busch).  No longer will we have to withstand this type of interrogation - we can proudly walk in with our local micro-brews and not look like beer snobs - I see this as a bonus.

2) Are you kidding me?  If someone walked up to you and asked you for your burrito, and offered to pay you twice what you paid for it, you would sell it too - even if it was a French guy who asked you for it.  AB has been a stagnant stock for years and the company has been resting on their laurels not buying up other companies to strengthen their value when they saw the other brewers doing the same.  AB was caught sleeping.  I know these majority shareholders aren’t really the guys who are struggling to fill up their gas tank, but we are - so we should understand their desire to make money.  Though we won’t know until the end of the next quarter if we are in a recession (it takes two quarters before you can say that) the way this quarter looks, we very well could be entering one, and these stockholders have probably taken an Economics class, probably know that the potential is very real, and are shoring themselves up just in case.  Financial savvy dictates that you shore yourself up before financial downtimes and start buying low when others are forced to sell because they weren’t shored up - that’s capitalism.

Yes, I understand that they are the uber-American brand, and it will be awkward to see the Clydesdales parading during the next Super Bowl or if they dare to refer to themselves as the “American Lager”, but the beer is still being brewed in the United States so the brewing and bottling jobs are staying in St. Louis.  YES - the majority of the money is going over seas but back to the burrito - are you really going to turn that offer down on the basis that the guy is French when you can barely afford gas?  I don’t think you would, so why would you expect AB to do it?  It would be financially irresponsible for the sharehoders and the board to reject the offer.  You don’t make money when you trade based on emotions, do you see the guys on the stock exchange weeping everytime they trade with foreign companies?  And for that matter, do you know how much of your 401k is invested in foreign companies?  And if you do, have you noticed how nicely those stocks have been performing?  “American Greed” are the words I keep hearing - mularky its ”Financial Savvy”. 

I know what your thinking - you want to deport me, and you are free to say and think that, but I have to think that I am not the only one who feels this way.

This Weekend in St. Louis : Cue David Bowie and Repeat

Melody | Culture, st louis | Friday, 27 June 2008

It’s going to be a fabulous weekend in St. Louis, and all the fabulous people will be out, and it will be fabulously unseasonably cool.  Here is a bit of what’s going on around St. Louis (my picks for the weekend)

  • Friday - Rock the Runway II starts at seven at rBar in The Grove
  • Saturday - Back in The Grove, St. Louis bloggers are back in the groove… the St. Louis Bloggers Guild is hosting a meetup at Atomic Cowboy - the owners love bloggers, and it shows… 2 for 1 drink specials and beefed up security.  RSVP here!
  • Sunday - happy hour specials at Barristers in Clayton from two until seven while watching the final Euro 2008 game on their screens, game starts at 1:30 central standard time - suss (that’s sweet in German)

Go forth and do well, friends!

Melody

If I Had A Million Dollars

Melody | Culture, Food, st louis | Wednesday, 25 June 2008

I saw a story on the news at noon saying that the millionaire population in the United States is growing - while at the same time I have to contemplate putting a pizza on my credit card because it is so expensive.  So, I began thinking about all of the things I would do if I had a million dollars (besides not buying a real fur coat ’cause that’s cruel) …

  1. Pay off my student loans
  2. Pay off my pizza bills on my credit card
  3. Have my neighbor’s car towed every time she parked in my spot… which is turning into seven days a week if I don’t win the race home from work.
  4. Buy a year’s supply of these and these because I love them, and no - I would not get burnt out on them because it would actually be a two year supply if I were to alternate days.
  5. Give money to this, this, and this organization because they are awesome
  6. Buy a house in the Central West End in St. Louis to prevent the possibility of being smothered by a McMansion neighborhood one day
  7. Buy A-B stock in anticipation of large returns from the In-Bev buyout (I heard a rumor that it is pretty close to final)
  8. Write a book about how I got my million dollars because it would have to be some stroke of divinity that came from the heavens
  9. Buy a Mac Book Air and a pink Dell as I can’t afford either right now, and this would be like vindication for having to save money to buy one.  And then - I would make them cage match.
  10. and by this time I would probably have just enough left over for a year’s worth of Jimmy Choo shoes and a pack of cigarettes

My, that went quickly… and I didn’t even get to buy my vacation house in Hawaii.  Dear internet, as I balance my ten dollars in my bank account, tell me - what would you do with a million dollars?