Some of you may remember that there used to be a phpBB message board over on StLouieLouie.com. I originally set it up back in the fall of 2006 in an effort to create some sort of online discussion about the things that I used to struggle to keep updated in my old Lowlife Guide to St. Louis. My idea was that the Saint Louis Forums could ultimately serve the same purpose as that old, outdated, online guide, but even better, because we could have a multitude of people weighing in on various subjects pertaining to the obscure and unusual local culture for those of us either living in or visiting Saint Louis… offbeat or “underground” local music, arts, restaurants, bars, unique attractions, sports, food, booze, fun things to do, weird stuff, etc. Unfortunately, despite promoting it on various other message boards, email lists, blogs and websites around the area, it just never took off as I’d hoped it would… probably because there were already plenty of other message boards and email lists (not to mention Myspace) where people were already spending a lot of their online time. I was about to pull the plug on the whole thing when my close friend Bill Streeter decided to create a new local social network site that would be connected with Lo-Fi Saint Louis that would basically serve the same purpose, plus offering people the ability to upload and share videos, music, and other media content. Not being fully satisfied with the Saint Louis Forums, I saw this as an easy way out. I would simply redirect the old site URL to Bill’s new site (which he named The Circuit) and encourage people to start using it instead. So I did that sometime last fall, and I do believe it helped Bill grow his network a little, because some people (even though they obviously did not post a lot) were still at least reading the Saint Louis Forums message board, and therefore got whisked away to The Circuit, where I would hope that they would have found the forum there instead.

I was happy to leave the redirect up for that site for a while, hopefully giving all of the former members a chance to catch onto the idea that The Circuit was THEE place to be, so that they could update their bookmarks and get accustomed to checking his site instead of mine. In the meantime, I thought it would be cool to come up with a few eye-catching St. Louis-themed designs that could be put onto T-shirts, kinda like STL-STyLe, but different. Having always been a fan of the St. Louis city flag, my first couple of designs are based on that flag’s art, only slightly modified (look closely at the fleur de lis, which I customized a little to look more like the one the St. Louis Browns used in the 1940s but still retaining much of the design of the classic city flag). So I set up a shop at Spreadshirt.com to sell some of these, and will probably be trying to come up with more designs in the future to add to it. If you have any ideas for more, please let me know!

By the way, in doing a Web search for common (or uncommon) St. Louis phrases, I was directed to a thread on StLouisGasPrices.com’s message board. As I was reading through it, I found a post in which someone had written a complaint about being tired of the phrase “Ask a doctor if _________ is right for you.” I thought that was pretty funny, and funnier still if you put “St. Louis” in the blank! So that’s where the idea for that shirt came from…

The other design on there right now came to me after I kept seeing all of these St. Louis Cardinals T-shirts with “Established 1892″ on them. There were a lot like that! But to the best of my knowledge, I’d never seen a shirt that said anything about St. Louis’ establishment date. That’s when I threw this one together!

There are lots of different shirt styles to choose from, for men, women, and even kids. And I can’t say enough about the great quality of these shirts from Spreadshirt… they really are nicer than screen printed tees. Please check ‘em out and buy one, or two, or three…