My last visit to St. Louis, Missouri, was for the Supercomputing trade show in 2021 (more about that trip here).
After that trip, I found someone else to take my place at these shows and I enjoyed taking a few years off. But I found myself missing the camaraderie, the family-reunion feeling of seeing colleagues from all over the world at the show. And so I decided to go to the show again in 2025, and—lo and behold—it was again being held in St. Louis.
My hotel was a ~15-minute Uber ride away from the convention center in a not-so-wonderful area, so I didn’t do much in the way of my usual photography walkabouts.
As I so often post pics from my hotel window, and since my view was laughably bad, below is the best seen-from-my-window image that I can share. Aren’t those delightfully artistic air vents? Just amazing!
All joking aside, there is beauty to be seen in many parts of St Louis. The Convention Center entrance is lovely.
My professional opinion about the place leaves much to be desired, though. I think for a smaller show it is likely just fine, but for a large show, like Supercomputing, absolutely not. I could go on and on there, but I won’t bore you with that.
One day, a colleague and I went with a tour guide for a short tour of the area, culminating in a ride up the St. Louis Arch. It was very interesting and I’m very glad I did that. I knew that quite a lot of important U.S. history took place within the St. Louis borders, but I didn’t realize just how much.
Here are a few pictures from that tour:
I loved the distorted reflections of the Old Courthouse in the glass of the modern buildings around it…
The shadows and cloud-dappled light made for a great shot here.
Here’s a pic of that same domed building and its surroundings, taken from a tiny window at the top of the Arch:
On a different day I got a few more pics taken out the car window while Ubering to the show:
And here’s a shot from when I was walking outside the Convention Center: In the middle of the street there was steam pouring out of a manhole cover, and on the sidewalk in front of me was this hot mess:
A small 3-person group of us had planned for weeks to sneak off and have dinner together one night, but on the last day we invited a few others to join us. We’d heard all week that the calzones here were not to be missed, so we went to a restaurant near the Convention Center called Sauce on the Side. Here is a mural on the wall of the restaurant:
Pretty strange, and I could not stop wondering what the hell it was depicting. Medusa? Why? I even asked a passing employee, who just said “No idea” as she kept walking by.
We had jaw-droppingly awesome calzones (followed by caramel apple pie calzones). As we were leaving, outside the entrance we saw a large sculpture of a human head on its side, which sadly was not at all lit so wasn’t very visible in the night.
Seeing this made me recognize this as a place I’d had lunch one day on my prior visit to St. Louis in 2021. Below is a photo of that sculpture from my last visit, which gave me a huge Ah-ha response when I saw it.But it’s not quite the same as what is in the mural.
But then, here’s another sculpture that is nearby, and that one is the same head. Bingo!
These sculptures are by artist Igor Mitoraj.
Anyway, I’m so glad I went to the show this year. I’ve worked on the Supercomputing show with this client since 2009 and have developed some real friendships with these guys along the way: I’ve been so lucky to work with them, and I was glad for the opportunity to see my friends again and to meet new colleagues here.
But this was pretty hard on my bad back, so I’m not so sure I’ll let myself do this again. The show is in Chicago next year… we’ll see if I can manage to keep away.