Yup, the East Side is a shit hole, and has been for a very long time. When I was in high school, the city went broke and they could not afford for trash pick up. You could smell it for miles. They had mobile homes parked on the side of the highway that you could pull up to and buy drugs from, almost like a McDonalds drive through.

It was always sex, graft, gambling and chemical plants over there. There are no titty bars on the Missouri side, but probably 30 on the east side. The joke about the East Side used to be: "If someone wanted to f*@& an elephant, the STL zoo would be missing an elephant the next day and it would be over on the East Side".

My uncle ran book making over there and back room casinos for 40 years. He went to the track (Fairmont) almost every night. But he lived in STL.