(upbeat music) (camera beeps and clicks) (upbeat music continues) (air whooshes) - Thanks for joining us in "Exploring the Heartland" with us.

I'm Fred Martino.

Events and institutions in St. Louis are a major tourist attraction for people all over the world, and there is a lot happening this summer.

As we kick off the season, I am so pleased to welcome Cat Neville of Explore St. Louis.

She is also the host of "Taste Makers" on WSIU and PBS stations nationwide.

Cat, it is great to have you back.

- Thank you.

- And exciting to talk about St. Louis in the summertime.

- Oh, there is so much going on.

Thank you for the opportunity to come back.

- Well, it is great to have you here.

Before we get to events, I was excited to find out that there are a couple of new attractions in St. Louis, which is already brimming with things all year long.

One is called, I can't believe there's another museum in St. Louis because there's so many great museums already.

- There are.

- The Museum of Illusions.

- [Cat] Yes.

The Museum of Illusions.

It actually opens today is the grand opening.

- [Fred] And we're taping, we should say.

We're taping- - Yes.

- [Fred] in May.

So this will run, and it's just opening in May.

- Yes, it is brand new.

And so this actually, they have outposts around the world and you walk in and it really is all of these optical illusions that you can interact with.

And what is really cool is that it is a new addition to City Foundry.

And so we might've discussed City Foundry the last time I was here, but it's one of the new entertainment districts in St. Louis.

So the Museum of Illusions is just one thing that you can do.

They have Sandbox, which is a virtual reality theater.

They have City Winery, which is a very small music venue, very intimate, like 250 seats.

There's a huge movie theater and there's a Putt Shack, and shopping and a food hall.

So Museum of Illusions, if that is the thing that gets you there, make sure you decide like spend the whole day.

'cause you will not- - Have an appetite, and make a day of it.

- That's right.

That's right.

- Sounds amazing.

Another new thing, and this is connected to a business that not everyone watching may know is in St. Louis.

- Yes.

- Rawlings.

- Exactly.

- And the Rawlings experience.

- Yeah.

I did not know that Rawlings, the baseball glove maker is based in St. Louis.

And so they recently relocated their headquarters to Westport.

Westport is in the middle of really kind of a resurgence, a renaissance.

There's a brand new 360 restaurant that's there.

It's gorgeous and incredibly modern, and also a brand new Soda Fountain Express.

So the same folks who have Union Station and Hilton at the Ballpark.

So that's where those two brands are coming from.

They have re-envisioned Westport.

And so Rawlings is there now, and yes, it's their headquarters, but it's also a place where you can go, if you're a baseball fan, build a custom glove.

You can actually try on some of the like, historic gloves, like through the years.

And it's just, it is a retail experience, but it doesn't feel like that.

It feels like kind of a museum and a real dedication to history.

- And it's free, correct?

- Yes, it is.

- It is free.

- It is free, yes.

- Can go for free to see this.

- The gloves are not free.

- The gloves are not free, but the experience is free.

My experience when you told me about it was I felt even older because I was thinking Little League.

My first glove was a Rawlings.

- Yes.

- And now I know that it was probably made in St. Louis.

Isn't that amazing?

- And I love that.

There are so many cool things that are connected to the history of St. Louis and this just deepens our baseball culture.

- Yeah, absolutely.

It's fantastic.

So many Cardinals fans out there, that's for sure.

- I'm one of them.

- You're one of them.

I bet you are.

We are, as we get into traction, starting with another sports related story here and one that, you know, just keeps growing in popularity.

NASCAR.

- Yes.

- St. Louis has a big event coming up very soon, so that's why we are airing this here right away.

- Yes, the NASCAR race is going to be at Worldwide Technology Raceway June 1st and 2nd.

Over the past couple of years, it has been a sold out experience.

And it is the entire weekend, like a hundred thousand people come out for this in southern Illinois where you're based.

And it's incredible.

So yes, there's the race, but there is a lot more that's going on including, you know, live music and food and beverages that are like usually flyovers from planes.

I mean, it's a thing.

It's not just the race, it's all of the culture that goes on around it.

So it really is like a can't miss.

There are still tickets that are available, but if you're even thinking about going, you should secure those tickets now.

- Okay.

Get 'em right away.

- Get 'em while they're hot.

- And if you enjoy the arts, we know that this is the city for you all year long.

- Yes.

- And we have a return of something that is also free and so available to anyone, Shakespeare in the Park.

- [Cat] Yes.

So one of their taglines is that it will always be free for everyone and they actually launched in 2001.

- Wow.

- They have performed in front of over a million people.

And so when it started out they created this little enclave in Forest Park, essentially across the street from, not essentially, across the street from the St. Louis Art Museum.

And since then it is their permanent home.

It's called Shakespeare's Glen.

So every year they set up there, it is outdoors.

You bring a picnic basket, bring a bottle of wine, you know, bring a big blanket or some chairs.

They do have chairs that you can reserve that do have a price tag to them.

But everything is free, easily accessible.

And it's great for kids because you know, you can sit in, if you have little ones, you can sit in the back and just let 'em run around while you're enjoying yourself.

Some Shakespeare under the stars, there is food available for purchase there and this year's play is "As You Like It," which of course is one of Shakespeare's beloved comedies.

So it's very cool.

- Fantastic.

And of course the art museum's there.

The zoo is there.

- Yes, both free.

- There's so much there and both free.

- Yeah.

- Which is an incredible contribution to not just St. Louis, but to the world that's part of St. Louis there.

- Agreed.

- Whitaker Music Festival as well.

This one is at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

- Yes it is.

It used to be called back in the day Jazz in June.

And it has expanded.

It is now the Whitaker Music Festival and it goes way beyond June.

It actually goes through July 31st.

Again, this is free.

Normally the botanical garden is a ticketed experience, but for the Whitaker Music Festival, they open the doors.

After a certain time.

Again, kind of like Shakespeare, bring a picnic.

There is food and drink available for purchase there.

But you're welcome to bring a picnic.

You're welcome to bring beverages.

They don't want you to bring glass please.

So decant your wine into a bottle, a whatever, like water bottle or something like that.

Or bring beer.

And it's something where you can sit.

They do have kind of an amphitheater style stage, but they place speakers throughout the garden.

So you can be sitting, you know, in almost any, you know, area of the Missouri Botanical Garden, which is absolutely gorgeous.

Plunk yourself down and just enjoy a night of free live music.

It's fantastic.

- Do you know if they have a website?

- They do.

So if you, you go, it's mobot.org.

I believe, even if you just Google Missouri Botanical Garden, the information is there.

The Missouri Botanical Garden is known for festivals generally.

They just had the Chinese festival, the Japanese culture festival's coming up.

They do the orchid show.

They have tons of things, things that engage you throughout the year.

So take a look.

- Since it's going on through July 31, that'll give people online time a chance to plan when they want to go.

- Yes.

- So that's fabulous.

This one intrigued me just because of the title.

"Let Them Eat Art."

- That's right.

This festival, this is in Maplewood, which is right over the actual like city line of St. Louis.

And so Maplewood is right along historic Route 66.

It's a charming downtown area.

And so it has a French theme, Bastille Day kind of a theme.

And so Maplewood is right along historic Route 66, very charming.

Like I said, there's the Schlafly Bottleworks Side Project Brewing, which is actually the second most highly rated brewery in the world.

It's right there on Manchester.

So you can eat, drink, and also buy art, you know, see art, immerse yourself.

It's a street festival.

And so it is also free to attend if you just wanna pop by and kind of check everything out.

But definitely, you know, bring some cash with you because the food's gonna be delicious.

- Okay.

Absolutely.

This next one, I was not aware, we started the show talking about a new museum, the Museum of Illusions.

I must say I'm embarrassed I did not know about the National Blues Museum.

And this is in partnership with the National Blues Museum.

Again, there's so many museums in St. Louis.

It's easy to lose track.

Blues at the Arch.

- Yes.

- [Fred] Which is coming up in August.

- Yeah, so the National Blues Museum is on Washington Avenue in downtown St. Louis.

Obviously it pays homage to St. Louis' role in the creation of the blues, which is the foundation of rock and roll.

And so it's a great museum to attend.

It is not free, but it is a wonderful place to kind of like go in, immerse yourself in the history of the blues.

Like when you think about "St. Louis Woman," all of these kind of songs, you know, starting out with, you know, ragtime and morphing into the blues and rock.

So what the National Blues Museum has done is they've partnered with the Gateway Arch.

And a lot of folks also don't realize that the Gateway Arch is a national park.

It is the smallest national park in the country.

So we're the smallest national park and the tallest manmade monument.

And so right there on the arch grounds, they have two days of live blues.

And the arch grounds are beautiful.

There are two reflective pools, tons of trees, very gently rolling hills.

And so, and it's really cool 'cause you're right there, you know, with all the skyscrapers of downtown kind of like behind you and then the river on the other side.

- And there are hotels nearby.

- Yes.

- So very easy to stay there if you want.

And I understand that the Gateway Arch National Park is attracting lots of people after there was a drop in attendance everywhere with the pandemic.

- Absolutely.

So they're back to pre-pandemic levels of people.

I wanna mention that the museum at the base of the arch is free.

It does cost, it depends on the time of year, but it costs like 16, 17 bucks to go to the top of the arch for an adult ticket.

- Yeah.

- But it doesn't cost anything to come into the arch and explore the museum.

Which is incredibly well done.

And it explores the role that St. Louis played in westward expansion, which obviously is commemorated by the arch.

It's the Jefferson National Memorial expansion was what it was originally.

And, so what is wonderful is if you go through this exhibit, it takes you all the way through from like Lewis and Clark days up until the, you know, the building of the arch in the 1960s.

And so it's a really interesting kind of peek into our history as a region, not just in St. Louis.

So I highly recommend.

- Enjoy the blues and enjoy the history too.

- Yes.

- So fabulous.

- I also just wanna mention, there's also, if you've never been on one of the riverboats, there are the riverboats at the base of the Gateway Arch, they're a separate ticket, but they do hour long history cruises every day.

So you can hop on, get a history of of the St. Louis region and see the city essentially from this boat.

And if you go on one of their dinner cruises, it's at night and it's so cool.

- Oh wow.

- Then you get like a three course dinner.

They have live music.

It's really, really fun.

- And they do sometimes sell out.

- Oh they definitely sell out.

- Sell out all the time.

So you probably can reserve ahead of time.

- I would highly commend it.

- Highly recommend it.

So again, online is our friend and we wanna do that online.

I was telling you before we started taping the Experience of a Lifetime and of course was reserved online seeing the amazing comedian John Mulaney at The Fabulous Fox.

And it has that name for a reason.

- Yes.

- The most, if you have not been to the Fox, I've talked to people, I've lived here two and a half years.

I've talked to people who have not been to the Fox site.

- You have to.

- You have to go to the Fox.

- You have to go.

- It is the most beautiful theater I have ever been in.

- It's astounding - Anywhere including London.

So it's amazing.

- It is highly, that is in the heart of our arts district called Grand Center.

That's where Jazz St. Louis is located.

It is where Powell Symphony Hall is located and Powell Symphony Hall is currently undergoing a multimillion dollar facelift and expansion that's gonna open up in 2025.

So when I come back, I'll tell you all about that when you can go back to the symphony.

But currently the symphony is kind of like, they're out in the community.

So they're playing at Stifel, they're playing at the Touhill.

So they're still out and entertaining folks all over St. Louis.

But yeah, so Powell Symphony Hall is currently undergoing a major renovation, it's very exciting.

- Okay, I had a chance to look briefly at the website for our next event, which was very interesting.

Coming up August 24th and 25th in Tower Grove Park, the Festival of Nations.

- Yes.

This is a really interesting festival.

It draws tens of thousands of people.

They bring in artists from around the globe and there are like vendors set up all along kind of the winding paths of Tower Grove Park that are selling international wares.

Also lots and lots of international food.

And it's food from every corner of the globe.

You know, you're gonna get stuff from Asia, Africa, you know, Eastern Europe, central, South America, all over the place.

And then they have a lot of live performances.

So there's dance and music, spoken word, and I mean it is truly, it's really a celebration of the diversity of cultures that call St. Louis home.

And it's just, it's a wonderful gathering of people who are there just to kind of like exchange, exchange cultural ideas and connect with each other.

And it's a very casual, I mean like you just wander through the park and you know, grab yourself a drink, grab yourself something to eat.

Watch a performance.

So again, it's totally free and open to the public.

- Well and I'm glad you mentioned that, you know, there are tens of thousands of people that go because even though this is toward the end of August, most of us, we like to plan out our summers and it's good to reserve if you're going to stay overnight, reserve your hotel early.

'cause I've been amazed, you know, I don't know, and you probably, I know working in tourism, you know more, much more about this than I do.

But I have been amazed as I've traveled around the country in the last year in particular that the hotel occupancy is way up there.

You do have to plan because I think there's pent up demand for travel and tourism because of the pandemic.

- Yeah, exactly right.

We actually get stats every week on St. Louis hotel occupancy and we pretty consistently beat the national numbers.

So you're exactly right in saying that hotel occupancy is up in general across the United States, but in St. Louis it is up in particular.

So we actually are getting more people and there is a lot going on in the hotel space.

One thing I do wanna mention, when you come to St. Louis, if you're looking for something really unique, the 21c Museum Hotel just opened up about a year ago.

Travel and Leisure and Esquire both put it on their top hotels in the world list.

- Wow.

- Yes.

That's a big deal.

- Yeah.

- So it actually is a YMCA, an old YMCA on Locust that they've re-imagined into this museum hotel.

So the gallery's free and open to the public and they're like on the second floor on the old like basketball courts and stuff, which is really, really cool.

But then the restaurant that's on the first floor called Idle Wolf serves like Spanish Fare.

So if you're looking for a place to stay that is, you know, is new, buzzy.

Definitely 21c.

- Yeah.

And we love it when they take the time to preserve older buildings like that.

- Absolutely.

- That is so fabulous.

- Well, and you said that you stayed at the Angad.

- Yes, I did, yes.

- When you were in Grand Center.

That's another art hotel.

- Beautiful, yes.

It was so wonderful.

And almost across the street from the Fox.

So for folks who want to go there, they want to make a night of it.

A lot of us don't like to drive at night, so, you know.

There you go.

- Yes.

- Go to a show and- - What color was your room?

- Our room was green.

- Ah, see, you get to choose what color based on your mood.

- If you want.

Or you can be just surprised when you go there.

- Yes, yes.

But I have to say a red room I think might be a little bit overwhelming.

So I'm picking green or blue.

- You picked the room.

Yeah, it was beautiful.

It was really interesting and unique.

We started with NASCAR for events.

And now we have another event.

This is IndyCar, the Bommarito Auto Group 500.

Yes.

- Yes, so fun fact, the Worldwide Technology Raceway is the only raceway in the world that hosts both NASCAR and IndyCar.

- Wow.

- And that is, I mean literally it's like five minutes on the other side of the Gateway Arch in Illinois, in southern Illinois.

And so it's very, very cool.

I actually went to the IndyCar race last year and it was so fun.

- Yeah.

- These are the European race cars, so they have like the really big wheels and kinda the skinny bodies and the racers came in from all over the world.

They're like, "Hello, I'm so and so from Sweden."

and "Hello, I'm so and so from France," hello, blah blah, blah.

And the race itself, I mean, it is heart pounding.

You know, the speed with which they go around that track.

It is incredibly cool.

- Yeah.

- So highly recommend if you have a chance to go.

Even if you're like, "I've never really been to a car race before."

It's really worth going.

Again, you're not going to go hungry, you're not gonna be thirsty.

There's lots of fun stuff to do.

There's entertainment.

- Yeah.

- But the race itself, at first I was like, it's just gonna be cars going around in the circle.

That's not gonna be very exciting.

But it was really cool.

So you should go.

- Yeah, absolutely.

It should be a lot of fun, again end of August.

But you want to plan now.

'cause we know that again, these NASCAR and IndyCar just incredibly popular, people are really going to those.

I'm glad we have about four minutes left 'cause we have two music festivals and I was looking at the lineups for these and talk about amazing lineups for these music festivals.

And this gets us to the very end of the summer.

So again though, plan now.

The first one is Music at the Intersection, which is September 14th and 15th.

- Yes, so this festival, it takes over the streets of Grand Center and it is essentially a celebration of St. Louis's impact on the American songbook.

So you're gonna have jazz, blues, hip hop, definitely some rock and roll.

But I went last year and I loved the vibe.

It feels like a music festival for grown people essentially.

You know, it is sophisticated but still very approachable music.

And because it is in the streets and there are multiple stages, you know, you can just kinda like pop around from one performance.

Like Chaka Khan is going to be there this year.

And I have to admit, I'm not very cool.

So I don't know a lot of the people who are performing, but I didn't last year either, and I was blown away by the quality of the performers.

So go online, check it out, and you'll see the lineup.

Probably the viewers will be more familiar with all the folks playing than I am.

- Yeah.

But you're not alone in that way.

I didn't know all of the names, but I mean, I just know that, I know a lot of them are very- - They're big.

- Very big names.

And the names that aren't as big, but as you say, are amazing emerging artists.

- Absolutely.

It's a fantastic, fantastic experience.

- We have another one September 28th and 29th and we have about two and a half minutes for to talk about Evolution.

- Yes.

So very quickly, this one is in Forest Park.

It brings in kind of like bigger national acts.

So like Blondie and The Killers and just, it's really, this is a very fun, it's in the grassy area of Forest Park and they have tons and tons of food vendors, lots of beverage vendors.

And again it is this experience where they have multiple stages.

So you're never going to be bored and you can just bring a chair, plop yourself down and enjoy it.

I went to this one last year as well and I'll be going again this year.

It is a can't miss.

And it's a national level festival, so people are coming in from all over the country to see these acts.

- There is a real appetite for music festivals.

Which, it almost, to me it seems like it's growing.

I'm noticing a lot more festivals around the country.

I was just in Las Vegas and as I was leaving I was told by our Uber driver that you, "Oh, it's a good thing you're leaving because there's this music festival coming in and there's gonna be, every hotel room is gonna be booked."

But are you noticing that in St. Louis too, that there are, there's more interest in creating festivals as opposed to one artist at an event?

- Yes.

Absolutely.

It broadens the appeal and it also gives you an excuse to stay for a couple of days.

So from a tourism perspective, I am very glad to see these festivals come up.

Because it is an only in St. Louis experience.

And if you wanna see both day one and day two, you have to stay the night.

And so it is something that is a very, very economically healthy thing for our region.

But it also makes the region a lot more fun because, you know, these like pockets of intense energy are happening all over the St. Louis area.

And that is something that, especially post pandemic, we're really excited to see.

- And speaking of music, I am on way too many email lists.

So I got one this week that Justin Timberlake is coming to St. Louis.

- Yes.

- So you'll look at that in December, but I know you'll be back for a Fall preview.

But for folks who are watching at home and wanna stay in the know, I'm on your email list, you can get on that by going to ExploreStLouis.com.

And sign up, right?

- Yes, That's right.

Sign up.

We have an extensive event calendar and we have tons of great content that goes in depth so you can learn all the great stuff to do in St. Louis.

- It's always happening in St. Louis.

- That's right.

- Cat Neville.

Explore St. Louis and host of "Taste Makers."

It's such a pleasure to have you here.

- Oh, it was really fun to check in with you again.

I look forward to doing it soon.

- You will.

Thanks for "Exploring the Heartland" with us.

I'm Fred Marino for everyone at WSIU, have a great week.

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