Ten Months Tracking Opinion in Chesterfield Reveals Keen Observation

Ten months ago local John Hoffman started writing opinion columns for Chesterfield Patch and now at the end of the summer doldrums when new column ideas are at a premium, he takes stock over the past 10 months.

SMOKING BAN: I wrote two columns, a before-and-after on the St. Louis County smoking ban. Both focused on a bar-restaurant tucked away in a corner at Clayton Road and Baxter. The place was well known with locals for having very good, cheap food and being very smokey. The management and some staff were worried before the ban went into effect about losing business from all the regulars who smoke. Three weeks after the ban, business had surged and was the best it had been in a decade.

Eight months now after the ban, business continues to increase. On Thursday after 8 p.m., you can walk in and will have to look for an open table. Plus, smokers haven’t left. They have gone outside. But despite a couple of large ashtrays outside, a large, handwritten sign recently appeared on the door that said, “Stop using the sidewalk as an ashtray. Thank you...Smitty”

OLD FARMHOUSES: In May I wrote how I thought the City of did the right thing in tearing down the old farmhouse at the on the old Eberwein farm property. That got a lone response from D. Todd Williams, who asked what my journalistic background was by not getting the other side of the story that included the Eberwein farmhouse was one of the last clapboard farmhouses from the 1900s left in Chesterfield.

I know there was no outcry in Kirkwood when in the 1960s the folks at Meramec Community College tore down the last Quonset hut used for classrooms and replaced it with a parking lot, despite the fact it was the last Quonset hut in Kirkwood. I hold clapboard farmhouses in the same category as a Quonset hut…a cheap utilitarian building.

CABLE TV: My column on trying to save money on my cable bill ended up with the folks at Charter Communications signing me up for a digital cable upgrade at $82 a month, even though I told them I had no intention of using the digital converter box. This was to save me paying $100 a month for regular cable.

After storing the new converter box in the hall closet, the first bill arrived in July and it was not for $82 as promised. It was for $89. I took the bill back to the Charter service center where I was told the extra $7 was for the rental of the converter box on my computer.  I could buy the box with a one-year warranty for $30 or pay $84 in the next year in rental fees on the box. I bought the box.

Then two weeks later I got a form letter from Charter telling me that I would begin to be charged $7 a month rental fee for the converter box I just bought. Another trip to the service center resulted in an explanation: “Oops, someone made a mistake.”

I really don’t understand how these people stay in business.

ST. LOUIS PARKING TICKETS: The column about how my wife got a $25 parking ticket in St. Louis after she parked on a gavel lot with no signs behind the Habitat for Humanity store brought four comments (from Patch users.) Two people wrote how the same thing happened to them, and two people wrote how simplistic I was, saying $25 was nothing, to park in a major city and how people should use mass transit more.

I am guessing the people who think $25 is no big deal are not originally from St. Louis. The $25 to park might be a bargain in New York, Boston, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, but it is still a lot of money to a St. Louisan.

I will still park in front of City Hall at 6:30 p.m., put a couple quarters in the meter that is free after 7 pm and walk to the ballpark rather than pay $15 to park for a baseball game.

Plus, half the lots downtown are run by the same people who were ripping off people with the Metropolitan Towing scam. I am not crazy about giving them my money.

The suggestion of using mass transit from West County led me to believe that the readers leaving comments must have lived in Clayton or Shrewsbury and not Chesterfield.       

QUIET REPUBLICANS: We all know how conservative West County is and how most elected officials are Republicans. Bill McClellan (St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist and Donnybrook TV panelist) once wrote there are two kinds of people in West County, conservative Republicans and very conservative Republicans.

I know by checking campaign contributions files there are some people in West County who regularly write Congressman Todd Akin an annual $1,000 check just as if they were paying a utility bill.

So when I wrote a column about Akin’s recent comments on a radio talk show about liberals hating God, I expected a flood of angry emails and a full comment board. There was nothing.

However, my column was posted by a number of bloggers around the country.  

TO WRAP UP: I have tried to balance my political opinion columns with topics that are fun, and take a look at some non-controversial subjects, such as who has the best onion rings, area estate sales, best TV dads, unusual people and events.

One of my favorite columns (from December) was one where I thought perhaps part of West County would be better called Snob-urbia than Suburbia.

Again I was surprised there was no feedback on that one at all. Thank you all, though, for your opinions on onion rings.