The population center for the St. Louis SMSA is now west of I270 (the ring road for St. Louis). The decrepit ring around downtown is pretty stunning and is going to make revitalizing St. Louis that much tougher. To be honest, I'm not sure it can be done.

Boyd, of course you may call me Charles. I'm a hunt and peck typer so I just avoid the shift key to save time. I'm more of a single malt man myself, though I do like a good beer from time to time.

BTW, I stopped buying RR...tastes like Bud Lite to me now.

A brand new stadium (originally called the TWA Dome, currently called the Edward Jones Dome) was built for the Rams to lure them here about 15 years ago. Hopefully, that isn't the new elapsed time standard for billion dollar tax transfers to wealthy sports team owners. Busch stadium lasted all of 40 years before it was torn down.

Dave, I moved here 10 years ago, so the high school question doesn't work for me, but I do know exactly what you mean.

DC Loser, as a free market advocate, I wouldn't oppose the sale. St. Louis' business decline predates globalization. When the World's Fair was held here in 1904, St. Louis was the fourth largest city in the country. What went wrong is a long, sordid, and controversial tale. This is just the latest blow.

Boyd, I've always been able to find Boddington's in a can with a widget wherever I've been, but it was best on tap in Surrey. And I got to see Jack Dee's widget ads. Classic. Alas, no YouTube link.

I'll have to see if I can find it in the DC area.

I've found Bodington's quite a bit here, albeit in cans (you have to actually shake it because there's a ball in there) all over Northern Virginia. Certainly, TotalWine has it. I think World Market, too.

I'll have to see if I can find it in the DC area.

As for the AB empire you have to separate out the distribution from the production in the USA, under the Three-tier system and the Volstead Act (FYI, beer in NOT an intoxicating beverage under that law, which is why beer was available ~1 year before Prohibition was repealed). The law in the US is that the producers can’t sell directly to the ultimate seller AKA Three-tier system.
So brewer-sells to a distributor, who sells to the retail location (who then sells to you). The brewer (or distiller or winemaker) is prohibited from selling (interstate) directly to a retailer, a middleman is required by law.

Back in the mid-90s AB bought about 50% of several microbrews and foreign brews in order to bring them under the AB umbrella and allow their distributors to have microbrews (except in areas where existing distribution contracts existed):
Grupo Modelo (Corona, Negra Modelo, Pacifico)
Tsingtao
Redhook
Widmer Brothers

Beers you don’t think are Bud, but are:
Rolling Rock
O’Douls (real decent job on the dark)
Tequiza (cough, beer?)

Meanwhile, Miller is owned by SABMiller. South African Brewery/Miller. Coors is Molson/Coors.

Me, I drink locally.

Well, obviously, the sale made sense to the Busch family, a significant number of whom live completely off their stock in the company.

InBev has a substantial presence in Latin America and I wonder if they're not the distributors for Busch there. The relationship between the two companies may go back a ways.

the local attitude is that they can piss off. No one here thinks this is a good idea.

Save, perhaps, for those being offered a 15 percent premium on their stock shares. But, yeah, I can't imagine this would be good for StL.

The Rams may well be leaving for, can you believe it, LA.

Considering that StL lost the Cardinals -- granted, not that big a loss -- during my memory, you'd think they'd learn. The Rams won a Super Bowl, went to another, and have had several decent runs in the very recent past. A state-of-the-art stadium is, like it or not, part of the cost of doing business.

As someone who drinks Bass when he drinks beer, I feel so ... dirty.

Heh. They've got a lot of trucks, I guess. And those really big horses. But, yeah, I drink Bass and Bodington's quite frequently and never realized there was an A-B connection.

As someone who drinks Bass when he drinks beer, I feel so ... dirty.