In downtown Saint Louis, one quarter of the block that’s bounded by Olive and Pine Streets and North 7th and North 6th Streets contains a surface-level parking lot. The rest of the block is a huge, vacant graffiti-encrusted parking structure. The street-side businesses are gone, with only a few reminders that you could, at one time, shop at Mr. Curry’s Indian Cuisine, the Olive Express Mart, Quizno’s, Nova Red Karaoke, Pharaoh’s Donut, the Edible Difference, or the Tortilla Grille (and other places whose signage didn’t survive). It’s sort of amusing to see the ghosts of these places that didn’t make it, I guess, but it sure does represent the lost dreams of a lot of small-business owners and their employees in a way that takes the amusement right out of it. (It was the Pharaoh’s Donuts sign, with a drawing of an actual pharaoh on it, that got to me.)

Saint Louis, Missouri
photographed 9.2.2026