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Thank you so much for joining us for Last Call.

Sarah, we're starting with you, and I have news for you.

Are you ready?

No.

Well, you should be.

Not so long ago, you interviewed the man to my right, Bill McClellan.

And you talked about Wally Wharton, did you not?

We did, we did.

This was on the 314 podcast.

Yeah, people can still listen to this wherever they get their podcasts.

Well, this week I got a text from one Max Kennison of Andrea's Restaurant in O 'Fallon, Illinois, and he was listening with his family to that podcast, and he's decided to start on Thursday nights a Wally Wharton drink.

Oh, I would love it.

So you are changing bars wherever you go.

How about that?

We're going to have to go do that.

Well, we're going to have to go.

Yeah, we're going to have to do some research.

For viewers who don't know Wally Wharton, he was a Depression-era poet in St.

Louis, and he wore shorts.

And there was a man who had a bar in Gaslight Square, and he said, free drinks to any man who wears shorts, and Wally showed up in his underwear.

And so Wally is a personal hero of mine.

And you are wearing shorts tonight.

So we will have to do some research on this.

I could stand up.

I wouldn't.

You might lose that microphone.

I am wearing shorts.

Maybe after the show, stand up.

Okay, Sarah, we want to ask you about what's going on on South Grand.

You wrote about it this week in St.

Louis Magazine, and that is after people like you extolled the virtues of traffic-calming devices, we call them traffic-slowing devices, you know, some of them have been taken out.

One was taken out, I think, on Broadway near the Hilton Hotel down there.

People couldn't stand it.

And now on South Grand near Magnolia, I think, people are waiting in traffic because these traffic-calming devices move the traffic like a, I don't know, some sort of funnel.

Yeah.

And you can't travel quickly anymore in an automobile.

Yeah, so I started looking into this because so many people in the neighborhood are so wound up about it.

I kept hearing the city is going to take this traffic-calming out because they know it's a disaster.

So I wanted to find out where does this stand, and I talked to the city, and they are thinking about modifying this.

They say this project isn't done yet.

Like, let us finish the paint.

If it's still as slow as it is, we are going to deal with this.

And to me, like, I do drive this intersection a lot.

Every time I go run in the park or take my kids to soccer practice, I don't think it's that bad.

I mean, we all really wanted South Grand to slow down, and especially near the park.

There are so many bicyclists and runners who are around there.

And, yeah, to calm traffic, it means you have to slow traffic.

But I think the pressure is kind of getting to the city.

You lived in L.A.

I did.

I mean, so you are used to heavy, heavy traffic.

Sitting in multiple traffic cycles.

Right, right.

This doesn't look like much to you.

This is nothing.

I understand that.

I knew because I never get to say I told you so.

I never do, so I have to say it now.

Traffic calming sounds like the nanny state, where we know what's best, and you're getting too agitated while you're driving, so we're going to put in these devices to slow down and then to make it impossible for emergency vehicles to get where they need to.

So I think it's just marked.

You know, it had a black mark against it.

If 20 cars have to wait at a light and all 20 of them are upset, isn't it worth it to stop the maniac that drives 100 miles an hour down South Grand?

And we all see it.

It's in the city.

It's in the county.

And if there's some places, like you said, by a park, kids, bicyclists, the object is to slow traffic down.

So it's working.

Well, I live by Skinker, and they can try things, but the only thing that's really successful is if you start giving people tickets.

Yeah, and the St.

Louis police are never going to do that.

You know, you go down Isle of Lindell, and it goes from two lanes to one lane, and does it slow you down?

Sure, because you might be you have to wait for the accident to clear.

Right.

Two lanes to one lane, the idea that that's a good idea.

They're not that popular.

I don't like it.

Don't forget, also, in Chesterfield on Clarkson, they had these traffic calming islands, and MoDOT removed them.

They took them out after the people went crazy.

Yeah, like MoDOT's big takeaway is we didn't do enough talking to people before this, and you hear a lot of people now in South City saying, hey, there wasn't enough community engagement before this.

I don't know that community engagement is going to make a difference when people are, like, in rush hour and they're getting irritated.

Like, you want traffic to be calm until you're the person in traffic.

People have also made the point that today cars are actually they are computers first, that the design of the dashboard has changed so dramatically that it is kind of easier to get a little distracted.

So when you're trying to navigate your way through these traffic calming areas, you could really end up a creek.

The only thing that surprised me in this conversation is that Sarah didn't say there was community engagement among the stakeholders.

I don't really have my bureaucraties down yet, Charlie.

Only what I'm typing.

Of all people, you have a beautiful use of the English language, so that was not fair.

Bill, I want to ask you about our next topic.

The NAACP released a lengthy report today on the conditions of the jail in downtown St.

Louis.

There's not enough room for all the detainees, and what room they have, it's not very good.

So there is some suggestion that maybe we'll have to build a new one or expand the current one.

What are your thoughts on that?

Well, like Wendy said, I told you so, and you and I can both take that, when they were closing down the workhouse.

I said, I don't know if this is really a smart idea because the workhouse was pretty full and the downtown jail was pretty full.

But they closed the workhouse, it was a big cause, and now suddenly we need a bigger jail.

And I suppose we do.

But it's just one of those things that was like traffic calming.

It sounded good at the time.

But it'll be an expensive proposition to build a bigger jail.

It's not going to happen.

Thank you.

There are innocent people whose homes still have debris in the front yard in North St.

Louis.

I agree, I agree.

And I understand that, too.

But these are human beings, and five of those who have died have committed suicide.

This is nothing that we should put lightly.

I know it's not going to be a priority, Alvin, but these are human beings.

I get it, and I am not being cruel.

I know a lot of people feel like that.

But you're telling me jail is terrible.

I knew jail was terrible, pretty much why I avoided jail.

And I think that society is that.

I understand people end up in jail and in trouble with the law for all kinds of different reasons.

But I think we're putting carpet for a horse.

It shouldn't be a gulag.

It shouldn't be Tower London.

At the same time, it's jail.

Stay out of jail.

Try that.

You're having seizures.

We have crossed the line from having a well-run jail that is punitive, that nobody would want to end up in, to something that is inhumane.

This report was really good.

I have to give the NAACP credit.

They got into a lot of details and called out exactly what was going wrong.

And you read this, and it's like, wow, we've got some huge problems here.

And I agree the political will is not here to build another jail.

But if you come away from reading this report and don't think we need to do something different and figure it out soon, then you're a very cold-hearted person.

Well, especially, we always talk about there must be consequences for crime, and people must be locked up, and we have to have a place to lock them up.

And it's a crime that we shut down one of the places we had to lock them up.

Well, one of the things they did mention in this report is that they put in these bail reforms, and this would have worked fine if maybe we had been willing to do a little bit of investment in pretrial services and ways that people who have not yet been found guilty of a crime, which is pretty much everybody in this jail, if we could build a system more like what the feds have, where you have to check in and you're being properly monitored.

That felt like maybe there's some alternative we could have to holding some of these people if we had enough checks in place to make sure people are safe.

But people in the neighborhood sometimes, if you talk to them, they don't want to help the police because they help the police and the person gets arrested and he comes right back out.

And so, you know, why should we help the cops?

That's what I'm saying.

That's a voice that's like, okay, the NAACP got this report.

That's all great.

The voices that you don't hear en masse are the people that live in the neighborhoods where most of the crime is taking place.

They're saying like, you know what?

If that person is out of jail, he's right back down the street from me murdering, slinging dope, doing all that other stuff.

Terrorizing maybe because I testified against it.

Well, keep them in jail.

Yeah, but some of them are innocent.

Your paper has how many stories on people who are falsely convicted?

Not that many.

That's one of those things where everybody's like, oh, you're just being soft on crime.

We've had a few on this program when we were interviewing people.

I understand.

And don't forget, the jail is for people who are accused of crimes.

I have one attorney, Jay Kanzler, he's telling me these guys say this jail is so bad, I will plead guilty even though I'm innocent because I'll go to the state prison because it's in better condition than the city or the county jail here.

Can you imagine being in these conditions?

No, I can't.

In this heat?

That's why.

Okay.

Should be continued as they say.

Jail is a deterrent to crime.

Jail shouldn't be nice.

I shouldn't be evil.

It should be rehabilitative also.

It shouldn't be an automatic death sentence or just, you know.

Okay, we're out of time.

All right.

Thank you very much for your comments.

What an uplifting note.

We'll see you next week.

Have a happy weekend.

I hope.