The Best Layover in the Country??? Stranger things have happened.

The Layover

Among my inner circle, I’m famous for saying my favorite place in the world is a bar at Lambert International Airport, which is ironic because I’m equally famous for not loving to fly. I get mercilessly teased for showing up super early, like an old Boomer (I am not). I’m there for the vibe. The nostalgia. The maps and murals. The people who strike up a conversation. The outset of an adventure. A seat at Schlafly, Shannon’s, or Three Kings Public House.¹

Back in the day, even when I wasn’t traveling, I loved being in the airport’s orbit. There was a restaurant called India Palace on the 11th floor of the Howard Johnson, overlooking the planes taking off and landing on the grand runway, and it was one of the most romantic date spots in town (truly) for a sub-21-year-old looking for places to go.

Lambert wasn’t designed to be anybody’s favorite destination. It became mine anyway.

No doubt, Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, No Reservations, and Parts Unknown changed how people travel, and pretty much changed the world. But for anyone who does what I do, his Travel Channel series The Layover was the real gift. The most useful show on television. A day or two in a city, and where to go to feel it. Which is the premise, really. That a stop can be enough.

Most layovers—Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix—earn a groan. But Vegas? Nobody groans about Vegas because Vegas decided long ago that the stop was the point. A city can decide that on purpose. A country can, too. Now, Icelandair (soon flying direct from St. Louis)² will sell you a ticket to Europe with a few days in Reykjavik on the way, at no extra fare.

So what’s our hand? In 2000, at the height of the TWA hub, just over half the people boarding at Lambert were changing planes for somewhere else. Sometimes more. Today, it’s not far off that same percentage. We’re not a hub anymore, and we probably won’t get that back. What we do have is the ground game.

I’d wager I pick up and drop off more people at Lambert than anyone not officially in the transportation business. Travelers who arrive here have usually made up their minds by the time they’re in my car. The airport is old, they say. And quiet. Nothing like the shiny one they just left in Charlotte. Twelve minutes later we’re standing in a hotel lobby in Clayton with their interest piqued, and they start to come around. I see that turn again and again. In many cities, touchdown is only the halfway point to the final destination, with another hour or more to get home. Here you land at 10:00 at night, and you’re in your own kitchen by 10:25.

A new terminal is coming, and by all accounts it’s several years out. Which raises a fun question: What could we do with the one we have now?³

As it stands, the ride down the escalator is mostly signage for plaintiff’s attorneys. And props to our robust legal community. Really. But right out of the gate, no pun intended, what does that say? Come here and get sued, divorced, or both?

What if the concourse were somewhere the adventurous might want to linger? Lifelike miniatures of our incredible landmarks. Cartoon maps of the neighborhoods. A glimpse of our epic local dive bar scene and clubby lounges. Road sodas, notorious and beloved, alongside unusually forgiving open container laws. A drink you carry while you wander.

And what if there were video walls of everyone from everywhere who calls this place home, saying so? A chess grandmaster.⁴ A plant scientist. Luthier, pitmaster, travel nurse, a New Yorker who stayed. The mayor greets you in every language, sure, and beside her, dozens of transplants: who they are, what they do, what they love, with a live band somewhere in the background playing the blues.

Everybody knows the trailer is sometimes the best part of the movie. What if the airport were the trailer? Three hours between flights that feels like stepping into Blueberry Hill or a Soulard block party instead of a gate.

Some might have so much fun they miss the connection. Oh well. Guess they’re staying in the city tonight.

What We Didn’t Tear Down

What if we waited so long to change that who we are came back in style?⁵

Here’s the (sometimes backhanded but genuinely loving) knock I hear most from people coming out of breakout cities: St. Louis resisted. It didn’t boom, but it didn’t bust either. Didn’t become Austin or Nashville or Seattle. Fights the new thing, argues about the data center, drags its feet. Talks up innovation, then takes its sweet, suspicious time.

All true. And some would say the resisting is why much of the brick is still standing. The theater is the original one.⁶ The watering hole with no website keeps rockin’. Some of our finest restaurants disavow the apps and make us (gasp) pick up a phone and talk to a human maître d’ on a landline, then serve us tableside like a Copacabana time warp.⁷

Land in a new city now, and the cool part of town has the same café, the same street art, the same coworking space, the same private-equity’d retailers, the same elevated price tag—whether you’re in Roma Norte or Lincoln Park or Seongsu. There’s a name for it: cultural homogenization, and you can argue either way, but the effect is plain enough: Sameness is everywhere now, and untouched particularity is scarce.

Countless gems and neighborhoods in other cities have been scraped, replaced, and splattered with flat, squared, uninspired architecture. But here, ours never stopped being unapologetically themselves.

Developers can put up the luxury building with a $19 cocktail on the ground floor, and many do. They can even rebuild the block. But nobody has figured out how to manufacture decades of regulars, lore, and provenance.

Meanwhile, four generations at once are chasing exactly what we have around here in spades. Vintage is having a moment. Analog, heirloom, handmade, anything with a little wear and patina on it. Gen Z is buying vinyl and film cameras, used clothes, and paper journals. Thrift stores. Antique malls. Independent bookstores. Stereo equipment and consignment. Millennials are right behind them. Gen X never left. And for anyone older, it isn’t nostalgia at all, just the way things were. What they miss.⁸

Smartphones aren’t going anywhere, but there’s a real hunger for texture, and texture is the one thing we haven’t totally renovated away.

So if the charge is that we’re perma-stuck somewhere around 1996, I’d own it, take the deal, and stop apologizing. Power up that DeLorean and go find, in the wise words of Vincent Vega, that wax museum with a pulse. Net net, we still look like St. Louis and vibe like St. Louis, and we’re fast becoming the exception worth the trip, not the rule.

Quiet

Yes, it can be quiet. Too quiet. And my feelings on that issue are well known. But I’ve noticed more and more that for a certain kind of person, the quiet is the draw. Show up early-bird or after the rush, and you can literally walk into a James Beard-recognized restaurant. Rent an artist loft downtown with floor-to-ceiling windows, endless wall space, and views.

Call St. Louis a region of curtains, where the good stuff is often behind doors. Fine. Who doesn’t love a speakeasy, or want to join a club that won’t have them? Just so long as someone slips you the location and password, of course.⁹

Privacy is the same coin. For groups in, say, finance, pharmaceuticals, or defense, a convention district with a little distance around it may feel less like a drawback and more like discretion. They can have three gorgeous city blocks to themselves. Would you rather be the ninth delegation shuffling through a packed hall, or Eric Cartman with the run of Casa Bonita?¹⁰

People who find crowds draining, including many neurodivergent folks, tell me all the time that they’re at ease here. Sidewalks aren’t a crush of shoulders. There’s elbow room, and nobody pressing in. You can hit the snooze. Miss the exit. Claw back three extra hours a day for your hobbies, special interests, nonprofit boards, and putting your aging parents or kids to bed.

You can focus.

Nerd Kingdom

A glorious geek streak runs through this town: legendary libraries and chess, record stores and all-ages punk shows, Pokémon, board games, e-sports performance centers, comic shops, roleplaying guilds, and LARPing clubs, 1,600 members deep, plus a science fiction convention going strong for decades. Magic Houses, IMAX theaters, new planetariums abound.

Lumosity once ranked Washington University in St. Louis the smartest college in America, ahead of MIT and Harvard, based on how students performed at brain games. What’s with all the top scores coming out of places called University City, Olivette, and Creve Coeur? If they had a nickel for every time someone on the data team uttered, “Wait, does that say Missouri?”…

Then there’s industry. Aerospace, built right off the runway. Alzheimer’s research. Neuroscience. Plant science and ag tech, with the world’s highest concentration of PhDs in the field, more than a thousand. Food innovation, in a region that helps feed much of the planet. Geospatial. It’s not an accident. Brain surgeons and geneticists need room to breathe. The quiet we read as emptiness is often the same quiet that lets someone spend 10 years on one problem.

Date Night

A working theory: elbow room draws the big brains.¹¹ Big brains draw companies. Companies bring big jobs, big jobs bring the money, and where there’s big money… well. You know what sells. Put another way, love may be our most undersold asset.

As of late, young MBA analysts across the country and around the world are picking their next city with a weighted spreadsheet. After your twenties, coupling can count for more than almost anything else. For years, we were nowhere near the top of anyone’s list, or even on it. That can change. Ask anyone hoping to find a partner in New York, LA, DC, or Miami, and you’ll hear the same thing: oceans of options, and hardly anyone ready to commit. Speed-dating events in tier-one markets are notorious for running two women to every man, sometimes three. Some turn into friend nights, because the math never works. In St. Louis, it’s the reverse: twice as many men, often described as tall, employed, Midwestern-mannered, and looking for something serious. It’s more than hooking up. It’s about finding the love of your life.¹²

Another loving knock: St. Louis is a hard place to be single but a great place to settle down. The first half is fair, and I won’t pretend otherwise. The pool is small. You can run through the apps in about three weeks. But chances are, when Cupid does find you that needle in a stack of needles, whoever it is isn’t after a fling. They’re in it for the long haul. Kiss someone in these parts on a Friday, and by Sunday you’re at their mom’s for dinner, looking for a pastor and a church.

The Car

In DC, Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston, many cherish being able to walk everywhere. Wonderful, and something to which we can all aspire. Some neighborhoods here already have that and are thriving, and the people building trails and greenways deserve much of the credit. Please, dear God, keep going.

But plenty in those same cities would rather hold the keys, and there, a few errands can mean a white-knuckle trip through a traffic-ridden gauntlet just getting to Target. One thing a lot of my happiest newcomers share is that they like to drive. Love to drive. They miss the open road and a parking spot with their name on it. And it’s been too long. St. Louis may be one of the last great places to own a car: store one, drive one, race one,¹³ or even get your license in the first place. With autonomous vehicles arriving by the day, getting behind the wheel could become more of a pastime. For nearly 30 years, every Corvette in America came from St. Louis, and the roads here still have room to let a V8 run.

The Stop

So while the trails, sidewalks, and new terminal come, and I hope they do, the question is: who might love St. Louis exactly as it is today? As in, right now.

The brilliant mind who does their best work without a crowd. The gearhead. The vinyl collector. The Gen Xer who came home. The spry retiree who wants a standing trivia night, a Friday fish fry, and KMOX on the kitchen radio.¹⁴

Plenty of cities are building theme-park neighborhoods for the 23-year-old. Let them.¹⁵ There’s a happy medium between Naples and Fulton Market, and most people just don’t know it’s here. Go with the resistance. They’ll follow.¹⁶

I’d like nothing more than for travelers to start asking for a layover in St. Louis. Museums and monuments and parks and zoos and sportsball are cool. Very cool. But what else is waiting here? A soul. The days of future past. The inverse of Field of Dreams, where if you build it, [they] will come.¹⁷ Here’s the thing, St. Louis: You already did.

Anthony P. Bartlett is president of Acclimate, providing independent ambassador services to St. Louis employers on behalf of their candidates, new hires, hybrid leaders, and families. He writes and speaks on why recruits come to the region, why some leave, and why others stay. The firm is based in the Delmar Loop.

Notes

¹ No. 1 Best Airport Bar in America, USA Today 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards (Oct. 14, 2026).

² TravelPulse, “Icelandair to Launch Nonstop Flights From St. Louis to Reykjavik,” October 2026.

³ “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it.” Steve Jobs, Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (1997).

⁴ The Saint Louis Chess Club and the World Chess Hall of Fame face each other across the street in the Central West End. When American grandmaster Yasser Seirawan moved here in 2023, he joined “twenty other grandmasters who call the city home” (Business Wire).

⁵ “You’re so money and you don’t even know it.” Swingers (1996).

⁶ Hi-Pointe Theatre, selling tickets since 1922, the oldest continuously running movie theater in town (St. Louis Magazine).

⁷ Paul Manno’s Cafe, Chesterfield. Landline reservations: (314) 878-1274.

⁸ “Be kind, rewind: The last Blockbuster on Earth is not only surviving, but thriving as a tourist destination.” Roadtrippers.

⁹ Acclimate St. Louis

¹⁰ “Casa Bonita,” South Park, Season 7 (2003).

¹¹ “Check out the big brain on Brad!” Jules Winnfield, Pulp Fiction (1994).

¹² B-Sides STL, “A Global Rubric Landed Her in St. Louis.”

¹³ World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, just across the river in Madison, Illinois.

¹⁴ KMOX 1120 AM, “The Voice of St. Louis,” where generations listened to Jack Buck call the Cardinals.

¹⁵ Mel Robbins, The Let Them Theory (2024).

¹⁶ “And if you would just lead them to freedom, they’d follow you. And so would I.” William Wallace to Robert the Bruce, Braveheart (1995).

¹⁷ The actual line: “If you build it, he will come.” Field of Dreams (1989).