McClellan: Last chance for last minute gifts from a St. Louis monument | news

The new football stadium is just a few blocks east. To the west, St. Louis University and Cortex are leading a revival in the downtown area.

Ronnie sold to a developer.

Sam Light Loans will close at the end of the year. Ronnie no longer accepts pledged merchandise. He sells everything. He was working on the phone when I stopped by last week. He called the people who had left things with him, letting them know that this was one last chance to get back what they had lost. A retired policeman came to buy back some rings he had pledged in the past. A few other people were looking for good deals.

There was a rack of fur coats. Each was priced at around $ 1,000. In a way, the coats seemed appropriate. Once in fashion, now out of fashion.

I also noticed a football signed by Rich Brooks, the original coach of the St. Louis Rams.

Apart from a few journalists, few people mark the demise of an iconic pawnshop.

“Kevin came by,” Ronnie told me. Sure. It would be Kevin Killeen from KMOX.

While town planners see a chance to dress up an important crossroads, some people, who tend to miss things they have never known, think of a man from Poland – or perhaps Lithuania – living with his family. woman and her six children in an apartment above a pawnshop and playing the violin in front of an open window, serenade the snowy street below.