Festivals and Events

The Balloon Glow is a beautiful and free event in Forest Park every year in late summer/early fall. The Balloon Glow features over 50 hot air balloons lighting up in the night, a DJ, and tons of local vendors. At the end of the night this year, the United States Army Golden Knights parachute team jumped from planes with beautiful sparklers, followed by a huge firework finale. The event was super crowded, so make sure to get there early! Food and drinks are sold at the Balloon Glow, but you can also bring your own (which I suggest due to the very long lines). The next day, the Great Forest Park Balloon Race takes place in which the hot air balloons from the previous night race across the city.

Each year, held next to the World Chess Hall of Fame, the Central West End (CWE) hosts a Halloween block party. Free and open to everyone, the event starts off with family-friendly attractions, such as the kids’ costume parade, trick-or-treating at the local businesses, and (perhaps best of all) a canine costume parade. In the afternoon, the party shifts to adults-only with drink vendors setting up shop, followed by the main event, the adult costume contest. The event is a ton of fun and a great opportunity to see St. Louis at its liveliest!

For those of you who love doing your shopping locally, Soulard and Tower Grove have some incredible farmers’ markets! Soulard is allegedly the oldest market west of the Mississippi, and is the perfect place to go on a Saturday morning if you want to hear some street music, get fresh tamales and donuts, and pick up some fresh fruit and vegetables from local farms. The same goes for Tower Grove. If you’re like me, and sometimes don’t have the time to go to farmers market every weekend, check out Find Your Farmer — it’s a delivery service that can deliver you fresh veggies from local farms every few weeks, as well as other locally made goods like farm fresh eggs and bread! It’s a more sustainable grocery delivery service and it supports local businesses, so it’s a win-win service!

Every year the Missouri Botanical Garden fully embraces the holiday spirit and decorates the garden with almost two million Christmas lights, a bunch of holiday exhibits, and food stands with everything from spiked hot cocoa to s’mores. Grab a few friends or your special someone and go wander around the magical tree-lined lanes or snap a photo of your group inside a giant inflatable snow globe. It’s a great way to get in the holiday spirit and would probably make a ridiculously romantic first date. Just saying.

Oktoberfest in St. Louis is absolutely amazing. This year I went to three different Oktoberfests: 1) Urban Chestnut Oktoberfest in the Grove; 2) The Biggest Oktoberfest in Missouri in Hermann; 3) St. Louis Oktoberfest in Soulard. If you enjoy beer, I highly recommend that you buy a stein at an event and carry it around to every other Oktoberfest. The energy at all three events is very upbeat and exciting. It’s a great way to see new parts of life in Saint Louis, people watch, and make new friends with random people! I even learned how to polka in the beer garden.

If you’re looking for the best St. Louis date ideas, the love doctor will see you now.

What brings you in? Abdominal pain? Shortness of breath? Increased weakness with slurred speech? Don’t worry! We’ve got you covered. I mean we did just finish our first clinical reasoning session how hard could this be? … Okay, we might not be ready to help with those symptoms, but we can provide supportive care.

Here are 10 of the love doc’s favorite St. Louis first date spots:

1. Picnics or sledding at Art Hill, depending on the time of year.
2. Go for chocolate and wine at Kakao.
3. Hike and kayak at Creve Coeur Lake
4. Try all of the handcrafted “Sexiest Ice Cream Alive” (according to Oprah magazine) at Clementine’s Naughty & Nice Ice Cream.
5. Grab a few of drinks at the underground Thaxton Speakeasy.
6. Travel a short distance to Missouri’s wine country along the Katy Trail – Blumenhof, Balducci, and Noboleis wineries are a must!
7. Wanna drink beer in a cave? Check out Earthbound Beer on Cherokee Street.
8. Paddle boat in Forest Park at the Boathouse.
9. Ain’t afraid of no ghosts? Check out the Mystery dinners at The Lemp Mansion and tour the haunted mansion of beer barons using the provided infrared cameras to document your journey.
10. Check out a telescope at the St. Louis Public Library then head over to Broemmelsiek Park Astronomy Site for an evening picnic and stargazing.

Depending on the sport, St. Louis has loads of spots to watch “the game.” If you’re trying to stay local, BBQ Saloon usually has the biggest football and basketball games on any given night. An order of jalapeño poppers and an old fashioned, and you’re set for a good time. Kingside Diner has a bit more of a pub vibe if you’re going for that while still only being a walk away.

If you’ve got a designated driver and a car, there’s another tier of sports bars. Amsterdam is a sick place for watching soccer with a range of beers and an outdoor patio area. Some of us went at 7:00 a.m. to watch the USA lose to the Netherlands, and it was slightly less sad than it should’ve been because of the atmosphere (Amsterdam is a pub, we did not fly to Amsterdam to watch us lose). OB Clarks is a multi-sport bar that can cover you for hockey, football, basketball, and even the more niche sports like corn hole. The bar’s got some great wings and a great crowd, but it’ll put you back 15 minutes.

Shakespeare in the Park is a really fantastic and free event put on in Forest Park every summer. Professional actors come from all around the country to put on a live performance of a Shakespeare play almost every night for four weeks straight. The seating is anywhere you can find in the grass, so make sure to bring a picnic blanket or a couple of folding chairs and get there early! Great local businesses sell food and drinks, but you are more than welcome to bring your own. Pets are welcome too! The 2022 performance was “Much Ado About Nothing” and went throughout the month of June. We were so impressed and couldn’t believe the show was entirely free!

Tower Grove Pride is a large community gathering by and for the St. Louis LGBTQ+ community and is hosted annually in late September at Tower Grove Park. It features an abundance of food, drinks, artists, crafters, booksellers, thrifters, nonprofit and small business booths, and performances — think of a queer county fair! WUSM students also work a booth and provide information on queer health.