Just say NO to InBev!

I won't make any sort of rational argument here. I think all St. Louisans are aware, at least now, of Anheuser-Busch's stagnant stock price and America-reliant market in an internationalized business.

Still, as a preservationist and a lover of this city, I simply cannot fathom the possibility that St. Louis might lose control over its flagship company--an independent holdout from the 1850s. German immigrants transformed the then mostly French and Creole city during that decade.

In a brewer's paradise, A-B was one of the few that survived Prohibition.

Unlike McDonnell Douglas, the May Company, and AG Edwards, A-B seemed a fixture of our city that could never be taken away. Somehow, to those of us who don't have our noses in the business journals every day, A-B seemed immune to the vicissitudes of the corporate world in a globalizing economy.

With the takeover, regardless of whether or not InBev leaves A-B mostly the same (minus, of course, the several high-paying jobs they're bound to slash locally), part of the soul of this city will be lost.

Typically, on this blog, I talk about incremental losses to the city's heritage. It is disheartening to think that with all of that sort of loss going around in the city, A-B may compound it.

Like a child who's been warned to "just say no" to drug propositions, I wish the A-B board would do the same.