GLUE St. Louis

The Buffalo GLUE gathering makes the St. Louis news:

RUST STYLE: Twin brothers Jeff and Randy Vines of the St. Louis apparel line STL-STYLE.com (they design those clever, interesting T-shirts with St. Louis icons on them) and Antonio French of the local political blog PubDef.net will represent our town at an upcoming gathering of urban devotees in Buffalo, N.Y. The meeting, which is being sponsored by the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program, will bring together urban advocates from 10 cities. They will meet Thursday through Saturday. The goal is "to craft a new narrative for industrial cities of the Great Lakes region, the so-called 'Rustbelt,' according to a news release from the group. Randy Vines said Tuesday that he and his brother hoped to come back with some exciting ideas to help contribute to the current enthusiasm for rejuvenating St. Louis. The gathering is the kickoff of a multiyear initiative that will explore ways to use new media to help spread the word about the cities involved. The group is called GLUE — an acronym for the Great Lakes Urban Exchange. It was developed by Pittsburgh and Detroit boomerangs (a word they use to describe young people who leave their cities and then return) Abby Wilson and Sarah Szurpicki as a means of combating negative perceptions about their cities.