Wearing a bouffant-style hairdo, Blue looks much younger than her 48 years. (Locals shook their heads at that sale, but it was just another blip in the city's storied history of shady dealings.) I visited the current town hall one recent Wednesday only to find it closed, so I came back later and met with the city manager, Justine Blue. Kinloch City Hall and Police Department are now housed in an old elementary school after Robert Hill, a convicted cocaine dealer, purchased the old city hall. The yard doubles as a junkyard, strewn with cars in various states of disrepair, old motors, and even a tractor. That's Kinloch's main drag, not far from the Cotton Club, a coffee shop, and a history museum-all shuttered. Today he's working on his truck, alongside a bunch of other old-timers in their friend's yard on Scott Avenue. 'They're crazy-ass motherfuckers,' says a former Kinloch resident named Gene Lee, who lived here until the nearby airport bought him out in 1996. Sure, the police there get a bad rap, but some locals say that Kinloch police make Ferguson cops look like social workers. But compared to Kinloch, it's absolutely thriving with its spas, brewpubs, and manicured medians. But now, beyond a salvage yard and an auto body shop, Kinloch doesn't have a single business, according to its city manager.įerguson is famous for Michael Brown's killing by a white police officer last August, and has subsequently been portrayed in the media as a poor, dangerous, kleptocracy.

King played a club here, called 12 Oaks, before it closed in the 50s. There were once barber shops, chicken shacks, pharmacies, a YMCA, turkey farms, and even a cab company. The place has a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max feel, with vagrants burning fires in bombed-out buildings, crater-sized potholes, and discarded semi trailers. As of the last official US census in 2010, fewer than 300 people populated Kinloch.

Missouri ghost town near st louis