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"In the beginning, everybody was falling all over themselves to partner," Marston recalls.

One such partner was the St. Louis Rams. The team dispatched a staffer, Cheryl Bini, to raise funds to build a playground at Bryan Hill Elementary on the city's north side. A West County native who had spent the prior ten years in New York City, Bini forged more than a professional alliance with Metropolis.

"My boss was like, 'You really fit their demographic, so why don't you work on that project,'" says Bini, who's now 30 and working for Verizon Wireless. "I kind of lived in a bubble in West County growing up. I was nervous about moving back home because I wasn't familiar with anything to do in St. Louis. I didn't want to run around with high school friends I hadn't talked to for seven years. Metropolis was a great outlet for me at that time."

At Bryan Hill the group raised $60,000 -- the bulk of which came from a company run by Marston's father -- to build a new playground. But the alliance wasn't a one-off; Bini, Crone and a rotating roster of Metropolites made regular visits to the school to tutor and mentor kids. Today, though, the Bryan Hill partnership is on hiatus.

Bryan Hill principal Carole Johnson figures the program fell by the wayside because people have "just gotten too busy."

Adds Reid: "With any of our projects, they're sustainable as long as those who conceived and worked on them stay involved. There's been talk of reinvigorating the partnership."

Former Metropolis secretary Jason McClelland, who was intimately involved with the Bryan Hill program, sees it differently. The group was at the table for Mayor Francis Slay's push for public-school reform and backed the mayor's slate of school-board candidates this past spring. "They seem to be more focused on schools in general -- kind of a macro view -- as opposed to working on one school and creating it as a model for citizen involvement, which was kind of our idea," McClelland sums up.

Crone believes the death of the Bryan Hill partnership could hamper Metropolis' credibility when it comes to big-picture matters such as the school-district overhaul now being undertaken by the consulting firm of Alvarez & Marsal.

"If the organization wishes to be taken seriously in the St. Louis Public Schools debate, then the Bryan Hill partnership needs to be revived, quickly," Crone asserts. "Not just as PR cover, but because it's a worthwhile project that was yielding some tangible benefits in the school."

When the topic turns to Metropolis' dwindling ranks, Reid is quick to point to the online readership of her weekly update. But if the communiqué is attracting attention, it's not all coming in the form of kudos. On August 25, Reid used her "President's Message" to criticize Metropolis member Brent Feeney, who had, in a Riverfront Times story two weeks earlier, expressed the belief that racism is a two-way street. "I am troubled because I do not believe this person's highly publicized views relative to our city, race relations and the appropriate treatment of women accurately reflect that of the membership of our organization," Reid wrote. "I am troubled because he inadvertently became our spokesperson, on random topics where he held and promulgated any viewpoint he so wished."

Reid was familiar with the role of unwitting spokesperson. At a July 15 school board meeting that featured heated public debate about the school-district overhaul, Reid had voiced her support for the board's consultant-helmed blueprint for restructure. Many Metropolites were upset and posted e-mail messages complaining that their president had misstated the organization's viewpoint and failed to achieve a consensus before speaking. Reid countered that she had simply expressed her own views and pointed out that she had said nothing about her affiliation with Metropolis in her remarks.

Meanwhile, Feeney's comments had led a St. Louis American columnist to refer to Metropolites as "silver spoon gagging" white people, a topic Reid felt the need to address in her September 9 dispatch. "Would I sacrifice the next new, fabulous sushi bar so that a handful of children could enjoy safer streets, live in stronger neighborhoods and achieve in solid schools? Absolutely," Reid wrote. "Does it work that way? Can we trade one for another? No, not really. Can Metropolis work to further both ends? Certainly. And, I invite you, no, I implore you to do so. As I sip my next $4 latte or $8 martini, I hope it crosses my mind how far that money could go in school supplies. And, I hope I take some action. As I waste away a stretch of hours watching Bravo or the Food Network while sitting on my Bauhaus sofa on a Sunday afternoon, I hope I recognize that this is time that could be spent mentoring a child. Again, I hope this spurs some action. I hope I don't forget. And I hope you don't either."

Marston and others felt the screed was a misguided attempt at self-parody. "Her last weekly update, I was like, 'Oh God, Christina," says Marston. "It was like, 'Ohmigod, there's poor people in the city?' It was weird."

Says Reid in hindsight: "Admittedly, there are a number of our members who read the President's Message that are privileged in many respects. I guess you could say it was a self-parody, but also a call to action. Like when you're drinking the $8 martini, think about how else that could go to use. Many of us are guilty of being city boosters and maybe city residents but are far removed from a lot of reality that the city faces. The city of St. Louis extends beyond downtown, or the Central West End; a lot of other neighborhoods are part of the picture."

On July 30 at the Schlafly Tap Room on Locust, Reid was elected to a second six-month term as president. Only 40 Metropolis members turned up to cast votes for the group's officers and steering-committee positions.

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