6 places to spend an afternoon.
Dead Wax Records and Cherokee Antique Row can eat a whole afternoon if you let them. Venice Café looks like someone glued a fever dream to the outside of a building, and somehow it works. Saturday is the day to show up.
3 things to do, 3 shops, all in Cherokee Street.
The art scene on Cherokee Street runs from maximalist to minimalist within a few blocks. Venice Café is a mosaic-coated fever dream you can drink inside, while Fifteen Windows Gallery keeps things tight in a single storefront next to Fort Gondo. Antique Row fills the gap between Jefferson and Lemp with thirty-plus shops of old stuff worth digging through.
Every surface - walls, floors, ceilings, patio - is covered in mosaics, bottle caps, taxidermy, and fever-dream folk art assembled by founder Jeff Lockheed since 1978. Cash only, live music almost every night, and an upstairs Explorer's Lounge with a resident king snake named Mr. Waylon Slithers.
Tiny storefront gallery at 3155 Cherokee opened in 2024 by veteran curator Bryan Walsh, right next door to the historic Fort Gondo arts compound. Open Saturdays noon to four or by appointment, with rotating shows heavy on local painters, illustrators, and street artists.
Six blocks of Cherokee from Jefferson to Lemp packed with over 30 independent antique shops, vintage stores, and oddities inside 19th-century Victorian storefronts. Prices are still reasonable, Elder's Ltd. has been here four generations, and you should budget at least an hour.
Cherokee Street rewards browsers who like their shops with a point of view. STL Style House has been selling the city back to itself since 2010, Dead Wax keeps expanding its vinyl footprint, and Anchovy Book Co crams a cookbook-only bookstore into six feet of frontage at 2619½.
The first St. Louis-themed clothing store in the city, opened on Cherokee in 2010 by twin brothers Randy and Jeff Vines after nine years online. Original city-pride apparel, custom on-site printing while you wait, and a house cat named Frankie.
Independent vinyl shop at 2100 Cherokee that doubled in size after moving across the street, stocking new, used, and rare records across all genres. Owner Jeremy Miller will clean and play anything before you buy, and the Riverfront Times named it the best place to buy vinyl for a reason.
The Midwest's first cookbook-only bookstore occupies a sliver of space at 2619½ Cherokee St - just six feet wide. Owner Maura Dunn stocks everything from vintage Julia Child editions to zines from local chefs.
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Three hotels worth booking in Cherokee Street.
Restaurants, bars, and cafes in Cherokee Street.