I noticed there was some hand painted signs saying the businesses were open.
The above picture was on the main road where all the protests took place. This picture is a view of the road from a distance.
There were still some remnants of damage to the area.
This damage was slowly being fixed. I briefly spoke with the guys fixing the windows and they said they had just replaced the windows of the building next to the one they were working on. They also said everything is back to normal and that normalcy allowed them to fix the windows in the first place without worry of them being smashed out again.
I walked a little further down the sidewalk and there was this black dude with dreads standing outside a store. He was really friendly and we started talking a bit. I found out he had just opened up his store and he had lived in Ferguson his whole life. He said that the media had it wrong and that people there peacefully coincide with each other. He said in his whole life of living in Ferguson as a black man, he never encountered an issue with the police as the media tried to say was an everyday occurrence. Coincidentally a younger white woman went jogging past us by herself. He then said while pointing at the woman jogging, “If it were really as bad as the media portrays it, you wouldn’t see that (implying a young white woman wouldn’t be jogging by herself in that area).” Overall, the town seemed calm and everything appeared to be business as usual. One thing I did notice was there was an element of solidarity in the town with some of the paintings and signs that were still up.
It was cool to actually see the area and put things into perspective as well as see the town on the mend. There were no protestors and I did not sense any tensions. It just seemed like everyone had moved forward in solidarity and now were living their everyday lives.