St. Louis-- Betrayal. Anger. Loss. • Black bunting even hangs over the Budweiser sign outside Al Smith's Feasting Fox restaurant, a south St. Louis establishment built by August Busch Sr. back in 1914. • So it is goodbye, Anheuser-Busch. It was a good 132-year run …

But hold on. A-B is not dead. Hardly. The brewery is staying on Pestalozzi Street. The city will remain Budweiser's global headquarters.

Yet it feels very much like a funeral here in A-B's hometown.

Money men may praise the deal for the Belgian company, InBev, to buy the St. Louis-based big boy of brewing for an incomprehensibly huge sack of cash. Shareholders appear swayed. But for many people — even those with no connection to the brewer — there is just a pang in the heart.

"People can't help but be sad," said Marty Luepker, Feasting Fox's owner.

This is the emotional response. The logical side of the brain says both the region's economy and the company can weather this. But the region's gut reaction illustrates the dangers of loving a corporation, of doting on a consumer brand, of feeling like you own something you never did. A-B coaxed us into adoring them, and we responded. We got sappy about a company. (Just like those mid-1990s Bud Light ads, "I love you, man!")

St. Louis is not alone in making these mistakes of the heart. Seattle loved Boeing, and then it moved its executives to Chicago. But perhaps no company is as closely identified with a city as A-B is with St. Louis.

You have the Gateway Arch. You have the baseball Cardinals. And you have the King of Beers.

"It is beyond what you'd expect when you're talking about, say, Tide," said Michael Lewis, a Washington University marketing professor, noting St. Louis' unusually strong connection to A-B is many times greater than Cincinnati's connection to its hometown Procter & Gamble and the iconic Tide detergent.

The sale of A-B was once unthinkable. The brewer is far and away the No. 1 brewer in the United States.

But things can get confusing in this global economy. Inbev was able to buy A-B, in part, because the dollar is cheap, relative to the euro. And money knows no boundaries.

"Beer is heavy and difficult to move. But money isn't," said Harry Schuhmacher, publisher of the industry trade publication Beer Business Daily.

Money is not emotional, either. But beer, especially, is about loyalty and tradition — emotions that might work in St. Louis' favor because so much of A-B's identity is built on its relationship with the city.

"People really identify with beers," said Donald Roussin, a beer historian working on a book about St. Louis breweries. "I can tell you what kind of beer my old man drank. People do not have that connection with other (consumer goods)."

Roussin has been affected before by the shifting and confusing relationships between people and companies. He started work at McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis in 1985. Today, his work badge reads "Boeing," which bought McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

He also considers himself a Ford man.

"But my last car was, I think, assembled in Mexico or made in Canada," Roussin said.

St. Louis has loved and lost before.

Fans of the once-dominant Lemp beer were crushed when it ceased production in 1918. The NFL Cardinals ditched St. Louis for Phoenix in 1987. And the baseball Browns moved to Baltimore in 1954, one year after the baseball Cardinals were bought by the Busch family. And now there are fresh worries about how long the Rams will stay in town.

While A-B is staying, for now, in St. Louis, the change in ownership may change how A-B is seen.

Bob Crowe runs a blog featuring a new photo of St. Louis every day. An attorney by trade, this is his hobby. Earlier this year, Crowe posted a photo to complete the phrase, "When people think of St. Louis, they think of …"

So he created "a crude collage" of a baseball Cardinal perched atop the Arch with an ice-cold can of Budweiser underneath it. That defined St. Louis for him.

But, he said, he will have a different answer next time.

Still the Cardinals.

Still the Arch.

"But maybe I'd have to put in the Mississippi River instead," Crowe said.

The river runs through the region's heart.

And it cannot be moved. It cannot be sold.

Or, at least, it seems that way for now.

tfrankel@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8110