Riverfront Times, January 18, 2023

Hartmann in 1977

FRONT BURNER

FIVE QUESTIONS for State Senate Hopeful Stephen Webber

Previously On

LAST WEEK IN ST. LOUIS

MONDAY, JANUARY 9 Three teens were arrested

a

—

a St. Charles

we hope shuts up

commenters who are convinced crime only happens east of Forest Park. A 52-year-old man was warming his truck when he spotted a trio of teens trying to steal it. He yelled at them; they opened fire. A manhunt ensued that shut down local schools. Surely, we can all agree this is Kim Gardner’s fault?

the

Former

Stephen Webber’s newly announced race for Boone County’s Missouri Senate seat will be closely watched in 2024. Redistricting removed the more rural parts of istrict 19 giving emocrats li e ebber a rare shot at ipping a historically Republican seat from red to blue. The RFT caught up with Webber this week to talk about his campaign and why Democrats winning seats is important for eliminating “extremism” in Missouri. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why are you running for state Senate? We have an extremism problem in this state. It’s getting worse, and it’s not going to go away until we stop it.

What is this “extremism problem” exactly? It’s the MAGA moment, the idea of no real values, that nothing matters except owning the “libs” or your opponent. When I first came into politics in 2008, there were a lot of Republicans that were trying to take away women’s right to choose. That’s not a new thing. But now we’ve evolved to extreme measures like bounty bills, where the state would pay you money to turn someone in. Republicans in 2008 would’ve been like, “Whoa, that’s a little too far.” Everything has gotten so much more extreme in a way that would have been unrecognizable a few years ago.

You mentioned MAGA earlier. Do you think this extremism is a direct result of Donald Trump?

Missouri Republicans have always been the leaders in terms of crazy. … I think Donald Trump has emboldened the worst instincts that were already there for a lot of these folks.

You unsuccessfully tried to flip this seat in 2016. So did Judy Baker in 2020. Why will things will be different in 2024?

Our district is different. In previous elections, Republicans have always lost Boone County but won the rural counties. Now the district is just Boone County. I think there are a lot of people who were taken aback by the extremism, too. They were voting Republican a few years ago, and now they’re voting Democrat.

Why is it important for Republican seats to flip in Missouri?

TUESDAY, JANUARY 10 A St. Louis-born congressman is now chair of the Ways & Means committee, which oversees everything from Social Security to the tax code. U.S. Representative Jason Smith (R-Salem) follows such luminaries as Dan Rostenkowski, Charles Rangel and Paul Ryan. What does this mean for Missouri? Probably nothing; right now Congress can’t manage to do shit. But it sure looks good on a resume.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11 FAA’s incompetence grounds flights across the U.S. Nice to be reminded that the private sector doesn’t have a monopoly on stranding travelers. Also: A 63-year-old in Maryland Heights confesses to killing and decapitating an Alton woman in 2004. Her corpse was later discovered at a rest stop. Police say Mike Clardy had no criminal record — which might be the scariest thing of all.

ESCAPE HATCH

FRIDAY, JANUARY 13 It’s a high of 31 after more than a week of unseasonably warm weather — what a reminder that winter sucks. Why would anyone choose to live in this frigid hellhole? Also, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signs into law a bill that protects people seeking abortion from across state lines, as well as abortion providers with multi-state licenses. It raises a big question: What does Bret Kavanaugh think? Everyone knows it’s unelected lawyers in D.C. who control this stuff.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 14 Nearly all of California is on flood watch; Los Angeles is in a state of emergency. With that, we’re back to being relieved to live in St. Louis: No threat of dying in a massive mudslide

SUNDAY, JANUARY 15 Balmy days are here again! We can’t believe we survived the long, long winter. Also, I-55 becomes chaos in Carondelet after police chase a suspected killer from Franklin County. Timothy Kalter crashed into an exit sign and two fences before his vehicle caught fire and he took off on foot. Police eventually got their guy, who had been on the lam for two weeks after a double homicide in Pacific. Thanks, Kim Gardner.

We ask three St. Louisans what they’re reading, watching or listening to. In the hot seat this week: three beauty specialists.

Kathy Ferrara, founder of K.Ferrara Color Nail Polish

Reading: Conscious Language by Robert Tennyson Stevens “This is the year that I’m upgrading and transforming my life through deliberate words and language! I’m learning just how much power our words have when we choose the words that express our true intent, and I’m loving it!”

Julie Longyear, herbal skincare chemist Listening to: Nils Frahm, Music for Animals and Felt “I discovered Nils Frahm recently, and I really appreciate the understated, textural quality of the music. It’s an amazingly soothing counterpoint to my stressful work life right now — like a sonic cocoon.”

—Monica Obradovic

There’s no way we can be a competitive statewide party if we can’t win select Senate seats. These MAGA extremists are never going to quit, and we have to have people in the legislature who can fight back against this agenda and try to stop it.

LaCrassia Wilderness, owner of Butter Love Skin Watching: White Lotus “It’s so good. I am obsessed with Jennifer Coolidge. Her role as Tanya is top tier. I love the mystery aspect of the show. I never know what’s next.”

Democratic state Representative

Stephen Webber (center in green shirt) tries again. | COURTESY PHOTO

after

shooting at

Cracker Barrel

which

all

Post-Dispatch

THURSDAY, JANUARY 12 Lisa Marie Presley has died, and with her, our last chance to find out what really went on in Michael Jackson’s marital bed

YOU

SERIOUS?

OF

Brick Watch

Date and time of sighting: January 11, 12:12 p.m.

Location: on the east side of the crumbling Lemp Brewery

Where’d those bricks come from? They used to be attached to the building, under that tarp.

Likelihood of a more calamitous collapse: very high, seeing as how it’s happened before

Do tarps keep bricks in place? Stay tuned to find out!

SO ST. LOUIS

Neighborhood Watch

An anonymous story about something that could only happen in the Gateway City

When you live in the City of St. Louis, one tends to find common ground with neighbors you might not have much else in common with because you have shared concerns around security. In my case, the neighbor behind me is really intense and may run out with a bat or a gun if he sees trouble. We didn’t get off to a good start when I moved in, and we’ve had a few issues since, but we’ve

settled into a dynamic of mutual respect and cooperation.

Since my driveway is next to his house, he took it as a personal affront that someone stole my car. I know he’s going to be extra vigilant, so when I agreed to let a friend drive my car to work the graveyard shift, I was sure to send a photo of the friend to the neighbor. He called and said, “Thanks for sending me that, brother. I don’t wanna shoot anyone that doesn’t need to be shot.”

—A contract employee in Kim Gardner’s office allegedly said this to a former member of the circuit attorney’s staff, Rebecca Goetz, who is suing for racial discrimination. See more on pg. 9.

They Shoot White Elephants, Don’t They?

St. Louis cannot save its downtown by betting on dead skyscrapers

BY RAY HARTMANN

The largest o ce building in Missouri doubles as its most useless. It is the vacant . million square foot, story AT T Tower at 0 Chestnut Street in downtown St. Louis.

Occupancy zero. Potential far, far less than zero.

The year old monument to myopia was added last year to the National Register of Historic Plac es. In related news from 8 , the Iran Contra scandal was added to the National Register of Political Scandals, and Big Hair made it to the National Register of Fads.

But the problem with the once glitzy former home to a phone company has nothing to do with a past that was mediocre at best. It has everything to do with a future that looms far worse than that.

Left to the cruel realities of to day’s downtown St. Louis, even if redeveloped this building will fail, miserably. It will fail because it’s oversized and obsolete. In its hey day, it was unremarkable. Now, in its death throes, it is unusable.

nderstand that Missouri’s larg est o ce building has stood va cant since 20 for a good reason There is no market for it. It would have been empty much longer than that, but one surviving itera tion or another of the telephone company’s bureaucracy remained scattered on its mostly empty oors for a decade.

I’ll take a wild guess that the new St. Louis based developer Advantes Development Group would beg to differ. That’s the company that the Business Journal reported last week as having exciting plans for the building, which it says it will finish purchasing early next year.

Its vision is something called “The Beacon on Chestnut, a mixed use vertical city’ with 0 apart ments, modern o ce space, retail and a 00 room hotel, along with shared amenities for use by build ing tenants.” Best of luck to them. How they proceed is their business.

But here’s the rub Like so many developments, this one would re quire staggering amounts of pub lic investment in the form of tax credits, tax abatements and who knows what else in the form of taxpayer assistance. That’s when it becomes everyone else’s business.

In that regard, the former AT T Tower has shown considerable promise to generate activity. It has already garnered some dubious historic tax credits and all manner of corporate welfare — in turn in vigorating the city’s colony of con sultants and contractors for whom such handouts are mother’s milk.

The obedient local media is all in. Why, resuscitating this wondrous building will reinvent downtown in ways that can only be described as transformational, cathartic, in novative, dynamic, restorative, re vitalizing and metamorphic. Apol ogies to Greater St. Louis Inc. if I’ve left something out.

Never mind that the building contains virtually no parking just a small number of basement spaces . What prospective city resident or hotel guest or o ce worker or shopper wouldn’t love to walk two or three blocks every night to get home or to their room or to their car

It’s not as if downtown has a crime problem, for goodness’ sake. And thankfully, St. Louis alone came out of the pandemic with no alteration whatsoever to compa nies’ use of downtown o ce space.

No, but seriously, folks. What part of “it has virtually no inter nal parking” does everyone not understand Smart people don’t construct tall buildings with no full oors of parking anymore. They just don’t.

Smart people also don’t con struct story skyscrapers in dy ing downtowns. And if ours isn’t a dying downtown, it’ll do until one gets here.

I have no idea how many hun dreds of millions of public subsi dies might be needed to clear the real world hurdles presented by a story structure without sig nificant parking and with an at

mosphere and amenities that are just so … ’80s. Certainly billion would get it done.

nsubsidized is another matter. Let’s be clear The only way a proj ect like this would have a prayer of success would be achieved through accessing massive amounts of found money to offset the realities of the marketplace. ou know, the one that’s been screaming “worth less” at the AT T Tower since 20 and before.

ou want mixed uses Here’s your mixed uses Imagine com bining a failed o ce building with a failed hotel and a failed residential building — all serviced by failed retail space — connected gloriously under one failed roof

This brings us to the part of the story that has escaped St. Louis’ corporate and political leadership, such as it is, for decades. It’s some thing called “opportunity cost.”

Rather than ask, “How can we do this with public resources ” re garding dreamy and aspirational proposals like the one at hand, a far more constructive question to pose would read, “What else might we accomplish with those same re sources invested in something less dreamy and aspirational ”

Imagine if the same ungodly investment contemplated for this

building’s . million square feet of vertical space were instead invested in the creation of . million square feet of horizontal space downtown. We’re talking something like acres, right Why shoehorn all the incentives into one failed vertical building rather than spread them out over several blocks horizontally down town In a horizontal scenario, downtown might have blocks and blocks of smaller buildings revi talized — at a tiny fraction of what skyscraper overhauls cost — and more safely.

Despite all that, I’ll admit, as a longtime preservationist, I like quixotic stuff. Were it absolutely mandatory to pour zillions of tax credits and incentives into a failed skyscraper, I could be sold on try ing it with St. Louis’ second largest o ce building, the .2 million square foot Railway Exchange Building at Olive Street.

nlike the AT T Tower, it’s actu ally historic for more than having been designed by a great archi tect, Gyo Obata. I know that is a criterion for people living in the preservation bubble, but for less intellectual muggles like myself, having the Railway Exchange’s credentials as a genuine example of early 20th century American architecture — as in being con structed in — beats name dropping every time.

Still, the Railway Exchange Build ing has been troubled for decades. It isn’t going to defy reality and succeed as some multi use thing no one has thought of. It would take an extraordinary amount of creativity and investment to find the right answer. That said, at age 0 , it deserves every last benefit of the doubt.

By contrast, the former One Bell South is not historic by any com monsense definition of the term. Its chief attribute is that it could be acquired at a bargain base ment price and contorted into re ceiving massive public benefits.

Far be it from me to advocate tearing down someone’s else build ing. But if the only alternative is to put St. Louis’ time and treasure into backing a certain loser, well, it doesn’t sound so bad. n

Rather than ask, “How can we do this with public resources?” about proposals like AT&T Tower, why not ask, “What else might we accomplish with those same resources invested in something less dreamy and aspirational?”

Ray Hartmann founded the Riverfront Times in 1977. Contact him at rhartmann1952@ gmail.com or catch him at 7 p.m. on Thursdays on Nine PBS.

Former Staffer Sues Kim Gardner’s Office

Rebecca Goetz says she experienced racial discrimination and was called a “slave owner” before being fired

Written by RYAN KRULL

Aformer diversion specialist at the St. Louis O ce of the Circuit Attorney is suing her former boss, Kim Gardner, alleging workplace discrimination.

Rebecca Goetz was hired by the Circuit Attorney’s O ce, or CAO, in October 2021 to work for its diversion program, which provides individuals accused of crimes the opportunity to avoid convictions by completing work, educational or treatment programs.

According to the lawsuit filed January 10 in federal court, Goetz, who is white, faced racial discrimination and then was fired when she spoke up about it. In the suit filed by St. Louis based attorneys Bevis Schock and Erich Vieth, she alleges civil rights violations that include retaliation based on her race and “discharge” based on her race, as well as a conspiracy claim.

A CAO spokesperson said in a statement they do not “provide public information on pending litigation regarding personnel matters other than to say that we deny that the O ce engaged in any wrongful conduct and we intend to defend this action vigorously.”

Much of Goetz’s lawsuit centers on interactions between Goetz and other CAO staff during a May 19, 2022, meeting with Gardner and four other CAO staff members.

According to the lawsuit, the meeting was about a diversion

program client who had spoken to a Normandy school group during a field trip to the courthouse organized in part by Goetz, as well as about a client who hadn’t paid court costs they were obligated to pay.

A video of students mocking the diversion program client’s presentation had made its way to Gardner, who apparently said that this client was “not on track” to graduate the program. The lawsuit says that Goetz wrote an email in which she said she felt like the client was being unfairly punished for his poor public speaking skills, but that he was on track to get a job with a trucking company.

According to the lawsuit, Gardner told Goetz: “I prefer that you don’t write things out — that you just come talk to me.”

A few weeks after the field trip, on May 19, the staffers met with Gardner — and the meeting became racially charged. One of those present was Victor Martin, who according to Goetz’s attorney is a CAO contract employee with a “major role” in the diversion program. According to the statement, “Martin is on parole and is listed on the Missouri Department of Corrections Offender Search website as having an ‘Active Sentence’ of ‘Murder 1st Degree.’’’

According to the lawsuit, as the group discussed the client who owed program fees, “Martin stated that he was bothered that Goetz kept track of the money that participants owed.”

Martin allegedly told Goetz,

“You’re not Black. You’re just a slave owner. That’s all you are. You’re a slave owner. I’m Black. You’re not. You will never help these participants.”

Also at the meeting, the lawsuit alleges that Martin repeatedly said, “All you do is act like slave owners.”

According to the lawsuit, Gardner “did not stop Martin from making these accusations toward [Goetz] or admonish him.”

According to the lawsuit, after the meeting grew heated, Gardner said, “Obviously, there is some racial tension. I’m going to call in Mr. Waheed. He’s used to addressing these types of situations. “

Khatib Waheed has been a diversion manager for the o ce since 2017. According to the lawsuit, Waheed told Goetz: “Becky, let me explain about our history

… the o ce must protect Gardner because she is a Black elected woman with a new agenda and people who don’t like it.”

According to the suit, “Waheed told [Goetz]: ‘White people created racism. They put all the guns and drugs into Black and Hispanic communities and therefore .... racism.’”

According to the lawsuit, Goetz responded: “I understand. I agree with you regarding the poor communities, but I don’t understand why the color of my skin affects this program and what [Martin] is saying.”

In response to this, the lawsuit says, Waheed told Goetz: “This is a perfect example of micro-aggression as racism.”

The suit goes on to say that CAO staff member Reddit Hudson spoke up on behalf of Goetz, saying, “Racism is about intent and that [Goetz] had no bad intent.”

According to the suit, Waheed replied, “You know that what you just said is a perfect form of a microaggression.”

The following day, the lawsuit says, Goetz was put on administrative leave.

The lawsuit says that Goetz was then placed under investigation for texts she had sent to others in the o ce in which she complained of the way she’d been treated. In the texts she said she was upset about her treatment, that she felt she might get fired and that she was considering contacting an attorney if that happened.

Goetz was fired on May 2 .

Goetz’s lawsuit contends that she was fired for “no lawful reasons” and that her text messages with colleagues were “protected conduct.”

Goetz previously filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, her lawyers say, and was granted the right to sue in federal court. She is seeking compensatory damages, punitive damages and attorney’s fees.

Employment lawsuits based on racial discrimination filed by white people have some history of success in St. Louis courts. In 2015, a white former professor at Harris-Stowe State University was awarded $5 million when a jury found that the historically Black college had discriminated against her based on race. n

A former sta er says she faced racial discrimination in Kim Gardner’s o ce. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI

Goetz’s lawsuit contends that she was fired for “no lawful reasons” and that her text messages with colleagues were “protected conduct.”

Death-Row Inmate’s Story Serves as Cautionary Tale

Written by MONICA OBRADOVIC

Demetrius Evans knew one thing after he pointed a gun at a police officer’s head — that what he did next would change his entire life.

An officer had just found him cowering behind a trash can after Evans, 27 at the time, tried to evade police in a vehicle chase. He’d been “on the run” for nine months after missing a court hearing. With his criminal history and the police on his tail, he feared he’d have to spend the rest of his life in prison.

He started to cry as the officer pointed his gun and yelled, “Put your hands on the wall!” Evans complied, but when the officer reached to return his gun to its holster, Evans jumped to steal the officer’s weapon. He pointed it at the officer’s head as a police dog bit at his ankles.

Three more police officers arrived. Evans remembers them saying, “Drop it! You’re a dead man!”

At that moment, Evans weighed what to do next. He was “already prepared to die,” Evans recalls in an interview 26 years later. To him, death was preferable to life in prison, and he thought that killing or threatening to kill that officer would be the ticket out.

But then he thought of his unborn daughter, who was due in six months.

“‘I want to see my child,’” Evans recalls thinking. “‘I don’t want her to be like me and not know her father.’”

So Evans dropped the gun and took a beating from the police. He ended up with a 10-year prison sentence but was released in 2002.

Ever since then, Evans has devoted his life to mentoring at-risk youth. In 2017, he founded Sudden Impact I.C.U., a nonprofit providing resources for at-risk youth to help turn their lives around.

More recently, Evans has turned to teaching kids at the St. Louis County Juvenile Detention Center about how to

make the right choices during moments of high stress. He uses his own life as an example — and also the life of Kevin Johnson.

Missouri executed Johnson on November 29 for the murder of officer William McEntee in Kirkwood. Like Evans, Johnson was wanted by police on the day of his crime. On July 5, 2005, Johnson’s 12-year-old brother Joseph “Bam Bam” Long died during a police search for Johnson. Johnson blamed McEntee for his brother’s death and killed him a couple hours later.

Whether Johnson’s murder of McEntee was spontaneous or premeditated was a point of debate during his trials, but Johnson always claimed he acted on impulse. In an interview before his execution, Johnson said he wasn’t thinking, that he “didn’t even know why the shooting happened.”

Still alive and free today, Evans knows how close he was to ending up like Johnson. Before Johnson died, Evans and Johnson’s former mentor, Pamela Stanfield, got his permission to use his life story as a cautionary tale for youth at the St. Louis County Juvenile Detention Center on what happens if you don’t think before you act.

“Me thinking is what has me here speaking out today,” Evans says. “They [the police] had the right to put holes in me, but because I dropped the gun and took the whopping, I’m here talking to the kids now.”

Stanfield’s relationship with Johnson began after his arrest in 2005. She met Johnson when she was his school principal at Westchester Elementary in Kirkwood, but their friendship didn’t develop until Johnson was 19 and locked up at the St. Louis County Jail for McEntee’s murder. Stanfield visited Johnson and helped him publish two books about his early life and time in prison. There is a third book on the way about his final days.

Stanfield and Evans started teaching

their program, called Split Second Decisions, three months ago. Before Johnson died, Stanfield would keep the kids in the group up to date on all the legal moves of Johnson’s case, and she described what it was like to witness his execution.

“You just pray that it’s real for them, because it could change their lives,” Stanfield says.

The kids wanted to hear Johnson’s story, Stanfield says, and they wanted to hear his words.

As an older white woman, Stanfield admits her words may not hold much power for male teenagers at the juvenile detention center, especially Black male teens. So Stanfield read Johnson’s words to the kids from emails he sent her. Johnson wrote of his regret and how he’d do “a lot of things differently.”

“I would choose not to carry a gun,” Johnson wrote. “That’s first because as you’ve probably heard before ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people.’ … Since being incarcerated, I’ve learned to think things out before I act or react.”

Having a male voice of wisdom is something Evans says he wished he had growing up.

Evans spent a large chunk of his childhood in the St. Louis County Juvenile Detention Center. At age seven, he started to run away from home (once, in an attempt to find his father). He got in trouble for stealing from grocery stores and taking cash from gas station registers.

By the age of 10, Evans says he’d been in the county’s juvenile detention center 22 times.

From ages 7 to 10, Evans says he was locked up with Kevin Johnson’s father, Kevin Johnson Sr., who was about five years older than Evans and protected him. “He taught me how to fight up in there,” Evans says.

Now 53, Evans puts most of his energy into helping youth. After the end of his final incarceration in 2002, he started sneaking into the county’s juvenile deten-

tion center, with the help of officers who knew him, to mentor kids. His unofficial volunteer role eventually turned legit. He’s now a deputy juvenile detention officer.

The Split Second Decisions program he co-teaches with Stanfield has apparently already made a difference. In written statements provided by Stanfield, the kids shared what they learned from Evans and Johnson.

“Talking about Kevin has made me wanna think before I do something, or take time in your head to think like, ‘If I do this, what’s gonna happen to me or to my family and friends,’” wrote one 15 year old.

“It’s meant a lot to me and I need to stop being impulsive and think before I do something,” wrote a 16 year old. “It’s hard for me to control my anger. This makes me want to keep working.”

“I’m trying to find myself,” a 17 year old wrote. “This lesson done taught me a lot. I want to better myself sometime. I don’t think. But this lesson made me think about a lot of stuff.”

Another teen said Johnson’s story helped him look at life “from a different view.”

“I’m 18 years old and had my first born son at 17,” he wrote. “Hearing [Johnson’s] story is sad and scary because he had a family he had to leave. Everyday, I think about my son and how I’m not able to be with him and it hurts me, it really does. ... This is not my life. Sometimes I wanna give up but I can’t. My life is in God’s hands. Everything I do now is for my son.”

Weeks after Johnson’s death, Stanfield says “it’s not real” to her yet.

She knows Johnson is gone. She remembers the blur of his funeral, his body in a casket — the slight smile on Johnson’s face, how she touched his shoulder. Still, the reality of Johnson’s death has yet to fully set it in, she says. It was normal for them to write to each other every few weeks, so gaps in their communication are not abnormal.

“It probably won’t register until all of a sudden my brain goes, ‘You haven’t heard from Kevin in forever,’” Stanfield says.

In a way, Johnson lives on in his words. Stanfield still has his writings from the last 97 days of his life. Johnson tried to write about his final days in diary-like entries.

Stanfield has yet to assemble all of his final passages into a book, but she noticed one passage in which Johnson wrote about a conversation the two had about guns.

“‘How can you tell a kid in a rough neighborhood to put down their gun when everyone else has one?’” Stanfield asked Johnson in the passage. Johnson wrote that he struggled to come up with an answer. He wrestled with the guilt of his brother’s death — and regret for owning a gun.

After that conversation, Johnson wrote he “hoped like hell that the youth out there could learn from my story and leave the guns where they found them so that they could live long prosperous lives.” n

A split-second decision ruined Kevin Johnson’s life. Now Demetrius Evans shares the story with kids to help them avoid the same fate

Demetrius Evans teaches juvenile detainees about making better choices. | COURTESY PHOTO

Missouri Judges Reject Bizarre Sex-Scandal Settlement

A Missouri woman was to be awarded $5.2 million from Geico a er she contracted HPV in a man’s car — before the Missouri Supreme Court struck it down

Written by SARAH FENSKE

Remember when a Missouri woman managed to win $5.2 million after contracting HPV from her own boyfriend — and because she was supposedly infected while having sex in his car, it wasn’t him, but his insurance company, Geico, that had to pay up? Remember how it seemed impossible that a legal judgment like that could stand?

Turns out it was impossible: The Missouri Supreme Court has struck down the appellate court ruling upholding the award, and the woman and her diseasespreading beau are now back to square one. And by square one, we mean the trial court in Kansas City.

The state’s highest court issued its unanimous ruling last week, and in it, the justices ordered an abrupt reversal to the legal chain of events that got us to all those viral stories about the woman who somehow won $5.2 million for getting a sexually transmitted infection in a car.

In short, the justices found that the Jackson County Circuit Court had failed to give Geico the 30 days then prescribed by Missouri law to intervene in the case between the anonymous woman (known only as M.O. in court filings) and her boyfriend

(known only as M.B.).

A little reminder on how we got to this point: M.O. had submitted a claim against M.B.’s auto insurance, but Geico declined to pay it. So the couple agreed to go into arbitration — and they also agreed that she’d only go after Geico, not her boyfriend (pretty convenient!). Then the couple somehow convinced the arbitrator that M.O. deserved $5.2 million for contracting an infection endured by an estimated 80 percent of sexually active Americans.

Remember who was on the hook? The party that wasn’t in the room — Geico. When the Jackson County judge affirmed the award, that was enough for the Missouri Court of Appeals, which decreed Geico should pay up.

Not the Missouri Supreme Court. In its ruling, it all comes down to what should have happened after arbitration — which should have been Geico making its case before a judge (and, likely, arguing how ridiculous the whole thing was). Within 25 days of the arbitration award being filed in court, Geico filed a motion to get involved. And so rather than confirming the arbitration award, the justices say, the Jackson County judge should have allowed the insurer’s intervention.

The four-page ruling keeps things simple: “GEICO was statutorily entitled to intervene in the pending lawsuit between M.O. and M.B. because GEICO filed the motion to intervene, prior to entry of judgment, and within the 30 days of notice. Because GEICO was not afforded the opportunity to intervene before judgment was entered, the circuit court’s judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded.” In short: back to Jackson County to do it right.

So for everyone who wondered whether this whole thing was a scam, and if so whether they could somehow sue their boyfriend and make his auto insurer pay them millions, the answer is clear: not in Missouri.

Maybe try your luck in Iowa? n

Sex in a car (not this car) led to a $5.2 million settlement with Geico. | FLICKR / PASA

MISSOURILAND

A New Perspective

As City Museum turns 25, changes are afoot

Photos by SARAH LOVETT Words by ROSALIND EARLY

ity Museum turned 25 last year, and plenty is afoot at one of St. Louis’ most cherished institutions. During the cold days of December, a pipe burst. But in happier news,

the museum also acquired terra cotta pieces from Chicago’s Schiller Theater Building, which was razed in 1961. The theater was designed by renowned architects Louis Sullivan and Danker Adler. The museum already has pieces from the theater in its Architecture Hall and will be using some of the new pieces to create an archway to greet folks as they approach the ticket counter.

But the biggest news is that Bob Cassilly’s loft above the City Museum went on sale: It is now possible to live above the City Museum. Cassilly imagined much of the city museum and personally designed his loft, which includes historic windows, a sculptural bidet, and the odd curving shapes and hidden surprises one expects at the City Museum.

Keep keeping us weird, City Museum. n

Bob Cassilly’s unique lo could be yours. | REALTOR.COM / BENJAMIN SCHERLISS PHOTOGRAPHY

Dystopian Classroom

Nearly one-third of Hazelwood students are now taught by virtual classroom teachers on screens instead of in person. But the district’s new $8.2 million virtual teaching program gambles on a Wall Street darling with a checkered track record

By Mike Fitzgerald

This past August, as students across the metro area returned to school, pupils in one of St. Louis County’s most stressedout school districts found themselves at the center of a big experiment.

Even as the pandemic-related shift to virtual education has receded across the U.S., Hazelwood School District has attempted to solve a teacher shortage by doubling down on screens and remote learning.

More than 4,800 Hazelwood students, nearly one-third of the district’s pupils, have been assigned to classes where they’re in person, but instead of having a teacher in the classroom, they have an aide (or, in some cases, a Kelly Services temp) to maintain discipline. The actual teacher might be hundreds of miles away, conducting the class remotely on a screen.

It’s an experiment whose outcome is far from known but which holds important implications not just for the middle school and high school students in these classes but for practically every school district in the St. Louis region and beyond.

It centers on this question: By spending millions of extra dollars per year on a for profit provider of real time or “synchronous” virtual teachers, can a school district like Hazelwood compensate for an unprecedented shortage of in-person teachers — a shortage with no end in sight?

It’s an expensive, high-stakes gamble. The for profit company providing the virtual instruction has set up a remote learning system far more expensive than normal classroom teachers — nearly $80,000 more per classroom than the salary and benefits package of the average Hazelwood teacher. Yet Wall Street has bet big on its model.

The experiment is underway with virtually no publicity at a time of extreme challenges for Hazelwood.

The district is already facing a burgeoning crisis over the discovery of radioactive waste that has led to the indefinite closure of one elementary school. A recent district request for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to test all Hazelwood school facilities could result in more school closures — a major, unbudgeted problem for a district where tax revenues are at and reserves are dwindling.

Another potential risk that must be taken into account: a major push for remote learning could widen educational disparities by race — a key concern for Hazelwood, where 80 percent of the students are Black and more than 60 percent qualify for free- and

reduced-priced meals.

Tyra Williams, a Hazelwood East junior, is taking Spanish through a virtual teacher. She gives the class a thumbs down.

“I feel it’s, like, messy,” Williams says. “ ou can never get your stuff in. Because we don’t have a real teacher.”

Williams says she’s complained to her mom.

“She says, Try your best,’” Williams says. “I just try as best I can. But if you don’t know something there’s nothing you can really do.”

Hazelwood’s big push for virtual teaching began, at least formally, in early June.

That’s when school administrators came to grips with a dose of bad news: There were 83 teacher vacancies in the district’s high schools and middle schools. More than half of these vacancies — 44 — were in middle school math, science and English, according to a district memo provided to the board of education at its July 19 meeting.

What to do?

Enter Stride Learning Resources of Herndon, Virginia.

In August, Stride signed a deal with the district to provide 50 virtual teachers for the 2022-23 school year.

The deal’s annual cost: more than $8 million — or about $5 million more than if the district were to hire traditional in-person teachers, according to a school district internal analysis.

Hazelwood Communications Director Jordyn Elston disputes the $8.2 million price tag of the Stride plan, but declines to break down the costs or state what the district considered the Stride program’s true cost, either per classroom or overall.

In an email to the RFT, Elston says it is “untrue that the current cost is $8.2 million as that would assume all costs are at the maximum estimates plus some. It is also untrue that no information was disclosed to the Board. All sta ng is approved annually by the Board as part of our operational budget.”

Certain things are important to know about Stride.

Stride is what is known as an EMO, or education management organization. It is the biggest EMO in the nation.

Stride’s services are not cheap. It costs the Hazelwood School District up to $160,000 for each classroom taught by virtual Stride teachers, who, while certified as Missouri teachers, may live in other states.

That’s while the average annual Hazelwood teacher salary is $63,000.

With eight Stride-taught classrooms at Hazelwood East, the school district plans to spend almost $1.3 million providing virtual teaching at Hazelwood East alone.

The costs break down to about $93,500 for Stride, plus $125 per student per Stride semester course license, and between $35,000 and 0,000 for each room’s “in class” facilitator, with the higher figure if the facilitators are hired through Kelly Services, the temp agency. The facilitators are not hired or supervised by Stride, but their duties include helping answer student questions about online lessons, as well as taking attendance and making sure students stay off their phones and remain in class.

Another thing to know about Stride is that it is one of the nation’s largest and oldest providers of K-12 online instruction, with about 174,000 students combined in its general education and career learning programs. It has provided education services to more than 2 million online students over the past 20 years, according to its latest investor guidance.

It is a for profit, publicly traded company that is experiencing rapid growth. The company describes its mission as helping “learners of all ages reach their full potential through inspired teaching and personalized learning. We do this by providing clear pathways for learners to expand their skills, explore their options, and change their lives.”

Its rising fortunes have occurred during a time when it has aggressively expanded its brand by spending millions of dollars nationwide on political donations and lobbying expenditures in both Congress and state legislatures nationwide. Over the past two years, the company has spent

$2.5 million lobbying lawmakers, according to Open Secrets, a nonpartisan database of lobbying and campaign expenditures.

Wall Street loves the company, in large part because its timing could hardly be better. At the end of the 202 fiscal year, Stride posted revenues of $1.69 billion — a 9.8 percent increase over the year before. James Rhyu, the company’s CEO, made nearly $7.7 million in salary and bonuses for 2022. (A Stride spokesman notes that the package includes $5.1 million in performance and timebased stock awards that “may, or may not be paid out.”)

Some teachers trying to reach Hazelwood pupils through Stride’s network of screens have had a less glowing assessment.

Sheila Soleau worked for Stride for a month, teaching seventhgrade math at a Hazelwood middle school until her termination in late September under contentious circumstances.

A big problem was the lack of organization, says Soleau, who taught from her home in Huntington Beach, California.

“The thing is, we were given no information about the schools,” she says. “I didn’t even know the name of the school. It was so disorganized.”

For the first two weeks of the school year, she had no students, Soleau says.

“I’d ask my supervisor, ‘Where are all the students?” Soleau recalls. “She’d say, ‘We don’t know.’”

But only after Soleau received her classes of students did the real problems begin.

“These kids needed some kind of structure,” she says. “They wouldn’t even do the problems with me. I’d open up a quiz and do a quiz with them. ‘C’mon, you guys, let’s do it together.’”

Soleau says she’d write out the math problems, but “they wouldn’t even do it. Some of those kids all had zeroes because they wouldn’t even do one thing.”

An in-class facilitator was assigned to Soleau’s classroom, but she wasn’t much help.

“She said they wouldn’t listen to her, so she gave up.”

Asked if the model Stride is deploying in Hazelwood has ever worked elsewhere, Senior Vice President Mike Kraft responded, “Yes, this model has been deployed at various districts. Note however, we do not share specific customer information.”

Stride — and the company it was formerly known as, K12 Inc. — has been making headlines for the past six years, but too often for the wrong reasons. It’s left a well-documented trail of angry parents, bitter lawsuits and hefty legal bills, controversies that Hazelwood School District Board of Education members apparently were never told about when they voted to hire the company back in early August, according to both meeting minutes and people with knowledge of board discussions.

In September 2020, technical glitches and cyberattacks plagued a $15 million, no-bid deal that K12 had shortly before agreed to with the Miami-Dade County Public School District in Florida, the nation’s fourth-largest school district with 270,000 students.

The Miami-Dade deal ended abruptly when the district school board voted to sever ties with K12 only two weeks after the new school year began — in large part because the K12 platform became an easy target for a series of cyberattacks, including one launched by a 16-year-old Miami-Dade student.

Two months after the MiamiDade County debacle, K12 Inc. changed its name to Stride.

The year before, in 2019, Georgia Cyber Academy — the Peach State’s largest charter school — fired K 2 after it was rocked by a legal battle with the corporation that used to operate it. In an unusually bitter public divorce between the online school and K12, accusations of questionable business practices ew on social media and in court documents, while state education o cials decried

the school’s unacceptably low student test scores.

The public criticism grew especially harsh when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the school paid K12 $54 million — more than half the school’s allotment of federal and state dollars — in fiscal year 20 alone.

And in 2016, K12 Inc., which at the time operated taxpayer-funded online charter schools throughout California, reached a $168.5 million settlement with the state over claims it manipulated attendance records and overstated the academic progress of students, according to the Associated Press K12 executives at the time admitted no wrongdoing.

Now known as Stride, the company says the $168 million number is wrong, and that it only agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle an investigation by the California Department of Justice that alleged misreporting of attendance at California Virtual Academy schools, according to Stride spokesman Ken Schwartz.

“Stride K12 agreed to pay $6 million to defray the cost to taxpayers for the Attorney General’s expenses related to its investigation of Stride K12 as part of an industry wide probe of for profit virtual schools,” Schwartz writes. “The remaining $160 million difference between these two figures is associated with ‘balanced budget’ credits the Attorney General mischaracterized as debt relief.”

The AP reported K12 agreed to expunge about $160 million in credits it had issued to the California Virtual Academies since 2005 that had helped the schools cover the cost of the contracts they hold with the company.

No record exists to show the Hazelwood Board of Education knew of, let alone discussed, Stride’s problematic past. Minutes of Hazelwood school board meetings before the August 2 vote to hire Stride show no debate or discussion about the Stride contract.

Betsy Rachel, the board president, confirms the board was not informed about Stride’s past problems. “I think you can say I don’t recall it,” Rachel says.

Nettie Collins-Hart, the Hazelwood school superintendent, declined multiple requests for an interview.

Schwartz, the Stride spokesman, declined to state if Stride informed the school board of past problems.

But in emailed responses to the RFT’s questions, Schwartz writes that Stride/K12’s history of controversies in other states “is a matter of public record and available for all partners we engage. The team also provides additional details on any aspect of Stride K12’s operation as required.”

Indeed, Stride wasn’t hiding its past. It provided three references as part of its bid for the Hazelwood work. One was Atlanta; the second, incredibly, was MiamiDade, where its contract had been terminated just two weeks into the 2020 school year.

The third was the Grandview R-II school district in Missouri, which supervises the Missouri Virtual Academy referenced by Elston.

Yet as the RFT previously reported, the work has not come without controversy. Stride’s contract with Grandview was inked after the district superintendent retired and then joined the company as a consultant. The cash-strapped district used Stride as the basis of a profit making model that elicited students around the state to sign up for online classes. And as the RFT’s Eric Berger reported, experts concluded the Stride-run online academy showed “disastrous” results, with only 56 percent of pupils passing their courses in the 2019-2020 school year.

Rachel declined to answer questions about whether the Hazelwood administration should’ve informed the board of Stride’s past problems or whether it would have made a difference in the board’s vote in August.

“I’m not at liberty to give a comment on that,” Rachel says.

The district’s other six board members did not return calls and emails seeking comment.

A Stride teacher at North Middle School in Hazelwood le a er a month. | GOOGLE MAPS

The story of how Stride, despite its checkered history, ended up providing virtual teaching services at an average cost of more than $160,000 per classroom offers useful lessons for all Missouri school districts.

After all, practically every school district in the state is experiencing problems recruiting and keeping teachers — a trend that some experts believe will grow worse in the years ahead as fewer young people enter the teaching profession and more mid-career professionals quit or retire.

Many education professionals use the word “crisis” to describe Missouri’s situation, and it’s hard to argue with that description. More than one-fourth of Missouri school districts, the majority in rural areas, are on a four-day school week because of the teacher shortage.

The latest to join that list is the Independence School District, which voted in December to start a four-day school week beginning in the 2023-2024 school year. The 14,000-student district took this step as a way to recruit and retain staff amid an ongoing shortage of teachers.

The problem is nationwide and getting worse.

In July, the American Federation of Teachers, one of America’s largest teacher unions, released a report that showed widespread and growing dissatisfaction among members with their profession.

A survey of AFT members shows a 34-point rise in job dissatisfaction since the start of the pandemic, from 45 to 79 percent. And since the school shootings in Uvalde, Texas, “educators increasingly fear the scourge of gun violence in their schools, with nearly half of all members concerned about a mass shooting.”

Titled “Under Siege: The Outlook of AFT Members,” the report finds “workload, compensation, conditions, disruptions and support as variables changing educators’ work lives for the worse. Nearly 9 out of 10 respondents say schools have become too politicized, following a year of political attacks on teachers waged by politicians stoking culture wars and banning books for personal gain.”

What’s more, 40 percent of AFT members across all divisions said “they may leave the job in the next two years, and three-quarters of teachers say they would not recommend their profession to others.”

Hazelwood isn’t immune to

those trends, and people familiar with the district suggest other, more unique reasons for its teacher shortage as well. Some stakeholders describe a school district run in a top-down, authoritarian style, as well as a district where building principals move around often, creating environments where teachers, especially newer ones, feel intimidated by supervisors and believe they have little control over their careers and classrooms.

Connie Steinmetz, president of the Hazelwood National Education Association chapter, blamed

members and administrators knew that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suspected that radioactive waste dating back from the earliest days of the Manhattan Project had emanated from nearby Coldwater Creek and contaminated Jana’s soil.

But school o cials sat on this information and de ected efforts by members of the public to find out the truth.

Finally, a Missouri Coalition for the Environment staff member filed a federal Freedom of Information Act request that, over the summer, revealed the Army

A cardboard “treasure chest” full of mechanical pencils and ballpoint pens had just arrived from Amazon. Students could earn tickets for these prizes by sitting and working quietly, having their headsets on, answering questions and logging in on time, according to the email Caise wrote from her home in San Antonio, Texas.

“Any time they do anything remotely positive or follow directions, give them a ticket,” Caise wrote. “Once we get command of the classroom, things will be better for all of us. It takes us working together to show the students we mean business.”

Caise urged her in-class partner to make sure students focus during class.

Hazelwood’s teacher shortage on the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The pandemic wore people out,” she says. “They had to turn on a dime to teach in a completely different way. … Teaching is tough anyway, right? But that pandemic year was pretty tough on people.”

Elston, the district spokesperson, placed most of the blame on “the nationwide shortage” that “has exacerbated the HSD teacher shortage. Based on our teacher resignation/retirement data, the majority of HSD teachers who resign report positive feelings toward the district.”

Meanwhile, the school district continues to explore a range of options to recruit and retain teachers. It plans to spend more than $270,000 on a program to mentor young high school teachers. The district has also taken steps to set up a partnership with a teachers college in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, district documents show.

But those recruitment efforts could be undercut by another crisis facing the district that is consuming district resources and administrator and school board attention: the discovery of radioactive waste on the grounds of Jana Elementary School, which the school district ordered closed in October.

For six years, school board

Corps’ suspicions about Jana.

That led a private company working for law firms representing plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit to conduct a series of tests that revealed what they believed to be dangerous levels of radioactive particles in the soil surrounding Jana and inside the building. In mid-October the school district ordered Jana closed with its nearly 00 students bussed to five nearby grade schools.

Meanwhile, the school board has requested that the Army Corps test Hazelwood school buildings and properties — or nearly 30 sites. The Army Corps has not yet responded to this request.

How is Hazelwood’s arrangement with Stride working out? Interviews with district stakeholders indicate one of the biggest problems so far has been keeping the attention of students in virtual classrooms and maintaining classroom discipline.

On September 13, Stride virtual teacher Kimberly Caise sent an email to her in-class facilitator about efforts to incentivize good conduct among the students in the North Middle School sixthgrade math class that Caise taught at the time, according to a cache of documents the RFT obtained under the Missouri Sunshine Act.

“If I am addressing a student for not paying attention please walk up behind them and let them know you are there and you are watching them,” Caise wrote. “If we double team them I think a lot of the nonsense will stop. I will continue to email and call parents, but I don’t want to inundate the parents as they will quit supporting me and see me as picking on their student or that the problem is mine because I can’t control the class from Texas.”

Elston, the district spokesperson, acknowledges discipline was initially an issue with “a few of our classrooms,” but that concern eased after “we met with administrative staff, provided quality professional development focused on classroom management, student engagement, contacting parents, making lessons more engaging for students, made a few sta ng changes, and conducted meetings with Stride staff to ensure that issues were addressed.”

She adds: “As with implementation of any new program, changes and improvements have been made as we have identified those areas. A preliminary report which highlighted strengths, as well as challenges and needs, was provided to the Board of Education after the first nine weeks of implementation. Overall, student feedback was positive.”

Caise left Stride’s employment in October. She did not return calls seeking comment.

Another teacher who left is Soleau, the middle school math teacher in Huntington Beach, California. In her case, it wasn’t by choice.

Her termination stems from a chaotic situation on September 16. After an intruder drill took place at Southwest Middle School,

“In 2019/20, which is our most recent year of results, we found that 20 percent of K12 Inc. blended learning schools and 26 percent of K12 Inc. full-time virtual schools had ‘Acceptable’ school performance ratings assigned by the state education agency. You will see that the K12 Inc. results are disastrous and do not change much from year to year.”

Chanti Harris-Walker, an in-class facilitator, called Soleau.

“I was in the middle of my explaining to Ms. Soleau what just happened and why,” HarrisWalker later wrote in an email to the school’s assistant principal. “That’s when a student yelled out they wanted to fight another student in class. I quickly de-escalated the situation by separating the two and talking to the class as a whole letting them know this behavior is unacceptable and it has nothing to do with helping them get to the 8th grade.”

That’s when Harris-Walker heard a male voice on the other end of the phone ask, “What happened?” Harris-Walker could hear Soleau explaining to him about the intruder drill.

“He follows up with ‘But she black!’ And she replied wit [sic] ‘I know right that’s crazy, there [sic] are all black!!’” Harris-Walker wrote. “He then asked her ‘are you muted?’ She replied with, ‘No they can’t hear me.’ Then I said YES I can hear you and she quickly hung up the phone.”

The incident touched off an investigation within both the Hazelwood School District and Stride. It led to an email three days later from Laura Spezio, Stride’s national account manager, to Hazelwood’s assistant superintendent for instruction.

“Please know Stride shares the concern in the issue you have sent,” Spezio wrote. “We have removed Sheila Soleau from the class and have a substitute in her place until further notice. Stride’s leadership team has begun their investigation.”

Later that day, a senior Stride human resources executive wrote in an email to Hazelwood administrators that Soleau “has been permanently removed from the classroom. As you may already know, I will not be able to share any further actions or outcomes as it is a personnel matter and confidential.”

For her part, Soleau says she got a raw deal.

The male voice belonged to her son, a high school student, who was fetching her cellphone when Soleau’s computer screen filled with images and sounds of kids in the classroom screaming.

“He goes, ‘Wow. Are they all Black?’” Soleau says. “That’s all he says. And then I said, ‘Yes.’ Then the facilitator says, ‘I can hear you.’ So she goes and tells

the school she was uncomfortable with me teaching the class because I was racist, and I had made racist remarks.”

The next day, Stride told her she was under investigation.

“I said, ‘This is ridiculous. I taught all kinds of kids before this. And this wasn’t coming from me, it was coming from my son. And they said, ‘Yes, but your son shouldn’t have been in your private classroom.’ ‘Well, he was bringing me my phone. And anyway he didn’t really say anything that bad.’ I said, ‘This is wrong. I’m a really good math teacher.’”

Soleau decided to move on, but the incident still rankles her, she says.

“Because I had invested so much in those kids, and I was trying to help them,” she says. “I wanted to make them better at math. I wanted them to learn.”

Keith Bausman, the district assistant superintendent for human resources, wrote a memo addressed to Hazelwood Superintendent Nettie Collins-Hart dated July 11, 2022. The memo was shared with the board at its August 2 meeting prior to voting on the

Stride contract.

In the memo, Bausman blamed the district’s teaching vacancies on “additional resignations and retirements … and other factors related to the ‘big quit’ or ‘great resignation,’” resulting in a “need to secure additional modes of instruction beyond that of the recruitment capacity of the Hazelwood School District.”

Bausman recommended Stride to Collins-Hart, and ultimately the school board.

But Bausman’s July 11 memo to Collins-Hart and the school board elides certain key details about Hazelwood’s massive investment in virtual teaching entailed by Stride’s hiring.

For instance, there are no details about the ultimate cost of the deal, or where the money for this $8.2 million unbudgeted expense would come from.

Nor does the memo offer details about the two competing bids from Edgenuity/Imagine Learning of Scottsdale, Arizona, or Proximity Learning of Austin, Texas. Another relevant, if missing, detail from Bausman’s memo: any mention of Stride’s performance record.

Gary Miron, of the National

Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, has spent years studying online providers of virtual teaching.

Miron’s assessment of Stride, formerly known as K12 Inc., is harsh.

“In 2019/20, which is our most recent year of results, we found that 20 percent of K12 Inc. blended learning schools and 26 percent of K12 Inc. full-time virtual schools had ‘Acceptable’ school performance ratings assigned by the state education agency,” Miron writes in an email to the RFT Miron adds, “You will see that the K12 Inc. results are disastrous and do not change much from year to year.”

Schwartz, the Stride spokesman, vehemently disputes Miron’s analysis.

“Stride K12 supports more than 20 districts across Missouri to provide their students and school communities with exible options,” Schwartz writes. “Thousands of Missouri students have benefited from the Stride partnership, and over 200 districts have worked with Stride in the past year alone.”

Schwartz writes that his company strongly disagrees with Miron’s conclusions.

“What he doesn’t consider is that a high percentage of students who transfer to online schools arrive behind grade level or credit deficient,” Schwartz writes. “These analyses also don’t account for the fact that Stride K12-powered students attend these schools because their current school isn’t serving their needs appropriately. These schools are often the only choice for a family looking for an option in rural America. Students at these schools are more likely to come from economically disadvantaged homes and from singleparent homes than the national average.”

Schwartz declines to identify the other school districts in Missouri and nationwide that work with Stride.

“It’s our business policy to not disclose customers we serve, in any of our lines of business, in any state in which we work,” Schwartz writes.

Miron is a professor of educational leadership, research and technology at Western Michigan University. In 2019, he co-authored a report on the fast growing in uence of education management organizations, or EMOs, on America’s education system for the National Education Policy Center.

Miron’s research found that

J. Ward and Christopher Peterson, juniors at Hazelwood East, say they don’t get any hands-on learning in their virtual classes. | MIKE FITZGERALD

EMOs like Stride fell short on traditional school performance metrics like student-teacher ratios and graduation rates. His report found that students in virtual schools had a graduation rate of 50.1 percent, while those in blended schools graduated at 61.5 percent rate — both well below the national average for in-person schools of 84 percent. The student-teacher ratio of EMOs was nearly three times higher than the national average, according to the report.

“The reason we’re seen as critics is because the findings are absolutely terrible, and the reason for that is the model that’s being used doesn’t make sense,” Miron in 2021 told Protocol, an online publication that covers the tech industry. “It’s for maximizing profit, not for serving children, not for representing taxpayer interest.”

Miron pointed to high studentteacher ratios as a major weakness for Stride and other for profit EMOs. He argues that technology’s ability to bring more people into a virtual classroom ultimately limits the critical one-on-one time teachers can spend with students, resulting in higher dropout rates.

“They don’t have communication with students, they have algorithms that generate emails when a child hasn’t been active for a week or two,” Miron told Protocol. “They don’t see the children, they don’t hear the children, and the children exit in masses.”

Elston, the school district spokesperson, declined to address Miron’s criticism.

“This is our first year of using this particular branch of Stride services,” she writes. “Our evaluations are ongoing, and we are monitoring implementation.”

One more thing the Hazelwood school board apparently did not consider: how such a major reconfiguration of the school district into a hub of virtual learning could affect students in a mostly minority school district.

Tamar Brown, the education advocacy director for A Red Circle, a group dedicated to addressing racial disparities in north St. Louis County, says Hazelwood doubling down on remote learning raises concerns because of already existing racial disparities in education.

“And a virtual environment only widens that gap,” Brown says. “It puts our students at a disadvantage.”

Brown says she’s not surprised to hear Hazelwood is having a hard time recruiting and retaining classroom teachers.

“Our teachers are under attack. I do believe that,” she says. “They’re tired, they’re scared, they’re frustrated.”

Brown adds: “I’ve heard teachers say they’re afraid to go to the classroom. They don’t know what’s going to happen. They don’t know if they’re going to be supported by their administration. So why go to work afraid every single day?”

None of these concerns were evident in a July 6 email chain obtained by the RFT in which top Hazelwood administrators considered the merits of the three companies that had responded to Hazelwood’s request for proposal: Stride; Edgenuity of Scottsdale, Arizona; and Proximity Learning, of Austin, Texas.

Christopher Norman, Hazelwood’s chief financial o cer, wrote: “I have not broken everything down or reviewed full submissions, but on a per-teacher basis, Proximity is much lower cost than Stride.”

“Edgenuity is certainly lower than that but as I understand it they provide the curriculum, not sure that is the case with Proximity,” Norman wrote.

Eric Arbetter, the assistant superintendent for instruction, responded with his preference for Stride.

“Am I reading Proximity correctly that for middle school they can only offer courses for Math, Science, Art, and Social Studies (pages 48-49)? If so, that eliminates Proximity,” Arbetter wrote.

Rhonda Key, the assistant superintendent for high school instruction, wrote that she is “fine with Proximity or Stride Learning. I do not support Edgenuity. We use Edgenuity as a credit recovery program for high schools. The students may treat their courses as credit recovery courses not required courses toward graduation or GPA’s.”

Key wrote that she leaned more toward Stride because “they have worked with Missouri schools and know Missouri Academic Expectations. … Secondly, Stride has representatives near the St. Louis area for assistance and support.”

Bausman added the cost of the Stride contract — $5.75 million — to the expected cost of hiring the Kelly Services personnel — another $2,524,000. Then he subtracted from the resulting total of $8.2 million the cost of hiring 50 in-person teachers, $3,355,000.

The total extra cost to the district: $4,919,000.

“It is the recommendation of human resources that the BOE authorize administration to proceed with a vendor contract from STRIDE Learning,” Bausman wrote. “We are having ongoing discussions with Stride to clearly identify costs and negotiate various items for the contract. The calculations that are based on 50 needed secondary teachers represent the highest estimated total.”

The Stride contract was one of six items that the school board voted on en masse. It was titled “Supplemental Sta ng Support Provider STRIDE.”

The only time board members discussed the Stride contract was when board member Diane Livingston spoke just before the vote.

“We need more teachers,” Livingston said. “We know that. So one avenue that we’re going through is maybe have some virtual classes within the schools. The kids will be going to classes as normal. … Because we’re short on math and science teachers especially, [they] might do it virtually. But it will be virtually with another human being on the other end of the camera.”

Livingston concluded her statement with a lament.

“It’s not something that we want to do,” she said. “But in this day and age, and I’ve talked to people in other states and areas and stuff like that, there are teacher shortages across the board. And we just have to make sure we have good, qualified teachers at all times. And if we can’t do it here we have to think outside the box.”

So far, the only public report the Hazelwood School District has made about Stride’s performance was delivered October 4, during a public report to the Hazelwood Board of Education.

Arbetter, the district assistant superintendent for instruction, portrayed the Stride remote learning program as an upgrade to the type of remote learning students experienced during the pandemic.

“I think a key difference from where we were in the pandemic, when kids were learning virtually, versus our students in the middle schools and high schools and learning virtually now is all of our students are in person,” Arbetter said. “So we have an adult in the classroom helping them with the learning along with the virtual teacher.”

Schwartz, the Stride spokesman, sketched a similarly upbeat portrait in an email to the RFT. Through the first semester of

the 2022-2023 school year, “Hazelwood and Stride Learning Solutions have collaborated daily to build a hybrid model that is customized for Hazelwood’s remote instruction program,” Schwartz writes. “Teachers and facilitators have completed training together — a combination of district and Stride-designed sessions.”

What’s more, Schwartz writes, “Stride K12-powered students have become accustomed to the remote instruction environment, and we are seeing improvement in student engagement and competencies.

“We are using Hazelwood’s assessments and assessment calendar to ensure that students remain on pace with their peers in other classrooms and track student grades throughout the quarter.”

During his October 4 presentation, Arbetter called the selection of Stride “an absolutely creative solution. But it also was out of necessity because we don’t have enough teachers.”

Betsy Rachel, the school board president, made it clear she sympathized with the district’s plight during the October 4 meeting.

“Because at the end of the day as a school district, we have responsibility and an obligation to provide highly qualified, certified teachers to every student in our district, right?” Rachel said. “And despite all of our best efforts to hire persons directly, we still had a lot of open positions. And that would have left students without that consistency. So I’m very thankful for this. I’m not going to pretend it’s ideal, but I’m very thankful.”

Walking home from school one day in early December, a pair of Hazelwood East juniors in the district’s grand experiment took a philosophical view.

Christopher Peterson explained that his English class is taught by a teacher in Kansas. “It’s worked out pretty good,” Peterson said.

His friend J. Ward has virtual classes in algebra and chemistry.

Since his teacher is also in Kansas, there is no hands-on learning in the chemistry class, he says. “It’s like a bunch of tests on how much information you can recollect,” he said.

Peterson added he’s not happy with the idea of taking more virtual classes for the next 18 months, until his scheduled graduation.

“But there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said. “I might as well just finish it and get it over with.” n

Mike Fitzgerald can be reached at msfit gerald 006 gmail.com

CALENDAR

BY RIVERFRONT TIMES STAFF

THURSDAY 01/19

It’s All a Game

What’s your idea of bingo? Is it being a little kid in kindergarten or maybe something you’d find at a school fundraiser or maybe even something that you imagine belonging to retirees vying for a slow cooker? Well, it’s time to change your mind about bingo. These days, it’s not just for kids or for parents or for the gracefully aged. It’s for anyone who wants to pick up an ice-cold glass of suds and tipsily yell, “Oh wait, I got it! Bingo, damn it, bingo!” That’s right. Bingo is for drinking adults now, and you can do so at Bingo Night at Global Brew Tap House (9578 Manchester Road, Rock Hill; 314-395-4504, rockhill. globalbrew.com). The three-hour event begins at 7 p.m., and winning involves brewery prizes. Play is free.

FRIDAY 01/20

Slasher Flick

The 13th year of Late Night Grindhouse at Marcus Des Peres 14 Cinema (12701 Manchester Road, Des Peres; 314-471-2239,

marcustheatres.com) kicks off with the 8 film Chopping Mall

It’s the 1980s, and all the cool kids are hanging out in the shopping mall. That includes three teen couples who are partying after hours in a furniture store. This isn’t just any mall, though. It has new security features including three robots designed to catch thieves. So the kids are safe, right? Wrong. A storm rolls in, and a lightning strike turns the robo-security into deadly killbots. The party quickly breaks up when one of the teens’ throats is slashed, and then the night becomes a fight for survival. The show is Friday, January 20, and Saturday, January 21, at 10 p.m. Tickets are $10.

Rock Show

Those New Year’s resolutions may have already been thrown to the wind, but it’s not too late to reset your energy for 2023. Gateway Yoga and Freya’s Haven have you covered with their Intro to Crystals Workshop and Happy Hour, a metaphysical event guaranteed to raise your vibes. The get-together, which will take place from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Gateway Yoga’s Kirkwood studio (935 South Kirkwood Road, Kirkwood; 314-582-5930, gatewayyoga.com), will set you up to be able to choose and care for

your own crystals and create a sacred space in your home. Cost of attendance is $30 and includes a crystal bundle, drinks, snacks and a personalized crystal prescription that will help you shine on like the crazy diamond you were meant to be. For more information and to register, visit Gateway Yoga’s events page.

SATURDAY 01/21

Ice Parade

Sometimes it seems like there is so little fun to be had each year during these dark winter days. With gray skies above us and Cardinals baseball still months away, it can feel as though we’ll never get to have fun outdoors again. But not only is that not true, that’s only part of what makes the Loop Ice Carnival the must-attend event of the season. This festival celebrates everything icy and cold while bringing the community together and getting us out of our houses. This year marks the 16th annual carnival, so they’re pulling out all of the stops. Stop by the Delmar Loop anytime between 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. to see over 40 ice sculptures, strolling musicians, stilt walkers and more. They’re even giving away $1,000 hidden

in ice cubes. Visit universitycityloop.com for more information.

Winter Sustenance

During the cold months of the year, one doesn’t necessarily think about fresh, local produce. But Missouri growers are crafty people who can pull edible gold from the ground, and maybe the greenhouses, year round. You can get your hands on those goods, plus a host of things made by local craftspeople, at the Tower Grove Farmers’ Market Winter Market in Tower Grove Park (4256 Magnolia Avenue, tgfarmersmarket. com). There are only six dates for the Winter Market, and this is the second, so make haste. Grab a sweater and a reusable shopping bag and head over between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Admission is free.

SUNDAY 01/22

Bit of a Stretch

Looking to shed some holiday pounds but also loath to leave the house if there’s no booze involved? Don’t worry: The aptly named Yoga Buzz has you covered. This Sunday, the historic

Amina Faye plays Jane Seymour in SIX. | JOAN MARCUS

Learn about crystals on Friday at Gateway Yoga. | VIA FLICKR / ARBYREED

mill Das Bevo (4749 Gravois Avenue, 314-832-225, dasbevo.com) will play host to a yoga class from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m., and your $15 admission comes with a free beverage of the alcoholic variety. Get your stretch on in the windmill bar built by Anheuser-Busch beer baron August Busch, then reward yourself the way the man himself surely would have: with a sudsy brew. Guests are welcome to take a tour of the storied and unique space once the class is over, and those who’d prefer a nonalcoholic option will have plenty to choose from as well. Space is limited, so make sure to purchase your tickets in advance on Eventbrite.

New Year, New Luck

The Lunar New Year marks the beginning of the lunar calendar, which is based on moon cycles. In Chinese culture, the day is celebrated with festivities that include celebratory food, decorating with red items such as lanterns and the

lion dance, which is supposed to bring good fortune and ward off evil spirits. The International Shaolin Wushu Center will host a Lunar New Year Lion Dance at the iconic Olive Supermarket (8041 Olive Boulevard, University City; stlouissupermarket.com). The dance begins at noon and only lasts 15 minutes, so don’t run late. Then you can hop over into the market and pick up some snowpea tips, tofu, coconut jellies and other favorites you can’t find anywhere else. If you can’t make this date, there are also lion dances on Sunday, January 29, and Sunday, February 5.

Controversial Comedians

Some ugly stuff has come out of Dave Chappelle’s mouth about trans people and the LGBTQ+ community in the last few years. There was SNL, and he had that awful Net ix special. Chris Rock got clocked at the Oscars and then compared himself to Nicole

Brown Simpson. A lot of people won’t want to see either comic perform live. But a lot of other people will — even people who otherwise condemn hate speech and tasteless jokes. They are two giants in the comedy world, after all, and that cannot be denied. So if you’re in that latter camp, Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle will be in St. Louis at the Enterprise Center (1401 Clark Avenue, 314-622-5400). The show starts at 7:30 p.m., and tickets will run you $76.50 to $296.50.

TUESDAY 01/24

Girl Power

Tuesday will bring the talk of the Broadway world to Fox Theater (527 North Grand Boulevard, 314534-1111, fabulousfox.com) with the musical SIX. One of the most popular shows on Broadway, SIX follows the six wives of Henry VIII. The Fabulous Fox describes the show as an effort to “remix five hundred years of historical

WEEK OF JANUARY 19-25

heartbreak into a Euphoric Celebration of 21st century girl power!” Last year, SIX won 23 awards, while the soundtrack received 6 million streams in the first month, en route to a No. 1 spot on the Billboard charts. The show runs from Tuesday, January 24, to Sunday, February 5, for a total of 16 performances, with tickets ranging from $35 to $150. Showtimes vary by date.

WEDNESDAY 01/25

Science Stories

Story Collider’s mission is to use storytelling to illuminate the role science plays in our lives. It’s kind of like The Moth, only with science, or TED Talks, only without the insistence that one overly simplified idea from a polished speaker in a headset can change humanity. And if you like the Story Collider podcast, the live events are even more fun — so maybe think about joining the St. Louis show, titled Variables, in St. Louis Public Radio’s Community Room (3651 Olive Street) on Wednesday. St. Louis-based hosts Gabe Montesanti and Sam Lyons will lead an evening of storytelling (and, yes, science) featuring local pediatrician Ken Haller, “Christian priestess” Jessica Gazzola, Wash U undergrad Colleen McDermott and former RFT staff writer Danny Wicentowski, gone on to a job in public radio but never forgotten. Wicentowski tells us his story actually stems from work he did for this paper in 2014 about the then-new trend of escape rooms. He writes, “It relates quite well (I think!) to the show’s theme of variables, with tales ‘about situations that are in our control, until the moment they aren’t.’” If that doesn’t hook you, keep listening to those silly TED Talks. For everyone else, the show runs from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $10, whether you want to be there in person or watch on Zoom. Details at storycollider.org/shows/2023/1/25/ stlouis-variables. n

Have an event you’d like considered for our calendar? Email calendar@riverfronttimes.com.

Catch a Lion Dance for the Lunar New Year. | Courtesy International Shaolin Wushu Center

Onolicious

Buzz’s Hawaiian Grill brings the joy of traditional island cuisine to St. Louis

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

Buzz’s Hawaiian Grill

3457 Magnolia Avenue, 314-875-0076. Mon. 4-8 p.m.; Thurs. 4-11 p.m.; Fri. 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and 4-11 p.m.; Sat. 9 a.m.-1 p.m. and 4-11 p.m.; Sun. 9 a.m.-1 p.m. and 4-8 p.m. (Closed Tuesday and Wednesday.)

Afew years ago, the newly launched Buzz’s Hawaiian Grill was featured on the Food Network Show “Food Truck Nation,” and the host lobbed a softball question at owner Thomas “Buzz” Moore about why he founded the brand. Moore thought he knew the answer, re-

plying with some superficial musings that seemed to satisfy everyone involved, even as he knew, deep down, he hadn’t gotten to the heart of the matter. That clarity would come to him a few years down the road, when after some serious re ection, Moore came to understand the real reason he opened Buzz’s was not simply to bring Hawaiian food to St. Louis; it was because of his sister.

Growing up a military kid in cities around the world, Moore developed an appreciation for different cuisines. He was blessed with a mother who was a tremendously talented cook, and she would soak in these different traditions, passing on everything she learned to Moore and his siblings. Moore carried this passion for food with him throughout his military service and during his career as an air tra c controller, which took him to Hawaii in the 1980s. There, he became immersed in the culture thanks to

his ex-wife’s indigenous Hawaiian family and his own children, who they raised with those traditions. He held onto that passion and respect for Hawaiian culture after moving back to St. Louis, as it was a way to remain connected with his family back on the islands.

Moore loved Hawaiian cuisine — so much that he and his second wife developed a reputation in their family and friend group for their traditional Hawaiian spreads, which they would put together any chance that they got. Moore always felt he was meant to make something of his talents, but he never found the courage to do so until his sister passed away of cancer when she was in her mid-50s. As he grieved her loss and thought of all the life milestones she would miss, he felt a sense of urgency to live a life without regret. Deciding it was now or never, Moore took the leap and launched Buzz’s Hawaiian Grill as a food truck in 2017 as much as a celebration of Hawai-

ian food and culture as a tribute to his late sister.

Buzz’s found great success and established itself as one of the city’s most beloved food trucks. Moore was thrilled with the reception, but over time, he realized that having a brick and mortar would give him the opportunity to expand his menu and create a warm gathering space that would capture the spirit of Hawaii. He found what he was looking for this past summer at the former Steve’s Hot Dogs spot adjacent to the Tick-Tock Tavern in Tower Grove East. After a series of renovations — a fresh coat of cream and pale-sage green paint and vintage Hawaiian travel posters — Moore welcomed his first guests to the new Buzz’s last July.

One of the main reasons Buzz’s has resonated with diners over its five years in business is not simply that the food is good; it’s that you can taste Moore’s love and passion for Hawaiian cuisine

Buzz’s Hawaiian Grill serves an assortment of pupu (appetizers), small dishes, main plates, sandwiches, poke, dessert and more. | MABEL SUEN

BUZZ’S

and culture in what he does. This carries through in the new brickand-mortar storefront. Not at all a kitschy theme restaurant, Buzz’s is deeply reverent when it comes to Hawaiian culinary traditions, as Moore prepares a host of dishes that give guests the experience of what it’s like to dine in Hawaii beyond the tourist traps.

The musubi illustrates this intention. A staple of Hawaiian snack time, the handheld savory treat, sometimes called Hawaiian sushi, consists of sticky rice, caramelized spam and sweet egg pancake all wrapped in a sheet of nori, or seaweed. Wrapped into a thick, roughly six-inch-long rectangle, it’s a fun taste of salt and sea.

Bite-sized pork hash “shumai” are another delightful pupu, or appetizer, consisting of ground pork, shrimp and water chestnuts ground up and filling an open topped steamed wonton. The sweetness of the pork and salt from the shrimp marry beautifully, while the crunchy water chestnuts add texture. A similarly Chinese in uenced dim sum dish, manapua, is a large steam bun filled with sweet char sui pork; though it looks like a larger version of a bao, the bun has a bit more sweetness and is a little u er in texture. It’s a lovely illustration of how dishes evolve with local in uence.

Lumpia, however, retains its quintessential Filipino form at Buzz’s. The cigar-sized spring rolls are filled with carrots, cabbage, bean sprouts, ground chicken and pork, then rolled into a paper-thin wrapper and deep-fried to a golden crisp. Dipped into Buzz’s chili

sauce, they are an outstanding appetizer. Buzz’s other handheld appetizer, the poke bombs, are a finger food version of one of Hawaii’s most popular dishes. Here, cubes of ruby-colored tuna are dressed in soy and ginger, then tucked into an open beancurd pouch. They are probably just a little too large to fully stuff into your mouth, but they’re so avorful you will be tempted to try.

Buzz’s main courses are equally successful. North Shore Garlic Shrimp are so coated in the tart allium, they’re almost spicy. It’s a glorious feeling. Chicken yakitori makes you understand why

the thigh is the bird’s finest piece. The boneless dark meat is grilled so that its exterior develops a substantial char; this bitterness beautifully contrasts with Buzz’s sticky soy-ginger glaze.

However, the restaurant’s Kalua pig is its calling card. Tender, slow-roasted pulled pork is outrageously succulent; the experience of getting an interior fatty piece in the same bite as a caramelized exterior crispy bit is otherworldly. Moore offers the pork as a platter served alongside sautéed spiced cabbage, or on a Hawaiian sweetbread bun and paired with tangy passion-fruit barbecue sauce; that

mixture of sweet, tang and salty pork is a match made in paradise. Noshing on that passion-fruit pork with a side of creamy mac salad, you could almost imagine you were languidly lounging at a bayside cafe in Hilo rather than a storefront in the middle of the Midwest. That Moore can evoke such feelings of joy, even in the depths of the dark Missouri winter, is as beautiful a memorial to his sister as he could create.

Buzz’s Hawaiian Grill

Musubi

Kailua pork sandwich

Chicken yakitori plate

omas “Buzz” Moore opened his brick and mortar last July. | MABEL SUEN

e tofu katsu sandwich is served on a Hawaiian sweet bun. | MABEL SUEN

Buzz’s sweets include haupia pie, banana bread, macaroons and lilikoi bars. | MABEL SUEN

SHORT ORDERS

Ozark Traditions

Chef from hit show Reservation Dogs to host events at Bulrush

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

On Sunday, January 22, St. Louisans will have the opportunity to dine with the culinary force behind the popular FX series Reservation Dogs when Bradley Dry pops into Bulrush (3307 Washington Avenue, 314-449-1208) as a guest chef. Dry, who was in charge of craft services for the hit show, will be hosting brunch and dinner service at the Grand Center restaurant that day, promising a delicious window into Cherokee cooking and Ozark foodways.

A veteran culinarian who has worked in a variety of restaurants around Tulsa, Oklahoma, Dry has become an important voice in telling the food stories of indigenous peoples. In addition to his work with Reservation Dogs, Dry is also a collaborator with the Osage restaurant Tocabe in Denver and Bon Appetit magazine, and he is

currently working alongside Rob Connoley with the Smithsonian to bring an Ozark foodways festival to Washington, D.C., later this year.

For his Bulrush day — a brunch and two dinner seatings — Dry will draw upon the Cherokee traditions he learned from his grandmother, who has been his greatest culinary in uence.

“Each dish is based off something I learned from my grandma and my community,” Dry says. “Our family is originally from Georgia, but we now live in northeast Oklahoma and northeast Ar-

kansas; the way my grandmother taught me to cook is Appalachiabased. I’m really excited about showing that.”

In announcing the brunch and dinner events, Connoley emphasized the importance of having voices like Dry’s represented at Bulrush, which has made it its mission to shine a light on Ozark cooking.

“Bulrush has been committed to presenting a complete history of the Ozarks since its inception,” Connoley said in his announcement. “However, when it comes to the role of indigenous and enslaved people, we believe that

it is not our story to tell, but the story must be told. We continue to bring in outstanding chefs who can tell their own story, working with the Bulrush team, and supported through our reparative restauranting principles.”

For Sundays brunch service, Dry will be serving a selection of Ozark and Cherokee in uenced dishes, such as bison biscuits and gravy and acorn stew with pumpkinsumac wa es. At the two dinner seatings, guests will be treated to a seven-course feast featuring items such as a creamy corn soup with hominy, a traditional Cherokee dish made with grilled hen of the woods mushrooms and cauli ower, green beans and pork, fried squash with root vegetables and a beet sauce, chicken with succotash, bison meatballs over pumpkin puree, and a riff on a quintessential Cherokee porridge-like dessert that he will be serving as a pecan-praline-laden ice cream. Both brunch and dinner will also feature beverages made using the local Switchgrass Spirits.

Brunch with Dry will begin at 9 a.m. and run into noon, or until the food runs out. Reservations are not accepted; the brunch is a first come, first served setup, and all food is served a la carte. Tickets to the dinner seatings are sold out, though the restaurant is adding interested diners to a waitlist through its reservation system. “I’m really excited about this,” Dry says. “It’s going to be challenging, but it’s also going to be a lot of fun.” n

Scan This

Imo’s QR code made of pizza is peak pandemic dining

Written by BENJAMIN SIMON

We never thought we would use these two words together: cool and QR code. But here we are.

That’s because this isn’t some AI-generated QR code. This is something only a human could do — and a St. Louis human for that matter: create possibly the tastiest QR code of all time, made out of

Imo’s pizza.

That’s right — hundreds of squares of Imo’s pizza were cut and crafted to create a QR code for its Square Deals rewards program.

The QR code and rewards program coincides with the release of a new Imo’s app. The app will feature delivery options and the ability to cash in on Square Deals rewards programs.

With the rewards program, customers receive one “square” point with each $15 order, allowing them to receive free appetizers, salads, drinks and pizzas. Three squares can get you a free drink, and 25 squares gets you a 16-inch extra-large, one-topping pizza and an appetizer.

For more information visit Imo’s website.

Those who sign up for Square Deals in January will receive two free squares. All you have to do is scan the QR code. n

Chef Bradley Dry will be in town for a one-day brunch and dinner event. | COURTESY BRADLEY DRY

e QR code is constructed from an image of Imo’s pizza slices. | COURTESY BYRNE PR

Dry Run

Hello Juice and Sans Bar team up for booze-free cocktail series

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

Two leaders of St. Louis’ alcohol-free movement are partnering up for a zero-proof cocktail series meant to show drinkers and nondrinkers alike there is more to the movement than Dry January. Hello Juice and Sans Bar launched their “AF Happy Hour” on January 12 at Hello Juice’s Kirkwood location (10463 Manchester Road, Suite F, Kirkwood; 314-394-0236) with an evening of merriment, activities, socializing, delicious food and creative cocktails — minus the booze.

“Dry January has gained so much momentum, and I love it,” says Annie O’Donoghue, Sans Bar’s self-styled mastermind. “But then February comes around, and [people] say to themselves, ‘What now?’ I’m not sure if it’s because of habit or what, but people go back to what they were doing, so this is a continuation of that momentum that lets people know they don’t have to go back, or if they want to, maybe they can do so in a more mindful way.”

As O’Donoghue explains, the collaboration between the two brands was a natural one, borne of a longstanding relationship with Hello Juice co-owner Jen Maness. Both alcohol-free in their late teens and early 20s, the two forged a friendship that has spanned moves across country, lifestyle changes surrounding alcohol and new business ventures. Both proponents of the alcohol-free and mindful-drinking movements, the two (together with Maness’ husband and Hello Juice co-owner Joe) are excited to partner up in a way that shows the community a world of possibilities that exists beyond alcohol consumption.

“I like calling it a movement because I really hope it is not just a moment,” O’Donoghue says. “One of the problems I’ve experienced has been that I am [a] nondrinker, but all my friends were drinkers. I never felt like I belonged and was so self-conscious being the one drinking a club

soda and cranberry juice. What’s great about this is that it shows people you don’t have to have a problem to stop drinking or take the night off. With all of the products available, you are just one amongst many. People want to feel normal, and the response has just been amazing.”

O’Donoghue is well positioned to help spearhead this movement. In her late teens, she made the decision to quit drinking alcohol only to start again when she was 25 years old. At that time, she was living in New York City and working as a bartender; drinking was simply part of that culture, so she joined in with her peers, only to understand that there was a reason she’d made the decision to become alcohol-free in the past.

“It was five years of misery and craziness,” O’Donoghue says.

She knew she needed to make a change, so she got involved with the nonprofit NCADA, or the National Council on Alcoholism, which eventually led to a relationship with the Texas-based organization Sans Bar, a foundational voice in the national dry movement since 2017. When she moved back to St. Louis from New York in 2019, O’Donoghue launched the St. Louis chapter of Sans Bar with an initial event at Third Degree Glass Factory. It was

a roaring success that showed her there was a real thirst for alcoholfree social opportunities in her hometown.

Since that initial launch, O’Donoghue has hosted several Sans Bar STL events, such as gettogethers at Kingside Diner and the now-shuttered Great American Human Foosball, as well as parties at the Improv Shop. She’s excited to carry this momentum forward into this current series with Hello Juice — continuing on three upcoming Thursdays, January 26 and February 9 and 23 — and is confident that people will be excited with what they have put together. For $30, the evening will include all-you-can-drink zero-proof cocktails, snacks and all materials needed for the interactive events, such as DIY succulent planting, a lineup of festivities which she hopes will draw even more people into the movement, even if just for the night.

“People come out for all sorts of reasons, and that’s the most interesting thing about it,” O’Donoghue says. “At the first event, a woman came up and told me she was 100 days sober that day. Another told me that she doesn’t drink because she had a lung transplant. We are so put into boxes, and I just want to bring people together and have fun.” n

CHERYL BAEHR’S NEW YORK-STYLE PIZZA PICKS

Contrary to popular belief, there is more to pizza in St. Louis than Provelcovered squares. However, when it comes to New York-style pizza — arguably the quintessence of the American form — St. Louis has a reputation as having a dearth of slices, at least if you ask any East Coast transplant. These five places offer a delicious counterpoint to that narrative.

Pie Guy

Mitch Frost serves up excellent New York slices at his Grove spot, Pie Guy (4189 Manchester Avenue, 314-8990444). Frost’s pies capture the greasy ease of the Big Apple’s grab-and-go joints, but are a result of his painstaking research and experimentation.

Pizza Head

Punk-rock vibes permeate Pizza Head’s (3196 South Grand Boulevard, 314-266-5400) South Grand storefront, capturing the big city’s pizza game as much as its East Village’s music vibe — but you can’t be angsty while noshing on the amazing white pie with spinach and artichokes.

Racanelli’s

A staple since the mid-’90s, Racanelli’s (multiple locations) is synonymous with New York-style pie thanks to owner John Racanelli’s family’s Italian American restaurant background, which traces its roots to the Bronx.

Pizza-A-Go-Go

Founder Frank LaFata opened the original Pizza-A-Go-Go (6703 Scanlan Avenue, 314-781-1234) in 1967 in an old Gaslight Square bar called Whiskey-A-Go-Go, hence the name. Since then, it’s been one of the city’s most beloved New York-style pizzerias.

La Pizza

Ask any New York transplant where to go for pizza, and after they stop laughing, they will have the same answer: La Pizza (8137 Delmar Boulevard, University City; 314-725-1230). The tiny shop is the area’s gold standard.

Annie O’Donoghue, mastermind of Sans Bar STL, concocts a drink. | COURTESY SANS BAR STL

ST. LOUIS STANDARDS

Slice of Life

e pastrami at Carl’s Deli has been a legend since 1947

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

Carl’s Deli 6401 Clayton Road, Clayton; 314-721-2392 Established 1947

Matt Lewis is proud of the deep relationships he’s cultivated with his customers at Carl’s Deli, first as a teenage employee and now as its owner. Sometimes, though, he has to laugh at how few boundaries there are between him and a few of his guests.

“Some ladies come in, and it’s funny because they tell me that I am getting gray,” Lewis says. “It’s not something you just go up and say to someone, but I guess they feel that they’ve been coming in long enough that they can say it because they feel like family and are comfortable with me. I tell them right back, ‘Yeah, it’s because I deal with you.’”

For Lewis, that jovial rapport with his customers is his biggest joy as owner of Carl’s Deli, the iconic sandwich counter and delicatessen that has stood at the intersection of Clayton Road and Demun Avenue since 1969. For decades, legions of fans have packed the small storefront, eager for a taste of the restaurant’s signature pastrami sandwich, a whopper of a dish that has set the standard for the form since Bill and Jack Carl opened the establishment in 1947. At the time of its founding, the brothers had just returned from military service in World War II and were tasked with bringing to life their parents’ dream of opening a Jewish deli.

That original iteration was located in the Delmar Loop, where Bill and Jack ran it together until 1969, when the building’s owner decided to end their lease because he had other plans for the building. At that point, the brothers decided to go their separate ways; Bill took the Carl’s Deli name and found a shop on Clayton Road, while Jack headed downtown to open Jack

Carl’s 2¢ Plain. Though he wasn’t there until the mid-1980s, Lewis recalls the brothers’ deli rivalry as a friendly one centered around two very different personalities.

“Jack was like the ‘Soup Nazi’ from Seinfeld; if you didn’t know what you wanted right away, he’d move on to the next person,” Lewis recalls. “Bill was the kind and gentle one, and he’d always ask how you were doing. It was funny; they’d actually call each other during business [hours] and tell each other how busy they were. It was a competition, but they were very close and would help each other out.”

Lewis learned a lot about the early years hearing stories as he worked alongside Bill, but his personal knowledge of the business dates back to the mid1980s, when he was a student at Christian Brothers College High School, or CBC, then located just down Clayton Road from Carl’s. His older brother had a job at the deli, which gave him an in. However, Lewis took it and ran with it, working in the mornings before school and the afternoons following dismissal. He continued on

at the gig after graduation while taking general-education classes at St. Louis Community CollegeMeramec, and became Bill’s righthand man, all the while trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. His father turned up the heat on that decision after he stopped going to Meramec, telling

him he had to get serious about choosing a career path. This led to Lewis going on a series of job interviews, until one day Bill threw a wrench in those plans.

“He told me to not accept any job offer until I talked to him,” Lewis says. “I went in the next day, and he told me he was looking to retire and wanted me to take over. I hemmed and hawed for a while, because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it or if I could afford it, but I talked it over with my grandfather, who was an accountant. We went through the books, and it took a couple of years to come up with a deal, but we finally came to one where I didn’t have to come up with the money up front; he just walked away, and I stepped in and would send him a check until it was paid off.”

Lewis o cially took over Carl’s Deli on January 1, 2000, and has kept it a family business ever since, employing his dad as a second-in-command for several years, and his younger brother, younger sister and nephews when they were looking for part-time work. He notes that some things have changed over the years —

ough Carl’s Deli serves other sandwiches, it’s the pastrami that’s the legend. | ANDY PAULISSEN

e deli moved to its current location in 1969. | ANDY PAULISSEN

though Carl’s still sells traditional Jewish delicacies such as knishes and lox, the restaurant has transitioned into more of a New Yorkstyle spot.

One thing that has not changed is the pastrami, the restaurant’s signature dish. Lewis, who learned the art of slicing the peppery meat from Bill himself, is not exactly

sure of the secret to the magic, but he hears all the time from his regulars that it’s just not the same anywhere else. Some of their affection for the dish has to do with the quantity Carl’s has come to be known for over the years.

“We are known for piling on the meat,” Lewis says. “We probably put too much on, to be honest. We

don’t weigh it; I just try to eyeball it and probably overdo it sometimes. As soon as we cut back, though, people call us out on it, so it’s this cat-and-mouse game.”

Lewis knows that people come in for the pastrami, but he understands that the real reason for the restaurant’s staying power goes far beyond how much meat he

stuffs between two pieces of rye bread, regardless of how heaping a portion it is. He says that the relationships he’s formed with his regular customers energizes him and notes that the best part of coming in to work is seeing regulars who began coming in when they were little and now show up at the counter with their own kids. Hearing their stories — about their grandparents’ favorite dishes or what their dad would order or their memories of the days when there would be sauerkraut on the tables — makes him realize that there is real meaning to his work. It may be a di cult business, especially over the last few years, but it’s one that brings so much joy to those he serves.

“People always come in and tell me that I can never close because we are a St. Louis landmark,” Lewis says. “They tell me we are up there with places like Ted Drewes. It always makes me feel good, and I don’t know how to respond to it. And I hear it from such a diverse group of people. We get college kids, construction workers and people who worked on Highway 40 when they shut that down forever. It’s always fun when we get people who tell us they stop in every time they go to the doctors’ offices right across the street. They assure me that they go there first and then come in, which is great, because I don’t want their doctors coming in and yelling at me about serving their patients that much pastrami.”

ICONIC PEOPLE, PLACES & DISHES THAT ANCHOR STL’S FOOD SCENE

Carl’s sandwiches are known for their sky-high meats. | ANDY PAULISSEN

Owner Matt Lewis took over operations in January 2000. | ANDY PAULISSEN

Carl’s Deli is a St. Louis landmark. | ANDY PAULISSEN

Lollipop Land

Mountain High Suckers are a mixed bag

Written by GRAHAM TOKER

It’s the new year, and I struggled deciding on what to review next. Since ower got me in hot water at the end of 2022, I decided to dip into a category that I have yet to try for a review: edibles.

My first time ever getting high was actually with a brownie in college. After ingesting the special baked good, I found myself slumped into a weird, ground level rocking chair while the party just rotated around me. I was one with the chair until the end of the night, when my friend had to peel me off with a spatula and get me home. And it wasn’t the only funny experience that happened when I crossed paths with edibles. A friend got too stoned from some special cookies, got the munchies and proceeded to have more special cookies. The next day my friend woke up like the party never stopped, still vibrating with the cookie goodness.

ltimately, I found edibles had an inconsistent high and didn’t track them down regularly. I’ve been burned too often by the “well that edible didn’t do shit so I’ll take another one and then I’m screwed” motif. But I still enjoy the effect from time to time. Since I work on my feet, getting that body high to alleviate the sore muscles is unrivaled. I just have to be OK with the fact that my night could be over, and I’m asleep sooner rather than later. Plus, I’d rather just taste the ower and smoke it. But I digress.

I placed an online order for three lollipops from Mountain High Suckers at the Ferguson location of Greenlight Dispensary. Being able to get weed in a drive thru is a novelty that’s worth a visit. After receiving a text that my order was ready, I made the journey to the drive-thru. There used

to be a large open window where one would interact with the budtender more or less face to face inside a garage area with your car turned off. Now, Greenlight has a more secure, bank like interface with a staticky speaker intercom, and large slide-out drawer for your IDs and order. My order came secured in the black bag reminiscent of the early 20 0 Denver dispensaries I visited on vacation. Each lollipop is 0 mg of THC and 0, and in total I paid . 2

REEFERFRONT TIMES

including tax.

I cracked open the first lollipop, the grape avored one, as I went on a grocery store run. Being able to shop while medicating and not blowing vape clouds was pretty nice. Two hours into the experience, I definitely felt a great effect in my legs. It wasn’t quite concrete shoes, but it was close. Overall, it was a solid relaxing experience. I was having some sinus issues, so it was nice to have a small break from smoking.

My experience with the second lollipop, Sour Pineapple, is what I’d steer you, dear reader, toward. It was labeled as “Josh Blue’s Dream — Sour Pineapple — Made with Blue Dream.” A mouthful, for sure.

As a fan of Blue Dream back in the day, I was excited to try the

sucker and also hoping for a similar experience to the ower. Compared to the first lollipop, it didn’t have as much of the “weed twang” taste to it. The pineapple avor was quite present, and I was able to coast on the body high from this lollipop without the intense munchies I got from the first lollipop.

My final foray with Mountain High Suckers was the caramel apple. I enjoyed the avor, but effect wise it didn’t surpass the Blue Dream powered pineapple sucker. The effects of both the grape and the caramel apple weren’t friendly to me, whereas the comedown from the pineapple sucker was not abrasive.

I’d rank the pineapple the top of the list here, followed by the caramel apple and then the grape. If you really want a dank sucker, then the grape would be up your alley, but personally it wasn’t my speed. The pineapple combined the best avor and effect for me, and 0 mg was enough to rock a body high productively. These suckers would be a great accompaniment to the new Avatar movie or as a discreet way to medicate in public.

Mountain High Suckers come in a variety of flavors, but sour pineapple stands out as the best flavor and high. | GRAHAM TOKER

Being able to get weed in a drivethru is a novelty that’s worth a visit.

MUSIC

St. Louis to SZA

Before he became SZA’s art director, Jas Bell rose the ranks as a roadie for Pharrell and Drake

Written by BENJAMIN SIMON

Where do you start Jas Bell’s journey?

Do you start in his childhood St. Louis home, where he built houses for his action figures out of cardboard boxes? Or do you start when he got kicked out of Hazelwood East as a teenager How about when he improbably ended up on tour with Pharrell as a roadie? Or when he went on tour with Drake Or when he made his own merchandise, and then Smino started wearing it and Bell ended up hitching a ride on his tour

You could start at any of those places, and each would represent its own wild stage on Bell’s rollercoaster of a life. But taken together, they all have contributed to where the year old finds himself today — as the art director for one of the world’s biggest recording artists, S A.

Bell, who goes by the artist name Leanardo Chop, thinks about his journey a lot — where he came from, how he ended up here, all of the couches he slept on and rap songs that never blew up along the way. He wants his life story to shine through in his artwork. “Man, I try to be a storyteller,” he tells the RFT during a FaceTime. It’s why he wanted to do the interview in the first place, despite being busy with the December release of S A’s second studio album, SOS, and the start of her tour. He wanted to show people, people in St. Louis, how he went from being kicked out of school to working for S A and creating his own fashion brand, Hazelwood, named after his hometown.

“Just listen to your journey,” Bell says from his apartment in Los

Angeles, with pictures of framed backstage passes hanging behind him. “One of my favorite quotes is that, The thing that you think is the thing may not be it — but it’ll lead you to what is the thing.’ ou know what I’m saying So, that’s initially what happened.”

It seems reasonable to start the story of Bell’s journey where it all began in St. Louis, at Barnes Jewish Hospital, he adds proudly, the place where his parents both worked in medical records. As a kid, he was always making art. He filled a 00 page sketchbook with drawings of sneakers. His brother, Jordan, remembers him making action figure houses out of Best Buy boxes. He designed all of his own outfits — printing out pictures and ironing them onto T shirts he purchased at Walmart.

From a young age, Bell wanted to be a rapper. He came from a musical family, where they listened to everything from David Bowie to gospel to Led eppelin. He grew up idolizing Nelly, wearing his jersey backward with a bandaid on his face, and he dreamed of reaching those same heights and representing St. Louis like him.

But then Bell took a considerable hit as a teenager He was expelled from Hazelwood East. The moment was demoralizing, Bell admits. His parents were furious. He was “defeated,” Bell says, the

“bane of the family.”

About a week after he was expelled, Bell told his parents, on a whim, that he was moving to New ork City. He bummed from couch to couch without a job, living with people he knew from Myspace, working a little on music and trying to get an internship at Pharrell’s Star Trak label. His mom called every day worrying.

But around this time, Jordan, who is now a rapper himself, saw a change in his older brother. “ Getting kicked out of school was a turning point,” he says. “Literally after that, I think he just locked in.”

About six months later, Bell moved to Atlanta, where he finished high school. There, he had an experience that would alter his life He met Pharrell through a friend. Bell and Pharrell just chatted on that day. But Bell decided that wasn’t enough. So he just kept showing up and showing up and showing up at Pharrell concerts, booking 0 ights and sleeping in airports. For the next four shows, Bell and his friend were just there, standing at the bus entrance, waiting for Pharrell.

“We idolized him so much at the time, we just were following him everywhere,” Bell says.

Pharrell noticed Bell and his friend at every show. He jokingly called them “crowd hoppers.” But they didn’t need to be crowd hop-

pers anymore, he said. Pharrell invited them to work as roadies on the famous 2008 Glow in the Dark Tour. Bell calls it being “support.” For the next few months, they stayed on the tour bus, helping out with minor things like unpacking merch, stage clean up and even, occasionally, the house engineering.

“He embraced us,” Bell says. “He let us rock him. It just got to a point to where he let us … shadow him. He just kind of let us be around.”

For most people, hanging out with Pharrell for a few years would serve as the story of a lifetime. But for Bell, it was just the start.

Really, Bell says he was learning, watching Pharrell, seeing his ability to weave the music and fashion world together. At this point, Bell was attending the Art Institute of Atlanta, where he studied audio engineering and graphic design. He was still pursuing a music career, and he found snippets of success, even garnering features in XXL and Vibe magazines. But he never fully broke into the mainstream.

After graduating from college, he moved in with a family member in Los Angeles, sleeping on the couch, with no job and no idea what he would do next. “A leap of a faith,” Bell calls it. So he went back to what he knew He just started showing up at Drake concerts. Incredibly, he ended up getting a job on the rigger crew for the Club Paradise and Summer Sixteen tours, setting up and taking down the stage. Even then Bell was still curating his own wardrobes and creating merch for his music.

“He just always was on the yest shit,” his friend, a rapper who goes by JSN Wlf, says. “He was always fashion-forward.”

Wlf and Bell met over Myspace as teenagers, and they later formed a music group together and stayed friends for over a decade. Wlf credits Bell’s “tenacity” in being able to integrate himself with such successful artists.

“Bro just knew himself. ... It’s very important to be confident in yourself and your own decision making,” he says. “I think he was confident in that, and if there was a time when he made a mistake, he was OK with failing because

Jas Bell is from Hazelwood, Missouri. | COURTESY JAS BELL

he’s failing forward.”

After spending almost five years with Drake, Bell decided to make one last stab at music stardom by releasing his final album, Home Games, in 20 — “an ode,” Bell says, “to my city.”

The album never blew up, and Bell’s music dreams languished. But thanks to a lot of hustle and a little luck, the thing he thought was the thing led him to what really was.

To advertise Home Games, Bell made T shirts featuring two Cardinals players, Garry Templeton and Tony Scott. When then up and coming St. Louis artist Smino held a concert in Atlanta, Bell gave him one of the shirts he’d designed.

Over the next few months, Bell says Smino was “wearing the tee everywhere.”

Smino reached out and asked for another T shirt. And before Bell knew it, he was making merch for the rapper — T shirts, hoodies, all sorts of memorabilia, including Smino’s popular satin lined hoodies. They formed a friendship, and when Smino opened on S A’s CTRL tour in 20 , Bell came along for the ride.

That’s how he met S A. Immediately, they connected.

“She’s the sister I never had,” Bell says.

They weren’t just compatible. They were brought together by their St. Louis roots, where S A was also born.

“Her roots to St. Louis are very sentimental,” Bell says. “Her grandmother’s from St. Louis. A

lot of her early days that she spent were in St. Louis. So her memories to St. Louis are super-duper impactful to her and who she is now. And it is the same thing with me.”

Connecting with S A kicked off a nearly five year long stage in Bell’s life — the most recent stop on his journey. He now serves as the superstar singer’s art director, a role that sees him designing her merch, album and song covers, tour graphics and anything related to visual art. His designs are wide ranging, from hats to Blues themed hockey jerseys to spray painted T shirts to tie dye shirts and bandanas that read “Cry About It.”

Their close relationship is integral to Bell’s role as an art director. Bell doesn’t call it a job; he calls it a friendship. Still, it is Bell’s job. But he doesn’t just make marketable merch. He’s a “translator,” as his brother Jordan says. His job is to project S A, her art and feelings onto a T shirt or album cover.

“When you see these merch pieces and you see the simplicity of it, or you see the complication of it, or you see every little thing in the merch — it is exactly what she’s feeling,” Jordan says. “From the color schemes to sizing to positioning to everything. When people wear this, they’re literally wearing her emotions.”

Jordan says his older brother is always studying, watching documentaries and learning from fashion artists, like irgil Abloh and Nigo, and even popular brands like

Coca-Cola or McDonald’s. But Bell doesn’t have a set creative process. Some of his projects go through hundreds of revisions and last months. Others come more naturally.

There’s no better example of the latter than how he created the art for S A’s breakup song, “I Hate .” The song blew up quickly, and the team had to scramble to develop art.

While sitting in his car, eating a sandwich and listening to a voicemail, it clicked. He wanted to make the cover an image of a voicemail saying, “I hate you.” He told S A, who countered with a suggestion Let’s do an image of a text message.

“I had to immediately stop eating, drive back to the crib, get on a laptop,” Bell says. “I did the text message. And then it was magic after that.”

The image became the iconic cover art for one of S A’s most popular songs, a track that would eventually garner nearly million views on ouTube.

Although some ideas come together in the snap of a moment, Bell’s work features precise attention to detail — even on something as small as a blood stain on a shirt for S A, says Wlf. If anyone else made it, Wlf would have assumed they pulled a JPG image of a bloodstain. But when Bell made it, he noticed the blood stain had different splotches of color.

“At some point, somebody’s going to go back, and they’re going to check the nuance in the de-

tail or whatever,” Wlf says. “And you’re going to be able to fall a little bit more in love with whatever he was doing, because he left something for you there in that process.”

Many of those details, some hidden, some explicit, re ect Bell, his journey and his hometown. The name of his brand, Hazelwood, is a nod to where he grew up. The cardinal on S A’s SOS T shirts represents St. Louis. A “Still Learning” Hazelwood T shirt represents how he has approached his own life. Even the camo workman jackets for Hazelwood have meaning — on the outside they might just seem like regular old jackets, but the inside lining actually represents the Missouri steelworkers who built the Arch.

“I think that they’re uniforms for your journey,” Bell says. “They’re not just specific to this small city, small town in St. Louis. I think it speaks to all of us at the very core.”

Bell no longer lives in St. Louis. He splits time between Los Angeles and Atlanta, but his hometown still plays a prominent role in him. He quietly sponsored a Little League team in St. Louis at one point, Wlf remembers, and he’s always aware of emerging St. Louis artists, even from afar.

But wherever Bell may find himself, he wants to share his journey with whoever will listen. “I’m trying to be a vessel,” Bell repeats. Because without this journey, Bell wouldn’t have this art to share. n

Jas Bell created the image associated with SZA’s hit song “Good Days.” He also runs his own brand Hazelwood, a nod to where he grew up. | COURTESY JAS BELL

[ACQUISITIONS]

Life in a Police State

Ai Weiwei’s giant Lego selfie in St. Louis is more serious than you think

Written by RYAN KRULL

Ai Weiwei’s “Illumination” is a lot of things. It’s a selfie. It’s a documentation of life in a police state. It’s an act of resistance. It’s made out of Legos. It also has a new home in St. Louis. The Mildred Lane Kemper

Art Museum announced it has acquired the work.

Born in Beijing, the 65-year-old Weiwei is one of the world’s most famous contemporary visual artists. He is also one of the fiercest critics of the humanitarian abuses of the Chinese Communist Party.

In the city of Chengdu in 2009, police raided the hotel where he was staying and placed him under arrest. As Weiwei was being taken into an elevator, he took the selfie that he would later reconstruct out of Legos to create “Illumination.”

“Legos are a playful and broadly accessible commercial medium — and thus an effective tool for spotlighting political injustices,” Sabine Eckmann, the Kemper’s director and chief curator told Wash U’s the Source.

“Illumination” is currently on view at the museum, located on Wash U’s campus and open every day but Tuesday.

You can see Ai Weiwei’s “Illumination” at the Kemper. | ALISE O’BRIEN PHOTOGRAPHY

Next Act

Greenfinch eater & Dive to open in the former Way Out Club space

Written by JAIME LEES

St. Louisans have been mourning the loss of the Way Out Club deeply. Though the club announced its closure in 2021, it wasn’t until last week that the public was let inside for an epic estate sale of all things kitsch.

But all of this attention to the space had people wondering what would come of it once the Way Out had been cleaned out.

Well, we finally have an answer.

The RFT spoke with Colin Healy who, along with his business partner Bradley Rohlf, is soon to open the Greenfinch Theater Dive in the former Way Out Club space at 2525 South Jefferson. The business will be a combination dive bar and community theater, and they’re working overtime to get it open this spring (pending occupancy and liquor permits, of course).

“We want Greenfinch to be not only a community space for south city,” Healy says, “but we also want it to be a place where the entire St. Louis community interacts

with its best-kept secret: its amazing theater scene.”

Their goal is to make the performance area a rentable, affordable space for unhoused theater companies in town. Healy says he’s been blessed with having his own company, Fly North Theatricals, taken under the wing of the Kranzberg Arts Foundation, and he’s eager to pay it forward. “We got the opportunity to open this place up, and we not only see it as a community space interfacing with the theater scene, we also kind of see it as our way to give back to the theater scene that’s treated us so nicely,” Healy explains.

He says he always felt at home at the Way Out Club because he spent his younger years out on the road touring with his band and had been in many similar spaces. Recently, he wondered why “that

STAGE 37

punk, dive-bar ethic can’t be applied to theater as well as it is to music venues.” So he decided to make it happen.

He says he and Rohlf are planning to keep the dive-bar vibes in both the drinking area and the performance area. Healy comes from a family that has owned bars for the past century, so he’s seen firsthand how a dive bar can be an “equalizer for the community. No matter who you are, no matter what your financial background or abilities are: Everybody goes to drink at the dive bar.”

They plan for the bar to be open seven days a week and are currently in the process of applying for a 1:30 a.m. liquor license, which they’re hoping to get in a few months. Pending an approved occupancy permit, they’re putting on their first show in the space “as is” at the beginning of March. Fly North Theatricals’ production of Peter and the Starcatcher is scheduled to run from Friday, March 3, through Sunday, March 12. There will be six performances, and all of them will be free to the public.

The theater will be available for booking beginning in the fall, and until then, it will function as an unpretentious space for both drinking and community building — something that clearly thrills south-city resident Healy to a large degree. Making theater accessible to as many people as possible seems to be his goal.

“We want to end the days of getting dressed up to go to the theater. We see the dive-bar ethic sort of permeating the space. Like, you can show up with your shorts and sandals and grab a Stag, and you go watch a freakin’ awesome music or play.” n

Say goodbye to the Way Out and hello to the Finch. | RFT FILE PHOTO

Colin Healy is the owner of the Greenfinch eater & Dive. | ANDY PAULISSEN

“ We want to end the days of getting dressed up to go to the theater. We see the dive-bar ethic permeating the space.”

A Dream, Exposed

e Black Rep’s poignant interpretation of Death of a Salesman is superb

Written by TINA FARMER

Death of a Salesman

Written by Arthur Miller. Directed by Jacqueline Thompson. Presented by the Black Rep through January 29. Showtimes vary. Tickets are $46.25 to $51.25.

Playwright Arthur Miller’s tragic Death of a Salesman is a heavy, heady American classic. The story explores the harsh realities and the price many pay trying to capture the American Dream. The Black Rep’s excellent production, under the direction of Jacqueline Thompson, mines every nuance and inflection out of the dense script. More than just the crumbling of a dream, we see every crack in the guises of hope and persistence that are its foundation.

Willy Loman believes in the American Dream. And not just any dream, Willy believes in the biggest of dreams. The dream where any one, no matter their

background or circumstances, is just one big idea, one lucky break, one good connection, one game-winning play from making it big. The dream is so tantalizing, it can lead to delusions that sustain a person for years only to come crashing down that much harder.

We meet Loman, a traveling salesman, as his reality and dreams prepare for a final showdown. His wife, Linda, stretches their limited resources to make ends meet but remains cheerful. Sons Biff and Happy struggle to find their places in the world and to reconcile their father’s dreams and expectations with

their own day-to-day lives. Sometimes, Loman thinks he would help his family more if he were dead.

Ron Himes is mesmerizing as Willy Loman, revealing pain and vulnerability as well as the necessary bravado and gravity the role demands. Like Shakespeare’s Lear, Loman’s assumptions have blinded him to reality, and it hurts everyone he loves. Himes shows every possible facet of desperation in search of hope as Loman’s moods swing wildly and any sense of meaning or purpose fades. Chauncy Thomas is electric as the always restless, always uneasy Biff. He falters under

the heavy weight of not living up to the potential others place on him; Thomas deftly ensures we understand the toll this takes on his character’s psyche.

Velma Austin’s Linda is “making do” personified — persistent and resolute when required. Christian Kitchens shows us just how desperate Happy is for the slightest positive acknowledgment from his father. And Kevin Brown is telling as Loman’s distant, wealthy older brother Ben. The solid ensemble cast includes Jacob Cange, Emily Raine-Blythe, Jim Read, Franklin Killian, Taijha Silas, Zahria Moore and Carmia Imani.

Set designer Dunsi Dai and composer Keyon Harrold set the time, period and a pervasive tone that’s under stress but holding steady. Lighting designer Jasmine Williams, costume designer Daryl Harris, and props designer Angel Hammie add the finishing touches that establish the post-war, emerging middle-class world in which the Lomans live and work.

Arthur Miller’s play is a riveting drama that exposes the darker corners of the American Dream. This production features a Black Willy Loman and family, which adds a compelling and telling perspective to the already weighty story without altering the script or the playwright’s intention. Death of a Salesman is an American literary classic; The Black Rep’s excellent production shows audiences why. n

Ron Himes (le ) as Willy Loman shows every facet of desperation in search of hope. | PHIL HAMER

Each week, we bring you our picks for the best concerts of the next seven days! To submit your show for consideration, visit https://bit.ly/3bgnwXZ. All events are subject to change, especially in the age of COVID-19, so do check with the venue for the most up-to-date information before you head out for the night. Happy showgoing!

THURSDAY 19

BOXCAR: 8 p.m., $15-$20. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis.

THE BUTTERY BISCUIT BAND: 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

JOE PASTOR TRIO: 8 p.m., $15-$20. The Dark Room, 3610 Grandel Square inside Grandel Theatre, St. Louis, 314-776-9550.

JOSIAH JOYCE & DREW WEISS: 7 p.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644.

KARAOKE WITH SHAGGY SOUNDS: 5 p.m., free. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 S. Kingshighway, 2nd oor, St. Louis, .

KOFFIN KATS: 8 p.m., $18. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

MERAMEC VALLEY GIRL: 7:30 p.m., $15. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

FRIDAY 20

BIG HEAD TODD & THE MONSTERS: 8 p.m., $30-$40. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

BIG LOVE: A TRIBUTE TO FLEETWOOD MAC: 8 p.m., $20-$25. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

DEANTÉ BRYANT: 7 p.m., $15. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

DREAMSIM 64: 8:30 p.m., $12-$15. Platypus, 4501 Manchester Avenue, St. Louis, 314-359-2293.

EX CATHEDRA: w Resistis, Sacrifice the Sacred 8 p.m., $12. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

FRY PROJECT: 5 p.m., $10. The Attic Music Bar, 2 S. Kingshighway, 2nd oor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.

GRACE BASEMENT: 8 p.m., $15. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis.

INZO: w/ Dreamers Delight, Covex 9 p.m., $5. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

JOHN R MILLER: 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

JOHN R. MILLER: w/ Buffalo Wabs & the Price Hill Hustle 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

KEVIN BUCKLEY: 4 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

KILLING FEVER: w/ Soft Crisis, the Maness Brothers 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

THE LEAN BACK BAND: 8 p.m., $20. The Dark Room, 3610 Grandel Square inside Grandel Theatre, St. Louis, 314-776-9550.

LUMINAL: 8 p.m., $10. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

THE MEDITATIONS: 8 p.m., $20-$25. The Broadway Boat Bar, 1424 N Broadway St, St Louis, 314-565-4124.

SHANE SMITH & THE SAINTS: 8 p.m., $20. The Hawthorn, 2225 Washington Avenue, St. Louis.

VIRGINIA LUQUE WITH JUBILANT SYKES: 7:30 p.m., $20-$45. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

WILDFIRE: 7 p.m., free. The Armory, 3660

Market Street, St. Louis, 314-282-2920.

SATURDAY 21

2 PEDROS: AN EVENING OF YACHT ROC: 7:30 p.m., $15. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

AARON KAMM AND THE ONE DROPS: 10 p.m., $13.50-$16. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE: 8 p.m., $13. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

ALL ROOSTERED UP: noon, free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

BIG GORGEOUS: w/ the Cult of Nasty, The Centaurettes, The Public 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

BOOGIEFOOT: 7 p.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644.

BOYZ II MEN: 8 p.m., $59.50-$134.50. The Factory, 0 N Outer 0 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

BREAKDOWN SHAKEDOWN: 8 p.m., free. The Armory, 3660 Market Street, St. Louis, 314-282-2920.

BROKEN HIPSTERS: 7 p.m., $5. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314224-5521.

C. JAY CONROD: 8 p.m., $25. The Dark Room, 3610 Grandel Square inside Grandel Theatre, St. Louis, 314-776-9550.

THE FABULOUS FREDDIE MERCURY TRIBUTE: 8 p.m., $20-$30. The Hawthorn, 2225 Washington Avenue, St. Louis.

JAGS DOES DYLAN: BOB DYLAN TRIBUTE: 5 p.m., $10. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 S. Kingshighway, 2nd oor, St. Louis, .

POP’S LOCAL SHOWCASE: 7 p.m., $8. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

THE PROCESS: w/ Miistro Freeyo, Reggie Son 8 p.m., $20. Club Riveria, 3524 Washington Ave., St. Louis, 314-531-8663.

RIBTIP & ROGERS: 8 p.m., free. Jack’s Joint, 4652 Shaw Ave., St. Louis, 314-773-6600.

THE SCHWAG: 9 p.m., $10. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

SLUSHII: 10 p.m., $15-$400. RYSE Nightclub, One Ameristar Blvd, St. Charles.

SOMI KAKOMA: 8 p.m., $35-$45. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

SPLIT66: w/ Secondhand Sin, Axeticy 8 p.m., $15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

SUNDAY 22

DREW LANCE: 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

J.D. HUGHES: 2 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

JEREMY TAYLOR & LATOYA SHAREN: 5 p.m., $25. The Dark Room, 3610 Grandel Square inside Grandel Theatre, St. Louis, 314-776-9550.

KEVIN BUCKLEY: 10 a.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

MISS JUBILEE & THE YAS YAS BOYS: 11 a.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644.

THE ROSE COURT: w/ Dead Birds Can Fly, Earthcult 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

SAM MORRIL: 7 p.m., $36. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

MONDAY 23

ANDREW DAHLE: 5 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis,

OUT EVERY NIGHT

DreamSim 64 w/ Vaperror, NOGENKI!, Sound Market, KC Mackey

8:30 p.m. Friday, January 20. Platypus, 4501 Manchester Avenue. $15 to $25. 314-448-1622.

The mid 2010s marked a turning point for the vaporwave genre, which evolved from time-stretched city pop songs and sounds sourced from retro video games to an emergent mix of artists trying to one-up each other on all fronts. That progression can be traced through the discography of Atlanta native Jeff Cardinal, whose Vaperror project combines a sense of commodified nostalgia with a pristine view of an alternate future that’s more sophisticated than our own. For instance, tracks from Vaperror’s 2014 album Mana Pool still consistently appear on a myriad of vaporwave mixes uploaded to YouTube and Soundcloud every week. That kind of staying power is rare for electronic music in general, but Vaperror’s long-term appeal has been proven through a lasting influence on new producers who attempt to capture the same idyllic vibe found on many

of Cardinal’s compositions. While Mana Pool was praised on release for its polished production and nuclear fusion of vaporwave and trap, there’s an underlying minimalism that gives the initial impression of simplicity. Cardinal’s approach to emphasizing basic melody makes for unyielding earworms throughout Vaperror’s many albums, with 2022 record Radiant Racer standing as the artist’s most complete and well-rounded set of songs to date. You’ve heard of cyberpunk, right? Meet cyberfunk, Vaperror’s vision of an alternate world where luxuries are plucked for free from utopian malls staffed with friendly live flamingos. Inspired by the jazzy, frenetic and sometimes bizarre soundtracks of Japanese racing games from the late ’90s, Radiant Racer marks a feather in the cap of a musician whose seminal work will likely inspire another wave of genre-bending electronic artists.

You’re Just Making Up Words Now: If you’re mystified by the term vaporwave or just want to get a better handle on the broad genre soaked in nostalgia, head over to the Vapor Memory YouTube page, which chronicles notable, new and classic releases. —Joseph Hess

Vaperror. | VIA SPOTIFY

[CRITIC’S PICK]

OUT EVERY NIGHT

314-621-8811.

ELECTRIC AVENUE: THE 80’S MTV EXPERIENCE: 8 p.m., $20-$40. The Hawthorn, 2225 Washington Avenue, St. Louis.

SOULARD BLUES BAND: 9 p.m., $8. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

TUESDAY 24

ERIC MCSPADDEN & MARGARET BIENCHETTA: 5 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

ETHAN JONES: 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

GEL: Big Laugh, Direct Measure, Paternity Test 7:30 p.m., $15-$18. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

LIZ CALLAWAY: 7 p.m., $25. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

ONEUS: 8 p.m., $59.50-$125. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 0 Rd, Chesterfield, 2 8 00.

WEDNESDAY 25

DREW LANCE: 4:30 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

LIZ CALLAWAY: 7 p.m., $25-$35. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

MARGARET & FRIENDS: 3 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

MUGSHOT: w/ Cell, No Cure, Subversion 8 p.m., $12. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

THE ST. LOUIS STEADY GRINDERS: 7 p.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 3 14-367-3644.

VOODOO DEAD 1981: 9 p.m., $12. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. n

Jessica Ackerley and Patrick Shiroishi

8 p.m. Friday, January 20. Schlafly Tap Room, 2100 Locust Street. $10 to $20. 314-241-2337.

Although past performances can be found online, even high quality videos of guitarist Jessica Ackerley and saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi fail to accurately capture how their combustible chemistry ignites and unfolds in a live setting. The phrase “a whole greater than the sum of its parts” accurately describes many artists, but Ackerley and Shiroishi apply musical multiplication through conversation-

al playing and textural storytelling. Born in Alberta, Canada, Ackerly has become an established improviser in the past decade, with a prolific body of work that includes collaborations with Tyshawn Sorey, Marc Edwards and Luke Stewart — just a few notable names in a long list of many. After nearly a decade of living and working in New York, Ackerly currently operates out of Honolulu, Hawaii, which means that performances in the Midwest are a rarity. With a background firmly rooted in Los Angeles’ experimental music scene, Shiroishi’s work ranges from the progressive art-rock of Upsilon Acrux to the joyous squalor of SSWAN, a free-jazz powerhouse that also features

Ackerly alongside a lineup of prominent improvisers. By presenting as a duo, the pair calls upon their shared history of living on the cutting edge of spontaneous composition. Schlafly Tap Room offers up a cozy and casual backdrop for the two world-class musicians to sculpt an otherworldly state of sound.

In With the New: This event kicks off a busy year for New Music Circle, whose lineup of concerts throughout the next few months features Madalyn Merkey, the Brandon Lopez Trio and Anna Webber’s Shimmer/Wince. Tickets and additional details can be found at the organization’s website newmusiccircle.org.

—Joseph Hess

Jessica Ackerley and Patrick Shiroishi. | VIA ARTISTS BANDCAMP

Manners

BY DAN SAVAGE

Hey Dan: I’m a gay man, and I’ve recently started seeing a guy in an open relationship. He’s intelligent, funny and sexy. He told me early on that his partner is a Dom top, into kink (leather, latex, etc.), that his partner has caged boys, and so on. Moreover, with his partner he’s a “bratty sub,” meaning he engages in erotic disobedience and defiance. I was indifferent to this initially, but I have begun to become aware of his partners presence in a way I don’t like, even though I’ve never met the guy. I also find myself feeling resentful and jealous of the idea of him being told what to do, held back or controlled. (The sex we have is hot, intimate and intense, as well as completely vanilla.) I know his relationship with his partner is none of my business, but if he truly is a bratty sub, and his partner is a “tamer,” am I just a pawn in their games? Is the intimacy we share in the service of his primary D/s relationship? I like this guy and wish I could be with him, but that’s not possible because he and his partner are engaged. I’m okay with that. But I can’t stand the idea of our connection being incorporated into an erotic game he’s playing with his partner. I don’t want to be conscripted into their power exchange. I welcome your advice.

Neither Brat Nor Tamer

Let’s call the guy you’re hooking up with “Brat” and call his fiancé “Dom.” Worstcase scenario, NBNT, Brat goes home and tells Dom everything you’ve been doing together, presumably in a very bratty way, and then Dom punishes Brat for being a slutty brat. If that’s what they’re doing — and we don’t know if that’s what they’re doing — then, yeah, I guess the vanilla sex you’re having with Brat is being “incorporated” into the erotic powerexchange games Brat and Dom play together. You could ask Brat not to tell Dom anything about the time he spends with you, NBNT, but you ultimately can’t control what Brat does or says when he’s alone with Dom … and them telling each other everything might be a condition of their open relationship … and you attempting to control what Brat says to Dom when they’re alone while at the same time objecting to the control Dom has over Brat is a little hypocritical.

Zooming out for a second: anyone who doesn’t like the idea of someone they’re fucking talking to a primary partner about the fucking they’re doing shouldn’t

fuck primarily partnered people and/ or should only fuck primarily partnered people who have DADT arrangements with their primary partners. (Submissive English majors: I order you to diagram that sentence.)

Back to you, NBNT: I think the real issue here is that you’ve caught feelings for Brat. But since you can’t object to Dom’s existence, as Dom was a given at the start (and Dom’s willingness to open the relationship made your connection with Brat possible), you’ve subconsciously landed on the idea of objecting to the sex Brat has with Dom and the possibility that the sex Brat has with you — in addition to being great and hot for you — fuels his connection to Dom. So it’s not that Brat plays a subordinate role in his relationship with Dom that bothers you, e.g., Brat being told what to do, Dom controlling Brat), but the subordinate role you play in Brat’s life. You want Brat the way Dom has Brat — not the sub part, NBNT, the partner part — and you’re going to come to terms with that if you decide to keep seeing Brat.

P.S. Just in case any Tucker Carlson producers are digging through my column looking for things to get outraged about: “caged boys” is a reference to submissive adult men, sometimes called “boys,” who enjoy wearing locking male chastity devices, sometimes called “cages.” Brat’s fiancé is holding the keys to cages with cocks in them, not the keys to cages with children in them.

Hey Dan: What is the etiquette for running into people you’ve hooked up with? My partner and I, both males, practice ENM, so long as he doesn’t know who I hook up with and I always play safe. I was recently on my own at a store and saw a guy I hooked up with. I would’ve said hi/acknowledged him, but he was with another guy, so I actively avoided eye contact since I didn’t know if they were together. But we definitely saw each other, just not at the same time. I want to be ready for when this happens again either when I’m alone or with my partner.

Ran Into Guy I Dicked

Fucking questions, sucking questions, cock-locking questions — I feel qualified to answer those on my own. But etiquette questions? Those are outside my areas of expertise, RIGID. So I shared your letter with Daniel Post Senning, great-great grandson of Emily Post and co-author of Emily Post’s Etiquette: 19th Edition

“Etiquette says we acknowledge people we know with our eyes, a wave, a nod and a polite, ‘How’s it going?’ when we meet in passing,” Senning said. “So long as the other person understands the lim-

SAVAGE LOVE

its of your romantic connection, there’s no reason for the encounter to be awkward.”

Since you weren’t with your partner, RIGID, you were free to acknowledge your hookup without your partner both noticing and knowing. But let’s say you were with your partner. What then?

“In a small world where we might be managing multiple relationships where the parties would rather not interact or know about each other, it’s a good idea to make explicitly sure everybody knows that fact,” Senning said, “and everyone knows that might mean walking past each other in public or otherwise limiting interactions.”

In other words, RIGID, what you know about your partner — he would rather not know about your hookups — your hookups need to know, too. It’s a small world, and the gay world is even smaller; even if you were to stick to horny tourists and business travelers, your chances of running into a hookup when you’re out with your partner are high. So you should say something like this to your hookups as you’re showing them to the door: “Hey, that was great. Look, if we run into each other and I’m with my partner, I might not be able to say hi. We’re open, but we’re doing the ‘don’t ask/don’t tell’ thing, and saying hello to a hot guy like you is a tell. My apologies in advance.”

Now, in the example you mentioned, RIGID, you were alone, but your hookup was with someone else, and you opted to pretend not to see him. Was that the right thing to do, etiquette-wise?

“Thinking about how you manage these moments with consideration for all involved is the right way to think these things through,” Senning said. “RIGID was right to consider the possibility the guy he saw might not want a past hookup to say ‘hello’ or otherwise engage when he was with someone else.”

While I agree with Senning — and defer to him on all matters of etiquette — I think gay men should err on the side of acknowledging the existence of men whose asses we’ve recently eaten, whenever possible. Ignoring someone we’ve fucked is cold, and it can leave that person wondering what they may have done wrong. So a quick smile and a nod. If the guy he’s with notices — or if the guy you’re with notices — telling a small lie to spare someone’s feelings is a courtesy that etiquette allows. Some suggestions: “We used to work together,” “He goes to my gym,” “That’s George Santos.”

Daniel Post Senning co-authored Emily Post’s Etiquette: 19th Edition with Lizzie Post, also a great-great grandchild of Emily Post. Together they co-host the podcast Awesome Etiquette

Hey Dan: I’m a 42-year-old gay man living in San Francisco, and I can’t stop playing the cum dump. My partner of 10 years wants to marry me next year. That’s not the problem. My problem is that we have ridden an STI train for two years. Every three months, we get a positive for something. It’s a roller coaster ride of shots and pills. My partner wants us to close our relationship and get off the STI train. My partner enjoys being topped by me, but he is older and struggles to top me. I’m vers and love bottoming. So I end up exploring all the normal spots for anonymous sex when I want to get topped. I tried going to these spaces and just giving oral, something I also love doing, but I always end up bottoming. And I quickly go from “please wear a condom” to “load me up.” My doctor isn’t supportive, and I get lots of “you need to stop doing this” from him. What should I do?

Lusting Over Anon Dick

You should find a few regular fuck buddies who can load you up. That won’t eliminate your risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections, LOAD, but having more sex with fewer people will — under most circumstances — significantly lower your risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections. And if you find it hard to stick to using condoms or oral when you visit places where men have anonymous sex, LOAD, you should avoid those places.

Again, I wanna emphasize that finding a small group of regular fuckbuddies isn’t a perfect system for avoiding sexually transmitted infections — only abstinence is, it saddens me to say — but taking nonanon and/or nearly-anon loads from a small number of regulars as opposed to anon loads from a large number of irregulars should result in less time on the STI train. And if you like the sleazy vibes at “the normal spots” for anonymous sex — bathhouses, sex clubs, public sex environments — you can arrange to meet your regular fuck buddies at them.

P.S. Your doctor shouldn’t shame you, LOAD, but you can’t expect your doctor to congratulate you after you’ve contracted your fourth STI in less than a year. And your partner sounds frustrated with the track you’re on. He’s talking about closing the relationship right now, LOAD. If you don’t want him to start thinking about ending it, you’ll make some changes.

P.P.S. Therapy.

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