After head’s little brother was killed, he turned to music to ease the grief — and created a hit song along the way
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INSIDE: Wealthy Harvard grad Will Scharf says he’ll “take on the establishment” as AG. PG. 14
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John Mueller, 50, is a St. Louis native (Lindbergh High School) and serial entrepreneur who started out in Nevada’s cannabis industry in 2016. After selling the operation three years later, he moved to the Midwest and now has 26 dispensaries across six states, including 15 Greenlight Dispensaries in Missouri. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
How do you think the adult-use rollout went in Missouri?
Nowhere in the country has that happened before where they launched a program ahead of schedule, even if it was just a few days, so I think it was a gift to the entire industry. Generally speaking, you see lots of delays or years of delays in places like New York.
Were all of your dispensaries licensed at the same time?
When the state announced the early launch, they didn’t really tell you what to expect. They had said as soon as you get your license, you can open, so everybody was wondering, “Am I getting a license on Friday?” We were fortunate that within a couple minutes of each other all 15 of the Greenlight licenses came on, about 8:30 on Friday morning, and by 10 o’clock, we were open for adult-use, and all of the sudden the lines started going around the building.
What’s the cannabis industry like?
I’ve done construction projects in the Ukraine, and I’ve opened a cattle feedlot in China, and the cannabis industry is by far the hardest industry I’ve been involved with since I came out of Mizzou.
What are the struggles?
When we first started even in 2016 — which feels like a lifetime ago — we’d bounce basically from one bank back to another until you effectively got caught, and you’d always worry about just simple things like making sure those payroll checks are clearing. In our industry, there’s always politics involved. So I think you stack all that stuff together, and you’ve got a very complex business that really shouldn’t be.
What’s your favorite cannabis product?
—A current U.S. attorney, who took part in a “collective eyeroll” upon learning Scharf was running for statewide office.
Read more on page 14
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13 Counties and even municipalities are gearing up to tax the heck out of recreational marijuana, the Post-Dispatch reports. Your friendly neighborhood pot dealer is looking more and more like a better bargain. Also, a listicle making the rounds from some publicity-hungry company named Safewise says the most dangerous Missouri city after dark is actually Springfield. We don’t believe it here in St. Louis, but we intend to trumpet it at every opportunity.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14 Lamar Johnson is free — after 28 long years in prison. We’ll give Kim Gardner this: She fought hard, and an innocent man now has his freedom. That’s not a small thing. Also: Emerson announced last week it was keeping its HQ in St. Louis. Remember when we all took a big sigh of relief? Well, now CEO Lal Karsanbhai is issuing a dose of “tough love.” It’s likely warranted (who among us can defend the inequities in our educational outcomes?), but it’s still hard to accept.
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 15 At 6 a.m., a man fatally shot the carjacker attempting to steal his vehicle at a gas station just north of downtown — a maddeningly familiar scenario in recent months.
keep firing after the carjacker is fleeing — a man in Soulard now faces seconddegree murder charges over that vigilantism in a previous incident.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16 Michael Butler quits running the Missouri Democratic Party to spend more time selling all-you-can-drink booze. He couldn’t have decided this before his (contested) reelection last month? Also, who among us saw snow flurries in the forecast? RIP, Tim McCarver. We’ll miss your voice.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17 In yet another chess scandal with St. Louis roots, SLU’s chess coach is accused of sexual assault and harassment. First, the allegation that Magnus Carlsen used anal beads to cheat in the St. Louis Chess Cup and now this — who knew being the Chess Capital of the World meant being linked to so much bad behavior?
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18 It’s Mardi Gras, and Soulard is positively packed. Somehow police managed to issue only seven summons for underage possession, which gives us new appreciation for the sheer laziness of the SLMPD. Laissez les bon temps rouler!
A sleep gummy that I basically take every night. It allows me to wake up in the morning ready to roll.
—Rosalind Early
“I would strongly encourage that, you know, you flee the situation as soon as possible,” a police captain told the PostDispatch.“But if you’re in such a situation where you have to defend yourself, you must defend yourself.” Just don’t
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19 Former President Jimmy Carter has entered hospice. This is one time thoughts and prayers are actually appropriate — we send them to all the Carters and regret every time we mocked the idea of all the adultery staining our dirty little hearts
“Will Scharf talks about things he’s learned prosecuting violent crime in America’s murder capital, but I’m not aware of a single murder that he prosecuted in America’s murder capital.”
Hole Watch
Date of sighting: February 11
Location: DeTonty, just east of Vandeventer
What is it? A car’s natural enemy: the pothole
What is a pothole’s natural enemy? A functioning municipal government
Audi’s distance from pothole: approximately seven feet and closing fast Audi’s ground clearance: considerably less than the depth of the pothole
We ask three St. Louisans what they’re reading, watching or listening to. In the hot seat this week: three Saint Louis Art Museum employees.
Ann Burroughs, head of engagement and interpretation
Just finished reading: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
“It’s about a woman in the Northwest who works in an aquarium, so not exactly an art museum. It’s an imaginary tale, but she befriends an octopus there who leads her back to unanswered questions about the loss of her son. I started off reading it thinking it should be either nonfiction or fiction, and this is kind of a blend. I ended up loving it. It was great, beautifully written.”
Katherine Feldkamp, research assistant with decorative arts and design
Listening to: Sammy Rae & The Friends
“They’re kind of an alt-rock blues band. It’s these different styles all thrown together, but they do it in a really cool, contemporary way, which I really like. The lead singer is great, too. She has a great voice.”
Matthew Hathaway, director of marketing and communication
Watching: Motherland, a BBC comedy
“It’s just really well cast, and the creator of it is Graham Linehan, who has made a lot of funny shows, Father Ted and The IT Crowd, and other sort of British comedies over the years.”
SOMETIMES IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT COUNT
The St. Louis Council councilman’s role as whistleblower lawyer raises eyebrows about case against Wash U trans-care clinic
Written by RAY HARTMANNOn February 10, the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital was rocked with explosive whistleblower allegations of “medically and morally appalling” treatment of young patients.
The allegations were published on a news-commentary website called the Free Press. Jamie Reed, 42, a former case manager at the clinic, wrote that the clinic overlooked patients’ mental-health needs and failed to inform parents and adolescents about side effects of treatment, among other things.
In an affidavit she had sent two weeks earlier to Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, Reed stated that the center “gave children puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones after just two one-hour visits,” the Missouri Independent reported.
Washington University officials expressed “alarm” at the allegations and promised both to review them and institute new safeguards at the clinic. But they said they would continue the work of the clinic, which “provides health care for transgender and nonbinary people in a welcoming, affirming environment.”
To most of us, that’s a wonderful mission. It should be a matter of local pride that Washington University has been willing to risk blowback in serving one of the most endangered populations in the nation.
Data indicates that 82 percent
of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40 percent have attempted suicide (with that number highest among transgender youth). The university is on the side of trans affirmation, a point not diminished at all by the emergence of transphobia as the Republican Party’s favorite red-meat instigator for its base.
What followed the publication of one untested commentary was a political luau, as one would expect from Missouri.
Bailey and fellow Republican culture warriors — led by insurrectionist U.S. Senator Josh Hawley — wasted no time pouncing on Reed’s statements as proven fact. Same for Republican state legislators, who nearly trampled one another in their zeal to attack all things LGBTQ.
Adding fuel to the fire, Reed described herself as “a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders,” and said she’s now married to a trans man. And she said she’s a progressive who didn’t mind that Bailey is a Republican because “the safety of children should not be a matter for our culture wars.”
The point about safety is true enough. But it doesn’t begin to prove the validity of Reed’s allegations. Nor does it establish her sweeping conclusion that “we need a moratorium on the hormonal and surgical treatment of young people with gender dysphoria.”
For those of us on the outside looking in, we can only guess whether the case will serve as some landmark moment in rolling back care for trans people. Or whether the story will fade as a set of allegations that turned out not to be provable.
But a couple of clues have appeared, and they don’t bode well for the case against the clinic. We’ve learned the identity of the two attorneys representing Reed and their brazen contempt for trans people is just a little bit suspicious.
One is Vernadette Broyles — of Norcross, Georgia — a woman who has dedicated her life’s work to opposing the rights of trans people. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted, “Broyles is president and general counsel of the Child & Parental Rights Campaign, which says it exists to respond to a ‘radical new ideology’ leading children to believe they could be ‘born in
the wrong body.’”
But with no disrespect to her transphobic-ness, Broyles’ presence runs second on the eyebrow meter to the presence of her legal teammate: one St. Louis County Councilman Ernie Trakas.
Trakas is a known commodity, to put it mildly. Since he was inflicted upon the council in 2017 by south county voters, Trakas has served as something of a truth meter on almost every council issue. If he says “wrong,” go with “right.” If he says “yes,” go with “no.”
Reading Trakas isn’t at all complicated.
This is not to suggest Trakas lacks credentials for this assignment. His website describes him as a George Mason University Law School graduate who, “during the last 20 years, represented students, public school districts, colleges, and universities in disability-based discrimination cases in federal courts.”
But for those trying to ascertain whether the impending lawsuit is as fair-minded as Reed suggests it is while flaunting her progressive credentials, the presence of both Broyles and Trakas shouts out otherwise. Rather loudly.
In 2021, County Executive Sam Page issued an executive order designating about 300 single-stall restrooms in county government buildings as gender neutral. The Republicans on the council opposed it because that’s what Republicans do.
But the only one who was truly worked up was Trakas. His reaction then should offer a glimpse into his mindset now.
“Trakas was vocal in his objection, asserting that Page’s executive order was part of a nationwide initiative ‘designed and
intended to erode, compromise and ultimately nullify’ the ‘free exercise of religious beliefs and the values inherent in those beliefs,’” the Post-Dispatch quoted him as saying. “‘To be clear, my objection to these measures is not about preventing anyone from making a lifestyle choice. This is about protecting the free exercise of religious beliefs and the values inherent in those beliefs.’”
I don’t know about you, but when I visit public restrooms, it’s neither to exercise my religious beliefs nor make a lifestyle choice. Maybe that’s just me.
But when you know someone like we’ve come to know Trakas, it’s hard to exclude that knowledge when trying to assess a situation like this one from afar. This is the same discrimination-law expert on behalf of whom we the county taxpayers laid out $60,000 to settle a sexual harassment claim by his former assistant.
Trakas always maintained that the claim was false. But the same self-proclaimed taxpayerfund watchdog — which he says ad nauseam — allowed his colleagues to waste all those precious tax dollars paying off a ransom to a false accuser?
With Trakas and a full-time anti-trans warrior at the legal helm, it’s hard not to remain suspicious of Reed’s impending lawsuit. To be clear, any issues of whether her whistleblower protections were violated might get resolved without regard to the substance of her allegations. This is not to judge her personal claim.
That said, here’s hoping Washington University sticks with its mission. Pausing its work, as Reed advocates, should not be an option. Nor should ending it altogether, the clear choice of Reed’s newfound attorneys.
This is a sensitive area of medical treatment and a new one: There might well be refinements and improvements needed in the delivery of services to young people and their families. But the work of the Transgender Center remains a great asset to the community.
Which is more than you can say for Ernie Trakas. n
When I visit public restrooms, it’s neither to exercise my religious beliefs nor make a lifestyle choice. Maybe it’s just me.
“It’s total dysfunction,” says a resident ticketed five times in one month
Written by SARAH FENSKEFor just about a decade, Celia Shacklett paid for a residential parking permit. “I balked at first because I didn’t want to pay for street parking,” Shacklett says. Then, like her neighbors, she got used to it. At $12.50 per car per year, it was pretty cheap.
Shacklett lives in Forest Park Southeast, just a few blocks south of the Washington University medical school. The neighborhood had mobilized to get the permits, which kept med-school students from monopolizing the spots in front of their houses. Her neighbor Zen Harbison describes it as a game of “Whac-A-Mole” — once one block started requiring permits, visitors would invade the next, and then that block would lobby the alderman for a permit district of its own.
The interlopers were easy to spot. Harbison says, “Anyone who drives up in the morning, gets out of the car with a backpack and starts walking toward campus, duh.”
Ultimately, Forest Park Southeast and the neighboring Central West End ended up with 10 districts. And it all worked well enough until last June, when the 1,000 or so permits in the area were set for renewal — but no one was capable of renewing them.
Park Central Development had long been in charge of the 10 districts. But Executive Director Abdul-Kaba Abdullah says the nonprofit development corporation had been working for years to hand the program off to the city. Abdullah says talks with the city treasurer’s office began in 2019 — and while they were interrupted by the pandemic, and then Treasurer Tishaura Jones’ ascent to the mayor’s office, by 2021
they were back in earnest. Park Central finally announced on its website last spring it was handing over administration to the city. But the city — perhaps surprisingly — has not administered any residential parking permits for quite some time. Despite that lead time, it simply wasn’t ready for the handoff.
The result? It’s now been eight months since residents of Forest Park Southeast and the Central West End have been able to renew or obtain new residential parking permits. That means people like Shacklett (who lost her permit after she bought a new car) and newcomers to the neighborhood are out of luck.
Even though it’s the city treasurer who will be administering the permits, that hasn’t stopped the treasurer’s office from ticketing. Treasurer Adam Layne says he’s had to send in parking enforcement officers — residents were again complaining that med-school students were using their streets as a free parking lot. Layne’s staff has urged people to continue to use their expired permits as a stop-gap measure.
Shacklett, out of luck, says she got ticketed five times in October. Since she teaches music lessons out of her home, she previously purchased permits for people visiting, too. Three of her students’ families were ticketed in October as well.
Shacklett found a solution, kind of — at the direction of Alderwoman Tina Pihl, she now sends her tickets directly to Layne. One by one, he voids them.
“I send it to him, and then I yank his chain two weeks later to remind him,” Shacklett says. But she can’t help but marvel at the inef-
ficiency: “What a roundabout way to deal with it!”
Layne won’t estimate just how many tickets he’s personally voided. But, he says, “It’s happening less and less” as enforcement officers in the area learn which cars belong. “They know them now.”
Layne says there are plenty of reasons for the lag in a new permitting system: The software cost $20,000, and that meant issuing a request for proposals and getting multiple bids. Rather than put a temporary system in place, and delay even further the actual rollout, he wanted to get the permanent system up and running. He also wanted to set up a system that could work for neighborhoods around the city, should they opt in. (Asked why the city and Park Central announced the handoff when the city still didn’t have a program in place, he says the departure of the Park Central employee who’d previously administered the program forced the issue.)
Layne declines to hazard a guess on when the office will be ready to issue new permits.
“We’re in the final stages of testing, and we hope to have applications open in the coming months,” he says. Of the period without a working system, he adds, “We’d hoped it wouldn’t go through February, but we knew it could.”
Once the city’s permit system is up and running, Layne says his office would be interested in taking on residential districts through-
out the city, which have turned to a hodgepodge of options in the absence of the city’s supervision. Some are apparently administered by their aldermen. In other cases, Layne says, an individual neighbor has taken on the responsibility.
It doesn’t always work well. Layne says he’s heard of one district where someone was unable to get a permit due to a personal grudge on the part of the person charged with administration.
He sees his office as being a good solution for districts in need. “I anticipate people coming to us,” he says. Abdullah, of Park Central, agrees, saying it’s a matter of equity for the city to administer the program — not all neighborhoods have the resources to run it themselves.
But for that to happen, Layne says, the treasurer’s office needs to get the program going — and eight months after the handoff, he’s asking for patience. “I understand the frustrations in Forest Park Southeast,” he says. “We are doing everything we can right now to have this program up and running as fast as possible.”
Shacklett is one person who’s ready.
“I just think it’s total dysfunction,” she says. “There are so many dysfunctional facets of our city. I’m sorry to see it. I’m sorry for people who come in from out of town and have to deal with this. It’s not the image I wish St. Louis was projecting.”
After frustrations with the police, Cameron Punjani is leading her own investigation
Written by RYAN KRULLCameron Punjani never had any particular interest in listening to true crime podcasts or watching true crime documentaries, much less scrolling through #truecrime social media posts. But a little more than a year ago her father disappeared and, disappointed with what she saw as police’s lax attitude toward the case, she took to TikTok to try to stop her dad’s story from being forgotten.
“I’m just not OK with not having the answers,” Cameron says. “I’m not going to be like, ‘Oh, yeah, my dad went missing, I guess there’s just nothing I can do about it.’”
By day Cameron, 22, works at a dispensary in Festus. But her videos are increasingly finding a big audience, with the more recent ones regularly garnering views in the tens of thousands. They’re also leading to tips that she hopes could provide a big break in the ongoing missing-person case — and stirring up a host of amateur sleuths eager to help in her quest.
January 14, 2022, started out as usual for Cameron’s dad, 50-year-old Naushad Punjani. He left his home in De Soto and drove to St. Louis, where he clocked in at his job at a plastics manufacturer in north city. But he never came home. His family reported him missing soon thereafter.
Cameron says her frustrations with law enforcement began almost right away. A Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputy came to her house to interview her, but she says she later found out that the report was never taken to a detective.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department disputes that. Grant Bissell, with the sheriff’s department, says that the case was assigned to a detective on January 20, six days after Naushad’s disappearance.
“We’ve had someone on it since days after his disappearance was reported,” Bissell says.
On the night of January 15, Cameron says that someone crashed her dad’s car in the Mark Twain neighborhood of St. Louis. The car crash occurred less than two miles from Serioplast, the plastics manufacturer where Naushad worked.
Months later, Cameron says, police in-
terviewed the woman who had been behind the wheel of Naushad’s car, who said that she’d gotten the car from her cousin. But the police couldn’t talk to her cousin because he had been killed in March.
That story sounded a little too convenient to Cameron.
Another potential lead that Cameron feels wasn’t followed up on quickly enough was that not long after her dad disappeared, she started getting requests for money via Venmo from someone who had Naushad’s phone.
Bissell says that “pages and pages and pages of reports” have been compiled by a detective, with additions to the case file as recently as last month. He adds that the detective has been doing investigative work in north county and north St. Louis city, areas outside of where Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office personnel would typically operate.
Cameron made a TikTok about the case in January 2022 when her dad first went missing. But by October she’d grown frustrated with the lack of updates coming from police, so she started making more short videos.
Cameron says that she’s motivated by the fact that her dad was in a place where voluntarily ditching the life he’d built for himself just doesn’t make any sense.
Naushad had previously been in debt, but after a year of working at Serioplast, he was back on firm financial footing. Cameron says her dad was also excited about becoming a grandfather and about Cameron’s younger brother starting college.
“He had a lot that he was looking forward to,” Cameron says.
She’s keeping an open mind about what happened to her dad and is trying not to jump to conclusions.
“The possibilities are honestly end-
less,” she says. “He could very much be alive or he could have died a year ago, and I have no idea where his body is.”
As Cameron’s audience has grown, so have the tips that her videos generate.
Earlier this month, in a video that has almost 400,000 views, Cameron announced that she got a tip that her dad had been seen at a convenience store in Granite City. Cameron and a friend investigated.
Employees at the convenience store didn’t recognize Naushad’s photo, but when Cameron stopped in a bar two doors down, a server there said she’d seen Naushad just a day prior in the bar drinking coffee.
However, when Cameron managed to get a photo of the person who might be her dad, she said that the hair and jawline didn’t match. Undeterred, she updated her followers about the lead that didn’t pan out. n
Written by RYAN KRULLAround 9:30 p.m. on February 13, 25-year-old Kayla Thompson was driving on the interstate with her parents when, just after passing under Hampton, a large chunk of concrete struck the front of her 2019 Jeep Cherokee.
Thompson’s dad was behind the wheel, and he thinks he saw a man in his mid-30s or early 40s throw the object from the overpass.
“If he had thrown it a few seconds later, it would have probably gone through the windshield and hit my dad in the face,” Thompson says.
Thompson says her Jeep was left leaking fluid, with its left blinker and horn broken.
The officer who responded to the scene said that Thompson was the fifth person to call in recent days to make a report about their car being struck by a concrete chunk on Interstate 64 near the Hampton Avenue overpass, Thompson says.
Despite eyewitness reports, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department says it is unclear if someone is throwing the concrete onto the highway, or if there is another reason for the falling rocks.
The department has set up a mobile camera at the overpass to investigate.
Another incident occurred on Super Bowl Sunday around 6 p.m. when a piece of concrete struck a red Nissan.
The concrete left a long gash in the car’s hood and a spider crack in the windshield.
The driver spoke to the RFT but asked that his name be withheld. He said that when police responded, “The officer told us that for the last week, detectives have been working there because there are reports of some people throwing things at cars from ... the Hampton and Turtle Park overpasses.”
The SLMPD has confirmed that a similar incident occurred two days prior, on February 10, when another car on I-64 was struck by a chunk of concrete near
the Hampton and Kingshighway exits.
Of the man her father saw, Thompson says, “Something is going on with him mentally, and he’s just taking it out on everyone else.” Her father thought it looked like the man may have been sleeping on the overpass prior to dropping the concrete.
Thompson is a college student who also works at QuikTrip. She says she’s now on the hook for the $1,000 insurance deductible to repair her car.
“Whoever is doing this has no idea what [drivers] are actually going through and if they even have the money to afford to get their car fixed,” Thompson says.
She adds, “I don’t want another incident to happen and it gets to a point where somebody gets killed.”
Baffled by the falling debris, police have set up a mobile camera to figure out what’s going on
Thousands of partygoers took advantage of the beautiful weather over the weekend and turned St. Louis’ Soulard neighborhood into a sea of purple, green and yellow.
People showed up in droves on Saturday for the Mardi Gras Bud Light Grand Parade, and they were all having fun in the sun. Things took a turn for the unexpected around noon when the truck pulling the St. Louis City SC float suddenly caught fire. Approximately 20 people were on the float at the time, but no injuries were reported.
So, ultimately, the spirits remainded high. Drinks were had, beads were thrown and many memories made and probably forgotten. Never change, St. Louis. n
A CELEBRATION OF THE UNIQUE AND FASCINATING ASPECTS OF OUR HOME
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is too moderate — or at least that’s what about 50 people who packed into Krueger’s Bar in University City on a Tuesday night in late January seemed to indicate. They were there to support former Assistant U.S. Attorney Will Scharf, who announced he’s running for Bailey’s job.
“There’s a big difference between Republicans and conservatives. We have a lot of Republicans in the state of Missouri, but we have many fewer true conservative warriors,” Scharf said.
“Conservative” was the word of the night, as the Princeton and Harvard alumus billed himself as a conservative activist and a political outsider.
“We’re going to win this race by bringing together conservatives from around the state of Missouri, conservatives who are willing to stand up for what’s right, conservatives who are willing to take on the establishment, conservatives who are willing to fight for the state of Missouri,” Scharf said.
He touted his bona fides as someone who worked behind the scenes on the confirmations of Brett Kavanaugh (Scharf says he helped him “beat the smears”) and Amy Coney Barrett.
He dropped Clarence Thomas’ and Donald Trump’s names as well.
The man who introduced Scharf, former State Senator Bill Onder (R-St. Charles), dropped another name.
“If you like the turn the AG’s office took under Attorney General Eric Schmitt, then I think you’ll like Attorney General Will Scharf,” Onder said.
Talking to the RFT, Scharf said
BY RYAN KRULLhe was “excited to present a conservative contrast to the kind of leadership that the people of Missouri have been getting out of Jefferson City.”
He said that Missouri has been in the throes of what he called “political insanity.” His evidence? “Year after year, election after election, voters keep returning state government to a narrow set of lobbyists and insiders.”
The implication, of course, being that Scharf himself is an outsider — never mind his wealthy background, elite education and even more elite connections.
Though Scharf’s campaign kicked off in earnest the last day of January, close observers of Missouri politics — as well as former Scharf colleagues — suspected the run for quite some time.
One day before Thanksgiving last year, not long after leaving his job as a federal prosecutor, Scharf had an 11-tweet thread go viral. “Things I learned working as an Assistant US Attorney prosecuting violent crimes in St. Louis, America’s murder capital,” the first tweet read.
The thread contained a handful of Scharf’s takeaways from his time as a federal prosecutor that mirrored nationwide GOP talking points, including supporting police and cracking down on China’s fentanyl exports.
The tweet’s virality led to Scharf appearing on right-wing cable news outlet Newsmax later that week, and by the end of the month, he’d announced he was running for an unspecified statewide office.
Scharf’s announcement was no surprise to a current assistant U.S.
attorney, who tells the RFT that it was met with “a collective eye roll.”
“Scharf talks about things he’s learned prosecuting violent crime in America’s murder capital, but I’m not aware of a single murderer that he prosecuted in America’s murder capital,” the prosecutor says.
The assistant U.S. attorney, who asked the RFT not to print his name, stresses that Scharf is obviously a smart man who worked hard during his two years on the job. But when Scharf joined the prosecutor’s office in 2020, his political ambitions were apparent from day one, and the perception that the job was merely a stepping stone for him rubbed some people the wrong way.
“He’d been a prosecutor for a little over five minutes, and he’s talking about Missouri AG,” the assistant U.S. attorney says, adding that Scharf came into the job with no prosecutorial experience and mostly handled “getting your feet wet” type cases during his two-year tenure.
Court records show that of the roughly 150 cases in which Scharf entered an appearance as an assistant U.S. attorney, a little more than half were for gun possession crimes, with “felon in possession of firearm” by far the most common charge. Another 15 or so cases involved gun possession charges along with other crimes such as drug trafficking.
The remaining cases were against people accused of robbery and kidnapping, dealing fentanyl or crack, or who had escaped from halfway houses. None of the cases Scharf prosecuted, much less made an appearance in, involved a murder charge.
The assistant U.S. attorney who spoke to the RFT says that it’s not necessarily uncommon for attor-
neys to come into the office with no prior prosecutorial experience, but they usually stick around for several years and gradually take on more complicated cases.
“Other prosecutors are not just checking the box, literally counting the days from the moment they get there to when they can leave,” the former colleague says. He adds, “You’ll never be able to convince me that he didn’t plan on getting just over two years. So he can say ‘years’ instead of ‘year.’”
After Scharf’s campaign kickoff speech, I asked him if there was one case from his time as a federal prosecutor that exemplified his time in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He cited the case of Walter Wilson, a 39-year-old who was arrested on a gun possession charge and subsequently escaped from the St. Ann jail by working with two other inmates to kick open a window. U.S. Marshals working with local law enforcement apprehended Wilson within 24 hours of his escape.
“What that case brought home for me was the admiration and respect we should have for law enforcement officers,” Scharf says.
Wilson, who was represented by a public defender, conceded the escape attempt, which meant that at trial Scharf’s job was to prove yet again that a man previously convicted of a felony possessed a gun.
The 36-year-old Scharf comes to Missouri politics from an elite background. His father worked in private equity, and Scharf attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, for high school, followed by Princeton for undergrad. At Harvard Law School, he was president of the Harvard Federalist Society, a chapter of the highly Continued on pg 17
influential organization that for decades has been placing conservative judges at all levels of the judiciary. Unusually for a lawyer who’s spent all but a few years of his career working for the government, in January, Scharf donated $500,000 to his own campaign.
In Missouri, Scharf worked for Catherine Hanaway’s campaign for governor in the 2016 race. He took an aggressive tack against Hanaway’s then-opponent Eric Greitens.
“He was sending opposition research out on Greitens to all the other campaigns and trashing him. He was one of the biggest haters out of all the staffers,” says a longtime Missouri Republican consultant about Scharf.
“Then, of course, Greitens wins the primary. And within a couple of weeks, Will goes to work for Greitens.”
When Greitens assumed the governorship, Scharf became his policy director.
The Republican consultant describes Scharf as one of a handful of Greitens staffers who stayed with the now-disgraced governor until the very end. Amid a sexual assault allegation and other mounting controversies, Greitens resigned the office in June 2018.
The following month, President Donald Trump nominated Federalist Society member Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and Scharf worked on the Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett confirmations.
The assistant U.S. attorney who spoke to the RFT says that in addition to Scharf’s obvious ambitions, it was also clear that he came into the prosecutor job highly connected. He recounts that in March 2020, the position for which Scharf would be hired hadn’t even been posted, but a monthly office birthday email went out, and Scharf’s name was among the recipients.
“You know you got fucking juice if the job isn’t even posted and you’re already on the office birthday list,” the assistant U.S. attorney says.
Despite his elite upbringing, Scharf has leaned hard into rural Missouri’s culture — and its culture wars. He’s posted to social media photos of himself at the shooting range (captioned “Sunday #gunday”), a photo of a Ronald-Reagan-themed birthday cake and video of himself flash frying a turkey. (To his great credit, Scharf, who is Jewish in a state whose Re-
publican party is not without a history of antisemitism, also posts pictures of pastrami on rye, Kosher delis and his hanukiah burning bright.) Even though he lives in ritzy Clayton, he drives a pickup truck and has a penchant for cowboy boots. He regularly posts photos of red meat that he’s prepared, as well as very un-red-state dishes like ceviche.
“I’m not trying to knock anybody for making money,” says the longtime Missouri Republican consultant. “But where I do have a problem is trying to rebrand yourself into some warrior for the common person when you are the son of a multimillionaire.”
Since leaving the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Scharf has lambasted “critical race theory” and questioned why the Missouri Department of Transportation has a director of diversity. Those tweets and others would seem to signal that, like Eric Schmitt and Josh Hawley before him, he’s not afraid to do battle in the culture war.
When Governor Mike Parson appointed Bailey, the current attorney general, Parson said that he did so because he wanted “some stability in the attorney general’s office. I think Andrew is going to bring that.” At Bailey’s January 3 inauguration, the governor jokingly said that he made Bailey swear a “blood oath” not to run for a different office in 2024.
It’s easy to see why Parson felt that such an oath was necessary.
Despite vowing to serve a full four-year term before running for a different office, Hawley was only 10 months into the attorney general job when he announced his bid for senator in 2017.
Eric Schmitt, appointed to replace Hawley, held the job for just four years before he too ran for Senate.
Though Schmitt held the position for the equivalent of one full term, it was obvious he viewed it as a stepping stone to national politics. He went to battle every day against all things woke, suing financial service companies for putting 401(k) money in “environmental, social, and governance” investments, suing China for COVID-19, suing Biden for student loan forgiveness and suing local school districts over their mask mandates.
“I think it’s fair to say that most politicians engage in some level of performative politicking, but I particularly think that anyone who is in the AG office as part of their path to higher office would
use that as a chance to take public stances to ward off potential challengers and gain publicity for future elections,” says Anita Manion, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
“We have certainly seen these lawsuits and public feuds be used as avenues for fundraising as well.”
As evidence of the office being a holding spot for ambition, Manion ran down the list of Missouri attorney generals over the past 50 years. “Danforth went on to the Senate. Ashcroft went on to be governor, a senator and U.S. AG. Webster went to prison for embezzlement. Nixon went on to be governor. Koster ran for governor. Hawley and Schmitt, senators,” she says. “So, clearly, this office has been a stepping stone for those with higher aspirations.”
At his inauguration, Bailey pledged to run the attorney general’s office with a steady hand.
However, with a looming (and likely crowded) primary, the “steady hand” era at the state attorney general’s office seems to have lasted less than a month.
In January, the conservative National Review got under Bailey’s skin by stating that he is unlikely to do battle in the national culture wars with the same élan as Schmitt, suggesting Parson chose Bailey because he wanted a “business-friendly, local approach.”
To many Missourians, it might seem like a turn in the right direction for the state’s top cop to do something other than pick performative fights in service of raising their profile, getting on Fox News (or Newsmax) and parlaying the attention into a run for higher office.
But what is good for Missouri isn’t necessarily good for a candidate in a Republican primary.
On January 27, Bailey tweeted: “The National Review posits that the Missouri Attorney General’s Office is stumbling. Here’s a couple examples of us ‘stumbling’ this week alone:”
He proceeded to tweet a list of what his office had “accomplished” to date. It included updates on many of Schmitt’s virtue-signaling lawsuits, as well as mentions of no fewer than four lawsuits the office was pursuing against President Joe Biden.
Some incumbents are afforded the luxury of running as a public servant who has proven they can “put their head down and do the job,” Manion says.
That may no longer be the case for Bailey.
“It’s different when there are already people who want to challenge you in two years. You’ve got
to have a public-facing record of accomplishment,” she says.
Of course what is meant by “accomplishment” depends on who you’re talking to. Republican primary voters are likely to have very specific ideas as to what constitutes a feather in Bailey’s cap.
In that sense, the attorney general was just handed an incredible gift two weeks ago by Jamie Reed, a 42-year-old St. Louis woman who worked for four years at the Washington University Transgender Center and who has now publicly accused the pediatric clinic of “permanently harming the vulnerable patients.”
There is no issue in the culture war that burns hotter than the intersection of young people and transgender health care. Now Bailey has a clinic that specializes in pediatric transgender care to investigate. The drip, drip of whatever his investigation uncovers will likely be enough fodder for tweets, press releases and Newsmax interviews until the primary.
Scharf will undoubtedly do his best not to be outdone. He recently tweeted about how Biden is trying to take assault rifles from gun enthusiasts and tips from waiters and bartenders. He also tweeted a photo of his own very large assault rifle laying atop a workout bench.
And he won’t be alone.
Manion, who spoke to the RFT prior to Scharf’s official announcement, says, “I feel like some of these folks are like vultures already circling.”
Indeed, at Scharf’s campaign launch there was mention that former U.S. Attorney Tim Garrison of Springfield might get into the race. The retired Marine colonel has himself been tweeting as if he’s gearing up for a primary run.
Manion also mentioned U.S. Representative Tony Luetkemeyer (RParkville), who recently changed the name of his political action committee from “Luetkemeyer for Senate” to “Luetkemeyer for Missouri,” hinting he may challenge Bailey. (Again, reading tweets as if they’re tea leaves, Luetkemeyer’s feed has been more about legislative work and the Chiefs’ Super Bowl run than about riling folks up over the culture wars.) A report filed by Luetkemeyer for Missouri earlier this month suggests the committee has about $930,000 in cash on hand.
For his part, in addition to the half-million he gave himself, Scharf raised $300,000 in December.
According to the Missouri Independent, Bailey raised $72,000 from a fundraiser in Chesterfield in December.
If you’re a podcast person, you probably don’t get out that much. Normal life is just slipping on a pair of headphones and doing the dishes, or maybe going for a walk and listening to a group of comedians talk about fast food or music. But some things are worth leaving the house and multitasking behind for, and one of those things is when one of your favorite podcasts comes to town. So put on some real pants and get ready for Welcome to Night Vale: The Haunting of Night Vale, coming to the Lou this Thursday, February 23. You need no intro, obviously, but for everyone else, Welcome to Night Vale is a quirky, bi-monthly fiction podcast in the form of a community news radio station that reports on the happenings of the not-real town of Night Vale. There are segments about banal topics — weather or local news — but things often veer into the strange, whether that’s the town’s secret police or dark figures in the night sky. Experience it live for yourself at 8 p.m. at the Pageant (6161 Delmar Boulevard, 314-7266161). Tickets start at $30 and are available at thepageant.com.
If you’re a deeply irritating person who is unfit for most social events, we’ve got the perfect event for you to let it all out without judgment. On Thursday, February 23, Das Bevo (4749 Gravois Avenue, 314-832-2251) is hosting a Grease Sing-a-Long. Here’s how it works: You go and eat some food and drink some drinks. Then Das Bevo plays Grease, during which you sing aloud without shame while others around you do the same. If this sounds like hell to you, you are most people. But if it sounds like heaven, you just may have finally found your people. Dress up like your favorite Grease character for bonus points with the crowd, and in any case, make sure you’re looking your best. After all, if you’re going to find a partner just as an-
noying as you are, it’s definitely going to be at an event like this. The kitchen, which will be serving classic diner fare to pair with the film, opens at 6 p.m., and the movie starts at 7 p.m. Admission is $5, and tickets can be purchased at square.link/u/fwdZx52P.
Herschell Gordon Lewis is known as the “godfather of gore” for good reason. The celebrated film director pioneered the “splatter” genre in the 1960s with bodily-fluiddrenched films including Blood Feast and Color Me Blood Red If you love a good scare or are a film history buff, you’ll definitely want to check out Two Thousand Maniacs! at Webster University’s Winifred Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood Avenue, 314-9687485) this Thursday, February 23. The 1964 film, starring 1963 Playboy Playmate Connie Mason, follows two Yankee travelers who make their way down south and end up at a Civil War centenial celebration that turns all too real. Tickets are $8 for the general public, and the show starts at 7:30
p.m. For more information, visit events.webster.edu/event/twothousand-maniacs.
This week, food fans would do well to head to Tempus (4370 Manchester Ave, 314-349-2878) for its new and monthly throwback to a vintage twist on dining out. Starting Friday, February 24, the restaurant turned pop-up destination and event space will start hosting monthly supper clubs. A once-popular tradition in the 1930s and 40s, supper clubs were destinations for patrons, offering a place to socialize, listen to music and enjoy some fine dining.
For the February Supper Club, Tempus promises to deliver on everything that made these vintage arrangements great — but with a modern twist. This ticket-only event includes cocktails, a “meticulously planned menu” and live music from local jazz act Jon Thomas and Friends. Doors open at 5 p.m., with music and food
beginning at 6 p.m. Tickets cost $20 per person and are available on OpenTable. More info at tempusstl.com.
Granted, the Rolling Stones’ songwriting team of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are pretty good — they’ve written a few decent songs, sold a handful of records and made a little bit of money for themselves over the years, to be sure. But there is one thing they are not: an entire symphony orchestra. Lucky for us, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is stepping in this week to fill in that glaring gap with a performance of The Music of the Rolling Stones: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards 1969 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the classic Stones albums Beggar’s Banquet and Let it Bleed Joining the SLSO will be a full rock band fronted by vocalist Mick Adams, whose website notes he’s “the ONLY Mick Jagger impersonator to be endorsed by Mark Cuban [and]
Ryan Seacrest” (the matching first name assuredly helps). Expect a full night of classic tracks and deep cuts in tribute to one of the best rock bands the world has ever known. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. this Saturday, February 25, at Powell Hall (718 North Grand Boulevard, 314-534-1700). Tickets range from $45 to $70 and are available at shop.slso.org/7663.
As the 2022-23 basketball season comes to a close, the Billikins will host Loyola Chicago in the team’s second-to-last home game this Saturday, February 25. Loyola Chica-
go isn’t the same Cinderella team from 2018 that reached the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament, but they might still have some of that magic with Sister Jean still attending games. Chances are running out to see the Billikens play at Chaifetz Arena (1 South Compton Avenue, 314-977-5000) before the Atlantic 10 tournament begins March 8 in Brooklyn. After an up-and-down season, SLU will need to pick up some steam and roll through its conference tournament to reach the big dance. Game starts at 5 p.m., and tickets range from $20 to $200 through Ticketmaster. For more information, visit chaifetzarena.com.
The original New Jack City, directed by Mario Van Peebles and starring such icons as Wesley Snipes, Chris Rock and Ice-T, came out in 1991 and was an instant classic. It follows the rise of megalomaniac crime lord Nino Brown and the cops who are trying to stop him.
Je’Caryous Johnson’s New Jack City: Live on Stage carefully captures the feeling of the original, bringing back Allen Payne — who played Gee Money in the original film — and adding rapper Big Daddy Kane and Naughty by Nature crew leader Treach to the cast. The show even incorporates snippets of the original film, projected on a huge backdrop behind the Carter, a public-housing building turned crack house where most of the drama unfolds. Catch the live version of the classic film at Stifel Theatre (1400 Market Street, 314-499-7600) on Sunday, February 26, at 3 p.m. or 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $52 to $122. For more information, visit stifeltheatre.com.
WEEK OF
Aaron Sorkin knew when he took on the task of adapting Harper Lee’s famous, required-ninth-grade-reading novel To Kill a Mockingbird that he was “going to ruin everyone’s childhood,” he told Datebook when the play was touring San Francisco. The writer of The West Wing and A Few Good Men made so many changes to the original story — expanding the role of Calpurnia the housekeeper, changing Atticus Finch from saintly lawyer into more human man, etc. — that Lee’s estate sued him. With that settled, though, Sorkin’s To Kill a Mockingbird hit the ground running and was an instant sensation. The story is updated for the stage and our modern times, but the central crux of a white lawyer, Atticus Finch, defending a Black man accused of rape in the American South in the 1950s stays the same. Catch the reimagining of a classic at the Fox Theatre (527 North Grand Boulevard, 314-534-1111) from February 28 to March 12. Show times vary. Tickets are $29 to $110 and can be purchased at fabulousfox.com. n
Vicini Pastaria’s spectacular fare made our critic throw down her fork and forswear lesser pasta
Written by CHERYL BAEHR
Vicini Pastaria
1916 Park Avenue, 314-827-6150. (Lunch counter hours) Mon. 11:30 a.m. until 3 p.m.; Fri.-Sun. 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. (Closed Tues.-Thurs.)
In May of 2020, Dawn Wilson stood on the cusp of realizing her dream for her restaurant, Vicini Pastaria. Though she’d formally founded the brand in 2016 while working as a personal chef in Chicago, Vicini’s roots went back even further — nearly a decade and a half — to her decision to quit her job as a molecular genetics research scientist and pursue her passion for cooking. It had been a long time coming, but as she prepared to welcome her first guests into her Lafayette Square storefront that May, she felt that she had finally brought to life the neighborhood pasta and prepared foods shop that her mind’s eye had pictured for all those years.
But, in an instant, it came to a screeching halt.
That May, just two days after Vicini Pastaria’s soft opening, Wilson was in a serious car accident that left her with a debilitating head injury. Knocked completely out of commission for five months, Wilson thought she’d be able to gradually return to her chef duties, only to find that her healing progress was non-linear, characterized by setbacks that prevented her from opening Vicini at full capacity. Though she ran the Lafayette Square storefront as a gourmet foods and handmade pasta shop, it wasn’t until this past November that she was able to fully launch Vicini as the Italian-inspired neighborhood spot it was meant to be.
When you step inside Vicini, you understand why Wilson was determined to hold onto that dream. More than just an entrance, the restaurant’s door is a
portal that transports you to the sort of neighborhood pasta and grocery shop you’d find in an Italian village. The space is positively gilded, adorned in square metallic tiles, stained glass and vintage decor that nods to both Venice and Tuscany. The former’s opulence is evident in the form of an immense
crystal chandelier that hangs over the dining room, a breathtaking piece that sets the tone for the meal that is to come.
Settling into one of the mismatched upholstered chairs surrounding one of Vicini’s large wooden communal tables and soaking in the Italian ambiance,
you can feel Wilson’s love for the Old Country. Though she’d always loved cooking and embraced the fundamentals of Italy’s slow food movement, her interest in its food culture turned into a bona fide passion once she went there to learn about its cuisine a few years after becoming a chef. There, she worked in a slow food kitchen in Colle di Val d’Elsa in Tuscany, where she learned the art of handmade pasta and classic Italian cooking, all the while soaking in the beauty of the country’s relaxed, relationship-centered approach to dining. Should she have a restaurant of her own one day, Wilson thought, it would exist to bring that sort of food culture to the states.
Lafayette Square, where she settled down after moving back home to St. Louis in 2017, has proved to be the perfect space to set up shop. With a neighborhood feel in which everyone knows their neighbors, the area reminds Wilson of life abroad — a perfect setting for a dining experience that is just as quintessentially Italian. Set up like a gourmet lunch counter, Vicini of-
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fers its diners a small but mighty menu filled with such classics as Castelvetrano and Cerignola olives; caper berries marinated in orange and lemon juice spiked with garlic, chiles and rosemary; and lemon balm plucked from Wilson’s herb garden.
Even more refreshing is Vicini’s insalata di finocchi e arance, a delightful melange of shaved fennel, sliced cara cara oranges, red onion, olives, capers and mint set against a backdrop of peppery arugula. The sweetness from the juicy orange slices and zest counter the peppery, briny pop from the other ingredients, activating the palate for the richer courses to come.
Those include Vicini’s raison d’etre: handmade pasta that makes you throw down your fork and make a pact with yourself that you will never again eat the massproduced stuff that comes out of a box. Such a revelation comes courtesy of Wilson’s signature noodle, pici, which is a painstakingly hand-rolled pasta that’s akin to a thicker, more rustic spaghetti. On any given day, Wilson will use the pici as a base for different sauces; on my visit, she had it prepared in the classic Roman cacio e pepe style, which paired the noodles with pecorino Romano cheese, cracked black pepper and olive-oil-toasted breadcrumbs. I cannot decide which is more striking, the haunting marriage of funky cheese and black pepper or the pici’s glorious, chewy mouthfeel — a texture you rarely get outside the motherland.
The day’s pasta special, spaghetti all’Amatriciana, is no less spec-
tacular. Here, Wilson’s flawlessly cooked handmade spaghetti noodles are slicked with mouthwatering guanciale and chile-infused tomato sauce that brought me so vividly back to a sidewalk cafe in Trastevere that I nearly wept. Sandwiches, too, are evocative of the Italian culinary experience. The Classico pairs silken Volpi prosciutto with juicy campari tomatoes, pesto, fior di latte mozzarella, fresh basil and arugula. Syrupy balsamic di Modena gives a backbeat of gentle sweet-
ness to this masterpiece. The Picante is equally delicious, layered with spicy sopressata and capicola, fontina cheese, tomato pesto, marinated eggplant, Calabrian chiles and artichoke-olive crema, all conspiring to make a dish that is both mouth-tingling and decadently gooey at the same time.
Both sandwiches are anchored by Vicini’s Tuscan-style focaccia, a bread masterpiece that has a delicate golden crust and pillowsoft interior. Though it pairs beautifully with the Classico and
Picante, I found myself just as smitten while simply dipping it in Wilson’s outstanding pesto, or even some Sicilian olive oil with a sprinkle of freshly shaved Parmigiano Reggiano.
Noshing on such a simple pleasure, you understand Vicini is not just Wilson’s dream realized — it’s our Italian fantasy, too. n
The best places (and reasons) to pick up a bottle of natural wine in St. Louis
Written by THOMAS CRONE
Within the last handful of years, natural wines have become a staple on the backbars of local establishments as well as on the shelves of wine shops. They’ve become so much of a draw of late that special sections frequently call them out, like at Clayton’s popular provisions shop Parker’s Table, which features a full endcap of natural wines just a few paces through the front door.
Simon Lehrer, the wine buyer at Parker’s, says that distributors are through the door on a weekly basis. They often carry debuting naturals with them on sales calls, whether altogether new or simply new to the market. Because natural wines have become popular for many a shopper, and with splashy, fun branding on many of the bottles, they’ve been a relatively easy sell for the store, with customers wanting to explore new titles regularly.
Why drinkers choose naturals, though, can range widely, and Lehrer says that “the reason that we use the phrase ‘natural’ is to just start the conversation. We want to find out what’s important to them, and then decide how deep we want to go down the rabbit hole.”
Kelly Nyikes, a veteran of the service industry in multiple roles and a three-year member of the A. Bommarito sales team, frequently calls on Parker’s Table. In fact, he was slated for a tasting the day after our visit to the shop. He lists a multiple-aspect rubric that helps his company deliver on the basics of natural wine, sometimes also
known as “low-intervention” or “minimal-intervention wines.”
Those phrases suggest that the growers emphasize organic practices in the field, use natural yeasts and use no-to-low sulfite content. About seven different components go into a natural designation for the company.
The whole of his time at Bommarito has overlapped with the rise of these wines in this market.
“Natural wine,” he says, “is very much a reaction to the overprocessed, inauthentic wines that have come to dominate the market since the introduction of chemical farming and post-production winemaking.”
He adds that “we are exiting the inflationary period of natural trendlines and focusing on quality and authentic production techniques. You are seeing wines get cleaner; they’re less flawed with less production inconsistencies. There have been a bunch of messy exposés revealing sketchy labor practices, bad winemaking choices, opaque farming practices, big companies masquerading as small, natty producers, etc., etc., etc. We are now finally figuring out how to vet our producers and reward those that are ethically aligned and making superior
wines.”
He suggests that those looking for a bottle of natural wine have no shortage of choices, including Parker’s, plus: Grand Spirits Co., Local Harvest Grocery, Pastaria Deli, Spirit Wine & Craft, Wild
Olive Provisions and Civil Alchemy. For a glass, he offers Olive + Oak, Pizzeria da Gloria, Bowood by Niche, the Clover and the Bee, Little Fox, the Lucky Accomplice, Salve Osteria and ’Ssippi, as well as the perhaps unexpected choice of Rockwell Beer Company.
As Lehrer did, Nyikes says that a bit of an adventurous palette is needed, as there’s “variation in bottle, case and, most certainly, vintage. These wines are supposed to be unique; they are supposed to be one-offs; they are supposed to be originals that are tied to their land and their vintage, so don’t expect consistency across years, brands or styles. These winemakers are constantly learning and experimenting with new ideas to better translate terroir into juice.”
A veteran of the mats at both 33 Wine Bar and Civil Life Brewing, Joe Mooney’s been working a trio of projects, including the monthly pop-up series Place & Time and Tended Cellars, a business that’s “providing comprehensive wine-cellar management from cellar organization to purchase/liquidation brokerage and fully covered relocation logistical support.” In essence, Mooney works with buyers to secure (and protect) valued wines at oft-high price points.
On a given afternoon or early evening, though, Mooney finds himself reaching for a bottle in the affordable price range, as naturals settle around $20 per bottle.
Mooney, as someone who spent years selling beers, sees a natural parallel between the rise of craft brewers and natural wine brands. He figures that naturals have really taken off in the past two to four years, and that “it’s really gained speed. There’s a lot of similarity to the acceptance of these wines next to Belgian-style sour beers that the American public have easily embraced, these tart and funky flavor profiles.
“I think the general public is very excited and accepting of these,” Mooney says. “And this has been driven by public acceptance, rather than wine-industry professionals pushing it.”
He says that the terms of “overtartness, mousiness and funk,” are part of the enjoyment of a bottle, best enjoyed sooner than later.
“Get into a bottle,” he suggests. “Get through it, and just enjoy it.” n
“ Natural wine is very much a reaction to the over-processed, inauthentic wines that have come to dominate the market since the introduction of chemical farming and post-production winemaking.”
Blueprint Coffee’s Nora Brady is taking on the U.S. Barista Competition for the sixth time following a seven-year break
Written by JESSICA ROGENThe U.S. Barista Competition coffee isn’t regular coffee — it’s top level, out-of-this-world creative coffee.
Take, for example, 2015, when Blueprint co-founder Nora Brady took inspiration for her signature cocktail from the name of the Ecuadorian farm, La Nube, where she sourced her beans. In Spanish, la nube means the cloud.
So Brady made a coffee cloud.
She began by dehydrating dates in the oven. After a day, they were nice and crumbly, so she ground them up with a mortar and pestle and made a kind of sweet, spicy, carbon-y ash. Then, she aged some water infused with vetiver (a root thought to have medicinal properties) in an oak barrel, sprinkled the date ash atop it and used a vaporizer to create a cloud of this mix around each drink, encasing it in a bag.
“[The judges] had to cut open the bag and release this vapor,” Brady says. “It’s totally a full sensory experience. The thing that you’re tasting is the espresso, but it’s just enhanced, or altered.”
The idea of the signature cocktail, she explains, is to create a flavor experience around or based upon the espresso. It demands originality, precision, drive and a whole host of other traits, which Brady has in spades.
That’s a good thing because she’ll need them: After placing second at the preliminary Barista Competition in October, Brady is heading next month to the 2023 nationals in Denver. If she places there, she’ll head to the world championship in Athens in June, where she’d face 27 competitors.
“I’m feeling pretty excited,” she says. “Got some tricks up my sleeve.”
At 33, this is Brady’s sixth time competing, but she came to it young. Not that her entrance into the coffee world was ever a guaranteed thing, given her early role models.
“My mom drank the grossest coffee on planet Earth,” she recalls. “It was just like that kind of super, super dark roast
that she would put milk and sugar in … like, tar type of coffee.”
Brady’s father, on the other hand, drank tea.
She and her sister started drinking coffee as students at Mizzou, picking up French vanilla creamer to flavor their Folgers.
But that changed when Brady interviewed for a job at Kaldi’s Coffee during college. During that process, she did a cupping — lining up different coffees side by side and tasting them.
“It was completely mind-blowing, just that coffee could taste so different from one region to another,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh, there’s something here.’ I got hooked.”
At Kaldi’s, Brady had a passionate trainer who was involved with the barista competition, so Brady got into it, too. That first year, she placed second. Maybe it was beginner’s luck, she wondered at the time.
Competitive by nature, Brady kept at it, continuing to place high, and pretty soon it was clear this wasn’t luck. Then she met her future Blueprint co-founders Kevin Reddy and Mike Marquard, and in 2013, the coffee bar and specialty roaster was born. The following year, Brady competed for Blueprint and went all the way to the world competition.
“That was super, super exciting for us as a company because it put us on the map immediately,” Brady says. “These conventions and competitions are the coffee events of the year, and so anybody who’s anybody in the coffee industry goes to these events.”
The event and the preparation for it are correspondingly intense. In competition, each barista makes everything fresh, on stage, live — and that includes grinding the beans. There are judges watching the whole process.
The competitors pick a theme, presenting it to the four judges, and then make their three courses: espresso, milk and signature. The judges score on taste, accuracy, overall presentation and professionalism, showmanship and cohesiveness.
Any waste, such as a spill, a drip, coffee grounds on the counter or other misstep is a ding. Going over your 15 allotted minutes is a ding.
“You can blink and wake up on the other side of your presentation,” Brady says. “It’s like an out-of-body experience. You practice it so many times that it’s just ingrained in your muscle memory.”
But Brady’s early entrance into competition wasn’t the only thing that stuck out about her at these events. She’d look around the room and often find herself one of the only women. Brady would constantly get asked about what it was like to be a woman in coffee, and she’d get invited to events as a representative of her gender. While having that cachet might sound good, it didn’t feel that way.
“I was really frustrated and just kind of defeated because this wasn’t the conversation that I wanted to be having,” Brady says. “I was like, ‘I just want to make coffee. I want to win.’”
She’d wonder about the coffee industry, where the clientele seemed so liberal and progressive. “Why is it that the top
tier of this industry is white men?’” she adds. “I would be losing, you know, by 2 1/2 points or something to a man.”
Brady felt she had to be extra authentic, extra professional. It was exhausting. At a certain point, she couldn’t take it anymore, so in 2016, she stepped away from competing and from the daily work of Blueprint for a few years. She spent 5 1/2 months thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail and moved to California to work on a family farm, returning to St. Louis in mid-2020.
In that time, the industry changed. Looking around now, Brady sees a lot more inclusion of different perspectives and people. She says the Specialty Coffee Association of America has taken definitive steps that she’s happy about.
It’s a great thing to see now that she’s back, recharged and ready to compete at a higher level than ever before. And, frankly, she’s feeling good about her chances.
“You have to believe so fully that you are going to succeed for it to work,” Brady says. “You have to picture your movements so crisp and clear and know where you’re going, like, have a roadmap and follow it like a robot. I play the scenario of not only my run-through but succeeding winning in my head constantly, and I feel like that is the first key to success. Even if I’m feeling insecure, or rushed, or it wasn’t a good idea, [there’s no room for] all those negative thoughts.
“This is how I’ve always treated competition, and I’ve always done pretty well, [but] I’m still yet to secure that first place. So it is pushing me forward because I really want it, and I know that I can achieve it.”
Eating fish on Fridays during Lent was meant to be an act of sacrifice. That the church fish fry ritual has turned into a highly anticipated season fueled by margaritas, beer and so much of God’s cod you’d grow gills if you hit them all might be organized religion’s biggest irony, but sacrilege has never tasted so delicious.
St. Ferdinand Parish
So delicious it cannot be contained to just Lent, St. Ferdinand Parish’s Friday fish fries embody all that is pure. Cod or catfish are fried or baked, and shrimp and Cajun-dusted fish pieces are also available. A couple of sides and a plastic cup of beer — enjoyed under the gymnasium scoreboard — make this event the standard.
Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox
Known as “Fishfest,” the fish fries at Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Church are for the refined who enjoy china and flatware. The plate’s heft is a plus, for it’s difficult not to pile it high with spicy catfish, fish tacos, baked cod with Creole sauce and shrimp. With beer included and a stocked bar, this fry is the dark horse favorite.
St. Cecilia Catholic
Ask anyone their favorite St. Louis area fish fry, and nearly all will say the Original Mexican Fish Fry at St. Cecilia Catholic Church. The beloved fry flips on its head the notion of Lenten deprivation thanks to its stunning chile rellenos, bean tostadas, margaritas and music that makes the long lines infinitely more tolerable.
St. Mary Magdalen Catholic
St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church
calls its fried-fish platter “The God’s Cod.” That whimsy hints at the fun feel of this extravaganza that offers one of the most varied menus around.
First
Granted, there is no fish at the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis Unfish Fry, but it is instead filled with Mediterranean-inflected delights that make it an essential visit.
At the downtown St. Louis spot, brothers Oscar and Oswaldo Fariña employ an 800-degree stone grill
Written by JESSICA ROGENIf you ask Oscar Fariña his favorite menu item at his new downtown St. Louis restaurant, he won’t hesitate for even a beat: meat. That answer couldn’t be more
Strange Donuts’ new concept, Up Late, promises to be the late-night spot St. Louis deserves
Written by JESSICA ROGENHave you ever been out in St. Louis after hours, wandering around hungry, finally settling for some generic fast food or maybe something unappealing from your own refrigerator? If this scenario sounds familiar, we have good news for you.
Up Late, a new effort from Strange Donuts’ front-of-house manager and baker Nathan Wright, opened within World’s Fair Donuts (1904 South Vandeventer Avenue, 314-261-4002) on Saturday. The restaurant will operate from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.
“St. Louis deserves a new late night spot,” the new business wrote on Instagram.
The concept is simple, with three dishes including carne asada street tacos and bacon or sausage breakfast sandwiches. It — naturally — has Strange Donuts’ donuts on offer, plus beverages including water, milk and a custom American lager from 4 Hands Brewing Co. called simply “Beer.”
It’s operated by Wright, who co-owns it with Strange Donuts owner Jason Bockman.
The concept came to be thanks to a germ of an idea shared between the
perfect because Oscar, along with his brother Oswaldo, have launched an eatery that is steeped in the allure of sizzling, delicious meat. Located in the heart of
Washington Avenue, their Fariña’s Kitchen & Bar (1001 Washington Avenue, 314-659-8647) features a variety of meats cooked on an 800-degree stone grill.
two men. Wright, who began working for Strange Donuts about two years ago, has always loved cooking.
“I’ve been cooking my whole life,” Wright says. “My parents were always working, so it was kind of ‘fend for yourself,’ and so I was always in the kitchen.”
Wright bought his creations into work for the enjoyment of his Strange Donuts co-workers.
One day, Bockman turned to him and asked if he wanted to own something, suggesting they open a restaurant together. Wright liked the idea, and the two settled on the late-night concept after noticing a dearth of options in that arena.
The initial conversation happened about a year ago, but things didn’t really get moving until four months ago, when the two dug in and did some research on
how similar businesses operated, even visiting ones in other cities.
“Jason is a marketing mastermind, and I can cook some food, so it just pairs together,” Wright says. “It’s just been a really good partnership, a great friendship.”
Strange Donuts purchased World’s Fair Donuts in December 2019 after owners Peggy and Terry Clanton closed doors at the iconic spot for health and personal reasons. There had been talk of selling the space to an entirely different kind of business until Strange Donuts stepped in.
At the time, Bockman told the RFT that he didn’t plan to change much — or anything — about World’s Fair. And Wright says Up Late doesn’t change that but will simply occupy the space after it closes for the day.
“I’m excited,” Wright says. “I’m stressed but feeling good.” n
No one in St. Louis is doing anything of the like, says Oscar, who also owns the popular Buenos Aires Cafe in City Foundry and Gauchos in Fairview Heights, Illinois. And the results speak for themselves.
“The stone concept for sure is something that is very intriguing,” Oswaldo adds. “We try to do it as clean as possible, just salt to get that natural flavor. So when that ribeye or New York strip hits the stone, and it starts automatically just searing, you’ll get that natural, like, buttery taste from that meat.”
The brothers come honestly by their meat-forward menu. Oswaldo recalls growing up in Argentina surrounded by people and food. There was plenty of the latter, he says, and everything was homemade.
“You’re cooking for the family, you’re cooking for neighbors, family and friends, and people come over and hang out, share stories and spend time together,” he says, recalling Sundays where that time stretched to five or six hours.
When the brothers think about those food memories growing up, they come up with different things. Oswaldo remembers Italian food that evoked the family’s ethnicity. Oscar thinks of meat and grilling.
“To me, it was meat, sausage, meat,” he says. “I think that’s what connects me back home. That’s why I like it so much.”
Both began cooking at a young age. Oscar started as a home baker, moving to food professionally as a side hustle while simultaneously studying medicine. He did a fast-track culinary school certification, and he and his wife purchased a food truck, then a small cafe — all while bouncing locales as necessary because of their military jobs. But then they went “full into food” after moving to the St. Louis area about six or seven years ago.
Oscar’s food style, he says, is simple comfort foods. But that’s different from Oswaldo’s style. The younger brother went to a traditional culinary school after high school and then relocated to Las Vegas, wanting to go into fine dining.
Oswaldo might have stayed in Vegas, but a trip to St. Louis made him realize he wanted to live closer to family. He initially thought about leaving the food business, but Oscar convinced him to do a project together as brothers.
Working together so far has gone well, and the restaurant opened on December 17. (The
brothers had briefly opened early in 2022 but closed quickly after realizing getting their liquor license would be a longer process than anticipated.)
Fariña’s is in the space that was Mango Peruvian Cuisine. Though the brothers have made some aesthetic changes — new paint, different decor — it looks similar to the previous concept.
Two walls of windows make for bright dining rooms punctuated by a three-sided bar. There’s table seating both in the bar area and in the dining room toward the back of the space, and Fariña’s also has an adjoining events space that’s big enough for larger parties.
One point of stark difference is the entrance, which holds a pink neon sign on a stone wall that’s edged with bright greenery. It’s Instagram worthy.
Though the menu is centered around stone-cooked meat — tuna, steaks and smoked lamb — it also includes a variety of starters, such as Argentinian empanadas, tostones, sashimi and more; soups and salads; and entrees such as chimichurri chicken and pabellon, a choice of protein with rice, beans and plantains. There are also flatbreads and a variety of sides. Dishes range in price from $8 to $18 for starters, $27 to $45 for stone-cooked meats, and $17 to $24 for entrees.
The brothers call Fariña’s an “open steakhouse concept,” and though many of the dishes are Argentinian influenced, it is not an Argentinian restaurant. They anticipate growing the menu over time and adding in flavors from a variety of cultures.
The bar is now officially open, and the restaurant has cocktails, wine and beer. Prices begin at $4 for a domestic beer. n
“ When that ribeye or New York strip hits the stone, and it starts automatically just searing, you’ll get that natural, like, buttery taste from that meat.”
The advocacy group found little improvement in medical cannabis programs across the country
Written by ADAM GOLDSTEINThis story originally appeared in the Missouri Independent and has been edited for length.
Areport from a patient advocacy group gave Missouri’s medical cannabis program a C+, or a middling 65.14 percent.
Americans for Safe Access issued its annual State of the States report earlier this month. The organization, a nonprofit, has put out the document to advocates and state policymakers since 2014 as a tool to “assess and improve medical cannabis programs.”
“Despite a slow and rocky start to the implementation of medical cannabis in Missouri, the program is finally functional and providing access to patients across the state,” the report states.
ASA Executive Director Debbie Churgai says that one of the main surprise findings of this report was the lack of progress being made to strengthen and develop the medical cannabis sector.
“This was the first report that we saw the fewest improvements in the states,” Churgai says. “So much so that I felt a little shocked at first.”
The five states with the highest-graded medical cannabis access programs were Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Of the five, Maryland had the highest score, receiving a 75.7 percent on the group’s scale.
ASA issued 13 failing grades to state medical cannabis programs: Texas, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. The lowest-scoring states were Idaho and Nebraska, which both received a 0 for a lack of medical cannabis programs.
ASA issued letter grades to all state medical cannabis programs in the report, based on a 0 to 100 scale. The programs were evaluated on the metrics of: patient rights and civil protection, accessibility, program functionality, affordability, health
and social equity, consumer protection and product safety and penalties.
The report does not evaluate recreational or adult-use cannabis programs.
ASA found that the number of medical cannabis patients continues to expand across the country, now numbering more than 6 million. That represents an increase of close to 1 million patients from the 2021 State of the States report.
The authors say that two states have added legal medical cannabis access programs in 2022, bringing the total to 48 states plus the District of Columbia, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Churgai notes that when the group started issuing the report, only 14 states had medical cannabis legislation.
The letter grades distributed to states in the report range from B, meaning a strong medical cannabis program, to F, for a fatally flawed or absent program. Churgai explains that an A represents the “ideal medical cannabis law” and no state received one.
“We know that we already know that some things do not exist in states, like coverage under health insurance for cannabis products,” Churgai says. “We base everything on a perfect program that we know cannot exist right now without federal oversight.”
Missouri got its lowest scores on affordability, though the report suggests lawmakers focus on policies that “protect medical cannabis patients in the state, like employment and parental right protections.”
ASA averaged the 56 state and territory grades to find that medical cannabis access in the United States only received 46.16 percent, or a “D+” on ASA’s grading scale. The authors said that the score marked a two-point improvement from
2021.
“We’ll take that,” Churgai says. “But one of the themes actually in this year’s report was our surprise that more states are not making improvements.”
More than anything, the ASA team emphasizes the growing challenges represented by the recreational market.
Missouri voters approved recreational marijuana last year, and sales began February 3.
“This is a huge trend that we’re seeing as more states are allowing adult use,” Churgai says. “Unfortunately, they’re giving a regulatory preference to it, so much so that they’re ignoring or pushing aside the patient medical program.”
The report says that as Missouri works on its recreational program, legislators need to ensure that “the adult use/recreational cannabis program and the medical cannabis program remain distinct, as each consumer base has separate needs that must be addressed.”
The executive director notes that 14 states were penalized on their report cards this year for giving regulatory preference to adult-use cannabis operations. Churgai adds that the ASA analysis also showed states lumping their medical and recreational cannabis programs together and not comprehending patient needs and protections.
“It’s not the regulators’ fault, or policymakers’ fault,” Churgai says. “I believe that they think that they’re still helping people. But they don’t understand the needs of patients and why patients actually still want a medical program, and they still need a medical program.”
Steph Sherer, president of Americans for Safe Access, adds that the consolidation of these cannabis programs is lead-
ing to consolidation of product for costsaving purposes, as companies fire their chief medical officers and compete with the upstart cannabinoid market. Cannabinoids are cannabis-derived chemicals, like Delta-8 THC and cannabidiol, or CBD. Products containing these substances can be sold in grocery stores and gas stations and have no federal age requirement.
“I think that what we’re seeing is that without these companies being able to increase their available market size to a federal market, they’re really struggling to stay in business,” Sherer says. “They’re finding that they often have to serve the adult-use population in order to pay for the business altogether.”
This decision ultimately harms medical cannabis patients, as their needed medicine gets sold as a consumer product.
The ASA leaders offer policy ideas, including increasing insurance coverage of cannabis, expanding medical cannabis licensing, standardizing lab testing and reducing taxes along the supply chain.
“It’s really important to understand that we’re not just telling states what they’re doing wrong, or what they could be doing better,” Churgai says. “But we actually give them ways to improve the law for patients.”
“The big elephant in the room for these programs is that when we first created access programs to medical cannabis, they were meant to be a type of triage, to get patients off the battlefield of the war on drugs while we changed federal law,” Sherer says.
“And 25 years later, states have done a lot to navigate this very odd situation of regulating an illegal substance. It’s really time for the federal government to move forward with the comprehensive program for medical cannabis.”
The first medical cannabis laws in the United States were implemented 26 years ago.
Consumption and sales of medical cannabis are illegal under federal law. n
“ It’s not the regulators’ fault, or policymakers’ fault. I believe that they think that they’re still helping people.”
Damon Davis’ installation by CITYPARK recognizes a Black neighborhood destroyed in the name of “urban renewal”
Written by BENJAMIN SIMONDamon Davis grew up five miles away, just over the bridge in East St. Louis. But he’d never heard about Mill Creek Valley.
Then, five years ago, Davis learned about the history of the demolished Black neighborhood for the first time.
“When I found out,” Davis said, “I wanted to make sure that no more Black kids would grow up without knowing about this thriving Black community that was in the center of St. Louis, downtown.”
Last Thursday morning, Davis shared this story with a crowd of people in the ULTRA Club at CITYPARK stadium at the ceremony for
its new art installation Pillars for the Valley. The ceremony featured speeches by Davis, St. Louis CITY SC President and CEO Carolyn Kindle, Great Rivers Greenway CEO Susan Trautman, former Mill Creek Valley resident and author Vivian Gibson and Mayor Tishaura Jones.
The public art exhibit, located at the intersection of Market and 22nd Street, recognizes Mill Creek Valley, a Black community once home to nearly 20,000 residents in Midtown that was bulldozed to the ground in the late 1950s to build a highway in the name of urban renewal.
Since then, the history of the neighborhood, the businesses, the churches and the people, has largely been erased.
“In our not-so-distant past, 64 years ago today, the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood was demolished,” Jones said. “To be clear, this was an act of intentional racial injustice. Mill Creek Valley was a Black neighborhood.”
The installation is part of the 20-mile Brickline Greenway being built by Great Rivers Greenway. It will extend throughout the city, from Forest Park to Fairground Park to Tower Grove Park to the Arch. The pillars will be placed on multiple sections of the Greenway, including at CITY PARK and Harris-Stowe State University. Davis, 37, started working on the project nearly five years ago. A world-renowned artist, Davis
created the public art exhibit All Hands on Deck and the documentary Whose Streets? — both centered around the aftermath of Michael Brown’s killing.
When Davis designed his most recent work, Pillars of the Valley, he wanted to symbolize time. He built hourglasses with tan limestone inside to represent sand.
“[The sand] doesn’t move because time has been stopped,” Davis said. “We stopped time to remember, recognize, commemorate, and more than anything, give
vindication to a neighborhood of people that were purposefully forgotten. So we never forget again.”
A wall along the west side of the exhibitions lists the names, ages and occupations of people who lived on a block in Mill Creek Valley in 1940. When Davis first started researching Mill Creek Valley, he came across an old newsreel, which he called a “smear campaign,” labeling it as a “slum.” He wanted to contest the mischaracterization of Mill Creek Valley with sculptures, such as this name-engraved wall.
“This was a thriving neighborhood [with] multiple economic classes because segregation just pushed everybody that looked a certain way together,” Davis said.
“So it was diverse in the types of Black people that were there.”
Davis didn’t only design this to be St. Louis-specific, though. He intended it to serve as a place for all people to visit.
“I wanted to make something that could be a site of reverence for all displaced people — refugees, people that get moved around without their consent,” Davis said. “And hopefully people from all over the world can come here, and take it in and feel some vindication, some validation.”
As Davis finished his speech in the ULTRA Club, he turned to the right side of the room, where dozens of people sat, the people who had lived in Mill Creek Valley.
“And one thing for the elders of Mill Creek. This,” he said, “for ya’ll.” n
“ We stopped time to remember, recognize, commemorate and more than anything, give vindication to a neighborhood of people that were purposefully forgotten. So we never forget again.”An aerial view shows Mill Creek Valley in 1959. | COURTESY MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY
[LIVING HIS DREAM]
After his little brother was shot and killed, Donald Walker spilled his grief into his first song — and became the rapper Head
Written by BENJAMIN SIMONDonald Walker can feel Nunu in the Starbucks. He pauses. He stares off into the walls of the quiet coffee house in north county, his eyes full of water and a soft smile on his face, as if he’s sharing a moment that no one else can see. It’s been three years and three months since Nunu was murdered at the age of 13. But Walker still sees him a lot. His smile. His warmth. His desire to be a musician. Whenever he gets in the studio for sure. And now in this Starbucks.
“I feel like he right beside me,” Walker says. “He here right now.”
Nunu, a.k.a. Clifford Swan III, was the reason that Walker started making music. Becoming a famous musician was Nunu’s dream, not Walker’s. Nunu would bounce around the house, blasting YoungBoy Never Broke Again, holding a toy microphone, freestyling for days, pretending to be a Louisiana rapper. Nunu brought life to a room, always joking and playing. “Nunu was funny as hell,” says his cousin Rico, who also goes by Ap5ive. “Like, I promise you, Nunu can make you laugh when you got a badass day.” He was sweet — the kind of person to call randomly just to say hi — and incredibly smart, a straight-A student who had recently signed a contract with Nickelodeon for acting.
Then, Nunu was killed on September 13, 2019. The 13-year-old, an innocent bystander, was shot while walking to the store by an 18-year-old who mistook him for someone else.
The killing suffocated Walker in pain. They were extremely close. Nunu looked up to Walker, wanted to be like him, and Walker
saw himself as his little brother’s protector. “He was like more of a father figure than a big brother to him,” Rico says.
Nothing touched Nunu — until it did. And Walker didn’t know how to respond. People told him that he wasn’t alone. “You’re not alone, you’re not alone,” they repeated. But, as Walker says, “I felt alone.” His little brother was dead.
So a week after Nunu was killed, Walker walked into his little brother’s room. He did what Nunu would have done: He made a song. He found a YouTube beat that “touched” him and bought it for $800. In one day, he emptied all of his grief, trauma and sadness onto the pages of his notebook with a red pen. Everything he felt.
“They told me, ‘Hold my head up,’ but I just keep it down,” he wrote.
“Ain’t no more smiles, all frowns when people come around.”
The emotions were easy to describe, he says. But finding a hook to draw people in and capture his
pain — that wasn’t so easy. Sitting in his brother’s room, he asked Nunu for help. Then it appeared in his mind, the iconic chorus that would define his first song.
“Tell me how I’m not alone / They say you are not alone / And I just want my brother home / I can’t believe my brother gone / So tell me how I’m not alone.”
He released the song on October 29, 2019.
It blew up.
“Not Alone” would become Walker’s hit song, under his childhood nickname, Head. Within 45 days, it had 1 million views on YouTube. Agents from Capitol, Atlantic and Def Jam Records flooded his phone. Fans from Germany FaceTimed him. A 13-year-old from Australia told him that the song stopped him from committing suicide.
Nunu’s story and “Not Alone” were highlighted in a 2021 Riverfront Times cover story. But Walker’s story is still ongoing. The song
sent him down an unexpected path: At 23, he is a musical artist known around the world. Since “Not Alone,” he has released multiple songs that drew more than 100,000 views, and he moved to Atlanta to pursue music.
To this day, “Not Alone” is still Walker’s most famous song, with more than 9 million views on YouTube. It touched people in a way few songs can. Really, it was how candidly he spoke about death. In the song, Walker doesn’t try to hide from grief. He doesn’t try to sugarcoat it. He doesn’t try to pretend that it’s all OK or that he should feel better or move on or forget about it or use it as fuel.
He raps what he feels: pain. Pure, aching, neverending pain. “Pain,” he says, “lasts forever.”
You can read it in his lyrics. “People telling me that you feel me / Fuck nah you just hear me.”
You can hear it when he sings, his soft voice crying out for help, or the parts where he raps, his voice sinking deeper, booming louder and cracking with anger.
Even after he released “Not Alone,” death has been a constant in Head’s music. His next song, “Die Today,” gave advice to his family if he died. “If I die today, God please take my soul / No funerals, party it up, I’mma forever gonna live long.” “By Myself” portrays a character contemplating suicide. “Moma I’m Sorry” is a letter to his mom, apologizing for going back into the streets and risk-
“ I still got to tell myself I’m a rapper. I be telling people, ‘Yeah man, I ain’t no rapper.’ And they be like, ‘No, boy, you is a rapper. You know how many views you got?’”
ing his life.
To an outsider, Walker’s musical catalog resembles a diary. He only has 15 songs, and he seems to make music when he needs it. “It’s like therapy,” his cousin, Deontra, says. Some songs are one minute long, others three minutes. One is a love letter to his daughter. In another, he’s fighting the “demons” inside of him.
“We all got feelings,” he says. “I’m gonna let it out. … I’m gonna open up for them, and I’m gonna let it be known that it’s OK to open up.”
But he’s still trying to make sense of a career he never saw coming.
“I still got to tell myself I’m a rapper,” he says. “I be telling people, ‘Yeah man, I ain’t no rapper.’ And they be like, ‘No, boy, you is a rapper. You know how many views you got?’”
Music surrounded Walker throughout his life. Multiple people in his family were artists. Walker, though, was more of a “sideman,” Rico says, a manager. He helped his cousin, 5ive, for example, write his hit song “Me and My Brother,” which received nearly 90 million views. And of course, he listened to Nunu talk about music all the time.
But Walker never planned to make his own songs. In many ways, it was because he never had the opportunity.
“Head wasn’t nowhere near rap,” Rico says. “That shocked everybody.”
Walker grew up all across St. Louis in a large, close-knit family made up of his mom and five siblings. He went by the nickname Head — a nod to his big head. Walker was the life of the party, just like his little brother. “[Walker] can make a joke out of everything,” Rico says.
But his childhood wasn’t easy. They had little money. They bounced from house to house.
“I feel like [Walker makes] music for people that grew up like him and came from places like him,” Deontra says. “Shit, we grew up in the hood. We didn’t really have much.”
Then, at 12, Walker had his firstexperience with death — when he lost his four-month-old little brother, who died in his sleep. With his mother absorbed in grief, Walker stepped up.
As a teenager, he began stealing from stores, disguising “BB guns as if they were real guns” and selling weed — doing anything to feed and clothe his family.
“It was a purpose behind everything I was doing,” he says. “I wasn’t just doing it because I’m hanging around these boys and they stealing, so I want to steal [because] I ain’t got no friends. Hell nah. I was really doing this shit for my mama’s kids to eat. So everything I was doing, I’m bringing it home — for us.”
As a high schooler, Walker stopped stealing, focused on his schoolwork and graduated from Hazelwood East in 2017, where he starred as a linebacker and received two college scholarship offers. But he didn’t take the offers. He couldn’t go to college. His family needed money, he says. When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he says: “To tell you the truth, a provider.”
He had no grand plans — until Nunu died, and he found a new path.
“I’m like, fuck it, I’m just gonna chase his dream,” Walker says. “He’s gonna live through me.”
Another turning point happened nine months after Nunu died: Walker’s daughter was born. The second he saw her feet, he says, he knew his life had changed. Still grieving over Nunu, his daughter gave him a new sense of motivation and purpose. “He wasn’t thinking for himself, no more,”
Rico says. “He got somebody to live for. He got a daughter.”
In the summer of 2021, he moved out to Atlanta to focus more on music, spending long days in the studios and meeting producers. “I can’t jeopardize my life no more / My little girl need a father,” he wrote in “Benji,” the love letter to his daughter. “... For you, baby, I shake the ground.”
But the music industry hasn’t been a simple rise to the top.
When “Not Alone” was released, Walker dropped into the music world with no blueprint. Labels offered him million-dollar contracts, but he turned them down because they wouldn’t give him creative control. “I’m worth more,” he says. He has sporadically put out music since 2019, totaling around 15 songs. None have struck the same chord as “Not Alone.” Sometimes he wonders if he missed his chance. His money trickled away as time passed, and for a period, he returned to the old life that he had set behind. “Shit hit the fan again,” he says. “I had to hustle. I had to hustle again.”
But Walker says he doesn’t feel bitter that his career hasn’t skyrocketed yet. Actually, he feels encouraged. He has no manager or label or agent. He hasn’t put out an album, hasn’t posted consistently, hasn’t even wrapped his head around being a rapper — and yet, he’s made it this far.
Still splitting time between Atlanta and St. Louis, he wants to post more consistently. “Consistency completely will change everything,” he says. This year, he plans to release a mixtape, six singles and an album. Already, he has put out two new songs. He says he is expanding his repertoire, combining his signature pain music with fast-moving, turn-up music.
“My numbers, in my eyes, can only go up,” he says. “I came a long way. … I don’t care if … this song-flower don’t bloom overnight. I started from nothing. So to them, I’m not doing something. To me, I’m doing something.”
But Walker says he’s not doing this for the fame or money.
He’s making music for the reason he made it in the first place: to carry on the legacy of his little brother, Nunu.
[EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE]
10 hitherto-unknown fun vignettes about Voodoo Players frontman Sean
Canan Written by STEVE LEFTRIDGESean Canan is not a normal person. He doesn’t sleep. He is immune to memory loss. He has guitar arpeggios wiggling in his mitochondria. He absorbs musical frequencies osmotically and then shoots them from his fingers like Force lightning onto the fretboard. His brain is rotated 20 degrees inside his skull.
How else to explain the superhuman prowess, range and pace of Canan’s live-performance heroics? With his continual musical transformations as a bandleader and citywide entertainer, Canan’s presence on the St. Louis music scene can be summed up by the title of this year’s Oscar favorite: He is Everything Everywhere All at Once
For the uninitiated, Canan is the good-natured, hard-partying, guitar-slinging hairball who heads up the Voodoo Players, a rotating cast of nearly 100 of the area’s finest musicians who perform the music of a different legendary artist at each of their concerts.
Last year alone, Canan led his Voodoo Players through 104 shows, and since the project’s 2014 inception, the collective has played an astounding 78 unique artist or theme nights. Many take place at the band’s regular Wednesday show at Broadway Oyster Bar, often to capacity crowds who pack the bar’s covered patio and stand on benches.
No matter the program, Voodoo sets are guaranteed to feature the best of the best of the area’s players. Still, it’s hard to take your eyes off of Canan,
“He’s the reason I do it,” Walker says. “He’s the only reason I do it.” n Continued on pg 36
and everyone has their favorite stage moves in the Canan canon: the headwag shiver. The brainfreeze grimace. The hobo circlestomp. The 19th-fret conniption. The pigeon-toed apple-bobber. The one-legged sailor. The trout in a blender. The tasered wildebeest. The Farrah.
However, I was able to catch him in a rare moment offstage — sitting in his favorite booth (front corner) in his favorite pub (McGurk’s) enjoying his favorite drink combo (a “G&J”: one Guinness, one Jameson) — to find out 10 fun vignettes you may or may not have known about Canan:
1. Canan and his three younger brothers were raised in Ohio. Their father was an amateur musician who cycled through bluegrass and rock phases, taking Canan to concerts and providing access to musical instruments around the house. “He took me to see Little Feat and the Allman Brothers when I was 10,” Canan remembers. “It was like a bomb went off.”
In a bizarre coincidence, he was childhood friends with comedian Nikki Glaser in Ohio, and the Canans and the Glasers would both end up relocating to Kirkwood. Today, Canan’s mother is in her final year as an English teacher at Kirkwood High School. His father occasionally sits in on bass with Sean at McGurk’s.
2. Canan graduated from Mizzou in 2001 with a degree in geography and, for a short time, played saxophone in the school’s marching band. But he spent most of his time in Columbia as the singer/ guitarist in the popular art-jam band Bockman’s Euphio, formed with keyboardist Andrew Weir.
“Meeting Andrew was one of those destiny dominoes, one of those moments when you meet somebody and it changes everything,” Canan says. Amazingly, he first connected with Weir in a Phish chatroom on AOL back when the two were in high school — Canan in Ohio, Weir in Kirkwood — long before the Canans had plans to move to Missouri. The two traded concert tapes without knowing they were both musicians until meeting up in person after Canan moved to Kirkwood years later. Bockman’s Euphio (named after a Kurt Vonnegut short story) was a Columbia mainstay, a favorite in St. Louis
and a regular on the jam scene through nationwide touring and the ambitious 2007 album Chasing Dragons.
3. Canan joined forces with Pat Kay (now of the Kay Brothers) in the hillbilly-rock band the Hatrick from 2007 to 2013. At times augmented by fiddler Molly Healey, the Hatrick was a stage warrior in Columbia and on the festival circuit. “I was force-feeding Pat bluegrass songs until that’s all he wanted to play,” Canan says with a laugh, adding that a Hatrick reunion is only a matter of time. “Pat and I made a pact that when we reunite it’s going to be so huge!”
4. Sean assumed the Jerry Garcia role in the Schwag, Jimmy Tebeau’s venerable Grateful Dead cover band, from 2010 to 2016. Canan toured extensively with the Schwag, wrote the setlists and stretched out his improvisational solos, a musical augmentation that continues to have a jam-centric effect on Voodoo shows today.
“Jimmy was, like, ‘Dude, your solos are too short,’” Canan remembers. “I hadn’t been challenged like that in a long time, so it was
an epiphany.”
5. Falling Fences, Canan’s Irishfolk-influenced band with singersongwriter Joe Stickley, took over Sunday nights at McGurk’s in 2008 when the legendary Bernie and Barbara McDonald retired. Falling Fences plays an average of 50 Sundays a year at McGurk’s and released its third album, The Wild Sea, last year.
Canan met Stickley back in the Mizzou years and formed Joe Stickley’s Blue Print, a Bockman’s offshoot, and now 15 years into the band’s McGurk’s residency, Canan remains Stickley’s biggest fan. “He’s a brilliant guy,” Canan says. “There’s nobody who gets me into my chi quicker than him. He’s instant chi!”
6. Would you believe he’s also in yet another band? Western States came together five years ago when another old Mizzouscene colleague, former Doxies frontman Tim Lloyd, sent Sean a demo of new original tunes. “I didn’t check them out for weeks,” Canan says. “And then one night, I put my headphones on and said, ‘Shit, these songs are awesome!’
I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll help get this up and running.’” The band, also featuring Mark Hochberg on violin, remains active, sliding the occasional show into Canan’s packed schedule.
7. He always sets up on stage left. Since it’s Sean Canan’s Voodoo Players, why isn’t he at center stage? “It’s so I can cue the entire band,” Canan explains, citing the band’s improv-heavy method. “I can turn and see all the eyeballs in the band at once. I like being over there. It’s where I go.”
8. The Voodoo bands barely rehearse, if at all. In a testament to the talent that Canan draws from the Voodoo bullpen, the ensembles prepare for shows chiefly through playlist sharing, listening, notetaking and individual practice. New shows are a different story: “We rehearse the night before in my basement,” he says. Canan and crew make it look easy, but playing 30 complex songs for the first time in months (or ever) remains a daunting task. “It’s a lot of anxiety,” Canan says, pointing to his eyes. “You see these bags, bro?”
9. He has maintained his trademark long-haired shagginess for nearly 20 years, which is roughly the last time he had any job outside of music. However, Canan did shave his beard once during the pandemic lockdown. “I freaked out and thought I was going to have to drive an Amazon truck,” he says.
10. Even after thousands of shows, Canan still gets stage fright before every gig. “I have it bad,” he says. “I think it’s because I moved around a lot when I was a kid, always looking for approval.” Regardless, he has no intention of slowing down and credits the chameleonic shapeshifting of the Voodoo rotations with keeping things fresh. “I never feel like I’m in a rut musically,” he says, emphasizing the incredible depth of musicianship and the spirit of collaboration in St. Louis. “That’s why I’m pushing myself like this — because I love the St. Louis music scene.” A glance around the Oyster Bar on Wednesday nights makes one thing certain: The city loves him back. n
Catch Sean Canan’s Voodoo Players from 9:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. every Wednesday at the Broadway Oyster Bar (736 South Broadway, 314-621-8811, broadwayoysterbar.com). Tickets are $14 at the door.
Written by TINA FARMER
Spells of the Sea
Written and composed by Guinevere Govea.
Directed by Julia Flood. Presented by Metro Theater Company through Sunday, March 5. Tickets begin at $25 for adults and $20 for children.
Celebrating its 50th anniversary season, St. Louis’ Metro Theater Company presents Spells of the Sea, a new musical for younger audiences. The imaginative musical thoughtfully addresses a bevy of emotions and experiences centered on fear, loss, grieving, acceptance and regaining hope. The performances capture the emotional tone of the script and integrate wonderfully with director Julia Flood’s fluid staging, simple but fanciful choreography by Tyler White and music director Deborah Wicks La Puma’s enveloping soundscape.
The loss of someone dear is difficult, no matter a person’s age. Playwright, lyricist and composer Guinevere Govea, with creative contributions by Anna Pickett, touches on the universal by placing relatable, realistic characters in a magically enhanced world. Finley Frankfurter, daughter of the town’s primary fisherman Ferris Frankfurter, is no longer a little kid and not yet a teen, and she feels thoroughly unremarkable and discouraged. When her father suffers a significant health crisis, her world spirals downward until a friendly mermaid, in the guise of a quirky shopkeeper, offers her hope.
The shopkeeper gives her a magic potion or two, then sends her to the lighthouse to find a secret map that will lead to a magic elixir Finley could use to save her father. At the lighthouse, she meets H.S. Crank, the older, outwardly gruff keeper of the lighthouse. After squabbling over the map and learning more about each other, the two work together to follow it, collect the required ingredients and find the elixir. Moments of genuine pain and loss are interspersed with fanciful dives under the sea and catchy,
hummable tunes.
Choreographer White captivates with a kind and gracious spirit and pleasantly lilting voice as the Mermaid. Author Govea effortlessly captures Finley’s spirit of adventure and insecurities. Govea has a lovely voice and is clearly in a comfortable range. Physically and verbally expressive, her reactions come across appealingly natural and appropriate for the character’s age. Jon Gentry, as H.S. Crank, offers a gentle baritone and exudes underlying warmth and care even in his most curmudgeon-like moments. Colin McLaughlin is nurturing and protective as Finley’s father Ferris, and Noah Laster and Molly Burris are among the ensemble standouts.
The entire show is lifted up by the inventive and often whimsical scenic design of Margery and Peter Spack, complemented by lighting and sound design from Jayson M. Lawshee and Rusty Wandall. The fluid movements of being on or in a large body of water are expertly conveyed through the combination of design, lighting, sound and movement.
Though warm and welcoming, the musical features a story and themes that touch on profound loss as well as the insecurities of youth as they begin to better understand the world and establish their independence. As such, the show may be a bit too much for sensitive individuals or children younger than eight or nine. Crafted with an eye to kindness and hope, the enchanting Spells of the Sea proves a thoroughly engaging and uplifting new musical for family audiences. n
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!
ANDY COCO & CO.: 4 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.
THE BOSMAN TWINS PLAY THE MOOSE LOUNGE, PART IV: 8 p.m., $20. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis.
THE HAMILTON BAND: 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.
HUNTER: 3 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.
JOSLYN & THE SWEET COMPRESSION: 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.
MATT ANDERSEN WITH SPECIAL GUEST MARIEL
BUCKLEY: 7:30 p.m., $20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.
MOLLY MORGAN: 7 p.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644.
ROCKIN RASCALS: 7 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.
WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE: 8 p.m., $30. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.
FRIDAY 24
120 MINUTES: TRIBUTE TO THE RAMONES, THE SPECIALS, AND THE CLASH: 7 p.m., $10. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.
AS THE CROWE FLIES: 7:30 p.m., $15-$20. Blue
Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.
AS THE CROWE FLIES: 7:30 p.m., $15. Blue
Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.
BLIND MAN’S BLUFF: 5 p.m., $10. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 S. Kingshighway, 2nd floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.
BORN OF OSIRIS: 7:30 p.m., $25-$39.50. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.
CELEBRATION DAY: A TRIBUTE TO LED ZEPPELIN
NIGHT 1: 8 p.m., $25-$40. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.
COLT BALL: 4 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.
DIGITAL NOSTALGIA: AN UNFORGETTABLE DANCE
PARTY: 8:30 p.m., $12-$15. Platypus, 4501 Manchester Avenue, St. Louis, 314-359-2293.
DREW SHEAFOR: 7 p.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.
KELLER ANDERSON: 8 p.m., $15. Blueberry HillThe Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.
LOS TIGRES DEL NORTE: 8 p.m., $52.50-$202.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.
MATTIE SCHELL & FRIENDS: 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.
MOM’S KITCHEN: 10 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.
NIKO MOON: w/ Dylan Schneider 8:30 p.m., $25. Ballpark Village, 601 Clark Ave, St. Louis, 314-345-9481.
OPERA BELL BAND: w/ Charles Ellsworth and the Space Force Deserters, Sandman and Hill, Bobby Stevens 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.
POOR DIRTY ASTRONAUTS: 9 p.m., free. The Back Bar, 228 C, N Main St., Edwardsville, 618-692-5115.
8 p.m. Saturday, February 25. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Boulevard. $20. 314-726-6161.
It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly 12 years since Australian singer-songwriter Gotye released “Somebody That I Used to Know,” 2011’s most inescapable earworm and the song that launched a million comparisons to Sting among Americans unfamiliar with the Basics. Two Grammy awards and billions of streams later, it remains Gotye’s signature work, and perhaps unfairly, that of New Zealand’s Kimbra as well. It’s not that it’s a bad song or anything, and Kimbra’s vocal contributions surely helped immeasurably to elevate it to the status of worldwide phenomenon, quite literally one of the most successful duets of all time. But Kimbra
SUNFLOWER SOUL LIVE: w/ the Freedom Affair 8 p.m., $20-$25. The Golden Record, 2720 Cherokee Street, St. Louis, N/A.
WESTERN STATES: w/ the Fighting Side, the Screechin’ Halts 8 p.m., $10-$15. Central Stage, 3524 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, 314-533-0367.
WILDERADO: 8 p.m., $20. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.
WORK DAWG & THE JUNKYARD PREACHERS: 8 p.m., $5. San Loo, 3211 Cherokee St., St. Louis, 314-696-2888.
YOUR SPIRIT DIES: w/ Pains, Hot Corpse, Primitive Rage, Drop the Blade 6:30 p.m., $12. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.
SATURDAY 25
120 MINUTES: 7 p.m., $5. Hwy 61 Roadhouse
contains multitudes and deserves more credit for the weirdo art-pop that defines her musical aesthetic. Drawing frequent comparisons to everyone from Prince to Minnie Riperton to Björk, the singer-songwriter is not afraid to experiment with her sound, a mishmash of R&B, pop, rock and jazz that’s somehow as approachable as it is difficult to categorize. January’s A Reckoning, Kimbra’s fourth album, takes that heady mix and throws in some hip-hop and electronic music for good measure, resulting in an eclectic and oft-cinematic listening experience that proves Kimbra is much more than a supporting act.
Long Time Coming: Seeing as how she lives on the other side of the world, it’s not often that St. Louis sees a Kimbra tour stop — the last was back in 2018. Be sure to extend her a warm welcome.
—Daniel Hill
and Kitchen, 34 S Old Orchard Ave, Webster Groves, 314-968-0061.
ALL ROOSTERED UP: noon, free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.
ANIMATED DEAD: w/ Extinctionism, Swamp Lion, Murtaugh 8 p.m., free. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.
BILLY E3: 7 p.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.
BURLIN MUD: w/ Heavy Pauses, Rex Blue, Zak M 7 p.m., free. Platypus, 4501 Manchester Avenue, St. Louis, 314-359-2293.
CELEBRATION DAY: A TRIBUTE TO LED ZEPPELIN
NIGHT 2: 8 p.m., $25-$40. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.
CRYSTAL LADY - GOLDEN BIRTHDAY BASH: 8 p.m., $10. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.
THE FABULOUS MOTOWN REVUE: 6:30 p.m., $20. Casa Loma Ballroom, 3354 Iowa Ave, St. Louis, 314-282-2258.
HOT KOOLAID: 8 p.m., free. Charlack Pub, 8334 Lackland Rd, Charlack, 314-423-8119.
HYFY: 10 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.
JOHN MCVEY BAND: 8 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.
KIMBRA: 8 p.m., $20. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.
KINGDOM BROTHERS: 5 p.m., $10. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 S. Kingshighway, 2nd floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.
KIRKOS ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION: w/ Tree One Four, Hoojshwah 9 p.m., $10-$15. Central Stage, 3524 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, 314-533-0367.
MICHAELE & CO.: 8 p.m., $15. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.
PECOS & THE ROOFTOPS: 8 p.m., $20-$40. The Hawthorn, 2225 Washington Avenue, St. Louis. RICH MCDONOUGH & THE RHYTHM RENEGADES: 3 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.
SCOTT MULVAHILL & BEN SOLLEE: 8 p.m., $25. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.
SMOKESTACK: 8 p.m., $5. San Loo, 3211 Cherokee St., St. Louis, 314-696-2888.
SUNDAY 26
ADAM MELCHOR: 8 p.m., $20. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.
AMERICAN AUTHORS: w/ Billy Raffoul 8 p.m., $25$30. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.
BROTHER JEFFERSON: 3 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.
BUSH: 7:30 p.m., $45-$75. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.
BUTCH MOORE: 1 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.
DREW LANCE: 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.
ERIK BROOKS: 8 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.
JULIAN VELARD: 6 p.m., $10. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.
KEVIN BUCKLEY: 10 a.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.
MSPAINT: w/ Destiny Bond, Skinman, Kato 8 p.m., $10. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.
PAYDIRT: w/ Torchlight Parade, I Like Snaps, JOEL, Beekman 6:30 p.m., $8-$10. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.
MONDAY 27
D-LUX: 6 p.m., free. Fast Eddie’s Bon-Air, 1530 E. Fourth St., Alton, 618-462-5532.
MIKE MATTHEWS: 2:30 p.m., free. Traffic Jam, 6 Westbury Drive, St Charles, 636-723-6138.
MONDAY NIGHT REVIEW: w/ Tim, Danny and Randy 7 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.
SOULARD BLUES BAND: 9 p.m., $8. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.
TUESDAY 28
ANDREW DAHLE: 5 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.
GIOVANNIE & THE HIRED GUNS: 8 p.m., $22. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. NAKED MIKE: 7 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.
WEDNESDAY 1
BLACK MAGNET: w/ King Yosef, The Mall, Black-
PICK]
8:30 p.m. Sunday, February 26. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Avenue. $10. 314-498-6989.
Hot off of a 2022 that saw its latest, Time Vehicle Earth, topping numerous year-end lists with its apocalyptic brand of industrial-damaged minimal wave, St. Louis’ Best Artist the Mall finally sees the record’s physical release this Sunday. Joining the band for the big party is Hattiesburg, Mississippi, synth punk act MSPAINT, with whom the Mall has frequently performed and toured; Denver full-speed-ahead hardcore punk band Destiny Bond, whose blink-and-you’llmiss-them songs tend toward the snotty four-chord side of things; 11 PM Records recording artist Skinman, another Hat-
well 7:30 p.m., $15. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.
DREW LANCE: 4:30 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.
INTERNATIONAL ANIME MUSIC FESTIVAL: 8 p.m., $44.50-$64. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.
JOHN MCVEY BAND: 7 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.
MARGARET & FRIENDS: 3 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565. ST. LOUIS JAZZ CLUB: 7 p.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644.
TEAL STRIPE: w/ Boreal Hills, Pleasure Center 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.
VOODOO CSNY/DAVID CROSBY MEMORIAL: 9 p.m., $10. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.
tiesburg act whose sound vacillates wildly from slow-and-low caveman core to a driving cacophony of punk rock; and relatively new act Kato, described on the show’s flyer as “Finnish hardcore from St. Louis.” Originally set to take place at CBGB, this show ultimately outgrew the small bar’s confines and was moved at the last minute to Off Broadway in order to accommodate demand — a sure sign that the party will be packed.
Don’t Sleep: Considering the band’s popularity, it’s a safe bet that the first pressing of Time Vehicle Earth will sell out relatively quickly. With 500 copies on black vinyl, housed in a heavyweight two-color sleeve featuring the stunning cover art by Indonesian artist Ibayarifin and including a 24-inch poster insert, it will make a fine addition to your collection — as long as you act fast.
—Daniel HillTue., April 18, 8 p.m., $20-$35. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.
CHASING THE MILKY WAY: Fri., April 7, 5 p.m., $10. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 S. Kingshighway, 2nd floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.
FLEET FOXES: Sat., June 17, 8 p.m., $49.50-$79.50. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. GHOST: W/ Amon Amarth, Fri., Aug. 11, 7:30 p.m., $29.50-$149.50. Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, I-70 & Earth City Expwy., Maryland Heights, 314-298-9944.
KATIE HUBBARD ALBUM RELEASE: Fri., March
3, 7:30 p.m., $15. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314256-1745.
PEDRO THE LION: W/ Erik Walters, Fri., May 26, 8 p.m., $35-$40. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.
IN THE CACTUS BLOSSOMS: W/ Riley Downing,
THE WAR AND TREATY: W/ William Prince, Fri., April 14, 8 p.m., $29. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. n
PICK]
Hey Dan: My boyfriend of six months wants to try pegging, and I’m down. But he wants “the whole experience,” which means sucking the dildo, too. That raises a red flag for me. I know how this sounds before I even ask, so please forgive me if this question is insensitive. But does his desire to suck on the dildo indicate gay or bi tendencies? He says he’s not attracted to men, but he will sometimes make remarks about a “good-looking guy” he saw. He also told me he had a threesome in his early 20s with a married couple and that the husband sucked him off. He says he hasn’t done anything like that since — and he’s had tons of sex and done a lot of freaky stuff. Is this a kink? Would this leave him wanting the real thing? He wants to get married and all that. Should I be concerned?
I’m gonna crawl out on a limb here and assume your boyfriend has demonstrated to your satisfaction — that he enjoys straight sex. Or opposite-sex sex, I should say, since not everyone who has “straight” sex is straight. Bisexuals have “straight” sex all the time; sometimes even gays and lesbians have “straight” sex and not always under the duress of the closet. Just as some straights are heteroflexible, some gays and lesbians are homoflexible.
Anyway, I’m gonna assume your boyfriend has demonstrated — again, to your satisfaction — that he enjoys having opposite-sex with you, WASP. He likes to kiss you, he likes your tits, he eats your pussy and he fucks you senseless. And I feel confident in making this assumption because if he was only going through the motions when he was having sex with you, if the “straight” sex you were having together was bad or infrequent or both, you surely would’ve mentioned that fact.
So since the sex you’re having with your newish boyfriend is good and frequent (and trending freaky), WASP, we can safely strike “gay” from your very short list of concerns. And while some would regard the distinction you’re attempting to make between your boyfriend wanting you to fuck his ass and your boyfriend wanting you to fuck his face as meaningless — most will regard him wanting to have his ass fucked as just as gay or even gayer than him wanting to have his face fucked — there is a difference. A guy can wanna have his ass fucked for the pure physical pleasure of
being penetrated, e.g., the stimulation of all those nerve endings, the amazing feeling of being opened up, the pounding of his prostate gland, and the dildo is simply a means to those ends. But sucking on a strap-on dildo … that’s more of a psychological thrill. You won’t feel anything, and your boyfriend doesn’t have a prostate gland on his soft palate.
But even if he’s getting off on the idea of sucking dick … that’s not proof he’s gay or bi. Some women have dicks, as we’ve learned over the last two decades and change, and your boyfriend could be fantasizing about sucking a woman’s dick, and there’s nothing gay or bi about a cis man sucking a trans woman’s dick.
(Right? Right.) Or your boyfriend could be into the idea of forced bi. Or your boyfriend could be turned on by the transgression against what straight sex is supposed/assumed to be, e.g., males penetrate, females are penetrated.
Zooming out for a second …
At the start of a new relationship people will sometimes hint at their non-normative sexual interests. A guy might share a little about his past — like having had a threesome with a married couple and getting sucked off by the dude — because he wants to assess his new partner’s reaction before sharing the rest. A guy into bondage might tell a new partner he once “let someone” tie him up when he actually begged that person to tie him up; a woman into spanking might tell a new partner about some spanking porn clip that somehow popped up in her Twitter feed when she actually went looking for it. Your boyfriend could be bisexual, WASP, and told you some married guy sucked his dick when actually he went looking for a guy — married or not — to suck his dick.
So let’s game out your worst-case scenario: Your boyfriend is bisexual. Would that really be so bad, WASP? If you’re going to obsess about the downsides of marrying a bisexual guy — he’s going to want to fuck a guy once in a while — you should at least pause to consider the upsides. For instance, you won’t have to be on the receiving end of penetration every time you say yes to sex, WASP, because you’ll get to do the penetrating every once in a while. And the occasional MMF threesome … well, that seems like the best-case scenario to me, WASP, but I’m a little like your boyfriend: here for the freaky stuff.
Hey Dan: I’m a 38-year-old mother of two youngish kids in a 10-year hetero relationship that I am destroying. I cheated with a girl at my job at the end of last year and now I have feelings for her. I’ve ended the affair several times, but each time we start back up again. I’ve always known that I’m bisexual but never really explored
that side of myself. I don’t know if I never explored this side of myself out of fear, internalized homophobia or that the right girl never presented herself. Now I need to choose. Do I stay with my long-term partner, a man I love dearly, and tamp down this side of myself? Or do I break up with him and explore my sexuality? If we didn’t have kids, I would choose the latter. We have talked about opening up the relationship, but he is way too hurt for that to be an option anymore. I know I majorly fucked up. I betrayed his trust and snuck around with this girl. Am I just a horrible person who needs to get her shit together and somehow patch things up with my partner? Or is exploring my sexuality something that I should prioritize over stability and long-term love?
If you were childless — or childfree — you would leave. But you aren’t childfree, CAF, and you owe it to your kids to at least try to make things work with your long-term partner.
That said, CAF, you aren’t obligated to stay in a relationship you can’t make work.
If your actions have irrevocably destroyed your partner’s ability to trust you, and if you can’t come to some sort of accommodation moving forward that allows you to be the person you are (an accommodation that could take many different forms), ending it may ultimately be in the best interests of your kids. Because a bitter, loveless, high-conflict relationship will not only make you and your partner miserable, but it will also make your kids miserable.
If your relationship never recovers from the blows you’ve inflicted on it — if you can’t get past this — then you’ll have to end it. But at this point you simply don’t know whether or how this relationship can be salvaged. Give it a chance, do the work and see where you are in a year. If leaving was the right thing to do, it’ll still be the right thing to do a year from now. If leaving was the wrong thing to do, you won’t be able to undo it a year from now.
P.S. Bisexual People? Please get out there and suck some dick and/or eat some pussy before you make a monogamous commitment to an opposite-sex partner — or a same-sex partner, for that matter, though I get fewer letters from bisexuals in same-sex relationships who’ve recently “explored” their bisexuality (with disastrous consequences) or begged their same-sex partners for permission to “explore” their bisexuality (and been threatened with disastrous consequences).
Yeah, yeah: Bisexual people can honor monogamous commitments. But as you may have noticed — as anyone who’s been paying attention should have noticed by now — monogamy isn’t easy for anyone.
While it’s considered bi-phobic to suggest that monogamy might be a little bit harder for bisexual people, most of the people making that argument to me are bisexuals who made monogamous commitments before fully exploring their sexualities. LGBTQ people never tire of pointing out how a particular thing might be harder for gay men and a different particular thing might be harder for lesbians and another particular thing might be a whole lot harder for trans people and a long list of other things might a bazillion times harder for asexuals, demisexuals, sapiosexuals, omnisexuals, etc. Yet it’s somehow taboo to suggest that monogamy — which, again, is pretty damn hard for everyone — might be a tiny bit harder for bisexuals.
Hey Dan: I’m a bisexual woman who once had an affair with a married man. (Let’s call him “AP.”) The affair ended a decade ago. I was in an abusive marriage at the time, and AP showed me what a loving, caring relationship was like. He was, and still is, happily married except for sexual dissatisfaction. His wife has an extremely low sex drive and is a prude. (She calls sex “icky.”) AP, on the other hand, has a high libido and is very adventurous. He loves anal, threesomes, etc., and has had experiences with men when he was younger. He loves his wife and kids, and I love him, so when we were discovered, I removed myself from the situation. I left the abuser, did a LOT of work on myself and found an awesome, open-minded, sexy bisexual new husband. Would I be an asshole if I sent an indecent proposal to AP and his wife? Everything out in the open this time. A one-time invitation to meet in a neutral place where the four of us could get to know each other. Then, if everyone is comfortable, we can have some naughty adult play time that would include all the stuff she doesn’t enjoy (anal, same-sex play, oral, etc.). I’ve come to a point that I realize a healthy relationship is based on far more than monogamy, and if my husband really wanted to engage in something I had no interest in, I’d give him my blessing. But that’s me. I hate the idea of AP living out the rest of his life unfulfilled. My husband is fully on board.
Do not do this.
P.S. A woman who doesn’t wanna do anal, oral or same-sex play is highly unlikely to wanna watch her husband do any of those things in front of her — particularly with a former affair partner.
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