Riverfront Times, March 15, 2023

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Publisher Chris Keating

Editor in Chief Rosalind Early

EDITORIAL

Managing Editor Jessica Rogen

Editor at Large Daniel Hill

Digital Content Editor Jaime Lees

Dining Editor Cheryl Baehr

Staff Writers Ryan Krull, Monica Obradovic, Benjamin Simon Theater Critic Tina Farmer

Music Critic Steve Leftridge

Contributors Thomas K. Chimchards, Mike Fitzgerald, Reuben Hemmer, Andy Paulissen, Mabel Suen, Graham Toker, Theo Welling

Columnists Chris Andoe, Ray Hartmann, Dan Savage Editorial Interns Katie Lawson, Braden McMakin

ART & PRODUCTION

Art Director Evan Sult

Creative Director Haimanti Germain

Graphic Designer Aspen Smit

MULTIMEDIA ADVERTISING

Associate Publisher Colin Bell

Account Manager Jennifer Samuel

Directors of Business Development Tony Burton, Rachel Hoppman, Chelsea Nazaruk

BUSINESS

Regional Operations Director Emily Fear

CIRCULATION

Circulation Manager Kevin G. Powers

EUCLID MEDIA GROUP

Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zelman

Chief Operating Officers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner

Executive Editor Sarah Fenske

VP of Digital Services Stacy Volhein

Audience Development Manager Jenna Jones

VP of Marketing Cassandra Yardeni www.euclidmediagroup.com

NATIONAL ADVERTISING

VMG Advertising 1-888-278-9866, vmgadvertising.com

SUBSCRIPTIONS

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Founded by Ray Hartmann in 1977

Kim Gardner photo by Danny Wicentowski; image of car wreck by Shutterstock

FRONT BURNER

MONDAY, MARCH 6 What wonderful May weather we’re having … in March. Should we enjoy it, or be spooked? Never fear, it’s St. Louis: If you don’t like the weather now, just wait five minutes … or til Wednesday.

TUESDAY, MARCH 7 Election Day in the city, and in a whole lot of wards, it makes zero difference if you vote. Instead of questioning why turnout is so low in these wards, perhaps we should ask why 11 or 12 percent of voters even bothered. Are they trying to establish their bona fides as primary election voters, so the campaign literature keeps coming? Or preserving their future electability in the event they seek to challenge Kim Gardner? Surely you people have reasons.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8 Neither rain nor sleet nor whatever that is falling from the sky this morning can stop us from poring over election returns. Some takeaways: Mayor Tishaura Jones does not have coattails worth riding in the new 8th — her chosen candidate, Shedrick Kelley, got clobbered not just by incumbent Cara Spencer (which was predictable) but also by a guy who’s been out of politics for six years, Ken “Cat’s Meow” Ortmann

Previously On LAST WEEK IN ST. LOUIS

(which wasn’t). Incumbents Bret Narayan and Joe “Car Wash Daddy” Vaccaro have a tough battle ahead in the new 4th. And what about that potential coin flip in the new 9th? Gotta love when two incumbents see their future decided “by lot,” in the archaic words of the city ordinance. Finally, how about the new 14th Ward? Seeing both current aldermen — Brandon Bosley and James Page — lose to state Representative Rasheen Aldridge and Ebony Washington is a good reminder of the battles of St. Louis elections past. The only thing that could possibly explain Washington’s success with absentee votes also happens to be true: She has close ties to the Hubbard family. We’ll just leave it at that (search “Bruce Franks Hubbards” for the whole sordid saga).

THURSDAY, MARCH 9 The Post-Dispatch reports that Attorney General Andrew Bailey has issued a 34-point subpoena

FOUR QUESTIONS for Neil Salsich, Contestant on The Voice

to Kim Gardner in his quest to oust her from the circuit attorney’s office. He’s digging into the cases dismissed by her office and the length of time before cases see resolution — two points on which Gardner appears deeply vulnerable. Bailey also wants to depose top staffers.

FRIDAY, MARCH 10 Surprise! Gardner’s top deputy, chief trial assistant Marvin Teer, is leaving to “spend more time with his family.” Surely this has nothing to do with the trouble at the circuit attorney’s office. The Post-Dispatch reports the office has just five prosecutors left — in a city that sees nearly 200 murders a year, not to mention all those other major crimes. Will the last one to leave have the bandwidth to turn out the lights? In a related development, the endlessly out-of-touch Post-Dispatch editorial board endorses a state bill to create a special prosecutor to take away cases from the circuit attor-

ney — a solution that, despite Gardner’s very real problems, prosecutors around the state have viewed with horror. Maybe it sounds better to someone living in Connecticut? Also: Alderwoman Tina “Sweet-T” Pihl squeaks past Mike Gras to make the runoff for the city’s new 9th Ward — no need for lots after all. Provisional ballots gave Pihl seven additional votes and Gras just three.

SATURDAY, MARCH 11 St. Patrick’s week begins in St. Louis with a very cold parade (yes, it’s almost an entire week — the downtown parade always happens on Saturday, and this year that’s six days before Dogtown’s March 17 extravaganza). The chilly weather is totally seasonable … and still feels totally unfair after such a balmy winter. Also! St. Louis CITY SC wins on the road. It’s the first MLS expansion team to get off to a 3-0 start.

SUNDAY, MARCH 12 The Battlehawks draw 38,000 — which not only breaks the XFL attendance record the city set in 2020, but stands as a new record for any professional spring football league anywhere. A further reminder that Stan Kroenke was a fool to abandon us. Bonus: It’s a win for the home team. Ka-kaaaw!!

or the second. I have so much respect for all of that –– just seeing all of these people just like, bam, firing on all cylinders doing their job. There’s a stage manager. You don’t hear this on TV, but for all the people in the room there’s a voice on the PA being like, “90 seconds, 60 seconds.” There’s just all this shit happening, and then these doors open and holy shit –– even talking about it has my heart racing.

You didn’t seem nervous when you got up there.

It was weird, man. I definitely was a type of nervous. But I wasn’t afraid. It’s hard to explain. I’m glad I didn’t present as nervous. My heart was racing, and maybe my knees were shaking a little bit underneath. But there was like a whole ’nother part of me that had a sense of calmness. I knew that I had a good voice. I wasn’t pulled off the street. I had experience at this. So I kind of knew I would turn one chair, which is all you really need to make it onto the show. And, of course, in my head, I was also telling myself, like, “Hey, it may not [happen]. Stay humble. You don’t really know what’s going to happen.”

Did it remind you of any other concerts?

Last Monday, there was a familiar voice on The Voice: Neil Salsich. The frontman of the Mighty Pines won a spot on Blake Shelton’s team and advanced to the second round. The RFT spoke with Salsich after the first episode aired. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What went through your head when you walked out there?

It was crazy, man. I was just taking deep breaths. You’re mic’d up. People are attending to you. People walk up to you at the last minute and straighten up your shit and brush whatever out of your beard. There’s hundreds of people working. It’s very down to the minute

It’s actually a completely different type of performance than anything I’ve ever done because it’s only one song, and there’s so much build-up to it. It’s weird –– it’s a competition, which is cool, that’s the point of the show. But no other performances are a yes or no. You just perform.

How has the transition back to St. Louis been?

It’s been great. I haven’t even been home for that long. It’s exciting. For example, after I announced that I was going to audition, I walked into [a St. Louis] venue, and people I didn’t even know were wanting to take their pictures with me. I’m just excited to keep playing shows around St. Louis. I’m also a little nervous. Part of me is like, I hope I can play an anonymous show again. I don’t know, man. This is what I wanted. But I’ll just have to get used to it. — Benjamin Simon

Neil Salsich at his Voice audition. | COURTESY THE VOICE

WEEKLY WTF?!

Bra Watch

Date of sighting: March 2 at 7:46 a.m.

Location: Chippewa Street and Hampton Avenue

Duration of time in tree: five days and counting

Bra uses: securing size D busts, transporting two moderately sized melons from the nearby Schnucks to the bus

Probability that owner got tired of wearing the bra and couldn’t stand it any longer: 10 out of 10

ESCAPE HATCH

We ask three St. Louisans what they’re reading, watching or listening to. In the hot seat this week: three people at the 314 kickoff party at Busch stadium.

Sasha Williams, membership specialist

Reading: I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

“It’s really interesting and offers a different perspective.”

Kalima Shahid, owner of Kay’s Kitchen

Listening to: “No Woman No Cry” by Tems and Marvel Music from the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack

“It’s a great song, plus I loved the film.”

Walter Beckham, higher education admissions

Reading: The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

“It’s a deep dive into trauma and just how it shows up in a lot of different ways in the body.”

[QUOTE OF THE WEEK]

“If you’re ever in a position where you have to ask someone questions in a professional manner ... heed my advice: Do not do so whilst stoned out of your mind.”

—Mary Jane Baker, in “Cannabrunch Will Get You Sky High,” page 35

SOMETIMES IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT COUNT

Eric Schmitt’s Anti-Woke Idiocy

Missouri’s junior senator isn’t smart enough to understand dummies

Written by RAY HARTMANN

Senator Eric Schmitt posted the following pearl of wisdom Friday on his Twitter account:

“In Biden’s bloated budget, there’s $1.3 billion for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for research on roadway fatalities and injuries. Part of that research? Developing a female crash test dummy to ‘address gender equity in crash testing.’ Beyond parody.”

Actually, it’s Schmitt who’s beyond parody. It seems that the phrase “gender equity” tripped Schmitt’s anti-woke alarm, prompting his reflex to ridicule whoever was associated with it.

(To better understand this phenomenon, try knocking on a wall, and see how your dog reacts.)

When it turned out that the guilty woke party was President Joe Biden, Team Schmitt must have been euphoric. What an opportunity for the Republican Senate caucus’s largely invisible caboose to capture even a moment’s fleeting notice.

But about those crash test dummies: In the rational world, they make a great deal of sense and represent a long-overdue advance in vehicle safety across the nation. And, yes, gender equity.

Since “Sierra Sam” debuted in 1949 as the father of all crash test dummies, a consequential gender gap has existed in what the testing industry terms “seat evaluation tools.” It’s understandable that “Sierra Samantha” wasn’t rolled out along with Sam. But three quarters of a century later, it is unfathom-

able that almost all the dummies in use are designed to measure the impact of crashes on average male bodies. And that matters.

Consider this from the World Economic Forum:

“Surely a body is a body, you may think, why does this matter? It matters because, on average, females are shorter and lighter than males, with different muscle strengths, torso, hip and pelvis shapes to men. And these differences can significantly change how our bodies react to the impact of a car crash.”

It was not until last year that Swedish engineers implemented a dummy based on the body of an average woman, the BBC reports. The closest tool used previously was a dummy designed to replicate a 12-year-old boy’s body. This female one — 5’3” tall and 137 pounds — has “sensors and transducers within the dummy [to] provide potentially lifesaving data, measuring the precise physical forces exerted on each body part in a crash event.”

And there was this information from across the pond:

“When a woman is in a car crash, she is up to three times more likely to suffer whiplash injuries in rear impacts in comparison with a man, according to U.S. government data. Although whiplash is not usually fatal, it can lead to physical disabilities — some of which can be permanent.”

Far be it from me to suggest that Schmitt add to his reading list an outlet employing as many large words as the BBC. Translating them to MAGA-ese would be prohibitive to the taxpayers.

But Schmitt’s most recent disgorgement on Twitter confirms that there’s pretty much no depth to which he will not sink in pursuit of cheap political gain. Even across party lines, many once regarded Schmitt as thoughtful and reasonable when he was a state senator. And they didn’t recognize him as an android.

During the 2022 election campaign for U.S. Senator, though, Schmitt developed MAGA Tourette’s, which his apologists rationalized as a necessary evil. The Republican Party has become overrun in Missouri with crazy MAGA types, the theory goes, so Schmitt had to speak their language to get elected. But privately, he would assure friends that he

didn’t mean it.

Well, the man now known as Senator Schmitt still speaks with that forked tongue. If the “real” Eric Schmitt is going to emerge — with a goal of, say, 25 percent of the reasonableness of Senator Roy Blunt, his predecessor — when’s that happening?

So far, it hasn’t. Everyone expecting the emergence of the old Schmitt has been sorely disappointed. To the contrary, Schmitt has made a fool of himself even among his own party’s Senators, right out of the gate.

Schmitt “irked” two colleagues — Senators Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) — by making an unusual and intemperate request that they give up prized seats for him on the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to Politico. Both declined, and the Senate voted to deny Schmitt a waiver he had requested (and would have needed since Missouri’s other senator, Josh Hawley, already serves on the committee).

But at least that story garnered Schmitt a headline or two. The next notable one didn’t come until a couple weeks ago with his recent appearance at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, a.k.a. CPAC. Schmitt has spoken there before, but this year’s poorly attended event had convened under a cloud.

CPAC founder and chief organizer Matt Schlapp is embroiled in two lawsuits filed by Carlton Huffman, a former staffer on Herschel Walker’s unsuccessful Republican Senate campaign in Georgia. More than a few prominent conservatives avoided this year’s conference after Huffman said the following on video, as quoted in the Daily Beast:

“Matt Schlapp grabbed my junk and pummeled it at length, and I’m sitting there thinking what the hell is going on, that this person is literally doing this to me.”

No less a microphone junkie than Hawley failed to attend the conference for the first time in several years, with no reference to the accusations, of course. But Schmitt was happy to rub shoulders (that’s all) with Schlapp. Schmitt did get a moment of attention in the right-wing media for having shown up and taken shots at Dr. Anthony Fauci.

These are tough times for publicity-starved politicians in Washington, D.C. No meaningful legislation will advance in either chamber of Congress since a divided government assures that nothing of consequence gets to Biden’s desk. So you’d expect senators to rely a bit more heavily on pronouncements of home-state interest.

Not Schmitt. The 15 press releases issued by his office in his first two months mostly call for Biden to get off his lawn. St. Louis hasn’t even been mentioned.

Ten of the press releases were political attacks on Biden over the Chinese spy balloon, his “out of touch” budget, student loan relief, border policy and so forth. Four releases reported Schmitt’s staff hirings and consolation-prize committee assignments.

Only one Missouri event in two months has risen to the level of an official news release from Schmitt: He issued a one-paragraph statement of prayers for a Kansas City police officer who died along with his canine partner and a pedestrian in a traffic accident after a motorist ran a red light at excessive speed.

It’s fine that Schmitt hasn’t chosen to weigh in when that all-toofamiliar scenario happens in St. Louis. We don’t need the publicity.

Yet, even in these terrible times of partisan dysfunction, this region or state could benefit from having a senator concerned with more than lighting a blowtorch “to turn the heat up on Biden Democrats,” as Schmitt promised in a famous MAGA-themed campaign ad. The bar is really low for this guy, especially since fellow insurrectionist Hawley makes up the other half of this sorry delegation.

Schmitt at least needs to rise to the level of a dummy. n

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

These are tough times for publicity-starved politicians in Washington, D.C.

Homeless Encampment Evicted

The city cleared a downtown encampment on Friday to mixed reactions

Written by MONICA OBRADOVIC

City officials cleared an encampment of unhoused people in downtown St. Louis Friday after posting eviction notices near the camp 10 days earlier. The encampment near Laclede’s Landing held about 30 to 40 residents earlier this week. By Friday morning, no more than 10 people still resided in the camp, which last April narrowly escaped a previously ordered eviction.

Up to 27 of the camp’s occupants had accepted housing options offered by the city by Friday, according to mayoral spokesperson Nick Dunne.

Residents who spoke to the RFT were hesitant to transition to shelters. They said they’d rather stay at the camp, which they described as a community.

For James, who asked us not to use his last name, the encampment offered a more liberating environment — free of shelter rules or curfews.

James said he moved into the encampment after he received a terminal cancer diagnosis several months ago. He plans to go live with his kids now — even if he’d rather stay at the encampment.

“They act like crime happens because we’re here,” James said. “That’s bullshit.”

In a “break from past practices,” according to Dunne, over the past several weeks a city outreach team and the city’s Department of Human Services brought social workers and community organizations to the camp to connect with residents.

“[Department of Human Services] was able to identify and offer housing and resources that would

address their underlying needs and set them on a path to permanent housing,” Dunne said in a statement.

Residents who remained in the camp Friday morning packed their belongings and took down tents. Those who accepted the city’s assistance were taken to different locations based on their needs, according to Dunne.

Two residents later returned to the camp, said Tent Mission STL and Winter Outreach volunteer Audra Youmans. One woman had been dropped off at a shelter that had no room for her, according to Youmans.

Tasha Thacker said she lived in the camp on and off for the past few years. She came back to her tent after city officials tried to take her to a hotel. Thacker had no form of identification, however, and could not be checked in (Dunne could not immediately confirm Friday afternoon whether encampment residents had been offered hotel rooms).

When asked if she knew where she’d go next, Thacker said she had “no idea.”

For “Mama D,” described by many as the “camp mom,” the

eviction marked a day of heartbreak. She spent most of the day packing her belongings in trash bags for the city to take to a facility for storage.

Through tears, Mama D spoke in short sentences.

“It’s just sad,” she said. For developers and business owners stationed near the encampment, Friday’s eviction brought relief.

Gretchen Minges, a developer on Laclede’s Landing, said she’s paid $50,000 to repair vandalism damage from her unhoused neighbors. Costs for in-house security guards have “well exceeded” that.

Minges and her husband coown St Louis-based Advantes Group and are trying to revitalize Laclede’s Landing, where they own six buildings and manage two parking lots. But the encampment has made it difficult for Minges to attract tenants, she said.

Many of their windows have been broken, bricks get thrown through tenants’ car windows and thieves try to break into their buildings, she said.

“It’s a constant struggle,” Minges said. “My husband actually had a knife pulled on him by a

gentleman from the camp about a month ago.”

Throughout the day, workers installed posts for a fence to surround the camp.

City staffers arrived early Friday morning and started to clear the area with a bulldozer after the last resident departed around 3 p.m. About 20 tents remained before the bulldozing began. Among the debris were coats, blankets, books, tarps and shoes.

Volunteers with Tent Mission STL and Winter Outreach stood in front of the bulldozer when a city staffer positioned it in front of the encampment. They moved after the final resident left.

Some of those who remained at the encampment hugged each other goodbye. Most who lived in the encampment had been there for several months and formed closed friendships with the people around them. They weren’t sure when or if they’d see their neighbors again.

“In a community with so much uncertainty, people are reluctant to leave their neighbors,” Grace Stansberry, a volunteer with Winter Outreach, said. “Everybody knows everybody. It’s a shame to see it torn down.” n

A Tent Mission STL volunteer blocks a bulldozer from entering a homeless encampment. | MONICA OBRADOVIC

Serial Killer Gary Muehlberg Faces One Victim’s Family

Sandy Little’s relatives made statements in court as Muehlberg pleaded guilty to her murder

Written by RYAN KRULL

The surviving family of Sandy Little, who was murdered more than 30 years ago at the age of 21, confronted the man who took her life and the lives of at least four other women in St. Charles court last week.

Last year, 73-year-old Gary Muehlberg confessed to murdering five women between 1990 and 1991. He picked them up on the city’s southside and then strangled them back at his home in BelRidge. After killing the women, he put their bodies in various containers, which he left along roads and highways throughout the region. The macabre M.O. caused some to refer to Muehlberg as the Package Killer.

The cases remained unsolved for 30 years until last summer when O’Fallon Police Department Detective Jodi Weber connected Muehlberg’s DNA to physical evidence from the 1990s. When confronted with this evidence, Muehlberg confessed to the murders. He was already in prison at the time, having been given a life sentence in 1995 for murdering Kenneth “Doc” Atchison.

Muehlberg previously expressed an eagerness to plead guilty to the crimes and be sentenced by the courts as quickly as possible. He told the RFT in November that he’s in an honor wing of Potosi Correctional Center, and he worries that if has to spend time in a county jail, he might lose his cell.

Muehlberg got his wish last week in St. Charles. He entered his plea via video link, appearing in his prison grays with a bruise underneath his left eye. He fidgeted with

a pen. Muehlberg, who recently suffered a brain bleed as well as a fall that left him with bone fractures, said he has been taking muscle relaxers and pain pills.

Over the course of a 75-minute hearing, Judge Daniel Pelikan accepted Muehlberg’s guilty plea and sentenced him to another life sentence in addition to the one he is already serving.

After Muehlberg’s guilty plea but prior to his sentencing, Little’s stepsister Barb Studt and halfsister Geneva Valle-Palomino had the opportunity to confront Muehlberg for the first time.

“Sandy was only 21, and, regardless of the path she was on at that time, she didn’t deserve to die,” Valle-Palomino said, referring to the fact that her sister was a sex worker at the time Muehlberg abducted her. “The lack of remorse you have shown is a shame. How can you sleep for 33 years knowing what you did?”

“She was a mother, a sister, a daughter,” Studt added. “She left behind a baby who was less than a year old. And the impact on that child growing up without a mother has been tremendous. He has been on his own.”

Several times in her statement, Valle-Palomino called Muehlberg a monster. “What happened to my sister Sandy, to all the victims, will forever be undeserved and forever will be an act of a monster.”

“You’ve had 33 more years than any of your victims, with no remorse. It will be a blessing to this world to know you’re gone, and I hope you rot in hell.”

If Muehlberg was affected by any of these statements, he didn’t show it. He listened with his gaze straight ahead, only hanging his head for a few moments after both women finished speaking.

When Pelikan handed down the life sentence, a bystander who happened to be in the courtroom on other business spontaneously clapped and said, “That’s what you get.”

Pelikan ended the hearing by telling Muehlberg, “May God have mercy on your soul.”

In total, Muehlberg has confessed to murdering five women between 1990 and 1991. In addition to Little, his victims include: Robyn Mihan, 18; Donna Reitmeyer, 40; and Brenda Pruitt, 27. Earlier this year, he revealed to detectives that he had killed a fifth woman whose name he doesn’t remember — if he ever knew it at all — and whose body he said he left in a steel barrel at a Ram-Jet self-service car wash. That victim is still unidentified. Muehlberg is expected to plead guilty to those murders in St. Louis County and Lincoln County courts later this month.

Prior to handing down his sentence, the judge asked Muehlberg to recount facts of the crime to which he’d pleaded guilty. Muehlberg spoke in a clinical, detached way that Studt later said sounded like he was reading details from a magazine.

“I picked up this young lady in south city and took her back to my home in Bel-Ridge,” Muehlberg said. “We had a relationship, and then I strangled her until she was deceased.”

Studt, who lived with Little for several months in the 1980s, said after the court hearing that she was bothered both by Muehlberg being allowed to appear via video and by his being so unforthcoming about the facts of his crime.

“There was zero emotion there,” Studt said. “And he didn’t even mention why he kept her in his house for eight months.”

Studt said she knows it’s macabre, but she can’t help but wonder about the final moments of her stepsister’s life.

“What I imagine in my head could be worse than what it was, could not be as bad as what it was,” she said. “I do think about it.” n

Gary Muehlberg admitted to killing five women in the 1990s. | MO DOC

Muehlberg says he strangled Sandy Little to death when she was 21. | COURTESY PHOTO

“ Sandy was only 21, and, regardless of the path she was on at that time, she didn’t deserve to die. The lack of remorse you have shown is a shame. How can you sleep for 33 years knowing what you did?”

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Union Rejects Furloughs

The vote may increase the likelihood of layoffs

Written by SARAH FENSKE

The union representing workers at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch overwhelmingly rejected furloughs demanded by the daily’s Iowa-based owner, Lee Enterprises, last Wednesday.

Lee had asked workers at publications across the U.S. to take two weeks of unpaid vacation. With last week’s vote, the St. Louis-based writers and ad sales staff who make up the membership of the United Media Guild replied with a resounding “no.”

The 48-11 rejection came at the urging of union leaders, who were frustrated that Lee had rejected its counterproposal without a counteroffer.

“Our members are aware that rejecting the furlough could create more layoff potential if the company decides to seek cost savings,” said Guild President Jeff Gordon. “That’s the reality. We can’t ignore that. But the company was unwilling to offer any layoff protection in exchange for everybody giving money back.”

At a Zoom meeting two days before the vote, Gordon said senior members made clear they’d acquiesce to the furloughs if it meant protecting the jobs of younger staffers. But nothing from Lee gave any assurance that would be the case.

Post-Dispatch spokeswoman Tracy Rouch said the company would not comment at this time.

The Post-Dispatch has seen a flurry of cuts in recent months. It laid off its archivist and eliminated two open positions in January and then laid off more than half of its prep sports staff in short order. Other resignations are now going un-

filled, with a buyout for advertising staff and last fall’s cuts to the comics page — which reduced the Post-Dispatch’s oncerobust offerings to the same uniform set of 10 strips offered throughout the newspaper chain — drew major pushback.

Last month, unionized Lee workers in Buffalo similarly rejected the furlough request. Days later, Lee announced it was shutting down its printing press there, though it remains unclear whether the two things are related.

Gordon said St. Louis guild members — which include approximately 50 journalists and 30 advertising sales staffers — had previously agreed to furloughs during the pandemic, but that was in part because unemployment benefits were so excellent at the time. The lack of a safety net, along with frustration over the recent layoffs, changed the equation.

He also noted that managers unprotected by the union are already taking furloughs, while the highest-paid managers got pay cuts that do not include additional time off.

“There’s no reason to believe the cost-cutting will ever end at this point,” Gordon said. “Lee has tried to maintain a good staffing level at the Post-Dispatch compared to other companies. They’re not as bad as Gannett. But the trend is still the trend.”

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s attempt at furloughs failed. | PAUL SABLEMAN/FLICKR

The Post-Dispatch laid off its archivist and eliminated two open positions in January and then laid off more than half of its prep sports staff in short order.

Ka-Kaw Is Law

The Battlehawks home opener got wild

Words by JAIME LEES

Photos by REUBEN HEMMER

Amighty “Ka-Kaw” echoed across the land yesterday as XFL fans assembled to watch the St. Louis Battlehawks crush the Arlington Renegades 24-11.

It was the first home game for

the Battlehawks, and St. Louisans dressed in blue (or as birds) broke attendance records for the XFL with a sellout crowd of 38,310 fans.

From animated tailgating parties outside to intense displays of testosterone inside the Dome at America’s Center (701 Convention Plaza, 314-342-5201), many jubilant fans seemed to lose their entire minds while cheering their team to victory.

Our photographer, Reuben Hemmer, was there tracking the entire event, which (judging by these photos) seemed to just get more wild as the day went on. The tailgating pics are what you’d expect, but once the game got started, entire groups of men started taking off their shirts.

If you want to get in on the fun, the next home Battlehawks game is this Saturday, March 18, against the D.C. Defenders.

A CELEBRATION OF THE UNIQUE AND FASCINATING ASPECTS OF OUR HOME

St. Louis has a problem.

Well, St. Louis has many problems, but chief among them is the issue of traffic violence. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that cops are giving out fewer tickets as traffic violations skyrocket, and families are left without justice for hit-and-run incidents that left loved ones dead. Recently, a crash involving a teen from out of state had consequences no one could predict, not only for the teen herself but also for the City of St. Louis. The man who caused the accident, Daniel Riley, had more than 50 bond violations. So why was Riley behind the wheel of a car instead of in jail? Many blamed Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, but is she really to blame?

In this feature, Ryan Krull takes a look at how Kim Gardner got to this moment, and where the victim, Janae Edmondson, is now. Monica Obradovic writes about traffic violence in St. Louis and new hope on the horizon for calming St. Louis streets.

—Rosalind Early

EVERY KIM VS.

The Constant Gardner

In her attempt to bring about change to St. Louis’ criminal justice system, Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has raised a lot of ire. Is this her final act?

BY RYAN KRULL

The fourth floor of the Carnahan Courts Building was tense as Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner stepped to the podium for her press conference, her demeanor measured. Gardner is used to being embattled. Conservatives in the Missouri state legislature have been trying to pass a law that would allow Governor Mike Parson to appoint a special prosecutor to replace Gardner since the start of the year. But now Gardner was facing more heat than even she’d seen before.

On February 18, Daniel Riley caused a crash that maimed a teenager visiting from out of town. Riley had been arrested in 2020 and had more than 50 bond violations. The blowback against Gardner’s office was swift, with critics saying Riley was not in jail due to Gardner’s mismanagement.

Even former allies expressed concern. Mayor Tishaura Jones told the press that Gardner had lost the public’s trust. Fellow progressive and President of the Board of Alderman Megan Green agreed.

Now four days after the crash, Gardner faced the press with her career, reputation and legacy on the line.

Several dozen Gardner support-

ers arrayed themselves against the reporters. It did not take long for things to explode.

A reporter’s question about Mayor Jones’ statement that Gardner had lost city residents’ trust brought a chorus of shouts from Gardner’s supporters. “We are the public,” a supporter said. “She hasn’t lost it,” another said.

The reporter tried to ask the question again.

“We answered for her!” someone shouted, to applause.

“Ask the mayor why she’s not at the press conference,” shouted a member of the crowd.

After Gardner’s remarks, a brief chant of “no justice, no peace” went out among her supporters, before former prosecutor and noted defense attorney Jerryl Christmas shouted to the crowd through a bullhorn: “Only judges can set a bond and revoke bond. Only judges can set a bond and revoke bond.”

The showing of support bolstered Gardner, but legal proceedings against her had already begun. About three hours prior, the Missouri Attorney General filed a petition to remove Gardner from office.

The controversy surrounding the embattled circuit attorney has become increasingly chaotic and has scrambled political lines, with former allies calling for her removal, but ardent supporters (and at least one erstwhile critic) defending Gardner’s handling of the case that sparked the maelstrom.

The question at the center of the controversy is straightforward: Who’s to blame for multi-sport athlete Janae Edmondson losing her legs? The Tennessee teenager was visiting St. Louis for a volleyball tournament. As she was walking back to her hotel near America’s Center with her parents, Daniel Riley, 21, driving 20 miles over the speed limit, hit a car, pinning Edmondson.

But not everyone thinks Gardner deserves the blame for Edmondson’s injuries. Riley’s lawyer in the case is noted St. Louis defense attorney Terry Niehoff. Niehoff is no fan of Gardner’s, writing in a recent blog post that she’s incompetent and “has taken what was once one of the best prosecuting attorney offices in the state and through mismanagement reduced it to a barely functioning shell of its former self.” However, Niehoff says in the same blog

post that Gardner’s office is being wrongly accused of being responsible for Riley remaining on bond before his trial.

“This incident could very well mean the end to Kim Gardner’s stint as the Circuit Attorney for the City of St. Louis. And, if it does, the world will be a better place,” Niehoff wrote. “However, I find it ironic that none of the genuine issues with her management has brought about her downfall, but what very well might is a situation where her office really did nothing wrong.”

In fact, Niehoff wrote, the assistant circuit attorney who worked for Gardner did bring Riley’s bond violations to the attention of the judge — yet, after a bond hearing, the judge allowed Riley to remain free.

That echoes what Gardner said about the case. In a statement, she blamed Judge Bryan Hettenbach for Riley being free on bond.

Attorneys for Gardner’s office asked that Riley’s bond be revoked on December 12, 2021, according to the statement, but Judge Hettenbach denied the request. (Critics were quick to note that December 12 fell on a Sunday that year.)

Continued on pg 18

KIM GARDNER

Continued from pg 17

When Hettenbach set the Riley case to go to trial in July 2022, prosecutor Natalia Ogurkiewicz asked for a continuance for reasons that Niehoff said on his blog were reasonable. A witness was not available to give testimony, and court records show that Ogurkiewicz was in trial for different cases the week before and the week after the date Hettenbach set. However, the judge denied the request for the continuance.

At that point, prosecutors dropped and refiled the charges against Riley — essentially starting the case from scratch in Hettenbach’s courtroom. Gardner’s statement says Hettenbach allowed Riley to be released on bond on August 10, 2022, despite the state’s wishes otherwise.

However, a transcript of this August 10 hearing obtained by the RFT shows the judge asking Assistant Circuit Attorney Jonathan Phipps, “What does the state propose we do with Mr. Riley this time around?”

Phipps replied that he had reached a deal with Riley’s defense attorney for Riley to be released on house arrest and GPS monitoring.

If Phipps made a case for Riley to be held in jail, the transcript doesn’t capture it.

In interviews with the RFT, multiple assistant circuit attorneys were adamant that it is the responsibility of the judge, not prosecutors, to revoke defendants’ bond when they fail to adhere to the terms of the pretrial release.

“Who gave them bond to begin with?” asks an assistant circuit attorney. “It wasn’t the prosecutor.”

“All a prosecutor can do in respect to bond is make requests and recommendations,” says another assistant circuit attorney.

As an example, one assistant circuit attorney cites a situation wherein a defendant is wearing an ankle monitor and ordered not to leave the house. If the ankle monitor registers a violation, a company called Total Court Services, which operates the monitors, emails court administrators, and prosecutors get a notification via case.net about it. “We’re the last party to find out when a violation has occurred,” the attorney says.

That prosecuting attorney, who wished to remain anonymous, specifically criticized Hettenbach, saying that Hettenbach, unlike many other judges, automatically sets all cases on his docket to go

to trial without first setting any hearings to determine if that is actually feasible. The attorney says other judges set a motion hearing two weeks prior to the trial’s start date for all parties to conference, determine if relevant witnesses are available, and if a jury trial can proceed. “Hettenbach just picks a trial date,” the prosecutor says.

According to the prosecutor, Hettenbach schedules multiple trials for the same date, a practice that emerged as a reaction to backlog issues created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But when this “cattle call docket” occurs, the prosecutor says, “it’s a shitshow.”

To the prosecutor’s point, Hettenbach’s courtroom had eight jury trials all set to commence at 9 a.m. on February 27.

A spokesperson for the 22nd Circuit Court says that the court is not commenting at this time.

Of those eight defendants whose cases were set to all go to trial on the same day, three of them had multiple violations of their GPS monitoring — more than 40 combined, with the bulk of those coming from Verzell Jones, who in May 2021 was charged with statutory rape.

Court records show that Jones was released on bond over the objections of Assistant Circuit Attorney Jonathan Phipps. A GPS

monitoring device was placed on Jones, but between May 2021 and February of this year, 27 violations were recorded in Jones’ case. There were an additional nine instances of a dead battery in the monitoring device, which one assistant circuit attorney tells the RFT counts as a violation of a defendant’s bond. Many of Riley’s violations were for a dead battery.

Also scheduled to start trial in Hettenbach’s courtroom the same day as Jones was Aquette Jackson, who is facing charges of arson and harassment. She had four GPS monitoring violations.

Assistant Circuit Attorney Scott Swiney sought to have Jackson’s bond revoked in June 2022, writing in a court filing that Jackson “had still not complied with the new conditions and is considered a ‘no show.’”

However, the judge denied that request on July 25 when Jackson showed up to a hearing with her attorney but, according to court records, no prosecutor made an appearance.

In Hettenbach’s courtroom on the morning of February 27 at 9 a.m., there was a testy exchange between Hettenbach and Ogurkiewicz about two cases Ogurkiewicz was scheduled to have go to trial there that morning. Ogurkiewicz argued for continuances in both cases, which Hettenbach denied.

Ogurkiewicz dropped the cases and refiled the charges.

In the courtroom someone made a remark about how parties with business before the court were now “documenting everything.” In reply, the judge quipped that he had “stacks of paperwork the state has filed about many things.”

The judge added, “It’s a new day in the 22nd Circuit.”

Ward 16 Alderman Tom Oldenburg, who has called for Gardner to resign, tells the RFT that it’s ridiculous to say that a judge is to blame in the Riley case.

“The courts don’t have a documented pattern of a lack of oversight,” he says.

Oldenburg is hardly alone in calling for Gardner to resign.

Ward 20 Alderwoman Cara Spencer and Ward 28 Alderman Mike Gras, as well as many business leaders, have done the same.

State Representative Rasheen Aldridge (D-St. Louis) called Gardner’s handling of the Riley case, “The straw that broke the camel’s back.”

When asked why this time is different, both UMSL political science professor Anita Manion and former Democratic primary candidate for attorney general Elad Gross cited Gardner’s tone-deaf initial statement in the early days of the fiasco.

The statement her office re-

Daniel Riley, 21, in court on February 27 after allegedly causing the accident that maimed a multi-sport athlete teen. | CHRISTIAN GOODEN

leased said, in part, that it is “unfortunate that there are those who choose to twist the facts to take advantage of this situation for their own selfish motives.”

Manion also cited the fact Janae Edmondson was from out of town, and the case was drawing bad press both locally and nationally.

Gardner, elected in 2016, is no stranger to scandal. Calls for her to leave office began almost as soon as she assumed the role of circuit attorney — although before February 18, they came mostly from the political right.

Gardner bested a large field to win the Democratic primary in 2016, ensuring she would become St. Louis’ first Black circuit attorney. Previously, she’d worked as a prosecutor for the city, then as a representative in the state house. She was also the attorney for her family’s funeral home and a registered nurse.

She wasn’t taking office during an easy time. A Post-Dispatch article about her victory said that, “Gardner is aware that she will assume the new role amid soaring violence in St. Louis and souring minority relations with anxious police.”

Gardner’s old boss, previous circuit attorney Jennifer Joyce, supported one of Gardner’s opponents, Mary Pat Carl, a lead homicide prosecutor. After Gardner’s victory, Joyce praised the historic nature of her win, but said she still felt Carl was more qualified. At the time, Gardner had never prosecuted a homicide. Carl said she would stay on in the office to help however she could.

But within six months of Gardner taking office, a dozen experienced prosecutors left. Departing staff cited Gardner’s appointing former public defenders to top roles, poor internal communication and inconsistencies in handling cases as the reasons for their departure.

She also drew flack for hiring her former Saint Louis University Law School classmate Maurice Foxworth to advise her office during its transition despite the fact that Foxworth had his law license suspended for failure to pay child support.

As she approached the one-year mark in office, a shopkeeper on Cherokee Street named Huan Le was brutally beaten in the course of a robbery, but the case against his alleged attacker was dismissed, drawing criticism. By the one-year anniversary of her election, Gardner’s office had turned over half its staff. Among those

who had left was Carl, the former lead homicide prosecutor.

The turnover created what many perceived to be a vicious cycle in which the loss of experienced prosecutors made the daily business of prosecuting crimes even harder for the dwindling staff, which then led to further attrition.

In 2018, then-Governor Eric Greitens was accused of taking a photo of nude woman without her consent in the Central West End, and Gardner’s office had to prosecute the invasion of privacy case, a task many saw her as botching. Greitens’ case was dropped, and Gardner’s private investigator on the case pleaded guilty to an evidence tampering charge.

Despite these reports, Gardner still had broad support in the city. She beat her erstwhile colleague Carl by 20 points in 2020, securing a second term. But the headlines about dysfunction kept coming. In 2021, Judge Jason Sengheiser dismissed first-degree murder charges against a defendant in the state’s custody after no one from the prosecutor’s office showed up to three hearings in a row.

It turned out, Gardner’s office had a backlog of 4,000 cases. Last year, as thefts of Hyundais and Kias spiked in the city, the RFT reported that Gardner’s office had filed just one case related to auto theft in a two-week period in August. Over those same two weeks, 462 cars were reported stolen in the city.

In January of 2023, a former staffer sued Gardner for racial discrimination. In the lawsuit, former diversion specialist Rebecca Goetz said that other staff members called her a “slave owner” and accused her of committing microaggressions even as she was being yelled at. According to the suit, Gardner sat idly by as this happened.

What was arguably Gardner’s crowning achievement came on February 14 when her office won exoneration for Lamar Johnson, a 49-year-old St. Louis man wrongfully sentenced to life in prison in 1995 for a murder he didn’t commit. Gardner’s pursuit of Johnson’s freedom had been an arduous four-year-long battle, with detours through the state legislature and the state Supreme Court.

But only nine days later, Bailey filed a “quo warranto” petition to remove Gardner from office, and the Missouri Supreme Court announced that John Torbitzky, who currently sits on the Eastern District Court of Appeals, would preside over the state attorney general’s proceedings against Gardner. All the judges in circuit court in St.

Louis had to recuse themselves as they could all be potentially called to give testimony about Gardner’s office.

Bailey’s “quo warranto” petition cited dozens of press reports as evidence of Gardner’s mismanagement. But the court of public opinion is not the same as an actual court. Bailey will have to prove Gardner is neglecting her duties. He will also have to convince Torbitzky to overcome any qualms he has about removing from office a duly elected leader who has broken no laws.

And while this crisis looms, Gardner’s office has been thrown into more turmoil due to further staff turnover. Marvin Teer, a former judge and Gardner’s chief trial assistant, announced his resignation.

“This is as close to the end for Kim Gardner as it gets,” Tony Messenger wrote on Twitter about the resignation. “Teer was a stabilizer who brought cover amid constant turnover and mismanagement.”

In a statement, Gardner’s office said, “Judge Marvin Teer has been an invaluable leader at the CAO, and has led his team with integrity. Judge Teer will continue to be an asset to the office and as the office transitions his role, he will continue to provide support. We wish him the best as he transitions from our office to spend more time with his family.”

It is not clear when Teer will step down and who will take over his caseload. But Gardner’s office was already the smallest it had ever been with just 30 prosecutors, down from 58 in August 2016.

Still, removing Gardner from office is a drastic step.

The reverend and activist Darryl Gray says he thinks something needs to be done to strengthen Gardner’s office, but she shouldn’t resign.

“I think that people in Jefferson City who want to take away control from Black elected officials are using this latest tragedy to divide the Black community,” Gray says.

Gray believes the calls for Gardner’s resignation stem in part from bills making their way through the state legislature to strip Gardner of her authority and appoint a special prosecutor to handle violent crime. He says there is a belief in the air that “if she resigns … that may make those bills go away.”

However, Gray is skeptical of this thinking, in part because if Gardner resigns, the governor would appoint her replacement.

“The GOP will be getting their way without a vote of the people,” Gray says.

Hope on the Horizon

A new traffic bill could lead to safer streets

BY MONICA OBRADOVIC

Abill signed by the mayor this month looks to reduce traffic violence in the city.

Dubbed by city officials and streetsafety advocates as a “first step,” Board Bill 120 allocates at least $40 million in American Rescue Plan funds to address street safety and infrastructure in St. Louis. After the mayor’s signature on March 1, the bill paves the way for $6 million in sidewalk improvements; $3.5 million for safety improvements to the city’s 10 most dangerous crash locations; and $8 million for paving arterial streets, among several other appropriations.

Here’s what city officials say you can expect from the “St. Louis Safer Streets” bill in the coming years.

Implementation of traffic calming studies

The city has previously completed traffic studies in key areas but lacked the funding to move forward, according to Board of Public Service President Rich Bradley. Board Bill 120 appropriates $12 million to design and implement traffic-calming measures and roadway improvements based on previous studies.

“This bill will move these studies into the design phase,” Bradley said at a press conference at Board Bill 120’s signing.

Once design is completed, the city will send out a request for bids from contractors, and construction will begin after contracts are awarded.

“It took decades to build the infrastructure we use every single day,” Bradley said. “This will not be work we can complete overnight.”

Infrastructure projects

Improvements to 10 of the city’s most dangerous crash locations will be implemented on an unspecified timeline. According to the mayor’s office, vehicle crash hotspots include the intersections of North Broadway and Washington Avenue, Hampton Avenue and I-44, East Grand Boulevard and I-70, and Kingshighway Boulevard and Natural Bridge Avenue, among others. City officials appropriated $3.5 million to improve high-crash locations.

In addition, $14.5 million will be used to install medians, expand sidewalks, build traffic circles and more. n

A City Plagued by Traffic Violence St. Louis streets tell a tale of many hit-and-runs

BY MONICA OBRADOVIC

Just after midnight on April 13, 2016, the driver of a red Lexus struck and killed Jameca Stanfield as she tried to cross North Grand Boulevard.

Notice of her death wouldn’t have extended beyond a few short news stories had it not been for her sister, Tiffanie Stanfield, who has fought for justice for her sister and so many other hit-and-run victims in the years after Jameca’s death.

Stanfield galvanized her grief to launch her organization, Fighting Against Hit and Run Driving, in hopes that the nonprofit would spur action against traffic violence by telling the stories of hitand-run victims.

“I fight for her because her death is in vain if I don’t,” Stanfield says.

Jameca’s death was part of a grim tally of pedestrians injured or killed by motor vehicles in 2016. That year, 294 were injured, 17 killed.

Seven years later, traffic violence in St. Louis is near an alltime high.

Data from Trailnet, a local nonprofit that tracks traffic violence, shows the total number of people killed on St. Louis city streets by vehicles hit a record high in 2020 compared to the last two decades (available records only go back to 2002). Eighty-one people lost their lives.

Last year was the second most dangerous year for traffic violence, when 78 people, whether they were pedestrians or vehicle occupants, died. Seventy people died for the same reason the year before that.

“Traffic violence is a systemic issue in the public health crisis in our city,” Trailnet Community Planner Sam McCrory says.

Street safety in the city has garnered renewed attention after a speeding driver struck 17-yearold Janae Edmondson on February 18. Janae lost both of her legs as a result of the crash.

Her case is undoubtedly tragic, street-safety advocates say — especially considering that the incident could have been averted. The man who struck her, 21-yearold Daniel Riley, had violated his bond more than 50 times but remained out of jail.

Still, the crash that resulted in

Janae’s injuries is far from rare in St. Louis.

“This is not a new topic,” Stanfield says. “It’s not a new tragedy.”

This is especially true in pockets of north city, where 7 of the city’s 12 most dangerous corridors identified by Trailnet exist.

North city crashes involving innocent pedestrians or motorists are often thought of as “a shame” but don’t receive much public outcry, Ward 21 Alderwoman Laura Keys tells the RFT

“Unfortunately, the broken glass theory is still in play,” Keys says. “You see things, and you’re so socialized to them that you no longer see them. It’s like being nose

A Victim Heads Home

blind constantly.”

According to McCrory, who authors Trailnet’s annual crash reports, the part of the city where Edmondson was hit is a particularly dangerous one.

Since 2021, 62 pedestrians have been involved in crashes in Downtown West. Two resulted in fatalities. Washington and Tucker stand out in a particularly fraught area, with 12 crashes on Washington and 8 on Tucker in 2021, according to McCrory.

“A lot of our great amenities are downtown,” McCrory says. “But, unfortunately, we don’t have the infrastructure to support a safe walking and biking environment.”

BY RYAN KRULL

Last week, Janae Edmondson returned to Tennessee after the February 18 crash that forever altered her life.

“We are finally back in Tennessee,” Janae’s mother Francine Edmondson wrote on the GoFundMe fundraiser for her daughter. “We appreciate your continued prayers for healing. The struggles change from day to day, but it is still a step forward to be home where she can start seeing family and friends. Please keep praying for my baby.”

The Edmondson family had a harrowing time in St. Louis. On February 27, Janae’s parents had to speak in a St. Louis city courtroom. They recounted the painful recovery their daughter was undergoing in a Saint Louis University hospital a week after she was struck by a car. A few feet away sat Daniel Riley, 21, the man who allegedly caused the accident that led to Janae losing both her legs.

“This is not the life she expected,” Francine said. She added that in the past few days her daughter had asked her heartbreaking questions like, “Am I ever going to walk again? Am I ever going to drive?”

Janae’s mother said that her daughter “should be at school in dual-enroll-

ment English, not in a hospital bed.”

Janae’s mother and father were speaking at Riley’s detention hearing, where it was up to Judge Rochelle Woodiest to decide whether or not to keep Riley in jail as a slew of charges he is facing in two cases work their way through the courts.

Riley is facing three assault charges, one charge of armed criminal action and a fifth charge of driving without a license related to the collision that severely injured Janae.

When that incident occurred, Riley was out on bond for armed robbery charges. It subsequently came to light that Riley had violated the terms of that bond dozens of times.

The Edmondsons were in St. Louis for Janae to play in a volleyball tournament. Her parents said that they had al-

During a phone interview, Stanfield lists numerous traffic tragedies that have contributed to St. Louis’ “epidemic” of traffic violence. In 2017, a hit-and-run driver killed Doletha Hudson as she tried to cross Natural Bridge Avenue. Stanfield also recalls a 2021 hit-and-run where a toddler died and his mother was paralyzed on one side of her body.

“There are many crash victims coming from all over the City of St. Louis [who] might not get quite as much attention,” Trailnet Chief Executive Officer Cindy Mense says. “We really hope this conversation can be about how we can make it safer for everyone.” n

ready ordered custom shoes and a shirt for their daughter to wear at her signing day ceremony, where she would accept an athletic scholarship to the University of Tennessee Southern.

In court, Janae’s father James Edmondson said that he can still hear the roaring of the engine and the sound of the explosion that accompanied the collision that caused his daughter to be pinned between two cars.

“The car was going so fast, it took my daughter out of my arms,” he said.

He said that he leaned on his military training in that moment, using a blanket and a belt to fasten two tourniquets.

“Whatever you do, don’t let this belt go,” Janae’s father said he told a bystander who assisted in rendering first aid.

“I feel guilty,” Janae’s father said. “What could I have done better?”

Janae’s mother spoke through tears, adding that as Janae lay on the ground she told her daughter, “Don’t close your eyes whatever you do.”

“A parent should never see their child in that situation,” she said.

As the Edmondsons spoke, Riley sat without expression, staring straight ahead.

“He had no reason to be driving like that,” Janae’s mom said of the 21-yearold. She added that Janae had conveyed to her that, “She doesn’t want anyone else to get hurt by this person.”

After Janae’s mother and father spoke, the judge denied bond modification for Riley, meaning that he will remain in the City Justice Center.

Riley is next due in court on the assault and armed criminal action charges on April 3. n

Janae Edmondson has returned to Tennessee, her life forever altered

Janae Edmondson was maimed in downtown west. | COURTESY PHOTO

CALENDAR

BY RIVERFRONT TIMES STAFF

THURSDAY 03/16

The Rest Is History

A sprawling oasis near River Des Peres? A brewery cave underneath Benton Park? These are just a couple lesser-known aspects of St. Louis city’s history a new speaker series seeks to uncover. Founded by two local historians, Unseen STL History holds its monthly offbeat history talks each third Thursday at Spine Indie Bookstore & Cafe (1976 Arsenal Street, 314-925-8087). Unseen STL History was born after St. Louis native and fiction writer Jackie Dana started digging into the history of various local sites as she searched for settings for her novels. In January, Dana heard casual talk about English Cave (a brewery cave that still remains under Spine Indie Bookstore and Benton Park) and thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to come to more of these talks?” Dana explains in a release. She partnered with historian Amanda Clark, who founded the acclaimed Renegade Tours for unscripted and off-beat tours of St. Louis history in 2012. (Renegade later moved to the Missouri History Museum; it’s now called See STL Tours.) Each month, Unseen STL History’s talks feature some of St. Louis’ most passionate history buffs and storytellers, with St. Louis Patina blogger Chris Naffziger and Historic Tales of St. Louis writer Mark Zeman slated to share stories at this week’s session. Sessions are free and open to the public. Doors open at 6 p.m.

Portrait of a Divorce

Mr. Rogers said it best: “There’s no such thing as a grown-up person.” Bill and Nancy are about to learn that the hard way in Moonstone Theatre Company’s Grand Horizons. The couple have been married for 50 years, but now that they’ve become snow birds, Nancy wants a divorce. Bill is OK with it, but the couple’s adult sons are having none of it. They descend on their parent’s retirement community, Grand Horizons, and try to intervene, with comedic results. Called “Neil Simon-esque”

by the New York Times, the play examines the meaning of love, marriage and family connection when the pursuit of happiness threatens to put it all in jeopardy. Grand Horizons opens this Thursday, March 16, and runs through Sunday, April 2, at the Strauss Black Box Theatre in the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center (210 East Monroe Avenue, 314759-1455). Tickets are $15 to $40 and can be purchased at metrotix. com/events/detail/moonstonegrand-horizons.

FRIDAY 03/17

Get Lucky

Don your green, unless you want to get pinched, and head to Dogtown for the annual Ancient Order of Hibernians Parade. The parade starts at 11 a.m. at Tamm and Oakland avenues and continues along Tamm Avenue to Manchester Avenue. While some parades may be flashier, there is

no parade more Irish. Enjoy Irish dancing, floats, Irish music, and nods to Irish history and culture. The parade is 2 hours and free. If you need more luck o’ the Irish, then hang out for the Dogtown Irish Festival. There will be live music at Clayton and Tamm avenues, and at St. James the Greater Church you can catch traditional Irish performances. The event starts at 9 a.m. and goes till 6 p.m. All the businesses along Tamm will close at 8 p.m.

SATURDAY 03/18

Crazy Quilts

Though there are technically only three types of quilts — patchwork, appliqué and embroidered — you should know that isn’t nearly the whole story. Within those broad categories there’s, for example, English paper piecing, where the quilter would wrap fabric around paper templates and then baste and press it all be-

fore sewing everything together. Or Hawaiian quilts, which date back to 1820s-era missionaries, and really have no function considering the islands’ climate. Or the watercolor quilt, which is totally made up of tiny blocks that are meant to resemble a painting when complete. And these are only a few of the many styles and designs out there. But St. Louis quilt lovers — or the quilt-curious — need not resort to a few listed styles. Instead, they can head to the Fanfare of Quilts 2023 event and check out more than 350 quilts by the Bits ‘n’ Pieces quilt guild members. Held at Queeny Park Recreation Complex (550 Weidman Road, Ballwin; 314615-8472), this year’s show will also include special exhibits from Roxann Jasper and MJ Kinman, as well as antique bed-turning, a raffle, demonstrations, guild challenges and more. The fanfare runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 18, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 19. Admission is $8. More info at

Get your green garb together for St. Patrick’s Day Shamrock Stroll. | VIA FLICKR / NUGGET04

bitsnpiecesguild.com.

The Wearing of the Green

This Saturday, March 18, there is no shame in wearing a bright green suit and a top hat in St. Louis. In fact, you’ll find people dressed just like you all throughout the Grove for the St. Patrick’s Day Shamrock Stroll. For a mere $15, you get access to multiple bars in the Grove, including Hot Java Bar, Taha’a Twisted Tiki, Open Concept and the Get Down STL; half-off drink specials; 20-percent-off food specials; live

music and more. So starting at 4 p.m. at Hot Java (4193 Manchester Avenue, 636-888-5282), bring out those leprechaun outfits — according to organizers, there just might be a pot of gold (a.k.a. a prize) in it for the best-dressed. For more information, visit pubcrawls.com/shamrock-stroll-stpaddys-pub-crawl-st-louis.

Say Less

Any event with both “burlesque” and “circus” in the title is practically guaranteed to be a good time. This Saturday, March 18, join “Creole Goddess of Burlesque”

Josie Laveaux for an evening of talented performers and bared

beauties as part of BareCat Cabaret: A Prohibition Burlesque and Circus Variety Show. South city venue Aurora (7413 South Broadway) will host burlesque and drag performances by Dandy Dillinger, Leena Allure, Rose Whip and more. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., with the show starting at 8 p.m. General admission costs $25, but standing-room tickets are available for $20. More info at aurorastl.com.

SUNDAY 03/19

Good Seeds

Liberian-American director Cheryl Dunye plays a character based on herself in the 1996 romantic comedy-drama The Watermelon Woman. The film is centered on Dunye’s character becoming obsessed with Black female actresses who appeared, often without credit, in films from the 1930s and ’40s. She sets out to make a documentary about one such actress, who is listed in the credits of a film only as “the watermelon woman.” The film was well-received at the time of its release for the humor through which it broached serious ideas. Feminist scholar Camille Paglia makes an appearance as herself. You can see it on the big screen at the Arkadin Cinema & Bar (5228 Gravois Avenue 314221-2173) this Sunday, March 19,

WEEK

at 2 p.m. Tickets are only $9. Buy them ahead of time at arkadincinema.com.

MONDAY 03/20

Wellness: Sound Meditation at the Pulitzer

If you did too much barfing of green things over St. Patrick’s Day weekend, you might be ready to slow down and recenter yourself. Lucky for you, Wellness: Sound Meditation is being held at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation (3716 Washington Avenue, 314-7541850) on Monday, March 20, and it might be just what the doctor ordered. This meditation event aims to offer “space for healing through the sounds of singing bowls, gongs, chimes, and voice.” The relaxing 60-minute event is being facilitated by a certified sound healer, and all ages and abilities are welcome. Participants are encouraged to wear comfortable clothing and to bring a yoga mat or blanket along with a headrest or pillow of some sort. But leave your drinks at home; they aren’t permitted in the gallery. Admission is free, but space is limited, so you’ll need to register in advance. For more information, visit pulitzerarts.org/events/ wellness-sound-meditation-3. n

The Fanfare of Quilts 2023 will feature more than 350 quilts. | RICHARD MAC MCKEEVER

The Pulitzer will host Wellness: Sound Meditation on Monday, March 20. | VIRGINIA HAROLD

Simply the Best

Wright’s Tavern excels by keeping it simple — and letting the classics shine

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

Wright’s Tavern

7624 Wydown Boulevard, Clayton; 314-3901466. Mon.-Thurs. 5-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 5-11 p.m. (Closed Sundays)

Wright’s Tavern serves a crab cake. This is less an observation than it is a flag in the ground marking this marvel of a restaurant as the only place in the Bi-State region that serves an actual crab cake — at least one that would not be laughed off Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Wright’s version is no crabcake-adjacent fritter or hushpuppy interspersed with paltry crab shreds but a shockingly simple assemblage of crab meat, brilliant because of what it doesn’t contain as much as what it does. Colossal crab meat so fresh it tastes as if it was plucked from the sea that afternoon. A sprinkling of cracker crumbs and a touch of fresh cream, so light they are more gentle nudges than binders. A dusting of finely chopped chives and a few pieces of fresh parsley for verdant snap. Piquant remoulade that would pair just as well with chilled lump meat on a shellfish tower. No more. Certainly no less.

All you need to know about Wright’s Tavern can be revealed by its crab cake. Or its Caesar salad, roast beef sandwich, ribeye or burger. Not to take away from the utterly glorious crab cake, but I could have written this opening about pretty much any menu item offered at Wright’s because each and every offering distills the restaurant’s raison d’etre: to serve dishes in their essential, perfect forms, then get out of their way.

It sounds like a simple enough plan. However, the ability to exercise such restraint is one born of the sort of expertise and maturity only acquired once you’ve mastered your craft and have nothing

to prove because you’ve already proven it. This is Cary McDowell, a veritable legend of the city’s culinary scene whose résumé includes working for Daniel Boulud in New York City before returning to St. Louis to open the Crossing with Jim Fiala. McDowell also opened the wonderful former spots Liluma and Revival, and served as the longtime corporate executive chef for Pi Pizzeria.

He also spent his free time playing around in the kitchen at the gone-but-never-forgotten King Louie’s with owner Matt McGuire during its impactful run roughly two decades ago. The two became fast friends, bonding over a shared passion for hospitality and culinary excellence and always musing about one day doing a project together.

It would take roughly 23 years for that to materialize. While McDowell was doing his thing as a chef, McGuire was equally hard at work cultivating a reputation as St. Louis’ preeminent hospitality pro. After King Louie’s closed in 2007, McGuire went on to work for such brands as Niche Food Group before opening the acclaimed Louie on DeMun in 2017. If King Louie’s established McGuire’s po-

sition as one of the city’s premier restaurateurs, Louie cemented it, which is why, when news broke that McGuire would be taking over the former I Frattelini space from fellow restaurant icon Zoe Robinson upon her retirement, the city waited with bated breath. Once word spread that McGuire had tapped McDowell as executive chef, it fell over itself.

That’s for good reason, as Wright’s Tavern stands not just as one of the best restaurants to open over the past year, but one of the brightest dining experiences of at least the past decade. This might seem like an interesting assertion on its face; after all, Wright’s is a straightforward classic steakhouse (with the price tag to go with it)

and not some bastion of culinary innovation that could define a new genre or push people to rethink food. However, I’d argue that this is precisely why Wright’s is so successful. It can’t hide behind bells and whistles but instead has to deliver flawlessly on the fundamentals of food and service upon which all else is built.

Consider the Tavern Caesar Salad, such utter perfection of the form you wonder why anyone would ever deviate from it. McDowell starts with crisp, chilled romaine and dresses it in anchovyladen dressing, its rich flavor and mouthfeel countered by razorsharp lemon. A blizzard of Parmigiano Reggiano, grated so finely it’s positively fluffy, covers the salad so thoroughly you can’t see the green of the leaves until you tuck in with your fork.

Scampi, too, is how God intended. The plump, jumbo shellfish are served sizzling hot, gilded in chile-spiked butter interspersed with innumerable garlic slices as thin as if they were hand-shaven by Paulie from Goodfellas. Perhaps the best part of the dish, though, is the bread, a rustic slice that soaks up the chile-garlic butter like a

Continued on pg 26

The French dip includes roasted top round of beef, havarti, au jus and pommes frites. | MABEL SUEN

Wright’s Tavern is one of the brightest dining experiences of at least the past decade.

WRIGHT’S TAVERN

Continued from pg 25

sponge while somehow retaining its crispness. The only rival to this bread-and-butter deliciousness is the actual bread service — complimentary slices of Union Loafers bread served alongside a cratered mountain of salted butter and olive oil that my dining companion aptly referred to as a “butter volcano.” The pairing alone makes Wright’s worth the visit.

Onion rings are a case study in texture: crisp, yet pillow-soft; firm enough to contain the perfectly softened sweet white onion slice, yielding so that the coating and onion melt together on the tongue. Fries, too, are extraordinary, the result of a highly involved process that results in thick strips with a golden brown exterior and an interior as soft as mashed potatoes.

Fries are served alongside Wright’s sleeper masterpiece, the French Dip. Having waited months to score a reservation at a bastion of high-end dining, and now dressed in your finest, I can understand the temptation to refrain from ordering a mere … sandwich. Resist this temptation. From the halved cloves of garlic that stud the mounds of juicy shaved meat to the perfectly crusty sesame loaf — so coated with the seeds that their nuttiness actually registers — and the havarti cheese that melts into it, the Dip is a stunner at every turn. And that’s even before you dip it in the magical nectar McDowell calls au jus.

Though Wright’s is, at its core, a steakhouse, the halibut is a worthy diversion. The gossamer fish is encrusted in thinly sliced potato rounds; when seared,

they crisp up to form a magnificent golden crust. It’s a wonderful choice if you can resist the pull of the steak options, which include a garlic-butter-encrusted sirloin served as steak frites, presented with marrow-enriched bordelaise, whose beauty is only rivaled by the accompanying dauphinoise potatoes. If their caramelized edges and layers of cream don’t send you into a state of ecstasy, the ribeye will. This 18-ounce specimen of meaty perfection is flawlessly seared so that it gets a pleasantly bitter crust. The texture is a wonderful contrast to the marbled steak that

McDowell pairs with mustard jus and velvety pommes puree to form one of the most memorable plates of meat you’ll find within a 250-mile radius.

There’s an unwavering commitment to the pursuit of perfection at Wright’s, but it’s not overly serious. Instead, the dining experience feels whimsical, even playful at times. Like dessert. Here, McDowell and his team give the people what they want: a wedge of wedding cake layered with silken almondy buttercream; a creme brulee so luxuriously custardy and bittersweet from the sugar crust that it borders on savory;

an ice cream sundae with all the trimmings so over the top it seems designed to elicit squeals of joy. When that outrageously immense dessert is placed in front of you, you understand that McGuire and McDowell want you to have as much fun as they are. To exude that sort of ease while performing at a level so high is a powerful thing — and tells you even more about Wright’s Tavern than that incomparable crab cake. n Wright’s Tavern

The Tavern serves a classic hot fudge sundae with all the fixings. | MABEL SUEN

Cary McDowell is chef at Wright’s Tavern. | MABEL SUEN

The dinner menu offers hors d’oeuvres, salads, sandwiches, entrées, sides and desserts. | MABEL SUEN

The Real Mexican Pizza

Jalisco’s fusion pies bring the flavors of western Mexico to St. Charles

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

In some ways, the pizza at Jalisco Pizza (3831 Elm Street, St. Charles; 636-723-7800) is about what you’d expect. It’s pan pizza (so not St. Louis style) with cheese, sauce, crust and toppings.

But those toppings — that’s where Jalisco gets wild.

In addition to the standard pepperoni, veggies and whatnot, the newly opened restaurant covers its pizza with ingredients more commonly wrapped in a tortilla.

Currently, the menu includes three Mexican-Italian fusion pizzas. There’s the Jalisco pizza, which features slow-cooked, shredded birria and sauce, cilantro and onions, served with a side of au jus. Then there’s the al pastor pizza with marinated pork, cilantro, onions and chipotle salsa. Finally, street steak pizza is topped with the aforementioned steak as well as cilantro, onions and green and red salsas.

The combos all come from the mind of co-owner and chef Leonardo Ortiz, 26, who opened Jalisco’s doors on February 1 with his wife Anna Seville.

“It’s all about just combining flavors, combining traditional stuff,” he says. “How do you make things different? You just do what no one is doing, like, just take the risk.”

Hailing from Degollado in Jalisco, Mexico, Ortiz is no stranger to the traditional flavors of the region’s cuisine. He began working in food at 14. He bussed tables, washed dishes — eventually graduating to waiter and then moving into the kitchen.

“I’ve done it all,” Ortiz says. Af-

Shaken and Stirred

Star mixologists Meredith Barry and Michael Fricker to open New Society, a cocktail lounge, on South Grand

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

What we can definitely say is that celebrated St. Louis mixologists Meredith Barry (Platypus, Netflix’s Drink Masters) and Michael Fricker (Grand Spirits Bottle Co., Gin Room and Salve Osteria) are teaming up to open a new cocktail lounge this spring.

ter high school, knowing he didn’t want to go to college, he was looking around for a job opportunity. A friend who owned a bike store mentioned that his brother owned restaurants in the U.S. and asked if Ortiz would like to work there. He thought: Why not?

So that’s how he ended up in St. Louis eight years ago, working at El Maguey in Bridgeton. He’s stayed in the restaurant business since, except for a brief stint in moving. Eventually, he got tired of just working in restaurants and started thinking about finally making a move to own one.

That’s when he found out that a friend, the owner of Stef’s Pizza, was selling the space. Ortiz jumped at the opportunity, ready to make standard Italian food — except for a happy accident.

Ortiz’s mother was set to visit, and he was craving a particular goat birria from his hometown. His mom, however, declined to bring him some. So he got in the kitchen and tried to replicate that dish. When Ortiz was done, the dish tasted nothing like what he expected. But it was really, really good.

That rendition became the topping for the Jalisco pizza. But his friend, who’d formerly owned the space, wasn’t immediately convinced of the concept.

“He was speechless,” Ortiz says. “He couldn’t believe what I was going to do. He even thought it was a bad idea because no one

has done it.”

But Ortiz had a sense that it would be great, and he went with it. In fact, Ortiz was so sure it would be good that he didn’t even try the mashup until it was already on his menu. But when he did, “everything started clicking.”

The response from customers has justified that surety, Ortiz says.

Part of the fun is the variety of salsas and sauces Ortiz makes to complement or heighten the pizzas’ flavors. There’s everything from a mayo-based chipotle to a thick Diablo to a punchy green chile sauce.

“Some people will love it just the way it is,” he says. “And then some other people just eat it with just all the sauces or just one or two. It’s up to you, how they feel. It’s an experience that you want to come in and repeat, [because] it’s not going to be the same every time.”

Jalisco also has a variety of aqua frescas, such as horchata and hibiscus. Like most else in the restaurant, they are made from scratch. In the not-homemade category, there are sodas and candy imported from Mexico.

But like everything at Jalisco, they are carefully selected by Ortiz in order to bring a taste of his home to an otherwise unremarkable St. Charles strip mall.

It’s all an extension of Ortiz’s passion for the business.

“I don’t like food,” he says. “I love it.”

They say it will be located within Grand Spirits, a natural wine shop that opened in December of 2021. They say it’s going to be about experimental drinks and be an “exploration of creativity” for Barry and Fricker. It will be small and intimate with 22 seats, focus on hospitality and have some food items. Named New Society (3194 South Grand Boulevard), it will hold its soft opening on Thursday, April 13.

But everything else: That’s shrouded in an air of mystery.

“Some intentional, some unintentional,” Fricker says with a laugh. “It’s been an interesting two months of trying to figure out how exactly to launch this and say a whole bunch of stuff — but also not giving anything away.”

New Society began as a friendship between Fricker and Barry. About nine months to a year ago, the two pals started dreaming about a new kind of project they could launch together. It would be a bar where they could be “our über-creative selves,” Fricker says.

They got down to work, figuring how everything would work about six months ago. That meant some deep conversations about what the concept would look like and what the two hoped for from it.

At New Society, scientific equipment (roto-evaporators, centrifuges, etc.) will be converted into drink-making paraphernalia. Despite that, the cocktail offerings will be balanced between approachable and adventurous.

But don’t ask Fricker what those cocktails will be. Don’t even ask for an example.

“We are not really giving any cocktail information out,” he says. “It’s kind of Continued on pg 30

Chef-owner Leonardo Ortiz tops his pan pies with birria, al pastor and street steak. | JESSICA ROGEN

Sauce and Feast Reduce, Eliminate Print Editions

Only Feast will continue to print quarterly

Written by SARAH FENSKE

St. Louis’ two monthly food magazines, which have been locked in an old-fashioned newspaper war for more than a decade, both announced big changes last week: Neither will be a monthly anymore.

Sauce Magazine is saying goodbye to print — and doubling down on digital. And Feast Magazine, the newer rival backed by Lee Enterprises, is moving to quarterly — in what the paper is also terming a “digital-forward content strategy.”

The two publications have their origins in the same website, saucecafe. com, which Allyson Mace and Cat Neville launched together in 1999. Two years later, in October 2001, they debuted their print issue.

“It was right after 9/11,” Mace muses. “The worst month to start a print publication in history.”

But Sauce survived that tumultuous beginning. It also survived when, in 2010, the partners split, and months later, Neville launched Feast with backing from Iowa-based Lee, the parent company of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Even so, the competition between the monthlies has been fierce, and to the RFT, Mace didn’t resist a dig at the corporate-owned Feast.

“They have their own shareholders to take care of,” she says, referencing the major cuts ordered by Iowa-based Lee this year. “They’re bottom-line-driven. We’re not. We’re driven by the passion of the food scene, by people who spend every day grinding in the restaurant community, creating new things.”

Mace, who serves as Sauce’s publisher, announced Friday that the magazine’s March issue would be its last.

“Starting April 1, we’ll no longer distribute a printed copy of Sauce Magazine,” she wrote. “Instead, you can find all our content online: on our website, our weekly Edible Weekend e-newsletter, social media, and a monthly digital edition of the magazine. We invite you to embrace this change with the same warmth and comfort of your favorite read, now reaching an even greater audience.”

Mace tells the RFT there will be no cuts to the paper’s team of eight staffers and 25 “flex team members” (which include part-timers and freelancers). “We’re not cutting anybody,” she says. “We’re not downsizing. This is growth.”

Even so, Mace acknowledges the paper’s return to its online-only roots is bittersweet. Two decades ago, her father

Gene Mace, a longtime newspaperman who owned publications in Ste. Genevieve and Jefferson County for years, died unexpectedly at age 56. He was posthumously inducted into the Missouri Newspaper Hall of Fame in October 2001, the same month as Sauce’s print launch.

“It was an emotional time in my life,

NEW SOCIETY

Continued from pg 29

weird to say ... but our biggest thing is that we want people to be able to come into the space without preconceived notions and experience it for themselves on their own terms.”

Accordingly, the menu will change up periodically, though Fricker says how frequently will be variable and evolving.

In addition, he and Berry will serve food at New Society. There will be some small bites and, down the line, a partnership with a food concept. Fricker thinks that will be announced in a few weeks. But don’t expect any hints in the meanwhile.

“[That] would kind of reveal who it is,” Fricker says.

What Fricker can say is why he expects St. Louisans will come to the bar and what he hopes to offer to their future customers: something unique and technique-driven that they haven’t come across before.

Furthermore, he knows what he hopes he and Barry will get from it.

looking at the paper and saying, ‘Here you go, Dad,’” she recalled. “And here I am 23 years later, still in the business.”

As for Feast, it handled its news internally, with a message sent to staff and freelancers and only a brief statement through a Post-Dispatch spokeswoman when the RFT reached out for comment last week.

The move to quarterly is a blow to what were once big ambitions. In 2014,

Neville announced an expansion across the state and brought on contributors in Kansas City and Springfield, along with distribution across Missouri.

But in June 2021, Neville left the magazine she’d founded — and long served as the face of — to work for the Hermann Farm + Museum (and later, Explore St. Louis). Budget cuts led to Feast pulling back to its St. Louis roots a year later.

Last year, the paper also lost its editor in chief, Heather Riske, who had deep ties to the local food community.

Riske’s replacement, Emily Adams, appears to be so new that she had to introduce herself in the email to freelancers announcing the end of monthly publication, saying she “couldn’t be more excited to work together.”

She also wrote, “Beginning in June, Feast will be meeting readers where they are with a fresh, digital-forward content strategy that evolves and moves with the pulse of St. Louis’ food scene.

“All the latest online, culinary content will be complemented by a quarterly print publication that curates the top trends and personalities in local food culture each season. This reenergized approach will allow Feast to produce more innovative, engaging and timely journalism on feastmagazine.com, as well as intentional, thought-provoking storytelling in print each quarter.”

While Mace said Sauce would see no cuts, it’s not clear whether the same is true for Feast, as the Post-Dispatch continues to grapple with the fallout from the decision by the union representing many of its news staffers (although not the team at Feast) to reject furloughs. More layoffs at the Post-Dispatch, at least, now appear likely. n

“This is really a dream come true,” Fricker says. “This is the kind of bar that I’ve always wanted. I’ve always wanted a pure expression of who I am and who Mer and I are as friends and as bartenders and beverage professionals. ... A

space to grow without inhibitions, without kind of any rules.”

New Society will be open Thursday through Saturday 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. and Sunday 5 p.m. to noon. n

Rival food publications Feast and Sauce look to digital distribution. | SARAH FENSKE

Meredith Berry will be a co-owner of New Society. | MABEL SUEN

ST. LOUIS STANDARDS

Play It Again, Sam

Sam’s Steakhouse has been south county’s go-to special occasion spot for three decades

Sam’s Steakhouse

10205 Gravois Road, 314-849-3033

Established 1993

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

In his seven years running Sam’s Steakhouse, Mark Erney has learned a lot about why guests regularly flock to the iconic south county restaurant. There’s its long history that dates back to the Busch family, its role as a multi-generational gathering place and the juicy steaks that grace its plates. However, if he has to narrow down the one thing that makes Sam’s so special, Erney doesn’t hesitate: It’s the sauce.

“I’ve been in the industry for over 30 years and have never seen anything like the response you get here when people take a bite of steak and can’t put their finger on why it’s better than any other they’ve had,” Erney says. “It’s our secret weapon. A few places do something similar, but we like to think we have the original secret recipe. It really does have 42 different ingredients in it, so there’s no way anyone is getting them all, and even if they do, they don’t know the amounts — and it can easily sway one way or another if you screw with it.”

For three decades, that mouthwatering, savory nectar has been gracing the steaks at Sam’s. The recipe goes back to the restaurant’s founding, developed by Sam Andria, who may have been involved with Sam’s for only its first year but whose name and recipe has had a lasting impact on the beloved steakhouse.

However big Andria’s legacy may be, the heart of Sam’s is its chairman and chief instigator, Denny Long. A former AnheuserBusch president and chief operating officer, Long dreamed of own-

ing a restaurant where he and his friends could gather over good food, play music and provide hospitality to the surrounding community. He got that opportunity when he retired from the brewery 30 years ago and suggested to a group of close friends that they should go into business together. He’d already found the building: the old Busch family spot at the intersection of Gravois and Laclede Station. As Erney tells it, the building was August Busch Sr.’s last stop on the way to the family’s sprawling country homestead, now Grant’s Farm, and Long figured he’d carry on the Busch family legacy in his retirement as he did in his career.

The friends’ partnership ended amicably after a year. Andria, who developed the sauce and much of the concept, went on to open Andria’s Steakhouse just across the Mississippi River in Illinois, and the other partners went their own ways outside of the industry. Long, however, remained, and together with his son, Patrick, built Sam’s into a beloved part of the south county dining landscape thanks to their uncompromising hospitality and generosity, as well

as wonderful food.

“We’ve always done a lot for the community — passing out air conditioners in the summer and heaters in the winter — and we do our share of giving back, probably even when we shouldn’t,” Erney says.

“Denny has always been a huge giver. If he could put out a sign that says ‘free steaks for everybody,’ he would be a happy guy.”

For the past seven years, Erney has seen that generosity firsthand. A seasoned industry veteran and longtime friend of Patrick’s, Erney had been chatting for some time with the Long family about stepping in to run the restaurant when father and son were ready to transition away from its daily operations. Erney came with serious know-how, having spent most of

The mouthwatering sauce at Sam’s Steakhouse is the spot’s secret weapon. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

Mark Erney has been running Sam’s Steakhouse for seven years. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

his career as the vice president of concept development for one of the nation’s largest restaurant chains. He’d also run three bars in St. Louis, balancing out his corporate experience with knowledge of the local scene; for the Long family, this made him the perfect candidate to continue their legacy at Sam’s.

As Sam’s celebrates its 30-year anniversary, that’s something Erney does not take lightly.

“I wasn’t looking to come around like this big changing of the guard or anything,” Erney says. “Denny and Patrick spent the last 30 years building all these bridges, and I wasn’t about to come in here and start tearing them down. We’ve just focused on freshening it up and on our wine pairings — really trying to make the younger generation feel welcome without pushing the older generation out. We want to tear down those barriers and make it feel fun and uplifting for everyone who comes out here.”

Erney has seen those efforts pay off. Despite the pandemic-related struggles of the past few years, business is thriving, with new regulars establishing Sam’s as their place alongside longtime customers — some of them different generations of the same family. Erney knows that success has a lot to do with tradition, and he credits the special things about Sam’s, like its renowned Christmas celebrations, with keeping that feeling alive.

“If you know Denny, you know he’s always loved Christmas, so

every year it got bigger and bigger, to the point where it lasts for four months here,” Erney says. “I tell my mom and dad that when they come to St. Louis they have to see the Arch and they have to see Sam’s at Christmas time.”

Erney also understands that Sam’s would not be where it is today without its fierce commitment to hospitality. It’s something he tries to provide even before guests walk through the door, through details like what the parking lot looks like and whether there are any lightbulbs that need changing. Once guests enter the building, they are greeted warmly, given a drink and made to feel special. Erney sees the proof that this resonates with guests when he notes that people are celebrating some of the most important events of their lives at Sam’s.

That he and his team have the privilege of helping to make those memories for people is what makes his work worthwhile.

“I tell the staff here every day at lineup that we are throwing a dinner party for the most important people in your family — the people you love the most,” Erney says. “We have the ability to do whatever we can for people; there are a lot of ‘no’s out there, but I feel like we can blow people away. Anybody can put a steak and beer in front of you, but Sam’s has this certain way of making you feel like you’re at Grandma’s house and having the best meal of your life.”

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

Despite the pandemic, Sam’s is flourishing. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

Hospitality is as important to Sam’s success as its food. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

Sam’s celebrates its 30-year anniversary this year. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

REEFERFRONT TIMES 35

Cannabrunch Will Get You Sky High

The monthly brunch series at Pop’s Blue Moon includes a fivecourse, cannabis-infused meal

Written by MARY JANE BAKER

The one-mile trek to QT was an endless hell that I’d wish on no one.

It’s not like anyone pressured me to roam through the Hill after consuming 60 mg of THC. And it’s not like my friend and I consumed all that THC against our will either. It was a wonderful hell of our own creation.

We knew full well what we were getting ourselves into.

On a warm Saturday at the tailend of winter, my friend Nova and I made our way to Pop’s Blue Moon (5249 Pattison Avenue, 314776-4200) on the Hill for Cannabrunch in a belated celebration of legal recreational cannabis. Cannabrunch, a monthly event hosted by chef Leah Osborne of Yonder Eats, involves consuming cannabis in the most delicious way possible. Osborne whips up a five-course meal — three savory and two sweet — each infused with 10 mg of THC.

The only issue with THC-infused food? Even after a fairly large and delicious meal, Nova and I were still hungry. After walking along Shaw from Pop’s to a taco place for what felt like two hours (but in reality was probably more like 20 minutes), we discovered it was closed. Thus began the hellish walk to QT, where we eventually sunk our teeth into pizzas and cinnamon-sugar pretzels.

But our hard-sought goodies were nothing in comparison to the meal we’d just had — even if it left us with a raging high and a serious case of the munchies.

When we arrived at Pop’s Blue

Moon, the atmosphere was calm and low-key. People chatted over a playlist of psychedelic rock playing softly on a speaker.

Courses arrived at about 15-minute intervals. First was a slice of tortilla española — an eggand-potato omelet topped with creamy sauce and alfalfa sprouts. Nova and I didn’t feel anything until the next course, a butternut squash soup that Nova said he could “eat a gallon” of. But things really hit the fan after the third course — shrimp and grits topped with roasted peppers.

At this point, we’d consumed about 30 mg of THC. Let’s put that into context: Your average weed gummy contains 10 mg of THC. I, being the ultra-weed-sensitive person that I am, usually get sky high if I consume so much as half of a gummy.

And to top it off, our $50 tickets included one drink from the bar.

Pop’s Blue Moon owner Josh Grigaitis, who also founded Mighty Kind, a beverage brand that sells cannabis and hemp seltzers, offered to make us a cocktail with Mighty Kind’s water-soluble THC additive. I opted for a lemoncannabis seltzer out of a can, also containing 10 mg of THC.

So, needless to say, after munching and sipping our cannabis,

Nova and I were positively blitzed.

Then came dessert.

You know that Disney movie Inside Out about memories and emotions? The one where Amy Poehler’s character launches into a quest to save a young girl’s core memories? The tiramisu Osborne served is now a core memory of mine — something I’ll never forget. The creamy, whipped mascarpone; the coffee-dipped lady fingers with just the slightest bit of crunch — it was a stoner’s dream snack, much more elevated than the Doritos I usually satisfy my munchies with.

On the same plate was a slice of cheesecake with a thick graham cracker crust. Bliss. But at this point, I irrationally worried about damaging my brain forever from being so high. I ate half and Osborne wrapped the rest in aluminum foil, so I could take it home.

If you’re ever in a position where you have to ask someone questions in a professional manner — be that to a boss or a journalistic subject — heed my advice: Do not do so whilst stoned out of your mind.

Osborne kindly let me pull her aside to ask her a few questions about Cannabrunch. In a state of sheer hubris, I thought I could do this as if I hadn’t just consumed 60

mg of THC.

Speaking in a tone that can only be described as a cross between Shaggy meets an inebriated Jennifer Coolidge, my questioning led with, “What was the inspiration for this meal?” (What?)

Osborne kindly answered my dumb question. The answer — Grigaitis. The water-soluble THC additive his company produces is easy to distribute into food, Osborne says. Every gram of the additive contains 67 mg of THC.

“What’s great about it is you can literally just add it into water, or into a soup or sauce,” Osborne says. “As long as I don’t cook it over 200 degrees, I’m good.”

I grabbed a pic of Osborne and Grigaitis at the bar and made my way outside to enjoy the rest of my high. I can only imagine what drivers traveling south on Kingshighway thought as they saw Nova and I giggling on the side of the road as we ravenously consumed a hot cinnamon pretzel and personalized pizzas.

Osborn and Grigaitis hold a Cannabrunch every month. If you go, I highly recommend traveling with a designated driver.

And keep snacks in your car, because Osborne’s incredible infused food will please but leave you hungry for more.

Leah Osborne and Josh Grigaitis collaborate every month on Cannabrunch, which will get you high as hell. | MONICA OBRADOVIC

Art Exhibits to Check Out

The Pulitzer Arts Foundation and Contemporary Art Museum open new shows

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

St. Louis’ art scene has hit its groove recently with a ton of exciting exhibit openings.

On Friday, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation (3716 Washington Boulevard, 314-7541850) opened two shows: Faye HeavyShield’s Confluences and The Nature of Things: Medieval Art and Ecology, 1100-1550. And the Contemporary Art Museum (3750 Washington Boulevard, 314-5354660) opened a three-part spring show that includes: Jacolby Satterwhite’s Spirits Roaming on the Earth, the CRXLAB x CAM: Artwork for Equity and ArtReach: Tales from North St. Louis

But if going to more than one exhibit at a time sounds like too

CULTURE 37

much, the geographic proximity of these shows should put your mind at ease: They are all next to each other, and admission is free.

Faye HeavyShield: Confluences

March 10 through August 6

A member of the Kainai Nation, Faye HeavyShield has been crafting her multimedia, spare sculptures, drawings and installations for more than 30 years. Working in the Blood Reserve in southern Alberta, Canada, HeavyShield draws upon her own family’s history as well as the collective legends and knowledge of the Kainai people.

The Pulitzer Arts Foundation’s exhibit spans the breadth of HeavyShield’s career, and her spare and minimalistic work reflects the prairie lands of her home place.

The Nature of Things: Medieval Art and Ecology, 1100-1550

March 10 through August 6

While HeavyShield’s artistic sensibilities reflect contemporary aesthetics, the Pulitizer’s other exhibit, The Nature of Things: Medieval Art and Ecology, 1100-1550, taps into the past. Featuring almost 50 sculptures, textiles and illuminated (a.k.a. illustrated) books, the exhibit covers artmaking during the latter half of the Middle Ages.

The show looks not only at that

artwork but how it was made — that’s the ecology aspect. That means everything from what natural resources were needed as well as how that artwork drew inspiration from nature. The work comes not only from Europe but also Africa and Asia.

Jacolby Satterwhite: Spirits

Roaming on the Earth

March 10 through August 3

Jacolby Satterwhite is interested in questions of human creativity, which is immediately apparent in his work. Surreal on one hand, his 3-D illustrations, painting, sculptures and videos tap traditions of sci-fi / fantasy, pop culture, mythology and art history. This show is the first comprehensive look at the multimedia artist’s body of work and explores the impact of Satterwhite’s mother, Patricia Satterwhite, whom he has referred to as his muse.

The show takes up most of CAM’s real estate, and different rooms of the museum explore topics, such as his mother’s influence and the addition of Black and queer culture into his artwork.

chael Brown to foster the growth of young Black and Latinx leaders. With Artwork for Equity, CRXLAB partnered with CAM to showcase the work of Black and Latinx designers and artists “that promote inclusion, equity, liberation, and justice” made as part of the organization’s MisEducated campaign in 2021 and Reproductive and Human Rights campaign in 2022.

The posters displayed as part of the CAM show explore topics that range from how the public school system in the U.S. treats African American history to the ironies of physical appearance to the relationship of overturning Roe v. Wade and maternal mortality.

ArtReach: Tales from North St. Louis

March 10 through August 13

CRXLAB

x CAM: Artwork for Equity

March 10 through May 14

The Creative Reaction Lab, also known as CRXLAB, is a nonprofit founded after the death of Mi-

Part of CAM’s mission is to serve the St. Louis community. That’s where ArtReach and its weekly art classes for high school students come in. Since 2017, the museum has partnered with Vashon High School in the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood to provide art classes; in 2021, the program expanded to Sumner High School in the Ville. Tales from North St. Louis features work from those classes; through drawing, sculpture and writing, the students looked at their schools’ neighborhoods as well as those in which they live. n

Jacolby Satterwhite’s “Shrines 2020” is part of an exhibit at the Contemporary Art Museum. | JACOLBY SATTERWHITE

MUSIC 39

the way. My priorities were shifting. I literally told everybody I was done with the music business.”

Right Place, Right Time

After too many years on the sidelines, singer Brian Owens’ moment is here

Written by STEVE LEFTRIDGE

Brian Owens has often found himself in the right place at the wrong time.

Set to sing in the Air Force, he was in a military processing center waiting to be flown to San Antonio to begin basic training. The date: September 11, 2001. Suddenly, Owens heard doors slamming all around him, and officers announced that the country was under attack. They ordered Owens to go home and await instruction.

On February 1, 2003, Owens was on the viewing platform at Kennedy Space Center waiting for the Space Shuttle Columbia to land. The timer counted down to zero with no shuttle in sight. Something was seriously wrong: Shuttles land on time. A space commander put Owens and his group on a bus and broke the news to them that the Columbia and her astronauts were lost.

For Owens, those fateful stories serve as analogies to his career as a singer. Time after time, the singer has tasted promising opportunities only to experience disappointing letdowns.

The frustration is understandable. One would be hard-pressed to find a better singer than Brian Owens. With his pure tone, crystalline range, limitless versatility, tasteful blend of flash and restraint, and encyclopedic knowledge of soul history, Owens is a singer’s singer and a mesmerizingly charismatic performer. He’s also handsome as hell and possesses an impeccable sartorial style.

Yet, he has no shortage of professional near misses.

As a high schooler in Belleville, Illinois, Owens was a member of

the elite Grammy Jazz Choir in Chicago. But despite being the choir’s main soloist, he was passed over — he thought nepotistically — to sing at the Grammy Awards.

In college, the brushes with fame kept coming. A standout in Millikin University’s vocal ensemble, Owens sang with Miss America on ABC’s Good Morning America. Later, he was featured on the Wayne Brady Show.

One of four artists selected for a weeklong masterclass at Carnegie Hall with Grammy-winning jazz singer Dianne Reeves, Owens sang “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch of game 1 of the World Series to a

television audience of 15 million.

Despite the exposure, a big breakthrough eluded him.

While overseas with his Air National Guard pop combo, Sidewinder, in 2011, a video of the group performing Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” went viral, leading to apperances on The Ellen Degeneres Show, Entertainment Tonight and Fox & Friends. But since Angie Johnson (who later competed on The Voice) performed the lead vocals, this hit also wasn’t the break Owens needed.

Feeling disillusioned, Owens was ready to walk away from performing. “In 2011, I was done,” he says. “I had two kids and one on

His professional focus shifted to education as he took charge of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s In Unison program, providing mentorship and college assistance to kids and young adults.

But then Owens signed a record deal with Missouri-based label Destin 2b1 and released two solo albums of soul originals, 2012’s Moods & Messages and 2014’s Preach, a Japan-only release.

His profile finally started to grow. In 2013, Owens and his father, Thomas Owens, recorded a duet of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” to support the charity Kids Rock Cancer. A black-andwhite video of the father-and-son performance exploded across the internet. The clip is set to surpass 100 million views.

Then, after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, where Owens has lived since 2006, he organized and headlined the Heal Ferguson Concert. The event caught the attention of Fergusonnative Michael McDonald, who invited Owens to open a 2015 show at the Sheldon. Owens later joined McDonald on an East Coast tour, joining the legend during encores on Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and the Doobie Brothers’ “Takin’ It to the Streets.”

Then, when Dianne Reeves canceled her 2017 SLSO Christmas concert, Brian stepped in to save the day with just three days’ notice, performing everything in Reeves’ key.

After so many high-profile showcases, Owens finally realized the purpose of those earlier letdowns.

“To teach me humility,” Owens says. “To teach me that it isn’t about me. It isn’t about my career. It’s about the stuff that really matters. It’s not about how much money I make or how many awards I get or who knows me or who doesn’t know me. It’s about all these people whose lives I get to pour into.”

Owens means raising his own children and also running Life Creative STL, the organization he started in 2016 to build community development through the arts. Life Creative empowers young people working across a wide range of

Continued on pg 40

Brian Owens was ready to walk away from the profession in 2011. | COURTESY PHOTO

BRIAN OWENS

artistic disciplines with financial, entrepreneurial, artistic and social support.

“The young people that I have developed who are super-talented live on my street,” Owens says. “They can come over any time they need me. I’m literally here for them.”

The drive to serve others runs in the family. Owens’ father chose the Christian ministry over a professional singing career. The church is where Brian learned to sing, harmonizing with his father and brothers as soon as he could talk.

Even with his shift in focus to family and community, Owens kept singing — but on his own terms. “I didn’t want to be a gigging artist. I wanted to be a concert artist,” he says. To that end, he organized a concert series at the Sheldon featuring soul masters such as Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, Al Green, Otis Redding.

Owens and his band, Deacons of Soul, took The Marvin Gaye Experience on a national tour of performing arts centers in 2017. The jaunt was lucrative enough to fund his non-profit and to pay for Owens’ next albums, released on his own record label, Ada Cole. Soul of Ferguson was dedicated to Owens’ troubled hometown and included “For You,” a duet with Michael McDonald.

“The album is about how people are still hurting in Ferguson but people still fall in love in Ferguson,” Owens says.

Then came a project that Owens sees as a major breakthrough. Building on the master series of soul legends, he decided to throw a curveball: a tribute to Johnny Cash. The Cash show received an instant reaction, not the least for Owens’ transformation of Cash classics into his own style.

“With Marvin, I wanted people to come to the show and hear Marvin,” he says. “But with Cash, I sang it like me.”

He took the project into studios in Nashville and Lexington, Kentucky, and produced an album, Soul of Cash. “The Cash record [set] me up to now move into the genre that is really more definitive to who I am holistically,” Owens says. “I’m more Americana Soul than I am jazz.”

Since then, Owens has found kindred musical spirits in rootsrock band the Mighty Pines, and he collaborated on the inaugural Pines Fest with them last year, serving as the artist-in-residence on duets with the Pines, River Kittens and others.

Next he developed a show named Soul in My Country featuring three genre-blending Black artists: Owens, country hitmaker Rissi Palmer and jazz-pop singer-songwriter Malena Smith. The show previews in New York this month.

He also has a record planned to capture his new sound and one with his father. Duets with Dad will feature the father and son blending voices on classics such as “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Try a Little Tenderness.” A docu-series to capture the making of the album is in the works.

Owens feels like he is finding a sweet spot in his journey and a career that is in service of the broader St. Louis arts community: facilitating the Life Creative STL ecosystem, staging monthly concerts as the musical director for the World Chess Hall of Fame and serving as ambassador for Music at the Intersection.

It promises to be an exciting new era for Owens.

“I know who I am musically, and I know who I am spiritually,” he says. “I feel like right now — now, at this moment — I am just at the beginning.”

Continued from pg 39

Brian Owens always wanted to be a concert musician. | COURTESY PHOTO

Community Theater

Opera Theatre of St. Louis is showcasing three new 20-minute operas that center minority voices

Written by ROSALIND EARLY

Opera Theatre of St. Louis does a lot to remind folks that opera isn’t stodgy, it isn’t old and it isn’t dead. Instead, opera is an art form that can be used to tell powerful modern stories. That’s what Opera Theatre will showcase with its 2023 New Works Collective: three 20-minute operas about three very different stories that run Thursday, March 16, through Saturday, March 18.

“Usually in the industry it’s an institution, and often a white institution, telling BIPOC artists, ‘This is what you can do,’” says Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, the stage director for the New Works Collective. In order to avoid that pitfall, Opera Theatre took a different approach: Community members selected the operas from more than 100 pitches. “Insofar as I know, it’s the first time in the opera world that anybody has really partnered with the community and given that authority to the community in this way,” Opera Theatre’s general director Andrew Jorgensen says in a recent interview with St. Louis Magazine. The process pushed Jorgensen and others at Opera Theatre out of their comfort zones, making it an “incredibly meaningful experience for us to undertake.”

The resulting operas are from people of color and artists who may not have opera in their backgrounds. They cover issues and events that may be unfamiliar to most people: the drag ball community in 1920s Harlem, Black female inventors and a Supreme Court battle over a band name.

“By giving the power to the com-

munity, it was the first time where the community felt they had a voice, and chose these artists that, let’s be perfectly frank, for far too long have been historically bypassed,” Maharaj says. “It’s a new way of looking at opera.”

Here is a look at the three operas.

Cook Shack by Del’Shawn Taylor and Samiya Bashir

Musical stylings: Classic opera mixed with ragtime, blues, funk, etc.

Story: Elementary school student Dayo takes the field trip of a lifetime to the Griot Museum to see the Superheroes of Invention exhibit. As she’s learning about the prolific Black female inventors of the 20th century, they come alive and start sharing their stories through the music of their era. Inspired, Dayo leaves ready to lean into and accept her own gifts.

What the creators are saying: “To be able to create a work that empowers and celebrates Black women was so important to me. And to do it in a way that was not [glorifying] trauma, as we see a lot today with Black stories. Celebrating their contributions is empowering to the next generation of young Black women,” Del’Shawn Taylor says in a recent interview with Ladue News

Slanted: An American Rock Opera by Simon Tam and Joe X. Jiang

Musical influence: Rock

Story: Simon Tam and Joe X. Jiang, the opera’s creators, are members of an Asian American rock band called the Slants. They were involved in a Supreme Court case in which they fought to trademark their band name, which some considered derogatory. Tam recalled not being able to speak in the courthouse about why his band could be called the Slants.

“There wasn’t a single Asian person that was allowed to speak in the room that day,” Tam says in a recent interview with KSDK.

“When you think about who was serving on the court, who the attorneys were — and they were all arguing what was offensive to Asian people. [There’s] something very deeply tragic and ironic about that.” Ultimately, the Slants won the Supreme Court case in 2017 after an eight-year battle. The unvarnished truth: Since Tam and Jiang lived through the experience, you’re getting the tale straight from the source.

Madison Lodge by Tre’von Griffith

Musical influence: 1920s jams (think ragtime, big band, etc.)

Story: Like most young people with a dream in their heart and a star in their eye, X wants to get out of their small (and small-minded) town. It’s the 1920s, and X, an African American living in the South, gets caught up in the Great Migration. They make it up to Harlem, a mecca for Black life and culture in Manhattan, and soon find the drag ball community. Suddenly X is in a whole new world, one that helps them discover their authentic voice and self as they unapologetically celebrate queer Black joy. Party on: Not only will this joyous opera bring the glam, it also has an official afterparty on Saturday, March 18, from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. at the Golden Record (2720 Cherokee Street). The Sweet Harlem Ball will showcase a ball competition and feature music from DJ Nico Marie and DJ DeeWay. Guests are encouraged to wear their best 1920s lewks. Tickets are $10 to $15.

The New Works Collective operas will show at 7:30 p.m. from Thursday, March 16, to Saturday, March 18, at the Catherine B. Berges Theatre at COCA (6880 Washington Avenue). Call 314-961-0644 or visit opera-stl.org/whats-on/nwc to purchase tickets, which are $35 to $55.

Composer Simon Tam (left) and stage director Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj work on Slanted: An American Rock Opera. | MACY WHITE/OTSL

[REVIEW]

Gorgeously Conflicted

Strong singing carries a dated script in New Line Theatre’s Nine

Written by TINA FARMER

Nine

Music and lyrics composed by Maury Yeston and book written by Arthur Kopit and Mario Fratti. Directed by Scott Miller and Chris Kernan. Presented by New Line Theatre through Saturday, March 25. Shows begin at 8 p.m., and tickets are $20 to $30.

In the 1980’s, Federico Fellini’s semiautobiographical 1963 film 8 1/2 was adapted into the musical Nine. Later, director Rob Marshall made a film version of the musical that referenced the movie, or vice versa. This season, New Line Theatre has made the tale its own.

The story, set in 1963, revolves around auteur Guido Contini, his latest project, lack of inspiration and troubles with women. First of mind are the women in his presence — his wife and his determined lover. Always close, however, are his memories of his muse and the woman who rather graphically taught him the facts of life when he was just nine. His producer — also a woman — wants to see the script for the musical she’s sinking so much money into. Feeling trapped, he keeps trying to script his life to match his imagination but may have stumbled into an inescapable corner.

Cole Gutmann is solid as Guido, with a pleasant voice that suits the role’s more complimentary vocal needs well. Guido has gotten himself into his current predicaments, but Gutmann ensures that the character doesn’t come across as cruelly abusive. However, he doesn’t try to sway our sympathies either. Though this is

Guido’s story, even he is a servant to his creative drive and insecurities. We understand the character through his awkward attempts at control and in the songs and reactions of the women in his life.

Lisa Karpowicz as Luisa, Guido’s wife, is patience and indulgence personified even as she has finally reached her breaking point. The song “Nine” highlights a mother’s pure love as Stephanie Merritt’s gently soaring soprano encourages Guido’s talents and understands his shortcomings. Sarah Wilkinson dazzles as Guido’s mistress Carla Albanese. “A Call from the Vatican” features her sultry high soprano and surprisingly effective choreography that integrates challenging costume adjustments into the bit. Ann Hier Brown gives “A Man Like You”/ “Unusual Way” an ethereal lightness as muse Claudia Nardi; even her movements bring a sense of the untouchable perfection Guido has in his mind. Brown is sensational as the very human person trying to establish her place off the pedestal.

Sarah Lueken moves well and lacks inhibition as Saraghina, who is young Guido’s first sexual encounter, in “Be Italian.” She has a flexible voice that easily growls and sustains true high notes. Kimmie Kidd-Booker belts out a fabulous version of “Folies Bergères” that energizes the entire show and Kay Love is a charming observer as the spa proprietress. Brittany Kohl Hester, Julia Monsey, Gillian Pieper, Kat Bailey, Kathleen Dwyer and Chelsie Johnston prove a capable and engaging chorus.

New Line Theatre’s production of Nine smartly keeps the focus on the women and the songs, which is good because the story and script feel incredibly dated. Some scenes may make sensitive audience members uncomfortable and others may elicit strong reactions to the casual misogyny and objectification of women so prevalent in the era. Audience members who can see past those problems will be rewarded with a vocally gorgeous evening of songs that explore the vagaries of love, attraction and imagination. n

Guido (Cole Gutmann) spins his bullshit in Nine. | NEW LINE THEATER /GERRY LOVE

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

THURSDAY 16

AUSTIN MEADE: 8 p.m., $17. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

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

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

K. MICHELLE: 7:30 p.m., $39.50-$59.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

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

THE MOTET: w/ Moon Hooch 8 p.m., $27.50. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

NEW STANDARDS MEN: w/ Apparitions, Sole Loan, Molten Bone Ensemble 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

PAUL BONN AND THE BLUESMEN: 7 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

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

SCOTT KENNEBECK NIGHT 1: 7:30 p.m., $20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

SHWAYZE: 8 p.m., $18. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

TERROR: w/ Direct Measure, Squint 8 p.m., $20. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

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

TINSLEY ELLIS: 8 p.m., $18-$20. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

FRIDAY 17

BILMURI: 7:30 p.m., $20-$39.95. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

CHERRY AND JERRY: 6 p.m., free. Alpha Brewing Company, 4310 Fyler Ave., St. Louis, 314-621-2337.

GENE JACKSON’S POWER PLAY: 8 p.m., free.

Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

MONGOOSE: w/ Cloud Machine, Nowhere but Down 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

SCOTT KENNEBECK NIGHT 2: 7:30 p.m., $20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

SNEEZY: w/ Drangus 8 p.m., $10-$15. Central Stage, 3524 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, 314-533-0367.

SOULSIDE: 8 p.m., $22. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. ST. PATRICK’S DAY: 4 p.m., $10. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 S. Kingshighway, 2nd floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.

SUBDOCTA: w/ Black Carl 7 p.m., $20. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

THEY NEED MACHINES TO FLY RECORD RELEASE

SHOW: w/ Subtropolis, Sisser 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

TREE ONE FOUR: w/ Blake Gardner and the

[CRITIC’S PICK]

Terror w/ Direct Measure, Squint

8 p.m. Thursday, March 16. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street. $20. 314-289-9050.

If there’s is one thing Scott Vogel is known for, it’s his desire to see some stage dives. He’s made his needs clear on stages across the world for more than 20 years now as the frontman of the no-nonsense hardcore act Terror, and fans of the band have dutifully and faithfully obliged. But if there are two things Scott Vogel is known for, the second is his way with words. Vogel’s propensity toward stage banter often runs headlong into his, let’s say, “poetic” manner of speaking, leading to what are referred to by those in the know as “Vogelisms,” little motivational refrains and philosophical ponderings that could only come from the mind behind one of hardcore’s biggest acts. There was even, for a time, a website that compiled his choicest musings. Though that site is now

Farmers 10 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

TUBA SKINNY: 8 p.m., $25. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

THE WEE HEAVIES: 7:30 p.m., $20. Westport Playhouse, 635 W Port Plaza Dr, St Louis, 314-328-5868.

SATURDAY 18

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

ANTHOLOGY: A TRIBUTE TO THE ALLMAN BROTH-

ERS BAND: 8 p.m., $25-$30. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

BLUE MOON BLUES BAND: w/ Kent Ehrhardt 3 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

THE BOBBY DAZZLERS: w/ Pleasure Center, Thee Fine Lines 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

defunct, his words live on in our hearts. There’s the inclusivity of “It doesn’t matter if you have a dick or a pussy, we all belong here.” There’s the robust art criticism of, “I don’t wanna turn on the radio and hear some band singing about how some girl hurt them; I wanna hear about how much this world fucking sucks.” And, of course, there’s this gem: “If you know the words to this song come up and help me sing along; it’s called, ‘Keep Your Mouth Shut!’” Expect many more such words of wisdom from hardcore’s preeminent philosopher-king at this week’s show at Red Flag — and to the sound guy, as always: We’re gonna need more stage dives in the monitors, please.

Warm-Up Routine: Opening the show will be like-minded St. Louis hardcore acts Direct Measure and Squint, whose sets will provide the perfect backdrop for you to stretch those hammies in the pit before the headliner takes the stage. It’d be downright irresponsible to show up late.

—Daniel Hill

BOOGIE CHYLD: 5 p.m., $10. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 S. Kingshighway, 2nd floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.

BRAWSH: w/ USA Video, The Real Wobbly Chair, David Montez 7:30 p.m., $10-$15. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

CHICAGO FARMER: w/ Horseshoes & Hand Grenades 8 p.m., $20-$25. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS: 8 p.m., $27.50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

FACES OF JAZZ AND POETRY: 4 p.m., free. High Low, 3301 Washington Avenue, St. Louis.

GILBERT O’SULLIVAN: 8 p.m., $35-$40. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

GIRL NAMED TOM: 8 p.m., $39.50-$49.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

JAKE’S LEG: 10 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

MAGIC GIANT: 8 p.m., $18. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

MANIK MYK: w/ Brian Andrew Marek 7:30 p.m., $5. Spine Indie Bookstore & Cafe, 1976-82 Arsenal St., St. Louis, 314-925-8087.

MEST: 8 p.m., $20. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

NEIL SALSICH & FRIENDS: 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

SHREK RAVE: 9 p.m., $20-$35. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

SKID ROW: w/ Buckcherry, No Resolve 7 p.m., $39.50-$75. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

THE SOUL II SOUL TOUR: w/ KEM, Ledisi, Musiq Soulchild 8 p.m., $64-$255. Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis, 314-977-5000.

TOBYMAC: 7 p.m., $20-$100. Enterprise Center, 1401 Clark Ave., St. Louis, 314-241-1888.

TONY M. HALL RECORD RELEASE SHOW: w/ Yard Eagle, Hunter Peebles 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226. UNCLE ALBERT: 8 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

SUNDAY 19

BONGZILLA: w/ Fister, Cloud Machine 8 p.m., $15. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

ERIC LYSAGHT: 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.

JOHN MCVEY BAND: 3 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

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

PROWL: w/ Direct Measure, Primitive Rage, Volition 7 p.m., $12. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

SHEMEKIA COPELAND: 7 p.m., $38-$45. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

STRESS ANGEL: w/ Century, Unspeakable 8 p.m., $12-$15. Platypus, 4501 Manchester Avenue, St. Louis, 314-359-2293.

MONDAY 20

BRAD HUFFMAN: 5 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

MONDAY NIGHT REVIEW: w/ Tim, Danny and Randy 7 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

SONJA: w/ Morgul Blade, Blackwell 8 p.m., $12$15. Platypus, 4501 Manchester Avenue, St. Louis, 314-359-2293.

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

TUESDAY 21

DECENT CRIMINAL: w/ Pink Strap, Nite Sprites 8 p.m., $12-$14. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

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

NAKED MIKE: 7 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

WEDNESDAY 22

THE DOWN BADS: w/ Thicc Lizzie, The Divine March 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

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

JAKE WESLEY ROGERS: w/ Stacey Ryan 8 p.m., $25-

Terror. | ATIBA JEFFERSON

Shrek Rave

9 p.m. Saturday, March 18. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street. $20-$35. 314-289-9050. The world is a wonderfully weird place and we have proof: A second Shrekthemed rave is going to happen in St. Louis this week. Yes, the same Shrek as from the movies. These whimsically themed touring dance parties have been all the rage lately, with the first St. Louis Shrek Rave bringing Red Flag to capacity in December, and with a similarly absurd SpongeBob dance party packing the house in February. The people, it would seem, just can’t get enough. So what’s the point of a Shrek rave? Well, you just

OUT EVERY NIGHT

Continued from pg 43

$99. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

JOHN MCVEY BAND: 8 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

THE KILLERS: 8 p.m., $34.25-$134.25. Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis, 314-977-5000.

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

RANDY ROGERS BAND: 8 p.m., $15. The Armory, 3660 Market Street, St. Louis, 314-282-2920.

VOODOO TENACIOUS D: 9 p.m., $10. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

THIS JUST IN

BETH BOMBARA: Fri., May 26, 5 p.m., $10. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 3143765313.

BEYONCE: Mon., Aug. 21, 7 p.m., $50.50-$530.

The Dome at America’s Center, 701 Convention Plaza, St. Louis, 314-342-5201.

THE CHURCH: Sat., March 25, 8 p.m., $35. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

CREE RIDER FAMILY BAND: Fri., March 24, 10 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

THE HARD PROMISES: A TOM PETTY TRIBUTE: Sat., April 22, 8 p.m., $25-$30. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

I LIKE SNAPS: W/ the Rose Courts, Haunted

go and have a good time. The whole party is Shrek-themed, but wearing a costume is optional. Dress like Shrek if you want. Or dress like Fiona if you want. Or paint yourself green if you’re feeling it. Or don’t dress up at all. Nobody cares; everybody is just there to have some fun. Why Shrek? Well, why not? Some… BODY once told us he was very popular, after all.

Cool Is Dead: Absurdity aside, there is something kind of sweet about these concepts, which deliberately eschew the self-consciousness that often comes with a night out at the club in favor of a fun-no-matter-what vibe. We can definitely get behind that. —Jaime

Lees

Hers, Belleview, Sun., March 26, 8 p.m., $12. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

KEVIN BUCKLEY: Sun., March 26, 10 a.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

KILLER WAILS: Sat., May 13, 5 p.m., $10. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.

MAN OR ASTRO-MAN?: Sun., May 14, 8 p.m., $25. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

MARQUISE KNOX: Thu., April 27, 7:30 p.m., $25. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

PERFECT ANGEL: W/ Scalawag, Birdie Edge, Tue., March 28, 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

PROTOMARTYR: Sat., June 24, 8 p.m., $20. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

PSYCHOSTICK: W/ Bit Brigade, Mon., May 15, 8 p.m., $22. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

SIMON JOYNER: W/ Jane Wave, Lucky Shells, Sarah Paulsen, Lori Damiano, Rory Scott, David Moore, Emma Connell, Wed., March 29, 7 p.m., donations. William A. Kerr Foundation, 21 O’Fallon St., St. Louis, 314-436-3325.

WEYES BLOOD: Sat., Aug. 26, 8 p.m., $25. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

MARTY STUART AND HIS FABULOUS SUPERLATIVES: Fri., March 24, 8 p.m., $37-$202. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900. n

“After a while you learn to ignore the names people call you, and just trust who you are.” | REUBEN HEMMER

[CRITIC’S

SAVAGE LOVE

Coming Around

BY DAN SAVAGE

Hey Dan: I’m a straight cis woman who could never orgasm from vaginal penetration alone. But suddenly I am able to come just from vaginal penetration now that I’m middle-aged! This was never the case for me before — I could never come from PIV all by itself — and I’ve never heard another cis woman talk about suddenly being able to come during PIV after hitting her late 30s. Is this common?

Suddenly Having Intensely Felt Tremors

“We too often think about orgasms as stable or unchanging,” says Dr. Debby Herbenick, a professor at the Indiana University of Public Health, a prolific and widely published-and-cited sex researcher, pundit, author and director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion. “In fact, orgasms sometimes shift over time or in response to certain life stages or body experiences experiences such as pregnancy, the postpartum period or menopause.”

While Dr. Herbenick can’t say for sure why you’re so suddenly able to come from PIV alone, she shared some possiblities.

“First, it may just be learning over time, especially if SHIFT has a new partner, is exploring in new ways with a long-term partner or is paying attention to vaginal sensation in ways SHIFT perhaps didn’t before,” Dr. Herbenick says. “Or maybe SHIFT’s just open to the experience now in ways she wasn’t earlier.”

Basically, SHIFT, if you ran out of fucks to give — something most women eventually do — and became more vocal and assertive about your pleasure and the positions, speeds, etc., that work best for you, you could be experiencing PIV differently.

“Another option is anatomical change,” Dr. Herbenick says. “While the changes are slow-moving, cisgender women do experience anatomical shifts — the angle of vagina in the body can change over time. I’ve always found this fascinating, and this may be contributing to how intercourse feels for SHIFT. Because along with changes in vaginal angle come changes in how the vagina and cervix may be stimulated during intercourse.”

If the angle of your vagina has shifted even slightly, SHIFT, the angle or angles of penetration that work best for you now — new angles that hit you just right — could be stimulating your clit, internally or externally or both, in ways PIV didn’t use to.

“Another possibility could be shifts related to hormones and the brain,” Dr. Herbenick says. “If SHIFT is around perimeno-

pause or menopause, no doubt she’s noticed a range of ways that hormonal changes are affecting ways that her body feels. Orgasm is not just about the clitoris or vagina; these are stimulating points, but they’re only one part of what contributes to orgasm. How we sense and perceive those sensations are influenced by our brain, which is also influenced by hormones.”

Finally, SHIFT, assuming you can still come from oral, manual and vibrational stimulation, I think we can safely file your question — suddenly being able to come from another kind of stimulation — in the “good problem to have” drawer. Enjoy!

Follow Dr. Herbenick on Twitter @DebbyHerbenick and on Instagram @DrDebbyHerbenick.

Hey Dan: I began getting massages to help with my back pain and discovered how utterly relaxing they are. But I also get a sexual charge from them. I’m a gay male, and every time I go, I’m hard from the moment the massage therapist touches me until the moment it ends. One masseur took this as a green light and gave me a happy ending, which I didn’t ask for or expect. I’m worried that by getting hard I may be making some massage therapists uncomfortable. Is that a possibility? Or are massage therapists used to that type of response? I’ve tried jerking off beforehand but still got hard during my session. I even got a massage from an older woman once and somehow still got hard! I leave these sessions and feel guilty, which sort of negates some of the calming aspects of a massage. Am I a terrible person? Should I stop getting massages? Should I warn them?

Bothered Over Needlessly Erect Dick

Erections happen for non-sexual reasons spontaneous erections, reflexive erections, nocturnal erections — and most professional massage therapists know to ignore them. While you may be getting a sexual charge during your massage (or you may be assuming you’re getting a sexual charge when you’re actually having a reflexive erection), your massage therapist is going to give you (and your boner) the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re not intentionally doing something to make them uncomfortable. The therapist who took your erection as a “green light” to give you a handjob took a wild guess, BONED and seems to have guessed correctly — you don’t seem traumatized. But if that massage therapist had guessed incorrectly, he could’ve lost his job or worse.

So you are not a terrible person, and you may keep getting massages. And since the only thing more awkward than a client getting an erection during a massage — at least according to a massage

therapist pal of mine — would be a client saying something like, “I just wanted to let you know that I sometimes get an erection during a massage,” no advance warnings.

Hey Dan: While trying to fall asleep the other night, insomnia struck again, and I decided to use the masturbation trick to knock myself out. I must have struck a creative nerve because a question popped into my head: Could I penetrate myself with my own penis? I’m a straight male, and I’ve never received anal, but the thought of giving has always aroused me. Could I give it to myself? Since fully erect obviously wouldn’t work, I relaxed, lubed up and only massaged myself to a state of semi-engorgement. And I was able to do it! And then, after applying a little pressure to the base of my cock, I was able to create an in-and-out pistonlike action that made me come right away! In my own ass! Does that have a name? Could I hurt myself if I do it a lot? Despite being a straight male, I’m not at all bothered by what I did — if anything, I’m bothered it took me 30 years to figure this out. Did I miss the boat by not watching any gay porn? Please enlighten me! Gone And Fucked Myself

Last week a hateful rightwing troll told me to go fuck myself — again, not something I need to do for myself, as I have people for that — and this week a straight reader of mine goes and fucks himself. Coincidence? Or did reading my column last week plant a seed in him? Anyway, GAFM, hung dudes who can fuck themselves were the crazy new thing in gay porn for 10 minutes 20 years ago. While I’m sure there are still plenty of porn performers out there fucking their own asses and uploading videos to PornHub and OnlyFans, it’s not the crazy new thing anymore and doesn’t get the attention (or the clicks) it once did. It’s still fucking crazy, though — crazy to do (requiring a degree of flexibility at the root of the cock that not all men possess) and crazy to think about (some people really can go fuck themselves). Since I’ve haven’t heard from or about someone who accidentally snapped his dick off trying to fuck his ass, GAFM, I’m gonna assume this is relatively safe — just take it slow, be sober and use lube.

Hey Dan: I’m a woman in my late 40s, married 20 years. My husband is in his late 50s. My sex drive was low for a while but now is quite high. I’m not sure exactly what accounts for the change, but some marriage counseling improved communication, which no doubt helped, and I got into porn and vibrators, which increased my pleasure and therefore my interest. Now, I like to have sex or mas-

turbate once a day. I’m going to reach menopause in a few years, which could make things more difficult, so I’m anxious to enjoy as much as I can now. However, this has caused some friction between me and my husband. He just doesn’t want sex as often as I do, and he doesn’t want me masturbating as often as I’d like to. He claims the noise from the vibrator is distracting. I’ve tried to be flexible, but he needs more sleep than I do, so sex and masturbation are off the table between at 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., which are both good times for me right before sleep, right after waking up — which leaves during the day, while our children are at school, but he’s not always interested during the day. But if I masturbate before I head to work, he says the noise disturbs him. (He works from home.) I think he’s being selfish. Most of the time when I approach him for sex — or mutual masturbation, which I also enjoy — he has trouble maintaining an erection. He says he doesn’t want to “deal with a doctor” about getting a medication that might help. I say if he doesn’t want to deal with doctors, let me use my toys! But he insists the noise disturbs him while he’s working. How do we remedy this situation? Am I unreasonable?

Buzzing Sounds

You’re up for fucking and/or messing around all the time lately, your husband’s not and you’re happy to take care of yourself routinely — which is an entirely reasonable solution, BS. Your husband should invest in a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and/or get out the 10 minutes it takes for you to get yourself off in the morning. I will take your husband’s side on the nighttime masturbation blackout no vibrator use in your shared bed between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. — as it can be difficult to get to sleep when someone is using a vibrator beside you. But you should be free to take your vibrator elsewhere when you wanna vibe one out at 10 p.m … if you’re not free to do that, well, there are worse problems in your marriage.

Finally, you don’t have to “deal with a doctor” to get E.D. meds anymore, as E.D. meds can be prescribed and ordered online. But there has to be an interest … and it doesn’t sound like your husband is interested, at least not right now. It’s possible your husband feels sexually inadequate and worries he’s disappointing you, and the sound of your vibrator makes it harder to ignore those feelings — something to talk about with a couples counselor.

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