Riverfront Times, May 9, 2023

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Publisher Chris Keating

Editor in Chief Rosalind Early

EDITORIAL

Managing Editor Jessica Rogen

Digital Content Editor Jaime Lees

Editor at Large Daniel Hill

Staff Writers Ryan Krull, Monica Obradovic Dining Critic Cheryl Baehr

Theater Critic Tina Farmer Music Critic Steve Leftridge

Contributors Max Bouvatte, Thomas K. Chimchards, Thomas Crone, Mike Fitzgerald, Reuben Hemmer, Andy Paulissen, Tony Rehagen, Mabel Suen, Graham Toker, Theo Welling

Columnists Chris Andoe, Dan Savage

Photography Fellow 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

Marketing Director Kristen Moser

Event and Promotions Manager John Heinrich

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

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SUBSCRIPTIONS

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FRONT BURNER 6

MONDAY, MAY 1 A dust storm in Illinois causes a huge pileup on I-55 heading north from Springfield that leaves 30 injured and seven dead. Unsettling to realize that the Dust Bowl is no longer century-old history. Also redolent of the 1930s but suddenly strangely modern: bank failures JP Morgan Chase agrees to take over most of First Republic to prevent another one. C’mon guys! In St. Louis, the failures seem congregated at the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office, where Kim Gardner is down to just two prosecutors in the Violent Crimes Unit after Chris Desilets quits early this morning.

TUESDAY, MAY 2 Yet another assistant circuit attorney departs — today, it’s the prosecutor tasked with presenting cases to the grand jury. How long can Kim Gardner keep going with virtually no staff? In New York City, a bystander’s video captures a young homeless man on the F train, Jordan Neely, being held in a chokehold by a fellow rider until Neely dies. Naturally, everyone has strong opinions on the nation’s latest viral snuff film. At least

Previously On LAST WEEK IN ST. LOUIS

authorities caught the gunman who killed five of his neighbors in Cleveland, Texas, last weekend — Francisco Oropesa Perez-Torres was hiding in a closet under a pile of laundry, as one does.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 3 Bi-State Development says it’s adding metal detectors to MetroLink stations. Not covered by metal detectors: parking garages. A woman is found shot to death in the Marriott St. Louis Grand Hotel garage downtown. La’Tatia Stewart worked for the hotel and had just finished her shift. Nearby, the Best Fans in Baseball (™) actually boo the Cardinals after yet another loss. On a different note, this very newspaper breaks a very big story: Kim Gardner’s apparently been taking advanced nursing classes at Saint Louis University —

SIX QUESTIONS for Powerlifter Heather Gurnow

even though state law holds that circuit attorneys must “devote their entire time and energy to the discharge of their official duties.” The hubris!

THURSDAY, MAY 4 With dawn comes the news that an assistant circuit attorney died the day before in a fiery car crash. James Heitman was 32. RIP. Also: Kim Gardner finally quits, which might be the best thing she’s done for the criminal justice reform movement in years.

FRIDAY, MAY 5 Nothing happened today.

SATURDAY, MAY 6 Wilson Contreras is just five months into a five-year, $87.5 million deal, but the Cards are pulling him off catcher duties. That’ll fix things. The team is now 10-24, worst in the National League.

Meanwhile, two people are wounded after being shot at Cherokee Street’s Cinco de Mayo festival. Things are even uglier in Texas: A gunman kills eight people at an outlet mall in Allen. Also, the Brits have a new king, and while he seems a bit old at 74, that’s six years younger than President Joe Biden, the guy we all decided had the youth and vigor to run the nation, not just serve as a ceremonial figurehead. The 2020s truly are the geezers’ last stand

SUNDAY, MAY 7 It’s suddenly hot and muggy, and with summer weather comes bloodshed. The Post-Dispatch reports that 10 people were shot, two of them fatally, across the city over the past two days. But hey, at least we’re not in Texas. Once again, the state suffers a deadly mass casualty. This time, a man plowed through a crowd of migrants in Brownsville, killing at least eight. At least the Cardinals finally win? The score is 12-6 after Brendan Donovan’s three-run homer leads to a sevenrun sixth inning. Finally, our fortunes have turned! Can civic renewal, a rejuvenated downtown and a well-run Circuit Attorney’s Office be far behind?

that I didn’t want to end up like her. So I started watching what I ate. I started working out, and then eventually it led me into finding the weight room and finding out more about lifting weights. Then I found powerlifting and never looked back.

Did you have a trainer when you started?

I had a program from a trainer online. I was in college at the time, so there was a rec center that [my husband and I] could go to for free. I enlisted the help of a personal trainer that got me started on doing different exercises to strengthen my core and strengthen my lower body. Eventually, I found different women in powerlifting, and I talked to them. They kind of guided me through.

Is it hard to wake up at 3 a.m. to train?

I work as an emergency veterinary technician. We have a very busy ER practice, and we have a very full ICU most days. So the stress on top of my job, getting home, going to sleep, trying to recover and waking up is hard, but you prioritize what you love.

How was it entering your first competition?

When Heather Gurnow entered her first powerlifting competition, she didn’t know what to expect. She’d mostly been powerlifting in her home without the aid of a formal coach. But she set five state records in her weight division (198 pounds) and age group (40 to 45) at the 2022 USA Powerlifting Missouri Open. Gurnow ended up breaking records in squat, bench press and deadlift, which meant she also broke the state record in push/pull (deadlift plus bench) and total (all three lifts). Not bad for someone who started her fitness journey just six years ago. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What got you started lifting?

About seven years ago, my mom passed away from health-related issues. At that time, I was teetering on about 300 pounds. I decided

I was nervous. You usually start with the squat, and being my first competition, I set the weight really low. It was more of a warm-up weight. But I didn’t want to get up there and bomb and not make the lifts. I got up there, and I squatted it, I stood back up, and I got a clean lift. I was like ‘OK,’ and so my next lift broke a state record. I went up 70 pounds from the first lift. [Lifters get three attempts.]

You broke the record on that attempt?

Yes, and I also set a new personal record for me. I had never lifted that squat at home. It was amazing, like I was feeling elated. So then we went to the bench [for bench press], and that’s just a boring lift for everybody, but I did break a record.

You swept the competition! Are you going to compete again soon? I’m definitely thinking about it. I haven’t made a decision yet.

Heather Gurnow awaiting competition. | COURTESY PHOTO

Tree Watch

This is: an eco-friendly traffic calming measure

Location: Sublette, near Shaw

Carbon Emitted in its construction: zero

Traffic calmed: zero. In fact, in the few minutes we were there, we saw many drivers whose confusion quickly turned to rage when they realized this branch in the road would be a mild inconvenience.

Number of sedans who tried to thread the needle between foliage and curb: one

Success rate of said sedan: zero

15 SECONDS OF FAME

CRAZY

LAWMAKER OF THE WEEK: Senator Mike Moon

Missouri state Senator Mike Moon, who definitely does not support adults marrying children despite gaining nationwide notoriety for implying just that, would like women who get abortions to be charged with murder.

Last month, the Ash Grove Republican got in an argument with state Representative Peter Merideth (D-St. Louis). Merideth wondered why Moon voted against raising the legal age of marriage in 2018 from 12 to 15.

“Do you know any kids who have been married at age 12?” Moon asked Merideth, who said he did not. “I do, and guess what? They’re still married.”

Moon thought he’d dunked on Merideth, but instead, he horrified a nation when the clip went viral. Moon later clarified his child bride comments by saying that he knows kids shouldn’t marry adults, but each other? Totally cool. Now, this guy has introduced legislation that would grant an unborn fetus the same rights as a person, thus making terminating a pregnancy a murder, according to the Kansas City Star

The “Abolition of Abortion in Missouri Act,” which doesn’t address Missourians getting abortions out of state, states a human being includes “an unborn child at every stage of development from the moment of fertilization until birth.”

Under Moon’s law, a woman who was raped and aborted the fetus could go to prison longer than her rapist. A reasonable person might say that it’s extreme. Too bad there aren’t more of those on the Missouri Legislature.

VOX POPULI

How St. Louis’ Debtors’ Prisons Exploit People Like Me

BY UMI OKOLI

Ihave firsthand experience with the damage that debtors’ prison can cause. I was jailed 10 times in five years and paid $15,000 in fees, court costs and bond forfeitures to different St. Louis municipalities over my life. While I cannot tell you about how bad things were in all of the municipalities that have been sued for this including Maplewood and Jennings, I can tell you about my experiences before and after a settlement with Normandy.

My encounters with Normandy police were interesting because they happened mostly along Natural Bridge, where several St. Louis municipalities intersect. It was like a “crabs in a bucket” opportunity for scraping revenue at the time.

The police seemed to prey on anyone driving in the area. I remember one specific ticket I received because it was so frivolous.

I was exiting I-70, and at the exit there is one stop sign and then another 50 feet ahead, where you can make a left turn. When I got to the stop sign, I counted, one, two, OK, I’m going to turn. After I turned, the police got right behind me.

He said, “You blew through the stop sign when you got off the highway there.” I knew I had come to a complete stop.

At the time, I was only $500 dollars short of qualifying for welfare, and I had two children who were both in school and one who was probably also in toddler care at the time.

Normandy made no exception for a person’s financial situation when it came to fines and fees. This often meant you were scared to go to court because you didn’t have the money, and then you were detained until you could call somebody to help you pay. If they couldn’t, then you go to the back — deeper into the jail.

This predatory scheme put relationships with friends and family in a pressure cooker.

This wasn’t happening to people in just Normandy or Maplewood or Ferguson. It was endemic to St. Louis.

People lost their jobs. They were in jail for several days or longer, more

than a sick day or a personal day could cover. Often, they didn’t have jobs that offer those types of benefits, so it was either show up or lose your job. Once you’re out of jail, you might try to get your job back or fill out an application for somewhere else.

Either way, you had to take the risk to get back on the road again, in order to work and pay the money you owe. You start all over again, accumulating charges and more expenses. It’s like a neverending hamster wheel for people in poverty.

There’s really no amount of money that any municipality can give a person that will help them erase feelings of shame, guilt, loss of respect and embarrassment. How do you pay back those things? Or pay back someone’s reputation?

When I first found ArchCity Defenders, I didn’t believe that other people had the same problems that I did. I didn’t believe that telling my story was important in such a racially motivated, poverty-stricken St. Louis. But they inspired me in a way that moved me beyond my embarrassment into a sense of hoping and being able to believe that there is a possibility and a way to change things.

I found being a representative in the class action lawsuit against Normandy liberating because it was a chance to show Normandy that they could have done things better. (And I imagine they don’t want to have to pay this expense again in the future.)

When I drive through that area in Normandy now, I feel a difference. I no longer see police sitting at the bottom of a hill or the middle of a hill or at tricky stop signs. I’ve been able to watch the slow and steady process of people’s lives changing for the better, and communities and friends — who were impacted much more than I was — feel vindicated, knowing it wasn’t their fault. The system was the problem.

Being able to see the cogs turn slowly, because of the persistence of people who have stood up and challenged an exploitative status quo, gives me hope.

I do believe change is possible. I see it happening. My advice is to trust your part in it.

SOMETIMES IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT COUNT

Kim Gardner Resigns

The St. Louis Circuit Attorney will leave office June 1

Written by RYAN KRULL

Last week, Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner announced her resignation, sparing herself and the city of St. Louis a grueling summer.

Gardner wrote that it is with “a heavy heart but a steadfast resolve” that she is resigning her position effective June 1. Gardner has been the circuit attorney since 2016.

“Unfortunately since the time I took office, as the first Black female prosecutor in the state, people outside the city have targeted me to advance their own goals,” her statement continued.

Her resignation letter, addressed to Governor Mike Parson, referenced the current efforts in Jefferson City to strip her of power.

“I can absorb those attacks, and I have. But I can neither enable nor allow the outright disenfranchisement of the people of the City of St. Louis, nor can I allow these outsiders to effectively shut down our important work,” she wrote. “If not for these two things, I would continue to fight tirelessly to maintain the job you selected me to serve.”

This resignation came the day after the RFT broke the news that Gardner has been pursuing an advanced nursing degree at Saint Louis University, possibly running afoul of state law, which requires circuit attorneys to “devote their entire time and energy to the discharge of their official duties.”

Gardner’s base of support had been steadily eroding since late February when 21-year-old Daniel Riley caused a car crash that left multi-sport athlete Janae Edmondson, 17, pinned between two cars. Both of her legs have since been amputated. Riley had been free on bond pending an armed robbery trial and had violated his bond more than 50 times. The public blamed Gardner for Riley

not being behind bars.

In late February, Mayor Tishaura Jones said that Gardner “really needs to do some soul-searching as to whether she wants to continue as circuit attorney because she’s lost the trust of the people.”

That same week, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a quo warranto petition in St. Louis City Circuit Court, seeking to remove Gardner from office.

The 10 weeks since have been packed with more bad headlines for Gardner than many politicians suffer in the course of an entire term.

Gardner initially blamed Judge Bryan Hettenbach for Riley being free on bail and held a press conference in which her supporters shouted down reporters.

On the heels of the initial quo

Governor Starts Search New Circuit Attorney

The governor says he will work with city leadership

Written by MONICA OBRADOVIC

Missouri Governor Mike Parson’s office will “immediately” begin a process to replace St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, Parson’s office said in a statement last week.

warranto petition, Bailey filed a much more detailed, 120-page amended petition in the removal proceeding, outlining a litany of errors on the part of Gardner, including allegations that her malfeasance led to the dismissal or bungled prosecution of more than 10,000 cases. He also alleged her office didn’t disclose evidence to defense attorneys, failed to communicate with victims and victims’ families and regularly violated defendants’ rights to speedy trials.

In early March, Gardner’s chief trial assistant Marvin Teer parted ways with the office. Teer is a former judge who was brought on to stabilize the office. He’d won a conviction in the high-profile case of Stephan Cannon, found guilty of killing former police officer David Dorn. His departure marked

Gardner resigned Thursday, May 4, amid widespread calls for her to do so. The twice-elected Democratic prosecutor had a tumultuous tenure — with the last few weeks full of staff resignations, contempt of court hearings and multiple state pushes to oust her from office.

Gardner’s resignation is effective June 1, giving Parson’s appointee more than a year to serve out the rest of Gardner’s term, which will end in November 2024.

State statute allows Missouri governors to fill prosecutorial vacancies. In accordance with statute, Parson’s selection for Gardner’s replacement must be “competent,” at least 21 years old and licensed to practice as an attorney in Missouri. Parson’s appointee does not have to be a resident of the City of St. Louis if there is

the beginning of a trend, as most of the attorneys who carried out the day-to-day work of the office left in the following weeks.

Prosecutors in the office had been long overburdened, and throughout March and April every time a prosecutor left the office, the workload on those remaining increased further, making an already untenable job impossible.

Assistant Circuit Attorney Natalia Ogurkiewicz penned a blistering letter on her way out of the office, saying that it would be tantamount to malpractice to remain.

Another assistant circuit attorney, prior to leaving the office, publicly mulled a run against his then-boss.

Criminal defense attorney David Mueller announced his run against Gardner in early April, motivated by outrage over what he said was Gardner’s office waiting years to disclose exculpatory evidence that proved one of his client’s innocence.

Also in April, the tension between Gardner and the judges of the 22nd Circuit burst into open conflict.

Monday, April 17, was supposed to be the first day of the murder trial of 18-year-old Jonathon Jones, but no one from the prosecutor’s office showed up. Judge Scott Millikan threatened to hold Gardner or someone else from her office in criminal contempt of court for the no-show. Gardner blamed Assistant Circuit Attorney Alex Polta, who appeared before Judge Millikan and was contrite, though he pointed out that he was on approved medical leave at the

“no qualified person” who will accept the appointment, according to statute.

“We fully understand the gravity of this situation and approach our duty to appoint a replacement with the utmost seriousness,” Parson said in a statement.

In February, Parson told reporters he did not have a replacement in mind should Gardner resign or get removed from office (the latter of which was an impending probability).

At the time, Parson said he’d work with city officials, including Mayor Tishaura Jones.

“We are committed to finding a candidate who represents the community, values public safety and can help restore faith in the city’s criminal justice system,” Parson said Thursday. n

The embattled circuit attorney has had a rough 2023. | DAVID CARSON ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

time of the missed trial, and the office provided no one to cover. The judge did not hold anyone in criminal contempt.

The same could not be said a week later when a similar scenario played out on the first day of a different murder trial. This time it was Assistant Circuit Attorney Chris Desilets who didn’t show up for the trial of the high-profile double murder of a seven-yearold girl and her father.

The judge in that case, Michael Noble, found there was ample reason to pursue criminal contempt charges against Desilets and Gardner.

Polta and Desilets resigned. Gardner then found herself facing the specter of criminal contempt charges in addition to the attorney general’s attempts to remove her.

Judge Noble, in announcing the contempt charges, called her office “a rudderless ship of chaos.”

The chaos was on full display last week in the murder trial of Dejuan Allen, accused of murdering 19-year-old Kendrick Woods. The trial ended in a hung jury. A juror in the trial told KSDK that prosecutor Sai Chigurupati “looked very nervous the whole time. It was just terrible.” Chigurupati is the sole remaining prosecutor in the office’s Violent Crimes Unit.

The defendant, Allen, 23, was returned to the jail, where he has already sat, presumed innocent, for five years.

Early last week, the judge overseeing the quo warranto process ruled that he would allow most of Bailey’s allegations against Gardner to proceed to trial. It was also reported last week that the state auditor would be looking into Gardner’s office’s finances.

“Her office appears on the brink of collapse,” Bailey said last Wednesday, echoing the words of Judge Booker Shaw in April hearing in the quo warranto proceeding.

After a tense day last week filled with speculation and media posted outside her office downtown, Gardner’s spokesperson sent out the resignation letter a little before 4 p.m. on Thursday.

“The most powerful weapon I have to fight back against these outsiders stealing your voices and your rights is to step back,” her letter said. “I took this job to serve the people of the City of St. Louis, and that’s still my north star.” n

In Limbo

Written by MONICA OBRADOVIC

At the Missouri State Capitol earlier this year, Keeley Kromat did one of the few things she thought she could do: She begged.

Kromat, mother of two daughters, told a room full of strangers some of her family’s most personal stories in a plea to get them to reconsider a bill that would restrict health care for transgender minors.

There are 12 Republicans in the 17-member General Laws Committee, which Kromat drove two hours from St. Louis to speak to. The chances of them actually considering her words were slim, she thought. Still, House Bill 419, which she came to speak against, is a horror that couldn’t go unchecked.

“The cowardice to target children with your culture war is staggering,” Kromat said to the committee. She spoke with conviction and tried to catch legislators’ eyes. Several of them sat slouched in their chairs, their faces tilted downward. Some tinkered with phones under their desks. “Gender-affirming care is lifesaving health care. Are you prepared to deny children lifesaving care?”

This was the first time Kromat had traveled to Jefferson City to testify at a hearing. Really, she says, she’d never paid much attention to state politics. Other transgender Missourians and their parents have been thrust into a similar position as they say the state “attacks” their lives.

Missouri is second only to Texas in the number of proposed bills that target LGBTQ+ rights this legislative session, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. GOP legislators in Missouri will try to block access to transgender healthcare before the legislative session ends this week. If they don’t, Governor Mike Parson has said he’ll call legislators into a special session on the matter.

And as Attorney General Andrew Bailey works to restrict access to genderaffirming care, parents and trans folks are left wondering: How much longer can they stay in Missouri?

Kromat’s family is “lucky,” she told legislators during her testimony. They have the resources to leave the state if they have to. But the idea that they would be turned into “refugees” to save her daughter’s life due to a state law was “sickening,” she said.

In the months since Kromat’s testimony, what started as an idea of last resort has become more of a reality to transgender people and their families. They’ll leave Missouri if they have to.

“Finally happy”

When Kromat’s eldest daughter, Rowan McGrew, was in preschool, she had no idea what to be when she got older. Kromat used to lovingly refer to McGrew as “Peter Pan,” the boy who famously refused to grow up.

Several years later, when McGrew was 14, Kromat learned that her child’s hesitation to grow up wasn’t because of some childish determination not to mature. It was because McGrew couldn’t bear the thought of growing up to be the adult man that biology seemingly destined her to be.

But in the three years since, McGrew has “blossomed,” Kromat says. Before, McGrew was withdrawn; she couldn’t state her own opinions, or would seldom speak at all. She spent hours isolated in her room.

That changed after McGrew came out as nonbinary, then later trans, and started to actualize her gender. She’s now bright and social. She’s a competitive skateboarder. She has a large group of loyal friends. She’s “finally happy,” her mother says.

“Just the level of assuredness in the past two years is night and day,” Kromat

tells the RFT. “I don’t recognize who she is compared to then. She’s very much the little kid I had. My bestie again.”

Missouri legislators have gradually started to accept that gender dysphoria is a real health impairment. Even the attorney general’s emergency rule to restrict transgender health care recognizes gender dysphoria as a condition that should be treated (though how and when Bailey, who has no medical background, believes it should be treated contradicts the opinions of most health care organizations).

McGrew describes gender dysphoria as “constant.”

“It’s like a disconnect, like you’re not being perceived how you want to be perceived,” McGrew says.

That’s a feeling McGrew doesn’t want to go back to. Now, she and her mother fear that life-saving health care will be taken away from her.

First, there were the bills. A lot of them. Forty-eight anti-LGBTQ+ bills were filed in Missouri this session. One Senate bill would ban puberty blockers, gender transition surgeries and hormone therapy for new patients younger than 18. Another would require transgender athletes to compete on sports teams that match their biological sex. In the House, a bill calls to ban gender-affirming care for minors regardless of whether they’re already receiving it.

But the most restrictive threat is the attorney general’s emergency order.

In all, the order outlines 21 guardrails trans folks and gender health care providers must follow to comply with state law. Here are a few things patients must do:

Continued on pg 10

As the Missouri attorney general and legislature wage war on transgender health care, some families consider leaving the state

Rowan McGrew (left) and her mom, Keely Kromat, are worried about accessing transgender health care. | MONICA OBRADOVIC

TRANSGENDER CRISIS

Continued from pg 9

• Prove, at least once a year, they are not experiencing “social contagion” in regard to their views on gender

• Undergo 15 hourly therapy sessions to explore “developmental influences” on their gender identity

• Minors would have to receive a “comprehensive screening” at least once a year for social media addiction and prove they have not suffered social media addiction within six months prior to receiving care.

• Exhibit three consecutive years of documented gender dysphoria

• Receive a screening for autism

• Show any mental health issues have been treated and “resolved.”

Transgender Missourians and their parents who spoke to the RFT view these rules as “impossible” to meet and worry they’ll eradicate access to gender-affirming care.

But for trans people of color in Missouri, gender-affirming care has long been hard to reach.

While Bailey’s order would take away her gender-affirming care, Amariah Hardwick says those like her who face the “double minority” of being Black and trans have already struggled to access health care.

“We’ve already been traveling to other states to receive HRT (hormone replacement therapy) or collecting hormones from the black market,” Hardwick says. “This isn’t something that’s new to us.”

“He will never come back”

Christine Hyman’s son, Corey, came out when he was in fifth grade. Hyman didn’t see it coming, but it started by Corey saying he didn’t want to be “in a box.” Not a boy box, not a girl box. So Corey went by they/them pronouns for a while, until he called his mom at a sleepover and said, “I have something to tell you,” Hyman recalls. He came out as transgender and switched his pronouns to he/him. Hyman helped Corey legally change his name about a year later.

It was a “pretty smooth path” until Missouri legislators started proposing measures to restrict trans rights, Hyman says. It started with so-called “bathroom bills” in 2017 after the Trump administration reversed Obama-era protections for transgender students in public schools to use restrooms and locker rooms that corresponded with their gender identities. Missouri bills targeting transgender people have progressively gotten worse since then, Hyman says.

Corey, now 17, was 13 when he first went to Jefferson City to testify. That first year, Corey wrote his testimony out on a piece of paper. Now, he looks legislators dead in the eye.

“He says what he’s feeling, and it’s not ever nice,” Hyman says. “The only thing he knows is he cannot curse at them.”

It’s the same thing over and over, Hyman says of her own testimonies.

“Year after year I go up there and try to plead with them,” Hyman says. “It doesn’t matter. You just get this feeling that they do not care.” She can only tell the same story so many times, so she tries to come up with something different to humanize herself and her family.

Hyman’s family moved to Missouri from New York about 18 years ago. Soon Corey will be 18, and he’s planning to move away for technical school, according to Hyman.

“He will never come back,” Hyman says. “[Missouri] holds nothing but bad memories.”

Around the end of February, Corey got sick. By then, news of Missouri’s extreme anti-trans legislation was making national headlines as the majority of legislators approved trans sports and health care measures vote after vote. And earlier that month, Jamie Reed, a former case manager responsible for patient intake at the Washington University Transgender Center, had published an op-ed in the Free Press about the center’s “medically appalling” practices.

Among many claims, Reed alleged the center lacked any formal protocol for treatment, that patients were often “disturbed young people” who were not informed of what they were getting into and rushed into treatment and that the center lacked regard for parental rights.

Hyman and her son had been in Jefferson City four Tuesdays in a row fighting legislation around this time. Corey started to get sick, and Hyman brought him to an emergency room. She thought he was dehydrated.

Doctors ended up putting Corey on feeding tubes. Corey had quit eating for 10 days because he was so worried, according to Hyman. It had “finally gotten

to him,” she says. “If it wasn’t going to be the legislation, it was going to be this thing that came out from Jamie.

“He ended up in the hospital for 12 days because there was no light at the end of the tunnel,” Hyman says. “He was like, ‘What’s the point?’”

Several patients of the Transgender Center or their parents have since come forward to contradict Reed’s story.

At the center, Reed seemed so supportive, Hyman says. She was decorated in tattoos, had her hair shaved on one side and wore glow-in-the-dark yoga pants. “The kids loved her,” Hyman says. “She had this really upbeat personality.”

Reed was the intake specialist for Kromat’s daughter, McGrew. Reed’s allegations couldn’t have been more different than McGrew’s experience.

“They definitely weren’t pushing it,” McGrew says. “Every step of the way, they told me to carefully think about what I was doing. They asked me the same uncomfortable questions about fertility and if I wanted biological kids all the time.”

Reed’s allegations in the Free Press and in an affidavit to the attorney general (both released on the same day), were enough to kickstart investigations into the gender center by three different Missouri agencies.

The attorney general announced his emergency regulation targeting genderaffirming care on April 13. Since then, the start date for Bailey’s regulations have been pushed back twice. A lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union has pushed back the start of the restrictions until July 24 at the earliest.

Transgender Missourians and their families hope the lawsuit will annihilate Bailey’s rules altogether. But they’re trying to plan for the worst.

Jennifer Harris Dault, a mother of two daughters, says it’d be “impossible” to follow all the regulations set forth in Bailey’s order. Her eldest daughter, an eightyear-old who has said she is trans, won’t need any medical interventions for a few years. Yet, in the meantime, Harris Dault and her family are considering leaving the state after Missouri’s onslaught on trans rights.

“I think everyone is thinking through, ‘At what point do we leave?’” Harris Dault says. “We’ve certainly been among those. We’ve worked out where we would go, what we would do if we needed to escape to allow our daughter to get medical care.”

“They’re just kids”

It’s always a challenge to communicate to her daughter what the state is doing, Harris Dault says. She tries to make it “less scary” by showing her daughter pictures of people who showed up to hearings and press conferences in support of trans kids. But her daughter still wants to speak to legislators at hearings. Harris Dault asked the RFT to leave out her daughter’s name out of concern for her safety.

Her daughter is a sensitive soul, Harris Dault explains, but a fierce advocate for justice. “She’ll say, ‘I want to hear those bad things because I want to know what they’re saying, so I can get them to believe the opposite.’”

“The parents of trans kids — we just want our kids to grow and thrive and live their lives,” Harris Dault says. “I’m not trying to make her into something she’s not; I just want to support her the best I can.”

Her daughter’s wonderfully herself but is no different from any other kid, Harris Dault adds. She loves to read, so much so that she has to be reminded to put her books down to get ready for school in the morning. She loves Pokémon, making funny noises, irritating her younger sister and school. At her birthday party this year, her friends came over to do science experiments.

“These kids are kids, leave them alone,” Hyman says. “They should be outside with their friends until the streetlights turn on — and not worrying about what their state is doing to them. And neither should their parents.”

When asked if there’s anything that gives them hope, McGrew and her mother mention the lawsuit targeting Bailey’s emergency order. They’re hoping it will stop this. But both acknowledged that even if the suit does succeed, there’s still the bills, each a threat of their own. Governor Mike Parson has threatened to call a special session if the legislature fails to pass measures restricting gender-affirming care and sports participation for transgender minors.

Kromat and McGrew fall quiet for a brief moment as the totality of all that’s before them sinks in.

Later, Kromat turns to her daughter and smiles. She strokes her hair.

“She’s my hope,” Kromat says. “My little anarchist.” n

Amariah Hardwick. | COURTESY PHOTO

“ The parents of trans kids — we just want our kids to grow and thrive and live their lives.

I’m not trying to make her into something she’s not; I just want to support her the best I can.”

People’s Joy

St. Louis celebrated Cinco de Mayo on Cherokee Street

Photos by THEO WELLING

Words by ROSALIND EARLY

For a moment, it seemed like the People’s Joy Parade might leave Cherokee Street and move to Tower Grove Park in September alongside Tower Grove Pride. Fortunately, the fates aligned, and we could once again see a parade entirely dedicated to the people march along Utah Street in celebration of Cinco de Mayo. This year’s parade took place on May 6 and included all

kinds of artists, performers, decorated cars and guys on bikes.

After the parade, folks headed to Cherokee Street for the Cinco de Mayo Festival to enjoy food, music, wrestling and margaritas. For a while, everything was right with the world, as people searched for shade, bought fishbowls full of booze, and munched on tacos and elote. Crowds flowed peacefully through the streets, but then violence struck with a shooting on the 2700 block of Cherokee around 7:30 p.m. This came on the heels of another shooting the day before.

What was a celebration of eclectic St. Louis culture and our La Calle Cherokee turned into something else, a moment of reflection, a call to do better. But, for a moment, when the parade started at 1:11 p.m. and kids were holding cotton candy and women were dancing in folkloric half circle skirts, the people’s joy was on full display. n

A CELEBRATION OF THE UNIQUE AND FASCINATING ASPECTS OF OUR HOME

In the mid-1980s Dave McCreery, now 82, was drinking with one of his fellow Moolah Shriner clowns at a Shriners Temple in St. Louis when his pal, who worked construction, said that he was thinking about buying a building for sale on South Grand Boulevard.

McCreery had built a successful career in the insurance business and thought that the twostory building across from Tower Grove Park at the corner of Grand Boulevard and Arsenal

Street sounded like a good investment.

“I got to look at it, and I thought, well, you know, why not?” McCreery recalls.

His pal in the construction business was integral to fixing up the building, which McCreery describes as being a mess when they bought it. But the partner soon got busy with other projects, so McCreery bought him out and found himself the sole landlord to the building’s colorful cast of tenants.

On the second floor, above the washing machine repair man and the Salvation Army, a populist group affiliated with the Socialist Party of America had its St. Louis offices.

“That was during the Cold War,” McCreery

says, “and all their literature came from Russia.”

There was also a group called the Rosicrucian Society, which, per Wikipedia, refers to a European spiritual and cultural movement that arose in Germany circa 1610 when a pair of anonymous texts announced “a thitherto unknown esoteric order.”

In south city in the 1980s, being a Rosicrucian meant that a few times a month you got together with your fellow men and women of the order, donned white robes and spent all night banging on a gong.

“The gong was probably about five feet in diameter,” McCreery says. “And when they hit that thing, it would reverberate throughout

BY RYAN KRULL

the entire building.”

As McCreery recounts all this, his words are punctuated with an easygoing chuckle that seems to sum up his personality. The man can’t help but laugh, which is just one of the many things about him that everyone who works with him seems to find endearing.

Despite being in the landlord game for more than 35 years, however, there was one tenant that the occultists and the communists hadn’t prepared McCreery for: the waffle man.

The socialist outfit in McCreery’s building regularly invited left-wing political candidates and European writers to lecture from a socialist perspective, but they were hardly the only counterculture types in the neighborhood in the 1980s. South Grand denizens have always had a healthy appetite for banding together to thumb their nose at authority.

When the alderman at the time, John Koch, tried to blight a stretch of South Grand from Flora Court to Magnolia Avenue, the owner of Panama Red’s Cafe (where Pho Long now is) led the effort to recall the alderman.

When the parent company of Jack in the Box fired a popular manager at its South Grand location, the workers staged a protest.

The street has also been a hub for the offbeat. A local painter opened the Grand Gallery South (across the street from what is now an urgent care) as a space to showcase the work of young artists and stage exhibitions such as Foreign Influence and Edible Art. The latter was billed as “an art exhibit viewers can eat.”

The international cuisine that defines modern day South Grand is in large part thanks to Jay’s International Foods, which has its roots in the 1970s when Jay Prapaisilp immigrated from Thailand and opened a small corner store catty-corner from what is today Cafe Mochi.

“We just had some basic Thai stuff, some Chinese stuff,” says JoJo Prapaisilapa, Jay’s nephew and the current co-owner of Jay’s. “Eventually our Mexican friends wanted some stuff from their home country. Vietnamese refugees were popping up, so we stocked some stuff for them. It kept growing and growing.”

The store grew so much that it eventually moved down Grand to its current location, encompassing half of an entire block.

A 1994 article in the Post-Dispatch credited Jay’s as the “anchor for the neighborhood’s revival.” South Grand was by then home to many of the Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, Middle Eastern and Mexican restaurants that still to this day define the vibrant, diverse dining strip.

However, that didn’t mean that McCreery was on a glide path finding tenants. In the early 2000s, one business after the next struggled to find longevity in the anchor space of McCreery’s building: the storefront directly at the corner of Arsenal and Grand. McCreery knew how important it was to have a vibrant presence on that corner, given that it was the entryway for the entire South Grand business district. He recalled that in 1986 there had been an ice cream shop in the building. He and his wife Beulah Ann thought to themselves, with the same optimism that led McCreery to buy the building, why not run an ice cream shop themselves?

For 12 years, the couple ran the much-beloved Tower Grove Creamery. During those years, it was a particular point of pride for McCreery and Beulah Ann that they had low turnover among their staff of mostly students who worked at the shop part time.

“We never had to advertise for help,” McCreery says. “Because students would be working for us, and they would go back to campus with

SOUTH GRAND

Continued from pg 15

$25 in their pocket in tip money. And the other kids said, ‘Well, where’d you get that?’”

When the McCreerys decided to close down the shop last year, they did so under the impression that a Boardwalk Waffles and Ice Cream would be occupying the space in a matter of a few weeks. McCreery said that he stopped by the Maplewood Boardwalk location a few times, where he saw the wafflesand-ice-cream concept in action. He thought that having one of them open in his old space would be perfect for the loyal following the McCreerys had built.

When Boardwalk owner Eric Moore opened that first location in Maplewood in 2017, he told Sauce Magazine that the business was an homage to his days growing up in New Jersey and visiting the Jersey Shore and its boardwalk, where he used to buy scoops of ice cream sandwiched between two waffles.

By August 2020, Moore’s Maplewood location was such a success that he moved it into a larger space just down Manchester Road. Soon thereafter, a second Boardwalk Waffles opened in south county on Telegraph Road. Last September, Moore told reporters he was planning three more spots in quick succession.

Behind the rapid expansion, however, Moore and Boardwalk’s parent company, BWAIC LLC, were facing lawsuit after lawsuit for unpaid rent. In May 2022, when Moore signed the contract with McCreery for the space on South Grand, he’d already been sued in January by his Maplewood landlord for $25,000 in unpaid rent. In March 2022, a Midtown landlord also sued for unpaid rent for space leased in the Metropolitan Artist Lofts near the Fox Theatre.

Moore says that he’s worked things out with the Midtown landlord and that everything is “just fine” in Maplewood. In March 2023, the Maplewood landlord won a default judgment against Moore for $36,380.

“There’s nothing more in the world that I would like to do than to open that store and serve the community, so the community can understand what Boardwalk is all about,” Moore says.

In addition to the lawsuits from landlords, multiple former Boardwalk Waffles employees tell the RFT that their paychecks were often late.

Kyler Asher, 19, started working

at the Maplewood location last year and said that the problems started when his third paycheck was two weeks late. Also, the store was chronically understaffed, and Asher found himself scooping ice cream solo most shifts.

“First, a dude comes in. And then like, five other people come in. Then a group of high schoolers, and [the line] is 20 deep. And I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, what is going on here?’” Asher says. “And the waffles take two, three minutes to cook, and every single person there is ordering a waffle.

“It was kind of stressful,” he adds. “I’d have 20 people waiting in line. And I’m the only one behind the counter.”

Alexandra Swisher worked at

both the Maplewood and Soulard Boardwalk locations starting in 2021 and says that her checks were late at times, but she always ultimately got paid. However, she recalls vendors frequently calling the stores looking for money they said Boardwalk owed them.

“[Moore] was dodging payments from the Ice Cream Factory for the ice cream he was serving,” Swisher says. “And we were getting phone calls all the time from their lawyer.”

Katherine Turner worked as Boardwalk’s accountant for two and a half years starting in late 2020.

“We were having to scramble. It was absolutely absurd. There was no money in the bank. I was

having to pull it out of thin air out of my pocket,” she says. “Chaos would be a kind word. I enjoy chaos. This was a travesty.”

She says that Moore used her as a buffer between him and the employees and vendors owed money. She says that when any problem arose, her instructions were always to “take care of it,” which meant doing anything other than paying up.

According to Swisher, “The consensus between most of the employees was like, ‘How long is this company going to last?’”

“Every employee has been paid,” Moore says. “Nobody’s owed any money. And yes, during COVID, for two and a half years,

When Boardwalk Waffles didn’t move into the storefront at Grand and Arsenal, landlord Dave McCreery put up this banner. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

Dave McCreery has been a landlord on South Grand since the 1980s, and he’s never had trouble with a tenant like he has with Boardwalk Waffles. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

Eric Moore (left) owns Boardwalk Waffles. | KATHERINE TURNER

SOUTH GRAND

Continued from pg 17

there was some delay.”

By April, almost a year after Moore signed the lease for the space at Grand and Arsenal, McCreery had only been able to collect one month’s rent, and according to McCreery’s attorney Matt Ghio, Moore was essentially using the space as storage for his other operations.

“He’s not open to the public. He’s been using the space as a freezer and refusing to leave or pay rent,” Ghio says.

“We offered to basically pay him $5,000 to leave, and he won’t do it. He keeps saying he wants to stay and make everything right,” Ghio adds. “Given all the other financial troubles he’s clearly having. I’m surprised. He wouldn’t take [the money].”

More than the missing money, the McCreerys are pained by the empty storefront at the entryway to South Grand, a community that means a lot to the couple.

In April, McCreery felt so bad about the empty space that he hung a banner up. “Friends & neighbors,” the banner reads. “We apologize for our corner shop and appreciate your patience as we work to bring in a viable business to serve you.”

McCreery tells the RFT that he wanted to apologize to the neighborhood. He says he knows that the empty retail space hurts other businesses. “I felt I probably should have put the sign up sooner,” he says.

He adds, “The damage to the neighborhood really hurts.”

For his part, Moore previously told the RFT that the McCreerys

are “too emotionally attached to the space.”

Natasha Bahrami, of Salve Osteria on South Grand, agrees with Moore in one sense: McCreery does care deeply about the building and surrounding neighborhood.

“He’s taking it so personally because his place is the entrance of South Grand,” she says.

Speaking of Moore, Bahrami adds: “If you’re going to be there, be there. Open something, do something, If not, you’re taking an opportunity that many people want: to be down here.”

Bahrami adds that it’s no surprise to her that the vacant storefront is incredibly painful for McCreery. “He knows how hard the neighborhood has been working to fill voids here, to make fresh starts, to really create an environment that is welcoming,” she says.

Another person with only good things to say about McCreery is Mo Costello, the owner of Mokabe’s coffee. She has been McCreery’s tenant for 29 years.

“He blew it,” she says of Moore. “You know this guy blew it because he could have had some help with Dave. He would have had some build-out help. It’s really a shame.”

Costello says that when her coffee shop expanded, McCreery paid for the construction. In the early days of the pandemic in 2020, he told her not to worry about paying rent, and then when he started asking for it again, she said he gave her a discount.

“I might add that with this building being empty next door, he’s continued to give us a discounted rate because it’s bad for my business to have the empty space,” she says. “I don’t know that that’s a routine thing that happens. Dave has our backs.”

Costello says that during the past few years in particular, having McCreery as a landlord has made an incredibly difficult time a little less trying.

“We’re still trying to figure out how to be post-COVID,” she says. “To be perfectly honest. It’s very weird.”

To borrow Costello’s phrase, South Grand has had a very weird couple of years, of which the Boardwalk Waffles saga is just the latest chapter.

For instance, Tribe Dispensary set up shop on Grand Avenue across from Tower Grove Park, but it has yet to sell a single joint.

La Crazy Margarita opened in February in a spot that had been the longtime home of Mekong Vietnamese restaurant, but two months in, the owners of La Crazy Margarita are still waiting for their liquor license so they can sell that inaugural marg.

Last fall, an acclaimed chef opened a much-hyped dim sum restaurant on Hartford just off South Grand, but the enterprise lasted less than two months after said acclaimed chef was arrested for domestic violence.

Then there have been the myriad incidents of traffic violence, from which no part of St. Louis has been spared but that have acutely affected South Grand.

In July, a motorist killed a pedestrian at South Grand Boulevard and Juniata Street just two blocks away from where South Grand’s Pocket Park was hosting a community movie. In September, a person driving a Kia collided with and killed a bicyclist on South Grand by Tower Grove Park. October saw another fatality from traffic violence near the strip. That same month, activists put up “compli-

mentary helmets” along the street, suggesting pedestrians wear them before crossing. The combination public art/protest was meant to shame city leaders to do something about traffic safety.

Steve’s Hot Dogs migrated from Tower Grove East to South Grand Boulevard in 2021. Co-owner Danni Eickenhorst tells the RFT that while COVID-19 wreaked havoc on restaurants on the strip just as it did everywhere, at least South Grand was surrounded by places where people live rather than where they work. Restaurants that only catered to workers on their lunch breaks were all but doomed, as were many eateries located in retail districts like shopping malls, to which people had to drive.

“We were really fortunate that we were able to run Steve’s on a skeleton crew,” Eickenhorst says. “We were able to pivot a million times to continue to keep serving people, and we sort of made a pact early on as the owners: We’re not closing for any reason, period — unless the city makes us. Steve [Ewing] worked shifts. I worked shifts. My son worked shifts. It was a struggle, but it’s why we’re OK now.”

Whereas Eickenhorst and Ewing were game to meet the moment, many other business owners who had been at it for decades and were already mulling retirement decided that COVID-19 was their cue. Vietnamese restaurant Pho Grand, a mainstay on the strip since 1989, announced it would be closing in June of 2022. Two months later, the City Diner, which had been open on South Grand since 1992, closed up shop as well. Thai restaurant King & I, on South Grand since 1983, announced in October it was headed to the county.

Rachel Witt, the executive director of the South Grand Community Improvement District, says that there are 70 storefronts in the business district, which stretches from Utah Place to Arsenal Street, and that right now 59 of them are occupied.

The space that used to be AJ & R pawn shop is a sore spot for Witt, as the owners are asking a lot of money for it and have done very little to keep the property from crumbling into an eyesore. She’s also less than thrilled about the Boardwalk vacancy, which she says is definitely a blow to people’s perception of the strip.

“But the district is actually performing very well,” she says. “Our businesses and our revenue are up. There are a lot of new exciting businesses opening and new

Continued on pg 20

Danni Eickenhorst (left) and Rachel Witt are prominent members of the South Grand business district. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

SOUTH GRAND

Continued from pg 18

launches. So good things are happening. It’s just we’re still in that weird flux since the pandemic with stability of businesses and getting businesses open.”

The fabric of South Grand has also changed in recent decades in more subtle ways that have nothing to do with waffles or COVID-19.

Asked what has changed the most in 30 years, Costello, the Mokabe’s owner, says that, “Everything has to include family. It’s not a South Grand-specific thing. It’s a societal thing, probably nationwide. Everything has got to be more family friendly.

“When we moved from Kirkwood [in 1993], our hours were 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. We’re a coffee house, and we’ve never had alcohol, but those were our hours. Now our hours are 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.,” she says.

Catering to families is also top of mind for Shanisah Knight, who, along with her husband Jason, is opening a superhero- and comic book-themed diner called Gotham and Eggs where City Diner used to be. She says that despite being predominantly a breakfast and lunch place, they do plan to be open for dinner a few nights a week. “We’re going to be a family environment, and morning hours don’t always work with kids being at school,” she says.

Eickenhorst says that when she set up shop on South Grand, she thought there would be more of a nightlife scene for Steve’s to cater to with their extensive bar. “We were surprised to see that there really wasn’t one,” she says.

“What you used to see on South

Grand, or what I used to see anyway — and I can tell you about my nights out — was like a secret club above a Thai restaurant, and those sort of places that are meant for drinking to drink, a kind of club environment,” she says. “I think now people are looking for a place where they can sit and have a conversational cocktail, have a little bit more community.”

Still, both Eickenhorst and Witt say that the nightlife scene is coming back.

Well-known bartenders Michael Fricker’s and Meredith Barry’s “experimental cocktail lounge” New Society had its soft opening on South Grand last month. Former Indo bartender Kenny Marks is set to fill the secret club void with a place destined to soon sit above La Crazy Margarita. When Lulu’s Local Eatery reopened for indoor dining under new ownership in April, it did so with a full bar and expanded craft cocktail menu of drinks inspired by musicians and their songs — everyone from Neil Young to Lady Gaga to Lil Wayne.

Eickenhorst says that as of last week, Steve’s is staying open until 10 p.m.

“As we go along, we are seeing more and more bar business over time,” she says. “It’s continuing to come back.”

“I think 2023 is going to be the year that we really hit our stride,” says Witt.

Last September, McCreery sued Moore and Boardwalk Waffles, trying to evict them from the building on Grand and Arsenal. The lawsuit alleged that Moore’s rent checks had bounced and that Moore refused to leave.

In March, Judge Lynne Perkins ruled against McCreery in his suit against Moore, writing that the lease Moore signed “does not provide for early termination,” and without the lease being terminated, Boardwalk Waffles and Moore can’t be said to be illegally occupying the space.

McCreery asked for a new trial in the circuit court with a new judge, and on April 19 walked into the courthouse downtown, smiling as always. Along with his attorney Matt Ghio, McCreery huddled with Moore, whose lawyer wasn’t present.

The three of them failed to come to any sort of agreement, though, and Judge Michael Colona set the matter for a bench trial on May 19.

“It’s a pain in derriere, there’s no question about that,” McCreery says of the lawsuit. However, litigation has done little to dim his optimistic outlook on things.

“I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years, and 99 percent of the people I’ve worked with who’ve been tenants have been very, very good,” he says. “They’ve been excellent business people. We’ve

had excellent relationships.”

Prior to the imbroglio with Boardwalk Waffles, it seems the biggest conflict McCreery ever had with a tenant was actually with Costello, the Mokabe’s owner. In the wake of Michael Brown’s killing, Costello and some staff spraypainted “Resist Institutional Racism and Oppression” onto a giant piece of cloth and hung it over the patio at Mokabe’s.

At first, McCreery asked her to take it down. Costello refused. The disagreement lasted a few weeks until McCreery went to Costello and apologized.

He said, “You know, you were right, Mo,” Costello recalls.

The coffee shop owner saw it as an example of someone really taking the time to catch up to what had happened in the city.

“I was grateful he did that,” she says.

And how does Costello feel about McCreery now hanging his own banner?

“Isn’t that funny?” she asks. “We made ours in the back parking lot with a spray can. He had his professionally done.”

South Grand is a beloved thoroughfare. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

People live, work and play on South Grand. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

CALENDAR

BY RIVERFRONT TIMES STAFF

THURSDAY 05/11 Fruit Rootin’

Picking your own food is cool again, and many of us in St. Louis eagerly await the chance to get some fruit and veggies right from the earth while paying for the pleasure of doing so. If you number among those that enjoy such a pastime, get psyched for Strawberry Fields Forever, the opening festivities for the annual Strawberry Festival from our friendly farm and country store at Eckert’s (951 South Green Mount Road, Belleville, Illinois; 618-310-1962). The event, which runs from 6 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, May 11, is a 21-and-up shindig that includes a tractor ride and field access, strawberry cocktails, hard ciders, complimentary berries and jarcuterie (yes, that is just charcuterie served in a jar because everyone loves jars). There will also be a DJ playing ’60s and ’70s jams. Tickets are $30. If you are under 21 and also like strawberries, don’t despair: The farm’s Strawberry Festival runs through Sunday, May 14, and involves lots of activities appropriate for all ages, such as carnival rides, a petting zoo and more. More information at eckerts.com.

Deep Sea Drinking

When you’ve got a venue of any

sort in St. Louis, it’s almost sacrilege to not make it a place where people can gather for adult beverages — this is a famously harddrinking town, after all. The St. Louis Aquarium at Union Station (201 South 18th Street, 314-9233900) has learned this lesson and is hosting Under the Deep Brew Sea, letting you drink in a place that’s more interesting than a bar and where topics of conversation are floating literally all around you. The event will be held this Thursday, May 11, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. and will include five different beverage stations stocked with Anheuser-Busch products. Under the Deep Brew Sea will pay special homage to the aquarium’s sea turtles, Tsunami and Quasi, and folks will be on hand to tell you all about the non-shark residents of Shark Canyon. The event is $40, but if you throw in an extra $10, you can also get a ride on the St. Louis Wheel. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the St. Louis Aquarium Foundation. Tickets and more info can be found at stlouisaquarium.com.

Walk on the Style Side

This week’s Sips, Souls and Strolls: Architecture & Architects is just one of many excellent events hap-

pening at Bellefontaine Cemetery (4947 West Florissant Avenue, 314381-0750) this summer, but it’s definitely the one that you won’t want to miss. This architecture-centered tour of the verdant cemetery, held on Thursday, May 11, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., will surely be a highlight of your week as the guides on hand tell you all about the history of the gorgeous mausoleums on site and a bit about the people who built them. In addition to learning about St. Louis history, you’ll be provided with an adult beverage, and it all only costs $15 per ticket. Visit bellefontainecemetery.org for more information.

Salvation Circa ’73

If you have always wondered what the New Testament would look like if it had been heavily revised in the 1970s and performed by a bunch of hippies, look no further than Jesus Christ Superstar, the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice banger that tells the story of Jesus’ crucifixion in song. This icon of the stage came out in 1973 and is celebrating its 50th anniversary at the Fabulous Fox (527 North Grand Boulevard, 314534-1111) with a production the theater says will be “mesmerizing.” We’re not sure anything can top the movie, wherein a bunch of hippies got off of a school bus in

their bell-bottoms and performed the whole thing in the desert, but we know we’d like to see them try. Catch the show now through May 21. Showtimes vary, and tickets are $25 to $100; pick them up at fabulousfox.com.

FRIDAY 05/12 Art from the Heart

The most important kick-off event of the summer is finally upon us. Happening every year on Mother’s Day weekend at Laumeier Sculpture Park (12580 Rott Road, Sunset Hills; 314-615-5278), the Laumeier Annual Art Fair is in its 36th year of giving you something to do with your mom that makes you appear thoughtful. It’s also one of the best times all year to stock up on quality art for every area of your home. The fair hosts up to 150 artists from all across the United States and in addition to providing awesome shopping opportunities, it’s also just a large party with live music and food and beverage vendors. Tickets are $10 per person, and it will even have family friendly activities on site, so your kids can have as much fun as you’re having, too. Visit laumeiersculpturepark.org/artfair for more information.

Eckert’s is good for more than just apple picking. | VIA FLICKR / MITCH BENNETT

Laumeier’s art fair is not to be missed. | COURTESY LAUMEIER SCULPTURE PARK

Let’s Talk About Sex

Ah, sex. That thing that almost everyone is always trying to have, but no one wants to talk about — not in any way that’s remotely helpful to improving your sex life, anyway. Enter And Then We Had Sex, a podcast about all things sex and relationships. Hosted by married couple Kristen Sivills and J-Rod Tanner (who are also a comedian and a writer, respectively), the popular podcast features uncensored conversations about sex, pleasure and comedy. Both Tanner and Sivills have previously worked with nationally recognized acts such as Anjelah Johnson and Jay Pharoah. Now, they’re bringing the show on the road, with a stop in St. Louis this week at City Winery (3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158; 314-678-5060) for an evening of humor and honest sex talk from a podcast that recently celebrated its 200th epi-

sode. The event is Friday, May 12, from 8 to 11 p.m. and tickets are $30. More info at citywinery.com.

SATURDAY 05/13 Hop ’Til You Drop

With the gorgeous weather we’ve been having of late, it’s a great time to sip a few beers and stroll through one of St. Louis’ best neighborhoods. Luckily, this weekend provides an opportunity to do just that. This Saturday, May 13, six bars and restaurants (and one comic book store) on South Grand Boulevard will team up for the South Grand Brew Hop. Exactly like it sounds, the afternoon is all about hopping from spot to spot on the boulevard and enjoying some beers while you do. Participating locations include Padrino’s Mexican Restaurant, Steve’s Hot Dogs, CBGB, Terror Tacos, Grand Spirits Bottle Company, Pizza Head and Apotheosis Comics and Lounge.

A $30 ticket gets you two 4 Hands

tastings at each location, with free parking available at 3500 Hartford Street. If all that isn’t enough, Steve Ewing from the Urge will perform at Ritz Park, the pocket park between Steve’s and the King & I. The event runs from 2 to 6 p.m.; for tickets and more information visit bit.ly/426WQyd.

No Place Like

(Someone Else’s) Home

If you’ve ever ogled at the opulence of St. Louis’ Compton Heights neighborhood, you’ll definitely want to check out the Compton Heights Home Tour, your chance to get a peek inside the neighborhood’s towering manses. Or maybe you live there and want to check out the interiors of your neighbors’ homes? In that case, this is your shot to satiate your curiosity (though you could save yourself $35 by simply knocking).

This Saturday, May 13, and Sun-

WEEK OF MAY 11-17

day, May 14, 12 historic homes in the Compton Heights and Compton Hill neighborhoods will open their doors for the viewing public. The area holds the former homes of some of St. Louis’ most prominent first families, with houses built for wealthy businessmen in the late 1800s to early 1900s. The home tour starts with the lavish Magic Chef Mansion (3400 Russell Boulevard), where a biergarten will hold light snacks, beer, wine and soft drinks. Attendees can either walk the tour’s 2.7-mile route or ride a shuttle service available at no extra cost. Tickets cost $35, and an extra $10 gets you a Compton Heights koozie or plastic stein. Tickets and more details can be found on eventbrite.com.

WEDNESDAY 05/17

Center Stage

In New York City, Jim Caruso’s Cast Party has earned a reputation as the best open-mic around — in its own words, “a hilariously impromptu open mic/variety show where showbiz superstars and up-and-comers deliver jawdropping musical performances and razzle-dazzle.” The Wall Street Journal called it “the gold standard of open-mic nights,” and even if you don’t trust Rupert Murdoch’s judgment on these things, a 20-year run at Birdland is nothing to sneeze at. Now Caruso is bringing all the excitement to St. Louis (along with longtime pianist Billy Stritch) for the first time. The fun begins at 7 p.m. on both Wednesday, May 17, and Thursday, May 18, at Blue Strawberry (364 North Boyle Avenue, 314256-1745). Tickets to watch the merriment are $20 to $25, but if you’re dying to perform with two show-biz legends and grab that mic for yourself, don’t wait for a real-time opening (there likely won’t be any). Email bluestrawberrystl@gmail.com to make your case that you deserve a performance slot. And you might casually suggest that you’re more than familiar with the venue’s 2022 Best of St. Louis award as the Best Place to See Great Singers — like, in this case, yourself! Details at bluestrawberrystl.com. n

The Compton Heights Home Tour is a chance to peek into your neighbors’ homes. | VIA FLICKR / PAUL SABLEMAN

Making Up the Rules

Cellar House is transformed — and all the more delicious for it — thanks to Chef Chloe Yates

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

Cellar House

5634 Telegraph Road, Oakville; 314-8465100. Tues.-Thurs. 4-9 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 4-10 p.m. (Closed Sunday and Monday).

Chloe Yates will never forget the call that changed her life. It was February 16 last year, and she was at her home in south county looking forward to a quiet evening until a friend called. With a touch of panic in his voice, he told her that the chef at Cellar House — the restaurant where he worked and where Yates was a longtime regular — had just walked out, right before service. Could she come by and help out in the kitchen so they could get through the night? Yates, an up-and-coming chef, wanted to help but wasn’t so confident that she had anything to offer, noting that she did not know their food. Really, she was intimidated, as Cellar House had always been a place that seemed fancy to her, a girl born and raised in a tiny town in the Ozarks. But she pushed through that negative selftalk and went in to help for what she assumed would be a one-night favor.

Now, a little more than a year later, Yates is both executive chef and general manager at Cellar House. She and owner Patrick Ahearn have unlocked the restaurant’s full potential, transforming it from a well-regarded neighborhood restaurant into a place whose bold flavors and warm hospitality reverberate far beyond its south county address. That process has allowed Yates to become the chef she always knew she could be.

In many ways, Yates’ journey to becoming a chef began backwards. As a child and adolescent, she displayed a natural talent for cooking, which she developed

with her grandmother, and she was always looking for a chance to share that know-how with those she loved. By the age of 12, Yates was throwing dinner parties for friends and family, who dubbed her “the Pinup Chef” thanks to her penchant for vintage fash-

ion. Still, she never planned on entering the hospitality field, but instead pursued a career in medicine and continued to cook in her free time, even starting an Instagram account under her Pinup Chef nickname.

In 2017, Yates left her job in the

medical field to move to England for a whirlwind romance. After it fell apart, she found herself back in St. Louis and in need of a job, just as her friend needed kitchen help at her south county restaurant, OSP Tap Haus. Yates did not see the gig as anything more than a short-term arrangement until she could find work back in the medical field, but a phone call from the Food Network would change that. One of the producers of the show Guy’s Grocery Games had stumbled upon her Pinup Chef Instagram account while searching for people to compete on an upcoming vintage-themed episode. The next thing Yates knew, she was on national television cooking a riff on chicken fried steak in front of Guy Fieri, an experience that bolstered her confidence and made her realize that she just might be onto something with this path that seemed to be opening up before her.

Guy’s Grocery Games accelerated Yates’ culinary trajectory. She began working for pre-Mayo Ketchup Mandy Estrella, who was just getting started with a walk-up

Cellar House features appetizers, entrees, desserts and more. | MABEL SUEN

Chloe Yates is the executive chef and general manager at Cellar House. | MABEL SUEN

CELLAR HOUSE

Continued from pg 27

window inside Alpha Brewing. From there, Yates bought the food truck Frankly Sausages, which she ran as the southern-inflected brand Red Dirt Revival until early 2022. By the time she received the call from her friend at Cellar House, it was clear that the truck was the past. After working that first shift on February 16, it was also clear that Cellar House was the future.

Since coming on board at Cellar House, Yates has put her own unique spin on the place while retaining its established wineand whiskey-centric identity. Her friend — the one who called that fateful day and who still works at the restaurant — refers to the new arrangement as “Cellar House, Y’all” in honor of the down-home, country-cooking sensibilities that Yates has added to the menu on dishes like the ahi tuna fried green tomatoes, which pair slices of the piquant green fruit with Thai-vinaigrette-dressed raw tuna. It’s a delightful melding of two distinct genres.

Crispy Brussels sprouts, another appetizer offering, are shockingly flavorful. The beautifully charred vegetables are placed atop creamy polenta that is infused with boursin and a ponzu butter sauce that has a hint of heat and intense umami depth that pairs beautifully with the earthy Brussels. Baked goat cheese, too, is a stunning match of decadent yet tangy cheese with sweet-tart mostarda. A lovely citrus zest perfumes every bite. Without question, though, Yates’ most stunning appetizer is the empanadas, which feature suc-

culent braised beef and lamb barbacoa wrapped in her grandma’s pie crust recipe and deep-fried. Vibrant red pepper chimichurri cuts through the richness, adding mildly sweet flavor to the outrageously juicy meat.

Entrees are equally successful. A seemingly simple spring vegetable pasta is surprisingly complex thanks to verdant pea puree that infuses every bite. Burrata, lemon garlic butter, arugula and pistachios each add richness and complexity to the dish. Salmon, flawlessly seared with a tender

interior and beautiful crust, takes on a wonderful eastern Mediterranean inflection with ingredients like creamy labneh and mint. A bone-in pork chop, kissed with grill char and cooked to a juicy medium, has the comfort of a quintessential country-style dish with its mustard greens and beets, but a touch of chili pistachio pesto adds an unexpected punch.

Yates likes to bring up something her father told her not long ago — that the reason she has been able to succeed is that she doesn’t know the rules. Her entire

culinary career thus far has been all about her being thrust into situations, ready or not, and having to feel her way through them on nothing more than instinct, tenacity and a genuine passion for what she does. In that sense, she is making up her own rules as she goes, while the world — specifically Cellar House — is all the more delicious for it. n

Cellar House Empanadas $15 Spring pasta $23 Bone-in pork chop������������������������������������� $34

Ahi fried green tomatoes are served with kani salad, Thai vinaigrette and smoked rice powder. | MABEL SUEN

The pan seared scallops include avocado butter cream, pork belly and more. | MABEL SUEN

The bread pudding is served with cereal milk and cereal granola. | MABEL SUEN

The Real Deal

With Ben Poremba’s Deli Divine, St. Louis city finally has a real Jewish deli

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

For too long, St. Louis city has been without a real Jewish deli — arguably since Kopperman’s closed in the Central West End in 2016 — since Protzel’s and Kohn’s are in the county.

Don’t even mention Blues City Deli (New Orleans style), Nomad’s (arancini is Italian) or Pickles (no). Though those places are all good, no establishment is a Jewish deli if it’s not a Jewish deli, and by that I mean it sells legit bagels, a variety of smoked fish that most people haven’t heard of, knishes and kuegels, matzo ball soup and an array of Dr. Brown’s sodas.

Finally, that has changed. On May 1, St. Louis restaurateur Ben Poremba (Elaia, Olio, Benevolent King, Bar Moro, and more) opened Deli Divine within the new Delmar DivINe building at 5501 Delmar Boulevard. Pormeba, who is from Israel but has spent much of his career feeding St. Louisans, understands better than most the pressure that comes with trying to fill that Jewish deli niche.

“Really it was born many, many

SHORT ORDERS

years ago,” he says. “Really, I [thought] about it in 2016, and I wanted to do this, and emotionally, I wasn’t ready.”

“There’s so many expectations when we did this because so many people, especially the Jewish community, they know everything,” he adds. “And they’ll let you know. Even now, they’ll come in and [say], ‘Why are you doing this? Why aren’t you doing that?’”

Entering Deli Divine on its third day open at 2 p.m. — an hour before it closed — those expectations, and the excitement surrounding this opening, are readily apparent just based on the number of diners queuing up at the end of the generally accepted lunch hour. They fill the relatively tight space at the front of the restaurant where the line splits between two counters, one for ordering sandwiches and the other for bagels.

A stand holds paper menus for both lines. The bagel menu includes a variety of house creations, including egg salad, whitefish salad, really dilly tuna salad, the Feinschmecker — cream cheese and schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) — herring and more. There are also open-faced bagels served with schmear and a variety of toppings such as smoked fish (sable, sturgeon, lox) and caviar. You can also get herring or simply an order of bagels.

The sandwich menu features deli classics and Poremba creations, such as a variety of pastramis, Reubens and combos and deckers, as in double deckers, where people can combine things to their hearts’ content. This coun-

ter also has the aforementioned selection of Dr. Brown’s sodas; knishes (stuffed rolls, kind of) and kuegels (casseroles of noodles or potatoes); and the soups, with Yiddish names, such as kreplach (dumplings) and kneidlach (matzo balls) as well as mishmosh (both plus noodles).

“One old lady said, ‘This was the best matzo balls I’ve ever had, better than my mom’s,’” Poremba says. “Another lady said, ‘These are horrible. I drove 35 minutes for the worst matzo balls I’ve ever had.’ I’m like, ‘OK. Sorry, you feel that way.’”

Another woman walks by and calls out to Poremba, “Delicious. Thank you!’” (The matzo balls are good, but what really gets me is the deeply chicken-y soup.)

Beyond the ordering counter, Deli Divine opens up into a market that Poremba says literally holds thousands of items. Sourcing that was a big challenge, as was renovating the space, which hadn’t ever been part of anything like a restaurant before.

They built it from scratch, adding the sewer lines, gas lines — everything. “I think we did a good job making it feel like it’s been here for a while,” Poremba says.

The decor adds to that feeling. It includes the sort of delightful clutter often seen in a long-established deli, even a sign reading “famous egg salad” — a bit humorous at a brand-new establishment, even if it might be referencing Olio’s beloved egg salad.

Over the windows by a few small tables in the market space are a series of drawings by Poremba’s son

of the characters from Among Us, an online video game. “It’s the life of his mind,” Poremba says.

Black and white photos by Joseph Zimbrolt, a family friend and a prolific photographer, adorn another wall. After he passed away, Poremba acquired a few boxes of Zimbrolt’s work, which Poremba rediscovered as he was opening Deli Divine. He notes that there’s a portrait of Zimbrolt at the front of the restaurant.

That all goes to show how personal this all is for Poremba. “This is so close to my heart. My grandparents are from that part of the world,” he says, referencing the European and eastern European roots of deli fare. “My father was born in Germany, and the story’s very personal.”

The inherent heart of this project fits well with its location in Maxine Clark’s Delmar DivINe, a building intended to be an incubator for nonprofit organizations that hope to better the lives of the people of St. Louis. Poremba thought about all that, hoping that Deli Divine would help draw individuals to a space north of Delmar, where they might not go normally.

He imagined people wondering if it was safe and if there was parking. But then they’d get in their cars and head over.

“You walk in here,” he says. “It’s Friday. It’s colorful, and there’s music. It smells like grandma’s kitchen. And so the experience started before you even showed up.” n

The deli is open 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and the market from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday through Friday.

Ben Poremba (right) with his wife, Angela. | JESSICA ROGEN

The deli opens up into a market. | JESSICA ROGEN

Through Rosé-Colored Glasses

Rosé by Peno aims to be the ultimate Lafayette neighborhood wine bar

Written by THOMAS CRONE

Pepe Kehm has enjoyed a long and successful career in the St. Louis service industry, be it as a chef, an owner, an operator, a consultant or some combination of all four. Trying to unknot that personal history would take the entirety of this article’s word count and then some. But even sitting down with the man for a halfhour’s conversation relating to his newest project, Rosé by Peno (1463 South 18th Street, 314-4058500, rosestl.com), you can start to connect the dots through his frequent references to great St. Louis destination bars and restaurants of the past and present.

The conversation, in this case, was specifically centered on Rosé by Peno, which came into being earlier this spring. We talked about how this spot’s menu and design were influenced by his Clayton restaurant, Peno. How he’s brought in chefs from different stops along the way, including heavy hitters like Executive Chef John Komotos. How he’s still jazzed about the challenges of launching (then rebranding) a brand-new place.

With refreshing candor, Kehm talks about the things that pull at him when developing a potential new concept, and his role as a creative center to it all.

“The creativity part, the ego, it gets to everyone,” says Kehm of himself and his restaurateur peers. “To be part of something community-minded, to have something that allows other people to make money, those are things that drive me. We’re not here making millions of dollars through our little restaurants. We create productions, every night, that’s what we do. We produce this all night. The community feel, the ambiance, the people make up the whole part. The food can almost be the third or fourth most important thing.

The interaction with our guests — and we don’t even call it ‘service’ here — is the first.”

Transitioning out of what he’s calling the lengthy soft open phase of his Lafayette Square concept, Kehm feels that springtime is going to bring out a new wave of interested diners and drinkers, with a small, front patio being augmented by a much larger, heavily planted, year-round side patio.

“Within the next month,” he figures, the full concept “will

Continued on pg 32

Rosé by Peno serves food as well as wines. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

Rosé by Peno is now open in Lafayette Square. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

Pepe Kehm is the owner of the recently opened Rosé by Peno. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

Few things can get a person out of bed on a weekend morning. The pure joy of a steaming hot biscuit gilded with butter and a bit of fresh-made jam is one. While we can’t guarantee they’ll get us out of our jammies very early, these are the ones that will get us out of bed before noon.

Honey Bee’s Biscuits + Good Eats

Michael Shadwick has been passionate about breakfast ever since he was a three-year-old attempting to make food for his mom. Together with his wife Merdith, he’s translated that longstanding love for daytime fare into the delightful Honey Bee’s Biscuits + Good Eats, whose Kirkwood storefront boasts outstanding, honey-glazed masterpieces.

Parker’s Table

Every Saturday morning at Parker’s Table, you can find what might be the best biscuits ever. These laminated wonders, served with whipped honey butter and fresh preserves, are like a cross between a croissant and a scone. They sell out fast, so make sure to get there early.

Russell’s on Macklind

Served during brunch at his restaurant, Russell’s on Macklind, these mammoth beauties have the perfect shortbread-like crust that yields to a pillow-soft interior. That they are accompanied by wonderful blackberry preserves only sweetens the deal.

The Clover and the Bee

Of the innumerable reasons to love this Webster Groves cafe, the biscuit is one of the Clover and the Bee’s standouts. Square and almost scone-like on the outside, it’s everything you want in the form.

Clara B’s Kitchen Table

Since its days as a food truck, Clara B’s Kitchen Table has been drawing crowds for its outstanding biscuits. Square shaped and baked until they take on a subtle golden hue, the biscuits have a flaky exterior that yields to a fluffy, cloud-like middle.

ROSÉ BY PENO

Continued from pg 30

manifest itself.”

The building that houses Rosé by Peno was, of all things, an early outpost of Stray Rescue. Over time, the space opened up for a totally new purpose, and all-around St. Louis champion Michael Powers began touting the raw space’s potential, while also sensing that the room could become a permanent reflection of his Rosé Day festival and affiliated 501(c)3 dedicated to a “mission of raising awareness for organizations improving quality of life in the St. Louis region.” The resulting partnership of industry vets with the energetic Powers birthed Hello Rosé, a pizza and wine bar that eventually saw its ownership team, name and approach retooled.

What obviously remains is the “rosé.” And plenty of rosés are onhand at Rosé by Peno, as well as whites, reds and bubbles. One of the primary design elements of the bar, in fact, is a large, cooling display case, with wines visible behind glass in a functional unit that also showcases the range of offerings. The menu has settled in at around 24 wines available by the glass, via 5-ounce and 2.5-ounce pours served from that temperature- and pour-controlled storage system.

It’s obvious (even when visiting prior to service) that this will be a place that rises or falls with

[FOOD NEWS]

$5 Tacos

Halfway to Taco Week features food and drink specials at area restaurants

Written by ROSALIND EARLY

Taco aficionados know that St. Louis Taco Week happens in the fall. In fact, this year it will be October 9 to 15. So if you do the math, we’re halfway to Taco Week, which deserves its own mini-celebration. So this week, through Friday, May 12, St. Louis Taco Week and el Jimador Tequila are sponsoring drink specials and $5 taco deals at participating restaurants.

An extra week of taco deals is almost too delicious to be true, but this Halfway to Taco Week will also help prolong last weekend’s Cinco de Mayo celebrations. Why should tacos and margs be relegat-

the buy-in of the neighbors, who might come in for a glass of wine, staying for a second round and a small plate, or two.

As mentioned, Kehm and his “pirate’s crew” are working to establish the long-term potential of this space. Figuring that the pandemic has caused both bars and restaurants to aim toward earlier service, Kehm is still dialing in the best hours while developing a set brunch menu and tweaking the dinner service, which currently features a menu that says it “intertwine(s) the soulful flavors of Calabria, Italy, with the delicate and attentive techniques of Marseille, France.”

“I think that we’re getting away

from what I do at Peno,” Kehm says, “where it’s more of a sit-down, upscale service. There, we’re teaching people about what we are. Here, I think our food will be as good as anyone’s, anywhere. We’ll just present that in a subtle way, having fun with it. Food’s gotten to where it’s selling hot dogs over here and winning James Beards over there. We’re in the middle.”

With “rosé” remaining in the retooled name, Rosé by Peno remains a wine bar at heart, one that Kehm says will focus on all the senses, all the time.

“When people don’t know why they’re having a good time,” Kehm says, “that’s when you know that the whole experience is working.”n

ed to just one day?

As with all Taco Weeks, there is an app to help you navigate the taco deals. You can download it for iPhone or Android. The app will map each of the participating restaurants for you and tell you what drink and taco specials each has. Get deals at Alpha Brewing Company,

Beer Sauce, the Blue Duck, Bob’s DriveIn, Cantina Laredo, Duke’s in Soulard, Mezcaleria Las Chupacabras, Sunny’s Cantina, Taco Drip, El Burro Loco, Le Tejana and Terror Tacos.

Whenever you go to a restaurant, check-in and see how many taco deals you can snag. n

CHERYL BAEHR’S BISCUIT PICKS

Halfway to Taco Week is keeping Cindo de Mayo going this week. | HAILEY BOLLINGER

The wine bar’s menu melds Calabria, Italy, with Marseille, France. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

Subtle Spice, FTW

New Sweet Heat Imo’s pizza is available for a limited time this spring

Written by MONICA OBRADOVIC

You’d think it’d be impossible to improve something that’s already perfect. But Imo’s found a way. That praise may be controversial to some. We can see the hate comments already: St. Louis-style pizza ... perfect? I need to have a word with Ray. Well, Ray hasn’t been the publisher in years, and we’re a staff of mostly homegrown St. Louisans, and we will defend St. Louisstyle pizza at all costs.

But Imo’s new Sweet Heat pizza doesn’t need much defending. It’s objectively good.

The new pie substitutes Imo’s traditional sauce for a sweet and tangy alternative. Toppings include chicken, red onion, ba-

con and, of course, provel cheese.

The sweetness of the red onions, the smokiness of the bacon and the salty creaminess of the provel culminate in a perfect balance of fire and flavor with the sweet and tangy sauce.

On the end pieces with crust, the sweet and tangy sauce is caramelized. Just the smallest amount of heat lingers after each bite.

Imo’s will offer the Sweet Heat pizza for a limited time this spring through a variety of deal options. Square Deal rewards members get $2 off a large or extra-large Sweet Heat throughout May. n

OPENINGS & CLOSINGS

BY JESSICA ROGEN

OPENINGS

Ben & Jerry’s (reopened), University City

BerryBox Superfood Bar

(inside TruFusion STL), Clayton

Cafe Ciao, Central West End

Chillax Taps & Co., St. Peters

Clara B’s Kitchen Table, Belleville, Illinois

Da Picky Vegan (inside West County Center), Des Peres

Doña Gloria, Carondelet

GastroPit, Southwest Garden

Grand Sammies & Sides (inside Grand Spirits Bottle Shop), Tower Grove East

Highway 61 North Bar & Grill, O’Fallon

Lefty’s Bagels, Chesterfield

Liliana’s Italian Kitchen, Cottleville

Locoz Tacoz, Maplewood

Lulu’s Local Eatery (reopened to dining), Tower Grove South

Maryland House by Brennan’s, Central West End

Mississippi Culture, Staunton, Illinois

New Society (inside Grand Spirits Bottle Shop), Tower Grove East

Pasta House Co., Kirkwood

Prioritized Pastries, Maplewood

Salsa Rosada, Midtown

Tapped Social House, Maplewood

The Wood Shack, Soulard

Tootie’s on Washington Ave., Downtown West

Vittoria, Wildwood

Quarrelsome Coffee, Central West End

CLOSINGS

Three Kings Public House (temporary), University City

Sides from Grand Sammies. | CHERYL BAEHR

This plate wasn’t long for this world. | MONICA OBRADOVIC

REEFERFRONT TIMES 35

Is Marijuana a Racist Word?

Chicana journalist Rebecca Rivas tries to find out the origins of the contentious word

Written by REBECCA RIVAS

This story originally appeared in the Missouri Independent.

Iwas talking to a cannabis business owner I’ve known for a while and respect. The man, who is white, told me he refused to use the term “marijuana” because it’s racist.

It was one of my first conversations on the cannabis beat, which I’ve been on for a month now. And my mind was bursting with questions.

Should I be offended by the word marijuana??!!

This Chicana journalist has been on a mission to get answers ever since.

Immediately, I turned to Google and realized that he was talking about the numerous accounts saying that in the 1930s, American politicians leading the charge of prohibition popularized the term “marijuana” in the U.S. to paint the drug as a “Mexican vice” and to have an excuse to persecute Mexican immigrants.

Yet now, after talking to scholars, lawmakers, fellow Latino journalists and even my parents, I’ve learned that — yes — race is involved, but not in the way I expected.

First, I spoke with Isaac Campos, a professor of Latin American history at the University of Cincinnati and author of Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs.

About a month ago, Campos published findings online of his long study on the history of cannabis terminology, and it’s compelling work.

Bottom line: He said the claim that politicians intentionally pop-

ularized the term during prohibition is false — because the word was being used decades before then in the United States.

And in his view, people shouldn’t have a problem using “marijuana.” In fact, erasing the word brings its own problems.

The first reference to the intoxicant “marihuana” was found in 1842 in Mexican newspapers, and then the term made its way to the United States in the 1890s.

After looking through thousands of American newspaper articles between 1910 and 1919, Campos found that “hashish” was by far the most common word used for intoxicant cannabis during that time — and “marihuana” came second.

Here’s the thing: Throughout the world, people were getting high off cannabis largely through hashish, by putting a lump in their mouths or smoking it in a pipe.

Americans began using the word “marihuana” to describe the method found in Mexico — smoking it through cigarettes — which had much milder and more controllable effects, Campos said.

“That’s why the word sticks,” Campos said, “because the word was associated with this particular way of taking the drug that came from Mexico.”

He compares using “marijuana” to the word “salsa.” Rather than just saying “sauce,” it’s really specific to the way Mexicans make sauce for tacos and other things.

The myth, he said, that hardly any Americans had heard of the word before “an aggrieved William Randolph Hearst decided to

pound the term into the American lexicon … to facilitate its demonization” was first introduced by marijuana-reform activist Jack Herer in the 1980s.

Was there racism against Mexicans? Absolutely, he said.

“But there is not one piece of evidence that suggests that word was used purposely by anybody to stain cannabis,” Campos said. “There was absolutely no need for it. It was already associated with the more foreign-sounding word ‘hashish.’”

The idea that it was “racialized” became another argument from activists to push to overturn prohibition, he said.

“The fact that those arguments worked out, I think that’s great,” he said, noting that the laws disproportionately impacted communities of color as well as Mexico. “But I’m a professional historian, so my job is to try to set the record straight.”

Herer’s influence can still be seen today. Last year the state of Washington banned using the term “marijuana” in state statute, and Virginia and Maine introduced legislation to do the same.

After talking with Campos, I found two resolutions by the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators passed in 2017 and 2021, arguing the term was racist and should be replaced by “cannabis” in statute.

Interestingly, the caucus cited a study by Dale Gieringer, director of California Norml, on cannabis prohibition in California to justify their statements.

However, that paper actually corroborates what Campos says:

That marijuana got swept up in the movement to ban opium, which some companies were adding to medicines without people’s knowledge. And many of the northern states that began the marijuana bans didn’t have Mexican immigrants yet.

“Yet even without the Mexicans, the Board would likely have proceeded to outlaw Indian hemp anyway, just like Massachusetts, Maine, Indiana, and Wyoming,” Gieringer wrote.

I reached out to Gieringer, and he told me in an email: “There is nothing racist about the word marijuana/huana. It is the proper term for smoked cannabis buds and leaf. Our organization, Norml, is proud to represent marijuana and cannabis users of all sorts.”

I had a great conversation with New Mexico Senator Antonio Maestas, D-Bernalillo County, who chairs the Hispanic caucus’ law and criminal justice committee.

He didn’t have a hand in writing the resolutions, but he took the lead on the 2007 legislation that legalized medical marijuana in New Mexico.

He was surprised the caucus called the word racist and isn’t personally offended by it. This claim never came up in his many years advocating for decriminalization in New Mexico, he said, but he believes it’s “better messaging.”

“The word cannabis kind of has a plant connotation,” he said. “The word marijuana kind of has an illegal connotation. It’s in our interest to use the word cannabis exclusively when dealing with cannabis policy.”

I told him about another academic study I read on how successful campaigns for marijuana legalization — in Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon — heavily relied on “white individualism,” meaning the face and focus of their campaigns were responsible, middle-class white people.

Maestas said it makes sense because when they were pushing legalization in New Mexico, they were targeting moderates and “rural conservative Chicanos.”

“If you’re trying to go mainstream and sell a product, you market to the average-Joe white person,” he said.

Using Mexican-sounding words probably doesn’t fit into that strategy. n

Some say that marijuana is a racist word targeting Mexicans. | VIA FLICKR/ELSA OLOFSSON

MUSIC 37

Music Memoriam

With Debbstock, Rock Paper Podcast’s Shane Presley honors his late mother’s influence

Written by STEVE LEFTRIDGE

Shane Presley is a testament to sticking with a passion project.

A lifelong music fanatic and hometown loyalist, Presley is the St. Louis music scene’s best buddy. The founder and amiable host of Rock Paper Podcast, Presley has crossed the nine-year and 1,000-episode marks of a show that features interviews and live performances with a dizzying range of St. Louis musicians.

The podcast has never been a big moneymaker, but Rock Paper Podcast is his labor of love.

“I have gotten to meet a lot of really cool people, who are now friends, and help get the word out about St. Louis music and have had a really killer time doing it,” Presley says.

The visibility of the podcast has also allowed Presley to stage Debbstock, a multi-artist benefit concert in honor of his mother, Debbie Mannahan, who passed away in 2019 from brain cancer. Debbstock, now in its third incarnation, will take place at Old Rock House on the afternoon of Sunday, May 14.

That Presley has decided to honor his mother in this way is especially poignant because it was her influence that engendered his lifelong love of music. He remembers his parents playing artists like BB King, Eric Clapton and Bo Diddley around the house and in the car.

They also encouraged him as he began his first forays into the music scene life as a student at Timberline High School in Wentzville, where he still lives with his wife, Stacie. He’d begun by frequenting clubs like Pop’s in Sauget to watch his friends play on the local mod-

ern rock scene. To help promote those bands, Presley started his own online blog, writing album and concert reviews, his first taste of music journalism.

Around the same time, Presley started posting to Facebook a daily list of the area’s live music offerings, a service he has kept up for more than a decade.

“I started out with maybe three or four shows a night that I knew of, and now on a Friday or Saturday, I’ll typically have 50 or 60 shows on the list,” he says. Legions of St. Louis music fans now count on these lists every night as an essential one-stop-shop for local concert options.

Eventually, Presley’s online music presence led to podcasting.

“Podcasting had just started to become a thing,” Presley says. “It made sense to move into an audio format because I wanted people to hear the music.”

Rock Paper Podcast was born in May 2014, and the show was unique for its time. “The first few episodes were with friends from high school,” Presley says. “But by episode five, we had Steve Ewing [from the Urge] on, so that solidified what we were doing.”

Shane, with his distinctive look — glasses, beard, no mustache — became a familiar sight at music venues and comedy clubs, where he’d introduce himself to musicians, scoring interviews and increasing his audience by “networking like crazy.” He also had to learn the technical aspects of podcasting on the fly, gradually upgrading his gear as he recorded as many as three or four new episodes each week.

In 2017, Presley started promot-

ing singer-songwriter showcases once a month at Naked Vine in Chesterfield, sets that Presley would record and make available on Rock Paper Podcast and YouTube, which also helped spread the word.

“[The growth] was really just word of mouth,” Presley says. “It grew pretty quick because we were out there supporting local music, and there weren’t a lot of opportunities for local artists to do interviews. So for some of them, Rock Paper Podcast was their very first interview, which was exciting for me.”

Presley prefers to conduct interviews in person, which has taken him backstage at clubs, to band practices, to musicians’ homes and mall food courts. These days, he does not have to work as hard to book guests and is typically flooded with emails from people hoping to be on the show.

Despite the number of requests, Presley isn’t shy about having repeat appearances, and says that drummer Drew Lance (One Way Traffic, Hillary Fitz Band) currently holds the record.

But the one guest he wishes he could have on the show more? His mom.

“She was such a big part of me getting into music,” he says. “She took me to my very first concert in 1997 — Matchbox 20 at Enterprise Center — and after she retired in 2016, we started going to concerts all the time together. Music was a big part of our lives. She really loved going to see my friends play, so she became a fan and friend of all of them, too.”

Although Mannahan sat in on one podcast, an interview with

one of her favorite musicians, Al Holliday, Presley says, “One of my regrets is that I wish I had recorded more of my conversations with my mother.”

In mid-2019, she was diagnosed with stage IV glioblastoma brain cancer. After surgery and rounds of treatment, the aggressive cancer returned, leaving her mostly nonverbal by late summer.

“It was ruthless, man,” Presley says. “It was just brutal watching this eat her up. But eventually I figured, if this was it and things are coming to an end, then let’s throw one last big ol’ party.”

Knowing how much Mannahan loved music, Presley organized a benefit show — the first Debbstock — at Old Rock House in September 2019 featuring some of her favorite singers, including Holliday, Big Mike Aguirre, Jackson Stokes and Joe Bizelli. “I didn’t know if she would even make it to the show, but she did, and we filled the whole room full of love,” Presley says.

Debbie Mannahan died seven weeks later on December 3, 2019.

After the pandemic restrictions eased, a second Debbstock was held in her memory in November 2021, featuring Nick Gusman, One Way Traffic and the Screechin’ Halts, with the money raised going to the Foundation for BarnesJewish Hospital.

This year, Presley decided to move the event to May — Brain Cancer Awareness month — and throw the party on Mother’s Day. With the friendly enthusiasm he brings to the podcast, Shane sings the praises of this year’s lineup — featuring sets by Russo & Co, Emily Wallace, Ryan Cheney and comedian Meredith Hopping — and the unique talent each of the artists will bring to the stage.

With Debbstock, Presley not only aims to remember his mom but her influence, which has set him on the path of promoting the endless list of St. Louis musicians who deserve attention.

“I’m just as committed as ever to raising awareness of St. Louis music,” he says. “We have something really special here, and I want people to know about it.” n

Debbstock begins at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 14, at the Old Rock House (1200 South Seventh Street, 314-588-0505, oldrockhouse.com). Tickets are $15 or $20 at the door.

Shane Presley is the host of Rock Paper Podcast. | JAMES JACKSON

The Final Huzzah

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is a fitting end to the series — chaotic, annoying and somehow still kind of fun

Written by CRAIG D. LINDSEY

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

It seems like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was made to be the final installment of this cosmic-superhero trilogy — even if Marvel Studios doesn’t want to wrap up this section of the Marvel Cinematic Universe just yet.

Several of the key players have already moved the hell on. Dave Bautista announced months ago that he was done playing chiseled dumbass Drax the Destroyer. Zoe Saldana recently admitted that her days as green warrior Gamora are over.

And, of course, there’s writerdirector James Gunn. After churning out an R-rated reboot of The Suicide Squad and the gleefully vulgar HBO Max spin-off show Peacemaker (made during the time he was briefly canceled for old, off-color tweets and dismissed by Disney), he’s now co-chairman/ co-CEO of DC Films, where he’s been planning to reboot the DC Extended Universe — and piss off fans who are still loyal to the Snyderverse.

If this is the last hurrah, the series is going out in typical fashion, with this mostly uncouth crew being annoying and dysfunctional as hell — until it’s time to kick ass in the most rocking way possible. They spring into action to save dying friend Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper, sounding as always like an even more irritated George Constanza), after some shiny, unkillable being (a buff but goofy Will Poulter) plows through their headquarters and leaves

Rocket clinging to life.

This being was dispatched by the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), a power-mad geneticist and the main Big Bad of this installment. He wants to wipe out Rocket, one of the Evolutionary’s former guinea pigs who became smarter than intended.

This Guardians volume once again shows off Gunn’s knack for creating kitschy, smart-ass chaos (something Taika Waititi shamelessly lifted for the inferior Thor sequels he directed). Our heroes continue to be bickering, badass bottom dwellers you’d love to have on your side — just as long as they don’t stick around too long.

Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) is still a Zune-listening dunce, carrying a torch for the Gamora he once knew. (Since that Gamora died in Avengers: Infinity War, we’re stuck with an alternate post-Snap Gamora, who’s a cynical pirate rolling with Sylvester Stallone’s space ravagers.) Gamora’s sis Nebula (Karen Gillan) is even more surly now that she’s the most competent Guardian of the pack, mostly chewing out Drax and the mind-altering Mantis (Pom Klementieff) for their screwball antics. And somehow, they can all understand Groot (Vin Diesel) now. So consider this the second summer blockbuster sequel coming out this month starring Diesel and an unlikely “family” fighting baddies.

Your endurance may get tested

whenever the Guardians are on screen together. All through their journey, they bicker, yap and make the usual amount of dunderheaded decisions. (I’m shocked no one says they’re gonna turn this spaceship around unless they keep quiet.)

For more soothing moments, there are flashback sequences where a comatose Rocket remembers all the good times he had with other caged, talking creatures who were mutated by the Evolutionary, who’s basically a screeching sadist who wants to create a perfect civilization. (I gotta say, I’m not digging this new direction the MCU is taking of giving us unsympathetic villains of color who are fucking insane.)

The Guardians even visit his first draft, Counter-Earth, which is just like our messed-up Earth — but the people are half-animal.

As with most MCU productions, you gotta take the good with the bad. The Guardians films have always been relentlessly riotous trips to Cosmic Crazy Town, managing to mix juvenile frat humor with ultra-CGIed action sequences and moments of surprisingly sincere emotion. (This volume also exhibits a theme of respecting/ protecting all creatures great and small.)

Just like with the last one, Gunn doesn’t scale back the verbal/ visual mayhem. He goes a bit overboard in every department: comedy, action, pathos. Even the

needle drops are in overwhelming abundance this time around. (The “Awesome Mix” soundtrack for this one will definitely sound like another Now That’s What I Call Music comp.)

At least there’s an awe-inspiring, allegedly one-take shot of the Guardians obliterating goons to the sounds of the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” — which, along with The Super Mario Bros. Movie , makes this the second Chris Pratt movie this year to feature this song. (I wouldn’t be surprised if this is Gunn’s homage to the one-take beatdown from Oldboy .)

And for a superhero series that’s always given off a grungy, grimey vibe, I was pleased that I could fully see a lot of it. Gunn and cinematographer Henry Braham made sure several sequences looked shiny and colorful on-screen, like the trip the gang takes to the Evolutionary’s headquarters, a station resembling intestines that looks like Gunn’s tribute to David Cronenberg.

As noisy and flawed as it is, the third Guardians is an acceptable, consistently whacked-out swan song. Sure, the post-credits sequence indicates that we’ll definitely see a Guardian in another MCU installment sometime down the line. But even in this era of unstoppable IP, at least this Guardians timeline knows when it’s time to pack up and leave not so quietly. n

Written and directed by James Gunn. Starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Chukwudi Iwuji and Will Poulter. Now showing at area theaters.

Guardians Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Chris Pratt and Karen Gillian are back — and predictably bickering. | JESSICA MIGLIO © MARVEL 2023

STAGE

Must See

The Black Rep’s outstanding musical revue, Eubie!, will lift your spirits

Written by TINA FARMER

Eubie!

The Black Rep has a reputation for staging evocative dramas and comedies that reflect the experience of being Black in the United States from both historic and contemporary lenses. When the company chooses to stage a musical revue, it applies the same high standards. This attention to detail, combined with brilliantly expressed affection, takes Eubie! to another level of entertainment — a musical revue that captivates and elevates the form.

The vibrant show is a celebration of Eubie Blake, one of the most important composers of the golden age of jazz and arguably the leading Black American musical theater artist of his era. His songs were popularized on the stage and, increasingly, to audiences across the country via radio. Blake’s style is sharp, crisp and expressively energetic. The Black Rep captures the composer’s inventive musicality and the optimistic spirit of the Gilded Age in every detail — even the Blues numbers have a hopeful lilt.

Tap choreographer Robert Crenshaw is part of a deep and talented ensemble that also features Coda Boyce, DeAnté Bryant, Serdalyer Darden, Evann De-Bose, Samantha Madison, Venezia Manuel, Carvas Pickens, Tamara PiLar, J’Kobe Wallace, and understudy Taijah Silas. Always connected and engaged, the ensemble numbers are crisp and entrancing.

“Shuffle Along,” “In Honeysuckle Time,” “I’m Just Simply Full of

Jazz,” “High Steppin’ Days” and “Finale” capture the breathtaking elements of a big Broadway show on a more intimate stage. The small group numbers “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” “Baltimore Buzz” and “If You’ve Never Been Vamped by a Brownskin, You’ve Never Been Vamped at All,” are full of physical comedy and good

Painfully Poignant

The Midnight Company’s The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey is filled with compassion

Written by TINA FARMER

The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey

Written by Celeste Lecesne. Directed by Alicen Moser. Presented by the Midnight Company at the Kranzberg Black Box Theatre through Saturday, May 20. Showtimes vary. Tickets are $20 to $25.

Stereotypes lead to assumptions and conclusions that may or may not be true and can make people feel demeaned, excluded and not seen. Sometimes stereotypes lead people to ostracize or hurt others, and sometimes they can be used to remind us all why they are so harmful. Such is the case with Celeste Lecesne’s one-act, oneperson play The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey. Joe Hanrahan plays all

humor, while “Daddy,” “Low Down Blues” and “Memories of You” offer more personal reflections and a touch of torch-song longing.

Under the direction of Ron Himes, the show moves at a fast pace with foxtrot-like precision. Well-integrated set changes and smart, focused moments balancing the bigger numbers. Choreog-

the characters in the short, precisely developed script, now on stage at the Kranzberg Black Box Theatre.

A grizzled old detective introduces us to Leonard, a teenager who has gone missing. He found out about him when Helen, a comely hairdresser, and her daughter, Phoebe, came to the police station to file a report. Leonard wasn’t Helen’s son, but she had welcomed him into her home. Phoebe wasn’t as enthusiastic about Leonard joining the family, though we learn that she protected him like a big sister.

Leonard was flamboyant and unabashedly comfortable in his skin, a trait some people in the tiny, insular community couldn’t appreciate. Discomfort like that happens all the time, but it should never be a reason to take somebody’s life. That’s the central theme of the short play, and Hanrahan adroitly delivers that message time and again through clever, if familiar, characterizations coupled with a sense of authentic connection with the material.

Hanrahan’s shifting characters remain grounded in the trappings and failings of humanity. At their worst, they make us squirm in our seats for our own transgressions. At their best, they give us hope for a world where everyone is seen and accepted no matter how they express them-

raphy by Vivian Watt and Heather Beal, with Crenshaw, and musical direction by Joe Dreyer keep the tone light and uplifting, drawing attention to the incredible dancing without distracting from Blake’s catchy-yet-complex compositions. Mark W. Vital adds sparkle and period detail through gorgeous costume design, and Tim Jones’s set design adds the final touch to take us back to Blake’s heyday.

The vocals are quite impressive, both in range and execution. Blake’s use of layered harmonies and dissonance require constant attention, and there’s not an off note all night. Dance and tap are equally important to the singing in this show and with good reason. Beyond pure enjoyment, dance is an essential part of musical theater that Blake intimately understood. The big numbers reflect the era’s many popular styles, and the tap routines are flawless and enthusiastic. With a variety of styles that perfectly capture the golden age of jazz and phenomenal dance numbers, Eubie! is the complete musical revue package and a must-see show! n

selves. His detective is gruff, grizzled and comfortable with terms and ways of describing people that come from a different generation. Initially, the detective is quick to warm to Helen and determined to find closure for her. As he learns more about Leonard, he begins to care about and feel compassion for the kid.

Lecesne’s emotionally evocative script uses derogatory language and broad stereotypes to drive home the pain and very real loss that intolerance enables. Frankly, the stereotypes in the script sometimes threaten to drown out the important message. Good direction from Moser ensures the language comes across as dated instead of the thoughtless prejudice it reflects.

Though neither the audience nor the narrator has ever met Leonard Pelkey, the Midnight Company honors his memory and everyone else who has walked in his rainbow-colored shoes. The show is uncomfortable at times, and the playwright’s point is almost obfuscated by the script’s construct, but it is effective, evocative theater. That said, The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey is a little repetitive and somewhat uninspiring. There’s nothing new or groundbreaking here, though theatergoers looking for post-show conversation will find plenty to discuss.

Written by Eubie Blake, Andy Razaf, Noble Sissle and Julianne Boyd. Directed by Ron Himes. Presented by the Black Rep at the Edison Theatre at Washington University through Sunday, May 21. Showtimes vary. Tickets are $15 to $50.

Eubie! celebrates the work of composer Eubie Blake. | PHILLIP HAMER

OUT EVERY NIGHT

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 11

ANDY COCO’S NOLA FUNK AND R&B REVUE: 9:30 p.m., $12. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

DIGABLE PLANETS: 8 p.m., $40. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

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

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

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

SAMANTHA PAULY: 7:30 p.m., $30. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

TOMBERLIN: w/ Trace Mountains 8 p.m., $16. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

FRIDAY 12

BLUE SPARKS: 7 p.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

THE BOUNCING SOULS: 7 p.m., $30. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

CLUTCH: 8 p.m., $37.50-$59.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

DANA STERLING: w/ Indisposed, Iron Linings, The Vast 7:30 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

GRAHAM CURRY & THE MISSOURI FURY: 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

@IAMATEM: 7 p.m., $25. National Blues Museum, 615 Washington Ave., St. Louis.

KYLE KILLGORE: 5 p.m., $10. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.

LUCKY OLD SONS: 8 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

THE PLOT IN YOU: w/ Holding Absence, Thornhill, Banks Arcade 7 p.m., $25. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

RAILHAZER: w/ Blackwell, Mongoose 8 p.m.,

$10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

SKID ROSES: TRIBUTE TO SKID ROW AND GUNS

AND ROSES: 7:30 p.m., $10-$20. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

THE STEEPWATER BAND: 9:30 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

WHITECHAPEL: w/ Archspire, Signs of the Swarm, Entheos 7 p.m., $25. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

SATURDAY 13

2 PEDROS: 8 p.m., $15. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

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

BANDTOGETHER STL 2023 POPS CONCERT: 8 p.m., free. The 560 Music Center, 560 Trinity Ave., University City, 314-421-3600.

BOXCAR: 12:30 p.m., $10. Laumeier Sculpture Park, 12580 Rott Rd, Sunset Hills, 314-615-5278.

THE DAVE STONE TRIO: 10 p.m., free. O’Connell’s Pub, 4652 Shaw Ave., St. Louis, 314-773-6600.

EUGENE & COMPANY: 8 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

THE GASLIGHT SQUARES: 7:30 p.m., free. The

Faeded: A High Fantasy Dance Party and Music Spectacular

8 p.m. Saturday, May 13. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Boulevard. $10. 314-726-6161.

There are drag queens, and then there is Maxi Glamour. St. Louis’ own “Demon Queen of Polka and Baklava” is an artistic force known for pushing things to the limit, whether that’s their bespoke costumery, otherworldly makeup artistry or even just the very concept of what a drag performance can be. Similarly, there are dance parties, and then there is Faeded. Billed as a “costumed high fantasy dance party and music spectacular that creates mythological play places for femmes, queers and people of color,” the everything-to-eleven event series, presented by Maxi, gathers up some of

Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

GLOW IN THE DARK FLOWERS RECORD RELEASE: w/ Radiator Greys, Furthest 8 p.m., TBA. William A. Kerr Foundation, 21 O’Fallon St., St. Louis, 314-436-3325.

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

MATT F BASLER EP RELEASE SHOW: 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

MAXI GLAMOUR & CUCO PRESENT: FAEDED: w/ Dodgr 8 p.m., $10. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

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

SOPHIE B. HAWKINS: 8 p.m., $28. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

THIS IS FALLING: 7:30 p.m., $10. Blueberry HillThe Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

SUNDAY 14

the most talented names in the music and art worlds and transports them to a faraway land of fantasy and surrealism that just so happens to be located within a St. Louis venue (in this case, at Delmar Hall). This week’s event is a special one, as the series celebrates its one-year anniversary with performances by K Rush, Kristopher Lay, Eric Donte, the Last Artful Dodgr and Maxi themselves. Costumes are practically (but not actually) mandatory — we trust you know better than to show up at Faeded in mere street clothes — and the whole affair is sure to be one for the record books.

MONDAY 15

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

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

PSYCHOSTICK: w/ Bit Brigade 8 p.m., $22. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. SOULARD BLUES BAND: 9 p.m., $8. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

TUESDAY 16

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

ETHAN LEINWAND: 7 p.m., free. Yaqui’s on Cherokee, 2728 Cherokee St, St. Louis, 314-400-7712.

THE LIL SMOKIES: w/ Mimi Naja 8 p.m., $20. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

MIDNIGHT: w/ Spirit Adrift, Spiter 8 p.m., $20. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

MR. WENDELL: 5 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.

RIO ROMEO: 7:30 p.m., $25. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

WEDNESDAY 17

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

JIM CARUSO’S CAST PARTY: 7 p.m., $25. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

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

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

THE ORPHAN THE POET: 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

SAWED OFF: w/ Subversion, Drop the Blade 7 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

SHELDON CLASSICS: CURATED BY ERIN SCHREIBER: 8 p.m., $30. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

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

VOODOO HIGHWAYMEN: 9 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

—Daniel Hill

But Wait, There’s More: Alongside the night’s main performers will be DJ sets by Saylor and Rico Steez, and visual artists Kotasauras Rex, Ann Johnson and Brandon Chavis will be responsible for transforming the venue into a world of fantasy for the evening.

CYBERPLASM: w/ X Harlow, Kong, The Mall 8 p.m., $12. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

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.

ETHAN JONES: 2 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

HEY THANKS!: w/ Bottom Bracket, The Chandelier Swing. Young Animals 7:30 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

LARRY JUNE: 8 p.m., $35. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

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

RICH MCDONOUGH & THE RHYTHM RENEGADES: 3 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

TWEET: 4:30 p.m., $42. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

THIS JUST IN

AEROSMITH: W/ The Black Crowes, Thu., Oct. 26, 7 p.m., $56.95-$496.95. Enterprise Center, 1401 Clark Ave., St. Louis, 314-241-1888.

BILLY PRINE & THE PRINE TIME BAND: W/ Scarlett Egan, Mon., June 5, 7:30 p.m., $35. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

BONE THUGS-N-HARMONY: Sat., Oct. 21, 8 p.m., $40-$99.99. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

THE CALLOUS DAOBOYS: Sun., June 25, 7:45 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

DEAN LEWIS: W/ Sara Kays, Fri., Oct. 6, 8 p.m., $139. The Hawthorn, 2225 Washington Avenue, St. Louis.

DIESEL ISLAND: Fri., June 16, 7:30 p.m., free.

The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

FINN’S MOTEL: Sat., May 27, 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

THE GASLIGHT SQUARES: Sat., June 10, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

GRAHAM CURRY & THE MISSOURI FURY: Sat., June 17, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

Maxi Glamour. | COURTESY PHOTO

[CRITIC’S PICK]

Midnight w/ Spirit Adrift, Spiter

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

With an absolutely disgusting sound that is outmatched only by its lyrics, Cleveland’s Midnight has spent the two decades pummeling the ears of metalheads, punks, speed freaks and degenerates the world over, culminating in the cult act inking a deal with the esteemed Metal Blade Records in 2019. Since then, frontman and one-man-band Athenar, who handles all vocals and instrumentation, has put out two acclaimed full-lengths, with last year’s Let

JON BONHAM & FRIENDS: Sat., July 1, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

JULIA JACKLIN: Thu., July 27, 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

LAMB OF GOD: Mon., Aug. 14, 8 p.m., $49.50$59.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

THE LEGENDS OF HIP HOP: Fri., Oct. 13, 8 p.m.,

$64-$255. Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis, 314-977-5000.

MUSTARD PLUG: W/ Something to Do, Sun., Nov. 12, 8 p.m., $16. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

NEIL SALSICH & FRIENDS: Fri., June 2, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

PINES FEST: W/ the Mighty Pines, Sat., Oct. 14, 3 p.m. The Big Top, 3401 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, (314) 533-0367.

POP’S LOCAL SHOWCASE: Sat., Aug. 19, 7 p.m.,

$8. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

RICK SPRINGFIELD: Tue., Aug. 29, 7:30 p.m., $25-

$125. St. Louis Music Park, 750 Casino Center Dr., Maryland Heights, 314-451-2244.

There Be Witchery serving as proof that his unique mix of punk rock, black metal and speed metal hasn’t lost any of its filth. From the d-beat ripper “Telepathic Nightmare” to the lumbering bruiser “More Torment” to the Motorhead-esque “Szex Witchery,” the album shows definitively that Athenar and Midnight have risen from the sewers underground to the top of the metal scene pack.

Partners in Grime: Though on record it’s all Athenar, he’s joined by some cohorts when performing live. Commandor Vanik and Secret Steel provide additional guitar work and drums, respectively.

—Daniel Hill

RIZZUTO’S BIRTHDAY BASH: Fri., Aug. 18, 7 p.m., $25-$59.50. St. Louis Music Park, 750 Casino Center Dr., Maryland Heights, 314-451-2244.

ROYAL BLISS: Tue., July 11, 8 p.m., $15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

THE SAINT LOUIS CHAMBER CHORUS: DEATH TO

LIFE: Sun., May 28, 3 p.m., $10-$30. St. Margaret of Scotland Church, 3854 Flad Ave., St. Louis, 314-776-0363.

SISTER HAZEL: Sat., Sept. 9, 8 p.m., $15. The Hawthorn, 2225 Washington Avenue, St. Louis.

SKATING POLLY: W/ Bugsy, Jacklenro, Sun., June 25, 8 p.m., $15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

SNEAKERBOXXX: Fri., Aug. 11, 7 p.m., $40-$65. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

TINK & FRIENDS: Sun., June 11, 7:30 p.m. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600.

VOODOO WHO: Fri., July 28, 8 p.m., $20-$25. The Big Top, 3401 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, 314-533-0367.

THE WHIPS: Thu., June 22, 8 p.m., $15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. n

Midnight. | HANNAH VERBEUREN

[CRITIC’S PICK]

Chick Lit

BY DAN SAVAGE

Hey Dan: A lot of studying is being done on pornography and what it does to our brain. My question: Are there any studies being done on erotic writing? “Women’s Romance Literature” is absolutely exploding in the online self-publishing sector, and my wife is an avid consumer. “Spice” is the euphemism they use but wow — romance lit is a hot dish. My wife consumes countless e-books and audiobooks, and there seems to be a huge community of readers like her out there. Erotic lit has been very good for our relationship; we listen to scenes together, and I help bring my wife to orgasm with my hands or tongue. It’s a fun way to be intimate! And listening is definitely less intrusive when we’re “coupling” than watching other people go at it on a screen. Anyway, back to my question: There are lots of studies looking into the effect of porn movies and pornographic images on the brain. But has anyone studied the impact of erotic literature on the brain? It’s got to be the oldest form of titillating art we have. What’s it doing to us?

Lessons In Titillation

“I haven’t come across neurological studies of erotic writing or literature,” says Dr. Kelsy Burke. “That doesn’t really surprise me since the questions scientists ask about sexuality usually reflect broader social and cultural interests — in this case, research on ‘porn’ is almost exclusively about it as a visual medium, not the written word.”

Dr. Burke is a sociologist and the author of The Pornography Wars, a terrific new book about the never-ending culture war over pornography. Suffice it to say, LIT, if Dr. Burke hasn’t run across studies into the kind of dirty stories your wife enjoys reading, those studies don’t exist. And while there are a lot of warring studies that look at the impact of pornographic images — moving and still — on our brains, much of the data being generated is pretty useless.

“There’s a lot more talk about pornography and the brain than there are definitive empirical studies,” says Dr. Burke. “And a lot of the talk stems from groups with a political or religious interest in opposing porn. Academic studies, on the other hand, offer mixed results and no definitive conclusions about how porn impacts the brain.”

So, despite all these warring studies and claims — from opponents and sup-

porters of porn — we simply don’t know if pornographic images and videos are warping our brains.

“Here’s what we do know: Our brains process visual images 60,000 times faster than text,” says Dr. Burke. “One of the better arguments, in my opinion, about the potential harm of internet porn — which is actually not exclusive to porn at all and applies to all video-streaming websites — is that the quick succession of videos and rapid processing of all of those images is what sucks us in, sometimes for longer than we would like.”

We all know people who watch too much TV, play too many video games and spend too much time on TikTok, all media served up on the exact same screens that serve up porn, and all serving up the exact same dopamine hits. But while people express concerns about “screentime” when it comes to Ted Lasso or Minecraft, the combo of sexual pleasure, sexual agency and the potential for sexual exploitation fuels a unique moral panic about the porn we watch. And there’s generally little concern expressed about people who spend “too much time reading,” even if they’re masturbating to what they read.

“And while we can have a huge queue of romance lit on our Kindles,” says Dr. Burke, “we aren’t likely to stay up all night binging one after the other, as we might do with, say, Netflix because our brains will tire from all that textual processing.”

So your wife could be a graduate of the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics speedreading program, but there’s a limit — a much lower limit — to the number of dirty stories she can consume in a single day and/or wank. (Evelyn Wood? Anyone get that reference? Anyone? Bueller?) But the same moral scolds who’ve successfully banned books with LGBT themes and characters, as well as books that delve into wrongs committed against Black people and other people of color (slavery, Jim Crow, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Internment of the Japanese, etc., etc.), are starting to go after romance novels. Books written by Nora Roberts, a popular (and PG) romance novelist, were just pulled from the shelves in a high school in Florida after an activist with the right-wing group Moms for Liberty complained. (You know who was reading Roberts’ books before they got banned? Teachers. You know who’s reading them now? Teenagers.)

“I doubt we’ll see a surge in research on what affect Roberts’ writing has on our brains, not only because banning books is purely political theater,” says Dr. Burke. And we may not see a surge in that kind of research because we ultimately don’t need it. “Neuroscientists al-

ready know that the stories in our heads are hugely important to our sexual pleasure,” says Dr. Burke. “These stories — our thoughts and feelings — can help or hinder our sexual experiences. It sounds like for you and your wife, it’s helping.”

Follow Dr. Burke on Twitter @kelsyburke. Visit Dr. Burke’s website — www. kelsyburke.com — to learn more about her work.

Hey Dan: I’m a 32-year-old gay man living in a large U.S. city. I sometimes hook up with college guys through the apps. I’m always upfront about what I’m looking for, and I try to honor the campsite rule. Occasionally, I see the same person more than once and will take them out for dinner or drinks, where I always pay since I remember being a broke college student. This year, I started hooking up a couple of times a month with a 21-year-old guy. Turns out he’s from a very wealthy family — not household names but super rich. I don’t know exactly how much money he gets from his family, but he let me know money isn’t an issue for him and insists on paying if we go out.

I asked him to alternate who pays, so it doesn’t feel uneven. He also bought me a small gift for my home that cost less than $40. When it’s just dinner or small things, I don’t mind too much. But this summer he’ll be doing an internship in Europe. I’ve always wanted to go to the city where he will be working, and he’s offered to fly me out around my birthday, pay for nice hotels and cover other expenses like meals. If he were my age, I would accept, but it feels wrong somehow due to the age gap. It’s just so much money for someone that young to be spending, but is it OK since he has access to a family fortune? Based on everything I know, he can easily afford it, but would I be wrong to accept? What are the ethical concerns of having a sugar daddy fuckbuddy who’s so young?

Additional context: I’ve been very clear I’m not interested in dating, and he’s expressed the same. We describe each other as friends, we both date and hook up with other people, we’re both on PrEP and I’ve encouraged him to get tested for STIs regularly. I have no connection to his family, I don’t work in the field he’s going into, we don’t use terms like daddy/boy, and he knows I’m financially comfortable, so this gesture seems to be motivated by generosity, not pity.

Spendy Holiday On Wealthy Undergrad’s Pocketbook

His motives could be pure — he could just be generous — or he could be motivated by a desire, possibly subconscious,

to control you. When an extremely wealthy person brings an urchin like you or me into their orbit, SHOWUP, we get a glimpse of a world we could never access on our own. The conscious or subconscious awareness that we could be exiled from this world at any moment might lead us to put up with things we wouldn’t tolerate from someone who wasn’t flying us all over the world and picking up the tab for fancy hotels.

That said, it doesn’t sound like your fuckbuddy is being excessively and/or manipulatively lavish, only appropriately and proportionately generous, and I think you should accept his offer. Pick up a few checks, SHOWUP, and enjoy the ride.

P.S. Don’t marry Connor.

Hey Dan: My sister died last year as a result of breast cancer. I was moved at how, during the last six months of her life, my brother-in-law, niece and nephew bonded in a manner that allowed them to support each other as they faced the daunting task of caring for my sister. My niece has returned to college, while my nephew moved in with his father during my sister’s illness. Last month, I arrived several hours earlier than expected (some miscommunication involved) to house sit; when I let myself in, I learned that my brother-in-law and 27-year-old nephew had been sleeping in the same bed. I think they may even have been naked. When I questioned my brotherin-law privately as to the propriety of this practice, he responded that the intimacy of sharing a bed was facilitating their healing from my sister’s death. I retain some reservations with regard to their sleeping arrangements. Several friends in whom I’ve confided have stated that the matter is none of my business. What do you think I should do?

Keep Exclaiming “Yikes!”

I think you should knock — on front doors, not bedroom doors — when you arrive early, even if you’ve been entrusted with a key.

P.S. I’m so sorry for your loss.

P.P.S. Since your nephew and brotherin-law are both adults, KEY, there isn’t really anything you can do about this. And since grief can be very deeply weird, I think you should take your brother-inlaw’s explanation at face value — and take the advice of your friends — and mind your own business ...

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