Riverfront Times, August 30, 2023

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MONDAY, AUGUST 21. It’s so muggy the air feels like split pea soup. Perfect day to go back to school (not). The terrible heat is pushing people to their limits; city police say they notched three homicides in the past 24 hours, and today a woman is stabbed to death at Goodfellow and Delmar. Beyoncé, however, slays at the Dome — while the hapless Cardinals lose 11-1 in Pittsburgh.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 22. It’s so steamy, schools are canceling sports practice and even recess. Not taking the day off: Mayor Tishaura Jones, who says she’s found a way to ban AR-15s and AK-47s under Missouri law. Unsurprisingly, Attorney General Andrew Bailey disagrees, meaning this one will likely be decided in court. Meanwhile, an early morning hostage situation at the City Justice Center ends with a 73-year-old guard taken to the hospital. A SWAT team retakes control of the jail within minutes of arriving — but much bigger concerns remain about conditions under Commissioner

Previously On

LAST WEEK IN ST. LOUIS

Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah. The jail’s oversight board renews calls for her to be fired, while city officials go quiet.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23. The GOP presidential candidates are debating, and while we have a certain morbid curiosity, who even has cable anymore? We’ll wait for the best putdowns to get repackaged on TikTok Overseas, it looks like Vladimir Putin just killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the oligarch who tried to mount a coup in June — by downing a plane with nine other people on it. Yikes.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 24. The PostDispatch reports everybody’s least fa-

4 QUESTIONS for Cool Down St. Louis fonder Gentry Trotter

Some of us are lucky enough to have a home with working air conditioning to keep us cool during an oppressive heat wave. Others aren’t so lucky. Cool Down St. Louis has been hard at work these last few weeks to respond to the needs of people without a means to escape the heat.

We caught up with Cool Down/Heat Up St. Louis founder Gentry Trotter in the midst of last week’s oppressive heat wave to discuss how it was affecting St. Louis’ most vulnerable — and what can be done about it.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What’s the demand for Cool Down St. Louis’ services been like these last few weeks?

Oy vey! That’s the first thing, oy vey. We’re at a 45 percent increase in demand from the same time last year. Climate change is attributable to this ridiculous, intense, unanticipated weather. And that’s why we have this tremendous amount of demand. It’s just off the chart. We’ve never had this before.

From Cape Girardeau, southern Illinois, way out in eastern Missouri, you name it, we’ve had people all over the area. We cover 44 counties, including the city of St. Louis, so it’s been hectic and terrific and just ungodly.

How do you all manage to keep up with that demand?

We’ve increased our staffing significantly. We doubled our staff, and that has been tremendous for the last month or so because we didn’t anticipate this. We’re making sure that no one is left behind.

We have two priorities. We’re fighting the blitzkrieg here. One is to help the seniors who are physically unable to keep their air, and then for low- to medium-income people, we’re trying to keep them going at the same time and make sure they don’t slip through the cracks.

COVID did not help. It really decimated people’s wallets. And we’ve got to figure out ways to get trees planted. Not only do they give oxygen, but they provide a tremendous amount of shade. I go to houses where the temperature spiked up 5 to 10 percent more because they

vorite St. Louis landlord, Lux Living (a.k.a. Asprient, a.k.a. CityWide), is selling some of its holdings. Just listen to those tenants cheer! They have to do it in the dark, though: As temperatures remain searing, Ameren asks people to raise the thermostats and lower the blinds

FRIDAY, AUGUST 25. It’s 104 degrees in St. Louis, and that is just the mercury That makes this the hottest August 25 ever recorded in the city. Beyond that, as of today, the heat index has reached 110 for six days in a row Happy Friday! Also, even more misery for families of transgender kids: Judge Steven Ohmer says he won’t block the state’s ban on

gender-affirming care for minors. It becomes law on Monday.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 26. Bob “The Price Is Right” Barker is dead at 99. The Washington native went to college in Missouri and began his career in Springfield, so we guess we’ll claim him. RIP. Morning thunderstorms finally break the heat — but put a damper on the inaugural Evolution Music Festival, which pushes its start time back to 3 p.m.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 27. There is so much going on this weekend, we don’t even have time to kill each other. It’s not just Evolution in Forest Park (a smash hit!) and Festival of Nations in Tower Grove Park (always a triumph): The Jonas Brothers are at Enterprise Center, the Offspring and Sum 41 are at Riverport and finally the weather is amazing enough to enjoy it. This is why we live here. Alas, the Cardinals are swept in Philly, and that is why even the Best Fans in Baseball have had enough.

cut down the trees.

We have this demand because of all these issues. Because of the economy, because of inflation, because of everything. And it’s really not going to get any better.

What do you think is the most important thing people should know during a heatwave like this?

It is critically important to check on the elderly or those with disabilities and to remember there are households out there that are having tough times.

What can people do to help?

People can drop a money order or check at any Missouri and Illinois Commerce Bank. This is a new thing that we’re about to launch in the next couple of weeks. They can drop off to a teller or they can donate online. It’s Cool Down/Heat Up St. Louis in care of Commerce Bank, PO Box 868, St. Louis, MO 63118. —Monica Obradovic

Cool Down St. Louis hustled to help locals during last week’s heat wave. | COURTESY COOL DOWN ST. LOUIS

WEEKLY WTF?!

SIGN WATCH

When: August 4

Where: 9th Street and Lafayette Avenue

What: a loopy heads up with odd specificity

Why so crooked? Everyone in Soulard is buzzed — and apparently that includes the traffic signs.

Seriously, though: Let’s face it: Soulard pedestrians aren’t like other pedestrians. They’re running on liquid courage, weaving through the streets and peeing on anything that grows. Don’t we all deserve a little warning?

15 SECONDS OF FAME

APPAREL OF THE WEEK

Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah’s Bulletproof Vest

What’s the best way to convey that you’re tough and in command of a Zoom press conference? Why, to attend said press conference wearing a ballistics vest, of course. And that’s just what embattled St. Louis Corrections Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah did last week, a few hours after the end of a hostage situation at the City Justice Center.

Reporters, oddly, didn’t quite get it. Had she been at the jail during the hostage crisis, they asked. “No, I wasn’t,” she admitted. “I was on my way in.” The obvious next question: Why the hell she was wearing a ballistics vest then — not just in the moment but five full hours later?

This being St. Louis, no one asked it. But we can’t help but admire the firm way Clemons-Abdullah commanded the meeting, the way she stood up to the danger of a bunch of underpaid local reporters joining from faulty internet connections, the way she stayed calm in the chaos of people forgetting to use their mute button. With leadership such as this, can there be any doubt that our city jail is surely in good hands.

SOMETIMES IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT COUNT

EVIE HEMPHILL SHUTTERSTOCK

Unsafe for Occupancy

After a north county apartment complex is condemned, residents wonder where to go

Written by MIKE FITZGERALD

There is no other way to say it: Ridgeview Apartments is a disaster zone.

With trash pick-up canceled months ago, piles of fetid, stinking garbage cover one parking lot, right next to several abandoned cars.

Meanwhile, the back courtyard is a wilderness of knee-high grass, discarded drug paraphernalia and shattered glass.

And without anyone actively managing the site, tenants say most of the units are occupied by squatters, who have turned the site at 9640 Diamond Drive into a marketplace for drugs. Gunshots and fentanyl overdoses are now a daily part of life, according to tenants interviewed.

“It’s a mess,” tenant Tammy Kuhn says. “There’s only seven people who legitimately live here.” Kuhn said she can’t wait to leave Ridgeview, which is located in the small hamlet of Riverview Village, just west of the nearby Mississippi River and north of the St. Louis city line.

But that won’t happen until the Housing Authority of St. Louis County, which oversees her Section 8 checks, finds her a new place to live — a quest that’s taken on a special urgency since August 16.

That was when village police began taping notices on each of Ridgeview’s 84 unit doors informing occupants the apartment complex had been declared “unsafe for human occupancy” and that tenants had 30 days to relocate, or else “be removed immediately” at the end of that period.

For Latice Valient, the news she might soon have to leave Ridgeview comes as a shock. Less than two years ago, she and her young son were evicted by nearby Spanish Cove Townhomes when it

began a large-scale renovation.

Valiant says she has no idea where to go.

“I ain’t got hotel money,” she says.

Ridgeview’s slide into oblivion happened in the same way Hemingway once described a character’s descent into bankruptcy — gradually, then all at once.

The quality of life began deteriorating three years ago. A series of owners and management companies came and went, each promising to make life better, but never following through.

Things hit rock bottom in January, when Evernest St. Louis — whose parent company’s corporate offices are in Atlanta — ended its active management of the site, according to tenant Michael McKinney and others interviewed.

McKinney heaped blame on Evernest St. Louis, as well as two previous property managers; each promised to make needed repairs but never followed through.

“They never do anything to the place for the last three or four years,” he says. “And they just push us, push us, push us.”

Evernest St. Louis did not return calls seeking comment.

St. Louis County real estate records show that the current owner of Ridgeview is a firm called Le Chateau Citadel LLC. No phone number is publicly listed.

But that ownership information is not accurate, according to attorney Elad Gross, outreach coordinator for the St. Louis Mediation Project, which works with landlords to help tenants avoid eviction.

The current owner of Ridgeview is a firm called Hughes Capital Management, of Reno, Nevada, says Gross, who was on hand for a village council meeting on August 25 to help tenants deal with the village-led condemnations. Hughes Capital’s phone number has been disconnected.

After speaking to village leaders, Gross says, “They agree [the evictions are] not legal. They won’t be going through with that. So I’m just here to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

McKinney also blamed village leaders for willfully ignoring the apartment complex’s obvious decline.

“They could’ve shut it down years ago,” McKinney says. “How come we’re living in a condemned building?”

During the council meeting, Mayor Mike Cornell told tenants jammed into the tiny council chambers that he and other city officials weren’t aware of Ridgeview’s deteriorating conditions until recently.

“We didn’t do this,” Cornell told tenant Esha White during the pub-

lic comment section. “We didn’t put it in this condition. Hell, we didn’t know what was going on.”

Later in the meeting, Action St. Louis Executive Director Kayla Reed told tenants in the packed room that her group will be making resources available to Ridgeview tenants seeking a new home.

Gross tells the RFT that only a couple families at Ridgeview receive housing vouchers through the county housing authority, and — with the help of their case managers — could probably use those subsidies at apartment houses that accept them.

“There are a good number of landlords who are accepting it,” Gross says. “I would think it’s sooner rather than later, but it’s really kind of hard to gauge. That’s why it’s important for anyone who’s looking to get on that as soon as possible.”

At the meeting, Reed also asked Cornell to confirm if evictions will occur next month, as originally advertised.

“So September 16 is not a date people need to be concerned about?” Reed asked.

“Correct,” Cornell replied. “However, we will be boarding vacant apartments. We will be going through everything.”

In the meantime, the village will seek to locate Ridgeview’s current owners.

“We’re at the bottom right now,” Cornell said. “I want to hold somebody accountable for leaving it like this.” n

Tammy Kuhn displays the condemnation notice from Riverview Village. | MIKE FITZGERALD

Michael McKinney blames the apartment’s owners — and Riverview Village, too. | MIKE FITZGERALD

Suit Seeks to Block Execution

The Innocence Project says Gov. Parson didn’t have the right to disband a board of inquiry

Written by SARAH FENSKE

The Innocence Project and other advocates have filed a lawsuit against Gov. Mike Parson for disbanding the board of inquiry examining the case of a man on Missouri’s death row — saying Parson cannot dissolve the board until it issues a report and recommendation in his case.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Marcellus Williams in Cole County Circuit Court on August 24.

Williams came within hours of being executed in 2017. But then-Gov. Eric Greitens responded to protestations that new DNA evidence showed Williams’ innocence by issuing a stay of execution and convening a very rare board of inquiry to examine the innocent claims.

Greitens’ successor, Parson, announced in June he was disbanding the board and dropped the stay, putting Williams on a path to be executed. Strangely, though, Parson did not share or even allude to the nature of any findings made by the board.

Now Williams’ lawsuit — filed on his behalf by the Midwest Innocence Project, the Innocence Project and two attorneys at the law firm of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner — says Parson does not have the right to dissolve the board “before it has satisfied its statutory obligation to produce a report and recommendation.”

“The dissolution of the Board of Inquiry before a report or recommendation could be issued means that, to date, no judge has ruled on the full evidence of Mr. William’s innocence,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell, executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, said in a statement. “Knowing that, the state of Missouri still seeks to execute him. That is not justice.”

Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, also said this in a statement: “The Board

of Inquiry statute was created so that an independent group of retired judges had an opportunity to review all the evidence in a death penalty case, without any procedural or political obstructions, to make sure an innocent man or woman is not executed. It’s a unique, fail-safe protection.

“By aborting the process before this distinguished group of jurists issued a report, Gov. Parson violated Mr. Williams’ due process rights under the state and federal constitutions to life and liberty.”

A Stop-Gap Measure

St. Louis turns to cardboard stop signs. What could go wrong?

Written by SARAH FENSKE

When south city saw intense flooding last June, it didn’t just create problems for the neighborhood of Ellendale. It also knocked the St. Louis Street Department’s print shop out of service.

And that’s the unlikely backstory of a mystery that’s gripped some local sleuths this summer — namely, what’s been happening to stop signs around the city?

Savvy observers have spotted stop signs that appear sheared in half in Soulard, the Central West End and Downtown. But instead of these signs being targeted for vandalism in an orchestrated campaign, it turns out that a change in materials may have left them more vulnerable to elements of all kinds — wind, bad drivers, vandals.

That’s because, as a “temporary fix,” city spokesman Nick Dunne confirms,

Williams’ case was the subject of an RFT cover story last year. He was found guilty of the murder of former Post-Dispatch reporter Felicia Gayle, which took place in her University City home in 1998.

But he has always protested that he is innocent, and his attorneys say that as DNA testing has advanced, it supports that claim.

In the words of their lawsuit, “When Felicia Gayle was murdered in 1998, her killer left the murder weapon, a kitchen knife, lodged in her neck. The handle of the knife contained a partial male DNA profile that almost certainly belongs to the person responsible for Mrs. Gayle’s murder. Mrs. Gayle’s killer is also very likely responsible for bloody footprints leading away from her body; for bloody fingerprints that law enforcement lost decades ago; and for the head and pubic hairs that investigators recovered from the carpet on which she was found.

“Modern testing proves that Marcellus Williams’s DNA is not on the murder weapon; his shoes did not make the bloody impressions at the crime scene; and the hairs recovered from around Mrs. Gayle’s body did not come from Mr. Williams. Nevertheless, absent judicial intervention, Mr. Williams will be ex -

the city isn’t using metal for the signs. They’ve instead turned to corrugated cardboard.

As Dunne explains, metal signs are traditionally made off-site and then delivered to the city print shop to be given their iconic STOP messaging. With the shop still offline, the city had to find a new supplier. Et voila .... cardboard. You can find ‘em online for as cheap as $6 a pop (or is that STOP?).

Dunne promises the cardboard signs — and, we presume, the random “ST” and “OP” messages they’re now displaying around St. Louis — will soon be a thing of the past.

“They’ve been restoring the Street Department building for the past year,” he says. “This was just a temporary fix, and you’ll be seeing metal signs again once that’s back.”

Dunne wasn’t able to say how many cardboard signs are out there or whether there have been many damage reports. But once you know the cardboard signs exist, you can’t stop seeing them — we spotted a dozen in the last day or so, their telltale giveaway a corrugated edge instead of one made of smoother material.

And not all of them seem to be standing up to the elements. Beyond the halfsigns that started us off on this quest, a few look positively wilted. Knowing the

ecuted for Mrs. Gayle’s murder.”

In their lawsuit, Williams’ attorneys suggest the board of inquiry actively solicited information from both Williams and the state (likely meaning prosecutors) as recently as 2020.

However, they add, “On information and belief, the State never submitted a reply in response to the Board’s most recent solicitation for information.”

That suggests the inquiry was stalled, or petered out, rather than concluding. By nevertheless dropping the stay of execution and issuing an executive order putting in motion a new execution date, Parson has violated Williams’ right to due process, they allege.

“By truncating the process and making secret the results (if any) of that process, Executive Order 23-06 took away from Mr. Williams a right created by Executive Order 17-20,” the attorneys wrote, referring to Greitens’ previous order. “Even if the Board were to issue a report that does not completely exonerate Mr. Williams, that report could ‘beget yet other rights to [other] procedures,’ including additional court filings, political pressure on Defendant Parson to commute his sentence, and potential action by other members of the executive branch.” n

wear and tear St. Louis drivers put on our roads, light poles, fences and even sidewalks, it’s safe to assume these cardboard placeholders don’t stand a chance. n

Marcellus Williams. | FILE PHOTO

This is not a good sign. | SARAH FENSKE

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MISSOURILAND

World Without End

Festival of Nations filled Tower Grove Park with a bounty of culture and international cuisines

Photos by BRADEN MCMAKIN

Words by SARAH FENSKE

Festival of Nations brought the world to Tower Grove Park this weekend — and St. Louis showed up to explore it.

The annual event is one of the highlights of the late-summer

season in St. Louis. Booths offer food for purchase from countries that range from Brazil to Bosnia to Bhutan. Performers show off songs and dances from their homelands. A market offers crafts and other handiwork from traditions across the globe — all to benefit the International Institute of St. Louis’ refugee resettlement program.

Saturday’s unexpected rain got things off to a slow start, but the festival more than made up for lost time. As the heat gripping the region finally broke, thousands upon thousands of St. Louisans turned out Saturday afternoon and throughout the day Sunday to eat, play, observe and celebrate the area’s international community. Families picnicked in the park, even little kids tried new food and performers demonstrated that St. Louis is not only a city of immigrants — but of ones with great talent.

A CELEBRATION OF THE UNIQUE AND FASCINATING ASPECTS OF OUR HOME

or “the walker,” disembarked the boat alone. His short, scrawny frame reached just an inch or two above 5 feet. A wispy mustache extended well off his face. He easily passed through a customs house and had no luggage, despite a weeks-long journey across the Atlantic Ocean.

Traveling light wasn’t unusual for Carvajal. Neither was his ability to surprise people.

The 31-year-old had become something of a celebrity for his exploits during the 1904 men’s Olympic marathon in St. Louis. He’d arrived for the race starved and wearing heavy boots. He even took a nap during the middle of the race, yet he still beat renowned runners. His clear talent for distance running took him to Athens in 1906, where he was

expected to win the Intercalated Games’ marathon.

Only he never showed up. “He had disappeared like a ship lost in a storm at sea, leaving no trace,” one newspaper reported. By the time Carvajal arrived back in his native Cuba that day in 1906, the country had already mourned its first Olympian. No one, presumably even his family, had heard from him in months. Newspapers published his obituary. A Canadian, Billy Sherring, won the Ath-

like a fool, Carvajal displayed his Cuban gold in some Neapolitan dive and “drifted out on the tide that night with his throat cut,” the Buffalo Commercial reported. Others wondered if he lost his money gambling, which he had reportedly done in the past.

The truth of his disappearance was far less dramatic. Carvajal just had the date of the marathon wrong.

Carvajal’s tumultuous life story is often unbelievable. For a poor man from what was then considered a remote Caribbean outpost southwest of Havana, he racked up an impressive array of accomplishments with not much more

In 1904, Félix Carvajal ran a marathon during a hot St. Louis summer day while wearing a beret, cut-off pants and long stockings. | COURTESY MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY

BORN TO RUN

Continued from pg 15

than pure skill and blind confidence. Originally a postman, Carvajal would become one of Cuba’s most famous athletes.

It’s difficult to pinpoint where the story of Carvajal’s life of exploits begins. It may have started when he was a young boy in Havana, where he raced his friends — and horses — in the hills of the country. Or it may have begun during the Spanish-American War, when Carvajal served as a courier for General Máximo Gómez Báez and at one point ran across Cuba in 16 days to deliver a dispatch. There was also the time when, at 14, he won his first race by outlasting Mariano Bielza, a Spanish athlete known for distance running. They started the race at 8 a.m., and Carvajal did not stop until 7 p.m. — two hours after Bielza gave up.

But Carvajal most certainly achieved legend status in St. Louis at the 1904 Olympic marathon. The race, part of the first-ever Olympics to be held on U.S. soil, is now recognized as one of the most bizarre athletic events in modern history. Men came near death, were chased off the course by a pack of wild dogs, endured oppressive heat and overcame a dubious science experiment meant to test their athletic performance.

Yet Carvajal, as he did for most of his life, chugged on. And years later, when he arrived in Cuba after failing to compete in Athens, Carvajal did what he had always done. He took off running.

In 1904, James Sullivan was on a mission. Sports, at the time, were seen as a way to advance the United States, and Sullivan, the head of the Olympics in St. Louis that year, believed American athletes were the fittest.

The 1904 Olympics in St. Louis were a mere appendage to the World’s Fair. Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the International Olympic Committee (still the authority responsible for the games today), refused to attend. He predicted the games would be nothing more than a sideshow, and according to his memoirs, he detested Sullivan. He wrote Sullivan was often “carried away by enthusiasm.”

The men’s Olympic marathon in 1904 serves as an excellent example of Sullivan’s hubris. Thirty-two men left the starting line around 3 p.m, but an unsuitable course covered in dust, a science experiment carried out by Sulli-

van and brutal heat allowed only 14 to finish.

Newspaper clippings from 1904 and books written on the fair since paint Sullivan as a powerful, ambitious and arrogant man who was the nation’s “acknowledged authority on athletics and the preferred referee at nearly all important athletic events in the country,” writes Nancy J. Parezo in The 1904 Anthropology Days and Olympic Games. He hoped the fair would serve as a source of scientific knowledge, a platform on which Sullivan would administer experiments to advance sports science.

Sullivan, who organized the fair’s sports program as director of its Physical Culture Department, thought Caucasians were

the superior race, both mentally and physically, and was the creator of the fair’s Special Olympics, in which “natives” — most recruited from the so-called living villages where fairgoers could marvel at other cultures — would compete in various events. The selection of sports included archery, a greased pole climb, tug-of-war and, for women, a tipi-raising contest in which participants had to erect a version of a teepee. Very few native demonstrators earned a wage at the fair, and the Special Olympics were one of the only ways to earn money.

Carvajal likely had no knowledge of Sullivan, nor the dubious events he would hold under the guise of scientific knowledge. Carvajal only wanted to run.

Carvajal raced whoever or whatever he could find as he grew up. In 1900, he ran 2,023 miles within Cuba, and completed the tour in 54 days. He got lost in a forest for two days during the run, and it was reported he survived on nothing more than wild fruit. This earned him widespread attention in Cuba.

He “always loved to run,” Carvajal told the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in 1905. Before he came to America for the Olympics, he had a vision of himself receiving a crown of laurel from the hands of the Olympic Games Committee at the St. Louis World’s Fair.

But Carvajal was desperately poor. Traveling to St. Louis without the support of his government would have been impossible.

There’s never been an Englishlanguage biography of Carvajal, so what we know about his life today is almost entirely gleaned from contemporaneous news accounts, which are colorful in their details and not always rigorously sourced. The Evening World wrote that a couple of months before the race, Carvajal, a “ragged, dirty, vagabondish sort of scrawny fellow” elbowed past the mayor’s secretary and asked the mayor for money in the “slang of Cuba.” The

Some of the runners were trained athletes, while others, including Félix Carvajal (number three), had never run a professional race. | COURTESY MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Carvajal’s plans rarely went smoothly. He lost all his money in a craps game after his steamer arrived in New Orleans, and he had to run to St. Louis.

mayor, while puffing a cigarette in his armchair, laughed and declined.

So Carvajal decided to do what he did best. He started running. He ran loops around Havana’s city hall plaza. One report said he ran all day and stopped after the mayor left to go home in the evening, only to find a crowd watching Carvajal run and run. Another said Carvajal ran loops around city hall itself, passing the mayor’s window over and over again. Toward the middle of the day, the story went, the mayor caved. Either way, Carvajal got his money, and he was on his way to run his first official race.

But Carvajal’s plans rarely went smoothly. He lost all his money in a craps game after his steamer arrived in New Orleans, and he had to run to St. Louis.

According to a 1950s TV special on Carvajal, he ran and walked from New Orleans to St. Louis. He begged for food or stole it from orchards and farms. He slept on haystacks in barns. He occasionally accepted rides, but for the most part, he ran.

Many of Carvajal’s competitors in St. Louis were darlings of the burgeoning running scene. Some of the most formidable contenders included John C. Lordan, who won the Boston Marathon in 1903 with a time of 2 hours, 41 minutes and 29 seconds; W. R. Garcia of San Francisco, who was known for dominating 10-mile runs; and Thomas Hicks, who placed second in the Boston Marathon that spring.

Some of them would come near death in St. Louis.

Carvajal arrived in St. Louis the same day as the marathon. According to some reports, he came to the start line with an empty stomach after not eating for two days. He wore the same clothes he traveled in — Army surplus pants, which were part of the official uniform of Havana mail carriers,

a long-sleeve shirt, stockings that reached to his knees, a beret and a pair of brogans, or street shoes, which each weighed about two pounds, according to the Boston Globe

Another Olympian took pity on Carvajal and found a pair of scissors to cut his pants into shorts, though reportedly Carvajal at first refused, as his trousers were the only pants he had.

But it was an extremely hot day on August 30, 1904, at the tail end of a St. Louis summer. Runners described a stifling, sticky humidity as temperatures soared to around 90 degrees. Yet Sullivan, who wanted to test the effects of dehydration on athletic performance, provided only one water station throughout the entire 24.85-mile course. It was a well at the 12-mile mark.

Louisiana Purchase Expedition President David Francis fired the starting gun around 3 p.m., and the marathoners took off to the cheers of about 10,000 spectators piled into what’s now Francis Stadium on Washington University’s campus. The stadium contained a cinder track in 1904. Runners looped around the one-third-mile track five times before embarking on a rocky course of unpaved roads that stretched through the “country,” or modern-day west St. Louis County.

The course was insufferable. Numerous steep hills throughout the 25 miles would later cause critics to describe it as one of the worst-planned courses for a marathon ever.

From the Boston Evening Transcript: “The course, after leaving the stadium, led over hills and through vales innumerable, being pronounced one of the most up-hill courses ever traveled by athletes in events, and the roads were deep in dust. Many of the men were overcome by the heat, but were brought back to the stadium or carried along the route.”

The dust seemed like the most

difficult part. A few days prior, race officials drove the course when the roads were muddy from summer storms, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. After days of heat, the mud was gone, and at one part of the course, at Manchester Road, the street was “inches deep in dust, and every time an auto passed, it raised enough dust to obscure the vision of the runners and choke them.”

A dozen men on horses cleared the course of spectators before the race began. The cloud of dust this caused was worsened by a fleet of cars carrying race officials, physicians, trainers and scientists. Runners also had to weave through traffic, delivery wagons, trolly cars and people walking their dogs. Two men in an automobile were seriously injured when, distracted by the race, their car plunged down the side of a 30foot embankment.

The noxious fumes from all the vehicles almost caused one man to asphyxiate. Garcia, the mediumdistance runner from San Francisco, was found near death on the ground by a local couple who took him to a hospital, where he received lifesaving emergency surgery. He had ingested so much dust, according to reports, that it had ripped the lining of his stomach.

Carvajal started toward the back of the pack. From all ac-

counts, he seemed to eat up the attention he received as the marathon went on. He often stopped to chat with spectators, or tip his hat at them (he ran the whole race with the beret he’d arrived in). One report said he stopped next to an automobile where a party of people eating peaches refused to give Carvajal one, so he stole it and ran, gobbling the peach as he traveled down the road.

Yet Carvajal’s hunger eventually became too hard to ignore. At the halfway point, one reporter described Carvajal’s running as a “flat-footed” clatter kept at a speed that “seemed ominous to American laurels.” Carvajal eventually decided to go slightly off course to a nearby orchard for some fruit. He ate either a rotten or unripe peach or apple. Whatever it was, it gave Carvajal stomach cramps. So he stopped for a nap under a tree. Meanwhile, the race chugged on. Among the “natives” Sullivan coerced into joining the race were two Zulu men from the South African Boer War Spectacular concession. Len Taunyane and Jan Mashiani, referred to as “Lentauw” and “Yamasani” by the press, were mail carriers. They did well, with Taunyane taking ninth despite running barefoot. Mashiani placed 12th and likely would have done better had it not been for the two dogs that ran

Continued on pg 19

Jan Mashiani (left) and Len Taunyane (right) were the first Africans to participate in the modern Olympics. They came to St. Louis for an exhibit on the Boer War. | COURTESY MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The course was insufferable. Numerous steep hills throughout the 25 miles would later cause critics to describe it as one of the worst-planned courses for a marathon ever.

BORN TO RUN

Continued from pg 18

him off course.

Toward the front, Thomas Hicks, an Englishman representing a Cambridge, Massachusetts, YMCA, was running a good race. He was in the front of the pack for the first 15 miles. But when he grew tired, his trainer, Hugh McGrath, gave him just the thing to help: a dose of strychnine sulfate, better known as rat poison, which was thought to enhance athletic performance. He gave Hicks one dose and another three miles later — this time with two egg whites and a sip of brandy to chase it down.

Unfortunately for Hicks, McGrath was of the same mind as Sullivan. McGrath thought water destroyed athletic performance. So Hicks was never allowed to drink water, though his trainers did sponge his body with water warmed by the boiler of a steam automobile.

One of Hicks’ handlers, Charles Lucas, would later describe Hicks’ condition in the final stages of the race: “His eyes were dull, lusterless; the ashen color of his skin and face had deepened; his arms appeared as weights well tied down; he could scarcely lift his legs.”

Toward the end, Hicks suffered from what Lucas described as “hallucination.” He seemed to think he was nowhere near the finish, that he still had 20 miles left. “His mind continually roved toward something to eat,” Lucas wrote. “And in the last mile, Hicks continually harped on the subject.”

Weak, and so exhausted that two men had to hold him upright, Hicks crossed the finish line in second place. He’d lost eight pounds during the race. It was reported he walked around the stadium in a stupor and had to get rushed out before receiving his trophy.

He survived, and Sullivan brilliantly deduced that strychnine sulfate did not enhance athletic performance. In Marathon Running, a training book Sullivan wrote years later, he did not recommend avoiding water. The International Olympic Committee didn’t ban strychnine until the 1960s.

Hicks “went lame and had to retire” from athletics, the Boston Evening Transcript reported in 1905. Hicks did compete in a handful of races in the next few years, however.

He later became a professional clown.

Reporters didn’t pay much

attention to Carvajal until nearly the end of the race. He had been off-course for so long during his nap that race dispatchers who telephoned runners’ places for stadium announcers ran ahead of him.

But now, awake and refreshed, Carvajal resumed running with vigor. He closed the gap to his competitors, ultimately finishing fourth at an unrecorded time. According to a 1906 Evening World profile on Carvajal, he sped up when he at last entered the stadium for the final meters of the race. His street shoes loudly clopped against the cinder track. His face showed strain. Spectators started looking over their programs as they wondered who the Cuban was.

Blind with dust and sweat, Carvajal didn’t stop when he passed the finish line. He ran another

lap around the track, and people nearby had to stop him.

Carvajal wept after he learned his place. He wanted to come in first. Many athletic experts, according to the St. Louis GlobeDemocrat, said he could have won if he had trained or had any support during the race. He also had the ideal marathoner’s physique. At little over 5 feet and between 115 to 130 pounds, he didn’t have much to carry.

“He was a wonderfully tough little piece of machinery,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in 1907.

Carvajal finished the “freshest.” He didn’t rest or look for any food after the race like the other runners. In fact, he stayed to walk around the fair. “He must be a freak,” the headline of one newspaper read. Carvajal was seen late that night on the Pike, a stretch

of the fair on what’s now Lindell Boulevard that contained 50 different carnival amusements including contortionists and circus animals.

Few outlets quoted Carvajal, and those that did wrote his words in the way reporters must have understood him. On the night of the race, Carvajal reportedly told the Globe-Democrat: “Champeen, he go to bed; me stay out Fair; walk around six, seven hours; me no tired.”

Though he was the second runner to cross the finish line, Hicks was eventually named champion with a time of 3 hours, 28 minutes and 53 seconds. It was a glacial pace compared to today’s standards. Now, the world’s best marathoners finish with times around two hours.

The 1904 marathon’s first winner, Fred Lorz, stopped running after nine miles and hitched a ride in a stadium car.

He re-entered the race around the 19th mile and took a picture with Alice Roosevelt, the then-U.S. president’s daughter, but angry officials later learned he cheated. Lorz admitted to it and tried to pass off his lie as a joke. He was temporarily banned from athletic events, but he entered the Boston Marathon a year later. He won, this time without cheating — un-

The marathon’s course was mostly dirt roads that stretched through what’s now west St. Louis County. | COURTESY MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Blind with dust and sweat, Carvajal didn’t stop when he passed the finish line. He ran another lap around the track, and people nearby had to stop him.

der watchful eyes.

Night had fallen by the time all the marathon runners straggled across the finish line. The glare of the fair’s weekly fireworks cast a glow over the stadium.

Carvajal stayed in St. Louis for the next two years, likely because he had no means to leave. He worked odd jobs, once at a peanut concession in a building that hosted jai alai, a Latin sport similar to racquetball.

The Missouri Athletic Club took him on, and he ran marathons for the club, often placing well.

The club’s then-Vice President Isacc Hedges hooked Carvajal up with a job operating elevators at the Cupples Building downtown. But he wasn’t very good at it. Carvajal terrified his passengers when he continuously “shook” them into “cataleptic fits.”

Messenger boys had a “mortal fear” of the 3-foot-long machete Carvajal carried at all times. When his “passions rose,” he’d chase them out of the building while brandishing his knife and screaming curses in Spanish. Messengers and nearby businessmen begged Hedges for Carvajal to be “caged, or at least muzzled and handcuffed.”

“Needless to say, he was given a wide berth from that time on,” the Globe-Democrat wrote.

Carvajal eventually quit his job, But outside work, he kept running. He spent much of his time at the athletic club’s gymnasium, where he ran 4 to 10 miles each day.

“Almost any day a person may go into the club and see Felix plugging around the track,” the GlobeDemocrat wrote. “Two hours later a return visit will still show Felix still going round and round, sometimes sprinting and at other times barely moving at a dog trot, but never walking.”

Yet St. Louis was never his true home. The first snow he endured in the city made him long for the warmer weather of Cuba. He had saved some money and planned to go to Havana or Key West, possibly even Colorado, eventually doing so around 1905.

In March of that year, local newspapers reported that he’d been living “hand-to-mouth” since his arrival in St. Louis and that he struggled to find work he could do.

On March 10, 1905, he told a reporter he was leaving for Tampa, Florida, where his father was the proprietor of a cigar store. He planned to run the entire distance.

“Fine train this,” Carvajal told

the Globe-Democrat while patting his thigh. “No tire, either. Maybe it will take me three months. I don’t care. Tired of this fellow and that fellow who say here: ‘Felix, 10 cents, quarter.’ Me no beggar. I say, good-by St. Louis next week, sure.”

His travel plans reportedly screwed over the Missouri Athletic Club, as he was slated to represent the club in an upcoming marathon. He said he was sorry he couldn’t make the race, but he still asked the club to furnish him with new shoes for his journey.

“I’ll eat fruit on the way,” he said. “And run sometimes 15, 30 miles a day. Sometimes walk.”

It’s not clear whether Carvajal ever made it to Florida. One 1906 profile reported that Carvajal was arrested in New York, where he jogged alongside cable cars before being admitted to a mental hospital as an insanity patient. For three days, he was held in a cell, where the hospital gave him three cold baths to “find out his pedigree,” presumably to figure out who his family was. A huge language barrier prevented this.

“He couldn’t talk English, or French, or even Spanish,” the Evening World reported. “His speech was a jargon made up of Cuban slang, and when they questioned him he howled. When he howled he got another bath.”

A few of Carvajal’s friends eventually turned up. Authorities asked, “How long has he been crazy?”

“He isn’t crazy!” his friends replied. “He’s a runner!”

Carvajal was let go, and he returned to Cuba on the next available boat.

What happened in Carvajal’s life after he left the U.S. went largely unrecorded, at least in American papers. None made any mention of Carvajal’s family, except for one that said he had a wife and several children in the city of Santiago de Cuba. In 1928, the St. Louis PostDispatch wrote Carvajal planned to run from San Francisco to New York while pushing a handcart, but later offered no follow-ups.

Almost exactly 119 years after the 1904 men’s marathon, a stifling heat blankets St. Louis. The humidity feels tangible, like steam from a shower. The possibility of running a marathon in such temperatures feels unthinkable.

In University City, a vine of green ivy drapes over a wooden historical marker for the 1904 marathon’s route along North and South Road. Employees at the Maine Stain car detailing shop across the street are clearing their parking lot with a hose. A firefighter at the station next to the marker chats on the phone outside. In this day’s 100-degree heat, the nearby River Des Peres is as inert as the hot, stagnant air.

At the marker, the runners in the 1904 marathon would have been in the home stretch of their race. The scenery would have been much different. University City was mostly small farms and dirt roads. Nearby, Edward Gardner Lewis had recently broken ground on his Woman’s Magazine headquarters. Its octagonal tower currently houses University City’s city hall.

Today, the story of the 1904

men’s marathon is one of the most lionized stories to come out of the 1904 World’s Fair and Olympics, according to historian Amanda Clark.

“People seem obsessed with it,” Clark says. “They focus on the wackiness of it.” It has almost the same draw as the axle of the fair’s Ferris wheel, which according to local lore, is buried somewhere underneath Forest Park.

The axle isn’t buried under the park, says Clark, who is a tours manager for the Missouri Historical Society. But people are still “obsessed with the damn wheel.”

“For some reason, people really want that piece of metal to be hiding in the park,” Clark says.

It’s important to note: Nearly every account of Carvajal’s life varies in the details. Did he stuff himself with peaches or apples before his nap during the Olympic marathon? Did he cut off his trousers himself, or did another runner do it for him? Did Havana’s mayor award Carvajal money after he circled city hall for a whole day, or just a few hours? There are also stories that claimed Carvajal ran in Cuba to raise money, and other stories that say he refused money.

One thing is sure: Carvajal made a lot out of a little. He was never a rich man. Far from it. He was born poor and died poor. According to EcuRed, Cuba’s government-funded online encyclopedia, Carvajal lived the last 20 years of his life in a “miserable shack” under the Puente de la Lisa, a bridge in Havana. Whatever money or winnings Carvajal garnered in his life he used so he could run more, often traveling farther than anyone, even more than those far more well off could have dreamed at the time.

And whatever he had was enough to make him into a legend. His story and that of the 1904 marathon seem so crazy, so sensational, that stories of other events or people at the 1904 World’s Fair often fade into the background.

What happened at the fair more than 100 years ago may seem crazy or barbaric to us now, but hindsight isn’t always perfect. That’s the thing about history — it’s only a matter of time before the lives we’re leading now seem just as outlandish.

“We’ve always been awful, and we’ve always been wonderful; we always think we know what we’re doing, and we never do,” Clark says. “History gives a continuity I find comfort in, especially right now. The world feels absolutely insane. But if you start digging through history, the world has always felt insane.” n

A sign marks the race’s final stretch near modern-day North and South Road and Shaftesbury Avenue in University City. | MONICA OBRADOVIC

CALENDAR

BY RIVERFRONT TIMES STAFF

FRIDAY 09/01 Back to the Movies

In addition to having a suggestively shaped sign (if you flip it upside down) and a name that spells I Lov It backward, the Tivoli (6350 Delmar Boulevard) was a beloved St. Louis institution during its time as an independent movie theater. So it makes sense that a whole lot of people were disappointed when Hawaiian shirt aficionado and “Duke of Delmar” Joe Edwards sold the storied building to One Family Church in May 2022. At that time, the church said it would eventually reopen the Tivoli and show movies again, and this week it finally makes good on that promise with its inaugural First Friday event, wherein the theater will open its doors for a pre-show performance and a film screening once a month. This being a church-operated affair, don’t expect any grindhouse or R-rated features; in fact, the church won’t be showcasing new releases at all but instead plans to show secondrun films. So if you want to get back in the Tivoli, even if it is to

watch a wholesome film you may have seen before, head on down this Friday, September 1, to catch Top Gun: Maverick, with a preshow performance by local jazz artist Kasimu Taylor. The show starts at 7 p.m., tickets are $7 to $10 and all of the concessions will be $3. All profits benefit a local agency called the FAM, which aims to “eliminate race as a factor in home ownership throughout St. Louis,” according to its website. Purchase tickets and see a full lineup of movies at onefamilychurch.com/tivoli.

Cover the Earth

St. Louis’ annual celebration of graffiti art, music and all things hip-hop, Paint Louis, is the stuff of legend, a coming-together of dozens of artists of various mediums that showcases the best our fair city — and many others from around the globe — have to offer. Now in its 26th year, the event kicks off its annual gathering of graffiti artists this Friday, September 1, with the goal of covering the 1.9-mile Mississippi River flood wall between Victor and Chouteau avenues, just south of the Arch, in dazzling displays of artistic prowess. The stretch of art is

so renowned and so consistently updated that it’s been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as “the longest mural in the world.” Paint Louis is a free community event, and you can catch it from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day from Friday through Sunday. Additionally, legendary Oakland hip-hop act Souls of Mischief will perform at 8 p.m. on Saturday, followed by a host of afterparties. A wide variety of additional programming, including a St. Louis hip-hop showcase, skate demos, dance battles and more, adds further incentive to check out one of the city’s most unique events. For more information, visit paint-louis.com.

Go Ahead, Punk

Dive back into the era of 1980s punk rock this weekend with a slick double feature showcasing the work of director Penelope Spheeris, who will see two of her films showing back-to-back on Friday, September 1, at St. Louis’ best mini-theater, the Arkadin

Cinema and Bar (5228 Gravois Avenue, 314-221-2173). Start your night off with The Decline of Western Civilization, the iconic 1981 documentary chronicling Los Angeles’ then-vibrant punk scene and featuring such legendary punk bands as X, Black Flag and Circle Jerks. Grab a drink at the bar after the first film, and then get ready for Spheeris’ follow-up, 1984’s Suburbia, which tells the story of a family of fellow punk rock travelers who “banded together against their bad parents and shitty authority figures,” as summarized by the American Genre Film Archive. The first film starts at 7 p.m., followed by the second at 9:15 p.m. Tickets are $9 for each showing. For more info, visit arkadincinema.com.

SATURDAY 09/02

Look to the East

Though the Japanese Festival definitely celebrates a whole lot more than Japanese cuisine, it

The Arkadin will show a double feature of director Penelope Spheeris’ work Friday. | POSTER ART

Paint Louis will bring fresh art to the flood wall on Friday. | JASON SPENCER

can be hard to focus on the history, culture and people of Japan while distracted by the barley tea, taiyaki (waffles shaped like fish and filled with custard), sushi and other delectable delights. But seriously, there is a lot more going on during the Missouri Botanical

Garden’s (4344 Shaw Boulevard, 314-577-5100) annual festival.

From the opening ceremony in the Japanese Garden to the Teahouse Island Tours to displays of calligraphy, origami, wagashi and more, the weekend event holds a bounty of cultural festivities. And

after you’ve filled your stomach with some tasty treats, the sumo displays, cooking demonstrations and cosplay are that much more informative and fun. The event runs Saturday, September 2, through Monday, September 4, with hours from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. over the weekend and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday. Tickets are $16 for adults, $12 for children and $8 for members. More info at events. missouribotanicalgarden.org/japanese_festival.

SUNDAY 09/03

Suck ‘Em Down

If you’ve ever happened to catch a professional hot dog eating contest on TV, then you know one thing: That shit is truly disgusting. The best professional speed eaters don’t take time to savor their weiners. They nearly inhale them, sucking down moistened tubes of meat and bun with the speed and determination of a coked-up party girl around

a snowy mountain of Bolivian marching powder. It’s both impressive and horrifying in equal measure. If you’ve ever dreamed of watching amateurs take their best shot at this feat of consumption — or perhaps even dreamed of yourself competing alongside them — Steve’s Hot Dogs has just the Labor Day Hot Dog Eating Contest for you. Up to 30 people will eat as many dogs as they can in 10 minutes, and lucky St. Louisans can cheer from neighboring tables while dodging weiner spittle. It all goes down at Steve’s Hot Dogs (3145 South Grand Boulevard, 314-932-5953) at 3 p.m. this Sunday, September 3. You must be at least 18 and register in advance. See steveshotdogsstl. com for details. The first-prize winner gets $100 in cash, some Steve’s schwag and the honor and glory of being the Joey Chestnut of St. Louis. The rest of us get the spittle.

TUESDAY 09/05 Dog Days

Back-to-school shopping is your first indication that summer is ending soon. Once you start seeing everybody’s first-day-of-school pictures, it gets a little more real. But when they let the dogs have their fun in the pool, you know that the end of the season really is well and truly upon us. The dogs love it, so we can’t be too sad about it. If your pup is the kind that just can’t wait to fling themselves into any body of water, they’d love it if you took them to the Drool at the Pool event at Shrewsbury Aquatic Center (7407 Sutherland Avenue, 314-649-4770) on Tuesday, September 9. Your dog will swim, splash and play, and it will make them so happy that you’ll almost forget that everything around you is about to be cold and colorless and covered in ice for the next six months. It’s just $10 for your pup to swim as long as they’d like during the two-hour event (you get to watch for free), but you do have to make sure to bring their current vaccination records so they can make sure every doggie is safe. Visit tinyurl.com/yc2en4bn for more information.

Pool season might be ending after Labor Day, but at least your pup gets one sanctioned dip before it’s all over for the year. | VIA FLICKR/GNOSNE

The Missouri Botanical Garden’s Japanese Festival returns this weekend. | MIKE TIGAS

Utterly Soulful

With her Venezuelan and Colombian restaurant Salsa Rosada, Mandy Estrella hits a home run

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

Salsa Rosada

3135 Olive Street, 314-601-3038. Tues.Sat. 11 a.m.-8 p.m. (Closed Sun. and Mon.)

Salsa Rosada would likely not exist if not for Major League Baseball. At least, that’s how owner Mandy Estrella explains it in between her neardaily deliveries to Busch Stadium during baseball season. It’s an arrangement that’s been going on for a couple of years now — ever since word spread throughout the city’s Latin American community about her ability to flawlessly execute some of the region’s most beloved dishes at her four-yearold Lafayette Square restaurant, Mayo Ketchup.

It turns out that local Latin American transplants were not the only ones to take notice. Estrella and her partner in life and business, Bradley Payne, observed that the occasional professional baseball player hailing from Latin America would drop in and be so impressed with her ability to bring them a taste of home that became regulars. Word got out through that closeknit community, and the next thing they knew, Mayo Ketchup was asked to cater meals for visiting teams who would come to play the Cardinals.

That arrangement not only validates Estrella’s cooking; it shows how the level of catering she was doing got so big that it could no longer be confined to Mayo Ketchup’s small kitchen — already pushed to the limit preparing food for the restaurant. Estrella and Payne toyed with the idea of finding a commissary to run their catering business out of, but when they came across a large commercial kitchen that happened to include a sizable restaurant space mere blocks

from the new Citypark stadium, they jumped on the opportunity. Not wanting to take business away from the Puerto Rican- and Dominican-focused Mayo Ketchup in Lafayette Square or its spinoff food stall inside Citypark, they decided to build a new restaurant around a different region of Latin American cuisine that

they knew diners were hungry for: Venezuelan and Colombian food. With that goal, Salsa Rosada came to life.

Though nearly a decade into her food business — first as the pop-up brand and former food counter inside Alpha Brewing Company, Plantain Girl, and eventually as the driving force behind

Mayo Ketchup — Estrella still gets looks when people find out she’s the owner of a fiercely traditional restaurant like Salsa Rosado. Those who have been following her know the backstory: As a St. Louis transplant living in Florida, Estrella fell in love with the Latin American food that defined south Florida’s food culture and was determined to learn how to cook it for the Dominican was then married to and their children. It became apparent to everyone that ate what she prepared that she had a talent and intuitive knack for bringing these dishes to life, and she carried that with her when she and her family moved back to St. Louis.

Estrella jokes that she never intended to open a restaurant — let alone two plus a food stall in a soccer stadium — but she kept getting requests for her food from members of the area’s Latin American expat community. This led to the Plantain Girl brand and a stint at Alpha Brewing that became so popular that it could no longer be contained as a mere food counter in a brewery. In 2019, Estrella and Payne finally took the leap and opened Mayo Ketchup to imme-

Continued on pg 26

Salsa Rosada offers Venezuelan and Colombian cuisine. | MABEL SUEN

Mandy Estrella (center) with Salsa Rosada staff. | MABEL SUEN

SALSA ROSADA

Continued from pg 25

diate success, enough that it was able to help them weather the pandemic. Catering orders came pouring in, then came the opportunity to be a part of the worldclass local food program at Citypark and the MLB business.

And now, Salsa Rosada. Located in the former Hugo’s Pizzeria in the heart of Midtown, Estrella and Payne’s five-month-old restaurant makes you understand why there was such demand for more out of this pair. Despite the counter service and size (the large space, with exposed brick, bright blue walls, black tables, chairs and banquettes, is divided into two fairly sizeable rooms), Salsa Rosada makes you feel like you are in a home kitchen in Bogotá or Caracas the moment you taste the food. This is not by accident. Though Estrella has honed her craft over the years, learning as much as possible through experimentation, experience and research, many of her Colombian and Venezuelan guests eagerly provided their favorite home recipes so that she could work her magic. The result is an outstanding assortment of traditional Colombian and Venezuelan dishes that are not just delicious; they are utterly soulful.

Consider the empanadas: large marigold-hued, half-moon-shaped fritters that are the standard of the form, whether filled with succulent ground beef and potatoes, black beans or even simple white cheese, which is so rich and gooey it stretches like a fried mozzarella stick when you crack them in half. Tequeños, too, offer this decadent cheese experience. Here, flaky pas-

try dough is filled with the same mild white cheese and fried, then rolled up like a cigar. Alone, it’s delicious, but when accented with a guava filling, it’s an otherworldly sweet-and-savory experience, not unlike a less sugary rolled-up cheese Danish.

Two other handheld, stuffed pastry-like dishes are equally delicious. The cochito, a crescentshaped bread roll filled with ham and cheese, has the same delightfully sticky-spongy texture as a bao. However, I was particularly taken with the buñuelo, a mandarin orange-sized sphere of cornmeal lightly flecked with cheese. This outrageously good fritter shares much with a hush puppy but has a wonderful, yeasty flavor that calls to mind doughnuts.

Estrella’s kitchen manager says her favorite dishes are the arepas; when you taste them, you see why. The fried offering employs a similar lovely corn concoction as the empanadas, though here it is discshaped and cut in half. Inside, Estrella offers a variety of fillings, including mouthwatering roasted pork that tastes like the very definition of pork itself. Shredded beef is equally stunning. As tender as a bell-peppery pot roast, the meat’s juices soak into the cornmeal like a Latin American take on the French dip. Both versions are accented with cabbage, queso blanco sauce, cotija cheese and a creamy cilantro sauce that adds a verdant note to the otherwise rich dish.

That shredded beef is the perfect filling for Estrella’s mammoth patacone, a sandwich that employs smashed plantains as the top and bottom bases. The crispy fried tostones provide a wonderful textural counter to the tender beef, which is dressed in the same

accoutrements as the arepas. This dish — which could easily feed two, maybe three, people — is one of Salsa Rosada’s showstoppers. The other is the perros calientes, quite literally, hot dogs. This overthe-top dish features a beef hot dog tucked into a bun and served Venezuelan style with cabbage, caramelized onions, cilantro, bacon and corn sauces, cotija cheese and fried potato sticks. It’s a joyfully messy concoction that looks overwhelming — but is a surprisingly well-balanced blend of sweet, smoke and salt, richness and crunch. The hot dog is a wonderfully beefy version I would enjoy eating even unadorned.

However wild the perros calientes are, Estrella shows she can shine just as brightly — maybe even more — when her food is at its most simple. A bowl of black beans and rice topped with rich, chile-infused jackfruit is deeply satisfying, almost evoking the

sweet and savory taste of baking spice. However, it’s her pernil where Estrella is at her most dazzling. The dish is nothing more than unadorned, slow-roasted pork, seasoned to bring out the meat’s deep, savory flavor, but not one bit more than needed so you taste nothing but pure, porcine bliss. So juicy you could spread it on a cracker, the pork, perfectly sticky maduros, well-cooked beans and rice stand as not only a wonderful example of traditional Latin American cooking; they are a flag in the ground that distinguishes her as a definitive source for traditional Venezuelan and Colombian cuisine.

Clearly, it’s not just her catering customers who know how to hit it out of the park. n

Salsa Rosada Patacone $16 Pernil bowl $13 Pork arepa ����������������������������������������������� $8

Beverages include guarapita (Venezuelan rum punch) and agua de panela, made with brown sugar. | MABEL SUEN

Mandy Estrella works her magic in the kitchen. | MABEL SUEN

The patacon’s “bread” is made of twice-fried plantains. | MABEL SUEN

SHORT ORDERS

It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane — No, it’s...

a superhero-themed diner, GOTham and Eggs, bringing themed classics to South Grand

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

With their lacy edges and swirl of sweet topping, the buttermilk pancakes on the Pym-Cakes Platter at GOTham and Eggs (3139 South Grand Boulevard, 314-8338355, gothamandeggs.com) look like the ideal. They’re golden, perfectly dotted with blueberries and are just begging to be drenched in syrup, butter or jam. Or all three, if you’re a maniac.

But glancing at the recently opened South Grand diner’s offerings, that excellence doesn’t seem to be limited to the flapjacks. The Hulkin’ Smash Burger looks like diner-burger perfection, with its appealing yellow, perfectly melted cheese and glowingly orange side of sweet potato fries. The Jack’s Slinger, with its side of biscuits and gravy, is basically St. Louis on a plate (a vegetarian plate at that), and the milkshake is perfectly swirled with strawberry syrup and topped with a dollop of whipped cream.

Each dish gives off the sense of having been executed thousands of times, something that might be surprising considering GOTham and Eggs only opened its doors on August 2, followed by a grand opening on the 12th. But co-owner Shanisah Knight says that serving dishes that can be made perfectly again and again was a major guiding principle behind the menu.

“One of my biggest pet peeves when I go out to eat at a place regularly is when what I order regularly doesn’t come out the same every time,” she says. “We wanted to pick things that could be consis-

tently executed.”

That includes traditional diner items such as pancakes, waffles and burgers, as well as some items that are influenced by the Knights’ individual tastes, such as the Mighty Spinach and Strawberry Salad topped with fresh berries and sunflower seeds. GOTham and Eggs also offers a French toast dish — Peter’s Fried French Toast Platter — made from an original City Diner recipe (a nod to the building’s previous iteration named for its founder, Peter Spoto).

But the most standout menu theme might be the dish names that allude to superheroes. Knight says they were careful not to step into copyright infringement but were creative about pairing items with characters, pointing to Garfield’s Veggie Burger, which refers to Teen Titan Garfield “Beast Boy” Logan’s love for the offering.

“We tried to use a little bit of nerd knowledge,” Knight says.

Even if you somehow miss the Batman reference in the diner’s name, the superhero theme is immediately apparent upon entering the space, which is decorated to the nines with collectibles and other decor accumulated by Knight and her husband, Jason, over the years.

Superheroes, especially Batman, have long been a passion for Jason, and Knight says that with her English lit background, she has a passion for the characters

and stories in the genre. But GOTham and Eggs keeps it positive.

“You won’t see many villains on the walls in the diner,” she says.

The decor was the Knights’ biggest change to the space, since they decided to use City Diner’s furniture and a lot of its equipment. The biggest challenge, she says, was a lot of cleaning.

In some ways, simply deciding to take on the restaurant project was a big challenge, too. Jason had been working in fast-casual restaurants and wanted to make a career change, but Knight, who had been in customer service and accounting and had earned a teaching certificate, needed some

convincing.

She describes herself as “not a risk taker” but says she eventually became comfortable with the idea. Finding the former City Diner space, which they felt was family friendly, went a long way.

“We figured that was a great opportunity, with it having such an established presence for so long,” Knight says. “We felt that it would be a good fit in the community and felt the need.”

Now the couple is eager to do just that: serve the St. Louis community with some great, superhero-themed fare.

“Come out and experience it,” Knight says. n

Clockwise from top left: Jack’s Slinger, Pym-Cakes Platter and Hulkin’ Smash Burger. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

GOTham and Eggs opened up in City Diner’s former home on August 2. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

CHERYL BAEHR’S CAESAR SALAD PICKS

Though Caesar salads have become so ubiquitous you can find them everywhere from high-end steakhouses to fast food value menus, a properly done version reminds us why they’ve become such an essential part of the American dining canon.

Twisted Tree Steakhouse

Perhaps it’s the croutons that make Twisted Tree Steakhouse’s Caesar so delicious. It could be the chilled metal bowl, the fact it’s served family style and dressed tableside, the crisper-than-crisp lettuce or the zesty dressing. No matter the reason, it’s Caesar magic.

Wright’s Tavern

Wright’s Tavern Chef Cary McDowell set out to make a Caesar salad so classic it defines the form. He’s achieved this, and then some. Crisp, chilled romaine, covered with anchovy-laden dressing and balanced by razor-sharp lemon, is coated with so much Parmigiano-Reggiano you can’t see the green of the leaves.

1929 Pizza & Wine

The Caesar salad Matt and Amy Herren serve at their restaurant 1929 Pizza & Wine will have you coming back again and again. Shockingly tender romaine hearts are accented with bright dressing, bread crumbs and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese; it’s like fireworks in your mouth.

The Bellwether

Riding the kale Caesar trend, the Bellwether’s version stands out for its unapologetically garlicky dressing and the caper tapenade that balances the anchovy-forward presentation.

Union Loafers

The Union Loafers Little Gem may get all the attention, but its Caesar is no less thrilling, amped up by capers, chili flakes and seasoned breadcrumbs. Thankfully, they don’t make you choose; the Little Gem is available at lunch while the Caesar at night.

Gone Gregg’s

After 48 years in north St. Louis, Gregg’s Bar and Grill has closed and is seeking a buyer

Written by SARAH FENSKE

Abeloved spot in the industrial Near North Riverfront neighborhood for 48 years, Gregg’s Bar and Grill (4400 North Broadway) has closed its doors.

The eatery first closed on July 31 for what the owner suggested was a temporary “staff shortage.” But that closure continued the following week, and on August 20, the bar’s owner posted on Facebook that the closure would be permanent.

“To the many great guests of Gregg’s. It has been truly a great honor and pleasure to have been able to serve you for the last 48 years,” he wrote. “I have enjoyed the times we have spent together. The great friends that I have from Gregg’s will always warm my heart. All the long days and long hours have been for you.”

He continued, “Closing down. This was not an easy decision. The last 3 years have been tough on many businesses. Gregg’s was very fortunate. We worked extremely hard to overcome many obstacles. However some things are out of

[FOOD NEWS]

Cheeburger Cheeburger Closes

The Des Peres location was the hamburger chain’s only one in the Midwest

Written by SARAH FENSKE

Anostalgic hamburger chain named after a Saturday Night Live sketch closed its only Midwest location last weekend. Cheeburger Cheeburger (13311 Manchester Road, Des Peres) first announced on Facebook that it would be closing after dinner service on Sunday, August 27.

our control. This is not goodbye but a see you later. THANK YOU ALL FOR HELPING MY FAMILY.”

Gregg’s was among the RFT’s Best Neighborhood Bars in St. Louis as well as last month’s 100 Best Bars in St. Louis. Located in an 1874 storefront, it drew a bluecollar clientele and earned raves for its fried chicken and its baby back ribs.

As we wrote in 2019, “This is a realm of beer and burgers, of generous fish sandwiches and perfect onion rings. It’s a place that attracts diverse characters and old friends, everyone from cops to construction workers to nearby neighborhood residents. Amid the area’s industrial sprawl, some call this place an oasis, but the warmth within doesn’t evoke a desert. There is a richness here, wealth measured in food and drink that remain consistent across years.

The owners wrote that they are retiring after operating the restaurant for 18 years.

“Our last day of operation is Sunday, August 27th. We will be conducting business as usual and hope you will visit with us before the end,” they wrote. “We will explain more when we see each of you over the next few days. It is a bitter sweet time for us and our staff as we all have worked so hard over the years to build such a successful business, but the time has come for us to say goodbye.”

Cheeburger Cheeburger once boasted 10 locations but appears to have shrunk in recent years, with the corporate website listing one eatery each in Pennsylvania and Virginia and two in Florida (along with one, oddly enough, in Saudi Arabia). One of the Florida locations is on Sanibel Island, which was hit hard by Hurricane Ian last October. It’s not clear if the restaurant has since reopened.

We just hope the news out of Des Peres doesn’t portend a larger downturn for businesses named after decades-old

It’s more like a garden, an Eden where temptation comes from a bottle of whiskey — but the only sin is failing to partake.”

We’ll miss Gregg’s. But maybe not for forever: The bar is now for sale.

“The owner of Gregg’s currently has the business listed for sale with our firm and we are working diligently to find a worthy successor to carry on what we believe is one of the best bars in St. Louis,” Dan Duffin of Fusion Business Brokers tells the RFT

The sale would include the building, as well as all the fixtures and an income-producing twofamily flat on the property.

Duffin says Gregg’s owner has asked that the price not be included in public postings, but more information can be had by calling Duffin at 314-651-6138 or Ken Kunkel at 636-346-0293. n

trouble.

Gregg’s had been a fixture in an industrial stretch of north St. Louis for nearly five decades. | ROSALIND EARLY

SNL jokes. If it does, our local Schwetty Balls shop and Flan Down by the River could be in

n

Cheeburger Cheeburger was located in a busy Des Peres strip mall. | GOOGLE EARTH

Super Extra

With top local restaurants coming to Wash U’s dining services, why would students ever leave?

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

The food on Washington University’s campus has never been anything to sneer at, and that’s been especially true of late. Earlier this year, ratings giants Princeton Review and U.S. News and World Report both singled out the St. Louis university as having some of the best grub in the game, naming it No. 5 in the U.S. and No. 11 respectively.

And now students are going to be met with even more culinary extravagance (eyeing that No. 1 spot, Andrew Martin?) — as Wash U adds some top local restaurants to its dining services this fall.

Coffeestamp is already serving its empanadas at a coffee spot on campus, with BEAST Craft BBQ, Collins Farm, Corner 17 and the Fattened Caf all opening in various campus locations.

Key Bistro Opens

The Missouri History Museum gets a French restaurant — and brunch is on the way

Written by SARAH FENSKE

The Missouri History Museum welcomed a new, French-inflected restaurant on August 23.

Key Bistro began serving lunch last Wednesday, with brunch and catering to come later in 2023 — and its panoramic views of Forest Park should make it a mid-day destination. Grab-and-go offerings will provide picnic fodder for those who’d prefer to eat in the park.

The new bistro also boasts a team with quite a pedigree: Former White House Chef Pierre Chambrin Sr. is listed as consulting on the menu, with operations run by Chef Kevin Green, formerly executive chef at Kreis’ Steakhouse & Bar, and Pierre Chambrin II, formerly manager at Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar in Frontenac. (Chambrin Sr. was executive chef at the White House from 1989 to 1994 and has lived in St. Louis for years.)

Chambrin II expressed his excitement

Fattened Caf, a beloved local Filipino barbecue brand, has been sharing sneak peek posts on Instagram this week of its new space in the Bytes Cafe in McKelvey Hall, the engineering building. It’s a single-counter kiosk with a spot for graband-go items as well as a display case,

presumably for prepared foods. There is also a small seating section.

“Stepping into this with arms stretched out and hands ready to receive what comes. Wash U, Filipino BBQ is coming for you,” the restaurant wrote. In a different post, it said the cafe would

be serving “chicken BBQ, Smoked Longganisa, Pork Belly Sisig, Chicken Tocino and mooooorrrreeee. 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM all this week.”

In a Wash U newsroom article from July 25, Shantay N. Bolton, executive vice chancellor for administration and chief administration officer, said the move to include local restaurants was about providing superior dining options and supporting local businesses, especially those that are minority- and women-owned.

Every one of the new restaurants will accept Wash U’s meal plan points, Bear Bucks. The university requires that students who are living in Wash U housing or enrolled in 12 or more hours of courses purchase a meal plan, which has options that cost from $3,795 to $702 a year. Freshman must purchase a level of at least bronze, at $2,509.

So many students will have plenty of funds to spend at these new spots, which is all the better for our homegrown restaurants.

That said, we can’t help be a little unsure about this Wash U food reality. On one hand, supporting local restaurants is amazing. On the other hand, it’s pretty bougie, and if students don’t even have to walk to the Loop to get their Corner 17 fix, we shudder to think about what will happen to the Wash U bubble. It’s about to get a lot smaller. n

in a press release.

“It’s an honor to open a restaurant in a St. Louis treasure like the Missouri History Museum,” he said. “Knowing that the Key Bistro would be surrounded by historical artifacts and would be visited by people who were here to enrich themselves really inspired my dad (Pierre Chambrin, Sr.) as he developed the menu, and it will continue to motivate Chef Green and I as

we operate day to day.”

Menu items include a board charcuterie ($15 for a single portion, $22 for one to share with two people), soups and salads, and sandwiches including a French dip or Reuben ($15). There’s also a quiche Lorraine or spinach quiche ($13) or a burger, topped with tarragon aioli and gruyere ($14). And yes, a vegan patty is an option. Creme brulee or French but-

ter cookies are the options for dessert. The museum held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the day the restaurant opened. Going forward, the Key Bistro will be open Tuesday through Saturday for full service dining from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., with graband-go express hours from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

They plan to eventually add Sunday brunch from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. n

Charlene Lopez Young and Darren Young are bringing their beloved Filipino barbecue brand Fattened Caf to the Wash U campus this fall. | SARAH LOVETT

Key Bistro opened Wednesday, August 23. | COURTESY OF THE MISSOURI HISTORY MUSEUM

REEFERFRONT TIMES

No ‘Lab Shopping’

Missouri cannabis regulators’ new rules aim to help labs feeling pressure to certify products as having high THC

Written by REBECCA RIVAS

This story originally appeared in the Missouri Independent.

In the marijuana industry, they say potency is king.

Producers all over the country are competing to put the most intoxicating product on the shelves. And that can leave the labs who test these products in a tough spot.

At least, that’s been the case in California and other states where marijuana is legal, says Josh Swider, cofounder and CEO of Infinite Chemical Analysis Labs in San Diego — and Missouri should take note.

Back in 2020, Swider started getting calls from marijuana producers asking him if he could guarantee a 20mg THC test result if they sent him a sample.

As an “honest lab,” he told them he couldn’t.

“The next year it went up to 25,” he says. “The year after that it went to 30. Now it’s up 30-plus guaranteed no matter what. You can never report less than that, or ‘I will pull my business.’ That is the exact conversations I have with the producers.”

For the past four years, Swider, who is also vice chair of the cannabis working group for the American Council of Independent Laboratories, has been collaborating with cannabis scientists nationwide to publish a guide of testing best practices and to help address the issue of “lab shopping.”

One key suggestion, Swider says, is interlaboratory comparison.

“It’s something that is 100 percent needed,” he says. “Interlab

comparison shows you if there’s flaws in the system.”

Missouri is joining the few states that have implemented an extra layer of “round robin” testing or auditing of marijuana products. It means that the state regulating agency — the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services — can now instruct the state’s certified testing labs to doublecheck each other’s work.

Up to 10 times a year, the state will instruct the licensed testing labs to pick up marijuana samples from another lab and perform a test. Then the state will review all the results to make sure they have similar results in THC potency — and that one lab isn’t passing a marijuana sample for pesticide residue while another one is failing it.

But this spring, Missouri’s testing labs owners united in opposition against this rule, saying it is duplicative of the current testing requirements, too vague and “unduly burdensome.”

“We do not claim that it is impossible to design an effective interlab comparison program, only that the approach outlined in this provision will surely fail,” stated Andrew Mullins, executive director of the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association, in a May 6 letter to legislators.

When Missouri voters approved recreational marijuana in November, it meant the department

had to issue a new set of rules to implement the constitutional amendment. The interlaboratory comparison rule is a small piece of the 127 pages of new cannabis guidelines, that include everything from packaging to event organizing.

Those rules went into effect on July 30.

The department first introduced these rules in January, and they went through a public comment phase before making their way through their final hurdle — the legislative Joint Committee on Administrative Rules.

During a May 8 committee meeting, Amy Moore, director of the state’s division of cannabis regulation, explained why the new testing rule is “critical.”

“The challenges in regulating and relying on for-profit cannabis testing labs,” Moore said, “is one of the most-discussed challenges in the national cannabis regulatory community.”

No standard testing method

Testing is among the many areas — like cannabis banking or labeling — where states’ regulation is hampered by the fact that marijuana is federally illegal.

In industries like food, the federal government sets the standard for testing. But for marijuana products, there’s no federal regulation over marijuana at all, be-

cause it’s still considered an illegal substance.

Naturally, when labs are using different testing methods, they’re going to get varying testing results on pesticide levels and THC potency, cannabis lab experts say. And that leaves state regulating agencies in a difficult position because they don’t have the necessary “boots on the ground” it takes to develop testing standards, says Kim Stuck, CEO of the cannabis and psychedelics compliance firm Allay Consulting.

“It is something that has been an issue in the industry from the beginning,” says Stuck, who previously served as an investigator for Colorado’s regulating agency. “I haven’t seen any state really make sure that those testing labs are getting the results they’re supposed to be getting, not yet at least. But there is a lot of talk about it.”

California is currently attempting to mandate a standard testing method — an effort that’s been in the works since 2021 — and the rollout is being highly watched by the cannabis industry nationwide.

Lab shopping poses serious safety concerns. For instance, when a product has less THC than the label actually says, customers not only get ripped off, but they also face overdosing the next time they buy a product with the accurate potency.

Some states, like Missouri, are attempting to tackle the issue by having the labs double-check each other’s results.

Pennsylvania attempted to require two different labs to test medical marijuana products, but a court struck down the rule this summer.

In January, Oregon passed a rule that’s similar to Missouri’s, where it requires random “round robin” testing among the labs.

“[The] goal is to flip the incentive structure from ‘get the highest result possible’ to ‘get the most accurate result possible,’” according to a November presentation by TJ Sheehy, director of analytics and research at the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission.

Until it’s federally legalized, interlab comparison is the best option for state regulating agencies, Stuck says.

“This isn’t an end-all be-all,” Swider agrees. “It should be something that’s getting done to make

Skyler Berry makes pre-rolled joints on May 2 at the Robust Cannabis production facility in Cuba, Missouri. | REBECCA RIVAS/MISSOURI INDEPENDENT

sure that everyone’s on the same playing field.”

Most states, including Missouri, have relied on “proficiency testing,” which means assessing performance against a set of pre-established criteria.

In most states, the licensees find an accredited test provider that performs interlab comparisons as part of this process, asking labs to test samples from the same batch of marijuana or marijuana products to ensure results are similar.

In Missouri, labs are required to do this annually. In Colorado and California, it’s twice a year.

A big challenge with proficiency testing is that the test providers cannot possess or ship marijuana samples because it’s a federally illegal substance. That’s why in Colorado, the Department of Public Health and Environment conducts the proficiency testing for the state’s certified labs, a department spokesperson told the Independent

Missouri and Oregon will continue to require proficiency testing. But now they’re also mandating these more frequent and random round robin tests — where labs test each other because the states don’t have their own labs currently.

“One constant in cannabis regulation is that state regulators continue to learn from each other,” says Mark Pettinger, spokesman for Oregon’s cannabis program. “And so rules like Missouri’s can serve as inspiration and a model for Oregon’s efforts as we look to build on the ‘first draft’ of round robin testing.”

Industry pushback

The new rule also allows the department to “initiate an investigation or other corrective action” for testing labs producing inconsistent results.

However, lab owners worry that the state will use the rule to be overly punitive, without enough data to back it up.

Anthony David, owner and COO of Green Precision Analytics Inc., says testing methods and standards are typically developed using a mass amount of test results, which Missouri won’t gain from this rule.

“Yes, we all want better ways to test,” David says. “We all want methods that are validated and that everyone can use across the entire United States and testing laboratories. But it’s an obtuse way of thinking for the state to think that they can do it.”

David says with the state gathering 10 tests a year for 10 laboratories, that’s 100 samples.

“That’s nowhere even close to enough data to know whether someone is an outlier, or whether they’re testing in regulation,” he says.

David points out that both Colorado and California require interlab comparisons as part of their proficiency testing, and it hasn’t helped either state address the issues of “lab shopping.” Missouri’s rule would be one more unnecessary hurdle and cost, he says.

Swider agrees the state shouldn’t limit itself to the number of tests it can conduct. And he says a big part of why California’s policy hasn’t worked is because the state lacks enforcement. But Swider believes Missouri’s rules could be successful if the state is willing to hold labs accountable.

Cannabis regulators showed they were willing to bring down the hammer with the recent recall of more than 60,000 cannabis products, as part of an investigation into one manufacturer allegedly not going through the proper testing process.

“It’s a necessary evil, I call it, the enforcement,” he says. “Because if not, what happens is the whole testing industry implodes on itself. You can write the best regulation in the world, and then if no one does anything, guess what. Welcome to California.” n

A big challenge with proficiency testing is that the test providers cannot possess or ship marijuana samples, because it’s a federally illegal substance.

CULTURE 35

Back on Delmar

MO Art Supply helps fill the void left by Blick’s departure from the Loop

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

When you first walk into St. Louis’ newest art store, everything is as you’d expect: There are racks and shelves filled with paints, printing supplies, papers, canvases and pretty much anything else you could imagine needing to create art — and also plenty you couldn’t. There are the helpful and intimidatingly cool store clerks, who immediately ask if they can guide you to anything specific. There’s even the whiff of oil paints wafting on the air.

But there’s also something just a little bit different about MO Art Supply, which opened on the second floor of 6174 Delmar Boulevard last weekend, just east of the Loop. Maybe it’s all the murals (like the giant one by St. Louis artist Cbabi Bayoc on the side of the building or the ones by Brock Seals by the back entrance). Or maybe it’s the layout of the store, which is broken thematically into rooms — paint, paper, architectural supplies (featuring another mural), and more.

It may be the community vibe that sets MO Art Supply apart.

“This is the people’s art store,” Studio Manager Sophia Malone says. “This is everyone’s art store. We want this to be just an inclusive, safe space to create.”

Malone is alluding to the community programming that Mo Art Supply launched with, which includes events, collaborations with local artists and art organizations as well as classes and affordable studio space. But she’s also referring to the story of how the store came about.

That story begins about three months ago when local artist Bob Madden heard that Blick had ac-

quired local chain Artmart and would be relocating the Blick store on Delmar to a space on South Hanley Road, leaving the Loop without an art supply store. Madden started commiserating about the loss with Mohammed Qadadeh, who owns Meshuggah Cafe and American Falafel — and then they decided to do something about it. Madden reached out to fellow University of Missouri–St. Louis art grads Malone and Brittney Parker, now assistant store manager, to see if they wanted to work with him and Qadadeh to open a store of their own.

“We’re like, ‘We can make this happen. We really can,’” Malone says. “I took over the studio, while Brittany and Bob took over the store side of things.”

It was especially meaningful for Malone to be part of the group that is making sure the Loop has an art store. She has fond memories of heading to the Loop from UMSL to pick up supplies and grab a bubble tea.

“I personally was so heartbroken when I heard Artmart was closing,” she says.

The name of the store came about organically. Qadadeh had started taking suggestions for the name from regulars and community members, and he kept hearing MO Art Supply.

What that stands for is in the eyes of the beholder.

“Nobody knows if it’s Mohammed or [Missouri] or more,” Qadadeh says. “It was a big void in the neighborhood and we just wanted to open something to keep it alive, so it’s everything.”

The store held a soft opening on 18th and then a grand opening over the weekend with live artist demonstrations. Since opening only a few days ago, the store has seen good foot traffic.

“The love was overflowing and everybody wants to help and see us succeed and open,” Qadadeh

says.

Though the store already seems well stocked, Malone says that they only have about half of the inventory that is on order. Each room also has a sheet where customers can request MO Art Supply stock additional items.

For Malone, though, the most exciting part might be the studio side, which she says is beginning with figure drawing classes and demos from live artists to show their expertise and answer questions. She says they will be adding on from there (Malone, who also runs Melon Press, will teach silkscreen and block printing and more). They even plan to offer inexpensive studio space that artists can purchase for a small hourly fee.

The store has already built many community connections and is planning to be at local events such as Paint Louis, the St. Louis Comics Expo and the Cherokee Street Print Bazaar. They’ll also keep a calendar of local events like gallery and museum openings and artists talks.

The idea is to make the store open to anyone (Malone is quick to note there’s an elevator in the back, if you can’t handle the stairs at the front entrance) and part of the rich St. Louis art scene.

“We want to make this a hub of community for art,” she says. n

Visitors are greeted by tons of art supplies — and murals both inside and out. | JESSICA ROGEN

From left: Mohammed Qadadeh, Brittney Parker, Sophia Malone and Bob Madden. | JESSICA ROGEN

Sibling Revelry

The Root Mod collective has gone from a family jam to one of St. Louis’ most exciting up-andcoming bands

Written by STEVE LEFTRIDGE

They are Root Mod. Or they are We Are Root Mod. They briefly considered I Am Root Mod.

The band’s name has varied slightly in the course of their six-year history. For next month’s Music at the Intersection — they play the fest’s main stage at 12:45 p.m. on Sunday, September 10 — they are billed as simply Root Mod, although the band’s new manager is still lobbying to add “We Are” back to their moniker.

Whatever they are called, the collective led by siblings Daniel

and Bianca Fitzpatrick is among the most exciting musical outfits in St. Louis, a dynamic multicultural mix of jazz, gospel, blues, funk, rock and soul that creates a unique stew of American musical traditions and brand-new inventions all their own.

What started as a five-piece family band in 2017 has grown into a 10-piece unit featuring an eclectic mix of musicians based around Bianca’s expressive neo-soul vocals and Daniel’s melodic but explorative piano compositions. With instrumental flourishes from the saxophone, trumpet, electric guitar and organ atop separate drums and percussion, Root Mod pumps out an almighty sound that ranges from jazz-torch subtlety to powerhouse rock-soul roof-raising.

The Fitzpatricks come by their musical prowess naturally. Their father, pianist Daniel “LaDale” Fitzpatrick, was a mainstay of the St. Louis gospel and blues scene and, at one time, played in Buddy Guy’s band. Tragically, LaDale passed away unexpectedly in July. As his son and daughter talk about their father over wine and Manhattans on a sweltering Monday afternoon at Vino STL in the Central West End, it’s clear they’re still shaken by the loss. “He was one of

the best musicians in town,” Bianca says. “He is the legend.”

Daniel and Bianca talk in the overlapping patter of close siblings, often finishing each other’s sentences. They explain that they grew up listening to their father play in church.

“I wouldn’t know what to play if it weren’t for him,” says Daniel, who followed in his father’s footsteps as a pianist. “I don’t even know if I would want to play.”

Indeed, the siblings’ parents instilled both a passion and a facility for music early on, first by putting them in orchestra lessons by age seven — cello for Daniel and violin for Bianca. Eventually, Daniel transitioned to piano, although his dad cautioned him against a career in music. “He told me not to become a musician,” Daniel remembers. “He told me to just do it for fun because he knew it was such a struggle.”

Daniel didn’t listen. After a broken foot derailed college football plans, he dove hard into piano, dedicating hours in his dorm to composing. “I would forget to eat,” he says. “I just fell in love with playing and writing.” Two years later, Bianca also went to college, following her mother’s lead by pursuing a career in fash-

ion, a goal that eventually took her to London and Milan. Still, she never stopped singing.

“I was really shy when I was young,” Bianca says. “I would get up to sing in church, and I would cry. But then my dad would take me to [Downtown jazz and blues club] BB’s and would pull me on stage to sing with him when I was like 12 years old.” In college, she says, she found inspiration in the neo-soul voices of India.Arie, Jill Scott, Lauryn Hill and others, adding their inflections to the gospel she grew up hearing in church and forming the versatile, adventurous style she would eventually make her own.

While neither Fitzpatrick had previously considered a career making music, one day in 2017, Daniel, who by then had written a pile of original songs influenced by everyone from Ray Charles to Oscar Peterson, asked his sister if she wanted to start a band.

Daniel would send Bianca tracks to write melodies over, and We Are Root Mod was born, filling its ranks with musical members of their family, including cousins Thomas Paden, a drummer, and Greg Fitzpatrick, a hip-hop MC and lyricist. Soon, the band was playing Fridaynight street parties on Washington

Siblings Daniel and Bianca Fitzpatrick brought together a supergroup of talented musicians to form Root Mod. | JESSICA PAGE

Avenue, self-producing the shows. “It was so rinky-dink,” Daniel laughs. “We were using old amps and stuff we pulled out of the basement. But we made it work.”

Before long, however, the band gained traction and became regulars in bars like their dad’s old haunt BB’s and the now-defunct the Monocle in the Grove neighborhood, where the band played a monthly residency in 2019. “It was insane,” Bianca recalls. “It was packed every time.” That momentum led to high-profile appearances at the NHL All-Star Game and the inaugural Music at the Intersection festival in 2020, as well as a coveted spot headlining the Whitaker Music Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden last year.

All along, the band, which already included Paden (who switched from drums to organ) and guitarist Peter Plank (who performs as Heatwave for his own solo project), kept growing, adding sensational drummer Robert Reavling, percussionist Isaac Johnston and bassist Shawn Pavy along with a horn section of saxophonist Jawwaad Spann and trumpeter Brady Lewis. According to Daniel, part of the motivation to increase the size of the band was to make sure the musicians in Root Mod earned decent money. “A lot of really talented musicians will play for three hours and hardly get paid,” he says. “My goal was to create an act that is so amazing and so entertaining that people would have to pay these guys what they are worth.”

Now, 2023 is set to be Root Mod’s biggest year yet. In addition to its Music at the Intersection set, the band is gearing up to release its first full-length album, recorded earlier this year at Shock City Studios in St. Louis with producer Sam Maul. Recently released singles include “Gotta Thing,” a slinky, shape-shifting love song that pairs Bianca’s voice with saxophone lines and layers of her own harmonies. “I know what I hear and what I want,” she says of her process of going it alone vocally in the studio. “Everything you hear is me.”

Still, Root Mod prefers to record almost entirely live in the studio to capture the band at its most sinewy and raw. “I challenged myself to just let it breathe,” says Daniel,

the group’s musical director. “I wanted to let it be what it is without overdubs.”

Another new track, “This That N’ the Third,” a song that blends jazz-funk arrangements around Bianca’s bumblebee vocals and rapper ithinkitsbbp’s skittery verses, will give the upcoming album its name. “To me, that title means that you just have to keep pushing, keep going,” Daniel says. “Nobody gives a shit what you’re going through because they don’t know what you’re going through. There’s always something. You have to keep going.”

And what about that band name? What is a Root Mod anyway? “I started with this web of words,” Daniel explains. “We love God, so that became ‘Source’ and then ‘Root.’ Our mom is super into fashion, so ‘Mod’ means popular and in style. So since we want to make organic music but keep it cutting edge, we are Root Mod, conforming to God in a fashionable way.”

By bringing to life a full range of musical and emotional temperatures, Daniel and Bianca, along with a cast of terrific musicians, satisfy both requirements: grounding in musical and spiritual bloodlines and exploring chic and innovative sonic creations. So who are Root Mod? They are. n

“ A lot of really talented musicians will play for three hours and hardly get paid. My goal was to create an act that is so amazing and so entertaining that people would have to pay these guys what they are worth.”

Nickel and Dimed

In Between Two Worlds, a French journalist goes undercover to explore the lives of the French working-class — but the story is all about her

Written by ANDREW WYATT

Between Two Worlds

Freshly divorced and effectively destitute, former homemaker Marianne (Juliette Binoche) arrives in the northwestern French coastal city of Caen seeking a fresh start. She haunts employment offices and job fairs, looking for an employer who will take a chance on a middle-aged woman with a 23-year gap in her résumé. There’s only one option for someone in her position: parttime, minimum-wage work as a cleaning woman. She proceeds awkwardly through her government-assisted job training and a succession of miserable early postings, mopping floors and scrubbing toilets in the wee hours for hostile, ungrateful clients. The jobs change week to week, but her fellow cleaners seem to be drawn from a common pool of hardluck local women. Their ages and circumstances vary, but all of these workers are broke, exhausted and unable to spare much time for their partners or children.

Marianne presents her situation as similarly precarious, but this is a deception. She is, in fact, an investigative journalist, working undercover to shine sunlight on the reality of France’s ongoing labor crisis, a late-capitalist cluster jam of poverty wages, grueling conditions and chronic underemployment. Hoping to develop her embedded experiences into a book, she fully commits to the bit, cutting off all contact with her family, friends and colleagues in Paris and living on her meager cleaning income. However, there is an intrinsic tension in her masquerade, quite apart from her anxiety at being found out: She engages in this drudgery by choice, and, unlike her coworkers, she can return to her bourgeois “real” life at any time.

Between Two Worlds is loosely adapted by Emmanuel Carrère and Hélène

Devynck from journalist Florence Aubenas’ prize-winning non-fiction book Le Quai de Ouistreham. The film is the third feature directed by the multi-hyphenate Carrère and the first since his 2005 international breakout The Moustache

Compared to that Kafkaesque psychodrama, Between Two Worlds is a relatively straightforward, socially conscious picture, one that recalls the bleak workingclass portraiture of British filmmaker Ken Loach (I, Daniel Blake; Sorry We Missed You). Other than Binoche, the performers in Carrère’s film are all non-professionals, and they acquit themselves quite well opposite one of France’s greatest living actors. This is particularly the case with Hélène Lambert, who portrays Chrystèle, an intense and hard-bitten young woman who naturally draws Marianne’s eye. The two eventually strike up a friendship, one that Marianne deludes herself into believing can survive her muckraking deception.

It’s through Chrystèle that Marianne lands a gig cleaning the France-to-Britain ferry in the nearby port of Ouistreham. It’s steady but brutal work, a marathon of vacuuming, scrubbing and sheetchanging that must be completed in the 90-minute window between arrival and departure. The cross-Channel ferry will be a familiar setting for fans of Catherine Breillat’s excellent 2001 erotic noir Brief Crossing. This adds a metatextual twist to the sensation that Between Two Worlds is peering behind the curtain of modern

French society, allowing hard-working, normally unrecognized laborers to stand in the spotlight, however briefly.

Of course, Loach, for all his miserablism, is resolutely focused on poverty’s absurd cruelties and the flawed characters who muddle through such tribulations. In Between Two Worlds, the story’s investigative conceit makes Marianne the star of the story. Accordingly, the more substantive day-to-day struggles of Chrystèle and the other workers ultimately feel secondary to the journalist’s inner turmoil.

To Carrère’s credit, this may be the point. The film regards Marianne’s project with ambivalence, critiquing her dogooder vanity and the broader problem with treating “awareness” as a commodity, one that requires inflicting deception and humiliation on the very people it aims to elevate. Regardless, the preoccupation with Marianne’s conflicted conscience ends up taking up space that would otherwise be devoted to the textured depiction of the grinding hardships (and fleeting joys) of Caen’s invisible janitorial workers.

Between Two Worlds never finds a way to satisfyingly resolve its disparate identities: a character drama about a woman’s well-intentioned deception; a gritty, ground-level depiction of insecure wage slavery in contemporary France; and an equivocal exploration of the ethics and politics of covert journalism. The

film does eventually settle on Chrystèle’s furious, embarrassed sense of betrayal as its central emotional pillar once Marianne’s lies begin to unravel. Mathieu Lamboley’s urgent and haunting electronic score underlines the impression that Binoche’s journalist is hurtling toward a momentous test of her values and loyalties, one that won’t necessarily cast her in a sympathetic light.

Binoche is the kind of actor who seems to possess her own reality-warping gravitational field, and her prowess is discernible even when the material is flimsy. (OK, maybe not in Ghost in the Shell.) Between Two Worlds gives her a performance about a performance, a fittingly juicy role that’s also half a step removed from the characters she typically portrays in French dramas. Marianne is a passive observer and chronicler, and she lacks the brittle, voluble edge that so often characterizes Binoche’s 21st-century performances. Yet there’s a taut dramatic pleasure in watching Binoche and Lambert play off each other. Marianne occasionally says or does things that subtly betray her professional-class background, and the sideways looks that Chrystèle gives her suggest that she senses something off about her new friend. Their interactions give Carrère’s feature the boundary-blurring psychological tension of an undercover spy or police drama. What is real here, and where does it all end? In tears, of course.

Directed by Emmanuel Carrère. Written by Emmanuel Carrère and Hélène Devynck, based on a book by Florence Aubenas. Opens in select cities August 25.

When Marianne (Juliette Binoche) bonds with Chrystèle (Hélène Lambert), Chrystèle doesn’t know her new friend is a journalist seeking information. | COHEN MEDIA GROUP

The Play’s the Thing

SATE’s This Palpable Gross Play is one kind of midsummer night’s dream

Written

by

TINA FARMER

This Palpable Gross Play

Written by Ellie Schwetye. Directed by Lucy Cashion. Presented by SATE at the Chapel through Saturday, September 2. Shows are at 8 p.m., and tickets are $25.

Over the last several years, SATE, a.k.a. Slightly Askew Theatre Ensemble, has applied an inventive, fully connected approach to classic plays and literature, bringing a fresh, malleable perspective to works from Jane Austin, the Brontë sisters and Shakespeare. This Palpable Gross Play, a playful riff on the forest scenes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, joins the company’s canon with wit, imagination and exuberance.

The mischievous faerie Puck opens the show with two mono-

logues — one of his own from Shakespeare’s play and a sincere recreation of a Lunesta ad from 2011, including the legal verbiage. The once-popular sleep aid is a comic anachronism with an important contribution to the plot and serves as a comic reminder that though the characters may be familiar, the audience is in for an evening of twists, turns and playful juxtaposition.

Instead of Pyramus and Thisbe, the Laborers are telling a story about Hermia and Lysander, cleverly intermixing Shakespeare’s plot, including the disruption of normalcy by Puck, as directed by Titania. With the sprinkling of a little faerie magic, Francis Flute transforms into Hermia, Snug becomes Lysander, Tom Snout is Demetrius and Peter Quince is Helena. Naturally, Nick Bottom is transformed into a donkey, or ass, though the script turns that bit on its head to humorous effect. This is a comedy, and so, despite the clever shake-ups and confusion, a happy ending is assured, as are a lot of laughs.

Ross Rubright is captivating as Puck, and his performance is filled with expert delivery and comic timing. Dressed in a stylish tuxedo, he compliments the gilded age costumes and demeanors of Victoria Thomas and Spencer Lawton as Titania and Oberon, respectively. Elevated above the forest in an invisible, gilded age

penthouse, their playful approach to their quarrels and petty jealousies plays out like scenes from Old Hollywood romantic comedies.

Andre Eslamian is spot-on funny as the pompous and often pretentious Nick Bottom, and he fully commits to his transformation, ensuring his bits with Oberon hit the right comic notes. Kayla Ailee Bush is genuine and likable as Francis Flute, with a big splash of can-do feminism that suits the character, and Kristen Strom brings a touch of stage manager to Peter Quince that’s only enhanced by her initially monotone affect. Joshua Mayfield is expressive and expansive as the amiably agreeable Tom Snout, and Anthony Kramer-Moser is laughably insecure, and then egotistically over-the-top certain, as Snug.

If you’re familiar with the original, you’ll enjoy seeing the unexpected ways playwright Ellie Schwetye has mixed up Shakespeare; however, you don’t need to know the play to follow along and enjoy this spirited and inspired show. Sharp direction by Lucy Cashion makes the story and transitions clear for the audience while ensuring things come to just the right chaotic boil before resolution. Whether you’re a Shakespeare fan or just looking for a night full of laughs and engaging storytelling, This Palpable Gross Play is laughout-loud fun. n

Parsing the ways This Palpable Gross Play riffs on A Midsummer Night’s Dream is fun, but you don’t need to be familiar with the original. | JOEY RUMPELL

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 31

ANDY COCO & CO.: 4 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

DENIE THIMES: 7:30 p.m., $30-$35. Blue Straw-

berry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

EASTSIDERS REVIEW: 7 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

ERICA FALLS: 9 p.m., $15. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

LLIAM CHRISTY: 7 p.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512

N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644.

NICK GUSMAN: 3 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028

S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

OKAY TWO THINGS: 8 p.m., free. Tim’s Chrome Bar, 4736 Gravois, St. Louis, 314-353-8138.

POLYPHONY MARIMBA CONCERT: 6 p.m., free.

Greg Freeman Park, Kingsbury Ave. and Des Peres Ave., St. Louis.

PORTRAYAL OF GUILT: 8 p.m., $18. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

ROBERT NELSON & RENAISSANCE: 8 p.m., $15. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis.

SAMANTHA CLEMONS: 7:30 p.m., $15. Blue

Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

FRIDAY 1

120 MINUTES: 7 p.m., $5. Hwy 61 Roadhouse and Kitchen, 34 S Old Orchard Ave, Webster Groves, 314-968-0061.

AARON KAMM AND THE ONE DROPS: 8 p.m., $15$20. The Big Top, 3401 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, 314-533-0367.

BRUTALLICA: w/ Storm Razor, Bleed Black 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

CHRISETTE MICHELE: 8 p.m., $60. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

EVERGREEN STARS: 7 p.m., $60. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

FISTER: w/ Snort Dagger, Van Buren 8 p.m., $12-$15. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

FUNKY BUTT BRASS BAND: 10 p.m., $10. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

HONKY TONK HAPPY HOUR: 4 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

JESUS CHRIST SUPERCAR: w/ Freddy Vs., Natalie Huggins 8 p.m., $10-$12. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

KINGDOM BROTHERS: 8 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

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

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

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

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

ROCKY AND THE WRANGLERS: 7 p.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

Trippie Redd w/ Lucki

7:30 p.m. Monday, September 4. Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, 14141 Riverport Drive, Maryland Heights. $34.50 to $109.50. 314-298-9944.

Canton, Ohio-based alt-rocker-turnedemo-rapper Trippie Redd continues to dominate the more angsty corners of the rap scene, so much so that, in just a few short years, he’s gone from performing at Pop’s to headlining at Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre during his St. Louis stops. Credit some of that success to the man’s remarkable work ethic, sure — the rapper born Michael Lamar White IV has been a fount of creativity since getting his start as part of the SoundCloud rap scene. Case in point: This year alone saw the release of the 25-track Mansion Musik in January, followed by the fifth entry in his

YAM YAM: 10 p.m., $10. Central Stage, 3524 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, 314-533-0367.

SATURDAY 2

2 PEDROS: AN EVENING OF YACHT ROCK: 7:30 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.

ALTON JAZZ & WINE FESTIVAL: 6 p.m., $5. Alton Riverfront Amphitheater, 1 Henry St, Alton.

COREY TAYLOR: 7:30 p.m., $39.50-$64.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

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

DISMAL: w/ Gasket, Sock ‘em, Socket, Chosen Time 7 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

EMO NITE: 10 p.m., $20. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

FAME ON FIRE: 7:30 p.m., $19. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

JOE PARK & THE HOT CLUB OF ST. LOUIS: 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend

314-678-5060.

ERIK BROOKS: 8 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

GAELIC STORM: 8 p.m., $35-$40. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

JAMO PRESENTS 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

CELEBRATION: w/ Dave Grelle’s Playadors, Al Holliday & The East Side Rhythm Band 4:30 p.m., $10-$15. The Big Top, 3401 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, 314-533-0367.

JOHN MCVEY BAND: 3 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

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

SHINEDOWN: 7 p.m., $29.50-$125. Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, I-70 & Earth City Expwy., Maryland Heights, 314-298-9944.

THREE OF A PERFECT PAIR: 10 a.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

MONDAY 4

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

DEVON ALLMAN: 8 p.m., $40-$45. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

LITTLE IMAGE: 8 p.m., $15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

MONDAY NIGHT REVIEW: w/ Tim, Danny and Randy 7 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

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

TRIPPIE REDD: 7:30 p.m., $34.50-$109.50. Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, I-70 & Earth City Expwy., Maryland Heights, 314-298-9944.

TUESDAY 5

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

KALI MASI: w/Surtsey, The Chandelier Swing 7:30 p.m., $10-$13. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

NAKED MIKE: 6 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

STEVE BAUER AND MATT RUDOLPH: 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

WEDNESDAY 6

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

—Daniel Hill

A Love Letter to You mixtape series in August, which consisted of another 20 new songs. But the bulk of Trippie’s ongoing domination of the gloomier elements of the hip-hop genre can be credited to his masterful handling of the woozy, melodydriven flow and huge trap beats that lead rap at this particular moment in time. More traditional hip-hop fans may shake their heads — especially when they hear a song like “Can You Rap Like Me, Pt. 2” and realize that he can expertly flow exactly how they’d prefer but simply chooses not to — but they’ll need to make their peace because that sound doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. Sports Mode: Opening the show will be influential underground rapper Lucki, from Chicago, who collaborated with Trippie on the track “Die Die” from Mansion Musik. Fans of the headliner would do well not to miss out.

Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

MYSTERY: A TRIBUTE TO KISS: 8 p.m., $23. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

NATE’S MUDPIE HOOTENANNY: 3 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

ONE WAY TRAFFIC: w/ Colt Ball & Friends 10 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

PAUL BONN AND THE BLUESMEN: 8 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

TOOSII: 8 p.m., $34.50-$49.50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

SUNDAY 3

ADAM GAFFNEY: 1 p.m., free. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

THE BIG MUDDY BLUES FESTIVAL: 2 p.m., free. Laclede’s Landing, N. First St. & Lucas Ave., St. Louis, 314-241-5875.

BRO FRANCIS FAMILY BAND: 3 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

DYLAN TRIPLETT: 7 p.m., $25. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis,

FOLKSTONE: 7:30 p.m., $10. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

JD SOUTHER: 7:30 p.m., $35. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

JOHN MCVEY BAND: 7 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

MARGARET & FRIENDS: 3 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565. ST LOUIS JAZZ CLUB: 7 p.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644.

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

THIS JUST IN

5-STAR ROSCOE: Fri., Oct. 20, 7 p.m., $6-$15. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 3143765313.

ALL ROOSTERED UP: Sat., Sept. 9, noon, free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

ALLISON RUSSELL: Sat., Jan. 13, 8 p.m. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

ANDREW DAHLE: Tue., Sept. 12, 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

Trippie Redd. | VIA TICKETMASTER

[CRITIC’S PICK]

ANDY COCO & CO.: Tue., Sept. 12, 5 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

ANDY COCO’S NOLA FUNK AND R&B REVUE: Thu., Sept. 7, 9 p.m., $12. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

ATOMIC JUNKSHOT: W/ Hazard to Ya Booty, Fri., Sept. 8, 8 p.m., $14-$18. Central Stage, 3524 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, 314-533-0367.

BARBARO: Thu., Nov. 2, 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

BARNS COURTNEY: Thu., Nov. 2, 8 p.m., $25-

$100. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

BEHEMOTH: W/ Twin Temple, Imperial Triumphant, Tue., Sept. 19, 7 p.m., $34.50. The Hawthorn, 2225 Washington Avenue, St. Louis.

BENEFIT SHOW FOR ELLEN HILTON COOK: W/ Luisa Sims and the Sorry Party, Fri., Sept. 8, 7 p.m., donations. Earthbound Beer, 2724 Cherokee Street, St. Louis, 314-769-9576.

BLACK STONE CHERRY: W/ Giovannie And The Hired Guns, Wed., Nov. 15, 8 p.m., $35. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

BOB DYLAN: Wed., Oct. 4, 8 p.m., $63.50-$139. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600.

BORIS AND MELVINS: Sat., Sept. 9, 8 p.m., $31$49.50. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

BUTCH MOORE: Fri., Sept. 8, 4:30 p.m., free.

Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

CHERRY & JERRY RAGTIME DUO: Sat., Sept. 23, 10 a.m., free. Webster Groves Garden Cafe, 117 E. Lockwood Ave., Webster Groves, 314-475-3490.

THE CONFORMISTS: W/ Imelda Marcos, Subtropolis, Fri., Sept. 8, 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

CREE RIDER: Mon., Sept. 11, 5 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

DOGSTAR: Sat., Sept. 30, 8 p.m., $45-$295. The Hawthorn, 2225 Washington Avenue, St. Louis.

DREW LANCE: Wed., Sept. 13, 4:30 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

ELSIE PARKER & THE POOR PEOPLE OF PARIS: Sun., Sept. 10, 4 p.m., $15-$20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

ERIK BROOKS: Sun., Sept. 10, 8 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

ETHAN JONES: Sun., Sept. 10, 2 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

EUGENE & COMPANY: Sat., Sept. 9, 8 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

FREDDY VS. EP RELEASE: Fri., Oct. 27, 7:30 p.m.,

$15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

GRACE BASEMENT: Fri., Sept. 22, 7 p.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

HIGH VIS: Sun., Sept. 17, 8 p.m., $20. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

HIS LORDSHIP: W/ Jimmy Griffin & the Incurables, Maximum Effort, Fri., Sept. 8, 8 p.m., $20. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

HONKY TONK HAPPY HOUR: Fri., Sept. 8, 4 p.m.,

$5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

INDIGO GIRLS: Mon., Nov. 6, 7:30 p.m., $35-$65. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

JAMES WHALEN BAND: W/ Zach McFadden, Sat., Oct. 7, 7 p.m., $6-$15. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.

J.D. HUGHES: Thu., Sept. 7, 4:30 p.m., free.

Fister w/ Snort Dagger, Van Buren

8 p.m. Friday, September 1. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway. $12 to $15. 314-328-2309.

If its been a while since you’ve caught a Fister show, here’s a refresher of what to expect: absolutely monstrous riffs delivered at deafening volumes and at a snail’s pace, a cacophony of horrors summoned from the depths of hell and screamed with the intensity of a thousand suns, a plodding sound that washes over you in wave after wave until you’re legitimately afraid you may be pulled under. If that sounds like your definition of a good time, then you are just the type of fucked up weirdo who probably didn’t need a reintroduction to one of St. Louis’ finest metal acts — you already know,

Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

JOHN MCVEY BAND: Wed., Sept. 13, 7 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

KEVIN BUCKLEY: Sun., Sept. 24, 10 a.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

THE KINGDOM BROTHERS BAND: W/ Zach Pietrini, Fri., Oct. 13, 7 p.m., $6-$15. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 3143765313.

KYLE KILLGORE: W/ Little Hills, Sat., Oct. 14, 7 p.m., $6. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.

THE LION’S DAUGHTER RECORD RELEASE SHOW: W/ Hell Night, Spinal Fetish, Fri., Oct. 13, 7 p.m., $12. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

LONESTAR: W/ Russo & Co, Thu., Sept. 21, 8 p.m., $37.50. The Hawthorn, 2225 Washington

and you’re already planning to go to the show. For more than a decade, the trio with the unspeakable name has been at the forefront of the city’s thriving metal scene, carrying the torch for NOLA-style sludge and doom with elements of death metal and post-metal thrown in for good measure. This event will be one of the last opportunities fans will get to catch the group’s teeth-rattling live show this year, as its members plan to take a break from playing out to work on material for a new album — a welcome development from a band whose songwriting has only gotten more sophisticated as the years have passed.

Locals Only: St. Louis’ premier psychedelic goregrind act Snort Dagger and proggy bass-and-drum doom duo Van Buren will warm the Sinkhole’s (lack of) stage, making this one an all-local affair.

—Daniel Hill

NAKED MIKE: Tue., Sept. 12, 6 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

NESSA BARRETT: Wed., Nov. 1, 8 p.m., $35. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

NOAH KAHAN: Wed., Sept. 13, 8 p.m., St. Louis Music Park, 750 Casino Center Dr., Maryland Heights, 314-451-2244.

PAUL CAUTHEN: W/ Colby Acuff, Wed., Sept. 27, 8 p.m., $30. The Hawthorn, 2225 Washington Avenue, St. Louis.

PEELANDER-Z: W/ Dog Party, Thu., Sept. 21, 8 p.m., $17. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

POLYPHONY MARIMBA CONCERT: Thu., Aug. 31, 6 p.m., free. Greg Freeman Park, Kingsbury Ave. and Des Peres Ave., St. Louis.

PORCHFEST 2023: Sun., Sept. 17, 1 p.m., free. 6008 Kingsbury Ave, 6008 Kingsbury Avenue, St. Louis.

PUNK ROCK CHRISTMAS: Sat., Dec. 9, 8 p.m., $30$40. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

RACHEL DESCHAINE: W/ Michael Marciano, Wed., Oct. 25, 7 p.m., $6-$15. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.

R&B GROOVE THANG: Sat., Nov. 25, 8 p.m., $59$199. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600.

REIGN IN BLOOD: A TRIBUTE TO SLAYER: Sat., Nov. 11, 8 p.m., $15-$25. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

THE RETRONERDS: W/ Rockin’ Rod, Fri., Oct. 6, 7 p.m., $6. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.

RICH MCDONOUGH & THE RHYTHM RENEGADES: Sun., Sept. 10, 3 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

THE ROOMINATORS: Fri., Sept. 8, 7 p.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644.

SARAH JANE AND THE BLUE NOTES: Sun., Sept. 10, 11 a.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644.

SEXYY RED: Mon., Oct. 30, 8 p.m., $34.50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

SHANELLE RIANA: Fri., Sept. 8, 8 p.m., $25. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

SOULARD BLUES BAND: Fri., Sept. 8, 10 p.m., $9. Mon., Sept. 11, 9 p.m., $8. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. SUICIDE SILENCE AND CHELSEA GRIN: W/ I AM, Peeling Flesh, Sun., Oct. 29, 7 p.m., $50. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

SYDNEY SPRAGUE: Tue., Nov. 21, 7:30 p.m., $15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

Avenue, St. Louis.

MARGARET & FRIENDS: Wed., Sept. 13, 3 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

MATT WALTERSCHEID: Sun., Sept. 10, 1 p.m., free. Friendship Brewing Company, 100 E Pitman Ave, Wentzville, 636-856-9300.

MIKE MATTINGLY: Sat., Oct. 21, 7 p.m., $6-$15. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 3143765313.

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

MOTHERFOLK: Thu., Dec. 7, 8 p.m., $20. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

MUSIC AT THE INTERSECTION DAY 1: Sat., Sept. 9, noon, $99-$650. Grand Center, N. Grand Blvd. & Lindell Blvd. 2, St. Louis, 314-533-1884.

MUSIC AT THE INTERSECTION DAY 2: Sun., Sept. 10, noon, $99-$650. Grand Center, N. Grand Blvd. & Lindell Blvd. 2, St. Louis, 314-533-1884.

THE QUEBE SISTERS & THE STEEL WHEELS: Tue., Sept. 12, 7:30 p.m., $22-$28. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

THURSDAY NIGHT BLUES JAM: Thu., Sept. 7, 7 p.m., $5. National Blues Museum, 615 Washington Ave., St. Louis.

TINY COWS: Sun., Sept. 10, 9 p.m., $9. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

TROY CARTWRIGHT: Sat., Nov. 11, 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

THE VERTIGO SWIRL: Sat., Sept. 9, 7 p.m., free. Spine Indie Bookstore & Cafe, 1976-82 Arsenal St., St. Louis, 314-925-8087.

VOODOO LAST WALTZ: Sat., Nov. 25, 8 p.m., $20$25. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

VOODOO NEIL YOUNG: Wed., Sept. 6, 9 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. n

Fister. | VIA ARTIST BANDCAMP

Blow Over

BY DAN SAVAGE

Hey Dan: Does your standard advice about sexless marriages extend to orally sexless marriages? My wife and I have been together for a couple decades. We met in our late teens, and we are each other’s first and only sexual partners. Oral sex used to be a regular part of our sex life, for the first decade or so, but the BJ frequency has declined to once every couple of years. I’m still game to give and always offer and often go down on my wife as foreplay. But my wife is basically no longer interested in blowing me, even though she’s great at it, and I love it. We have a really strong relationship but busy lives with kids and jobs, which definitely impacts her sex drive and energy. It’s not a relationship-ending thing for me, but the thought of not getting my dick sucked more than a few more times for the rest of my life, well, that fucking sucks to think about. I’ve raised it with her a number of times, but she just doesn’t think it’s important and, most frustratingly, plainly isn’t interested in trying to get interested again. We’re committed to monogamy, and outside sexual partners just wouldn’t fit in our lives. I’ve got to imagine this is pretty common. Do I just have to resign myself to a fellatio-deprived future? Or should I expect more?

The Headless Husband

You can expect more from the woman you married — you can expect all the blowjobs you want — and that might be a reasonable expectation on your part, THH, considering that blowjobs were once a regular part of your marital sex life. But the woman you’re married to now doesn’t wanna suck your dick anymore and/or doesn’t wanna suck your dick more than biannually.

So what can you do?

Well, you can do what you’re supposed to do. You can communicate your wants and needs to your wife without pressuring her to do anything she doesn’t wanna do. In other words, THH, you can soft beg your wife for oral sex without being pathetic (no one wants to suck pathetic cock) and without being coercive (no one wants to suck cock under duress, no one should want their cock sucked under duress). But you’ve already tried that — you’ve raised the subject a number of times — and she’s given you her answer: She’s not that interested in sucking your dick anymore, and she’s not interested in getting more interested again. And since your wife isn’t Magic Eight Ball, THH, you can’t just turn her over, give her a shake,

and get a different answer.

You also have the option of doing what you’re not supposed to do … and I don’t have to tell you what that is. You open by asking if my “standard advice” to people in marriages that are happy but sexless or inescapable but sexless — do what you need to do to stay married and stay sane — applies in cases of orally sexlessness marriages. But you close by emphasizing your commitment to monogamy before declaring outside sexual contact a bad fit. So it really doesn’t matter if my “standard advice” for people in sexless marriages applies in a case like yours, THH … which, for the record, it doesn’t, since your marriage isn’t sexless. (Suckless ≠ sexless.)

And as much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news … based on years of listening to straight married men complain about not getting their dicks sucked and straight married women complain about being expected to suck dick … it’s highly likely blowjobs will come further and further apart, THH, and the enthusiasm with which they’re performed to diminish along with their frequency until they stop altogether.

As for how common this is …

It’s so common I honestly think it may not be realistic to expect frequent and/ or enthusiastic oral sex two decades into a marriage — particularly if we’re talking about blowjobs to completion and not a little oral-as-foreplay, which is all the oral your wife gets. Just as the desire for extended make-out sessions seems to fade the longer we’re with someone, the urge to inhale someone’s dick — the desire to do the hard work of getting a guy off with your mouth — seems to fade with time, too. While we can look at that drop and conclude there’s something wrong with our spouses … or something wrong with our marriages … it might be better if we accepted that enthusiastic blowjobs, like those long make-out sessions, come with NRE and fade away along with NRE.

Something else to consider: The longer you’re together, the older you get; the older you get, the longer it takes to get you off. There’s a huge difference between a 10-minute blowjob and 30-minute blowjob — mostly for the giver. The experience of pleasure is roughly the same for the receiver, but the effort required to suck off a man in his forties is exponentially greater than the effort required to suck off a man in his twenties. A man might not realize it’s taking him a lot longer to come from oral as he ages, but the person who blows him is painfully aware of that fact — and may be understandably hesitant to initiate blowjobs when “to completion” is the expectation.

Another thing to consider: If you only

go down on your wife as foreplay before pivoting to PIV … you’re probably getting off each time you two have sex. If your wife isn’t getting off every time or as often as she would like (not everyone needs or wants to get off every time), she may resent you for ignoring her basic needs and not feel particularly motivated to meet your extra-credit needs.

Anyway, THH, the right thing to do is to soft beg your wife for more frequent oral — and you’re likelier to get oral more frequently if you’re as willing to accept oral-as-foreplay as she seems to be and if you’re making sure sex is as pleasurable for her as it is for you. And when you do want a blowjob to completion, you’re likelier to get one of those in your forties if you’re willing to help get yourself there, i.e., if you’re willing to work in a little selfstroking to give her breaks and get yourself closer. And just so we’re clear: My standard advice for sexless marriages doesn’t apply in cases like yours, THH, as your marriage isn’t sexless, just suckless.

Dear Readers: I asked the married straight women who follow me on Twitter and Threads why they weren’t sucking their husbands’ dicks anymore. Obvious answers poured in — oral wasn’t reciprocated, poor personal hygiene, no longer in love, guilty admissions that sucking dick was a strategy — so I rephrased the question and asked again. I wanted to hear from women who 1. still loved their husbands and 2. used to love sucking cock and 3. no longer sucked cock to explain what changed. Here are a few of their letters …

My husband and I have been together for 12 years. We have a loving relationship and I’m not looking to go anywhere but have to admit that I would be a bit more excited to suck some new-to-me dick. I’d also wager there’s some fucked up purity culture fallout involved — I was raised in the church and tend to fantasize about the forbidden, and there’s nothing forbidden about sex with your husband.

Blowjobs are fantastic. I love giving them — but at this point, I’d rather give a stranger a blowjob than my husband. I don’t think there is any issue with the act, but with all the cultural bullshit women are exhausted by — blowjobs are something men feel entitled to, yet another act of service women are expected to perform. In reality, a married woman’s entire day is an act of service. I do all of the emotional labor and take on the entire mental load of running a family and household, all while also having a fulltime job. I miss giving blowjobs for fun.

My husband got a blowjob on a work trip.

He doesn’t know I found out, and I don’t plan to tell him because I don’t feel betrayed. I feel relieved. But I think he would be upset to learn that I’m not upset. I love him (very much!) and I want him to be happy (and I make him happy in lots of ways!), but I don’t want his penis in my face ever again. Knowing he got a blowjob and could get another sometime makes me feel less guilty. But since I want this to be a very rare thing, I think it’s better he doesn’t know that I know and certainly not that I approve. We still have good and frequent PIV and use toys. Still fantasize about performing oral sex on a man, but it’s never my husband in my fantasies.

I love my husband. We’ve been married for a decade, we have two children and I actually think we are having the best sex of our married lives now. We’ve actually been getting kinkier and more adventurous as we get older. That said, I do not like giving head anymore, not at all. And I know I’m not alone, since many of my married girlfriends have told me they feel the same way. It’s hard to find an angle that doesn’t pinch my neck or hurt my knees, and it’s not fun to be reminded that your body has gotten older and creakier in the middle of sex. And since it’s not very fun for me, I don’t think it’s fun for my husband. Maybe head is just a young person’s game.

My relationship to the almighty BJ has changed. The hubs and I have been married for 15 years in October. I’m in my late 30s, and he’s in his early 40s, and we have four awesome kids. To be honest, I used to enjoy giving head and was pretty good at it. But since giving up alcohol a little over a year ago, I’m less inclined to jump to a BJ. It took me a while to connect the dots, but I realized that alcohol gets me horny and eager, and without it I’m a little less motivated. I still do it, but more as a sidebar/treat now, and rarely to completion.

Gay man here with an observation to share. My husband sucked my cock like a madman when we first met. We’ve been together for 12 years now, and he doesn’t suck my cock like that anymore — but I’ve watched him suck the cocks of other men like he used to suck mine. I think a desire to show someone how much you want them inspires a person to suck cock like that. Once you’ve got someone, you’re not as inspired. My advice to straight couples: Want to see your wife suck cock like she used to? Watch her suck someone else’s. Want your cock sucked like that? Get someone else to suck it.

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