Riverfront Times, September 6, 2023

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Owner, Chief Executive Officer and Publisher Chris Keating Executive Editor Sarah Fenske

EDITORIAL

Managing Editor Jessica Rogen

Digital Content Editor Jaime Lees Editor at Large Daniel Hill

Staff Writers Ryan Krull, Monica Obradovic Dining Critic Cheryl Baehr Theater Critic Tina Farmer Music Critic Steve Leftridge

Contributors Max Bouvatte, Thomas Crone, Mike Fitzgerald, Virginia Harold, Reuben Hemmer, Ace Louie, Tony Rehagen, Mabel Suen, Theo Welling

Columnists Chris Andoe, Dan Savage

Photography Fellow Braden McMakin

ART & PRODUCTION

Art Director Evan Sult

Creative Director Haimanti Germain

Graphic Designer Aspen Smit

MULTIMEDIA ADVERTISING

Associate Publisher Colin Bell

Account Manager Jennifer Samuel Directors of Business Development Tony Burton, Rachel Hoppman

Marketing Director Kristen Moser

Event and Promotions Manager John Heinrich

BUSINESS

Regional Operations Director Emily Fear

CIRCULATION

Circulation Manager Kevin G. Powers

BIG LOU HOLDINGS

VP of Digital Services Stacy Volhein

NATIONAL ADVERTISING

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

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MONDAY, AUGUST 28. It’s glorious weather in St. Louis at long last. Meanwhile, some Republican from Des Peres is setting up a committee to look at the city’s earnings tax — one of the few things that absolutely no one in this city is complaining about these days. For some reason, House Speaker Dean Plocher isn’t interested in taking on the regressive sales tax that adds a high surcharge to groceries for families in St. Louis and Des Peres and across Missouri. Nope, he’s worried about lawyers who make $100,000 a year and have to send $1,000 of it to St. Louis City Hall. Priorities!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 29. More wonderful weather Willson Contreras slugs two home runs and brings the smattering of fans at Busch Stadium a 6-5 victory (anyone still there in the 10th after the team’s wretched play this season is truly among the Best Fans in Baseball). Meanwhile, some loser in Eureka is charged with bringing a gun to a fist fight — and then

Previously On

LAST WEEK IN ST. LOUIS

using it to pistol-whip the kid he wanted to fight. At least he didn’t open fire?

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30. Former PostDispatch reporter Mike Faulk settles his lawsuit with the city after being rounded up in the mass “kettling” arrests of 2017. Then-Interim Police Chief Lawrence O’Toole claimed the police owned the night, yet the city continues to pay big bucks for all its civil rights violations Faulk, God bless him, will get $180,000. Also, City SC wins on another gorgeous night (it’s the last super blue moon ’til 2037!). GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is raising money at the Four Seasons after having his fundraiser boot-

ed from Olive + Oak. Why everyone is still mad at Olive + Oak but couldn’t care less about the Four Seasons, we can’t say.

THURSDAY. AUGUST 31. There’s another jail death in the wee hours of the morning, and once again no one says a word until whispers lead to media questions and press coverage. Transparency fail. In the evening, the jail oversight board vice chair is arrested and roughed up for asking questions about the death.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 Janis Mensah’s arrest finally awakens the Board of Aldermen from its midsummer slumber, and President Megan Green and

4 QUESTIONS for James Ozier of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists’ 1973 manifesto, officially establishing the group as an organization after its initial gathering in 1972 Chicago. The CBTU’s St. Louis chapter commemorated the benchmark with a gala event last Saturday.

CBTU-St. Louis president James “Jay” Ozier spoke with the RFT ahead of the celebration to discuss the catalyst for the CBTU, Black workers’ place in the labor movement and his thoughts on labor’s recent advances.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What initially made you want to join the CBTU?

There was racism in the workforce, and the Black workers — we were the last hired and the first fired. It’d been about a year into my apprenticeship in the carpenters’ union in 1972. I recognized early on that if we were going to do something in regards to job opportunities, that we as Black workers were going to have to be organized. Because the companies that we’re going to be working for — they’re organized. One significant thing that always stood in my mind was when Percy Green, who was the head of ACTION [Action Committee to Improve Opportunities for Negroes], climbed up on the Arch while it was being built to protest the lack of Black workers on the construction of the Arch. And that was 1964, but that always stayed in my mind.

The CBTU describes itself as the bridge between the labor movement and the Black community. Can you talk more about that relationship?

We’ve made progress with organized labor here, particularly with the AFL-CIO. Pat White is the president of the St. Louis Labor Council. He’s been amenable to many of the things that we did and with some of the initiatives that we’ve been a part of. We’ve got more Blacks hired into the building trade. There’s a program that we helped them initiate called Building Union Diversity.

What do you make of all the labor activity happening around the country?

I guess it would be reminiscent of unions being organized back in the 1930s. The companies didn’t want UAW, or the carpenters’ union, or the Teamsters. But they fought and fought and some battles, they

the Public Safety Committee join activists in calling for Corrections Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah to go. Meanwhile, the Cardinals lose again, but it’s a beautiful night in the city. The Gateway Cup brings cycling fans to Lafayette Square, while Paint Louis kicks off on the riverfront and Big Daddy’s Blues & Roots Festival fills Soulard.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 Jimmy Buffet dies. Bill Richardson dies. At Burning Man, everyone is stuck in the mud and rationing water, and the most anyone outside Burning Man can muster is the bitter laugh of schadenfreude Back in the Midwest, City SC falls to Kansas City. We blame the refs.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3. It’s hot again. How is summer ending already? Wasn’t it just yesterday we were plotting our pool schedule and planning vacations? We’ve got Willie Nelson’s “September Song” on Alexa, and we’re feeling blue.

won. And in the end, they were able to organize workers. The CBTU supports the right of workers to organize. We have to be able to organize if we’re going to fight back.

What are your hopes for the next 50 years of CBTU, and for workers in St. Louis generally?

I’d say the biggest one right now is getting on the ballot for $15 an hour. We’re joining with Missouri Jobs for Justice in collecting signatures to put $15 on the ballot and to give sick leave for workers. All workers need decent pay and they need to be able to have some sick leave.

We also need to increase our political education because politics, we can ignore it, but we can’t escape it. Either a politician or someone appointed by an elected politician affects us every day. So that’s really one of our biggest challenges — educating people about the importance of coming out to vote. And to prevent companies and the government from interfering with workers’ rights to organize, because that’s what’s been happening with Amazon workers and Starbucks workers and other places as well. All workers have power, but we have to unite and pull together. —Jacqui

Germain

James “Jay” Ozier sees progress — and potential — for Black workers and the labor movement in general. | ERICA M. BROOK BUSINESS PLUS++ PHOTOGRAPHY

WEEKLY WTF?!

CHRIS ANDOE’S SOCIETY PAGE

The Magic of a Monk’s Mound Eruption

The intense late summer heat, combined with travel schedules, made it harder to get things done in August.

I originally intended to write this column about how the residents of Benton Park roll out the red carpet when cycling events come through. During the World Naked Bike Ride, I’ve been wowed by the neighborhood’s incredible hospitality. Folks handed out water, juice, beer, beads and even sprayed down riders upon request.

Yet my primary contact for that story, Jessica Jobin, was traveling, so we couldn’t connect. I invited Neil Salsich of NBC’s The Voice fame, who lived in Benton Park before moving to Gravois Park, to meet up. He was also traveling.

COUCH WATCH

Where: an alley near Michigan and Sidney streets, Fox Park

When: Sunday, August 27

What: an alley couch, just chillin’

And on top of that: Just across the alley sat a second couch, as if someone was preparing for a super chill alley party.

Just needs: lamp, TV, very long extension cord

15 SECONDS OF FAME

SELF-INFLICTED WOUND OF THE WEEK Kelly

Wells

The executive director of KDHX (88.1 FM) has a penchant for firing beloved volunteers who’ve done nothing worse than criticize station leadership, a response that has the completely predictable result of spurring more people to criticize station leadership. This past week, after the furor of Tom “Papa” Ray’s termination had finally begun to fade, Kelly Wells elbowed her way back into the spotlight by summarily firing two more popular DJs, Andy Coco (The Rhythm Section) and Drea Stein (The Other One), thereby ensuring a tidal wave of bad publicity and more canceled memberships. What could be less popular than firing three unpaid people who gave their time and energy for years on end? Well, how about suggesting that candidates to replace them should be under 40? We’re not sure what Wells was going for with that. Insulting everyone old enough to have money to donate? A last-ditch effort to find new blood to alienate? Under Wells, KDHX continues to offer a master class in how not to run a community organization.

As I thought about what to write about instead, I was reading an advance copy of Scott Alexander Hess’ latest novel, A Season in Delhi. I was contemplating the St. Louis native’s rich descriptions of place when inspiration struck.

I would write about the most spontaneous, perhaps even cinematic, Sunday I’ve had in some time. An evening where it felt many of us simply surrendered to and became one with the heat and this place.

On August 20, I invited Jamar Torres, an Instagram acquaintance who was in town for the Beyonce concert, out for drinks. My husband and I picked him up from the Hyatt Regency at the Arch, and made our way to Bar PM on South Broadway. Torres, 35, was living in New York when he was lured to Tulsa by its ambitious remote work program, which offers $10,000 toward housing costs, in addition to fostering community engagement for transplants.

I showed him around Bar PM, explaining how it recently expanded into the neighboring building, which was long owned by the world’s oldest performing drag queen, Bonnie Blake Torres discussed all he’d seen and done around town before mentioning he’d like to see Cahokia Mounds. “Let’s go right now, before sunset!” I said.

There was a massive salvage yard fire in nearby Madison, Illinois, and from our vantage point it appeared Monk’s Mound was an erupting volcano. From the top, we and a dozen others had a panoramic view that included the sky-

line and the raging inferno.

Torres snapped photos of the soaring Arch on the way back, and then we wound our way through Soulard, pulling over twice to say hello to people we knew before arriving at Bastille. Despite the soupy conditions, many preferred to sit outside, including “Maven of Mardi Gras” Luann Denten. The Soulard socialite held court at one of the tables on the front sidewalk. “I returned from my trip early to celebrate Dessi’s birthday!” the Maven said, in reference to Panera VP Dessi Zaneva

Longtime bartender Mark Rumback turned on the misters over the patio, where a festive crowd, which included the jovial Zaneva, laughed and mingled. We all got soaked as the colored patio lights shimmered on our faces.

Torres seemed thoroughly charmed by our old and layered metro, based on his comments that night and his glowing Instagram post. After he returned home, I asked for his thoughts on his weekend here.

“St. Louis is a city with a special charm and strong character, where I truly see the interaction of the Midwest meets the South. The people are friendly, they’re proud of their city, I see a bustling LGBTQ community, and enjoyed visiting different places such as the art museum for the hip hop exhibit, the City Museum, and visiting the awe inspiring Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site with my new friends.”

Free agents like Torres are being lured away from megacities, sometimes landing in metropolitan areas a third our size. That offers an opportunity for St. Louis. We have the affordability they crave, without drastically sacrificing urban amenities and culture. We just need people to see what we’re about.

Just as I surrendered to conditions that evening, letting this place be what it will be, I’m doing the same with this column. For me it’s about finding meaning and value in our efforts and experiences, even when they don’t play out as intended. Finding inspiration in one another and in this complicated place. A place where even a tire fire can become part of a mystical backdrop. Perhaps even an eruption of civic pride.

SARAH FENSKE

Kelly Wells is known for her dreadlocks — and her bad decision-making. | SCREENSHOT VIA YOUTUBE

KDHX Fires 2 More Volunteers

The station set off yet another firestorm last week

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

Yet more turmoil has hit St. Louis’ most tumultuous independent radio station. KDHX has fired two longtime volunteers: DJs Andy Coco and Drea Stein.

Without using names, KDHX Executive Director Kelly Wells announced the terminations in a statement last week that began by noting the importance of donors and volunteers.

“Unfortunately, two longstanding volunteer DJs who have helped build KDHX will no longer have shows due to their use of their platform to encourage listeners to defund our station,” she wrote. “While we appreciate their service, listener support makes KDHX’s independent programming possible.”

Reached by phone August 29, Coco and Stein each confirmed that they had been fired. Coco said that he was informed by email the day before after he declined to meet with Wells and Director of Volunteer Connection Andrea Dunn without knowing what the meeting would be about. Wells and Dunn informed Stein during a meeting after her show on August 28.

“[They cited] the amount of instances that I had attempted to defund the station,” Coco says. “I’m not really sure what that accusation is about besides having withdrawn my own donations in protest and not doing a whole lot of fundraising on the last drive. I don’t think I really ever said, ‘Don’t give your money’ or anything of that nature.”

Stein says she was told that her statements about KDHX had not been appreciated and that her “services were no longer needed.”

She acknowledges that she’d been critical of KDHX on her personal Facebook page — especially about the firing of KDHX DJ Tom “Papa” Ray earlier this year and the way she believes power has been stripped away from the station’s volunteers — but says she had never done so on her show page.

“I said, ‘You sure you really want to do this after 28 years of my volunteering?’” Stein recalls.

“She said, ‘Yes,’ and I said, ‘This was a really dumb move. This was not a positive move for KDHX.’”

Reached by phone August 30, Wells said the station had documented instances of both DJs using their public platforms to ask people to withhold support, but would not share specific instances. She said such efforts could be hurting the station’s fundraising.

“Our listeners, they’re the lifeblood of what we do here, and we’re funded by them,” she says. “Listener support, that’s our largest form of support. So when people are actively working to en-

courage people to defund the station, they cannot enjoy the privilege of the airwaves.”

Coco says there was little buildup to the conversation aside from a cold shoulder from Dunn, whom he has considered a longtime friend.

“It just makes me feel sad,” he says.

Until early last year, Coco served as production and technology director at KDHX. Last month, he told the RFT that he’d “resigned in protest” because of leadership failures, but he had kept his funk and soul show The Rhythm Section until now. For 28 years, Stein hosted The Other One, a Grateful Dead-inspired bluegrass, blues and Americana show. She is also known for her T-shirt tie dye fun-

draisers, which supported KDHX until recent years.

Coco and Stein are far from the only ones unhappy with the direction of the station. Since the announcement, new members have poured into the Facebook page Save KDHX 88.1, which was started to protest “the unfair treatment of our community.” Now the group behind the page is organizing a festival, S.O.S. Fest, to highlight problems at the station and advocate for a change in leadership. The event is now set for October 21 in Benton Park.

Meanwhile, a post on the station’s official Facebook page seeking car donations has been flooded with angry comments about the terminations. A call for new volunteer DJs that suggested applicants should be “18 to 40” years old has also been a point of contention with the online community. (Wells says that the station has received about 20 applications so far and that the age range was meant to balance out the demographics of the current DJs.)

In May, a group of approximately 45 current and past DJs sent the board a letter of no confidence in Wells, naming eight missteps ranging from repeated PR debacles to KDHX’s lack of involvement in community events to failures to recruit new volunteers.

Of particular concern to the DJs was a volunteer agreement that they were being required to sign and a letter from Board Director Gary Pierson, which many believed were intended to chill volunteers’ ability to speak out. The agreement included the prohibition that DJs not air “KDHX internal business and/or conflicts on KDHX channels or social media.”

When asked in May if the station would let go of volunteers who aired grievances, Wells demurred. “Well, I will say our goal will always be to seek a path toward resolution,” she told the RFT at the time. Last week, she noted that DJs encouraging others not to donate was in conflict with that agreement.

Coco spoke about his experiences at KDHX for a story about the agreement and an RFT profile last month. He says that he was resigned to the possibility the stories might end in his termination.

“I can’t say I didn’t expect it,” he says. n

KDHX announced last week that it had fired two more longtime DJs, setting off consternation among many longtime listeners. | THEO WELLING

Andy Coco. | KATIE CLANCY

Andy Coco and Drea Stein are far from the only ones unhappy with the direction of the station.

City Arrests Oversight Vice Chair

Janis Mensah was seeking information about a recent death at the St. Louis jail

Written by RYAN KRULL

The vice chair of St. Louis’ jail oversight board was forcibly removed from the City Justice Center last Thursday, August 31, after the leaders of the facility refused to share any information about the most recent death there.

Janis Mensah says that when board members first heard of the detainee’s death, the second in two weeks, they went to the jail to try to learn more. Mensah chairs the city’s Detention Facility Oversight Board, a group of civilians tasked with investigating problems at the jail.

“I didn’t go there planning to stay,” Mensah says. “I just asked them a few questions, and they ignored me.”

Mensah then sat in the lobby. Around 9 p.m., jail staffers called the police.

“They pulled me out of the

Chronic Harasser Gets 7 Years

Robert Merkle has terrorized dozens of women in St. Louis

Written by SARAH FENSKE

Aman who’s harassed a shockingly large number of women in the St. Louis area was sentenced on August 31 to seven years in prison.

Robert Merkle, 54, pleaded guilty to Harassment 1st Degree in St. Louis County Circuit Court. While that’s only a Class E felony, Merkle was sentenced as a Prior and Per-

bench, pretty forcefully,” says Mensah. “They said ‘stop resisting,’ but I wasn’t moving at all.”

Mensah says they suffered scrapes and scratches and had their sweatshirt ripped.

Officers wrote Mensah a citation for trespassing and resisting arrest and then took them to the hospital. Mensah was released from there.

On Friday, Mensah said their face still hurt from being thrown to the ground in the jail lobby.

“They never read me my rights

sistent Offender. That takes the maximum penalty from four to seven years in prison. And Judge John Lasater gave Merkle the max. Addressing the court, the victim in the case said Merkle caused damage that was “severe and traumatizing,” according to the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. She asked the court to issue the maximum seven-year sentence consecutive to the 71 months Merkle is currently serving after a plea deal in federal court last month.

However, the prosecutors who struck deals with Merkle in both state and federal court had agreed that the prison terms would be concurrent. They asked the judge to stick with that deal, and Lasater did.

Merkle has previously been able to get out of seemingly long prison sentences by having his terms run concurrently rather than consecutively. In 2018, victims spoke out after a plea deal that was supposed to

then or at any point in the night. I can’t tell if I was arrested or caught and released or what even happened,” Mensah says.

Mensah’s removal comes amid growing tensions between the oversight board and Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah, the city’s head of corrections. The board has long called for her removal.

Increasingly, the oversight board and other jail reformers have focused their ire on Mayor Tishaura Jones, who appointed Clemons-Abdullah two years ago.

“This is definitely an escalation,” oversight board member Mike Milton tells the RFT about the events. “The mayor’s not doing anything. The blood is on her hands.”

Also on August 31, as the drama surrounding Mensah played out inside the jail lobby, a group of activists held an impromptu demonstration outside to protest the deaths and lack of transparency from the administration.

One of the speakers, Inez Bordeaux of ArchCity Defenders, focused her comments on Jones.

“I remember when this administration was running, saying, ‘We’re going to be transparent. We are going to change the culture of this city. We are going to change the culture in the police department. We are going to change the culture in the jail. We are going to reimagine public safety,” said Bordeaux. “Here we are two years later. It might as well be Lyda [Krewson] still in charge.”

“I haven’t seen a single change,” Bordeaux said. n

the time he’d spent in jail waiting for trial and concurrent terms.

And time and again, he’s shown himself willing to reoffend.

The crimes have a maddening, and terrifying, pattern. Victims have detailed numerous instances in which Merkle met a woman only briefly — through dating apps, groups like meetup.com or simply by being seated near her and learning her name — and sent her horrifying messages threatening her with rape. A former IT worker, he was known to track down personal details about his victims and their families.

lead to three years in prison instead saw him ready for a parole date not long after being sentenced, due to

“This guilty plea is the result of dedicated collaboration between law enforcement, the prosecuting attorney’s office and concerned citizens,” said St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell in a statement. “I am grateful to the survivors of these crimes for their bravery in seeking justice for themselves and for standing against violence against women.”

Janis Mensah took this photo at the hospital shortly after being forcibly removed from the City Justice Center. | COURTESY JANIS MENSAH

Robert Merkle has drawn criminal complaints from women accusing him of harassment dating back to 2017. | COURTESY ST. LOUIS PROSECUTING ATTORNEY

“ This is definitely an escalation. The mayor’s not doing anything. The blood is on her hands.”

MISSOURILAND

Physical Graffiti

Paint Louis brought 500-plus artists to the floodwall for a street art extravaganza

Photos by BRADEN

Words by SARAH

MCMAKIN

FENSKE

For the past 26 years, the St. Louis floodwall has been the place to be on Labor Day weekend for street artists from around the world —- not to mention DJs, MCs and break dancers. This year was no excep-

tion: The annual Paint Louis event brought an estimated 500-plus artists from around the world to 1000 South Wharf Street each day from September 1 to 3 from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. And those artists brought their A-game.

Paint Louis co-founder John Harrington has explained, “Paint Louis started as an attempt to bring graffiti into the mainstream. It was always on trains, cars, underpasses, but it wasn’t in a place where the public could get up close and appreciate it. This is an event that focuses on recognizing the contributions of graffiti artists and giving them the respect they deserve.”

By that metric, the event more than succeeded, with glorious murals and a host of onlookers, too. We can be all too quick to conclude “only in St. Louis” — but this remarkable event truly deserves that response, in the best of all possible ways. n

A CELEBRATION OF THE UNIQUE AND FASCINATING ASPECTS OF OUR HOME

A hostage situation lays bare major problems at the city jail — and puts pressure on Mayor Tishaura Jones to fire her corrections commissioner

BY RYAN KRULL

The SWAT team’s arrival at the St. Louis city jail on the morning of Tuesday, August 22, put a quick end to the hostage situation that had broken out during breakfast service. Around 6 a.m., a 73-year-old guard let two detainees out of their fourth-floor cells to help him distribute food. The detainees instead rushed the officer, shoving him into a shower, shackling his legs and hands and stealing his mace.

A slew of police and fire vehicles quickly took over Tucker Boulevard, the wide thoroughfare between the jail (officially named the City Justice Center) and City Hall, blocking it to traffic. Both Police Chief Robert Tracy and Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson arrived on the scene, and the fire department perched a hose on a truck, creating a makeshift street shower in case any law enforcement officers were maced.

A little before 8:30 a.m., the SWAT team entered the fourth floor of the jail, firing rubber bullets and using other “less than lethal” force on the hostage-takers. It took them about three minutes to free the guard, who had been held for more than two hours. He was taken to the hospital, where he was treated for a busted lip and concussed head.

With the guard’s safety ensured, the police and fire crews gradually began to disperse. The fire department’s decontamination station was shut off after only being used to cool down reporters and rubberneckers. The combustible situa-

tion seemed to have been defused.

But in the days since, the hostage situation has shone a spotlight on the chaotic inner workings of the City Justice Center and the increasingly tenuous position that Mayor Tishaura Jones’ appointee, Corrections Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah, occupies as its head. It’s also thrown into stark relief the increasingly complicated position Jones finds herself in relative to jail reform.

To longtime watchers of the city jail, the events that Tuesday morning may have been surprising in their particulars, but were otherwise a long time coming.

“Am I surprised it happened? I’m surprised it took this long,” says Everett Washington, who is serving a nine-year sentence for robbery at the state prison in Bonne Terre. He was locked up at the city jail for two years, until this past July, and says he spent much of that time in a dank, smelly cell that consistently flooded and never fully dried.

This summer, the civilian board

Continued on pg 17

The City Justice Center has seen major complaints in recent years. | PHOTO BY RYAN KRULL

MELTDOWN AT THE CJC

Continued from pg 15

tasked with overseeing jail operations called the City Justice Center a “powder keg.” And throughout June and July, the poor hygiene of detainees coming over from the jail was increasingly hard to ignore. Attorneys say their clients inside the jail complained of going without showers, toothbrushes and in some cases even regular access to food. Last month, attorneys representing current and former jail detainees in a class-action lawsuit made public numerous videos showing guards’ heavy-handed use of mace on inmates, in some cases administered seemingly without provocation. The attorneys say they cataloged at least 250 such incidents, some as recent as last December.

The revelations fueled tension between Clemons-Abdullah and the jail’s civilian oversight board, who in June began calling on Mayor Jones to fire the corrections head she’d appointed less than two years prior.

Amid the fallout from the hostage situation, the oversight board has redoubled their calls for Clemons-Abdullah to be fired, and everyone from the NAACP to the editorial pages of the Post-Dispatch have criticized jail operations.

Last week, the vice-chair of the oversight board was forcibly removed from the jail. Janis Mensah refused to leave the justice center Thursday night after the jail’s administration would not hand over any information about a detainee who died there earlier that day.

That death was the second of a detainee in as many weeks.

“The mayor’s not doing anything. The blood is on her hands,” oversight board member Mike Milton told the RFT

Amid the escalating turmoil, Mayor Jones tells the RFT she’s sticking by her appointee. Her office says in a statement, “Mayor Jones has confidence in Commissioner Clemons-Abdullah, who has overseen major projects and construction at the CJC, including fixing broken locks and upgrades across the facility. In this role, the commissioner has improved food service and expanded educational programming.”

Mayor Jones came into office in April 2021 during a particularly fraught time at the City Justice Center. That month, detainees staged their second riot of the year, breaking out windows on the building’s

third floor and throwing burning trash to the ground below as a gaggle of reporters and assembled law enforcement looked on.

Their riot surfaced reports about the horrific conditions within, including the capricious use of mace and, absurdly for a jail, doors that didn’t lock. Video that became public about a year later showed that between the two public uprisings, a corrections officer opened one detainee’s cell door so that two much larger inmates could beat him within an inch of his life. The casual way they carried out the attack suggested this

sort of violence was not all that uncommon.

Corrections reform had been a key plank in Jones’ campaign for mayor, and she notched some early successes in that area. The month after she took office, thenCorrections Commissioner Dale Glass resigned. He had drawn ire from activists after blaming them for emboldening the detainees to riot. Jones called his leadership a failure.

As a candidate for mayor, Jones had aligned herself with the “Close the Workhouse” campaign, promising to shut down the city’s

other jail, the Medium Security Institution, commonly known as the Workhouse, within 100 days of taking office. The facility’s closure had long been the goal of activists in the city, and though it took Jones longer than promised to make it happen, the last detainees left the north city facility for the downtown justice center in May 2022.

Jones’ other key reform initiative was the creation of the Detention Facility Oversight Board, a group that includes jail reformers, faith leaders and former pub-

Continued on pg 18

Corrections Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah. | ALFRED LONG FACEBOOK

Mayor Jones has stood by her appointee. | RYAN KRULL

A police officer stands watch in downtown St. Louis on the morning of a hostage situation at the City Justice Center. | RYAN KRULL

MELTDOWN AT THE CJC

Continued from pg 17

lic health officials. Saying they would be empowered to hold the administration of the city corrections to account, Jones signed the new board into law in December 2021.

However, in the years since, the board has yet to provide any actual oversight. It remains mired in disagreements with City Hall over how board members should be trained — and the city insists board members can’t examine the jail or investigate inmate deaths (there have been at least eight since January 2022) until its training is complete.

“We hear second- and thirdhand that things are bad and deteriorating in the jail,” oversight board secretary Pamela Walker told the RFT about two weeks prior to the hostage situation. “But we can’t investigate it because they say we haven’t fulfilled our training requirements, which is ludicrous.”

Walker has more than 40 years working in government, including as the city’s acting health director and running Missouri’s Center for Emergency Response and Terrorism. She said about her frustrations with jail administration and City Hall, “Sometimes it feels like obstruction is on purpose. Sometimes it feels like it’s accidental. And sometimes it feels like it’s just gross incompetence.”

City ordinance stipulates that incoming Division of Civilian Oversight board members must complete an orientation. The statute delineates more than a dozen topics that must be covered in that orientation, some of them specific, like Missouri’s Sunshine

Law, others much more broad, like constitutional law and the “history of the relationships between people of color and the economically poor and the police and correctional officers.”

Nick Desideri with the mayor’s office says that the training required of board members is in line with the training recommendations made by the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement.

But multiple members of the oversight board say they feel the training requirements are more about creating obstacles to prevent them from entering the facility than anything else.

Matthew Brummund, a former FBI agent who until May was in charge of the city’s Division of Civilian Oversight, told the RFT earlier this year that the primary obstructionist to the board’s oversight work was City Attorney Sheena Hamilton, who, according to Brummund, has indicated that tasking civilians to uncover problems at the jail would be tantamount to providing a “road map” for outside entities to sue the city over the jail, already a not-uncommon occurrence.

The board has been vocal in calling for Jones to fire ClemonsAbdullah, citing what they say is a lack of transparency, the deteriorating jail conditions and her lack of a plan to remedy either.

Prior to the oversight board’s initial call for Clemons-Abdullah’s ousting, which came in June, Walker sent a text message to Jones’ advisor Richard Callow as a “heads up” to the mayor about the board’s forthcoming demand.

“It should not matter who the Commissioner is or who the City Counselor (she needs to go too) is for us to meet our mandate. City

staff need to get on board or go home,” she texted.

Callow responded: “Unclear why the board members won’t go to training.”

“Seriously!?” Walker replied. “Sorry I tried to give Tishaura a heads up through you. Won’t bother you again.”

Callow posted a screenshot of the back-and-forth to the group chat with Jones and her father, Virvus, and it wound up part of the exchange released inadvertently as part of a Sunshine request.

Virvus Jones was the only one to respond. “They are taking themselves way too serious,” he wrote of the oversight board.

“It’s just weird,” Walker says today. “You passed an ordinance. You signed it. You appointed us. You did background checks on all of us, you vetted us. And now you don’t want us to do anything. Well, we’re not going to be window dressing. We’re not that kind of people. You put the wrong people on here if that’s what you wanted.”

Even as the oversight board that Jones created is proving to be a liability on her left flank, the other chief accomplishment of her jail reform agenda, closing the Workhouse, is now providing fodder for critics on her right.

The mayor’s political opponents have pointed to the hostage situation and ongoing chaos at the City Justice Center as evidence that, as an August 26 Post-Dispatch editorial phrased it, she closed the Workhouse with “too little forethought about overcrowding it would cause elsewhere.”

Frequent Jones critic Jane Dueker, a Democrat who is closely allied with the police union, tweeted two days after the hostage situation that “closing the Workhouse is a direct cause of the sub-human

conditions at CJC.” She referred to the closing of the jail as a “political slogan policy.”

Jones’ office is unequivocal about the Workhouse’s closure being a success, telling the RFT that “Mayor Jones ran on a promise to close the Workhouse. The Workhouse is closed, and we are currently engaging the community in a reenvisioning process on how best to use this space to address an existing City need in forwardthinking ways.”

Even sans the Workhouse, the city jail system shouldn’t have any capacity issues. On paper, it’s supposed to be able to hold more than 800 inmates. Monte Chambers with the Department of Public Safety tells the RFT simply, “There is no overcrowding.”

However, one year ago this month, KSDK reported that the jail was turning away defendants whom police were trying to turn over to jail custody, saying that the facility was full. According to city jail data, at that point, on September 1, 2022, 562 people were locked up in the jail. As of last week, the jail headcount stood at 670.

Chambers says the conditions that caused those issues last September were temporary, adding that maintenance, repairs and renovations can have short-term effects on capacity by taking specific areas offline. Overall, he says, “upgrades at the jail have created more space.”

Some have said that capacity issues stem from the jail being understaffed.

Sheriff Vernon Betts, whose deputies are responsible for transporting detainees from the jail to court, tells the RFT that he’s heard from detainees that all the doors still don’t lock and that there isn’t enough staff to guard all the floors

Oversight board member Pamela Walker has been openly frustrated by the city. | BRADEN MCMAKIN Mike Milton has criticized the mayor for her handling of the jail. |

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

of the jail — suggesting that while the building may have higher capacity, that’s not the case as it’s currently staffed or maintained.

Of staffing levels at the jail, Chambers says, “We cannot comment on staffing numbers due to security concerns and recent events. CJC was adequately staffed during last week’s critical incident.”

The assertion that there are no capacity issues at the facility does seem to be at odds with jail administrators’ decision in the wake of the hostage situation to use temporary transfer areas as ad-hoc housing. “They brought them over to my side,” says Betts, whose department controls several holding pen cells that act as transfer points for detainees coming to and from court.

Betts says that the detainees broke the windows out in those transfer pods. “They were banging on the doors, banging on the glass, kicking on the doors,” Betts says, adding that he heard from some of the detainees that they hadn’t eaten in two days.

“We had almost had a repeat of the riot the next day,” says Betts.

In the wake of the hostage situation, conditions at the jail deteriorated further, at least temporarily. Criminal defense attorneys described in the days following the standoff the jail losing track of their clients, not feeding them or allowing them to meet with legal representation. One attorney, Bob Taaffe, says that attorneys with his firm had to wait two hours to meet with a client. When they did, the man came into the interview room wearing only his underwear.

When ClemonsAbdullah took the top corrections job in August 2021, she had most recently been assistant warden of a federal prison in Arkansas. She told the RFT shortly after stepping into her new role that the biggest difference between her old and new jobs was money. “Because the federal government is what it is,” she said. “You know, we always had money.”

In its announcement of her hiring, the Department of Public Safety said that Clemons-Abdullah had worked at nine institutions and earned “46 specialized certificates of leadership training within corrections.”

“They tout how qualified she is, but when I looked at her qualifications, when she worked for the federal prison in Arkansas, she didn’t run the prison, she ran programs, which is quite different,” says Walker.

In addition to funding, one of the

biggest differences between federal prison and city jail is the nature of the inmate population. Jails are transient places with people arriving and leaving at unexpected and irregular intervals, unlike federal prisons, where many inmates are serving long sentences, with their intake and outtake typically coming with advanced notice.

Walker says her other major critique of Clemons-Abdullah is “she appears to be frightened.” Walker cites as evidence the fact that the commissioner recently wore a bulletproof vest as she spoke to the media from her office via Zoom, and that detainees say the corrections commissioner is rarely on the floors where they’re actually housed. “That is really a formula for disaster,” says Walker.

When Clemons-Abdullah spoke with the RFT in 2021, she said that she dropped in on the jailhouse floor, sometimes at night, conducting “pop-up” visits. “I go from cell to cell sometimes,” she said.

But Washington, the man now in state prison who spent two years at the justice center, says that Clemons-Abdullah never once stopped by his cell. He says he only spoke to her once; when he was working in the jail kitchen, she came by and he went up to her. “Did she meet with inmates?” Washington says. “No.”

The relationship between the Division of Corrections and the city Sheriff’s Department has also been frosty in the past two years, according to Betts. He tells the RFT that he and Clemons-Abdullah had a contentious working relationship from the start.

“Somebody has told that lady that Vernon Betts wants to take over the jail,” Betts says. “She’s got this wild hair up her butt that I want to run the jail.”

Betts says when he was a candidate for sheriff he did talk about consolidating the sheriff’s deputies with corrections officers and city marshals, but he dropped the idea when he came into office and realized how impractical it would be.

“She’s had it in for me since she’s been here,” Betts says.

Betts says that the animosity between him and Clemons-Abdullah hasn’t abated in the past two years.

“Tuesday, we have the riot. I shout to my guys, ‘Get your stuff together. Get the gear,’” says Betts. He says that Clemons-Abdullah instructed his deputies to line up on 11th Street and “stand by.”

It’s notable that Betts describes August 22 as a “riot.” Public Safety Director Charles Coyle referred to it as “a critical incident” at a press conference, the same phrase used

by Chambers, the spokesman for the department.

Six men were ultimately charged with kidnapping, assault and damage to jail property in connection to the incident.

The two detainees accused of instigating are Eric J. Williams, 20, and Anthony D. Newberry, 29, both in jail on murder charges.

The 73-year-old corrections officer was speaking to Newberry in the pod when Williams allegedly struck the guard on his head. The detainees dragged the guard into a shower stall where they cuffed his hands and legs. Newberry then allegedly started unlocking cell doors, both in the pod where the guard was taken hostage and in an adjoining pod. Newberry and another detainee, Richard C. Bolden III, 30, who was being held on charges of attempted rape, allegedly used extension cords to lasso televisions bolted to the ceiling and pulled them to the ground.

“The inmates disassembled the televisions and located broom and mop handles to create a variety of weapons,” the police probable cause statement says.

The detainees moved the guard to a table near the entrance to the pod, where one of the hostagetakers held a makeshift weapon to the guard’s throat and said, according to police, “I’ll cut your throat if they come in here.”

According to court filings, “dozens” of inmates were out of their cells for the two and a half hours the guard was held hostage.

To some, this might sound a lot like a riot, and a guard recently told KSDK it in fact was. Yet the previous corrections commissioner resigned five weeks after the last riot, which may explain why public safety officials are now not only avoiding the word but are being generally tightlipped about the incident.

Adolphus M. Pruitt II, president of the St. Louis City NAACP, last week blasted jail administration for a lack of transparency, saying, “The public deserves a more detailed ‘briefing’ of efforts being undertaken to address the lack of CJC effective oversight and the adverse conditions in the City Justice Center.”

In her only public comments about the hostage-taking, the ones made while wearing the bulletproof vest, Clemons-Abdullah demurred from several questions, including ones about staffing levels, what the detainees were doing prior to the incident and what sort of weaponry was used to respond to it.

Clemons-Abdullah said she couldn’t offer any specifics in reply. She cited “security issues.” n

CALENDAR

BY RIVERFRONT TIMES STAFF

THURSDAY 09/07

What’s in a Name?

While it’s true that famed playwright Thomas Lanier Williams III spent much of his formative years knocking around the ShowMe State, “Missouri Williams” just doesn’t quite have the proper ring to it. But we’re not gonna let a little thing like being slighted on the pen-name front stop us from celebrating one of the most brilliant minds our fair city has ever produced, and that’s why the Tennessee Williams Festival, founded in 2015, consistently finds exciting new ways to present even Williams’ most familiar works. Executive Artistic Director Carrie Houk and her team staged a remarkable 2021 production of The Glass Menagerie that incorporated the fire escapes and rear wall of the playwright’s former residence, and have also brought to light lesser plays, as with last year’s inventive staging of The Rose Tattoo at the Big Top. This year’s festival should keep up the momentum, with Williams’ shocking novella-length “Suddenly Last Summer” taking center stage at COCA (6880 Washington Avenue, University City; 314-725-6555) from September 7 to 17. Sexual compulsion, exploitation, cannibalism, the threat of lobotomy — it’s going to be fun to see Houk & Co. tackle this rich Freudian stew. The festival includes a host of interesting programming to complement the production, including a panel about Williams’ years in University City on September 9, a performance of the classic one-act “Something Unspoken” at U. City Mayor Terry Crow’s house from September 8 to 10, and a screening of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on September 12. Full details at twstl.org.

And Now, This

Everyone knows that it takes a lot to make the news funny, yet John Oliver has been doing just that for nearly two decades. The British comedian first came to stateside prominence with his debut standup special John Oliver: Terrifying Times, but he became a household name as an anchor on The Daily

Show with Jon Stewart, where he worked from 2006 to 2013. Oliver has been hosting his own show, Last Week Tonight, on HBO for nine seasons now, but when he’s taking a break from TV (which we suppose he must, due to the writers and SAG-AFTRA strikes) he does stand-up shows. He’s bringing his latest insights on the news, popular culture and life in general to the Stifel Theatre (1400 Market Street, 314-499-7600) on Thursday, September 7, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $56.50 to $146.50 plus fees, and can be purchased at stifeltheatre.com.

FRIDAY 09/08

Too Big to Fail

Twitchy millennials still too scared to purchase a home will remember the name “Lehman Brothers” as something of a harbinger of doom, a sort of shorthand in financial markets for a warning sign that comes too late to do anything about,

thanks to the outsize part the banking institution played in the Great Recession when it went belly up in 2008. The story of the Lehman family actually goes back two centuries to a country in Europe that no longer exists, winding its way through the American South, war, slavery and the Great Depression before meeting its ignoble end on Wall Street. Here to tell that tale is The Lehman Trilogy, 2022’s Tony Award winner for Best Play, which opens at the Repertory Theater (130 Edgar Road, Webster Groves; 314-968-4925) on Friday, September 8, after a few days of previews. It frames the story as “one family’s passionate pursuit of the American Dream and the piercing cost of greed.” The play runs nightly Tuesday through Sunday through September 24, and showtimes vary by day. Tickets start at $25. More info at repstl.org.

Outside the Box

It’s finally that time of year when

we can go outside without being fried like an egg on the hot sidewalk, so it’s also that time of year when the outdoor events really get good. Case in point: The 20th Annual Schlafly Art Outside Festival is being held this weekend at Schlafly Bottleworks (7260 Southwest Avenue, Maplewood; 314-241-2337). Running from Friday, September 8, through Sunday, September 10, this fantastic fine arts fair offers a wide variety of pieces made by local artists, including ceramics, paintings, photography, jewelry, glass, stonework, woodwork and more. All of the artists are truly local, too — there’s a rule that each vendor must reside within a 125-mile radius of St. Louis. This event is family friendly and free to attend, but you’ll want to bring some money to spend on the goods and on beer and food, because you know Schlafly always does ya right. Visit schlafly. com/events/artoutside for more information.

During the 2022 Tennessee Williams Festival, Rayme Cornell played seamstress Serafina Delle Rose in The Rose Tattoo. | SUZY GORMAN

SATURDAY 09/09

Welcome to the Jungle

Guns N’ Roses has a long and complicated history with St. Louis. Frontman Axl Rose banned the group from playing concerts in the city after having a little hissy fit and causing the Riverport Riot in 1991, and was frequently seen in public in the years that followed sporting a “St. Louis Sucks” T-shirt. He held strong to that ban for decades, but

— likely thanks to the influence of guitarist Rich Fortus, who hails from STL — the band finally came back to town to play the Dome at America’s Center in 2017, and everything went just fine. (See, Axl? We can all be friends. Or we can at least pretend to be friends for the sake of rock & roll.) This Saturday, September 9, GNR and the STL will bury the hatchet even further in the ground when Axl and Co. bring their huge live show to Busch Stadium (700 Clark Avenue, 314-3459600). Tickets to the concert run from $29.50 to $164.50 and can be purchased at mlb.tickets.com. It

should be a riot.

Off the Top Rope

Get yourself down to the South Broadway Athletic Club (2301 South Seventh Street, 314-7764833) this Saturday, August 9, for some mat-slamming, pile-driving action courtesy of the Mid-Missouri Wrestling Alliance. The best regional wrestling talent will be taking the squared circle for its Back to School Brawl. If you’ve never been to a professional wrestling event before, make this your first. If you’ve only seen the nationwide acts perform at giant venues like Scottrade Center, then prepare yourself for up-close action that will be a totally different — and much better! — fan experience. Tickets start at just $10 and the bodies start flying at 7 p.m. More info at sbacstl.org.

Art Attack

Booths as far as the eye can see, filled with art of every possible stripe, from sculpture to turned wood to hand-dyed clothing. Food trucks and stalls filled with culinary delights from local restaurants. Performances from St. Louis’ finest talent. This is the Saint Louis Art Fair, which takes over downtown Clayton for a weekend annually — and every year, it’s a great time. But this year is set to be something special: It’s the event’s 30th anniversary, so it pretty much has to be. The announced line-

up offers exhibiting artists from around the world, performances from STL Rock School, Hard Bop Messengers, the Whiskey Racoons and others, as well as food from St. Louis favorites Kimchi Guys, Deli Divine, Press, Pappy’s and many more. As always it’s free to attend, but bring your dough for the art. The festivities will run from 5 p.m. on Friday, September 8, to 5 p.m. on Sunday, September 10. More information at saintlouisartfair.com.

MONDAY 09/11 Swingers Welcome

If you’ve dreamed of learning how to swing dance, or just getting better at it, STL Swing has you covered. Show up at the Link Auditorium (4504 Westminster Place, 314-813-0009) at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, September 11, for a short introductory lesson. Then, from 7 to 9 p.m., the band STL Swing Harmonizers plays — and we should note this is a group with but one stated purpose: “To make your dancing feel better and easier.” If they succeed in their mission and you’re still jump jive an’ wailin’ at the end of their set, a DJ will keep things hopping until 10:30 p.m. It’s probably a peppier Monday than you’re used to — but isn’t that a good thing? You can purchase your $15 ticket at the door or online at stlswing.dance/ swing-dance-events. No partner necessary.

Guns N’ Roses plays Busch Stadium on Saturday. | VIA FLICKR BODELLIA

The Back to School Brawl takes over the Broadway Athletic Club Saturday. | REUBEN HEMMER

Catch John Oliver in St. Louis on Thursday. | VIA TICKETMASTER

Port-au-Prince, Homestyle

With My Marie, Marie Louis-Jeune shares a taste of the Haitian cooking she’s been perfecting since age five

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

The oxtails at My Marie are not merely a delicious dish; they are the sort of soul-stirring meal that comes from generational knowledge from grandmas and grandpas, mothers, fathers and aunties passed down in home kitchens, where the family gossip was at hot as the stew on the stove. You can taste this in owner Marie Louis-Jeune’s slow-cooked oxtails, which are so tender they come off the bone with just the slightest fork prod and bob in a stew-like cooking liquid that is so rich, it’s as if you distilled the entire idea of how beef should taste into it. Served alongside buttery mashed potatoes — homestyle — it’s such pure comfort, you feel as if an entire family history is wrapping you in a loving embrace.

For Louis-Jeune, however, the oxtails — and all of her cooking — were born from a much different place. After losing her mother at the age of five while living in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, LouisJeune felt compelled to support her family through her obvious culinary gift, at first by cooking for them from home, and eventually by selling her wares as a street vendor after school. She’s not sure where her talents came from — chalking them up to a blessing helped along by her dad and an older neighbor — but she leaned into them and became passionate about food, seeing it as a way not only to support her family but to express her love for those she cared about.

It made sense, then, that Louis-

Jeune would pursue cooking as a career. After graduating high school, she went to culinary school and opened a restaurant as soon as she finished the program. It was a successful operation for

two years until 2010, when the earthquake that devastated Haiti forced her to close up shop and flee to the United States. Originally, she and her family landed in Michigan, but then some friends

whom they knew from Haiti invited them to move into their home in Cape Girardeau. Louis-Jeune and her family accepted the offer and stayed in southeast Missouri for almost a year. At that point, they felt it was safe to return to Haiti and reopen the restaurant. Louis-Jeune and her family reestablished their lives and their business back in Haiti, but in 2015, the country’s political situation became so fraught that they felt they had no choice but to leave for good. Already familiar with Cape Girardeau, they moved back to the Bootheel, where Louis-Jeune got experience cooking in area restaurants before eventually deciding to again open a place of her own in her adopted town.

That restaurant, My Marie, opened in Cape Girardeau in 2019. Though the city lacked a Haitian population, Louis-Jeune knew that her cooking was good enough to draw in business. She was right; the restaurant developed a loyal following and became a vibrant addition to the city’s dining landscape. However, Louis-Jeune and her family longed for a Haitian community to be a part of and felt like a larger city would be a better

My Marie Restaurant features the Haitian cuisine of its owner’s homeland. | MABEL SUEN

Marie Louis-Jeune is the chef-owner of My Marie. | MABEL SUEN

MY MARIE

Continued from pg 23

fit for their restaurant. Nearby St. Louis seemed like the right move, so they closed the doors to My Marie, packed up and moved two hours up Interstate 55.

Louis-Jeune reopened My Marie on Cherokee Street this past September in the former Tower Tacos storefront located on the business district’s western edge. Outfitted with orange and yellow walls, red tables and chairs, and a television that plays mostly Rihanna, the space makes you feel as if you’ve walked into a small restaurant off a side street in Louis-Jeune’s home country.

That transportive experience is amplified tenfold once you taste this talented chef’s cooking. Even before the oxtails hit the table, you understand Louis-Jeune’s gift in the form of her patties; the savory pastries are as buttery and flaky as the finest French croissants but so delicate the layers melt on the tongue. How they are able to hold their contents — savory, seasoned ground beef, succulent chicken and peppers — is one of life’s mysteries. The veggie version is particularly delicious, packing a piquant heat that cuts through the pastry’s buttery texture.

Louis-Jeune’s dumplings are equally amazing. Though the name might connote otherwise, these fritters are unfilled; think savory, warm, spice-seasoned funnel cake served alongside a gravylike sauce. The chef balances this richness by serving the dumplings alongside a Haitian-style slaw, which consists of julienne cabbage, carrots and other vegetables tossed in a mildly spiced, bright dressing. The combination is breathtaking.

The fried pork, or griot fritay, is another brilliant success. Here, hunks of pork shoulder are boiled until tender then fried, unbreaded, so that the exterior crisps up, yielding to a succulent interior. The meat itself is only mildly seasoned so that the pure pork taste takes center stage. Fried green plantains and vibrant Haitian slaw round out this outstanding plate.

A whole snapper, fried so that its skin crisps up while the flesh cooks to the perfect delicate texture, puts My Marie in the conversation as one of the essential places for whole fish in the city. Alone, it is delicious, but the slight gilding of deeply savory, complex tomatoey sauce adds a punch of flavor that is otherworldly.

Her jerk chicken is another must-

try dish. Unlike the much spicier, thyme- and hot-pepper-forward Jamaican version, the Haitian style is more of a sweet-and-savory flavor that’s not all that dissimilar from Memphis barbecue sauce — a fitting comparison since Louis-Jeune explains that the dish is called barbecue chicken in Haiti. There’s a baking-spice warmth that haunts this slightly sticky glaze and pairs beautifully with the slightly bitter grill char that permeates the meat.

Like the oxtail, Louis-Jeune’s ultra-traditional legume feels like something you should be experiencing on a family table in Port-au-

Prince rather than a storefront on Cherokee Street. Though its name will likely bring to mind beans, peas or lentils, this is a false cognate. The dish is actually a slow-cooked vegetable stew made from eggplant, carrots, onions and greens, which cooks down so that the components meld together to become an almost spreadable concoction, but not so far that they lose their individuality. There’s a surprising brightness to the vegetables when enjoyed on their own; however, Louis-Jeune encourages diners to enjoy them mixed with a shockingly rich redbean sauce that transforms the dish

into a stick-to-your-ribs comfortfood masterpiece.

That Louis-Jeune is able to bring about such a connection between her guests and her native country through her cooking shows she’s not just an excellent cook; she’s a steward of Haitian cuisine and culture — something not necessarily taught but that has lived inside her all along. That it now lives with us is a privilege.

My Marie

The Haitian legume includes mixed vegetables such as carrot, eggplant and cabbage. | MABEL SUEN

The jerk chicken is served with cabbage and sweet plantain. | MABEL SUEN

The Jerk Rasta Pasta includes chicken, onion, pepper and white sauce. | MABEL SUEN

The Bird Is the Word

Sunday Best brings back Juniper’s lauded chicken — at family-friendly prices

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

When John Perkins looked at the books for his beloved Southern restaurant, Juniper, he discovered a staggering statistic. Eighty percent of diners ordered fried chicken. It wasn’t a shock that this was the case. Ever since opening Juniper in its original location in 2013, Perkins has been known for his outstanding fried bird. First that came in the form of critical acclaim throughout the city and, eventually, from national media outlets, including Eater, which dubbed Juniper’s version of the Southern staple one of the best in the entire country.

It was enough to make him wonder: Why was he putting so much time and effort into the other 20 percent of business?

“It was clear that things weren’t working at Juniper, but I kept trying to plug along,” Perkins says. “The metaphor I use is it was like I was driving a car, and there was a smear of oil across the windshield of my brain; I just couldn’t see anything in front of me. I have always been a big-picture vision kind of guy, but I didn’t have any. I kept telling everyone that all I wanted was clarity, and I just couldn’t get it.”

That clarity would come to him after the Eater nod in the form of an answer that he understands, in retrospect, was there all along. He should give the people what they wanted by turning Juniper into a fried chicken spot. Once he accepted that notion this spring, he began the work of winding down Juniper. He closed up shop in early July and converted the space to a new fried chicken concept, Sunday Best.

Though Sunday Best (4101

Laclede Avenue, 314-329-7696) just opened to the public on August 25, the idea had been kicking around in Perkins’ head for several years. Originally, he’d envisioned a small, scalable drivethru restaurant made of shipping containers centered around fried chicken and soft serve. He even developed the branding for Sunday Best three years ago, but kept tabling the idea as he was focused on Juniper and other things.

However, the Sunday Best idea came back to the forefront this winter when Perkins was at home following treatment for multiple myeloma, which he was diagnosed with last August. Homebound for two months with a lot of time to

think, he realized something had to change. After stewing about what that might be, it became clear that he should close Juniper, merge it with his original idea for Sunday Best and create a restaurant that would be the best of what both concepts had to offer — a casual, sit-down restaurant with a small cocktail list, a handful of appetizers and sides, and a price point meant to appeal to people looking for great food at a good value.

In that spirit, the Sunday Best menu revolves around fried chicken, available in two-, fouror eight-piece portions and served in three different styles: original, hot or very hot. Twoand four-piece meals come with

one side; eight-piece portions are served with two. Choices include everything from classic Juniper favorites such as mac and cheese, collards and an updated mashed potato recipe to new items such as street corn, tomato and cucumber salad, and a Sea Island red pea and preserved lemon salad, which he describes as a take on a bean salad.

Joining the fried chicken on the menu are three entree salads — a Cobb, a wedge and a chopped — as well as a fried or grilled chicken sandwich, chicken tenders and a few starters, including Perkins’ famous bread basket, pimento cheese, Brussels sprouts and smoked catfish dip.

While Perkins is happy to offer these dishes inside the restaurant, he’s also hoping that diners will come to see Sunday Best as their go-to for takeout and delivery. The restaurant offers both through its online store and will begin offering its food on third-party delivery apps, even though Perkins encourages guests to work directly with the restaurant whenever possible. That in-house delivery is available within a five-mile radius of the restaurant, and though Perkins notes fried chicken might not be the first thing people think of for takeout or delivery, he is confident his chicken will hold up and be perfectly crispy when it arrives on diners’ doorsteps.

For those who choose to dine inside Sunday Best, there are even more delights. Diners familiar with Juniper’s excellent cocktail program can expect the same thoughtfulness from Sunday Best. The restaurant will offer several draft cocktails, including the bourbonand-ginger classic Presbyterian, a handful of highballs, beer and wine. The idea, Perkins says, is to get a delicious and affordable cocktail in guests’ hands within a few minutes of them sitting down — and entrees on the table not much longer after that. Speed, value and the best fried chicken you can find are the foundation of everything he and his team are doing at Sunday Best — and of course, fun.

“There are no reservations; it’s table service but more casual,” Perkins says. “The big thing is we want to go from being a three-dollar-sign resto to a two-dollar-sign — much more fast casual. The key is, just gonna have fun.” n

Juniper’s Eater-approved fried chicken is back thanks to Sunday Best. | CHERYL BAEHR

John Perkins (right) launched Sunday Best with kitchen manager Pat Skiersch. | CHERYL BAEHR

A Restaurant with Retail

At El Molino del Sureste, Alex Henry will sell fresh tortillas and more Yucatán eats

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

Alex Henry — chef-owner of Sureste, the City Foundry Food Hall stall serving the cuisine of the Yucatán — has a simple and compelling reason to open up his first brick-andmortar restaurant.

“We ran out of space,” he says with a little laugh.

But while it’s easy to imagine the space limitations of a food hall spot, the real reason he felt too crowded there isn’t necessarily simple, but it is compelling. Since opening Sureste last year, Henry expanded beyond his initial vision of providing St. Louis diners with the traditional dishes of the Yucatán, an area many in the St. Louis region may be less familiar with, culinarily speaking.

“We started selling our tortillas and masa wholesale to a few other restaurants and doing some retail,” Henry says. “By trying to run basically a second half of the business out of what’s already a small space for a restaurant, we ran out of space.”

He found himself looking for a commissary that he could run the retail operation out of — but instead, along with brother Jeff, found 5005 South Kingshighway. The Southampton neighborhood space, which used to hold Antonio’s Market Bistro, came with a different vision, but one that was still all about the tortillas.

The result of that new direction is El Molino del Sureste, a multiconcept restaurant and retail space that is set to open on Saturday, September 9. During the day, El Molino will operate a traditional mill, or molino, to grind corn for retail and wholesale fresh masa and products such as

tortillas, chips, tostadas and more. By night, the space will transform into a restaurant that, like Sureste, will showcase traditional Yucatán dishes as well as Henry’s spin on the region’s cuisine.

Henry says he’d had the idea in the back of his mind for a while, but that it unfurled into the current concept quickly. Everything, in fact, came together fast. The brothers signed the lease on the space in March and started working on making it a reality. That meant dealing with things like inspections and permits as well as making the space, which was turnkey, their own by painting and decorating it.

That also meant diving into the menu without delay.

“I already had a pretty good idea of what I wanted here,” Henry says, referring to the main dining space. “It doesn’t all fit on [the menu] at the same time, so it’s going to be rotation, we can rotate through different things. Then the [bar side] menu over there, it’s a little bit more fun. There’s some very obscure traditional things on that menu. Then there’ll be some things that are less traditional, where we use that side as a good opportunity to play around with traditional techniques, but maybe in a more contemporary format.”

As an example of a traditional offering that he intends to serve as-is, Henry points to the papad-

zules, an egg dish composed of chopped, hard-boiled eggs that are rolled in a tortilla with herbs and topped with tomato sauce. He compares it to pizza with eggs, saying that it “tastes really good.” He adds, “As a kid, I hated eggs, and this is the only way I’d eat them.”

One traditional dish he decided to play with is the culce tradicional con queso locales, or a spread of fruit candies with cheese. Henry’s version uses papaya that is, like masa, lightly nixtamalized, which strengthens the fruit so it doesn’t turn to mush when submerged in hot sugar.

“It holds its shape, and it takes on just the slightest taste from the nixtamalization as well,” he says. He pairs that with cheeses sourced from local creameries. “It’s kind of our Mexico cheese plate.”

Jeff Henry is running the front of the house and the bar. He says the bar program will focus on Mexican agave spirits and sugarcane spirits like rums, with drinks that focus on citrus (which he says is often grown in the Yucatán), hibiscus and tamarind. The bar will also have a limited selection of beers and wines.

“I’m just trying to evoke some of the flavors of our childhood, flavors that are familiar to Mexicans,” Jeff says. “Without a doubt, the main driver is Alex. This is just looking to complement it.”

Sourcing things locally, when possible, is important to Henry. One area where that’s essential for him is with the corn for the molino. Most of it is coming from Illinois, and he’s been playing around with different varieties and seeing what they are best for. So that might look like a Henry Moore white corn that’s perfect for tortillas and available all year round, or a Hopi Blue Flint variety that’s a bit drier, which makes for an excellent corn flavor on fried items.

Anyone who tries a fresh tortilla, Henry says, is going to be blown away by the difference. For one thing, they have a simple ingredient list compared to their packaged kindred.

“A fresh corn tortilla, if you stretch it, it’s just as stretchy as a flour tortilla,” Henry says. “And it’s nice and soft, and it tastes like corn.”

Henry is looking forward to sharing that traditional tortilla — and everything else that El Molino has to offer — with St. Louis eaters.

“I think that’s something that just hasn’t really been very available in the St. Louis area,” he says. “I’m anxious to get open.”

“I’m definitely excited to see what Alex can do,” Jeff adds. “We’re kind of uniquely positioned, having been raised with one foot in two worlds ... to be kind of like cultural ambassadors.”

Chef-owner Alex Henry adds family style serving to his repertoire at El Molino del Sureste. | JESSICA ROGEN

One Last Chance

An outpouring of support after announcing the end has Crusoe’s considering the future

Written by SARAH FENSKE

Stevie Limmer LaChance has never known a world without the Original Crusoe’s (3152 Osceola Street, 314351-0620), the old-school south St. Louis bar and grill her father first opened in 1979. Her parents met there, and — like many kids of restaurant owners — she and her brother then grew up there.

About 10 years ago, as her father, Steve Limmer, dealt with Parkinson’s, LaChance took over the business, and she and her husband Elliot have kept it going through the COVID-19 pandemic and what have been some very tough years in the restaurant business.

But last Wednesday, LaChance felt like she’d had enough. She wrote on Facebook that she would be closing the place.

“Unfortunately, we are going to have to close our restaurant of 44 years,” she wrote, noting that she’d grown up in the place. “We were hoping for the same for

[FOOD NEWS]

Food Truck Fracas

1929 Pizza & Wine owners receive death threats amid festival cancellation

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

The owners of Metro East businesses 1929 Pizza & Wine and C&B

Boiled Bagels say that they have received death threats in the wake of a festival cancellation that some view as the co-owners’ fault.

The problems began last Tuesday, August 22, when the Wood River Enrichment Network posted on Facebook that it was cancelling the fifth iteration of its annual Wood River Food Truck Festival, which would have taken place on Saturday, October 7, in downtown Wood River, Illinois. Though the organizers did not cite a reason for the cancellation, right away commenters began pointing fingers at Amy and Matt Herren, referring to them as owners of local pizza and bagel spots.

When one commenter asked for the

our children, but times have changed and it is a lot harder than it was before.”

The post went viral. LaChance found herself with more than 1,000 likes, 684 shares and 366 comments, many from people who loved the place, who remembered working for her parents or who developed fond memories of family celebrations there, or just eating Crusoe’s signature fried chicken.

Some weren’t willing to let the beloved Dutchtown favorite go. A friend put up a GoFundMe, and people kicked in more than $1,000. Others reached out directly.

reason for closure, another wrote, “Apparently the owners of the bagel place and the pizza place (same owners from my understanding) are mad because it ‘disrupts’ business for them with the street being closed.”

Another person chimed in, “I know if I owned a pizza spot I would see the potential and I’d buy or build a cart and sell slices out of the front. Perfect opportunity to let someone try your new spot and drive future sales. But instead drives a wedge into its own city. The same city that approved its business/liquor license, the same city that would be its primary customers. Seems like they’ve not thought much about it….. (might be the bagel shop and not the pizza spot).”

Things quickly turned vitriolic, with Facebook commenters calling the business owners “shit bags” and “rude.”

And the ugliness didn’t stay online. Matt Herren told the Riverbender that he and his employees soon began receiving death threats, that some people threw bottles and fruit at the store and that others protested in front of the business.

He also insisted that he had not asked for the festival to be cancelled. “I have no idea why they canceled their festival, all I know is that we have been turned into somebody’s scapegoat,” Herren said to the Riverbender

Yet Herren also provided some context for the rumors. The entrance to the cou-

It was, to put it mildly, a rollercoaster of a day. “It’s a little emotional,” LaChance admits. “I knew I cared about this place, but to see other people cared too …”

It has been a tough, tough summer. A lengthy power outage left Crusoe’s with weeks’ worth of thawed food that had to be thrown out. Later, problems with a hood not working in the kitchen, despite repairman after repairman looking at it, forced the place to close for another week.

“We had to keep turning people away,” LaChance says. “It was 100 degrees, and

the thing that sucks hot air out of the kitchen wasn’t working. I couldn’t put my staff through that.” After losing all those days open, and business that never really bounced back after COVID-19, she thought she saw the writing on the wall. She hated owing money to people like her electrician.

“I was getting to the point where I couldn’t pay people, and I knew these were small businesses like me,” she says. “We were getting into a hole. I didn’t know how to get out of it without selling.”

But now she finds herself hoping that she won’t have to. She says she’s not asking people to donate money (though she’s grateful for the GoFundMe). She just wants the place to be bustling again.

“I just want people to come and eat,” she says. “I want people to come out and support my business. I want to have a reason for my husband and I to work all these hours with two little kids.”

Last week’s outpouring of support has her contemplating a different ending. “It makes me want to fight for it,” she says.

And so Crusoe’s opened last week and weekend, serving that fried chicken to the families who come to the restaurant for a homestyle dinner and good company. The regulars will be there — but she’s hoping to see faces she hasn’t seen in a long time, too.

She’s hoping for a different ending.

“I want people to know that I’m willing to put the effort into it,” LaChance says. “I want to be there. But I need their business.”

ple’s C&B Bagels opens onto what would have been the festival grounds. Herren said he’d asked a festival organizer, Melissa “Missy” Bell-Yates, to push back the event, reschedule it or move it, but she declined. At that point, he reached out to city officials to intervene. Soon after, the event was cancelled.

Wood River Mayor Tom Stalcup issued a statement on Facebook saying the city would be providing more oversight on similar events going forward, but that “work is being done on a compromise.”

“I’m grateful that we have so many passionate business owners and resi-

dents that are committed to the revitalization and growth of our city,” he wrote.

“Sometimes when you have passionate people doing great things, you experience some growing pains.”

As the RFT’s Cheryl Baehr wrote in a rave review earlier this month, the Herrens opened 1929 Pizza & Wine in a longvacant building after being encouraged by the city’s mayor and police chief. Matt, a California native, is the co-founder of Goshen Coffee; Amy is from Edwardsville, and spent years working in New York, but later returned to the Metro East and opened the restaurant Fond in 2008. n

Steve Limmer opened the Original Crusoe’s and met his wife there. | COURTESY STEVIE LIMMER LACHANCE

Matt and Amy Herren own and operate 1929 Pizza & Wine. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

REEFERFRONT TIMES 31

The Art of Breeding Cannabis

Zach Post’s Elitist Urban Agriculture brand is obsessed with cultivating the perfect strains

Written by MONICA OBRADOVIC

On a recent Saturday at George Washington Carver Farms, a room full of teenagers have a lot of questions. About 10 had gathered at the nonprofit’s location in north St. Louis’ Fairgrounds neighborhood to learn about the cannabis industry. It’s hot without air conditioning in a house on the farm’s property, but everyone huddled in the living room listens intently to Zach Post and Brandon Meeks. They talk about the industry and their work as medical cultivators as fans blow a slight breeze.

“You’re at the beginning of an industry that’s going to last forever,” Post says to the class. “You’re actually a part of this, and you can make it look the way you want it to look.”

Throughout the class, questions pop up around the room. Do they need any formal training to enter the field? What’s better for growing cannabis, hydroponics or soil? Can you grow it outside?

Years ago, Post had similar questions. When he first entered the industry about a decade ago, he knew little about cannabis. He learned how to cultivate it mostly through trial and error.

But he’s come a long way since. Post and his nephew, Meeks, 32, founded a nonprofit called Elite Home Growers Academy shortly after Missouri legalized medical cannabis in 2018 to teach medical cannabis patients the art of growing their own cannabis indoors. At these classes, which have mostly been on hold since the pandemic, Post was often asked the same

thing — could attendees smoke the product he was growing? Missouri law prohibits sharing cannabis cultivated for medical use, so the answer was always no.

But the question got Post thinking. What if he found a way to share the genetics of the plants he bred so other people could grow them themselves?

The Elitist Urban Agriculture brand was born soon after. Together, Post, Meeks and collaborators Brian Hamilton and Jason Ford work within the limits of Missouri’s medical marijuana laws to breed the best strains of cannabis. Each cultivates their own strains at home, looking for the perfect combination of flavor, smell, feel and yield.

The clones and seeds of winning combinations are then sold to legal cultivation facilities. One of Elitist’s strains, Meltz, is now sold at Viola St. Louis, Luxury Leaf and Bloom Medicinal dispensaries.

Post, Meeks and Hamilton follow a long and arduous process they call “pheno hunting” to create their desired strains. They take attributes of certain strains that they like and try to breed them into one super strain. One strain may have a good smell, for example, but it may yield little trichomes — the sticky “hair” of the

plant that produces cannabinoids. So Post and crew will breed the good-smelling strain with a trichome-heavy strain to put the two attributes into one plant. They’ll then do a second or third round of growing to make sure they get consistent results.

The whole process can take months, or even years, and an understanding of genetics that everyone at Elitist learned mostly on their own. Meeks, a long-time home grower, started cultivating by himself using hydroponics. Hamilton found medical cannabis to treat his spina bifida.

“I’m very hard on myself when it comes to the medicine I create,” Hamilton says. “I think that’s something the bigger market lacks because it’s all about money to them.”

Cannabis always fascinated Post. Even though he didn’t smoke it until much later in life, he felt inspired to grow it as a teenager in St. Louis. His few attempts to grow were failures. “I got busted each time,” Post says. He once tried to grow it at his mother’s house in her bathroom, but it, of course, didn’t work. Then there was the time he grew a plant on a windowsill in the attic. It sprouted and grew quite large, Post says, but then “my sister told on me, and my mom came and

killed them.”

He finally tried to grow it in the backyard. “It grew a little bit, but then I think somebody ended up cutting it down with a weed whacker or something.”

His first job in cannabis was as a trimmer at a Las Vegas cultivation facility. It was just a means to pay bills, Post explains. He had some knowledge of cannabis but knew nothing about the science or medicinal side of it. But the cultivators at the facility, some who had been growing the plant for decades, shared their knowledge with Post, fueling his passion. He learned about terpenes and cannabinoids and the difference between sativa and indica strains.

“It was like a foreign language to me, but I started to pick up these keywords, and I would go home and do my own research,” Post says. “That’s when I started to really get a better understanding of the plant.”

Now Post works to share that knowledge as legal cannabis sales becomes a billion dollar industry.

“I want people to find the relief and this medicine, but I would be a better service to them if I could show them how to cultivate it because that’d be something they will have for the rest of their lives,” Post says. n

Zach Post teaches a class on cannabis at George Washington Carver Farms in north St. Louis. | MONICA OBRADOVIC

CULTURE 33

Pieces of Us

The Pulitzer’s new exhibit showcases the beauty of St. Louis’ lost buildings

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

The pieces of the Rivoli Theatre’s facade are incredibly ornate, to put it lightly. The medium orange-red terracotta has a white clay overlay that was carved away to create intricate scrolling designs in some panels and display the theater’s name in another.

“It’s a very rare example of sgraffito for St. Louis, probably the most elaborately designed building in this technique in the city,” says Stephanie Weissberg, curator at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.

It’s hard to imagine that elaborate decorations like these — even if they were the fanciest of their kind — were once the norm for St. Louis buildings. The Rivoli, which was established in an existing building on North 6th Street downtown in 1922 as a home to theater productions, came down in 1983 after the space had morphed into a seedy B and X-rated moviehouse.

That sort of devolution of a highly decorated landmark building isn’t an unusual story in St. Louis in the late 20th century, as the city’s inner core lost residents and people moved to the suburbs. The new exhibit Urban Archaeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis at the Pulitzer presents salvaged architectural pieces from the late 19th and early 20th century buildings they left behind.

“What makes this exhibition notable is it’s not just looking at the architectural history of the city but also the history of salvage and preservation,” Weissberg says. “[We’re] asking questions about what objects’ lives are after they’re removed from buildings. Who saves or doesn’t save objects from different neighborhoods, or different places? Which places get prioritized? Who makes decisions to prioritize saving parts of buildings

or neighborhoods? And how well can we understand these buildings when we’re experiencing only fragments of them that are no longer in their original context?”

The pieces in the show come from the collection of the National Building Arts Center in Sauget, Illinois, which has worked for four decades to preserve aspects of historically significant buildings that were being razed. Like the Pulitzer itself, the Building Arts Center is a nontraditional organization. It was only natural for the Pulitzer to approach NBAC Executive Director Michael Allen shortly after he took up his leadership position a year ago.

The partnership was a good opportunity to show the building center’s holdings in a museum space for additional exposure — but close enough to home base that curious viewers can make their way over to check out the larger collection in Sauget afterward.

And there’s plenty in Urban Archaeology that will pique that interest. For one, though the show has plenty of cool-looking building fragments, that’s not the whole deal. Each gallery is paired with an oral history from a community member related to the objects in the space, as well as ephemera such as newspaper articles and photographs that help contextualize them.

For example, that first gallery

with the Rivoli artifacts includes an oral history from Dave Lewis about the process of deconstructing the theater. (Like all the oral histories, it’s available on headphones in the gallery and also via a QR code.) There is also a photograph of the facade decorations in their intended context, which makes them appear less like artifacts from a bygone time and more as something not entirely out of place in the modern St. Louis city.

The exhibit also includes perspectives from neighbors and activists in addition to curators and academics.

“Throughout the process, we were thinking about how to get other voices in the show,” says Molly Moog, curatorial assistant at the Pulitzer. Moog, Weissberg and others reached out to community stakeholders for their thoughts on what to include in the exhibit as well as how it should be treated and contextualized.

“The loss of buildings and architecture can be a very sensitive topic and also one that many people are very personally affected by,” Weissberg says.

One place this influence is apparent is in the final gallery, which includes a video giving different perspectives surrounding salvage and preservation that’s a sort of case study on three neighborhoods: Jeff-Vander-Lou, St. Louis

Place and Soulard. In the 1970s, all had grassroots preservation efforts that helped the neighborhoods become thriving community spaces despite threats such as loss of buildings, city plans for demolition or newly constructed freeways.

“We wanted to close the exhibition with the gallery that introduces more questions than answers and acknowledges the complexity of the subject, salvage and preservation and the built environment that we live in,” Weissberg says. “The notion of preservation or architectural loss isn’t something that’s in the past. It continues into the present moment. It’s something that we’re all living today.”

The awareness of how buildings going up or coming down has changed St. Louis and the complexities surrounding that is, of course, the main takeaway from the show. But it isn’t the whole appeal.

There’s also the pleasure of seeing beautiful old objects from the streets we tread every day — Grand Center, Downtown, Dogtown and its brick-industry past — and marveling at how our forebears would construct an all-marble building or why they covered the Buder Building (also known as the Missouri Pacific Building, which once hosted the St. Louis Times paper) downtown with decorative lions, and how different new construction is today.

This limestone relief panel was part of the West End Hotel, which was constructed in 1891 and razed in 1972. | VIRGINIA HAROLD

MUSIC

Make It Pop

Paige Alyssa trained in jazz, but these days, they’re true to their first love: pop music

Written by STEVE LEFTRIDGE

Paige Alyssa is a pop-music maven through and through, both as a lifelong fan and as a creator and innovator of the form. Alyssa, who uses nongendered pronouns, takes their pop music very seriously, and their latest material, including the new single “Beneficial,” embraces that sound with gusto.

The video for “Beneficial” features Alyssa in full hip-hop-stylebling-and-braggadocio mode, flexing on a white Jeep, smoking a blunt and showing off their bottom-teeth grill while a trio of female dancers writhes around them. Despite the bawdy machismo on display in the video and the tough R&B sound, Alyssa’s melodic pop instincts and mellifluous vocals are unmistakable, making for unique sonic contrasts.

Those contrasts are key to understanding Alyssa as an artist. If you came to Alyssa’s music for the first time through “Beneficial” and its decidedly pop-forward video, you might not realize that Alyssa is also one of the finest jazz singers in St. Louis. They studied jazz vocals at Webster University, graduating with honors in 2015, and led the Paige Alyssa Quintet on some of St. Louis’s most prestigious stages, including a well-received show at Jazz St. Louis last year doing modern jazz versions of the Mary J. Blige catalog.

However, as far as Alyssa, 30, is concerned, it’s a pop life, one they have been obsessed with since high school, when they reached back to classic artists before their time. “My trinity was Michael Jackson, Prince and Janet Jackson,” Alyssa says. “My whole life was consumed with watching them, watching their bootlegs. I wanted to be Michael Jackson when I was in first grade.”

Alyssa is telling me all of this over Zoom rather than in person thanks to a positive COVID-19 test, the virus picked up, they assume, at the recent Beyoncé concert at the Dome. Alyssa is an excellent elocutionist, even over a computer screen, and once they get going, they don’t want to stop. Two of their great loves, in fact, are communication and pop music, so for the first several minutes of our talk, the conversation is exclusively about the Beyoncé show. “It’s my seventh time seeing Beyoncé,” Alyssa says. “I’m definitely a stan. It was a spiritual moment that I needed.”

Alyssa’s passion for music began in the Baptist church, where they started singing and playing drums at age nine, which they say “shaped me going into music school and to this day. A lot of the music I grew up on was contemporary gospel, and a lot of those sounds translated to ’80s R&B, so when I first watched Purple Rain or heard [Janet Jackson’s] ‘Pleasure Principle,’ it reminded me of the music I loved in church.”

Alyssa grew up in both Rich-

mond Heights and Florissant, attending McCluer North High School as a self-described “notorious band geek,” playing drums in the pit orchestra and in the marching band. After graduating in 2011, they headed to Webster University, pivoting their focus from drumming to singing. Asked about the desire to sing, Alyssa returns to an earlier topic. “Honestly, it was Beyoncé,” they say. “I saw her for the first time when I was 14, and I liked how much command she had of the stage. But it took me growing into myself to have the courage to say that I wanted to be a singer.”

In school, Alyssa was immersed in serious jazz vocal training under teacher Debby Lennon. “She saw that passion in me and pushed very hard to get me to the point where I am today,” Alyssa says. But even with such rigorous focus on jazz, Alyssa never lost sight of the ultimate goal of being a pop artist.

“I never had any intention of being a professional jazz singer,” they say. “Jazz and standards are incredibly important. Without

them we wouldn’t have any of the contemporary music we have today. But even when I was in jazz classes, I tried to choose contemporary stuff because that’s where I eventually wanted to land.”

It didn’t take long to stick that landing. In fact, Alyssa was writing dance-pop material while still in college, putting out their first EPs, forming Paige Alyssa and the Max to play ’90s-influenced R&B and eventually recording a fulllength debut, Who Is Paige Alyssa?, in 2018. That album, full of smooth, seductive electro-dance tunes like “Girl Crazy” and “The Plug,” helped answer the very question posed in the title of the album: Paige Alyssa is a pop artist.

“I would still do jazz gigs, but this is how I want to be recognized,” they say. “It’s not like I don’t love jazz. But if you come to a Paige Alyssa show, it’s going to be not jazz at all.”

That album gave Alyssa the confidence to relocate to LA in the fall of 2018 to make it as a pop star. “I was feeling myself. Like, ‘I’m hot shit. I want to make the jump. Fuck it. Let’s just do it.’ I packed

Paige Alyssa is gearing up for a midday set at Music at the Intersection this Sunday. | COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

my car up and drove out. I really loved it. It was an eye-opening experience.” However, Alyssa also says that LA came with an intensity that was destined to teach tough lessons. “I learned to stick to my own authentic self. There’s a lot of folks out there who said, ‘You should do this,’ and it wasn’t aligned with who I am as a person or what I want to do,” they say. “Also, I have a lot of respect for LA because everyone is hustling out there, so I came back to St. Louis with this level of being able to hustle and create and push myself out to the world and be confident about it.”

Opportunities to use that determination, however, hit a wall during a visit home in early 2020 when the first COVID-19 cases started to hit. Suddenly, LA was in the past, and Alyssa’s career in pop music seemed hopelessly stalled. “I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I was at the point where I was about to quit,” Alyssa says. “It was the most challenging period of my life. I had to wrestle with my relationship with my art and my music.”

Eventually, Alyssa reaffirmed their inherent passion and talent for music and found fresh motivation to make the kind of music that moves them. “You do this because you love it because it is a gift that has been given to you,” they say. “And it’s a gift that not everybody has, and you have to keep moving and keep tapping into yourself. I had to find my way back into falling in love with my art and myself, so I just started working on projects that make me feel good.”

One of those projects was a homemade all-electronic housemusic album, No Worries, that sounds, by design, like video game music. “That’s my pandemic project,” they say. “I’m a video game nerd. Everyone knows I’m a Sonic the Hedgehog fan. Some element of him is always with me.” As a result, No Worries creates a 16-bit Sega-style soundscape in a series of one-minute tracks. Fittingly, the cover art features a digital design of Alyssa sitting in front of a TV playing Sonic 3 with their young self.

The first of Alyssa’s vocal pop moves to emerge during the pandemic was an extended version of “What’s the Move?” a terrific midtempo track hidden at the end of Who Is Paige Alyssa? “Beneficial”

took Alyssa further into a more original, modern sound and away from the ’90s influences that inform much of their earlier work.

“I love New Jack Swing,” they say. “I love the ’90s, but I’m not SWV. I’m not Bobby Brown. It’s not how I want to be perceived.”

One thing that hasn’t changed is Alyssa’s inclination to write about their favorite topic: sex. Their songs frequently celebrate sensual pleasure, sometimes explicitly so. Typical lyrics include “I can make your wettest dreams come true” from “Slip and Slide” and “Why don’t you take my hand and show me where it’s supposed to go?” from “Beneficial.”

“I like talking about joy and love and sex,” Alyssa says. “I love how liberated Janet and Prince were with their gender personality and sex. People don’t think twice about it when it’s a guy or a woman writing about sex. As a queer masculine Black person, I should be able to write about that stuff too and just be fun and express joy.”

“Beneficial” is the first track released on what will be Alyssa’s next album, For What It’s Worth, coming late this year or early 2024. And while the first single has a hedonistic, carnal dance vibe, Alyssa says some of the other material represents a different side, both lyrically and musically.

“I wanted to start with ‘Beneficial’ this summer because it’s fun, and it has the vibe,” they say, “but I’m really proud of this new stuff because it’s made me stretch out vocally and get deeper and write more vulnerably.”

Alyssa promises to debut some of the new songs when they kick off the second day of Music at the Intersection at noon on Sunday, September 10. For that set, Alyssa is bringing a group of fantastic musicians, including Jeffrey Dhoruba Hill on drums, Luke Sailor on keys and Ian Lubar on guitar, along with show-track elements, the three dancers from the “Beneficial” video and other surprises Alyssa is not ready to disclose.

All told, the Music at the Intersection show and this moment in general feel like the pop-ecstasy breakout that Paige Alyssa has been dreaming about since they were a kid. “It’s gonna be poppin’!” Alyssa says. “You all are going to see me in a light that you’ve never seen me in before.” n

Not Just Another Teen Movie

Zany and fearless, Bottoms takes on high school from a raunchy lesbian point of view

Written by CRAIG D. LINDSEY

Bottoms

If this was 20 years ago, Bottoms would kill on the gay and lesbian film festival circuit.

As someone who has written about LGBTQ film fests in the past, I found this uber-zany, proudly queer, teen burlesque just the kind of fun, frivolous nonsense programmers would look for to balance out the slew of wellmeaning dramas and documentaries that would nevertheless bum everyone — gay, straight, whatever — the fuck out.

But this is 2023, and queer culture is all over movies, television,

streaming, etc. My good friend and fellow film-reviewing colleague Jason Shawhan recently wrote an essay in Nashville Scene breaking down the queerness that’s been infiltrating the multiplexes these days. From Barbie’s homoerotic humor (weren’t those Kens more into each other than the Barbies?) to Jason Momoa being the Fast & Furious franchise’s first sexually ambiguous villain to the alpha-bro in the latest A24 scarefest Talk to Me being played by a trans actor to Disney’s The Haunted Mansion, directed by gay director Justin Simien, quietly hinting that Tiffany Haddish and Jamie Lee Curtis’s psychics could have a wonderful life together, it’s been a, shall we say, fabulous time at the movies this summer.

Bottoms belongs in the more low-budget, indie section of the multiplex (a.k.a. the ones that are bold enough to have screens for queer flicks like Passages and Theater Camp). After giving us the claustrophobic comedy Shiva Baby, director Emma Seligman (who is herself gay) and actress Rachel Sennott once again team up to drop their own take on the raunchy teen-sex farce. This time, the desperate, virginal protagonists looking to land some tantalizing teenage girls are teenage girls themselves.

Sennott reunites with the ubiquitous Ayo Edebiri (they starred in the very short-lived Comedy Central web series Ayo and Rachel

Are Single) to play PJ and Rosie, two high-school seniors/nerdy lesbians who have crushes on the resident popular cheerleaders (models Havana Rose Liu and Kaia Gerber). When word gets out that their school’s rival football team is attacking students, PJ and Josie set up a self-defense club for the female students. Of course, they don’t know a damn thing about defending themselves. But since the student body thinks PJ and Rosie have been in juvie (a long story) — and their crushes join the club — they run with the lie and basically oversee a fight club for gals.

Bottoms is an hour and 32 minutes of Seligman and Sennott (who both wrote the script) indulging in the same adolescent, horndog fantasies male filmmakers have been slapping on the big screen for generations. Sennott and Edebiri basically play the queer female versions of Jonah Hill and Michael Cera’s lustful teen losers in Superbad. Sennott fearlessly goes into asshole mode at every turn, as her character is so steadfast in her mission to get into a girl’s pants that she doesn’t mind alienating her fellow teenage queer brethren. As for Edebiri, who often acts like a female Donald Glover, she serves as the sheepish straight (pardon the pun) man.

Since this is a comedy written and directed by women, the shenanigans are more satirical — and more feminist. The football-playing boys (who are constantly in full

uniform, all looking like ditzy-ass versions of Kevin from Daria) act more queer than the movie’s actual queer people. In fact, the majority of the male characters are gotdamn fools. Leading the charge is former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch, scoring laughs left and right as a false-fact-spewing, goingthrough-a-divorce teacher who becomes the girls’ club sponsor.

The film’s reckless, absurdist abandon almost brings to mind the blatantly ludicrous, hypersatirical style gay screenwriter/ playwright/wicked wit Paul Rudnick brought to such major-studio farces as In and Out, The First Wives Club (for which he did a bitchy, uncredited rewrite) and that much-maligned, batshit culture crash Marci X

As enjoyable as it is watching teen girls be just as horny as the guys, I often felt like the lunacy would get away from Seligman and Sennott. The movie’s such a Mad Magazine-style parody of high school, much of it felt like farce for the sake of farce.

Then again, maybe that’s the point. I’m sure many people will tell you that high school was the most absurd, insane time of their lives. Bottoms makes it known that it was also just as absurd and insane for the queer folk. As far as Rrated teen comedies for the ladies go, Bottoms is certainly a more exuberant — and exuberantly gay (in every sense of the word) — film than Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart n

Directed by Emma Seligman. Written by Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott. Now playing.

Queer girls Josie (Ayo Edebiri) and PJ (Rachel Sennott), on the far left, cope with the absurdity of high school. | COURTESY OF ORION PICTURES INC © 2023 ORION RELEASING LLC

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 7

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

BOXCAR: 7 p.m., free. Highland Square, 914 Main St., Highland, 618-304-9610.

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

J.D. HUGHES: 4:30 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

MATTHEW FOWLER + ALEXA ROSE: 8 p.m., $10. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

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

NITTY GRITTY DIRT BAND: 7:30 p.m., $55.50-

$80.50. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

S. CAREY: 8 p.m., $22. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

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

FRIDAY 8

10 YEARS: 8 p.m., $25. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

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

AUSTRALIAN PINK FLOYD: 7:30 p.m., $39.50-

$79.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LOCAL LOU BENEFIT SHOW: w/ Young Animals, Squint, Wise Disguise, Inches From Glory, Interpersonal 7 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

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

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

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

SOULARD BLUES BAND: 10 p.m., $9. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

Flogging Molly w/ the Bronx, Vandoliers

8 p.m. Tuesday, September 12. The Pageant, 6161 Delmer Boulevard. $45 to $60. 314-726-6161.

Head on down to the Pageant this Tuesday for a night of drunken lullabies. Los Angeles’ premier Celtic punk band Flogging Molly has been slinging Irishinflected tunes for nearly 30 years now and is currently midway through a tour in support of its latest record, 2022’s Anthem — its first studio album since 2017 and seventh since the band’s founding in 1995. Though it may not sound like it from Flogging Molly’s characteristically foot-stomping mix of punk and traditional Irish music, the outfit’s most recent work presents much of the same morose hopelessness found in many musicians’ post-pandemic output. As an example, Anthem’s first track, “These Times Have

SATURDAY 9

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

BEN NORDSTROM AND STEVE NEALE: 7:30 p.m., $25. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

BEYOND FM ALTERNATIVE SHOWCASE: 7:30 p.m.,

$6. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

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

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

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

FEEL: 8 p.m., $12. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

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

GUNS N’ ROSES: 6 p.m., $49-$375. Busch Stadium, 700 Clark Ave, St. Louis, 314-345-9600.

Got Me Drinking/Tripping Up Stairs,” tells the story of an inebriated man wallowing in his loneliness while trying to climb stairs to “an empty room left haunted.”

Elsewhere on the album is “A Song of Liberty,” a jangly, upbeat rocker whose lyrics trace back to the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland and wind their way through history through both World Wars. It’s the kind of track you could easily imagine beerguzzling regulars belting at an Irish pub, and its release was accompanied with a fundraising effort led by the band to collect money for Ukrainian refugees. It’s just the type of protest-anthem activism fans have come to expect from the politically charged and history-obsessed act, and it’s a perfect example of why those fans religiously flock to Flogging Molly’s shows whenever the band hits town.

SISTER HAZEL: 8 p.m., $25. The Hawthorn, 2225 Washington Avenue, St. Louis.

SUMMER SOUNDS: 1 p.m., free. St. Louis Art Fair, Main Stage, Clayton, (314) 863-0278.

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

SUNDAY 10

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

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

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

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

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

JOE MANDE: w/ Mike Glazer 7 p.m., $25-$30. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

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

MAX & IGGOR CAVALERA: w/ Exhumed, Incite 7 p.m., $29.50. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

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

OZARK MOUNTAIN DAREDEVILS: w/ Pat Liston 7 p.m., $39.50-$89.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

RED: 7:30 p.m., $25-$49.50. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

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

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

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

MONDAY 11

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

MARGO PRICE: 8 p.m., $27. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

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

—Monica Obradovic

First Things First: LA punk (and occasionally mariachi) act the Bronx and Dallas alt-country group Vandoliers will open the show.

HOZIER: 8 p.m., $39.50-$89.50. St. Louis Music Park, 750 Casino Center Dr., Maryland Heights, 314-451-2244.

MAGNIFICENT MULLETS OF LONEDELL: 10 p.m., $11. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

MISPLACED RELIGION: 7:30 p.m., $10. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

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

NOAH CYRUS: 8 p.m., $30. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

POPPY & PVRIS: 7 p.m., $39-$50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

REALMS OF DEATH: w/ Sawed Off, Nolia, Mürtaugh 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

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

ROCKIN RASCALS: 3 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.

THEO CROKER: 7:30 p.m., $28-$35. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

TUESDAY 12

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

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

BAYSIDE: w/ Hawthorne Heights, Pinkshift 7 p.m., $32. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

ERIC CLAPTON: 7:30 p.m., $46.50-$372. Enterprise Center, 1401 Clark Ave., St. Louis, 314-241-1888.

FLOGGING MOLLY: w/ the Bronx, Vandoliers 8 p.m., $45-$60. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

FORTUNATE YOUTH: 7:30 p.m., $29.50. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

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

THE QUEBE SISTERS & THE STEEL WHEELS: 7:30 p.m., $22-$28. City Winery St. Louis, 3730

Flogging Molly. | VIA CLARION CALL PUBLICITY

[CRITIC’S PICK]

Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

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

WEDNESDAY 13

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

JANELLE MONÁE: 8 p.m., $48.50-$88.50. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600.

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

JOY OLADOKUN: 8 p.m., $26. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

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

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

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

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

THIS JUST IN

1D UP ALL NIGHT: Sat., Oct. 28, 9 p.m., $20. The Hawthorn, 2225 Washington Avenue, St. Louis.

THE 442S: Sat., Sept. 16, 7:30 p.m., $20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

ANITA JACKSON + JOANNA SERENKO + EMILY WAL-

LACE + DAVE GRELLE: Wed., Sept. 27, 7:30 p.m.,

$20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

BIG LOVE: A TRIBUTE TO FLEETWOOD MAC: Sat., Dec. 16, 8 p.m., $20-$25. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

DREW HOLCOMB & THE NEIGHBORS: Fri., April 19, 8 p.m., $25-$275. The Hawthorn, 2225 Washington Avenue, St. Louis.

ERIN BODE: Thu., Oct. 5, 8 p.m., $15. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis.

THE FARSHID TRIO: W/ Emerson Magana, Thu., Oct. 12, 8 p.m., $15. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis.

FIVEFOLD: Sat., Nov. 18, 8 p.m., $18. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

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

THE FURIOUS BONGOS PLAY ZAPPA: Sun., Oct. 29, 7:30 p.m., $25-$30. Wildey Theatre, 254 N. Main St., Edwardsville, 618-692-7538.

HARD BOP MESSENGERS: Fri., Sept. 22, 7:30 p.m.,

$15. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

HILLARY FITZ: Thu., Sept. 21, 8 p.m., $15. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis.

THE HOT CLUB OF ST. LOUIS: Thu., Sept. 14, 8 p.m., $15. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis.

J. CHAMBERS: Wed., Oct. 4, 7:30 p.m., $15. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

KELLY WILLIS, BRENNEN LEIGH & MELISSA CARPER: Wed., Nov. 8, 8 p.m., $22. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

KIM VASSIE ROBINSON: Sat., Sept. 30, 7 p.m.,

$10. Pilgrim Congregational Church, 826 Union Blvd., St. Louis, 314-652-6800.

MAGNOLIA PARK: Sat., Oct. 28, 7:30 p.m., $20-

$49.50. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

PAIN OF TRUTH: Sun., Nov. 19, 7:30 p.m., $18.

Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

PETTY GRIEVANCES RECORD RELEASE PARTY: W/

Kilverez, Modern Angst, Sat., Oct. 7, 7:30 p.m.,

$10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

SEXYY RED: Mon., Oct. 30, 8 p.m., $39.50-

$55.50. Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis, 314-977-5000.

SIMPLY P.A.M.: Thu., Sept. 21, 7:30 p.m., $20.

Music at the Intersection

12 p.m. Saturday, September 9, and 12 p.m. Sunday, September 10. Grand Center, North Grand Boulevard and Lindell Boulevard. $99 to $650. 314-533-1884.

St. Louis’ finest new music fest makes its triumphant return this weekend. Music at the Intersection, the boutique festival centered on jazz, soul, blues, hip-hop and the varied fusions of those forms, circles back to the starting line of its victory lap following the blowout success of its 2022 edition. That event proved that MATI has legs and saw music fans buzzing in its aftermath, and organizers have decided to follow it up with more of the same. And so once again the Grand Center Arts District will play host to more than 50 musical acts this weekend for a two-day affair highlighting St. Louis’ place in American music history through artists both local and international. At the top of the bill

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

SYNOPTIC FREQUENCIES 6: W/ Eli Winter,

Ghosts I Have Been, Lex Kosieradzki, Two Hands | One Engine, Sat., Sept. 30, 7 p.m., $10. MaTovu, 4200 Blaine Avenue, St. Louis, n/a.

TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA: Sun., Dec. 17, 7 p.m., $37.49-$119.75. Enterprise Center, 1401 Clark Ave., St. Louis, 314-241-1888.

VOODOO BILLY VS ELTON: Wed., Oct. 25, 9 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

VOODOO CCR: Wed., Oct. 4, 9 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

VOODOO JIMI HENDRIX: Wed., Sept. 27, 9 p.m.

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

VOODOO PHISH: Wed., Sept. 20, 9 p.m., $14.

are headliners Smino, Masego, Snarky Puppy and Cameo, with such luminaries as Arrested Development, Ravyn Lenae, Keyon Harrold and Pharoahe Monch in the finer print. As always, St. Louis’ thriving music community is well-represented, with scene stalwarts including Mai Lee, Sir Eddie C, DJ Alexis Tucci, Eric Donte and Maxi Glamour all slated to appear. If past is prelude, attendees can expect a breezy weekend of end-of-summer fun delivered by a series of performers at the top of their game.

$55. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

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

BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE: Thu., Oct. 5, 8 p.m., $35-$50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

THE CENTAURETTES: W/ Kat and the Hurricanes, The Public, Thu., Oct. 12, 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

DEHD: W/ Sarah Grace White, Fri., Oct. 6, 8 p.m., $21. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

DETHKLOK AND BABYMETAL: Wed., Sept. 27, 7 p.m., $45-$65. St. Louis Music Park, 750 Casino Center Dr., Maryland Heights, 314-451-2244.

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY: Thu., Sept. 21, 8 p.m., $30-$45. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

FOXING + THE HOTELIER: Sat., Nov. 4, 8 p.m., $25. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

FRAGILE PORCELAIN MICE: W/ Sinister Dane, Sat., Oct. 14, 8 p.m., $25-$40. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

FRANKIE COSMOS: W/ Good Morning, Mon., Oct. 2, 8 p.m., $20. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

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

GRAVITY KILLS: Sat., Nov. 11, 8 p.m., $35. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

HELMET: Wed., Oct. 11, 8 p.m., $27.50. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

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

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.

THE MANESS BROTHERS: W/ Huskey Burnette & The Comedown, Sat., Sept. 30, 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

THE MARS VOLTA: Tue., Oct. 3, 8 p.m., $49.50$79.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

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

PETTY GRIEVANCES RECORD RELEASE PARTY: W/ Kilverez, Modern Angst, Sat., Oct. 7, 7:30 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

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

—Daniel Hill

Serious Business: Organizers hope the festival can grow to serve as a miniSXSW of sorts that can bring St. Louis more attention from the music industry and help to elevate its considerable talent; in keeping, they’ve attached a free micro-conference element to the festival that takes place in the two days prior to the main event. For more information on that, visit musicattheintersection.org/intersessions.

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

WES HOFFMAN AND FRIENDS: Sat., Nov. 18, 8 p.m., $15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

WEST END JUNCTION: Thu., Oct. 5, 7:30 p.m., $10. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

ZACH BRYAN: $72-$322. Enterprise Center, 1401 Clark Ave., St. Louis, 314-241-1888.

UPCOMING

AL GREEN WITH BETTYE LAVETTE: Sat., Nov. 25, 7 p.m., $62-$297. Family Arena, 2002 Arena Parkway, St Charles, 636-896-4200.

AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS: Wed., Oct. 25, 8 p.m., $30. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

BLACK VEIL BRIDES: Sun., Oct. 1, 7 p.m., $45-

POSTMODERN JUKEBOX: Fri., Nov. 24, 8 p.m., $29.50-$69.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE: W/ Viagra Boys, Sat., Sept. 23, 7 p.m., $44.50-$69.50. St. Louis Music Park, 750 Casino Center Dr., Maryland Heights, 314-451-2244.

RHIANNON GIDDENS: Thu., Sept. 14, 8 p.m., $47$175. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

RINGO STARR: Sat., Sept. 23, 8 p.m., $55-$449. The Fox Theatre, 527 N. Grand Blvd., St. Louis, 314-534-1111.

SARAH BORGES: Thu., Sept. 21, 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

SHEER MAG & HOTLINE TNT: Wed., Oct. 11, 7:30 p.m., $18. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

SQUEEZE / PSYCHEDELIC FURS: Tue., Sept. 26, 7:30 p.m., $40-$100. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600. n

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[CRITIC’S PICK]

SAVAGE LOVE

Quickies

BY DAN SAVAGE

Hey Dan: I’m a fisting top, and I always ask my bottoms to make sure they’re cleaned out. What is the proper etiquette when brown liquid explodes out of a bottom, covering me, the bed, the walls and the floor?

Get out of bed, shower off, get dressed, put the bottom in an Uber, exit the apartment, lock the door behind you, go to the airport, fly to a new city, don’t leave a forwarding address.

Hey Dan: My BF of 10 years is 53. I’m 43. Things have cooled off in the bedroom as he has age-related issues like indigestion, back pain and headaches — all the usual age stuff. How do we spice it back up? How do I get him back into his kinky gear for some kinky fun? He was kinkier when he was younger, so I know it’s in him. Any tips?

Instead of trying to get him back into the exact same kinky stuff he enjoyed doing 10 years ago — and felt physically capable of doing 10 years — work on identifying some new kinky stuff that vibes with the themes of the kinks he used to enjoy and that aren’t as physically taxing. For instance, you could substitute simpler easy-in/easy-out bondage for long, elaborate bondage sessions or you could ask him to watch while you do whatever he orders you to with your favorite insertion toys. (I’m guessing at your kinks here — but you get the idea.)

Hey Dan: My university-aged cisgendered heterosexual daughter now identifies as asexual. Which is all good. But what does that mean? Not getting any? Doesn’t want any? I don’t want to bother her about it if she isn’t into chatting about it, but I would like to know what’s going on.

Some asexuals aren’t getting any and don’t want any. Some asexuals get some but don’t want much. Some asexuals get lots and want more. Asexuality, like so much else, is a vast and broad spectrum. You can learn about all the different points (and all the different pride flags) along that vast and broad spectrum at the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network. But only your daughter knows where she falls — at least for now — along that spectrum.

Hey Dan: I’m a 40-something straight male who only gets off to gangbang porn. It has to be focused on female pleasure; I don’t enjoy

anything violent or rough. I’ve never even had a threesome, and honestly when it’s over — right after I come — I’m not into the idea anymore. What’s going on?

Don’t mistake post-nut indifference for post-nut clarity — meaning, your sudden disinterest in gangbang porn right after you come watching gangbang porn isn’t a sign that there’s something wrong with you or with the gangbang porn (provided, of course, that it’s ethically produced gangbang porn, which does exist). Like all men, you’re less “into the idea” of whatever turns you on right after you come. Losing interest as you crash into your refractory period doesn’t mean your kinks are shameful — it means you have a little time to think about something else.

Hey Dan: Why has caging become so popular in gay porn?

Interestingly, cock cages — male chastity devices — were being used by straight men in cuckold relationships long before gay men embraced them, making cock cages one of the rare kinks that jumped from straight kinksters to gay ones. That usually works the other way around, i.e., gay men beta test some new perversion and straight people pretend to be revolted for a decent interval before coopting the kink. Anyway, I think cages are popular in gay porn because popular gay porn stars like Caged Jock and Devin Franco popularized them.

Hey Dan: Is it safe to sleep with a cock chastity cage on?

Dr. Stephen King, a urologist, urged my readers not to wear a male chastity devices overnight: “My primary concern is long-term health and preservation of erectile function ‘down the road,’ so I tend to err on the cautious side … so, I’d caution against any long-term or continuous use of such a device, anything more than four to six hours,  if it places any significant compression on the tissue directly,” King told me back in 2013. For more on cock cage safety, check out my 2015 column featuring an interview with Christopher Miers, the founder of Steelwerks (steelwerksextreme.com), purveyors of the world’s finest male chastity devices.

Hey Dan: Isn’t sex only sex when there’s an erection and penetration involved?

If sex is only sex when an erection and penetration is involved, then mutual masturbation isn’t sex. Fingering isn’t sex, scissoring isn’t sex, cunnilingus isn’t sex, pegging isn’t sex, eating ass isn’t sex, two bottoms jamming on a double-ended dildo while their

cocks are caged isn’t sex. And if you walked in on your wife scissoring with one woman while another woman ate her ass and yet another woman pegged the woman eating your wife’s ass … and two gay bottom boys in cock cages jammed on a double-ended dildo on the other side of the room … you wouldn’t think, “No erections, no penetration, nothing to see here!”

Hey Dan: My ex was very small, but my new guy is hung like a horse. He’s almost too big! Can one adjust?

One can, one must, one will — but will you be that one?

Hey Dan: I’m just one person, and they’re currently only sleeping with me. We’ve both agreed to tell each other if that changed. Does that mean anything about the relationship? Is this at all significant? Is it just about safety?

This clearly means something to you — but only time will tell whether it means something to the other person involved.

Hey Dan: How do you know if you’re making the right decision when it comes to breaking up with significant other?

You don’t.

Hey Dan: Can you test positive for weed after eating pussy while the receiver is high?

People have tested positive for weed and other substances after drinking the urine of someone who was high — but vaginal secretions aren’t urine, i.e., a woman’s body doesn’t eliminate waste through vaginal secretions. So I think it’s unlikely a sober person would test positive after eating the pussy of a woman who was high — but that’s a semi-informed guess, not a guarantee.

Hey Dan: No-longer-used sex toys. What to do with them? Landfill?

I had a friend who used to wash her old sex toys, place them in a Easter basket with a bow on it, and then leave the basket a busy corner in the nightlife district with a note that said, “Gently used, lovingly cleaned and sterilized, and looking for a good home.” Most probably wound up in landfills, but one or two may have been saved.

Hey Dan: Why are you such a fag?

Ours is not to reason why, ours is butt to screw and sigh.

Hey Dan: Is it safe to have anal sex right

after a colonoscopy? I mean, my ass will never be cleaner.

So long as you didn’t have any polyps snipped out, you’re good to go.

Hey Dan: Many vers gay men speak disparagingly about guys who only enjoy one role — meaning, gay guys who only top or only bottom. Thoughts?

With most gay men identifying as either tops or bottoms these days — and with some gay men making which role they enjoy during anal sex their entire personality (at least on social media) — it’s understandable that some vers guys might be annoyed by a tribalism that excludes them. It would be great if annoyed vers guys could assert themselves without disparaging guys who enjoy one role or the other, of course, but the longer you’re told you have to pick a team, the more annoyed you get; the more annoyed you get, the likelier you are to speak disparagingly of the people pressuring you to pick a team. (Just ask a bisexual.)

Hey Dan: How can I, a 41-year-old woman, tell my wonderful new Dom, a 39-year-old man, that I need to be warmed up before impact play and that I prefer more consistent rhythmic strokes to get into sub space? Any resources?

The resource you need can be found under your nose and above your chin: Open your mouth, use your words. If can’t bring yourself to talk about your limits, boundaries, needs and how certain kinds of play work best for you, you’re not ready for a D/s relationship. If this man has convinced you “real” subs aren’t allowed to have limits or boundaries or preferences — and a slow build during impact play is a perfectly legitimate preference — then at best he’s a bad Dom, at worst he’s an abusive Dom.

Hey Dan: My boyfriend and I recently opened our relationship. He prefers random encounters while I prefer deeper connections. How do we make that work and avoid open relationship pitfalls?

He could have random encounters while you pursue deeper connections. But if he wants things kept strictly casual with outside partners and casual/anon sex doesn’t work for you, you might have to close the relationship back down until you can get on the same page. n

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