JANUARY 20–26, 2016 I VOLUME 40 I NUMBER 03
The Good Cop Don Re can’t fix St. Louis’ policing problems. But he’s trying to teach the young officers who will BY DANNY WICENTOWSKI
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“I was thinking about the past -- what my father and mother went through and their struggle in the South. I was thinking about coming up here to the march on Martin Luther King Day. And I’m thinking now about the movement and what have we gained, and how far are we going back?” —TERRY SIMMONS (MIDDLE), PRAYING WITH FELLOW LETTER CARRIERS BOB RAPISARDO (RIGHT) AND LEROY GILL (LEFT) AT THE MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. CELEBRATION AT THE OLD COURTHOUSE ON MONDAY, JANUARY 18.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS FEATURE
12.
The Good Cop Don Re can’t fix St. Louis’ policing problems. But he’s trying to teach the officers who will. Written by
DANNY WICENTOWSKI Cover by
VALERIY KACHAEV
NEWS
CULTURE
DINING
MUSIC
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19
25
35
The Lede
Calendar
A Taste of Taipei
Your friend or neighbor, captured on camera
Seven days worth of great stuff to see and do
Cheryl Baehr gets adventurous at Tai Ke
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22
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On the Road
Stage
Side Dish
Normandy High’s AP students are NYC-bound
Sunset Baby grapples with activism and parenthood
Wade Waller was inspired by a Florida vacation
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Coming Home
A crime victim leaves the hospital
Galleries
Art on display in St. Louis this week
First Look
Melo’s Pizzeria comes to Benton Park
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Dining Guide
Where to eat right now in the Gateway City
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The Rager Review
Matt Bryan gives a graphic review of the night Lion’s Daughter, Black Fast, Fister and Hell Night played the Firebird
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Homespun
Brother Lee and the Jackals: Boredom Leads to the Bottle
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Out Every Night
The best concerts in St. Louis every night of the week
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E D I T O R I A L Arts & Culture Editor Paul Friswold Music Editor Daniel Hill Digital Editor Elizabeth Semko Staff Writers Doyle Murphy, Danny Wicentowski Restaurant Critic Cheryl Baehr Editorial Interns Katelyn Mae Petrin, Emily Higginbotham Contributing Writers Drew Ailes, Mike Appelstein, Allison Babka, Nicole Beckert, Mark Fischer, Sara Graham, Patrick J. Hurley, Roy Kasten, Dan LeRoy, Jaime Lees, Joseph Hess, Kevin Korinek, Todd McKenzie, Bob McMahon, Nicholas Phillips, Tef Poe, Christian Schaeffer, Alison Sieloff, Mabel Suen, Ryan Wasoba, Alex Weir
A R T Art Director Kelly Glueck Contributing Photographers Abby Gillardi, Robert Rohe, Mabel Suen, Steve Truesdell, Eric Frazier Micah Usher, Theo Welling, Corey Woodruff, Jennifer Silverberg P R O D U C T I O N Production Manager Robert Westerholt Production Designer Brittani Schlager
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At Normandy High, an Empire State of Mind
W
hen she thinks about visiting New York City, eighteen-year-old Precious Bobo doesn’t think about seeing skyscrapers or fancy stores. Instead, she envisions her classmates’ excitement. “I want to see their faces when they see it,” she says. She just might get that chance. Bobo is a student at Normandy High School, which is perhaps best-known for educating Michael Brown before his death made him a national lightning rod. The north county St. Louis district has struggled, badly — it’s the lowest-performing in the state — and its sole high school has been named the most dangerous in Missouri. But to Bobo, it’s home. “We are family,” she says. Offered the chance to transfer during the district’s accreditation crisis, she declined. Bobo plans to go to college (she eventually wants to be a veterinarian). But for now, as a senior, she’s learning all she can at Normandy. In Tyler Jones’ AP Writing and Composition class, they are reading important books, among them Ta-Nehesi Coates’ Between the World and Me, which just won the National Book Award. It made a huge impression, Bobo says —- and also inspired a possible class trip to New York, if they can only raise a little more money. As Jones explains it, part of the book deals with a trip to Paris. Inspired, he threw out a question: Where would the students travel if they could go anywhere? “I was expecting a crazy list of international destinations,” Jones says. “But they had many U.S. cities.” As Bobo explains, that’s partly a matter of life experience: She’s barely been outside
Tyler Jones plans to take his students to Harlem, Ground Zero and Columbia University. | JOAKIM LLOYD RABOFF Missouri, and suspects that’s also true for most of her classmates. As the discussion shifted, Jones mentioned he’d worked in New York City for a time. “The questions just came pouring out,” he says. Jones began plotting to take the students there — just for the weekend, yes, but he could see the itinerary. They’d visit Harlem, Columbia, maybe even the New York Times. And they’d see the tourist sites, too: Ground Zero, Times Square. His girlfriend, Brittany Kelleher, who is herself a former teacher in the Normandy district, launched a crowd-funding campaign on a site called Crowd Rise. After we reported on the campaign on our website Monday, donations pushed the class over the top of the trip’s estimated $9,000 cost. For students like Bobo, it could be a game-changer. She acknowledges that “Mr. Jones” has encouraged her to apply to a few schools out of state in addition to the ones in St. Louis, but she’s
not sure what to think about that. Going to New York City could help her figure out how she feels about moving away. “It could help me see what it’s like to be away from my family,” she says. She’s dying to see Times Square. “I want to see if it’s really like what I looks like in TV and in the movies,” she says.
J
ones, 30, came to teaching — and St. Louis — by a circuitous route. A native of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, he studied business and worked as a consultant before getting burnt out and longing for something more. Joining Teach for America in 2011, he found himself placed within the St. Louis Public Schools — and promptly out of a job six weeks into the school year, thanks to district cutbacks. He landed at Normandy. “I wound up there and I absolutely loved it,” he says. But when the district lost its accreditation and the state took over, he was again let go — all teachers had to reapply for their riverfronttimes.com
jobs. Fortunately, he was rehired — and last year, won an award as the district’s “innovative Teacher of the Year.” He admits his three years in the classroom have been an eye-opener. “My goal was to use teaching to get into education policy,” he says, yet, “I find I continually have fewer answers than I walked in with.” Of his students, he adds, “They probably teach me more on a daily basis than I teach them. I consider myself lucky to be teaching in the district. It’s been a tremendous opportunity.” Jones still remembers his first trip to New York. He was a bit older than his students at Normandy — an undergrad, he had a job interview in Manhattan — but the rush of arriving at Penn Station is still seared in his memory. Traveling, he says, “opens up your universe so much.” Now he’s hoping to open the universe for his AP students. It’s only one weekend, but it could change their lives. – Sarah Fenske
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A Bittersweet Homecoming
C
hris Sanna returned home Monday — more than three months after a robber shot him through the spine as he left a St. Louis Cardinals game. The 44-year-old Army vet, who nearly died in the attack, scanned RFT_AD_BLPT_GRD_PARD_2016_CRA.pdf his place in House Springs as he
rolled his wheelchair into his driveway. “Normally, I’d be crying right now,” he said, “but I’m all teared out.” Volunteers completely renovated Sanna’s home while he was recovering in the hospital. Coordinated by the Gary Sinise Foundation, which works to support military veterans, the workers outfitted every corner to suit Sanna’s new life in a wheelchair. Dozens of them showed up on Monday morning to mark the day. want 1 “We 1/4/16just 12:01 PM to say, ‘Welcome home, buddy,’” Chris Kuban of the
Chris Sanna. | DOYLE MURPHY Gary Sinise Foundation told Sanna. “Welcome home.” Sanna and his girlfriend had
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met his family at the Cards game on September 25, 2015 to celebrate his mother’s 60th birthday. The pair left early to beat traffic, only to be confronted by a gunman on Walnut Street as they walked to their car. The crook stole his girlfriend’s purse, and then opened fire as the couple ran. Sanna was hit in the back. The bullet tore through his spine, liver and lung before it exited through his armpit. “I’m just surprised I’m even here,” he said. St. Louis Metro police charged 31-year-old Kilwa Jones with assault and robbery following a five-day manhunt. Jones, a career criminal, was already in custody for allegedly beating his ex-girlfriend and holding their children hostage just days after the attack on Sanna. He is awaiting trial. Supporters from across the world rallied to help Sanna, raising more than $121,000 through a GoFundMe account where his mother, Candis Sanna, has posted dozens of updates about his recovery. She started to cry as she thanked the workers on Monday. “I love you all from the bottom of my heart,” Candis Sanna said. “I really do.” The renovation included everything from moved walls to landscaping. Hardwood floors replace carpet. Electronic chair lifts in the garage and living room sit ready to carry Sanna up and down stairs. His old bathroom is now a sprawling shower that’s easily big enough for a wheelchair. “We could have a water fight in here,” Sanna joked after seeing for the first time. He has had dark days since the shooting, he said. Simple tasks — even urinating — are hard, and the trauma takes a toll on his whole family. “My family members have stuck with me,” Sanna said. “The pain makes you very mean. You fight with your family, and they just stand there and they put up with it. I’m just grateful.” He eagerly rolled from room to room in his house, lingering over a new washer and dryer set, running his fingers across a microwave installed low in the side of a granite-topped kitchen island. Sinise, who spoke to Sanna by phone on Saturday, sent him a new bass guitar. The actor’s signature is written across the body. “In a lot of ways,” Sanna said, “I feel like I’ve won the lottery.” – Doyle Murphy
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The Good Cop
Don Re can’t fix St. Louis’ policing problems. But he’s trying to teach the officers who will
O
BY DANNY WICENTOWSKI
fficer Don Re took one look at his comrade’s uniform and felt hope drown in his gut. There was too much blood. The blue fabric – the same as Re’s uniform – was splashed red from shoulder to belly. A dark stain dripped beneath the silver badge of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. Re wasn’t thinking in that moment of the officer’s health. Despite the bloodstains, he would be fine, at least physically. But there was a six-year-old boy on the hospital gurney, a badly
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wounded child who up until now had been resting in the officer’s arms – that was a different story. That was the boy’s blood. The date was March 11, 2015. Gunfire had blasted out earlier that night following a seemingly minor argument between the little boy’s father and an unidentified motorist near O’Fallon Park. Somehow, a disagreement about blocked traffic escalated to a rolling gun battle that sprayed bullets across blocks of West Florissant Avenue. One of those bullets found the small chest of the boy, Marcus Johnson, tucked away in the backseat of his parents’ minivan. The crime scene was a few blocks away from Re’s regular patrol beat in north St. Louis, and after re-
JANUARY 20-26, 2016
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sponding to the shooting he led a convoy of police vehicles clearing traffic in a desperate attempt to deliver the still-breathing child to the hospital. A team of doctors and nurses took little Marcus, and Re and the other officers could only pace about the waiting room. Lost in worry, Re found himself staring at the officer’s bloodied uniform. He thought about his own son, also six, who was probably asleep at home by now. Carefully, Re pulled out his phone and snapped a single picture. It wasn’t long before the doctors returned and told the assembled officers the news. Marcus Johnson was dead. Re left the hospital with a head full of rage. After more than seven-
teen years as a city cop, he’d seen petty arguments turn into gun battles before, and he’d worked the Sixth District of north city long enough to witness the worst kinds of human wreckage – but this was something else. A little kid is bleeding out in a minivan? Really? Is that where we’re at? Re, 42, managed to keep his cool through a few more dispatch calls, a stolen bike and a car accident. He finished the shift and got home after 11 p.m. Then he grabbed some beers, opened his laptop and logged into his personal blog, Don of All Trades. He started to write. And write. He hit publish at 2:43 a.m. The blog post, titled “A senseless death,” described Re’s rush to the
hospital and the unnamed officer carrying Johnson to the emergency room. It also included Re’s photo of the cop’s bloody uniform. “It was hard for the officer,” Re wrote in the post, “because he did the best he could and it wasn’t going to be enough. It was hard for me, because I have a son about that age at home and couldn’t imagine anything like this happening to him. It was awkward because we were all hoping, but we also knew that it was going to take a miracle for that boy to live. He was not granted that miracle.” Perhaps the hardest part of that night was pretending to care about a stolen bike and car accident long enough to write the incident reports. He had wanted to scream, “At least you didn’t die at six years old from a bullet through your chest!” But that wouldn’t be professional. It was the post’s final, brutal lines that seemed reflect the emotions of a city exhausted by an endless churn of guns and death. Over the next few days, those lines would be read and shared by the chief of police, every TV news station in St. Louis and hundreds of thousands of people on social media. “I’m looking at my own six year old’s homework folder,” Re wrote, “and wondering if this dead boy has a homework folder in a backpack never to be turned in again. Will his mom see it when she gets home and cry? Did he have a lunch packed for the next day that will still be in the fridge this weekend to remind his family of a lunch that was never taken to school? Did he go to kindergarten? Will somebody have to explain to his classmates that they’ll never see this little guy alive again and why?” Re concluded: “This is all too sad and it needs to stop. Someone please figure out how.”
M
arcus Johnson’s death marked St. Louis’ 24th homicide of 2015, and the meaningless horror of the shooting drew further attention to the city’s enduring struggle with violence. It was early March, barely three months into the year, and St. Louis was already on its way to recording its highest murder rate in decades. As in past years, most of the homicides were clustered in poor, majority black communities in the north. Re spent more than a year patrolling those same hard-hit areas. Raised in south city, Re had spent his formative years playing in soccer tournaments and listening to his
father’s stories about breaking up bar fights as a St. Louis cop in the 1970s. In his father’s telling, being a cop was all about camaraderie and excitement. The reality, as Re found, could be much different. In writing about Johnson’s final moments, Re didn’t resort to “thin blue line” grandstanding or sound bites; he didn’t blame the violence on absent fathers, rap lyrics or imply that a “thug culture” was corrupting young black men. He didn’t say anything glib about all lives mattering. Re just sounded like a human being who was trying to understand why bad things happen to innocent people, and specifically why some asshole decided to shoot up a minivan for nothing. The next morning, March 12, Re rolled out of bed at 7 a.m. to make his morning shift working security at an apartment complex. Around noon, he got an unexpected call from the St. Louis police’s public information division. Re later learned that Sam Dotson, the city’s police chief, had read and enjoyed his blog post. Dotson even tweeted about it. “I was half expecting them to say that you can’t be writing stories about the police department,” Re recalls. Instead, he was asked if the department could share his post on the official SLMPD Facebook page. That request was followed by calls from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which reprinted the blog post in full, taking up an entire page in the next day’s print edition. Local TV news stations took notice as well, followed by People. By day’s end, Re says the post had been viewed more than 300,000 times. “It was almost too much attention,” Re says now. The blog, he insists, was never supposed to be any sort of behind-the-badge soapbox, and he can still hardly believe that politicians and community activists – not to mention his boss – were actually tweeting and discussing the product of his late-night boozy writing session. “I never intended to write anything about the police department. Mostly it was just a journal on my family, to keep tabs on my life, to get a few laughs,” he says. “If I’ve ever spent more than an hour on a blog post I’d be shocked. Most of that time would be spent just getting up to get another beer.” But Chief Dotson says he found the blog compelling. “It was moving, it really was,” he says. “He has a unique way of capturing the emotions that police officers see far too frequently. It
After a tragic night, Don Re snapped this photo of an officer’s bloodied uniform. “This is what a good policeman looks like,” he wrote on Facebook. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI shows a side of police officers that doesn’t get portrayed at all. Police officers are human beings, they have families, children, they have emotions just like everybody else.” Many times, though, they just don’t share that side. “Police officers are naturally internal people,” Dotson observes. Re started the blog in 2012, and its first year mostly chronicled the antics of raising three young kids while trying to remain (generally) sane and married. Basically, he was a daddy blogger. One early blog post, for example, concerned Re’s toddler-age son asking him why he was so fat. That post was accompanied by a picture of Re – a nominally grumpy cop built like Fred Flintstone – riding his daughter’s pink Barbie bicycle down the street with a madman’s grin plastered on his face. riverfronttimes.com
“It wasn’t too often that someone I knew would read it,” he admits. He seems almost bashful when estimating his early audience at around only a few hundred hits a week. It wasn’t until the Ferguson protests in 2014 that Re allowed his blog life and cop life to intersect. Triggered by a fatal encounter between a black teenager named Michael Brown and Ferguson officer Darren Wilson, the summer protests unleashed a long-overdue reckoning between the region’s various police departments and an increasingly influential coalition of residents, activists and politicians. Although Re himself wasn’t among the metro cops deployed to assist Ferguson that summer, he says he couldn’t simply ignore the messages blaring at him on the TV.
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GOOD COP Continued from pg 13
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Before attending law school, Re spent the first ten years of his career patrolling in south city. DANNY WICENTOWSKI “There seems to be a perception, outside of this area, that it’s a war zone here, that the whole region is in shambles,” he wrote in an August 19 post. “I can see how a person might think such a thing. I mean, God forbid the national media folks take their cameras outside of the immediate area where all the trouble is happening to see that life is still being lived by decent folks, even just outside of Ferguson.” Here too, Re wasn’t penning polemics. He didn’t weigh in on whether Michael Brown had his hands up. The writing wandered, as if following Re’s own undirected musings. He wrote about the group of boys he’d spotted playing basketball against a bare rim in north city, a young mother with hungry children huddled against the cold, and following a trail of blood up to an open front door. Amid the hurt were moments of small unrehearsed kindnesses, like buying a basketball net or comping a hot
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meal. This was Re’s vision of good police work. “Something has to change, and change for the better,” he wrote, wrapping up the post. “Shame on all of us, if we let this pass and we don’t become better people for having endured it. That’d be a real shitter.” The post attracted its share of attention, and for the first time Re found himself running into cops who read the blog as well. One of Re’s squad partners, a young officer named Ryan Kotaska, remembers pulling twelve-hour shifts with the grumpy older cop and discussing the blog. “We talked all the time,” Kotaska says. “A lot of it was about how you’re not going to change the world by arresting someone with some dope or heroin. Especially in these neighborhoods where there’s not a whole lot of good going on. Don had a way with people, the way he talked to them. There’s lot to be said about making people comfort-
TRY ROCK CLIMBING able to talk to you.” Kotaska wasn’t the only one who had noticed Re’s writing or his abilities as a communicator. In the days after his blog post about Marcus Johnson went viral, Re applied for and interviewed for a teaching position with the police academy. The transfer order came down in April, and just like that, Re was headed to the classroom.
W
est Florissant Avenue passes through the shadows of many deaths, not just Marcus Johns o n ’s . J u t t i n g northwest from its downtown origin, the street borders the grand sprawl of the Bellefontaine and Calvary cemeteries, where tombstones and monuments smoothed by time peek behind tree cover at the zooming traffic. “I enjoy Calvary Cemetery. It’s got a lot of history,” Re says during a late December drive though the surrounding neighborhoods. “Cars crash through the fence all the time. The fence takes a beating, weekly, definitely monthly. Sometimes the drivers are drunk.” Because he’s now based downtown, this is Re’s first visit to this stretch of West Florissant since his transfer to the police academy. For Re, more memories are lurking here. He recalls the hardened criminals and the drunk oafs who taught him to notice certain behaviors, patterns in the north city noise – like the out-of-place white guy who today is wearing a Blues cap and camouflage vest, leaning against a car with a tallboy of Bud Light in his hand. “He’s buying drugs, no doubt about it,” Re says, taking a right turn on a residential street in Baden. “He’ll say he was being profiled, but you know, a white guy with Illinois
plates? That’s pretty typical.” With his move to the police academy, Re doesn’t get to flex those crime-spotting instincts much anymore. (Then again, he can’t turn them off, either.) Re says it wasn’t his blog’s success that drove his move from beat patrol to teacher. In fact, he says that a police commander had reached out in 2014 to express surprise that Re – who is also a licensed attorney and worked six years in the department’s legal division – was out on the streets with the young guys in the Sixth District. Re suggests his transfer was part of the normal ebb and flow of police personnel. “I don’t really miss it, I’m not going to lie to you,” he says of his old beat. “I don’t really miss taking radio calls. Trust me, if I wanted to stay in the Sixth District, I could have stayed.” The Sixth District patrol is no easy assignment. Baden, which had been Re’s primary beat, comprises little more than a square mile of real estate, but still managed to register more than 50 murders since 2008. North city isn’t all wasteland, though. Just one neighborhood over, in North Pointe, Re remarks on the tidy houses and well-kept lawns. But even a nicely maintained neighborhood like North Pointe must contend with the area’s violence. A dozen or so of those tidy lawns bear signs that read, “We Must Stop Killing Each Other.” “Honestly, I think it’s ridiculous that we have to have signs like that,” Re says as he drives past. “To me it just seems like it’s more talk, and I’m tired of talk.”
“Something has to change, and change for the better. Shame on all of us, if we let this pass and we don’t become better people for having endured it.”
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GOOD COP Continued from pg 15 Re parks at Gregg’s Bar and Grill, his usual lunch spot during his days patrolling north city. The interior is buzzing with chit-chat from its blue-collar customers, and the owner, a towering man in a button-down shirt, clasps Re on the shoulder like an absent old friend. “Last night,” the owner says, “at about 6:05, we heard six shots,” “Six shots?” Re says, chuckling, as if acting out a familiar bit. “That’s not too bad, not too bad.” For Re, places like Gregg’s remind him of the camaraderie between officer and citizen, the kind of interactions that might be more common if not for the spread of police brutality videos and nationwide protests. In the 1990s, before Re entered the police academy, Rodney King’s beating in Los Angeles raised similar tensions. Still, the scrutiny that officers faced day-to-day on the job was nothing compared to the criticism of the present, with its ubiquitous camera phones and online commentary. The adjustment has not been easy. “Older policemen, we’re a very funny group. Very naturally defensive, we don’t take accusations well, we don’t like to be told what to do,” he says. “But you get this ‘everyone is against us’ mindset. We should remember, especially these young policeman, that most of the people out here respect the job you do. Don’t fuck it up if you can help it.” It’s a difficult mindset to maintain, especially for officers who don’t yet have the street smarts it’s taken Re years to learn. He’s seeing officers burning out on frustration, attaining levels of crankiness in two years previously only reached after fifteen grinding on the force. That’s not to say Re is an apologist for the police department. (“We fuck up, we do,” he says.) But Re is faced with preparing the next generation of St. Louis officers, and they won’t have the luxury of learning slowly – not when any mistake could be livestreamed or uploaded to YouTube. “The trainees understand the new environment of policing, the riots, all the kind of protesting – that’s just something they know is going to be part of their careers. I think they’re more nervous about doing the wrong thing than I was when I came in.” That was more than seventeen years ago, but for Re, it feels like a bygone era. “It was a bigger joke when I was in the academy,” he says. “The old guys 16
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As a police academy instructor, Re must translate his street experience into classroom lessons — no easy task. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI
“It shows a side of police officers that doesn’t get portrayed at all. Police officers are naturally internal people.”
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would say, ‘Whatever you learn in the academy is a bunch of bullshit; you come out here and we’ll teach you how to be a policeman.’”
O
n a Wednesday afternoon, 30-something students dressed in blazers and khakis file into Re’s classroom, which is located within the harshly lit innards of the downtown police academy. It’s a diverse group in terms of age, gender and race. They all address Re as “sir.” Like many classrooms in America, the day’s lesson begins with several minutes of Re fumbling with the overhead projector. This is only Re’s second class of trainees, but it doubles the size of the one that graduated three months ago. Today, he’s talking about scenarios for consent searches. “So you’re in a house lawfully because you got a call for a domestic,” Re begins. “Let’s say a woman called and says my husband is beating my ass, and the dispatcher tells you the call was cut off, that’s all we’ve got. When you get to the door and a guy says there’s no woman here, you’re going in that house to make sure.”
Re fields several what-if questions from his students. Then a male student raises his hand. “In the scenario where a guy is beating the wife and you ask if he has drugs or guns in the house, what if she’s the one who shows them to you, can you charge her for those? How do you know if the stuff is hers or his?” In the real world, that’s not how Re would handle the scenario. But this is what hypothetical questions are for. A teachable moment, they call it. “Well,” Re says, “you’re going to have to figure it out. If you want to lock a victim of domestic abuse up for drugs while she’s bloody and crying, go for it. You won’t be my partner, I would wash my hands of you.” But these scenarios are never simple. Theoretically, Re says, an arrest could be justified if it was unavoidably apparent that the woman had a stash of drugs. “It’s not a trick,” he says, thinking aloud. “You are asking if there are drugs in the house. If she points you to drugs that are in her purse, then
shame on her for being an idiot. But it happens. It does. Maybe it’s her drugs, or maybe not.” Re pauses, as if running through a dozen more possibilities through his cop brain. He sighs. “This will make more sense in the context of being out on the street than it does in the classroom,” he says. There’s only so much that Re can teach the trainees, and at moments like this it seems like very little indeed. Balancing someone’s constitutional rights against, say, a rapidly escalating domestic situation is a lot of responsibility. For Re, it requires a nuanced understanding of power and application of law. And when reality is bearing down, a cop might be presented with more than one moral quandary. That’s why Re doesn’t like watching videos of police shootings. There are too many unseen variables at play, he says, too much going on in the officer’s head in the moment. However, Re made an exception for the recently released video of Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke pumping bullets into the prone body of seventeen year old Laquan McDonald in 2014. McDonald had been armed with a knife and toxicology reports indicated he had PCP in his system. But video of the shooting, released under a court order in November, definitively contradicted the officer’s claim that the teen had lunged at him with the knife. Citing the video, prosecutors charged the officer with murder. “It looks like a bad shooting to me,” Re wrote in a November 24 blog post. “But I’ve not heard what the other side has to say about it. What was the officer’s reasoning? If he says he was in fear of his life, who are you to say that he wasn’t?” The post, titled “Murder and deadly force are different,” seemed to track Re’s conflicted feelings about the shooting. The piece reads like a cop psychoanalyzing himself into a brick wall. “There is a difference,” he wrote, “between grabbing a gun and intentionally finding a target to kill and then killing him,” and “being thrust into a tense situation because it’s your job and using deadly force because you thought you had to.” Yet, he continues, that doesn’t excuse the officer. “[Van Dyke] will have to answer for what he did, and I’m okay with
that. I am glad that there was video, the police department’s video I might add. He will have to go through what he was thinking and convince a judge or jury that he didn’t murder that kid, and honestly, he might be able to, because it’s a tough case to convince a jury that a police officer murdered an armed person.” The post goes back and forth, toggling between Re’s misgivings about charging an officer with murder and his own horror at the filmed death
of a teenager. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, but the truth is, I don’t know, and neither do you,” he wrote. “Same on the other side of the argument as well. Well intentioned people who support the police are doing the same thing, spouting off that the kid had a knife and was on PCP. They’ll say he deserved to die because he didn’t listen to the police. It’s not that simple either folks.” Re doesn’t pretend to have the an-
swers. But he does know one thing. At the end of the day, the climate of knee-jerk suspicion is making life in St. Louis worse for everyone. If people think cops are demons with badges, intent on lynching minority residents, how can police solve crimes and support communities? “I don’t know how we get that trust back, is what I’m saying,” Re says. “Maybe we never had it. Somewhere in the middle is the truth.” n
Jan 29 & 30, 2016 A Beautiful Illusion. An Enchanting Journey. Don’t Miss the Magic!
Touhill Performing Arts Center
Tickets: 314.534.6622 dancestlouis.org
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IT’S TIME TO TELL
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Sun, February 14, 3:00pm Sat, February 13, 7:30pm John Elefante, vocals
John Elefante, formerly of Kansas, joins the STL Symphony for an evening devoted to your favorite classic rock bands this Valentine’s Day weekend. With songs from Aerosmith, Foreigner, Journey, Led Zeppelin and more, relive generations of classic rock that changed music forever.
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This Valentine’s Day, bring your sweetheart to hear legendary hits from the Las Vegas songbook with the STL Symphony, including “Luck Be a Lady,” “Young at Heart,” “The Way You Look Tonight” and more! MEDIA SUPPORT PROVIDED BY KMOX
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CALENDAR
WEEK OF JANUARY 22-27
Big Muddy Dance swoops into the Pageant on Friday. GERRY LOVE
FRIDAY 01/22 [MARDI GRAS]
L’ecole Culinaire Wine, Beer and Whiskey Taste Mardi Gras is just over the next hill — are you prepared? If not, you can do some training at the L’ecole Culinaire Wine, Beer and Whiskey Taste. You’ll get to sample more than 50 wines, beers and whiskeys from 7 to 11 p.m. tonight at the Bud Light Party Centre in Soulard Market Park (Lafayette Avenue and South Ninth Street; www. mardigrasinc.com). Sommeliers
and cicerones (that’s a beer genius, if you didn’t know) will be present to explain what you’re drinking and where it comes from, and barbecue treats from Pappy’s, Salt + Smoke and Sugarfire Smokehouse are included in the ticket price ($40 to $50). If you’re still unsure, consider this: Anheuser-Busch will be sampling an “unnamed, experimental product” during the event. There’s only one way to find out what that beverage is. [DANCE]
Mud Tracks Big Muddy Dance keeps the “contemporary” in contemporary jazz dance with Mud Tracks, a show packed with premieres. The com-
pany unwraps its first production of artistic director Brian Enos’ Diphthong, which is set to the music of Zap Mama and was originally created for Chicago’s Hubbard Street Dance. Chicago dancer Autumn Eckman has choreographed a new piece for the troupe, while company dancers Thom Dancy and Dustin Crumbaugh will both perform a piece that is new to Big Muddy’s repertoire. But the centerpiece is a new work created by Josh Manculich, who won a Princess Grace Choreography Fellowship in 2015. Manculich was in fact nominated for the award by Big Muddy Dance, so it’s fitting that St. Louis would be first to see the piece. Mud Tracks is presented at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday (January 22 and 23) at the Pageant (6161 Delmar riverfronttimes.com
Boulevard; www.thepageant.com). Tickets are $22 to $25.
SATURDAY 01/23 [PERFORMING ARTS]
Duo BandiniChiacchiaretta Internationally, the guitar is often considered the essential instrument for tango, but in Argentina you’re not tangoing until someone breaks out the bandoneon. The squeezebox instrument has a plaintive, yearning tone when played by a master such as Cesare Chiacchiaretta. Together with the gifted guitarist
JANUARY 20-26, 2016
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K
CALENDAR Continued from pg 19
world p Theatr long ge cially f runs Tu uary 23 Loretto Road, W 4925 or are $50
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shining over the loop for over e sun 20 y h t ea ing p rs ee
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SUND
[OPERA
Cosí
Grateful Dead, Beatles, & other Classic Rock Memorabilia! Circus Harmony gets joyful. | LAUREN KNIGHT
6608 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63130 (314) 727-9043 | sunshinedaydreamloop.com Giampaolo Bandini, Chiachiaretta coaxes aching desire out of his instrument while performing the music of Ástor Piazzolla and other Argentinian greats. Even their silences are dramatic, as heard on the Duo Bandini-Chiacchiaretta rendition of Gerardo Matos Rodríguez’s familiar “La Cumparasita” — they hang so long on the pause before the final refrain you find yourself leaning forward in anticipation. The St. Louis Classical Guitar Society presents Duo Bandini-Chiacchiaretta tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Sheldon (3648 Washington Boulevard; 314533-9900 or www.thesheldon.org). Tickets are $26 to $30. [CIRCUS]
Circus Harmony: Giocoso Where do kids from south city, the counties and the northside get together on a daily basis? At Circus Harmony, of course. The circus school based at the City Museum teaches kids traditional circus arts, but it also teaches them about themselves — and others. You can see what they’ve learned at Circus Harmony: Giocoso. The name comes from an Italian musical term for “joyful,” which is the only way these 20
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youthful acrobats, contortionists, wire-walkers and unicyclists know how to perform. Prepare to be amazed, and not just by the daring on display — the Circus Harmony Band plays everything from traditional circus music to klezmer. Giocoso is performed at 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday (January 23 to 31) at the City Museum (750 North Sixteenth Street; 314436-7676 or www.circusharmony. org). Tickets are $20. [ T H E AT E R ]
Georama John Banvard had great artistic ambition, channeling his fascination with the Mississippi River into a landscape painting that he claimed was three miles long. (Experts now believe it was at most a half-mile long, which is still impressive.) Banvard mounted what he called his “georama” on rollers like a scroll, and would unspool it slowly so audiences could see what a cruise down the Mississippi looked like. His vision made him the toast of the 1800s, but imitators threatened to push him out of the market he created. West Hyler and Matt Schatz turned the true story of an American original into the musical Georama, which gets its
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world premiere at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. A 600-footlong georama was created especially for this production, which runs Tuesday through Sunday (January 23 through February 7) at the Loretto-Hilton Center (130 Edgar Road, Webster Groves; 314-9684925 or www.repstl.org). Tickets are $50 to $65.
SUNDAY 01/24 [OPERA]
Cosí fan tutte Guglielmo and Ferrando are soldiers currently set to marry a pair of sisters, Fiordiligi and Dorabella. Their older pal Don Alphonso warns them that women are not capable of being faithful, and proposes a test. The boys should claim they’re being sent off to war, but actually disguise themselves as rich Albanians and attempt to woo each other’s fianceé. And so they do, but with some reservations. Mozart’s two-act opera buffa Cosí fan tutte has enchanted and unsettled audiences for 225 years, thanks to its comic bits and its jaundiced view of women as fickle flirts. Winter Opera St. Louis continues its season with Cosí fan tutte at 8 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Sunday (January 22 and 24). Performances take place at the Skip Viragh Center for the Arts (425 South Lindbergh Boulevard, Frontenac; 314-865-0038 or www.winteroperastl.org), and tickets are $35 to $55.
MONDAY 01/25 [FOOD & DRINK}
Burns’ Night As a Scotsman and a Romantic (same thing, really), poet Robert Burns was dedicated to commemorating Scottish life in his writing. The persistent argument in his work is that Scotland mattered to the larger world, and its folk songs, stories and traditions were worth preserving. For his labors he earned his claim as the national poet of his country. Today Scots around the world celebrate his life with Burns’ Nights marking his birthday. Lo-
cally, the folks at the Schlafly Tap Room (2100 Locust Street; 314-2412337 or www.schlafly.com) have a pretty fair party for ol’ Rabbie, complete with traditional foods (haggis, cock-a-leekie soup and scotch eggs), live music from Duddy Breeks and a memorial poem written and recited by Tom Schlafly. And then there’s the presentation of this year’s batch of Scotch Ale, which is delivered to the room by a procession of pipers. Schlafly’s Burns’ Night runs from 5 to 11 p.m. tonight and admission is free, but you’ll need money for food and drink.
WEDNESDAY 01/27 [LITERARY EVENT]
Stewart O’Nan Everybody remembers F. Scott Fitzgerald for The Great Gatsby and the glitzy, boozy crowd he associated with, but that was a fairly brief moment in Fitzgerald’s life. In 1937 his wife was institutionalized, he was out of money and the great success he’d achieved was now a millstone around his neck. So he did what the truly desperate do and headed to Hollywood to break into showbiz as a screenwriter. It did not turn out well. Stewart O’Nan’s new novel West of Sunset fictionalizes this bleak period in Fitzgerald’s life, when he was starting over again as a very famous nobody in a city of powerful somebodies. Nan discusses and signs copies of West of Sunset at 7 p.m. tonight at St. Louis County Library Headquarters (1640 South Lindbergh Boulevard, Frontenac; 314-994-3300 or www.slcl.org). Admission is free, and Left Bank Books will sell copies of the book on-site. — Paul Friswold
Planning an event, exhibiting your art or putting on a play? Let us know and we’ll include it in the Night & Day section or publish a listing in the online calendar — for free! Send details via e-mail (calendar@ riverfronttimes.com), fax (314-754-6416) or mail (6358 Delmar Boulevard, Suite 200, St. Louis, MO 63130, attn: Calendar). Include the date, time, price, contact information and location (including ZIP code). Please submit information three weeks prior to the date of your event. No telephone submissions will be accepted. Find more events online at www.riverfronttimes.com.
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JANUARY 20-26, 2016
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THE ARTS
[ S TA G E ]
Father Knows Best The Black Rep’s Sunset Baby offers a fearless take on fatherhood Written by
PAUL FRISWOLD Sunset Baby
Written by Dominique Morisseau Directed by Ron Himes Presented by the Black Rep through January 31 at Washington University’s Edison Theatre (6445 Forsyth Boulevard; 314-5343810 or www.theblackrep.org). Tickets are $20 to $30.
A
ging revolutionary and renowned activist Kenyatta Shakur stares down a camera lens and discourses on the topic of fatherhood. After some preamble, he comes to the nub. “Fatherhood is decades of fear. Lots of fear.” And this is before he learns that his daughter makes a living by dealing drugs and posing as a prostitute so her boyfriend can rob the clients. Dominique Morisseau’s Sunset Baby is no cakewalk. This is an eyes-wide-open look at the responsibilities – and failings – of fathers in the black community. But it’s also about hope for the future, forgiveness and the blind spots children have when it comes to their parents. The Black Rep’s production eagerly leans in to Kenyatta’s fear and dares you to look away – because Sunset Baby ain’t gonna blink first. It’s an absorbing, thought-provoking play that reaches for the heart and succeeds in making you care about the characters and the issues they confront. Ron Himes directs and plays Kenyatta, an absentee father who has decided to reconnect with his adult daughter, Nina (Erin Renée Roberts). Their relationship faltered when he was sent to prison for robbing an armored car, and was further damaged when he didn’t return home after his sentence was served. Nina blames him for
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Nina (Erin Renée Roberts) values cash more than her father. | LAWD GABRIEL the death of her mother, Ashanti, who slipped into crack addiction in Kenyatta’s absence and died a broken woman. Ashanti left behind a cache of never-sent love letters to Kenyatta, which he now wants. But Nina refuses even to consider it. These writings are all she has left of her mother after all of her other mementos were stolen. Roberts is just about as tall as Himes, but she seems larger because of the way she charges at him in most of their scenes. Her speech is clipped and angry, but as their negotiations break down and then resume, you realize Nina is holding something back, as if giving full voice to her rage would be failing, as it would allow her father to see something inside her. But when she’s alone, Nina is a softer, dreamy woman. She listens to her namesake, Nina Simone, and fantasizes about getting out of the city, perhaps with her boyfriend, Damon (Lawd Gabriel), a fiery intellectual who deals drugs. Roberts does exemplary work bringing this complex, intelligent survivor to life.
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As for Damon, he too is a father. He has a son with another woman, whom he resents because she makes him out to be a bad guy when he’s “only half-bad.” Gabriel is charismatic as hell – one moment he’s talking about casually killing a naive customer, the next he’s lovingly offering to rub Nina’s feet after a tough day. You want to believe him when he talks about the bond he has with his son, but when Nina asks him his son’s birthdate, all he can do is grab his head and moan. Himes, as always, portrays his role with nuance and grace. He plays Kenyatta as a guarded, wary man who sticks to small talk and the facts. Prison taught him to meditate and stay cool, which further infuriates Nina. He’s more easygoing when talking to his camera, which he does frequently. Sitting in his living room under a picture of a young Stokely Carmichael, he talks about his past, his regrets and the revolution he’s still fighting for. These monologues are projected in real time on a screen above Nina’s small, cluttered apartment. Is
he a disembodied voice in Nina’s head, or is this Kenyatta thinking of his daughter and what she’s become? It’s a subtle effect, beautifully worked out by Mark Wilson. When the final confrontation between father and daughter comes, it goes badly. A gun is pulled, and both Kenyatta and Nina drop their masks to show each other who they really are. “Are you always like this? So hard and angry?” Kenyatta asks. Nina tells him that she is, and the great man slumps, sad and defeated. The worst part is, it’s a defeat he engineered himself, thinking he was planting a revolution in her. But maybe he did. Morisseau tags on a coda that offers resolutions for her characters, but not easy answers. Life, fatherhood and revolutions don’t always come with happy endings, and forgiveness is never an easy thing to extend to an enemy. If you can see your opponent as a human being, though – flawed, scared and as uncertain as yourself – they’re much easier to embrace. And that’s revolutionary thinking in action. n
ART GALLERIES
23
From Clearly Human | MURIEL EULICH
Clearly Human II St. Louis Artists’ Guild
male gaze and the hypersexualized way women are depicted in mass media.
12 North Jackson Avenue | www.stlouisartistsguild.org
Connections: Land/Water
Opens 5 p.m. Fri., Jan. 22. Continues through Feb. 27.
Atrium Gallery
The human form is a work of art in its own right. It comes in a variety of colors, shapes and sizes, each one familiar yet unique. Clearly Human II is a juried, multimedia show that celebrates figurative art in all its variety. The opening reception also serves as the kick-off for the St. Louis Artists’ Guild’s 130th anniversary year. Cake (from St. Peters’ cakesbygeorgia.com) will be served, with live figure drawing demonstrations as well.
Fear of a Blank Pancake White Flag Projects 4568 Manchester Avenue | www.whiteflagprojects.org
4814 Washington Avenue | www.atriumgallery.net Opens 6 p.m. Fri., Jan. 22. Continues through Mar. 19 Kentucky native Ellen Glasgow finds inspiration in the waterways of the world. Her new work depicts rivers, oceans, lakes and wetlands — the places where people first congregated and where they continue to live and play. Her 2014 oil painting The Callawassee (SC) captures the inland estuary system of South Carolina’s barrier islands in deep blue with a pink and purple mass of clouds piled up in a pale blue sky. A slate gray landform tapers off into the sea, acting as demarcation line for the horizon. No signs of civilization mar the scene — it could have been captured any time in the past 4,000 years the islands have been inhabited by humans.
Opens 7 p.m. Sat., Jan. 23. Continues through Mar. 12. This group exhibition showcases work by Kelly Akashi, Elizabeth Jaeger, Calvin Marcus, Anita Uddenberg and Charlie White, and runs the gamut from sculpture to video installation. White is a Los Angeles-based photographer and filmmaker who creates unnerving scenes that feature star people and otherworldly creatures interacting in curious ways. His 2013 photograph The Persuaders (from the series And Jeopardize the Integrity of the Hull) has a trio of menacing felt puppets coercing a disgusted-looking middle-aged woman on a Sesame Street-like set. Uddenberg uses styrofoam, glass fiber and aqua resin to create human forms, often female, that are contorted or compartmentalized so the focus is on the posterior. Her use of synthetic hair and contemporary clothes make her sculptures somehow less human upon closer examination, critiquing the dehumanizing effects of the
Basil Kincaid: Reclamation 2 The Luminary 2701 Cherokee Street | www.theluminaryarts.com Opens 7 p.m. Fri., Jan. 22. Continues through Feb. 27. Basil Kincaid’s ongoing Reclamation series uses strictly found materials. In this new installment he uses only the detritus of technology, which he recasts through Ghanian folk art techniques. Mannequins are covered in new, colorful skins of pre-paid telecom cards; their heads are then wrapped in patterned cloth. Their bodies now hidden and their faces masked, Kincaid’s figures represent the shifting identities we can adopt online, whether as fantastic new creatures or anonymous shapes in the shadows.
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Find Our Beers When you can’t stop by the brewery, you can still find a great Main Street beer! Here’s a list of establishments proudly serving our beers: BALLWIN - Wine & Cheese Place
FULTON - Beks
CLAYTON - Craft Beer Cellar,
MANCHESTER - Randall’s Wines & Spirits
Wine & Cheese Place
O'’FALLON - Friar Tuck Beverage
CRESTWOOD - Friar Tuck Beverage
ROCK HILL - Wine & Cheese Place
- Wine & Cheese Place ELLISVILLE - Lukas Liquor Superstore FENTON - Friar Tuck Beverage FLORISSANT - Randall’s Wines & Spirits
ST. LOUIS - Saint Louis Hop Shop,
CREVE COEUR-
Fallon’s Bar & Grill SOULARD - Fields Foods,
Randall’s WIne & Spirits
BELLEVILLE
A LT O N
4204 W. Main St.
180 E. Center Dr. Alton, IL 62002
Belleville, IL 62226
618-465-7260
618-416-7261
IS YOUR MOUTH WATERING YET? Thank you, St. Louis! BEST BARBEQUE - Reader’s Choice 2015
5 AREA LOCATIONS
THREEKINGSPUB.COM
OLIVETTE • ST. CHARLES • WINGHAVEN • “44” VALLEY PARK • WASHINGTON
coming soon DOWNTOWN Visit SugarfireSmokehouse.com for more info
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CAFE
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A Taste of Taipei If you’re adventurous enough to try Taiwanese street food, Tai Ke is a true treat Written by
CHERYL BAEHR Tai Ke
8604 Olive Boulevard, University City; 314801-8894.. Tues.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. and 5-10 p.m.; Fri. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. and 5-11 p.m.; Sat. 12-11 p.m.; Sun. 12-10 p.m. (Closed Mondays).
I
n Taiwan, there’s a tradition of challenging your local hot dog cart vendor to a game of dice. You buy a sausage and then roll a few rounds. If he gets the most points, you have to pay for your food; if you win, dinner is on him. My Taiwanese friend shared this story while we were enjoying hot dogs – yes, hot dogs – at Tai Ke, the four month-old Taiwanese restaurant located on the western outskirts of University City’s “Chinatown.” Though dice were nowhere to be found, I still felt as if I was taking a bit of a gamble on dinner. This was my first time trying Taiwanese food, and when I saw the list of offerings, it became clear I was in for a different sort of meal: congealed pork blood, cold pig’s ear cartilage, stewed intestines. I had thought Taiwanese would be basically Chinese food. Couldn’t someone give me some steam buns as training wheels? It turns out they have those at Tai Ke – some of the best pork steam buns I’ve had the pleasure of eating. A pearlescent sticky bun, teetering on the line between solid and air, overflowed with succulent pork belly, crushed peanuts and cilantro. Pickled mustard green relish brightened the rich pork, a palate refresher readying my mouth for another. Tai Ke calls these treats a snack, but all I wanted to do was make a meal out of them. So, you can stick to the familiar here, and it’s delicious. But I wouldn’t advise that. It’s the other
Tai Ke dishes include sizzling beef and a sticky rice hot dog. | MABEL SUEN
The “Sticky Rice Cube,” a platter of congealed pieces of pork blood interspersed with rice to form a handful of gelatinous cakes, sounds like a horror show, but the outcome was a pleasant surprise. part of the menu that makes this place such a welcome addition to the St. Louis dining scene. Tai Ke is the first restaurant in
town dedicated solely to Taiwanese cuisine. Its level of authenticity means dishes that may at first seem unfamiliar, even to the dim sum set. Though the Chinese influence is apparent, I have since learned that Taiwanese food includes hints of Japanese cooking (Taiwan was ruled by Japan for about 50 years), as well as some dishes that originated from the island’s native inhabitants. Co-owners Calvin Koong and Brian Hsia opened the restaurant last September after many years longing for an authentic representation of their homeland in St. Louis. The lifelong friends moved to the United States from Taipei twenty years ago and have since made their living cooking in Americanized Chinese restaurants – Koong most recently at Happy Wok in O’Fallon; Hsia at the West County outpost of House of Wong. Their experience with how Chinese food is represented in the U.S. made them a bit wary of opening a wholly authentic spot, but Koong had finally had it with riverfronttimes.com
slinging General Tso’s chicken and convinced Hsia to help him do what they do best – real Taiwanese food anchored on the menu by “Street Snacks,” tapas-sized items intended to be eaten with your hands as you walk around Taipei’s Blade Runneresque night markets. This is where the hot dog comes in. I must admit to holding a Euro-centric conception of the “carbs-wrapped-around-tubularmeat” thing, but Tai Ke’s version expanded my definition of what is possible. Sticky rice cradles the garlicky pork sausage almost like a bun. A sweet glaze, a cross between Asian-style ketchup and homemade sweet and sour sauce, is drizzled over the top for a lovely salty-sweet interplay. A pork chop seemed like an odd choice for a hand-held street snack, but Tai Ke’s version is fit to be devoured Henry VIII style. The half-inch-thick piece of juicy meat is sliced into thin strips perpendicular to the still-attached bone. It’s dredged in crunchy panko that Continued on pg 26
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ALL KILLER. NO FILLER. Hand-Crafted Smoked Meats and Brews
“World-Class BBQ”
-Cheryl Baehr, Riverfront Times Restaurant Critic
20 S Belt W Belleville, IL 62220 618.257.9000 Hours: MTWT - 11am - sell out, or 9p FRI & SAT- 11am - sell out, or 10p SUN - 11a - sell out, or 9p
Tai Ke dishes include sizzling beef and a sticky rice hot dog. | MABEL SUEN slinging General Tso’s chicken and convinced Hsia to help him do what they do best – real Taiwanese food anchored on the menu by “Street Snacks,” tapas-sized items intended to be eaten with your hands as you walk around Taipei’s Blade Runneresque night markets. This is where the hot dog comes in. I must admit to holding a Euro-centric conception of the “carbs-wrapped-around-tubularmeat” thing, but Tai Ke’s version expanded my definition of what is possible. Sticky rice cradles the garlicky pork sausage almost like a bun. A sweet glaze, a cross between Asian-style ketchup and homemade sweet and sour sauce, is drizzled over the top for a lovely salty-sweet interplay. A pork chop seemed like an odd choice for a hand-held street snack, but Tai Ke’s version is fit to be devoured Henry VIII style. The half-inch-thick piece of juicy meat is sliced into thin strips perpendicular to the still-attached bone. It’s dredged in crunchy Continued on pg 26 panko that
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“Three Cup Tofu” is tossed in a sauce of rice wine vinegar, soy sauce and sesame oil. | MABEL SUEN
TAI KE Continued from pg 25 has a distinct cinnamon flavor. It’s as if you’d crushed up some churros and fried your pork using them as breading. The result is so genius I couldn’t help but wonder why this isn’t a thing. The street snacks are not the only place where Tai Ke shines. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed small plates like the pig’s ear cartilage. I’d expected the thin strips to be chewy; they were, in fact, rather crunchy and served room temperature, with only a light drizzle of the house’s “special sweet and garlic soy sauce” and a few scallions. Knowing now that Koong and Hsia were trained chefs in Taiwan explains how they were able to expertly nail such perfect texture. The intestines, or chitterlings, were equally impressive for their mild flavor and silken texture. Tai Ke serves them with a sweet, almost floral liquid that tastes like a combination of soy and plum sauces. Even the “Sticky Rice Cube,” a platter of congealed pieces of pork blood interspersed with rice to form a handful of gelatinous cakes, proved unexpectedly comforting. The description sounds like a horror show, but the outcome was a pleasant surprise. Unlike other pork blood dishes I’ve had, this one lacked any metallic taste; it read more like a rich mole brightened with whole basil leaves. But Tai Ke is much more than a theater of the esoteric. For the less adventurous, the restaurant is worth checking out for its more
approachable main dishes. For the “Three Cup Tofu,” large, pillow-soft squares of bean curd are tossed in a mouth-watering sauce that is equal parts rice wine vinegar, soy sauce and sesame oil (a cup of each, hence the name). Whole red chilis give just a hint of spice, and basil leaves add herbal notes to a dish that redefines comfort food. The restaurant pays homage to one of the island’s largest ethnic groups with its Hakka stir-fry. The spaghetti-thick noodles are sautéed with strips of squid, tender pork, dried tofu and celery. It’s a beautiful Taiwanese version of a surf and turf. The night’s biggest crowd pleaser was the sizzling beef, a searing hot platter of melt-in-the-mouth tenderloin strips with bell peppers and onions served in crushed black peppercorn gravy. Think of how good “Black Pepper Beef” at your local Americanized Chinese restaurant could be if it was expertly prepared by someone who wanted to demonstrate the excellence of his native cuisine. Tasty, smart and utterly approachable – that was Tai Ke’s sizzling beef. After enjoying such a huge payoff, I wondered why I’d ever classified Tai Ke as a gamble. Really, the odds of going into any number of mediocre Americanized “Asian” spots and getting something good are much lower than they are here. Let’s face it: There’s a lot of bad faux-Mandarin food out there in America. But this little slice of Taipei is a safe bet. n Tai Ke
Guao bao (pork belly bun) ..........$5.99 “Signature Three Cups Tofu” ......$9.99 Sizzling tenderloin of beef .......$12.99
SOULARD’S ULTIMATE MARDI GRAS EXPERIENCE
MAKE SHELLY’S YOUR MARDI GRAS HEADQUARTERS SOULARD’S BEST BALCONY THE GLITZIEST UPSTAIRS BAR 䌀伀刀一䔀刀 伀䘀 䴀䔀一䄀刀䐀 ☀ 䄀䰀䰀䔀一 䤀一 吀䠀䔀 䠀䔀䄀刀吀 伀䘀 匀伀唀䰀䄀刀䐀 riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 20-26, 2016
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SHORT ORDERS
[SIDE DISH]
[FIRST LOOK]
MELO’S BRINGS NEAPOLITAN PIZZA TO BENTON PARK
It All Began with Jerk Chicken
Written by
CHERYL BAEHR
Written by
CHERYL BAEHR
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n high school, Wade Waller of Standard Brewing Company (12322 Dorsett Road, Maryland Heights; 314-548-2270) envisioned a life in the big leagues rather than in the kitchen. “I’d always wanted to be a baseball player,” Waller explains. “But school was never really my thing. I didn’t have the grades for it. I had a few [college scholarship] offers, but none that were all that great.” Luckily, he had a backup plan. A Carbondale, Illinois native, Waller grew up with an appreciation for food. “My dad hunted and fished,” Waller recalls. “I was always around deer and fish and watched how he cleaned and prepared them. It’s what got me interested in cooking.” However, it was an experience he had while on vacation that sealed the deal for him. “We were on vacation in Florida and I had some jerk chicken,” Waller says. “I remember thinking, “Oh my. This is totally different than the sort of home cooking I grew up on.” Waller was hooked, and as soon as he was old enough, he started working in restaurants and even took a home economics class in high school. When Johnson & Wales came to his school to talk about culinary arts, he realized it was a career he could pursue. Eventually, he packed up and moved to North Carolina to attend classes at the university’s Charlotte campus. Waller lived in Charlotte for seven years, but recently found himself called back to the Midwest. An avid home brewer, he jumped at the offer to lead the kitchen at Standard Brewing Company. Here, he doesn’t just work by the brewery — he’s created a menu that uti-
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Wade Waller originally dreamed of playing Major League baseball. | COURTESY OF CITRA COMMUNICATIONS lizes the brews in the cooking. He took a break from rolling out his newly designed menu to share his thoughts on the St. Louis food and beverage scene and his high-octane daily ritual. What is one thing people don’t know about you that you wish they did? That I love to fish and watch football. What daily ritual is non-negotiable for you? I have to have at least a pot of coffee to start the day. If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Time travel or the ability to stop time. What is the most positive thing in food, wine or cocktails that you’ve noticed in St. Louis over the past year? Micro-brewing.
JANUARY 20-26, 2016
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Who is your St. Louis food crush? Cleveland-Heath. Which ingredient is most representative of your personality? Jerk seasoning — it has a little bit of everything to it. If you weren’t working in the restaurant business, what would you be doing? I’d like to be a sports commentator. Name an ingredient never allowed in your kitchen. Canned green beans. What is your after-work hangout? My house with my wife and kids. What’s your food or beverage guilty pleasure? Chicken wings and gummy bears. What would be your last meal on earth? A dozen raw oysters and my n mom’s chicken pot pie.
f you thought nothing could possibly make Blues City Deli any better, the Valenza family just proved you wrong. Tucked into a converted garage behind their iconic sandwich shop, the Valenzas’ new restaurant Melo’s Pizzeria (2438 McNair Avenue; 314-833-4489) adds Neapolitan pies to the family repertoire. Granted, Melo’s is less an addition to Blue’s City Deli and more a standalone spot — but that wasn’t the original plan. When patriarch Vince Valenza bought the Blues City Deli property in 2013 (until that point, he had been leasing it), his son Joey thought he would convert the garage into a place to bake bread for the deli. An aspiring baker, the younger Valenza had been playing around with bread recipes, which led to experimenting with pizza-making. This quickly turned into an obsession. “I think it’s natural for people who get into real pizza-making to become obsessed,” Joey Valenza laughs. “I think it has something to do with cooking with fire. There’s something very primal about it.” The Valenzas quickly realized that a pizzeria would be the perfect fit for the garage space, and shipped in an authentic pizza oven from Naples to prove just how serious they are about their pies. “You should’ve seen us celebrating when this thing arrived,” laughs co-owner Vince Jr. The blue-tiled, dome-shaped oven, emblazoned with white tiles that spell out “St. Louis the King,” takes up a great deal of the Continued on pg 30
Buy one lunch entree get $3 off Second
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106 main st. • edwardsville, il 618.307.4830 www.clevelandheath.com
Voted #1 Greek Restaurant in St. Louis!
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olympiakebobandtaverna.com
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MELO’S PIZZA Continued from pg 28
[FIRST LOOK]
MELO’S BRINGS NEAPOLITAN PIZZA TO BENTON PARK Written by
CHERYL BAEHR
I
Thank you, St. Louis! BEST COMFORT FOOD - Reader’s Choice 2015
BEST DELI/SANDWICH SHOP - Editor’s Pick 2015
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f you thought nothing could possibly make Blues City Deli any better, the Valenza family just proved you wrong. Tucked into a converted garage behind their iconic sandwich shop, the Valenzas’ new restaurant Melo’s Pizzeria (2438 McNair Avenue; 314-833-4489) adds Neapolitan pies to the family repertoire. Granted, Melo’s is less an Boogaloostlouis.com #boogaloostl addition to Blue’s City Deli and more a standalone spot — but that wasn’t the original plan. When patriarch Vince Valenza Fresh Sandwiches bought the Blues City Pressed Deli propHomemade erty in 2013 (until that point, Soups Wood Fire Pizza he had been leasing it), his son Local Beer • Local Wine Joey thought he would convert Ice Cream • Snacks the garage into a place to bake bread for the deli. An aspiring baker, the younger Valenza had been playing around with bread recipes, which led to experimenting with pizza-making. This quickly turned into an obsession. “I think it’s natural for people who get into real pizza-makTOWER GROVE EAST ing to becomeOpen obsessed,” Joey 11 a.m. - 8 p.m. Valenza laughs. “I 3101 thinkArsenal it has something to do with cooking with fire. There’s something very primal about it.” The Valenzas quickly realized that a pizzeria would be the perfect fit for the garage space, and shipped in an authentic pizza oven from Naples to prove just how serious they are about their pies. “You should’ve seen us celebrating when this thing arrived,” laughs co-owner Vince Jr. The blue-tiled, dome-shaped oven, emblazoned with white tiles that spell out “St. Louis the King,” takes up a great deal of the Continued on pg 30
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Above, the Dom. Below, the Valenzas’ dome-shaped pizza oven. | CHERYL BAEHR
restaurant’s tiny space. Guests order at the counter and wait for their pizzas at the small wooden counters that line the walls. There are no seats, unless you count the large patio that Melo’s shares with Blues City Deli. However, patrons seem to have no problem standing and eating their pies while sipping a beer. And about those pizzas … At Melo’s you’ll find the classics, like the Margherita, made simply with fresh mozzarella, crushed tomatoes and basil, as well as some that have personal connections to the Valenzas.
“The Angelina is named after my grandmother,” Joey says. “It’s the traditional marinara that you’d find in Naples, but we put green onions on it because she used to always put green onions on her pizzas.” Through January, Melo’s is open limited hours — Thursdays and Fridays from 4:30 until 8:30 unless otherwise posted. The Valenzas hope to expand service in February. Judging from the restaurant’s already roaring popularity, those extra hours are going to make a lot of pizza lovers extremely happy. n
JOH LL MA NN (G R( EY YC MIN W ER 11A 2 NE ST ILA AC M 5 AP JA RE OL N K E T IS, TR N M S 7 A MN H P O 26 EIK ISS M -D ) &T S) O J H EW O UB M 7P EL (20 US M ILE LS EA SO JER ICIANS E HO ’S VAUD NE DS EV T RY EX I O L LE J TE P A T JA GR EN ZZ ZZ ) EE JA B N R M U JA NC N ZZ H TR IGHT
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All dinners served with mashed potatoes, cole slaw and a roll
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Chicken, Shrimp & Fish Dinners
3 piece Dinner $5.69 4 piece Box $6.19 3 piece wing $4.59 Chicken Tender Meal $6.99 2 piece breaded Cod $6.19 2 piece Jack Salmon $6.49 Catfish Nuggets $6.49 6 piece Jumbo Shrimp $7.19 8 oz. Mini Shrimp (18-21 count)
HOLIDAY, OFFICE & BIRTHDAY PARTIES or ANY OCCASION Dine-In • Carry-Out Catering • Open 7 Days 3628 S. BIG BEND 314-781-2097
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8 piece Bucket $11.49 16 piece Bucket $17.99 20 piece Bucket $21.49 30 piece Shrimp Bucket $32.99 6 piece Cod $14.99 6 piece Catfish $16.99 6 piece Jack Salmon $14.99
$13.99 $23.99 $28.99
Sides & Extras
Pint Cole Slaw/ Mashed Potatoes $3.49 Pint Potato Salad $3.99 French Fries $1.99 Corn Fritters (10 pieces) $3.59 Fried Okra $3.49 Buffalo Wings $6.79
S FRIED CHICKEN
GREAT VALUE AT PAT’S!
VALENTI’S BAKERY
$7 LUNCH SPECIALS
A ST. LOUIS CLASSIC SINCE 1902
BURGER, CHICKEN SANDWICH, SOUP & SALAD
EVERYTHING MADE IN-HOUSE CATERING EXPERTISE FOR EVERY OCCASION
A Portion Of Our Menu… Regular is mixed pieces of chicken. Special is pick your own pieces.
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It’s A Good Time For
DAILY HAPPY HOUR 3-6PM $2 DOMESTICS, $3 MIXED DRINKS AND MORE!
Good Drinks, Great Prices 6400 Oakland Ave, St. Louis, MO 63139 (314) 647-7287
310 Debaliviere | 314.367.7788 riverfronttimes.com
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Two Locations!
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St. Louis’ New Cajun-Creole Restaurant Breakfast Served All Day! CHEAPEST DRINK PRICES IN TOWN!
Beer, Wine, & Full Bar
DINING GUIDE
The Dining Guide lists only restaurants recommended by RFT food critics. The print listings below rotate regularly, as space allows. Our complete Dining Guide is available online; view menus and search local restaurants by name or neighborhood.
Price Guide (based on a three-course meal for one, excluding tax, tip and beverages): $ up to $15 per person $$ $15 - $25 $$$ $25 - $40 $$$$ more than $40
2015
WINNER
Tejas Burger 1/2 lb. burger mixed w/roasted Jalapenos & bacon, topped w/ Cilantro, avocado, onions, fried Jalapeno & Queso Fresco sauce.
4 Horsemen
Kitchen Sink A sample of the above 4 items: SBR, Jambalaya, Etouffee, Gumbo
255 Union Bl vd. St. Louis, MO 63108 314.454.1 551
Sauteed Shrimp & Andouille served over Cheesy grits w/a Tasso & Crab gravy
626 N. 6th St. At the corner of 6th & Lucas 314.241.5454
Housemade chicken tamales from Fort Taco. | MABEL SUEN [ M I D S T. L O U I S C O U N T Y ]
Fort Taco
8106 Manchester Road, Brentwood, 314-647-2391 Owner Gabriel Patino and company transformed the former Brentwood Rally’s into Fort Taco, a homage to the food they grew up on. The restaurant calls itself traditional, but it’s not exactly Mexican. Patino uses the recipes of his great-grandparents, who brought their native cuisine with them when they emigrated to Fort Madison, Iowa. Fort Taco’s menu consists of just three main items. Traditional soft-shell tacos are its signature; the large, puffy, deep-fried flour shells are stuffed with either beef or chicken and simply dressed are a feast in themselves. Enchiladas — vegetarian, beef or chicken — covered in a rich, ancho-chile-based sauce are equally delicious, and the handmade tamales are as authentic as anything you’d find on Cherokee Street. Fort Taco is drive-through only, and thankfully the long line moves quickly — the friendly staff understand the urgency of getting this delicious food in their patrons’ hands as fast as possible. $
Small Batch Whiskey & Fare 3001 Locust Street; 314-380-2040
Restaurateur David Bailey takes the whiskey-bar trend in an unexpected direction with his vegetarian eatery, Small Batch. Bailey doesn’t bill the place as a crunchy vegetarian spot; instead, he hopes that diners will enjoy the vegetable-focused concept so much that they fail to miss the meat. The carbonara pasta, made with housemade linguine, replaces the richness of bacon with smoked mushrooms. Even the most die-hard carnivore will be satisfied by the “burger,” a greasy-spoonstyle corn and black bean patty topped with creamy guacamole, Chihuahua cheese, and Bailey’s signature “Rooster” sauce (tangy mayonnaise). Small Batch’s bourbon selection and creative cocktails are also impressive. The “Smokeysweet,” a blend of smoked cherries, rye and rhubarb, tastes like drinking punch by a campfire. For a taste of summer in a glass, the “Rickey” is a bright concoction of elderflower liquor, grapefruit, lime and white corn whiskey. The gorgeous, vintage setting provides an ideal spot to indulge in some Prohibition-era-style drinking. $-$$
Fozzie’s Sandwich Emporium Southern 1170 S. Big Bend Boulevard, Richmond Heights; 314-932-5414 Though a small restaurant, Fozzie’s follows the “more is more” principle. There are twenty sandwiches, almost all of them overstuffed, as well as burgers, hot dogs and gyros (and salads, appetizer dips and milkshakes, too). There is the “B.A.B.T.L.” (bacon and bacon, lettuce and tomato) with a half-pound of bacon, and the awesome “Big Bend Mafia,” with Italian-seasoned beef and salsiccia. The signature dish might be the “Juicy Lucy,” a Minneapolis-St. Paul specialty that consists of a cheeseburger with the cheese stuffed inside the patty. The salads, featuring with vegetables from the restaurant’s own garden, are very good. $ [MIDTOWN]
Triumph Grill
3419 Olive Street; 314-446-1801. Another addition to midtown’s suddenly teeming restaurant scene, the Triumph Grill is attached to the Moto Museum and named for the classic motorcycle. The lengthy menu includes many of the dishes that spring to mind when you call a restaurant a “grill” — wings, calamari and onion rings; nine different salads and more than a dozen sandwiches; steaks, pork chops, chicken breasts and salmon — but with occasional, unexpected touches from the cuisines of Japan, India and the American southwest. The décor is contemporary-art gallery. When the place is crowded, though, the hubbub will make you think of a passing fleet of Harleys. $$-$$$
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3108 Olive Street; 314-531-4668 What do you get when Pappy’s pitmaster Mike Emerson and king of comfort food Rick Lewis team up? Only the best thing that’s happened to Southern cuisine in St. Louis since, well, ever. Their joint venture, Southern, is one part Nashville-style hot chicken shack and one part deep-South-influenced butcher shop. Southern serves hearty sandwiches, like its fried green tomato BLT called “The Dirty South,” made with bacon so thick it could be confused with a ham steak. The hot chicken is this fast-casual restaurant’s specialty, though, and they do it up just like the legends in Nashville -- juicy meat, crispy skin and a generous saucing of hot chili oil after it comes out of the fryer. Heat levels range from mild to melt-your-face-off “Clucking Hot,” though for those who shy away from spice, un-sauced original or an Asian-style General Tso version are available. Wear your stretchy pants: The only way to cool down your mouth is with the housemade vanilla pudding. $$
The Dark Room
615 N. Grand Boulevard; 314-531-3416. Shutterbugs and winos alike will delight in Grand Center’s Dark Room. Part art gallery and part bar, the Dark Room features monthly photography exhibits curated by the International Photography Hall of Fame alongside an artisan wine program highlighting a substantial selection by the glass or bottle. The minimal space features decorative vintage film equipment and clean, contemporary design.
taste of soulard
january 30 & 31
stop by 1860’s for a taste of our famous crab cakes & jambalaya stay for the southern comfort SOUND STAGE in our parking lot on saturday & watch the pet parade as it goes right by our front door on sunday! FREE SHUTTLE TO ALL BLUES GAMES! Visit 1860Saloon.com for music schedule and special event calendar
1860 S. 9 TH STREET
Authentic MexicAn Food, Beer, And MArgAritAs!
2817 cherokee st. st. Louis, Mo 63118 314.762.0691 nco.coM o r B L e iA r e u q A .t w ww riverfronttimes.com
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TA K E H O M E TROPS!
Now offering $7 20 oz. legally sealed containers to take safely to your destination!
GAME DAY SPECIAL: Bring your BLUES or BILLIKEN ticket in for
$1 OFF ON GAME DAY 1800 S. 10 TH Street IN HISTORIC SOULARD!
@ Y A D R U T A S BIG February 6TH GRAND PARADE DAY
OPEN TIL 3AM
DOORS OPEN EARLY 8AM ON SATURDAY LIVE MUSIC UNDER OUR HEATED AND COVERED PATIO ALL DAY DJ FLYIN BRIAN GETS YOUR POST-PARADE PARTY GOING AT 2PM HURRICANE’S - BEADS - BOOZE - BANDS - DJ’S - FREE SHUTTLE
FREE SHUTTLE TO AND FROM MARDI GRAS ALL DAY AND NIGHT (8AM-MIDNIGHT) FOR MORE INFO GO TO LACLEDESLANDING.COM
LARGE GROUPS PLEASE CALL AHEAD FOR FREE TABLE RESERVATIONS & SKIP THE LINE PASSES FOR INFO: BIGDADDYSTL.COM • 314-621-6700 • 118 MORGAN ST.
IN THE HEART OF HISTORICAL LACLEDE’S LANDING
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MUSIC
35
‘
Continued on pg 36
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RAGER REVIEW Continued from pg 35
Continued on pg 38
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TNT Glass
Designs All-American
Smoke Shop
Pipes • Vaporizers • Locally Crafted Jewelry Detox • CBD American Shaman Products
ANNUAL GLASS BLOWOUT SALE! 25% OFF *HAND BLOWN ITEMS THROUGH V-DAY 2/14/16
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OUR patio…
A 1920’s Speakeasy - Modern Twist
a drinker’s paradise
Dining • Cocktails • Burlesque Shows Corporate & Private Events
Largest Patio on Morgan Ford
Located in downtown St. Louis www.TheBoomBoomRoomSTL.com - 314-436-7000 500 N. 14th Street, St. Louis Mo. 63103
Mon - Industry Night $2 Pints Wed - Ladies Night Thurs- Tenacious Trivia 8-10 We are now Non-Smoking! Happy Hour Mon-Sat 3-7pm 4 Blocks South of Tower Grove Park 3234 Morganford • 314-771-7979
thur. jan. 21 10PM Aaron Kamm and the One Drops
fri. jan. 22
10PM
Bonerama
Brass, Funk, Rock from New Orleans
sat. jan. 23
10PM
Unifyah
with guests Guerrilla Theory
wed. jan. 27 9:30PM Voodoo Players with Trucker’s Night
736 S Broadway St. Louis, MO 63102 (314) 621-8811 riverfronttimes.com
JANUARY 20-26, 2016
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RAGER REVIEW Continued from pg 36
M
att Bryan is an illustrator, cartoonist and animator working out of St. Louis. A winner of the RFT’s Mastermind award, as well as our previous pick
for “Best Local Cartoonist,” he is best known for illustrating the graphic novel Book of Da and the mini comic series Moses and Bean. An avid metal fan, Bryan attended a recent Lion’s Daughter record release show and crafted this review for us. Find more of his work at mattbryanart.com.
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S
Lou t.
i s ’ O n ly T i k i B a
r!
Happy Hour Specials Wed-Fri, 4-7PM • $2 Busch and bud drafts • $2.50 Premium Drafts • $3 Flavored Malibu, Cruzan, and Bacardi Rums •$5 Select Tiki Cocktails •daily food specials
Over 200 rums
from around the world!! 4199 Manchester Ave in The Grove 314-202-8300
HAPPY HOUR LATE NIGHT LOUNGE 4-7pm daily 9pm - Close Thurs - Sat Now open for BRUNCH 10am - 2pm Sat & Sun
Get in The Grove for exciting Drinking, Dining, Dancing, & Shopping!
LIVE MUSIC THURSDAY-SATURDAY 9PM NEVER A COVER! EVERY THURSDAY
SPACEBALLS: THE PARTY PUNK/METAL NIGHT
$2 TALL BOYS
UPCOMING SHOWS: 1/22: THE WILDERNESS 1/23: BLACK JAMES
4317 Manchester Rd in the Grove 314.553.9252 • laylastl.com
riverfronttimes.com
JANUARY 20-26, 2016
RIVERFRONT TIMES
39
Bowling the way it is now – FUN!
A St. Louis Landmark Find out what our Birthday Party is all about
Sit at one of our tables with built-in boardgames!
Play!
Scrabble ★ Monopoly ★ Clue Parcheesi ★ checkers Ouija ★ chess BlueberryHill.com JUST ADDED!
6191 Delmar · 314-727-5555 PinUpBowl.com
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FRI. 3/4*
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SAT. 1/30*
SAT. 2/6*
SUN. 2/14*
THU. 2/18
THU. 3/3 18+
“St. Louis pioneers of craft beer and live music” THURSDAY, JANUARY 21 ST
Slow Down Scarlett, Animals in Hindsight, Joel - Rock 7pm - $7
FRIDAY, JANUARY 22 ND
Pepperland - The Beatles Revue - Beatles Tribute 8:30pm - $10
SATURDAY, JANUARY 23 RD
The Hillside Barrons and Surco - Jam Rock - 8pm- $7
SUNDAY, JANUARY 24 TH
Gorilla Music Battle of the Bands - Rock - 4pm - $10
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20
2/11 Free Karaoke with KJ Sheel 2/12 St. Louis Princes of Comedy vs Yung Gunz 2/26* Bronze Radio Return 3/12* Joseph 3/13* Common Kings 4/02 Dread Zeppelin 4/13* Voodoo Glow Skulls 4/28* Eleanor Friedberger
Geeks Who Drink - Trivia - 8:30pm- FREE
Tickets available at Blueberry Hill (no service fees with cash) All Ticketmaster ticket centers H Ticketmaster.Com *All Ages shows: $2 minor surcharge at doors.
EVERY Beer of the month: Free glass with every TUESDAY NEW BELGIUM New Belgium purchase.
6691 Delmar
In the University City Loop
314.862.0009 • www.ciceros-stl.com 40
RIVERFRONT TIMES
PeacockLoopDiner.com 6261 Delmar in The Loop
THIS WEEK
TH
24/7
Open 7 days from 11 am 6504 Delmar in The Loop ★ 314-727-4444
JANUARY 20-26, 2016
riverfronttimes.com
WED. 3/9
ON SALE NOW
FRIDAY 1/8 1.22 AT 10AM ON SALE SUN. 5/20
1/8 1.22 AT 10AM ON SALE FRI. 3/25FRIDAY
FRIDAY 1/8 1.22 AT 12PM ON SALE WED. 4/13
1/8 1.22 AT 10AM ON SALE TUE. 5/22FRIDAY
FRIDAY 1/22 & SATURDAY 1/23
SATURDAY 1/30
THURSDAY 1/28
TUESDAY 1/26
UPCOMING SHOWS 2.4 BIG HEAD TODD & THE MONSTERS 2.9 KEYS N KRATES 2.10 & 2.11 JIM JEFFERIES 2.12 STS9 2.13 MIKE STUD 2.17 GAELIC STORM 2.18 LOTUS 2.21 BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE 2.23 DROPKICK MURPHYS 2.24 HOODIE ALLEN 2.25 DARK STAR ORCHESTRA 2.26 & 2.27 CELEBRATION DAY: A TRIBUTE TO LED ZEPPELIN 2.29 LOGIC 3.4 METRIC 3.6 GEORGE THOROGOOD & THE DESTROYERS
3.12 BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME & AUGUST BURNS RED 3.13 MELANIE MARTINEZ 3.15 X AMBASSADORS 3.24 EXCISION 4.9 YONDER MOUNTAIN STRING BAND 4.10 UNDEROATH 4.15 CHARLES KELLEY 4.16 JIM NORTON 4.22 ANDREW BIRD 5.3 ANIMAL COLLECTIVE 5.23 MIIKE SNOW 5.28 TECH N9NE 6.8 LEON BRIDGES 6.25 BLUE OCTOBER
visit us online for complete show information facebook.com/ThePageantSTL
@ThePageantSTL
thepageantstl.tumblr.com
thepageant.com // 6161 delmar blvd. / St. Louis, MO 63112 // 314.726.6161
riverfronttimes.com
JANUARY 20-26, 2016
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42
HOMESPUN
BROTHER LEE & THE LEATHER JACKALS Boredom Leads to the Bottle brotherleetheleatherjackals.bandcamp.com
T
he first time St. Louis audiences got a good look at Josh Eaker, he was playing bass with the winsome pop group Palace, a band that deployed boy/girl harmonies and emotionally loaded songs with hooky know-how. So after that band’s dissolution, Eaker’s subsequent emergence as a frontman with a nomme du rock (Brother Lee) and a garage rock-leaning backing band (the Leather Jackals) was more than a modest shift in expectations. It was a full-on rock & roll reinvention. But like all good rock & roll origin stories, the mundane outstrips the myth. The band was born out of Eaker’s boredom with the bass — “It’s hard to play bass and write songs,” Eaker says. His friendship with drummer Danny Blaies provided a rhythmic ballast against which to try out new material and a new approach. “It started with just Danny and I at his basement at home,” says Eaker. “I was just learning to play guitar and never really sang or anything. We just decided to start a band. It kind of all took off from there.” Blaies sought to accompany Eaker, but the band’s slightly scuzzy approach came more from volume than intent. “I’ve always been into power-playing drums,” says Blaies. “Josh was doing more of a singer-songwriter type of thing. We ended up turning everything up — it had that guitar/drum sound.” That modest start set the course for Brother Lee & the Leather Jackals. The band would expand to a fivepiece for its earliest shows and recordings, complete with two guitars and a piano, though lineup shifts would lead to a core trio (with Sean Kimble on bass) for the recording of Boredom Leads to the Bottle, the band’s second EP. Much of the group’s quick-and-dirty style is traceable to garage rock (or some permutation of it), but across the six songs the band is able to flip among a few workable styles — country-punk, Cali stoner pop, Tex-Mex psych — while keeping focus on Eaker’s pinched, passionate vocals. The EP’s title track recalls some of JEFF the Brotherhood’s devil-may-care hedonism, though here the Jackals favor a loping country rumble and twangy guitar. It’s a solid opening shot of cow punk by the numbers, but Eaker sells the song in a way that makes it much less a cautionary tale of day-drinking gone wrong than an invitation to the party. “Jesse James” follows suit, both in sound and content, as Eaker sings of being adopted into the outlaw’s gang and taking to thieving and killing. It follows the arc of a country-flecked story song, though the deep reverb and guitar flanging give it a psychedelic twist. As with 2014’s South City Blues EP, Brother Lee & the Jackals sought “to record the record live, to translate what we sound like live,” according to Eaker. To do this, the band worked with Zagk Gibbons, who has played drums with Old Capitol Square Dance Club
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and CaveofswordS, but who has also more recently become a go-to recording engineer. “He was highly encouraging in what we wanted to do and how we wanted to sound,” Eaker says of Gibbons. “He just kind of has a hand in a lot of stuff that’s been coming out. We know Zagk from our Belleville days; we knew he would care.” The EP’s longest track is also its most adventurous. “Waltz Upon a Time in Mexico” takes a dark, heady trip south of the border, with Eaker’s guitar being fed through a series of Leslie-like effects to give it an unnerving doppler feel. Given the nervy but ultimately lightweight nature of the rest of the songs, which work off of bash-‘em-out efficiency, “Waltz” shows unexpected heaviness. “The writing process was a really long time in the making,” says Eaker. “I had come up with several parts four or five years ago. I was living in Texas and went down to the Gulf of Mexico, and was playing songs on the beach like a bum. We kind of just tinkered with it and jammed on it for a long time. It was a warm-up jam for us, and then it evolved to what it was. There’s that whole beginning part where it’s all noise; Zagk encouraged us to play with our pedals and make noise.” Gibbons’ influence comes up a few times in conversation, and the band has designs on working with him again soon. “We’re already scheming about our next EP, which we’ll hopefully start demoing out in the next few months,” says Eaker. When asked why the band favors five- and six-song EPs instead of full-length albums, drummer Blaies says that the move is reflective of the band’s writing process. “We also tend to write songs in groups; Josh does the songwriting and hooks, but we’ll write a bunch of material fast, and to me they all have a feel to it,” says Blaies. “I think it’s a mistake to sit on your material too long. I don’t like getting bored of material, so I like to write. I don’t like the idea of fans or friends seeing the same show.” –Christian Schaeffer
43
OUT EVERY NIGHT THURSDAY 21
SATURDAY 23
Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis,
TUESDAY 26
ENFORCER: w/ Warbringer, Cauldron, Exmor-
THE DOCK ELLIS BAND: w/ the River Kittens 9
314-436-5222.
CITY AND COLOUR: w/ Greyhounds 8 p.m.,
tus 6 p.m., $20. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis,
p.m., $10. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St.
LOVE JONES “THE BAND”: 8:30 p.m., $10. BB’s
$32.50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St.
314-289-9050.
Louis, 314-773-3363.
Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis,
Louis, 314-726-6161.
JIMBO MATHUS: 8 p.m., $12-$15. Off Broadway,
EXOTYPE: w/ Like Monroe, Alice Alive 6 p.m.,
314-436-5222.
KEN MCCRAY MEMORIAL SHOW: 7 p.m., free.
3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-773-3363.
$13-$15. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-
WEEKEND FOR BERNIE FUNDRAISER DAY 2: w/
The Firebird, 2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-
SLOW DOWN SCARLETT: w/ Animals in Hind-
289-9050.
Blank Generation, Mathias & the Pirates, Letter
535-0353.
sight, JOEL, $7. Cicero’s, 6691 Delmar Blvd.,
THE FADE: w/ World Famous, Flying House 9
to Memphis, Michael Franco, Zach’s Wrath 7
SKYLINE IN RUINS: w/ Roots Like Mountains,
University City, 314-862-0009.
p.m., free. Schlafly Tap Room, 2100 Locust St.,
p.m., $10. The Demo, 4191 Manchester Ave, St.
Ilia, Mental Fixation 7 p.m., $10. Fubar, 3108
TRAVELING SOUND MACHINE: w/ the Defeated
St. Louis, 314-241-2337.
Louis, 314-833-5532.
Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.
County, the Good Deeds 9 p.m., free. Schlafly
FOSTER MCGINTY: 9 p.m., $10. The Bootleg, 4140
Tap Room, 2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-
Manchester Ave., St. Louis, 314-775-0775.
MONDAY 25
WEDNESDAY 27
2337.
JOHN LATINI: 7 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups,
CHASING MORGAN: w/ the Ruthless 7 p.m., $10.
BOB “BUMBLE BEE” KAMOSKE: 8 p.m. Beale on
WARREN WOLF & WOLFPACK: 7:30 & 9:30 p.m.;
700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.
The Demo, 4191 Manchester Ave, St. Louis,
Broadway, 701 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-
Jan. 22, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m.; Jan. 23, 7:30 & 9:30
S.L.U.M. FEST HIP HOP AWARDS: w/ J.R., Saint
314-833-5532.
621-7880.
p.m., $25. Ferring Jazz Bistro, 3536 Washington
Oeaux, Indiana Rome, Bates, Less, the Domino
HOP ALONG: 8 p.m., $12-$15. Off Broadway, 3509
DEFEATED SANITY: w/ Iniquitous Deeds,
Ave, St. Louis, 314-571-6000.
Effect, Sal Calhoun, Nick Menn, A-Game, Truth-
Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-773-3363.
Iniquitous Savagery, Hemorrhaging Elysium
DoIt, Mistro Freeyo, Tie Tailor, Nato Caliph,
NILE: 6 p.m., $20. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St.
7 p.m., $10. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis,
Nite Owl, Lyfestile 8 p.m., $10. 2720 Cherokee
Louis, 314-289-9050.
314-289-9050.
THE BEL AIRS: 10 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues &
Performing Arts Center, 2720 Cherokee St, St.
SOULARD BLUES BAND: 9 p.m., $5. Broadway
JENNIFER HALL: w/ Acorns to Oaks, Marie &
Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-
Louis, 314-276-2700.
Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-
the Americans 9 p.m., $5. Foam Coffee & Beer,
5222.
STEPHEN KELLOGG: 8 p.m., $17-$20. Blueberry
8811.
3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100.
FRIDAY 22
[CRITIC’S PICK]
Enforcer 6 p.m. Thursday, January 21. Fubar, 3108 Locust Street. $20. 314-289-9050.
This is a show truly worthy of the whiplash you will inevitably be feeling the following morning. All of the bands on the bill — Enforcer, Warbringer, Cauldron and Exmortus — are relative newcomers to an old game, each bursting onto the scene in the early to mid 2000s with sounds of thrash and death and British heavy metal in tow. Though the massive thrash metal resurgence of the beginning of this century has largely
waned at this point, these acts have proven themselves to have considerable staying power, and by combining forces they ensure one hell of a night for St. Louis metal heads. Protect Ya Neck: With riffs this tasty, we understand if you can’t help yourself from whipping your head to and fro, bashing your poor brain around inside your skull. So for safety’s sake, we recommend that you go to your doctor before the show and have yourself equipped with a motion-restricting halo brace as a preventative measure. You’ll thank us later. –Daniel Hill
[CRITIC’S PICK]
Jessica Lea Mayfield. | COURTESY OF JESSICA LEA MAYFIELD
BLK JUPTR: w/ Smino, Monte Booker, Jean
Hill, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-
Deaux, Bryant Stewart, Jay 2 8 p.m., $10-$12.
727-4444.
Jessica Lea Mayfield
The Demo, 4191 Manchester Ave, St. Louis,
WEEKEND FOR BERNIE FUNDRAISER DAY 1: w/
8 p.m. Friday, January 22.
314-833-5532.
Brother Lee and the Leather Jackals, the Wil-
BUD G: w/ Nemo, Con 8 p.m., $10. The Firebird,
derness, Dibiase, LoopRat, Ramona Deflowered,
2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353.
Billy Brown, DJ Joe Lucky 7 p.m., $10. The
DROPKICK THE ROBOT: w/ Brotherfather, the
Demo, 4191 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-
Fade 9 p.m., free. Foam Coffee & Beer, 3359
5532.
Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100.
WINTER JAM 2016: w/ For King & Country, Mat-
KEEM: 9 p.m., $5-$10. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St.
thew West, Crowder, RED, Sidewalk Prophets,
Louis, 314-289-9050.
Trip Lee, Lauren Daigle, Tony Nolan, Stars
TOM CHAPIN: 8 p.m., $35-$40. The Sheldon, 3648
Go Dim, We Are Messengers 5:45 p.m., $10.
Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.
Scottrade Center, 1401 Clark Ave., St. Louis,
TOOL: w/ Primus, 3Teeth 7 p.m., $79.50.
314-241-1888.
Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis, 314-977-5000.
SUNDAY 24
THE VANILLA BEANS: w/ the Potomac Accord,
FIELD DIVISION: 9 p.m., $5. Foam Coffee & Beer,
Dubb Nubb 9 p.m., free. Schlafly Tap Room,
3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100.
2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-2337.
JUSTIN HOSKINS & THE MOVIE: 5 p.m., $10. BB’s
Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Avenue. $12 to $15. 314-773- 3363.
When Jessica Lea Mayfield flipped the Americana script for a bunch of dollar bin ‘90s grunge CDs, she wasn’t trying to remake herself. Whether or not she played old-time country with her folks in Kent, Ohio, bands like Foo Fighters and Stone Temple Pilots were her childhood soundtrack, and she never cared who knew it. Her last album, Make My Head Sing, was louder and sludgier than anything she assayed riverfronttimes.com
under Dan Auerbach’s tutelage, but the album was most memorable for lilting pop meditations like “Standing in the Sun” and “Party Drugs,” on which she confesses that she may be the “most fucked up” person in the room, but she’s still not ready to OD on a motel bed. Mayfield’s dream songs are nothing if not deliciously dark. Spin-Offs: Local openers include Summer Magic (a new a project of Troubadour Dali’s Kevin Bachmann) and Forgotten Son (led by Will Godfred, guitarist for Pretty Little Empire).
JANUARY 20-26, 2016
–Roy Kasten Continued on pg 44
RIVERFRONT TIMES
43
FIND ANY SHOW IN TOWN...
[CRITIC’S PICK]
TUESDAY 26
CITY AND COLOUR: w/ Greyhounds 8 p.m.,
$32.50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.
KEN MCCRAY MEMORIAL SHOW: 7 p.m., free. The Firebird, 2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314535-0353.
SKYLINE IN RUINS: w/ Roots Like Mountains,
Ilia, Mental Fixation 7 p.m., $10. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.
WEDNESDAY 27
BOB “BUMBLE BEE” KAMOSKE: 8 p.m. Beale on Broadway, 701 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-
City and Colour. | ALYSSE GAFKJEN
621-7880. DEFEATED SANITY: w/ Iniquitous Deeds, Iniquitous Savagery, Hemorrhaging Elysium 7 p.m., $10. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. JENNIFER HALL: w/ Acorns to Oaks, Marie & the Americans 9 p.m., $5. Foam Coffee & Beer, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100.
PHOTOGRAPHER: TODD OWYOUNG BAND: SLEEPY KITTY
44
City and Colour 8 p.m. Tuesday, January 26. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Boulevard. $32.50. 314726-6161.
City and Colour’s latest LP, If I Should Go Before You, is a million miles away from where Dallas Green started out. He was co-lead singer of Canadian post-hardcore band Alexisonfire at the turn of the century, but his solo material as City and Colour sought a gentler and more intimate approach, using little more than his voice and an
acoustic guitar. Subsequent albums, including his latest, have pushed Green to embrace full-band arrangements and rangy dissonance. Lead-off single “Woman” unfurls itself over nine minutes, with enveloping fuzz and menacing bass tones threatening to overtake his soulful, loaded delivery. Grey is the Colour: The Austin-based Greyhounds, a duo of Anthony Farrell and Anthony Trube, will open the show with weathered, rootsy soul music. –Christian Schaeffer
THIS JUST IN
MIIKE SNOW: Mon., May 23, 8 p.m., $25-$27.50. The
THE BAD PLUS AND JOSHUA REDMAN: Tue., April 19,
Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-
7:30 & 9:30 p.m.; Wed., April 20, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m.,
6161.
$40. Ferring Jazz Bistro, 3536 Washington Ave, St.
MYSTIKAL: Fri., Feb. 5, 9 p.m., $20-$30. The
Louis, 314-571-6000.
Marquee Restaurant & Lounge, 1911 Locust St, St.
THE BLACK LILLIES: Sat., April 2, 8 p.m., $12-$15.
Louis, 314-436-8889.
Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-773-
NE-HI: W/ Whitney, Mon., March 21, 8 p.m., $8-$10.
3363.
The Demo, 4191 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-
BOYCE AVENUE: Sun., May 22, 8 p.m., $25-$27.50.
833-5532.
The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-
OLIVER HELDENS: Wed., March 9, 8 p.m., $25-$30.
726-6161.
The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-
BUD G: W/ Nemo, Con, Fri., Jan. 22, 8 p.m., $10. The
726-6161.
Firebird, 2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353.
THE PLOT IN YOU: W/ Lorna Shore, Ascension of
With our new and improved concert calendar! RFT’s online music listings are now sortable by artist, venue and price. You can even buy tickets directly from our website—with more options on the way!
GALLOWS BOUND: Sun., Feb. 21, 8 p.m., $12-$14.
Akari, Sun., Feb. 14, 6 p.m., $13-$15. The Firebird,
Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.
2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353.
THE GORGE RECORD RELEASE SHOW: W/ Path of
ROBERT EARL KEEN: Fri., Feb. 12, 8 p.m., $30-$40.
Might, Alan Smithee, Grand Inquisitor, Fri., Feb.
The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis,
12, 9 p.m., $8-$10. The Demo, 4191 Manchester
314-833-3929.
Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-5532.
STICK MEN: Wed., May 11, 8 p.m., $18-$20. Old
HEART: W/ Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Cheap
Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-
Trick, Sat., July 16, 6 p.m., $19.95-$129.95. Hol-
0505.
lywood Casino Amphitheatre, I-70 & Earth City
TORTOISE: Mon., May 9, 8 p.m., $22-$25. The Ready
Expwy., Maryland Heights, 314-298-9944.
Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-
THE HUSH LIST: W/ New Lingo, Made in Waves,
3929.
OATM, Fri., Feb. 12, 8 p.m., $10. The Firebird, 2706
TURNPIKE TROUBADOURS: Fri., March 25, 8 p.m.,
Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353.
$20-$22.50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St.
JANET JACKSON: Wed., July 20, 6 p.m., TBA.
Louis, 314-726-6161.
Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis, 314-
WEEZER: W/ Panic! At the Disco, Andrew McMa-
977-5000.
hon in the Wilderness, Tue., July 19, 6 p.m., TBA.
www.riverfronttimes.com/concerts/ –Roy Kasten
JJOSH RITTER: Fri., May 20, 8 p.m., $25. The Pag-
Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, I-70 & Earth City
eant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.
Expwy., Maryland Heights, 314-298-9944.
Jessica Lea Mayfield. | COURTESY OF JESSICA LEA MAYFIELD
R R
erts/
OUT EVERY NIGHT Continued from pg 43
RIVERFRONT TIMES
under Dan Auerbach’s tutelage, but the album was most memorable for lilting pop meditations like “Standing in the Sun” and “Party Drugs,” on which she confesses that she may be the “most fucked up” person in the room, but she’s still not ready to OD on a motel bed. Mayfield’s dream songs are nothing if not deliciously dark. Spin-Offs: Local openers include Summer Magic (a new a project of Troubadour Dali’s Kevin Bachmann) and Forgotten Son (led by Will Godfred, guitarist for Pretty Little Empire).
Continued on pg 44
JANUARY 20-26, 2016
riverfronttimes.com
SAVAGE LOVE NO COUNTRY FOR OLD DILDOS BY DAN SAVAGE Hey Dan: I am no longer sexually active, but I have a significant collection of sex toys from earlier years. I’m thinking of getting rid of most of them, and it seems such a waste for them to end up in the landfill. What’s an environmentally responsible way to dispose of dildos? I wish there was a place I could donate the dildos where they could be used again. Many of them are quality silicone types, they’ve never been used on a person without a condom, and they’ve been thoroughly cleaned. I’d be happy to donate them to impoverished dildo users in need, if only I knew where to send them. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Your question comes up frequently, RRR, and there really isn’t a satisfactory answer. In Seattle, where I live, a community tool bank recently opened in my neighborhood — but they don’t collect and lend the kind of tools you’re looking to donate. I’ve heard about dildo graveyards in other cities (spots in parks where people bury their used
sex toys), but burying sex toys isn’t environmentally responsible. And while high-quality dildos can be cleaned and safely reused, most people are pretty squeamish about the idea. Which is odd, considering that we routinely reuse actual cocks that have been enjoyed by others — so why not the fake ones? But even if I can’t tell you what to do with your dildos, RRR, I can tell you what not to do with them: Do not ship your used dildos to the anti-government militia currently occupying a federal wildlife refuge in rural Oregon. After militia members asked supporters to send them supplies — via the US Postal Service — their spokesperson complained bitterly about all the dildos they were getting in the mail. So if you decide to put your used dildos in a box and send them somewhere, RRR, please make sure the address on the box doesn’t read: Bundy Militia, c/o Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, 36391 Sodhouse Lane, Princeton, OR, 97721. Hey Dan: I understand that monogamy is not something people are good at — and that’s fine. In fact, most of the people I know are in healthy poly or monogamish relationships. Here’s the thing: I’m monogamous. Not the “I’m attracted to other people but
won’t act on it because it makes me uncomfortable or believe it’s wrong” kind of monogamous, but the “I genuinely have ZERO desire to fuck anyone but my partner” kind of monogamous. Fantasizing about others is fun, so is looking, so is porn and role-play. There’s a world of deliciously kinky, weird, and wonderful sex stuff I’d LOVE to explore until my sexy bits fall off. But I want to do those things with one partner and one partner only in a monogamous, intimate relationship. Here’s the kicker: I’d like my partner to feel the same way. I don’t want someone to enter into a monogamous relationship with me if in their heart/groin they’d genuinely like to fuck other people. Am I a lost cause? Surely I can’t be the only genuinely monogamous person there is? I’m 31 and still turn heads, but I worry my quest for a partner who feels as I do is impossible and a waste of my time. One 4 One You value monogamy, you want a monogamous commitment, and you want someone who feels the same. That great, O4O, and you have my full support. But you do acknowledge that fantasies about others can be fun, as can looking, as can porn (watching others) and role-play (pretending to be others). So while you may
riverfronttimes.com
45
wanna fuck other people — hence the looking and fantasizing and role-playing — you have no desire to actually fuck other people. If you’re having a hard time finding partners who want what you want — a monogamous commitment without the stress of maintaining the monogamous pretense/facade/fraud, i.e., pretending they don’t at least think about fucking other people — either you’re living in some sort of poly parallel universe where non-monogamy is the default setting or you’re not giving others the same benefit of the doubt you’ve given yourself. You wanna fuck other people and you don’t seem to think that disqualifies you from making, honoring, and genuinely wanting both a monogamous commitment and a monogamous sex life. (The two don’t always go hand in hand.) If you’re breaking up with people for admitting to the same things you’ve admitted to in your question — you might think about fucking other people, but you don’t want to actually fuck other people — then you’re the reason your quest to find a partner has been so frustrating. Listen to Dan’s podcast every week at savagelovecast.com. mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter
JANUARY 20-26, 2016
RIVERFRONT TIMES
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110 Computer/Technical Data Warehouse and Analytics Developers (ETL/Informatica) Ascension Health-IS, Inc. is seeking two Data Warehouse and Analytics Developers (ETL/Informatica) in St. Louis, Missouri to code design and development on the data warehouse/analytics Extract Transform Load (ETL) toolset, Informatica PowerCenter; support Informatica toolset; integrate and develop other technologies. Research solutions and technology; participate in testing (e.g. user acceptance testing, unit, system, regression, integration testing); develop test plans and documentation; debug code. Contact Jenna Mihm, Vice President Legal Services & Associate General Counsel, Ascension Health, 4600 Edmundson Road, St. Louis, MO 63134, 314-733-8692, Jenna.Mihm@ascensionhealth.org To apply for this position, please reference Job Number 03.
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145 Management/Professional Business Solutions Specialist (Nestlé Regional Globe Office North America, Inc. – St. Louis, MO) Supprt GLOBE Solution sustain, implmntation, process imprvmnt, & leverage activities in order to meet sustain targets, deliver process implmntation & imprvmnt targets, & satisfy agreed customer key perfrmnce indicators (KPIs). F/T. Reqs Bach’s dgr (or frgn equiv) in Eng, Bus Admin, or rel fld & 7 yrs exp in job offered or in wrk’g w/ SAP/ APO. Exp must incl follow’g: 2 full life cycle implmntations of SAP/APO in consumer goods envrnmnt w/ remote manufactur’g locations; us’g SAP ECC & APO, incl’g master data, batch jobs, idoc failures, & configurations; postimplmntation supprt, incl’g trblshoot’g, ticket resolution, on-call duty, health checks & KPIs; & reqs gather’g, syst dsgn doc, writ’g tech specs, & root cause analysis. Resumes: J. Buenrostro, Nestlé USA, Inc., 800 N Brand Blvd, Glendale, CA 91203. Ref Job ID: BSS-IMA.
185 Miscellaneous LEGIT ONLINE $5000 PER MONTH JOBS. Part Time or Full Time Online Jobs. MAKE EXTRA MONEY. onlinedigitaljobs.com (AAN CAN) PAID IN ADVANCE! Make $1000 A Week Mailing Brochures From Home! No Experience Required. Helping home workers since 2001! Genuine Opportunity. Start Immediately! www.TheIncomeHub.com (AAN CAN)
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500 Services 525 Legal Services
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530 Misc. Services WANTS TO purchase minerals and other oil & gas interests. Send details to P.O. Box 13557, Denver, Co 80201
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310 Roommate Services ALL-AREAS ROOMMATES.COM. Lonely? Bored? Broke? Find the perfect roommate to complement your personality and lifestyle at Roommates.com! (AAN CAN)
315 Condos/Townhomes/Duplexes for Rent SOUTH-CITY $440 314-223-8067 Spacious 1BR, 2nd flr, garden entrance, hdwd flrs, kitch appls, near Grand busline
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SOUTH-CITY $575 314-968-5035 Newly Renovated, 1BR 1BA, 3850 Park Ave Located directly behind Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital. Less than 1 mile from SLU. New Kit. Appls & Cabinets, C/A, Coin Lndry, Off-St. Pkg, CATV wired & carpet. Park Property Developers LLC SOUTH-CITY 314-504-6797 37XX Chippewa: 3 rms, 1BR. all elec exc. heat. C/A, appls, at bus stop SOUTH-CITY! $385 314-309-2043 1 bedroom, appliances included, central heat/air, extra storage, carpet & tile, pets welcome, w/d hookups, ready to rent! RG8D2
NORTH ST. LOUIS COUNTY 314-579-1201 or 636-939-3808 2, 3 & 4BR homes for rent. eatonproperties.com. Sec. 8 welcome OVERLAND! $725 314-309-2043 Private 2-3 bed house, big basement, screened patio, central heat/air, fenced yard, loaded kitchen w/dishwasher, pets welcome! rs-stl.com RG8EA
SOUTH-CITY! $625 314-309-2043 3 bedroom, full basement, fenced yard, all kitchen appliances, beautiful fireplace, w/d hookups, plenty of storage, off street parking! RG8D6 SOUTHWEST-CITY! $625 314-309-2043 2 bedroom, finished basement, beautiful hardwoods, appliances included, central heat/air, pets, w/d hookups! rs-stl.com RG8D4
575
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ST. JOHN $495-$595 314-423-3106 Special! 1BR.$495 & 2BR.$595. Near 170 & St.Charles Rock Rd THE-CIRCLE! $425 314-309-2043 1 bedroom, central heat/air, basement storage, fenced yard, appliances, walk-in closets, utilities paid! rs-stl.com RG8D3
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*$1 install is per component in factory ready locations. Custom work, kits, plugs and supplies additional. Savings include discount from our posted install prices.
SOUTH 5616 S. Lindbergh • (314) 842-1242 WEST 14633 Manchester • (636) 527-26811
HAZELWOOD 233 Village Square Cntr • (314) 731-1212 FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS 10900 Lincoln Tr. • (618) 394-9479
Unless otherwise limited, prices are good through Tuesday following publication date. Promotional installation (free install, $1 install) is for product purchased from Audio Express installed in factory-ready locations. PPP indicates product installed at half off our posted rates. Custom work at added cost. Kits, antennas and cables additional. Added charges for shop supplies and environmental disposal where mandated. Illustrations similar. Video pictures may be simulated. Not responsible for typographic errors. Savings off MSRP or our original sales price, may include install savings. Intermediate markdowns may have been taken. Details, conditions and restrictions of manufacturer promotional offers at respective websites. © 2016, Audio Express.
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RIVERFRONT TIMES
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Across from Wildwood Parkway and Shell gas station in Wildwood Plaza, next to Domino’s Pizza on Clayton Rd.