Feature

THE BIG MAD

Funda-Men-talism

e Missouri Manhood Challenge, undead trolleys and vaccine skepticism

Compiled by DANIEL HILL

Ah, March. A time of rebirth, as the sun lingers a little longer, enveloping us all in its warm embrace. It would be beautiful, it could be serene — if not for the madness. No, we’re not talking basketball: The March Madness to which we refer is the unbridled rage you feel every day. Your fury is so great, and yet you cannot put a finger on what it is, exactly, that you’re furious about. But fear not: We’re here to help.

Welcome back to the Big Mad, RFT’s weekly roundup of righteous rage. Let’s dive in!

GRAB ‘EM BY THE MANHOOD: The Missouri House of Representatives, having conquered all of the state’s more pressing woes [EDITOR’S NOTE: FACT-CHECK THIS], is rolling up their sleeves to take a crack at the larger ills of society — namely, the sheer lack of manliness in our population. Apparently not enough MO residents identify as manly men interested in the noble pursuits of manliness — far too few for Clay County Rep. Doug Richey, who late last month introduced House Resolution 288, formally instating a “Missouri Manhood Challenge” for the state’s population. The language of the resolution calls for the “exemplary men” of Missouri to be commended for their “vigorous manhood” (that whole “Show Me State” motto has taken a concerning turn). Kudos to the Missouri House for hanging the legislative equivalent of a pair of truck nuts onto our state — now can St. Louis have some goddamn vaccines please?

DAWN OF THE TROLLEY: 2020 brought a whole lot of awful shit into our lives, but if there’s one thing it (mercifully) was light on, it was Loop Trolley news. Fret not, insatiable trolley fans (all six of you) — your favorite transportation boondoggle is back, and ready for the public to deposit more money into its bottomless coffers! As reported by the Post-Dispatch, backers of the rolling unmitigated failure have submitted a request to the EastWest Gateway Council of Governments, which oversees the disbursement of federal transportation money in the St. Louis area, for a scant $1.26 million more dollars to keep on clanging down the line. It’s mere pennies compared to the $33.9 million in federal funds already gobbled up, and if the Sunk Cost Fallacy has taught us anything, it’s that things are bound to turn around if we just put a liiiiittle more money in. Here’s hoping the trolley’s board of directors get what they’re asking for — after all, these parked cars ain’t gonna hit themselves.

COME ON, SHEEPLE: It’s amazing what can be accomplished by little more than decades of anti-vaccine griftwork and a president who treated COVID-19 like a nightclub bouncer who could be bought with a couple wadded-up fives: A recent poll, conducted in the past month of vaccine rollouts, suggests that around 25 percent of Missourians would reject a coronavirus vaccine even if available. That doesn’t mean they’re waiting to see if the shot makes people grow forehead tentacles — they are simply “not interested.” This is deeply bad news for all of us, including Governor Mike Parson, who acknowledged, “Some Missourians are less interested in receiving a vaccine than others.” Rich words to St. Louisans driving hours to rural distribution sites for a chance at a shot — while the “Plandemic” crowd refreshes their YouTube comment sections to see if “PatriotSKULLBONERZ1776” has any new insights on immunology.

AMERICA, MEET JEFF ROORDA: On March 14, CBS’ 60 Minutes introduced a national audience to St. Louis’ police union spokesman, Jeff Roorda. While the segment effectively presented Roorda’s opposition to Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, his response to a question about St. Louis police shootings stood out like a rotten apple: “We don’t shoot,” his explanation began. “We shoot back.” So, yes, that sounds like a benign tough-guy response, but it’s deeply revealing of Roorda’s commitment to the idiocy of the “War on Cops.” It’s more than just the fact that Roorda is wrong — just to name a few, in the police killings of Anthony Lamar Smith, Kajieme Powell, and Mansur Ball-Bey, it was the cops who shot first — but his refusal to accept a more complex world than “cops good, criminals bad” is actually terrible for everyone, cops included. In the real world, police shootings are the product of complex interactions, tragedies that, even if ruled “justified,” traumatize officers and devastate community trust. St. Louis voters just approved two mayoral candidates whose platforms feature new ideas based on the notion that an armed cop isn’t always the best tool for an emergency. And yet, we still have Roorda, who never seems to miss a chance to prove himself the biggest tool of all. n

COVID KEEPERS

After a year of living the pandemic life, what hacks, tips and tricks should we carry into the new world — and what should we leave behind?

By Riverfront Times Sta Illustrations by Jon Wilcox

Oer the co rse o a ew days in late e r ary watched thro gh y windows as wor ers e ptied o t y neigh or s ho se filling one ind strial d pster and then another with the contents

sweet older co ple had li ed there since long e ore arri ed in the neigh orhood didn t now the well t we wo ld wa e and say hello s y son grew old eno gh to toddle aro nd y ront yard the h s and wo ld eeline o er to coo at hi li e an adopted grand ather e ept o r distance a ter the pande ic egan t still wa ed nd then one day an a lance arri ed and too the wi e away The h s and le t not long a ter They ne er ca e ac later heard that the wi e had contracted he had s r i ed t in their wea ened state they had o ed o t o state to e closer to a ily

The clean o t crew arri ed shortly a ter and egan piling what i agine were decades old elongings in the d psters t night saw the silho ettes o sca engers in the giant etal in the ea s o their ashlights sweeping o er old chairs and etal shel es as they ade rapid fire dg ents a o t what pieces o y neigh ors old li e still had al e and what wo ld e le t on the literal trash heap yo dro e down y street yo wo ldn t notice anything is di erent t y neigh ors e it is one o a illion ways the pande ic has changed o r li es This onth ar s a year since ericans at large egan to wrestle with the inco ing plag e eryone had a o ent or day it eca e real re e er learning the t atric s ay cele rations had een canceled and thin ing ow t see ed li e the right o e t it still elt s rprising to see ig e ents p t on hold n those early days we elie ed that the sh tdowns and cancelations wo ld e short li ed and we d pic p where we le t o ow it s clear that we are ore er changed e will do things we sed to do again e ll go to resta rants witho t as s and pac sho lder to sho lder in concert halls tra el to see relati es and go to the grocery store on a whi t a ter twel e onths o li ing ore contained li es we e had so e ti e to thin a o t how we want o r new world to wor id yo spend ore ti e in the par hec in on yo r riends ore re yo entirely sic o oo s we headed into this pande ic anni ersary with accines rolling o t so slowly in t o is we wanted to consider not st what s happened t what o r t re will loo li e o e o it is o t o o r control t we anaged to s r i e this year y fig ring o t what is i portant to s e re not going ac to o r old li es t we can fig re what we want to eep and what to lea e ehind

KEEP

Respecting the Restaurant Employees, Delivery Drivers and Grocery Store Workers Who Kept Us Fed and Soothingly Drunk

For a while there, we as a society irted with the idea o finally treating deli ery dri ers grocery store wor ers ser ers and the li e as the ns ng heroes they truly are. Employers were handing o t ha ard pay e ployees were cashing in on ses or wor ing in wildly ncertain circ stances and those c sto ers with any decency were tipping anyone they co ld li e their oney was on fire t d e nice i we co ld say it lasted t soon things see ed to slide ac to where they were at the start o all this and those good people were le t to end or the sel es financially and otherwise This cannot stand t s ti e we recogni e all those who help to ens re that o r ellies are ll o s stenance e re tal ing eys to the city ac ha ard pay ro when e ployers got ac to their greedy de a lt stat s tips o at least percent t why not to percent e erything not or those who were willing to charge into the reach and ens re that the asses were not h ngry we d e in ar worse shape today t s well eyond ti e we show o r appreciation —Daniel Hill

KEEP

Working Remotely

ow that we e pro ed that people can wor ro ho e there s no reason to r sh to get ac to offices the o can e done at ho e there s no reason why doing the o at ho e sho ldn t e an option hile nder great psychological and financial press re ost o the co ntry was a le to transition to re ote wor ing with little to no warning or ing ro ho e sed to e considered a l ry sit ation t now that we now that it wor s it sho ld e the standard i at all possi le nd i an e ployee ails at ho e there are plenty o people o t there loo ing or a o who wo ld e happy to ta e their place a ing re ote access also nloc s a whole world o e ploy ent or disa led and re otely located people opening p positions to e filled y tr ly the ost alified not st whoe er can show p to an office

—Jaime Lees

LEAVE BEHIND

Zoom Happy Hours

n the eginning o the pande ic oo happy ho rs were a h ge thing across the land n order to e in style d ring those first terri ying wee s one had to watch Tiger King try to a e so rdo gh

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bread and engage in many Zoom happy hours. These online meetings were mostly just an excuse to get shifaced together because the world was ending. But now that we’re a whole year into this mess, we don’t need any excuse to get shitfaced. Who needs an audience to drink? This is not something that will continue into the After Times. In the After Times, we will drink to celebrate surviving, however broken. —Jaime Lees

LEAVE BEHIND

Washing Our Hands, and All That Comes with It

For months, doctors were stumped as to why I was bleeding all the time.

I was just a kid, in middle school, and the backs of my hands seemed to be in a constant state of scaliness, red and bumpy and cracking frequently at the knuckles t first y pediatrician s spected eczema, then allergies. Over the course of several attempts to get to the bottom of the matter, we tried just about everything. We switched detergents, I stopped eating grains, I was told I could no longer pick dandelions and blow the seeds off of them, and on and on.

It would take those bloody knuckles being coupled with my mom coming home late from work one day — and the resulting full-tilt panicked meltdown I had before her eventual arrival, convinced something terrible must have happened — for us to fig re o t what was act ally wrong: I had obsessive compulsive disorder. The skin on my hands was cracking because I was washing them compulsively. My meltdown came because I was obsessively worried about my loved ones’ well-being.

Over years of therapy that, for a while, included the use of medication, I was able to get a handle on my OCD. That’s not to say I was cured — I’m not certain such a thing is possible, really — but I was able to live for at least a decade with it serving as little more than background noise.

But then, along came COVID-19.

Suddenly, I was told that compulsively washing my hands was one of the most important things I could do to protect myself from the virus. Suddenly, worrying obsessively about my loved ones not only seemed far less irrational than it had been, it was downright sensible. Suddenly, I was thrust by global circumstance to face down the full wrath of my anxiety disorder once again. When I look at the cracked and broken skin on my hands now, I can’t help but think about how mentally scarred so many of us are going to be from this COVID nightmare. We’re not out of the woods yet, and there will be plenty of time to survey the damage and pick up the pieces once it becomes naught but an ugly memory, but it’s important to recognize that these past twelve months have been nothing short of traumatic.

I hope that the sky-high rates of anxiety and depression brought on by the pandemic fade. I hope that the people who are suffering from some form of PTSD after all o this find the strength to reach out and get help. For my part, I hope that I’m able to shove my OCD back into the closet again when this is all over. I would love for it to be relegated to mere background noise once more. And I really, really hope I can stop washing my bloody hands so damn much.

—Daniel Hill

KEEP

Adopting Lots of Pets

The equation is simple. Animals at shelters need permanent homes, we are all inside for the time being, and we even have more time on our hands to train a new pet. For those who are able to, it’s the perfect time to welcome an animal into our homes. The so-called “pandemic puppies” may be the best thing to come out of this lockdown — while life has changed immensely for each of us, at least we’re clearing out local shelters in the meantime.

And if you’re considering adopting a pet, why not adopt a farm animal from Long Meadow Rescue Ranch? Imagine showing off your new goat to all your friends that just got a standard pandemic puppy. You can oneup your loved ones, and get a pet goat out of it.

That said, don’t let the Sarah McLachlan song playing over the photos of sad puppies fool you — if you are not ready to care for another being besides yourself, do not adopt a pet. The outcome of the pandemic puppy surge is yet to come. You could always just adopt a plant instead. —Riley Mack

LEAVE BEHIND

Livestreamed Music

If there was ever a case for the life-changing power of live music, it’s all the livestreamed sessions that have happened during the pandemic. While valiant efforts and a good show of spirit, even the best livestreams couldn’t touch the feeling you get from standing in front of a band or sitting in front of an orchestra and having your soul baptized with music. Future concerts are going to be epic, even if they’re shit. If your band is crappy, get out there as soon as you can before everyone remembers that live music can suck, too. —Jaime Lees

KEEP

Walking Alone in Your Neighborhood

When we had busy lives and were always rushing somewhere, some of us used our homes as little more than a place to sleep and a place to keep our stuff. But the sloweddown life (combined with a feeling of being absolutely trapped) surprised us with simple joys like walking in circles around our neighborhoods. In addition to being a nice way to get in a little exercise and burn off some stress, neighborhood walks are thrilling in many unexpected ways. Walkers get to literally see the seasons change, covertly spy on their neighbors and see all of the ways that nature makes sexually suggestive plant life. Highly recommended. —Jaime Lees

KEEP

Making Government Meetings Accessible

The Pandemic Year started differently for everyone, from canceled vacations and lost jobs to the creeping, encompassing sensation that this was the end of things as we knew them. For Andre Holman, the station manager for STL-TV, St. Louis City’s public access channel, the moment came when health authorities clamped down on gatherings of more than ten people — a category that included the very government meetings his crews had een fil ing or decades

“It made us really have to pivot and think about how we do everything,” Holman says. “The Board of Aldermen was the number-one thing we had to make sure we kept moving.” T T has een fil ing the board’s meetings since 1991, but in a matter of weeks, Holman and his staff worked with the city’s IT department to set up multiple oo acco nts or officials and parallel livestreams broadcast on YouTube or Facebook.

The process wasn’t always easy. Between slow internet connections, echoing rooms and various human errors — in addition to at least one attempted “Zoom bombing” from a disruptive troll — the crews had to cover as many as ten committee meetings and a handful of mayoral press conferences every week.

“We were able to make sure residents didn’t miss a beat,” Holman says proudly. “If anything was taking place in city government, people had access to that information.”

But with vaccine distribution steadily advancing across the state, we’re approaching the day when “normal” no longer needs hypothetical quotation marks — and that’s the day when local governments will be faced with decisions about what to do with the systems for remote participation they’ve honed over the past year.

For reporters and civic watchdogs, the remote systems made covering government vastly ore efficient while also opening the door to anyone who wanted to watch two hours of aldermanic debate from the comfort of their home. Before COVID-19’s shutdowns, few regional governments did more than upload meetings to YouTube at a later date; now, people who may have never had the opportunity, time or mobility to attend in-person meetings can follow proceedings live and, in some cases, submit questions beforehand or through chat functions.

Before the pandemic, St. Louis County made video recordings of its council meetings available on YouTube, but “there was no interactivity,” says county IT director Chuck Henderson.

“If you wanted to interact with the council, you had to be in the room,” he adds. “That’s where we were a year ago.”

Since then, Henderson says the county has moved to host its meetings through Webex, allowing administrators to balance interaction etween officials and iewers while controlling the ow so the meetings don’t devolve into crosstalk. (The meetings are still being streamed through social media platforms, though viewers there won’t be able to participate.)

The improved access showed up in viewership, and Henderson says that the latest meetings have consistently attracted more than 150 participants — a number larger than the usual attendance at in-person meetings in the county’s Clayton headquarters.

No decisions have been made about the future of these systems, but Henderson believes there’s good reason to maintain them even after the pandemic restrictions are lifted. “We are recommending that they do keep it in place,” he says. “It enables that hybrid environment so that if you have a council person who is out of state, they can still participate. You also have a greater outreach with people, and more people are viewing this content.”

Of course, the return to physical meetings raises additional complications, and the decisions about how to balance remote viewing, online participation and

in-person attendees will fall to the individual boards and committees in the city and county.

The upside, though, is clear. The pandemic showed just how crucial government action can be when the world is falling apart around us, and, someday, when the world settles just a bit, it would be worse than wasteful to close the now-opened windows to democracy in action. Let the people see — and stream. —Danny Wicentowski

KEEP

Friendship

Ah, friends. Don’t you miss them?

I had a friend once. His name was Caleb. Caleb and I were playing Hot Wheels one time in his backyard when a car jumped off the slide and hit me in the eye. His mom ran out and put a bandage on it. Another time we had a sleepo er and co ldn t find the bathroom so I peed my pants on accident.

Friends are great. I do miss them.

—Jack Killeen

LEAVE BEHIND

Sharing Bowls of Food with Our Hands

Everybody loves snacking on tortillas at a Mexican restaurant while their orders are being prepared, but it’s going to feel really weird to do that after the pandemic passes. Why? Because it’s dirty. We always knew that it was dirty, but now we have proof. There’s no reason to spread germs like that. We can all still eat tortillas, but let’s eat them out of our own small bowls instead of one big bowl. That’s nasty. —Jaime Lees

KEEP

Checking on Your Friends’ Mental Health

We’re only beginning to address the mental health crisis that happened to literally all of us over the past year. While our friends in health care are obviously exhausted beyond belief, tons of other people in our lives should be afforded some extra emotional care from loved ones in the future as well. It’s going to be a long time before anyone is back to any kind of “normal” mental health, so continue to check in on your friends in the future. Just because the pandemic is (hopefully) coming to an end doesn’t mean that the stress from the pandemic is ending, too. —Jaime Lees

KEEP

Dressing for Yourself

Zoom meetings and remote teleconferencing may be inferior to in-person communication in innumerable ways, but one manner in which it has been a damn blessing is when it comes to our wardrobes. Suddenly all of the rules for sartorial success were thrown out the window, and comfort became the only law of the land. As the old saying goes, “No one knows you’re

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naked on a conference call,” [EDITOR’S NOTE: IS THAT A SAYING?] and boy have we proven that timeless adage to be true again and again over the last twelve months. [WHAT?!] Working from home in nothing but a towel, coming up with new and exciting parts of the body to pull socks over, learning that a longsleeve shirt can function just as well covering the lower half of your body as the top (better in some bathroom-related ways, even) — it’s been a wild, wild ride. Heading into post-pandemic li e we sho ld definitely eep that energy up. I mean, who knew it was possible to go a full year without wearing pants? [CALL ME WHEN YOU SEE THIS, DANIEL, WE NEED TO TALK.] — Daniel Hill

KEEP

Wearing Masks If We Might Be Sick

Flu numbers were way down this season, and that’s because most of the country was keeping their ugly, germy faces covered. The best way to cut down on cooties of any kind is to strap some cloth to your face hole. Now that we all have masks, if you have to go out in public in the future while you ha e the sni es do e eryone a favor and slap a mask on that thing.

—Jaime Lees

LEAVE BEHIND

Squeezing and Pressing the Flesh of Your Hands with the Flesh of Other People’s Hands

Picture this: You walk into a job interview, nerves are high and you begin to feel self-conscious about the weird way you set down your briefcase next to your chair. You lean over the desk to greet your interviewer, arm jolting out from your side to meet theirs. Here comes the most pivotal moment of the interview: a fir handsha e with yo r potential employer, the handshake that will determine whether you deserve $50,000 a year plus health coverage and dental.

Your palms slap together, and you clench your hand around theirs tightly o eel confident in your grip until that devastating moment arrives: The warm juices of your nervous inner palm are transferred to theirs. You meet their gaze with fear in your eyes, as they look in horror at their hand, now covered in the profuse secretions of your anxiety. You can kiss your hopes and dreams of casual Fridays and taco T esdays in the office goodbye. You will wake up in a cold sweat thinking about this moment for years to come. ac ing the esh o o r hands against a stranger’s hand is weird, no matter what illness is ravaging our society. The pandemic has fundamentally

changed us all. I pray that it has changed our post-pandemic greetings in the same way. Let’s leave our germy handshakes to the clueless versions of ourselves from 2020. —Daniel Hill

—Riley Mack

KEEP

To-Go Cocktails (It’s a Start)

To-go alcoholic beverages came to St. Louis at just the right time. Granted, we’d have been happy to see them come along at any point since it’s been legal for us to drink — but right at the start of a global pandemic? We were really damn thirsty, and that timing was perfect. As COVID-19 begins to fade from our lives and things settle back down, why don’t we take our new love of alcohol on the go to the next level? It’s time for this city to embrace the NOLA concept of walkaround drinks. Imagine bar-hopping in the Grove or on Cherokee Street with full rein to bring your beverages with you from place to place. Imagine hitting the Loop for an afternoon of shopping, grabbing a cocktail from Three Kings and marching gleefully down the street with it. We at RFT have been saying for a while now that the one thing that could save the Loop Trolley would be to convert it into a rolling bar and phone-charging station — why don’t we seize the day and finally a e this a reality? The time is now. If not now, then when?

LEAVE BEHIND

Tongue Kissing

Ew. Absolutely abhorrent. “Tongue?!” everyone should be saying. “No thank you. I learned my lesson about germs during that pandemic.”

I’m not certain of the number of bacteria transmitted every year through French kissing, but I’m sure it’s a lot. Think about all of the other ways you can tell someone you like them: a nice card, a pat on the back, an affir ing s ile at st the right oment. And none of those things makes someone whose girlfriend recently broke up with them uncomfortable if they’re sitting behind you on the bus while you perform them.

Yes, French kissing is really unsafe and we should get rid of it. It will be like wearing a bike helmet, except it involves the lack of doing an activity — all the easier to achieve!

And if said person on the bus taps your shoulder and says, very softly, kindly, “Excuse me, could you not do that? I’m going through a hard time right now because my girlfriend just broke up with me and it’s really been tough,” well, you should also turn your attention to this grieving soul and comfort them, not rudely glare before re-starting your aggressive germ exchange. And then maybe when that person gets up and sits somewhere else on the bus, don’t throw gum in his hair, because he’s self-conscious about his hair and that makes him think you don’t like it.

It’s a public health crisis! —Jack Killeen

KEEP

Expanding Sidewalks, Devoting Less Space to Cars

It was two years ago on the sidewalks of Paris, as I lolloped along with a crepe in hand, that I realized the structural malpractice besetting our nation: Our roads are too big, and our sidewalks are too small (Paris seems to have found an equilibrium between the two).

I think of this problem especially in commercial districts. Take the Delmar Loop. Parking spots line nearly every section of road from Kingsbury to Skinker. Cars dispute with jaywalking pedestrians over the right of way. Restaurants reach the end of their sidewalk after a few tables and chairs.

With the pandemic, we’ve had a break from this. As anyone who’s been to the Loop in the past year has seen, restaurants like Salt + Smoke have been allowed to advance their dining tables into the street, behind barriers, for the sake of safer dining. And it’s really nice. Sitting there with a pint and a mask, things seem more committed to being rather than going.

The discussion of city planning and cars can continue ad nauseam (cars, cars, cars, cars), and while it deserves a thorough examination — especially in St. Louis, where public transit is laughable and the sight of Manchester Road, with its sprawling asphalt, endless cars and tree-less horizon, incites a tenacious depression — this is not the time or place. For now, let’s hope that what’s happened in the oop shows the enefits o prioritizing pedestrians over traffic ter all it doesn t ta e ch math to realize that the economic gain from giving a restaurant two parking spots’ worth of sidewalk outweighs that of reserving the space for cars. And, like I said, it’s nice.