Riverfront Times, June 26, 2019

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HONORS & AWARDS: • Charles Shaw Trial Advocacy Award • Missouri and Kansas Super Lawyers • St. Louis Magazine, Best Lawyers in St. Louis DWI • Riverfront Times Best Lawyer • Best Lawyers in United States • 10 years of law enforcement training, including time as a narcotics agent • Invited to speak nationally on the topic of DWI defense • A proven record of successfully defending difficult DWI cases • A graduate of the National College of DUI Defense at Harvard

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THE LEDE

“I feel like there’s some magic here that we’re creating here together, the city and me.

Like the city wants this to happen. But it also feels crushing at times, because it’s more work than I’ve ever done, and I’m more broke then I’ve ever been. Right now I feel we’re at a point where it’s turning, but it’s turning so slowly. I can see it. I can see all the pieces that are coming together.”

PHOTO BY THEO WELLING

CHEF WILLIAM THOMAS PAULEY, PHOTOGRAPHED AT HIS CONFLUENCE KOMBUCHA ON JUNE 21 riverfronttimes.com

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Publisher Chris Keating Editor in Chief Sarah Fenske

E D I T O R I A L Arts & Culture Editor Paul Friswold Music Editor Daniel Hill Digital Editor Jaime Lees Staff Writers Doyle Murphy, Danny Wicentowski Restaurant Critic Cheryl Baehr Film Critic Robert Hunt Columnist Ray Hartmann Contributing Writers Mike Appelstein, Allison Babka, Thomas Crone, Jenn DeRose, Mike Fitzgerald, Sara Graham, MaryAnn Johanson, Roy Kasten, Jaime Lees, Joseph Hess, Kevin Korinek, Bob McMahon, Lauren Milford, Nicholas Phillips, Tef Poe, Christian Schaeffer Proofreader Evie Hemphill Editorial Interns Katie Counts, Joshua Phelps, James Pollard

COVER White on White

A R T Art Director Evan Sult Contributing Photographers Virginia Harold, Tim Lane, Monica Mileur, Zia Nizami, Andy Paulissen, Nick Schnelle, Mabel Suen, Micah Usher, Theo Welling, Jen West, Corey Woodruff

Meet the St. Louis groups fighting racism — by keeping their own membership whites-only Cover design by

P R O D U C T I O N Production Manager Haimanti Germain

EVAN SULT

M U L T I M E D I A A D V E R T I S I N G Sales Director Colin Bell Sales Manager Jordan Everding Senior Account Executive Cathleen Criswell, Erica Kenney Account Managers Emily Fear, Jennifer Samuel Multimedia Account Executive Chris Guilbault, Drew Halliday, Jackie Mundy

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C I R C U L A T I O N Circulation Manager Kevin G. Powers E U C L I D M E D I A G R O U P Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating Officers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner VP of Digital Services Stacy Volhein Creative Director Tom Carlson www.euclidmediagroup.com

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The Lede Hartmann

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News Feature Calendar

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Eric Greitens is gone, but Kim Gardner is facing the heat

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1776 | Grand Center Theatre Crawl | Pridefest | Urban Wanderers | etc.

Film

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Cafe

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Short Orders

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Out Every Night

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The Fall of the American Empire | Anna

Cocina Latina

Matt Dawson at Cafe Coeur | Chao Baan | Up-Down STL

Asumaya | St. Luis Punk Rock Flea Market | Dylan LeBlanc

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HARTMANN Revenge of the Lawyers Gardner vs. Greitens is over. And the sequel, in which his lawyers’ best buddy goes after the circuit attorney, is a letdown

BY RAY HARTMANN

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or a brief shining moment, the clash of political disrupters seemed like the coolest thing ever.

Ah, for the days of Gardner v. Greitens. Never had we seen a locally generated topic more riveting and salacious and dark and emotional and disgusting and ironic and trivialized and overblown and kinky — all the elements for the perfect news story

of our time.

The star of the show was Governor Eric Greitens, he of the blazing résumé exceeded in its splendor only by the boundless ego that he brought to his quest to disrupt state government and the ruling Republican elite with platitudes so thin that his entire agenda was scribbled on a single spanking ruler. Also, he was a bully.

In the other corner, Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, who won a landslide 2016 election victory in St. Louis as a very different sort of disrupter. Her mission was to overhaul a broken criminal justice system decimated by centuries of racial injustice. Unlike Greitens, Gardner brought a long list of specific solutions, none of which mentioned prosecution of kinky sex crimes or helping Republicans remove tumors from their own body politic.

But then came that glorious day of January 10, 2018, when KMOV broke the story featuring the secretly taped conversation between

the angry husband and the crying wife telling him she had been photographed, nearly nude, while blindfolded without her consent and blackmailed in the basement of the happy home of Greitens, the governor who had run for office as “Ultimate Family Man.” Greitens confessed to the affair — emphasizing that it took place before he took office, as if that was e culpatory — but he steadfastly denied all the fun parts.

Still, Greitens had accomplished something no one had achieved in two centuries: He made Missouri state government exciting. And that was even before we learned the jilted husband’s lawyer got paid with a suitcase filled with $100,000 in cash. What politician wouldn’t want a part in the drama that would ensue n the first day the news broke, state Senator Rob Schaaf (R-St. Joseph), one of Greitens’ many Republican foes, gleefully declared, “Stick a fork in him.” We in the media sure lapped it up.

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Gardner immediately joined the fray. It was, after all, within her jurisdiction that the woman, a hairdresser who would become known as K.S., had allegedly been victimized. Standing up for the rights and safety of women was certainly part of Gardner’s DNA, and prosecuting an alleged scumbag for violating the privacy and threatening the safety of a woman — even one with whom he had a consensual affair — would be consistent with her values and job description.

On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine Gardner would have bothered with this case had the defendant been John Q. Public.

The woman didn’t want the story known, much less to press charges. Most of the sex had apparently been consensual. There was no physical injury. In a city wracked with thousands of violent crimes, this wouldn’t have become Topics A, B and C in the circuit attorney’s office without Greitens’ star

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appeal.

But Gardner proceeded, and on February 22, 2018, a grand jury indicted Greitens for felony invasion of privacy. Just four days later, the state House of Representatives formally opened its own investigation of Greitens. For the next three months, the story consumed state government and dominated the news, culminating in Greitens’ resignation effective June 1.

Gardner ended up as a footnote to the story, rather than a co-star.

Whether her decision to proceed was an act of political courage or bowing to pressure or exploiting the situation remains to this day a point of much contention. Maybe it was all of the above. But this much is certain: Gardner’s part in the drama was that of a tragic figure: Her investigation ended in disaster.

It’s still hard to know what happened. Since taking office a year earlier, Gardner had been engaged in all-out war with the police department, so the cops weren’t willing to lift a finger, other than the middle one pointed at her, when she sought their assistance with the case. Or maybe she didn’t ask them at all. No one seems to know anything for sure: It’s just a question of which side you choose to disbelieve less.

In any event, Gardner was left to investigate on her own. She did have an office presumably stocked with investigators, but for some reason didn’t trust that team to handle the case. That’s still a mystery. This was not, after all, a highly technical matter.

There was, however, a formidable obstacle: Greitens had assembled a legal dream team, featuring respected — and highly connected — local attorneys Jim Bennett and Ed Dowd. And he added Scott Rosenblum, arguably St. Louis’ most feared defense attorney. As one wag suggested to me: “If you find a dead body in your house, you want to call Jim Bennett. If you put it there, you want to call Scott Rosenblum.”

This was not going to be easy for Gardner, and maybe that’s why she assumed her office would be overmatched. But her fateful decision to outsource the investigation to a former FBI agent, William Tisaby, would prove arguably as bad a decision as Greitens made to open his home to his hairdresser.

For whatever reason, Tisaby

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(and/or Gardner) managed to botch things so badly that the prosecution became the defense in the case, with perjury allegations flying and Gardner facing the prospect of having to take the stand as a witness. Maybe that was the genius of Greitens’ all-star team; maybe it was deserved. All that’s known for sure is it ended up in an indictment unsealed last Monday against Tisaby for evidence tampering and six perjury counts.

On one hand, it’s a big deal when a prosecutor’s office is targeted in a criminal probe (including having its servers seized by police).

The indictment is a significant news story.

But it’s also an anticlimactic one. The big story is over: Greitens is long gone.

In retrospect, Gardner’s move to prosecute was helpful to the Republicans in giving them extra political cover, but not essential.

They were going to take Greitens out politically even had she not acted. Remember, this story started with a TV news report, not some initiative on Gardner’s part.

And Greitens went down for a myriad of reasons unrelated to his basement recreation. His own party despised him from day one (he had, after all, run as its disrupter). He faced serious allegations of misusing his veterans charity’s funds for political purposes (one that Gardner would also charge him with). More ominously, there was the danger of Greitens’ misdeeds leading to a probe of his world-class, nefarious use of dark money. That could have gotten ugly.

There is some speculation that the Tisaby indictment is intended to get to Gardner — his attorney, Jermaine Wooten, said as much last week — but my sources tell me that since she was never under oath herself, it’s unlikely that Gardner would personally face charges related to the investigation. In any event, given the resentment in the African American community to the continued attacks on Gardner, indicting her would make race relations significantly worse than they already are, which is saying something.

Not a great plan.

Conversely, there’s much to question about the probe itself. At best, the optics are awful: Gerard Carmody, the special prosecutor named by Judge Michael Mullen to handle the investigation, was Dowd’s childhood friend and former law partner. Presumably that violates no law, but how, if I might inquire as a layperson, is

In retrospect, Gardner’s move to prosecute was helpful to the Republicans, but not essential. They were going to take Greitens out politically even had she not acted. that possibly OK? And then there’s Gardner’s claim that Greitens’ lawyers threatened her with career ruin if she proceeded with the case. She’s wondering why there’s no special prosecutor looking into that.

Maybe she should nominate one of her former law partners for the task.

That said, here’s my vote for no more lawyer fights, in either direction.This story ended a long time ago for most of us, the day that Eric Greitens, the star of the show, was written off the script. And if you really can’t get enough of this stuff, I’ve got a radical thought: Work on the next election.

Presuming that Gardner is not run out of office by the legal system — and she’s certainly not going to resign — the next chance her foes will have to remove her as circuit attorney is August 4, 2020, the date of the Democratic primary that’s essentially a general election, given the extinction of Republicans in the city. If anything, the ongoing efforts to torment her will likely serve to galvanize support for her in the African American community, which helped her win 47 percent of the vote in a four-way race last time.

That would be ironic. But I still don’t find this anywhere near as interesting as the clash of the disrupters.

Eric Greitens 2: The Tisaby Chronicles is just another boring sequel. n Ray Hartmann founded the Riverfront Times in 1977. Contact him at rhartmann@sbcglobal.net or catch him on St. Louis In the Know With Ray Hartmann and Jay Kanzler from 9 to 11 p.m.

Monday thru Friday on KTRS (550 AM).

NEWS

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Old Slur Comes Back to Haunt Edwards Written by

DOYLE MURPHY

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ack when he was a judge, St. Louis Public Safety Director Jimmie Edwards used a homophobic slur to chastise a rapist at sentencing, a newly resurfaced transcript shows.

The defendant in the 2005 case, Anthony Carroll, had been found guilty of robbing and sodomizing his victim at gunpoint. In emotional testimony, the victim recalled how Carroll repeatedly called him a “faggot,” telling the man he deserved what was happening to him. The man testified that Carroll warned him not to tell anyone about the forced oral and anal sex, because “he would kill me because he didn’t want anyone to know he was a fag like me.”

At sentencing, Edwards — then a St. Louis Circuit Court judge — kept his comments brief. But the language was shocking: Mr. Carroll, during the trial, I was baffled during crossexamination. The prosecutor asked you whether you were a homosexual and you were upset. You told him no. I believe your words were you were not a fag. I’ve consulted some of my friends that are homosexuals and they want me to let you know, whether or not you’re the giver or the givee, if you have forced a heterosexual man to suck your penis and you’re so gratified that you take him and put him in the bed and have anal sex with him, you are a fag.

Edwards then sentenced Carroll, who was 40 at the time, to 160 years in prison. The 54-yearold is currently serving his term at Southeast Correctional Center in Charleston.

In an interview on June 19, Edwards apologized for using the

St. Louis Public Safety Director Jimmie Edwards says he regrets using a gay slur when he was a judge. | DOYLE MURPHY slur, describing it as “unfortunate and definitely inappropriate.” He says he was upset by what Carroll had done and chose his words poorly.

“I thought what he did was terrible,” Edwards says. “I think today, I absolutely would not use the word, but it was a word the defendant had used. I repeated the word the defendant had used.”

He insists it is not a word he uses, and only used it then in the context of the case.

He says his track record, which includes overseeing the first adoptions to same-sex couples in the state and becoming the first udge in the city to perform same-sex marriages, demonstrates his respect for the LGBTQ community.

Even so, the fourteen-year-old transcript is now coming back to haunt the former judge as he takes a lead role in navigating separate scandals within the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, which he oversees.

Earlier this month, a Philadelphia organization called the Plain View Project released screenshots of bigoted and otherwise disturbing Facebook posts made by dozens of former and current police officers in St. ouis. The department was one of eight across the country targeted by the project.

In response, Edwards and Mayor Lyda Krewson have promised

a thorough investigation, as well as sensitivity training. Activists had hoped for something more decisive from city leaders (and the city’s circuit attorney, Kim Gardner, has forced their hand a bit by saying she’ll no longer accept cases from those officers .

In recent days, the transcript from Carroll’s trial began to circulate online with an excerpt of Edwards’ statement. On Instagram, the Close the Workhouse organization — a group dedicated to shutting down the city’s notorious Medium Security Institution — posted screenshots of the police officers’ Facebook posts followed by the excerpt of the 2005 transcript.

Saint ouis, These are the officers making the arrests that land people in the Workhouse,” the post read. “And this is the person giving them sensitivity training.”

Edwards says he has shown himself throughout his career to be unbiased and there should be no concerns regarding the investigation into the officers’ posts.

Krewson released a statement defending Edwards: “This is something that Judge Edwards is addressing. As I understand it, the comment was made as part of a sentencing hearing sixteen years ago. I know Judge Edwards as a very fair-minded, impartial person. ... His actions in support of the LGBTQIA community support

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his fair and impartial nature.”

The public safety director and mayor have worked in recent weeks to persuade Pride St. Louis to reverse a decision to ban uniformed cops from marching in this year’s Pride Parade. The organization had originally said it was dropping officers from the celebration to honor the Stonewall riots, an uprising that began when New York City cops raided the famed gay bar and fed-up patrons fought back.

Last week, Edwards and Krewson held a news conference with Pride members at City Hall to announce uniformed officers would be allowed to march after all. any of our police officers in the city of St. Louis will fall into the category of LGBTQI-plus and some in the trans community,” Edwards said during the news conference. “We support our police officers, and am elated that they will have the opportunity to participate in uniform.”

On a post about the announcement on Pride’s Facebook page, the comments were peppered with the image of the transcript excerpt.

Edwards says he is taking responsibility for what he now describes as an error in judgment. f you make a mistake fifteen years ago, or however long ago it was, you ought to apologize,” he says. n

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No Arrests?

Not Quite

State Drops Pelvic Exam Push as Abortion Fight Rages

Written by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

A

fter the St. Louis Blues’ Stanley Cup win, the fact that the city didn’t (as the Onion had predicted burn it all down and finally end it became a point of local pride. The police announced that not a single arrest had been necessary in the dizzying aftermath of Game 7. In the words of o T , olice say there were no arrest reports filed last night for any unruly behavior from Blues fans.”

It was a feel-good story. It was also not entirely accurate.

On the same day Fox 2 published the police’s statement touting the absence of arrests, Riverfront Times reported on the heroic tale of Blues fan Justin Poole, who shouted “protect the cup!” as he was arrested near his seat and cited for trespassing at the massive Stanley Cup watch party in Busch Stadium.

And we later learned that, on that same night, police cited a second Blues fan. Andrew Bobbitt had similarly been singled out by a Busch Stadium usher that night and arrested.

Asked about the discrepancy, St. Louis police spokeswoman Evita aldwell confirmed that both Poole and Bobbitt had been arrested by off duty officers working as security at Busch Stadium.

“In both incidents,” Caldwell wrote, officers working secondary at Busch Stadium during Game 7 attempted to escort the individuals out of the ballpark due to ‘unruly behavior.’ However, both individuals refused to leave when asked and were then summonsed and released for trespassing.”

When asked if there were other summonses or arrests from the Stanley Cup festivities, Caldwell responded, “This is all I have for June 12,” indicating that these two cases represent the total crime activity that night.

That the RFT has somehow identified the only two arrests made amid thousands of drunk and celebrating fans seems ... improbable. But sure, maybe we are that good at our jobs. And maybe St. Louis is just that law-abiding?

Either way, the two incidents do show some similarities.

In Poole’s case, the fan said his arrest occurred about fifteen min-

Written by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

Hockey fans filled Busch Stadium to watch the Blues beat the Bruins in Boston. | KATIE COUNTS utes after the end of the game. He was celebrating with some gusto when an usher told him to leave, which prompted resistance from Poole. He told RFT that the usher directed police to kick him out even though other people remained in the stadium around him.

As for Bobbitt, his citation came during the game’s first period. His girlfriend, Emily Schroeder, who attended the game with him, says an usher abruptly targeted the couple for expulsion. She says it was an aggravating, and at times terrifying, experience.

That’s because Schroeder has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic disorder that, among other things, causes her joints to be easily dislocated by physical contact or movement.

“My disability is invisible, you can’t see it just looking at me,” says Schroeder.

According to Schroeder, she and her boyfriend were instructed to move to a new section as the rain began to pour down during the beginning of the game. When the weather cleared up, ushers ordered the fans to move back, but Schroeder says the fans were more interested in watching the game than moving quickly. So the usher summoned the cops.

“Everybody started to leave,” she says, “and normally I need help getting up and stuff. I didn’t want to hold everybody up. Everyone was pushing and rushing, and I didn’t want to fall.”

When Schroeder and Bobbitt started to get up, the usher pointed them out to the officers, saying, according to Schroeder, “These two want to talk to the cops.” She says she tried to return to her seat, but an officer yelled at the

couple and grabbed her arm and said they were being thrown out.

It didn’t seem fair to Schroeder.

“There was over 300 people who had moved and sat there — we were the only ones who got in trouble,” she alleges.

The officers, Schroeder says, didn’t want to listen to her explanations about her disability. At one point, she says, a cop punched a cup of soda out of Bobbitt’s hand after he’d shouted at an officer trying to grab her.

After Bobbitt’s arrest, she asked for a wheelchair to navigate the distance out of the stadium. She says the officers laughed at her.

“A cop was trying to grab my arm and try to walk me, and I was like, ‘Please don’t touch me, you’re going to dislocate my shoulder,’” she says. “If I had a neck brace or a cane, they would have left me alone. Because they didn’t see my disability they thought I was lying.”

By the time Bobbitt was released, the couple had missed the rest of the game. Schroeder says neither she nor Bobbitt, who is eighteen, were drinking or being unruly. She says she doesn’t know why the usher or officers were so intent on kicking them out.

“They would not listen to anything,” she suggests. “They were more concerned about the Blues game.”

For Schroeder, missing most of Game 7 left a sour taste. As for Poole, well, at least he got some viral fame out of it.

For the rest of us, it’s unarguably good that St. Louis didn’t get put to the torch by sports fans. But don’t say there were no arrests.

St. Louis may be good, but we’re simply not that good. n

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issouri’s top health official says that Planned Parenthood will no longer be required to perform pelvic exams on women 72 hours before they get an abortion, which had been coupled with a second pelvic exam on the day of the procedure. It’s a requirement that M’Evie Mead, the director of Parenthood Advocates of Missouri, called “state-mandated sexual assault” at a press conference Friday.

Mead credited “tremendous outrage and criticism from the medical community” for the change.

Last week, CBS News broke the news that Planned Parenthood doctors would defy the state regulation, which meant women seeking abortions were actually subjected to two pelvic exams: one at the time of the state-mandated “informed consent” meeting, and the other 72 hours later.

The state’s policy, Mead said, had “harmed over 100 women” who underwent the two pelvic exams at Planned Parenthood before doctors there concluded that it was unethical to continue adhering to the state regulation.

Now, the state is giving in.

“For that reason,” Mead said on Friday, “today is a win for women.”

Mead’s remarks followed a court hearing in St. Louis, the latest in the pitched legal battle over the fate of Missouri’s last operating abortion clinic.

While the clinic remains open on judge’s orders, that’s only temporary. Also on Friday, the Department of Health and Senior Services, or HSS, finally formally denied the clinic’s abortion license. t was a move health officials had initially resisted, opting to simply let the license expire.

But that didn’t cut it with St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Michael Stelzer, who on June 10 ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood, granting a preliminary injunction

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M’Evie Mead, director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Missouri. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI

PELVIC EXAM

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that allowed the clinic to continue providing abortions even after its license technically expired. Stelzer also order DHSS to issue a decision one way or another by last Friday.

After that denial, on Monday, Judge Stelzer ordered Planned Parenthood to take its case to the state’s Administrative Hearing Commission. The ruling came with yet another extension to the injunction, thus preserving Planned Parenthood’s abortion license until June 28. And the hearing commission’s decision will almost certainly be appealed, taking the case back to Judge Stelzer.

For now, though, Planned Parenthood has its victory on the pelvic exam front. After last Friday’s court hearing, DHSS director Randall Williams held a press conference of his own in Jefferson City. He referenced the department’s claim of deficiencies on lanned arenthood’s part, including one patient who required three abortions in three days before the procedure took. Another woman was found to still be pregnant five weeks after obtaining an abortion.

Williams noted that such “failed abortions” are very rare. They, among other cases uncovered by the department’s investigation, required the state to deny the clinic’s abortion license, he claimed.

“We feel we have a duty to prevent future harm,” he said, “and to make sure there’s nothing systemically going on.”

On the issue of pelvic exams, Williams said the state require-

ment dated back to a 1988 law.

However, after the Missouri legislature mandated waiting periods, “the requirement for [the pelvic e am moved with them, first to 24 hours, and then 72 hours before the abortion.

“Planned Parenthood chooses to do their pelvic exam on the day of surgery. That is not what is normally done,” alleged Williams, who is also a licensed OB/GYN. He suggested that if Planned Parenthood had simply done its exams three days before any given abortion, the state wouldn’t have objected: “There’s never been a law that you have to have two [pelvic] exams.” But since Planned Parenthood did the exam the day of, the state had required one during the consent period as well.

Williams conceded that he is “sensitive” to concerns that it is burdensome to put patients through two pelvic exams. That’s why, he said, the department is issuing an emergency order to allow the clinic to defer the pelvic exam to the day of the procedure, as long as doctors “using their clinical judgement think there is a medical reason to do that.”

However, in Planned Parenthood’s estimation, illiams is flat wrong on the necessity of a pelvic exam days before a procedure.

“There’s no medical relevance to that,” said Planned Parenthood spokesman Jesse Lawder on Friday. “We do it right before the procedure. That’s when you find out how to proceed. The body organs shift, so doing it three days out, we would still have to do it again. That’s how we got to two pelvic exams.” n

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ILLUSTRATION BY EVAN SULT

ave Ziegler is white.

Like the majority of people in the St. Louis area, he lives in a neighborhood and attends a church where most everyone looks like him. He held jobs where most everyone looked like him. And he never thought much about it.

“When I was in high school and college, it was the civil rights movement,” says Ziegler, 74. “I knew about that but didn’t worry about it, because it didn’t affect me.”

He got married, had children, worked, retired.

Last fall, he heard about a book discussion group centered on race and racism — through the perspective of white folks. A section would be meeting at his south St. Louis County church. His daughter encouraged him to sign up with her.

“I thought I might as well try it and learn something new. I had never done anything on race before,” Ziegler says.

The Witnessing Whiteness group at Mary, Mother of the Church is one of eleven in the St. ouis area that started in anuary, each with fifteen to 25 participants and three facilitators. By design, everyone is white.

The program itself stems from a 2007 book of the same name written by a white woman, Shelly Tochluk. A black woman, Amy Hunter, conceived the discussion group two years later when she was the racial justice director at YWCA Metro St. Louis.

“I read about 35 books before deciding on Witnessing Whiteness,” says Hunter.

Each YWCA in the United States is required to have a “hallmark” program around racial justice. Hunter had looked at ones for cross-racial groups and concluded they weren’t working. She decided a “racial affinity group of only white people would be more successful. veryone has work to do on racial issues, she said, but white people and people of color are coming from different spaces.

“People of color are fatigued of doing all the teaching in these sessions. White people were sitting back and listening and learning, and it wasn’t fair,” says Hunter. She adds, “White people gave me the most challenges on why it wouldn’t work; they thought white people would need people of color in a room.”

That was, in fact, what iegler thought when he first signed up for itnessing Whiteness. But once the sessions started, he realized that he felt Continued on pg 16

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WHITE ON WHITE Continued from pg 15

more comfortable discussing difficult topics when he wasn’t worried that he might unintentionally hurt or offend someone.

The YWCA hosts separate groups for people of color, with different objectives, often centered on overcoming trauma and oppression.

Occasionally, black people have asked about joining Witnessing Whiteness; the YWCA provides them the rationale for its affinity grouping and points them to programs such as the black-only Sister Circles, the organization says.

Hunter structured Witnessing Whiteness so each session focuses on a chapter in Tochluk’s book.

But the program is not a traditional book club. There are no discussions of character development or literary merit. Instead, participants form what Hunter calls a “collectivist culture.” You can’t get kicked out for saying the wrong thing. Everyone assumes good intentions. Everyone contributes.

“In white communities and white culture, the patterns are to be an individual rather than a communal and a collective,” says Hunter. This group flies in the face of that … it’s creating a loving environment where people can grow and connect with each other. Instead of this being a book club, people can come and grow and contribute.”

FEW RESOURCES

T

ochluk, a professor of education at Mount St. Mary’s University-Los Angeles, didn’t anticipate any specific paradigm coming out of Witnessing Whiteness when she wrote it twelve years ago. She had completed a dissertation on white identity in relation to people of color and cross-racial relationships. She found a few resources when she was doing research, but not many.

Her book is divided into three sections: racial history and background, interracial friendships and self-examination and a call to action.

“All white people have a role in confronting racism,” says Tochluk.

“There is a targeted, purposeful intent to twist racially conscious work into something negative instead of recognizing that ‘colorblindness’ has contributed to ongoing systemic racism.”

Any publicity around the book, she says, unleashes a renewed surge in hate mail. “For people

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Dave Ziegler “had never done anything on race” before joining a Witnessing Whiteness class. | THEO WELLING

who don’t really understand, there is a fear that work like this is meant to make people feel like they’re not good people. But that’s not it at all.

“It’s not about shame and guilt.

It’s meant to make people feel more effective about doing something about a problem.”

It took Ziegler, of the Mary Mother cohort, a few sessions to get to that point. t first, didn’t really like what

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I was reading,” he says. “Because most of the stuff made me feel bad to be a white person.”

Early on, the book outlines how social and economic systems were built to benefit a white, middle class population.

“They say ‘white privilege,’ and at first, didn’t like that term because we don’t have a choice of who our parents are, and I thought it was really harsh that they call it privilege,” Ziegler says. “But as

I read, I realized that I have a lot of privileges that a person of color doesn’t have because of my skin.”

FRAUGHT CONCEPTS

W

hite privilege isn’t the only concept that can be difficult to swallow for those who grew up with the understanding that racial Continued on pg 17

biases that we all have may not be challenged in an all-white group unless the facilitators or members challenge it.

“It’s how it’s carried out, how it’s implemented and how challenges are addressed.”

One challenge Ross notes is that white people tend to self-segregate in their daily lives as it is. “If they just continue in that loop, it won’t help their interactions with people of color,” she says.

But it can be a start.

WHITE ON WHITE Continued from pg 16

segregation is wrong and that skin color should have no bearing on access to any activity or endeavor.

In the Jim Crow era, “whites only” designations were instituted to ensure that white people retained their position of power and privilege. In groups such as Witnessing Whiteness, the goal is the opposite.

But the execution can be fraught.

Last fall, the University of Maryland’s counseling center formed a racial affinity student group.

Initially called White Awake, it received national media attention for a flier advertising it as a safe space for White students to explore their experiences, questions, reactions and feelings” around “interactions with racial and ethnic minorities.”

After a backlash, the university gave a statement to the Baltimore Sun saying the group was based on research and best practices with the intent of helping “White students become more culturally competent, so they can better participate in creating a more inclusive environment.” But the name was changed, to the Anti-Racism and Ally Building Group, and the flier discontinued.

Witnessing Whiteness has also received pushback.

When Webster University made plans this year to host a group on its campus, the Kansas City Star’s editorial board recoiled. “The optics of a whites-only space, no matter the motivation behind it, are terrible,” it wrote in February.

“The term ‘whites only’ dredges up our not-too-distant history, which included Jim Crow laws that inflicted state sanctioned segregation and myriad other injustices on minorities in our country.”

Susan B. Wilson, vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, told the daily that it’s important to have a space to learn about racial issues. But she balked at leaving some people out based on race.

“Exclusion is the opposite of inclusion and sends the wrong message,” Wilson, who is black, told the newspaper.

The messaging is what can make or break a group that uses the affinity model, says andy Ross, who has worked as an equity consultant for educators since the 1970s.

“I would say it’s a good model and a good approach to start out with, but there are some caveats built into that,” she says. “Implicit

GROWING PARTICIPATION

Storyteller and actress Alicia Revé Like engages attendees at a We Stories session. | COLLEEN SCHRAPPEN

“There is a fear that work like this is meant to make people feel like they’re not good people. But that’s not it at all. It’s not about shame and guilt. It’s meant to make people feel more effective about doing something about a problem.”

As the YWCA’s racial justice director, Mary Ferguson wrote a lengthy guide for Witnessing Whiteness classes. | THEO WELLING

In each of the ten Witnessing Whiteness sessions in the local YWCA’s program, participants spend the first hour discussing and reflecting on a chapter, in large and small groups, through “listening pairs” and by journaling. The second hour is activity-based.

Facilitators choose the activities from a 150-page guide created by Mary Ferguson, who took over for Hunter as the St. Louis YWCA’s racial justice director in 2016.

For Chapter 3, “Uncovering a Hidden History,” participants might share biographies of white anti-racist activists such as Elijah Lovejoy and Jane Elliott, or outline the parallels between past practices, like redlining or naturalization laws, and current ones.

Ferguson wrote the manual to provide parameters for the pool of what is now more than 100 facilitators, a group that mushroomed in the wake of Michael Brown’s 2014 death and the ensuing protests. hen the program first started in 2009, one group met at a time.

When it wrapped up, another would start. After word spread and demand spiked, Ferguson implemented a schedule. Groups now run from January to May and August to December. More than 3,500 people in the region have now participated in Witnessing Whiteness. lmost five years after rown’s death, Ferguson attributes the continued growth to “local and national reinforcement. Everything has echoed what was happening here, all of the spoken and unspoken ways that race is included in political and social events.”

White people hear about disparities — police shootings, immigration policies, incarceration rates — and they want to understand what’s going on, she says.

The St. Louis YWCA uses a “spiral” model that allows Witnessing Whiteness to grow with little funding. Participants buy their Continued on pg 18

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WHITE ON WHITE Continued from pg 17

own books, but there are no other costs. At the end of the session, anyone who is interested can attend a daylong training to become a facilitator.

That’s what Lexie Walsh, 27, did after participating two years ago.

A Philadelphia transplant, Walsh heard about the program while at Washington University. She said she wanted to learn more about how being white affected her personally and how it influenced the systems she lives and works in.

Walsh, of Tower Grove South, just wrapped up her third session as a facilitator. It’s not always a linear process toward racial awareness, she says. It can be humbling.

“You don’t know what you don’t know. People come in knowing stereotyping is bad, that individual acts of racism are wrong,” she says. But coming to terms with the racism that is manifest in housing, government, education and labor “can be an emotional process of working through the weeds.”

RIPPLE EFFECTS

T

he book concludes with suggestions for taking action.

And though some people drop off after the program, many others take up the antiracism mantle, says the YWCA’s Ferguson.

Amy Hunter devised the Witnessing Whiteness program for the St. Louis YWCA. | THEO WELLING

“White people were concerned with the specifics surrounding Michael Brown’s death, while black people were focused on the root causes of the Ferguson movement. To take that thinking down to the family level: We’re not even talking about the same thing in our homes.”

Lexie Walsh graduated from the YWCA’s program and now serves as a facilitator. | THEO WELLING

“I want people to advocate or come up with new solutions,” she says. “But I don’t want to discount smaller, personal things.”

Like being deliberate in how you raise your children.

Laura Horwitz, 37, of Clayton, participated in Witnessing Whiteness in 2015. She had moved back to her hometown the year before and connected with Adelaide Lancaster, 39, another East Coast transplant with young children and a background in community building.

Horwitz, the mother of two, says she was trying to figure out her role amid the tension following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a white police officer. ike many folks, she noticed that white and black people didn’t view that flashpoint in the same way.

“White people were concerned with the specifics surrounding Michael Brown’s death, while black people were focused on the root causes of the Ferguson movement,” says Horwitz. “To take that thinking down to the family level: We’re not even talking about the same thing in our homes.” Many white families never discuss race with their children. For families of color, ignoring it is not an option, she says.

Lancaster, who has three kids and lives in Webster Groves, says she and Horwit wanted to figure out a way to make conversations about race more natural for white families.

Books would be the conduit.

Horwitz and Lancaster’s project, e Stories, became an official nonprofit in . The two women combed through lists of diverse children’s stories, reading and discussing them with their own kids.

They tapped experts such as Kira Banks, a professor of psychology at Saint Louis University and the host of a podcast called Raising Equity.

Banks, who is black, says that many white parents were raised thinking there was a simple solution: “Treat everyone as an individual and be colorblind, and it will solve the problem. It won’t.”

Research has found that babies as young as six months notice differences in skin color, and racial bias begins to solidify by age seven — even when the adults in their lives do not exhibit racial biases.

Using books to spark conversation lets “white families increase their comfort level around topics such as race and difference,” says Banks. “Being a white anti-racist person takes work. You need internal reflection and to be comfortable in your own skin.”

Continued on pg 19

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WHITE ON WHITE Continued from pg 18

At We Stories, that work comes via four children’s books and an online curriculum. Parents are prompted to ask questions about what their children notice in the books and in their own lives. They can turn to a Facebook group for advice and support. n its first three years, families have joined a We Stories cohort. The families are mostly white, though about fifteen percent identify as multiracial. The nonprofit hosts parent workshops and town halls throughout each session and invites its previous participants to join new alums at a wrap-up event.

DEFINING PREJUDICE

A

t City Garden Montessori in the Shaw neighborhood, We Stories’ twelfth cohort comes together on a Sunday afternoon in March to listen to a few more books.

“The theme of today is what comes next,” Lancaster says, following a rousing guitar singalong in the elementary school’s multipurpose room.

Students like five-year-old Theo, left, get a new perspective at We Stories. | COLLEEN SCHRAPPEN The 50 or so families disperse: toddlers and their parents to the gym to page through board books and play with baby dolls of various hues, while herds of preschoolers move into classrooms for a storycentered activity, their parents left to themselves for some adult

discussion.

In one classroom, about a dozen four- to six-year-olds listen to Mae Among the Stars, a picture book about a young Mae Jemison, the first female frican merican to travel into space.

Volunteer Beth Doht explains

the word prejudice to the exuberant crew as they blurt out what it might mean, “how our outsides don’t always tell us about our insides.” Then they get to work crafting self-portraits on paper plates, carefully examining each Continued on pg 21

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WHITE ON WHITE Continued from pg 19

Crayola Multicultural crayon to find ust the right shade.

Meanwhile, Mary Lamboley of St. Louis County sits at a table with other parents, trading advice about how to answer kids’ questions about race, where to find information and how to diversify friendship groups.

Lamboley talks about reading her son his favorite book, a story about a police officer, over and over before realizing that every character in it is white.

“He would see black people and say, ‘That’s a scary person.’ I didn’t realize I was perpetuating those beliefs by where I lived, what I read, our habits and patterns,” she says. Growing up, “race was basically about ‘what are we going to do about those poor kids in Africa?’”

Lamboley knew she needed to learn more. She went through Witnessing Whiteness and became a facilitator. We Stories helped her find ways to name and celebrate differences with her son, she says.

And it was also about the fun of discovering new favorite books.

Her son, Theo, skips over to the table, helps himself to a bag of popcorn and snuggles into his mom’s lap. The five year old, a NASA fan wearing a sweatshirt printed with astronauts, tells his mom the best part of the story he heard was when Mae rocketed into space.

ready spoken to the YWCA’s Ferguson and We Stories’ Horwitz, members of Educators for Social Justice and an early childhood group.

They want to get it right before launching a pilot in the fall.

“We welcome all feedback, especially the stuff that’s hard to hear,” Morgan, 43, tells the group.

The four-part curriculum begins by looking at artwork and poetry by people of color, such as Cbabi Bayoc, a St. Louis artist and illustrator.

One teacher suggests using paint samples for a lesson on skin tones. Another questions whether

children will know what “mottled” means.

At the next meeting, they plan to dive into history lessons, from before enslavement through the civil rights movement, acts of oppression and resistance, the Trail of Tears, the Harlem Renaissance and Japanese internment. It’s a history many white children don’t know, Morgan says.

The hefty topics are necessary, says Kelly, 50, who is a Witnessing Whiteness alum. “I felt like I had gotten so much from being in a group with white people and I wanted to do that for children.

“Our ultimate goal is that the

white children who have participated in the Community Conversations will feel comfortable in engaging in these conversations with people of color. We hope it leads to action in anti-racist ways.”

That action can take many forms, says Hunter, the program founder. It’s voting. Speaking up.

Being thoughtful about where you spend your money. Advocating at your school or workplace.

“The truth is still a struggle, but ’m over oyed at the infinite possibilities,” she says of her decade-long program. “I hope more things ripple off of it. There’s so much work to do.” n

DEVELOPING CURRICULUM

O

n a different weekend in March, eight educators convene in the Creve Coeur home of Angela Kelly, a reading specialist in the Ladue School District.

Kelly and Rachel Morgan, who works at the Children’s Community Microschool, have gathered teachers for their inaugural advisory session to evaluate a prospective Community Conversations curriculum.

The two women have spent the past eighteen months compiling resources to help white thirdthrough eighth-graders learn about the history and implications of race in the U.S. They wrote it to adapt to multiple settings, including after-school groups, church and community organizations or even regular classrooms.

The advisory group combed through lessons on identity, but they weren’t the first to provide input. Kelly and Morgan had al-

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CALENDAR

BY

BY PAUL PAUL FRISWOLD FRISWOLD

THURSDAY 06/27 Birth of a Nation Almost 50 years before Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton explored the lives and personality clashes of the founding fathers, Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone took up the sub ect of these legendary figures in their musical 1776. The Continental Congress is locked up trying to decide the matter of American independence, and personal concerns among the delegates are only increasing after a year’s worth of meetings. John Adams, the irascible Massachusetts delegate, believes independence is the only choice worth debating, but everyone else is sick of him talking. His friend Benjamin Franklin suggests using a more likable man as his proxy might yield better results. Virginia’s Richard Henry Lee might just be the man. But when the Congress determines that a unanimous vote is necessary to approve independence, Adams has to do more bargaining and sweet talking than he would like. 1776 shows the difficult birth of a nation, and the difficult men who fought their way clear to a bouncing, baby country.

The Muny in Forest Park (www. muny.org) presents 1776 at 8:15 p.m. Thursday through Wednesday (June 27 to July 3). Tickets are $15 to $105.

FRIDAY 06/28 Play Sampler A sizable chunk of St. Louis’ robust theater scene will be stationed in Grand Center (North Grand and Lindell boulevards) this weekend for the Grand Center Theatre Crawl. This pop-up theater experience presents short shows ranging from the classics to freestyle operas at venues both traditional (the Kranzberg Arts Center) and unusual (Miss M’s Candy Boutique). Participating companies include St. Louis Shakespeare, Gateway Opera and Midnight Company (which will be performing a new play, Patient #47, about a dying man and his caregiver). Sessions start at 7 p.m. Friday and 2 or 7 p.m. Sat-

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urday (June 28 and 29), and not all plays are presented at each session. Visit www.stlpublicradio.org for the full schedule and synopses of each show.

Women’s Revolution Playwright Olympe de Gouges has revolution on her mind. Not the kind that’s sweeping late eighteenth-century France, however; she has bigger plans than guillotines can solve.

Olympe wants both the end of slavery and equality for women.

She’s joined by Marie Antoinette, who mainly has survival on her mind, and Charlotte Corday, the woman who killed revolutionary thinker Jean-Paul Marat. Olympe’s friend, Marianne, joins the Jumping Bean was a big hit at last year’s Urban Wanderers. | ARLEANA HOLTZMANN/COURTESY OF STRAY RESCUE three women to discuss what it really takes for a woman to be revolutionary in this a long way in a half-century, but grow in si e and influence. The troubled time. Lauren Gunder- the fight isn’t over. This year’s fes- community-centric celebration of son’s play The Revolutionists tival takes place from 11 a.m. to LGBTQ+ (and allied) people takes mi es historical figures with fic- 7 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 place from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sattional characters to comment on p.m. Sunday (June 29 and 30) at urday, June 29, at Tower Grove our regressive culture and its short Soldiers Memorial (1315 Chestnut Park (4256 Magnolia Avenue; attention span. Insight Theatre Street; www.pridestl.org) and fea- www.towergrovepride.com), and Company presents The Revolution- tures vendors, interfaith celebra- the emphasis is on people and ists at 8 p.m. Thursday through tions, special areas for families the neighborhood. There will be Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday (June with children and a designated games (both yard and carnival), 28 to July 14; no show on July 4) at area for the 25-and-younger more than 250 vendors, local the Marcelle Theater (3310 Samuel crowd to hang out. There’s also bands (including the Asia Major, Shepard Drive; www.insightthe- a full schedule of live entertain- KG Lang and Party McFly) and an atrecompany.com). Tickets are $20 ment, with Swedish duo Icona Pop estimated 10,000 people under the to $40. and Taylor Dane headlining on leafy trees of one of the city’s best Friday and Saturday, respectively. parks. Admission to Tower Grove And don’t miss the grand parade, Pride is free. which starts at noon on Sunday.

It’s gonna be big — an estimated 300,000 people attended last year, and this year may break that re- Stray Rescue and its staff of emcord. Admission to PrideFest is ployees and volunteers do a free, but if you can spare $5 (or great deal of work rescuing and It’s a year of nice round numbers more), donate at the gate and help re-homing dogs, cats and select farm animals, and they do it yearfor PrideFest, which celebrates defray the costs of the festival. round. It takes more money than 40 years of increasingly larger you think to get treatment, feed parties in the name of LGBTQ+ and care for the creatures in their visibility and pride, while also care, and bake sales and fundraiscommemorating the 50th anniing appeals only go so far. That’s versary of the Stonewall riots.

The LGBTQ+ movement has come Tower Grove Pride continues to why the shelter’s Urban Wander-

SATURDAY 06/29 40 Years of Parties

JUNE 26-JULY 2, 2019

Artful Doggies

Party for the People

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WEEK WEEK OF OF JUNE JUNE 27-JULY 27-JULY 33

Shizuku looks for purpose and finds love in Whisper of the Heart. | STUDIO GHIBLI/FATHOM EVENTS

Do Donuts

Pridefest celebrates 40 years of family downtown this weekend. | THEO WELLING ers fundraiser is crucial to Stray Rescue’s mission. This art show and auction features art inspired by the stories and faces of numerous rescued animals. Each piece in the show captures the essence of a dog or cat who was saved from dire circumstances and now needs a home. If one of the pieces moves you and you’re the highest bidder, you go home with that art-

work. Of course, you could always adopt an animal to go with your new painting; it’s not required, but should prove very rewarding.

This year’s Urban Wanderers art auction takes place from 7 to 11 p.m. Saturday, June 29, at the Four Seasons Hotel (999 North Second Street; www.strayrescue.org/uw).

Admission is free.

If you’ve ever wanted to burn your breakfast calories even while you’re eating them, St. Louis Tour D’ONut 2019 is the event for you. With wheels spinning along the city pavement and doughnuts circling around their stomaches, cyclists will be taking a trip to five independently owned doughnut shops in one morning. Tour D’ONut will commence at 8 a.m. on Saturday, June 29, in Sublette Park (5701 Arsenal Street) and end around noon. The noncompetitive “bakery-themed take on a bar crawl,” as described by co-organizer Matt Menietti, features stops at five local shops: O’Fashion Donuts, World’s Fair Donuts, Vincent Van Doughnut, Pharoah’s Donuts and John’s Donuts. The event is a reboot of one that lasted several years, starting in 2011. (Tour D’ONut is not related to the long-running Tour de Donut held in Staunton, Illinois.)

Triathlete and doughnut enthusiast Menietti says he had a great time at the previous events and, after completing a Whole30 diet, decided to reboot it alongside coorganizers Ted Floros and Grace Kyung. “I probably cycle to make up for all the carbs I’m eating,” Menietti says. He also hopes to

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bring business to local doughnut shops. While people might love doughnuts from supermarkets like Schnucks, and Menietti says they do a pretty good job, he thinks the smaller shops get overlooked. And while the RFT once lazily took a drive around St. Louis’ doughnut scene, the D’ONut route, just under a “manageable” fifteen miles, is intended to be doable for “the average biker,” balancing advanced and casual cyclists alike, he says. “We’re not planning on going at a snail’s pace, but we’re not going to go too fast either — knowing that people will take some time to actually stop at the actual store,” he adds. Attendees are encouraged to wear doughnut-themed apparel, with prizes available for those that get into the glazed, doughy spirit. Regardless, the event is looking to attract “people who enjoy biking or doughnuts or both.” Perhaps you might buy some PEDs: performance-enhancing doughnuts.

—James Pollard

MONDAY 07/01 An Animated Romance Shizuku is a fairly typical fourteenyear-old girl. She loves reading and she thinks sometimes about being a writer, but she’s not really certain what she wants to do. When Shizuku notices that every book she’s checked out from the library has previously been borrowed by the same person, she resolves to find and meet this Sei i. espite a rough first meeting, Shi uku soon admires him for both his dream of becoming a great violin maker and his doubts about his own skill.

When Seiji leaves for an apprenticeship in Italy, Shizuku resolves to complete a project of her own: She’ll come up with and complete an original story. Studio Ghibli’s Whisper of the Heart is the rare teen romance that is both romantic and tender. Fathom Events presents Whisper of the Heart at 7 p.m. Monday and Tuesday (July 1 and 2) at the Marcus Ronnies Cine (5320 South Lindbergh Boulevard; www.fathomevents.com). Tickets are $13.47. n

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FILM [REVIEW]

The Criminal Virtues Denys Arcand’s crime story is a fable about financial inequity and oppression Written by

ROBERT HUNT The Fall of the American Empire Written and directed by Denys Arcand.

Starring Alexandre Landry, Rémy Girard and Maripier Morin. Opens Friday, June 28, at the Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

W

ith its portentous title and a story that skirts a handful of different genres, Denys Arcand’s The Fall of the American Empire is a remarkably civil comedy, a film that pits bad behavior against good intentions and criminal actions against an almost naïve faith in humanity. t’s a sly, subtle film, managing to pass through elements of a contemporary gangster film, a police procedural, a heist story and a romantic comedy even while rarely raising its voice.

It’s a busy narrative, with enough twists and digressions to fill at least half a do en episodes of a typical TV cop show, but so underplayed that you can almost forget the threat of violence lingering in the background. A gangrelated robbery in a strip mall ends with two men dead and a third on the run. Pierre-Paul (Alexandre Landry), who has a Ph.D in philosophy and a dead-end job as a delivery truck driver, pulls into the parking lot ust as the fleeing robber drops the bags of loot.

Almost without thinking. Pierre stashes the bags in his truck. With both the mob and the police on his trail, he enlists a gri led e con and Montreal’s highest paid escort (Maripier Morin) to help him elude his pursuers without compromising his naively idealistic sense of morality.

Arcand splits the genre threads by taking the film into two radically different directions. At times it resembles the conversational

Alexandre Landry and Maripier Morin are an unlikely pair of criminals. | SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

and moral investigations of Éric Rohmer, with a talky but not entirely grounded hero who can freely quote philosophy but rarely knows how to maneuver his way through the real world; at others, it’s a kind of fantasy in which the workings of international finance and the criminal underworld —

not that far removed from each other — are a kind of Wonderland, through which Pierre is guided not by a white rabbit but by a worldly, literate call girl.

Ultimately, Arcand — like PierrePaul — is less interested in the activities of cops and robbers than in a bigger and more unfortunate

[REVIEW]

crazy enough to be amusing, as with the Scarlett Johansson vehicle Lucy or the genuinely insane The Fifth Element.

More often, they’re unappetizing messes like his last effort, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Jumping from family films or historical epics to hyperactive gangster films and derivative comic-book action, Besson has long revealed himself as the Man Who Would Be Spielberg… But Will Settle for James Cameron or Michael Bay. Anna is a relentlessly silly story about international assassins, post-Cold War spying and general mayhem. It is an exercise in gratuitous violence with the glossy veneer of a fashion layout. The titular heroine, played by Russian model Sasha Luss, is an accomplished Russian hitwoman of somewhat mysterious loyalties, working for both the CIA (under the command of Irish actor Cillian Murphy, with an American accent even more distracting than his steely blue eyes) and the KGB (where her boss is Helen Mirren, apparently channeling the spirit of The Incredibles’ Edna Mode.)

It’s divertingly fast-paced and proudly superficial, but here’s the best part:

One Step Besson Luc Besson exercises his most excessive tendencies in his forgettable thriller Anna Written by

ROBERT HUNT Anna Written and directed by Luc Besson. Starring Sasha Luss, Helen Mirren and Cillian Murphy.

Now playing.

S

ome early reviewers have suggested that with his latest film Anna the French director Luc Besson has fallen into the trap of self-imitation, but that simply means that they haven’t been paying attention. Besson has always been both chameleon and narcissist, eagerly but haphazardly lapping up what he hopes is the pop culture zeitgeist. Sometimes the results are just

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reality. The Fall of the American Empire is a satire about criminals, but it never loses sight of a more insidious crime: the economic inequality that has isolated his hero from society and caused an escalation in Montreal’s homeless population. n a world where financial criminals are sheltered by power and prestige, Arcand (and his hero) turn their attention to the real-life struggles of the poorest and least protected. (It is hardly coincidental that the escort, being an otherworldly creature, has never even noticed the poverty of the street.)

It’s not entirely clear what Arcand is implying with his mockhistorical title (or how it relates to his film The Decline of the American Empire), but perhaps his intention is more optimistic than destructive. It begins with an instance of all-too-familiar contemporary violence and widens its scope to take in an abstract international web of money and influence, yet ierre aul, removed from both things, never loses his strict moral vision. From the prosaic details of crime, corruption and greed, Arcand has crafted a kind of fable, a story (with a moral, of course) about ordinary people displaying extraordinary virtue. n

Anna (Sasha Luss) is an international assassin. | SHANNA BESSON Anna is one of those stories where every sequence is followed by a title card taking us “Three Months Earlier” or “Five Years Later,” or whatever leap in time is necessary to completely reverse or negate whatever happened before. In other words, it’s filled with action and violence but not a single thing in it matters. To call it forgettable is to give it more attention it deserves. In other words, it’s a typically well-polished act of juvenile self-indulgence from the Man Who’s Stuck Being Luc Besson. n

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CAFE

[REVIEW]

Kitchen of Her Dreams Cocina Latina is a triumphant take on Peruvian cuisine — and so much more Written by

CHERYL BAEHR Cocina Latina 508 North Euclid Avenue, 314-696-2294.

Tues.-Sun. 11 a.m.-10 p.m. (Closed Mondays.)

N

ineteen years ago, Maritza Rios arrived in St. Louis with a plan to open Cocina Latina. Granted, she didn’t have the name, or even the concept, completely fleshed out.

She just knew that she wanted to bring a taste of her native Peru to her newly adopted city.

And what she did have was the experience to back up her plan.

For more than two decades, Rios had been cooking in a variety of restaurants throughout New York City after arriving there as a teenager. Even after she went to school for accounting and found herself working office obs, she could not leave behind the restaurant business. She realized it was likely her life’s calling.

The only hitch in her plan was St. Louis itself. Though Rios was confident in her family recipes and cooking skills, she was not as sure of the reception an authentic Peruvian restaurant would receive in the Midwest. So she put her dream on hold and went the safe route, opening an Americanstyle Mexican restaurant, El Paisano, in Jefferson County in 2001.

El Paisano found success, and Rios expanded the concept to three more locations. However, a car accident that left her bedridden for eight months thwarted further expansion. She sold the restaurants to her now ex-husband, saving only the south-city location on Watson for herself, and focused on her recovery.

That focus would again shift when her father needed major

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Cocina Latina’s lomo saltado features sauteed marinated tenderloin steak, red onions and tomatoes, served with fries and rice. | MABEL SUEN heart surgery. For months, Rios stayed by his bedside at BarnesJewish Hospital, becoming a de facto resident of the Central West End. When she needed a break, she would walk around the neighborhood, soaking in its charm and daydreaming about opening a restaurant there one day. The area reminded her of New York, and she was confident it would be amenable to an authentic Peruvian restaurant. She ust had to find the right opportunity.

Even after her father got out of the hospital, Rios would regularly visit the Central West End, scouting properties all the while. t took fourteen years, but she finally found the right one, settling on a vacant storefront just south of the corner of Euclid and Washington avenues. For two years, she worked with a local architect, her husband and an artist friend, Jose Gomez, to convert the space from a dingy blank slate into Cocina Latina.

The restaurant, which opened in February, is a vibrant realization of her vision. Dark wooden tables and banquettes with multicolored upholstery take up the

JUNE 26-JULY 2, 2019

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majority of the seating area. Additional space is available at the cozy bar in the rear. Paired with cream-colored walls and blackpainted ductwork, these features might make for an unremarkable dining room, but Rios smartly filled the room with Gome ’s Technicolor, Latin-inspired paintings. They give Cocina Latina the feeling of an art gallery as much as a restaurant.

The edible art that comes out of the kitchen is just as striking. Cocina Latina is mostly a Peruvian restaurant, although Rios also includes both Colombian and Caribbean specialties, representing her husband’s heritage and her kids’ favorite foods, respectively. However, the heart of the menu are dishes derived from her old family recipes — dishes Rios learned to cook as a kid growing up in Peru from her grandmother.

That includes anticuchos de corazón, or beef heart skewers, marinated in a mild chile paste that caramelizes on the grill. For anyone averse to organ meats, this is a spectacular introduction. Even my picky five year old couldn’t tell the difference between the beau-

tifully charred beef heart and a hunk of grilled sirloin — and I certainly won’t be telling her anytime soon. It’s enough that she loved it.

Cocina Latina’s ceviche is even more dazzling. Rios describes her grandmother as having a heavier hand than most when it comes to seasoning, a style reflected in Rios’ liberal use of fresh lime juice and aji limo peppers, which combine to make a flavor so mouth puckering it’s positively electric.

Cubes of fresh seafood are kissed by this delightful nectar and then tossed alongside Peruvian corn nuts, fresh herbs and slivers of red onion. t’s like fireworks going off in your mouth.

The razor-sharp acidity of the ceviche is a striking contrast to the warm comfort of the tostones con ahogado, a Colombian specialty akin to a veggie stew. Tomatoes and green onions are slow-cooked to the point that they break down, forming a chunky sauce that can be spooned over the accompanying fried plantains. The plantains themselves are chewy, but once the tomato concoction soaks in, they soften to a much more pleasant texture.

The difference between the two cuisines is also apparent in the empanadas. For the Colombian version, flaky fried dough is filled with beef and potatoes that taste as if they have been slow-cooked in spicy gravy flecked with tomatoes and green onions. The heat does not hit you over the head but creeps up with every bite, culminating in a spice that tingles the tongue. The Peruvian empanadas are milder, and their exterior has an entirely different texture — more like a biscuit than its Colombian counterpart. Inside, the beef is firmer, more like shredded steak, which is encased in the dough with its cooking liquid. It’s a good thing it’s unnecessary to pick favorites, as both are delightful.

Rios is equally adept with main courses. Lomo saltado, a Peruvian stir fry of tenderloin, red onions and tomatoes, is like a deeply savory version of beef stew, only with better-quality meat. The tenderloin is succulent and flawlessly cooked, its juices forming a beefy broth that cooks with the softened tomatoes, onions and diced potatoes, turning them into tender, pot-roasted vegetables.

Tallarin verde might make you think, upon first glance, that you’ve stepped into an Italian restaurant rather than a South American one.

Linguini are slicked with a verdant basil-and-spinach sauce similar in both taste and appearance to pesto. However, unlike the Italian

Chef-owner Maritza Rios. | MABEL SUEN sauce, the tallarin verde contains evaporated milk, giving the dish a slightly creamy texture while softening the basil’s intensity. A simple grilled chicken breast is served alongside the pasta. It may look like a throwaway, but don’t be deceived: The tender chicken, seasoned with a garlicky black pepper rub, is perhaps the juiciest whitemeat chicken served in the city. It’s simple, but done perfectly enough to be dazzling.

Aji de gallina, a traditional creamy chicken stew, is Peru’s version of Grandma’s chicken soup.

Shredded chicken, simmered in a

creamy, mildly spiced aji amarillo pepper sauce, is garnished with olives and slices of hard-boiled eggs — it’s like a cross between chicken enchilada filling and egg drop soup. As a matter of preference, I found it overly rich and flat, though perhaps in the middle of winter (or high up in the Peruvian Andes), I’d better understand its popularity.

I needed no such intellectual exercise to enjoy the mahi mahi, a new addition to Cocina Latina’s menu that is hopefully here to stay. The mild fish is served in a delicate tomato broth perfumed

with oregano and cilantro; the moist meat tastes as if it’s been poached in the fragrant liquid. In a parade of wonderful dishes, it stole the show.

Rios offers a handful of homemade desserts straight from her family’s recipe book. Creamy rice pudding is perfection of the form, balancing the rich, liquidy components of the dish with firm yet tender rice grains. The biggest delight, however, are the alfajores — caramely dulce de leche is sandwiched between buttery shortbreads that melt on the tongue almost instantly, their toasty sweetness lingering long after the last bite.

It’s hard to imagine that there was ever a time when those cookies or the haunting flavors of mahi mahi, or the magnificent lomo saltado — would have met a less-than-enthusiastic reception.

And in hindsight, perhaps Cocina Latina would have been a success nineteen years ago. Still, Rios insists that the timing just didn’t feel right until now. She had mistakes to make, she admits, and she’s happy they worked out the way they did, opening the doors for what is now her baby. And besides, why rush? A restaurant like Cocina Latina is certainly worth the wait.

Cocina Latina Ceviche (market price) ........................$16.99 Anticuchos de corazón .......................... $9.99 Lomo saltado .......................................$16.99

DAILY LUNCH BUFFET : WEEKDAYS - $9.99 WEEKENDS - $10.99

DINNER 7 DAYS A WEEK

MAKE YOUR DINNER SPECIAL WITH A BOTTLE OF WINE & GET OTHER 1/2 PRICE

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6 RESTAURANTS YOU NEED TO CHECK OUT...

OAKED

THE BLUE DUCK

OAKEDSTL.COM

BLUEDUCKSTL.COM

314.305.8647 1031 LYNCH ST, ST. LOUIS, MO 63118

314.769.9940 2661 SUTTON BLVD, MAPLEWOOD, MO 63143

Treat yourself to an elevated culinary experience. With spring’s arrival, OAKED introduces its Pink Moon menu.

Diners can order the entire menu inside the speakeasy-feeling lounge, upstairs in the spacious dining room, and now on the beautiful New Orleans-style patio dubbed “the Veranda”. Chef Stephan Ledbetter and crew create new dishes each menu using the finest available ingredients while keeping past winners. This time around includes Duck Breast with charred Cabbage; Ratatouille with Spaghetti Squash and Vegan Burrata; and the housegem - Wild Mushrooms served with Duxellé, Truffle and Mushroom Tea. OAKED ensures their menu includes several vegan and gluten-free options so everyone can savor their evening. OAKED also has one of the better curated wine list in town alongside a selection of whiskeys and craft cocktails. It even has a small cigar bar outside on “the Gallery”. Offering Happy Hour specials from 4-6 daily. Music in the lounge Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Ample parking. Walk-ins are welcome, but reservations are recommended.

There aren’t many businesses named after Adam Sandler movies, but at the Blue Duck, the food is as whimsical as its “Billy Madison” reference. Originally founded in Washington, Mo., owners Chris and Karmen Rayburn opened the Blue Duck’s Maplewood outpost in 2017, bringing with them a seasonal menu full of American comfort-food dishes that are elevated with a dash of panache. Start the meal with the savory fried pork belly, which is rubbed with coffee and served with a sweet bbq sauce and root vegetable slaw. For the main event, the Duck’s signature DLT sandwich substitutes succulent smoked duck breast instead of the traditional bacon, adding fried egg and honey chipotle mayo along with lettuce and tomato on toasted sourdough. Save room for dessert; the Blue Duck’s St. Louberry pie – strawberries and blueberries topped with a gooey buttercake-like surface – is a worthy tribute to the Gateway City.

SPENCER’S GRILL

CAFE PIAZZA

CAFEPIAZZA.COM

314.821.2601 223 S KIRKWOOD RD KIRKWOOD, MO 63122

314-343-0294 1900 ARSENAL STREET ST. LOUIS, MO 63118

Spencer’s Grill is a historic diner in the heart of downtown Kirkwood. Bill Spencer opened the Grill on Route 66 back in 1947. Over 70 years later a lot has changed but the diner is still a timeless staple cherished by locals. These days Alex Campbell is the owner and the road goes by S. Kirkwood, but the old grill lives on.

Known for its breakfast, Spencer’s cooks up crispy pancakes, from scratch biscuits and gravy, omelets, hash browns, and other traditional breakfast favorites. For the after breakfast crowds, Spencer’s offers a variety of lunch options including sandwiches as well as some of the best burgers in town. Jake Sciales (previously head chef at Farmhaus) runs the kitchen at Spencer’s and creates delicious off-menu specials daily. His culinary excellence makes even the most familiar dishes divine.The charming breakfast bar is welcoming and the service is friendly and fast. Mornings can be busy but the lines move quickly and breakfast comes out fast.

Looking for a new breakfast spot? If you haven’t tried Spencer’s yet, you need to check it out. Spencer’s Grill is open 6AM until 2PM seven days a week.

Like pizza? Nobody does it better than Café Piazza, a Sicilian Café & Bar in Benton Park & a stone’s throw from Anheuser-Busch (enjoy this iconic St Louis vista from our patio). Our “Big Momma” (a 4-ton laser wood-fired pizza oven) has been firing out pizzas since 2017. Try the original 11” Italian style: bestsellers include our Pizza Bianca (garlic infused alfredo sauce, grilled chicken, bacon and parmigiana) or Queen Margherita (fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil). Prefer a deeper dish? Try our Sicilian pizzas baked in Extra Virgin Olive Oil & tomato fillet sauce with your choice of toppings. Heard of our famous graffiti mural which covers the entire ceiling? Created by legendary artist Paco Rosic, it depicts famous St Louis luminaries: kudos to those who can name all eleven! If pizza isn’t your thing, our appetizers, paninis, and salads definitely will be. Open for lunch & dinner daily. Brunch served Saturday, Sunday 10am – 2pm. $7 original 11” Italian pizzas all day every Monday! Happy Hour 4pm – 6pm weekly ($3 draft beer), all-day Sunday. Open until midnight Friday & Saturday. Group catering also available.

J. SMUGS GASTROPIT

CARNIVORE STL

314.499.7488 2130 MACKLIND AVE, ST. LOUIS, MO 63110

314.449.6328 5257 SHAW AVE, ST. LOUIS, MO 63110

Housed in a retro service station, J. Smugs GastroPit serves up barbecue that can fuel anyone’s fire.

Married teams of Joe and Kerri Smugala and John and Linda Smugala have brought charred goodness to the Hill neighborhood, nestled among the traditional Italian restaurants, sandwich shops and bakeries. Part of St. Louis’ ongoing barbecue boom, the J. Smugs’ pit menu is compact but done right. Ribs are the main attraction, made with a spicy dry rub and smoked to perfection. Pulled pork, brisket, turkey and chicken are also in the pit holding up well on their own, but squeeze bottles of six tasty sauces of varying style are nearby for extra punch. Delicious standard sides and salads are available, but plan on ordering an appetizer or two J. Smugs gives this course a twist with street corn and pulled-pork poutine.

Several desserts are available, including cannoli – a tasty nod to the neighborhood. Happy hour from 4 to 7pm on weekdays showcases half-dollar BBQ tastes, discount drinks, and $6 craft beer flights to soothe any beer aficionado.

Carnivore fills a nearly 4,000-square-foot space on The Hill with a dining area, bar lounge, and adjoining outdoor patio gracefully guarded by a bronze steer at the main entrance. Always embracing change, Joe and Kerri Smugala, with business partners Chef Mike and Casie Lutker, launched Carnivore STL this summer. As the Hill’s only steakhouse, Carnivore offers a homestyle menu at budget-friendly prices appealing to the neighborhood’s many families. Steak, of course, takes center stage with juicy filet mignon, top sirloin, strip steak and ribeye leading the menu. Customize any of the succulent meats with sautéed mushrooms, grilled shrimp, or melted housemade butters, such as garlic-and-herb and red wine reduction, on top of the flame-seared steak. Other main dishes include a thick-cut pork steak (smoked at J. Smugs) and the grilled chicken with capers and a white wine-lemon-butter sauce. St. Louis Italian traditions get their due in the Baked Ravioli, smothered in provel cheese and house ragu, and in the Arancini, risotto balls stuffed with provel and swimming in a pool of meat sauce. With an exciting new brunch menu debuting for Saturday and Sunday, Carnivore should be everyone’s new taste of the Hill.

CARNIVORE-STL.COM

JSMUGSGASTROPIT.COM

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JUNE 26-JULY 2, 2019

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SHORT ORDERS [SIDE DISH]

A Chef Who Keeps It Kosher Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

M

att Dawson may be living his passion as executive chef at the newly opened Cafe Coeur (10477 Old Olive Street, Creve Coeur; 314439-8800). However, his introduction to the kitchen came about as much out of necessity as love for food.

“I was raised by a single mom who worked all the time and didn’t have time to cook big meals,” Dawson says. “I took over. I started playing in the kitchen when she wasn’t home and learned how to cook. I loved it, and the moment somebody would hire me, I was working in restaurants.”

That first gig an ice cream parlor in St. harles happened when he was just thirteen. Though he was admittedly young, Dawson instantly felt a connection to the food business and pursued that passion at various restaurants throughout high school. When he graduated, there was no question he’d continue kitchen work, so he got into the corporate side of the restaurant business and began his career in earnest.

Dawson loved the industry but wanted a change from the corporate trajectory his cooking career was taking. When he was in his mid-twenties, he enrolled at L’Ecole Culinaire with the intention of formalizing and expanding his knowledge in the kitchen.

It ended up landing him a job before he even graduated.

“For my externship, I ended up at a place called Pepperoncini’s and became the executive chef,” Dawson recalls. “My last externship became my first e ecutive chef position.”

The job proved short-lived; the economy crashed and the restaurant closed its doors. From there, he went on to Quintessential Din-

Cafe Coeur chef Matt Dawson is also a published author. | JEN WEST ing and Nightlife on Main Street St. Charles, and then eventually to River City Casino.

Around that time, Dawson began exploring kosher cooking and food as a way to expand his knowledge. The more he learned, the more he wanted to learn, and before he knew it, he was completely immersed.

“I’ve always been deeply spiritual, but not religious, and I love studying new things,” Dawson explains.

That knowledge came in handy when Dawson was approached by Moshe Plotnik and Yaniv Sides, who were getting ready to open a kosher pizzeria and sushi restaurant in Creve Coeur. Sides owns a handful of kosher restaurants in New York and, after getting stranded in St. Louis for a week, was shocked at the city’s lack of options. t first his plan was to open a restaurant that served kosher pizza and sushi. But once Dawson came on board, the vision grew more ambitious.

“They came to me with two concepts for a pi a and sushi restaurant,” Dawson explains. “They needed a way to bridge the two, and that got me thinking, ‘Why not marry the two in fun and interesting ways?’”

The pizza and sushi concept became a jumping off point for Cafe

Coeur, a place he describes as a modern restaurant that fuses Japanese and Italian cuisine. Though the restaurant still has the pizza and sushi portions of the menu, he’s been thrilled with the response to the more unique dishes that are a mix of the two, such as the “arancini nigiri,” a play on both Sicilian and Japanese rice balls. It’s one of the eatery’s best sellers.

“As far as I know, we are the only restaurant in the country that is doing this kind of food,” Dawson says. “We want everyone to come in to experience it. We’re kosher, but we don’t tell people we are a ‘kosher restaurant.’ We consider ourselves a Japanese and Italian restaurant that happens to be kosher.”

Dawson took a break from Cafe oeur and his writing career in addition to being a chef, he’s a published science fiction author to share his thoughts on the St. Louis food and beverage scene, his love of ramen and why time may be the most important ingredient in his kitchen.

What is one thing people don’t know about you that you wish they did?

I love to write in my spare time. antasy, sci fi, mystery everything.

What daily ritual is non-negotia-

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ble for you?

I drink an energy drink and read a food magazine before I start my day.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

Teleportation. I love to travel, and that would make it much easier.

What is the most positive thing in food, wine or cocktails that you’ve noticed in St. Louis over the past year? love that people with fine dining backgrounds are moving to more casual cuisine elevating it while making it approachable for the general consumer.

What is something missing in the local food, wine or cocktail scene that you’d like to see?

I’d like to see more local purveyors certifying their products as kosher.

Who is your St. Louis food crush?

There are too many to choose from. St. Louis has a lot of amazing chefs working in the food scene right now.

Who’s the one person to watch right now in the St. Louis dining scene?

I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about what Rick Lewis is doing over at Grace Meat + Three.

Which ingredient is most representative of your personality?

I’d have to say time. I love to use fermentation to enhance my dishes. We do all of our own pickles in-house, and I’m currently experimenting with making miso, vinegar and black garlic for largescale production.

If you weren’t working in the restaurant business, what would you be doing?

Probably writing full time.

That’s my retirement plan if I ever manage to break away from the restaurant scene.

Name an ingredient never allowed in your restaurant.

Pork, of course.

What is your after-work hangout?

Usually it’s whatever new restaurant I haven’t been to yet. I rarely go to the same place twice.

What’s your food or beverage guilty pleasure?

Tacos. I love tacos of any and all kinds.

What would be your last meal on earth?

Ramen made by Ivan Orkin. I am absolutely obsessed with his New York restaurants, Ivan Ramen. n

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JUNE 29

HOTEL CALIFORNIA Eagles tribute band

JULY 18

10,000 Maniacs JULY 20TH

Greg Warren

Comedy Special Filming

AUGUST 2 & 3

John Mayall

AUGUST 23 Popa Chubby AUGUST 30 & 31

GYPSY

SEPTEMBER 20

ORLEANS

Located in the Chroma development in the Grove, Chao Baan plans to offer regional Thai cuisine. | CHERYL BAEHR

[FIRST LOOK]

Famed for King and I, Family Has a New Eatery Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

Wednesday June 26 9:30PM

Sean Canan’s Voodoo Tribute To Hank

Thursday June 27 9PM

The Driftaways Friday June 28 10PM

Torrey Casey and the South Side Hustle Saturday June 29 10PM

One Way Traffic

with Special Guests The West Duffy Trio Sunday June 30

Atomic Blues Festival 1-6PM Soul and Blues Legend

Kim Massie 8PM

Wednesday July 3 9:30PM

Sean Canan’s Voodoo Tribute To CCR

Thursday July 4 9:30PM

The Meters Tribute 32

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T

hirty years ago, the Prapaisilp family took a chance and opened the King and I on South Grand, giving St. Louis one of its first tastes of Thai food.

Three decades and a string of successful business later, they are again offering local diners something new, this time with a new restaurant called Chao Baan (4089 Chouteau Avenue).

The restaurant, which opens this week in the Grove’s new mixed-use Chroma development, may be Thai through and through, but it significantly deviates from the standard playbook offered at other local Thai restaurants. According to Shayn Prapaisilp, who owns Chao Baan with his father Suchin, that’s because it reflects his family’s heritage, which spans two different regions of the country.

“My dad is from the south, which borders Malaysia, and my mom is from the northeast, which is right next to Laos,” Prapaisilp says. “The way I describe it is to imagine that if someone from Miami and someone from Seattle happened to meet — and if it wasn’t for St. Louis, they never would have met.”

As Prapaisilp explains, his parents

JUNE 26-JULY 2, 2019

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separately immigrated from Thailand to the U.S. for college in the 1970s; his dad landed in St. Louis and his mother settled in Chicago. His father opened the international grocery Jay International Food Corp. a few years after he arrived, and would regularly travel to Chicago to purchase product for the store. At the time, his mother worked for a travel company that served the Thai community, and their paths crossed. Eventually, they fell in love, got married and moved to St. Louis to begin their life together.

The Prapaisilps opened the King and I in 1981, which they parlayed into several other businesses including Global Foods Market, United Provisions and Oishi Sushi and Steakhouse. Because of this pattern of successes, Chroma’s development team approached the family about opening a restaurant in their building. The Prapaisilps agreed, with Shayn spearheading the project.

But he decided to do things differently.

“At first, I think they thought we were going to do a King and I 2.0,” Prapaisilp explains. “But with the Grove being such a dynamic restaurant destination, we thought we’d do something different.”

Prapaisilp describes the cuisine in his parent’s two native regions of Thailand as being very different from the Thai food seen at most restaurants, which is mainly from the central part of the country.

As he explains, food from the northeast takes its cue from Laos and is characterized by fish sauce, funk, fermentation and sourness. Southern Thai food, on the other hand, has a dry heat and uses a great deal of turmeric.

But it’s not just the differences in flavor that make Chao Baan unique. As Prapaisilp explains, the food has a rustic, country feel to it that evokes the sort of meal you have in someone’s home.

“I like to joke that this is hoosier food without the derogatory connotation,” Prapaisilp laughs. “This is the stuff you will see at a family barbecue or a dinner — the food everyday folks eat.”

To this end, Chao Baan will serve dishes like mieng kham, a small but powerful appetizer of dried shrimp, lime, chiles, coconut and peanuts wrapped in betel leaves.

Another dish, the khao tod nam sod, features crispy rice and fermented pork. It’s one of Prapaisilp’s favorite dishes.

The Prapaisilps enlisted Space Architecture + Design to create a restaurant that is both modern and warm, with dark blue walls, blond wood furniture, wicker-like chandeliers and a shiny open kitchen. A separate bar and lounge area to the front of the restaurant follows the same aesthetic. “We wanted it to look like an Asian restaurant without being kitschy and having a dragon out front,” Prapaisilp says.

As of press time, Prapaisilp was still working on an exact opening date. It can’t come soon enough for the family, which is thrilled to show off a concept that is so personal to them.

“When we opened the King and I, we were the first Thai restaurant. Now there are like 40 in the area,” Prapaisilp says.

“It’s flourishing and we’re happy, but for this, we wanted to pivot and cook the food that we eat at home. It’s a love letter to St. Louis.” n

Up-Down STL is open at long last in the Central West End. | KATIE COUNTS

[BARS]

Herbie’s Old Home Is Now Up-Down Written by

KATIE COUNTS

U

p-Down STL (405 North Euclid Avenue, 314-449-1742), the arcade bar that opened June 14 in the Central West End, says it has something for everyone.

“Groups can come here and all like the place,” general manager Joey Akers says. “It’s unique in that way.”

Up-Down features more than 60 vintage arcade games and pinball machines, as well as skee ball and more modern games like Mario Kart and Dance Dance Revolution. If you want to catch a break from the flashing lights and noise inside, you can go to the outdoor patio for yard games including shu eboard and giant onnect Four.

Up-Down upgraded the plumbing, electric and HVAC in the space where Herbie’s Vintage 72 and Balaban’s formerly resided.

It also added the modern-looking walled-in patio.

Both levels and the outdoor patio contain bars which will serve more than 60 craft beers (includ-

ing some local brews) and cocktails. If you’re hungry, you can grab a slice or a whole pizza, with six different New York-style pies on the menu. Up-Down later plans to add salads and sandwiches to its menu, according to Akers.

Even though Up-Down is part of a company based in Iowa, Akers says it’s important for the arcade bar to fit into the culture of St. Louis.

“It’s not a corporate stamp,” Akers says.

St. Louis athletic legends like Jackie Joyner Kersee and Lou Brock are featured on the walls.

And the bubble hockey game shows the Blues facing off at home against the Blackhawks.

Akers formerly managed the Kansas City location and has high hopes the Central West End one will find similar success. ut not everyone has been supportive of the arcade bar; a pair of neighbors challenged its liquor license, taking their fight all the way to circuit court. The neighbors lost their case but have filed an appeal, which is still pending. eah, we had some difficulties,” Akers says. “But people were overwhelmingly supportive.”

He’s hopeful even the skeptical will give the place a visit.

“The games are good. The beer is great,” Akers says. “I think people are really going to be impressed and just blown away by the building and everything we’ve done here.”

Up-Down STL’s hours run from 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. during the week and noon to 2 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. n

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[HOMESPUN]

Call for Backup With All St. Louis Revue Vol. 1, Al Holliday and his band support some of St. Louis’ finest songwriters Written by

CHRISTIAN SCHAEFFER

B

ack in April of 2017, Al Holliday and his ten-piece band tackled a project that both had its roots in soul-music traditions and sought to bring those traditions into the present.

The group served as the backing band for the first ll St. ouis evue, supporting artists like Jesse Gannon, the Sleepy ubies and enny eShields with the weight of its deep-pocketed rhythm section, its crack horns and harmony vocalists. At the time, Holliday noted that he hoped it would be the first of many.

The idea was for our band to back up several of our favorite artists in St. ouis, some of our favorite singer songwriters, Holliday says over sandwiches at Southwest Market, not far from the home where he gives piano and guitar lessons as well as rehearses with his band. t was meant to be a celebration of St. ouis music and our local culture, and kind of putting it in a uni ue package that wouldn’t have been made otherwise.

Holliday and his band treated each artist on a case-by-case basis; while having a common backing band aided the overall cohesiveness of the pro ect, it was meant to be a showcase for the singers and their songs. or some artists, it was us serving as a backing band for them and allowing them to showcase their work. ike esse Gannon, we backed him up but we were doing our best to keep up with him, because his stuff is heavy, Holliday says. “For other artists, it was more of a reinterpretation of their songs across genres. We did

Al Holliday’s new album pairs his ten-piece band with a host of local singer-songwriters. | MATT MCELWRATH/JAMES JACKSON a take on South ity’ by the Sleepy ubies it was like, lay it with a horn section and put sixteenthnote hi hats on it.’

Two years later, that initial show at the elmar Hall has spawned a full-length record, All St. Louis Revue Vol. 1, and a second iteration of the live evue, to take place this riday and Saturday at ff roadway. eil . uke, ig ike guirre and Tommy Halloran will perform on riday, with ugene ohnson, mily allace and guirre playing on Saturday. ll artists will perform alongside Holliday and his ast Side hythm and.

The two year lag between that first show and this new album is e plained by Holliday’s own busy schedule; in 2018, he recorded, released and toured internationally behind his third full-length, 4963, and he’s created a cottage industry as a teacher, arranger, producer and session musician. lus, he notes that the idea behind the evue was never a one and done experience.

The idea at first was to have a pro ect that would like to cultivate throughout my career, he says. The whole time we were putting together music for the concert, we were thinking,

‘Man, this could be a record and it would be really great.’ That was the dream the entire time. n choosing artists to work with, Holliday was drawn to songwriters whose songs have a timeless quality, both in composition and message. like to work with artists that are writing almost in the style of a standard they’re writing these songs that are somewhat timeless, Holliday says. They’re almost traditional, but they just make a lot of sense they could be in the style of a andy ewman or Tom Waits song. gain, this is something would like to do for a long time ’m not out here saying that these are the best artists don’t want to be like that, Holliday continues. ut whenever you think of St. ouis artists that are performing at a high level, you gotta think about rian wens. f you’re thinking about soul music in St. ouis, you have to think about oland ohnson in that conversation.

The emotional centerpiece on Vol. 1 comes with a one two punch of songs written by athan atcko and enny eShields. magine, eShields’ offering, echoes much of the togetherness-through-strife

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tone that was the driving force for ake p merica, the song he and Holliday wrote and performed at the first evue show. t’s another soulful, compelling call to consciousness from one of the area’s purest voices. atcko’s composition, ittersweet Home hicago, resonates for a different reason. The pianist, sideman and songwriter took his life early last year, leaving behind scores of friends, family and fellow musicians who marveled at his ability to perform in almost any idiom. His lone solo record, Catch, contains the slow, celestial blues track that Holliday interprets in his only lead vocal performance on the record. love his record he gave me a copy of it one night at ’s and never got to tell him how much liked it, Holliday says of atcko.

That tune in particular that we did, that song is gonna be good for over a hundred years. t’s a beautifully written standard. ust love the damn tune.

All St. Louis Revue Vol. 1 Album Release Party 8 p.m. Friday, June 28 and Saturday, June 29. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Avenue. $10.

314-498-6989.

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[PREVIEW]

Veteran Bluesman Releases Debut Written by

THOMAS CRONE

C Dmitri Jackson, hard at work on another weekly installment of his Blackwax Boulevard comic. | DAVE MOORE, DAVEMOOREPHOTOGRAPHY.COM

[COMICS]

Drawing Praise With a new graphic novel, St. Louis artist Dmitri Jackson is hitting the big time Written by

JOSHUA PHELPS

D

mitri Jackson, a freelance graphic artist, decided to combine five years of his Blackwax Boulevard web comics and self-publish them as a graphic novel called Blackwax Boulevard: Five Years, What a Surprise (2012-2017).

Released through Jackson’s own Frotoon Press in late 2018, Blackwax Boulevard is set in a struggling record store and chronicles the lives of a group of record store clerks and their frequent interactions with oddball customers.

Publishers Weekly praised Jackson in a review for creating an “honest, believable world where the cool girl behind the counter struggles with addiction and the quirky owner isn’t always diligent about managing his diabetes.” The collection was a finalist at the e t Generation Indie Book Awards

and won the prize for Comics and Graphic ovels at the recent ational Indie Excellence Awards.

Jackson (who also designed the RFT’s June 12 cover) was born in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1985 and moved around before settling in St. Louis in 1998. He got his start creating animations and drawing comics when he was eight years old.

“As a young kid, I always doodled whatever cartoon I saw on television. I was trying to copy and draw the cartoon,” he says.

Jackson, now 33, drew inspiration from cartoons such as Tex Avery’s Droopy and George and Junior series as well as Chuck Jones’ Wile E. Coyote.

“Just seeing how Chuck Jones managed to design and draw these characters and imbue them with such life … that was really captivating to me as a youngster,” Jackson recalls.

When he shifted focus from animation to drawing comics, Jackson was inspired by Japanese manga artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi, legendary comic book artist and writer Will Eisner and, recently, graphic novelist Ben Passmore. “[Passmore] has a very unique sensibility in terms of tackling the issue of race and ethnicity in the 21st century. It’s a very fresh perspective he gives. It’s a perspective nobody else sees much in comics or independent comics today,” Jackson says. (The New York Times heralded Passmore’s Your Black Friend as a “small master-

piece of storytelling.”)

When Jackson transferred from the University of Missouri-St. Louis to Washington University in 2005, he further honed his drawing skill as an editorial cartoonist for Student Life.

“I managed to build a name for myself on campus, and I met a lot of really smart and funny artists in the process,” Jackson says. ow an ad unct professor in comics at the college, he says the response from the paper’s readers was rewarding because of the impact his work made.

“It’s almost like a drug where seeing the reaction of people and getting the response that you wanted from them, it was intoxicating,” he confesses.

After graduating, Jackson freelanced for various magazines and newspapers before starting his web comic series, Blackwax Boulevard.

Although Jackson is proud of all of his individual strips, his favorite piece involves store manager Hardy Rollins at work. “He’s at the top of a mountain consisting solely of album covers and it’s kind of like this majestic one-page image.

I like the overall effect of it. It’s a really nice collage. It’s probably my favorite one,” Jackson says.

Jackson can be found on Twitter and Instagram, and his book can be purchased online on Amazon and in stores at St. Louis Art Supply, Vintage Vinyl and Euclid Records.

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onversations about the blues tend to be conversations about roots, of musical family trees and lineages. Often, the question of when a player began gigging becomes one about who else was on stage then and how that person dated back to those who came before.

St. Louis bluesman Tony Campanella is no different. He’s got a new album out, Taking it to the Streets — that’s the news hook here — but naturally, he takes it back a bit first.

“I’ve played in Soulard for 30 years,” says Campanella. “Most of my time was spent at the old Mike & Min’s, which is no longer around, or at the 1860 Saloon. ike in’s was definitely more of a traditional blues bar, and when I came up it was one of the first places for me to play. was doing that with Tommy Bankhead. While they were very traditional, they were also accepting of what I was doing.”

At only twenty, Campanella was gigging before his legal drinking age. A handful of years later, though, a wife and child came into the picture and music took on a different dimension. Though continuing to gig, he was now juggling family life and club life. But a piece of the puzzle was missing: a recording with his name on the cover.

Within the last year, longtime area guitarist and songwriter Mike Zito, who, like Campanella, came up in the scene in the mid’ s, finally convinced ampanella to release a debut solo album via Zito’s own Gulf Coast Records.

To get there, he and his band went into the studio with songs from both Zito and Campanella, and the idea of creating as live a sound as possible.

“It was a completely new experience for me. We did a lot of it live, the three of us looking at

JUNE 26-JULY 2, 2019

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After 30 years in the blues scene, Tony Campanella finally has an album. | VIA THE ARTIST

TONY CAMPANELLA Continued from pg 37

each other in the studio and letting it happen organically. You could almost compare it to a live show, ampanella says. t was the three of us in the same room, doing the same parts, not smashing it all together later. or a first time experience in the studio, it was e actly how ’d have wanted or imagined it to be.

Though ampanella admits he felt some pressure before the recording was completed, he says Zito offered some good advice about being nervous. t’s ust about capturing a moment in time. So ust play in the moment and we’ll get a good record,’ he recalls ito saying. nd he was right about that. think we have a good sounding record with good songs. He did an amazing job as a producer, since we did eleven songs in two and a half days. He was the guy, he was the taskmaster. He kept things rolling and, with limited time and budget, he did a great job of keeping us on track and adding little changes that added to the feel, if you will, of my songs. He couldn’t have been any better. e made a good record together. ampanella says he’d describe his sound as blues rock. t’s an apt

description. t’s not traditional blues. t’s a little heavier than that, he says. t’s kind of what listened to growing up, what played then. have a huge influence from my uncles, in particular, who turned me on to traditional blues. ut was also listening to imi Hendri , an Halen, the Stones. nd all of that’s in there. laying this weekend with peer eremiah ohnson, ampanella feels that he’s in a uni ue middle ground of players bringing their own take on the St. ouis blues and linking generations.

He feels, too, that the local blues scene is in a good place in . eah, ’m very optimistic about the blues scene here, he says.

There’s such a foundation of guys like Henry Townsend, Tommy ankhead, ig George rock. nd then there are new guys like aruise no and ittle ylan that are keeping the tradition going.

Then there are guys like me, like eremiah, who grew up listening to that older scene, but we’ve got our own flair. t’s an offshoot of that traditional sound and there are still a lot of people who want to hear it.

Tony Campanella 7 p.m. Friday, June 28. Atomic Cowboy Pavilion, 4140 Manchester Avenue. $12.

314-775-0775.

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OUT EVERY NIGHT

41

[CRITIC’S PICK]

Asumaya. | VIA ARTIST BANDCAMP

Asumaya 8 p.m. Friday, June 28. Foam, 3359 South Jefferson Avenue. $7. 314-772-2100.

Not to harsh Keller Williams’ mellow, but pretty much anyone can set loops on their guitar; today’s rapidly expanding guitar-pedal technology means that even the most novice of shredders can pick one up and noodle away. Madison, Wisconsin-based artist Luke Bassuener, who records as Asumaya, prefers to make loops out of his mbira, an instrument popularized by Zimbabwean musicians

THURSDAY 27

ERIKA WENNERSTROM: 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

MEGAN THEE STALLION: 9 p.m., $25-$37.50.

The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

THE MINKS: w/ Brother Lee and the Leather Jackals 9 p.m., $10. Gaslight Theater, 358 N. Boyle Ave., St. Louis.

PIERCE CRASK: 6 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

THE RIVER KITTENS: 8:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

SAINT LOUIS SOCIAL CLUB: 8 p.m., $15. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis.

SHOW-ME DOWNTOWN: AN EVENING IN BLUE: 5 p.m., $60-$125. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600.

THE SLACKERS: 8 p.m., $18-$20. Blueberry Hill The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

SONGBIRD CAFE: 7:30 p.m., $23-$28. The Focal Point, 2720 Sutton Blvd, St. Louis, 314-560-2778.

SOUTHERN AVENUE: 8 p.m., $12-$15. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

STL SHED: 8 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

VOODOO STEVIE WONDER: 6 p.m., free. Atomic Cowboy Pavilion, 4140 Manchester Avenue, St. Louis, 314-775-0775.

YEAR OF THE COBRA: w/ Forming the Void 7:30

(it’s close in construction to a kalimba).

Asumaya gets a wide range of tones from his little thumb-piano, from marimba-like bass notes to the flurry of metallic blinks that he sets against an overdriven bass guitar and emphatic vocals.

Loop-de-Loop: Any touring loop-centric artist will have to contend with our very own queen of the form, Syrhea Conaway, who will perform a set alongside fellow St. Louisan Eric Hall. Local electronic wranglers Stephen Favazza and JoAnn McNeil will also perform.

—Christian Schaeffer

p.m., $12. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314289-9050.

YOURS, MINE, & OURS: 8 p.m., $5. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

ZEPPARELLA: 8 p.m., $20. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

FRIDAY 28

ALL ST. LOUIS REVUE, VOL. I ALBUM RELEASE PARTY NIGHT ONE: w/ Neil C. Luke, Big Mike Aguirre, Tommy Halloran, a Tribute to Nathan Jatcko 8 p.m., $10. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

APRIL MACIE: 8 p.m., $25-$30. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

ASUMAYA: w/ JoAnn McNeil and Stephen Favazza, Syrhea Conaway and Eric Hall 8 p.m., $7. Foam, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100.

BETTER LATE THAN PREGNANT: A FUNDRAISER FOR PLANNED PARENTHOOD: 9 p.m., $10.

The Crack Fox, 1114 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-621-6900.

BIG MIKE AGUIRRE: 5 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

BLUE FELIX: 7 p.m., $12. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

BUTTERCUP: w/ Family Medicine, Blight Future, Seashine 8 p.m., $7. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

DAN RUBRIGHT AND THE WIRE PILOTS: 10:30

Continued on pg 42

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[CRITIC’S PICK]

Maximum Effort believes you can handle the truth. | JOEY GLYNN

St. Louis Punk Rock Flea Market 11 a.m. Saturday, June 29. The Silver Ballroom, 4701 Morganford Road. Free.

314-832-9223.

Punk’s not dead, it’s just all grown up and interested in bargain shopping now. That’s the only sensible takeaway from the existence of the St. Louis Punk Rock Flea Market, held from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. this Saturday in the parking lot across from the Silver Ballroom. With more than 40 vendors selling records, collectibles, punk gear and handcrafted goods, you’re sure to walk away with that rare album you’ve been

p.m., $10-$15. Ozark Theatre, 103 E. Lockwood Ave., St. Louis, 314-962-7000.

DYLAN LEBLANC: 8 p.m., $12-$15. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

JASON COOPER BAND: 10 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

JEREMIAH JOHNSON: w/ Tony Campanella 6 p.m., $12-$15. Atomic Cowboy Pavilion, 4140 Manchester Avenue, St. Louis, 314-775-0775.

KEKE WYATT: 8 p.m., $35-$45. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929.

LEROY JODIE PIERSON: 7 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

MISS JUBILEE: 9:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

MONT BABY MIXTAPE RELEASE: 8 p.m., $10.

Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

POOR YOU: w/ Blankscreen, The Slow Boys, Inches From Glory 8 p.m., $7. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

STANK THUNDER: 9 p.m., free. Pop’s Blue Moon, 5249 Pattison Ave., St. Louis, 314-776-4200.

A TRIBUTE TO ARETHA FRANKLIN: 7 p.m., $15$30. Machinists Hall, 12365 St. Charles Rock Road, Bridgeton, 314-869-8773.

SATURDAY 29

40 OZ TO FREEDOM: 8 p.m., $10-$13. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929.

85 SOUTH: w/ DC Young Fly, Karlous Miller, Chico Bean 7 p.m., $37-$52. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600.

ALL ROOSTERED UP: noon, $8. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

ALL ST. LOUIS REVUE, VOL. I ALBUM RELEASE

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searching for, or maybe a studded vest with which to broadcast your continued disdain for society. Drinks from 4 Hands Brewing, Alpha Brewing, Stag, Jameson and Brick River Cider will be served, and some eleven bands will perform, including Trauma Harness, Bassamp & Dano, Bastard Squad and Boomtown United. Admission is free, but obviously you’ll want to bring some scratch for the treasure on hand.

Declassified Records: St. Louis conspiracy-punk band Maximum Effort will be using its slot at 4:30 p.m. to host a listening party for its latest, a double LP to be released July 6 at the Sinkhole. This show should serve as a nice primer.

—Daniel Hill PARTY NIGHT TWO: w/ Emily Wallace, Big Mike Aguirre, Eugene Johnson, a Tribute to Nathan Jatcko 8 p.m., $10. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

BRE HAMMOND: 7 p.m., $20. Ozark Theatre, 103 E. Lockwood Ave., St. Louis, 314-962-7000.

BROTHER JEFFERSON BAND: 10 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

CUCO: 8 p.m., $15. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

FLIPPER: 8 p.m., $20-$25. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

IVAS JOHN BAND: 7 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

L.A. GUNS: 8 p.m., $22-$25. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

THE LEFT OUTS: 5 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

MIDWEST RUSHFEST: w/ Thunderhead: The Rush Experience 8 p.m., $20-$50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

NAME IT NOW!: w/ The Wild & Free, Kaiju Killers 7 p.m., $5-$8. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

ONE WAY TRAFFIC: 10 p.m., $8. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

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

SHIVER: 9 p.m., free. Nightshift Bar & Grill, 3979 Mexico Road, St. Peters, 636-441-8300.

SKINCARVER: w/ Split Tongue, Polterguts, halked p, offin it p.m., . The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

THEO PEOPLES: 5 p.m., $20-$25. Mount Pleasant

Continued on pg 43

[CRITIC’S PICK]

Dylan LeBlanc. | VIA RED LIGHT MANAGEMENT

Dylan LeBlanc 8 p.m. Friday, June 28. The Old Rock House, 1200 South 7th Street. All ages: $12 advance, $15 day of show. 314-588-0505.

One thing’s for sure, Dylan LeBlanc knows how to write a rock & roll line.

“Police car radio howling out an APB,” he sings on title track to the newly released Renegade. “Some bad motherfucker, and they say he looks a lot like me.” The stance he cuts is pre-Army Elvis bent with post-motorcycle-wreck Dylan, and the sound he conjures, ethereal and threatening at once, like Laurel

OUT EVERY NIGHT Continued from pg 42

Estates, 5634 High St., Augusta, 800-467-9463.

US: w/ The Complaint Line, Asa Dawson 9 p.m., $7. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

SUNDAY 30

ATOMIC BLUES FEST: 1 p.m., $10. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS: 7:30 p.m., $29.50. River City Casino & Hotel, 777 River City Casino Blvd., St. Louis, 314-388-7777.

CHICAGO: 7:30 p.m., $50.50-$130. The Fox Theatre, 527 N. Grand Blvd., St. Louis, 314-534-1111.

DANNY GATTON TRIBUTE: 5 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

HANNAH GREY DUO: 2 p.m., free. Mount Pleasant Estates, 5634 High St., Augusta, 800-467-9463.

KIM MASSIE: 8 p.m., $10. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

LOVE JONES “THE BAND”: 10 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

SHAWN MENDES: 7 p.m., TBA. Enterprise Center, 1401 Clark Ave., St. Louis, 314-241-1888.

STRAIGHT OUT THE JACKET TOUR: 6 p.m., $5.

Canyon smoldering on the cusp of fire season, has become his own. His rich tenor could sail above the turbulent guitars and layer upon layer of backing vocals, but he’s letting the music drive his finely crafted lyrics, even if he can’t say where. Rock & roll outlaws always strike a pose, but LeBlanc’s new stance has the wide-ranging ring of truth.

Catch His Drift: Andrew Ryan’s 2017 release Across Currents remains one of the strongest St. Louis-based singersongwriter albums of the decade. Arrive early and dive into his opening set.

—Roy Kasten

Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

X AMBASSADORS: w/ Your Smith 8 p.m., $10.57$30. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

MONDAY 1

THE FOXIES: 8 p.m., $12-$15. Blueberry Hill The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

THIRD SIGHT BAND: 8 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

TUESDAY 2

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

ROLAND JOHNSON: 7 p.m., free. The Dark Room, 3610 Grandel Square inside Grandel Theatre, St. Louis, 314-776-9550.

ST. LOUIS SOCIAL CLUB: 8 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

WEDNESDAY 3

AUGUST BURNS RED: w/ Silverstein, Silent Planet 7:15 p.m., $27.50-$32. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

FRESH PRODUCE BEAT BATTLE: first ednesday of every month, 9 p.m. continues through Oct. 3, free. The Monocle, 4510 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-932-7003.

ROBERT RANDOLPH & THE FAMILY BAND: 6 p.m., $25-$60. Atomic Cowboy Pavilion, 4140 Manchester Avenue, St. Louis, 314-775-0775. n

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SAVAGE LOVE TIE POINTS

BY DAN SAVAGE Hey, Dan: I’m a single gay guy in my late 30s. I’m quite introverted and a bit shy, yet I have a big sexual drive and a rich libido. I’ve always found the gay scene overwhelming, and my several attempts at online dating were not very successful.

I feel my quiet ways tend to put people off and I hardly ever get the chance to show my more playful or crazy sides, as it takes me a bit to feel comfortable to show those.

Whenever I was able to, my partners were usually pleasantly surprised and we could enjoy plenty of fun, but I can count these occasions on the fingers of one hand.

I feel most guys just stop at my gentle disposition and assume I must be a bit boring if not a prude altogether. Turns out I actually have quite a few kinks — bondage being one of them — but so far I have hardly been able to explore them with a partner. Often those drawn to me haven’t really been of the sexually adventurous kind. By my looks I don’t really fit into any of the “tribes” that a lot of gay men identify with. Part of me doesn’t care, but at the same time I find myself on the outside looking in when searching for a nice guy for a date or more. Would you have any kind of advice to crack this shell of mine open?

Always Looked Over, Never Embraced e t time you find yourself on the outside looking in, , take a moment to look around. ecause that small scrum of guys who fit neatly into whatever gay tribe happens to be dominating the bar pool whatever the guys on the inside looking at themselves or looking at their phones or looking at themselves on their phones are usually surrounded by a much larger group of guys who don’t fit neatly into that particular tribe or any other obvious tribe. nd if the guys looking longingly at the easy and obvious tribe would look around, they’d see a whole lot of guys like them guys who might be feeling a little awkward or out of place, guys who are attractive in perhaps less conventional or

immediately apparent ways, guys with hidden depths, etc. n other words, , guys like you. nd speaking of guys like you, did you know you have a moth erfucking superpower that makes you a member of all gay tribes and your own uni ue tribe ondage is the great unifier among kinksters, said oshua oyd, a gay bondage enthusi ast, as they say, in his mid s who lives and ties in the Seattle area. ondage guys are from all walks of life, and they range from twinks to muscle guys to bears, cubs, ocks and average oes.

So ust as you’ll find gay guys in every race, ethnic group, eco nomic class, faith community, etc., bondage guys can be found in ev ery gay tribe and bondage guys make up their own uni ue tribe. should put any search for a long term relationship on hold and look for more casual kinky fun, said oyd. econ re con.com has always been a good place for me to start conversa tions with fun guys even met my husband there. The bottom line is there are others who share his interests, and they are waiting to connect with him. ut you’re shy ou’re intro verted onnecting is hard oyd describes himself the same way shy, introverted, difficultly con necting and not only is he mar ried, , he doesn’t lack for casual play partners and he’s got play pics all over the internet to prove it.

Tyger oshi also describes him self as shy and introverted and recently watched shy, introvert ed oshi do a bondage demo at Trade, a gay leather bar in en ver, where he suspended a guy from the ceiling. hen first started e plor ing my interest in bondage, was lucky enough to be in a city where opportunities were plentiful, even for a shy, introverted person like me, said oshi, who’s also in his mid s. There were people who wanted to mentor me, but struggled taking that first step of accepting help.

The kind of help oshi is re ferring to the kind of help he eventually accepted can most easily be found at munches, i.e., casual meet ups where kinky people, both ueer and straight, sociali e and connect with other

“Bondage is the great unifier among kinksters.

Bondage guys are from all walks of life, and they range from twinks to muscle guys to bears, cubs, jocks and average Joes.” like minded kinksters. unches play parties. Spend five seconds on Google, , and you’ll also find kinky educational organi a tions that offer classes for people who want to hone their bondage skills while learning about con sent, safety and other best practic es. nd whether you’re a bondage top you want to tie or a bondage bottom you want to be tied or a switch tie and be tied , you’ll make friends in bondage classes. nd if you wind up clicking with someone, that person isn’t going to assume you’re a prude they met you at a bondage class and that person will definitely be se ually adventurous you met them at a bondage class . nd unlike gay bars or clubs, a person’s skills are ust as important as their looks at gay bondage parties and events. fter you start making con nections and building your cir cle, find local fetish kink events that are happening around you you may need to reach out to the panse ual community and see if one of your new friends from the munch or the class or econ is willing to go with you to check it out, said oshi. nd as you start e ploring more of your kink side, consider the possibil ity of separating kink and se at first. et people know that you are interested in bondage but haven’t tried much and you want to practice. Having an e plor atory or practice session is much different than having a bondage

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se session, and people may be more willing to facilitate that e ploration. nd from my e peri ence, if you’re able to get up the courage to go out to a kink play party with a friend for support , the likelihood of finding someone who’s willing to assist in new or first time e periences increase.

So, , that thing you’ve been holding back until you get to know someone our interest in bondage ead with that. Get involved in the kink scene, work on your skill set, be friendly and open be the nice guy and you’ll meet lots of men you have something in common with. Trust me, your tribe is out there. ou can follow oshua oyd on Twitter seabndgsadist. ou can find Tyger oshi on Twitter and nstagram tygeryoshi.

Hey, Dan: Is having sex with multiple partners something prevalent in the gay community? If so, why?

It seems that having sex is a pretty big deal with gay men. Why? You Won’t Answer Gay men are men, , and let’s not kid ourselves: es, the average gay guy has more se partners than the average straight guy. ut straight men would do everything gay men do if straight men could, but straight men can’t because women won’t. t’s not that straight guys are any less interested in se than gay guys are or that se is any less of a big deal for straight men. nd you know what om en are ust as horny and ust as interested in se as men gay, straight, or bi and that in cludes se with multiple part ners. ut women have to weigh every choice they make and every truth they tell against the very real threat of se ual violence at the hands of straight men and the lesser threat of being slut shamed by straight men and other wom en. Shout out to the ase ual gay, straight, and bi men and women out there who aren’t interested in se with anyone don’t mean to erase you, but ’m talking aver ages here, the centers of various bell curves, not deviations.

Listen to Dan’s podcast at savagelovecast.com. mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter ITMFA.org

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HAPPY HOUR SPECIALS CRISPY EDGE Located in the heart of Tower Grove South, Crispy Edge is St Louis’ first and only potsticker restaurant. Voted as one of St. Louis’ best new restaurants, Crispy Edge’s menu boasts an impressive list of internationallythemed dumplings seared to perfection. Many of its potstickers, like the savory and sweet ‘Chorizo Date’, are also available as vegan version.

The restaurant is elegant, modern, and dark. Purple grow lights accenting a hydroponic living wall create warm mood lighting and an atmosphere worthy of date night. A dog-friendly

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patio follows the corner of Juniata and Bent and is ideal for brunch.

Pair your potsticker with one of Crispy Edge’s many hand-crafted cocktails like the Fizzy Nut- a delightful gin, coriander, and coconut milk concoction, or indulge in a glass of sake.

Crispy Edge is open from 11am -10pm Friday and Saturday and 10am-2pm for brunch on Sunday. After you have had your fill in the restaurant, be sure to take home some frozen potstickers or pick them up from local grocery stores!

CRISPY EDGE | 4168 JUNIATA ST, ST. LOUIS | CRISPYEDGE.COM

HAPPY HOUR

St. Louis’ ONLY Axe Throwing Bar and Grill FREE Axe Throwing with Food and Beverage Purchase!

720 N. 1ST ST, ST. LOUIS, MO 63102