Riverfront Times, July 7, 2021 by Riverfront Times

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JULY 7-13, 2021

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JULY 7-13, 2021

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RIVERFRONT TIMES

MARCH 6-12, 2019

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THE LEDE

“These kinds of events are always a fun time for us to just see people that we haven’t seen in a long time, exchange monetization and to socialize in a way with a common goal. We all want to support each other. We all want to support Black business, even if we don’t really like the item or need it. It’s like, ‘I want to support you!’ And that feels good, you know?”

PHOTO BY THEO WELLING

OMI KONGO, OWNER OF BLACK MADONNA JU JU, PHOTOGRAPHED AT BLACK WALL STREET 314 FESTIVAL ON SATURDAY, JUNE 26 riverfronttimes.com

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Life in Pictures

ver come across those online galleries of mugshots? Or maybe you’ve spotted one of the newsprint versions at a gas station, pages of photos of people arrested in St. Louis for everything from the pettiest crimes to killings, displayed for entertainment. In this week’s cover story, RFT staffwriter Danny Wicentowski goes behind the photos to trace the rise of a St. Louis mugshot empire — and the surprising story of how the supply was cut off. —Doyle Murphy, editor in chief

TABLE OF CONTENTS Publisher Chris Keating Editor in Chief Doyle Murphy

E D I T O R I A L Digital Editor Jaime Lees Interim Managing Editor Daniel Hill Staff Writer Danny Wicentowski Contributors Cheryl Baehr, Eric Berger, Jeannette Cooperman, Mike Fitzgerald, Ryan Krull, Andy Paulissen, Justin Poole, Theo Welling, Ymani Wince Columnists Thomas Chimchards, Ray Hartmann Editorial Interns Zoë Butler, Holden Hindes, Erin McAfee, Jack Probst, Victor Stefanescu A R T

& P R O D U C T I O N Art Director Evan Sult Production Manager Haimanti Germain M U L T I M E D I A A D V E R T I S I N G Advertising Director Colin Bell Account Managers Emily Fear, Jennifer Samuel Multimedia Account Executive Chuck Healy Digital Sales Manager Chad Beck Director of Public Relations Brittany Forrest

COVER Mugged

C I R C U L A T I O N Circulation Manager Kevin G. Powers

The king of St. Louis mugshots trafficked for years in humiliating photos — then his supply was cut off

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 www.euclidmediagroup.com

Cover illustration by

JOHN KERSCHBAUM

N A T I O N A L A D V E R T I S I N G VMG Advertising 1-888-278-9866, vmgadvertising.com

INSIDE The Lede Hartmann News Feature Cafe Short Orders Reeferfront Times Culture Calendar Savage Love 6

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HARTMANN Lucas Kunce Fights to Win Finally, a Missouri Democrat who brings the heat BY RAY HARTMANN

ucas Kunce is putting on a clinic for his fellow Democrats. A political outsider, Kunce has embarked on a quixotic journey to become a U.S. senator from Missouri, running for the seat that will be vacated in 2022 by retiring Senator Roy Blunt. The guy started with virtually no name identification, record in office or blessing from the Democratic Party establishment. He’s an ex-Marine with a fine résumé, but that’s about it, on paper. Even if Kunce were able to overcome all odds against more established politicians in the Democratic primary, he would certainly find himself a huge longshot when squared off against some betterknown, slavish Trump devotee in Trump country. Suffice it to say Missouri is labeled “solid Republican” on every conventional political war map for 2022. Despite all that, there is something that sets Lucas Kunce apart. Unlike any statewide Democrat in memory, Kunce has come out of the gate with fire in his eyes and a forceful style made for the moment of the digital age. He has a swagger, campaigning as if he’s already won the Democratic primary. When he goes after Republicans vying to replace Blunt, he acts as if they had already won the GOP nomination. Kunce calls disgraced ex-Governor Eric Greitens “a flat-out criminal who should be in prison.” He describes vigilante lawyer Mark McCloskey as a “clown” and a “criminal” and “Mansion Man.” Last month, Kunce posted a hilarious video — a spot-on parody of Greitens’ famous assault-rifle campaign ad of 2016 — offering McCloskey free Marine-led firearms training if he’ll only apologize to those Black Lives Matter protesters who he menaced last June. It went viral. Kunce has unveiled a dramati-

cally populist campaign, attacking “massive corporations and corrupt bureaucrats.” He describes the national group where he has his day job — the American Economic Liberties Project — as “a nonprofit fighting large corporations who use their monopoly power to stick it to the middle class.” That’s the sort of message that can resonate with everyday voters the Democrats have lost in droves for the past decade or two, especially in rural areas. And Kunce is willing to call out his own party’s politicians, as well as the Republicans, for having become beholden to corporate money. He even includes Facebook while railing against the monopolists, presently a Republican talking point. The man is different. It’s not every day that you see a Missouri Democrat’s Twitter feed referring to “weed” while demanding an end to the drug war. Or throwing down on behalf of someone as controversial as Olympic sensation Sha’Carri Richardson, who lost her spot in the upcoming Tokyo games over an insanely stupid drug test. Or crusading for a pardon for Kevin Strickland, the Black man “convicted by an allwhite jury for a crime he didn’t commit,” as Kunce notes bluntly. This is not the customary soundtrack of Missouri Democrats, who are more comfortable sticking to soft language about racial justice and paying homage to Juneteenth. Few prominent Democrats would touch lightning rods like Richardson and Strickland as Kunce did. But guess what? Running to win — as opposed to running not to lose — isn’t working out so badly for Kunce. Less than four months into the race, he’s gaining support far beyond what would normally be expected from an unknown candidate. Like it or not, the scoreboard that matters early in a big race is the one maintained by the Federal Election Commission that shows the quarterly campaign fundraising reports of the candidates. So far, Kunce is blowing it up. Kunce reports that he raised some $630,000 with no corporate PAC money and with 99 percent of his more than 20,000 donors giving less than $200. That comes on the heels of a stunning firstquarter report showing he had received $280,000 in less than a

Unlike any statewide Democrat in memory, Kunce has come out of the gate with fire in his eyes and a forceful style made for this moment of the digital age. month without holding a campaign event. Topping $900,000 in less than four months is no small feat for a first-time candidate. The total amount is but a small fraction of what a Senate candidate would need to compete in Missouri, but it’s the number of small donations that Kunce has been able to raise in such short order that has to get one’s attention. Kunce’s populism might be popular. The fact that he could garner thousands of small-ticket donors without having held office or previously waged a major campaign defies expectations. Now, before Kunce could testdrive his populism against an actual Republican foe, he would have to defeat his Democratic primary opposition. The leader now is former state Senator Scott Sifton of south St. Louis County. Sifton slightly outraised Kunce in the first quarter and has until July 15 to disclose his second-quarter results. It’s an interesting contrast, to put it mildly. Sifton was a highly respected state senator — well liked among his colleagues and a lawyer widely regarded as one of the smartest members of the legislature. He’d be a fine U.S. senator. But he’s a classic example of a Democrat running to the soft center, adverse to taking risks. He’s great on the issues, but not so much on the headlines. If Sifton were the party’s nominee, he’d be a dramatically better choice than any member of the tragic Republican field. But it’s

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hard to see him breaking the Democrats’ recent losing streak in big races without showing more fire. There’s a common misconception in Missouri politics that the state transformed into “deep red” almost overnight after having been dominated by statewide Democratic officeholders as recently as 2012. That’s not true. The simple reality is that Democrats have over a period of many years stopped connecting with the very voters — especially those blue-collar, middle-class and rural — who constituted much of their base for many decades. This started happening long before ex-President Voldemort came along. Let’s not forget that he didn’t have an ideological bone in his body. He won because he made that connection with people who felt they have been left behind by elites of both political parties, especially Democrats. This wasn’t “Trumpism”: It was a masterful exploitation of fear and grievance that only a world-class conman could pull off. Everyday Missourians vote their emotions, not their ideas. The Democrats lost touch with them in the past few statewide election cycles because they forgot how to talk to them. Now, with Republicans poised to field a ghastly candidate next year, there’s an opening that would not have existed against Blunt. It’s far too early to know if Democrats can pull an upset in this race, but any of the present GOP hopefuls looks far more beatable than Blunt would have been. For his part, Kunce must prove he can withstand the test of time. But the one thing he has shown is that a Democrat can buck the culture war. For too long, the party’s candidates have caricatured the elites so roundly resented in the heartland. Kunce’s populist appeal offers a visceral connection — along with a swagger — and early on, it’s working. His party might want to pay attention. n Ray Hartmann founded the Riverfront Times in 1977. Contact him at rhar tmann1952@gmail.com or catch him on Donnybrook at 7 p.m. on Thursdays on the Nine Network and St. Louis In the Know with Ray Hartmann from 9 to 11 p.m. Monday thru Friday on KTRS (550 AM).

JULY 7-13, 2021

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NEWS

Family Alleges Police Lied on Search Warrant in Fatal Raid Written by

DOYLE MURPHY

he family of a man killed in 2017 when St. Louis police serving a “no knock” search warrant on his house shot him say a detective lied in court documents to make the disabled 63-year-old look like a violent drug dealer. n a lawsuit filed last week, Don Ray Clark Sr.’s four children — three adults and one young daughter — contend that their father was unarmed and in bed for the night when a police SWAT team busted through the door of his Dutchtown home without warning and opened fire. They’re suing the city, the detective who applied for the search warrant and another twenty officers involved in the deadly raid. “Mr. lark, an elderly and disabled veteran, died a violent and horrific death as a result of bad police work and a culture of using excessive force, the family alleges in the suit filed on behalf of the family by nonprofit law firm rch ity Defenders and attorney Jerryl Christmas. His family said Clark suffered from a variety of health problems, including bad eyesight, limited hearing and diabetes. He walked with a cane and spent most of his time at home, sometimes screwing his door closed at night because he feared crime in the neighborhood, the suit says. His son, Don lark r., stopped by daily, and a home health-care worker visited regularly to care for him, according to the suit. n ebruary 21, 201 , the day of the raid, lark r. said he had to

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Police raided Clark’s house (far right) and two other houses on the block. | GOOGLE STREETVIEW

Even if police wanted to search Clark’s house, his family says there was no reason to send a SWAT team. work, so his father took a bus to a doctor’s visit, a strenuous effort in his condition, which would have left him exhausted. “When he made it back home later that day after the doctor’s visit, Mr. lark told Don, r. by phone that he was looking forward to going to sleep after an eventful day, the suit says. That night, police S T teams raided three houses on the same block of California Avenue. The street is about three blocks to the southeast of South City Hospital, and St. ouis police Detective Thomas Strode claimed in matching search warrant applications that a six-month investigation showed evidence of guns and drug dealing at 02 , 02 and 02 alifornia venue. The three houses, all single-story one-bedroom houses of about 0 s uare feet, were built at the same time in the same style. ccording to the suit, officers divided into two “stacks, hitting 02 and 02 first. They then re-

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Don Clark Sr. was killed by police in 2017. | FAMILY PHOTO grouped and raided 4023 — Clark’s home. Then-police- hief Sam Dotson would later tell reporters that officers announced themselves and someone inside fired at them before they returned fire. But lark’s family’s lawsuit says that’s not true. Clark was given no warning and probably wouldn’t have been able to see or hear clearly enough to know what was happening when officers rammed the front door open, flung a flash bang inside and burst into the home, the suit says. ne officer, icholas Manasco, fired on lark, hitting him at least nine times, according to the suit. lark, who slept in the living room so his eight-year-old daugh-

ter could have the lone bedroom, rolled onto the floor and lay there, still alive for “crucial minutes” before another officer arrived and finally called for an ambulance, the suit says. Dotson said police recovered weapons and drugs during their searches, including a gun supposedly used by lark to fire on officers, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in 2017. The family disputes nearly all of what Dotson and police have said about what led up to the raid and what was found in Clark’s home. Despite Strode’s claims that a longrunning investigation, supported by accounts from a confidential informant, showed evidence of guns and drug dealing, lark’s son and the home health-care worker who visited his father every week insisted they never saw drugs or any sign of the series of uick-stop visitors supposedly streaming in and out of the house to buy heroin and marijuana. The suit says that if police did find any drugs or guns while executing their search warrants that night, they didn’t come from Clark’s home. The family contends that Strode first searched the other two houses and then carried a box from either 02 or 02 alifornia into Clark’s house. The city and the police department declined to comment on the allegations in the suit, citing the pending litigation. Strode, according to the suit, regularly filed applications for “no knock search warrants, and the police department and courts provided little scrutiny. Even if police wanted to search Clark’s house, his family says there was no reason to send a SWAT team. Clark had served in the Army and, for a time, ran a security company. n recent years, his health was bad and he was in bed by 8 p.m. most nights, his family says. Police previously listed several arrests in his past as part of their justification for the no-knock tactics, but his record doesn’t show any convictions, and attorneys for the family say he didn’t have a criminal record. “Ultimately, think that Don Clark Sr.’s death was a preventable tragedy, hristmas said in a news release. “Had the police done their due diligence, this would have never happened.” n

Hazel Erby, Political Pioneer, Dies Written by

JENNA JONES

ormer St. Louis County Councilwoman Hazel Erby has died at age 75 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Described by many, including St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, as a trailblazer, Erby was the first Black woman to serve on the county council and became its chair in 2009. She served as a mentor to younger generations. She started her service on the council in 2004. After former County Executive Steve Stenger resigned amid a corruption scandal in 2019, Erby had hoped to replace him on an interim basis, but then-Council-Chairman Sam Page slipped into the position during a rapid-fire change in leadership. She and Page remained rivals, even after he hired her as the county’s director of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in 2019. Page later fired her in 2020, a move she was still contesting through

As Mayor’s Deadline Passes, Workhouse Empty, Not Closed Written by

JENNA JONES

ayor Tishaura Jones campaigned on a promise to close the Workhouse. And this past Thursday, the day of her self-imposed deadline, the notorious city jail was empty — but not completely closed. “As of today, the budget for the Workhouse has been zeroed out and the facility stands empty,” Jones said in a press call. “But, to be clear, there’s still more work to be done.” In recent weeks, the city has shifted detainees out of the Workhouse, officially named the Medium Security Institution, to its newer but still flawed jail, the City Justice Center. Interim public safety Director Dan Isom, who was on the call, focused on updates and repairs in the CJC. The

the courts at the time of her death. As news that Erby had died spread on Friday, friends and supporters took to Twitter, memorializing her as a woman who had changed many lives. State Rep. Raychel Proudie was one of those people. She tweeted for Erby to rest in “well-deserved peace.” Proudie, reached via email on Friday, remembered Erby as an “impactful political leader.” “Whereas her hard-fought battle with pancreatic cancer was well-known, learning of this tremendous loss this morning comes as a breath-taking shock. Her presence and guidance will be greatly missed,” Proudie wrote. St. Louis County Police Lt. Col. Troy Doyle remembered her as an “instrumental person” in his life. Doyle described Erby as a kind, caring lady who tended her community and St. Louis. “She was more like a mother figure to me,” Doyle said in an interview. “I could come to her with any issues, any concerns. I asked her for advice on different things and just her, I guess, I don’t know — she’s hard to describe. You could come to her and she would just be candid with you and give you the best advice possible. A lot of things I’ve done in my life have been from the advice of Hazel. I appreciate her for that.” Page extended his condolences on

Twitter to Erby’s family and called her a “passionate advocate.” Before her death, Erby filed a lawsuit against Page, alleging racial discrimination and retaliation. Erby said in her suit she was illegally fired from her job as director of diversity after she complained the county wasn’t using the required number of contractors from minorityand women-owned businesses for projects, including the $1.67 million tempo-

rary morgue that held COVID-19 victims. According to KSDK, one of Erby’s last acts involved preserving her testimony against Page. Erby is survived by her husband, Louis, daughters Angela and Kristina, son Louis and her grandchildren. September 22 is set to be the first “Hazel Erby day” in St. Louis after legislation was passed in May, according to the St. Louis PostDispatch. n

downtown jail has been the site of multiple revolts since December, including two uprisings in early 2021 during which detainees were able to take over entire units, smash exterior windows and fend off corrections officers for hours. Following one of the uprisings, Isom’s predecessor revealed that detainees could manipulate faulty locks and let themselves out as they wished. Isom, who was appointed by Jones, said on the press call that repairs are proceeding, noting that the windows on the front of the building have been fixed but repairs to the locks are ongoing. The director had previously given a timeframe of 48 weeks or longer to completely repair CJC. No more than two pods of the downtown jail go down for repairs at a time. Isom reported no current issues with the detainees getting out of their cells. CJC also remains under capacity. At the time of last week’s call, 563 people were being held there. Isom credits a combination of the federal detainees being moved to other facilities and detainees being processed more rapidly. As the city continues work on the downtown facility, it has left one pod at the Workhouse open for overflow. Jones spokesman Nick Dunne said, “The one

pod at the Workhouse is still an option for processing detainees in case of overflow,” but that the mayor is working with prosecutors and judges to ensure detainees are getting court dates more quickly, as well as investing in programs to keep people out of jail in the first place. The Workhouse hasn’t housed any detainees since the move. Federal inmates have been moved to other facilities in outstate Missouri and other states, according to reports from KSDK. Isom said the city has been “identifying where the federal government is planning to send detainees on a consistent basis to help develop a more comprehensive and concrete plan to keep them connected to their lawyers and loved ones.” Jones also pointed to the three-point plan highlighted by Isom two weeks ago when the last of the inmates had been moved out of the Workhouse. The first order of business was closing the Workhouse. Jones says she and her administration are still working on the next two points: clearing the COVID-19 backlog of cases with the help of the U.S. attorney and the St. Louis circuit attorney and limiting the contact people have with the incarceration system through different

programs. Jones added that an $80 million relief package proposed by the mayor addresses public safety improvements, including youth programming and community violence intervention. As far as future plans for the Workhouse, there currently are none. As the budget moves into effect, the mayor has plans to invest in programs suggested by community members for how the city should repurpose the Workhouse, as well as the old police headquarters and the municipal court buildings. Dunne said during the call that the mayor’s office expects to start that process now that they have a budget plan. Isom said the transition process from the Workhouse to the CJC has been “quite seamless,” thanks to the correctional officers. “I have to credit the leadership and also the corrections officers. Change and change under these circumstances is often very difficult,” Isom said. “The correction officers and U.S. Marshals are very familiar with transporting detainees from different locations. Of course, this was more of a massive job than what they do on a daily basis, but it really was done very efficiently and with very few hiccups.” n

Hazel Erby will be remembered as a trailblazer. | VIA TWITTER

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0 5 + m r estaur o r f s r e g ants r u b ! 6

Courtesy of Pit Stop STL

SAVE THE DATE! St. Louis Burger Week is back for its fourth year! Support your local restaurants for St. Louis Burger Week and enjoy $6 burgers all week long! The idea is to get people to embrace the food, and culture of St. Louis while getting them out to eat, drink, and try new places. Navigate your way through the city with our official St. Louis Burger Week passport- will be available online and participating burger week restaurants closer to the event. Grab four or more stamps, submit your information and a picture of your passport, and be entered to win gift cards and an ultimate St. Louis Burger Week prize pack.

JULY 18-25TH, 2021 PRESENTED BY:

Est. 1879

MORE BEING ANNOUNCED DAILY!

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The dance floor was packed for one final night at JJ’s Clubhouse. | JANIE STAMM

[OPINION]

In Defense of JJ’s Clubhouse and Queer Joy Written by

JANIE STAMM

his is a response to counter Elizabeth Van Winkle’s article titled “Reckoning with the Legacy of JJ’s Clubhouse on Its Last Night.” Truthfully, I went back and forth with how I wanted to proceed. A photo of me was featured in the print article and in an online slideshow, to which I consented. What I did not realize was that Van Winkle had planned on writing a piece that would be a scorched earth takedown of JJ’s, a place I have treasured dearly. Van Winkle stated within the piece that she had sought out to capture images of “leather women, trans folks and people of color,” which left my partner and I feeling grossly objectified and unsettled. The article left me feeling as though because of my identity as a queer dyke that I was unable to enjoy myself at the bar. I’m not here to invalidate anyone’s experience at JJ’s (both good and bad) and therefore I can only speak for myself when I say JJ’s was a second home to me in which I felt safe and cared for. This is a love letter to JJ’s: JJ’s Clubhouse and Bar opened its doors during the heart of pride season in 2000. Housed in a former garage and theater drapery manufacturing building, JJ’s was established as a leather-andLevi’s bar, which over the years evolved into a space that welcomed every type of person. JJ’s served as headquarters to both Blue Max CC and Gateway MC, two queer motorcycle clubs, and Show Me Country Dance, a queer line dancing organization that I am a part of. JJ’s was a little slice of queer paradise underneath a highway overpass. It was a safe space to exist as a queer person (out or not) for it was just far enough off the main Grove drag to ward off most bach-

elorette parties. With the scent of poppers wafting through the air, one could dance the night away in queer bliss against the bar’s greasy aluminum tread wall. JJ’s gave me life. The dance floor was euphoric. The last time I went to JJ’s was June 17 for the closing party. The bar was just a few days shy of turning 21 years old before it was sold; a monumental amount of time for a gay bar. Around 5 p.m., the dance floor opened and I walked in with some of my line dancing friends. A room of JJ’s relics awaited the final night patrons. Tables with piles of vintage gay smut books, condoms, lube and liquor brand promos were all free for the taking. I found a crumpled up pride flag on one of the tables. It’s dirty and the flag’s corners have staples embedded in them, but it has now become one of my most precious objects. It lived at JJ’s and embodies the essence of the bar’s history in its woven fibers. I spent the rest of the night worshipping the dance floor. My body swayed under the glittering disco ball. Kevin, the lighting designer for JJ’s, put on a laser light show for the gods. I wept as DJ Walter played “Last Dance” by Donna Summer to close the night. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to walk through the doors and into the parking lot because that would make the loss of this vital queer space too real. I ran up to Rich, one of the bartenders and someone who I consider family, and he gave me a hug filled with love, and I cried even more. Jerry Jurak and Jeff Plunk (the owners) waited at the doors and hugged and thanked every single person that was there that final night. To Jerry and Jeff: Thank you for building JJ’s into the palace of queer love that it was. It has been the only queer bar in which I have ever felt truly welcomed. You both created a St. Louis treasure that made me (and I’m sure a lot of other people) proud to be queer. To Rich: (If you could only see me struggling to write this.) You mean everything to me. My favorite part of coming to JJ’s was getting to see you behind the bar. Janie Stamm is a queer St. Louis-based artist and craftavist.

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mugged The king of St. Louis mugshots trafficked for years in humiliating photos — then his supply was shut off

By DANNY WICENTOWSKI

n STLMugshots.com, crimes are content. The site’s visitors are treated to an endless scroll of thousand-yard stares, people reduced to their facial expressions at their lowest moments, with each mugshot, each click, leading to separate pages that package the arrest details alongside a column of automatically generated online ads.

On the homepage, an animated wall of prison bars slams across the St. Louis skyline, all-caps text screaming “NEW MUGSHOTS EVERY DAY” — and it’s a promise the site has kept since at least 2014, with hundreds of mugshots harvested daily and supplied directly from a central repository of the region’s law enforcement data. But on April 1, 2021, STL Mugshots suddenly went still. The website is still live, and the weekly newsletters keep coming, but each one displays the same mugshots, the faces never changing from those arrested and booked on March 31. Functionally, the site is unchanged. It still features a “Matching Game” page, which summons five random mugshots and scrambles them alongside the associated charges — offenses ranging from minor traffic infractions to

Illustration by JOHN KERSCHBAUM

violent felonies. Refreshing the page yields new faces from the bottomless supply, challenging players to correctly match the face to the alleged crime: Does a bald, middle-aged white man seem like a trespasser, or someone who would drive without a license? Did a short-haired Black woman fail to register her vehicle, or was she arrested for parental neglect, or drug possession, or speeding, or domestic assault? No matter the circumstances that led to their mugshots, or whether their charges were later dropped or amended or expunged, in St. Louis, they all wound up in the same place. The same website. That is, until the supply was cut off. Those running the website have not responded to requests for comment. The site’s elusive owner, Edmund Tauk, is currently being sued by former publishers of his mugshot-focused newspaper, Behind the Bars, whose issues

were sold in city gas stations for $1 before quietly disappearing at some point in the past three years. For the people featured on the website, efforts to remove mugshots are met with either silence or demands for proof that a charge has been dropped — while others allege the website’s owner demands cash for removal. No law exists to define this process, and even an official expungement by the court is no guarantee for action online. The site’s mugshots persist in Google searches and background checks, following their subjects for years. But there’s no mystery here. The end of STLMugshots.com began on March 5, when the Riverfront Times contacted the St. Louis County Police Department with questions about how the website was able to not only post mugshots from every municipality in the county, but with remarkable speed — mugshots were being added in real time, with booking dates showing arrests occurring the same day the images appeared online. In an email, the RFT asked if the department had a position on the use of its police work: Was it aware that its mugshots were being funneled to a website that exposed arrestee booking information from even minor incidents

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— or that the mugshots were being monetized alongside “sponsored content” and clickbait celebrity listicles? “We are now aware,” Tracy Panus, a sergeant and spokeswoman for the department, replied on March 11. She went on to explain that the RFT’s inquiry had prompted further research into the department’s protocols for distributing mugshots. The policy had been set in 2011, she wrote, “at the request of the County Counselor.” As a result, Panus wrote, the department would be reviewing its longstanding mugshot policy — and, as she put it, “looking into a way to change it.”

or years, STL Mugshots and the Behind the Bars newspaper comprised a niche media empire that thrived on an inexhaustible supply of new material, courtesy of St. Louis law enforcement. But the real story of how mugshots travel from multiple police departments to a for-profit website is one that twists through a little-known government agency, the Regional Justice Information Service, better known as REJIS. Based in St. Louis and founded in 1974, REJIS’ website states that

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it was formed “under a cooperative agreement between St. Louis County and the City of St. Louis.” It is governed by an executive director and a seven-member commission appointed by the St. Louis mayor and St. Louis County executive. In Missouri police departments, its footprint is nearly everywhere, functioning as a central hub for information, connecting federal, state and local law enforcement as they run license plates, check warrants and pull up booking photos. And it is REJIS’ ubiquity, and essential efficiency, that helped a local entrepreneur named Edmund Tauk become the king of St. Louis’ mugshot publishing industry. In an August 2018 letter to an attorney representing people suing STL Mugshots, Assistant St. Louis County Counselor Priscilla Gunn, acting as counsel for REJIS, revealed that in 2011 the county had asked the agency to give two publishers “arrest reports and specific data on a continuing and on-going basis.” There was nothing illegal about this. REJIS concluded that records were public under the state’s Sunshine Law, which empowers anybody to request certain Missouri criminal records. The open records law allows news sources, including the RFT, to request police departments provide details of ongoing criminal cases, even though the defendant hasn’t been found guilty or innocent. It means stories can quote directly from probable cause documents and, yes, publish mugshots. Beyond just crime coverage, documents and information revealed through Sunshine requests are often key to quantifying the impact of government policies and identifying corruption. This was something different, but, as Gunn’s letter to the attorney repeatedly noted, entirely legal. She wrote that REJIS is “required to comply” with the state’s open records law, and therefore would continue to provide Tauk, owner of the Behind the Bars newspaper, with direct access to the region’s public safety data. In return, Gunn wrote that Tauk and a second “requestor,” Kyle Prall, the Austin-based founder of BustedMugshots.com, agreed to pay REJIS $150 every week to offset the “programming costs to provide specific information in the format requested.” “REJIS does not sell mugshots

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A 2015 arrest on a “failure to appear” warrant put Jardena Green’s face in the pages of Behind the Bars. | ERIN MCAFEE or data,” Gunn’s email continued. “REJIS passed the costs of producing the information to the requesters.” The exchange meant that Tauk and Prall received dozens of mugshots every day, direct from REJIS, with the monthly totals often exceeding 2,000 individual cases. Meanwhile, the public and journalists still had to file Sunshine requests and wait for the county to respond, a process that can take days (and sometimes, weeks) to get a single document. But Tauk and Prall now had nearly instantaneous access to the mugshots en masse. With the arrangement in place, RE S opened the floodgates of St. Louis County’s crime data. According to Gunn, Prall was the first customer to make use of the data, gaining access in May 2012. The date corresponds with the start of the Busted Mugshots collection of more than 120,000 St. Louis County mugshots still available on the site. Busted Mugshots stopped updating in April 2019 — just a few months after Prall himself became the subject of a twentycount federal indictment. Prosecutors accused him of diverting more than $500,000 from sham political action committees backing 2016 presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Prall eventu-

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ally pleaded guilty and, in October 2019, a judge sentenced him to three years in prison. Tauk ran into no such trouble with the law in St. Louis. He gained access to the REJIS mugshot supply in 2014, around four years after founding Behind the Bars. The sixteen-page tabloid offered eye-catching and often suggestive headlines — one run of issues featured stories titled “East side stripper tells all,” “Fried chicken & cocaine” and “Clowning and frowning.” Around the same time, Tauk founded STLMugshots.com. “I didn’t even know if STL Mugshots was controlled by an organization out of St. Louis. It could have been in Nigeria, as far as I was concerned,” says a St. Louis resident who asked not to be identified because his mugshot remains searchable on the website. Originally triggered by a warrant for nonpayment of child support, the arrest that landed his image online is now more than five years old, though it was later resolved without a conviction on his record. He says he emailed STL Mugshots several times asking for its removal but never heard back. “All I knew was I had a mugshot there that I was trying to get removed, and I couldn’t get any traction whatsoever,” he adds. He describes a series of dead ends: After emailing STL Mug-

shots, he contacted several “reputation management” services that offered to “delist” the image from web searches, but he balked at paying thousands of dollars to another seemingly shady online industry. He spent years worrying that his employer would stumble across the mugshot on a Google search. n frustration, he finally contacted the Ballwin Police Department, which had arrested and booked him in the first place before his transfer to the St. Louis County Justice Center. In an email, a Ballwin police lieutenant told him the department had never received any formal requests seeking his arrest data. “We do not routinely release arrest information to include arrest photographs, unless it is the type of crime that could impact the community, i.e. robbery, serial burglaries and such,” the lieutenant wrote. “The incident to which you are referring would not have been of the nature where a media release was conducted.” But if Ballwin didn’t release the mugshot, who did? The lieutenant noted that Ballwin’s “mugshot system” was maintained by REJIS, which, he wrote, “has strict procedures on releasing information.” In reality, those strict procedures were the very avenues on which the mugshot had passed, from Ballwin, to St. Louis County,

to REJIS — and from there, to Edmund Tauk.

n 2015, Jardena Green spent that Mother’s Day weekend in a holding cell. Like thousands of drivers in St. Louis County, she had been caught in the predatory system of municipal traffic enforcement, in which motorists stopped for minor traffic issues would be flagged for previous violations in other municipalities — where they could be jailed and fined by the cash-strapped towns. St. Louis County includes more than 80 municipalities, most which maintain their own court systems and police — producing a confusing and often badly coordinated system that relied on physical mailing addresses to inform defendants of court dates. That spring, Green had been arrested in Maryland Heights for a traffic violation — but a check of her plates showed a warrant for her arrest for failing to appear at a Hanley Hills municipal court hearing for an unrelated charge of failing to register her vehicle. Green says the summons had been sent to the wrong address, and court records show the charge was later dropped. Then her mugshot appeared in the pages of Behind the Bars. “A friend of mine told me that they saw me in a magazine,” Green recalls in a recent interview. “At the time, I was very active in martial arts, and I thought it was an article about something positive, but it was the total, complete opposite.” In college studying for a degree in criminal justice, Green says she dreaded applying for internships with background checks. She taught tai chi, but prospective students Googling her classes would find her mugshot along the way — “To have that slapped on there, and to have people look up what I do for a living, it was just so embarrassing,” she says. Green, who is Black, noticed that many of the pages featured on STL Mugshots and Behind the Bars are filled with faces that looked like hers: Black motorists arrested for minor traffic cases. Considering the website and newspaper reflect the data collected from municipal police departments in St. Louis County — where Black drivers have been found to be at disproportionate risk for being pulled over — it makes a certain sense: STL Mugshots reflects the same racially biased policing as the departments which supplied its data. But those details don’t mat-

Paul Peanick says it took $550 to remove his 2015 mugshot. | ERIN MCAFEE ter when a mugshot file is created. Like the rest of the content featured in Tauk’s publications, Green’s booking information began life on St. Louis County servers and was saved into a digital record managed by REJIS. Then it was sent to STL Mugshots. “It’s like this defamation of character, because no one’s going to follow up and inquire about if the case was thrown out or what was it really for. It just looks awful,” Green says. “I just feel like they’re taking people and using their embarrassment as entertainment. That to me is really messed up.” Even when charges are dropped, an accusation itself can destroy careers. Paul Peanick’s 2015 arrest for felony seconddegree robbery never advanced beyond his arrest — the charge, he says, was related to his attempt to retrieve personal items from an ex-girlfriend’s home and a dispute with her new partner, who pressed charges for robbery but never showed up to court. Even so, Peanick says the arrest changed his life. By the time he graduated, the image of STL Mugshots appeared on Google search “as the very top result, above my LinkedIn.” “Before I was charged, I didn’t

Even when charges are dropped, an accusation itself can destroy careers. spend a lot of time paying attention to these sorts of websites and papers you’d see at the gas station counter. I’m sure as a teenager I’d probably pick one of these up and laugh at the people in there, and it’s natural to do that,” he says, and adds, “You always think, ‘It’s never going to happen to me.’” Peanick would ultimately spend years, and thousands of dollars, in attempts to remove his mugshot. They included attempts to contact the website directly with proof of his charges being dropped. Finally, in 2018, he paid $550 to a website called CleanSearch to remove two mugshots from STL Mugshots and a second website — and it worked. In emails from a CleanSearch staff member identified only as “Chris,” Peanick was provided updates on the negotiation. The own-

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er of STL Mugshots, Chris wrote, was “unreasonable” and had demanded “a large up-front sum.” By the end of the ordeal, Peanick was glad his mugshots were finally scrubbed from the web, but he found himself furious at what felt like a shakedown: He was convinced that STL Mugshots, CleanSearch and Edmund Tauk were connected in some kind of extortion scheme. Taking money for mugshot removal is illegal under a 2014 Missouri law, which made it a misdemeanor for any entity that publishes criminal record information to demand payment for that same information. Peanick believed his case showed just that sort of illegal scheme. n late 201 , he filed a complaint with the Missouri attorney general’s office, which opened an investigation through its consumer protection division. The investigation came to a close in March 2019. In documents shared with the RFT, Morgan Johnson, a consumer advocate in the G’s office, wrote to Peanick “The company denies any wrong-doing, and therefore will not be providing the relief you are seeking.” Johnson’s message included an email response to the AG’s investigation, dated November 27, 2018, and signed by “STLmugshots.” “We have never accepted money for removing information off our site,” the email began. “It has never happened. If he provided us with information stating that his case was dismissed or dropped that is why his information was removed.” Notably, the response failed to address whether STL Mugshots had actually removed Peanick’s mugshot or, for that matter, that it had ever featured him on the site. The message amounted to a carefully written denial. “This site sells advertising, that is how it makes an income,” the email concluded. “Just like any other news source.”

dmund Tauk did not respond to requests for comment sent through his website. Direct messages sent to the STL Mugshots Facebook page were viewed but not responded to. But Tauk has not always managed to avoid reporters so easily. In July 2018, Fox2 investigative reporter Chris Hayes got Tauk on camera — at which point Tauk denied owning the website and repeatedly challenged Hayes to “prove it to me that it’s mine.” Even when Hayes uncovered

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HELP WANTED ST. LOUIS AND SURROUNDING AREAS

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invoices from REJIS showing the weekly payments for arrest summaries and photos, Tauk held his ground. “I’m telling you again for the 500th time,” Tauk told Hayes in a phone call later aired by the news station, “I don’t own STL Mugshots. You’re wrong. I’m telling you this a thousand, thousand percent, I do not own STL Mugshots, and I’ll say it again and again and again.” By then, Hayes had already broken the news on REJIS’ special arrangement with the two mugshot publishers. However, while Tauk’s business license with the Missouri secretary of state showed his ownership of Behind the Bars, there was no such paper trail between him and STL Mugshots. Hayes’ story also featured Jardena Green and Paul Peanick describing their public shaming after appearing on the website. Green’s lawyer, Justin Meehan, had already filed a lawsuit demanding Tauk remove her mugshot and pay damages for “extreme embarrassment, loss of reputation and public humiliation.” But Meehan had run into the same challenge as Hayes. In an August 2018 interview with the RFT, the attorney noted that the ownership of STL Mugshots’ domain was hidden by its registration through GoDaddy and a nameless proxy organization based in Arizona. To Meehan, however, Tauk’s denials were beyond belief. Meehan noted that STL Mugshots’ ability to add hundreds of daily mugshots strongly suggested that it had a direct feed to REJIS — there was no other way to match the volume. In addition, there was already proof that Tauk was indeed paying RES for the content that filled the pages of Behind the Bars. “The key is, he’s the only guy who’s purchasing this information from REJIS,” Meehan said at the time. “I’m dragging him into the ring, and we’re going to use legal procedures to get to the bottom of it. We’ll eventually be able to force him under oath.” Three months later, Meehan’s prediction came true. In answers submitted in response to Meehan’s lawsuit, Tauk came clean: He admitted to owning STL Mugshots, obtaining crime data from police in both St. Louis and St. Louis County, and paying REJIS for the arrangement which allowed the mugshots and booking information to be “automatically

uploaded to the website.” What Tauk continued to deny, however, was ever taking money to remove mugshots or operating reputation services like the one used by Peanick — despite the fact that Peanick’s mugshot had indeed been removed from STL Mugshots after paying CleanSearch. Meehan’s lawsuit had forced Tauk to admit owning the site — but the litigation wouldn’t result in any more revelations. In November 2018 (while the attorney general’s office was still investigating Peanick’s complaint) Meehan and Tauk settled their lawsuit. Tauk agreed to remove several mugshots of Meehan’s clients. Meehan promised not to bring any further litigation against the website and owner.

— though neither site approaches the sheer scale of content that once moved through STLMugshots.com. Both the Columbia and Springfield sites are being actively updated, but they appear to rely on public information portals maintained by the Boone County and Greene ounty sheriff’s offices. Meanwhile, St. Louis County has recently activated its own public records portal and an “inmate locator” tool, though it requires users to type in a specific detainee’s first and last name. The difference is the REJIS data pipeline — after more than six years, the source that fed Tauk and ST Mugshots has finally been closed. In a June 25 email, St. Louis ounty confirmed that ST Mugshots is still able to make Sunshine requests for daily arrest data, but

In 2018, Edmund Tauk was questioned on camera by Fox2’s Chris Hayes. | SCREENSHOT VIA FOX2 For STL Mugshots, it meant returning to business as usual. Every day, new faces streamed onto the website. Every week, Tauk paid REJIS $150. And like Green and Peanick, the people caught in the middle continued to pay the steepest price.

n May 6, more than a month after STL Mugshots stopped updating, St. Louis County police spokeswoman Tracy Panus confirmed in an email to the RFT that “effective April 1, our protocol was terminated regarding the transfer of mugshots.” That doesn’t mean Tauk’s mugshot empire has ended. The homepage of STL Mugshots now features banners for two spinoff sites under similar branding targeting olumbia and Springfield

now must do so “in the same manner as other inquiring parties.” The journey to the end of STL Mugshots leaves many questions. Between the St. Louis County counselor’s office, ustin Meehan’s lawsuit and the reporting by Fox2’s Chris Hayes, it can’t be said that Tauk’s arrangement with REJIS was a secret — but it apparently still shocked the police department into action after the RFT reached out in March. Even REJIS was uncomfortable with its arrangement with Tauk. Dan Isom, a former St. Louis police chief, was appointed REJIS executive director in 2017 — and recently left the position to become St. Louis’ new public safety director. Isom’s tenure intersected with the recent attempts to take down

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Tauk and STL Mugshots. In an interview, som says that he first learned of REJIS’ deal with Tauk after watching Hayes’ Fox2 report in 2018 — and that the news motivated him to alter the arrangement. “Even though that was approved by St. Louis County long ago, and it’s legal, we didn’t want to be in the middle of it anymore,” Isom says now. “When I got there, I said, ‘I’m tired of this.’” According to Isom, the change didn’t immediately end the REJISto-Tauk mugshot pipeline, but instead made St. Louis County the middleman in the arrangement. Under Isom, instead of sending the mugshot data directly to Tauk, REJIS sent the data to the county, which in turn provided “the file of the day’s arrests to Tauk’s media publications. While acknowledging the reallife damage against the people featured in its pages, Isom argues that, on a legal level, STL Mugshots isn’t doing anything wrong — and nothing fundamentally different from mainstream news sources: Like Tauk, a news site that publishes a mugshot can’t be compelled to take it down, even if the underlying charge is dropped or exonerated. “The only difference here is mass production,” Isom says. “If KMOX or Riverfront Times post a picture of somebody who’s arrested, that picture never goes down. Once you put it out there, it’s out there. It’s unfortunate. But that’s the law.” Isom calls it a Catch-22, an ethical paradox of any open records law: Open records empower journalists to report on crime and expose corruption — and it also allows actors like Tauk to publicly shame people and to turn their lives into content for online ad revenue. “Once you put that image out there, no matter who it is, whether it’s one or two, or whether you’re playing matching games or not playing matching games, you can’t take that back, because the simple fact is, even though you may think that the way they’re using it is inappropriate — this is legal. The law allows it to happen.” It’s tempting, Isom adds, to wish for a more restrictive system for public record access. In theory, he suggests that the Missouri legislature could pass a law that would force publishers to remove mugshots and other embarrassing materials, or even seal those materials in the first place. “There’s a flip side of that, he cautions. “Do you want a process where the government can keep photos of people who are arrested a secret? That might be even scarier.” n

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CAFE

[REVIEW]

Scary Good Is it punk to love Terror Tacos’ vegan food? Written by

CHERYL BAEHR Terror Tacos 3191 South Grand Boulevard, 314-260-9996. Tues.-Sun. 11 a.m.-8 p.m. (Closed Mondays.)

rothers Bradley Roach and Brian Roash have been vegans since the mid-’90s, living the plant-based lifestyle before it was as mainstream as it is today. Over the years, they’ve been heartened to see vegan food’s rise in popularity and, with it, easier access to vegan food, including restaurants specializing in plant-based cuisine. There was just one problem: Those restaurants just aren’t their thing. It’s not that Roach and Roash have some deep-rooted dislike for vegan restaurants in general; Roach even worked as general manager and head chef at the Demun spot Seed afé for five years. The problem was that none of the vegan eateries they encountered really spoke to them in terms of the vibe and aesthetic. The brothers first became vegan while active in the hardcore music scene in the mid-’90s, viewing their choice more as a political statement than a dietary one. In their minds, veganism had that irreverent, loud, inyour-face spirit, so it was jarring to them to see the movement become dominated by a more crunchy, peace-and-love hippie scene. As Roash jokes, he’s all for peace and love — he’s even married to someone he describes as a hippie — but it just wasn’t their style. Roach and Roash would often muse about opening a vegan restaurant of their own one day, but they never really went anywhere with the idea. Instead, Roach got into the corporate call center life while Roash embarked on a front-of-house restaurant career. However, when Roach eventually grew so weary of his corporate gig and moved to St. Louis to take the job with Seedz some years ago,

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Terror Tacos is legit. Try any of these: birria tacos, birria bowl, Behemoth taco, Double Diablo taco and Fright of Tacos. | MABEL SUEN their talks grew more and more substantive. Last year, those musings reached a tipping point and morphed into a bona fide search for a space to realize their vision for a hardcore, underground-style vegan restaurant. Aided by a friend in the local vegan restaurant scene (who requests to remain anonymous), the brothers zeroed in on the old Baida storefront on South Grand and immediately realized it was the perfect spot. After a few months of work converting the former Moroccan-themed space into a dark, edgy scene, the pair opened the doors to their restaurant, Terror Tacos, this March. It’s immediately clear that Terror Tacos is not your typical vegan restaurant when you walk in the door. Instead of the stereotypical breezy, granola vibe, the brothers’ place hits you over the head with loud punk-rock music and eye-popping neon paint splashed graffiti-style against black walls. The pair wanted the fast-casual restaurant to evoke the hardcore clubs they used to go to back in the day, and they’ve captured that

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BBQ Seitanic crunchy wrap with housemade seitan, spicy barbecue sauce, rice, red cabbage, onion, jalapeños, sour cream and fresh chips. | MABEL SUEN aesthetic perfectly. The food is another indicator of their determination to buck the standard vegan playbook. The entire menu at Terror Tacos has the sort of feel you’d get from a greasy burrito joint you’d frequent after attending a Fugazi show rather than a crunchy smoothie spot to hit after yoga. The offerings are un-

apologetically big, greasy and bold, such as the Double Diablo Taco, which wraps a crunchy taco stuffed with seasoned veggie grounds, chipotle cheese, shredded lettuce and sour cream inside a flour tortilla filled with green chili, black beans and cheese. This double-decker concoction is supremely satisfying; the grounds and beans combine for

Bradley Roach and Brian Roash serve the kind of tacos they always wanted. | MABEL SUEN a rich, rustic refried bean texture with so many layers of flavor and spice that make it not just an excellent vegan dish. It’s an excellent dish, period. The Green Chili-Lupa is another hit. Here, a soft, grilled pita is stuffed with green-chile-seasoned veggie grounds that magically have the texture of crumbled bacon. Cilantro, diced red onions, chipotle cheese and a generous slather of luscious guacamole round out this outstanding offering. Equally satisfying is the Buffalofu Taco, featuring hunks of perfectly cooked tofu tossed in piquant Buffalo sauce, then garnished with jalapeños, green onions, cilantro and vegan ranch. The taco sets your mouth on fire, but it’s a sweet, sweet burn. The hits keep coming. Terror Tacos gets with the birria trend with its vegan version of the popular Mexican dish. Here, a shockingly greasy-in-the-best-way quesadilla is filled with plant-based consommé-marinated seitan, sour cream, red cabbage, onions, cilantro and jalapeños. The dish is served with a side of the consommé for dipping, which tastes of smoky chiles and mild cinnamon. That a vegan dish can have you dripping its contents to your elbows is a pleasant surprise. The Carnage Asada Burrito is a gargantuan, overstuffed wonder of housemade seitan that is akin in texture and flavor to gyro meat, grilled bell peppers and onions, fluffy cilantro rice, sour cream, guacamole, lettuce and chipotle cheese. This should be added by all of St. Louis’

new medical cannabis patients to the list of munchies must-haves, as should the Loaded Nachos, which look like something Cheech and Chong might have come up with during a fever dream. A mound of tortilla chips is piled sky-high with chipotle cheese, those excellent veggie grounds, black beans, raw red and green onions, lettuce, salsa, sour cream and guacamole. To this omnivore, there is no better plate of nachos in town. Dare I say there might not be a better burrito than the Terror Burrito? I might leave all the carnitas and carne asada in the world behind for a bite of this outstanding mix of veggie grounds, cilantro rice, beans, cheese, green chile sauce, lettuce and sour cream. The grilled tortilla is so overstuffed that, when you cut into it, its contents ooze out in this beautiful, creamy mess. It’s impossible to eat the Terror Burrito — or really any of the dishes at Terror Tacos politely. One after another, the restaurant’s dishes are filled a little too much, brazenly spicy and deliciously oozy — and that’s exactly the point. That vegan cuisine can be so thrilling is a real eye-opener to those of us who still cling to the clichés of it being haute-hippie health food. St. Louis owes Roach and Roash a significant debt of gratitude for showing us the light.

Terror Tacos Birria tacos ..........................................$11.95 Green Chili-Lupa ................................... $5.50 Terror Burrito........................................ $10.95 • Carry-out, delivery and dine-in

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RIVERFRONT TIMES

SHORT ORDERS

[ S T. L O U I S S TA N D A R D S ]

Market Share Paul’s Market is woven into Ferguson’s community Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

ary Crump has a trove of vivid memories collected over his years at Paul’s Market, dating all the way back to when he was in the third grade and his father, the eponymous Paul, leased the storefront that would become a Ferguson mainstay. However, none are more vivid than the initial impression he got, courtesy of the father and son who lived downstairs. “Cigars and bacon,” Crump recalls. “The gentleman who owned the building lived downstairs with his son, and every Saturday you would smell cigars and bacon coming from their place. There were so many great smells there. Still, to this day, I can remember walking in every day and smelling the coffee and all the smells of the grocery story. It was so neat.” Six decades later, the sights, sounds and smells at Paul’s Market are quite different than those initial impressions, even as the soul of the place remains the same. Crump insists on that. As the bearer of his father’s legacy, he feels a responsibility to do things the way his dad taught him while helping the business adapt to meet current preferences. Over the 61 years in business, Paul’s has evolved from a grocery store to a butcher shop to a specialty foods store and now a place increasingly dedicated to hot foods such as burgers and barbecue. As Crump jokes, he does not necessarily consider himself to be a creator — he’s more of an innovator who improves upon the great ideas of those around him. And there’s no question that Paul’s was one of those great ideas. According to Crump, his father was filled with great ideas. n entrepreneur by disposition, the elder Crump was a Potosi, Missouri, native whose first business

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Paul’s Market has only gotten better over the years. | ANDY PAULISSEN

Owner Gary Crump, left, has added to the market but the but

Generations of customers depend on the market. | ANDY PAULISSEN venture was a hauling company. t wasn’t a big outfit rump’s father simply bought a used truck and started running lumber between Potosi and St. Louis before moving on to delivering mail, packages and eventually people between Potosi and Steelville. He left his hometown for St. Louis to take a job with the airplane manufacturer Curtiss-Wright and worked there until James McDonnell took over. Convinced that the now-legendary aerospace executive would run the place into the ground, Paul Crump quit to start a wholesale milk business. He eventually switched careers again when he came across the space on Elizabeth Avenue in Ferguson, which he figured would make a

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great spot for a market. In 1959, Paul Crump signed the lease, then opened a year later, establishing Paul’s Market as a grocery and fine butcher shop. As Gary Crump explains, his dad believed in providing the highest-quality meat and was especially particular about his ground beef. “What you grind — and you only grind chuck — is the backbone of your business,” he’d tell his son, and he always insisted on doing things the right way, even when competitors were taking shortcuts, such as putting red dye in their ground beef to make it look more appealing to customers. In his unwavering quest for excellence, he was hard on his son, who was

D always trying to impress his dad, even though it seemed like he never could. He eventually realized that wasn’t the case. “I always wanted to get his approval, but he never said I was doing a good job,” Crump says. “I was complaining about that one day, and one of my brothers took me aside, put his hands on my shoulders, and said, ‘You’re a slow learner, aren’t you?’ He asked me when does Dad ever talk to me. I told him it’s when I screw up. Then he asked when he doesn’t talk to me. That’s when I got it. If he didn’t talk to you much, it meant you were doing a good job. He was a man of

Stocked with tasty bites. | ANDY PAULISSEN but the butcher shop remains a vital piece. | ANDY PAULISSEN

Daily specials are always posted. | ANDY PAULISSEN very few words, but I understand what he was doing.” Crump worked alongside his father through grade school, middle school and high school, and he admits that, though it was a great learning experience, he resented it. He was determined to do anything but the butcher business after he graduated from high school, but he simply could not get away. It didn’t help that his dad planted a seed in his head, telling him that this was a job where he’d never have to look over his shoulder. That appealed to his irreverent spirit, and Crump threw himself full force into working at the

store, learning the ins and outs of the business so that he could take over when his father passed on the torch. In 1977, Paul’s moved into its current building, located directly behind the original storefront. Not long after, Crump took over the operation and expanded its hot foods offerings, beginning with barbecue and eventually expanding into burgers. He’s remodeled the place twice, and he’s in the process of another round so that he can offer even more made-to-order items. He’s also started doing outside sales, shipping steaks and seafood to every state in the continental U.S., and is proud that his business is quickly adaptable to roll with whatever punches come their way. And those challenges have certainly come. In addition to the natural ups and downs of business, Crump witnessed Ferguson grapple with its identity following the death of Michael Brown and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. He says he has been fortunate throughout and credits the Ferguson community’s unwavering support of the market’s continued success. “When I look at our little business, I think back to how my grandma used to make a quilt,” Crump says. “People she knew would all give her little squares, and she would put those together to make it. I think of us as one of those squares. I want to take care of my square the best that I can, and, with everyone else doing that, we can make a really nice quilt that’s a piece of art.” n

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JULY 7-13, 2021

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REEFERFRONT TIMES

Medical Marijuana Delivery Coming to St. Louis Written by

DANIEL HILL

or those too stoned and/or lazy to pry themselves off the couch to re-up their cannabis supply — or, more importantly, those for whom health issues or other disabilities make such a prospect a difficult one — comes good news: Medicinal marijuana delivery is coming soon to the St. Louis area. Doobie is a Palm Springs, California-based cannabis delivery service that is partnering with Jane Dispensary (6662 Delmar Boulevard, University City; 314-464-4420), which also has a location in California, to bring marijuana to the (medically approved) masses with just a few clicks on a computer. According to co-owner Joseph Rubin, the effort is meant to help expand the customer base of Jane by reaching people who might not live in the shop’s immediate vicinity. “ hat we try to do is we find strategic partners located in various different states that have storefront retail operations, and we want to partner with them so we can help expand the dispensary’s network and reach,” Rubin explains. “A lot of dispensaries go after customers or are able to reach customers that are within a ten-to-fifteen-minute driving radius and range. And we like to come in and provide our expertise on the delivery side of things with respect to cannabis specifically, and help those dispensaries and partner up with them.” For St. Louis, that means Jane Dispensary and only Jane Dispensary. Rubin describes the partnership as akin to a marriage. “I really think of it as two different engines where we come in

Jane Dispensary in the Delmar Loop is partnering with delivery service Doobie to shuttle weed to local customers. | COURTESY JANE DISPENSARY and we’re more of the marketing side, for the delivery, and we can provide operational expertise,” he says. “But on the other side of delivery, the people actually performing deliveries are Jane employees, and they’re really the engine that makes the train move. So, you know, we’ve got a great, great partnership and there’s great teams on both sides, and we couldn’t be happier to be working with them. So Jane is, you know, we’re tied at the hip, and I’m not looking for a divorce anytime soon.” The process itself is fairly straightforward, as Rubin explains, and not dissimilar from using a service like Postmates or Uber Eats. St. Louis customers will head to trydoobie.com, type in their address, and Jane’s menu will pop up on the screen. From there you simply pick out the products you want — anything Jane has in stock at the store will be available for delivery as well — and add them to your cart. Next the site will ask for your first and last name, date of birth and cellphone number, as well as some info from your medical card and driver’s license. An employee will then call you to confirm your information and ensure that you will have your med card and ID on hand at the time of their arrival. You’re then given the option to

As your delivery window approaches, an employee will text your number with a tracking link so you can see where your driver is in real time. select the time when it would be best to have the goods show up at your house. “We want people to be able to schedule the delivery window that they want so if they’re at work and they want to be able to get a delivery specifically between 6 and 7 p.m. we can make that possible,” Rubin says. As your delivery window approaches, an employee will text your number with a tracking link so you can see where your driver is in real time. Upon their arrival, the driver will show up with a clipboard to go over your order, and to get some signatures. Once all your paperwork is in order

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you’ll be handed your cannabis products and the driver will be on their way — not entirely different than having a pizza delivered, just with a few extra governmentmandated steps. Of course, just as you might expect to pay a little extra to have that pizza delivered, there will be delivery fees through Doobie as well. Rubin says that for the first few months the service will be waiving those fees altogether, but once they get into the swing of things the fee will be based entirely on drive time. The most expensive fees will come out to $8 or $9, while some of the closer deliveries will be free. Rubin says he expects the service to kick off any day now — they’re just waiting for a couple of compliance items to be checked off with the state, and then customers can enjoy that most exquisite of experiences: legal weed brought directly to your front door. “We’re very, very excited to be the first legal and compliant medical cannabis delivery service in the state of Missouri,” Rubin says. “Being able to bring people their medicine without them having to leave their home is really, really important, so, you know, opening up that accessibility to everybody is fantastic.” For more information, visit trydoobie.com. n

JULY 7-13, 2021

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CULTURE

Back in Action Ignite Theatre Company is preparing for its first in-person show since last year Written by

JACK PROBST

t the end of this month, the young performers of Ignite Theatre Company will do something they haven’t done in more than a year: stage an in-person performance. The youth theater company is the only of its kind in St. Louis. Founded by Kimberly Melahn-Kavanagh and Libby Pedersen in 2015, Ignite aims for inclusion on stage and in the audience with programming that prizes diversity and productions that cater to specific needs, such as a child’s aversion to strobing lights or sharp, loud noises that have often made traditional theater unworkable for some kids. And while that work has continued online during the past year-plus of social distancing, the actors, directors and audiences have all been separated. “As a youth theater company, you can imagine that everything that we do is dependent on gathering large amounts of people into small spaces, so we had to quickly adjust our programming to be safe not only for our cast members but our crew and our staff and all of our families,” Melahn-Kavanagh says. “We began our streaming model where we would do Zoom rehearsals, which are very challenging. We’ve all had to learn to teach music and choreography when there are lags in everyone’s internet services. It’s definitely provided new challenges.” In the Before Times, Ignite offered shows that you might not see anywhere else. Many of their performances are of the “Jr.” variety, meaning they are condensed versions of full-length musicals and plays. An upcoming production of Singing in the Rain Jr. is a three-hour show reduced to 90 minutes. Longer dance numbers are cut down, along with dialogue unnecessary to the story. All changes are approved by the author or rights holder, so you know you’re still getting a quality show. The aim is to draw in St. Louis kids who might not normally find themselves in the theater and then to nurture a love for the performing arts that grows for the rest of their lives. That has included working with schools and promoting diversity and inclusion among company staff and performers, with an eye toward achieving

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The actors filmed performances separately for online viewers, but they’re eager to see a live audience. | COURTESY OF IGNITE THEATRE COMPANY racial diversity within that community. “We prioritize school partnerships with the hope that we will attract young performers of color to branch into Ignite programming outside of school,” MelahnKavanagh says. “We are constantly looking at new ways to make our program more attractive to performers of color.” Before COVID-19, an important service that set Ignite apart was its free sensoryfriendly performances, which are the participants’ favorite shows to put on. The house lights stay dimmed but not off, unlike in a typical theater setting. If a show has strobe lights or other lighting effects, they get dropped from the production. Actors will even wear soft-soled shoes because stage shoes are normally louder. “For Disney’s Aladdin Jr., instead of swords, we used pool noodles for a sword fight,” Melahn-Kavanagh says. “Performers come out into the house before the production to introduce themselves, just because we also understand that it can be confusing or frightening if you don’t understand what’s happening on stage isn’t happening in real life. [An] audience member can come up and see this is a costume. This isn’t actually a scary sea witch; it’s just someone in a costume. For these shows, every one of our performers walks away feeling like what they did was really special and that they provided something that is so rare and beautiful in the theater community.” Like most live theater, Ignite’s plans hit a snag when pandemic-related shutdowns began last year. The organization had to cancel its annual all-ages family show (which allows performers, as they

JULY 7-13, 2021

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say, from ages 8 to 88) and the sensoryfriendly shows. Ignite moved its operations online, working through a series of challenges. Performances had to be filmed and edited like a movie so audiences could stream them online. Shrek Jr. (yes, there is a Shrek musical) was filmed around town last summer, with each performer recording their parts separately. Picture an eighth grader dressed as the titular Shrek, but he’s wearing a face mask. He’s speaking to another kid dressed as Donkey as they walk together, yet completely separate, around different locations in south city. The time of day switches from day to night and back again between lines. Even with these limitations, you could tell Ignite’s performers gave their all in a time when it was difficult for everyone to be under the same limelight. Watching them succeed was charming as hell to see. An earlier production of Annie Jr. was filmed entirely on Zoom. During the show, kids pop up in boxes for musical numbers and find creative ways to interact with one another from afar. Offstage, the lives of the young performers drastically changed at school, at home, out in the world, and still in these stitched-together scenes, they make the most of it. Singing in the Rain Jr. will be another streaming show, and then Ignite will prepare for an in-person staging of Violet, a musical that traces a scarred young woman’s quest for a miracle cure. As shows head back in front of live audiences again, Ignite has adopted strict COVID-19 safety protocols, given

that most kids still aren’t able to be vaccinated. That means masks for audiences and performers and temperature checks upon entry. Plus, each in-person performance is being sold at 50 percent capacity to allow for social distancing. When asked how she feels about these precautions, Melahn-Kavanagh seems happy to be still playing it safe. “Listen, I’ve had small children sneeze directly into my open mouth. I would like to keep masks for a while!” Safety plan in place, the show will go on. Melahn-Kavanagh says the performers are ready. “Oh my gosh, they are losing it. All of our performers, especially those that have been exclusively in online school, cannot contain how excited they are to finally have a live audience,” she says. “That energy and the buzz, you just don’t get it through streaming musicals. That feeling of taking the final bow, having the people that you care about the most so proud of you, so in awe of what you’ve done. That’s why a lot of us do theater, and you’re missing that piece with streaming.” n Singing in the Rain Jr. streams from Friday, July 9, through Sunday, July 11. Ignite’s first in-person show, Violet, a production by high school and college kids, takes place at the Robert Ryan Theater on Thursday, July 29, and Friday, July 30. (This show is rated PG-13, so it might be good to leave the younger kiddos at home.) These performances of Violet will then be streaming August 19 to 22. Tickets can be purchased at ignitewithus.org.

WEEK OF JULY 7-13

CALENDAR

It’s sunflower season again. | COURTESY ECKERT’S FAMILY FARMS

SATURDAY, JULY 10 Sunflower Trail Saturday, July 10 Eckert’s Farm in Belleville $10 (951 South Green Mount Road, Belleville; 618-233-0513) Sunflowers have bloomed nearly a month early at Eckert’s Farm in Belleville, and they’re ready for the crowds. s we eagerly await olumbia Bottom onservation rea’s field, Eckert’s announced its sunflower patch has blossomed. rowds can come to take photos or even pick their own flowers. The field stretches 2 acres, allowing plenty of space to stretch out and have a photoshoot or two. “ e plant these crops months in advance and can’t be certain of what will make it through the winter frosts or intense summer heat, so a surprise harvest of sunflowers, along with blackberries and peaches is very exciting, ngie Eckert, vice president of retail operations, said in a press release. dding to the fun, Eckert’s has made a change to its sunflower trail this year. Post-photoshoot, guests can cut their own sunflower — or take multiple — for 1 per flower. The tricky part is getting tickets. ast weekend was supposed to be the opening, but heavy rains made for muddy fields. So that

didn’t happen, and you can be sure there will be even more demand if Eckerts is able to open the fields this weekend. But if you just want to get out to see a little of the farm life, Eckerts has plenty of you-pick-it options, including blackberries and, new this week, the much-anticipated peaches. Because nature is unpredictable, you’re probably going to want to check www.eckerts.com before you head out. Eckerts also strongly recommends reservations. More Flowers: ant more options than Eckerts and olumbia Bottom The Missouri Department of onservation plants other sunflower fields at the eldon Spring onservation rea (6990 South Missouri 94, St. Charles) in St. harles ounty. Those flowers are expected to bloom in mid-to-late uly, depending on growing conditions. —Jenna Jones and Jaime Lees

SUNDAY, JULY 11 Jimbo Mathus 7 p.m. Sunday, July 11. The Gaslight Theater, 360 N. Boyle Avenue. $20. 314-458-2978. s a founding member of the -based S uirrel ut ippers, Jimbo Mathus ended up in the middle of the swing revival of the late ’ 0s. The difference between Continued on pg 26

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Jimbo Mathus. | PRESS PHOTO

CALENDAR

Continued from pg 25

the Zippers and bands like the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies (which is still a super gross name) or Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (less gross, but still cringe) was that the Zippers looked and sounded slapped together. The video for the song “Hell,” their big hit, was a low-budget take on some big band from the ’30s, but all slapped together and weird. It was quite something to see on MTV in 1996 while they were simultaneously playing President Bill Clinton’s second inaugural ball. What a time to be alive! Since then, Mathus has released eighteen albums on various labels, some under different names. He’ll be playing songs from his 2020 album Incinerator, and certainly some from those seventeen previous records. He’s even toured with Buddy Guy, so you know he knows his shit. It is sure to be a night filled with bluesy guitar and plenty of stories from his 40 years as a musician. Leaving the Nest: Earlier this year, Mathus collaborated with occasional Squirrel Nut Zipper and whistling wonder Andrew Bird on an album titled These 13. The duo recorded almost every old-timey tune live in front of a single microphone. They complement each other well, and it’s an album worth checking out if you’re familiar with either musician. —Jack Probst

Maplewood Market 11 a.m. Sunday, July 11.

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JULY 7-13, 2021

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Schlafly Bottleworks Lot, 7260 Southwest Avenue. 314-241-2337. The stretch of Manchester that rolls through Maplewood is cute as hell. Seriously. There are so many little shops to pop into, great spots to sit with coffee (I’m looking at you, Foundation Grounds) and plenty of places on side streets to pick up a nice treat (hey there, Strange Donuts!). And what’s really great about the area is how local businesses help each other out. That’s where Maplewood Market comes in. Held on the first Sunday of every month (except for July, when it’s actually on the second Sunday) through November on the wide-open space that is Schlafly Bottleworks’ parking lot, the event features more than 40 vendors from the St. Louis area. There’s lots to explore and lots of local businesses you can support with your purchases. To encourage everyone to explore Maplewood after perusing the market, a Maplewood Market tote is available to purchase for $5. Show it at places like ZeeBee Market, The Blue Duck or CBD Canvas Boutique & Dispensary to receive a discount (see the full list of participating stores and discounts at schlafly.com events maplewoodmarket/). Playing the Market: Some of July’s vendors include City Dog Treat Bar, Feltup by Gretchen, Saint Louis Succulents, Poptimism by Whisk, Jack’s Salsa, Mister Finley Pet Bakery and The Bag Ladies, just to name a few. If you can’t make the market this time around, you have more opportunities August 1, September 5 and November 7. —Jack Probst

Out Every Night Summer is here in all its glory, as if the pandemic never happened... if you got your jab, that is. Make sure you’re vaccinated and come out to play! Compiled by

DANIEL HILL THURSDAY 8

AHSA-TI NU: 7 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. ANTHONY HAMILTON: 8 p.m., $1,000-$10,000. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900. BETH BOMBARA: 8 p.m., $15. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis. CASSANDRA LLEA: 7:30 p.m., $12-$15. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745. DUHART DUO: 6 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. IVAS JOHN BAND: 10 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

FRIDAY 9

AUDIO GARDEN: A TRIBUTE TO CHRIS CORNELL: w/ Amy’s Ex: A Tribute To Evanescence, A Shogun Named Marcus: A Tribute To Clutch 7:30 p.m., $10-$12. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720. FAMILY MEDICINE: w/ Biff K’narly and The Reptilians, Willem Dafrend 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226. MOM’S KITCHEN: 10 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. OLD SALT UNION DUO: 5 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. SCOTTY MCCREERY: w/ Tenille Arts 8 p.m., $35$40. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. TERRY ROGERS BAND: 8 p.m., $25. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. THE SO & SO’S FEATURING JOHN WILSON: 7 p.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644. VOIDGAZER ALBUM RELEASE SHOW: w/ Defcon, Scuzz, Swamp Lion 8 p.m., $12. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. WAKER: 8 p.m., $13-$15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. WHISKEY RACCOONS: 7:30 p.m., $15-$20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745. YARD EAGLE: w/ Oregon Space Trail of Doom 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

SATURDAY 10

ALL ROOSTERED UP: noon, free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. BIG RICH MCDONOUGH & THE RHYTHM RENEGADES: 7 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. BRETT DENNEN: 7 p.m., $27.50-$62.50. The Big Top, 3401 Washington Blvd, St. Louis, 314-533-0367. CHRIS NATHAN: 7:30 p.m., $25-$30. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745. FUNKY BUTT BRASS BAND: 10 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. HEADKNOCKER: A TRIBUTE TO FOREIGNER: 6:30 p.m., free. hesterfield mphitheater, 1

eterans Place Drive, hesterfield. THE JAZZ TROUBADOURS: w/ the Panderknots 7 p.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644. KINGDOM BROTHERS BAND: 3 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. LUXORA EP RELEASE SHOW: w/ Conman Economy, White Rose, Make Your Mark, Young Animals 7:30 p.m., $12. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. RIVER KITTENS: w/ Jackson Stokes 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. STOKER: w/ The Lizardtones 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226. WEST END JUNCTION: 11:30 a.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644. ZEUS REBEL WATERS: w/ Yerrty G, Poiison, DaRealTJ, Bo$$nate, Kamikaze Cole, The Real RJ, Johnny Bravo, #ItsRep 8 p.m., $10-$15. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

SUNDAY 11

ATOMIC JUNKSHOT: w/ Into the Blue, Niko, No Point 7:30 p.m., $12. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. BRIAN CURRAN: 2 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. THE EXTRA 3: 6:30 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. FAITHFUL STRAYS: 1:30 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. GENE JACKSON & POWER PLAY: 3 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. LOVE JONES “THE BAND”: 7 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. STEVE EARLE & THE DUKES: 8 p.m., $35. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

MONDAY 12

COMEDY SHIPWRECK OPEN MIC: 9 p.m., free. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226. IDAHO: w/ The String and Return, Slights 8 p.m., $12. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. JASON GARMS: 5 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. MINDFUL MONDAY: 7 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. SOULARD BLUES BAND: 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

TUESDAY 13

ST. LOUIS SOCIAL CLUB: 7 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. STEVE REEB: 5 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. STONE COLD & THE JACKAL: 7 p.m., $49-$99. Helium Comedy Club, 1151 St. Louis Galleria Saint Louis Galleria Mall, Richmond Heights, 314-727-1260.

WEDNESDAY 14

13 FRIDAYS: 9 p.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644. AMERICAN AQUARIUM: w/ Morgan Wade 8 p.m., $20-$22.50. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. BIG RICH MCDONOUGH & THE RHYTHM RENEGADES: 7 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. THE DEAD ROSES: 7 p.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644. DREW SHEAFOR & FRIENDS: 8 p.m., free. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745. SORRY, PLEASE CONTINUE: 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226. THE S&S VOODUO PLAYERS: 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. n

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JULY 7-13, 2021

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SAVAGE LOVE SACK LUNCH BY DAN SAVAGE n the first Thursday of every month host “Sack unch, an online hangout exclusively for Magnum subscribers to the Savage ovecast. take uestions, invite listeners to answer them with me, and we have a blast. ’m giving this week’s column over to some of the uestions we didn’t get to during this month’s Savage ovecast Sack unch Hey, Dan: My son is straight, cute, accomplished, 25, and has friends. He’s never been kissed. I suspect he’s terrified. I can’t talk to him about it. Should his dad talk to him? Should he go to a sex worker? Would this undermine his confidence? our son has friends and that’s a good sign. ot only does it mean your son has social skills, mom, it means he has people in his life that he can confide in about his sex life and ask for advice. ou can and should ask him if there’s anything he would like to talk about — keep those lines of communication open — but it’s entirely possible that your son has no interest in sex he could be asexual or that he has an active love and or sex life that he doesn’t wanna talk with mom and dad about for reasons, e.g. he’s someone’s rubber gimp or he can only get it up in a fursuit or he’s in a polyamorous triad that he’s not ready to tell you about. f he’s happy, let him be. Hey, Dan: Is there a safe way to enlarge a clitoris? llow me to Google that for you. Hey, turns out there’s a ikipedia entry for that “ litoral Enlargement Methods , as suspected there might be, and it lists three methods to grow a clitoris the use of creams containing testosterone applied directly to the clit testosterone supplements administered by injection and the use of clitoral pumps, i.e. suction cups. Testosterone injections is the most effective way to enlarge a clit — as any trans man

can tell you — but it has other “masculini ing effects that you may not want. litoral pumps, much like penis pumps, can enlarge the clitoris temporarily but overuse or too-enthusiastic use of a pump — on a dick or a clit — can damage erectile tissues. Hey, Dan: I am familiar with demisexuality — the idea that some people cannot develop a sexual relationship without an emotional or a romantic bond first — but what about the opposite phenomenon? I lose interest in people who get to know me and my desire to hook up is quickly replaced by a desire to just be acquaintances. ot only is there a term for people like you — people who lose desire after getting to know someone — there’s also a pride flag because there can never be too many pride flags “ raysexual, also known as ignotasexual, is a sexual orientation on the asexual spectrum, says GBT iki, “ describing someone who only experiences sexual attraction towards those that they are not deeply connected with and lose that attraction as they get to know the person. our pride colors are blue, cyan, white, and gray. There are so many pride flags out there these days — and they come out so damn fast — that suspected someone created an online pride flag generator. nd was right myflag.lgbt. Hey, Dan: What would you say to someone in a poly relationship who had their heart broken as a third? t gets better. Hey, Dan: My husband (gay, age 29) has continually accused me of cheating and other similar activities over the course of our six years together. It wasn’t too bad at the start but it got worse. I now feel so much resentment toward him that it’s destroying us. I feel like a prisoner in the relationship. He’s tracked my phone to make sure I’m not going anywhere “unapproved” and if I don’t tell him everything I’m doing he gets upset. At this point I hate being intimate with him. I don’t even want to touch him. We’ve started seeing a couples counselor but it’s not help-

ing with my resentment. How do I get over this resentment? Or do I do what my brain is telling me and divorce him? DTM — divorce the motherfucker already — and you’ll not only be doing yourself a favor you’ll most likely be doing your ex a favor as well. Because the pain of getting dumped is the only thing that motivates jealous and controlling assholes like your husband to get the help they need. Hey, Dan: What does “being in good working order” mean in practice? I’m struggling with depression (got diagnosed 18 months ago) and I still don’t have a handle on things. I feel like I can’t date because I can’t even tell potential partners what brand of chaos to expect with me because I don’t know myself. My friends say I’m being too hard on myself. What do you think? don’t have a handle on things. ot all the things. have my own struggles and bring my own particular brand of chaos to the table, the bedroom, the play party, etc. But like to think ’m in good working order — or good enough working order. reali e this is circular logic but one of the ways know ’m in good enough working order to sustain a relationship is that ’m in relationships ’ve somehow managed to sustain. So if someone decides they wanna be with you — someone who has a choice about staying or going — then that person believes you’re in good enough working order. That’s a “yes you can and should take for an answer but it’s not a “yes you’re ever gonna get if you never allow yourself to date. t some point you have to take a chance — probably more than one chance — to find out whether or not you’re in good enough working order. think it’s a good sign that your friends — people who know and love you — feel like you’re in good enough working order to get out there and start dating. reali e that the ability to sustain a relationship isn’t, in and of itself, proof that a person is in good working order. Some relationships are toxic, abusive, codependent, etc. Getting out of a bad relationship, staying in a good one — either can be evidence that a

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person is in good working order. Hey, Dan: Long distance relationships.... how do you choose between moving overseas to another country, uprooting your life for a relationship, and staying close to family and friends and the familiar? I moved to the U.K. before the pandemic hit and I’m trying not to blame the relationship for a shit year where I wasn’t able to leave home or make new friends in a new country. We were together for one year before I moved here. I miss home and friends, I lost my dad, and I’m terrified that this relationship might fail at some point after we’ve started a family. And then I’ll be stuck in this country to be near my children. Yes, I’m in therapy. But think I need a Dan Savage reality check. ’m so sorry for the loss of your father. would advise you to take a deep breath — several do en a day — and give it another year. nce you’re able to get a job and make some new friends you’ll gain some clarity. f things are still good and you’re feeling more at home, great. Stay in the U.K. But if you’re still miserable and full of doubt, well, then you might want to end the relationship and head home. n the meantime you’re going to wanna stay in therapy and make sure you’re using the most effective possible form of birth control method you can get your hands on — which is available free from the U.K’s ational Health Service. nd don’t want to be a downer here or tip the scales but there’s no way to eliminate the risk of a relationship ending or failing after you’ve started a family. r before you’ve started a family. Magnum subscribers to the Savage ovecast enjoy ad-free versions of the show with more guests and more uestions, access to the full archive of shows, the monthly Sack unch virtual hangout — where my listeners get to give sex advice — and other bonus content. To subscribe to the Savage ovecast go to www. savagelovecast.com and click subscribe. mail@savagelove.net @FakeDanSavage on Twitter www.savagelovecast.com

JULY 7-13, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JULY 7-13, 2021

riverfronttimes.com

JULY 7-13, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JULY 7-13, 2021

riverfronttimes.com

Riverfront Times, July 7, 2021

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