Riverfront Times, November 6, 2019 by Riverfront Times

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NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

RIVERFRONT TIMES

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

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NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

RIVERFRONT TIMES

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

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THE LEDE

PHOTO BY THEO WELLING

“It’s important that they know our culture because, especially nowadays, there’s a lot of negativity about [the] Hispanic population.” KARINA RODRIGUEZ, PHOTOGRAPHED PERFORMING AT THE MISSOURI HISTORY MUSEUM FOR DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS AND A CELEBRATION OF HISPANIC CULTURE ON NOVEMBER 2

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Publisher Chris Keating Interim Editor in Chief Doyle Murphy

E D I T O R I A L Managing Editor Liz Miller Arts & Culture Editor Paul Friswold Music Editor Daniel Hill Digital Editor Jaime Lees Staff Writer Danny Wicentowski Restaurant Critic Cheryl Baehr Film Critic Robert Hunt Columnist Ray Hartmann Contributing Writers Mike Appelstein, Allison Babka, Thomas Crone, Jenn DeRose, Mike Fitzgerald, Sara Graham, MaryAnn Johanson, Roy Kasten, Jaime Lees, Joseph Hess, Kevin Korinek, Bob McMahon, Lauren Milford, Nicholas Phillips, Tef Poe, Christian Schaeffer Proofreader Evie Hemphill Editorial Interns Ella Faust, Caroline Groff, Ronald Wagner

COVER

Menace to Sobriety The RFT investigates: How does St. Louisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; new all-you-can-drink bar compare in the land of cheap booze?

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

Story by

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

DANIEL HILL

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 Senior Account Executive Cathleen Criswell Account Managers Emily Fear, Jennifer Samuel Multimedia Account Executive Jackie Mundy

Cover photo by

THEO WELLING

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

INSIDE The Lede Hartmann

News Feature Calendar

Expect to pay if you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t handle the gay

14 24

Film

The St. Louis International Film Festival, week one

Cafe

Akar

E U C L I D M E D I A G R O U P Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating Officers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner VP of Digital Services Stacy Volhein Creative Director Tom Carlson www.euclidmediagroup.com 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 S U B S C R I P T I O N S Send address changes to Riverfront Times, 308 N. 21st Street, Suite 300, St. Louis, MO 63103. Domestic subscriptions may be purchased for $78/6 months (Missouri residents add $4.74 sales tax) and $156/year (Missouri residents add $9.48 sales tax) for first class. Allow 6-10 days for standard delivery. www.riverfronttimes.com The Riverfront Times is published weekly by Euclid Media Group Verified Audit Member Riverfront Times 308 N. 21st Street, Suite 300, St. Louis, MO 63103 www.riverfronttimes.com General information: 314-754-5966 Fax administrative: 314-754-5955 Fax editorial: 314-754-6416 Founded by Ray Hartmann in 1977

Short Orders

Culture

Bee Simple | Ballpark Village | Iowa Buffet | Southside Wine + Spirits | Bar Tab: Taco Circus

Fire Dog | Mark Deutsch | Benji Brothers

Out Every Night

Flyover Comedy Festival | The 75s | The Sadies

Savage Love 6

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HARTMANN What Were They Thinking? County police $20 million LGBTQ disaster reveals a case of arrested development BY RAY HARTMANN

n 1998, a 26-year-old rookie St. Louis County police officer came upon a burning car with a person trapped inside at about 5 a.m. on a commuter parking lot in south county. Unable to open the car doors, he resourcefully kicked in a window and, with the help of a good Samaritan, was barely able to pull the coughing and choking victim

through the window and drag him 40 feet away just before the car was engulfed in flames. It was a nice, feel-good story, albeit buried on page W4 of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s West edition. The officer received a Medal of Valor for his heroism, described as “the highest award a community can give to those who protect it.” Less than two years later, he would receive another award for performing the Heimlich maneuver on a woman who was choking. The officer’s name was Keith Wildhaber. You may have heard of him now: Nearly two decades after those acts of glory, he is front-page news in St. Louis. Wildhaber just received a $20 million jury verdict because the police department he served for all those years heartlessly discriminated against him for being gay. At least that’s what the jurors believed after hearing that he had been passed over 23 times for a promotion because he displayed

too much “gayness” and that he was retaliated against for filing his EEOC complaint and lawsuit. The jury spared no feelings: “We wanted to send a message,” its foreman told reporters. “If you discriminate, you are going to pay a big price. You can’t defend the indefensible.” The jurors did give the county some numbers to defend, as the Post-Dispatch reported, “awarding Wildhaber $1.9 million in actual damages and $10 million in punitive damages on the discrimination allegation. It added $999,000 in actual damages and $7 million in punitive damages for the retaliation allegations.” More staggering than those numbers was this enterprising reporting late last week from the Post-Dispatch: “Wildhaber offered to settle his discrimination lawsuit for $850,000 plus a promotion to lieutenant six months before” the jury awarded the $20 million. “On Wednesday, County Counselor

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Beth Orwick said that the Board of Police Commissioners had refused to settle the case, but did not indicate the amount that had been discussed.” All together now: What were they thinking? The public is entitled to make as harsh a judgment as the jury over the failure to settle with Wildhaber by the police board, the department, the county attorneys or anyone else in the process. Sure, that’s easy to say with the benefit of hindsight, but the sad facts that emerged from the weeklong trial lead to one that is irrefutable: The county should have never let this disaster get into a courtroom. I didn’t attend the trial, so I don’t know if Wildhaber’s aforementioned acts of heroism were mentioned, but there was plenty of praise heaped on him by colleagues, past and present. And it’s pretty clear that jurors believed Wildhaber when he testified that, in 2014, a now-former

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county police board member, John Saracino, told him, “The command staff has a problem with your sexuality. If you ever want to see a white shirt (get promoted), you should tone down your gayness.” Jurors somehow believed an e ecutive assistant who testified her high-ranking boss cited the Bible in calling homosexuality an “abomination,” and they weren’t impressed by the female sergeant who just happened to write “gay” ne t to the name of an officer on a candidate list. Then there was the testimony that Wildhaber had been given “geography lessons” by being transferred from Affton to the Jennings midnight shift — not quite the gold standard of assignments — after he raised his complaints. The RFT headline captured it well: “Sued by a Gay Cop, St. Louis County rass Couldn’t Keep Their Stories Straight.” But there were two inadvertent stars of the show, men whose conduct validates the notion that the police culture is really messed up when it comes to dealing with LGBTQ people, and for that matter, the truth. And in both cases, they again make one wonder what these people were thinking when they allowed this explosive case to get to trial. The most tragically comical was one Capt. uy Means, who indignantly denied calling Wildhaber “fruity” to Donna Woodland, the widow of slain police officer, at a 2015 police event. Why, said Means, he not only didn’t remember the event, he wouldn’t know that woman if she was sitting in the jury box in front of him. Well, she wasn’t. But he might have recognized her on the witness stand when — in a wondrous erry Mason moment she arrived packing photobooth evidence of Means not only having attended said party, but having given her playful, smiling bearhugs in the photos. She even brought the receipts. That scratching sound you could hear were the county attorneys trying to tunnel their way out of the courtroom. But the same attorneys should have known not to have been in that courtroom based upon the black-and-white deposition given by none other than Chief Jon Belmar nearly a year earlier. As reported in the RFT, when Belmar was asked if Wildhaber’s complaint would “have any impact of his efforts to get promoted to a

HAPPY HOUR

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lieutenant’s position,” the chief’s stupendously, outrageously honest answer was this: “I believe they have now.” Game, set, match. Here’s my follow-up question: Hadn’t some county lawyer prepped Belmar for the deposition? If not, why not? If so, wouldn’t said lawyer have initiated settlement-offer discussions if it did not go well? What were they thinking? The county put on this clown-car defense of lying witnesses and an honest admission that the chief was pissed enough at Wildhaber to deny him any chance of a promotion. And they wanted to take this to trial? And if all that wasn’t enough, after the trial Belmar apparently felt the need to put a little whipped cream on this plate of stewed cat food they’d served to the press and public. So just days after the trial, at a major event of police supporters emceed by KM ’s Steve Savard, elmar had Post-Dispatch reporter Christine Byers (who covered the trial quite well) evicted from the premises. Yes, this event emceed by one of St. Louis’ most prominent media figures was closed to the press. Now that’s a great sequel to losing a $20 million verdict. There will be repercussions. lmost all of the five-member police board is going bye-bye. And there’s really a case to be made — as Councilwoman Lisa Clancy has already stated — that Belmar, after presiding over this troubled culture of homophobia, and lying, might head for the exits, too. But whoever leaves or stays, this much is clear: The county must settle out of court with Wildhaber, a good man who was horribly treated and deserves compensation, although hopefully for the county’s sake, for a bit less than $20 million in punitive damages (half of which would go to the state, by the way, thanks to “tort reform” laws). The price of poker will be a lot higher than $850,000 and a promotion. But the county needs to settle. Now. Metaphorically, the county police department is a bit of a car fire right now, with elmar coughing and choking at the wheel. And I don’t think Wildhaber will be coming to the rescue this time. n Ray Hartmann founded the Riverfront Times in 1977. Contact him at rhartmann@sbcglobal.net or catch him on St. Louis In the Know With Ray Hartmann and Jay Kanzler from 9 to 11 p.m. Monday thru Friday on KTRS (550 AM).

NEWS Tracking Missouri’s Anti-Abortion Scheme Written by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

s Planned Parenthood tried to keep Missouri from becoming the only state in the 21st century without an abortion clinic, the bad faith behind the entire venture was revealed courtesy of Dr. Randall Williams, the director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, or DHSS. The moment came during a hearing last week, in which he blithely testified that the department had tracked the menstrual cycles of patients at Planned Parenthood’s clinic in the Central West End. That was news to Planned Parenthood and its doctors — and, seemingly, to everyone else. The state’s top Democrats have called for investigations, and abortion rights groups want his resignation. National outlets jumped on the story, which was first reported by the Kansas City Star, describing a spreadsheet attached to an email to Williams. The subject line referenced “[L]ast normal menses date.” During Williams’ testimony, he claimed the data was used to investigate the number of women who had returned to the clinic after “failed abortions.” But after the news broke, Williams and DHSS shifted to damage control and tried to fend off mounting outrage. Revealed midway through four days of hearings in St. Louis, the state’s clumsy, spreadsheet-assisted investigation into Planned Parenthood’s patients reflects the rot of bad faith at the heart of Missouri’s anti-abortion enterprise. For his part, Williams would have you believe that outrage over the tracking of women’s periods amounts to a “false allegation.” On October 30, DHSS sent out a press release saying the department had

DHSS director Dr. Randall Williams sparked outrage over tracking periods. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI

Administrative Hearing Commission Commissioner Sreenivasa Rao Dandamudi (left) and Dr. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer of Missouri’s last abortion clinic. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI simply used “legally-obtained information which was required by law and which Planned Parenthood routinely submits.” The statement, sent to the Associated Press and others, argued that its review of health information was necessary “to ensure that our laws and health care standards are being met.” But the reason behind that review, and the lengths that state investigators went to conduct it, still ba ed r. Colleen Mc icholas, chief medical officer of eproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region. In an interview, McNicholas called the tracking of her patients’ menstrual cycles “a real violation of the trust that patients have with their physi-

cian and health care providers.” “I think the public outrage reflects the reality, she added. “The public does not expect the department of health to be going through their records. I can think of no medical reason for why they were collecting that information.” So what is going on here? At issue are a number of “failed abortions” reported by Planned Parenthood’s clinic since January. That number, according to McNicholas’ testimony at the hearings, totaled two cases out of more than 4,000. illiams, though, testified that a state investigator found the clinic had failed to fill out a complication report” for a patient whose abortion re uired five separate

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attempts before it took. Another case involved a woman pregnant with twins, requiring a second abortion wee s after the first. The failed abortions, Williams claimed, led to an aggressive investigation that included, yes, DHSS calculating the last menstrual period of patients. That effort produced two other cases the state alleges were “failed abortions,” though Planned Parenthood disputes that and has repeatedly accused the state of “cherry picking” cases as a means to justify ending abortion access in Missouri. The state’s focus on these “failed abortions” ran into the expert testimony of both McNicholas and Dr. Daniel Grossman, a San Francisco-based obstetrician/gynecologist who similarly disputed the state’s charge that the Planned Parenthood doctors had mishandled various treatment decisions that led to multiple abortions or the need for hospitalization. nstead, rossman testified that those cases represented either rare instances — such as a doctor missing a twin — or cases that were not actually failed abortions, such as one patient cited by the state who, Grossman said, “did not leave the facility thinking she had had an abortion.” Grossman also testified that he did not have any concerns” about the way those cases were handled. Much of the testimony during the third day of the hearings tilted on clinical decisions made by McNicholas and other doctors in those four cases, leading to back and forth between DHSS’s attorneys and the people with actual medical degrees and experience as abortion providers. After the hearing, McNicholas told Riverfront Times that Planned Parenthood already tracks failed abortions and that it provided its records to DHSS as part of the license renewal process — records that DHSS apparently believed were incomplete. However, it appears that Williams is now trying to distance himself from the period-tracking spreadsheet. In a statement sent to the Star, DHSS said Williams “did not ask for, see or know anything about the spreadsheet, which was put together by regulators.” DHSS went on to claim that email’s

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St. Louis Cop Charged in Shooting

collapsed. Shortly after the shooting, police Chief John Hayden told reporters that the driver was reaching for his waistband before he was shot. However, the man never had a gun. Other officers who responded searched him and the area for a weapon but came up empty. He was transported to the hospital. Kornberger concluded, “Based on the foregoing, I believe the defendant is a danger to the victim and the community.” After EerNisse was charged with assault and armed criminal action last week, police released the following statement: “After a lengthy and thorough investigation by the Department’s Force Investigation Unit and Internal Affairs Division, it was determined that a warrant application was the appropriate course of action. This process ensures that of-

ficer-involved shooting investigations are conducted in a competent manner which promotes transparency, integrity and the professional standards to which we hold ourselves.” Despite the conclusions of the Internal Affairs and Force Investigation units’ investigation, the spokesman for the police union claimed EerNisse was innocent and blamed the prosecution on Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, a frequent target of the union. “It’s appropriate on Halloween that we have a criminal masquerading as a prosecutor charging yet another innocent police officer,” St. Louis Police Officers Association business manager Jeff Roorda told KMOV. “We’ll let his attorney address the facts of the case, but we are here to stand up for our member, and we believe this is about him wearing a badge, not the facts of the case.” EerNisse had been an officer for about two years at the time of the shooting. He is also a defendant in two ongoing civil lawsuits from his time on the force. He was one of 343 police officers sued for their actions during police protests in September 2017 after former officer Jason Stockley was acquitted of murder. EerNisse was also sued after a 2016 crash. He was chasing an unidentified vehicle when he slammed a police Chevy Tahoe into an uninvolved Chrysler 300, badly injuring the driver, according to the federal lawsuit. He did not have his emergency lights or sirens on at the time, the suit says. The city has said EerNisse’s actions were protected under the law and it bears no responsibility. EerNisse is free in the shooting case on a $50,000 cash bond. n

patients to receive abortions while the two sides fought it out. A St. Louis city judge then sent the matter to the Administrative Hearing Commission, a state body reserved for disputes over regulations. The hearings were presided over by a single commissioner, Sreenivasa Rao Dandamudi, who will decide Planned Parenthood’s appeal. His ruling is not expected for several months. But while this latest chapter is notable for evidence of DHSS’s willingness to use private medical records to build its case against Planned Parenthood, it strikes a familiar tone in the broader saga of abortion rights in Missouri: It is a state where pro-life politicians have spent years bragging about the closure of abortion clinics while simultaneously insisting that the very policies restricting abortion access — such as medically unnecessary pelvic exams and requirements for abortion doctors to have hospital admitting privileges — were implemented out of concern for patient safety.

That bad faith argument has led, perhaps inevitably, to the absurdity of a period-tracking spreadsheet. And even if no one at DHSS wants to take responsibility for it, it reflects the political and policy forces that have successfully shuttered every other abortion clinic in the state. It’s the same force that passed an eight-week abortion ban lacking exception for rape and incest, a measure that would have made the vast majority of abortions illegal in Missouri, had it not been blocked by a federal judge in August. For Planned Parenthood and its supporters, the doublespeak from Missouri officials can’t obscure the political reality of the state, and it’s no wonder the organization just opened a new health facility in Illinois to help take on Missouri’s abortion refugees. It’s as clear as Governor Mike Parson saying he wants to make Missouri “the most Pro-Life state in the country!” The bullshit at play speaks for itself. And it doesn’t take a spreadsheet to recognize it. n

Written by

DOYLE MURPHY

St. Louis police officer has been charged with first-degree assault for shooting an unarmed man in the back on August 27, 2018. Matthew EerNisse, 26, was one of multiple officers who responded after a sergeant spotted a Ford Mustang that had been reported stolen that morning in a carjacking near North Kingshighway Boulevard and Natural Bridge Avenue, police say. The sergeant chased the Mustang to the 5500 block of Chamberlin Avenue in the West End neighborhood where the driver lost control, crashed and ran off on foot. EerNisse, who is 6 feet 1 inch tall and weighs 250 pounds, chased after him. Police say the driver started climbing over the plywood-covered gate of a gangway, and EerNisse started shooting. The driver made it over the gate and out of sight, but EerNisse continued shooting blindly through the plywood, according to court records. “The gangway gate next to 5595 Chamberlin was boarded up with plywood, making it impossible for EerNisse to see the gangway while firing at [the driver],” writes Sergeant Joseph Kornberger of the department’s Internal Affairs Division. The driver was shot in the back and

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subject line, “Director’s request,” was actually made in error. On the other hand, DHSS’s lead investigator — that is, the person most directly in the role of the “regulators” mentioned in the above DHSS statement — had already testified that it was illiams, a gynecologist/obstetrician himself, who made the clinical judgments while evaluating Planned Parenthood’s application to renew its abortion license. And so from period tracking, SS has moved to finger pointing. Far from exposing Planned Parenthood’s misdeeds, the hearings only deepened questions about the state’s basis in denying an abortion license to the sole remaining abortion clinic in the state. In May, when it became clear that DHSS would not renew the clinic’s abortion license, Planned Parenthood took the matter to court, seeking a restraining order to allow

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Officer Matthew EerNisse. | ST. LOUIS POLICE

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Parsing Propaganda Written by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

or most of its 90-minute runtime, the documentary Hard Landing At Lambert tells the dramatic tale of how St. Louis bulldozed thousands of homes in a Bridgeton subdivision in the early 2000s in order to build a billion-dollar runway for St. Louis Lambert International Airport. ut the film, released last wee in three parts on YouTube, has been met with concern and dismay by city and airport officials, who last wee interrogated the film’s executive producer, Travis Brown, during a meeting of the Airport Advisory Working Group — the same group on which Brown serves as a lead consultant on the subject of privatizing Lambert. Brown is now facing accusations of conflict of interest and circumventing his duties as a project leader for a process city officials often neutrally describe as an “exploration” of privatization. And Brown isn’t just some hired marketing help: He’s the chief lobbyist for billionaire financier e Sin uefield and the founder of the Sin uefield-funded nonprofit Grow Missouri, a group that itself serves as the linchpin in a deeply strange arrangement in which Sin uefield pays the city’s consultants to “explore” privatization. Into this twisting, convoluted narrative comes the film Hard Landing At Lambert, which was produced through Brown’s public relations firm, irst ule. The documentary attempts to frame the construction of a western runway, completed in 2006, as leaving Lambert “crippled by debt” and incapable of becoming a “worldclass airport.” In the documentary’s trailer, a narrator asks, “What do you get when you listen to politics and ego over truth and science? A world-class boondoggle.” To ma e those points, the film uses original interviews and extensive archival TV news footage to chronicle the doomed efforts of residents of a Bridgeton subdivision that was ultimately displaced to make room for the runway. That portion of the story is told in the documentary’s first and second chapters, which present a welltold narrative of grassroots activism pitted against St. Louis Mayor

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The film was released online the day before a deadline for privatization proposals. | VIA YOUTUBE Vince Schoemehl and airport director Colonel Leonard Griggs. In an interview with Riverfront Times, Brown described the documentary as a “passion project” inspired by his research into the “root cause” of Lambert’s struggles. “I think is is important for the public to understand that we’re still paying for debt and not realizing as much revenue as we would have,” he said. “What the film provides perspective on is, where did [the debt] originate, how can it still be here, and what does that mean for today?” Upon viewing the entire documentary, however, the issue of the airport’s debt accounts for only several minutes’ worth of content toward the film’s conclusion. nd although the film includes firsthand accounts of pilots and air traffic controllers who opposed the design of the runway expansion, the film does not feature any current airport officials or expert sources to support Brown’s claim that Lambert’s $600 million of remaining debt represents a “unique debt structure” that holds it back from making necessary improvements. And then there’s the timing of the film’s release, one day before the November 1 deadline for companies to submit their privatization proposals — amounting to a long-term lease — to the city, which runs the airport even though the actual facilities are located in St. Louis County, far beyond its borders. Indeed, on November 1, St. Louis announced it had received eighteen proposals from various groups angling to take over Lambert. If St. Louis bites, it sets the stage for what would be the largest U.S. airport to ever go private. What would St. Louis get out of it or one thing, a cash flow unencumbered by federal restrictions, which currently limits the

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Travis Brown says his film isn’t about St. Louis’ privatization push. | COURTESY OF FIRST RULE amount of money the airport can send to St. Louis’ general fund to about $6.5 million annually. And there’s another thing. That “crippling” debt highlighted in Hard Landing at Lambert? A private operator would have to pay that off, too. lthough the film ma es no e plicit mention of privatization, Brown acknowledged in his interview with RFT that there’s “no doubt that one could use the film to argue in favor of privatizing Lambert. It is the debt, he said, which presents a powerful lesson to be learned from Lambert’s “world-class boondoggle” for a 6,000-foot runway, originally designed for the tens of million passengers that passed through Lambert during its peak years as a TWA hub in the 1980s and 1990s. Lambert today has lost most of that traffic. etween the ban ruptcies of TWA, the disruption of air travel after 11 and final loss of hub status in 2009, the airport and its runways simply have fewer passengers. In 2000, Lambert moved around 15 million through its terminals. In 2006, the year it completed the billion-dollar runway, it was moving less than half

that number. Brown cautioned, “We need to be careful about our airport’s future,” adding, “I for one do not want to wait another generation for St. Louis to be in the ranks of other airports.” But Brown appears to have few fans of his new film, or, for that matter, his claims that it represents merely a “historical documentary.” In fact, the documentary’s existence was revealed only about two weeks ago, through an email invitation to a private screening first reported by St. Louis Public Radio. The email stated, “The documentary you will preview exposes how the decision of past St. Louis City officials to build a new runway and pay for it with massive debt was the true reason for the diminished performance of the airport rather than the commonly held belief it was the collapse of TWA and subsequent dismantling of the hub by American Airlines.” That line got the attention of Lambert Director Rhonda HammNiebruegge. During an October 24 meeting of the Airport Advisory Working Group, Hamm-Niebruegge referenced her past employment with TWA, and told the committee that the email’s claim “couldn’t be further from the facts.” On October 31, just hours before the full film was released to YouTube, Brown himself appeared before Airport Advisory Working Group. During the meeting, St. Louis Budget Director Paul Payne, who serves as the head of the working group, took Brown to tas for blindsiding officials and sidestepping the working group’s communications staff, who are are supposed to function as public educators on privatization without “advocating one way or the other.” “What concerns me is that, Travis, you’re a project leader for this project, you are under contract with the city,” Payne said, and added that he was concerned about potential conflict of interest. The film’s statistical depiction of Lambert’s debt also came under fire. uring the wor ing group meeting last week, HammNiebruegge noted that the documentary uses 2010 figures that list landing fees at $8.18, and that the figure is used in a graphic showing unfavorable comparisons between Lambert and other airports. In 2019, she pointed out, the landing fees are at $6.56. In response to Payne and others at the meeting, Brown said the film had nothing to do with privatization and only seeks to present Continued on pg 13

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“historical facts,” a line that produced increasing incredulity in the audience of airport experts and city officials. At the end of the meeting, having heard Brown’s defense yet again, PFM Group consultant Rebecca Perry-Glickstein, who serves on the Advisory Working Group, shot back at Brown, “The history of what?” Perry-Glickstein pressed further, attacking Brown’s claim that Lambert’s debt is unique to St. Louis. That’s not the case, she argued, as U.S. airports planning massive infrastructure projects are generally funded via debt. “I don’t understand the context and the angst,” she continued, speaking directly to Brown. “You want to talk about how U.S. airports are funded? Then talk about how U.S. airports are funded. But this to me is like a directed attack on this airport.” Indeed, the numbers don’t reflect that Lambert is uni ue in its debt load. As the fourth largest “medium size” hub, Lambert’s 2018 debt of $682 million lines up with Dallas’ Love Field, the second-largest medium hub, which carries $675 million, according to figures provided by the airport advocacy group Airports Council International. The third-largest medium hub, Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, comes in at $789 million in debt. And while the largest medium hub, Nashville International Airport, held only $286 million in debt in 2018, Annie Russo, Airports Council International’s senior vice-president of government and political affairs, tells RFT that the airport’s ongoing construction pro ects will add significantly to that figure. “Lambert is in very good company,” Russo says, noting that other medium hub airports have been forced to downsize and repurpose infrastructure that was intended to serve much larger uantities of traffic. She disputes that Lambert’s debt structure is unique or “crippling,” instead calling it, “very much average.” The critiques haven’t stopped Brown, who suggested in his interview with RFT that his “dual role as film producer and privatization consultant was no different than the dual roles filled by city and airport officials who also serve on the working group. Still, those officials aren’t releasing independent documentaries to bolster their own strangely rele-

Brown acknowledged there’s “no doubt” that one could use the film to argue in favor of privatizing Lambert. vant “passion projects.” But as the privatization process veers into the realm of real numbers and actual proposals, Brown’s many roles in the process, from Sin uefield lobbyist to city representative to film producer, reflects the remar able degree to which the separation between airport’s public and private interests have eroded since the process began back in 2017. After all, this is a “public private partnership” that includes no provision for public vote. The entire process started with St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay seeking the assistance of e Sin uefield, who in turn supplied his millions to pay consultants, lawyers and various experts to shepherd St. Louis through an “exploration” of an unprecedented privatization process — and all on the condition that he’d only be paid back if the city went through with leasing the airport, representing a perverse incentive that would seem to provide all the motivation necessary to taint the process. Instead of killing the city’s privatization search, though, the taint of conflict-of-interest has become one of its defining characteristics. And now privatization backers have a 90-minute “documentary” to reference as proof of Lambert’s failures. During the interview with RFT, rown denied that the film is misleading or an example of propaganda. “It’s in the eye of the beholder,” he said, adding, again, that he only sought to produce a “historical documentary.” However, while Brown said Sin uefield did not fund the production of the film, he confirmed that the billionaire is funding the film’s distribution on traditional TV and through digital release. “We’re going to make it broadly available to the St. Louis region,” Brown said, adding, “Our focus is one thing. Let’s build back Lambert.” n

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Menace

to Sobriety 14

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How does St. Louis’ new all-you-can-drink bar compare in the land of cheap booze? AN RFT INVESTIGATION BY DANIEL HILL

t’s not difficult to understand why debut raised a few eyebrows.

pen Concept’s

ctober

illed as a pay-by-the-hour, drin -what-you-can-handle affair, the Cheroee Street bar housed in the space that was formerly home to Melt brings an admittedly novel concept to south city’s bar scene. or a mere 10 an hour, patrons can unloc access to a variety of specialty coc tails and classic mi ed drin s, as well as wine and beer. or 20 per hour, beverage options climb out of the wells and closer to the top shelf, with li uors including Ma er’s Mar , atron,

ennessy

and lenlivet available in either shot form or as a base to create one’s own drin s from a variety of mi ers on hand. wner Michael utler, who also serves as St. Louis’ recorder of deeds, has said that the bar is the first of its ind in the region and the state. redictably, then, media outlets of both the local and national variety uic ly too notice. n the wee s before its official opening on ctober 4, pen Concept saw a deluge of press from the li es of , Food & Wine, St. Louis ublic adio and many more much of it focused on the opportunities for overconsumption the bar provides. ew ar Lets ou rin Sort f nlimited oo e for an ourly ate, reads the headline used by Vice. St. Louis ar Charges y the our ather Than the rin hat Could o rong as s The Takeout. eople tend to drin too

much and get absolutely obliterated at unlimited bars we’ve all been there , Maxim notes. To combat man’s natural tendency to overindulge when money is no ob ect, utler insisted in interview after interview that the bar’s staff won’t hesitate to cut patrons off when they’ve had more than their fair share. hen we see people becoming visibly into icated, we then serve them edialyte. e care about our customers, he says. Most people, once they’ve been drin ing, ust want something fruity and tasty, so we can serve them that edialyte and say, ey, you need to slow down.’ ut some were not convinced, and early criticism of pen Concept’s business model came from

RFT Music Editor Daniel Hill processes the results of a long night of research. | THEO WELLING

both within and outside the ran s of local government, most vocally but not e clusively from former th ard emocratic Committeewoman Marie Cesels i, who resigned her position upon the announcement that a presidential debate watch party would be held by the city and state emocratic parties at the bar. am a lifelong emocrat as were my parents and grandparents before me. will continue to support and vote for emocrats. ut will not be affiliated with organi ations that associate with an all-you-can-drin for 10 an hour ... bar and ridiculous claims that edialyte sobers people up, Cesels i wrote in a statement. now too many people illed or in ured by drun drivers, too many with the chronic disease of alcoholism, too many with liver damage from drin ing, to thin

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this bar and data mining scam is an acceptable business for State arty and Central Committee to partner with. Shame on all of you that go to Tuesday’s atch arty at part-time ecorder of eeds Michael utler’s bar. t’s easy enough to understand her concern. St. Louis is an infamously drun city, built by beer barons and home to rett ull, who was recently declared the drun est man in merica by the New York Post on account of his boo y appearances during the duration of 201 ’s Stanley Cup playoffs. o we really need new and e citing ways to pic le our livers ut while can see where she’s coming from, myself am a St. Louisan cut from similar cloth as ull, ust without any of the sports prowess, charisma or national acclaim. or me and, indeed, many of my fellow St. Louis citi ens the idea of an all-youcan-drin bar provides a potential penny-saving opportunity. nd so it was with thriftiness in mind that set myself out to get to the bottom of things in regard to St. Louis’ most hotly contested new bar, purchasing a bloc of three hours the most you can buy at once on pen Concept’s website with the e press goal of seeing ust how much alcohol could shovel down my gullet for 0. hat follows is a complete detailing of my efforts.

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

Continued on pg 16

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Open Concept’s pay-by-the-hour structure attracted national attention, but can the model hold up to our rigorous stress test? | DANIEL HILL

Open Concept

visited pen Concept on a ednesday, arriving with a Riverfront Times editor designated driver at 4 14 p.m. to begin my threehour bloc of drin ing. The bar, brightly lit by the afternoon sun, was fairly empty at such an early hour, with only one other pair of customers in attendance. ro ectors and flat-screen T s lined the walls, soundlessly playing the li es of Bad Boys II, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie and Real Housewives of Somewhere or Other while ry ah adu’s 1 hit n n oo ed through the bar’s spea ers. smo e detector with a low battery chirped overhead. hen showed up, was first as ed to show my and to fill out a short profile on an i ad with my name and phone number, which are both integral to the bar’s pointof-sale system. ’d purchased my time in advance, so all they had to do was pull up my order. fter receiving a te t message from the bar announcing that my time had begun, was free to imbibe to my heart’s content. pen Concept’s menu is split into two sections, one for 10-anhour drin ers comprising large-batch proprietary drin s with names such as Lou uice, Mango liss and um unch as well as wine, beer and several traditional coc tails and one for those willing to pony up 20 per hour, mostly made up of straight shots of higher-end li uor. t the end of the bar, a small coc tail station with several mi ers and va-

RIVERFRONT TIMES

rieties of fruit afford those in the latter camp the ability to create their own drin s. s thriftiness is paramount for this e periment, obviously chose the former. fter loo ing over the menu, announced that believed could consume all twenty drin s on the 10 side before my time was up. was greeted with s epticism. The good news is we have edialyte for the end, one bartender uipped. started at the top of the menu the section filled with proprietary mi ed drin s. Lou uice came first, and was fruity and sweet and tasty, followed by a aspberry liss, which also leaned heavy on sugar and fruit elements and also tasted fine, and then a Mango liss, which did not en oy. n the interest of e pediency, ’ll ust ran the specialty drin s from best to worst 1. um unch 2. Lou uice . aspberry liss 4. Mango liss . Strawberry ine unch. The bar was out of the si th and final specialty drin , ess and od a, so was unable to ran it, but presume it tastes a bit li e a mi ture of clear li uor and generic soda. ust a hunch. moved on from that portion of the menu and onto the traditional coc tails, beginning that section with a vod a and club soda, which went down easily enough.

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

t this point, was si drin s in, and only about a half-hour had passed since my arrival, setting me up for an average of twelve drin s per hour. So far, so good. mused with myself, logged onto social media and posted a picture of the bar, along with a message ’ve been here for 0 minutes and ’ve already had si drin s. There is so far no sign of concern from staff my health or wellbeing. This would prove to be an illadvised, catastrophic error. ut more on that later. s moved on to my seventh drin , a vod a and cranberry, began to hit a wall, consuming it much more slowly than the previous si . Midway through my beverage removed my glasses and put my head in my hands while rubbing my eyes, according to my designated driver. Minutes later, a member of staff LaKeySha osley, interestingly enough, a state representative in Missouri’s th ouse district approached the table and set a small cup filled with edialyte in front of me. t was p.m. and had officially been cut off. was told would not be served any more drin s until was no longer visibly into icated. tried to advocate for myself, insisting that was a special breed of

“I’ve been here for 30 minutes and I’ve already had six drinks. There is so far no sign of concern from staff RE my health or well-being.”

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drun who could safely consume twenty total drin s over the course of three hours. Loo at me, ’m enormous, said. ut osley was unmoved. e don’t body shame here, so ’m gonna wal away, she replied. s twiddled my thumbs and waited to no longer be drun enough to set off alarm bells for staff, something une pected happened Michael utler himself, owner of the bar, recorder of deeds, strode in through the front door dressed in a blue suit. fter spea ing briefly with staff he turned and approached our table directly and addressed me by name, as ing me if was wor ing on a story. eader, had been made. t would seem that my posting on social media had come bac to bite me in the ass. ’d later find that a mutual internet friend tagged utler under my status. resumably, utler saw my post and headed up to the bar to ma e sure my health and well-being would be a priority going forward. fair amount of time had passed since ’d been cut off, and was allowed to order the ne t drin on the menu, a whis ey and Co e, while utler was there. fforded the opportunity to tal with him on the record about his business, hit start on a recorder and as ed if he was concerned about over-serving guests. bsolutely. e ta e it very seriously, utler replied. That’s why our bartenders are always watching. e ma e it a point of, the 20 option, the shots, we let people get two shots in a row but nothing more than that. e will generally tell people that they can have one shot and then one drin , almost bac to bac , but if you get two shots or one shot and then a drin we don’t let you come bac to the bar for some time. ur bartenders will tell that person, ou’re moving too fast.’ So had si drin s in the first half hour, replied. That’s not normal, utler said. will tell you something, you have been a very good customer to us if you bought three hours and it sounds li e you got your money’s worth with si drin s. e plained to utler that my plan had been to consume the entire 10 menu over that three hours but his indly staff’s insistence that cease drin ing had thrown a wrench in the gears. e registered his disbelief that anyone would be able to physically complete such a tas , to which insisted that ’m a pro but conceded that it was probably wise to cut me off before could do so. e’re re uired to do that,

Just Bill’s serves cheap drinks, without need for your name or phone number. | DANIEL HILL utler said. She mentioned that at some point you became visibly into icated, and we’re re uired by law to shut you off. That’s how we do it. ’m glad the system is wor ing. finished my whis ey and Co e my eighth overall alcoholic beverage of the night and tried mightily to tal my way into a ninth, but utler would not be moved. s he left the building he waved his hand across his nec , giving the signal to staff that was done for the night. departed shortly after. Later that evening, pee ed at social media and noticed that utler had since shared my status from earlier in the night, with a message of his own ur pen ar Concept is not a challenge and should not be treated as such. ur e perienced bartenders shut Mr. ill off after he became visibly into icated. e was in our space with friends and had a designated driver. e applaud you Mr. ill for thin ing ahead about your safety. STATS: 8 drinks 3 hours $30

Just Bill’s

ow, ’ll grant that eight drin s for 0 is a pretty damn fine deal. ut how does it stand up to a normal St. Louis-area bar nd would said normal bar be more or less li ely to cut me off To get the answers to these burning uestions, made a trip to ust ill’s, an verland bar where ’ve spent more than a few foggymemoried nights over the years. ust ill’s, or clusively il-

liam’s in the parlance of some regulars, is the uintessential dive-bar e perience. Located in the center of scenic downtown verland and flan ed by a uaint little diner on one side and a sandwich shop on the other, the beloved north-county watering hole e ists utterly and completely without pretense, serving as a sanctuary for those dedicated drin ers who ust want to tilt bac a few without dealing with the hassles that come with pretending to be fancy. n other words, ’ve seen people blow snot-roc ets onto the carpet. t’s my ind of place. stopped by the bar on a Monday with an accomplice again in tow. pon our arrival at 44 p.m., spotted a pair of plaid bo er shorts on the sidewal ust outside the front door. s we headed inside, the bartender remar ed on the abandoned unmentionables, saying they’d been there when she arrived and that she’d opted not to pic them up because she thought it was funny. hen there’s underwear on the ground, you now somebody had a good time the night before, she said. ne of the televisions behind the bar was playing a fistfight between a couple of ascar racers on what seemed to be a loop. nother simply showed a race that was already in progress. n this afternoon, the bar’s TouchTunes u ebo churned out a steady stream of alternative roc , from Smashing ump ins to oo ighters to Kid oc , though ’ve heard everything from eicide to a a loc a lame to the theme song from Friends on prior visits. Continued on pg 18

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NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

RIVERFRONT TIMES

The ’Bees serves dollar drinks and cheap apps until you literally can’t take any more. | DANIEL HILL

MENACE TO SOBRIETY Continued from pg 17

pon arrival promptly ordered ten drin s one buc et of usch beers, two pic le shots vod a and pic le uice and two whis ey and Co es. They were all handed to me at once within about five minutes. t first, the bartender tried to give the drin s to me and my associate, but corrected her and e plained that they were all for me. She laughed and handed me a receipt to sign, with my total coming to ust 1 . tipped 10 on top of that, ma ing for 2 for ten drin s already cheaper than pen Concept and indeed, among the cheapest in town ta e note, fellow thrifty drun s. ithin a half-hour, both shots, two beers and one whisey and Co e were already down the hatch. too my time from that point, relatively spea ing, as new had little further to prove here. finished my last usch at 40 p.m., ust under two hours after my arrival. The e perience was enlightening. hat critics of pen Concept fail to consider is that the bar’s business model actually disincentivi es staff from overserving its patrons. The fact of the matter is, you’re only gonna pay a set rate for your time, and every beverage they serve to you during that time is actually money out of their poc ets. t’s a needle-threading game, then, wherein it’s in the bar’s best interest to serve you ust enough to eep you happy without going too far and hurting their bottom line. hen it comes to the top-shelf li uor options this is probably especially the case.

RIVERFRONT TIMES

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

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our average bar, on the other hand, is financially incentivi ed to sell you all the alcohol you can consume while still being able to stand. s od intended it. efore leaving, ordered one final pic le shot, ust to see if was served. nsurprisingly, was. STATS: 11 drinks 2 hours $32

Applebee’s

ith trips to both a standardbearer north-county bar and Chero ee Street’s revolution in inebriation entered into the record, a clearer picture begins to emerge of the triumphs and tribulations inherent in each but rigorous scientific study of this matter demands a third point of reference so as to triangulate our findings. Luc ily, pplebee’s serves ollaritas. or those hopelessly uns illed at deciphering a portmanteau, a ollarita is a margarita that costs only a dollar. pplebee’s debuted the preposterously ine pensive drin in ctober 201 to combat millennials’ apparent fast-casual-chainilling bloodlust following a tough fiscal year of restaurant closures and declining revenues. The move seemed largely predicated on the notion that the lac of financial security and upward mobility that tends to result in younger generations’ refusal to spend what little money they have on overpriced, subpar food in a chain setting could be overcome with dirt-cheap boo e. hich, K, is not the cra iest gambit ’ve ever heard. So it ma es sense, then, that include the ’ ees li e to call it

the ’ ees in my search for the thriftiest bu in town. ow, ’ll concede that this particular e periment is not e actly a new one. n my ollarita research, found that a Vice writer had hit a ew or -area pplebee’s in uly 201 in an effort to see if it is possible to get drun off of its dollar drin s. That month’s drin was the 1 L. .T., or Long sland iced tea pplebee’s apparently rotates out the name and specific elements of its bottom-shelf mi ed swill on a monthly basis and the writer in uestion declared herself drun after ust three of them, because Vice writers are posers. n addition, her research found that this particular pplebee’s cuts its customers off after three drin s, at the insistence of its franchisee, because ew or area pplebee’s restaurants are evidently also posers. n short, felt there was room for further e perimentation, despite a friend’s suggestion that all that would be gained from this trip would be a ferocious case of ollarrhea. My designated driver and arrived at a St. Louis-area eighborhood rill ar on a Sunday at p.m., whereupon ordered a ollarita. was told that this month’s cheap boo y drin is called a ampire, a bright purple concoction consisting of rum, passion fruit, dragon fruit, strawberry and pineapple uice according to the official pplebee’s website, it is also supposed to be served with a plastic set of fangs, but never got those, which is disappointing . dran two in ten minutes. They tasted e actly li e you’d e pect a watered-down fruity rum drin to taste, which is to say, fine. opted at this point to try to ta e it easy, fearing that ’d be cut off ust li e Vice was. turned and struc up a conversation with the man sitting ne t to me, an older fellow with a mustache and glasses, a thin build, a poc et nife clipped to his belt and a sweatshirt that read C L ST CL T L . e had a set of souvenir photos from St. Louis’ new erris wheel sitting on the bar in front of him and had visited it with family earlier that day before leaving them at home and heading up to pplebee’s for a drin . veryone was asleep when left, he said. thought could snea out for a beer, but my daughter has other plans. ith that, the man uic ly downed the latter half of his beverage and too his leave, wishing me a happy Sunday on his way out. Confident that ’d now cemented my status as a run-of-the-mill pplebee’s barfly rather than a man

The Vampire Drink. | DANIEL HILL

trying to see how many 1 drin s he could pound, got bac to the tas at hand and ordered a third ampire, which was delivered to me at p.m. leven minutes later, ordered a fourth and crossed my fingers that my luc wouldn’t run out as Vice’s had. To my delight, the bartender didn’t bat an eye and promptly brought me my drin . s sipped it victoriously, Chumbawumba’s 1 hit Tubthumping came on over the stereo, providing the perfect soundtrac as rewrote the song’s lyrics in my head to better fit the matter at hand e drin s a ampire drin , he drin s a ampire drin . e drin s a ampire drin , he drin s a ampire drin h shit, how about some apps Classic Combo latter would be the perfect complement to my current state of chain-restaurant alcoholic bliss, with spinach dip and boneless wings and a uesadilla and mo arella stic s pairing nicely with the purple boo e water was already en oying. ordered and ate greedily upon my food’s arrival, downing drin s all the while, and for a moment wondered why anyone would spend their time drin ing anywhere else. ut then, as the one-hour mar rolled around and started in on drin seven, began to hit a wall, as the oh-so-sugary beverages oined forces with the greasy chain fare in my stomach to stage a rebellion. did what could to push through, downing two more ampires by 10 p.m. and ordering one final drin in order to ma e it to ten. ut there was no going further, and that tenth drin would remain untouched. Though my head only felt moderately bu ed, Continued on pg 21

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NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

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MENACE TO SOBRIETY Continued from pg 19

my guts were in full distress. t would not be possible for me to consume any more apps or beverages. To again paraphrase 1 ’s favorite band of anarchist one-hit wonders, got noc ed down, but there was no chance was getting up again. hastily as ed for the chec , and when got it, saw to my confusion that ’d only been charged for five ampires. did not notice, in my addled state, that ’d also been charged for a bris et uesadilla, an order of chic en parmesan and a side salad, whereas my sampler platter was nowhere to be found. n short, ’d been given the wrong bill, but wouldn’t reali e that until days later when went over my notes and photos from the visit. wrote in a 10 tip on the bill, which was around 40, but when loo ed at my ban statement days later found that ’d only been charged a total of 4.12. still have no earthly idea what all that’s about. e left at 1 p.m., less than two hours after our arrival. My designated driver dropped me off at home, where promptly got to wor vomiting e cessively into a travel-si ed charcoal grill ’d forgotten was sitting by my bac door. spent the rest of the night curled in a ball in pain. STATS: 9 drinks 1 hour and 40 minutes $34.12, apparently

Return to Open Concept

ith all of this data coming from various boo y e periments at venues across town, you would thin that ’d be eroing in on a conclusion. ut something stuc in my craw about my visit to pen Concept. amely, reali ed it is completely impossible for me to confidently put forth my e perience as one that could serve as useful to the drin ing public at large, on account of the fact that was shamefully made as a reporter due to my own foolish actions on social media. ut what could be done ’d typed my name out on an i ad when created my bar profile during that visit ’d even been addressed by name by the owner himself. n top of that, it seemed unli ely that staff would forget the face of the man personally cut off by their boss when the bar was virtually empty, especially given that a return trip would have to

happen less than two wee s after the first in order to ma e deadline. ow could properly continue my research when ’d be so easily outed as a media spy Luc ily, the entirety of my e perimentation was occurring in the latter wee s of ctober, in the run up to alloween, a. .a. the only time of the year that it is socially acceptable to go out in public wearing a disguise. decided that a return trip was absolutely mandatory, and planned it for a riday night, when the bar would presumably be most bustling, allowing me to more properly blend in. erhaps antithetical to fitting in, but imperative for concealing my identity, also decided that would complete this visit clad in a hot dog costume that ’d purchased for alloween a couple years ago, with a shapeless drape to conceal my memorably enormous body and red face paint in order to properly prevent me from being recogni ed. showed up with my designated driver and two other accomplices, all of us dressed in costumes in order to further throw staff off of my scent. e arrived at 40 p.m. to a dramatically different scene than the one ’d e perienced on our first visit. The bar was pac ed wall to wall, with dimmed lights and more of a club vibe, accentuated by the occasional bottle set on tables that loo ed as though they’d been reserved in advance. played a mi of and hip-hop in the corner while the bar’s patrons danced and mingled throughout the space. ne large pro ector played what loo ed to be a Die Hard movie, while a second was used by patrons to play Mortal Kombat. t seemed more li ely ’d be able to fly undetected here, in spite of the ostentatious nature of my costume. ut then, trouble came. t the door chec ing s was none other than utler himself, along with osley, the same staffer that had so indly brought me edialyte on my first visit. t seemed e tremely unli ely that ’d be able to gain access to this building without either of them figuring out who was ’d spent a fair amount of time spea ing with both of them. was surely doomed before even stepped foot in the door. My fears seemed confirmed when utler pointed at me, my eyes loc ing with his behind the identity-concealing sunglasses was wearing indoors and at night. ut rather than the gotcha that e pected, utler then pointed me to osley and indicated that should Continued on pg 23

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MENACE TO SOBRIETY Continued from pg 21

go to her to chec in he was at that time contending with a line . stepped over to osley, all but holding my breath while she loo ed at my , certain was made. hen it was time to enter my name into her i ad, crossed my fingers and typed an ill into the field, hoping against hope the omitted iel would provide ust enough cover to slip in undetected. To my great surprise, my gambit paid off. was promptly ushered through the front door and into the venue where my accomplices and were literally the only people in costume with no mention of my previous visit. immediately headed to the bar. n this setting, pen Concept’s business model began to ma e a lot more sense than it had on my first visit. The line for the bar was long, but moved fairly bris ly, as the bartenders did not have to contend with the payment process of the bar e perience, instead ust doling out drin s in e change for the customer’s name. t the same time, the line was ust long enough that, in order to manage the high rate of consumption had en oyed during the first halfhour of my initial visit, ’d need to spend my entire time standing in line, then immediately file to the bac again upon being served. That prospect seemed both unten-

able and wholly unen oyable. hen got to the front, resumed the drin -everything-on-the-menu mission ’d been forced to abandon before. e t on the list was a whis ey sour, followed by a Manhattan, an ld ashioned, a lime Margarita and a gin and tonic. ll tasted as e pected. also doubled bac and got that ess and od a ’d been unable to try last time due to it being out of stoc turns out was right in predicting it would taste li e clear li uor and generic soda. finished those drin s over the course of an hour. There were no unoccupied tables, so was a little concerned that might be dubbed visibly into icated more easily than if was sitting. ut whether due to my sure-footedness or the staff’s inattention, it didn’t come up during my first hour. prefer to thin it was the former. utler moved throughout the bar, wal ing within inches of me on more than one occasion. ach time turned my bun-clad body away so as to avoid being detected. Meanwhile, osley remained on door duty, so avoided going near the door. ne of my accomplices the RFT editor who had accompanied me on my first trip did not avoid the door, though, and she was soon made. osley recogni ed her in a costume that was spare and mostly involved a wig so as to change the appearance of her hair when she pointed

out a spill to staff, with safety being her concern. She then te ted me that she had been spotted and said she’d avoid standing by me so hopefully wouldn’t suffer the same fate. Meanwhile, the time paid for ran out. Convinced that would be easily outed as that troublema er from before, ’d only bought one hour for this go-around. orse still, additional time had to be purchased from osley up front. The fact that she’d been stationed there throughout the night rather than at the bar had played to my advantage, as had only interacted with her one time, rather than several as with the bartenders though was also strategically going bac and forth between bartenders throughout the night so as to minimi e my face time with any one of them . specially after my associate was made, the need to purchase another hour could easily be my undoing. ut again to my surprise, it wound up not being a problem. bought another hour undetected and headed bac to the bar, where was now onto the wine portion of the menu. did not en oy the cabernet or the moscato, that section’s only two beverages, but ’m not a wine guy. The beer section was ne t, comprising ud products. li ed the udweiser more than the ud Light, obviously, but to be honest, don’t li e either of them. This brought me to the very end of the menu my hard-fought victory in sight, ust over the hori on,

only a ud Select gross standing between me and triumph. ut then, as waited in line once more, got a te t from pen Concept My time was up. That last hour had flown by, and if was going to drin the entire menu as ’d planned, ’d need to purchase yet another. decided not to. t’s interesting, and sort of a testament to pen Concept’s business model’s self-policing nature, that opted not to plun down another 10 ust to achieve my goal. ere this ust ill’s, would definitely have bought a final beer, ust to say ’d finished the whole menu. ell, even in the throes of gastrointestinal distress at pplebee’s ’d still at least ordered a tenth drin , even though didn’t touch it. ut 10 for a fuc ing ud Select There’s no way in hell. My accomplices and headed out into the cool ctober night upon completion of our mission, red face paint running into my eyes and foam hot dog bun on my bac . My designated driver delivered me safely to my home, where my portable barbecue grill than fully went unused. STATS: 10 drinks 2 hours $50.14 (I’d been unable to tip on my first trip, as I’d bought my time online in advance and had no cash, so I overtipped dramatically on this visit.)

Conclusion

Our preliminary analysis: Hill, still undercover as a human hot dog, was just fine without that final Bud Select. | THEO WELLING

riverfronttimes.com

n total, consumed alcoholic beverages in four trips to three venues over the course of nine combined hours, and if there’s one main conclusion that can be drawn from my e perience see ing out the thriftiest bu in town, it is this pplebee’s is poison. o not drin their dollar drin s. or the love of od. side from that, fail to see what all the fuss is about regarding pen Concept. hen compared to a traditional bar, or even a chain restaurant, its all-youcan-drin model ultimately ends with roughly the same number of beverages consumed and that’s when a person is even deliberately stress-testing it. t no point in time, during either trip made to the bar, did see anyone that loo ed to have been overserved. onestly, was probably the drun est person in the building both times and wasn’t even that drun . mean hell, bet could have drun the whole $20 side of the menu in one sitting if ’d really tried. artender n

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RIVERFRONT TIMES

CALENDAR

BY PAUL FRISWOLD company performs in front of, on and atop a wall. Wallstories is performed at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday (November 8 and 9) at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus (1 University Boulevard at Natural Bridge Road; www.touhill. org). Tickets are $15 to $30.

THURSDAY 11/07 On Merriment Nick Offerman is a man of the people. That means he makes things out of wood, liberally quotes Wendell Berry, enjoys a nice sausage, plays a few instruments and does some acting. All of those skills come together, somehow, in his live show All Rise. He’ll sing a song or two, tell a couple jokes (some off-color), perhaps outrage you with a political joke or his take on women’s lib and equal pay (he’s fer it) and generally amuse himself while amusing the audience. It seems effortless, but then most of life’s best moments are effortless. Nick Offerman: All Rise takes place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, November 7, at the Stifel Theatre (1400 Market Street; www.stifeltheatre.com). Tickets are $46.50 to $66.50.

FRIDAY 11/08 Looking Forward In the days after the world crashes, there will still be people. Children, unfettered by rules or laws, will make their way in the ruins of what came before and unconsciously start creating a new society. Feral and free, they will devise new codes, new gods and new beliefs inspired by their intuition and observations. Emma Vidal creates artifacts and images of this new land in her exhibition Lost Boys. Inspired by Vidal’s research into the earliest human societies and the post-apocalyptic fiction of William Goldman and other writers, Lost Boys includes large-scale charcoal drawings, mixed-media sculptures and golden ceramics that represent the divine figures that will spring forth from the imaginations of the future. Emma Vidal: Lost Boys opens with a free reception from 6 to 10 p.m. Friday, November 8, at Hoffman LaChance Contemporary (2713 Sutton Boulevard; www.hoffmanlachancefineart.com . er wor remains up through November 30, and the gallery is open noon to 3 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

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Silly Pirates

Lindy West returns to St. Louis to talk about her new book. | JENNY JIMENEZ

Of the Wall Nejla Yatkin grew up in Cold War Berlin, and the shadow of the Berlin Wall — and the oppression it represented — cast a pall over her youth. Instead of succumbing to the paranoia and hostility that fear can generate, she channeled her

feelings of helplessness and terror into Wallstories, a multimedia dance piece that transformed her emotions into art. In Wallstories, recordings of other people who lived near the Berlin Wall play along with musical selections from Bach and Pink Floyd’s The Wall album, all while MADCO’s dance

Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic operetta The Pirates of Penzance hinges on the finest splitting of a contractual hair: The orphaned Frederic must remain with the pirate crew that fostered him until his 21st birthday. As he was born on February 29, he’s stuck with the pirates until he’s 84. It’s a raw deal for Frederic, who had a brief taste of freedom before the legalese loophole was discovered by the Pirate King. During that respite, he met Mabel, who has many beauteous sisters and a major-general for a father. Now separated from his new love for at least 60 years, Frederic pledges to wait for her, but the Pirate King plans to return much sooner than that to have his revenge on the major-general. Winter Opera Saint Louis opens its new season with The Pirates of Penzance. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Sunday (November 8 and 10) at the Skip Viragh Center 425 South Lindbergh Boulevard; www.winteroperastl.org). Tickets are $35 to $55.

SATURDAY 11/09 Unfinished Business

Nick Offerman visits the Stifel Theatre with his new show All Rise. | COURTESY OF STIFEL THEATRE

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

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When Mozart married his beloved wife, Constanze, against his father’s wishes, he pledged to write a mass in her honor. He never finished it, and musicologists and historians continue to search for a reason why. What remains of his Great Mass in C Minor is a staggering work of improbable beauty, alternating choruses with arias performed by two male and two female voices. Maestro Masaaki Suzuki and four vocalists, Mozart specialists all, will scale the glorious heights of the Great

WEEK OF NOVEMBER 7-13

One of the pieces in Emma Vidal’s art show, Lost Boys. | EMMA VIDAL

Mass this weekend with St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the St. Louis Symphony Choir. Performances are at 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday (November 9 and 10) at Powell Hall (718 North Grand Boulevard; www.slso.org). Tickets are $15 to $83.

TUESDAY 11/12 Hockey Dogs It’s still early in the NHL season, so much so that at the time of writing, the St. Louis Blues and the Arizona Coyotes have very similar records. Still, history is on the Blues’ side when the two teams meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday, November 12, at the Enterprise Center (1401 Clark Avenue; www.stlblues.com): The Coyotes have been woeful for decades, and the Blues are reigning champs. Keep an eye on new Coyote Phil Kessel, a deceptively skill-

ful forward with a gift for timely goals. Tickets are $20 to $208.

WEDNESDAY 11/13 The West Witch Lindy West isn’t afraid to rile up people, especially if they’re men. In the past she’s skewered the Sex and the City films, called out fat shamers and scorned misogynists. And in her new book The Witches Are Coming, West delves into the power structure that supports and exalts what she terms the “mediocre white men,” who dole out the crappy memes and sexual harassment that fuel our society. Left Bank Books welcomes West back to town to discuss and sign copies of The Witches Are Coming at 7 p.m. Wednesday, November 13, at .Zack (3224 Locust Street; www. left-bank.com). Tickets are $30 and include a copy of the book. n

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NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

RIVERFRONT TIMES

FILM

[REVIEW]

Slip into SLIFF The St. Louis International Film Festival offers an unimaginable wealth of options St. Louis International Film Festival www.cinemastlouis.org/festival-home

s in years past, our local film festival offers too many films for one person to take in, too wide of a selection to fathom the “big picture.” With 389 films to choose from this year, RFT staffers reviewed an eclectic selection of films based purely on what looked interesting and had an available screener. The festival-goer’s best bet is to read the schedule carefully and take a similar leap of faith. You don’t always know what to expect until it shows up on the screen.

Synonyms Directed by Nadav Lapid 8:15 p.m. Friday, November 8 & 5:30 p.m. Sunday, November 10 Plaza Frontenac Yoav, a young Israeli man played with deadpan innocence by Tom Mercier, wakes up in a Paris apartment with no possessions, no clothes and no clear idea of what he’s going to do with himself. It’s like he dropped in from outer space, not srael. Trying to fit in, he resolves to no longer speak Hebrew, embracing the French language and spending hours reciting lists of words from his pocket Larousse. Almost immediately, Yoav becomes the center of attention for everyone from a young French couple to a mysterious security agency whose aims are as obscure as its methods. There’s undoubtedly a political allegory at play in Synonyms, but the film also works as an absurdist spectacle, a contemporary Being There as written by Pinter or Beckett, supported by the considerable comic skills of the plain-faced Merci-

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Buñuel in the Labyrinth of Turtles. | © SYGNATIA, THE GLOW, SUBMARINE, CANAL EXTREMADURA TV, ARAGON TVS er. In one of its best moments, a starving Yoav takes to the dance floor, using an impromptu disco moment as an excuse to surreptitiously steal food. Comedy and despair mix in a Kafkaesque spin on Saturday Night Fever. — Robert Hunt

Buñuel in the Labyrinth of Turtles Directed by Salvador Simó 7 p.m. Saturday, November 9 Webster University Moore Auditorium Luis Buñuel’s relationship with truth and objectivity was intentionally complicated — as a surrealist, he considered himself a revolutionary in both art and politics. is films were intentionally provocative and met most often with shock and outrage. Buñuel in the Labyrinth of Turtles recounts the process by which Buñuel and his friend am n c n created the film Las Hurdes, Tierra sin Pan (Land Without Bread), a semi-documentary portrait of the deeply impoverished Hurdano people of Spain, Buñuel’s home country. Blocked by his own outrageous reputation from ma ing another film in his usual outré style, Buñuel lucks out big when Acín wins the lottery and opts to produce his ne t film. They gather a team of four and travel to the interior of Spain, where the Hurdanos live in a state of such e treme privation that, the film claims, they don’t even know what

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

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bread is. The subject is a seemingly odd one to animate. But one of animation’s fundamental wonders is the sheer work involved in crafting every single frame by hand. Director Salvador Simó uses the medium as an extended and effective metaphor for the huge difficulties and liberties in creating Las Hurdes — like the animation, Las Hurdes is both factual and invented. Animation often implies a young audience, but definitely not for this film. eside the fact that the subject would likely be terribly dull to the average kid, there are some images from Las Hurdes built into this film that are hard to loo at and include several instances of actual violence to animals. As in the original, so in the retelling: We’re talking about Buñuel here. — Evan Sult

Kings of Mulberry Street Directed by Judy Naidoo 12.30 p.m., Saturday, November 9 & 3 p.m. Sunday, November 10 Plaza Frontenac Set among the Indian community in South Africa’s Sugarhill district, Kings of Mulberry Street is an odd throwback to direct-to-video children’s films of the 1 0s in which an overweight, nerdy kid is taught to be cool by a cocky, street-smart partner, outsmarting all of the adults and uncovering some kind of villainous scheme in the pro-

cess. This time around, the uncool one is shy over-parented Baboo, who unwillingly finds a mentor in Ticky, a Bollywood obsessed hipster whose dad is involved in a local crime gang. The young heroes are about as engaging as one can e pect and older children may find it entertaining if they don’t mind subtitles (and their parents don’t mind ubiquitous adult language). — Robert Hunt

Drag Kids Directed by Megan Wennberg 6 p.m. Saturday, November 9 Stage at KDHX

Temper tantrums and tiaras abound in the documentary Drag Kids, which follows four kids from different parts of the world as they discover their passion for performance, drama and drag. Director Megan Wennberg shines a light on what it means to be a modern day drag queen and what it means to be a kid as the subjects build a friendship on their way to preparing for a group performance at the Montreal Pride Festival. Nine-year-old Nemis (Queen Lactatia), eleven-year-old Jason (Suzan Bee Anthony), and eight-year-old Stephan (Laddy GaGa), are joined by eleven-yearold rac en, a young girl defining her own path in a scene that not long ago was a male-only form of expression. The lead up to their performance expresses the awk-

tiny. Likable performances and a strong sense of the real struggles of daily life in the days before the fall are ultimately outdone by stale characters, a smug, moralistic tone and an ending that makes it a coincidental companion piece to festival entry Balloon. — Robert Hunt

Balloon Directed by Michael Herbig 2:30 p.m. Wed., November 13, & 9:30 p.m. Fri., November 15 Plaza Frontenac

Rosie (Sarah Rich) tries to track down the person who harassed her younger sister to death in #Like. | © SARAH PIROZEK wardness of making friends and offers the warmth of discovering where you belong. Drag Kids captures the uncomfortable and exuberant moments that come along with following around a bunch of ten year olds. — Caroline Groff

Curtiz Directed by Tamás Yvan Topolánszky 7 p.m. Sunday, November 10 Webster University Moore Auditorium

Beginning with a credit sequence that looks like the opening of a ames ond film if one had been made in the 1940s, the preposterous Curtiz is a political fantasy set on the Warner Brothers lot in 1942, where Hungarian émigré Michael Curtiz struggles with family drama, government pressure and studio overrule as he directs Casablanca. Washington wants the film to promote the war effort; Curtiz just wants to be left alone (or at least free to pursue his many extra-marital interests). Filmed with pointlessly self-conscious camera movements (as if deliberately disassociating from classic Hollywood style), director Tamás Yvan Topolánszky tries in vain to be serious yet also archly ironic. Characters speak in wordy pronouncements amid a stream of historic clichés and anachro-

nisms. One character has a drawing of Mr. Spock from Star Trek in a sketchbook, another speaks of “alternative facts,” but there’s no apparent reason for these history-challenged asides. The most embarrassing: Curtiz asks Hal Wallis why they couldn’t cast onald eagan in the film and is reminded that the actor is in the service, adding, “He told me he was going to make America great again.” — Robert Hunt

#Like Directed by Sarah Pirozeck 8:30 p.m. Sunday, November 10 Tivoli Theatre

Set in the sleepy, washed-out woods of Woodstock, New York, #Like is the story of teenage girl Rosie, who grapples with the suicide of her younger sister Amelia, a victim of anonymous sexual harassment on a popular video chat website. n the first anniversary of Amelia’s death, Rosie receives a message on her sister’s online profile and reali es that her sister’s tormentor is still at large. The film follows osie as she vows to get revenge on the person behind the anonymous account. She gradually becomes obsessed with a middle-aged construction worker who she is convinced is the

man that ruined her sister’s life. Rosie’s slow, dark spiral is made all the more intense by a dizzyingly emotional performance from Sarah Rich. #Like is an atypical portrayal of integral social issues that women face within internet culture, and it digs painfully deep into the helplessness that inevitably follows death and loss, all while thrillingly subverting expectations. Viewers are kept on their toes up until the very final scene, left with the undeniable message that the internet (and those who misuse it) is an unconquerable and dangerous entity. — Ella Faust

Hawaii (Romania) Directed by Jesús del Cerro 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, November 12 & 8:30 p.m. Saturday, November 16 Plaza Frontenac This confused story of a Romanian cab driver trying to leave the country to collect an inheritance (from a deceased relative who had escaped to the titular island) has all of the ideological stereotypes and Cold War nostalgia: pompous party-line followers, evil bureau chiefs, bribe-hungry officials and unreliable black marketeers. Even the hero’s romantic interest is ultimately placed under scru-

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Balloon is the true story of two families who escaped from East Germany in 1979 by building a homemade hot air balloon (weak hearts in the “spoiler alert” camp will have to find a way to see the film without nowing the title . Their story was previously told in a 1 2 isney film, Night Crossing, but what a difference 27 years and the reunification of a ma or uropean country makes. In the Disney version, the protagonists are inspired to escape after seeing the arrest of friends whose son had tried to escape. They execute their plan under threat of discovery and the oppressive measures of the government. In this new telling, there’s not a lot of political oppression or even a strong sense of any kind of ideology. The heroes are a Spielbergian nuclear family who never really say why they want to leave, and the film rushes into their plan without a lot of clues about what drove them to it. The father complains after a failed attempt that “Everything I’ve put my mind to has worked out,” but the film leaves us guessing as to what those things — successful or otherwise — are. Family dynamics rule the day; a hint of a Romeo and Juliet romance between the teenaged son and the daughter of the party hack next door, a younger son resentful for not being informed of the escape and a toddler almost giving the plan away. t’s hard to say who this film is for. Are there German audiences feeling nostalgic about the Bad Old Days? Balloon isn’t a depiction of a footnote to Cold War history; it’s a careful avoidance of it, reducing the original event to a celebration of family insularity. — Robert Hunt

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

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PING PONG TABLE • POOL TABLE • BOARD GAMES WEDNESDAY TRIVIA • LIVE MUSIC / DJS 5 DAYS A WEEK

THIS WEEK THE GROVE SELECTED HAPPENINGS

Day or night, there’s always something going on in The Grove: live bands, great food, beer tastings, shopping events, and so much more. Visit thegrovestl.com for a whole lot more of what makes this neighborhood great.

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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6

THE TALBOTT BROTHERS - RUN NO MORE TOUR $10, 7 PM AT THE READY ROOM

DRAG BINGO

OPENING PARTY 5 PM AT HANDLEBAR

FLYOVER COMEDY FESTIVAL 2019 6 PM AT THE GROVE

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7

DISNEY TRIVIA BENEFITING ST LOUIS PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION

FLYOVER COMEDY FESTIVAL

6 PM AT TROPICAL LIQUEURS

8 PM AT HANDLEBAR

4130 MANCHESTER AVE. IN THE GROVE FIRECRACKERPIZZA.COM

ALEX CAMERON $15, 7 PM AT THE READY ROOM

FLYOVER COMEDY FESTIVAL FRIDAY OPEN MIC - FLYOVER COMEDY FEST

HOLLY LYNNEA THE BOOTLEG $15, 8 PM AT ATOMIC COWBOY

TUNNEL VISION W/ TREE ONE FOUR AT THE BOOTLEG $10, 7 PM AT ATOMIC COWBOY

5:30 PM AT HANDLEBAR

KIDS THESE DAYS | SKETCH COMEDY SHOW AT THE IMPROV SHOP

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11

FLYOVER COMEDY FEST

$15, 8 PM AT THE IMPROV SHOP

ATREYU

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8

JOEL KIM BOOSTER

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9

$20, 6 PM AT THE READY ROOM

SAVAGE & COOKE WHISKEY TASTING

$25, 7 PM AT THE READY ROOM

MARK BATTLES

BOOZE SCHOOL WITH STILL 630

5 PM AT INTOXICOLOGY

FLYOVER COMEDY FESTIVAL

7 PM AT THE READY ROOM

$20, 7 PM AT HANDLEBAR

MONTREAL JUST FOR LAUGHS COMEDY FESTIVAL NEW FACES SHOWCASE #2

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FEATURED DINING SEDARA SWEETS

SPONSORED CONTENT

6 RESTAURANTS YOU NEED TO CHECK OUT...

CLUSTER BUSTERS

SEDARASWEETS.COM

CLUSTER-BUSTERS.BUSINESS.SITE

314.532.6508 8011 MACKENZIE RD AFFTON, MO 63123

314.297.8846 3636 PAGE BLVD ST. LOUIS, MO 63113

In May of 2019, Sedara Sweets joined the community of Affton. Sedara serves a variety of baked goods including fifteen types of baklava—both Iraqi and Turkish. Just like the name says, Sedara sells ice cream, using products from Wisconsin-based Cedar Crest, and milkshakes. The cafe offers a small savory menu featuring breakfast bread, falafel and shawarma sandwiches, with rotisserie versions of beef or chicken both on offer. Whether you are looking for something to satisfy your sweet tooth, or a new option for lunch and dinner, Sedara has you covered. “We want to have something for everybody” Sedara Sweets is both family owned and operated. They offer dine in and take out food services, as well as an amazing Baklava gift box that can be ordered online, or even delivered! Owners George and Esraa Simon look forward to meeting their new neighbors and sharing some of their favorite dishes with the community!

Located on both Page Avenue, as well as the upcoming location in the Saint Louis Galleria, Cluster Busters hopes to provide Saint Louis with high quality seafood at affordable prices. Cluster Busters offers both dine in and carry out seafood, with recipes from Chef Deion Woodard. You will find all your favorites dishes such as seafood, pasta, gumbo, and fried fish. Whether you want to try their flagship “Cluster Buster” or the Lobster Mac and Cheese, Cluster Busters offers something for everyone. Since 2017, Cluster Busters continues to grow as part of a staple of the North Saint Louis community, and is very excited to bring their offerings to the Galleria. Keep an eye out for menu additions as well as daily specials. Cluster Busters is also available for catering and private events, so consider them for your next event. At Cluster Busters, you’re invited to come catch this drip!

POKE DOKE

J. SMUGS GASTROPIT

POKEDOKESTL.COM

314.499.7488 4916 SHAW AVE ST. LOUIS, MO 63110

314.833.5900 8 S EUCLID AVE ST. LOUIS, MO 63108 314.553.9440 6316 DELMAR BLVD UNIVERSITY CITY, MO 63130

Housed in a retro service station, J. Smugs GastroPit serves up barbecue that can fuel anyone’s fire. Married teams of Joe and Kerri Smugala and John and Linda Smugala have brought charred goodness to the Hill neighborhood, nestled among the traditional Italian restaurants, sandwich shops and bakeries. Part of St. Louis’ ongoing barbecue boom, the J. Smugs’ pit menu is compact but done right. Ribs are the main attraction, made with a spicy dry rub and smoked to perfection. Pulled pork, brisket, turkey and chicken are also in the pit holding up well on their own, but squeeze bottles of six tasty sauces of varying style are nearby for extra punch. Delicious standard sides and salads are available, but plan on ordering an appetizer or two J. Smugs gives this course a twist with street corn and pulled-pork poutine. Several desserts are available, including cannoli – a tasty nod to the neighborhood. Happy hour from 4 to 7pm on weekdays showcases half-dollar BBQ tastes, discount drinks, and $6 craft beer flights to soothe any beer aficionado.

Poke Doke offers St. Louis their energized recipes intertwined in a fast-casual model. Best part is every bowl is customizable to the patron -- whether you know what you want and can come up with your own flavor pairings — but it’s certain your heart will be content with the rich, high-quality seafood. Customers choose a size, a base, (such as rice, greens, or soba noodles) and choose from proteins (such as salmon ahi tuna, spicy tuna, shrimp or tofu), then add as many toppings and drizzles as they wish. If you’re less interested in the simple pleasures of fish and more in playing around with accoutrements, both the shrimp and tofu are neutral enough that they benefit from the enhancements. The menu also offers appetizers such as pork-filled pot stickers, miso soup, and crab rangoon, along with an assortment of bubble milk teas and soft serve ice cream. With locations in both the Central West End and the Delmar Loop, Poke Doke is the perfect spot to grab a quick bite!

JSMUGSGASTROPIT.COM

BLK MKT EATS

CRAWLING CRAB

BLKMKTEATS.COM

314.328.3421 6730 PAGE AVE ST. LOUIS, MO 63138

314.391.5100 9 S. VANDEVENTER AVE. ST. LOUIS, MO 63108

Looking for the best seafood in St. Louis or the Midwest—don’t fret, Crawling Crab is now open! Here, we drizzle everything in garlic butter and then sprinkle on our magic dust! In a fun and casual atmosphere, you’ll enjoy fresh, hand-cleaned seafood ranging from lobster, shrimp, and of course crab legs. All platters come with corn sausage potatoes and Cajun boiled eggs and shrimp that won’t disappoint. For those pasta and veggie lovers out there, there is a spot for you here too! Enjoy our double dipped garlic butter rolls along side with your meal. And if you are still not stuffed, we have homemade dessert on the menu too! Have a big family coming in or an event coming up? Enjoy our family meal options and our beautiful seafood tables. As we continue to grow, we are excited to add new items to the menu, get creative with new recipes, and give back within the community. Join us on the first Tuesday of the month for $20 platter specials, and $5 appetizers on every Wild Wednesday! Open Tuesday thru Saturday 4pm-10pm, currently located in the 24:1 Coffee House Cafe.

RIVERFRONT TIMES

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

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The fast-fresh, made-to-order concept has been applied to everything from pizza to pasta in St. Louis, but the sushi burrito surprisingly had no Gateway City home until BLK MKT Eats opened near Saint Louis University last fall. It was worth the wait, though, because BLK MKT Eats combines bold flavors and convenience into a perfectly wrapped package that’s ideal for those in a rush. Cousins and co-owners Kati Fahrney and Ron Turigliatto offer a casual menu full of high-quality, all-natural ingredients that fit everything you love about sushi and burritos right in your hand. The Swedish Fish layers Scandinavian cured salmon, yuzu dill slaw, NOT YOURAnother AVERAGE Persian cucumbers and avocado for a fresh flavor explosion. favorite, the OGSUSHI Fire, featuresSPOT your choice 9 SOUTH VANDEVENTER DINE-IN, jalapeño TAKEOUT and OR DELIVERY MON-SAT 11AM-9PM of spicy tuna or salmon alongside tempura crunch, masago, shallots, piquant namesake sauce; Persian cucumbers and avocado soothe your tongue from the sauce’s kick. All burrito rolls come with sticky rice wrapped in nori or can be made into poké bowls, and all items can be modified for vegetarians.

CAFE

[REVIEW]

An Intimate Encounter At Akar, Bernie Lee proves that restriction can push culinary creativity Written By

CHERYL BAEHR Akar 7641 Wydown Boulevard, Clayton; 314-5539914. Tues.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Fri. 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sat. 5-10 p.m.; Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (Closed Monday.)

ernie Lee has received many suggestions from his Wydown neighbors-turneddiners since opening Akar this past June. Perhaps the one piece of advice he’s heard the most, however, is that he should put a steak on the menu. “People in St. Louis need steak and potatoes,” he hears. “If you want to be successful, you need to put a steak on the menu.” Digging into Akar’s short rib, you realize why Lee has not only resisted these calls — but more or less silenced them. This gorgeous hunk of meat, glistening with a mix of rendered fat and funky sambal glaze, is a masterpiece. Like a perfectly cooked pot roast, the meat falls away from the bone with barely the tug of your fork, leaving in its wake a pool of the mildly funky sambal jus like a Southeast Asian gravy. You try to soak up as much of this wonderful nectar with the forkful of short rib, but the bit that remains trickles over a few charred carrots and into a fluffy pea mash, its te ture somewhere between hummus and whipped potatoes. As if Lee had not already proved the dish’s merit, he adorns the plate with half a head of roasted garlic so you can have the soul-stirring joy of dipping the softened cloves into the jus. After a few bites of this magnificent dish, you might not even remember the phrase “steak and potatoes,” let alone look for it on Akar’s menu — doing so would

Mama Lee’s Noodles are a nod to the noodles that Lee’s mother cooked to celebrate the Lunar New Year. | MABEL SUEN entirely miss the point of this tiny gem of a restaurant. Although Akar is a neighborhood spot by geographical default — its location in Clayton’s quaint Wydown district makes it a no-brainer destination for the area’s residents — the restaurant is less about catering to clientele and more an exploration of Lee’s culinary roots, which extend all the way back to his childhood in Malaysia. This point is particularly poignant to Lee, who has spent roughly a decade and a half in the restaurant business. For most of those years, he focused on fashioning his establishments for a certain clientele or location. Even at his now-shuttered Washington Avenue restaurant, Hiro Asian Kitchen, where Lee set out to offer traditional Malaysian food based on his family’s recipes, he still found himself in a position where what he could do was dictated by customer demand. At the massive Hiro, which closed in May, those needs were great. ar, with its tiny, five-table dining room, restricts him to less space but has resulted in more creative freedom. No longer pressured to fill a dining hall’s worth of seats, Lee is able to treat Akar

like a dinner party in his own home, which means he is able to do what he wants because he wants to do it. What Lee wants is to show diners the food he loves to eat. Though the cuisine of his home country plays a prominent role in that vision, the restaurant is more Malaysian-inflected than literal. This is because Lee sees his culinary journey as more than his family’s food it’s also the flavors he’s discovered through his vast travels around the globe, making Akar a modern version of a fusion restaurant. If Lee’s inspiration is vast, his stage for displaying it is about as small as it gets in restaurant real estate. Located in the former Anthony’s Italian Eats, Akar’s dining room seats fourteen people. The patio more than doubles this capacity, but it becomes all but irrelevant between the months of October and April, making the heart of Akar its micro interior. Lee, however, has an eye for design, and he’s transformed the space into a stunning room that is oversized in its presence. The restaurant is outfitted in shades of gray dar on the trim work, light and textured on the walls. A small, wooden bar

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sits at the back of the room; to the left of that, a white subway-tiled wall features wooden shelves that display glassware and trinkets. Other than this functional decor, the room is minimally adorned save for a lone vase on one wall and three impressive, canvas light fi tures that hang from the tin ceiling. It’s a strikingly intimate setting — perhaps too intimate for some of the more well-heeled diners considering you have to walk through the kitchen to use the restroom. For this diner, it adds to the homey charm. Lee’s knack for creating food is as impressive as his talent for design. The lobster wonton, for instance, reinvents the ubiquitous crab rangoon, subbing in lobster meat and a minimal dollop of cream cheese for the filling. More shellfish than cheese, the wontons are accompanied by a mango dipping sauce that brings out the lobster’s natural sweetness. umplings, filled with chic en and herbs, are satisfying both in te ture and flavor. utside, the shell is thick and seared golden brown, resulting in a nice light chew. Inside, the chicken acts like a sponge, soaking up the deeply

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umami soy dipping sauce. Micro cilantro adds an element of licorice flavor that brightens the dish. The seasonal soup on my visits, pur ed cauliflower, was bland on its own and only improved when topped with the optional crabmeat. The soft-shell crab, however, is an outstanding display of the shellfish. Coated in a delicate tempura batter, the crab is a treat itself, its sweetness underscored by a warm corn salad. However, dipped in the accompanying Singapore chile sauce, it’s like red pepper chile firewor s going off in the mouth. Like the short ribs, Lee’s entrees are meant to evoke comfort. Overall, they succeed. Mama Lee’s Noodles, which are a nod to the noodles his mom cooked to celebrate the Lunar New Year, are thick and slicked with peanut sauce. Veggie meatballs, made from tofu, mushrooms and cashews, had a surprisingly crunchy coating that gave way to a cloud-like interior. Cured egg yolk bottarga gave the dish a subtle funk. Pumpkin gnocchi, a special on both of my visits, was one of the standout dishes. The small

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Akar is an exploration of chef-owner Bernie Lee’s culinary roots. | MABEL SUEN dumplings, tossed in brown butter, were seasoned with autumn spices, giving them a sweet and savory flavor. Mushrooms and artichokes adorned the gnocchi, imparting umami and a bright, lemony note, respectively. Hopefully, this will make a regular appearance throughout the season.

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

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There were two missteps on the entree side of the menu. Halibut, the evening’s fish special, was overcooked and dried out. I enjoyed the thoughtful accompaniments — blistered tomatoes, venere rice that popped in the mouth like quinoa and the curry shrimp bouillon broth. A better

coo ed piece of fish would have made this a success. I was also disappointed with the Cornish hen. Like the halibut, the hen was overcooked and chewy, and the mushroom stuffing was overly salty. This was mitigated slightly when mixed with the accompanying sticky rice, but overall, it remained over-seasoned. These issues slipped from memory the moment the pumpkin spice bread pudding arrived. Glazed in rich vanilla icing and covered in candied pecans, the dessert is like an autumnal version of a cinnamon roll. I wish I could’ve ordered a venti. In addition to dinner service, Akar is open for lunch, snacks and Sunday brunch. It has a fun cocktail list, a bar focused on Asian spirits and a robust carryout menu that allows diners to get a taste of Lee’s cooking when they can’t get a table. What it doesn’t have — and will almost certainly never have no matter how often he hears it — is steak and potatoes. Not that anyone misses that once they try Lee’s cooking.

Akar Tempura soft-shell crab ............................ $17 Mama Lee’s Noodles ................................ $22 Short ribs ................................................. $32

SHORT ORDERS

[SIDE DISH]

The Buzz on Bee Simple City Farm Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

ary Densmore and James Meinert may be connected to the soil of St. Louis, but the roots of their small microgreens operation and apiary, Bee Simple City Farm (beesimplecityfarm.com), run all the way to a two-person book club in Central America. “We met when we were living in Nicaragua doing different volunteer work for the same program,” Meinert explains. “We really clicked the second year of living there together and decided we wanted to read a book together — sometimes out loud, sometimes on our own. It was Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, her book about moving to the country and living off the food she grew. Mary loved that idea, and I was teaching gardening and farming there. We realized we had it in our blood and knew we wanted to do some growing.” That Densmore and Meinert found each other in the first place is its own small miracle. Growing up in Marietta, Georgia, Densmore loved the outdoors and playing explorer in her backyard and neighborhood creeks. However, it was her passion for service and helping others that led her to do volunteer work as part of a Jesuit program in Nicaragua after college. Meinert’s call to Central America began in college where he became passionate about liberation theology and social justice. Hailing from rural southern Missouri, Meinert grew up on farms ranging from five to 95 acres and watched as his dad pursued his passion for growing food. He used those skills in Nicaragua as part of the Jesuit volunteer program, where he and Densmore bonded over their shared passion for small-scale agriculture. The pair began dating shortly

Mary Densmore and James Meinert, the faces behind Bee Simple City Farm, with their baby girl. | ANDY PAULISSEN before the program ended, and they made a pact that they would figure out a way to continue their relationship, as well as pursue opportunities to serve others. They weren’t sure if that would be in Missouri or Georgia, but when Meinert found opportunities for them with two different Catholic Worker intentional communities doing work with the unhoused and refugees in St. Louis, they decided this was where they needed to be. While living in these communities, Densmore and Meinert were introduced to New Roots Urban Farm and instantly felt as if they’d found their place — and developed a love-hate relationship with the product that would later become their signature. “We started gardening and farming at New Roots in 2009, and that’s when we learned a lot about microgreens,” Meinert explains. “At that point, we hated them. They were tedious, and we hadn’t developed the systems for growing and farming them. As Mary built the business, she had to learn how to make growing them sustainable.” Densmore and Meinert saw New Roots as an incubator for growing their farming business while they worked in different careers — she

had begun teaching at a language immersion school and he was enrolled in graduate school studying women and gender studies. However, when Densmore got burned out on teaching she was ready to take the leap and pursue her true calling. “The teacher’s life is so stressful, and she knew she loved farming,” Meinert explains. “She thought, ow can figure out how to be a full-time farmer, because that’s what I want?’ We thought about the space we had and figured we could maybe make it work by doing microgreens, so I took on a full-time job to support us and she went into business.” Densmore and Meinert realized that they would need to diversify their offerings if they were to make Bee Simple a full-time operation. This led Densmore to begin making soaps and lotions they could sell at the farmers’ market. It also prompted Meinert to take up a skill he used to watch his dad do when he was a kid. “He was a beekeeper until I was four,” Meinert says. “He kept all of his old equipment sitting in a barn, and he let us use it. I’m using his smoker from the early ’80s. Plus, Mary’s mom got into beekeeping about a year before we started, so she got really excited

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and bought us our bee jackets and veils. There’s been a lot of family support and connection.” ow in their fifth year, ensmore and Meinert have grown Bee Simple City Farm to the point where they are both working there full time (Meinert quit his other full-time job earlier this year when Densmore became pregnant with their first child, who was just recently born — the reason Meinert is the only one doing the interview.) Although the business is still a modest operation, he and Densmore are proud of the relationships they have built with several chefs around town and the way they have been able to grow their business without compromising what they feel is right. e’ve had to figure out how to make this work and keep our values,” Meinert says. “We are very partial to growing in a way that we feel has as minimal impact on the Earth as possible. We try to have integrity, but the weather kicks us in the ass sometimes. Our biggest frustration is when we have to short someone on their order — it breaks our hearts, and 99 percent of the time it’s because of the weather. However, our chefs are loyal because they see we are trying to grow in a holistic way — plus

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stuff grown in sunlight has a better flavor. t’s hard to grow, but we feel there is value in how we do it.” Densmore and Meinert took a break from the farm — but not a break from loving their brandnew baby girl — to share their thoughts on the St. Louis food community, the physical toll of farming and why sometimes there’s nothing better than some deep-fried Buffalo wings. What is one thing people don’t know about you that you wish they did? That we grow all of our microgreens in soil under sunlight — no additives, no water pumps, no fertilizers, etc. We think this gives them the best flavor. What daily ritual is non-negotiable for you? Stretching! Our hands and bodies get tired from lifting so many trays and harvesting microgreens, and a lot of the movement is repetitive. We take a break in the middle of workdays, face the sun and stretch ourselves. If you could have any superpow-

er, what would it be? Probably the ability to control the weather! Not only would it be helpful with climate change and natural disasters, but our work is pretty weather dependent. Also the Tower Grove Farmers’ Market is a weekly market for us and it is so much more enjoyable when it is sunny and warm but not hot. If we could control that, it would be amazing. What is the most positive thing in food, wine or cocktails that you’ve noticed in St. Louis over the past year? Known & Grown has been developing and is finally off the ground. Chefs and foodies want to know that they are supporting farmers that use the most ecological growing practices, and Known & Grown is going to support local farmers by visiting their farms and then verifying and supporting those farmers. What is something missing in the local food, wine or cocktail scene that you’d like to see? We’d love to see more collaborations between farmers and chefs. Pop-ups that highlight up-andcoming chefs are really exciting, but we’d love to see more pop-ups that highlight small-scale farmers and support them, too.

Who is your St. Louis food crush? Chris Meyer of Kounter Kulture. She loves and takes care of her farmers. They are so generous over there and are always thinking about how to expand collaboration and highlight other people’s work. She’s a damn hard worker and makes good food. Who’s the one person to watch right now in the St. Louis dining scene? One of our favorite chefs who is between ventures right now is Tello Carreón. We loved what he did with Nixta and Alta Calle and are waiting to see what his next move is. Which ingredient is most representative of your personality? guess the sunflower microgreen. Like them we are crunchy, a little nutty and we stay fresh. If you weren’t in this business, what would you be doing? Nothing that makes money! We love the community and care in the food industry, so something with people and relationships — maybe counseling? A surprising number of people stop at our booth at the farmers’ market and connect and visit, and we’re glad they do. Name an ingredient never allowed in your kitchen. Factory-farmed meat and fruits

[FOOD NEWS]

Ballpark Village Expansion to Bring New Restaurants Written by

ELLA FAUST

allpark Village (601 Clark Avenue, 314-797-7530) is about to get a lot more fun — or at least tastier. Three new restaurant and entertainment concepts will open on the west end of the $260 million Ballpark Village expansion in 2020, according to a joint press release from the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cordish Companies. This is the first in what’s likely to be a series of announcements about Ballpark Village’s upcoming expansion, which will, in total, add 75,000 square feet of ground-floor dining, entertainment and retail space to the downtown development. This second phase of development is currently 92 percent leased according to the release. “It is incredibly exciting for the Cordish Companies to join the Cardinals in announcing three dynamic concepts for the growing Ballpark Village neighbor-

This second phase of development is currently 92 percent leased, according to developers. | SHUTTERSTOCK/BRIAN S. hood,” Nick Benjamin, vice president of development for the Cordish Companies, said in the release. “Our focus from the onset has been to create a world-class neighborhood with diverse offerings for our guests and residents. We have taken great care to curate a tenant mix for the second phase that complements the existing offerings at Ballpark Village and creates a variety of local and national tenants as well as dining, retail, lifestyle and entertainment-based concepts.” Slated for various projected opening

dates throughout 2020, the three new concepts include Sports & Social St. Louis, Davio’s Northern Italian Steakhouse and Baseballism. Sports & Social already occupies several stadiums across the country, featuring a full bar and restaurant menu, a variety of interactive arcade-style games (think duck-pin bowling, ping pong, shuffle puck, darts, Skee-Ball and foosball) and live music. In St. Louis, Sports & Social will occupy 9,000 square feet overlooking Ballpark Village’s new infield

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and veggies out of season. We cook a lot (we call our kitchen the Bee Simple cafe), and we try to get our meats and veggies both local and seasonal. What is your after-work hangout? What is this “after-work” you speak of? But, when we do have free time, we like to get some quick food and drink some bubbly water. One of the closest sandwich shops to where we live and work is Medinas Mediterranean Grill at 14th Street and Washington Avenue. We go there after a Friday harvest to get sandwiches, and they have soda-water on tap, which makes us sound dorky, but we love it. What’s your food or beverage guilty pleasure? Wings slathered in wing sauce with blue cheese. We tend to eat really healthy; we cook a lot and put our microgreens on most of what we eat, but sometimes you just want deep-fried, fatty, saucedripping chicken wings! What would be your last meal on Earth? Both of us grew up having pizza and ice cream as a special meal for birthdays or even just family-night Fridays. Last meal? We’d probably have to eat some homemade pizza and chocolate ice cream. n plaza and Busch Stadium with both indoor and outdoor patio seating. The second dining concept, Davio’s Northern Italian Steakhouse, plans to open across from Busch Stadium’s main entrance at the base of the soon-to-open Live! By Loews hotel. The menu, crafted by chef-owner Steve DiFillipo, features housemade pasta, Prime Brandt beef steaks and a lengthy wine list. The Boston-based Italian restaurant’s St. Louis location will be one of twelve across the country. Baseballism, selling baseball lifestyle apparel, will also open at the base of the Live! by Loews hotel. The company operates nine retail stores across the country in locations such as Fenway Park and Wrigley Field and will sell a wide range of baseball lifestyle products for Cardinals fans, including specialty glove-leather items like handbags, wallets and phone cases, as well as St. Louis-inspired Tshirts and baseball caps. “We are excited to welcome Sports & Social St. Louis, Davio’s Northern Italian Steakhouse and Baseballism to Ballpark Village,” Bill DeWitt III, president of the Cardinals, said in the release. “These concepts will bring great new energy to Ballpark Village and will help us attract new residents, office workers and visitors to downtown.” For more information on Ballpark Village and its expansion, visit www.stlballparkvillage.com. n

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NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

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[ONE OF OUR OWN]

After a Violent Carjacking, Fundraiser Launched for Iowa Buffet Family

Tommy Gage was seriously injured in a violent carjacking last month. | RFT ARCHIVE

Written by

LIZ MILLER

fter a violent carjacking that left a local man in a coma, members of the community are rallying to support him and his family. On October 3, around 9 p.m., Tommy Gage was in the middle of running an errand for his wife, Janice, and his mother-in-law, Carolyn McKinney, who owns Iowa Buffet (2727 Winnebago Street, 314-776-8000). Gage had just returned to the south-city bar with a package of hamburger buns and left his car running outside while ferrying them into the bar. The car had been having difficulty running, which is likely why Gage left the car idling outside, Janice told KSDK last week. Sur-

veillance footage released from a neighbor after the carjacking shows Gage exiting the bar as the thief is preparing to drive off in the vehicle. Gage, a former Olympic boxer who once fought off an armed robbery at nearby O’Malley’s Irish Pub with only a broomstick, then jumped on top of the car’s hood. The assailant attempted to throw Gage, who was clinging to the hood, off the car by reversing the vehicle and then popping it back into drive several times, but was unsuccessful. Finally the thief drove off for good, with Gage still holding onto the hood. At some point off camera, Gage was thrown from the car, run over by the assailant and dragged halfway down the block before being left for dead.

Doctors say that the incident broke “nearly every bone in his body.” Hearing the altercation from inside the bar, Janice and customers rushed outside in time to see the carjacker exit the vehicle and take off on foot. Police are still searching for the suspect. According to reporting by KSDK, Gage sustained severe injuries in the attack, with doctors saying that he broke “nearly every bone in his body.” Gage has been in a coma since the night of the attack and remains in critical condition in an intensive care unit.

Regulars of Iowa Buffet, a beloved establishment for more than three decades, quickly rallied to help Janice and McKinney defray the costs of Gage’s medical bills. Ellen Hilton Cook, a friend of the family, recently launched a fundraiser for Gage and the bar on Facebook, which has so far raised over $3,000 in less than a week. Originally seeking $3,000 for Gage and family, the fundraising goal was increased to $5,000 after quickly exceeding the initial figure. s of press time, the fundraiser had raised approximately $5,500 and was still accepting donations for Gage. On the fundraiser page, Cook says that Janice recently underwent heart surgery in addition to losing her father (and McKinney’s husband) in recent months. “[Carolyn is the first person to ma e sure the neighborhood kids are OK and knows all the regulars,” Cook writes. “She takes pride in her family bar and her family and her laugh is so contagious.” Cook posted that she is hoping to host a benefit party for age and Iowa Buffet as well. “This is my neighborhood bar and they have seen me at my worst and my best,” Cook writes. “There’s been times when they’ve fed me when I was hungry, made sure I was taken care of when I was drinking heavily, I even took a shower in the back house when my gas was shut off. I walked into the bar with a towel on my head. It was funny. This bar and its people mean the world to me. Let’s help them out.” RFT has reached out to Cook to learn more about the fundraiser and benefit party. n

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

DINNER 7 DAYS A WEEK

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

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RIVERFRONT TIMES

[FIRST LOOK]

Southside Wine + Spirits Opens in St. Louis Hills Written by

LIZ MILLER

ight in time for the holiday season, residents of St. Louis Hills and the surrounding neighborhoods have a new destination for wine, beer and spirits: Southside Wine + Spirits (5017 Hampton Avenue, 314-779-6294) celebrated its grand opening on Halloween. As the Riverfront Times first reported in September, the shop is an outgrowth of an online retail and events company of the same name owned by Tiffany and Rob Harmon, who are longtime residents of the neighborhood. Although the couple have no formal background in the wine industry, they share a serious passion for it. As active residents of St. Louis Hills, the Harmons noticed a lack of quality wine served at community events. They’ve already started to turn that tide with the events arm of Southside Wine + Spirits. Now, with the debut of the brick-and-mortar shop, they’ve given the neighborhood a dedicated spot to grab drinks or pick up a bottle or two. The opening marks the culmination of months of hard work for the Harmons. The couple have completely transformed the 700-square-foot space, making considerable updates including replacing the ceiling and flooring to craft the cozy interior that now greets customers. Rob’s sister, Angie Harmon of Vintage Modern Home, styled the shop, wrapping the intimate space in a world-traveler theme with vintage maps and globes. “It’s been so fun to watch the transformation of this little shop,” Tiffany says. “I think people will find that it’s a fun and inviting space. The theme is all about travel and exploration: In the bathroom [Angie] did a collage of vintage maps, behind the bar there’s a collection of vintage globes and we’ve got a compass on the store [logo]. It should spark the feeling of travel and bringing tastes back from around the world to south city.” Southside’s inventory pulls from local, national and international offerings, including Missouri-made items from Lifted Spirits in Kansas City and Southside Alchemy Sweat & Tears Bloody Mary Mix made in St. Louis. A selection of canned wine is offered alongside a variety of West Coast bottles and European vintages. The Harmons are focused on offering wines at affordable price points as well, with bottles hovering around $10 and up. For its beer offerings, the shop has partnered with Rockwell Beer Co., stocking its canned brews in a cooler. And for kids and customers seeking a non-alcoholic beverage, Southside serves sodas

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Tiffany and Rob Harmon pose with daughter Lydia on opening day. | LIZ MILLER from Jones Soda Co. The shop won’t be serving pours at its tasting bar right away, although Tiffany says that eventually that’s the plan. “I think we’re at about 70 labels in the store right now,” she adds. “We have a lot of New World wines. We’ve got a great collection of cabernets and pinot noirs that we’re hoping will be popular during the colder months as we get into winter. We also have a wonderful selection of Spanish wines that have really piqued our interest, and then we’ve got a small selection of Italian and French wines as well. We’re starting there and seeing how we branch out.” The shop will be hosting a series of events in the next few months, including public wine tastings on Friday, November 8, and on December 6. The shop is also available to rent for private parties and small corporate events. In addition to its new retail space, Southside can be hired to pour at events, from weddings to birthday parties to corporate gatherings, and you’re likely to see them at neighborhood festivals and block parties. The company also runs an online wine club, The Society, which offers members the chance to purchase from a curated monthly menu. For $25, members can choose from a lengthy list of specialty wines and spirits, with selections delivered right to their doorstep. Members of the wine club also receive other perks: free pours at Southside Wine + Spirits events, invites to private tastings and pop-up events and discounts on products and merchandise at the store. “We can’t wait to show all of our family, friends, neighbors and the rest of the neighborhood what we’ve done,” Tiffany says. “A lot of people have been walking by and looking in the windows, and we’re really excited to just finally show off the fruits of our labor.” Southside Wine + Spirits will be open from 1 to 8 p.m. on Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays. n

BAR TAB

by Ellen Prinzi

Where we’re drinking: Taco Circus What we’re drinking: The Purple Margarita When we’re drinking: When it’s time to get drunk

he Purple Margarita ain’t your traditional ’rita — and isn’t suited for just anyone’s liquor tolerance. Upon ordering the cocktail at Taco Circus (4940 Southwest Avenue, 314-899-0061), owner Christian Ethridge immediately informs me that the drink comes with its own set of consequences. “It can give you the sweats and will make your face hot if drunk at a normal speed,” Ethridge says. Taco Circus has been open in its new location on the edge of the Hill neighborhood since September and has been packing in the crowds ever since. The restaurant’s bar program is one of its new features at the relocated space, which is also serving an expanded menu of the Tex-Mex favorites that made it famous. As always, the portions of tacos, burritos, nachos and more are large here, which provide the perfect foil for soaking up booze. “We serve large, over-the-top portions in true Texas fashion, and this is a concept that hadn’t been fully explored in the region,” Ethridge says. With drinks like the Purple Margarita on offer, you’ll be extra happy for those over-the-top portions. Unlike strong cocktails that can taste severely alcohol forward, the Purple Margarita is smooth and flavorful, a further credit to its sneaky intoxicating abilities. The marg comes with a two-drink limit — and after securing a buzz after three sips, I can’t imagine the tolerance of a person who could drink more than two of them. The drink is made with overproof tequila, Plantation O.F.T.D. Overproof Dark Rum, lemon, granulated sugar, cassis and a purple syrup made with blueberries that have been soaked in simple syrup and the Plantation rum. The cocktail is a smooth, slightly sweet concoction that definitely gets the job done. Like the Tex-Mex tacos, burritos and more that inspired the Taco Circus menu, the Purple Margarita was influenced by Ethridge’s memories of his hometown of Austin, Texas. “The idea behind the Purple Margarita came from this place back home called Baby Acapulco,” Ethridge says. “They had a drink called the Purple Margarita and it also came with a two-drink limit. I wanted to create a higher-quality version, so I turned to the bar managers to bring the creation to life.” The architects of Taco Circus’ cocktail program are St. Louis bar industry vets Eric In-

The Purple Margarita. | ELLEN PRINZI

thaluexay, who has worked at Atomic Cowboy, Mission Taco Joint, Layla and Nixta, and Casey Colgan, co-owner of Parlor in the Grove. Aside from the booze-forward Purple Margarita, the restaurant’s cocktail list features many creative and classic cocktails, including frozen and regular margaritas, a traditional paloma, a mezcal margarita and a large selection of draft and bottled beers. From Thursday to Saturday, in anticipation of wait times and to make full use of its new bar program, there is an overflow bar next door called the Mezcal Bar. Belly up to the bar while you wait for a table and order drinks from a separate mezcal-heavy cocktail menu, including that mezcal marg. (Due to its high ABV, the Purple Margarita is not served at the Mezcal Bar.) In the next few weeks, Taco Circus will introduce a late-night happy hour and extend its hours until 1 a.m. on weekends. Just don’t say we didn’t warn you about the Purple Margarita or the ensuing craziness you’ll likely experience after downing it. Ellen Prinzi is our bar columnist. She likes strong drinks and has strong opinions. You can catch more of her writing via Olio City, a city guide app she started in 2017.

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MUSIC + CULTURE

[HOMESPUN]

For the Pups Fire Dog’s latest album continues the band’s kid-friendly direction Written by

CHRISTIAN SCHAEFFER

ark Pagano has been leading the poppy rock & roll trio Fire Dog for well over a decade at this point. Along with bassist Celia Shacklett and drummer Mike Schurk, Pagano makes funny, sometimes absurd, always upbeat songs that are devoid of ego and irony and heavy on charm and warmth. And it seems the longer the band stays around, the younger its audience gets. “We kind of got together in 2006, and the focus was around the songs I was writing at that time,” Pagano says. “Those weren’t geared toward family audiences.” As time went on, the trio’s peppy and open-hearted songs, which are built around sing-along-able harmonies, began to appeal to a broader audience. “There were certain songs of Fire Dog’s that were popular that kids liked, and people would ask us if we would do a kid’s album,” Pagano explains. The idea percolated until 2014, when Pagano and his wife welcomed their first child. From there, his songwriting turned toward younger listeners — his children, of course, but other people’s kids as well. It’s Fire Dog!, the trio’s latest, comes on the heels of last year’s Endangered Species Project, which featured songs about animals whose habitats and livelihoods were threatened. That record featured “Hellbender,” which has become the trio’s signature song and an anthem for the revival of an evocatively named salamander native to Missouri. It’s Fire Dog! has no such framework to it, but Pagano sees the album as part of the band’s kidfriendly progression. “I consider the new album the third in that trilogy. The last three albums have been in that focus,” he says. “It’s been a good niche for us; we

Fire Dog didn’t initially start out as a children’s band, but it turns out the kids love them. | VIA THE BAND play at diverse venues like libraries and schools and community events.” Pagano calls the move toward family friendly music “a natural progression,” and even the earliest Fire Dog songs had a child-like sense of wonder and an effusive positivity, even if the band was more likely to be gigging at rock venues than libraries. The band still plays at more adult-oriented venues; it graces the mosaic-tile stage at the Venice Cafe a few times a year, and that bar’s eclectic decor and come-as-you-are aesthetic fits ire og’s winsome attitude. “A lot of the songs we do out at bars is the same material, and it’s accessible to kids and adults of all ages,” Pagano says. “The rhythms are real danceable and the harmonies are singable. There’s an accessibility that makes it fun.” Now a father of two, Pagano uses parenthood as fodder for songcraft. Not surprisingly, his sons end up both as muses and coconspirators in his songs. “We’re playing music all the time,” Pagano says. “My older son got into drums at about two years old and we still play a lot together. I’m also an educator, so I use music a lot with my young ones in

our day-to-day interactions.” Part of Pagano’s day job is to host songwriting workshops at local grade schools, and he often ends up writing collaboratively with his young charges. “Narwhal,” from the new album, was one such co-write, and it sprang from a residency with a fourth-grade class at Kehrs Mill Elementary. As an added bonus, the students will learn precisely how hard it is to make a living as a working musician. “It is registered with ASCAP and it is a co-written effort, so assuming that money rolls in, they’ll get half,” he says with a laugh. Pagano says that “Narwhal,” written about the tusk-endowed whale, has already become a favorite of his young listeners. “It’s a really popular animal right now; it’s kind of a magical creature, so there are kids telling me stories on how they evolved from unicorns. It’s interesting to play these songs for kids and see what they have to offer.” Likewise, the opening and closing songs are the twin title tracks to It’s Fire Dog!. Pagano says the tune was born out of necessity: The group needed a theme song to introduce the band, and some interactive dog-barking was a good

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way to ramp up engagement. “Kids really respond to that,” he says. “They just like to howl like a dog.” Pagano says that while this is Fire Dog’s second record in as many years, he isn’t sure how many more full-length records he envisions. His bandmates keep active with other gigs — Shacklett is perhaps the best-known children’s performer in town, and Schurk plays regularly with Beth Bombara and others — so practice and songwriting sessions are few and far between. “It’s hard to say the direction or arc of the band,” Pagano says. “We’re all busier than we have been in the past, so it’s hard to find time to rehearse. It was a bit of a difficult decision to release songs on the album format. I’ve been getting into some home recording and moving toward singles and self recording things. It’s just a lot of work to rehearse the live band and get into the studio. It slows the process down; we could continue to be productive and produce things that way.”

Fire Dog Album Release 3 p.m. Saturday, November 9. The Schlafly Tap Room, 2100 Locust Street. Free. 314241-2337.

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

RIVERFRONT TIMES

“I was a working musician ... I had a very sober, solid, working musician’s strategy. And then I got this instrument and it’s completely rearranged my life.”

[PREVIEW]

If You Build It St. Louis native Mark Deutsch returns to town with his homemade 39-string bass in tow Written by

THOMAS CRONE

ark Deutsch doesn’t love to travel by air, but not necessarily for the usual reasons. For him it’s less about the an iety of flying and more related to the fact that he’s got an instrument that accompanies him wherever he goes — and the bazantar isn’t one to be handled roughly. A creation of the musician himself, the bazantar is, by the shortest (and somewhat insufficient definition, an enhanced 39-string bass, one that he handcrafted more than two decades ago. For a cross-country tour that he’s embarked upon, Deutsch is driving. Just him and his bazantar and a whole lot of cities that are interested in what the former St. Louisan has been up to. “I’m driving to San Francisco, to New York,” Deutsch notes, “and I was going to fly. ut the last time, it was damaged. In June, I thought, ‘Let me see what I can set up for a little tour. I haven’t driven across the country in a while and it’s time.’ have this huge flight case, which suspends the instrument in the case. But with what I’ve added to the instrument, it’s always overweight. For some reason, during the last time flying, a dude made me disassemble it and it was really hell. When it was in the case, it was totally fine, but when had to put it in this other box … well, I’m a little frea ed out about flying. Because? “It’s the only one there is, you know?” Let’s pause here. The bazantar. The protoptype is Deutsch’s. It’s so tied to Deutsch that his website’s URL is bazantar.com and Deutsch has occasionally answered to “Bazantar” as if it’s his name. Via said website, here’s the short history: “While studying North Indian classical music with the legendary sitar and surbahar master Ustad Imrat Khan (younger brother of stad ilayat Khan , Mark began delving deeper into the universal fundamentals of music and its underlying frequency structures. This in turn led him to

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Mark Deutsch’s signature instrument, the bazantar, is a six-string acoustic bass fitted with an additional twenty-nine sympathetic strings and four drone strings. | VIA ARTIST WEBSITE his quest to develop an instrument that could reproduce his findings. This work culminated in 1999 with Mark being awarded a US patent for his groundbreaking new instrument: Bazantar — a six-string acoustic bass fitted with an additional twenty-nine sympathetic strings and four drone strings. The result is a remarkable instrument that weaves a mesmerizing soundscape of resonance, and evokes all the power of Western classical music with the depth and nuance of Eastern traditions.” The instrument was something he developed from 1993 to 1997, a period of time in which Deutsch

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

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was already well established in several overlapping St. Louis music communities. “In the 1980s, I started out in playing avant-garde jazz, heady stuff,” he recalls. “And in the ’90s, I was really making a living. I had the Live Wire blues band, my own jazz quintet, my Americana band Missouri Bottoms. I played with the Illinois Symphony, the Webster Symphony. I played sitar all the time. All of that progressed as I was building the bazantar. I was playing every night of the week: jazz, blues, classical, the sitar. I really loved my life in St. Louis and I was doing

well. My life is just so different now. There, I played all the time. I was just a prostitute, playing anything you’d want. Jazz, cool. Blues, no problem. At the end of my stay there, I was going to New York and playing with the avantgarde cats in New York, and I brought a program that I started in St. Louis, ‘Massamalgam,’ to New York and Chicago, bringing them St. Louis poets like Shirley LeFlore and Michael Castro and musicians like Gary Sykes and John Wolf.” His experiences there would lead to his departure from St. Louis. Deutsch ticks off a host of contemporaries that he played with in St. Louis, as well as influences li e the drummer Joe Charles, a frequent sideman of John Coltrane. That life he had here, he says, was comfortable, but as the bazantar came into focus, he began to delve deeper into worldwide classical and folk music, especially those of India and China, creating a pushpull that was impossible to ignore. “I had a different trajectory” in St. Louis, he says. “I’d been a musician since I was twelve. I’d set up a retirement account. I was a working musician and being conservative, playing anything. I had a very sober, solid, working musician’s strategy. And then I got this instrument and it’s completely rearranged my life.” It’s not like Deutsch has been a stranger since he departed. After a solo showcase at the Sheldon in early October he came back for a show at the Focal Point on November 2. Out of town for a few more days after that, he’ll return for a third hometown gig, this one centered on more of a Q&A approach at the Judson House on Friday, November 8. Three shows so close together Continued on pg 45

Kelton Rucker (left) and Rasheme Bridges face federal charges in an alleged weed robbery. | VIA ST. LOUIS REGIONAL CRIMESTOPPERS

[CRIME]

Rap Duo Benji Brothers Charged in Armed Marijuana Robbery

wo St. Louis rappers, signed to a national record label, have been indicted on federal drug and gun charges. Rasheme “Benji Bam” Bridges and Kelton “Benji Kellz” Rucker are accused of carrying out an armed marijuana robbery. The duo, who perform as Benji Brothers, conspired with others on the January 2018 stickup in the Carondelet neighborhood of south city, according to an indictment unsealed last week. The two stole a pound of weed during the robbery, authorities say. Bridges brandished a handgun, and Rucker squeezed off at least one round before they took off with the marijuana, according to the indictment. The Benji Brothers signed in January

MARK DEUTSCH Continued from pg 44

in one city might seem a lot, but Deutsch says each gig offers something a bit different. “The Sheldon is where I debuted my instrument twenty years ago,” he says. “It’s a great place, and I used to play there when I lived in St. Louis, for different jazz or classical shows. Another gig’s at the Focal Point and I’ve never played there but know they’re into high-quality sound. At the Judson House, it’ll be open for the audience to have a discussion; the audience will drive how that one goes. I’ll be able to dissect some of the processes that I use and that are super interesting. It’ll be a concert/lecture, a chill thing.” There’s plenty to talk about. “I’m like an expert in tuning

to Cinematic Music Group, the New York City-based label that is home to Joey Bada$$ and other Pro Era rappers. Just nineteen years old, Bridges and Rucker have built up a following, racking up hundreds of thousands of views on their music videos released on YouTube. Their music often covers topics of crime and violence, with many of the videos set in urban ruins, although a disclaimer at the beginning of one, “Moment of Silence,” says any illegal-looking “props” — presumably guns flashed throughout — are “merely props and should not be taken seriously.” But police in the St. Louis area allege the two are responsible for real-life violence. Rucker and Bridges have each been featured on the St. Louis Regional CrimeStoppers’ Most Wanted List as suspects in an assault and attempted robbery. In the federal case, Bridges and Rucker were each charged with conspiracy to posses with intent to distribute marijuana and possessing firearms in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. Warrants were issued last week for both teens.

—Doyle Murphy

Wednesday November 6 9PM

systems and the underlying math that constitutes what notes you use, what notes are,” he says. “I really know the mathematics behind it. That’s what I’m doing on this tour, I’m lecturing on the physics of sounds. It can sound really esoteric or new-age-y, but it’s old stuff. The Chinese and Indians have been doing this for 3,000 years. I’ve really gotten into it, and it’s the work that I’ve done for the last 30 years. That’s my passion. Before that, it was being a jazz or classical musician, but I felt that with this instrument I lost my prior life, and it put me in this weird direction of bass solo guy. “It’s a pretty unusual thing to do, he figures. li e it.

Sean Canan’s Voodoo Players Tribute To Paul Simon

Thursday November 7 9PM

The Gusto

Friday November 8 10PM

Clusterpluck’s Pickin To Feed Show to Benefit The Homeless and Hungry

Saturday November 9 10PM

Jakes Leg

Sunday November 10 8PM

Blues, Soul and Pop Diva Kim Massie Wednesday November 13 9PM

Sean Canan’s Voodoo Players Tribute To Jimi Hendrix

Thursday November 14 9PM

Mark Deutsch

Mom’s Kitchen

7 p.m. Friday, November 8. The Judson House, 3733 Washington Avenue. $20. No phone.

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OUT EVERY NIGHT

[CRITIC’S PICK]

The men of White Women. | VIA FLYOVER COMEDY FESTIVAL

Flyover Comedy Festival 5 p.m. Thursday, November 7; 5 p.m. Friday, November 8; 4 p.m. Saturday, November 9. Multiple venues in the Grove. More info at flyovercomedyfest.com. Flyover Comedy Festival returns for the third time in as many years with its biggest lineup yet. The scrappy homegrown event, booked by St. Louis natives, has fast become a force to be reckoned with in St. Louis’ comedy scene, taking over multiple venues in the Grove each year and bringing barrels of laughs along with it. This year’s lineup is no exception, with

THURSDAY 7

ALEX CAMERON: 8 p.m., $15-$18. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929. BEAR GRILLZ: w/ Lucii, Somnium Sound 8 p.m., free. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. THE CLINIC: 7 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. CURSIVE: w/ Cloud Nothings, The Appleseed Cast 8 p.m., $22-$25. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. HUNTER DRAGON: w/ Elektrodinosaur 9 p.m., $7. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226. IVAS JOHN & BRIAN CURRAN: 7 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. PAT REEDY AND THE LONGTIME GONERS: 7 p.m., $15. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis. SATSANG: 8 p.m., $12-$15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. THE TOY TRUCKS: w/ Boreal Hills 9 p.m., $7. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

FRIDAY 8

BASSAMP & DANO: w/ Lightning Wolf, Potty Movth 8 p.m., $7. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309. BIG HEAD TODD & THE MONSTERS: 8 p.m., $30-

appearances by the likes of Kyle Kinane, Joel Kim Booster, Sasheer Zamata, White Women, Jena Friedman and Kids These Days, alongside a slew of up-andcomers of both the local and national variety. Shows will take place at the Improv Shop, the Ready Room, Handlebar and the Bootleg, and you can purchase tickets for all three days for just $45. Comedy A La Carte: For those unable or unwilling to attend the entire fest, tickets for individual performances are available as well on the festival’s website. Head to flyovercomedyfest.com for prices and set times. —Daniel Hill $35. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. BROTHER JEFFERSON BAND: 10 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. THE CHAINSMOKERS: w/ 5 Seconds of Summer, Lennon Stella 7 p.m., $46.50-$96.50. Enterprise Center, 1401 Clark Ave., St. Louis, 314-241-1888. THE FLATLANDERS: 8 p.m., $30-$50. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. FREE PARKING: w/ Brian Bulger, Hudson Freeman, Dead Format, The Matching Shoe 7 p.m., $5-$8. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720. JOEL KIM BOOSTER: 8 p.m., $25. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929. LEROY PIERSON: 7 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. LOS LOBOS: 8 p.m., $40-$50. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900. REMO DRIVE: 8 p.m., $15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. STAGHORN: w light uture, Coffin it, amily Medicine 9 p.m., $7. Foam, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100. VOODOO JGB: w/ Sean Canan’s Voodoo Players 9 p.m., $10-$12. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. WHITE DENIM: 8 p.m., TBA. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

Continued on pg 49

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[CRITIC’S PICK]

The 75s. | VIA SCOTT LASSER

The 75s Reunion Show 8 p.m. Saturday, November 9. Fubar, 3108 Locust Street. $10. 314-289-9050. The lifespan of a band is impossible to predict, but something about the tuneful tweepunk trio the 75s felt pre-ordained to burn brightly and quickly. Laurel Mydock fronted the band with equal parts sneer and smile, and from the outset she sought to write proudly “girly” songs with overt nods to forebears like Tiger Trap and the Aislers Set. The band was powered by Scott Lasser’s drums, but the 75s stands tall

OUT EVERY NIGHT Continued from pg 47

SATURDAY 9

THE 75S REUNION SHOW: w/ Bruiser Queen, the Jag-Wires 8 p.m., $10. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. ALARM WILL SOUND: 7:30 p.m., TBA. The 560 Music Center, 560 Trinity Ave., University City, 314-421-3600. ANDREA GONZÁLEZ CABALLERO: 8 p.m., $24-$28. Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Rd, Richmond Heights, 314-991-0955. BAD HABIT: 9 p.m., free. Nightshift Bar & Grill, 3979 Mexico Road, St. Peters, 636-441-8300. BIG FREEDIA: w/ Low Cut Connie 8 p.m., $25$30. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. BLUES OFF GRAND: 6 p.m., $40. Grandel Theatre, 3610 Grandel Square, St. Louis, 314-533-0367. BLUES TRAVELER: 8 p.m., $30-$35. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. CHEROKEE STREET JAZZ CRAWL ‘19: w/ the St. Louis Jazz All-Stars, The Rum Drum Ramblers, Miss Jubilee, Sweetie and Chase, Charles Creath and Jacob Alspach, Kaleb Kirby Qntet, Saint Boogie Brass Band, Tommy Halloran, Gaslight Squares, DJ Nune 11 a.m., free. Cherokee Street (Nebraska Ave. & Cherokee St.), Cherokee St. and Nebraska Ave., St. Louis. CODY JINKS: 8 p.m., TBA. The Fox Theatre, 527 N. Grand Blvd., St. Louis, 314-534-1111. DEVIL’S ELBOW: 10 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. DISCREPANCIES: w/ The Skagbyrds, Retro Champ, Bleach, Man The Helm, Taylor James 6:30 p.m., $10-$15. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720. HARLEM 100: 8 p.m., $15-$40. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900. HIRIE: w/ RDGLDGRN, Kash’d Out 8 p.m., $15$20. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504

in local memory as the launching pad for Morgan Nusbaum, who played bass and sang backing vocals with the group before stepping out in front of the dependable twosome Bruiser Queen. To celebrate Lassiter’s 50th birthday, the 75s will reunite for the first time in nearly ten years — and, we’re told, for the last time ever. Where Are They Now?: Nusbaum will pull double-duty as Bruiser Queen performs on the bill alongside Lasser’s combo the Jag-Wires; the Radio Buzzkills round out the four-band bill. —Christian Schaeffer

Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. KATHLEEN MADIGAN: 7 p.m., $22-$42. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600. KYLE KINANE: 8 p.m., $25. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929. LADY J HUSTON SHOW BAND: 5 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. MERCYME: 7 p.m., $30-$80. Enterprise Center, 1401 Clark Ave., St. Louis, 314-241-1888. SINK IN: w/ Last Youth, Malibu ‘92, the Monocles, the Howl Twins, Wombmates 6:30 p.m., $10. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. THE WOOLLY BUSHMEN: w/ Pono AM, Cynanides 8:30 p.m., $7. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309. THIRD SIGHT BAND: 1 a.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. TISH & NBC THE VOICE FINALIST BIRTHDAY EDITION: 7 p.m., $20. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. THE WEEKS: w/ Future Thieves, H.A.R.D. 8 p.m., $18-$20. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. WESTERN STATES: w/ Hillary Fritz Band 6 p.m., $10. The Bootleg, 4140 Manchester Ave., St. Louis, 314-775-0775.

SUNDAY 10

CRUMB: w/ Divino Niño, Shormey 8 p.m., $18$21. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. FIELD DAY: 8 p.m., $20. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. GOTHS ON WHEELS: HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: 3:30 p.m., $10. St. Louis Skatium, 120 E Catalan St, St. Louis, 314-631-3922. LOVE JONES “THE BAND”: 9:30 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. MANDY PATINKIN: 3 p.m., $39. Blanche M Touhill

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[CRITIC’S PICK]

The Sadies. | JEREMY BRUNEEL

The Sadies 8 p.m. Wednesday, November 13. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Avenue. $15. 314-773-3363. Unless you’re a lifetime subscriber to the Bloodshot Records mailing list or an archivist of Canadian spaghetti-western surf rock, you probably haven’t crossed paths with the Sadies. Or at least you might think so, but dig deeper into the history of alternative country, and you’ll find the Sadies, led by Toronto-based brothers Dallas and Travis Good, powering some essential moments in the movement’s evolution. Everyone from Neko Case to Andre Williams to John Doe to Blue Rodeo have

OUT EVERY NIGHT Continued from pg 49

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Performing Arts Center, 1 University Dr at Natural Bridge Road, Normandy, 314-516-4949. THE MARCUS KING BAND: w/ Aaron Lee Tasjan 8 p.m., $26-$31. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. ROCKY & THE WRANGLERS: 4 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. TALULAH PAISLEY: w/ Rob Apollo, Loveseat 8:30 p.m., $5-$7. Foam, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100. THE USUAL SUSPECTS: 7 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

MONDAY 11

ATREYU: w/ Whitechapel, He Is Legend, Tempting Fate 6:30 p.m., $20-$129. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929. DIRTY HEADS: 8 p.m., $35-$40. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. GIVE WAY: w/ OTM, Final Order 8 p.m., $7. Foam, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100. JOHN 5: w/ Jared James Nichols, Reverend Jack 7 p.m., $20-$25. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. LIFE IN VACUUM: w/ Exhalants, De’Lorme, Mystic Will 8 p.m., $7. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309. RUSSIAN CIRCLES: w/ Windhand 8 p.m., $16$18. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

TUESDAY 12

JESSE GANNON: 10 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. JUPITER STYLES: w/ Crop Top, Yuppy, Frankie Valet 8 p.m., $7. Foam, 3359 Jefferson Ave.,

called on their eccentric, always deeply twangy talents. The band’s own releases are excellent, especially 2017’s Northern Passages, which features a Kurt Vile cameo and some surprisingly tense and pretty harmonies for a band best known for its manic guitar duels and psychedelic walls of sound. Country and western post Bob Wills doesn’t get any weirder or more adventurous than the Sadies. Northern Unicorns: Though the Sadies have occasionally passed through St. Louis as supporting act, headining sets have been truly rare. File this show under “crazy to miss.” —Roy Kasten St. Louis, 314-772-2100. ROLAND JOHNSON & SOUL ENDEAVOR: 7 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. TORCHE: w/ Eye Flys 8 p.m., $16-$18. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. THE WOOD BROTHERS: 8 p.m., $26-$31. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

WEDNESDAY 13

BIG RICH MCDONOUGH & THE RHYTHM RENEGADES: 7 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. BISHOP BRIGGS: w/ Miya Folick, Jax Anderson 7:30 p.m., $27.50-$30. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. BRE ECKERT: w/ w/ Jeramiah Conley, Andrew Edmonston 7:30 p.m., $5. Foam, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100. BRIAN MCKNIGHT: 7:30 p.m., $42. River City Casino & Hotel, 777 River City Casino Blvd., St. Louis, 314-388-7777. GHOSTLEG: 10 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. MARCO BENEVENTO: w/ The Mattson 2 8 p.m., $12-$15. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. NEW POLITICS: w/ Plain White T’s, The Mowgli’s 7:30 p.m., $27.50-$30. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. THE SADIES: 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. SIMPLE PLAN: w/ State Champs 6:45 p.m., $29.50-$59. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

THIS JUST IN

ABIGAIL WILLIAMS: W/ Aenimus, Wed., Dec. 11, 6:30 p.m., $13. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

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OUT EVERY NIGHT Continued from pg 50

ANTHONY HAMILTON AND ERIC BENET PRECONCERT PARTY: Sun., Dec. 1, 5 p.m., free. Maurizio’s Pizza, 220 S. Tucker Blvd., St. Louis, 314-621-1997. AUGUSTANA: Wed., Nov. 20, 8 p.m., $20-$23. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. BETH BOMBARA: W/ Essential Knots, Thu., Dec. 12, 8 p.m., $12. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. BETH HART: Sat., April 25, 8 p.m., $40-$60. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. BIG RICH MCDONOUGH & THE RHYTHM RENEGADES: Wed., Nov. 13, 7 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. BLACK TIGER SEX MACHINE: Thu., March 12, 8 p.m., free. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. BODYSNATCHER: Tue., Feb. 18, 6:30 p.m., $13. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. BRE ECKERT: W/ w/ Jeramiah Conley, Andrew Edmonston, Wed., Nov. 13, 7:30 p.m., $5. Foam, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100. BRETT YOUNG: W/ Matt Ferranti, Fri., Feb. 7, 8 p.m., $35-$75. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600. CHEROKEE STREET JAZZ CRAWL ‘19: W/ the St. Louis Jazz All-Stars, The Rum Drum Ramblers, Miss Jubilee, Sweetie and Chase, Charles Creath and Jacob Alspach, Kaleb Kirby Qntet, Saint Boogie Brass Band, Tommy Halloran, Gaslight Squares, DJ Nune, Sat., Nov. 9, 11 a.m., free. Cherokee Street (Nebraska Ave. & Cherokee St.), Cherokee St. and Nebraska Ave., St. Louis. COLONY HOUSE: Tue., March 10, 8 p.m., $20. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314588-0505. COWBOY RANDY ERWIN: Fri., Nov. 15, 7 p.m., free. Gaslight Lounge, 4916 Shaw Ave, St. Louis, 314-496-0628. DAN DEACON: Tue., March 31, 8 p.m., $18-$20. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929. DAVE MASON: Sun., March 1, 7:30 p.m., $29.50$89.50. River City Casino & Hotel, 777 River City Casino Blvd., St. Louis, 314-388-7777. DENNIS DEYOUNG AND THE MUSIC OF STYX: Fri., Feb. 14, 8 p.m., $29.50. Sat., Feb. 15, 8 p.m., $29.50. River City Casino & Hotel, 777 River City Casino Blvd., St. Louis, 314-388-7777. DEVIL’S ELBOW: Sat., Nov. 9, 10 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. THE DOLLOP WITH DAVE ANTHONY AND GARETH REYNOLDS: Fri., April 17, 8 p.m., $30. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. END WORLD: W/ Goaltender, Interpersonal, Lightrider, Reeling, Fri., Dec. 6, 7:30 p.m., $10. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. GABRIEL IGLESIAS: Fri., March 13, 8 p.m., $46.50-$76.50. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600. THE GATLIN BROTHERS: Fri., March 20, 8 p.m., $19.50. River City Casino & Hotel, 777 River City Casino Blvd., St. Louis, 314-388-7777. GHOSTLEG: Wed., Nov. 13, 10 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. GINUWINE: Sun., Dec. 22, 8 p.m., $30-$75. Ballpark Village, 601 Clark Ave, St. Louis, 314-345-9481. GIVE WAY: W/ OTM, Final Order, Mon., Nov. 11, 8 p.m., $7. Foam, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100. HARD LIVING THANKSGIVING: A HOLIDAY HONKYTONK HOOTENANNY: W/ Old Capital, The Fighting Side, Craig Gerdes, Chris Black & The Eagles of Unemployment, Isaac Chosich, Sat., Nov. 30, 8 p.m., $10. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. HOT TUNA: Tue., March 3, 7:30 p.m., $29.50$64.50. River City Casino & Hotel, 777 River City Casino Blvd., St. Louis, 314-388-7777. JESSE GANNON: Tue., Nov. 12, 10 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis,

314-436-5222. JIM GAFFIGAN: Fri., Feb. 21, 7 p.m., $46.75$56.75. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600. JOSEPH: Wed., Feb. 12, 8 p.m., $22-$25. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-7266161. JOURNEY: W/ the Pretenders, Fri., June 26, 7 p.m., $35-$399.50. Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, I-70 & Earth City Expwy., Maryland Heights, 314-298-9944. JUPITER STYLES: W/ Crop Top, Yuppy, Frankie Valet, Tue., Nov. 12, 8 p.m., $7. Foam, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100. THE KYLE GASS COMPANY: W/ Wynchester, Sun., Nov. 17, 8 p.m., $15. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. LADY J HUSTON SHOW BAND: Sat., Nov. 9, 5 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. LIFE IN VACUUM: W/ Exhalants, De’Lorme, Mystic Will, Mon., Nov. 11, 8 p.m., $7. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309. LOVE JONES “THE BAND”: Sun., Nov. 10, 9:30 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. MARK CHESNUTT & JOE DIFFIE: Fri., Feb. 21, 8 p.m., $19.50. River City Casino & Hotel, 777 River City Casino Blvd., St. Louis, 314-388-7777. MICHAL MENERT: W/ Filibusta, Thu., Jan. 23, 9 p.m., $12-$15. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. THE MIGHTY PINES: ne ay Traffic, Tue., Dec. 31, 9 p.m., $20-$25. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929. MINIATURE TIGERS: Fri., Feb. 7, 8 p.m., $18-$20. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. MUSIC UNLIMITED: Thu., Dec. 12, 7 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. PHILLIPALOOZA 2019: Fri., Dec. 27, 6 p.m., $15$25. Sat., Dec. 28, 6 p.m., $15-$25. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. POPPY: Sat., Feb. 15, 8 p.m., $23.25-$25.25. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. RAILROAD EARTH: Sat., March 28, 8 p.m., $25$35. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. ROCKY & THE WRANGLERS: Sun., Nov. 10, 4 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. ROLAND JOHNSON & SOUL ENDEAVOR: Tue., Nov. 12, 7 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. RUSKO: Wed., Nov. 27, 8 p.m., free. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. THE SCORE: W/ the Unlikely Candidates, Thu., Nov. 14, 8 p.m., $15. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. SNAILS: W/ Kompany, Hi I’m Ghost, Mon., Dec. 2, 8 p.m., $27.50-$30. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS: Fri., May 22, 8 p.m., $22-$25. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. STAGHORN: light uture, Coffin it, amily Medicine, Fri., Nov. 8, 9 p.m., $7. Foam, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100. STURGILL SIMPSON: W/ Tyler Childers, Sat., March 21, 7 p.m., TBA. Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis, 314-977-5000. TALULAH PAISLEY: W/ Rob Apollo, Loveseat, Sun., Nov. 10, 8:30 p.m., $5-$7. Foam, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100. THE WOOLLY BUSHMEN: W/ Pono AM, Cynanides, Sat., Nov. 9, 8:30 p.m., $7. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309. THIRD SIGHT BAND: Sat., Nov. 9, 1 a.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. TIM MONTANA: Thu., Nov. 21, 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. TIM REYNOLDS & T3: Sat., Dec. 21, 8 p.m., $16$18. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. n

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NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

RIVERFRONT TIMES

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

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SAVAGE LOVE THE MAN SHOW BY DAN SAVAGE Hey, Dan: I am male. A close female friend was raped by an old acquaintance of mine. I knew this guy when we were tweens, I didn’t really care for him as we got older, so it goes. It turns out that a few years ago, he raped my friend in an alcohol blackout situation. I don’t know more than that. She says she considers the encounter “not strictly consensual” and confided that this guy didn’t react well when she tried to talk to him about it. This isn’t something she’s “out” about. My feelings toward this guy are pretty dark. Now he’s moved back to town and I see him around, and some good friends of mine who stayed in contact with him invite him to stuff. I don’t know what to say or how to act. I know I don’t want to talk to him or be his friend. I would like to tell my other friends about this guy so I don’t have to see him, but I can’t because it’s not my story to tell. I would rather just skip social events he’s at. But without an explanation, I doubt my friends will understand, and it feels like I’m surrendering my friends to someone who assaulted a dear friend. I told someone once to please not invite him to something or I would skip it. They were confused, and it felt like an awkward ask. What should I say to my friends about this guy? What can I do to keep him out of my life? Angry Confidant “I don’t like hanging out with Chuck and would appreciate it if you didn’t invite him to the party/ show/bris/whatever.” “What’s the issue between you guys?” “Look, we go a long way back, and it’s not something I want to discuss. It’s just awkward for us to be in the same place.” That’s the best you can do without outing your friend — without telling a story that isn’t yours to tell — and it’s likely your mutual friends will be confused by the ask, AC, but you’ll just have to be at peace with that. You could add something vague that omits identifying details (“He did a shitty

thing to a friend”), but any details you share — however vague — could result in questions being put to you that you can’t answer or are tempted to answer. Even worse, questions will be put to “Chuck,” and he’ll be free to lie, minimize or spin. My only other piece of advice would be to follow your close female friend’s lead. You describe what transpired between her and Chuck as rape, while your friend describes the encounter as “not strictly consensual.” That’s a little more ambiguous. And just as this isn’t your story to tell, AC, it’s not your experience to label. If your friend doesn’t describe what happened as rape — for whatever reason — you need to respect that. And does your friend want Chuck excluded from social events hosted by mutual friends or is she able to tolerate his presence? If it’s the latter, do the same. If she’s not making an issue of Chuck being at a party, you may not be doing her any favors by making an issue of his presence yourself. If you’re worried your friend tolerates Chuck’s presence to avoid conflict and that being in the same space with him actually upsets her (or that the prospect of being in the same space with him keeps her from those spaces), discuss that with her one on one and then determine — based on her feelings and her ask — what, if anything, you can do to advocate for her effectively without whiteknighting her or making this notstrictly-consensual-and-quite-possibly-rapey thing Chuck did to her all about you and your feelings. It’s really too bad Chuck reacted badly when your friend tried to talk to him about that night. If he’s an otherwise decent person who has a hard time reading people when he’s drunk, he needs to be made aware of that and drink less or not drink at all. If he’s a shitty person who takes advantage of other people when they’re drunk, he needs to know there will be social and potentially legal consequences for his behavior. The feedback your friend offered this guy — the way she tried to hold him accountable — could have prevented him from either fucking up like this again (if he’s a decent but dense guy) or taking advantage like this again (if he’s a shitty and rapey guy). If he was

It’s not your experience to label. If your friend doesn’t describe what happened as rape — for whatever reason — you need to respect that. willing to listen, which he wasn’t. And since he wasn’t willing to listen … yeah, my money is on shitty and rapey, not decent but dense. Hey, Dan: I’m a single straight man. A friend recently told me her twenty-year marriage hasn’t included sex for the past six years. Kids, stress, etc. I offered to have sex with her, but only if her husband approves. If I were her husband, I would want to know. But I think it’s unlikely her husband would approve our coital encounter. Have I done wrong? Married Asshole Refuses Intercourse To Affectionate Lady If discreetly getting sex outside her marriage allows your friend to stay married and stay sane, and if she doesn’t get caught, and if the sexual connection with her husband should revive after their kids are older — a lot of ifs, I realize — then the condition you set could result in your friend and her husband getting divorced now, which would preclude the possibility of their sexual connection reviving later. (Although we shouldn’t assume that sex has to be part of a marriage for it to be loving and valid. Companionate marriages are valid marriages.) That said, your friend is free to fuck some other guy if she doesn’t like your terms. Finally, MARITAL, unless you’re brainstorming names for a My Chemical Romance cover band, there’s really no reason to use the phrase “our coital encounter.” Hey, Dan: I’m a straight 45-yearold man. Good-looking. Three col-

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lege degrees and one criminal conviction. Twice divorced. I’ve had some intense relationships with women I met by chance — one knocked on my door looking to borrow an egg — so I know I can impress women. But online dating doesn’t work for me because I’m only five foot seven. Most women online filter me out based on height. The other problem is that I’m extremely depressed. I’m trying to work on the depression (seeing a psychiatrist and a psychologist), but the medications don’t seem to do much for me. This is probably due to my alcoholism. I’d love to start my online profile by boldly proclaiming my height and my disdain for shallow women who disregard me for it, but that would come across as bitter, right? Serious Heartbreak Over Relationship Travails There are plenty of five-foot-tall women out there, SHORT, women you’d tower over. But there are very few women who would respond positively — or at all — to a man whose online dating profile dripped with contempt for women who don’t want to fuck him. Rejection sucks, I know, but allowing yourself to succumb to bitterness only guarantees more rejection. nd first things first Keep wor ing on your depression with your mental-health team and please consider giving up alcohol. (I’m sure you’ve already considered it. Reconsider it.) No one is looking for perfection in a partner — and no one can offer perfection — but if dating you is likely to make someone’s life harder, SHORT, they aren’t going to want to date you. So get yourself into good working order and then start looking for a partner. And since you know you have better luck when you meet people face to face, don’t spend all your time on dating apps. Instead, find things you li e to do and go do them. Maybe you can pick a presidential candidate you like — one who supports coverage for mental-health care? — and volunteer on their campaign. Check out Dan’s podcast at savagelovecast.com. mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter ITMFA.org

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

RIVERFRONT TIMES

NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

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NOVEMBER 6-12, 2019

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INFORMED, HONEST, EFFECTIVE MEDICAL MARIJUANA ADVOCACY Primero Cannabis Clinics offers State compliant certifications to the program in a safe environment with physicians and advocates that understand how to help you through the process. We also offer certifications through Tele-Care for patients that are home bound or not available during our regular business hours, these certification visits are done by computer or your smart phone. wWe have physicians on staff 6 days a week with different hours to try and accommodate everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s schedule. Educated Alternative is a not-forprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization focusing on education and funding for the cannabis patients of Missouri. Currently through our partnership with Primero Cannabis Clinics we offer discounted rates to see the physician for Veterans and patients on SSDI (State disability). We are accepting donations and those funds

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