Riverfront Times, January 10, 2024

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RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 10-16, 2024

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riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 10-16,2024

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Owner and Chief Executive Officer Chris Keating Executive Editor Sarah Fenske

E D I T O R I A L Managing Editor Jessica Rogen Editor at Large Daniel Hill Staff Writers Ryan Krull, Monica Obradovic Arts & Culture Writer Paula Tredway Dining Critic Cheryl Baehr Theater Critic Tina Farmer Music Critic Steve Leftridge Contributors Aaron Childs, Max Bouvatte, Thomas Crone, Mike Fitzgerald, Cliff Froehlich, Eileen G’Sell, Reuben Hemmer, Braden McMakin, Tony Rehagen, Mabel Suen, Theo Welling Columnists Chris Andoe, Dan Savage

A R T

COVER

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P R O D U C T I O N

Art Director Evan Sult Creative Director Haimanti Germain Graphic Designer Aspen Smit

The Bird That Only Lives in St. Louis

M U L T I M E D I A

A D V E R T I S I N G

Publisher Colin Bell Account Manager Jennifer Samuel Directors of Business Development

The Eurasian Tree Swallow got a foothold in St. Louis — and pretty much only St. Louis. Blame the Germans

Tony Burton, Rachel Hoppman

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

B I G

Cover photo by

L O U

H O L D I N G S

Executive Editor Sarah Fenske

LEO BUCHER/SHUTTERSTOCK

Vice President of Digital Services Stacy Volhein Digital Operations Coordinator Elizabeth Knapp Director of Operations Emily Fear Chief Financial Officer Guillermo Rodriguez Chief Executive Officer Chris Keating

INSIDE Front Burner News

N A T I O N A L

A D V E R T I S I N G

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Short Orders

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Reeferfront Times

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Culture

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Music

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Film

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Out Every Night

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RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 10-16, 2024

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T H E D E V I L’ S I N T H E D E TA I L S

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MONDAY, JANUARY 1. It’s cold and gloomy — hopefully not a harbinger! But even though the calendar says 2024, old problems follow us from 2023. In St. Ann, a 23-year-old woman pumping gas not long after midnight is carjacked and sexually assaulted. In the city’s Forest Park Southeast neighborhood, an Airbnb hosting a loud party is left riddled with bullet holes (and neighbors rattled) after a drive-by shooting around 1 a.m. Meanwhile, a powerful earthquake strikes Tokyo, killing more than 100 people. Happy new year, we guess.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 2. It’s back to work for much of the city, and Mayor Tishaura Jones and Police Commissioner Robert Tracy are taking a victory lap: Crime is down bigly from 2022 in the city, in key categories including murders (21 percent), shooting incidents (24 percent) and juvenile shooting incidents (47 percent). Not doing quite so well: St. Charles, where felonies are up 13 percent, KMOV reports. Good thing we

recommended (italics, theirs). Judging by the online rhetoric, you’d think Dr. Matifadza Hlatshwayo Davis had spent the day torturing babies before Parson intervened (though, come to think of it, in some ways, she did).

Previously On LAST WEEK IN ST. LOUIS never connected the MetroLink to that hellhole! Meanwhile, Harvard President Claudine Gay sees the writing on the wall after clumsy handling of congressional questioning over antisemitism on campus, as well as allegations of plagiarism, and resigns.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3. It finally feels like winter in St. Louis, ugh. Meanwhile, cars are back on the road now that kids have returned to school, and everyone is driving like maniacs. One driver crashes head-on into a railroad pillar in Ferguson and dies.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 4. Possibly explaining the SLMPD’s recent success: The

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criminals are getting stupider. In Creve Coeur, a would-be carjacker is foiled by — get this — a parking brake. Meanwhile, in St. Charles County, the school board announces plans to bring back Black history and Black literature electives, less than two weeks after removing them. We’ll count this as progress.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 5. Citing rising cases of COVID-19 and the flu, the City of St. Louis Health Department issues a mask mandate for city employees, effective today — but it only lasts a few hours. Apparently after a staffer for Governor Mike Parson makes a phone call, Mayor Jones rescinds the order to suggest merely that masks are strongly

SATURDAY, JANUARY 6. We awake to an inch (or even two) of snow, but it’s still warm enough that roads are totally clear. Best of both worlds!

SUNDAY, JANUARY 7. All the snow melts long before two St. Louis Police officers crash their SUV just one block from police HQ. It’s so violent, the vehicle actually flips. Police say they were on their way to a crime scene in the Central West End; seeing no one was hurt and that two rookie cops are again to blame for a high-profile crash, the third in as many weeks, hilarity ensues. Meanwhile, the Golden Globes aren’t funny (who is this Jo Koy anyway?) but are utterly predictable. Did anyone really think Oppenheimer wouldn’t win?

7 QUESTIONS for a Catholic conventiongoer Around 19,000 young Catholics descended on downtown St. Louis last week for the annual Seek conference, put on by the Fellowship of Catholic University Students at the Dome at America’s Center. The conference promised five days of life-transforming speakers and a performance by Judah & the Lion. We caught up with one attendee, college student Grace Peterson, to see if the conference and its host city were living up to expectations.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What kind of stuff goes down at the Catholic Conference?

We have mass every day. There’s, like, over 20,000 of us there that we celebrate with. We’ve also had lots of guest speakers coming in, sisters, fathers, all sorts of different people. It’s been really good to get different insights from different people. There’s also been quite a few who might have struggled with their faith earlier in life. They’ve talked about that moment where everything seemed to fall into place.

Wow, 20,000 people at a mass. Does that feel like a concert?

Does it get pretty loud?

Yeah, not really. We have that respect that we know that we need to have going into mass. So, yes, the singing parts get loud. We’re all getting excited in there. But whenever it’s time to be serious, everybody’s being serious and respecting each other.

Presumably there’s a social element to the conference. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

That’s been really nice. I’m from Northwest Missouri State University and I spend lots of time at my Newman Center on campus. But even there, it’s not that big of a group compared to the rest of the student body here. It’s been really nice being here with all of these other Catholics. I know everyone around me has the same beliefs and values and that we’re all here to celebrate the same thing, for the same reason.

Have you been able to explore the city much?

Today, there’s a group of us who are going up to the Arch. Then we’re getting dinner somewhere as well.

What do you think of downtown?

Downtown isn’t so bad, says Grace Peterson. | RYAN KRULL Honestly, it hasn’t been as bad as, like, my mom was telling me going into it. There have been a few nights walking back at like 11:30 at night where I’m kinda just a little nervous, especially passing some dark alleyway. But overall it’s been good. I’ve been traveling with groups. I’d say it’s pretty safe.

When there was a Mormon youth convention here a few months ago, I was surprised by how big of a Mormon Instagram influencer community there was. Is there a Catholic youth influencer community, too?

I think there’s lots of Catholic influencers on Instagram. I don’t know how many of them have that big following. I personally follow quite a few on social media, not only Instagram, but also like TikTok and Facebook.

Are many of those influencers here?

Yes. —Ryan Krull

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FRONT BURNER Continued from pg 6

WEEKLY WTF?!

No one was hurt in this crash ... except the SLMPD’s reputation. | AARON BUNSE

COP WATCH Where: Olive and 20th streets, Downtown West When: Sunday, January 7, 4:20 p.m.

What: another crash involving a St. Louis Police SUV Why: even the cops can’t drive in this city We can’t help but think: SLMPD has issued an APB seeking the whereabouts of the canine who caused this crash.

Also, please note: We did not make up the part about the crash happening at 4:20 p.m. Would we do that to you? (OK, we might. But we didn’t.)

15 SECONDS OF FAME FAKE FREEDOM LOVER OF THE WEEK

Nick Schroer

State Senator Nick Schroer (R-St. Chuck) wants to bar women from having abortions, kids from having access to drag shows and consumers from being able to freely purchase hemp-based products like CBD. A libertarian, he’s not.

Yet last week, Schroer announced that he’d formed a new “Freedom Caucus” in the Missouri Senate, and the rollout was strangely short on irony. “The time for statesmanship is over,” he announced. (Did State Senator Nick Schroer talks a good that time ever exist in this 21st cenfreedom game. | SCREENSHOT tury in Missouri? Perhaps we were sleeping off a hangover and missed it.) Schroer later doubled down on the freedom rhetoric by tweeting, “The time is near at hand friends [sic] which will determine whether Americans are free men and women, or slaves.”

It’s always strange when a man lacks all self-awareness. Even stranger when he starts a Freedom Caucus while sporting hair straight out of 1933 Germany. When we think of freedom, we think of sex, drugs and rock & roll, not the Hitler Youth. But when you base your entire political philosophy on being stridently anti-woke, it should surprise no one to find core inconsistencies.

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NEWS

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Barriers block access to the Riverfront Trail — and the Arch grounds — for travelers coming from north city. | EVIE HEMPHILL

[OP-ED]

A photo of Kevin O’Shaughnessy taken in jail shows his cantaloupe-sized hernia. The lawyer who took it had phone privileges revoked for documenting O’Shaughnessy’s condition. | USED WITH PERMISSION

Phone Crackdown Follows Photo of Medical Neglect Jail officials responded to a high-profile image last week by making it harder for lawyers to photograph their clients Written by

RYAN KRULL

O

ne day after media outlets, including the RFT, published a photo of a St. Louis City Justice Center detainee with an untreated, cantaloupe-sized hernia, the jail banned attorneys from bringing in their phones when meeting with clients.

The photo was taken by public defender Erika Wurst and given to multiple media outlets at a January 4 bond hearing for Kevin O’Shaughnessy. O’Shaughnessy’s

sister and mother were at the hearing, asking St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Katherine Fowler to allow O’Shaughnessy to await his day in court anywhere but the city jail, where they said his mental and physical medical needs were being severely neglected.

The family members, along with O’Shaughnessy’s attorney, Jordan Cohen, used the photo as evidence of the neglect.

The next day, Matt Mahaffey with the public defender’s office told the RFT that attorneys were being barred from bringing phones into the facility. He said that three attorneys from his office all got the same message: no phones allowed.

“Of course, this is the day after both the Riverfront Times and the Post-Dispatch published stories about an accused person being held at the jail who has had grossly inadequate medical attention for very serious mental and physical needs,” Mahaffey says.

Department of Public Safety spokesman Monte Chambers tells the RFT that the no-phones rule for attorneys is nothing new. “The Department of Corrections has a strict, long-standing policy for all visitors to adhere to regarding the usage of cellular phones and recording devices.

This is not a new policy; it is an existing policy,” he says.

However, a sign posted on

We Must Take on Traffic Violence in 2024 We’ve made this city unsafe for cyclists and pedestrians — and that needs to change Written by

EVIE HEMPHILL

W

hen gaining confidence on a bicycle, a useful game to play is something called the lava box. Participating cyclists line themselves up in a one-way-facing circle, inside the bounds of a cone-outlined square of pavement. Once an instructor says ready-set-go, the riders all pedal the perimeter together, staying within the square. They’re forbidden from setting a foot down or veering outside the tight boundaries — because, of course, everything is lava.

Once you so much as touch the lava, it’s game over for you. As consolation for your elimination, you join a growing crew of folks moving the cones into a smaller and smaller square for remaining players to pedal within. The game becomes harder and harder as the number of competitors and the rideable area eventually shrink into nothingness.

As a low-stakes game, the lava box is a pretty fun time. Everyone ultimately emerges unscathed from pretend lava.

But over the last few years, in my own mind, the lava box has morphed into an unhappy metaphor of sorts — an image of what it’s like to get around outside of

a car in St. Louis.

This lava box is instead a terrifying real-life scenario, with a rapidly shrinking menu of options for getting from point A to point B without falling victim to the lava of traffic violence.

With every year that passes, I find myself eliminating more routes from my mental list of streets that seem reasonably safe to traverse outside of an automobile in this town. Whether you’re simply trying to go about your life on foot, on bike or in a wheelchair, the lava box is getting smaller by the day.

I used to ride the Grand bike lane (the lane in which Danyell McMiller lost his life in 2022) — no more. When downtown, I would cautiously but confidently ride Washington Avenue near the convention center (near where volleyball player Janae Edmondson lost both of her legs last February). Never again. For years I depended on Broadway’s bike lane. But after drivers started using both the bike lane and the center lane as passing racetracks (drivers seemed to collectively lose their minds in the early pandemic and have yet to find them), I crossed Broadway off my list.

Chouteau is getting worse, too, but I’m loath to eliminate that key connection just yet, as I do need to get places.

And while I’ve learned to use side streets as much as possible (even though it often adds a couple miles to a given commute), and though I feel less and less shame about retreating to sidewalks where needed (a strategy which, by the way, creates other problems and is still no guarantee, especially as citizens and police alike here are running straight up into buildings), driver behavior on what are designed to be narrow, quiet residential streets is often just as bad.

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Residents Cry Foul on Roundup Use

shine Law officer, says coalition member Daniel “Digger” Romano.

The records they eventually received showed the city used 520 gallons of Roundup in city parks from 2018 to 2021, in addition to smaller amounts of Resolve and Resolute herbicides. All three pesticides contain substances that are recognized as possible carcinogens by various agencies.

Roundup’s manufacturer, St. Louisbased Monsanto, has been in the midst of a series of heated court battles over its effects, with mixed results. The German company Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018, and two years later, agreed to pay $10 billion to settle claims that Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, caused cancer.

In several recent cases, juries have sided with plaintiffs who were not included in the settlement, racking up billions in losses for the pharmaceutical company. In October, a jury awarded St. Louis

man John Durnell $1.25 million after he developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after using Roundup for several years.

Earl Neal, a City of St. Louis Forestry Department employee in the 1990s, reached a settlement with Bayer in 2022 after he accused Roundup of causing his cancer. Earl also had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“I think the city is really putting itself in legal and financial danger by continuing to use pesticides,” coalition member Barbara Chicherio says.

In an emailed statement, Nick Dunne, public information officer for Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office, did not address a question about whether the city still used Roundup. Dunne said, “We look forward to reviewing the potential impacts of this proposal, and further discussing practical steps the city of St. Louis can continue making our parks and public spaces safe and healthy.”

The coalition’s bill would require the

Department of Parks, Recreation and Forestry to develop an “Environmental Land Management Plan” that prioritizes natural and organic practices for plant and pest control. It would also limit the city to pesticides found on the federal National List of Allowed Substances in the Organic Foods Production Act. Coalition members say their proposed ordinance, called “Healthy Outdoor Parks and Public Space,” has received support from five aldermen. Last January, former Alderman Jesse Todd introduced a version of the bill, but it didn’t go further than one committee hearing.

“As with any piece of legislation, impacted city departments must weigh potential impacts to operations, staff capacity, as well as departmental budgets,” Dunne’s statement reads. “As with the similar bill that did not make it out of committee last year, no fiscal note has been provided.”

Dunne says the city’s Parks Department has had “numerous” conversations with community members about weed and pest remediation methods over the past several years. But Romano says, although members have tried repeatedly to meet with Parks, Recreation and Forestry Director Greg Hayes about pesticide use, Hayes has declined. Romano says he heard through Todd that Hayes called the proposal “unworkable.”

“One hundred forty other cities have some version of a bill like we’re talking about, so to say this is impossible to implement is rather ridiculous,” Romano says.

Indeed, some cities, including Portland, Maine; Houston, Miami and Austin have banned or restricted use of pesticides that use glyphosate.

“We understand in a political process sometimes compromises are necessary, but we’ve seen this work in other cities and they’re making it work,” Roman says.

“We can make it work here.” n

its reflex to “fight transparency to the utmost degree” when its warts become public — as happened throughout the last year as the jail saw a spate of detainee deaths, a hostage situation and reports of detainees being forced to meet attorneys in only their underwear.

O’Shaughnessy has been in the city jail since June, charged with multiple counts of assault and armed criminal action. He was shot by police officers six times after pointing a rifle at a SWAT team outside his house in the Ellendale neighborhood. He is a diagnosed schizophrenic, and in court, his lawyer said he had been trying to commit suicide by cop in June.

Yet his treatment in jail has only exacerbated his difficulties.

His sister, Caitlin O’Shaughnessy, told the court on January 4 that during her brother’s six months in jail he hasn’t had ac-

cess to clean clothes, has gone without a shower and brushing his teeth for months, and has not had his hand bandages changed.

“No family should have to live like this,” she said.

Susan O’Shaughnessy, Kevin’s mother, tells the RFT that she knows her son isn’t the only one whose medical needs aren’t being met in the jail. When she has visited him in the medical unit, she says she’s seen other detainees banging on the glass of the infirmary, trying to get someone to pay attention.

The January 4 hearing resulted in Judge Fowler ordering Kevin O’Shaughnessy released to BJC Hospital for evaluation.

Mahaffey says that in some ways O’Shaughnessy is fortunate. His sister is a medical research coordinator at Washington University; his mom is a retired teacher. They

have both gone out of their way to document O’Shaughnessy’s experience at the jail and advocate for his needs.

“He also happens to have a dedicated and dogged attorney, and an assigned judicial officer willing to listen,” Mahaffey says. “Oh, and he is a white male.”

But Mahaffey stresses that even though O’Shaughnessy’s case may be unique in its particulars, “every person being held at that jail is being housed in the same reality as he is.”

He adds, “We need to stop listening to the jail administration’s words and start evaluating their actions and inactions. We need to stop listening to the politicians that blindly support them. And we need to stop being okay with innocent-until-proven guilty people suffering and dying in the custody of the state.” n

A Sunshine Law request revealed the City of St. Louis’ penchant for pesticide Written by

MONICA OBRADOVIC

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ix years ago, Erin O’Reilly walked through Tower Grove Park when she noticed something she thought was concerning. A city worker was spraying chemicals on the park’s greenery, and O’Reilly, a nurse and lactation consultant, says she noticed the same thing occur again and again in the years that followed.

So did other city residents who now make up the St. Louis No Spray Coalition.

The group has spent the last two and a half years trying to get the city to limit its use of pesticides on public land — but they say their message has fallen mostly on deaf ears.

“It’s our mission to ensure that our public green spaces are maintained in a healthy manner without the use of chemicals that can cause unhealthy effects,” O’Reilly tells the RFT. It’s a mission the coalition has been determined to accomplish. Members have gone through 17 versions of a draft ordinance that would limit pesticide use.

They also worked to obtain public records showing just how much pesticides the city’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Forestry used from 2018 to 2021 — which took a year and a half, a lawyer, and intervention from then-Alderwoman Megan Green. The group encountered “roadblock after roadblock” from the city’s Sun-

PHONE CRACKDOWN Continued from pg 7

January 5 at the jail reads, “Beginning January 15, 2024, no cellular devices or any type of recording/ photography devices will be allowed inside the facility. All previous authorizations for cellular devices are no longer authorized.”

Attorneys bring their smartphones for visits at the city jail because it has no WiFi, so the only way to access court documents from the internet is through cellular data. Also, attorneys may need them in an emergency, especially given that they sometimes conduct visits during extended hours at the facility, which has a roughly 60 percent staff vacancy rate and swelling inmate population.

To Mahaffey’s mind, the jail’s response is just another example of

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City parks getting hit with pesticides include Tower Grove Park. | FLICKR/PAUL SABLEMAN

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TRAFFIC VIOLENCE Continued from pg 7

Any sort of relatively safe, real-life lava box seems to be disappearing almost entirely.

Far too many drivers fly down the very skinny south city street where I live (a child was injured by a driver right outside my apartment just a few months ago). The street at the end of my block is an even skinnier one-way passage, but more and more drivers carelessly zoom down it the wrong way (one recently told me through his rolled-down window, “I don’t care,” when I informed him of his error — after he nearly creamed a mom and her children on their way to school).

In the months since I urged St. Louisarea leaders to walk in our shoes for just one day, referencing multiple recent experiences of serious driver-inflicted bodily harm among people just within my own small circle of local associates, still another friend has been badly hurt: A fellow bike teacher was hit by a reckless driver who zoomed into the oncoming lane at a side-street intersection, rather than stop at a stop sign behind the slowing driver in front of him.

Adding insult to (literal) injury, in nearly every case, these selfish, reckless drivers have left the scene of the crash. They have no empathy for anyone, no sense of responsibility to fellow human beings, even to those whose lives they have just irrevocably changed, if not outright stolen. And yet St. Louis drivers are still being coddled by those in charge, still effectively allowed to act with zero consequences.

Where I can, I am riding more trails and fewer streets because the daily anxiety for myself, my friends and colleagues, and St. Louis children — all of whom deserve to have fun riding bikes and walking and rolling around — is taking an increasing toll. So is the frequent driver harassment I encounter, simply for existing on a bike.

But depending on where you live and work and/or go to school in the St. Louis region, trails can be really hard to come by. I live near Carondelet Park, and work in Soulard. There is no nonstreet way for me to traverse those five miles or so to and from work. A bit further north, by the Gateway Arch, there’s a wonderful path for a mile or so. But it soon ends, just north of the Arch, in a now perpetually closed floodgate, which the city has stopped opening. It’s wild to me that this closure along the once-cherished Riverfront Trail has been allowed to persist for years on end, especially as it’s one of the most important non-car-focused connections between Downtown and the north side.

Perhaps this state of affairs is by

design? Barriers (and glass) are everywhere. The Riverfront Trail should be a key refuge for active transportation and youth recreation. It should be the perfect connection to the prized Arch.

Instead, the city has effectively cut off access for those on the north side.

This is not acceptable. It’s deeply unjust, and should be made right. Yesterday.

But will these problems be addressed? When?

Every time I ride the Arch grounds and Riverfront Trail, it’s harder to do it. Just this past week, I was met with even more gates set up to block streets that are supposed to be the detour for the perpetually blocked trail — this time gates that not only block streets but the sidewalks, too, making any kind of mobility at times literally impossible, right in what should be a vibrant center of outdoor city life.

How is it possible that we have created a riverfront where humans are not consistently free to walk, roll and bike around? How are children and families and teens supposed to enjoy fresh air and activity when we are providing fewer and fewer safe places for them to feasibly do so?

When I reach out to local officials and agencies with such questions and concerns, any responses I receive are admirably kind. (When I reached out to Great Rivers Greenway a few weeks ago about the concerning state of Riverfront Trail access, for example, my correspondent was quick to genuinely thank me for the detailed email and agreed the floodgate closure and state of the surrounding streets are not what they should be. I was assured that the agency would “continue to coordinate with the City about what’s possible, whether that be re-opening the gate, opening it just on the greenway vs the whole street, or finding a better detour.”) What’s missing isn’t acknowledgment of what’s broken, or the many layers so often involved — what’s missing is urgent action. Actual change.

We cannot wait one more day, let alone one more year, to address the unfortunate and increasingly violent fact that is St. Louis car culture. Local leaders: Please fix this crisis now. You need to crack down on bad drivers. From the Riverfront Trail to the city streets, you need to prioritize safe access to this city for people who aren’t in cars.

The time for talk and promises is long gone. It’s past time for urgent, multi-pronged, unflinching action. n Evie Hemphill is a St. Louis resident and the programs director for St. Louis BWorks, which provides free bike and computer courses that inspire children to pursue their dreams, care for the world around them and explore new possibilities through experiential learning.

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MISSOURILAND

Brave New Year Ballpark Village was packed with revelers — and bull riders — as St. Louis said goodbye 2023, hello 2024 Photos by

SVEN WHITE Words by

SARAH FENSKE

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t’s the most human of impulses: Celebrate the end of one thing and the beginning of another.

From bachelor parties to weddings, from going-away parties to welcome happy hours, we love mourning what was even as we toast what will be. New Year’s Eve offers a perfect example. No sooner do we finish the funeral for one year when the ball drops us into the next — and with it, cheers for an all-new beginning.

And so as St. Louis bid farewell to 2023 and aloha to 2024, bars across town were popping, but few brought out the sheer volume of party people as Ballpark Village downtown. The sprawling entertainment complex offered the opportunity to roam among six different venues with DJs, a live band, a New York-style ball drop and even a mechanical bull, which provided a great metaphor for America as we head into this presidential election year: How better to say goodbye to 2023 and hello to 2024 than to hang on for your dear life? n

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A C E L E B R AT I O N O F T H E U N I Q U E A N D FA S C I N AT I N G A S P E C T S O F O U R H O M E

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THE

Bird T H AT

only Lives IN

St. Louis The Eurasian Tree Sparrow got a North American foothold in St. Louis — and pretty much only St. Louis — and never gave it up. Blame the Germans

by COLLIN PRECIADO

For most of my life,

I had just assumed that every little brown bird was the same kind of bird.

Even when they were in my direct line of sight, my brain barely registered that they were even there. No one else seemed to really notice them either. They didn’t have a baseball team named after them like a cardinal. They weren’t draped in the American flag on the back of some scary dude’s pickup truck like a bald eagle. They were just those boring, stupid brown trash birds that sometimes got a little too close on restaurant pa-

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tios while I tried to get drunk and eat French fries.

But then over the past few years I got waaaaaay into birding (normies refer to it as birdwatching) and learned that one of these brown birds, the Eurasian Tree Sparrow, wasn’t actually that boring at all.

It was still the color of dirt so, yes, unspectacular in that regard, but interesting in that it could only be found in one major city

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on the entire continent of North America, and that city happened to be St. Louis, Missouri.

I had made this discovery at a time when I became so passionate about birding that friends and family began to worry that my brain was cracked.

“What’s with the binoculars?” was a question asked in hushed tones more than once during the two-year span that I was frequently seen in public with a pair around my neck. I had been so consumed by the newfound thrill of identifying a previously unseen bird that I was bringing them with me everywhere, even if I was just going to the grocery store, just in case I saw something flapping

around in the parking lot.

The origin of my new hobby was not a complete mental breakdown, but the preference to avoid one. My first son had just been born and the sudden increase of my life’s responsibilities from few to many, combined with a total lack of sleep, was having a major impact on my psyche. At the same time, a global pandemic was really hitting its stride, shattering every delusion I used to have about any control I had over the universe.

And my near-constant phone use was exacerbating the problem. I spent several hours a day doom-scrolling, obsessively checking the news for COVID-19 Continued on pg 15

Not a brown trash bird but a major part of St. Louis’ ecosystem. | FLICKR/IMRAN SHAH

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TREE SPARROW Continued from pg 12

updates, and sometimes calling my relatives racist on Facebook.

Even when I was outside, going for a run around Francis Park, I still somehow found a way to look at my phone, often playing Pokémon GO, a game where you wander around your neighborhood trying to catch shiny Bulbasaurs.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m jealous.

I started to become vaguely aware that I was losing touch with the real world around me, which wasn’t necessarily an uncommon occurrence, but this time I had a baby to look after, and getting trapped in my own head was no longer a luxury I could afford. I needed to find a relaxing way to reconnect with my immediate surroundings.

I landed on birding pretty quickly. Sort of like Pokémon GO, birding was a kind of game in itself, where your high score increased every time you found a new species, and also a puzzle in trying to figure out which species you were even looking at, a task that can be fairly complicated when so many of them closely resemble each other. I also had an inherent vague interest in birds ever since Jurassic Park told me they were basically flying dinosaurs. So I got the Peterson Field Guide to Birds, stopped looking for holidaythemed Pikachus on my phone and started looking for creatures in the real world instead.

My initial objectives were only to identify the flashier, more colorful birds I had never previously known by name, birds that weren’t burned into the public consciousness like robins and blue jays. I also wanted to find birds I had never seen or heard of before due to not paying attention or caring.

I set up a couple of bird feeders in my Southampton backyard and had some early fancy-named successes. There was a Rosebreasted Grosbeak. A couple of Indigo Buntings. Even a WhiteTailed Treebeak made a single appearance. And yes, I did make that last bird up.

Due to the limitations of my urban landscape, birds like that grosbeak were about as rare as a face covering in a Bass Pro Shop.

Most of the time the feeder was occupied by squirrels or those lame brown birds I mentioned earlier. My initial attempts to even identify those stupid birds were discouraging because they

Artist Dan Zettwoch is a longtime fan of St. Louis’ “most ‘local’ bird.” | DAN ZETTWOCH all looked exactly the same. But I reached a point where they were all I had left, and the endorphin rush that was greeting each new identification was starting to become addicting, so I did what every junkie does and made do with what I had.

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he first dirt bird I successfully identified was a House Sparrow. This really is the brown bird that you see everywhere. I consulted with my field guide to check its North American range, and the entire map was purple, indicating this bird was at all places at all times, no matter the season.

It turned out to be the most prevalent bird in the world, too, an invasive species from the Middle East that has bullied its way into nearly every continent, running native species out of their

homes and nesting in every nook and cranny it can fit into. If we ever colonize the moon or Mars, it’ll find a way to get there, too.

The second brown bird I identified ended up being exponentially more fascinating: the Eurasian Tree Sparrow. I checked my North American field guide assuming I’d found another wide-ranging pest, but it turned out to be something drastically different. Instead of an all-purple map, it was a tiny purple smudge, hovering right over where I lived.

I had learned enough to know that this extremely confined range was bizarre, or even possibly incorrect. Birds are typically spread out over several states, if not countries, so for one to be isolated in a small geographic area that wasn’t an island was a bit unbelievable.

I checked other sources, which all delivered the same result: In

all of North America, the only major city that this bird could be found was the one I happened to be living in: St. Louis.

I was pretty gobsmacked. At least, as gobsmacked as one can be over a fucking bird. How did St. Louis have its own? I needed answers, and after all my previous effort to find a hobby that kept me offline, I was right back on the internet, but this time with a purpose.

The Eurasian Tree Sparrow’s St. Louis story started in the 1830s when, as is a recurring theme in history, shit was going down in Germany. The country was engulfed in economic and political turmoil, and one of the more popular solutions to the ongoing problems was just to get the hell out of there. A German by the name of Dr. Gottfried Duden came to the St. Louis area and figured it was the best option for relocation, and enthusiastically argued as much in a very popular book at the time, spurring thousands of other fellow countrymen to follow his lead.

It should be noted that, as Ernst A. Stadler wrote in The German Settlement of St. Louis, a lot of those Germans were pretty pissed off when they got here and discovered that the winters and summers were pretty fucking miserable. Duden himself left after a couple of years and never came back.

Anyway, the German population here began to thrive. So much so that a few decades later there were multiple (!) German language newspapers. One of their owners, Carl Daenzer of Anzeiger Des Westens, decided St. Louis had not been quite Germanized enough, so a decision was made to introduce a variety of invasive avian species into the local ecosystem, just so the German transplants here could see and hear the same birds that they had back in the country they had just escaped from.

On April 25, 1870, roughly 20 Eurasian Tree Sparrows were ceremoniously released in Lafayette Park. There were some other German species that were released that day as well, but they all died.

Only the Eurasian Tree Sparrow had the courage to live in Missouri. With a little bit of luck, and probably some inbreeding, their population and territory began to flourish in the area, much like their human counterparts (minus the inbreeding, one assumes). But after a few years those territorial gains came to a near standstill after a bigger, dumber invasive spe-

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Can you spot the differences? Above, the House Sparrow. | FLICKR/JOHN FRESHNEY

And here is St. Louis’ bird: the Eurasian Tree Swallow. | FLICKR/LUIZ LAPA

Overseas, an attempt to exterminate the Eurasian Tree cies started to muscle its way into the area.

“Some story goes that someone Sparrow in 1950s China played wanted to introduce to North America all the birds that Shakespeare a major role in bringing about ever mentioned in his plays,” says Vincent St. Louis. The biology professor at the University of Alberta the deadliest famine in studied the Eurasian Tree Sparrow as part of his master thesis and not human history. because (as he assured me) his last

TREE SPARROW Continued from pg 15

name was St. Louis.

One of those Shakespearean birds was the House Sparrow, the first brown bird I successfully identified on my feeder, which was released in New York in the 1850s. It only took a few decades for the House Sparrow to spread across the entire country, overlapping the St. Louis Sparrow (trademark!) in range, making it almost certainly the reason why that tiny purple smudge over the Mississippi hasn’t grown much over the past century.

Yet it is growing, says Bill Rowe, president of the St. Louis Audubon Society, and another expert I spoke to about this topic because I’m a very scholarly and rigorous writer.

“They haven’t been static for 150 years; they have expanded slowly,” Rowe says. “It’s just been in the past 30-plus years that they have been breeding in Iowa.”

On the other side of the planet,

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it’s a completely different story.

The Eurasian Tree Sparrow is widespread over both the continents in its name, and it is crucial to the ecosystem. They are so crucial, in fact, that an attempt to exterminate them in China in the 1950s played a major role in bringing about the deadliest famine in all of human history. At the time, the Chinese government identified the bird as a pest that ate substantial amounts of the country’s grain supply, but what was overlooked was the substantial amounts of crop-eating bugs they also consumed. The lack of sparrows to keep that bug population in check contributed to a disastrous agricultural upheaval, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of people.

In stark contrast, if the Eurasian Tree Sparrow were run out of America, the worst thing that might happen is that the wild bird

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seed at Varietees Bird Store would have to be restocked slightly less often. Their range is so limited and inconsequential that most people in the country, even those who live in St. Louis, aren’t even aware that they exist, like expiration dates on temp tags. It’s not entirely known how the bird managed to stick around to begin with, but the leading theory is that it has something to do with their size.

Both St. Louis (the biologist) and Rowe emphasized that the Eurasian Tree Sparrow is a bit smaller than the more aggressive House Sparrow. Both species can make homes out of every possible little hole and crevice available, but the Eurasian Tree Sparrow can shack up in slightly tinier, even more impossible places that the House Sparrow cannot, like, say, a crack in my house fascia that I didn’t know existed, preventing the House Spar-

row from running them out of every available nesting site.

As far as anyone knows, no additional Eurasian Tree Sparrows have been released in North America since 1870. Vincent St. Louis’ research supported this theory back in the late 1980s when his genetic studies indicated a fairly shallow gene pool in the local population. That means any Eurasian Tree Sparrow you see in St. Louis is a direct descendant of the original 20 or so birds that were set free in Lafayette Park more than 150 years ago.

So by this point you may be wondering, “How can I go and find this bird for myself, since all the brown birds kind of look the same?” Well, it just so happens this is the easiest of the bunch to spot. Just be warned, it may only take one successful identification before you start down a lifetime of birding, annoyingly choosing vacation spots strictly based on the fauna, and alienating your friends and family by excitedly pointing out a red-shafted Northern Flicker outside of its normal range.

Still here? OK, here goes: If you want to see a Eurasian Tree Sparrow, go to the nearest window and look for the small brown bird with a clear and distinctive black dot on both sides of its face.

Did you see it? Well then congratulations, you’re hooked on birding. But if you’re going to the grocery store, you can definitely leave your binoculars at home. n

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BY RIVERFRONT TIMES STAFF

THURSDAY 01/11 Art for Arf’s Sake The Foundry Art Centre (520 North Main Center, St. Charles) has officially gone to the dogs, with an art exhibition curated and designed specifically for our favorite fourlegged companions. With Wag: An Exhibition for Dogs, curious canines can enjoy artwork created by area artists with dog-friendly color spectrum palettes, all at dog height for easy viewing, as well as portraits of adoptable dogs at the St. Charles Animal Shelter, interactive sculpture and video installations, art activities, a community wall filled with visitors’ artwork, and a bowl installation, which can be purchased through a silent auction. The exhibit features artists such as Greta Coalier, Justin King, Steve Jones and Laura Lloyd, and throughout its run, dogs will be able to participate in programs including Yappy Hours, pet portrait sessions, Puppy Yoga, an adoption event, Pawentine’s Day and a donation drive. All proceeds go to benefit the St. Charles shelter. Wag will be showing each Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. until March 23.

Admission is free. For a complete list of events and programs, visit foundryartcentre.org/wag-an-exhibition-for-dogs.

Just Scraping By This week, spend the evening of Thursday, January 11, rubbing elbows with the area’s art crowd at the Green Door Gallery (21 North Gore Avenue, Webster Groves), a gem of a venue with reliably great events and consistently well-curated art on display. From 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., the gallery will be hosting the opening reception for Upon Further Reflection, a collection of abstract paintings

by Missouri artist Mark Witzling, who in this series works with oil and cold wax, a technique wherein the wax adds a layer of depth to the oil painting to which it is applied. Witzling utilizes unconventional methods to achieve his vision, typically eschewing traditional paint brushes in favor of using sticks, rollers, scrapers and

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See if your four-legged friend has what it takes to be an art critic at Wag: An Exhibition for Dogs. | ART BY STEVE JONES even old credit cards to apply and move paint across the canvas, making for a striking interplay of color and texture. Admission is free and light refreshments will be served. If you can’t make the opening event, fear not: The collection will be on display Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. until April 5. For more information, visit greendoorartgallery. com/upon-further-reflection.

FRIDAY 01/12 Cider? I Barely Know Her St. Louis has no shortage of great holiday pop-ups, but come the new year, suddenly nothing is going on. Frankly, it’s a bit of a bummer, even if our livers appreciate the break. Now, with its Cozy Cider Cabin pop-up bar open from Friday, January 12, to Sunday, February 25, Eckert’s Farms has stepped up to right this great wrong. It’s pretty much perfect timing: The bar launches just when you’ve recovered from your New Year’s Eve

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excesses. The pop-up takes place in Eckert’s Cider Shed (951 South Green Mount Road, Belleville, Illinois), which the farm will transform into something akin to “a cozy cabin nestled in the woods.”

That means rustic chic decor, such as a variety of woodland critters adorning the walls, fur rugs in front of fireplaces, blankets aplenty and string lights, because it’s not a pop-up without string lights. Eckert’s invites guests to come dressed in their finest flannel PJs and settle in. The Cozy Cider Cabin pop-up will offer hard cider, naturally, but also a host of specialty drinks, such as a Campfire Martini, the Chill Pill and more, as well as snacks such as chili and a bison burger. Part of the profits will go toward Heat Up St. Louis, a nonprofit that helps at-risk households pay for heating. To that end, there’s a $5 reservation fee, which will also hold your spot. For more information, visit eckerts.com/event/cozy-cabin/2024-01-12.

birth of a child he said he’d never have, funnyman John Mulaney is realer than ever. And to all our benefits, Mulaney is the type of person to channel the misery of his struggles into comedic content. To the delight of his many local fans, he’s bringing his latest tour to the Fabulous Fox (527 North Grand Boulevard) this weekend. The SNL alum will have two shows in St. Louis as part of his John Mulaney In Concert tour: one on Friday, January 12, and one on Saturday, January 13. Whether you’re in a lifelong game show called “Do My Friends Hate Me or Do I Just Need to Go to Sleep” or you just need something fun to do post-holidays, Mulaney’s performance will certainly lift your spirits. The Friday show starts at 8 p.m. and the Saturday one starts at 7 p.m.; tickets start at $57.50. Pick yours up at fabulousfox.com.

That tall child is coming to St. Louis! After a divorce, rehab and the

Just when you thought we were leaving the Swift One behind in

SATURDAY 01/13 The Comeback Kid Ready for It?

WEEK OF JANUARY 11-17

Eckert’s Cozy Cabin pop-up is the perfect way to stay warm this winter. | VIA JASPER PAUL PR

Bar K’s Winter Formal will further solidify your dog’s new rep as a socialite. | VIA FLICKR/DAPUGLET the year 2023, in walks trouble: The Taylor Party is coming to St. Louis on Saturday, January 13, for a show at the Pageant (6161 Delmar Boulevard). Starting at 8 p.m., Swifties 18 and older can shake it off through all of Taylor’s Eras, with a career-spanning celebration of her biggest hits. This enchanting night will be filled with sparkle and magic as you dance and sing your way through the oeuvre of one of the most iconic artists of the modern age. Don’t forget to shine in your favorite Eras outfit, make those friendship bracelets and grab your besties for a night you won’t forget. Tickets are $20 and available through Ticketmaster; visit taylorswiftnight.com for more information.

SUNDAY 01/14 Throw the Ball We dog people are weird. We talk about our pups like they’re our kids (or better than our kids). We chase after strays with treats that we always keep in the car, we

seek out the most adorable doggie Halloween costumes and we have even been known to push doggos around in strollers. We also never want to leave our fourlegged furry friends out of anything, and that anything includes getting fancy and partying. That’s where the Winter Formal at Bar K (4565 McRee Avenue) comes in.

At 1 p.m. on Sunday, January 14, a.k.a. National Dress Up Your Dog Day, the beloved St. Louis destination for both dogs and their people is holding a red carpet event. There will be voting and prizes for the Winter Prince and Winter Princess, Best Dressed Dog, Best Dressed Human and Cutest Couple, with the winners crowned at 3 p.m. Directly following that will be a Doggie Slow Dance, which just sounds like the cutest thing ever. Naturally, there will be vendors, giveaways, punch and more. Entry is free for Bar K members and $10 for the first dog, $5 for the second dog for non-members. All dogs must be vaccinated appropriately and socialized for groups. More details at barkdogbar.com/event/ bar-k-winter-formal.

Beloved funnyman John Mulaney graces St. Louis with two shows this weekend. | COURTESY PHOTO

TUESDAY 01/16 Just Bead It In the dead of winter, it can be all too easy to spend every night on the couch, Netflixing and chilling without even having someone to chill with. If you ask us, that’s a recipe for depression — but Tamm Avenue Bar (1227 Tamm Avenue) just might have the cure. Pop over for happy hour on the right night, in fact, and the purchase of just one drink will net you a free kit to participate in Craft Night at Tamm! (the exclamation point is

theirs, but we certainly share in the sentiment it expresses). This Tuesday, January 16, they’re making beaded pets — and if that’s not reason enough to get out of the house, it’s hard to say what would be. Now, if you’re somehow not only unexcited about beaded pets, but actually have no idea what they are or how to make one, a few more details (and a fetching photo) are online at fb.me/ e/3cWERZOaR. Beyond that, instructions will be provided at the bar, and we’re reasonably certain that come Tuesday, enthusiasm at this friendly Dogtown pub will be contagious. n

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Hungry Like the Wolf Ambition and culinary creativity star at chef Matthew Daughaday’s Spanish concept Idol Wolf Written by

CHERYL BAEHR Idol Wolf 1528 Locust Street, 314-325-0360. Sun.Thurs. 5-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 5-11 p.m.

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he 21c Museum Hotel St. Louis penguins have been known to go places. It’s not uncommon to find the bright orange, roughly three-foot-tall plastic sculptures basking in the floral glory of the hotel’s stunning Fallen Fruit staircase, or marveling at the massive, 18,000-pound water-filled orb that greets guests in the main lobby. Often, the penguins end up in the billiards room, upstairs in one of the converted basketball courts that now boasts an art gallery or lounging by the hotel’s Locust Street Athletic and Swim Club pool. Every now and then, they end up in a guest room (I don’t want to know).

On the night of my visit, one was tucked under the right arm of a lady en route to an upstairs yoga class. It’s said that one once even left the building thanks to a drunk guest who returned the statue 12 hours later, realizing the theft was a felony.

However, the most exciting place the penguins end up is inside Idol Wolf, the stunning Spanish restaurant on the hotel’s main floor. It’s a magnificent space, obscured from the lobby by a veil of woven, brown-leather straps attached from a half-wall to the ceiling. Past this sculptural tapestry, the dining room reveals itself in all of its sepia-toned splendor.

Reddish-brown glazed tiles cover column-like portions of the walls; the other portions are wood-paneled and hung with whimsical, portrait-style artwork. The low blush-colored, arched plaster ceiling creates an intimate, cave-like vibe, while moody floral upholstered banquettes and deep-blue fabric chairs provide seating

Located inside the 21c Museum Hotel, Idol Wolf serves up a Spanish-inflected menu featuring bocaditos, raciones and tapas. | MABEL SUEN

Matthew Daughaday is the executive chef of Idol Wolf. | MABEL SUEN around a mix of butcher block and marble tables.

What makes Idol Wolf the penguins’ most joyous spot, though, is not the incredible decor. It’s the handiwork of executive chef Matthew Daughaday and his team of longtime culinary colleagues, who have created not simply a magical restaurant but the dining desti-

nation that downtown St. Louis needed.

Anyone who has followed Daughaday’s career over the last decade-plus knows well that he was the right person to deliver this restaurant. After getting his start with Marc Del Pietro at Luciano’s, Daughaday caught serious buzz in the culinary scene thanks

to his turn as sous chef at Niche and, eventually, as executive chef at Taste by Niche. Daughaday left Taste to open his own restaurant, the gone-but-not-forgotten Reeds American Table, which had an acclaimed four-year run, then went on to Juniper with John Perkins.

Daughaday recently found himself at a career crossroads, wondering how he could balance the competing forces of a desire for work-life balance and the realization that he wanted to remain a chef. A hotel job seemed like the best avenue, but he worried that those jobs tend to be soul-crushing and oftentimes fail to provide the creative outlet he’d gotten used to at independent restaurants.

When he came across the job with 21c, it seemed almost too good to be true; here was a place that had the backing of a wildly successful hotel group — but one that valued creativity and culinary innovation above all else.

While Daughaday inherited the Spanish concept from the 21c team, he was given complete creative freedom to take it where he best saw fit. This resulted in a menu that, while undoubtedly

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The chorizo-roasted hen of the woods mushroom is a showstopper. | MABEL SUEN

Idol Wolf’s grilled octopus includes potato, chorizo spices, herbs and lemon aioli. | MABEL SUEN

IDOL WOLF

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Spanish oriented, takes its cues from the experiences he’s had in some of St. Louis’ most exciting kitchens. The beef-cheek empanada, for instance, harkens back to one of his most beloved dishes at Reeds. Here, flawlessly seasoned, succulent meat the texture of the slowest-cooked pot roast is stuffed into a flaky half-moon-shaped shell. The meat’s natural juices provide all the sauce you need, though it’s difficult to refrain from dipping them in the verdant mojo verde and smoky mojo rojo sauces that accompany the dish.

The empanadas are among Idol Wolf’s several tapas offerings. Another, the grilled octopus, pairs tender hunks of the sea creature with sliced potatoes; both are gilded in chorizo-spiced oil and accented with little crispies of smoky sausage akin to miniature bacon bits. Bacalao croquettes are equally delicious, made with a mix of salted cod and potato that is positively cloud-like. The sea flavor from the fish is subtle, but enough to make a delightful impact.

Pan con tomate, one of the menu’s bocaditos, or “small snackables,” is perfection of the form.

Here, rustic, almost jam-like tomato pulp is slathered atop garlicaccented Union Loafers bread. It’s a simple, glorious pleasure made more decadent by thin slices of a silken serrano jam that we opted to add to the dish.

Idol Wolf’s paella, which easily feeds three people, nails the form’s traditional texture. Here, plumpgrained bomba rice is cooked in a skillet so that the top gets an almost creamy texture like risotto while the bottom crisps up like

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The bar, located just off the 21c Museum Hotel lobby, stuns with its good looks, and the offerings live up to the aesthetics. | MABEL SUEN Persian tahdig. Squid, mussels and grilled shrimp accent the saffronand paprika-kissed dish, which is brightened by accompanying candied lemons and citrus-scented finishing salt. Another of the restaurant’s larger dishes, the pork chop, is a delight in itself, but the plate’s scene-stealers are the mouthwatering n’duja braised beans that are at once bright, rich and earthy. I could have made an entire meal out of this seemingly humble side.

But then I would have missed Idol Wolf’s two most thrilling dishes. The chorizo-roasted hen of the woods, stacked atop a creamy masa cake, has become the res-

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taurant’s most popular dish — for good reason. The meaty mushrooms are accented in spicysmoky chorizo seasoning and finished with chorizo butter that you want to lap up with a spoon. A smoked aioli finishes the dish and adds to the earthy complexity.

I might have declared chorizo to be the evening’s king of spiced pork were it not for the mindblowing sobrasada toast, which pairs thick slices of Union Loafer’s bread with velvety whipped goat cheese, a honey glaze and dollops of the dish’s namesake Spanish sausage, which is like a paprika- and garlic-spiced meat jam.

Eating this masterpiece sent me into such a reverie, it took a moment to realize that one of those bright orange penguins had somehow made its way to the edge of my table and was now standing alongside me as if he was going to swipe the last bite out of my hand.

I wouldn’t have blamed him. If I was a 21c penguin, I too would be lurking inside Idol Wolf, waiting to shoot my shot for a bite of that toast. n

Idol Wolf Beef cheek empanadas �������������������������$14 Chorizo-roasted hen of the woods���������$18 Pork chop ���������������������������������������������� $45

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SHORT ORDERS [FIRST SIP]

The World Takes Note St. Louis brewery Heavy Riff has one of the best barrel programs in the U.S. Written by

TONY REHAGEN

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arrel-aged beer is big business in this town. Four of the highest-rated beers in the world — Side Project’s Beer : Barrel : Time, M.J.K. and O.W.K. and Perennial’s Barrel-Aged Abraxas — are brewed, bourbon-barreled and aged right here in St. Louis. Bottles of each run more than $50 apiece (750 milliliters), though Side Project often bundles its brews with other beers in packages that cost into the hundreds. Even so, they tend to sell out quickly. You can usually find pours in the respective taprooms easily enough — at up to $6 and $8 per ounce. (Worth every penny, in this writer’s humble opinion.) The secondary market for many of these oak-soaked beers starts in the triple digits and sometimes reaches to the thousands per bottle (not sure any beer is worth that).

All of that said, when Heavy Riff Brewing (6413 Clayton Avenue, heavyriffbrewing.com) got into the BA ballgame with Dear Agony in 2018, it wasn’t looking for a money grab. In fact, what has quietly matured into one of the best barrel programs in the country started as something of an accident.

The rock & roll-themed Dogtown brewery, started by musicians and music nuts Jerid and Justin Saffell, Rick Hagen, Steve King and Greg Meyer, wanted to celebrate the life of deceased Motorhead bassist and singer Lemmy Kilmister. The late Brit musician was known to love Jack and Coke, so the crew decided to brew up a Russian imperial stout and age it in used Jack Daniels whiskey barrels. “Jerid was up on the brew deck, and all I heard were expletives,” Hagen says. “I ran over to him to ask what was

Heavy Riff Brewing got into barrel-aged beers in a big way with Dear Agony. | RYAN KRULL wrong, and he told me he’d put too much lactose sugar into the beer.

We called our good friend [STL brewing scion and 2nd Shift Brewing owner] Steve Crider and he said, ‘All you can do now is throw it into some barrels.’”

So they did. In addition to Tennessee Whiskey barrels, they also stashed the flawed concoction in seven brands of used bourbon cooperage: 1792, Buffalo Trace, Elijah Craig, Eagle Rare, Bulleit, Heaven Hill and WhistlePig. Over the next 12 months in storage, oxygen slowly slipped through porous wood, gradually tempering the bitterness and teasing out different flavors in the beer, such as notes of cinnamon, ginger and dark fruit. The charred staves, still stained with bourbon, absorbed the liquid, imbuing it with charcoal, tannins and alcohol. Time mellowed the drink, making the sugary substance smoother and, most importantly, less lip-smackingly sweet.

The product was good enough that Heavy Riff decided to do a special in-person release. That had become commonplace for breweries putting out a barrelaged offering, since it’s an occasion worth celebrating: BA labels are something of a status symbol in craft beer, a sign of the skill and sophistication needed to produce such a decadent luxury product (Dear Agony typically registers around 13 percent ABV). It’s also a declaration that your brewery is on solid enough financial footing to tie up the time, storage space,

labor and materials (Dear Agony’s mash bill includes pricey Belgian candy syrup and imported dark malts, and premium used bourbon barrels cost up to $200 apiece) in a beer that won’t recoup the expense for a year — if then.

At first, Hagen and his co-owners were skeptical that Dear Agony could break even. They decided to stagger the release, putting out two variants every week for four weeks, beginning the last Saturday in December. Initial response was tepid, with hardcore groupies and a few curious strangers trickling in. But gradually, the people started to come. “By the fourth week, we had a line wrapped around the block,” Hagen says. “We sold out.

[DRINKS NEWS]

Three Sixty to Open in Westport Plaza The new lounge promises stunning views, a “mind-blowing” interior and elevated cuisine Written by

PAULA TREDWAY

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Three Sixty is headed to Maryland Heights. The new lounge will open its second location atop the “gold tower” in Westport Plaza (111 West Port

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We doubled production for the following year and started seeing people coming in from out of state. We sold out again.”

Heavy Riff doubled the batch yet again in 2020, a move that, at first, seemed like an overreach — for the first time, they didn’t sell out — but the back inventory turned out to be a boon when COVID-19 struck months later. They sold out the remaining bottles in two weeks, essentially floating the company through the early part of the shutdown while quickly setting up a canning line to move the rest of the brewery’s wares.

In the intervening years, Dear Agony has only evolved. They’ve tried new brands of bourbon barrels (Blanton’s, W.L. Weller and 12year WhistlePig); as well as other liquor barrels, such as Madeira sherry; and some adjuncts, such as coffee and vanilla. This year, they’re adding a ninth variant, a breakfast stout. Hagen says interest has spread all over the country and even across both oceans, where Europeans and, interestingly, Vietnamese drinkers have acquired a taste for boozier American stouts.

And yes, he’s even seen a secondary market emerge, with 500-milliliter bottles that retail for $20 going for upwards of $200. “I guess some people would be flattered by that,” Hagen says. “For me, I wish they hadn’t. It’s not a cheap beer to make, but we try to keep the price at $20 a bottle, a level where the common person can afford it. We take less margin.

But I want to keep it real.” n

Plaza Drive, Maryland Heights; 360-stl.com/ westport) on Wednesday, January 31.

“We own an operating lease all over the Westport Plaza,” says Blaise Pastoret, Lodging Hospitality Management’s director of restaurants. “We are redeveloping, redesigning and modernizing the Westport Plaza. We own both of the hotels that flank that. So both of the Sheratons are being remodeled, revitalized and we’re creating a big green space to anchor down more bar and restaurant concepts coming up in 2024-25.”

With the new rebrand, Pastoret says another 360 location just made sense for them.

“We already have a rooftop that does very well downtown,” he says. “Here we will have a bigger space, almost twice the size [of] downtown.”

Continued on pg 26

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THREE SIXY WESTPORT Continued from pg 25

Three Sixty Westport will feature a dedicated wine room, bar seating, wraparound banquette low seating, distinct dining and patio space overlooking Westport Plaza and Maryland Heights.

“Two-thirds of the lounge is inside and one-third outside,” Pastoret says. “This one is a little different than the one downtown, as this patio has a roof, so it’s open air on all three sides. It will have heaters as well so guests will be able to stay away from the elements while still being able to sit outside.”

With 360 Downtown holding on to the prestige view of the Arch, 360 Westport makes up for it with luxurious furniture and finishes.

“We went above and beyond on the interior parts,” Pastoret says. “What you see on the inside versus downtown is just mind-blowing, which is a lot of white marble. You are not looking out on the river, the Arch, the ballpark downtown — the west view you don’t see all that, you’re looking over Maryland Heights, which is nice. There’s still a rooftop bar where you see the lights. It looks really cool whenever the lights go down. However, the inside then has to be just mind-blowing, and I think we’ve accomplished that.”

Three Sixty is opening a new location at the top of the “golden tower” in the Westport Plaza in Maryland Heights. | COURTESY 360 WESTPORT The menu will be similar to downtown’s but more expansive and elevated, fusing together French, Italian, Asian and Mediterranean cuisines. Pastoret says that will be a highlight.

“We’re not doing pizzas here,” he says. “Similar to downtown, there will be small plates just expanded and then a few large plates. We have a lot of cool dishes.”

Local craft cocktail makers will serve a rotating menu of classic and crowd-pleasing cocktails, alongside an extensive wine list as well as draft or bottled beers.

“We have a huge wine list that we just finished curating and a cocktail program I’m really excited about as well,” he says.

Three Sixty Westport will be able to accommodate larger groups than the downtown location, with space for parties any-

[FOOD NEWS]

Clucking Good News With Brasas, Jalea chef Andrew Cisneros brings ember-cooked chicken to the Loop Written by

LAUREN HEALEY This story was originally published in Sauce Magazine.

A

ndrew Cisneros will open a brickand-mortar location for his Brasas concept in the Delmar Loop in spring 2024. The restaurant will open at 6138 Delmar Boulevard, the former home of 12oh7 Herban Eatery. Brasas, which translates to “embers” in Spanish, will focus on pollo a la brasa, or chicken cooked over embers. Cisneros’ other restaurants include Jalea and Sanguchitos at Perennial Artisan Ales.

Cisneros made his mark on the St. Louis culinary scene at a variety of spots, including the now-closed Publico and Original J’s Tex-Mex BBQ, along with the soon-to-close Cinder House, but it was his time at Original J’s that allowed him to perfect his wood-fired rotisserie chicken recipe. “The recipe is almost four years old,” he says. “It hasn’t changed since

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Chef-owner Andrew Cisneros will open Brasas in the Loop this spring. | MABEL SUEN we first launched it in 2020. I was working under chef Mike Randolph, one of my mentors, who gave me the freedom to do my own pop-up at the space, and I was able to finalize the recipe in a few weeks.

I love wood-fire cooking — it’s very South American and adds another layer of flavor to the chicken.”

Beer and lime juice are the marinade base for the chicken, along with a proprietary blend of 14 additional ingredients.

The chicken will be available at Brasas in whole, half or quarter portions, to be served alongside Cisneros’ delectable

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sauces, including the aji verde, a rocoto fry sauce, a cheesy huancaina sauce, and polleria, a black mint salsa. The pollo a la brasa dish is served with steak fries and a simple house salad. The mostrito dish will include the rotisserie chicken, along with Peruvian-style fried rice. There will also be a dish of arroz con pollo, which will feature the chicken along with cilantro rice.

The menu also will feature an anticuchos section, offering marinated meats like beef heart, ribeye and chicken skewered and cooked on a Japanese yakitori grill. Other

where from 50 to 250.

Though no grand opening is scheduled, mock services and a soft opening will take place before the space officially opens to the public at the end of January. n Three Sixty Westport will be open from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. Monday through Saturday and 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Sunday.

offerings will include lomo saltado, a Peruvian staple, and several variations on fried rice. Friday and Saturday nights will see specials such as quail and duck.

On the drinks side, Brasas will offer some Perennial Artisan Ale beers, including their collaboration on Waska, a Peruvian-style lager with quinoa, plus some natural wines and a few pisco-based cocktails like the pisco sour.

The space is about 1,000 square feet and will have room for approximately 28 guests between mainly two-top tables and eight seats at the bar. “We’re in the first stages of getting all the cosmetic stuff done, but we’re going for a contemporary European gastropub feel,” Cisneros says. “At nighttime, it will be candlelit, but daytime will still be sort of upscale with everything nicely plated.”

Cisneros has also done some consulting work for local spots like Casa de Tres Reyes and the Tavern Kitchen & Bar; however, he’s put his consulting work on hold for the time being to focus on his own concepts.

Brasas is slated to open by April for lunch and dinner daily, except for Monday. It will offer table service with QR codes at each table for customers to place their orders on their phones. Seating will be available on a first-come, firstserved basis, aside from Friday and Saturday evenings, when reservations will be available by phone. If you want a glimpse into what Brasas will offer, stop by Jalea on Tuesday evenings for its chicken-andbeer night. n

[FOOD NEWS]

[FOOD NEWS]

Pho Grand Is Coming Back

Beffa’s Retakes Its Kitchen The landmark St. Louis bar and restaurant has parted ways with Honey Bee’s

But details about the return of the iconic South Grand spot remain elusive

Written by

JESSICA ROGEN

Written by

JESSICA ROGEN

T

I

t’s been a whisper. A tantalizing rumor. We’ve heard it from seemingly everyone, yet no one has been able to verify it.

Pho Grand is coming back.

The idea seems like a fever dream born of the desperate hopes and dreams of South Grand diners who have been mourning the loss of the 33-yearold Vietnamese restaurant since it closed in June. The idea that the Trinh family would pick up the reins again was just too good to be true.

But then a most reputable source confirmed the rumors: In a forward-looking end-of-the-year post on its Facebook page, the South Grand business district announced that Pho Grand is coming back, baby!

It was the last line on the district’s list of cool things happening on South Grand. “Last, but not least. Pho Grand is making a return. More details on this coming soon,” the post said, following that with the little “shh” secret emoji.

(Sorry, South Grand business district, you can’t write that on Facebook and expect the RFT not to report on it.)

So that’s what we know. We admit it isn’t much. Here’s a little unverified context, though: In early December, a

Pho Grand has helped to shape the city’s dining landscape. | VU PHONG Facebook post from House of Paint & Design Co. purported to have gotten the go-ahead to share news from the daughter of the original Pho Grand owners, My and Tami Trinh.

“After speaking with Monica Trinh, the daughter of the owners of Pho Grand, she wanted me to relay that, ‘I can confirm that the Pho Grand chapter will remain closed, but a new chapter will be opening in that same location with a new concept, after renovations, under my brother,’” the post read.

Our attempts to get someone in the Trinh family to confirm the news on the record at that point were for naught.

However, the news relayed from Mon-

and flavors are a case study in complexity for something best enjoyed with a styrofoam cup of drip coffee. Our fair city has no shortage of these fried-dough masterpieces, but these five are the most magical.

CHERYL BAEHR’S

APPLE FRITTER PICKS The King Kong of the doughnut box, the apple fritter eclipses its counterparts not simply because of its size, but because of its multi-dimensionality. Layers of textures

Donut Stop Food & Wine’s pick for the best doughnut shop in the state of Missouri, the Donut Stop (1101 Lemay Ferry Road, Lemay) is the pastry jewel of south St. Louis County. While it can be difficult to order anything but its wonderfully named cinnamon glob, its magnificent apple fritter — oblong shaped, fluffy, studded with large hunks of apple and delicately glazed — is an essential purchase.

Donut Drive-In The vintage sign at Donut Drive-In (6525 Chippewa Street, donutdrivein.com) shines

ica Trinh suggests the new restaurant would be in the hands of Andrew Trinh, who spoke to the RFT when his parents decided to close.

In retrospect, he might have hinted that he would be taking the helm at a new concept down the line.

“We’ve thought about what we can do to change it, but we don’t want to change it overnight,” he told the RFT. “People know my mom. They know the food. It’s not my baby, and it’s not mine to change, but it’s not sustainable.”

We’re looking forward to finding out what that new concept is going to look like. Andrew, if you want to talk details, we’re looking forward to listening. n

like a beacon of hope, beckoning doughnut lovers to stop in for one of its glorious apple fritters, which are defined by their mounded round shape, soft interior crunch glaze and cinnamon-kissed apples that are so plump, they’re still juicy.

John’s Donuts One of St. Louis’ most beloved doughnut institutions, John’s Donuts (1618 South Broadway) boasts an outstanding apple fritter that is encased in beautifully placed apple slices like a fine French pastry.

When cracked open, its crunchy, funnelcake-like exterior yields to a pillow-soft interior that’s pure doughnut pleasure.

Donut Palace The pride of Ellisville, Donut Palace (37 Clarkson Road, Ellisville; donutpalacestl. com) is a bastion of apple fritter glory

he Midtown restaurant and bar Beffa’s (2700 Olive Street) announced last week that it has retaken control of its kitchen. In doing so, it is parting ways with Honey Bee’s Midtown, a biscuit-focused daytime spot that took up residence in the Beffa’s kitchen in October.

Beffa’s announced the move on its Facebook page.

“This was not an easy decision and it does not mean brunch can’t come back eventually,” the post read. “However, over the years we have lost sight of our goals and who we want to be as an establishment. The focus will be more on the bar side of things with a quality food menu to complement. Our vision was to be an elevated family sports bar and we hope to make that vision come true in 2024.”

Owner Paul Beffa tells the RFT that the new menu will include pizzas from a partnership with Uncle Leo’s, smash burgers and wraps. He says that the guiding principle was items that would go well with the bar side of the Beffa’s equation.

Beffa himself will be retaking charge of the kitchen, with help from a few parttime staffers.

“I’m trying to scale back and make it more manageable than it was last time that I was running the kitchen,” he says, adding that he’s open to “exploring other businesses coming in and running the kitchen for us.” n

thanks to its magnificently massive masterpiece. Roughly the size of a small loaf of bread, these deep-fried beauties are generously studded with large apple hunks and liberally accented with cinnamon. Here the glaze coats the exterior to form a crunch, but also soaks into the interior, which gives it a lovely sweetness throughout.

Pharaoh’s Donuts Sometimes oddly square, sometimes a little more round, the apple fritters at Pharaoh’s Donuts (multiple locations including 202 North Ninth Street, pharaohsdonuts.com) are beautifully rustic and look as if the large apple slices and delectable yeasty dough are being held together by little more than the sweet sugary glaze that coats every bite and seeps into all the delicious crevices.

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[FOOD NEWS]

BrassWELL Closes Rockwell Beer Co. will assume food operations in the wake of the departure of Gerard Craft’s burger concept Written by

JESSICA ROGEN

G

erard Craft’s restaurant group will have an outpost within Rockwell Beer Co. no longer. The two entities announced last week that Niche Food Group’s brassWELL (1320 South Vandeventer Avenue), a fast-casual burger

[FOOD NEWS]

Three Kings Gets a Home The bar and restaurant will move into the former HopCat space in the Delmar Loop Written by

SARAH FENSKE

N

early a year after the beloved Loop restaurant Three Kings Public House was ravaged by fire, its owners have found a new home, and it’s just three doors down from the old one — the sprawling two-story building previously home to HopCat. “When I went into that space, it’s all brick, with amazing wood floors,” says Three Kings co-owner Derek Deaver of 6315 Delmar Boulevard, which housed Hopcat from 2018 to 2020. “I said, ‘It looks just like a Three Kings!’”

Three Kings’ original location at 6307 Delmar has been closed since suffering the catastrophic three-alarm fire in April. And while Deaver and partners Ryan Pinkston and Derek Flieg had initially hoped to reopen in the same building, the damage has proved just too significant.

“It would be 12 months from now to rebuild,” Deaver says. “With all my staff members, I need to open sooner rather than later.”

Deaver will be operating the new Three Kings as a sole proprietorship, and hopes to be open by spring. The turnkey location is the one thing that makes that possible.

Deaver says he gave serious consider-

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BrassWELL made Rockwell Beer Co. a destination for diners, not just drinkers. | COURTESY PHOTO concept, will no longer operate the food program within the brewery.

Instead, Rockwell will take the helm

ation to the spaces in the Loop that previously held Pi Pizzeria and Cicero’s. But the Cicero’s building needed too much work, and the Pi location, which sits just across the street from the Pageant and Delmar Hall, had one big downside: It’s just over the county line in St. Louis city.

And that was a problem even beyond the long lag time to get a liquor license in the city. Deaver is also president of the Loop Special Business District, which seeks to promote the University City portion of Delmar. “This way I’ll be able to stay in that position,” he says. “And I want to stay in U. City.”

Deaver acknowledges the Loop has had its struggles in recent years, as the long-vacant Cicero’s space and the nearempty western end of the Loop around it make clear. But Deaver says up until the fire in April, Three Kings was doing big business. “We were on pace for our second best year ever.” The 420 celebration that saw the Loop closed to traffic, was the restaurant’s single best day in its 12year history.

He never seriously considered leaving Delmar.

“We’re really excited to be back in the Loop,” he says. He knows of other businesses’ struggles, and he doesn’t downplay them. “But the Loop is still the place to go for events, for restaurants. We’re going to do well. And we’re excited to be back.”

As for the HopCat space, it’s 6,300 square feet — 2,000 more than the old Three Kings spot. But Deaver says he’s not worried. The new space has one major advantage. “Three Kings was always busier than HopCat,” Deaver says. “But the one thing I was so jealous of was the back patio. They did a great job with that — and I’m going to do even better.” n

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for food, as well as drinks, at the Grove location. The brewery was already running the food program at the Francis Park

biergarten.

“We are grateful for the collaboration and partnership with Niche Food Group over the last five years. Gerard and Niche Food Group have contributed to the success of Rockwell since we opened. We look forward to building upon the existing menu and expanding food offerings in the future,” said Rockwell Director of Operations Dan Heaghney in a statement.

“Once we established our food program at Francis Park, we were confident that we could bring the same level of elevation and execution to our home in the Grove. Our Grove location is a community destination, and we are excited to share the details for our expanded food offerings, which will pair well with our extensive beer and beverage programs.”

BrassWELL has been operating out of Rockwell Brewing for the last five years.

As for Craft, he’s staying plenty busy.

He recently opened None of the Above, a cocktail bar in the tunnels beneath City Foundry, and also announced plans to bring back his much-missed Porano Pasta in Des Peres. n

DECEMBER OPENINGS & CLOSINGS

Rick Giordano opened his much anticipated metal pizza joint Headless Bat last month. | JESSICA ROGEN

OPENINGS

Osteria Forto, O’Fallon

Beyond Sweet Kitchen + Bar, Academy

Sacred Grounds Cafe, Downtown West

Big Belly Deli, Greater Ville

Shake Shack, Des Peres

CC’s 2 Seriously Good, Hazelwood

Soda Fountain Express, Maryland Heights

Carretas Mexican Restaurant, Ballwin

STL Steak & Cake, Tower Grove South

Century Coffee Company, City Foundry STL

Terminal 3 Bar & Grill, Bridgeton

Chicken N Pickle, St. Charles

Vanilla Sugar Bake Shoppe, Webster Groves

Clements Bar, Gravois Park Crema Coffeehouse, DeBaliviere Place The Headless Bat, Tower Grove South Hidden Gem, Midtown Honey Bee Tea, Oakville Jinzen, Clayton Kenny’s Upstairs, Tower Grove South Mazaj Mediterranean, City Foundry STL None of the Above, City Foundry STL

CLOSINGS Elaia, Botanical Heights Hungry Joe’s, Kirkwood Nixta, Botanical Heights Olio, Botanical Heights Wasabi Sushi Bar, Central West End Massa’s, Town and Country

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REEFERFRONT TIMES

[REVIEW]

Hits Like Cake Can’t CODES’ Blueberry Gooey Cake gummies offer a relaxing high but don’t quite delivery on buttery richness Written by

ZOOIE GREEN

H

aving moved to St. Louis not so long ago, I recently learned gooey butter cake is a St. Louis delicacy. Now, I’ve always loved gooey butter cake — just never looked into its history.

So when CODES announced a new St. Louis-flavored gummy — Blueberry Gooey Cake — last month, I immediately knew I had to get my hands on it.

CODES described its Blueberry Gooey Cake flavor as “rich, sweet, and creamy with an infusion of fresh blueberry flavor” and with a 1:1 ratio of CBD to THC, promised the goodies delivered a “soothing indica gummy.”

It was 8 p.m. on a Thursday when I decided it was as good a time as any to see if the edibles lived up to my pastry expectations. Each package comes with six 20-milligram gummies, each scored for easy portioning. I was cautioned to start with one-fourth of a gummy (five milligrams), so I did. Taking this small of a piece, it was hard to really taste the flavor. I then waited an hour and felt nothing. But I have a rather high tolerance.

The next night, I decided I was really going to give them a go.

At about 9 p.m., I decided to take three-fourths of the gummy, or 15 milligrams. (Basically, what was left over from the night before).

This time, the flavor hit. After getting past the sour sugar coating, I tasted blueberry, followed by a hint of vanilla, giving it that cake flavor. It definitely masked the taste of the marijuana, which I prefer. But it didn’t give me that full-

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CODES’ new blueberry gooey cake gummies are an ode to St. Louis’ beloved dessert. | ZOOIE GREEN on cake flavor I was hoping for.

Sweet tooth not entirely satisfied, I decided to make some cookies for when the munchies hit. I preheated the oven and prepped some prepared chocolate chip cookie dough. I then turned on season five, episode two of Seinfeld — “The Puffy Shirt.”

Around 10:25 p.m., I felt the high starting to kick in — a calming and relaxing effect, probably enhanced by the edible’s CBD to THC ratio. But there’s a dark side to that chill: As I was relaxing and watching my show, I realized I forgot about the cookies, and they were probably burned to a crisp.

I ran to the kitchen — only to find I never put them in the oven. Ten minutes later, I finally had some cookies.

Thus satisfied, I felt my eyes get-

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ting heavy and my body relaxing as I read a text from a friend who lives in North Carolina. He said, “I’m watching a race in St. Louis.”

Me being high, I thought he was in St. Louis and got so excited. He informed me that he was not, so I told him he’d dashed my “high” hopes. That’s when I knew I was peaking. I thought “high hopes” was the funniest thing I could have ever said and started FaceTiming other friends so I could share my brilliance.

After my high shenanigans, I could feel my relaxation turn to tiredness, so I gave my undivided attention to Seinfeld until I drifted away. And let me tell you, as a person who has a hard time staying asleep at night, I slept the entire night.

I would say the CODES gummy

is relatively similar to other gummies I’ve tried in the past as far as its effects go, but the Blueberry Gooey Cake flavor is definitely a fun twist. But if you’re looking for that true gooey butter cake rich flavor, stick to the bakery section.

Though these gummies are good, they don’t take the cake.

Overall, these gummies provided me with a nice, calm and relaxing full-body experience.

They were just lacking the sweet cake flavor I was hoping for. But if you’re looking for something new to try, I definitely recommend them. n You can pick up a pack of Blueberry Gooey Cake gummies for $20 at CODES’ St. Louis dispensary (11420 Concord Village Avenue; codesdispensary.com).

CULTURE

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The group hopes to show that people’s differences are important and magical. | COURTESY JESSICA SILAS

[COMEDY]

And Then A new all-Black improv team, Some Black People, will debut at the Improv Shop later this month Written by

PAULA TREDWAY

W

hen Jessica Silas started taking classes at the Improv Shop two years ago, she realized all the improv groups around her were predominantly white. But soon, that reality will be no more.

Silas’ new all-Black improv team, Some Black People, will be making its debut Saturday, January 20, at the Improv Shop (3960 Chouteau Avenue, theimprovshop.com) at 8 p.m. With its creation, she hopes to show that improv can be for anyone, and that comics’ differences only make the humor better.

“I want people to see, first of all, that improv is really fun and entertaining,” she says. “And second of all, that diversity is important.

It’s really good to feel represented and see yourself on stage.”

It took about four months for Silas to pull the group together after first getting the inkling that she’d like to be on stage herself. “[Improv is] not super male dominated, but it’s like a male thing for the most part,” Silas says. “One night I went to a show,

and I saw an all-female team called Toxic, and it really lit my fire because I was just taking the classes for fun. But once I saw the all-female team, that inspired me to perform.”

When it was her turn to come up with a team, she wanted to create her own version of Toxic to help inspire a more diverse atmosphere at the Improv Shop.

“But there wasn’t a lot of interest in improv, I don’t think, from a lot of Black people,” she explains. “So I just kept going to the shop, and when I would see Black people in shows, I would introduce myself to them. Once I found about six people, we started hanging out and decided to make a team.

“We have a lot of pause moments and emotional connections,” Silas says. “You’ll see a lot of scenes between husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, mothers and sons. You know, a lot of high emotional connections with humor and realism kind of mixed in. So it’s really not what people expect. It’s a lot of fun.”

The group’s main goal is to make the crowd laugh, but Silas hopes viewers see the importance of differences between people.

“With this team, we really want to show that when you do have different communities involved within one larger community, you get different things, and that’s really beautiful,” she says. “That little bit of shared culture can make for something really magical.” n Tickets are $12 and can be purchased on the Improv Shop’s website.

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MUSIC

[AMERICANA]

Songs of Myself Riley Holtz’s terrific new album offers songs inspired by his life — and backing from a top-notch band Written by

STEVE LEFTRIDGE

W

hen Riley Holtz was a teenager, he ran the backroads of Neosho, the “City of Springs” or the “Gateway to the Ozarks,” as Neoshoans like to call it, deep in southwest Missouri, a few clicks below Joplin. Neosho is best known for its La-Z-Boy manufacturing plant and its proximity to the fabled Spooklight, a floating ghost light that, legend has it, floats supernaturally at the end of a gravel road out in the sticks, although Holtz himself never saw the Spooklight despite his teenage attempts to spot it.

This was back in the mid-aughts when Holtz was just a high school choir kid with a smooth tenor who had no ambitions of playing a guitar or writing songs or forging a musical career at all. Little did he know that about 20 years later, he would be releasing his debut album, the terrific Illegal Before Noon, the first great St. Louis album of 2024, and would be prepping to headline an album release concert at Old Rock House fronting a nine-piece band, Riley Holtz & the Lost Cause.

“At the time, I loved it,” Holtz says of his time in Neosho. “I liked living in the country. I made a lot of lifelong friends from down there. But there’s no way in hell I’d move down there again.” Holtz graduated from high school in 2008 and turned down a vocal music scholarship in favor of enlisting in the Navy, a Holtz family tradition. “I walked past a Navy recruiter’s booth and was like, ‘I’m going to join the Navy,’” he says with a laugh. “It was not very

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Riley Holtz taught himself to play guitar as a way to back up the singing that he loved. | CHRIS DUNN well thought out, very spur of the moment. I figured it would give me time to figure things out.”

It turns out that time in the Navy was short. Holtz forgot to tell them about his bad case of asthma and had an attack during basic training, leading to a quick discharge. He never made it out of boot camp, never saw a boat. It was back to Neosho, where Holtz got a job driving a forklift in a feed mill and started to find his way back into singing, discovering that somewhere within him was a songwriter trying to get out.

Music, after all, was in his blood.

Before his parents’ divorce, Holtz had lived in the Ballwin area where his dad reveled in classic soul music and high-end home audio. “We never had a big house or nice car, but we had the nicest sound system,” Holtz says. His dad, a recreational drummer, fed young Riley a steady dose of Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. Today, Holtz has a tattoo on his arm that reads, “Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind” in honor of both the classic Ray Charles hit and Holtz’s mother, Georgia.

Back in the feed mill days, Holtz

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would get off work at midnight and sit up until five in the morning playing a five-string guitar (“The E string was broken,” Holtz says), teaching himself to strum along to Jason Mraz and John Mayer songs.

“I would play for hours,” he says.

“I just wanted to keep singing.”

Holtz enrolled at Missouri State in Springfield, where he sang with the Beartones, MSU’s a cappella group. There, he met drummer and beatboxer Cam Branson, who plays drums for Holtz’s Lost Cause today. Holtz left the school in 2010 and moved back to the St. Louis area, banged around on a plastic mail-order guitar and learned piles of covers with his buddies, eventually forming a cover band called Will Play For Beer, a moniker they meant literally.

“We were learning anything from Nelly to classic rock to country, just the bar bangers,” Holtz says, as the band landed a steady gig at the Haus in Chesterfield circa 2011. “We were degenerate 21-year-olds. We had a bunch of degenerate 21-year-old friends who had nothing better to do than to come see us on a Saturday, so the bar kept bringing us back.”

And Holtz kept getting better. A

vocal chameleon, Holtz can sing anything, and his knack for getting popular covers over with crowds led to solo acoustic shows around town and eventually a career performing on cruise ships, an ironic twist on his old Navy aspiration of working on a boat. Holtz’s time on cruise ships scratched an itch for both world travel and live performance, and served as the inspiration for the autobiographical “Home,” the first single on Illegal Before Noon.

It wasn’t until COVID-19 hit, however, that Holtz really came into his own as a songwriter. “I wrote sparingly until the pandemic,” Holtz says. “Then at that point, I sat down and said, ‘I want to do this.’” During the shutdown, Holtz would take requests during marathon six-hour sessions on Facebook, picking up new tunesmithing tips by learning other writers’ songs. “Playing all these songs — that’s when things started clicking with songwriting,” he says.

It was also during this time that Holtz leaned into his signature look: namely, his voluptuous gnome-like beard. I ask him how long he’s been this well-bearded.

“Not that long!” he says. “It was

super patchy, but then I thought, ‘It looks like it’s growing in, so maybe I’ll just let it go.’ My brothers are insanely jealous.”

Most of the songs on Illegal Before Noon were written in 2021 and 2022, although one of the album’s best songs, “Giving Up on Love,” goes back to the old feed mill days. With its fingerpicking intro, time-shifting and sonic variance, the song feels quite sophisticated for a writer’s first-ever song. “Credit that to ignorance,” he jokes. “Everything I knew was put into one thing. It’s a snapshot of myself at 19.”

The rest of the album could be said to be snapshots of Holtz throughout his 34 years. The record is filled with memoir-like vignettes about coming of age, living it up and experiencing heartache, across vocal and musical stylings that at turns call to mind Zac Brown, Ray LaMontagne, Chris Stapleton and Nathaniel Rateliff, among others.

“I love storytellers. I really love when songwriters make up a story about a fictional character. Dylan, Prine, all the greats have done it,” Holtz says before adding with a laugh, “I found out that I’m not good at that. So almost all of these songs are me having to come back into myself to find whatever story I was trying to tell. It’s about me, but others can relate to that too.”

Recorded at Kalinga Production Studios in Maplewood, what started as a planned five-song EP kept expanding as Holtz got on a songwriting roll. “We started with eight songs and were going to pick the best five, but then I wrote three more,” he says. “Being in the studio, I just wanted to keep going.”

Beyond the ten songs that made the album, Holtz and his band recorded eight more, which he hopes to release later this year. Crucially, many of the musicians who were brought in to play on the album have stuck around to form the Lost Cause, a group that swells to nine members at full strength.

Holtz credits his bandmates, including Branson, bassist Kevin Neumann and multi-instrumentalist Nathan Sickmeier, with helping to broaden his songs stylistically. “I’ve got to give it to the guys, because the music would sound entirely different without them,” he says. “I came in with a scratch track and said, ‘What do

“I wrote sparingly until the pandemic. Then at that point, I sat down and said, ‘I want to do this.’” you guys hear?’” As a result, the album is tour of diverse Americana styles: the slow-building country soul of “Movin’ On”; the gospel handclapper “Passin’ the Plate”; the swampy, syncopated, horn-abetted “Locked Up”; the organ-drenched beer-and-cocaine country ballad “430”; the falsettoinflected jazzy soul of “Bad Bitch”; the muscular guitar-driven “Father I Have Sinned”; the wordyversed bluegrass-adjacent “Josey’s Ring.” (“That was me trying to write a Jim Croce song,” he says of that last one.)

Holtz and the full Lost Cause band, complete with a three-piece horn section, will perform these songs at the album release show on Friday, January 12, at Old Rock House with opening acts John Henry and Matt Jordan. At the show, Holtz says folks can expect to hear the new album, a brandnew original the band has yet to record and a few covers, too.

Those covers, as Holtz says, continue to “pay the bills,” and Holtz can be found playing out three or four times a week all year — solo, in duos, in trios, and as the full cover band Riley & the Groove — everywhere from the Foundry to Fast Eddie’s in Alton to wineries in Defiance. “I’m all over the place,” he says.

With the new album, more Riley Holtz & the Lost Cause shows booked, some regional touring in the works, a home studio being built in his basement and his recent engagement to a gal he’s known since they were teens, Holtz is living the good life, singing songs that he loves. “Man, I think, ‘What do you have to do today? Have a rehearsal, go to the studio, play a gig that night,’” he says. “It’s pretty sweet. I really try to step back and realize it.” n

7-0-7 TOUR

ELVIS COSTELLO & THE IMPOSTERS PLUS CHARLIE SEXTON

FRI, JAN 26

THE SIMON AND GARFUNKEL STORY FRI, FEB 2

BAND OF HORSES SAT, FEB 17

SUBTRONICS PLUS WOOLI, HEDEX, SAKA, JON CASEY, SKELLYTN

THU, FEB 22 GOODBYE YELLER BRICK ROAD, THE FINAL TOUR

LEWIS BLACK FRI, FEB 23

MUSCADINE BLOODLINE PLUS BEN CHAPMAN

SAT, FEB 24 ST. PATRICK’S DAY TOUR 2024

DROPKICK MURPHYS PLUS PENNYWISE

AND THE SCRATCH

MON, FEB 26

THREE DOG NIGHT PLUS CHRIS TRAPPER

FRI, MAR 1

EXCISION PLUS ATLIENS, RAY VOLPE, ZAYZ, DRINKURWATER

tue, MAR 12

TOWER OF POWER thu, MAR 14

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FILM

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[REVIEW]

Nazis, They’re Just Like Us The Zone of Interest radically upends the idea of a Holocaust movie — to brilliant effect Written by

KAYLA MCCULLOCH The Zone of Interest Directed by Jonathan Glazer. Written by Jonathan Glazer, based on the novel by Martin Amis. Opened January 7.

I

f silence is violence, then I’d deem Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest the most brutal film in theaters today. Emotionlessly presenting a daily report on one of Führer und Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler’s most loyal soldiers, the film quietly explores its nightmarish concept with zero frills. There’s no blatant depiction of the monstrosities occurring in the immediate vicinity. They’re unspeakable, and they go unspoken. Instead, smokestacks billow black soot into a cloudy blue sky while little ones splash in a pool. Groundskeepers till fine gray ash into the soil of a blooming garden. Gunfire and screams pierce the air surrounding an otherwise serene picnic by the water. This is life just outside the confines of Auschwitz in its simplest — and most revolting — form.

Nazi Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) is a commandant at the German Reich’s enormous complex of more than 40 concentration and extermination camps. Located within occupied Poland, the compound played a central role in the systematic implementation of the Holocaust throughout World War II. On a smaller scale, Höss plays a key part in Auschwitz’s day-to-day along with a battalion of other Nazis. Signing off on proposed expansions, discussing the finer details of a soon-to-be-built crematorium, overseeing disciplinary actions for insubordinate Standartenführer personnel — the epitome of evil, all in a day’s work.

Home is hardly an escape for Höss, so I can’t imagine the pathetic

Sandra Hüller and Christian Friedel are ordinary Germans enjoying the fresh air. | © COURTESY OF A24 “just following orders” excuse for the atrocities committed holding any actual weight here. With only a wall between his workplace and his household, there certainly can’t be any compartmentalizing going on.

His wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) looks after the greenhouse while a horrific soundscape echoes from next door. His children play with knick-knacks torn from the hands of kids their same age imprisoned not far from their window. The family swims in the same river where body parts wash ashore. No vertical concrete slab with barbedwire trim can block out this reality.

Still, Rudolf and Hedwig would say they’re living the dream. Husband is successfully climbing the career ladder, wife is aptly rearing the littles, the staff of servants keeps the interior and exterior of the house looking tip-top. It’s everything they hoped and dreamed for, dating back to the earliest pages of their ongoing love story and unfolding exactly as planned. But, when a surprise promotion — one that would relocate Rudolf to Berlin and crown him deputy inspector of every concentration camp, not just Auschwitz — threatens the plans they’d made together, the cracks in the facade begin to show. The Hösses can pretend not to see the ugliness in plain sight, but it’s been obvious to us observers from the start.

If you — like me — are a fan of (or, at the very least, familiar with) Glazer’s last film, 2013’s Under the

Skin, then you might assume you know what to expect going into The Zone of Interest. While bearing no similarities in plot, Under the Skin nevertheless approaches its starkly terrifying material with ostensibly flat direction. No fancy camera movements, no twistyturny narratives, no lavish sets, no extravagant performances gunning for an Academy Award sizzle reel. To a certain extent, this does accurately describe both films.

However, The Zone of Interest takes Glazer’s distinct approach a step further by eliminating some of the more stylized elements of the former film for an even more grounded effort. (The only true slips out of the real world and into the void come in the form of brief digressions shown in an unsettling black-and-white negative.)

Hüller’s performance in The Zone of Interest also took me back to Under the Skin. Whereas in that film Scarlett Johansson’s alien character (Laura, as she’s named in the script but never explicitly called on-screen) searches for human traits to adopt so she can better blend in with us mortals, Hüller’s Hedwig has suppressed the same human traits that would prevent her from accepting existence under Nazism. She is the inverted version of Laura, a blackand-white negative who has shed those basic human traits to become the compliant, complicit spouse of a high-ranking Nazi.

It’s a question worth asking:

How (not to mention why) do you make an emotionless, even-keeled movie about such unfathomable real-life horrors of the not-toodistant past with troubling current-day resonance? The cinematography by Łukasz Żal and score

by Mica Levi are essential factors in Glazer’s complicated equation. Żal’s pragmatic digital shots show the full picture — the Höss family in the foreground, the manmade barrier in the middle ground and Auschwitz just beyond in the background. Meanwhile, the inimitable Levi delivers an uncharacteristically pared-down but nonetheless fitting soundtrack. There’s no romanticization, no glorification.

Only vérité.

From its naturalistic dialogue to its relatively plotless proceedings, its observational interludes to its unemotional portrayal of life in and around concentration camps, The Zone of Interest dares to challenge the premise of a “Holocaust movie” as we’ve come to understand them over the years. Placed alongside Schindler’s List, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and Inglorious Basterds — all contemporary titles that spend a lot of time from the SS perspective — The Zone of Interest is clearly a radical departure. Once it arrives at its subversive, medium-bending conclusion, it’s already cemented its status as one of the toughest, most difficult historical dramas of its era — and one of the most distinctive works of the decade so far. n

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OUT EVERY NIGHT

E

ach week, we bring you our picks for the best concerts of the next seven days. To submit your show for consideration, visit https://bit.ly/3bgnwXZ. All events are subject to change, so check with the venue before you head out.

Happy showgoing!

ROCKIN RASCALS: 3 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

RYAN HARVEY BAND: 6 p.m., $6. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 3143765313.

SAM GOLDEN: 7:30 p.m., free. Yaqui’s on Cherokee, 2728 Cherokee St, St. Louis, 314-400-7712.

SCOTT THOMPSON AS BUDDY COLE: 8 p.m., $29$39. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

SHELBY RAYE: 7:30 p.m., free. Tin Roof St. Louis, 1000 Clark Ave, St. Louis, 314-240-5400.

[CRITIC’S PICK]

THURSDAY 11 ANDY COCO’S NOLA FUNK AND R&B REVUE: 7 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

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

G. LOVE & SPECIAL SAUCE: 8 p.m., $43.19. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

IRENE ALLEN, ERIC MCSPADDEN & SHARON BEAR: 8 p.m., $15-$20. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis.

LOGAN LEWIS BLUES: 7 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

MOOSECREEK PARK: w/ TRSH, Wise Disguise, Harrison Gordon 7:30 p.m., $15. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

NATE LOWERY: 3 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

REBIRTH BRASS BAND: 8 p.m., $32-$40. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

STICKY BANGS, FROG SPLASH, MYSTERY ACT: 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

THE TOM SCHAEFER BAND: 7:30 p.m., $10. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

FRIDAY 12

AHZIDAL: w/ Swamp Lion, Murtaugh, Cloud Machine, Extrusion 8 p.m., $10. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

BOBBY STEVENS, WESTERN STATES: 8 p.m., $10.

The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

BUTCH MOORE: 4 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

CHANCE STANLEY: 6 p.m., $6. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 3143765313.

DEAK HARP: 7 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

GRAHAM HUNT BAND: w/ Pealds, Nicole Grace 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

THE JAG-WIRES: w/ Hotel Party, Thee Fine Lines 7 p.m., free. The Record Space, 8716 Gravois Road, St. Louis, 314-437-2727.

LUCKY OLD SONS: 8 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

SHANE DEVINE: 7 p.m., free. Yaqui’s on Cherokee, 2728 Cherokee St, St. Louis, 314-400-7712.

YANNON: w/ Queen Kiddo 7:30 p.m., $16-$20.

City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

SATURDAY 13

120 MINUTES: 7 p.m., $10. Hwy 61 Roadhouse and Kitchen, 34 S Old Orchard Ave, Webster Groves, 314-968-0061.

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

ALLISON RUSSELL: 8 p.m., TBA. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

THE BEDLAM BROTHERS: 7 p.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

DOGS RUN FREE: w/ Nightswim, With Glee 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway,

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SUNDAY 14

Rebirth Brass Band. | VIA CROSSOVER TOURING

Rebirth Brass Band

MONDAY 15

Even when keeping in mind the storied musical heritage of New Orleans, the city that birthed jazz and brought us such luminaries as Louis Armstrong, Allen Toussaint, Dr. John and so many more, you’d be hard-pressed to name a modern act that is more synonymous with the sound of the Big Easy than the venerable Rebirth Brass Band. Founded in 1983 by brothers Phillip and Keith Frazier alongside crack trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, the Grammy-winning band of brasscionados is the very definition of the second line sound that imbues the cobblestone streets of NOLA with the joyful spirit for which it is known. Its 25-year-plus run of Tuesday nights at the Maple Leaf Lounge is the stuff of legends, bringing the venue to capacity week after week as patrons

pack the club shoulder to shoulder for the fiery live shows Rebirth reliably brings.

So transcendent is that experience that no less than former president Barack Obama remarked in 2015 that one of the first things he wanted to do when he left office was to join those crowds in their revelry. This week, thanks to the good people of City Winery, you don’t need to travel some 700 miles for the pleasure — you can experience the glory that is the Rebirth Brass Band from the comfort of St. Louis.

Brassin’ on a Budget: Those who can’t afford the $32 to $40 for the Rebirth show, or who have an aversion to City Winery for some reason, are not without options this evening: Just across town, St. Louis’ own Big Easy-inspired musical experience, Andy Coco’s NOLA Funk and R&B Revue, will be turning out the dance floor at BB’s Jazz, Blues and Soups. You truly can’t go wrong at either show.

— Daniel Hill

St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

EUGENE & COMPANY: 8 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

EUREKA STRINGS: w/ Gary Lawrence 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

KYLE ROWLAND: 8 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

LESTER ST. LOUIS: w/ Chris Williams 8 p.m., $10-$20. The Luminary, 2701 Cherokee Street, St. Louis, 314-773-1533.

LYNN O’BRIEN & FRIENDS: 7:30 p.m., $15. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

PETTY GRIEVANCES, JEFFY AND THE SUNKEN HEADS, KILLING FEVER: 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

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

ROCKIN’ AT THE RITE: 6 p.m., TBA. Saint Louis Scottish Rite Cathedral, 3633 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-7410.

8 p.m. Thursday, January 11. City Winery, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158. $32 to $40.

314-678-5060.

3 CENTRAL: 5:30 p.m., $15-$20. The Dark Room, 3610 Grandel Square inside Grandel Theatre, St. Louis, 314-776-9550.

BILLY THE KID & THE REGULATORS: 7 p.m., $20.

BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

CELEBRATION OF MICHAEL KUELKER: noon, free.

BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

ERIK BROOKS: 8 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

KEM, CHRISETTE MICHELE, LYFE: 7 p.m., $75.75$125.75. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600.

MISS JUBILEE & THE YAS YAS BOYS: 11 a.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644.

RICH MCDONOUGH & THE RHYTHM RENEGADES: 3 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

SONGWRITER SERIES: w/ Adam Gaffney, Joey Ferber, Karen Choi 7 p.m., $15-$18. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

LUISA SIMS: 7:30 p.m., free. Yaqui’s on Cherokee, 2728 Cherokee St, St. Louis, 314-400-7712.

NOAH REID: 8 p.m., $35. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

TIM ALBERT AND STOVEHANDLE DAN: w/ Randy 7 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

TUESDAY 16

THE BISHOPS: 7 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

OPEN MIC NIGHT: 8 p.m., free. 1860 Saloon, Game Room & Hardshell Cafe, 1860 S. Ninth St., St. Louis, 314-231-1860.

SOME KIND OF NIGHTMARE: w/ Stinkbomb, Dracula Johnson, Weedtuth 8 p.m., $10.

Platypus, 4501 Manchester Avenue, St. Louis, 314-359-2293.

WEDNESDAY 17

BEATLEMANIA - AGAIN: 7:30 p.m., $35. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

JOHN MCVEY BAND: 7 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

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

MANIA: THE ABBA TRIBUTE: 7:30 p.m., $32-$59.

The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

MARGARET & FRIENDS: 3 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

VOODOO JGB: 8:30 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

W. MARK AKIN: 7 p.m., $10-$15. High Low, 3301 Washington Avenue, St. Louis.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT JAZZ JAM: w/ Rob DeBoo 6 p.m., free. The Dark Room, 3610 Grandel Square inside Grandel Theatre, St. Louis, 314-776-9550.

WHITAKER VARLEY AND CURT LANDES: 7:30 p.m., $15-$20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745. n

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