Riverfront Times, April 17, 2024

FRONT BURNER 7

WEEKLY WTF?!

Rarely are such harbingers of doom so neat to look at. | ZACHARY LINHARES

SUN WATCH

What: darkness midday in a terrifying celestial scene portending destruction and ruin

When: 1:59 p.m. Monday, April 8

Where: way up in the heavens, the domain of the deities

What the hell is happening? The Sun God is sick and it’s our fault for not laboring harder in the fields.

What do we do?? Set your arrows alight and fire them into the sky to rekindle the flame; it’s our only hope.

Wait, never mind: It’s bright outside again now, so it looks like somebody already did.

15 SECONDS of FAME SEX TOY BANDIT OF THE WEEK CHRISTOPHER BOOTH

An Overland man was booked into the St. Louis County jail last week, accused of stealing more than $1,500 worth of vibrators from the Hustler Hollywood store in Berkeley — and he would have gotten away with it, too, if not for that pesky neck tattoo.

Police say that Christopher Booth, 34, entered the store on a Wednesday evening in March and swiped eight vibrators from the shelves, shoving them in a trash bag before fleeing. Booth allegedly stole Swedish-made vibrators that retail for a little less than $200 each.

Law enforcement subsequently located the vibrators listed for sale on Facebook Marketplace. Interviewed by police, Booth denied having a Facebook account. (He has one.) Employees easily identified him by the large 314 tattoo covering his neck.

Moral of the story: You can have your scheme to get rich off eight vibrators or you can have your hometown pride inked permanently on your windpipe, but you can’t have both. Sorry to be a buzzkill.

“‘St. Louis attorney Mark McCloskey is representing Haggard and the pro-vetting crowd.’ I don’t like to lump them together, but it is sure is easy when they all hang out together.”

— reader Trevor G, on Facebook

Previously On LAST WEEK IN ST. LOUIS

MONDAY, APRIL 8. It’s again getting hot in herrre, and we’re all outside watching the partial eclipse in the city — or stranded on I-55 en route to the total eclipse in the hinterlands. No fun to drive for hours just to end up watching the sky get kind of dark at a gas station in Potosi! Hey, there’s always the next one … in Montana, in 2044. Better save those glasses.

TUESDAY, APRIL 9. After Governor Mike Parson refuses to offer clemency, the state of Missouri executes Brian Dorsey. Dozens of corrections workers had vouched for Dorsey, who killed his cousin and her husband in a fit of crack-fueled psychosis only to become a trusted prison barber. His jailers sought to persuade the Missouri Supreme Court to let him live out his life in prison. Instead, they had to serve him his final meal. “I am truly deeply overwhelmingly sorry,” Dorsey wrote in his final statement. “Words cannot hold the just weight of my guilt and shame. To all those on ALL side[s] of this sentence, I carry no ill will or anger, only acceptance and understanding.” As for Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who put Dorsey’s execution in motion, he spends the day crowing about how he’s filed suit to stop President Biden’s student loan relief plan, again. Haven’t we been to this rodeo before?

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10. It’s rainy, literally and metaphorically, as the Wall Street Journal makes St. Louis Exhibit A in its front-page story about struggling downtowns. Apparently we’re in a Doom Loop! In the flurry of local responses, we’d like to remind people that just one day ago, St. Louis was in the same paper for being one of the hottest job markets. The press gives and the press takes away.

THURSDAY, APRIL 11. The new “crash report” issued annually by Trailnet says St. Louis County saw its highest number ever of pedestrian deaths in 2023. Shocking anyone who’s ever walked its streets, pedestrian deaths in the city actually dropped to their lowest level since 2018. “There are reasons to believe the City is headed in the right

direction,” the report observes. Remaining to be seen: Whether the report will kick off the urgency in the county that’s infused conversations about traffic violence in the city in recent years. Also! Jessica Clark is stepping down, the Post-Dispatch reports Once a proud Sugar Baby taking handouts from lascivious old men, Clark joined the culture wars as a Rockwood school board member — and won the attention she craved by mocking students with disabilities and labeling her opponents “libtards.” She’s apparently moving out of the district a full year before her term is up, proving yet again that the best thing about unserious people is that they lack the attention span to cause (too) much damage.

FRIDAY, APRIL 12. Another “right direction” for this beleaguered Doom Loop of a city: the Post-Dispatch reports 911 hold times are finally improving. About 85 percent of calls in March were answered within 10 seconds. Last July, it was just 56 percent. Left uncalculated in the daily’s report: How long it takes for officers to respond after the dispatcher picks up.

SATURDAY, APRIL 13. It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood! This being St. Louis, warm weather brings out bad behavior

We’re not just talking about our annual summer-long game of “gunshots or fireworks” but also, around 5 p.m. a city-wide call for officer assistance after a melee at Goodfellow and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Seven men are arrested, one is tased and two officers are injured. At Wash U, a dozen people are arrested for protesting Boeing by disrupting an event for incoming students, while overseas, Iran launches a drone attack on Israel — only to be thwarted by Israel’s Iron Dome

SUNDAY, APRIL 14. It’s 89 degrees outside and we haven’t even finished our taxes. At least City SC finally notches a win with a 1-0 victory over Austin FC. The lone goal in the 57th minute ends a 234-minute goalless streak — and with that, another local Doom Loop is defeated!

Racist Pastor Vets GOP Pols

Dan Gayman has a long history in the White Identity movement. Now he decides who gets to run as a Republican in Vernon County

BY RYAN KRULL

Depending on how a court case shakes out, anyone hoping to run as a Republican in one Missouri county may first need to submit to vetting by members of a far-right church known for its ties to the White Identity movement and domestic terrorism.

Vernon County, in the southwestern part of the state bordering Kansas, is one of a handful of Missouri counties whose Republican party has instituted the process of candidate vetting, wherein individuals who want to appear on the ballot as Republicans need to first complete a morals survey and have their criminal and financial records scrutinized by county committees.

In Vernon County, that potentially means some pretty unsavory characters doing the scrutinizing.

That’s because within the ranks of the Vernon County Republican Committee are several members of the Church of Israel, an organization based in Schell City that has been labeled an extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League.

According to the ADL, the church’s founder and head pastor Dan Gayman, now in his 80s, has long been a thought leader of the Christian Identity movement and helped popularize what is called the two seedline theory, an influential belief in that extremist sphere that contends Jews are the cursed offspring born from a union between the Biblical Eve and the devil. A national leader of one of the largest Ku Klux Klan factions in the U.S. has sat on the church’s board of directors. And Gayman has espoused other explicitly racist views, including being quoted in the Kansas City Star asking rhetorically, “What has any colored person ever invented?”

But church members are not persona non grata in every corner of Vernon County politics.

“They are amazing patriots,” says Cyndia Haggard.

Haggard is the Vernon County Republican Committee chairwoman and a leading activist behind the effort to make the vetting of Republican candidates the norm in all 114 counties across Missouri.

She confirmed to the RFT that there are members of the Church of Israel on the central committee, and that Gayman

is among them.

She tells the RFT she “could not care less” what a church was up to in the 1950s and that if you look closely enough at any religion or specific church, you’re likely to find things you don’t like.

But with the Church of Israel, you don’t have to look too closely to find something many will object to, and you certainly don’t have to go back to the 1950s to do so. Gayman is spry and still preaches regularly at his church, which

has posted his and hundreds of other sermons given from the pulpit there on the video streaming site Rumble.

The RFT spent about half an hour viewing them and even in that short time saw plenty of cause for alarm: In a video from last year, Gayman encourages single men to “find a good, godly Christian woman of our faith and our racial heritage” to start a family with; in a video from 11 days ago, a speaker at the church labeled interracial marriage

as a sexual perversion along with sodomy and pornography; in a video posted six months ago, another pastor at the church said that for reasons of “ethnic, cultural, linguistic or racial bonds,” the U.S. fighting the Nazis in Europe had been a bad idea.

Gayman’s extremist bona fides have long been known. Eric Rudolph, who perpetrated the bombing at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, had ties to his church. Prior to that, a 1980 Kansas City Star expose on Gayman and his church was headlined: “Church in the woods: Hideout or school of hatred?” He insisted to the reporters of the piece that he and his congregation “do not wish to broadcast our beliefs,” claiming they merely wanted to be left alone by the government and “cosmopolitan America.”

But as a member of the county Republican committee, he’s not walling himself off from the government; he’s seeking to shape it.

It’s unclear how many members of the county committee that vets candidates are members of the Church of Israel. Multiple Vernon County residents say that Haggard has refused to disclose the identities of everyone on the committee. She would not provide a list to the RFT either, and would only say that there are more Church of Israel members on the committee than just Gayman. Gayman’s daughter is on the ballot for the upcoming committee race, as are two others who appear to be his relatives.

Pastor Dan Gayman was a racist thought leader before it was cool. | SCREENSHOT

Attorney Mark McCloskey and his wife infamously brandished weapons at nonviolent Black Lives Matter protestors walking past their house in 2020. | THEO WELLING

RACIST CHURCH

Continued from pg 9

More broadly, the practice of candidate vetting is currently in place in Christian, Franklin and a handful of other Missouri counties. Critics say that the practice delegates too much power to the Republican Association of Central Committees of Missouri, for which Haggard is a founding director.

Among Vernon County Republicans, the issue of vetting has led to a civil war of sorts, with a lawsuit underway seeking to boot off the ballot eight candidates for office, including four incumbents, who refused to get vetted.

St. Louis attorney Mark McCloskey is representing Haggard and the provetting crowd in their lawsuit against County Clerk Adrienne Lee, who put the eight unvetted candidates on the ballot despite Haggard and Co. deeming them insufficiently pure.

Murder Shell Closure Offers Guide

Neighbors took action without the City of St. Louis

BY RYAN KRULL

The infamous “Murder Shell” gas station in downtown St. Louis is set to close this summer, in part thanks to a little-used state law that attorneys say could be a road map to remedying other nuisances in an expedited manner — and citizens taking action rather than waiting for city leaders.

For decades, the gas station on Tucker Boulevard near Washington Avenue in Downtown West has been a haven for violent crime and open-air drug dealing. According to court filings made in one of the lawsuits against it, the police have received more than 6,000 calls to the Shell since 1990, and the service station has been the site of at least 21 shootings. Last year, an argument that began at the Shell spilled down the street and resulted in an open-air execution that made national headlines.

The gas station’s closure, which will happen on August 1, is the result of two lawsuits filed against it in recent years.

The neighborhood improvement association for Downtown West filed the first one in July 2021, arguing that city ordinances forbade gas stations from operating in the downtown central business district and sought to pull its operating permits. In addition to the legal fight against the gas station owners, the neighborhood improvement association faced pushback from the city itself, which was named as a defendant — and actually argued against the request to eliminate the gas station’s operating permits. (They lost.)

A second lawsuit, brought by people who own property nearby, argued the business was a nuisance. That lawsuit was filed last October, with the property owners

In a video posted six months ago, one pastor at the church said that for reasons of “ethnic, cultural, linguistic or racial bonds,” the U.S. fighting the Nazis in Europe had been a bad idea.

McCloskey is a big booster of candidate vetting, with videos of him posted all over the website for the Republican Association of Central Committees. He says he hopes to see the practice adopted statewide.

The former Senate candidate says he’s never heard of the Church of Israel, and suspects that neither have any of the high-profile Republican candidates and office holders who support the concept — people like Bill Eigel, Jay Ashcroft, Andrew Bailey and Will Scharf.

“This is just more extreme left-wing red meat you’re going to throw out there for your captive audience of left-wing red-meat eaters,” he says of this story.

Ironically, one of the primary arguments put forth by the pro-vetting crowd is that a vetting process would have saved the state party the embar-

McCloskey and Haggard scored an early win in the suit last week at a hearing in Vernon County, which was attended by Gayman and other church members. Lee has until April 23 to tell the judge presiding over the case why she should not have to remove the unvetted names from the ballot. Absent good cause, her preliminary order will have them stricken.

rassment of having people like Darrell McClanahan III get on the primary ballot for governor.

McClanahan is the former (honorary) KKK member who, despite being photographed giving the Nazi salute in front of a burning cross, made it onto the GOP primary ballot for governor. The state party has filed a suit trying to boot him off.

McClanahan just so happens to live in Vernon County, population 19,000, and was at the court hearing last Wednesday. He even snapped a photo of Haggard speaking with Gayman, sporting a Trump hat, outside the courtroom, which he then sent to the RFT.

The RFT asked Haggard a question by text message: Does she worry her argument that vetting would keep KKK members off the ballot is undercut by the fact that Gayman and other Church of Israel members are vetting candidates in her home county?

She called the question “despicable” and this story a hit piece. n

being represented by former Missouri Governor Jay Nixon and Paul Puricelli. (Puricelli also filed the suit on behalf of the neighborhood association, too.)

It was brought under a little-used state law that applies only to St. Louis and Kansas City and allows anyone who lives or owns property within 1,200 feet of a nuisance property to sue to remedy the situation.

“That law was a vital tool in our tool chest to get the action that was necessary to make a safer neighborhood,” Nixon says.

Both Nixon and Puricelli say that suits brought under this state law could be a playbook for others in the city who have to deal with nuisance properties nearby and want to deal with them in a timely manner.

The City of St. Louis recently proactively filed suit against a group of locals running

what it called an illegal rooming house scheme. But the deeply researched legal case was something of a rarity in a city that’s all too often playing defense even as citizens beg for enforcement action. The Murder Shell shutdown suggests, as long as lawyers are willing to take the case, citizens have tools to do the enforcement work themselves.

“If I were to be a commentator on this, I would say certainly cases like this are the first of what could be a trend of the tool being used,” says Nixon, who joined the firm Dowd Bennett after leaving the governorship. “You can go after personal damages if you win on this.”

In addition to allowing individuals to sue nuisance property owners for damages, they can also sue for attorneys’ fees.

“It really is at a level that as a defendant in one of these situations, you just want to

clean things up and get it right to avoid a lawsuit,” says Nixon.

He adds that a tool like this could be more important than ever, especially with, as he puts it, “the Wall Street Journal bringing the hammer down” on downtown St. Louis last week.

Puricelli adds that the wording of the law requires that the court give the suits expedited attention. The lawsuit brought under the state law against the Shell station was filed less than six months ago.

“I think it’s good that this is getting out there and people know about it,” Puricelli says. “People should use it if they’re faced with a nuisance of this kind or any kind.”

In addition to the Murder Shell’s closure, the lot will also be subject to a deed restriction, meaning that the property cannot house a convenience store going forward. n

The notorious “Murder Shell” station will be shut down this summer thanks to neighbors — and their lawyers. | RYAN KRULL

Ballpark Figures

The Cardinals are gearing up for another big ask from St. Louis taxpayers. But the math on public funding for stadiums never seems to add up

BY ERIC BERGER

In the some two decades since the St. Louis Cardinals reached an agreement to obtain public funding for a new stadium, team leaders have touted its economic benefits for the area and described the agreement as unique in professional sports because of how much of the stadium was privately financed. Local officials often then repeat those leaders’ assertions.

“Home games are invaluable in supporting our local businesses and helping Downtown grow and thrive,” St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones stated in a recent news release that claimed the team would generate $310 million in economic impact for the St. Louis metro area this season alone.

While fans certainly spend millions of dollars attending Cardinals games, economists question how much public investment in professional teams’ stadiums here and elsewhere helps the surrounding economy. And in St. Louis, they dispute the claim that the stadium, which opened in 2006, was almost entirely privately funded.

On the opposite side of the state, the owners of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals are exploring other options after Jackson County voters resoundingly rejected a sales tax to fund a renovation of Arrowhead Stadium and the construction of a new Royals ballpark.

Now the River City Journalism Fund has learned that the Cardinals owners hope to make significant renovations to Busch Stadium in the next five years — and will likely seek public funding for the project, which they say is necessary to keep the stadium viable.

The team president compares the potential scale of the project to two other franchises that each obtained more than $500 million in public funding for stadium upgrades.

And so, three decades after the Busch Stadium negotiations, the Cardinals leadership could soon go to bat again over the idea that stadium projects help taxpayers and are not simply a big win for billionaire owners.

A Family Business

For Cardinals owner

Bill DeWitt Jr., baseball — rather than just the Cardinals — is his family business, which, in the American professional sports industry, means he has several times obtained public funding for stadiums.

Unlike most, if not all, other team owners, who made their fortunes elsewhere and then bought a franchise, the DeWitt family’s work in baseball started at the bottom.

Bill DeWitt Sr. entered the baseball business as a teenager in 1916, when he was hired to work the concessions at Sportsman’s Park, then the home of the Browns. Branch Rickey, best known for later breaking the game’s color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson,

then hired DeWitt as an assistant, according to Bill DeWitt Sr.: Patriarch of a Baseball Family.

He continued his ascent until he and his brother Charley purchased the Browns for $1 million in 1949, a stake he later sold for $1.5 million. From there, DeWitt Sr. held key roles with the Yankees, Tigers, Reds and White Sox.

DeWitt Jr. was part of a group that purchased the Reds from his dad, and persuaded Cincinnati’s city and surrounding county governments to pay for a new stadium and then lease it to the team for a percentage of its annual revenue, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer

A city council member who voted against the deal said it would actually cost $52 million, not $42.5 million, and not generate as much revenue as supporters claimed, leaving taxpayers to cover the deficit.

After the governments and team reached an agreement, DeWitt Jr. sold his stake in the team. And indeed, in 1972, the Cincinnati Post reported that there was a $2 million deficit that year between the cost of the stadium to the city and its expected income, costing “every man, woman and child in Cincinnati an average of about $4 a year whether they ever use the stadium or not.”

A couple decades later, DeWitt Jr. purchased the Texas Rangers as part of a group that included future President George W. Bush. They then suggested that they could move the team from Arlington if they were not able to get public funding for a new stadium. The city agreed to spend $135 million to build a stadium, according to the Kansas City Star. A few years later, the group sold the team for a profit of more than $200 million.

DeWitt Jr., who had sold his stake in the team before the other owners, became a minority owner of the Baltimore Orioles, whose previous owners had recently convinced Maryland officials to spend $106 million to build a new stadium. He sold his interest just a few years later and, in 1995, purchased the Cardinals. He and his other investors, who’d grown up with him in St. Louis, paid the Anheuser-Busch brewery $150 million.

The owners told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that they intended to keep the former Busch Stadium, which was then 29 years old.

“Our honest opinion is that this is a great stadium,” said Frederick Hanser, who was among the new owners. “With a grass field coming in next season, the fans will get a fresh start.”

Less than two years later, the owners began lobbying for public money. They said they needed to renovate the existing stadium or build a new one for the team to remain competitive.

“The plan is to figure out where we can get the money. Start putting the money away and determining what the state, the city, the county and the Cardinals

This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund. See rcjf.org for more info.

BALLPARK FIGURES

Continued from pg 13

can do,” Tom McCarthy, a lobbyist for the Cardinals, told the Post-Dispatch. “It appears in the long run the public is more capable of handling the burden of providing for the ultimate replacement of the facilities.”

The Quest for Viability

As the team leaders campaigned for a new stadium, they described the old Busch Stadium as no longer a viable option because of its age.

“It’s going to have to be done because if we don’t, we’re putting the franchise at risk,” then-team president Mark Lamping said in 2000, according to the Associated Press. “Busch Stadium is fine now, but it won’t be fine at some point in the future.”

If the team did not obtain public funding for a new stadium, they would have to slash payroll and raise ticket prices, they said.

“The only place we can go to generate more money is to put it on the backs of fans,” Lamping told the Post-Dispatch. “And we can’t afford to do that anymore.”

The alternative, as owners often threaten, is to move the team. Lamping met with then-Illinois Governor George Ryan about building a stadium just across the Mississippi River.

Lamping told the Post-Dispatch in 2002 that the team would continue to negotiate with city and state leaders in Missouri, “but if we can’t get it done and we’re faced with the choice of failing in downtown St. Louis or succeeding a mile east, we believe…that a ballpark site in Illinois can be viable.”

If the team built a stadium in St. Louis, however, it would “revitalize downtown” and “be a sound, solid investment for all Missourians,” Dewitt Jr. said.

The Cardinals, of course, did not leave Missouri, and J.C. Bradbury, a Kennesaw State University economics professor who studies public funding of stadiums, doesn’t think they would have.

“I thought they had the best fans in baseball? That’s what I hear every time they are on TV,” says Bradbury. “I think fans and politicians need to understand that really what this is all about is just creating artificial justification for passing the buck along to taxpayers.”

Owners threatening to move unless they obtain money from the government amounts to extortion, according to Brian Hess, a lobbyist who serves as executive director of the Sports Fans Coalition, which opposes public funding of stadiums.

“Teams should be staying in the city that they are in because they are part of the community,” says Hess. “But they don’t want to be a part of that community unless that community pays for their palaces.”

A Public Benefit?

Economists dispute the idea that government funding for new stadiums benefits taxpayers.

“I think fans and politicians need to understand that really what this is all about is just creating artificial justification for passing the buck along to taxpayers.”

-Economics professor J.C. Bradbury

Between 1970 and 2020, state and local governments dedicated $33 billion in public funding to construct majorleague sports venues in the U.S. and Canada, which covered an average of 73 percent of the construction costs, according to a study in the Journal of Economic Surveys

Team leaders generally claim that the investment will have substantial economic benefits for the surrounding area. In Georgia, advocates for a new Atlanta Braves stadium and surrounding mixeduse development claimed that $300 million in taxpayer funds would be a “billiondollar home run” for the area, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Instead, since opening in 2017, Truist Park and the Battery Atlanta have produced an annual deficit of between $12 to $15 million for Cobb County, according to a report from Bradbury, who also was an author of the Journal of Economic Surveys study.

“It’s been studied to death” and economists agree that public funding for a stadium is “unlikely to be successful because for the most part, it’s just changing how people spend their money locally,” says Bradbury. “It’s not stimulating any economic development whatsoever.”

In St. Louis, however, Cardinals leadership contends that they paid 90 percent of the stadium’s $400 million cost.

“In an era when most sports facilities were built with a majority of public subsidies, the Cardinals deal was privately financed and involved little public mon-

ey,” a financing report on Major League Baseball’s website states.

But Judith Grant Long, a University of Michigan associate professor of urban planning and sports management, says that even when considering only some of the costs, 79 percent — rather than 90 percent — of Busch Stadium was privately financed.

And Long’s calculation does not account for the public costs of infrastructure, like the highway improvements made to accommodate the stadium, which cost the state $12 million; the city’s elimination of a 5 percent entertainment tax and abatement of a real estate tax; or public expenses for municipal services.

“I have found that it is fairly typical for teams to not include infrastructure and land costs (or ongoing operating costs), but instead to focus on the building cost alone, since their contributions look bigger when the size of the pie is smaller,” Long writes in an email to the River City Journalism Fund.

The data also does not include subsequent funding for another project Cardinals leaders promoted during their campaign, Ballpark Village, a mixed-use residential, retail and entertainment development.

The team agreed to spend $60 million on the development and complete most of it by 2011. If they did not fulfill that obligation, they would pay the city $3 million in annual fines.

In 2006, the city and Cordish, a de-

veloper that has built similar districts around the country, announced that they had reached an agreement for a $387 million project that would receive more than $100 million in tax incentives. The next year, Centene Corp. announced that it would move its headquarters from Clayton to the development in a $250 million project.

But in 2008, Centene backed out and the Great Recession hit, and the deal, which had been a key bargaining chip to receive public funding for the stadium, fell apart.

The city later agreed to delay enforcing the $3 million penalties until 2016, if the village was not built by 2014.

In any case, even if they had enforced it earlier, “for the Cardinals, that’s roughly the equivalent of a second baseman,” the Post-Dispatch pointed out in 2008, when players cost less than they do now.

The team received $17 million in state and federal incentives to build a scaledback $100 million first phase of the development and opened it in 2014.

Economists state that such projects often don’t generate additional revenue for the surrounding area but instead just lure customers away from existing businesses.

“By creating these villages, which is a strategy now for sports teams, what do they really do? They absorb even more [customers], and they generally impact local businesses,” says Eric Click, a Webster University professor who studied the economic impact of the stadium and village and now is head of the school’s European academic operations.

And indeed, after it opened, downtown restaurant and bar owners started to complain that they were losing business to Ballpark Village.

Competition Is Healthy

Eddie Neill, owner of the Dubliner, a multilevel Irish bar on Washington Avenue, told the Riverfront Times in 2014

Busch Stadium cost $400 million, but one expert disputes the team’s contention that they paid for 90 percent of it. THEO WELLING

BALLPARK FIGURES

Continued from pg 15

that he’d made less money than in previous years but that he still thought the year-old Ballpark Village complex could be good for downtown.

“In retrospect, Ballpark Village may be a gift for all of us to think more about our clientele and what we’re doing,” Neill said then. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s going to help in the long run in the viability of the area. I think something new can be created for the city.”

A year later, he closed the Dubliner. Neill, who is also an owner of Café Provencal in Kirkwood, says that his Dubliner revenue decreased from about $2.5 million in 2013 to $1.9 million in 2014. As fewer people walked along Washington Avenue, the street became less safe for the remaining customers, Neill says.

A couple months after the Dubliner closed, Patricia Shannon closed Mike Shannon’s Steaks & Seafood, which had been a mainstay for fans before and after Cardinals games.

She and Neill both say the problem was that at that point Ballpark Village was just an eating and dining destination, even though it had been billed as a mixed-use development that would include offices and residences.

“There wasn’t that influx of living and businesses that Ballpark Village was trying to attract,” Shannon says.

And the number of conventions and out-of-town visitors slowed after the recession and because of media coverage of protests in the wake of the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, Shannon says.

Add additional bars and restaurants to “an already depressed area, and that I think is the triple whammy that happened to” Shannon’s, she says.

Harry’s Restaurant & Bar also closed in 2016 after more than two decades; the owner told the Post-Dispatch that Ballpark Village took away 70 percent of his business and was “the nail in the coffin.”

The Cardinals and Cordish eventually

opened an office space, the PwC Pennant Building, in 2019, and an apartment building, One Cardinal Way, in 2020.

Drew Clary, a 32-year-old commercial real estate broker, was one of the first people to move into an apartment. His overlooks Busch Stadium.

A big sports fan, Clary loves how easy it is to walk to local stadiums.

“There’s not another luxury apartment like it,” Clary says. “The fact that you can watch Cardinals games” and “you have a pool and can make friends there, it’s just really cool.”

Still, some people are afraid to visit downtown because of crime — let alone live there.

The area received increased scrutiny over the past year after reckless drivers hit a teenage girl who had to have her legs amputated and killed a mother and daughter.

Clary says he enjoys spending time in and around Ballpark Village, but does not venture outside of that area downtown much. He has secured parking in his building, but on one of the occasions he parked in the unsecured area, his car was broken into, and he hears gunshots multiple nights each week.

But he points out that his car could have just as easily been broken into elsewhere in the city.

“The building itself is pretty secure,” says Clary, a Springfield native. “I tell people, it’s kind of like a resort in Mexico, you just don’t stray too far from it.”

Daniel Pistor lives in a loft on Washington Avenue and acknowledges there are issues downtown, like people renting Airbnb properties to throw parties that spill out into the street, including a shooting last year in which 10 teens were injured and one was killed.

Still, Pistor, chair of the St. Louis Downtown Neighborhood Association, feels safe walking around the area and sees the Cardinals as an asset for downtown.

Also, as the restaurant industry is always tough, it’s possible that Shannon’s and the Dubliner would have closed even if it weren’t for Ballpark Village. Longtime downtown establishments like Broadway Oyster Bar and Paddy O’s

are still open.

Tom Schmidt, owner of the Salt + Smoke barbecue restaurants, opened a location at Ballpark Village in May 2021 and says it’s now his busiest restaurant.

“Competition is healthy,” says Schmidt. “You need new players that bring a new life, and it might disrupt other players for a short period of time while they [evaluate] ‘what do we need to do to compete?’ Not to get too philosophical, but that’s kind of the American dream, right?”

Downtown’s Challenges

So have the Cardinals revitalized downtown as DeWitt pledged in 2001?

The team claimed after the 2022 season that Busch Stadium had produced $43 million in tax revenue to the city and state that year and a total of $545 million since the new stadium opened in 2006, according to a report on Major League Baseball’s website.

The opening day press release from Explore St. Louis and Greater St. Louis Inc., two groups that promote economic development and tourism, touted that the Cardinals would generate $310 million in economic impact for the St. Louis metro area because of items such as ticket purchases; food and entertainment at or near the stadium; and outof-town visitors staying at hotels, as well

as “indirect economic impact,” meaning “business-to-business purchases in the regional supply chain that stem from the initial direct purchases.”

Bradbury, the economist, does not see either claim as credible because of research showing that stadiums just draw money away from other entertainment options. Plus, he has never seen any stadium generate that much revenue.

“These types of fantasy documents that are put out” are “pretty common. No economist takes them seriously,” he says.

Economists have also found that construction of stadiums does not create additional jobs — as stadium subsidy proponents claim — but instead just takes workers away from other projects.

In the decade before the city helped pay for the construction of Busch Stadium, it did the same thing for the Rams and the Blues. A report in the Journal of Urban Affairs found no evidence that construction employment or wages increased in the St. Louis area during the stadium construction as compared to when the government was spending similar amounts of money to build roads in the area.

And many of the jobs that are created by a sports team — ushers, concessionaires — are often low-wage and season-

Tom Schmidt says the Salt + Smoke location downtown is his growing chain’s busiest location. THEO WELLING

Dan Pistor says the Cardinals have been a good asset to downtown. THEO WELLING

BALLPARK FIGURES

Continued from pg 17

al. There are, after all, only 81 regularseason home games each year.

On a positive note, between 2011 and 2016, each Cardinals game generated 2,200 additional hotel room occupancies and $330,000 in additional hotel revenue, according to a study in the Applied Economics Letters journal. But the researchers determined that was still not enough economic surplus to justify the public subsidy for the stadium.

There are, of course, less tangible benefits of having a professional sports team, particularly one with a storied history and record of success like the Cardinals. See Adam Wainwright sending the Cardinals to the 2006 World Series by turning Carlos Beltran into a pillar of salt as he struck out looking or David Freese throwing his helmet to the ground after hitting a walkoff homerun in Game 6 of the 2011 World Series.

“The civic pride, the memorable moments — all of those are a result of athleticism and fandom. None of that is dependent on tax money,” says Hess.

Even if the stadium and Ballpark Village have produced positive economic ripple effects for the area, plenty of problems remain downtown — as Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III (third generation of baseball leadership) himself conceded in a 2023 interview with the St. Louis Business Journal

“I just feel like we’ve hit bottom on many levels, including activity levels, development levels and safety and security levels, and it feels to me like we’re on a really good trajectory there,” DeWitt III said at the time.

DeWitt III tells the River City Journalism Fund that he was referring to the emptying out of downtown that occurred because of the COVID-19 pandemic and that activity downtown and attendance to Cardinals is returning to

pre-pandemic levels.

He says people have “legitimate concerns” about safety downtown, but that those worries “have largely been addressed.”

The Downtown Community Improvement District and the St. Louis Police Foundation, both nonprofits, have over the last year increased their funding for extra police and security patrols in the area. And the Cardinals are working with parking operators around the stadium to coordinate safety, DeWitt III says.

“Fans should not be worried about safety and security coming downtown,” he says.

A “Significant” Infusion

For the positive momentum to continue, DeWitt III says Busch Stadium will need a “significant capital infusion” in two to five years. It’s “too early” to detail what the improvements would look like, he says. “Our goal would be to handle whatever back of the house things need to happen and to fix [them], as well as probably create some cool and interesting new features for fans.”

The owners would likely seek public money for that, he adds.

When asked how much such a project would cost, DeWitt III says it would likely be in a similar range to recent Milwaukee Brewers and Baltimore Orioles projects. Those are $500 million and $600 million taxpayer investments, respectively.

Yet while agreements to upgrade those stadiums — both of which opened in the last 32 years — may make it seem as though the Cardinals obtaining public funding is a foregone conclusion, that may not necessarily be the case. The city’s infusion of funds to the Blues’ Enterprise Center, for example, generated bitter pushback from the Board of Aldermen in 2016 and would likely have never gone through without the machinations of then-Aldermanic President Lewis Reed. Reed is now in prison, and

public funding for Busch Stadium upgrades until they had an actual proposal.

In the meantime, rather than debate public funding for a new stadium, the best fans in baseball will focus their attention on the success of the team — or lack thereof.

After one of the worst Cardinals seasons in decades, St. Louis residents were especially loud in expressing the perennial complaint that ownership is cheap and that team leadership makes bad decisions when it comes to improving its roster.

Fans wanted ownership to bring back pitcher Jordan Montgomery, who ultimately only signed a one-year deal with the Texas Rangers for $25 million, a relatively reasonable, safe bet.

But John Mozeliak, Cardinals president of baseball operations, expressed confidence in the rotation, which has an average age of 34; in baseball years, that means a player’s best days are likely in the rearview mirror. Mozeliak told the Associated Press of the rotation, “unlike our upcoming election, I am not overly concerned with age.”

his successors take a far dimmer view of public financing for stadiums. City voters also said no to funding for an MLS stadium in 2017.

They’re not alone. On April 2 in Jackson County, 58 percent of residents voted against a sales tax measure that would have provided $2 billion for the Chiefs and Royals stadium projects.

“It shows what people across the country already know and feel: It’s that taxpayer dollars to sports stadiums is a bad idea for the community,” says Hess.

After the vote, the wife of the Royals owner wrote on Facebook, according to the Kansas City Star, that “neither team will work with Jackson County again… We will be lucky if both teams wind up in Kansas. At least still in the area!”

Kansas Governor Laura Kelly has said she would support the Chiefs moving across state lines. But that also does not mean that Kansas taxpayers will support funding a stadium.

After Ted Leonsis, the billionaire owner of the Washington Wizards (NBA) and Capitals (NHL), failed in his effort to move the teams to Virginia and build a $2 billion stadium — $1.5 billion would have come from public bonds — he had to make an about-face and return to the negotiation with Washington, D.C., officials. They reached an agreement on a $515 million publicly funded stadium, a fraction of the cost of the Virginia stadium.

Democratic lawmakers, labor unions and Washington and Virginia residents had campaigned against the Virginia deal.

“It was really the first time in recent history where an active citizenry pushed back and educated lawmakers on a deal like this. It’s been a wake-up call for a lot of people,” says Hess, of the Sports Fans Coalition, who lobbied against the bill.

When asked about potential funding for a Busch Stadium renovation, spokesmen for the Missouri governor and St. Louis city and county, respectively, all said they could not comment on potential

It’s also plausible that there is a correlation between payroll spending and the team’s economic impact. The press release from Explore St. Louis and Greater St. Louis in 2023 claimed that the team would produce $350 in economic impact; this year the figure was only $310 million. Tony Wyche, Greater St. Louis chief communications officer, says the $40 million decrease was due to lower projected attendance figures provided by the team. That decrease is also notable because of inflation between 2023 and 2024.

If the team isn’t performing well, fans are less likely to come downtown.

Profits and Possibilities

DeWitt Jr. has sometimes presented his team as operating under difficult circumstances.

“The industry isn’t very profitable, to be honest,” DeWitt Jr. said on 590 The Fan in 2020.

If that’s the case, then what is profitable? He and his business partners purchased the team for $150 million in 1995. Now it’s worth $2.5 billion, according to Forbes, a 1,566 percent increase.

But DeWitt III tells the River City Journalism Fund that the team spent as much money as it could afford this offseason.

“We are absolutely committed to winning,” DeWitt III says. “We pretty much put all of our resources that we have available because of our great fan support and other revenue streams to fielding the best product we can on the field.”

As to what the future holds for that field and stadium, DeWitt III says, “I think it would be in everybody’s interest for the Cardinals to be downtown indefinitely, and that’s certainly our goal, but we also need to make sure our facility is viable.” n

This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund, which seeks to advance journalism in St. Louis. See rcjf. org for more info.

Mike Shannon’s Steaks & Seafood has been among downtown’s casualties in the last decade. | THEO WELLING

BY RIVERFRONT TIMES STAFF

THURSDAY 04/18

Cue the Comedy

The very funny Shannon Fiedler is coming to the Helium Comedy Club (1151 Saint Louis Galleria Street, Richmond Heights) as part of her nationwide tour, bringing with her the hilarious impressions and observational comedy that has made her a certified TikTok star with more than 200,000 followers to her name. Fiedler is perhaps best known for her send-ups of denizens of various cities across the country — with characters including “the brash Bostonian” and “the naive Minnesotan.” Maybe her time here will inspire a surly St. Louisan? Find out for yourself on Thursday, April 18. Fiedler takes the stage at 8 p.m. and tickets start at $22. More info at st-louis.heliumcomedy.com.

SATURDAY 04/20

Bark in the Park

The Gateway Arch goes to the dogs this month with the return of Arch Bark

On Saturday, April 20, the Gateway Arch Park Foundation and Purina’s free, family-friendly event takes place in the North Gateway and welcome those with or without dogs. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., St. Louis’ very own national park will host a variety of fun events starting with a morning yoga session called Doga (get it?) led by Urban Breath and the one-mile Purina Paws on Pavement Walk around the Arch. There will also be Purina Incredible Dog Team demonstrations at 11 a.m. and noon, as well as a dogfriendly bubble bus and caricature drawings by Caricature STL. Dog owners will have the chance to chat with the National Park Service’s B.A.R.K. Ranger program to learn more about the non-human member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition — Meriwether Lewis’ dog Seaman — as well as the opportunity to ask a Purina pet behaviorist questions regarding their dog’s behavior or training. Speak Rescue and Sanctuary will also be in the park with adoptable pets looking for their forever home. To complete the day, enjoy some lawn games, “pup music” from the Arch Bark DJ, brunch and mocktails from Pour Decisions, and lunch from Wok-O Taco and the MOObile Smash Burgers & MOOre. Details at archpark.org/ events/ArchBark.

Old School Cool

Looking to get away for the weekend? Why not take a day trip to historic Hermann on Saturday, April 20, for the 2024 Hermann Antique Show at the Hermannhof

CALENDAR

complex (First Street and Gutenberg, Hermann)? From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., visit the Festhalle at the Inn at Hermannhof (237 East First Street, Hermann) and the Wagon Works buildings, where more than 30 dealers from all across the U.S. will be selling their found historical treasures. After some antiquing, take a carriage ride at the Hermann Farm (526 East First Street, Hermann), swing by Tin Mill Restaurant (315 East First Street, Hermann) for a bit to eat or grab a drink at the Black Shire Distillery (111 Gutenberg Street, Hermann), or better yet, go wine tasting at the Hermannhof Winery (330 East First Street, Hermann). Admission to the festivities is $10. For more information visit facebook.com/HermannAntiqueShow.

Green Party

There’s more than one way to go green on 4/20. This Saturday, April 20, celebrate that big round rock you live on at the annual St. Louis Earth Day Festival on the Muny Grounds in Forest Park (1 Theatre Drive). This community tradition boasts dozens of local vendors as well as food and entertainment. Local nonprofits will also be in attendance to impart their wisdom on all things green. Earthday365, the host of the festival, promises you will leave inspired by and connected to

sustainability and preservation efforts, and knowledgeable about some recent advances in both. At the very least, it’s a great opportunity to combine both of the day’s celebrations and people watch. Festivities run from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m, on both Saturday and Sunday, and entry is completely free. For maps, vendor lists and more, visit earthday-365.org/festival.

Bubble Trouble

Once you’ve had your fill of the Loop’s 420 Street Fest (more on that in the Reeferfront Times section of this paper), or maybe just when you need a break from the smoked-out festivities, pop into Blueberry Hill (6504 Delmar Boulevard, University City) for something completely different but no less fun. The Showdown in the Lou National Bubble Hockey Tournament pits 50 competitors from across the nation against one another to see who is best at making a team of little plastic guys wiggle a tiny puck into a small goal. Competitors from nine different states will get in on the action, with all their registration fees going to support the solid organ transplant program at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. There’s no cost to cheer on your favorite players, and the fun starts at noon and runs until a winner is declared. For more details, visit facebook.com/groups/619412281737519.

SUNDAY 04/21

Fun Guys

Easter is over, and now it’s time for something far better than any egg hunt — morel season. This week, you can join hundreds of other mycophagists as they descend on the woods that border Missouri and Illinois to gather as much of

the delicacy as they can. The 15th annual Morel Mushroom Festival will be held at the Pere Marquette Lodge (13653 Lodge Boulevard, Grafton, Illinois,) on Sunday, April 21, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event is free and will feature musicians, vendors and of course a mushroom hunt. Participants are encouraged to wear sturdy shoes and bring a sack to hold their finds. Two seasoned morel hunters will be on hand to assist novices. After the hunt, there will be contests to see who found the most morels, as well as the smallest and largest specimens, and if you win, you earn a free night’s stay at the lodge. The event is free and open to the public. More info at pmlodge.net/events/mushroom-festival.

WEDNESDAY 04/24

Multitudes Contained

Mary Engelbreit inhabits a dual space these days. The St. Louis-based illustrator has gained a national profile over the past four decades for her rosy-cheeked children and flower-studded scenes. The calendars, greeting cards and picture books she’s lent her talents to are immediately recognizable. Yet at the same time, the world has become increasingly aware of what a badass the septuagenarian really is. She’s spoken in recent years about how she was fired from the Post-Dispatch early in her career for complaining that women were paid less than men. She’s come out in favor of Black lives mattering and the ohso-controversial idea of women nevertheless persisting. “How Did Mary Engelbreit Get So Woke?” the Post-Dispatch titled its 2020 profile. You can see Engelbreit’s work in all its glory at a new show at Green Door Art Gallery (21 North Gore Avenue, Webster Groves). All About ME: Mary Engelbreit Art Show promises 23 original drawings featuring “the wit, wisdom and whimsy of the one and only Mary Engelbreit.” The show opens on Wednesday, April 24, and runs through June 1, and the gallery is open Wednesday thru Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. See greendoorartgallery. com for details. n

Saturday’s National Bubble Hockey Tournament supports a good cause . | VIA FLICKR/SICKKIDS FOUNDATION

Arch Bark affords your furry friends an opportunity to vist St. Louis’ favorite monument. | COURTESY PHOTO

Eastern Promises

Telva, Balkan Treat Box’s new offshoot, delivers on a perfectly perfumed menu

Of course, the rose latte. And of course, the rose kunefe. I mean, what could possibly be wrong with that drink, and that utterly divine snack scattered with petals? I’m a sucker for beautifully perfumed rosy things, gorgeously scented orangey things. And I’m also a pushover for untweased beautiful dishes which, with a variety of textures and colors and smells, become culinary works of art. That’s what we have at the family-run Telva at the Ridge — an offshoot of Balkan Treat Box that has partnered with Rolling Ridge Nursery in Webster Groves and moved into the space next door. Its reputation preceded it; the rumors of this divine, mostly Bosnian food have spread far and wide in a few short months. “Telva” is on everybody’s lips. If it isn’t, you hope it soon will be.

Two-time James Beard semi-finalist Loryn Nalic and husband Edo Nalic’s new concept, like Balkan Treat Box, is a daytime spot. Consequently, the emphasis is coffee, baked goods and breakfast that very easily doubles as lunch. The bummer is that this Telva menu gives you a glimpse of all the tastes that are possible in a kitchen, and you feel sad about your New York Times sheet pan chicken thighs, your TikTok pasta with tomatoes and feta.

It’s hard to come to grips, especially, with the deliciousness of the Cilbir Turkish eggs. Hard not to feel like you could merrily eat this dish every day for the rest of your life. Everyone’s been talking about it. And with good reason. Eggs may be the main event here, but there are lots of other events happening on this plate as well — the waft of gently garlic yogurt, the tangle of herbs, the deep red, deeply rich tomato chile brown butter. Once you’ve romped through the toasty Bosnian flatbread called somun that accompanies this Heaven-sent breakfast of gods, you’ll either be using your finger to clean your plate or your tongue. I’m OK with either.

To call the Breakfast Sendvic with beef sausage a “burger” would be to liken carpaccio from Harry’s Bar to Stouffer’s Chipped Beef. It’s nothing of the sort. The beef does come between two circles of that somun (with egg and cheese). But it’s rather a gently spiced, flattened “kebab” with delicious hints of the Middle East.

Orange blossom — possibly the most gorgeous scent of all — was promised in a vinaigrette over a salad of inky greens, roasted squash, seeds and — get this — charred dates. We loved the tender baby kales and thin slivers of squash in the Tikva Salata, but the

dates did not seem particularly charred and the truth is, my heart always sinks when salad comes to the table and there are sliced crosssections of orange in it. The result, it seems to me, is always the same: Wet. But, in this instance, with Telva, I’ll forgive anything, even the tedious counter ordering system, which may cut down on waitstaff (and the price of your lunch), but has you wondering — when you are 20th in line — if the wait is worth it. I’m afraid it is.

But back to that kunefe, that sweet little nest — a Middle Eastern cheese pastry wrapped and woven with shredded filo, syruped with perfumed, sugar-based attar, then nestled with chopped pistachios. Add a milky, rose-scented coffee to the mix, and life doesn’t get, um, rosier. (There are petals, as well, in the Baklava Yogurt Parfait.) Don’t worry: Neither the coffee nor the nest is overwhelmingly bloomy. Rosiness only sneaks into that latte. It’s more a whisper, a lovely trace that you might miss if you’re busy wondering how to divide the kunefe into equal parts or if you might not have to; your friend can have the scone! But, oh wait…

Just a day before my lunch at Telva, I came home trumpeting a cheese chive scone I’d stumbled across in Florissant. I was cock-

Continued on pg 24

TELVA AT THE RIDGE

60 North Gore Avenue, Webster Groves; 314-395-2760. Open Wed.- Sat., 8 a.m.-3 p.m., Sun. 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Closed Mon.-Tues.

Among Telva’s breakfast offerings: a parfait with yogurt, baklava granola and crispy pastry.

BY ALEXA BEATTIE

BY MABEL SUEN

PHOTOS

TELVA AT THE RIDGE

Continued from pg 23

sure. I said, outright, it was the best I’d ever had. I didn’t expect to have to renege on that unequivocal decree, although, truth is, no one had been listening to me anyway. We puzzled, my friend and I, over Telva’s iteration. What was that gorgeously surprising taste, the ingredient that speckled through dough that was crumby and tender, moist; crunchy on top with glittery crystals of sugar. This soi-disant food critic had to ask a waitperson. “Basil,” she said. “It’s Thai basil, with sour cherries.” I was beside myself.

As for Telva’s interior, it’s a big drafty stable without the draft, or the horses: wood beams, a colossal barn door and a huge exposed-brick wall. It could be brighter, but such is the ceiling’s height — the light sources are far, far away. In the vestibule, the lower ceiling drips rather abundantly with plastic foliage, which, considering its proximity to a pretty garden center of shrubs and trees, seems out of sync. It doesn’t matter. That’s not the point here.

However, do be warned: After a lunch at Telva, cooking food in your own kitchen — tipping a bag of lettuce into a bowl, salt and peppering those tedious old thighs — might, like I said, be a humbling affair. But it’ll get better. June is on its way, and then there’ll be roses. n

Clockwise from top left, Telva’s Baklava Yogurt Parfait, rose petal kunefe, Tivka Salata, Breakfast Sendvic, Cilbir and a sour cherry scone. Loryn and Edo Nalic, far right, with members of their Telva team. The Breakfast Sendvic pairs Bosnian-style flatbread with egg, cheese and sudzuka sausage.

Sew Delicious

Rockwell Beer’s Crisp Chinos can illustrates what a lager would wear

If your beer wore pants, what kind of pants would it wear? It’s a question that lingers on the minds of Rockwell Beer Company

Head Brewer Jonathan Moxey and Zack Kinney, owner of Kings County Brewers Collective in Brooklyn. The longtime friends collaborated for the second time in 2019 to produce Crisp Chinos, a rice lager with flair.

Moxey and Kinney had answered the burning question once before, when they came together to brew Sensible Slacks, a porter, for a collaboration between Perennial Ales and Kings County Brewers Collective. For the second time around, Moxey says the two “took Sensible Slacks for a walk.”

Rockwell’s head brewer speaks to the difficulty in coming up with beer names, saying inside jokes work well: “If there’s no need to know the setup for the joke, that’s a good beer name.”

For the label art, he called upon his friend and illustrator Adam Fischer. Moxey recalled

memories of McCall’s Sewing Patterns hanging in the aisles at WalMart or strewn about at Grandma’s house. The envelopes provided sketches and outlines of patterns for a particular piece of clothing to assist with DIY fashion. Moxey imagined seeing the eponymous chinos in a similar sketch.

Fischer swapped Moxey’s vision for reality. The Crisp Chinos’ label depicts faceless models in numbered fashion sketches of chinos — straight out of grandma’s sewing catalog. The color palette pops from the shelves with lime green, sunflower yellow, orange and royal blue chinos modeled against a sky blue background. No need to look further for fashion inspiration than the cuffed chinos, belted chinos, plaid chino shorts and chinos with deep pockets styled on the side of this beer can.

Similar to the color palette, the flavor is bright yet refined. Crisp Chinos struts with an elevated profile: dry-hopped and 5.2 per-

cent ABV. It tastes simple and slightly citrusy with a subtle aroma of fresh herbs. Like a perfect pair of chinos, the brew feels refined yet breezy.

The rice lager has made big strides locally. It hit the market in 2019, originally brewed just in time for baseball season. Now it stays in vogue year round.

Moxey admits, “When I drink Chinos, I’m usually wearing a pair of work pants,” but suggests you pull out those salmon-colored chinos for the occasion. No worries if your wardrobe lacks — a crispy spring day and the great outdoors will suffice. The head brewer also recommends Crisp Chinos paired with a slice of lime. n

The Beer: CRISP CHINOS

The Brewery: ROCKWELL BEER COMPANY

The label art was inspired by McCall’s sewing patterns, popular in the middle of the last century.

BY LAUREN HARPOLD

Lauren Harpold tells the stories behind the art gracing the cans or bottles of local brews. Got a suggestion for her to explore next? Email her at harpoldlp@gmail.com

PHOTO BY ZACHARY LINHARES

SAUCED

Taco Belle

Vicia’s spinoff Taqueria Morita gets a brick-andmortar home — and an expanded menu of beachy Mexican favorites

BY MEERA NAGARAJAN

The permanent home for Take Root Hospitality’s pop-up concept, Taqueria Morita, opened April 4 at 4239 Duncan Avenue in the Cortex Innovation District in the Central West End.

The 4,000-square-foot space was formerly a Wasabi sushi bar and was re-worked by Space Architects to incorporate light wood accents, bright colors and a mural by Shannon Levin of the Toky branding and design firm on one wall, the same artist who also came up with the restaurant’s branding identity. The dining room seats 80 inside and the patio seats another 40 guests.

Taqueria Morita’s menu is helmed by Take Root Hospitality partner and culinary director Aaron Martinez. “I’ve never done a Mexican restaurant menu before Taqueria Morita. It’s not precious; I just want it to be flavorful and not too complicated. I want food you get on a beach on Tulum or Sonora – something approachable,” Martinez says. “Everything about this restaurant, from the

concept to the menu offferings and the vibe, is a true labor of love.”

The restaurant will offer lunch and dinner service with more quick, casual options at lunchtime, such as chicken tortas or rice bowls topped with a mushroom barbacoa. Shareable appetizers, such as the black bean and Chihuahua cheese empanadas served with a fruity cascabel chile salsa and the crispy taquitos stuffed with chorizo and potato and topped with cilantro cream and queso

fresco, will pair perfectly with the restaurant’s drink offerings.

Take Root Hospitality beverage director Leila Miller designed the menu. Look for agua frescas in a range of flavors from tamarind-pineapple to coconut-horchata, which make for refreshing non-alcoholic drinks. (You can always opt to add a spirit to any of these.)

The drinks menu highlights agave spirit cocktails on draft, including a Paloma, the signature MargMorita and a mez-

cal margarita. Other tropical inspiration can be found in the Passion Fruit Sour, made with mezcal, bacanora, melon and banana liqueurs and fresh passion fruit juice. Best of all, from 3 to 6 p.m. they’re making happy hour a priority, offering $5 draft beers, $8 draft margaritas and Palomas, $8 wine and a range of snacks, including puffed chicharrons with a chile-onion dip.

At night, look for their signature tacos, such as the grilled oyster mushroom tacos topped with epazote cream, goat cheese and peanut salsa macha — a fiery, oil-based sauce made with guajillo, ancho and arbol chiles. Also on the menu are pork tacos, with the meat cooked in its own fat, carnitas-style, and flavored with a serrano vinegar and fresh pineapple just before service.

Shareable, large-format options will be available, such as a pork belly chicharron for two. On the lighter side, look for small plates like tuna crudo, cauliflower ceviche tostada or ceviche; a recent striped bass version was served with a blackened jalapeno and charred onion salsa negro and finished with spicy habanero oil. Their coconut tres leches cake, which was a cool and tropical treat in the summertime on the popup patio space, makes its return served with almond cremosa, which has a hint of white chocolate and burnt cinnamon served with rhubarb.

Taqueria Morita is now open from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. The restaurant does not take reservations. n

Lunch service at Taqueria Morita will feature a selection of quick, casual dishes, and dinner brings a mix of shareable options and small plates. MICHELLE VOLANSKY

Take Root Hospitality beverage director Leila Miller and culinary director Aaron Martinez. | MICHELLE VOLANSKY

REEFERFRONT TIMES 29

The High Holiday

Get ready to puff, puff, pass at these can’t-miss St. Louis 4/20 events

BY PAULA TREDWAY

St. Louis is going all out for 4/20 this year. Whether you plan to celebrate on Cherokee or in the Delmar Loop or somewhere in between, you’ll discover new cannabis vendors, try some infused treats and drinks, and enjoy live music and some fun giveaways. And most importantly, light St. Louis up with a little puff, puff, pass.

These 21-and-older 4/20 events are guaranteed to leave you on a high note. Want to check out all of them, but eager to be responsible on the St. Louis streets? There’s a shuttle for that! Read on for details.

Green Light District Festival

The Green Light District Festival on Cherokee kicks off Friday, April 19, at the Cola Private Lounge (2834 Cherokee Street) with a night of laughs. From 8 to 10 p.m. the Best Medicine: Comedy, Dinner and Cannabis event will have a rotating lineup of hilarious comedians, with food from Rooted Buds to keep the munchies at bay. Doors open and dinner starts at 7 p.m. Then, on Saturday, April 20, from noon to 11 p.m., enjoy a day of markets, live concerts, DJ sets, skate demos and

vendors, as well as a scavenger hunt and classes in dance, painting and yoga. The highlight of the day, of course, will be the 4:20 Street Crawl Parade. Then, on Sunday, April 21, cool down from the weekend’s festivities with a yoga class and chef competition. General admission tickets cost $20 and include access to Saturday’s festival, market and live music; entry to the Cola Lounge all weekend; special discounts at participating Cherokee Street businesses; and participation in the 4:20 Street Crawl Parade. Separate tickets are required for the comedy show and dinner; dance, painting and yoga classes; yoga and sound therapy; and the chef competition. To purchase tickets visit gldstl.com.

Taste of Canna

Celebrate 4/20 at Taste of Canna from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the House of Soul (1204 Washington Avenue). The event, hosted by JMR Solutionz, Greengirl STL and STL Spacetreats, will (obviously) be focused on all things cannabis, with a variety of products from tasty edibles to soothing topicals on hand. Learn more about weed from the experts and connect with some like-minded individuals. Tickets start at just $5 and can be purchased at ticketleap.events/tickets/ jmrsolutionzllc/TasteOfCanna24.

The Loop 420 Street Fest

The second annual Loop 420 Street Fest is sponsored by Sunshine Daydream (of course) and the Emporium (naturally) on Saturday, April 20, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. This year there will be glass-blowing demos with artists Laceface, Niko Cray, JFELL, Cowboy, ChunkGlass, Gladstone Glass, Addison Hanna, Hilljack Glass, MTN Life and Nik Den Glass, as well as live painting by Peat

“Eyez” Wollaeger and infusion cooking demos by Chef Snoop of Rooted Buds. Catch music by Jake’s Leg in the Tivoli parking lot from noon to 3 p.m. followed by Aaron Kamm and the One Drops from 4 to 7 p.m. Make sure to shop all the cannabis-focused vendors set up in the Loop and check out Enigma Tattoos’ 420 flash tattoos and tattoo contest. As an additional bonus to all the 4/20 fun, in honor of National Record Store Day, Vintage Vinyl will have live music all day at a stage on Leland Avenue. For more details, see visittheloop.com/420fest.

4:20 STL Festival

Stop by STL Home Growers (918 La Beaume Avenue) for its 4:20 STL Festival from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. to explore the wares of more than 30 cannabis vendors, as well as some games, live performance and the chance to network with other industry professionals. There will also be free drinks, snacks and swag bags for the first 100 people. Tickets are $15 online or $25 at the door. Purchase tickets at eventbrite.com/e/420-stl-festival-tickets-855602117967.

STL Smoker’s Shuttle 420 Edition

Want to get high and not worry about driving? The STL Smoker’s Shuttle has you covered. For $20 the shuttle will transport you to all of the above — the Loop 420 Street Fest, the Green Light District Festival, the 4:20 STL Festival and A Taste of Canna — from 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets include transportation on the smoke-friendly shuttle, trippy treats for the ride, discounted entry to shuttle events and a real 420 vibe with music, giveaways and more. Tickets and details at eventbrite.com/e/ stl-smokers-shuttle-420-edition-tickets-849225545467.

[HOLIDAZE]

The Loop 420 Street Fest will take over the Delmar Loop this week with a block party vibe and plenty of weed to go around. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

MUSIC

The Next Big Thing

A St. Louis band recorded its debut at Abbey Road, only to see it shelved for decades. Now it’s finally getting the release it deserves

BY STEVE LEFTRIDGE

Quick: What musical act was the American equivalent of the Beatles? The Byrds? Dylan? The Beach Boys? The Aerovons? Wait, you’ve never heard of the Aerovons? Well, you can be forgiven, since the Aerovon’s prodigious 1969 debut album was lost for decades. But if there was one band that was poised to be the American Beatles and the Next Big Thing, it was the Aerovons. After all, the band recorded the album at the fabled Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles themselves recorded nearly their entire catalog, and the Aerovons had it all — the talent, the songs, the look — in the right place and the right time. And they were one of ours: The Aerovons were from right here in St. Louis.

The unlikely story of the Aerovons begins with Tom Hartman, who started the Aerovons in 1965 when he was just a 13-year-old student at Bayless High School, not long after first hearing the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on KXOK radio. Hartman remembers rushing to Sears in Crestwood Plaza and buying the last copy of the record. “I had never heard a record like that with that much guitar in it,” Hartman tells me over the phone from his home in Florida. “John’s rhythm part is just chugging along from beat one. I was blown away.”

The young Hartman soon acquired his first guitar and became a Beatles obsessive: “I spent most of my time in my room learning all of this stuff,” he remembers. His first break into the music business was a brief stint in a local band called the Dartels, which later became the Aardvarks. However, the Dartels fired Hartman after a few weeks. Thankfully, Hartman’s mother, Maurine, who plays a key role in the Aerovons’ story, encouraged her son to start his own band, one he could never be kicked out of. The Aerovons were born.

With three buddies from Bayless, the Aerovons became a busy cover band in St. Louis, playing raucous versions of hits from the Beatles, the Who and the Turtles all over town with Maurine serving as the band’s manager, landing the upstart group high-profile shows. “She

was winging it combined with studying on the job,” Hartman says of his mother’s alacrity for the music biz. “Mainly, my mom was somebody that if you said, ‘You can’t do that,’ she’d say, ‘Get me the phone number.’ She was just very persuasive and strong-willed and just got things done.”

Hartman rattles off the names of St. Louis clubs the Aerovons played (Castaways, Bat Cave, Rainy Daze), even playing “Teen Night” at Busch Stadium, until his mom prompted him to take the next step and write some original material. Hartman had picked up piano from his older sister and sat down to write his first song. “In very short order I came up with ‘World of You,’” he says. “It was just kind

of meant to be. I just hit those chords and started singing.” A wistful Lennonesque ballad about falling in love for the first time, the song would unlock many of young Hartman’s dreams.

His mom arranged to have Hartman and his bandmates record “World of You” at the old Premier Recording Studio in St. Louis, where the song caught the ear of a visiting Capitol Records employee. He offered the Aerovons a meeting with Capitol out in California, where Maurine struck again. “She told the guy that her son really had his heart set on going to London to record where the Beatles do,” Hartman remembers.

Incredibly, Maurine was indeed able to get an appointment with EMI, Capitol’s

During that 1967 trip to London, another of the 17-year-old musician’s dreams came true when he gained access to the exclusive Speakeasy club, where he met Paul McCartney himself.

parent company, in London, and after raising some funds from family friends, the four Aerovons, along with Maurine, flew across the pond. There, they met with Roy Featherstone, A&R man for Queen, at EMI’s offices in Manchester Square, where the Aerovons recreated the famous Beatles photo looking over the railing of the building’s stairwell. Featherstone listened to “World of You” and agreed to work with the Aerovons.

Time for another Maurine maneuver. In addition to meeting with EMI, she arranged a meeting with Decca Records in London, attempting to initiate a bidding war for the Aerovons, and while Decca made no official offer, Maurine bluffed EMI into one. “She told EMI that Decca offered us $3,000 as an advance,” Hartman says with a laugh. “And EMI matched Decca’s nonexistent offer.”

During that trip to London, another of the 17-year-old Hartman’s dreams came true when he gained access to the exclusive Speakeasy club, where he

The Aerovons with Maurine Hartman, a force to be reckoned with, in London’s Trafalgar Square. Tom Hartman is second from right. | COURTESY TOM HARTMAN

At Abbey Road, the Aerovons’ gear was stored next to the Beatles’, much to the band’s delight. | COURTESY PHOTO

met Paul McCartney himself. “He was so nice and pleasant and funny,” Hartman remembers. Two days later, during a tour of EMI/Abbey Road Studios, the Aerovons hung out with George Harrison. In a photo snapped by Maurine, the four mop-topped Aerovons in their colorful swinging London threads are nearly indistinguishable from the Beatle they idolized.

Told to go home and write more material, the Aerovons returned to St. Louis and recorded a pile of new demos in the winter of 1968. The following March, the Aerovons, with a retooled lineup, returned to London to record what would be their debut album. More mind-boggling brushes with greatness followed: Hartman met Hendrix and Pink Floyd, jammed with the Hollies, borrowed a guitar cable from John Lennon, chatted about guitar tech with George Martin and watched all four Beatles record takes of “Yer Blues.”

The album the Aerovons made in London is an exquisite 12-song slice of ’60s orchestral pop across a variety of Beatlesque styles, produced by the Beatles’ own team of engineers, including Geoff Emerick and Alan Parsons. Sadly, after the Aerovons’ lineup started to fall apart — one member was booted from the band during recording; another left shortly after returning to St. Louis — and after the “World of You” single stalled, EMI shelved the album indefinitely.

Back home, Hartman flirted with a solo career in California, releasing a single with Bell Records in 1971 before ultimately opting for college, which led to a successful career scoring documen-

taries and commercials. Still, the legend of the Aerovons refused to die. After years of the 1969 album being bootlegged in England, the album was finally acquired and released by RPM Records in 2003 under the title Resurrection. “My first thought was, ‘Oh no, now everyone is going to hear it,” Hartman jokes. But suddenly Tom Hartman’s curious story and his long-lost album were in high demand among Beatlemaniacs everywhere.

In 2021, Hartman released a new solo project, collaborating with a new set of musicians billed as the Aerovons. He describes A Little More as a more mature, accessible set of songs than he came up with as a teenager in London. Indeed, A Little More is a brilliant McCartney-esque power-pop album filled with indelible hooks and ravishing instrumentation.

Now, nearly 55 years after its recording, Resurrection is finally being released on vinyl with a new remaster and a classic flipback sleeve. The album will be available exclusively at St. Louis’ Euclid Records for three months starting on Record Store Day, April 20, and then will be distributed to independent record stores throughout the U.S.

And while Hartman has not played a show as the Aerovons in a half-century, he does not rule out the possibility of staging a concert to play the old songs live if given the right opportunity. “That would be a lot of fun,” Hartman says. “But I’m not sure how realistic it is.”

Where else but St. Louis for such a landmark event? Perhaps it’s time to bring the Aerovons home for a celebration that is long overdue. n

Maurine Hartman snapped this photo of the Aerovons with George Harrison. COURTESY TOM HARTMAN

OUT & ABOUT

This week brings multiple varieties of hardcore punk to St. Louis, with Better Lovers set to offer Off Broadway on Friday the mathy metalcore you’d expect from a group whose ranks include former members of Every Time I Die and the Dillinger Escape Plan; Modern Life Is War bringing its driving, anthemic hardcore and heart-on-sleeve lyricism to Off Broadway on Saturday; and Chicago upstarts Stress Positions serving up some relentlessly fast and chaotic powerviolence-adjacent fury at a DIY show at Rootwad Park on Monday. Elsewhere, Doyle of the Misfits brings some spooky Halloween music to Red Flag, indie-rock darlings the Mountain Goats come armed to their tin-can-crunching teeth with smartly crafted jams and unparalleled lyricism, and Dave Grohl’s ex (and St. Louis native!) Louise Post of Veruca Salt fame makes a much-welcomed return to the city that raised her. All that and a pirate-themed metal band (that would be Alestorm) in this week’s top concert picks!

Word to the Wise

THURSDAY 18

AARON LEE TASJAN: w/ Molly Martin. 8 p.m., $20. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

DOYLE: w/ Otep, Red Devil Vortex. 6:30 p.m. Red Flag, 3040 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

RITUAL FOG: w/ Maladjust, County Ditch, Bleed Black 7 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

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

FRIDAY 19

ALESTORM: w/ Elvenking, Glyph. 7 p.m. Red Flag, 3040 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

BETTER LOVERS: w/ SeeYouSpaceCowboy, Foreign Hands, Greyhaven. 7 p.m., $30. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

THE JAYHAWKS: 8 p.m., $40-$50. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

MAGGIE ROSE: w/ Jackson Stokes, Mattie Schell. 8 p.m., $20. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

SATURDAY 20

BOYWITHUKE: w/ Hey, Nothing. 8 p.m., $29.50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

MODERN LIFE IS WAR: w/ Blight Future, the Gorge 8 p.m., $18. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS: w/ Katy Kirby. 8 p.m., $49.50. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

SUNDAY 21

—Daniel Hill

YOUR NEIGHBORS: w/ Dreamfone. 8 p.m., $17. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

MONDAY 22

STRESS POSITIONS: w/ the Mall, Miracle Whip. Q 8:30 p.m., $10. Rootwad Park, 1 O’Fallon St., St. Louis.

TUESDAY 23

DES ROCS: w/ Jigsaw Youth. 8 p.m., $25. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

SLOTHRUST: w/ Weakened Friends. 8 p.m., $20. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

WEDNESDAY 24

BRIT TAYLOR: 8 p.m., $15. The Golden Record, 2720 Cherokee St., St. Louis.

GRAHAM PARKER: 7:30 p.m., $35-$45. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

LOUISE POST (VERUCA SALT): w/ Slazinik 8 p.m., $20. Red Flag, 3040 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

SUM 41: w/ the Interrupters, Joey Vallance & Brae. 7 p.m., $59.50-$69.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

THE TOASTERS: w/ Skamasala, the Hot Rails, DJ Brick City. 8 p.m., $17. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. n

Modern Life Is War. | BRIAN SANTOSTEFANO

Priced Out

BY DAN SAVAGE

My boyfriend wants my permission to see sex workers. He did this quite a bit before we were together. He goes to Canada, where it’s legal and supposedly safer. He says he’s just trying to be open and honest about his desire for variety and that I should be glad he doesn’t want to cheat. To me, that sounds like a thinly veiled threat to cheat with or without my permission. He says it’s not like that. Ideally, he — a 53-year-old man — would prefer a sexually open relationship, while I — a 46-year-old woman — would prefer more of a monogamish situation.

We were friends for twenty years before we started dating, we have great sex (though not as much as I would like), get along great otherwise, and have a wonderful time together. This is definitely our biggest issue. Am I being closed minded, and prude to deny him the variety he desires? I consider myself pretty open minded, but I am extremely triggered by this. I’m not completely closed to adventures. I’m open to threesomes, sex parties, etc., but those are scenarios where we are doing something together. I’ve been in non-monogamous relationships in the past — consensual ones — but I don’t have the energy for that at this point in my life.

Safety concerns aside, I have moral hang-ups around sex work. All I can think is, “What self-respecting woman would put up with this?” The other thing is that he has a long history of dating much younger women, sometimes as much as twenty years younger. I may be the first “age-appropriate” girlfriend he’s ever had. While I know I am still very attractive and sexy and I get hit on all the time, the reality is that I will never be young and firm again. The ones he hires are both of those things. What do you think, Dan? Are we doomed? Can we both find fulfillment in this relationship? Or should we let each other go?

Verklempt In Vermont

A particular phrase came to mind as I read your letter, VIV, but not one that will come as a comfort: irreconcilable differences. You can’t reconcile yourself to your boyfriend seeing sex workers; your boyfriend can’t reconcile himself to monogamy and/or the kind of non-monogamy you might be willing to explore… if you were interested in exploring non-monogamy… which it doesn’t sound like you are. While sex parties, swinging, threesomes, and other forms of non-monogamy where the couple plays together appeals to you in theory, VIV, it doesn’t seem to hold much appeal in practice. And if you told your boyfriend what you told me — you don’t have the energy for non-monogamy anymore — he may fear the promised sex parties and threesomes may never materialize. So, for variety’s sake, he’d rather get your permission to make something happen for himself (seeing sex workers on business trips) than wait on things that might never happen (attending sex parties with you). It’s also possible your boyfriend prefers sex one-on-one — with you

and other partners — over the kind of group play you might be willing to indulge him in.

Which means you two are at an impasse. Your boyfriend needs a particular thing to be happy — a permission slip from his partner to see sex workers — and you need the opposite thing: not just a promise from your partner to refrain from seeing sex workers, but ideally a partner with no interest in having sex outside the relationship at all.

And he’s not that guy.

If I may paraphrase Maya Angelou: when someone starts dropping unambiguous hints about who they are, take the hint the first time. While your boyfriend didn’t explicitly say he’s incapable of honoring a monogamous commitment, he made it pretty clear that he’d rather not make one. I think the tell here, VIV, is that he said seeing sex workers with your permission was a better choice than cheating while failing to include not seeing sex workers on his short list of possible options.

So, is this relationship doomed?

It sounds like you crazy kids have a lot going for you: a long history, good sex (if not enough), and a lot of affection. But one of you is gonna have to give in — one of you is going to have pay the price of admission — to make this relationship work. And if your boyfriend agrees not to see sex workers in exchange for a promise from you to have some threesomes someday, you’re going to feel pressured to do things you may not wanna do, VIV, and verifying he’s not cheating on you is gonna be tricky. You’ll either have to take him at his word or never let him out of your sight. And the fact that you already feel like he’s making veiled threats to cheat is a bad sign — unless you’re willing to set your fears aside and/or suspend your disbelief and/or embrace tolyamory.

P.S. Alexander Cheves — author, writer, memoirist, and sex worker — walked into the café in Berlin where I was working on my response to your question, VIV. Since Cheves writes a sex-advice column himself, I asked him to take a look at your question and share his thoughts.

“First, not all sex workers are women,” Cheves said, “and sex work isn’t just supposedly safer where sex work is legal, it is safer. And I guess I’d say to VIV that the fact her boyfriend is being transparent makes him a good potential partner. He’s laid out his ‘price of admission,’ as you call it, Dan, and now VIV has to decide if that’s a price she can pay. In general, I think people have too many dealbreakers, but not wanting the same kind of relationship — not wanting monogamy or not wanting the same versions of non-monogamy — is often a sign that, yes, a relationship is doomed.”

I’m a slightly bisexual but mostly gay man. Recently, thanks to diabetic medication, I lost a significant amount of weight (without meaning to) and I find myself unexpectedly interested in dating, companionship, and SEX for the first time in years! I haven’t been in a relationship in twenty years and haven’t had sex in at least fifteen years. With testos-

SAVAGE LOVE

terone replacement therapy and improved sexual function in addition to my improved general health, I am ready to reconnect sexuality. But I haven’t pursued dating since before the turn of the century! Technology has changed, dating has changed, and my physical abilities have changed so much that I am unsure of how to proceed. I’m even a little nervous and scared. Hiring an escort service — bespoke sex for compensation — sounds like a good option. I am also open to encounters that include physical affection without sex. I am so overwhelmed by new choices and lack of knowledge about choices, I feel frozen. Any advice on how to defrost would be greatly appreciated.

Back On Top

“BOT has already answered his own question,” said Cheves. “He has an idea that an escort would be helpful — and I think one would be helpful — and he’s talking about taking baby steps as he eases back into sex and intimacy. And taking those small, manageable baby steps with someone you trust rather than diving in headlong is a good idea — he’s already giving himself the kind advice I would give him if he’d written to me.”

So, take some good and accurate pictures, create a profile, and thank your lucky stars that you’re getting back out there at a moment when everyone seems to want a hot daddy. And in addition to booking some time with an escort or two, look into hiring a gay life coach. Just as are there are guys out there who make a living taking dick, there are guys out there who make a living helping other gay men learn how to navigate gay life, hookup apps, etc.

“Learning how to communicate online, learning how to make emotional connections, and learning how to tell sex and romance apart — some lessons he needs to learn, and some he may have forgotten and needs to relearn. Also, he should bear in mind that, even though he’s older, there’s gonna be knowledge and experience gaps between him and his partners, even if they’re younger than he is. He’s going to have to learn a new language — communicating on the apps — and he’s going to make mistakes. He’s also going to have a few unrequited crushes and he might get his heart broken. And while those experiences are painful, they’re essential to the process.”

You can follow Alexander Cheves on Twitter @BadAlexCheves or read his book My Love Is a Beast: Confessions.

I’ve been married for two years, and my wife just found out that I subscribed to a few OnlyFans accounts. She considers this cheating, which really surprised me. We have talked openly about how we both watch porn, but the fact that I’ve paid to see specific people crosses the line — and me not telling her about paying for porn is confirmation I knew it was wrong. I thought that her finding out might be mildly embarrassing, but I didn’t think it would be a relationship-ender. But she says she doesn’t know if she can get through this and trust me ever again or want

to fuck me ever again. When I look on Reddit about this issue, it seems like everyone thinks that paying for OnlyFans is cheating. I never messaged anyone, I just paid for porn — which my wife knows, since she’s been in my account. Is there something that I don’t understand? And it’s not like I have an addiction to paying for porn: it was just a few accounts. I don’t understand why she doesn’t trust me when I said I’ll stop now that I know she doesn’t like it. To her it’s the same as if I slept with another woman and said, “Now that you caught me, I won’t sleep with other women.” I just really struggle to see it as the same. How can I build the trust back with her and make her not view me as a disgusting pervert who violated her boundaries?

Paying For Porn

So, your wife was fine with porn — your porn consumption, her porn consumption — so long as you were jacking off to amateurs who shared their stuff for fun or professionals who had their stuff stolen. But getting out your credit card a couple of times and compensating porn performers for their labor? Unbeknownst to you, PFP, your wife considered that as cheating and, unbeknownst to you, your wife is one of those people whose definition of cheating is elastic enough to encompass things that aren’t actually cheating and, unbeknownst to you (the unbeknownst trifecta), cheating — even the not-actually-cheating kind of cheating — isn’t something your wife can forgive or get past.

If you had known your wife regarded subscribing to OnlyFans as cheating, PFP, you wouldn’t have gotten out your credit card that first time. But you didn’t know because your wife didn’t tell you — she really should’ve beknownst that shit to you before the wedding — and since I don’t have a time machine and can’t take you back three years, PFP, and get you into couples counseling before the wedding, I don’t think I can help. And even if I had a time machine, I’m not sure it would help. Because there’s a good chance the problem isn’t your OnlyFans subscriptions, PFP, but your wife’s buyer’s remorse. If she was unhappy in this marriage and looking for a reason to end it, she may have seized on your OnlyFans accounts as an excuse. If that’s the case, time machines and couples counseling won’t help.

P.S. Before the Internet came along and “disrupted” the porn industry, everyone — or their older brothers and cool uncles — paid for porn. Playboy and Penthouse and Mandate and Drummer didn’t fall from trees; adult movies weren’t screened for free at public libraries; dirty books didn’t magically appear on nightstands. While there are problems with sites like OnlyFans and JustForFans, they made it possible for actual porn performers to make a living and for amateurs with nice feet to make a little extra money.

Got problems? Yes, you do. Send your question to mailbox@savage.love! Podcasts, columns and more at Savage.Love

LET’S PLAY CATCH UP IT’S BEEN SO LONG AGO, whose serve?

What friends and colleagues need now is time to gather. To sit back, enjoy handcrafted cocktails, shareable plates and friendly competition. Book your group and have an overall, much awaited, good time! It’s time to gather and find out! Book your group and have an overall, much awaited, good time!

FACE OFF AGAINST YOUR FRIENDS AND ROCK OUT TO SOME LIVE MUSIC, EVERY WEEKEND. w e s t p o r t s o cia l - s tl.co

Enjoy handcrafted cocktails, small plates and friendly competition.