Riverfront Times, October 19, 2022

FRONT BURNER

FIVE QUESTIONS for Katie Woo of e Athletic

Previously On LAST WEEK IN ST. LOUIS

MONDAY, OCTOBER 10 An urban legend actually came true when a St. Charles mom found marijuana gummy worms in her kid’s Halloween candy. We wonder: who gives out Halloween candy before mid-October?

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11St. Louis Police killed another one. They said he shot first, and who wouldn’t take the city’s finest at their word? The department continues to do its best to keep this humble burg No. 1 in officer-involved shootings (or, as we native English speakers term it, cops shooting civilians).

ry Foster also ridiculed an underling who pushed back on his dastardly scheme by suggesting he should go to CrossFit “like a real man.” Dude, this is Missouri. Real men play cornhole. And: Yuengling is coming to Missouri. Just what this state was missing: boring beer brewed by Trumpers.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14 O glorious fall! Was there ever a more perfect day in St. Louis? RIP, Bruce Sutter. You had a beautiful beard and a beautiful split-finger fastball, and you picked a beautiful day to leave this earth.

For The Athletic’s Cardinals reporter, Katie Woo, this is the job she has dreamed of since she was a kid. RFT sat down with Woo, a Bay Area native, just five days after the Cardinals were eliminated from the 2022 playoffs to get a look at her life in the off-season.

The season’s over, so what do you do now?

Well, I catch up on a lot of sleep first. It’s shifting from a routine where I would wake up at 9 in the morning, go to bed at 3 in the morning every day and travel to a different city every week. Now I can get a little bit of a normal lifestyle. But it is a little strange when it’s 2 o’clock, and my body feels like it’s time to go to Busch Stadium. What did the locker room look like after the loss?

I remember talking to Nolan Arenado about how he felt like he didn’t live up to expectations, and he was so clearly disappointed about it; his voice was breaking. Or Yadier Molina getting choked up talking about how much he’s gonna miss the fans. There was Albert [Pujols], who was just thanking everybody. As [Pujols] was walking out of the clubhouse, to no one in particular, he’s leaving for the final time, he just said, “Thank you.” Nobody was around him. And I was like, “That was really cool.”

How do you balance your day-to-day life?

I don’t, but I kind of like it that way. You just wake up, and you hope that you can knock off as much as you can. So, for example, I can be having coffee with you right now, and the Cardinals could make a trade, and I would have to stop everything we’re doing, and I’d have to go write.

You could be with your friends, relaxed, trying to decompress and …

I was at a bachelorette party when I got a text that Albert Pujols was coming back to St. Louis. And I was like –– this is my worst nightmare [laughs].

Was the goal always to be a beat reporter?

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12 St. Louis awoke to an unusual sound: the pitter patter of raindrops. Total precipitation: about 1/20th of an inch. Also, senatorial candidate Eric Schmitt deleted a tweet giving props to Kanye “Protocols of Zion” West. Where was the AG’s support when Kanye was coming after Pete Davidson? It’s like Schmitt only has Ye’s back when he’s shit-talking Jews or something ….

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13 The Post-Dis patch reports that a small-town Missouri police chief ran a ticket quota scheme that targeted “soccer moms” with nice cars because they’d be more likely to pay the fines. A Missouri municipality going af ter soccer moms instead of people of color … does this represent progress? Chief Ter

ESCAPE HATCH

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15 The Mississippi River has dried up so dramatically, people are walking across the riverbed to Tower Rock, near Chester, Illinois. Who knew climate change could be so fun? And, Vladimir Tarasenko scored twice as the Blues opened their season with a 5-2 victory. Stanley Cup, here we come!

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 16 Now Donald Trump is cueing up anti-Semitic rhetoric, suggesting “American Jews” get their acts together and honor his greatness. That whole quasi-endorsement of Eric Schmitt is starting to make a lot more sense. Also, more sunshine. Where’s the rain? Finally: Happy Boss’ Day! Don’t know about you, but we send our greetings to Gregory F.X. Daly, St. Louis’ charming iteration of the late, great Boss Tweed.

We ask three St. Louisans what they’re reading, watching or listening to. In the hot seat: three well-known writers.

RAY HARTMANN, media mogul

Watching: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. “It fills the role in 30 minutes that 60 Minutes used to provide.”

GERALD EARLY, professor

Listening to: The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd, Orig inal Cast Recording. “When I listen to it, I feel good about being alive, and that’s something that in these troubled times you need.”

KATHY GILSINAN, author

Reading: American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta. “He’s a phenom enally good writer and pays a lot of attention to the Midwest, which I like.”

—Benjamin Simon

I always wanted to be a beat writer, and I did not care for what team, for what city. I was lucky enough to get the Cardinals, a team with such a story. But ... I just wanted to be a beat writer, and I would have moved anywhere. Was it easy to move from my comfy Bay Area home near all my friends and family? Of course not. Was it worth it? Without a doubt.

Listening to: Rap Sh!t “Seduce and Scheme” by Shawna & Mia, Raedio. “It makes me feel like a bad bitch.”

Katie Woo writes about the Cardinals for e Athletic. | CRAIG WILSON/CARDINALS

“He’s like the most dangerous person on this planet!”

DUMPSTER

SO ST. LOUIS

e Case of the Missing Windows

An anonymous story about something that could only happen in the Gateway City.

My car windows got broken out … twice.

“I’m very sorry,” my fel low said as he woke me up, “but your car …”

Outside, I found my passengerside window in pieces across the car’s interior, which was otherwise empty. There was nothing to steal, so nothing was gone. His car — un touched. (His ex with a golf club?)

$300, gone. Well, $600.

Months earlier, I’d headed out for a shift as a manager at a women’s clothing store known for selling suiting to business ladies to find the same damn window smashed. Again, nothing was missing, though

papers from the glove box and CDs had been flung throughout.

It started to rain. No way could I drive from the city to Chesterfield with glass jangling throughout the car. I called off (and was later rep rimanded by the store manager, and I quit not too long after).

There was a tornado warning, and my roommate and I huddled in the hallway. I can’t remember if I covered the window. (But I must have?)

Fixing the window cost less than my deductible, so I didn’t report it. (Regretted that.)

Could this have happened any where? I was young; I was broke; I was stupid; I cried both times. Share your So St. Louis story to jrogen@euclidmediagroup.com.

[PULL QUOTE OF

Forget the Flaws, Say Yes to Legal Weed

We can’t blow our one chance to end failed pot prohibition in Missouri

BY RAY HARTMANN

If they had asked me to draft Amendment 3 to legalize mari juana in Missouri, it would have read as follows:

“All persons 21 years of age or over shall have the right to possess, cultivate, obtain, pur chase or sell marijuana, subject to taxation by the state. All stat utes interfering with those rights by the state, or its political subdi visions, are hereby repealed. The legislature is authorized to regu late and tax marijuana sales. All previous criminal convictions in Missouri for possession of mari juana are hereby expunged.”

Regular readers of this column can understand why I wasn’t en listed to do the writing. But my draft would have had a whole lot better chance of passage than the version of Amendment 3 in front of voters on the November 8 ballot.

To describe that version as flawed understates the situation dramatically. It is a 39-page piece of legislation masquerading as a constitutional amendment — or 450 pages at a politician’s read ing level.

But I’ll be voting for it because rejection would continue prohi bition for marijuana for years to come. That’s a nonstarter: Prohi bition has failed as disastrously for cannabis as it did for alco hol a century ago — and for far longer than the 13 years of that travesty.

The criminalization of mari juana represents an ongoing ca tastrophe for the nation. Police made an estimated 350,150 ar rests for marijuana-related vio

lations in 2020, the most recent year for which those statistics are available, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report.

The good news is that the num ber is dropping precipitously, as the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws reports: “This total is a 36 per cent decrease from 2019 totals when police made an estimated 545,602 marijuana-related ar rests. Not since the early 1990s has the FBI reported so few mar ijuana-related arrests in a single year.”

But the bad news, which can not be overstated, is that those hundreds of thousands of ar rests continue to destroy Ameri cans’ lives in service of a Reefer Madness mentality that persists to this day. Not only does it con tinue to reflect irrationality and injustice — wildly dispropor tionate to people of color and the poor — but it strains every level of the criminal justice system.

Every minute — and penny — expended in pursuit of mari juana as a crime represents a failed opportunity for the sys tem to focus upon more seri ous offenses. Especially violent ones. It begins with policing but impacts the courts, prosecutors and public defenders, probation o cers, and everyone else in an underfunded and overburdened justice-system food chain.

Failure to pass Amendment 3 in Missouri would perpetuate a status quo of irrationality, injus tice and misplaced resources. It shouldn’t even require a second thought and should be enacted with an overwhelming margin of voters, not unlike the 65.6 percent who approved medical marijuana in 2018.

But here’s where the story gets painful. The heroes of that vic tory have produced a sequel for adult-use marijuana that, like many movies, doesn’t quite live up to the original.

As the RFT’s Monica Obradovic reported, many people who in stinctively might have supported Amendment 3 have been put off by language that “only helps Mis souri’s Big Cannabis businesses maintain their grip on the indus try.” The new initiative allows the same lucky few who were granted licenses for medical can nabis to expand their monopoly

HARTMANN

— and relegates the minorities and entrepreneurs who got the shaft last time around to secondtier, “microbusiness” status.

RFT was not alone in that cri tique. Former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Wolff, an advocate for legalized pot, expressed similar concerns in a Post-Dispatch op-ed about Amendment 3 “putting a favored few in the driver’s seat” with its provisions for how licenses would be issued.

Beyond the concerns publi cized by Obradovic and Wolff, I think it’s an unfortunate reality that the activists pushing this initiative again chose to address the details of implementation in the state constitution.

I hate to second-guess the peo ple doing all the hard work from the comfort of my peanut gal lery, especially when Legal Mis souri 2022’s leaders pulled off a medical-marijuana landslide four years ago. And it’s fair to say that Amendment 2 in 2018 could have easily been criticized on the same count of having too much detail for a constitutional amendment.

But that was then, and this is now. Medical marijuana was an easier sell based upon the obvi ous need to address the suffer ing of the large number of Mis sourians who needed its benefits to address glaucoma, the side effects of chemotherapy, anxiety and so much more.

Medical marijuana has indeed been a godsend for hundreds of thousands of patients and their families. But it has faced one large hurdle: how to distribute and manage licenses. And it’s hard to argue with those who note that the process has been plagued by big-money politics and racial discrimination.

That alone should have been good reason for the organizers of Amendment 3 to steer as far as possible from the details of implementation this time. It’s understandable that they want ed to keep legalized cannabis out of the mitts of the political class, which was mostly responsible for allowing the licensing pro cess to get overrun with politics, but doubling down with detailed rules that seem to rig the game for the same group of winners was a big mistake.

The formula that worked in 2018 wasn’t the right template for 2022. Less would have been more for selling the concept of recreational marijuana — or “adult-use marijuana,” as those organizers have smartly sought to rebrand it — and even if the devil were in the details, keep ing a healthy distance from that devil would have been a smarter path.

Remember that the misery of Reefer Madness is not fully be hind us. President Joe Biden re cently surprised the nation by issuing mass pardons for people who committed federal marijua na possession cases — a wonder ful surprise even if few such peo ple were in the federal system at the time of his executive order.

But in today’s divided political environment, even the fact that two-thirds of Americans approved of his move earned him no more than scant support from members of his own party. And he received the obligatory scorn from rightwing media and politicians.

Nationally, Republicans in Con gress have continued to oppose Democratic measures to legalize marijuana at the federal level, even though their constituents don’t care about the issue and lots of them are probably hold ing. It’s reality.

And here’s an even more im portant reality to consider when voting on Amendment 3 to legal ize marijuana in Missouri: If it doesn’t happen now, there’s no chance of another bite at that edible for at least two years or more.

Govenor Mike Parson, an out spoken foe of pot, won’t permit legislative legalization on his watch, which means until 2025. Who knows what’s happening after that?

If you regard passing on the op portunity presented by Amend ment 3 as a long-term strategy to replace it with something better or fairer in Missouri, I respect fully suggest you’re smoking something.

Wouldn’t you like it to be legal? n

Ray Hartmann founded the Riverfront Times in 1977. Contact him at rhartmann1952@ gmail.com or catch him at 7 p.m. on Thurs days on Nine PBS and St. Louis in the Know with Ray Hartmann from 9 to 11 p.m. Mon day through Friday on KTRS (550 AM).

Co-op Grocery Store Facing Challenges

One Year In

MARSH opened hoping to o er people a ordable or even free groceries, but has struggled

Written by BENJAMIN SIMON

When MARSH opened in the summer of 2021, people streamed into the store. Shoppers. News cameras. Even the mayor. The store, says staffer Grace Smith, had a “buzz.”

That’s because MARSH, located at 6917 South Broadway in the Carondelet neighborhood, wasn’t like other grocery stores. Sure, it sold vegetables, baked goods, prepared foods, meat, dairy, herbs and more. But this wasn’t a Schnucks or a CVS.

MARSH is a co-op, where veg etables aren’t bought in bulk from a distributor –– they are grown in one of the business’ three city gar dens. One person doesn’t run the store –– anyone who buys a share has a say in ownership decisions.

Customers don’t pay a strict listed price –– they pay what they can af ford. The goal is to provide a gro cery store that serves the largely disinvested area with organic food at an affordable price.

“ ur model is not for profit,” says staffer Beth Neff. “We’re not pulling any profit for our own capitali a tion, and we’re paying people high wages. By trying to reverse what we believe is sort of an extraction model, we’re also putting ourselves in a precarious position. We’re try ing to break molds that are not gen erative to a community.”

One year later, the experiment has produced mixed results, store owners say. Tra c has slowed. The store gave away nearly

$13,000 worth of food through the pay-what-you-can system, which had to be modified though Neff says this shows the “level of food insecurity” in the community).

A grant from America’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative ran out, forcing the staff to shrink from 11 to 4 workers and the store to shorten its opening hours.

“It takes a lot of time,” Neff says. “It takes time to sort of build a fol lowing. How do you change peo ple’s shopping patterns? You get home from work, you’re hungry, you’re gonna run to Schnucks.”

Neff knew there would be chal lenges. When Neff and her coworkers initially applied for the grant, they didn’t predict breaking even until five years in the future.

“What are we supposed to do between years two and five ” she asks. “So that’s where we are right now. What are the ways that you can build a sustainable business that is not extractive and exploit ative? How do you do that? So now we’re asking deeper philo sophical questions.”

On a weekday morning in Sep tember, MARSH, which stands for Materializing and Activating Radical Social Habitus, is quiet with few customers. Staffers are huddled around the stove, pre paring enchiladas for the week’s pre-made community-supported agriculture meal. The business has struggled, but that has not stopped the staff from keeping the

grocery store alive.

“ s di cult as it is for us to even be sustainable, we’re trying to build something new that hasn’t been re ally done before,” Smith says.

The concept for MARSH got its start when Neff purchased the building on Broadway in 2018. She intended to turn the space into a cooperative diner, but a flood wiped away those plans.

Then, in early 2020, the pandemic hit. With the help of her daughter, Neff created MARSH as an online co-op and a biweekly outdoor mar ket. The organization also handed out nearly 100 bundles of free food to people in the neighborhood ev ery week during quarantine.

While running the online shop, Neff realized the need for a brickand-mortar grocery store in the community. Neff and her team ap plied for the Healthy Food Financ ing Initiative grant, and by the summer of 2021, the store opened.

“We want to encourage access to natural foods,” Neff says, “which has been like an elite thing in the past –– only certain neighborhoods and certain people were able to ac cess high-quality, nutrition-dense [organic] kinds of foods.”

One year in, parts of their de sign have worked well. The CSA, where customers pre-pay for a recurring box of food from the store, has “saved our butts,” Smith says. For the boxes, staff mem bers prepare some items, such as the enchiladas. In the past, boxes

have also included carrot-raisin mu ns, ham pies and egg rolls.

The staff wants to hire a kitchen coordinator, who would help ease the cooking workload for employ ees and allow them to gradually open a diner. They plan to host live music and a climate sympo sium in the future.

Neff and the team also made some adjustments. Most recently, they modified the pay what you want policy. Now people mostly pay within a threshold –– either 20 percent more than the listed price or 20 percent less.

Most notably, the employees want to connect more with their neighbors. When they sent out a recent survey to the surround ing community, only 10 percent of residents said they knew of MARSH –– and that is a problem.

“I think that we have significant amounts of work to do to become a fi ture of this neighborhood. ... There are lots and lots of other people that would be interested in knowing about this that just don’t know about it,” Neff says. “Our problem-solving needs to happen in a really grassroots sort of way.”

Despite the ups and downs, the team says MARSH isn’t going any where.

“It definitely takes a commit ment, and I think that’s, in some ways, what we’re asking for. What does it look like then to commit to change?” Neff asks. “And that’s go ing to take a lot of time.” n

From le : Ranata Frank, Beth Ne , Chrissy Kirchhoefer and Grace Smith stand inside of MARSH, a co-op grocery store. | BENJAMIN SIMON

Concerns Over Euthanizing Dogs

Written by RYAN KRULL

Testimony under oath by a former em ployee at St. Louis Animal Care and Control is raising concerns about the agency’s manner of euthanizing dogs.

In a deposition, a former veterinary technician at the agency’s Olivette facility stated that she heard complaints about and witnessed a veterinarian “slamming” dogs down on their sides when they were not fully sedated — a way to gain compli ance so the fatal drug could be adminis tered to end their lives.

The deposition is related to the ongoing lawsuit stemming from a dog that was allegedly wrongfully euthanized — Erin Bulfin’s dog, Daisy.

Abortion Funds Cut Back As Cost of Abortion Rises

e funds are reducing benefits to pay increasing travel expenses due to state abortion bans

Written by MONICA OBRADOVIC

This reporting was supported by the In ternational Women’s Media Foundation’s Reproductive Rights Reporting Fund.

It’s been a busy few months for abortion funds.

In the months since the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade, abortion funds have juggled a larger patient load in tandem with higher travel costs.

The New York Times reports that abortion funds across the country are spending sometimes hundreds of dollars more per patient this year compared to 2021.

Alison Dreith, director of strategic part nerships for the Midwest Access Coali tion, told the Times that a typical patient’s expenses once cost around $1,000.

Now, the cost per patient has risen to

In December 2019, Daisy nipped at Bulfin’s daughter. According to her lawsuit, Bulfin called county animal control and was told that Daisy needed to be quarantined for 10 days in an animalcontrol facility, at a veterinarian’s office or in a boarding facility.

Wanting to follow the proper protocol, Bulfin’s husband took Daisy to the St. Louis County Animal Care and Control facility in Olivette.

However, Bulfin soon found out the dog could be quarantined at home, so she returned to the animal shelter the next day to retrieve Daisy. But Daisy had been euthanized less than two hours after being dropped off.

Bulfin’s attorney Mark Pedroli has previously described the Olivette facility as “ghoulish” and a “house of horrors.” Testimony in the ongoing litigation seems to buttress those allegations.

A former veterinary technician de posed for the case testified that ideally when euthanizing a dog, the staff at Animal Care and Control first gave the animal an intramuscular injection of a sedative.

Then, when the animal was sedated, a veterinarian administered Euthasol via an intracardiac injection, what is also called a “heart stick.”

However, according to the former vet tech’s deposition, the county has seen multiple instances of a dog not being sedated adequately prior to being given the heart stick.

The technician said that the Bulfins’ dog, Daisy, was not euthanized in this manner. However, she did say that even though she was “rarely” attendant to euthanasia, she did see at least one in-

stance of an inadequately sedated dog given a heart stick and heard complaints of it happening on multiple occasions.

“Have you ever seen a dog forced down, slamming it down on its side, when it was not sedate enough so that they could administer the heart stick?” asked Pedroli, who conducted the deposition.

“Yes,” affirmed the technician. She went on to say that she saw a veterinarian at the facility force the soon-to-beeuthanized dogs down.

“And I’m sure that’s a gruesome thing, isn’t it?” Pedroli asked.

“Yes,” the technician replied.

Pedroli tells RFT that he believes “the behavior described in the deposition warrants an immediate investigation by the St. Louis County Council and even the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney.”

He adds that the lawsuit filed by Bulfin has continually uncovered “seriously questionable behavior” at Animal Care and Control as well as “a complete failure to supervise and discipline government employees.”

Christopher Ave, director of communications at the St. Louis County Department of Public Health, said that his office could not comment on issues related to pending litigation. n

fund’s average patient cost has actually decreased in recent years.

From 2021 to 2022, the average Midwest Access patient cost dropped from $346 to $338.

Dreith attributes the decrease to a change in Midwest Access’ services. Prior to 2022, the abortion fund paid for a support person to travel with an abortion seeker.

But Midwest Access stopped funding most patients’ support people in January as demand started ticking upward, Dreith says. A new law in Texas banned most abortions, so more patients sought abortion care in the Midwest.

nearly twice that much. Midwest Access’ wraparound service cost is “easily becom ing $2,000 per client or more,” Dreith said.

The abortion fund’s caseload has also jumped “astronomically” in the last few months.

“In 2021, we saw 800 people,” Dreith tells the RFT. “We hit that number in July this year.”

Fourteen states have banned most abortions since the court’s decision in June. Missouri and several Southern states have some of the most restrictive laws, causing abortion seekers to travel

further and stay longer.

The Times article presumes rural Missourians would spend $2,368 to fly to St. Louis and then Chicago to receive care.

Dreith says such a path is “atypical” for rural residents. Most Missourians tend to drive for abortion care, or take a bus or train.

“Typically, people use ground transportation, unless someone is later in pregnancy and needs to go to Colorado or Washington, D.C.,” Dreith says.

Though Midwest Access is spending more on some patients, the abortion

“I think that saved us money,” Dreith says. “While we’re maybe spending more per person in some cases, we’re not paying for an additional person to travel with them.”

Abortion access has been close to nonexistent in Missouri for the past few years, Dreith adds. Many of Midwest Access’ patients now come from Southern states. Most local patients just need help getting to Illinois.

“I had a client from Arkansas traveling to Chicago who cost me $2,500 right around the Supreme Court decision,” Dreith says. “But then we have people who live in St. Louis and need to get to the Hope Clinic, and that’s a $30 Uber. It balances out in the end.” n

St. Louis Animal Care and Control may not be properly sedating dogs before euthanizing, sta er says

e Bulfin family dog Daisy was wrongfully euthanized. | VIA MARK PEDROLI

For many abortion funds, travel costs have increased. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI

Quite the ‘Undertaking’

A recent wrestling match at South Broadway Athletic Club used co ns from a Six Flags contest Words and photos by REUBEN HEMMER

In 2018, Six Flags St. Louis held a “Co n Challenge” i con testants had to remain in a co n for 30 hours in order to win 300, a season pass and the co n they were confined to. The winners included local wres tler ahyman formerly known as Rammstein) and Olivia Crabtree, a then aint ouis niversity un dergrad and sorority member. a hyman offered to buy Crabtree’s co n for 00, and since the cof fin would have been a tough fit for

her sorority house, she happily obliged. The two began a friend ship after their shared co n e perience, and they have kept in contact ever since.

ahyman used the pri e co ns earlier this month for a headlin ing “Co n atch” against the id issouri Wrestling lliance’s heavyweight champion enja min “ r. traordinary” Trust at outh roadway thletic Club. opulari ed by The ndertaker, the wrestler wins the match by completely concealing their op ponent in one of the co ns. ahy man came out the victor until he was ambushed by Trust and other wrestlers), Crabtree was reunit ed with her co n, and the two friends were able to catch up and reflect on their time in a casket.

or decades, wrestling at outh roadway thletic Club has been one of the best cheap thrills you can find in t. ouis. The match es are always entertaining, and inflation hasn’t hit its bar yet, where draft beers are con stantly flowing. n

A CELEBRATION OF THE UNIQUE AND FASCINATING ASPECTS OF OUR HOME[

Stephan Shaw has a 17-0 record, with 13 knockouts, and is close to a chance at the heavyweight title, but he’s made little money and little fame outside boxing.

St. Louis’ Stephan Shaw is one of the best heavyweight boxers in the world. But he has has little money and little fame — still, something keeps him fighting

year ago. The idea is unfathom able, as if LeBron James went one-on-one with a guy in a men’s league.

It’s a weekday evening, and Shaw is in a converted garage in Floris sant, Missouri, that has been trans formed into a boxing facility called St. Louis Boxing Academy. Heavy bags hang from the ceiling, and a makeshift ring sits in the middle of the concrete floor. efore the fight started, a half dozen people of all different ages were hitting heavy bags, but now they crowd around to see what will happen when one of the best fighters in the country takes the ring.

That’s when Hosana Mulambu, the beginner, stumbles toward Shaw, his feet stuttering and chop ping forward. Mulambu is around 6-foot-2 with bulging muscles, and has been training for months. But his flurry of left hand jabs seem more like taps against Shaw’s shoulder. Shaw absorbs them, barely even acknowledges them. Shaw’s wife leans over the rope, videotaping, yelling for him to jab and hit the body, reminding him that he’s the greatest.

For 10 or 20 seconds, Shaw doesn’t throw a punch. His feet are planted. He holds his hands in front of his sleeveless 2Pac tank top, showing off his chiseled foot frame. e’s just waiting, watching, thinking, taking a few punches — then pow. A blinking left jab right in ulambu’s fore

BY BENJAMIN

head. “Oof,” someone says on the sideline. Mulambu’s head bounc es backward. The makeshift ring shakes. The punch is faster than it sounds, and the pssss noise lin gers in the air.

“He’s like the most dangerous person on this planet!” Shaw’s fa ther proclaims from the sideline.

When the round comes to an end, Shaw gives Mulambu, who’s still di y from the single jab, a hug. It seems like a hug reserved for the end of a tortuous fight. Shaw barely broke a sweat and threw just a few uick jabs. ut he seems to be saying thank you. His father offers him water, but Shaw just keeps bouncing up and down, counting down the seconds until the second round begins.

Shaw is the 29th-best heavy weight boxer in the world, the fifth best in the . ., according to BoxRec. He’s 17-0, with 13 knock outs. In his last fight, televised on ESPN, Shaw, or “Big Shot,” as he’s called, knocked down his opponent three times in the first round. e’s just a few fights away from a chance at the heavyweight title and millions of dollars.

But here he is, in a garage in Flo rissant at p.m., fighting against Mulambu, a 31-year-old who has never competed in an amateur contest and started fighting one

When Shaw leaves the ring 30 minutes later, though, he sounds thrilled. e’s happy just to have fought against a warm body.

“Man, I needed these eight rounds,” he says. “I haven’t done that in a minute.”

Shaw pulls aside the boxers in the gym. He remembers each of their names. He looks them in the eye and thanks them for help ing him. “Keep getting better,” he says. “Whenever you need me, I got you.” He takes a photo with all of them in the ring and holds up the number one.

After the photos, he lingers in the ring –– and there, it comes out. It comes pouring out. The frustra tion, the sadness that is always simmering beneath the surface.

His voice, once light and easygo ing, becomes sharp and agitated. or 0 straight minutes, it fills the gym, rising with each word. He grandstands to anyone who will listen, which on this week day evening consists of only a few people –– Mulambu, his dad, the gym owner, a bystander and a reporter.

He steamrolls through topics. How a boxer didn’t follow him back on Instagram. How he’s get ting his championship belt the “old-school way.” How he’s unde feated. ow his ne t confirmed fight isn’t for seven months.

“Why the fuck are they keep

ing me out the ring for seven months?” he asks the onlookers.

“Why is seven months of inactiv ity even a thought after my first round of knockouts? Ain’t no way! Put that motherfucker in the ring for the next three months! You know what I’m saying e just knocked the shit out of him in the first round he needs some more work!’”

Shaw tells the onlookers that he loves boxing. He’s one of the best boxers in the world, after all, good enough to have an undefeat ed record and spar with Deontay Wilder, the former heavyweight champion. He loves being in the gym, pounding cracked bags and dancing around the ring, with his entire family surrounding him. He loves the showmanship, the history and the science of the sport.

But it’s not so clear that boxing loves him back. He’s made little money and has little fame outside of bo ing. e could lose a fight and watch his world-championship aspirations disappear. He goes through long stretches without be ing in the ring. He has to practice against beginners in garages in Florissant.

What do you do when you’re one of the best in the world at something — and few people are paying attention? Stephan Shaw keeps boxing.

“I love it,” he tells the onlook ers. “If you don’t love it, this will be hell.”

Stephan Shaw, the fifth-best heavyweight boxer in the country, stands in the ring with someone who just started boxing.

Inside an elementary school basement in Jennings, Mis souri, where there is no air conditioning, that’s where the fifth best bo er in the country trains.

Shaw walks in every day shortly after 5 p.m, right when the gym is starting to fill up with little kids trying on gloves for the first time, parents watching from the sidelines, elders talking about the good old days. You’ll hear the beep of an electronic bell, the smack of people hitting things, and the music of Stevie Wonder or MoneyBagg Yo. The windows are scratched, tiles are missing

from the floor, and the ropes sag and creak. The ring’s floor, long ripped apart from so much box ing, is covered in gray duct tape.

On a weekday evening in Au gust, Shaw enters the gym with his wife and two boys under the ages 9 and 5. He stops by each per son, all 30 or so packed into the el ementary school basement, for a fist bump.

He sits down in a plastic chair next to Doc, an elderly man wear ing a Vietnam War veteran’s hat. People gravitate to Shaw. He’s warm and open and easy to talk to, and he can talk about anything.

“He doesn’t brush off anyone,” his mom, Stephanie Dale-Shaw, says.

“He embraces anyone that wants to embrace him and connect with him.”

His dad ties Shaw’s gloves, and then Shaw gets to work. He shad ow boxes the air, jabbing, upper cutting, dashing from side to side as if possessed. He doesn’t have the ring to himself –– he shares it with his wife and two teenaged, amateur boxers.

The gym lights up every time Shaw enters the ring. He’s playful, loud and full of energy. He shakes his gloves to the rap music. He makes funny noises. He puts on his ’90s playlist. He shows off what it means to be fancy in boxing.

“Once you get a li’l jelly with it. Once you get a li’l bit more skills, you know, Kyrie-it. Now you can.” He slides from corner to cor ner like a skater, like a dancer, a boxer. “The jelly. The razzle. The dazzle.”

“Oohhhh!” he says, picking up speed, flying around the ring, laughing and smiling. “Now you see me! Now you don’t! The Ali. Just having fun. Being creative,” he says, bumping into his wife by accident.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she says, giggling. “Big man coming through.”

After shadow boxing, Shaw will start to hit the bags. And when Shaw punches –– it doesn’t matter how many buzzers are going off, how many people are punching –– everyone in the gym knows it. POP-POP-POP-POP. He threads the punches together in a blur. Jab-jabjab uppercut left hook right hook, feint, duck, jabhookjab. Shaw hits so hard that the bags have a dent, and his 6-foot-2 father, who holds

STEPHAN

Top: e Shaws see their kids onto the bus a er some pre-school catch. Bottom: Stephan Shaw began boxing in earnest a er making the national Olympic team as a practice player.

them in place, has to wear knee braces. It’s hard to imagine how a human being can withstand such a punch. “Like gunshots,” Doc says from the sideline.

When he’s actually fighting, Shaw doesn’t dance in the ring like Muhammad Ali. He doesn’t hunt after opponents like Mike Ty son. He doesn’t really move at all. It’s jarring to watch him fight. e kind of parks in the middle of the ring and stands there –– calculat ing, thinking, observing. Then his opponent throws a punch and, in a matter of a millisecond, Shaw’s feet spark to life. He will bounce backward and swat away the jab. If he gets backed to the ropes, he simply shu es and slips away be fore any damage is done. His feet are light and quick. “Like a mid

dleweight,” his trainer, Basheer Abdullah, says. “Like a ballerina,” Shaw says. But he likes to cement himself in the center of the ring, where he can mold the match to his liking, where he has complete control.

It’s this intelligence –– this ability to process and strategize in such a short amount of time –– that makes him a heavyweight contender. “[Boxers are] very, very smart athletes, and even amongst them, Stephan’s top 1 percent,” says his manager, David McWater. Shaw is known for picking apart boxing tendencies, slowly and patiently, until he has them completely un derstood –– and then attacking with knockout blows.

But in recent months, Shaw has changed his boxing style. He

doesn’t have a choice. He needs to get more attention around his name. e needs more fights and more money. No one seems to care about patient boxing. They want knockouts.

“What is skills?” he says. “Doesn’t sell tickets. Doesn’t put enough asses in that seats. Might get you that belt that you’ve always been wanting since you were a little kid. But to give you this top millions of dollars that you say you deserve or that you want –– you got to put some asses in the seats.”

In his most recent fight against Bernardo Marquez, Shaw seemed like a completely different boxer. Twenty seconds into the fight, ar ue fired a left hand hook, one of his first punches in the match. Shaw easily jumped out of the way, and Marquez stumbled forward.

In earlier fights, haw would have stayed still, continuing to prowl, continuing to control the pace of the fight. ut this time, Shaw pounced on Marquez. He unleashed a fury of punches fast er than he has, maybe, ever. Right hook left hook right hook. Mar quez fell forward, ducking, trying to hide from the blows, his chest arched toward the ground, his hands in front of his head.

Left, right, left, right, until Mar quez couldn’t duck any further, collapsing to one knee so the beat ing could stop.

In two minutes, the fight ended –– after Shaw knocked him down twice more.

“Stephan Shaw proves his name is true,” the play-by-play announc er said. “Big. Shot. Shaw.”

Shaw waltzed around the ring, staring into the crowd, at the cam era. Then he returned to his cor ner, where his dad hung over the ropes, holding his hands above his head.

“Come on! Give me some!” his father yelled, cradling his son’s head with two hands and giving him a kiss.

Boxing, Stephan Shaw says, is ingrained into his blood. His father, Brian Shaw, is a local coach and former boxer who competed in the junior Olympics. His grandfather, Winston “Buddy” Shaw, is one of St. Louis’ legendary trainers, the former boxing coach at Cochren Community Center on the south side. Shaw remembers, as a kid, visiting his grandfather’s house in niversity City only to find his grandfather’s protégé, Cory Spinks, a world champion, chill ing in the basement watching pro fessional boxing matches.

“It’s a hereditary sport,” Shaw says.

He started going to the gym at four years old, trying on gloves and wanting to spar with everyone and anyone. At home, he would hide in the basement and watch tapes of old fights while wear ing a coordinated bo ing outfit with a homemade mouthpiece and boxing gloves. He’d punch the walls until the entire north St. Lou is home started shaking. He would position the couches into a square like a ring, with his Rottweiler, Missy, watching.

Down there, down in the base ment, by himself, that’s where Shaw liked to stay. He was a home body, his mother, Dale-Shaw, says. There was something about box ing –– the solitude –– that attract ed Shaw.

From the moment he was born, he was smart. He had a photo graphic memory. His parents got him Kayo trading cards, and he memorized every boxer on them –– stats, records and bios. His mom thought he should become a meteorologist because he watched a hailstorm, got curious and start ed to study weather patterns re ligiously. “Even in middle school, teachers used to say, ‘Stephan is a historian,’” Dale-Shaw recalls. “‘He’s like a mastermind.’”

But the chance to pursue boxing didn’t appear out of nowhere. His parents made that happen. They came from very little in north St. Louis, but they had each other. They got married in 1991, had two kids and moved to Spanish Lake. Brian Shaw worked in IT. Dale-Shaw worked in a chemical plant. Their goal, from the mo ment they got together, was to make sure their children could do whatever they wanted. They ex posed them to all kinds of things. They enrolled Shaw in a Saint Louis University African heritage class. When Brian was employed at IBM, he took Shaw with him to work trips in Atlanta and Okla homa City. His parents introduced him to every sport –– basketball, the sport that earned him his nickname “Big Shot” because he made so many jump shots that his mom called him Shotgun.

“We gave them the best life that we could,” Dale-Shaw says of rais ing Shaw and his siblings. “I’m a lovable mother. A lot of love.”

Shaw, though, happened to be good at boxing. He knocked out his first amateur opponent at the age of 10. He won the national Sil ver Gloves Tournament twice.

Then, at 13, he quit. He felt like he had beaten everyone in his age Continued on pg 18

Stephan Shaw goes everywhere with his wife, Kendra Minnis-Shaw.

group. e also felt pressure from such a long lineage of bo ing.

“I kind of fell out of love with bo ing,” haw e plains. “ ecause at the time, it didn’t feel like some thing I loved, like I once did, or how I feel now. It felt like my dad was making me bo .” or si years, haw didn’t train, spar or fight. e graduated from a elwood Central, where he was a first baseman and made the honor roll. e enrolled at arris towe tate niversity at , where he studied business and planned to become a sports broad caster. e worked at c onald’s. e lived downtown with his par ents in a loft, making music videos with his friends on their roof. haw returned to bo ing in 0 after taking a trip with his fa ther and grandfather to the lym pic trials. year later, he miracu lously made the national lympic

team as a practice player. In 0 , he was the runner up in the Na tional Championships, one of the premier amateur bo ing tour naments.

That’s when l aymon called. aymon, a legendary promoter who is considered “the most pow erful person in bo ing” and “chief architect” of loyd ayweather’s career, wanted to sign haw to a five year professional contract with a ,000 signing bonus. haw was working overnights at a chnucks warehouse. e had nev er seen a check as large as ,000.

“I’m like, Where do I sign ’” he remembers.

hortly after haw inked a deal with aymon, he steamrolled through a string of professional opponents, racking up an 0 re cord after he defeated onathan ice in ugust 0 .

is life was coming together. e was working with asheer bdullah, a trainer in an iego, who would organi e a boot camp for haw in the weeks leading up

to his fights. e’d gotten married and had his first son.

“I felt good,” haw says. “I’m young. It’s my first fight on T . I shine. ominated. nd I wanted to show what they don’t always see. I want to show, like, skills. ou don’t always have to knock a guy out. The knockout is just the cherry on top.”

espite his skills, he was mak ing little money. haw knew this was part of the process, but that didn’t make it easier. e brought home about 3, 00 a fight and he fought only three fights a year. e couldn’t afford an apartment. Instead, around years old, a professional athlete with a wife and a kid, he lived in his parents’ house in erguson.

Then the fights stopped. y the beginning of 0 , haw hadn’t fought anyone in five months. o ers don’t have a structured, unioni ed league that provides a permanent schedule or pay scale. ometimes, fights just don’t hap pen. o ers’ livelihoods lie largely

out of their hands. They lie in the hands of promoters, T networks, other fighters’ schedules and world events, like the C I pandemic.

“Coming into this sport is just not an easy task,” says haw’s trainer, bdullah. “It can be a lonely jour ney, especially if you don’t have the resources behind you.”

haw’s current manager, c Water, who signed haw in late 0 , wouldn’t even describe bo ing as a sport.

“It’s a lot like music,” he says. “That’s the best way to compare. ike 0s music. ou have to take everybody to otown ecords e ecutive erry ordy, and he holds all the cards.”

This isn’t basketball, where the th best player in the N makes million a year. ven if they don’t make the N , basketball players can compete overseas, netting hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes even mil lions. In bo ing, most profession als bring home less than ,000

Stephan Shaw trains in ATT Evolution in Brentwood, Missouri.

per fight for years. nly a hand ful, fewer than 00 professional bo ers in the world, bring home millions. There’s little in between, and there aren’t any backup op tions, like overseas basketball. To reach millions of dollars and fame and comfort, it takes years of training every day, fighting in front of small crowds and scrap ing together enough money to survive. It also means staying un defeated or really close to it just to make a living wage. “ ou have to just wait for your opportunities, be ready, beat who ever they put in front of you so you can get those opportunities. ... ou have to keep winning,” haw says. “It’s different from basket ball and football. team can go 0 , and the top guy on the salary can still make 0, 0 million.”

s his fights dried up in 0 , haw got a job as a sparring partner for eontay Wilder, the heavyweight champion of the world. ut it only reminded haw, and the people around him, how

good he was and how little people cared. e could stand in the same ring with the heavy weight champion, but he couldn’t make enough to purchase his own apartment.

Then his life really unraveled.

is father, rian, frustrated to see his son upset, called aymon and left a curse word filled voice mail. hortly after, aymon’s peo ple called back. They got rian’s voicemail and they cut haw from his contract.

“I was furious,” haw says. “I was crushed. I cried. I went into my deepest depression. I went to a sunken place.”

haw obsessively checked his phone, hoping it would ring with another opportunity. ut it didn’t. e didn’t understand. e knew he was good at bo ing, maybe one of the best in the world. et he had no money, no fame, no nothing. e was married and waiting on his second son, and suddenly, his source of income had been cut. e knew his dad had made a mistake,

but had haw done something wrong id people not like him id promoters think he was un sellable e wonders if he would have more attention if he was white and skinnier.

“ tress,” he says. “I don’t re ally know what’s going on with my career.” When asked what that looked like, he pauses. “ at ing,” he says. e pauses again and scoffs. “ ating. ating. It’s real tough. ou know what I’m saying ike for real.”

haw ballooned from 0 to nearly 300 pounds. e to take edi bles. e lost motivation to bo , to spend time with his family, to live. “I didn’t give a fuck about living or dying,” he says.

When he did get back in the ring in ay 0 , it was nearly one year after his last fight. e didn’t have an agent, and he made only , 00 in front of a sleepy t. Charles crowd. e got a job spar ring with tipe iocic, a mi ed martial arts fighter in Cleveland, but he made only 00 per week.

e called home to his parents crying almost every day. e told them he might uit bo ing.

e decided to keep fighting. ut during his ne t bout, he showed up out of shape, taking si rounds to beat oel Caudle, who is now . t the end of the fight, bo ing o cials mandatory drug tested him. It came back positive for T C. e was suspended for si months. It was unclear if haw would ever bo again.

Shaw shows up 0 minutes late to lunch with a reporter at t. ouis read Co., apolo gi ing when he walks in. e was on the phone with his manager, he says, trying to figure out his ne t fight. It keeps getting pushed back. e definitely, prob ably, will fight in anuary and hopefully, probably, maybe in No vember haw has since signed a contract to fight in November .

haw is 0, but his career is still in constant flu . e says it Continued on pg 21

Le column: Since beginning to train at ATT Evolution, Stephan Shaw has gotten into the best shape of his life. Right column: Brian Shaw trains his son in the gym in Jennings.

STEPHAN SHAW

doesn’t bug him as much anymore –– at least not like it used to. “I ain’t really stressing too bad,” he says.

Shaw is the most stylish person in Bread Co., with an all-white outfit white sweatshirt, white shorts, white socks. He has earrings in each ear, and his hair is neatly trimmed, as always. His sweatshirt reads “Stephan ‘Big Shot’ Shaw” with a computerized drawing of his face. No one recognizes him.

Shaw’s wife, Kendra MinnisShaw, who is wearing a “Ladybig shot” sweatshirt, sits down at a nearby table. She wasn’t invited to the interview, but to invite Big Shot is to invite ady ig hot. They fin ish each other’s sentences. They make TikTok videos together (Min nis-Shaw has over 300,000 follow ers). They go everywhere together.

So that’s where the conversa tion starts –– how their relation ship began, back when he was 19 and she was 21, over a decade ago, two boxers at Wohl Commu nity Center. They went to a boxing tournament, and then they went on a walking date downtown. They’ve been together ever since. Shaw’s eyes twinkle as they talk about their relationship. “Love and boxing,” he says.

“Just a sweet guy,” Minnis-Shaw says. “We connected, we’re like Bonnie — not even Bonnie and Clyde because they did things that weren’t right. But we’re the good Bonnie and Clyde. That’s my best friend.”

“Like a match made in heaven,” Shaw adds, smiling.

She calls him “the most humble person.”

“When you do get something big, you really are gonna be able to appreciate it,” she says.

“That’s why I stay down till I come up,” he says.

“I love that about him. I really feel like if he gets millions of dol lars, he’s not gonna be above it, he’s so conservative,” she says, laughing.

“That’s what struggle done taught me,” he says.

Despite all of Shaw’s struggles, his family has remained steady. Never even wavered. His wife, his kids, his mom, even his dad during their disagreements. He’s been with Minnis-Shaw for near ly 10 years. He calls his parents every day, and he goes to dinner at their house every Sunday. He wakes up every morning to play catch with his kids before school.

After Shaw failed the drug test in May 2017, his new manager,

McWater, paid for Shaw to start strength and conditioning training with ATT Evolution in Brentwood. It whipped Shaw into shape. He previously fought at 260 pounds. uring his most recent fight, he weighed in at 236. Everyone says he’s in the best shape of his life. He boxes every day, he runs almost every day, and he does strength and conditioning multiple times a week. His trainer says he doesn’t know a heavyweight that works harder than Shaw these days.

Now that he is 17-0, Shaw has a deal with TopRank, one of the top promoters in the sport, and a TV contract with N. e could fight for a heavyweight title in the com ing years.

“He’s in a situation where he can make 00,000 in one fight and a million in the next,” McWa ter says. “He’s at that point where his life could change drastically.”

Shaw calls himself a “true over comer” for still boxing today. He really overcame that during the pandemic in 2020. With the world shut down and boxing matches cut, he dug himself into anoth er deep depression –– then he climbed out. In some ways, Shaw grew to understand the instability of boxing and focused on the parts of his life that he could control.

“I just found more sanctuary,” he says, “in what I already have. ... I already have certain things that people that possess financial stability wish to have. And that’s a wealth of love from my wife, my mother, my father, my kids.”

On a chilly Thursday in October at 8 a.m., Shaw’s two kids walk down the stairs from their twobedroom apartment in Ferguson with bookbags and a football. He follows shortly behind in a wrin kly Cardinals hoodie. For the next 10 minutes, they play football catch in the middle of the street at their apartment complex. Shaw doesn’t want his kids to box. He worries about the injuries. So every morning, his kids run fly routes up and down the road ––and Shaw throws them dot after dot.

When the school bus arrives, Shaw calls after his kids. “Give me some,” he says, suffocating them with a hug. He leads them to the bus, his wife right next to him. “I love y’all,” he says.

After his kids are off to school, Shaw returns upstairs to his apart ment. A YouTube clip of his last pro fessional fight against ar ue , the one that ended in the first round, is playing loudly on the TV in his liv ing room. African art from his par

ents covers the walls, and his cham pionship amateur belts are laid out on a shelf with torn Muhammad Ali picture books. He leans forward on the couch, pulling his beard, watch ing highlights from his own pro fessional and amateur fights, even highlights from his first fight when he was 10. He commentates and rewinds when people miss his fa vorite punches. “Boom. Boom. Onetwo,” he says, watching a highlight video of his 20-year-old self over a Chief Keef song. A gigantic, giddy smile erupts across his face.

The frustration is still there. It’s always there. Shaw is constantly oscillating between pride and bit terness when reflecting on his jour ney. He says that’s normal. It’s just part of boxing. But to spend time with Shaw now is to absorb an in to icating amount of self a rma tion. He voices so much positivity, an overwhelming amount, that it seems staged. He preaches, con stantly, about how he will capture a heavyweight championship belt, how no one in the world is better than him and how it all just comes from a mustard seed of faith. “It’s only a matter of time,” he says.

Maybe you need that bravado to survive in boxing. The word “faith” does hangs in his living room. Shaw really does believe, in full faith, that he will, in a few years, live in San Diego, with a heavyweight championship belt hanging on his wall. He can’t let himself not believe this. Because to not believe this is to submit to the cruelty of boxing, to admit failure, to throw away all of those years of struggle. He can’t do that. He won’t let himself do that. And when those doubts creep in, that’s when the frustrations rear their head again.

If others won’t give him money or attention, fine. It will make him angry. But he won’t stop boxing. e will continue to fight, watch his own highlights and remind himself that he is an amazing boxer. If boxing won’t repay him, then he will repay himself, over and over and over and over again, until boxing has no choice but to grant him his childhood dreams.

“I’m gonna go get something up out of this,” Shaw says. “And it’s going to be world championships. Period. World championships. I’m gonna get myself out of being in a financial drought. It’s only right. I worked too hard for it, and I stood the test of time.”

But until then, until those world championships, he will play catch with his kids outside of his twobedroom apartment and box in the elementary school basement, waiting. n

riverfronttimes.com OCTOBER 19-25, 2022 RIVERFRONT

Four generations of Stephan Shaw’s family have contributed to his boxing life, day in and day out.

CALENDAR

BY RIVERFRONT TIMES STAFF

THURSDAY 10/20

Fact or Fiction?

How closely do writers’ works cleave to reality? That question is at the heart of St. Louis Actors’ Studio’s Fiction. In the Steven iet play, two successful fiction writers are happily married until the wife, Linda, is diagnosed with cancer and reads her husband Michael’s diaries. Within them, she finds writing about a secret affair. Is it real, or are the entries works of fiction Then the tables are turned when Michael reads Linda’s diaries. Find out what happens at 8 p.m. at the Gaslight Theater (358 North Boyle Avenue, stlas.org, 314-458-2978). The show runs through Sunday, October 23, and tickets are $35 to $40.

FRIDAY 10/21

Bourbon, Whiskey and Rye, Oh My!

Don’t worry, the St. Louis Bour bon Festival is called that for the sake of brevity. It covers the wa terfront, offering more than 450 scotches, bourbons and whiskeys from around the world. The event will feature cocktails, bourbon celebrity meet-and-greets and tastings. If you can tell from taste if you’re drinking an American whiskey made from corn and rye or a Scotch whiskey made from malted barley, then this is your event. The St. Louis Bourbon Fes tival is at the Lemp Grand Hall and Lofts (1817 Cherokee Street, stlouisbourbonfestival.com) from 5 to 9 p.m. Tickets are $90 for drinkers and $45 for designated drivers. You can add on a special “presenter” tasting ticket to sam ple flights of bourbons with mas ter distillers, brand ambassadors and master bourbon tasters.

Everybody Dance Now

ig out your flannel shirts, scrunchies, bucket hats and Doc Martens, and get back to your baddest ’90s self to prepare for

an evening of dancing that hasn’t been seen since Nirvana’s Nevermind first hit shelves. This night of wild throwback nostalgia will hit St. Louis thanks to Fool House: The Ultimate 90s Dance Party at Bally Sports Live. The live DJ’d event promises to pay “homage to the golden era of boy bands, pop stars, hip hop, and pop punk.” We’re thinking Lauryn Hill, Dr. Dre, Green Day, Alanis Morissette, Nas, C&C Music Factory, Smash ing Pumpkins … too many stars to name here. Get your night of singalongs, throwbacks and choreo graphed dance moves beginning at 9:30 p.m. at Ballpark Village (601 Clark Avenue). The dance party is free to attend.

SATURDAY 10/22

Beer Me!

Celebrate beer and fall at 4 Hands Fall Fest (1220 South Eighth Street). The local brewery has mixed up some magic for this fes tival, and you’ll love all of the in gredients. The party celebrates the release of its Fat Elvis stout (which features flavors such as peanut butter, banana and chocolate), but 4 Hands is offering other adultdrink options, including a fallinspired cocktail menu. If you get

hungry, there will be a variety of foods available, including options from ugarfire moke ouse, i Pointe Drive-In, Chicken Out and Strange Donuts. Sean Canan’s Voo doo Players will be on site to get the party started with live music. Kids are invited, too, for some free activities. Visit 4handsbrewery. com/4-hands-fall-fest for more in formation.

Witches and Warlocks Unite

The West St. Louis County Chamber of Commerce presents Witches of West County at Vlasis Park (300 Park Drive, Ballwin; 636-230-9900, witchesofwestcounty.com). Enjoy dancing, food trucks, drinks, shop ping, psychic and tarot readings, a costume contest and more! Dress ing up is not required but encour aged. Don’t miss the boutique and vendor shopping from 4 to 10 p.m. The band Out By 9 will perform live starting at 6 p.m. This is a 21+ event. Food and drink will be avail able for purchase. Tickets are $25 in advance, $35 at the door.

Best Fest

Beer is undeniably at the heart of St. Louis, as is Forest Park, one of the largest (and best) urban pub

lic parks in the U.S. St. Louisans can combine these two loves this weekend at St. Louis Beer Fest at the Saint Louis Science Center (5050 Oakland Avenue). The afterhours fest takes over the museum and its exhibitions, providing at tendees with a beer buffet that includes 120 brews from over 40 breweries, including Logboat, 4 Hands Brewing Co., 2nd Shift, Good News Brewing Company and a whole host of others. The festival runs from 8 to 11 p.m. General admission includes un limited samples and entry to the exhibits and costs $50. VIP entries are $65 and add an additional hour of drinking time and spe cialty beers. More information at stlouisbeerfest.com.

SUNDAY 10/23

Happy 150th, Tower Grove Park!

Tower Grove Park must feel like the second-best little sister sometimes. Forest Park is bigger, it houses all the prestigious institutions (you try competing with the zoo and the art museum!) and is the only place in St. Louis that constantly gets com pared to Central Park (even if its only St. Louisans doing so). But the

Take a Trolley Tour of Bellefontaine Cemetery this weekend. | ROSALIND EARLY

analogy is unfair for a host of rea sons, and a big one is this: Tower Grove Park is actually the older sibling. Yes, this south-city gem opened to the public in 1872, four whole years before Forest Park’s debut. And Tower Grove Park’s trailblazing isn’t the only reason it deserves celebration as one of the nation’s premier public parks. It also provides dazzling fourseasons beauty and plays host to everything from kickball leagues to pickleball to family picnics. So let’s celebrate this treasure at its 150th Birthday Bash Sunday from

11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Food Truck Alley will offer 15 food trucks curated by Sauce Magazine, while separate stages host musical performances for kids and adults. We hear Fred bird and Blues mascot Louie will be in attendance. When’s the last time Forest Park could say that? Details at towergrovepark.org.

Ye Olde Last Hurrah

In a matter of days, the knights will hang up their swords, the pi

rates will pull up anchor, the tur key legs will be all gone, and Wen tzville’s Rotary Park will return to the 21st century. In other words, this is your last shot to bask in all the glory that the annual St. Louis Renaissance Festival has to offer. Over the years, the event has gone from niche gathering to a wildly popular affair with fun for the entire family, including unicorn and mermaid encounters, aerial acts, jousts, pub crawls and even a Game of Thrones-themed tavern. For the last weekend, the festival is transforming into an Enchanted Halloween, with spooky-season decor and activities. The event runs rain or shine, from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. For additional infor mation, visit stlrenfest.com.

Worldly Fashion

Nowadays, drip is everything. Fortunately, we have a lot of op tions to look fly, and that is due at least in part to Indian chintz. It was Indian artists who more than several hundred years created a printed cloth that resisted fad ing. The fabric became known as chintz and resulted in some beau tiful creations. The Saint Louis Art Museum (1 Fine Arts Drive, 314721-0072, slam.org) is celebrating these breakthroughs with Global Threads: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz to show how this textile revolutionized fash ion, trade and culture. The exhi bition opens Sunday, October 23, and goes through Sunday, Janu ary 8. Tickets are $6 to $12. Check website for exhibition times.

TUESDAY 10/25

Historical Spooks

Tis the season to visit graveyards, and while a daytime tour of Belle fontaine Cemetery (4947 West Florissant Avenue, 314-381-0750, bellefontainecemetery.org) may not bring on scary chills, it will definitely offer a glimpse into the history of St. Louis. The graveyard is famous for the important his torical figures buried there, often in elaborate tombs and mausole ums. The Wainwright Tomb was drafted by a young Frank Lloyd Wright, who went on to become

one of America’s most famous architects. Learn more about the cemetery and the luminary St. Louisans housed within at the Trolley Tour from 10 a.m. to noon. Seating is limited, and par ticipants should arrive between 9:30 and 9:45 a.m. Tickets are $5.

WEDNESDAY 10/26

Real Insight

It’s not every day that America’s preeminent short-story writer comes to town. But at 7 p.m. author George Saunders will be reading from his new work and speaking at the Skip Viragh Center for the Arts at Chaminade High School (425 South Lindbergh Boulevard). Saunders is a cross between Kurt Vonnegut and Anton Chekhov. He’s often laugh-out-loud funny even as he limns the ways our technology-addicted, status-ob sessed and money-driven society make mincemeat of the gentle and well intentioned among us. The event, presented by St. Louis County Library, coincides with the release of Saunders’ latest collec tion, Liberation Day. Tickets are $35 (or $40 for two people) and come with a book.

Howling Good Time

Bar K (4565 McRee Avenue, 314530-9990, barkdogbar.com) will host its first annual Howl-O-Ween Party. The newly opened dog park boasts over 100,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor space for dog gos in addition to three bars scat tered throughout the space. For Howl-O-Ween, Bar K’s normally cutesy space will transform into a ghoulish scene. ou’ll find a “doggie haunted house” for playful spooky fun, live music and costume con tests for best-dressed dogs and dog/ human combos. Winners will re ceive a prize. Howl-O-Ween is free to Bar K members. Guests must pay 0 for their first dog and for each additional dog. Want to visit but don’t have a canine friend? That’s OK, too. Entrance for pup per-free visitors is free. n

Have an event you’d like consid ered for our calendar? Email cal endar@riverfronttimes.com.

“Menswear Ensemble” is part of Saint Louis Art Museum’s Global reads exhibit. | PAUL EEKHOFF

Unexpected Magic

Westchester transports diners from Chesterfield to another era

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

Westchester

127 Chesterfield Towne Center, Chesterfield; 636-778-0636. Tues.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m. (Closed Sunday and Monday.)

Knowing the résumés of the parties involved in West chester, I expected a good meal. What I didn’t expect was that partners Brian Herr, John Cowling and chef

Matt Glickert have created some sort of wormhole that allows them to bend space and time to transport diners from a banal west-county strip mall into the sort of gilded, speakeasy-style dining room you’d find in 0s Detroit.

From the outside, expectations are tempered thanks to Westches ter’s placement: smack-dab in the middle of an elongated crescent of businesses ranging from a title company to a testosterone clinic, outfitted in the non offensive col ors and stonework characteristic of modern shopping plexes found in Anywhere, USA. Considering Westchester’s beige facade, I as sumed this aesthetic would carry through when I stepped through the front door. It did.

But then I opened the second set of doors and was greeted with such a striking scene, I audibly

gasped. Dark and moody, the little light illuminating the dining room comes from thin, brushed brass fi tures on each table shaped so that they cast the lamp’s glow downward, as well as swirledmetal chandeliers and a couple of wall sconces. Woodwork is dark not the espresso of 000s era builder basic kitchens but the deep chocolate of 00 percent ca cao — including the gorgeous bar that takes up the left side of the shotgun room. You know it was recently built, though it magical ly has the feel of a vintage piece and is made even more stunning thanks to the deep, peacock-blue leather chairs that line it. It’s the same color and material of the semicircle banquettes in either corner of the room, as well as the seat portion of the chairs that sur round the room’s wooden dining tables.

CAFE

That feeling you get when you see a movie in the daytime and are blinded when you walk out into a sunny afternoon? Westchester is that in reverse.

Glickert understands the pre conceptions attached to strip-mall dining, but he was up to the chal lenge. Born and raised in Chester field, lickert is well versed in the soul of the area; he experienced it as a regular at the now-shuttered west-county wine bar Naked Vine. Herr, who owned Naked Vine, was a knowledgeable wine-andspirits professional who created a welcoming atmosphere that at tracted a host of interesting char acters like Glickert, Cowling and a handful of other folks who would become friends over their years patronizing the place.

When Herr broke the news that he would be closing their

Westchester’s highlights include duck fat tru e fries, a fried bologna sandwich, roasted beet salad and more. | MABEL SUEN

WESTCHESTER

watering hole due to the chal lenges associated with running an in-person business during the COVID-19 pandemic, the group jokingly asked one of their fellow regulars, who was in commercial real estate, to find them a place. When he took them up on their request and presented them with the storefront that would become Westchester, they couldn’t say no.

The group may have done an outstanding job on the aesthet ics of Westchester, but Glickert’s culinary prowess breathes life into the restaurant. student of the revered t. ouis chef ill Cardwell, Glickert has spent the last 17 years immersing himself in farm-to-table dining, even before those words were a thing. nder Cardwell, he learned to pay hom age to farmers and the area’s sea sonal bounty through his cooking, and he carried that philosophy with him as a culinary school ex tern at Gerard Craft’s Niche and Taste, at ugarfire moke ouse and back under Cardwell at C’s itchen. ou hear Cardwell in Glickert’s ear on such dishes as the roasted beet salad, which pairs delicate local greens with a med ley of firm golden and red beets, luscious goat cheese, vibrant pick led onions and seasoned pecans

that combine to create layers of te ture.

Westchester’s onion soup, too, is a classic pairing of beefy onion soup, a sourdough crouton and Gruyère, but Glickert’s technique transcends this dish past any old rench onion soup. The li uid has an intensity of sweet onion and beef stock flavor, but it’s so deli cate in texture you wonder how he can fit all of that power into something so light. The broth on

his Prince Edward Island mussels dish is e ually impressive. The white wine concoction, infused with the mussels’ sea flavor and a whisper of tomato, is meant to complement, not cover up, the fresh shellfish. unks of house made bacon add a layer of gentle smoke, evoking the beauty of smoked bivalves without hitting you over the head.

Glickert’s deft touch extends to the dinner menu. Chicken

marsala, so often presented as a gloppy, cloyingly sweet-sauced plate of mediocrity, is savory and restrained at Westchester. ere, a locally raised skin-on chicken breast is placed atop perfectly browned gnocchi and covered in a delicate sauce that is more sa vory and delicate than what’s typ ically thought of as marsala sauce. Kale and local tomatoes complete this comforting dish.

Pan-roasted halibut is paired with silken butternut squash pu ree, shaved russels sprouts and cubes of housemade bacon that is a beautiful balance of sweet, earth and smoke the fish itself was slightly overcooked (a factor I can’t gloss over because of its price point), though I do bear some of the blame for having to hold the walnut brown butter that would have usually been used to finish the fish. prime dry aged bone in strip steak is perfection of the form, cooked to a flawless medium rare, and the Chef’s urger is an out standing, upscale neighborhood restaurant offering, made from deeply savory Wagyu beef and topped with bacon jam, tobacco onions and aioli. ll are worthy of ferings, though the showstopper is the pork rib chop, a thick, bone-in slam of tender porcine beauty fin ished with a maple bourbon glaze that tastes like distilled autumn; it’s a warm, comforting taste am plified by slow cooked greens and sweet potatoes.

Westchester’s atmosphere and menu are delights on their own, but the restaurant’s bar program is what drives home its luxe vin tage vibe. This goes beyond the sparkling, notched barware and mustachioed and vested barman who stirs flawless bourbon cock tails with a twisted, elongated spoon like someone from an oldtimey movie. The scene adds to the mystique, but the beverage situation at Westchester belongs in any conversation on the area’s premier bars thanks to a cocktail list developed with the help of the esteemed Ted Kilgore of Planter’s ouse, as well as a shockingly si able wines by the glass list. ip ping a spot-on rye Manhattan and noshing on a bone-in, dry-aged steak, you can’t help but feel like you’ve been transported not sim ply to another place but to an other era. That this can happen in such an unexpected place is not just good restaurant know-how — it’s magic.

Cocktails include the Troubador and the Filmore. | MABEL SUEN

Executive chef Matthew Glickert prepares a Wenneman’s pork rib chop in the kitchen. | MABEL SUEN

SHORT ORDERS

[FOOD NEWS]

Food Seen

e Fattened Caf fosters collaborations for Filipino American History Month

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

For the Fattened Caf owner Charlene Lopez Young, Fili pino American History Month is not simply about celebrat ing the contributions that Fili pino Americans have made in the growth and development of the United States; it’s about recognizing their role in the nation’s present.

“For people like me who were born in the United States but have Filipino parents, we always live in this tension that we are not Filipino enough but not American enough,” Lopez Young says. “This month is so great because it helps people like me who identify as that feel a little more seen, wheth er that is in the food scene or just the acknowledgment that Filipi no Americans live in the United States and are Americans.”

As a Filipino American business owner, Lopez Young — together with her husband and co-owner Darren Young — embraces the plat form the Fattened Caf has given her to bring representation to the St. Louis food community and be yond. Through their regular popups, residency at Earthbound Beer and year-old consumer-packagedgoods brand of the same name, Lopez Young and Young are able to, in her words, normalize Filipi no cuisine and integrate it into the regular rotation of what people are eating, rather than having it be a niche cuisine only thought of one month out of the year.

However, Lopez Young sees Fili pino American History Month as a step toward this goal. That’s why she and Young have been working with local chefs and restaurateurs on a host of collaborative dishes that showcase the beauty of Fili pino cuisine.

“I want more people to be aware of our identity and increase repre sentation in any way that we can,”

Lopez Young says. “What we have access to is the food scene. That is why we are bringing about all these collaborations with restau rants that St. Louisans frequent. They already have good food, but we wanted to see what it would look like to have access to our food and to normalize it.”

Lopez Young and Young kicked off their Filipino American Heri tage Month celebrations by col laborating with the popular bar becue brand Salt + Smoke. The pair have also been working with Gerard Craft and his team at both Bowood by Niche and Fordo’s Kill er Pizza on two different dishes: a longganisa rice and eggs brunch dish and a longganisa and egg piz za, respectively. For Lopez Young, the experience of seeing Filipino food represented at these estab lishments was moving.

“I can’t tell you what it felt like when I went to Bowood and had the longganisa, eggs and rice,” Lo

pez Young says. “I almost cried, because here was this restaurant that was not Filipino, but it was serving a Filipino dish. They sold

out within the first two hours of them having it; that means not just Filipinos were buying it, but everyone was enjoying it. It made me feel like who I am matters and that people were welcoming of it.”

In addition to the Bowood and Fordo’s collaborations, which ended October 16, the Fattened Caf is teaming up with three oth er area businesses for Filipino-in flected specials that run through the end of the month. These in clude Nudo House, which has cre ated a longganisa bahn mi, Buzz’s Hawaiian Grill, which is offering longganisa musubi (musubi is a traditional Hawaiian dish) and La Patisserie, a Florissant bak ery that will be serving a Filipino brunch.

“This really normalizes the food we grew up with and makes peo ple feel like Filipino Americans are part of the food culture of not only St. Louis but of the United States,” Lopez Young says. n

is month, the Fattened Caf is collaborating with Salt + Smoke, Fordo’s Killer Pizza and more. | MIRANDA MINGUIA

“ I want more people to be aware of our identity and increase representation in any way that we can. What we have access to is the food scene.”

On the Move

Yapi Mediterranean Subs and Sandwiches is moving to the Central West End

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

For the past six years, Lisa and Armin Grozdanic have been spreading sandwich joy to south St. Louis with their res taurant Yapi Mediterranean ubs and andwiches, first at a storefront in Southampton, which they eventually relocated to St. Louis Hills. Now the husbandand-wife team is yet again pre paring to move Yapi to an entirely different part of town.

In an interview with the River front Times, Lisa Grozdanic con firms that she and her husband closed their St. Louis Hills location on September 17 in preparation for Yapi’s new chapter — a storefront on the eastern edge of the Central West End on Vandeventer Avenue, diagonal from City Foundry. The new Yapi, which Grozdanic antici pates will open on Saturday, Oc tober , will fill a void left by the former Mediterranean restaurant Yiro/Gyro.

“We’re serving everything from

gyros to cevapi to buffalo chicken sandwiches and gyro salads,” Gro zdanic says. “It’s Americanized style, but it’s still halal.”

As Grozdanic explains, she and her husband had been talking about moving Yapi for a while but never had any firm plans to do so. However, Grozdanic would regu larly drive by the vacant Yiro/Gyro space during the course of her work with the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis. Located in the same neighborhood as the founda tion, the vacant storefront seemed

like prime real estate thanks to its proximity to Saint Louis Universi ty, Cortex, IKEA and City Foundry, so Grozdanic mentioned it to her husband, who didn’t immediately think much of it. When it was still available this past Ramadan, she revisited the idea with him, and this time, he was on board. “We believe that what is written for us will be ours, and what is not writ ten for us will not be ours,” Groz danic says. “The fact that it was still for rent, and I had mentioned it more than one time, made us re

alize it was meant to be.”

Fans of Yapi can rest assured that the menu will be nearly iden tical to what the Grozdanics have been serving for the past six years in south St. Louis. However, as Grozdanic explains, the format will be different; instead of full service, the restaurant will be a fast-casual format to cater to the on-the-go energy of the area. She and her husband are also consid ering offering a very simple, takeand-go breakfast and coffee op tion, though they are still working out what that will look like.

“It will be very small, readymade breakfast from like 6 to 9 [a.m.],” Grozdanic says. “Right now, there is really nowhere for college students to grab coffee and breakfast sandwiches.” She’s thrilled that this move will intro duce a new crop of diners to Yapi, but she remains thankful to the loyal customers who have made the restaurant the success it is today. Already, many have said they’ll make the trek across town to the new location, and she notes that their support has been so vi tal getting their business through COVID-19 and also helping them during a very di cult personal time when they lost their eightyear-old son in January of 2020.

“If we can get through COVID and losing our son right before COVID, then it feels like the restau rant industry must be written for us,” Grozdanic says. “When God closes one door, he opens another. It really was meant to be.” n

[FOOD NEWS]

Fly & Dine

Kingside Diner adding new location in St. Louis airport

Written by BENJAMIN SIMON

Kingside Diner, the popular chessthemed restaurant, is readying to add one more outlet to its growing brand. Owner Aaron Teitelbaum confirms that he will soon open an additional location in the St. Louis Lambert International Airport.

The airport commission approved the Kingside site during its monthly board meeting on October 5. The diner, situated in concourse C, will open in March 2023. It joins sit-down and express locations in Clayton, the Central West End and the Loop. Teitelbaum says the process has taken over a year and a half.

“It just seemed like it’d be good brand recognition for us,” he tells RFT. “We do want to grow the brand, the express brand especially. We felt like hotels and airports are good for us because it has a

captive audience and built-in clientele.”

But Teitelbaum says people shouldn’t expect any significant differences from other Kingside Diner restaurants.

“The food and service and decor will

represent who we are 100 percent,” he says.

The forthcoming airport location is one of many recent additions to Kingside over the past three years. In April 2021, the business moved to the corner of Euclid and Maryland in the Central West End, across from the World Chess Hall of Fame.

That move has made a huge difference, Teitelbaum says, noting it doubled sales and introduced a late-night dining option.

Then, in September 2022, the business opened its first Kingside Express spot in the Loop, with a focus on pickup and delivery.

Kingside’s centrality in St. Louis stood out to the airport, Teitelbaum says. “[The airport] really liked the idea of local,” he explains. “Diners are starting to be a big brand for airports, so at least [airports are] looking for them because they really feed a lot and there aren’t many.”

Teitelbaum says he’d like to expand to more airport terminals in the future. But for now, they’ll start in St. Louis.

“I wanted it to be in my hometown first, learn the ropes,” he says. n

Lisa and Armin Grozdanic look forward to Yapi’s next chapter. | CHERYL BAEHR

Kingside Diner will open soon in St. Louis Lambert International Airport. | MABEL SUEN

ST. LOUIS STANDARDS

Boogie-Woogie

Benton Park’s Blues City Deli has been a vital part of the city’s food culture since 2004

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

City Deli

McNair Avenue, 314-773-8225

If you ask Vince Valenza for the origin story of Blues City Deli, you might think it begins with a fateful trip to New Orleans for a work conference that inspired him to begin making muffalettas at home, or even his turn as a blues musician, which gives the deli its musically inflected spirit. In actu ality, though, the roots of the sand wich shop go much deeper.

“It goes back to when I was a child not that I thought I was going to open a deli someday, but because we had this tradition on Saturdays of sitting around the table for lunch,” alen a e plains. “It was a casual day. I was five or six and would get out of bed and help my pop go shopping or do some work outside. y mom and sisters would be doing stuff around the house, and we’d all meet at the table for lunch. The Volpi Genoa salami would come out, bread from Valenti’s in Jen nings, olives, cheeses and what not. It was just something we did every aturday, and when I got married, we tried to continue that tradition. In the back of my mind, it was just part of me.”

When you walk into Valenza’s beloved Benton Park shop, Blues City Deli, you can feel the through line from these childhood lunchtable experiences to what he and his team have created. or the past 18 years, Valenza and com pany have dedicated themselves to creating more than delicious sandwiches — they are giving their guests the intangible feeling that comes from enjoying simple, good food prepared by people who know your name, have your order memorized and let you know that they are truly happy you’re in their lives. It’s a culture Valenza has not created by order,

but one that has sprung up organ ically thanks to the entire Blues City Deli team’s buy-in into what they are doing.

However humbly Valenza de flects credit for creating such an environment, there is no ques tion that his personal journey into the restaurant business has informed Blues City Deli’s hos pitable atmosphere. rowing up in north county — Jennings, to be exact — Valenza was sur rounded by quality family-run eateries; Ponticello’s, Angelo’s, aullo’s and omenico’s defined the area’s Italian merican din ing landscape and crystallized in Valenza what a good restaurant should be.

It also sparked in him a passion for the restaurant business, but it would take him a while to scratch the itch. Instead, straight out of high school, he got a job with e rox and worked for the company until it closed its t. ouis distri bution center in 3. alen a was offered a position at ero ’s Te as location, but his dad had just been diagnosed with stage colon cancer. eaving town was not an option, so he got into the hair-cutting business thanks to a connection through some friends. It was a good gig, but he could

not shake the feeling that he was meant for something closer to his heart.

“ ll that time, I kept thinking that I wanted to get into food,” alen a says. “I mentioned to my wife that I wanted to open some sort of Italian cafe and get back to my roots, so I talked to my friends who opened ratelli’s in ellwood. I told them I was thinking about doing this and

asked if they could sit down with me sometime to go over basic things I’d need to know. They said, Why don’t you just come work for us ’ That’s where I fell in love with it.”

Valenza may have worked at ratelli’s for only a year, but it was enough time for the restau rant industry to get into his blood. ven after he left to find a more substantial income — working in the hair-cutting business again and at a playground equipment manufacturer — Valenza could not shake the feeling that he was being called to open a restaurant. That inkling became a full fledged urge after a business trip to New Orleans sparked in him a connec tion between food and music that inspired his vision for what would become lues City eli.

Valenza spent the few years following those trips develop ing recipes at home, perfecting his sandwich game and sketch ing out ideas for how he would base a sandwich shop around the famed lues ighway . . Highway 61 that extends from Wyoming, innesota, to New r leans . ventually, he felt that he was ready to launch the concept, so he made plans to open in lo rissant. They fell through, as did

A trip to New Orleans sparked a connection between food and music for Blues City Deli founder Vince Valenza. | ANDY PAULISSEN

Sta member Amber steps outside for some hula hooping. | ANDY PAULISSEN

his second plan to bring the idea to t. Charles County, so he began making plans to do a Blues City Red Hots hot-dog cart in Soulard instead. e got so far as asking his friend, a fellow blues musician, for help with his website, but in stead, he got a tip on a building for rent in enton ark.

“ veryone knew I wanted to open Blues City Deli, so he said to me, ‘Vinnie, this building across the street has been sitting empty

for a long time; you ought to take their number and see, because it might be reasonable,’” Valenza re calls. “I told my wife, and she was like, ere we go again,’ but then I took her to look at it, and it was so cool looking, she said .”

Valenza opened Blues City Deli in ctober of 00 , surround ing himself with a team that he credits with expanding on his original vision to make the place what it is today. rom its wildly

popular sandwiches to its live music shows (which have yet to resume after they paused during C I , alen a and his team have been giving their guests a transportive experience for nearly two decades, and he be lieves the restaurant thrives be cause of its collaborative nature. Though he began with a core sandwich menu and a certain idea of how things should work, the deli has evolved over time

thanks to the creativity of his employees, who take ownership in its success.

“We have so many longtime employees that have given their all and work hard,” alen a says.

“The older I get, I can really see what they are doing more and more; they have ideas and share and brainstorm. It’s like they are thinking about the deli’s success and about ways to make the deli better. If I would’ve been there just calling the shots, none of this would’ve happened. I’m so proud of them.”

If alen a is proud of his team for their efforts in helping him build the deli into the success sto ry it has become, he’s even more thrilled with the culture they have created. e believes the key to their staying power has to do with centering the customer and building relationships, even if it’s only for the minute or so they in teract with their guests. If they can continue to do that, then they will continue to be a vital part of t. ouis food culture for years to come.

“This is a we’ place,” alen a says. “I always tell my team that I am not paying their salaries; the customers are. I’m just writing the checks. It’s them that we have to tip our hats to and take care of. When you make people feel good and are respectful of them, you start to build something. There is a path, and we are following it by letting people know that when we make food we put our soul into it.” n

ICONIC PEOPLE, PLACES & DISHES THAT ANCHOR STL’S FOOD SCENE

e mu aletta includes Genoa salami, ham, mortadella and provolone. | ANDY PAULISSEN

Blues City Deli thrives on the creativity of its employees. | ANDY PAULISSEN

e crew including owner Vince Valenza (back right) and his son Vinnie Jr. (back le ) take a pause before opening. | ANDY PAULISSEN

REEFERFRONT TIMES

[WEED LAWS]

Greenbacked

Medical-marijuana companies pour money into legalization PAC in campaign’s homestretch

Written by JASON HANCOCK

This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent.

With less than a month to go before voters head to the polls, the campaign to legalize recreational mari juana is getting a financial boost from the medical-marijua na industry.

Legal Missouri 2022 — the polit ical action committee supporting a marijuana proposal that will ap pear on the November 8 ballot as Amendment 3 — has raised nearly $700,000 in large donations since October 1.

The money came from compa nies in the medical-marijuana in dustry, which under Amendment 3 would get first dibs on the more lucrative recreational licenses is sued by the state to grow, manu facture and sell marijuana.

The largest contribution was a 00,000 check from pringfield based BD Health Ventures LLC, which under the medical-mari juana program was awarded two dispensary and three cultivation licenses.

A $100,000 check came from Grassroots OpCo LLC, which was awarded five dispensary licenses but is connected to a chain of at least 16 dispensaries across Mis souri.

According to its July quarterly disclosure report with the Mis souri Ethics Commission, Legal Missouri 2022 spent nearly $6 mil lion getting Amendment 3 on the ballot.

On the other side of the issue is a PAC called Save Our State. Run by former lawmaker and longtime GOP political strategist Scott Dieckhaus, the PAC was cre ated in early September to oppose Amendment 3.

Save Our State has not reported

any contributions since it launched.

Amendment 3 asks voters whether to amend the Missouri Constitution to remove bans on marijuana sales, consumption and manufacturing for adults over 21 years old, with some caveats.

The amendment includes auto matic expungement for certain people who have nonviolent mar ijuana-related offenses on their records. People who are still in carcerated would have to petition the courts to be released and have

their records expunged.

It would create a regulated mar ket where, just like for medical marijuana, the state would have the authority to cap the number of licenses it issues to grow and sell cannabis. Those with a cur rent medical-marijuana business license would be first in line to get recreational licenses.

After voters approved medical marijuana in 2018, state regula tors decided to only issue the min imum number of licenses allowed

— 60 cultivation licenses, 192 dis pensary licenses and 86 manufac turing licenses.

The decision has stirred contro versy ever since.

The Missouri House launched an investigation into the licens ing process in early 2020, fueled by widespread reports of irregu larities in how license applica tions were scored and allegations that conflicts of interest within the state health department and a private company hired to score applications may have tainted the process.

enied applicants filed hun dreds of appeals, and rumblings of FBI scrutiny of the industry have been persistent.

Both state regulators and indus try leaders have long denied any wrongdoing in the marijuana li censing process. And they defend the license caps by noting Mis souri issued far more than most states and arguing that by capping licenses the state ensures oversup ply doesn’t fuel a black market.

But that’s done little to quell critics, who say the caps have ben efited connected insiders in the medical-marijuana industry who now stand to reap most of the fi nancial rewards if Missourians vote to legalize recreational use. n

[WEED NEWS]

Beg Pardon?

Written by JASON HANCOCK

This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent

While announcing a plan to pardon those with prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession, President Joe Biden urged governors to follow suit for those convicted of state offenses.

Missouri Governor Mike Parson, who has granted clemency to more people than any Missouri governor in the past four decades, doesn’t appear ready to heed the president’s call.

In a statement released to the media, the governor’s spokeswoman indicated he will continue to handle clemency on a case-by-case basis.

“Gov. Parson has used his state constitutional authority to grant pardons to individuals who demonstrate a changed life-style, commitment to rehabilitation, contrition and contribution to their communities — rather than as a blanket approach to undermine existing law,” the statement said.

Under Missouri law, anyone seeking clemency must apply to the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole, which makes recommendations to the governor.

Last month, Parson granted 26 pardons, bringing his total to more than 100 so far this year.

On October 6, the president pledged to issue pardons to anyone with a federal conviction for marijuana possession.

Biden also directed U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and Attorney General Merrick Garland to review how marijuana is classified under federal law as a Schedule I drug, the Drug Enforcement Agency’s most dangerous classification that in-

cludes substances like heroin and LSD.

“Sending people to prison for possess ing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit,” Biden said. “Criminal records for marijuana pos session have also imposed needless bar riers to employment, housing and educa tional opportunities. And while white and Black and Brown people use marijuana at similar rates, Black and Brown people have been arrested, prosecuted and con victed at disproportionate rates.”

Missourians will vote November 8 on whether to amend the state constitution to legalize recreational marijuana. The pro posal also includes provisions that would allow Missourians who were previously charged with nonviolent marijuana offens es to have their criminal records expunged. Expungement would be automatic for those on probation or parole, with those in prison required to petition courts to vacate sentences and expunge records.

Parson has been outspoken in opposition to the proposal, which will appear on the ballot as Amendment 3, calling it a “disaster” that will mostly benefit “corporations behind marijuana.” n

Missouri governor doesn’t plan to issue blanket pardons for marijuana o enses

Legal Missouri has raised almost $700,000 since October 1. | VIA MARCO VERCH FLICKR

CULTURE

[SITE SPECIFIC]

Street Art

Renowned gra ti artist Indie 184 painting mural in the forthcoming Puttshack at City Foundry STL

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

Walking into the construc tion zone that is the future Puttshack at City Foundry STL is about what you’d expect. The space is ex tremely raw with exposed beams, unpainted cement and a steady stream of neon-shirted workers wearing hardhats bringing a min iature golf course to life.

But look to the right, and you’ll find something une pected a woman with spray cans set against an open wall. This is Indie 184 — a world renowned gra ti artist who is hard at work transforming that blank wall into what will be a vibrant mural celebrating street art, St. Louis and, of course, the forthcoming Puttshack.

Indie began painting the mural earlier this month.

“It’s thrilling to say the least,” she says, “and I guess that’s what gra ti is all about, that rush. I’m up for the challenge, and I’m going to do my best.”

The project came about as a collaboration between Puttshack — a contemporary reimagining of mini golf that includes music, drinks and world cuisines — and CASS Contemporary, a Tampa, Florida, gallery that also facilitates larger-scale projects between businesses and artists. The gallery previously coordinated a mural by German artist Case Maclaim that runs alongside the main drag of City Foundry.

When the Puttshack project came up, Indie’s name surfaced almost immediately.

“We’ve worked with her in the past, and her work is just really cool,” says Tobin Green, CASS project manager. “It’s very bright and colorful, a lot of cool mixed media, and it’s approachable. Peo ple really like to engage with it.”

Indie worked with Puttshack

to come up with the design for the mural, which incorporates its brand colors, her trademark bubble letters and subtle St. Louis imagery, such as the fleur de lis.

“I heard that the City Foundry was filled with gra ti before, and I think they wanted to return to that essence, like the gra ti cul ture,” Indie says.

Indie 184, a.k.a. Soraya Mar ue , first learned about street art and gra ti culture growing up in New York City. Taking the subway or riding the bus, she’d notice the gra ti, thinking of it as a kind of secret society within the city.

Then, when she was 11, she read two landmark books about gra ti — Subway Art by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant and Spraycan Art by Chalfant.

Those volumes changed the tra jectory of her life. But the effects weren’t immediate.

In her early 20s, Indie was working as an administrative as sistant at a nonprofit, which was working with boys, gra ti art ists and other creative people. She connected with other artists and learned about the culture, starting herself to paint in the process.

As her work evolved, she transi

tioned to also painting on canvas out of a desire to leave a perma nent mark. Indie mi es gra ti, graphic design, photography and other media when creating her paintings. She often features strong women such as Frida Kah lo and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“I think that happened, me do ing that, subconsciously,” Indie says. “I grew up in a single-mom household. So, to me, women, I

paint a lot of icons because I feel like they just resonate more with me, and I love each individual story and what it took for them to persevere. And I kind of saw that in my mom.”

But despite her evolution to ward smaller-scale works, Indie says that she always finds herself “returning to the essence of graf fiti.” That’s clearly evident in her dynamic and playful lettering and colors.

The large-scale projects such as this mural, though, are important to Indie. Her murals can be found across the world in locations as diverse as the South Bronx and Paris.

“It’s like the heart and soul, if you will, of my practice,” she says, “because that’s how I started. I started painting in the street. The fact that I am getting paid to do that now is amazing, and I get to collaborate with all these great cli ents and companies.” n

Indie 184’s mural will be open to the public at a yet-to-be-deter mined date. But St. Louisans can purchase a limited-edition print by the artist at Procure by The Women’s Creative (3730 Foundry Way Unit 137, shopprocure.com)

e very start of a mural takes shape beneath Indie 184’s spray cans. | SARAH LOVETT

Indie 184 first became interested in gra ti art growing up in New York. | SARAH LOVETT

[VISUAL ART]

Wild Colors, Strange Mediums

Written by KASEY NOSS

Walking through Katharina Grosse’s latest exhibition is like stumbling into a contemporary wonderland. Mystifying patterns, unlikely materials and bold colors that should clash — but don’t — greet you at every turn. This is all par for the course for Grosse, an artist renowned for a vivid color palette and affinity for strange mediums.

The biggest difference between this show and her previous ones? This one’s indoors.

The exhibition, Studio Paintings, 19882022: Returns, Revisions, Inventions, opened at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum (1 Brookings Drive, 314-9354523) late last month. It features 37 largescale canvases divided into two thematic sections: Returns, Revisions, Inventions and Fissures and Ruptures.

Aside from the two galleries, Grosse’s work at the Kemper also includes a series of three digital prints on fabric, roughly 22 1/2 feet tall, hanging in the museum’s atrium. The unveiling of Studio Paintings is accompanied by a book of the same name featuring 160 full-color plates and 38 sup plemental images documenting her studio practice over the last three decades.

Grosse flew in for the exhibition’s open ing on September 23. Wearing a bright-or ange dress with a white, geometric pattern, Grosse appeared as vibrant and spirited as the paintings that surrounded her.

“You’re very active in the space,” she said as she introduced the exhibition. “Your position [within the exhibition] de fines what you can get and what you can understand of the work. You constantly move, you see things out of the corner of your eye. … I think it is odd to have a very clear relationship to the work.”

The indoor studio exhibition is the first of its kind for Grosse, who is most known for her large-scale, on-site works painted directly onto their surrounding environments.

“Katharina Grosse is one of the most

stimulating, creative and thoughtful paint ers working today,” Sabine Eckmann, the William T. Kemper director and chief cu rator at the Kemper, said in a statement. “Yet, to date, her works on canvas have been relatively understudied. We are ex tremely honored to shine a light on this foundational aspect of her oeuvre.”

All of the works in the exhibition are untitled. Instead, each painting is labeled with the year Grosse painted it, amplifying the exhibition’s goal of exploring changes and continuities in Grosse’s work over the years.

The exhibition’s first section, Returns, Revisions, and Inventions, features many of her earlier works. It also highlights the fluid and spontaneous nature of Grosse’s creative process. She doesn’t begin her works with a specific endgame in mind. Rather than plan out her paintings from the start, she lets the creative process guide her.

“That is very much how I worked and still work,” Grosse says. “I define the start ing point, but then it is very possible that toward the end of the work, I’m very far away from where it started. I find that it’s important to actually sift through the pos sibilities.”

The evidence of Grosse’s process shines through in the exhibition. Viewers can trace each brushstroke or color from the painting’s genesis, even if the com pleted work sees them covered or hidden.

In Untitled, 2005, for example, a blue, magenta and yellow geometric pattern is clearly visible beneath lime-green streaks that define the foreground.

The second section, Fissures and Ruptures, marks a slight departure from her earlier methods. Through the use of unusual methods and mediums, Grosse demonstrates her desire to blur the lines between the canvas and its surroundings. She particularly favors using a spray gun, which allows her to expand her range of motion and, consequently, the kinds of works she is able to create.

Grosse also employs soil, shredded can vases and even tree branches to blur the line between the traditional canvas and the outside world. For one work, Untitled, 2006, Grosse stomped all over a circular canvas wearing specially made, rubberplated boots. Muted brown footprints litter the splashes of red, orange and green that form the background, drawing attention to the process that brought the work into be ing rather than the finished product itself.

The exhibition allows viewers to see how Grosse’s work has evolved over the years, but it also highlights captivating con sistencies. Color is decidedly one of them.

“I had a moment, definitely, when I left art school, and it was really understanding and agreeing with myself that color is the main medium,” Grosse says. “It’s like when you switch on the music of a song that you totally love, and the first two bars you hear

you go, ‘Ah, alright.’ … That’s why I live, and that’s what color does for me, really.”

Though Grosse generally skips the can vas for her site-related works and paints directly on the surrounding environment, even her studio work demonstrates her proclivity for larger-than-life art.

“I’ve always liked large paintings, even as a little kid,” Grosse says. “I have a real problem staying where I am. I like to move, to vibrate, and then the vibration gets larg er, and larger, and larger.”

Grosse’s massive canvases have the effect of making viewers feel almost child ishly small, yet drawn into something larger than themselves. Grosse is interested in the way paintings allow us to tap into and process our emotions. The canvas, though in some ways confining, also proves a par ticularly powerful medium for achieving this effect.

“You can be actually more aggressive because a lot of action goes into a small space, whereas outdoors, the action I have goes into a large space, so it’s actually slow motion,” Grosse says. n

The Kemper Art Museum is open to visi tors each week from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday as well as Wednesday to Sunday. You can check out Studio Paintings, 19882022: Returns, Revisions, Inventions now through Monday, January 23, 2023.

19-25,

e new Kemper Art Museum exhibition is a first for artist Katharina Grosse, who’s known for her large-scale, on-site works

From le : Katharina Grosse’s Untitled, 2016; Untitled, 2015; Untitled, 2013. All are acrylic on canvas. | VIRGINIA HAROLD

Katharina Grosse’s exhibition will be on display until late January. | LARISSA HOFMANN

Process shines in the exhibition, as in Untitled, 2004 (second from the right). |

VIRGINIA HAROLD

[REVIEW]

A Fantastic Romp

e Repertory eatre of St. Louis’ Private Lives is subtly self-aware and laugh-out-loud funny

Written by TINA FARMER

Private Lives

Script by Noël Coward. Directed by Meredith McDonough. Presented by the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis through Sunday, October 23. Showtimes vary. Tickets are $23 to $92.

If Noël Coward’s Private Lives is to be believed, relationships a century ago were every bit as complex and seem ingly inexplicable as they are today. The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis’ (130 Edgar Road, Webster Groves; 314-9684925; www.repstl.org) rollicking produc tion embraces the sophisticated slapstick of Coward’s comedy of manners while hu morously challenging the more blatantly outdated misogyny.

Recently married, Elyot and Sybil Chase are enjoying the view from the terrace of a hotel in France. The honeymoon is off to a splendid start, though Sybil seems a bit preoccupied with Elyot’s first wife. When they go in to dress for dinner, Victor and Amanda Prynne step out to the terrace from the room next door. They, too, are recently married and on their honeymoon; this time it’s Victor who’s preoccupied with Amanda’s ex-husband.

Not to give too much away, but it turns out Elyot and Amanda are each other’s exes. The moment the two realize they have adjoining terraces, the panic, sparks and madcap humor in the script really take off.

Written in 1930, Coward’s deftly funny script features period-typical norms such as patriarchy and domestic violence as relationship goals. Fortunately, Coward

STAGE

was more forward thinking, and he constantly challenges presumptive norms, particularly via Amanda. She bristles at the mere thought of conventionality. Still, one of the things that makes this production so delightful is how malleable the clever script is in the hands of a talented cast, guided with considerable finesse by director Meredith McDonough.

Amelia Pedlow and Stanton Nash are well matched as the sharp-witted, feisty Amanda and cavalierly disaffected Elyot. Self-absorbed and unconsciously callous, their relationship threatens to combust, with scorched-earth ferocity, at any moment. Pedlow and Nash create believable chemistry. Their breaths flutter and postures change as soon as they become aware of each other. Their impromptu duet in the second act is an unexpected treat.

As Sybil, Kerry Warren’s shrill protestations, whether crying or throwing a tantrum, are perfectly pitched comic excess. In contrast, Carman Lacivita is humorously self-important and stuffy as the always alert, always judging Victor.

The gorgeous set design by Lex Liang and costumes by Kathleen Geldard are nicely lit by Colin Bills and complemented by Lindsay Jones’ sound design, which leans into the briefly elevated post-World War I mood. Contributions from fight choreographer Nathan Keepers, dialect coach Jill Walmsley Zager and intimacy directory Kaja Amado Dunn are apparent and welcome.

Coward’s complacency toward domestic violence and dismissive attitude toward women in Private Lives may be triggering for some audience members. I found the Rep’s delightfully cathartic show subtly self-aware and laugh-outloud funny. A general rebellious attitude toward the patriarchy updates the tone without losing any laughs. A strong cast that leans into the cartoonish and lavishly over-the-top approach helps audiences to thoroughly enjoy the witty show. While it’s hard to know what the future holds for Amanda and Elyot, one hopes they’d find a happier balance in real life. n

Sybil (Kerry Warren) and Victor (Carman Lacivita) fight in Private Lives. |

JOHN GITCHOFF

OUT EVERY NIGHT

Each week, we bring you our picks for the best concerts of the next seven days! To submit your show for con sideration, visit https://bit.ly/3bgnwXZ.

All events are subject to change, espe cially in the age of COVID-19, so do check with the venue for the most up-to-date information before you head out for the night. And, of course, be sure that you are aware of the venues’ COVID-safety requirements, as those vary from place to place, and you don’t want to get stuck outside because you forgot your mask or proof of vaccination. Happy showgoing!

THURSDAY 20

BLANCO BROWN: 7:30 p.m., $25-$59.50. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

BUTCH MOORE: 5 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

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

HILLARY FITZ: 8-10:30 p.m., $15/$20. Joe’s Cafe Gallery, 6010 Kingsbury Ave., St. Louis, 314-862-2541.

JOHN MCDANIEL: 7:30 p.m., $20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

LEYLA MCCALLA: 8 p.m., $25-$30. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

MARCUS KING: w/ Dean Delray 8 p.m., $35-$50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

ME LIKE BEES ALBUM RELEASE SHOW: w/ Matt F Basler, Super Bomb 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

NEIL SALSICH AND FRIENDS: 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

THE Q-TIP BANDITS: w/ The Public, Dead Format 8 p.m., $12. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

THE RECORD COMPANY: 8 p.m., $25. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

SLANDER: 8 p.m., $35-$59.50. The Factory, 17105 N uter 0 d, Chesterfield, 3 3 00.

STEFON HARRIS & BLACKOUT: Oct. 19-23, 7:308:40 p.m., $37. The Harold & Dorothy Steward Center for Jazz, 3536 Washington Ave, St Louis, 314-571-6000.

FRIDAY 21

THE BRONX CHEERS: 5 p.m., $10. The Attic Music ar, . ingshighway, nd floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.

BROTHER FRANCIS AND THE SOULTONES: 7 p.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

CARNIFEX: w/ Spite, Oceano, Left To Suffer, Crown Magnetar 6:30 p.m., $25-$30. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

FALLING FENCES ALBUM RELEASE: 8 p.m., $15. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

FOOL HOUSE: THE ULTIMATE 90S DANCE PARTY: 10 p.m., free. Ballpark Village, 601 Clark Ave, St. Louis, 314-345-9481.

HITCHCOCK AND THE HITMEN: 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

KEVIN BUCKLEY: 4 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

KURT VILE AND THE VIOLATORS: 8 p.m., $30. The Pag eant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

THE MEDIUM: w/ Lemons 8 p.m., $10/$12. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis,

J.R.C.G. w/ 18andCounting, Jane Wave

8 p.m. Monday, October 24. O Broadway, 3509 Lemp Avenue. $10. 314-498-6989.

After years of designing art and album covers for a vast array of musicians, Jus tin R. Cruz Gallego compiled specific visu als to inform the kaleidoscopic vibe of Ajo Sunshine, the debut album from art rock outfit J.R.C.G. The Tacoma, Washington, native built a mood board filled with old covers of Lowrider Magazine, print materi als from the Chicano Moratorium, and the work of the photographer Guy Le Querrec, along with key items from his own fam ily’s rodeo legacy, using it all as a road map to arrive at the finished sound of Ajo Sunshine. Since the release of the record late last year, Gallego has led J.R.C.G. in malleable live recreations of the songs in a variety of different venues while draw ing inspiration from loosened jazz per formances where each band member

314-328-2309.

NAPALM DEATH: w/ Brujeria, Frozen Soul, M.D.C. 7:30 p.m., $25. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

RENAISSANCE BAND: 7 p.m., $20. National Blues Museum, 615 Washington Ave., St. Louis.

SPONGE: w/ The Ricters, Misplaced Religion 8 p.m., $25. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

STEFON HARRIS & BLACKOUT: Oct. 19-23, 7:30-

J.R.C.G. | VIA ARTIST BANDCAMP

shines through their own nuanced perfor mances. J.R.C.G. tactfully melds into the landscape of any given setting, a recent standout being the group’s opening set for a screening of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo at the Beacon Cinema in Seattle. And that film is a solid visual baseline for the noisy desert mysticism that J.R.C.G. conjures by dousing ardent drum beats in a murky mix of guitars and synth. The band comes through St. Louis at the tail end of a nearly month-long tour of the United States, with opening support from the ever-prolific 18andCounting and local sonic conjurer Jane Wave.

Breaking Into the Business: While J.R.C.G. is the most recent — and currently more prominent — musical export of Gallego, the project sits under the umbrella of Dreamdecay Music Group, which notably includes the Seattle-based punk-adjacent band Dreamdecay. Start with the “N/O” 7” released through Sub Pop in August 2019 as part of the Sub Pop Singles Club. —Joseph Hess

8:40 p.m., $37. The Harold & Dorothy Steward Center for Jazz, 3536 Washington Ave, St Louis, 314-571-6000.

STONE CRAZY: 7 p.m., free. Cheers Bar and Grill, 61 National Way Shopping Center, Manchester, 636-220-8030.

THIRD DEGREE GLASS FACTORY 20TH ANNIVERSARY: w/ Boxcar 7-10 p.m., free. Third Degree Glass Factory, 5200 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-367-4527.

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

SATURDAY 22

4 HANDS FALL FEST W/ VOODOO HIGHWAYMEN: noon, free. 4 Hands Brewing Co., 1220 S. 8th St., St. Louis, 314-436-1559.

ALL ROOSTERED UP: noon; Oct. 29, noon, free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

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

BETTER THAN EZRA: 8 p.m., $25. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

THE BLUE SPARKS: 7 p.m., free. Das Bevo Biergar ten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

CRAIG FINN & THE UPTOWN CONTROLLERS: 8 p.m., $25-$30. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

DEAD POET SOCIETY: w/ BRKN Love 8 p.m., $17-$20. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

EMO NITE LA PRESENTS EMO NITE: 9 p.m., $16$31. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

HOT KOOLAID: 8:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m., free. St. Charles Music House, 2556 Raymond Dr., St. Charles, 636-946-2212.

HOWL AT THE MOON HALLOWEEN PARTY AND HIPHOP SHOW: w/ Jonezy, Robinson, T Menace, Poet X, Azeei Picasso 8 p.m., $10. Pop’s Blue Moon, 5249 Pattison Ave., St. Louis, 314-776-4200.

JAKE’S LEG: 10 p.m., $12. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

KATIE PEDERSON: 5 p.m., $10. The Attic Music ar, . ingshighway, nd floor, t. ouis, 314-376-5313.

MOON VALLEY: 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

NEQUIENT: w/ Swamp Lion, Hot Corpse 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

OVER HEAD DOG: 6:30-9:30 p.m., free. 9 Mile Gar den, 9375 Gravois Road, Affton, 314-390-2806.

REAL TALK COMEDY TOUR: 8 p.m., $59.50-$199.50. Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis, 314-977-5000.

REBA MCENTIRE: w/ Terri Clark 7:30 p.m., $46$746. Enterprise Center, 1401 Clark Ave., St. Louis, 314-241-1888.

SISSER ALBUM RELEASE SHOW: w/ Vaudevileins, The Potomac Accord 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

STEFON HARRIS & BLACKOUT: Oct. 19-23, 7:308:40 p.m., $37. The Harold & Dorothy Steward Center for Jazz, 3536 Washington Ave, St Louis, 314-571-6000.

THEREALWOBBLYCHAIR: 7:30 p.m., $5. Spine Indie Bookstore & Cafe, 1976-82 Arsenal St., St. Louis, 314-925-8087.

VANESSA COLLIER: 7 p.m., $20. National Blues Museum, 615 Washington Ave., St. Louis.

SUNDAY 23

ADAM CALHOUN: w/ Demun Jones, Brodnax, Dusty Leigh 7:30 p.m., $30-$35. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

THE CALIFORNIA HONEYDROPS: 6 p.m., $23-$45. The Big Top, 3401 Washington Blvd, St. Louis, 314-533-0367.

CASH LANGDON: w/ Hennen, Birdie Edge 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

DAVE WECKL AND HIS STL BIG BAND CONTINGENT: 3 p.m., $10-$30. Pattonville High School, 2497 Creve Coeur Mill, Maryland Heights, 314-213-8051.

ERIC LYSAGHT: 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster

[CRITIC’S PICK]

Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

THE MILLENNIUM TOUR: TURNED UP: w/ Bow Wow, Mario, Keri Hilson, Llyod, Pleasure P, Bobby V , Day 26, Ying Yang Twins, Dem Franchize Boyz, Crime Mob, Sammie, Chingy, Travis Porter, Lil Scrappy, Trillville 7 p.m., $64.50-$154.50. Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis, 314-977-5000.

ORIGAMI ANGEL: 7:30 p.m., $20. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

SLOPPY SECONDS: w/ the Bollweevils, Ultraman 8 p.m., $18. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

STEFON HARRIS & BLACKOUT: Oct. 19-23, 7:308:40 p.m., $37. The Harold & Dorothy Steward Center for Jazz, 3536 Washington Ave, St Louis, 314-571-6000.

THREE OF A PERFECT PAIR: 11 a.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

TYRONE WELLS: w/ Ellie Schmidly 8 p.m., $22/$25. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

MONDAY 24

J.R.C.G.: w/ Jane Wave, 18andCounting 9 p.m., $10. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

SOULARD BLUES BAND: 9 p.m.; Oct. 31, 9 p.m., $5. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

STEVE REEB: 5 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

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

TUESDAY 25

CARLOS TRULY: 7:30 p.m., $12/$15. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

COLT BALL: 5 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

ETHAN JONES: 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

JOE DREYER: 7-11:59 p.m., $5. Blue Strawberry STL, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

MIKE AND THE MOONPIES: w/ Vandoliers 8 p.m., $15. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

RODNEY CROWELL: 7:30 p.m., $85. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

WEDNESDAY 26

ANTONIO FOSTER: 7:30 p.m., $17. Jazz St. Louis, 3536 Washington Ave, St. Louis, (314) 571-6000.

CHILD BITE: w/ USA Nails, Terms, Iron Linings 8 p.m., $15. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

COLT BALL: 7:30 p.m., free. Steve’s Hot Dogs, 3145 South Grand, St. Louis.

DENISE THIMES: 7 p.m.; Nov. 25, 7 p.m., $25. Blue Strawberry STL, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

HOODIE ALLEN: 8 p.m., $29.50. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

JUDY COLLINS: 8 p.m., $74-$94. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

MICROWAVES: w/ Van Buren, Christopher Pravdica (from Swans), Brett Lars Underwood 8 p.m., $13/$15. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

MIKE DOUGHTY: 8 p.m., $25-$30. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

MR. WENDELL: 4:30 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

POST SEX NACHOS: 8 p.m., $12. Blueberry HillThe Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

VOODOO GRUNGE: 9 p.m., $12. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

THIS JUST IN

USA Nails w/ Terms, Child Bite, Iron Linings

8 p.m. Wednesday, October 26. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street. $15. 314-289-9050.

If the “noise rock” genre confuses or scares you — after all, etymology of the term can be traced back to frightening urban hipsterdom of the late ’80s — the UK-based USA Nails is suited to give a damn TED Talk on the matter. After all, the band is making a rare appearance in the midwest in the run up to what is arguably North America’s biggest noise rock festival, No Coast in Denton, Texas, which also features the like-minded METZ, KEN Mode and Cherubs. USA Nails’ latest split with Psychic Graveyard offers a seminar on the form with grimy

Dec. 29, 5:30 p.m., free. Missouri History Muse um, 5700 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, 314-746-4599.

ADAM GAFFNEY AND DREW SHEAFOR: Thu., Nov. 3, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

ANDY COCO & FRIENDS: Sat., Oct. 22, 7 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

THE CHARLIE BERRY PROJECT: W/ Ish, Wed., Nov. 16, 6 p.m., $15. Wed., Dec. 21, 6 p.m., $15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

CHOIR VANDALS ALBUM RELEASE SHOW: Sat., Nov. 5, 8 p.m., $15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314727-4444.

CHRIS BOTTI: Sat., March 4, 7:30 p.m., $49.50$99.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 3 3 00.

CHRISTMAS IN ST. LOUIS: W/ Erin Bode and the St. Louis Christmas Carols Association, Thu., Dec. 8, 5:30 p.m., free. Missouri History Muse um, 5700 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, 314-746-4599.

riffs pounded into submission by heavy backbeats and a heady, manic approach to vocals. Detroit, Michigan’s Child Bite joins USA Nails on this short trek with an edgy collision of metal and punk that brings stark consequences — namely long-term hearing loss and a heightened heart rate. Prepare accordingly.

NIGHT 2: Sat., Dec. 17, 8 p.m., $12. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

THE GASLIGHT SQUARES: Sat., Nov. 12, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

HALLOWEEN BRUNCH PARTY: W/ Drew Sheafor, Sun., Oct. 30, 10 a.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

HARDY: Thu., April 27, 7:45 p.m., $39.75-$49.75. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

HARRY CONNICK JR.: Sun., Dec. 4, 7 p.m., $46$162. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600.

JOE PARK & THE HOT CLUB OF ST. LOUIS: Sat., Nov. 5, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

JOE PERA: Sat., Feb. 4, 8 p.m., $35. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

JON BONHAM AND FRIENDS: Fri., Nov. 4, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

KATT WILLIAMS: Fri., April 21, 8 p.m., $64-$255. Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis, 314-977-5000.

LEO KOTTKE: Thu., Dec. 8, 8 p.m., $35-$50. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

MEN IN BLAZERS: Mon., Nov. 21, 8 p.m., $30$90. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

MR. BLUE SKY: A TRIBUTE TO ELO: Wed., Nov. 23, 7 p.m., $25. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

MUSE: Sun., March 5, 6:30 p.m., $39.50-$159.50. Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis, 314-977-5000.

NEIL SALSICH AND FRIENDS: Thu., Nov. 10, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

OLD SEA BRIGADE: Wed., Nov. 9, 8 p.m., $15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

DJ G.WIZ: Thu.,

On Your Own Terms: Prolific experimental guitarist Chris Trull, known for his work in Yowie and Grand Ulena, will bring his latest project Terms to a live setting in his hometown of St. Louis for the first time. The duo commands a math rock nuclear reaction that manages to fit more riffs into a single song than most bands do throughout their entire discography — you need a musical GPS to navigate the winding paths this band goes down.

PLACK BLAGUE: W/ Kontravoid, Lunacy, Nadir Smith, Mon., Nov. 28, 7 p.m., $15-$18. Off Broad way, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

THE PRINCE EXPERIENCE: Fri., Dec. 9, 8 p.m., $20. The Hawthorn, 2225 Washington Avenue, St. Louis.

RA KALAM BOB MOSES / KYLE QUASS / DAVE STONE / DAMON SMITH: Fri., Nov. 4, 7 p.m., $20. The Judson House, The Judson House 3733 Washington Ave, St. Louis, 314-406-6578.

SHAKEY DEAL: W/ Hard Rain, Fri., Nov. 4, 8 p.m., $20. The Playhouse at Westport Plaza, 635 Westport Plaza, St. Louis, 314-469-7529.

—Joseph Hess

COLIN RICH & THE MONTAGE ALBUM RELEASE: W/ Dizzy Del, Chris Grindz, Solid Armada, Kanashii, Sat., Oct. 29, noon, $10. Pop’s Blue Moon, 5249 Pattison Ave., St. Louis, 314-776-4200.

DAVE WECKL AND HIS STL BIG BAND CONTINGENT: Sun., Oct. 23, 3 p.m., $10-$30. Pattonville High School, 2497 Creve Coeur Mill, Maryland Heights, 314-213-8051.

DAVID RANALLI: Thu., Nov. 17, 7:30 p.m., $25. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

DR. ZHIVEGAS PRINCE TRIBUTE: Fri., Dec. 23, 8 p.m., $20. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

FALLING IN REVERSE: Mon., Dec. 5, 7 p.m., $42.50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

FOALS: Sun., Dec. 4, 8 p.m., $35. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

FUNKY BUTT BRASS BAND BRASSTRAVAGANZA NIGHT 1: Fri., Dec. 16, 8 p.m., $12. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

FUNKY BUTT BRASS BAND BRASSTRAVAGANZA

SKAMASALA: Sat., Oct. 29, 7 p.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

THEREALWOBBLYCHAIR: Sat., Oct. 22, 7:30 p.m., $5. Spine Indie Bookstore & Cafe, 1976-82 Arsenal St., St. Louis, 314-925-8087.

THIRD SIGHT BAND: Mon., Oct. 24, 7 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

TWO FRIENDS: Tue., June 6, 7:30 p.m., $39.50$49.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 3 3 00.

VALENTINE’S SOUL JAM: Sat., Feb. 11, 7 p.m., $59$125. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600.

A VERY AWFUL DOUBLE F GANG CHRISTMAS: W/ Egan’s Rats, Luh Davey, J-Rebel, Deezymann, Too Tall Baby, Chilly Brisk, Striff, Sat., Dec. 10, noon, $10. Misty Nights Bar & Grill, 4241 N St. Peters Pkwy, St. Peters, 6369229497.

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE: Thu., Feb. 23, 8 p.m., $30. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

THE WILMINGTONS: Thu., Oct. 27, 7 p.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521. n

riverfronttimes.com OCTOBER 19-25, 2022 RIVERFRONT TIMES 41

USA Nails. | PHOTO VIA BANDCAMP

[CRITIC’S PICK]

SAVAGE LOVE

Crushing Loads

BY DAN SAVAGE

There is more to this week’s Savage Love. To read the entire column, go to savage.love.

Hey Dan: I’m a 71-year-old gay man married to a much younger man hat s all fine, not relevant so much as just info.Fifteen years a o, rie y too ro a hile it dulled my se drive, the or asms did mana e to have while ta in ro a were off the harts even tal ed to my do tor a out it at the time, and he just sort of shru ed and said enjoy it , fine ut a little more than 15 years later — off ro a for most of that time (I didn’t stay on it long) — my or gasms are still off the charts. My hus and s last a ind of normal ish five to ei ht se onds, ut mine continue for a good 30 seconds and leave me una le to fun tion after ossi ly related, from time to time et a short ut slammin head a he also very rarely e erien e un leasant or asm related disori entation, li e a sense of d j vu that lasts for hours have een to a neurolo ist a out this ut was of fered no e lanation worry these or asms mi ht e ermanently de ilitatin to me o you thin ould e harmin myself with these massive, mind lowin events am havin se a out twi e a wee , and they are always li e that Massive Orgasms And Neurological Symptoms

Some people get intense head aches immediately before or af ter climaxing, and while “sex headaches,” as their doctors call them, can be extremely annoy ing, they’re not life-threatening. If you’re using Viagra or poppers (which should never be used to gether), that could be causing or worsening your sex headaches.

As for your other symptoms, a recent study written up in the Times of London could offer some guidance. The study, published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, focused on post orgasmic illness syndrome (POIS), a rare sexual dysfunction that a icts a tiny percentage of men. Basically, men can become allergic to their own

sperm cells, and their own im mune systems mount a response to those “left behind” sperm cells that exit the balls but not the body.

“Many health providers do not know about it, let alone the public,” the study’s lead author, Andrew Shanholtzer, a medical student at Oakland University, told the Times of London. “It is more than likely that it is underdiagnosed, with many sufferers out there.”

Seeing as symptoms include feel ings of fatigue, disorientation and headaches, along with an assort ment of flu like symptoms, N , it’s possible that you’re one of those undiagnosed sufferers.

The study details how Shan holtzer treated a younger POIS sufferer whose symptoms sound ed a lot worse (and a lot less fun) than yours: a cough, swollen lymph nodes, hives. The use of an antihistamine reduced the se

verity of this man’s symptoms by more than 90 percent. The study will be published in the November 2022 issue of rolo y Case e orts (“Post orgasmic illness syndrome successfully treated with anti histamine: A case report,” Shan holtzer, et al), if you want to print it out, show it to your doctor and give the recommended antihista mine — fexofenadine — a try. Or, hey, maybe it was the Prozac you briefly took years ago, and an antihistamine won’t help.

ll that said, N , we all got ta go sometime … and I can think of much worse ways than being taken out by a massive orgasm in my eighth decade of life.

Hey Dan: I’m a 41-year-old dude who has een mono amously mar ried for years now you re doin the math and, no, it wasn t a shot un weddin e were hi h

s hool lovelies who went to ol le e, ot our de rees, ot married, and esta lished our areers efore havin two ids oth our ids, who are still youn , have een di a nosed autisti eedless to say, our lives have e ome more hal len in A out two years a o, my artner fell in love with another woman and as ed if we ould try olyamory he asserts that her love for does not diminish her feelin s for me, and that, in art, re resents an es a e from life s hallen es elieve her, ut that hasn t made it easier for me ve tried to e as su ortive as ossi le, whi h has in luded develo in a meanin ful, lovin and se ually a tive relationshi with myself owever, the ro ess of settlin into olyamory has reated more distan e etween us me and my wife than would li e urther om li atin matters, ve devel o ed a stron onne tion with an other woman , and even thou h has stron ly su ested the feel in s are mutual, she s in a lon term relationshi that a ears ha y and mono amous want to tell love her, ut haven t out of res e t for , her artner and their youn ids am also nervous a out losin as a friend Can tell in someone you love them ever o wron

Paralyzed Over Love’s Yearning

You’ve got a wife, you and your wife currently share a girlfriend … Go to savage.love to read the rest.

questions@savagelove.net Check out the Savage Lovecast @FakeDanSavage on Twitter

JOE NEWTON

“My husband’s orgasms last a normal five-toeight seconds, but mine continue for a good 30 seconds and leave me unable to function after.”