Riverfront Times March 2, 2021 by Riverfront Times

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MARCH 3-9, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

MARCH 3-9, 2021

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MARCH 6-12, 2019

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MARCH 3-9, 2021

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MARCH 3-9, 2021

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THE LEDE

“Real grassroots outreach is always going to be needed. So that’s where my heart is. I’ve been a champion of this stuff for almost 30 years, and I ain’t giving up. I’m here to help the poor. Not just in the winter — you’re going to see me out here in the summer, too. Because I know homelessness doesn’t take a break, no matter what the seasons are.”

PHOTO BY THEO WELLING

ANDRE COLE, PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE UJIMA COMMUNITY RESOURCE FAIR HOSTED BY URBAN CITY SERVICES AND UNHOUSEDSTL AT THE SALVATION ARMY (2740 ARSENAL ST.) ON FEBRUARY 20 riverfronttimes.com

MARCH 3-9, 2021

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The Big Read

don’t know where to tell you to begin with this issue, because it’s loaded with good writing and reporting. Maybe start with the dueling first-person accounts of Missouri’s embarrassingly bad vaccine rollout, penned by Daniel Hill and Jack Killeen. Or go straight to food critic Cheryl Baehr’s achingly poignant return to restaurant reviews through her tale of the review that wasn’t. Flip over to Hill’s remembrance of Kings of Leon’s epically shitty performance or read about major updates in two stories we’ve been following since 2017 — the death of Tory Sanders and the long-awaited freedom of Alex Garcia. Whatever you do, please don’t miss the debut of The Big Mad, a new guide to the most rage-inducing events of the past week. Better just read it all. — Doyle Murphy, editor in chief

TABLE OF CONTENTS Publisher Chris Keating Editor in Chief Doyle Murphy

E D I T O R I A L Digital Editor Jaime Lees Interim Managing Editor Daniel Hill Staff Writer Danny Wicentowski Contributors Cheryl Baehr, Eric Berger, Jeannette Cooperman, Thomas Crone, Mike Fitzgerald, Andy Paulissen, Justin Poole, Theo Welling, Ymani Wince Columnist Ray Hartmann Editorial Interns Jack Killeen, Riley Mack A R T

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

COVER Shot Chaser

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

Two writers dive into our botched vaccine rollout and report back

E U C L I D M E D I A G R O U P Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating Officers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner VP of Digital Services Stacy Volhein www.euclidmediagroup.com

Cover design by

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

EVAN SULT

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INSIDE The Lede Hartmann News The Big Mad Feature Cafe Short Orders Culture Savage Love 6

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HARTMANN The Bright Republican Line Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office seemed infested by Trump politics. Now there’s proof BY RAY HARTMANN

mong the many unanswered questions about the January 6 Capitol riot, there’s this: How much were the nation’s Republican attorneys general complicit in having created the climate that allowed it to happen? It’s a fine question for Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, although don’t expect any answers soon. Regardless, one fact has emerged in the aftermath of Trump’s attempted tyranny: Schmitt’s office — and countless others like it — were shamefully overrun by politics in service to the dear leader. Schmitt is the vice president of the national Republican Attorneys General Association. After two months of loyally cooperating with Donald Trump’s Big Lie about election fraud, RAGA promoted Trump’s January 6 rally through the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a political subsidiary it billed as a policy arm. “At 1 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal,” said a voice on a robocall to RAGA supporters. Violence was not specifically mentioned. Then again, neither was the fact that there was no permit for such a march. The Rule of Law Defense Fund, or RLDF, was listed as a participating organization in a website set up to promote the rally that preceded the riot. The website is no longer to be found. Nor is the executive director of RAGA, who walked the plank just days later, protecting anyone else who might have been in on the decision for RAGA to go full-Trump nuts. For his part, Schmitt was emphatic that no buck stopped with him despite his prominent posi-

tion at RAGA. Like all his counterparts, he immediately denied any knowledge of the robocall and claimed he did not condone the results of Trump supporters’ rage over the Big Lie that he himself helped promote. Schmitt had taken a leading role among Republican attorneys general in trying to overturn the election results. Almost immediately after the election, he jumped on Trump’s pile of lies about mail-in voting equating to fraud. Then he took a lead role — at Missouri taxpayers’ expense through staff time — in the filing of amicus briefs in two cases: one attacking Pennsylvania’s electoral sovereignty; the second, that infamous Texas case that essentially sought to overturn democracy writ large. After both cases were swatted away like flies by the conservative U.S. Supreme Court, Schmitt said — well, he apparently did not say much that can be found online. It’s possible Schmitt has accepted that President Joe Biden was duly chosen by Americans through a free and fair election, but if so, he’s keeping that to himself. As recently as last Friday, spokesman Chris Nuelle declined to respond to a question about it. On January 6, Schmitt had tweeted, “Every American has a right to peacefully protest but violence and lawlessness simply cannot be tolerated,” and sought prayers for law enforcement officials. When asked by the Missouri Times about the RAGA robocall, he was equally indignant about the outcome of the Stop the Steal effort that RAGA had been supporting for two months: “Attorney General Schmitt absolutely had no knowledge of or involvement in the robocall and condemns the violence that took place on Wednesday in the strongest possible terms, period,” Nuelle said. That may be true, but so is this: There’s no way Schmitt can pretend not to have known about RAGA’s prominent role in promoting Trump’s narrative. Thanks to some enterprising work by local attorney Elad Gross — erstwhile Democratic primary candidate for attorney general — there’s now public proof that RLDF had maintained direct and constant communication with Schmitt’s office. Gross discovered through a pub-

Research revealed that a “War Games” meeting had been held in September to plan for a potential Trump electoral defeat. Emails from RLDF to Schmitt’s office confirm that his office was indeed part of those meetings. lic-records request that RLDF held at least 30 meetings for senior staff in the offices of state attorneys general, dating back to last July and as recently as January 5, during business hours. Gross had obtained records with the help of fellow local attorney Mark Pedroli of the Sunshine and Government Accountability Project. The research also revealed that a “War Games” meeting had been held in September to plan for a potential Trump electoral defeat. Emails from RLDF to Schmitt’s office confirm that his office was indeed part of those meetings, including the attendance at the War Games by Solicitor General John Sauer, one of the top employees in Schmitt’s office. It is impossible to overstate how inappropriate this is. RLDF, a little-known arm of RAGA, is a 501(c)4 organization and through that status was able to raise funds more anonymously for RAGA. That’s fundraising as in darkmoney fundraising. Legal? Yes. Political? Oh yes. Schmitt’s office didn’t merely cross the bright red line between politics and government in maintaining an inappropriate line of communications with RAGA: It obliterated the line. The St.

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Louis Post-Dispatch reported last Wednesday that Nuelle said RLDF “was not a political group, but rather a policy organization.” That’s just not true. But even if RLDF wasn’t officially a 501(c)4 — which it is — any direct relationship of any kind between RAGA and any official state offices is just over-the-top outrageous. The “R” in RAGA is a dead giveaway. About the only possible way this could be worse would be for the offices involved to represent the top law enforcement authorities of the respective states. Well, there’s that. This isn’t partisan, and it isn’t debatable. There’s nothing sinister about a political organization of Republican attorneys general — the Democrats have one of their own — and it’s fine that Schmitt has a leadership role, even if he’s not such a good leader as to know what his organization is doing. But any communication between RAGA and public officeholders like Schmitt by definition must be made strictly to his campaign or personal accounts. Any communication from a political organization to an address ending in “mo.gov” is absolutely forbidden. Everyone who has served in any state government knows it. One of those people would be Gross, who worked as one of former Attorney General Chris Koster’s assistant AGs. Gross says he was pessimistic when Pedroli suggested an email search from Schmitt’s office, since it seemed so unlikely that such an improper paper trail would exist. “I couldn’t believe what we found,” Gross told me. I worked in state government, and I can’t believe it either. The customary church-state separation of government and politics is the sort of thing Trump scorned, but he’s a criminal. Schmitt has to be better than that, even if he did take part in the “Stop the Steal” scam. Doesn’t he? n Ray Hartmann founded the Riverfront Times in 1977. Contact him at rhar tmann1952@gmail.com or catch him on Donnybrook at 7 p.m. on Thursdays on the Nine Network and St. Louis In the Know with Ray Hartmann from 9 to 11 p.m. Monday thru Friday on KTRS (550 AM).

MARCH 3-9, 2021

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MARCH 3-9, 2021

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NEWS Alex Garcia Outlasts Trump, Leaves Sanctuary Written by

DOYLE MURPHY

lex Garcia walked out of a Maplewood church last week to rejoin his family after more than three years living in sanctuary to avoid being deported to Honduras. Garcia, 39, was ordered in September 2017 to report within two weeks to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials who were intent on carrying out Donald Trump’s new “zero tolerance” immigration policies. Rather than risk permanently separating from his wife and five kids, all of whom are U.S. citizens, he left their Poplar Bluff home and moved into a makeshift apartment in the basement of Christ Church. His wife Carly Garcia and a coalition of supporters have worked ever since to negotiate a solution with ICE to allow him to remain in the country. They finally succeeded last week. On February 24, after 1,252 days in sanctuary, Garcia and his attorneys and allies announced they had secured a written promise from ICE that he could leave the church and the feds wouldn’t seek to arrest or detain him. Shortly after 3 p.m. the same day, he walked through the red front doors of the church where he met a crowd of jubilant supporters and was presented with a key to the city by Maplewood’s mayor. “Because of all of your support and the new administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement made a promise that I am no longer a priority for deportation,” Garcia said in a prepared statement. “We are not done yet. There is still so much work that has to be done, and I look forward to being able to join you all out there in the

Alex Garcia holds the key to Maplewood after walking out of Christ Church. | DOYLE MURPHY community and continue to fight for my permanent protection.” The about-face by ICE follows new directives issued last week by President Joe Biden. His memo instructs immigration agencies to refocus their resources on violent criminals, rather than spending them on otherwise law-abiding immigrants. That led to Garcia’s freedom and could have wideranging effects on millions of immigrants and refugees across the country. Nicole Cortés, attorney and cofounder of the Migrant and Community Action Project, said there are about 50 people in the United States publicly known to have been living in sanctuary. Garcia was the only one in Missouri. “In the last three and a half years, it has been an endless march toward freedom,” she told the crowd outside the church. Cortés actually began working with the family seven years ago when they were seeking citizenship for Garcia, hoping he would qualify because he was married to a U.S. citizen. However, a deportation order from 2000 blocked his path. He had been caught during his initial attempt to cross the southern border that year and sent back to Honduras. He later returned to the U.S. and managed to board a northbound train, landing by chance in Poplar Bluff. He built a life there, marrying Carly and working construction to provide for his family. But that old deportation order meant his only path to living legally in the United

States would be to leave, wait ten years and then apply for re-entry. “Let’s be totally clear about this, he is not a criminal,” said Javad Khazaeli of Khazaeli Wyrsch, LLC, an immigration attorney who recently joined Garcia’s legal team to negotiate with federal officials. “He is caught in a Kafka-esque administrative loop.” During the Trump administration, that loop was endless. The ex-president had made harsh treatment of immigrants and refugees a platform of his campaign, and he spent his lone term in office enacting myriad policies to choke off access to the United States for people born elsewhere. That included slashing refugee allotments to historic lows, sinking millions of dollars into a failed border wall and using the separation of families as a deterrent to those seeking to enter the country. In that environment, what Garcia and his family had hoped would be a few weeks or months of sanctuary turned into years. Carly and the kids eventually had to give up their house in Poplar Bluff and move in with her parents before they relocated to Maplewood to be closer. Garcia remained in the church, keeping busy by scouring the old stone building for walls to paint and broken bits to fix. Throughout, Cortés worked closely with the St. Louis InterFaith Committee on Latin America. The nonprofit’s executive director, Sara John, helped lead the support effort, first to find a

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sanctuary and then create whatever political pressure they could to not only help Garcia but reform immigration laws, an ongoing effort. Over the years, Cortés and John have become close with the Garcias, their kids playing together as the mothers worked and strategized. Carly Garcia joined IFCLA as the organization’s operations manager. Their activism on immigration issues has included marches, countless phone calls, petition drives and even trips to Washington to press members of Congress and their staff members for change. Congresswoman Cori Bush announced earlier last week she was introducing legislation that could lead to permanent residency for Garcia. That so-called private bill is still in motion. If passed, it could mean lasting protection against the shifting whim of political leaders. “St. Louis and I are so grateful and relieved that Alex has been reunited with his family at home,” Bush said in a news release on the day of Garcia’s freedom. “This is the power of organizing. Alex was able to go home today because of the tireless work of his family, organizers, faith leaders, lawyers, Christ Church UCC in Maplewood, and community members who fought tooth and nail for years to make this day a reality.” Christ Church was an unwavering ally of the family throughout Garcia’s time in sanctuary. Pastor Rebecca Turner, ever protective of the congregation’s guest, accompanied supporters on tense visits to ICE’s office in St. Louis, standing alongside other pastors, even as federal agents threatened to arrest anyone who didn’t leave. This afternoon, she stood on the steps of the church and led the group in prayer. “Everybody say ‘Hallelujah!’” she shouted. In the end, Garcia said goodbye and jogged with Carly and their kids to the family minivan as news reporters and photographers trailed along. They turned out of the parking lot and made a pass in front of the church to huge cheers before driving out of sight for an afternoon in St. Louis. “Thank you, everyone,” Garcia said before they left. “Now, I’m going to enjoy my family — the way it’s supposed to be.” n

MARCH 3-9, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

No Charges in Tory Sanders Jail Death Written by

DOYLE MURPHY

o one will face criminal charges in the death of Tory Sanders, who died in 2017 after he was tased, pepper-sprayed, pinned down and choked by jailers during a mental health episode in a notorious rural Missouri jail. State Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced on Friday that staff from his office conducted a review of the case and concluded there wasn’t evidence to support a murder charge, the only charge available due to the statute of limitations. “The death of Tory Sanders is tragic and heartbreaking, particularly for his family and his loved ones, and my heart goes out to them,” Schmitt said in a news release. Sanders was 28 when he took off from his home in Nashville and apparently took a wrong turn on his way to see family in Memphis. The married father of eight traveled throughout the night before running out of gas in Missouri’s Bootheel region. He eventually made his way early in the morning to Mississippi County where he asked a gas station worker to contact police because he believed he was wanted on a warrant back home. He was, but it was a misdemeanor — not something local cops would hold him on for extradition. As the day went on, Sanders’s mental health seemed to be deteriorating, according to accounts described by the attorney general’s summary and a civil lawsuit filed by his family. (Relatives previously told the Riverfront Times he suffered from depression.) Sanders reportedly refused to leave the jail and clashed multiple times with jailers, who at different times shocked him with a stun gun. A Mississippi County sheriff’s deputy let Sanders use his cellphone to call his mother. “They’re trying to kill me,” Sanders reportedly told his mother. Sanders was checked out twice by a counselor, who recommended during the second visit that he should be placed on a 96-hour mental health hold. Sanders was to be transferred for psychiatric care at a nearby hospital, but he never made it there. Confrontations with jail staff grew increasingly violent that evening as he refused to leave a cell, and jailers called local cops to respond with pepper spray, which they blasted through an opening in the cell door. Sanders was able to snatch the keys from one staffer during a pepper spray episode, according to the attorney general’s summary. In a cellphone video recorded by a jail nurse, Sanders shouted that he was going to be raped and killed and Mexicans were trying to kill him, according to the attorney

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Tory Sanders, shown with three of his children, died in 2017 in Mississippi County. | PROVIDED general. Sometime after 6 p.m., more than eight hours after Sanders entered the jail, staffers decided to go into the cell to get him. The attorney general says Sanders fought with them, holding off multiple attempts by jailers. They responded by unleashing so much pepper spray that they all had to go outside for fresh air. That’s about the time when thenSheriff Cory Hutcheson arrived. In theory, Hutcheson’s actions with the sheriff’s office and jail were supposed to be administrative only. He was facing charges in unrelated cases after he was caught tracing the cellphones of his former boss, Missouri state troopers and a local judge. He would eventually plead guilty in a federal case and be sent to federal prison, but while the charges were pending, he was supposed to be stripped of any hands-on law enforcement action. However, at 7:18 p.m. that day, Hutcheson led nine people — a mix of jail staff and cops — into the cell in what turned out to be a final confrontation. The group piled onto Sanders. The attorney general says Sanders, “exhibiting extreme strength,” tossed them aside and kept fighting, biting one man’s thumb as people in Hutcheson’s crew threw punches. One person kneed Sanders to the ground where jail administrator Sally Yanez squeezed his neck, choking him out. The attorney general says Hutcheson was also near Sanders’ head. In the civil lawsuit, some in the cell said the sheriff jammed his knee against Sander’s neck. The 28-year-old went limp and never recovered. He died shortly after. “This is a gentleman who was having a medical emergency, not someone who was being charged with a crime,” says attorney Samuel Wendt of Wendt Law Firm, who is representing Sanders’ family in a civil lawsuit. Sanders died three years before George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, who held him down and kneeled on his neck. Floyd’s killing, recorded in a video that soon went viral, sparked mass protests across the country. But Sand-

MARCH 3-9, 2021

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ers’ death, which his family and a medical examiner blamed on a knee to the neck, played out in a sparsely populated corner of rural Missouri and never received a fraction of the media coverage. Then-Attorney General Josh Hawley reviewed the case and decided against filing murder charges. At the time, he left the door open to lesser charges, but Wendt says they never pursued anything else. “They did nothing,” he said. Instead, Hawley left office midway through his term after beating Claire McCaskill for a seat in the U.S. Senate. The statute of limitations for lesser charges has since expired, which left murder in the first or second degree as the only remaining options. Schmitt says he put two of his office’s most experienced attorneys on the review, but they ultimately concluded they couldn’t prove that Hutcheson and the others intended to kill Sanders. Wendt says the decision added “insult to injury” for Sanders’ family. “Obviously, they’re incredibly devastated, not only by his loss, but by the Hawley administration’s decision not to press charges originally and now by the Schmitt administration’s” decision. The attorney general’s report cited the conclusions of two medical examiners who blamed “excited delirium” and cardiac arrest for Sanders’ death. It’s a controversial diagnosis. Wendt points out that it pops up as a cause almost exclusively in police-custody deaths. It is not recognized as an actual condition by the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association or World Health Organization. A toxicology report found that Sanders had meth and cocaine in his system, which the attorney general’s report suggests also contributed to his death. It’s not clear, however, how recently he would have taken any drugs. He arrived at the gas station about 4 a.m., according to a worker there who told the RFT in 2017 that Sanders seemed calm and friendly. Sanders entered the jail about

10 a.m. and had his final showdown with Hutcheson and the others more than nine hours later. A third medical examiner hired by the family came to a different conclusion after reviewing the case. She suspected the cause of death was really asphyxiation as a result of him being choked out in the cell. That wasn’t conclusive enough to merit charges, according to the attorney general. The civil lawsuit in the case is still pending. Wendt says one of the issues involves surveillance video from inside the jail. The attorney general’s summary says there is no footage from surveillance cameras showing the inside of Sanders’ cell. That may be true now, but Wendt says it wasn’t always the case. One camera was aimed down the hallway and would have given a partial view into the cell, the attorney says. After Sanders’ death, the Missouri State Highway Patrol conducted an investigation and requested the footage from jail cameras that day. Hutcheson, described by adversaries as a tech whiz, gave them a thumb drive that included a couple of hours of video from two cameras, but not the one that could have shown what happened in the cell and at the door. Asked the next day by an investigator for all the footage, he said he’d provide it in a couple of days. By the time the highway patrol got ahold of the DVRs, the camera’s footage from the time of the incident was gone. Wendt says they suspect Hutcheson, the only one with the password for the DVRs, or someone else wiped the recording. Wendt filed a motion in the civil suit asking a judge to find that Hutcheson destroyed evidence. “[The camera] didn’t magically stop recording during the time Tory Sanders was involved in this horrible situation,” Wendt says. The civil suit is still pending. There is a tentative settlement with Charleston, the city where the jail is located, but the case continues against Mississippi County and Hutcheson who is now out of federal prison. Wendt has become familiar with Hutcheson through past suits and says the jail and county are almost certainly better off now that he is no longer working in law enforcement. Sanders’ death was just one of multiple incidents at the jail during Hutcheson’s tenure, first as the jail administrator and later as sheriff. In 2018, Mississippi County and Charleston settled a lawsuit with a young mother who died of an overdose in the jail. Video showed jailers laughing and mocking her as she lay dying, according to a suit brought by her relatives, who were also represented by the Wendt Law Firm. In another case, the ACLU filed a suit on behalf of a former inmate, who was pregnant and undergoing severe complications. The suit claimed she was refused medical care and was eventually transferred to a correctional facility across the state where her baby was stillborn. n

THE BIG MAD RAWWRR! Far-flung vaccines, Hawley overload and fears of a zombie Rush BY RFT STAFF

t’s been two weeks since Missouriborn conservative shit-disturber and red-faced outrage/pill addict Rush Limbaugh shuffled off this mortal coil, and many are still suffering through the shock of the aftermath. Thousands of rudderless, wandering balls of white-hot anger are simply unsure where to direct their energies now that America’s Anchorman is no longer here to tell them, specifically, what it is they are angry about. But fear not: We’re here to help. Welcome to the Big Mad, RFT’s weekly roundup of righteous rage. No longer will you need to wonder why you are an absolutely apoplectic asshole all the time; simply take that fury, ascribe it to any or all of the bite-sized bits of bile below, and you’ll finally have a plausible explanation for why no one you know can stand to be around you anymore. Simple! Let’s dive in. Vaccines in far-flung lands: Why are we prioritizing vaccine distribution to rural communities where people aren’t interested? Last week, nearly 2,000 doses of vaccine made their way to the town of Leopold, Missouri, which only has a population of 65 people, resulting in an open call for willing recipients that saw those in the St. Louis area driving hours to get shots. The weekend saw a similarly mismanaged mass vax event in Putnam County, a rural community about four hours north of St. Louis that had to put out an urgent call regardless of eligibility once it became clear its shots would go to waste otherwise. Could it be that Governor Mike Parson knows that the metropolitan areas by and large won’t vote for him, so he’s hoping we die? To be clear, we’re not mad that rural populations are getting shots, but the fact that many St. Louisans — including people who are in the proper eligibility tiers — have to resort to piling into cars and driving hours round-trip to get a shot is enraging. Eric Greitens, profile in courage: While there was plenty of coverage of Rudy Giuliani telling a gross story about the time he went golfing with Rush Limbaugh and the two ended up following a crew of paparazzi trying to take upskirt photos of a professional golfer, it was easily missed that Giuliani told this story while on the

“Real America’s Voice” network with Steve Bannon and former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens. As Giuliani went full lockerroom talk, Greitens could only grimace/ smile. Greitens infamously resigned in 2018 amid revelations of adultery and accusations that he took nonconsensual pictures of a woman. Here he was handed a chance to meaningfully display how far he’d come from that controversy, finding himself in a position where a powerful man bragged about invading the dignity of a young woman — but Greitens could only look down, silent, and let Giuliani finish. The birds that flew the coop: It’s been a full year since the debut of the Battlehawks, the ones that got away, stricken too soon by the viper-like strike of COVID-19. There’ll come a time to mourn everything lost in this lost year, but in the view of this Kaw-Kawlumn, the loss of our scrappy and extremely weird football team is a sting of what could have been, what might have flown. There’s still some hope that the team will return, as a group of investors including Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson purchased the XFL over the summer with plans for a return to play in 2022, but we’re still mourning the season that wasn’t. Josh Hawley overload: We’re getting sick of Josh Hawley, and we’re barely into the next hell-epoch. He’s at CPAC, he’s being a total dingus at confirmation hearings, and he continues to represent himself as a monumental weasel when it comes to his opposition to certifying the voters for Biden’s victory on January 6. Hawley’s assertion that he wasn’t encouraging insurrection — but, instead, solely objecting to Pennsylvania not following its own laws — only makes sense until you check a map and realize that Pennsylvania is not part of Missouri. He is exhausting, and honestly we wouldn’t mind if he went to Cancun for several hundred years. Speaking of Rush: Rush Limbaugh is interred in a St. Louis cemetery, which would be bad enough, but his eternal presence lends further evidence of an unsavory trend of St. Louis harboring the spirits of profoundly stupid media personalities — and sure, Bob Romanik may not host “White Awareness Radio” anymore, but there’s still Jim Hoft and Gateway Pundit, an unrelenting fount of misinformation that Rush couldn’t match even at his most oxyrevved intensity. Moreover, given the nonzero possibility that we’re living through the apocalypse, we’re the ones who will have to man the unraptured barricades if the dead come back to life and an angry zombie army led by Rush Limbaugh bursts through the cemetery ground. n

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MARCH 3-9, 2021

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Shot Two writers dive into the botched vaccine rollout and report back

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MARCH 3-9, 2021

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Confessions of an Unrepentant Vaccine ‘Cheater’ by Daniel Hill

hen I got the email confirming my appointment to receive the first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, I damn near threw my laptop across the room as if it were on fire. I had just over an hour to get from my home in St. Louis County to the Belle-Clair Fairgrounds mass vaccination site in Belleville, Illinois, and I was feeling the pressure. In a half-panic, I frantically gathered up all the things I would need. eys Photo ID Phone charger Oh shit, it’s free ing outside — jacket It’s a small miracle I remembered to put pants on in the mad scramble. My hands were trembling with excitement as I prepared to leave, so much so that I had to have my fianc e enter the address to the site on my phone’s GPS for me. When I got outside to my car I determined that there simply wasn’t enough time to properly scrape

all of the ice from my windshield, so I used my bare hands to claw away just enough to see what was in front of me, relying on the heater’s defrost setting to do the rest. Within minutes, I was Illinoisbound, racing down I- 0 while peering through a half-frosted windshield and frantically calling my family and friends in the hopes they would luck out in the same wholly unlikely way I had. It was February 1 , and I had been wrapping up work near the tail end of an otherwise uneventful Friday when I noticed something intriguing in the back-end of the RFT’s blogging platform: One of our new interns this semester, Jack illeen, was working on a story with the temporary headline “Getting vaccinated (title work in progress).” “What’s all this, then?” I wondered. Jack, I know, is a younger fella, much younger than I. So

how was he getting a vaccine? Being that I am unashamedly nosey (what kind of reporter would I be if I weren’t?) I clicked on the halfwritten post and started reading. Jack’s prose spoke of vaccine chasers whose attempts to get needles into their arms were often centered around finding vials that were set to expire or otherwise go to waste. e wrote about an event in Belleville that he’d heard had opened to the public at large after being unable to find enough willing recipients. “The Belleville Fairgrounds are doing a drive thru covid vaccine event tomorrow-this weekend and need people to sign up so the vaccines don’t go to waste,” he’d been told in a text message by a family member, who shared a link and a registration code — both of which I was now staring at in the post. It was as though I’d stumbled upon a secret trove of forbidden

knowledge. In disbelief, I copied and pasted the RL into my browser’s search bar and pressed enter. When prompted, I typed in the registration code and was shocked when it worked, allowing me access to a site that asked for my personal information. I answered each question honestly — I live in Missouri, I’m in my 30s, I’m not a health-care worker, I’m fat but not quite fat enough for it to be dubbed a comorbidity, etc. — and clicked to schedule an appointment for the following afternoon. The computer told me the slot I’d attempted to sign up for was now taken, and in fact, every Saturday slot was gone. I tried the same for Sunday and saw the same outcome — though these appointments were available when I initially selected them, by the time I submitted the form I was told they were filled. It seemed to me Continued on pg 14

t ChaserS ‘Is This Where You Give Vaccines?’ by Jack Killeen

first heard of the elusive “vaccinated 23-year-old” scenario a month ago. I was in Indiana, visiting my brother, and we were in the kitchen with his fiancée Shannon. Shannon’s a third-year medical student at Indiana University. As she pulled a sheet of cookies out of the oven and laid it onto the stove, she said that some hospitals were having to throw away vaccines. “They come in vials of ten doses. After one’s been opened, it has to be used in a few hours,” Shannon said as she scooped a cookie, then plopped it onto a plate. “I have a friend who’s completely healthy, but she got a vaccine because she asked a hospital front desk if there were extras.” She pointed to me with the

spatula. “Better than the trash.” Upon returning to St. Louis, I decided I would call a few hospitals. If I ended up with a vaccine, great. If not, no big deal. I dialed St. John’s Mercy Medical Center. “Hi. I heard that if there are leftover vaccines, you throw them out. If that’s true, could I get one?” There was a pause on the other end. “Um, this is the front desk. I’ll transfer you.” Click — the phone rang. I crossed my legs and tapped a finger. There was a beep, then the line dropped. I frowned, then called Barnes-Jewish Hospital. “Hi, my name is Jack, and I heard that you guys throw out vaccines at the end

of the day?” “No, we don’t do that.” I tried to think of a reply. “Um ….” A few seconds passed. “Have a nice day.” The woman hung up. I sat there for a while, looking at the model kits my dad keeps near the ceiling — the Incredible Hulk wrestling with a dinosaur, Superman punching his way through a brick wall. Maybe calling wasn’t the best method. The next day, I drove to Barnes. I suppose there are other hospitals I could’ve gone to (and I have a feeling rural hospitals are more likely to give you a leftover vaccine), but I’m more familiar with BJC, and I like the Central West End.

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Having parked, I loitered near an Applebee’s, then Euclid Avenue, and perused the hospital signs. Where would Barnes keep its vaccines? Siteman Cancer Center? That seemed wrong. That was the building for advanced medicine. Were vaccines advanced medicine? The parceling out of vaccines has been a confusing, haphazard operation across the country. No one seems to know where to go or what to do. In the vacuum of clear procedures, private citizens have started cobbling together shot-tracking Facebook groups and hastily coded websites to point people toward temporary bounties. Missouri’s rollout has been particularly clumsy, oversupplying rural areas and Continued on pg 15

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‘CHEATER’

Continued from pg 13

that there must be a lot of people vying for spots at the moment for the situation to be this fluid. I shrugged and tried for a Friday slot, figuring all those, for sure, must be filled up. But to my shock, one went through. The site directed me to check my email for a QR code to bring to the fairgrounds, and when I saw that I’d received one my eyes popped out of my head as though I were a Looney Tunes character noticing a fellow Looney Tunes character’s sexy drag outfit. I promptly sent the scheduler link and verification code to my mom, and then called her immediately and told her to check her email. I sent the link to several friends in a group text as well, hoping as many of the people I care about as possible would be able to get in. One friend I spoke with as I raced to the site said he’d been tipped off to this situation earlier in the day, but had no luck when he’d tried to secure an appointment. The only reason I’d gotten one, we agreed, is that someone must have canceled theirs. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would do that, but I was grateful. “Keep trying,” I told my mom urgently over the phone. “Even if it looks like all the slots are full, somebody might cancel.”

s we approach the one-year mark of the coronavirus pandemic running and ruining the vast majority of our lives, many have begun to hit a wall. COVID fatigue is real, and as the health crisis has dragged on endlessly, some are giving up and throwing caution to the wind, unable or unwilling to keep up with ever-shifting safety guidelines, while others are spiraling further and further into the depths of insanity as the isolation and lack of stimulation chew through their brain cells likes worms through soil. I’m in the latter camp. That might be because, in my case, quarantine life essentially started about three months earlier than it did for most. On December 4, 2019, I was riding a moped home from a trip to the store when a driver traveling the opposite direction suddenly turned in front of me, lining me up right between his headlights and propelling me through the air in what became my first (and hopefully last) 40 mph front flip. After an ambulance ride to the ER, emergency surgery to repair my newly shattered hip and a five-day stay in

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Unknown numbers of people booked appointments to get vaccines at Belle-Clair Fairgrounds only to be turned away and called cheaters. | JACK KILLEEN the hospital, I was sent home to recuperate. I spent the beginning of 2020 using a wheelchair. That period of time is a haze of painkillers and prone positions in front of the television, broken up only by biweekly physical therapy appointments. By early March, and still with considerable difficulty, I finally got to the point where I could get around with a cane, and I was excited to finally trek out into the world again. We’re all painfully aware of the global events of March 2020 that happened next. And since my fiancée is a nurse at a local hospital — with the accompanying potential to bring any manner of illness home from work — I’ve been studiously and strictly following stayat-home guidelines ever since. And so, in a sense, I can serve as something of a glimpse into the near future, to the level of desperate, intractable boredom that awaits at the fifteen-month mark of quarantine life. Insanity at these levels can even make a man believe the unbelievable, to dare to dream that it’d be possible to get a vaccine months ahead of schedule through sheer luck. As I was waved into a line of cars by a National Guardsman

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at the Belle-Clair Fairgrounds & Expo Center, I felt that same sense of hope I’d felt when I’d healed up from my accident. Finally, after all this time, I’d be able to start actually living my life again, rather than sitting in limbo. Finally, I’d be able to drop my complicated COVID safety rituals that’d grown so tiresome over the last twelve months. Finally, things could go back to normal again! I called my mom to see if she’d had any luck securing an appointment and was delighted to hear she had — she was scheduled for the following morning. My dad, meanwhile, had nabbed a Friday slot and was driving to the site now. My sister hadn’t been able to get one yet, but she was still trying. I was ecstatic, but a bit confused. How’d my mom get a Saturday slot? I’d tried for one of those, and they were all taken. And how had my dad gotten an appointment for today? Are people really canceling their appointments in such great numbers? The long line of cars snaking all through this parking lot would seem to indicate that there was plenty of demand for the shot. So what gives? I watched as members of the

National Guard approached the six or so cars in front of me, armed with scanners and clipboards. Then, with some confusion, I watched as they sent all six of those cars along in a batch, with none of them stopping in the area wherein the shots would presumably be administered. At last, it was my turn. I pulled to the front, where a guardsman asked for my QR code and ID. After scanning the former, he looked at the latter. “OK, two problems,” he said. “First, you don’t live in Illinois. Second, you’re not 65.” I told him that I’d heard they had more shots than they had appointments, and that supposedly they’d opened up eligibility to the general public. “They changed the rules at noon,” he told me. “I just got here.” I asked if there was anything I could do here, and he said no. So I took my ID back, told the man “thank you” and then pulled my car forward until I was no longer in anyone’s way, whereupon I rolled my window back up, gripped my steering wheel with both hands and screamed at the top of my lungs in frustration. After collecting myself, I called

Sure, maybe it was an insane fantasy to think that a mass vaccination event would see so little public interest that it would open up to the public regardless of eligibility, but if I filled out all of my information honestly, what the hell did I do wrong? my dad. “Turn around,” I told him. He explained to me that my mom and sister had just jumped into my mom’s car and were on their way to the site now too — my sister had gotten a late-Friday appointment just like he and I had. That’s when it dawned on me: The canceled visits were the people who were being turned away for not qualifying — that’s why there were so many, and the situation felt so fluid. The slot my sister had secured was probably originally held by the occupant of one of the six cars that had been in front of me. The system that St. Clair County had used for scheduling these appointments bafflingly didn’t exclude people who were not qualified, even when those people were 100 percent forthright about their Missouri citizenship and younger age. So with every car that was turned away a new appointment opened up, which then got gobbled up by someone else who probably wasn’t qualified but who was repeatedly hitting refresh on the scheduler link. Essentially, it was a self-feeding system guaranteeing that the event would be run in the least efficient manner humanly possible, as the poor National Guard members were forced to spend the majority of their time sending people away instead of helping to administer shots. “Yeah, turn around,” I told my dad. “Call Mom and tell her to do the same.” As the visions of hugging my family members for the first time in a year evaporated before my eyes, I dejectedly pointed my car in the direction of home, vowing to never get my hopes up again.

he following morning, I was irate to wake to news that I’d been labeled a cheater. As reported by Kavahn Mansouri (a former RFT

intern) for the Belleville NewsDemocrat, St. Clair County Board Chairman Mark Kern said that a whopping 80 percent of Friday’s scheduled appointments had been nabbed by people who were not eligible. All that talk of extra shots and open eligibility had been nothing more than a myth. The explanation the guardsman had given me about the rules changing at noon and his having just arrived was untrue and, most likely, simply the best way they had figured out to keep the line moving and get the ineligible people to leave with as little resistance as possible. That’s understandable, and more power to them. Vaccine chasers from as far as California had shown up to the event, according to Kern, as well as many from Missouri and some from Michigan. They were all turned away. “Someone figured out how to get through the system and make it hard for people who legitimately need the vaccine, who live here, to sign up,” Kern said. “... Someone or a group of people really hurt the system by trying to cheat and get around the rules as they exist.” Herb Simmons, the county emergency management agency director, referred to the problem as a “breach” in the appointment system. Officials believe the link — the same link I’d used — was shared and reshared on social media and through text messages to the point of virality, resulting in that Friday’s clusterfuck. Simmons said entire families were showing up for vaccinations, and even a twelve-year-old had arrived with an appointment. “Anytime someone who hasn’t followed the rule has to be turned away, that slows the process down,” Simmons said. “Please be from St. Clair County, and we will get you taken care of as quickly Continued on pg 17

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undersupplying St. Louis and Kansas City. Every day brings more accounts of urbanites with the ability and resources scurrying across the state in search of doses. In the background are questions of the morality of the system as debates rage about who gets vaccinated and when. Missouri Governor Mike Parson infuriated educators when he initially refused to prioritize teachers, even as he pushed to open schools. He has also admitted there are “vaccine deserts” in parts of the cities — an inequality that has hit primarily Black and brown neighborhoods especially hard. It’s clear that the state has done a poor job getting shots to those who need them most. But what is the morality of letting shots go to waste? I’m young and healthy, and that understandably places me at the lowest priority in the state’s tiered system. Am I jumping the line if excess shots are available and would otherwise go to waste? Maybe it’s as simple as what Shannon said: “Better than the trash can.”

t Barnes, I walked through the doorway into a big lobby. The ceilings were high above clean hardwood floors. People lounged in leather chairs. Poles with retractable straps (the kind school cafeterias use) created a single lane leading from the entrance to a plastic foldout table. Behind the table sat two women, nearly identical, who wore face guards over their masks. In order to enter the building, you had to first approach the women. I walked up. One of them peered down at a piece of paper and said, “Have you had any symptoms of COVID-19? Have you been in contact with anyone who has tested positive in the past fourteen days? Have you experienced any symptoms of COVID-19, including loss of taste, smell ….” After she finished, I said, “No.” She peeled a sticker off a roll and handed it to me. There was a “2” written on it. The other stickers had 2s too. “Actually, I had a question about vaccines,” I said as I placed the sticker on my jeans. “Is this where you give vaccines?” “Oh.” She pointed to her left. “Talk to him.” A man sat behind a desk. He was thin, wearing a gray suit and bent over paperwork. “Hi. I have some questions about vaccines.” “We have a website for that.” He opened a laptop. “I can give you the link.” Internally, I sighed. I knew the website he was talking about, and it wouldn’t help. “Actually, I’m a reporter.” “You are? I used to be a reporter. Jeffrey Small for Channel 5.” He squinted.

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“You know, you should be going through media relations.” Media relations. I already knew that was a dead end. Phone calls with people in tinny voices. “Oh. Technically, I’m an intern. This is my second week.” “I see. You like it?” “Yeah.” “That’s good. I’ll give you their number.” He tore a sheet of paper off a notepad, then paused. “Who are you with again?” “The Riverfront Times.” He nodded, then began writing. We talked a little more before he handed me a note and I walked out of the hospital. A few days passed, and Small’s note remained untouched on my desk. This didn’t matter, because I got a text from my sister: “Just an FYI if anyone is interested.... The Belleville Fairgrounds are doing a drive thru covid vaccine event tomorrowthis weekend and need people to sign up so the vaccines don’t go to waste.” Her text included a long, randomlooking website and an eight-character registration code. “It says it was for people over 75 and healthcare workers only, but they didn’t have enough people under this category registered and they’ve opened it to the public.” My sister added, “A friend sent this!” I followed the link and began filling in information. No way this works, I thought. I hit submit. “Registration complete,” the page said. My appointment was in two days. I jumped around the house, still holding my phone. It seemed I’d found my scenario.

f the past year has taught me anything, it’s to always leave room for disappointment. I graduated college without a proper goodbye. I spent my summer at home rather than a summer camp (I had plans to be a counselor). A lot of friends lost their post-graduation jobs, and most of them live with their parents, as do I. This vaccine proved to be no different. The day before my appointment, I got a call from the St. Clair County health clinic. I wasn’t eligible, I shouldn’t have gotten the link, and if I showed up I’d be turned away. I was disappointed, but not sorrowfully so. That night, I met some friends at a county rec center to play basketball. (As Washington University students, these friends get saliva tested weekly, and I hardly leave the house, so we figured the risk of catching or spreading the virus was low.) It was 8 p.m. and cold. Ours were the only cars in the parking lot. As we shuffled one by one past the front desk, a woman measured the temperatures on our wrists. She nodded silently until each of us was through. It felt like we were entering a speak-easy. Later, A— and I sat courtside watching Continued on pg 18

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as possible.” The fact that I and those like me were being scapegoated as cheaters who refused to follow the rules by the people in charge of this horribly mismanaged system left me incensed. ow difficult would it be to simply code the appointment scheduler to exclude people who should be excluded? How much time and effort would have been saved if this had just been done right in the first place? Sure, maybe it was an insane fantasy to think that a mass vaccination event would see so little interest from people in proper tiers that it would open up to the public regardless of eligibility, but if I filled out all of my information honestly, what the hell did I do wrong? I decided to see what I could learn about these people. A quick Google search on Simmons’ name pulled up a trove of October reports in which Simmons can be seen in multiple videos unmasked and ignoring social distancing guidelines in his capacity as commissioner of the Southern Illinois Championship Wrestling organiation, which he recently moved to Tennessee in order to skirt — some might even say “cheat” — COVID-1 guidelines. This, even as he repeatedly stressed the importance of the safety measures to St. Clair County residents. Asked by Fox 2 reporter Chris ayes why it’s O for him to ignore those rules in Tennessee but enforce them in Illinois, he dropped this gem: “I have no idea. I guess because their mitigation is different. Each state has their own guidelines that they’re going by. Each county down there is probably — is different — than what it is here.” ern, meanwhile, opted to stand by his man. Despite the fact that Simmons can plainly be seen flouting his own guidance in multiple videos, ern, who said he didn’t watch any of them, told SD that Simmons had actually not done that. “Mr. Simmons wears a mask and practices social distancing,” ern said. “ e does everything he’s supposed to do.” St. Clair County residents were incensed at the videos. Freeburg Village Administrator Tony Funderburg offered withering criticism when contacted by SD . “When I first saw it, I’m like, There’s no way this guy can do this job, there’s just no way,’” Funderburg said. “ e’s the guy that’s telling us how to live our lives and

St. Clair County officials blamed people who thought they had legitimate appointments, instead of the failures in their system. | JACK KILLEEN what to do on a daily basis, and he is not following that. It’s hard for me to have any respect for him at this point.” Meanwhile, as I was watching videos of a maskless Simmons hanging out with wrestlers, my colleague illeen was back on the scene in St. Clair County, where he came across Simmons while reporting. When illeen asked about the debacle, Simmons responded with a bunch of bullshit. “It was people that had got a link sent to them by a friend or family member that clearly stated that if you didn’t receive this from the health department you shouldn’t sign up, and they did,” he said falsely — there was no such message on the page. illeen asked how so many people were able to sign up despite being ineligible, to which Simmons replied, “Because they probably went in there and changed, they put different, false dates and that in there,” which is not true of my case, illeen’s, my family’s or many others at the site who filled out the questionnaire honestly. “At the top of the QR code it says that you have to be a frontline health-care worker or 75 or older,” a man near Simmons said, to Simmons’ approval. This is also not the case at all whatsoever. Asked the most burning question, the one that would have avoided this entire stupid mess — why the system didn’t automatically exclude people who were not eligible — Simmons opted to pass the buck.

“It’s the software that they use,” he said. “We don’t have any control of that.”

early two weeks later, as I was sitting down and working on this story, I got a message from a friend: There was a mass vaccination event happening in Leopold, Missouri, that had not seen many people signing up for appointments, I was told. Due to the dearth of willing recipients, the event was to be opened to the public at large regardless of eligibility. According to FVS reporter Alayna Chapie, the site was stocked with 1, 50 shots, but Leopold, whose population is a scant 65 people, apparently didn’t need that many. I was skeptical. This scenario sounded eerily familiar, and my St. Clair County experience had already seared the life lesson to never get my hopes up onto my very being. But though my brain did protest, I soon found my body behind the wheel of my car, headed two and a half hours south with my fingers crossed. At the very least I could see some cows, I figured. Spotty cell service and a lack of confirmation from the workers manning the Missouri Department of ealth and Senior Services COVID-1 hotline prevented me from reaching out to friends and family as I had done before. This mass vax event was more than double the distance I’d driven for my last failed attempt, and even if I could get cell service

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long enough to relay a message, I wouldn’t want to send anyone on what was, more likely than not, another utterly doomed wild goose chase. Several refrains of “Moo, cows, eat up some hay” (to the tune of the Ludacris song) later I arrived at a nights of Columbus hall in the tiny town. Its parking lot was overflowing with cars, and a National Guardsman again directed me to the line. When I was asked for my ID, I handed it over, fully prepared to be turned away at this point just as I had before. “You’re from St. Louis?” the guardsman who took it said. “County, yeah,” I replied. “ ey, I’m from Florissant,” he said as he handed my license back to me, along with a vaccine card. It seemed as though the rumors that brought me here were true, but I wanted to be sure, so I asked the guardsman why, exactly, the event had been opened to the public. “We only had about 00 people sign up,” he told me. “So they went ahead and blasted it out to the media that anyone could come.” Minutes later, a woman in scrubs came to my door with a syringe in hand, filled with that magical life-restoring fluid, and stuck me right in the arm, to my absolute shock and infinite gratitude. The following day — the time of this writing — I could find ero reports of elected or appointed Missouri officials accusing me of cheating. n

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Hundreds of people flocked to the Belle-Clair fairgrounds for vaccines during a weekend event in February. St. Clair officials say no doses were wasted. | JACK KILLEEN

KILLEEN

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the game. Our heads followed the ball as it traveled from one hoop to the other. Shoes squeaked like many birds whistling. “I feel less bad about doing this now that people are getting vaccinated,” A— said. “People are getting vaccinated?” I said. “J— did the other week. R— has been for at least a month.” “How?” “It’s a little sketch. J—’s mom hooked him up. I don’t know how. R— was volunteering at a vaccine drive, though, and at the end of the day they had extras.” I sighed. R—, short and strong, drove through the lane and made a lay-up. “Dang.”

n Sunday, February 14, despite not having an appointment, I decided to drive to the Belle-Clair Fairgrounds & Expo Center in Belleville, Illinois. I would ask a few questions for my story, see what a vaccine drive looked like and ask if they had extras. There was a snowstorm forecasted to begin in a few hours, so I threw a shovel in the trunk. It was 9 degrees. On the way, I passed a burning car. Black smoke curled into the sky. The Belle-Clair Fairgrounds & Expo Center is a huge parking lot surrounded by a fence. Above the top rail runs three rows of barbed wire. Across the street is a McDonald’s. That day, there was a layer of old snow over everything. Guarding the entrance were two police cars and a sign that said, “COVID 19 VACCINE SITE / BY APPT ONLY.” When I turned inside the lot, a man in a beige jumpsuit stepped forward and began pointing at my car, then a lane made of cones and caution tape. I rolled down my window and said I was a report-

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er and I had some questions. “A reporter?” I confirmed. He mumbled into a walkie talkie on his shoulder. Then he lifted the caution tape for my car to crawl under. I parked on the snow and got out to take pictures. “Who are you with again?” he yelled from a distance.

ineligible registrations, and he eased into a speech. I grabbed my phone, hit record and held it out the window, but soon I realized I wasn’t wearing gloves. I devised a system: When one hand held the phone, the other warmed against my breath. Simmons told me how well things were going. I switched hands. There were hiccups with all the ineligible people

“People are getting vaccinated?” “J— did the other week. R— has been for at least a month.” “How?” “It’s a little sketch. J—’s mom hooked him up. I don’t know how. R— was volunteering at a vaccine drive, though, and at the end of the day they had extras.” “The Riverfront Times!” “Riverfront Time,” he murmured into his shoulder. A little while later, a white Ford Escape approached. I got back in my car. The Ford stopped with its driver-side door across from mine. The window rolled down. “You the reporter?” He introduced himself as Herb Simmons, the St. Clair County Emergency Management Agency director. He had thin white hair and rectangular glasses. In the passenger seat was another man, maskless, who tapped at his phone. I told Simmons I was there about the

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showing up on Friday, but now that was over. They’d had to turn away a lot of people — how many they weren’t sure. A breeze picked up. I eyed the gloves, which lay mockingly in the seat next to me, and calculated how I could put them on without dropping the phone. Would it balance on the door? Simmons and I continued like this, a follow-up question here and there, until it seemed he had said all he wanted to. “One last thing,” I said. “Have you had to throw away any vaccines?” “No. No vaccines have gone to waste.” Trying not to seem disappointed, I

nodded. I set the phone aside, rubbed my hands, then sat on them. Simmons offered to show me around the place, and I said sure, why not? For the next half hour, Simmons was Virgil and I was Dante. I saw the entrails of a mass vaccination site. My favorite part was a big metal shed with three sections labeled “Cows,” “Swine” and “Sheep.” This had nothing to do with the vaccination process; I just enjoyed the commitment to labeling. After I waved goodbye to Simmons and his friend, I rolled up my window and turned the heat as high as it went. Despite the setbacks, I was confident I would find my vaccine scenario someday. I left the fairgrounds hoping to be home before the storm arrived.

n a recent Tuesday, the first warm day in months, I went to the park to play basketball. I didn’t stay long, though. The courts were all taken. I had gotten there early, as did one other friend, so we texted the group. The others quickly made plans for Three Kings happy hour or Forest Park. As I got up to leave, I noticed the friend was putting on his shoes. “You staying?” “Yeah, I think I’ll play with those guys. They’re grad students, and I’ve played with them before.” “You’re not worried about the virus?” “No,” he said. “Got vaccinated last week.” “How?” “I work at a hospital, and they had extras.” “Do they ever have extras still?” “Sometimes, but they only give them to employees.” He stood. “Well, if they’re ever about to throw any out ….” “Yeah, I’ll let you know.” Then he jogged off towards the court. n

CAFE

[REVIEW]

Back on Track COVID-19, Little Fox and the review that never happened Written by

CHERYL BAEHR Little Fox 2001 Park Avenue, 314-696-2699. Wed.Thurs. 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. (Closed Monday and Tuesday.)

n retrospect, I wonder if I knew deep down that this was the end. Sitting in Little Fox’s dining room the evening of March 14, 2020, I think everyone in that packed house had the same inkling. The room had what must have been the feeling in the salons onboard the Titanic, where music played as the water flooded the steam room: We understood we were about to meet our doom, yet we hadn’t fully come to terms with it. That night, I’d gathered with three friends for what was to be a typical review dinner. We showed up for our reservation and settled into our seats, prepared to methodically approach the meal, as is usual for a restaurant review, and strategizing who would order what appetizer, salad, dinner and dessert. What wasn’t typical was how we looked over our shoulders with suspicion at anyone who so much as cleared their throat. Deep down, we knew we shouldn’t be dining out. Northern Italy was a hellscape; New York City wasn’t far behind, and as the numbers of COVID-19 cases began to rise in St. Louis, we could feel that life as we knew it was about to change. So we drank. A lot. And ate. A lot. And as we stumbled out of the restaurant into our Lyfts, I looked over my shoulder at Little Fox’s storefront, taking in its warm glow and absorbing the energy of the numerous patrons in various states of merriment, searing that moment in time into my memory because I knew I wouldn’t be back

Before the pandemic, Little Fox put together the total package — impeccable service, amazing atmosphere and outstanding food. | MABEL SUEN anytime soon. What I didn’t fully grasp was what that meant for my job as a dining critic. For seven years, I’d been reviewing restaurants for the RFT, assuming that train would keep running indefinitely. owever, while reviewing my notes the Monday following that visit to Little Fox, I felt the need to pull the emergency cord. After texting some colleagues about the issue I emailed my editor, informing her of my discomfort in filing a review and asking for her advice. When I didn’t hear back from her right away, I was concerned, because she was always so prompt in her replies. The next morning, I found out what the issue was: She had been furloughed. And so had I. Now, almost a year later, I’m again at my keyboard on a Wednesday morning, trying to lend some coherence to the scattered thoughts that somehow result in a restaurant review. Last week, I learned from my editor that we got the green light to start doing them again, part of a larger push to get our food coverage

I was concerned, because she was always so prompt in her replies. The next morning, I found out what the issue was: She had been furloughed. And so had I. back near full capacity. Considering that only a year ago there were real questions as to whether or not the RFT would continue to exist, this was cause to celebrate. owever, it also raises serious questions about restaurant criticism during and (god willing) post-pandemic. Even if I hadn’t been furloughed last March, there

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was no way I could have done a traditional review. For starters, I had (and still have) serious ethical questions about whether or not it is appropriate to encourage the dining public to head out and about when doing so is fraught with risk. It’s a balance, for sure, that puts public health concerns at odds with the livelihoods of restaurant owners and employees. That restaurant employees have worked their tails off to figure out how to operate safely is the only way, in good conscience, I can encourage the public to enjoy their wares. For those who balk at safety protocols, it will be a very long time before I can comfortably recommend anyone patronizing their establishments. The other question that arises is whether or not it is ethical — even moral — to write a critical review while restaurants fight for their lives. Though a critic has a responsibility to a reader to give an accurate assessment of a place, it’s utterly tone-deaf to criticize someone for underseasoning

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After moving to St. Louis from Brooklyn in 2017, the husband and wife had only opened the doors to Little Fox for three months before all pandemic hell broke loose.

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their ratatouille when they wake up every morning wondering if their business is going to make it. These establishments have had to develop new business models on the fly and have been hemorrhaging money for the past year. Even as business picks up and the world starts to turn again, it’s going to take a very long time to dig out of that hole. That’s why, in my opinion, it’s not the time to write traditional, critical reviews, and it won’t be that time for the foreseeable future. What does this mean for RFT restaurant reviews? Over the past year, I’ve been asked more times than I can count for my advice on where people should eat. More than the usual request to know what’s good, people have been more interested in knowing who is doing what and how. Which dining rooms are safely open? Who has an inviting outdoor space? What are some great takeout options — especially out-of-the-box ones? Who has shown leadership and innovation during this crazy time, and who needs help? The fact that I am able to help find an-

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Mowgli and Craig Rivard, like all of us, are fighting through the pandemic. | MABEL SUEN swers to those questions and add a little joy to the slog that is this horrendous “new normal” is an absolute privilege. Finding that joy, when the restaurant experience has gone from being relational to transactional, has been difficult. I often think back to Little Fox, which I refer to as “the review that never hap-

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pened,” and reflect on the sheer enjoyment I felt that evening last March. Surrounded by friends, attended to by a service staff that knew their stuff in and out, and enjoying chef and co-owner Craig Rivard’s magnificent food (oh how I long for those Italian fish sauce riblettes and garlicky pancetta crostini), the restaurant was

the total package of amazing atmosphere, outstanding food and impeccable hospitality. It was exactly the restaurant Craig and Mowgli Rivard had long dreamed of owning. After moving to St. Louis from Brooklyn in 2017, the husband and wife had only opened the doors to Little Fox for three months before all pandemic hell broke loose. They completely Continued on pg 21

Little Fox switched to groceries, wine and takeout and will expand offerings soon. | MABEL SUEN

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closed down the week of March 16, reopened in May for grocery pickup and some prepared foods, then set up a natural wines shop. They were fortunate that they had obtained an option from the city of St. Louis to use the vacant lot across the street from the restaurant, and turned the space into a covered outdoor dining area, which ran from July through November. To an outside observer, it looked like Little Fox was doing all right. Mowgli, however, is frank about how difficult it has been, which is why she and Craig have decided to pull back on their offerings. For now, they are keeping up their Wine Wednesdays, which consist of retail wine pickup and an accompanying food special, as well as Sunday morning breakfasts out of their carryout window. They are also getting ready to offer a limited carryout menu on Fridays, with dishes like clam chowder pot pie. However, outside of those offerings, they are taking a break. As Mowgli explains, even with the robust support of the neighborhood — something they are truly grateful for — they are losing money, and they can’t continue to do so if they hope to have a restaurant on the other side of this pandemic. It’s been as emotionally draining as it has been financially. Mowgli’s honesty is raw when she talks about how difficult it is to have poured your heart and soul into something, only to be pre-

vented from actually doing it the way you want to. She notes the toll it has taken on Craig, a shockingly talented chef who has spent his life dreaming of the restaurant that Little Fox could be, then having that taken away by forces beyond anyone’s control just as he was starting to feel like he had it. For these reasons, they need some time to figure out how they can be the restaurant they want to be when they feel like it is safe enough to do so. The Rivards understand that, when they get to the point where they can reopen their dining room, they will have to figure out the balance of being responsible for taking care of their staff and guests while giving people a good time. There’s an awkwardness in encouraging people to eat, drink and be merry when the world is — even if no longer completely engulfed in flames — still smoldering. However, Mowgli has noticed that she and Craig are talking more about menus lately, and Little Fox’s staff meetings are filled with chatter about wine pairings. It’s a far cry from where things were, but it gives her hope that they will get to the other side, where people can enjoy dinner and drinks and friends. And restaurant critics can write reviews and go out to dinner without looking over their shoulders.

Little Fox Friday night dinner .................................. $28 Italian benedict ....................................... $14 Roasted pork and tomato sandwich ....... $14 • Carryout only via a walkup window • Outside dining, weather permitting

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SHORT ORDERS

[SIDE DISH]

Hold the Jelly The Greek Kitchen’s Lisa Nicholas stays hopeful as she works to keep her dream alive Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

ne of Lisa Nicholas’ first food memories involves cooking with her grandfather, an experience that sticks with her vividly not so much as for what was good about it, but for what was so very bad. “My earliest memories of cooking at home with my papopus when I was little was making scrambled eggs,” Nicholas recalls. “ e’d always add grape jelly to them. It made them sweet and salty and green — and absolutely horrible. Scrambled eggs became my big go-to food over the years, but without the grape jelly. I would never do that to my kids.” Now an adult and owner of the Greek Kitchen (343 South Kirkwood Road, Kirkwood; 314-4629112), Nicholas gets the final say about what goes into her dishes. It’s been a long time coming for her to get to this point — especially considering she has been cooking for years and was one of the founding forces behind the iconic Olympia ebob ouse and Tavern, which she helped run with her ex-husband. Now, with her partner Joe andel by her side, Nicholas is able to bring to life the Greek specialties she’s been honing for decades at a place all her own. Though she’s been involved in the restaurant business for years, it wasn’t necessarily something she fully embraced until recently. Growing up the daughter of trained ballet dancers who owned a dance studio, Nicholas was destined to go down that path. When her parents retired she took over the studio, balancing teaching, helping to run Olympia and raising her children. It was a busy time, but she always fell back on cooking as a creative outlet and relished any opportunity she had

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Lisa Nicholas finally got her shot to run her own place with the Greek Kitchen, and she’s not going to let a pandemic take that away. | ANDY PAULISSEN to show her stuff. She’d cook for family and friends, do some catering and even prepare some dishes alongside Olympia’s matriarch, her ex-husband’s Aunt Marietta, who would always give her grief about her skills. “She was the best Greek cook I’ve ever met — right off the island of Rhodes,” Nicholas says. “She was incredible, and I’d just watch her and learned so much from her. Anytime I’d make something, she’d say it was no good. My most favorite line of hers was when she’d say, It’s good, but it’s not mine.’ She was probably my biggest influence.” As Nicholas got busier teaching ballet and raising her family, she became less involved with Olympia. After her marriage ended, she entertained the idea of opening her own Greek restaurant — and even dreamed of it being in irkwood. owever, because she lacked the funding to start such an operation, she didn’t give it much thought. That changed when she reconnected with andel. A former couple when they were young adults, the pair got together after he moved back to St. Louis. One day, as a token of her affection, Nicholas made andel a small pan of baklava. e was blown away by how delicious it was, and he encouraged her to begin making it to sell. Working together, they got the licensing, pack-

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aging and a commercial kitchen, and began a small business. It was killing them. Though they loved the idea of having a business together, the high overhead and low profit margin for the baklava operation was not sustainable. As they searched for their next move, they found an opportunity one night while out at dinner. The pair happened upon a small restaurant in Ellisville, Cafe abob, and got to talking with the owner. As their conversation went on, he informed them that he wanted to sell the business. The next thing they knew, they were arranging to run it for him for six months to see if they truly wanted to go allin on owning the place. After that trial period, they sealed the deal and bought the restaurant in June of 015. With the business fully theirs, they were able to put their stamp on it and soon rebranded as the Greek itchen. The pair found success in Ellisville, but Nicholas never let go of the dream of owning a restaurant in irkwood. When an opportunity arose to move the business, she jumped on it, opening the Greek itchen on South irkwood Road in June of 01 . The restaurant was everything she’d dreamed it would be until March of last year, when the COVID-1 pandemic upended life as she knew it. The past year has challenged

Nicholas in ways she never could have imagined. Scared, unsure and exhausted, she and andel have been making it work and are encouraged to keep pushing forward by their loyal patrons, who they consider friends. She also credits her ncle Dino, who spent his life in the restaurant business, as the inspiration for what keeps her going day in and day out. Drawing upon his example as a hard worker who never gave up, Nicholas is not about to let the pandemic dash her restaurant dreams now that she feels that she has finally achieved them. “There are days when I don’t want to get out of bed, and there are days when I can conquer the world,” Nicholas says. “I know I’m speaking for everyone in the business when I say that. Still, we feel lucky. It’s not great, but it’s as good as it can be. I can’t ask for more than that.” Nicholas took a break from making her signature baklava to share her thoughts on the state of the restaurant industry, her recently acquired taste for White Claw and why empathy from her customers is the best gift they can give. What is one thing not many people know about you? I’m a trained ballerina. Both my parents were ballet dancers, and I retired from teaching three years

ago to focus on our restaurant. And children, I LOVE children of all ages That’s two things. What daily ritual is non-negotiable for you? Morning coffee and the local news. Getting to the Greek itchen early to plan and make sure that everything is in place to cook very traditional, authentic food. Who is your St. Louis food crush? My uncle, Dino Benos. e is retired from the restaurant business, but his work ethic and delicious food are always in the back of my mind. e doesn’t know this, but I am his biggest fan and want to be just like him when I grow up. WW DD? What would ncle Dino do? Which ingredient is most representative of your personality? Lemons The Greek answer to penicillin They can be sweet, they can be sour, but they always make everything better. If you weren’t working in the restaurant business, what would you be doing? Teaching. I love my employees, and I really try to help the younger ones with manners, discipline and excellent posture They don’t seem to mind, and they call me their work mama. As a hospitality professional, what do people need to know about what you are going through? I really believe that most people understand and have been very patient with us as we navigate through all the changes that have been made back and forth over these eleven months. There are a handful of customers who don’t understand what we have gone through. There were days that Joe and I couldn’t keep up with the changing rules since there was no real guidance. Close, 5 percent, 50 percent, no bar seating, wow. It’s been cra y. Our restaurant is small, with only fifteen interior tables. People have walked in and I had to turn them away, even with so many empty tables. A couple of carryout orders went to the wrong customers. I want everyone to know that we are doing our absolute best every single day and we are tired We are washing dishes, cooking, answering phones and running a business. Joe and I want to thank all of our wonderful customers (friends) from the bottom of our hearts. You all have kept us going and be-

cause of that, we have been able to keep all of our employees working. Thank you so much What do you miss most about the way you did your job before COVID-19? I miss plating the food the way I would like to, as most everything has been in carryout boxes. I want the food to look lovely and delicious. What do you miss least? I guess it would be getting home later at night. As hard as this year has been, we have been getting home earlier. What have you been stress-eating/drinking lately? I’m usually not a big drinker, but my daughter turned me on to White Claw. She said that I’m like a teenager Joe loves the occasional Scotch on the rocks. Then there are the nights that we come home really stressed and have a Boodles and diet tonic. The secret that no one knows is the food that we eat after work. Cans of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup for me and rotisserie chicken from Sam’s for Joe. We have a really nice meal every Monday night. We have been eating drinking this way for the past year. What do you think the biggest change to the hospitality industry will be once people are allowed to return to normal activity levels? It’s going to take a while to get back our sea legs. I think the carryout business will stay significant as we juggle our 100 percent seating. That will be quite a challenge, and one that we are up for — just another time that we will have to be creative. Everyone in the industry can’t wait for some normalcy. I know that employees will be happier having the old boring routines back. It’s going to be quite an adjustment for restaurants and quite a thrill for customers. What is one thing that gives you hope during this crisis? Well, I always have hope. And I feel that the more you give back, the happier you will be. I have tried to set an example of giving and never saying “no” to anyone that may need help. People are really struggling, and it is my hope that Joe and I can be of any kind of help or service, and that my kids will learn from our example. There will always be struggles, but there is always hope and something to look forward to. n

The smoked meatball sub is one of the new offerings available at BEAST Butcher & Block’s sandwich pop-up. | ED ALLER

[SHORT ORDERS]

BEAST Launches Pop-Up Sandwich Shop Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

ig changes are underway — at least for now — at the acclaimed Grove barbecue restaurant BEAST Butcher & Block (4156 Manchester Avenue, 314-944-6003). Last week, owners David and Meggan Sandusky announced that they are temporarily suspending their barbecue operations and pivoting to a sandwich pop-up, which will run out of the butchery side of the complex. The restaurant part of the business will be closed during this time. According to David Sandusky, the changes were necessary as the Grove restaurant works to remain viable during the pandemic, a challenge due to the space’s large physical footprint. Though the city of St. Louis has allowed restaurants to accommodate in-person dining, he and Meggan have erred on the side of caution, offering only takeout and delivery throughout the COVID-19 outbreak. Because of this, it simply did not make sense to continue to operate at full capacity, at least until he and Meggan feel comfortable reopening for in-person dining. “We are going to keep the butcher shop open, because it is the engine for all three locations,” Sandusky says of his other properties, which include BEAST Craft BBQ and BEAST Southern Kitchen & BBQ. “The shop has been doing really well during the pandemic, so we want to create a menu that uses their product and gives them the op-

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portunity to do some stuff they’ve never done before — stuff they are good at.” Indeed, the team at the Butchery has proven it has some tricks up its sleeves. The pop-up has already made a name for itself thanks to its soon-to-be-signature “Pit Beef and Cheese” sandwich. The meaty wonder, which is a mound of shaved chuck eye that is heated on a griddle and heaped onto a beef tallow bun, then topped with barbecue rub and molten white cheese, is a direct challenge (in good fun, of course) to the roast beef sandwich at the iconic Lion’s Choice. In fact, the beloved St. Louis roast beef institution has even commented about BEAST’s sandwich on Twitter, calling it “Straight Fire.” According to Sandusky, the “Pit Beef and Cheese” is not just a random — albeit delicious — sandwich offering. It’s the result of experimentation he and his team have been doing with different barbecue styles over the past several months. Sandusky is particularly interested in the East Coast style, especially popular in Baltimore, that involves smoking meat directly over the fire (as opposed to off-set like in Texas barbecue) and regularly turning and basting it in marinade to develop a pit-roasted flavor. In addition to the beef, BEAST’s sandwich pop-up will feature a pimento smash burger, smoked meatball sub and an Italian beef sandwich. Housemade gumbo and a Lenten cornbread catfish sandwich are also on offer, and Sandusky expects to add additional items as the concept develops. As for the restaurant and barbecue, Sandusky expects the closure to last approximately six to eight weeks. In the meantime, he is excited to offer something that showcases what his team is capable of doing. “We just want them to be able to explore and see what they can do with it,” Sandusky says. “It will be a fun new thing.” n

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[ L I B AT I O N S ]

Drink Up St. Louis makes USA Today’s shortlist of Best Beer Cities Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

t. Louisans may have a self-deprecating sense of pride when it comes to our fair city (tops in STDs! highest murder rate!), but in the case of our outstanding beer scene, there’s no irony in our affection. We make great beer — always have — and will put our brews up against those from other cities any day of the week. It’s no surprise, then, that St. Louis has again been nominated as the Best Beer City by USA Today. For the fourth year in a row, the city has been chosen as one of twenty finalists for the paper’s Readers’ Choice award by a panel of beer experts. Readers will vote for their favorite from the list of nominees, which includes such esteemed beer cities as Fort Collins, Colorado, Bend, Oregon, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. Voting is live now and will run until Tuesday, March 16, at noon, with winners being

The St. Louis beer scene is up for national honors, courtesy of USA Today. | MABEL SUEN announced on Friday, March 26. According to USA Today, the nominee cities were chosen by a panel of five national beer experts, based on “stellar selections of established and up-and-coming breweries, beer bars, brewpubs, beer festivals” and “thriving home-brewing communities where novice brewers can get their foot in the door.” Of St. Louis in particular, the paper notes the city’s longstanding heritage as a beer city while commending its present scene, and gives nods to Schlafly, 21st Street Brewer’s Bar, and Bridge Tap House & Wine Bar as evidence of what makes it so special. St. Louis is the defending champion for USA Today’s Best Beer City and has won the award every year since 2018. If you want to make sure we retain our Budweiser-shaped crown, you can vote at 10best.com/awards/travel/best-beercity. n

[FOOD NEWS]

Flavortown Comes to St. Louis Written by

JAIME LEES

f you’ve always wanted to have Guy Fieri’s outrageous concoctions delivered straight to your door, then all of your dreams have just come true. The Food Network personality/ restaurateur/style victim/actually good guy is launching Flavortown Kitchen in select cities across the United States, and St. Louis is one of the lucky markets. Flavortown Kitchen is a collaboration between Fieri and Robert Earl (founder and CEO of Planet Hollywood), and it’s a delivery-only concept, which means that the food arrives at your house from some unknown location like magic. (Spoiler: The two local kitchen locations are actually in Frontenac and Des Peres, but they don’t offer pickup.) The menu includes all of your Fieri favorites like Bourbon Brown Sugar BBQ Wings, Mac N Cheese Burger, Cheesesteak Egg Rolls, Italian Stallion Salad

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It’s time for some off the hook treats, St. Louis. | VIA ELISE THOMPSON / FLICKR and Mac Daddy Mac N Cheese. And the cool thing about having these things delivered directly to your house is that you can then eat them privately and hide your shame from the world, as it should be. The Flavortown Kitchen is already live and taking orders, so download the dedicated app, hit up the website or place your order through Grubhub, DoorDash, Postmates or UberEats for some off-thehook treats. n

CULTURE [POOP]

For the Birds Let’s remember that time some pigeons pooped on Kings of Leon during a St. Louis show Written by

DANIEL HILL

ashville rock band Kings of Leon has a new album coming out this week, and in keeping, the familial foursome recently released a video for the single “Echoing.” It’s fine The jangly parts jangle, the poppy parts pop and the lowstakes video has the feel of a live performance, which we’re all desperately missing by this point in pandemic life. But speaking of, all this deadly virus hubbub kept us too distracted last year to properly acknowledge the ten-year anniversary of a true St. Louis milestone: that time the band walked off a St. Louis stage mid-concert after a pigeon (allegedly ) pooped in bassist Jared Followill’s mouth. A shameful oversight, that, and one that must be rectified So here we go: The now-infamous avian defecation cancellation situation went down on July 23, 2010, as Kings of Leon made a stop at what was then known as Verizon Wireless Amphitheater (now dubbed Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, but forever etched into the hearts and minds of most St. Louisans as simply “Riverport”) with openers the Stills and the Postelles in tow. There were early indications that the pigeons spotted up in the rafters of the outdoor venue might make trouble for the Followill boys. Specifically, the feathered beasts had already pooped all over members of both the opening bands. Reviewer Steve Hardy, who was covering the show for RFT at the time of the poopening, noted to then RFT music editor Annie Zaleski that the Postelles dedicated one of the band’s songs “to our bassist, who just got shat on.” And Justin Burnett, an attendee

An artist’s rendition of Kings of Leon, three songs into the band’s July 2010 St. Louis set. | SOURCE IMAGE BY DAN WINTERS at the show who was seated in the front row, told Zaleski that he personally watched the bassist of the Stills get hit with a solid stream of bird shit during their set as well. “It was so high up you couldn’t see it, but it was definitely a bird,” Burnett said. “And not to be gross, but when a pigeon shits, it comes out as a long line, and it’s very noticeable. We thought it was water at first, and when the opening act commented on being shat on, we knew it was a bird.” The sight of the bassists of both those bands coming off the stage dripping in bird shit was likely a disconcerting one for Kings of Leon — particularly for fellow fourstring enthusiast Jared (not enough has been made of the fact that the birds seemed intent on only dropping bombs on bassists on this evening, but it’s certainly worthy of note). To their credit, though, when the time came, the band members stepped out onstage and played their hearts out nevertheless. For three songs, at least. The band made it through just “Closer,” “Crawl” and “Taper Jean Girl” before walking off the stage in a huff. As the show’s entry on Setlist.fm succinctly notes, “Concert ended early due to bird shit.” The house lights came on after a few minutes of confusion, and a staff member took to the stage and announced that the show was

over. “Due to concerns over the band’s safety, we are canceling the show. Please file out in an orderly fashion,” he said. At first, those in attendance thought the sudden end to the concert was a prank or a hoax, according to Hardy. But as reality set in, there was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, and enraged Kings of Leon fans booed and began a chant of “bullshit ” — apparently unaware that, actually, it was pigeon shit. According to Hardy, the scene in the parking lot descended into a cacophony of honking and broken bottles as those same disgruntled fans queued up to leave. Drummer Nathan Followill soon took to Twitter to address the matter. “So sorry St. Louis. We had to bail, pigeons shitting in Jared’s mouth. Too unsanitary to continue,” he wrote. “Don’t take it out on Jared, it’s the fucking venue’s fault. You may enjoy being shit on but we don’t. Sorry for all who traveled many miles.” The fallout was swift. Just after midnight, Live Nation issued a statement offering refunds due to the abbreviated set. The following afternoon, a member of the band’s management team, Andy Mendelsohn, officially laid the blame on a “pigeon infestation” at the venue, saying he was “surprised they stayed for as many songs as

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they did.” “Jared was hit several times during the first two songs,” Mendelsohn said. “On the third song, when he was hit in the cheek and some of it landed near his mouth, they couldn’t deal any longer. It’s not only disgusting — it’s a toxic health ha ard. They really tried to hang in there. We want to apologize to our fans in St. Louis and will come back as soon as we can.” Jared spoke up about the situation in the statement as well. “We couldn’t believe what the Postelles and the Stills looked like after their sets,” he said. “We didn’t want to cancel the show, so we went for it. We tried to play. It was ridiculous.” A clearcut case, then: The show was stopped short because a bassist-hating bird took a dump in Jared’s mouth. Who could blame him for wanting to walk off? But soon, the rumor mill kicked into high gear. When Monday rolled around, longtime S E DJ Fava mentioned the incident during his radio show and received a call from a listener who claimed things were not, in fact, as they were being presented. The caller, who asked to remain anonymous and said he didn’t want his call to be aired, claimed he was working backstage at the show. He said the culprit was not a discourteous bird — it was alcohol. “He said that the band got there at 11 o’clock, drank all day — and I don’t think I said this on the air — but each of them took an IV to try to sober up,” Favazz told Zaleski at the time. “And that they were just wasted. They went out there and just couldn’t play, and blamed it on the pigeons.” Favazz told Zaleski he had read a similar story on Facebook over the weekend about the band’s drinking, and he said that the caller even told him that the person who had posted about it had already been canned by the venue. Kings of Leon’s publicist vehemently denied the allegation, telling RFT that the rumor was “absolutely untrue.” And, seemingly, that was that. Kings of Leon came back to Riverport for a makeup date just a couple months later in September, the birds behaved themselves and the show went off without

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KINGS OF LEON Continued from pg 25

incident. “Pigeongate,” as it came to be known in St. Louis circles, became a thing of the past. Or did it? Fast-forward about a year later to July 29, 2011. Kings of Leon take to the stage at Gexa Energy Pavilion in Dallas, Texas, and manage to make it only 40 minutes into their set before singer/guitarist Caleb Followill, who had been slurring throughout the performance and had mentioned earlier in the set that he’d been drinking, announced that he did not feel well. “I’m going to go backstage and vomit and then play three more songs,” he told the crowd. He wouldn’t return. The rest of the band followed him off the stage, and soon Jared reemerged, telling the crowd the show was over. “We’re sorry,” he said. “Caleb can’t sing. Go ahead and burn our records. We are sorry.” Darryl Smyers, who reviewed

the concert for the Dallas Observer, dubbed the performance “one of the worst shows I’ve ever seen.” Within days, the band canceled the entirety of its remaining U.S. tour dates. “I love our fans so much,” Jared wrote on Twitter. “I know you guys aren’t stupid. I can’t lie. There are problems in our band bigger than not drinking enough Gatorade.” Kings of Leon wouldn’t perform again until September 28 in Vancouver. On October 31, the band announced they’d be going on hiatus at the conclusion of their November tour in Australia. The band played only a handful of shows in 2012 and didn’t resume a full touring schedule again until the summer of 2013, as its members geared up for the release in September 2013 of the album Mechanical Bull. Kelsey Whipple, a former RFT contributor, noted that the U.S. tour cancellation served as “vindication” for St. Louis — not to mention its poor, scapegoated pigeon population. “To put it clearly: While we

thought their complaints of pigeonshit were pretty bullshit, it turns out the band is just chickenshit — and maybe, also, full of shit,” she wrote, adding, “Different brother this time around? Sure. Same story? Definitely. A year later, it looks like the real problem has nothing to do with St. Louis.” Kings of Leon followed up Mechanical Bull with Walls in 2016, then went quiet on the recording front for a few years, though it did continue touring during that time — even making a stop in St. Louis again in July 2014. Since early January of this year, the band has been teasing new songs from its first new album in years, the upcoming When You See Yourself, to be released on Friday. What with the pandemic and all, there are obviously no plans for future stops in St. Louis to support the album at this time. But we do hope they’ll come back and see us when things go back to normal again. It’ll be a much less shitty time, guys! We swear .... n

[VENUES]

Off Broadway Reopens for Trivia, DJ Nights Written by

DANIEL HILL

e’re still waiting for one of our favorite venues in the city, Off Broadway (3509 Lemp Avenue, 314498-6989), to finally host live music again, but meanwhile we can take comfort in the fact that it has reopened its bar on weekends to serve up some suds. The venue announced on social media last week that it will be open Fridays and Saturdays after a period of winter-weatherrelated closure. “All thawed out and ready to roll again!” reads the post. “We’re open this weekend for bar nights.” Friday nights will feature happy-hour specials from 4 to 6 p.m., with the bar open until 11 p.m. Music will come courtesy of in-

It might be time to get back to that sweet, sweet Off Broadway patio. | SCREENSHOT house DJs 3 Minute Record. On Saturdays, meanwhile, the venue will host trivia nights focused on music. Admission is free, but you must make reservations on Off Broadway’s website at offbroadwaystl.com. On both evenings, the vast majority of the action will take place on Off Broadway’s spacious patio, allowing for social distancing and COVID-19 safety. If you’re unable or unwilling to make it to the venue but you still want to show your support, consider swinging by Off Broad-

way’s online store, where you can purchase branded merchandise including shirts and face masks, as well as beers and booze to-go, available curbside. Just hit up offbroadwaystl.com/curbside-pickup to get that ball rolling. From the looks of things, Off Broadway will continue to open on weekends as long as the weather permits, so keep checking its Facebook page for updates on when to stop in. It’s not the same as heading there to see a live show, of course, but it’ll have to do for now! n

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VIA FLICKR.CANNABIS URLAUB

[WEED]

Greenlight Cannabis Dispensary Opens in Ferguson Written by

JAIME LEES

he hope of drive-through medical marijuana is what has been getting some of us through the winter, and now it seems like that dream will soon become a reality. The Greenlight Dispensary (517 South Florissant Road, Ferguson; 888995-0420) opened its doors in late February, and its long list of amenities will soon include a drive-through. Hallelujah. Once the drive-through opens, those with a state-issued medical marijuana card can purchase items online and then simply drive through to pick up their flower, pre-rolls or edibles. Greenlight also stands out in the growing field of local medical marijuana dispensaries because in addition to having a reputation for being “competitively priced,” it also offers no-charge medical exams for north St. Louis County and north-city residents. Interested parties can sign up to meet with their doctor virtually to see about being approved. The Missouri company has many other locations throughout the state and the near-Midwest, but this is their first spot in the St. Louis area. A new location in Baden (8542 North Broadway) is scheduled to open this week, with a shop in Berkeley (4451 Brown Road) to follow. Having a drive-through for customers is a huge step in local medical marijuana culture. First of all, many medical patients can’t leave their cars or get anxiety in shops, so being able to pick up their medicine easily is essential. Combine that with the fact that there’s a raging pandemic going on and it’s clear that drive-through is one of the safest options out there. For more information about the dispensary or to see the Greenlight menu, visit GreenlightDispensary.com. n

MARCH 3-9, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

MARCH 3-9, 2021

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SAVAGE LOVE DEVASTATION BY DAN SAVAGE Hey, Dan: I am at a loss. I am devastated. I just found out my husband has been sexting with another woman. As if that wasn’t bad enough, this woman is his first cousin! And this has been going on for years! I’ll give you a moment to recover from that jaw drop. OK, now the background. We’ve been married for almost 30 years. Our relationship is not all wine and roses, but we had counseling years ago and decided we wanted to grow old together. We have similar interests, we love spending time together, and it’s just not the same when one of us is gone. Our sex life was never “off the charts” and, yes, this was one of our main problems. He wanted a lot of sex and I was content with very little. I came to believe he was content too and that he long ago accepted that spending his life with me meant this would be how it was. And I truly believed that our marriage was monogamous. Now I know that only I was monogamous. If it was any other woman than his cousin I might be able to deal with this! I wish it was someone else! I feel trapped! I feel like I can’t talk to anyone! All I can think of is how disgusted and disappointed my children, who are in their twenties, and his family would be if they found out. This cousin has had many ups and downs. And years ago when my children were small I noticed some flirtatious behavior between her and my husband. I confronted him and demanded to know what the hell was going on! I thought that was the end of it! I was wrong! I was on my husband’s iPad when I found their explicit chats along with requests for “visuals.” I went to my husband and asked if they had ever gotten together physically. He told me no. A few days later we were on our way to a big family event and this cousin was supposed to be there. With me standing next to him he called her and left a message disinviting her. She called him back and he answered on speaker and I said hello and then asked her if she was fucking my husband. She sounded surprised and caught off guard but

she said no. We are about to move to new place to retire! Now what?!? Insane News: Cousins Erotic Sexting Trouble! Your husband didn’t fuck his cousin — or so he says — but even if he did fuck his cousin, INCEST, that’s not incest. Don’t get me wrong: Most people are thoroughly squicked out at the thought of cousins fucking. And cousin fucking is, in fact, incest-adjacent enough that most people can’t distinguish it from actual incest. But you know what does make a distinction between incest and cousin fucking? The law. First-cousin marriages aren’t legal in all U.S. states but they’re legally recognized in almost all states. They’re also legal and legally recognized in Canada, Mexico, the UK, the EU, Russia, and on and on. And since people are expected to fuck the people they marry, INCEST, it would seem that cousin couples — even first-cousin couples — aren’t legally considered incestuous. Mark Antony, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein all married first cousins. The actress Greta Scacchi married her first cousin. Your husband’s cousin says she isn’t fucking your husband. Seems to me that this is one of those cases where, even if you suspect you’re being lied to, you should take what you’ve been told at face value and avoid looking for evidence that might contradict it. Your marriage is still monogamous if define you cheating narrowly. I happen to think everyone should define cheating narrowly, INCEST, because the more narrowly a couple defines cheating, i.e. the fewer things that “count” as cheating, the likelier that couple is to remain successfully monogamous as the decades grind on. Conversely, the more things a couple defines as cheating, INCEST, the less likely it becomes that their marriage will remain monogamous over the years. So … if you would still like to regard your marriage as monogamous don’t define sexting as cheating and you’re in the clear. Your husband was always the more sexual one in the marriage and obviously still is. He made his peace with having less sex than he might’ve liked over the last three decades because he loves you and wants to be with you. But he apparently needed an outlet, something to masturbate about, and

someone in his life who made him feel desirable. And if he was going to swap indecent sexts with someone to meet those needs, maybe … just maybe … it was better he did it with this woman than with someone else. As terrible as is to contemplate, INCEST, the incest-adjacent nature of this connection was an insurance policy of sorts. Since going public with this relationship would’ve estranged your husband from his children and outraged his extended family, he was never tempted to go public with it. While she wasn’t an ideal choice, and while a cousin wouldn’t be my choice, she wasn’t someone your husband would or could ever leave you for, right? Your children would probably be disgusted to learn their father was swapping sexts with anyone, INCEST, and they would doubtless be even more disgusted to learn their father was swapping sexts with his cousin. So don’t tell them. Your husband isn’t going anywhere. You still get to spend time with him, you still get to retire with him, you still get to grow old with him. And you know how you didn’t used to think about what he was jacking off about? Back before you stumbled over those explicit chats? Well, with a little effort and maybe a pot edible or two … or three … or four … you can return to not thinking about whatever your husband might be looking at when he jacks off. And finally Your family shouldn’t be getting together for “big events” in the middle of a pandemic — unless you don’t want to live long enough to retire. Hey, Dan: My younger brother is a 34-year-old gay man who got out of a really awful relationship about six months ago. Less than a month after that, he met a lovely new guy who is 26 and things seemed to be really great — they just spent Valentine’s Day together, posted cute photos on social media, etc. Ten days after that the guy dumps my brother. He’s incredibly mature about it, says he thinks they’re best friends but something is missing and he doesn’t want to string my brother along. My brother is beyond devastated and at 34 it’s the first time he has ever been dumped when he was this in love. I’m trying to be supportive and help guide him through the pain, but he’s

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truly a wreck about it. I sympathize but to be completely honest I felt this kind of pain for the first time when I was around 15 or 16, and I’ve been with my current partner for 14 years. Do you think there’s anything different about how you walk someone through their first heartbreak in their 30s vs. their teens? Helping A Brother In Turmoil Your brother got into a rebound relationship and got dumped — it sucks and it’s awful and it hurts, HABIT, but it happens all the time and people get over it. Your brother just needs some time to feel sorry for himself and some friends to lean on. Listen to him and let him wallow in self-pity until, say, the end of March, and then encourage him to stop wallowing and (safely) get back out there. Hey, Dan: You responded to GHOST, a gay man whose inability to achieve an erection is both a turnoff for him and an ego destroyer, in last week’s column. I wanted to add my perspective to your excellent reply. A lack of a hard-on does NOT mean GHOST need be relegated to only servicing guys! He can ejaculate if stimulated sufficiently! I have type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure (both under remediation from attending to my health better) and I was on a host of meds for my bipolar disorder until recently which both killed my erections and my libido. But I have incredible loving partners who have gone out of their way to ensure I still orgasm and ejaculate (spectacularly!) despite being either flaccid or only slightly firm. Very fulfilling orgasms are entirely possible like this, Dan! Actually a friend who had his prostate removed chimed in on this topic to say it was so for him too! And as I’ve worked on both my mental and physical health, my erections are returning along with my libido. Perhaps that’s something GHOST could work on as well? And I want him to know that at age 57 I’m having some of the best sex of my life despite not being hard enough to penetrate anyone right now. But who knows? Perhaps by age 60 I will again be rock hard again! No Need To Be Hard To Come! Thanks for sharing, NNTBHTC! mail@savagelove.net @FakeDanSavage on Twitter www.savagelovecast.com

MARCH 3-9, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

MARCH 3-9, 2021

riverfronttimes.com

MARCH 3-9, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

SWADE

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Riverfront Times March 2, 2021

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