Riverfront Times, April 12, 2023

FRONT BURNER

MONDAY, APRIL 3 CNN is back on its bullshit, providing wall-to-wall coverage of a failed former real estate developer soon to be arrested in New York. Y’all know things are happening in statehouses across America that have far more impact on our lives? Let’s start with Jefferson City Meanwhile, Louisiana State University has won the women’s NCAA championship — and this year we’re actually talking about the girls and not the boys. (UCONN who?) Jill Biden, weirdly, spoils the moment by inviting also-rans Iowa to the White House.

TUESDAY, APRIL 4 Ope, Jill Biden disinvites Iowa. Turns out the racial politics of inviting the mostly white team that didn’t win, when a mostly Black team did, are super awkward. Speaking of awkward, what was meant to be a day of triumph for that failed former real estate developer in NYC turns into a day involving an astonishing 34 felony counts — and very few people protesting his fate. Turns out it’s not just Donald Trump who doesn’t like losers. Back in St. Louis, it’s Election Day. St. Louis says yes to a bunch of taxes on cannabis and

Previously On LAST WEEK IN ST. LOUIS

goodbye to two aldermen with grade-A nicknames, Tina “Sweet T” Pihl and Joe “Carwash Daddy” Vaccaro. Pihl’s ninth ward offers rich ground for analysis, but for Vaccaro, bested by fellow incumbent Bret Narayan in the new fourth, the takeaway seems simple: Now that we have just 14 wards, being “assessable” is no longer enough to ensure reelection.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5 It’s a fun day of analyzing election returns! The PostDispatch reports that a bunch of weirdos trying to take over suburban school boards failed in their quest. Apparently even Missouri Republicans have limits on the nuttiness they’ll tolerate. In the city, the daily reports, Tuesday was a good night for progressives — yet Mayor Tishaura Jones’ three most outspoken

FIVE QUESTIONS for author Martin Riker

critics, alderpersons Cara Spencer, Sharon Tyus and Tom Oldenburg, all cruised to reelection. Expect contentiousness ahead! Also worth noting: St. Louis elected its first Latina representative, Daniela Velazquez, in the new sixth. A city that only a decade ago felt more or less Black/white is now represented by a true rainbow coalition. That’s progress.

THURSDAY, APRIL 6 ProPublica drops a bombshell: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted a whole lot of free luxury travel from a hitherto obscure billionaire. Also, here in the ShowMe State, Jay Ashcroft, the ne’er do well son of Thomas’ former mentor, is running for Missouri governor.

FRIDAY, APRIL 7 Some judge in Texas

most exciting thing for me.

halts FDA approval of the abortion pill mifepristone after two decades of its legality. Yes, he can just do that; the federal government will appeal. Also, it turns out that Clarence Thomas’ billionaire buddy collects Nazi shit and has a garden full of statues of dictators. Serious question: Does anyone manage to stay normal after accumulating a billion dollars? Also: Someone was shot in the parking garage of Plaza Frontenac and local TV news crews are speeding to the scene. Clutch those pearls, west county friends!

SATURDAY, APRIL 8 CITY SC loses again. It’s the team’s first loss on the road. Also on the road, the Blues lose. But hey, it’s 2023, and we have another pro sports team in St. Louis. The Battlehawks today become the first XFL team to win in overtime. Ka-kaw!

SUNDAY, APRIL 9 It’s Easter Sunday, the weather is glorious and today we vow not to complain about anything. This is much easier if you aren’t a Cardinals fan. We’re not complaining, really we aren’t … but last in the NL Central?

The Guest Lecture is a truly funny read. Do you consider yourself a funny guy IRL?

Although I think I am jolly, I’m much funnier on paper. The kind of humor that’s in the book is a very written humor. It’s a humor that relies entirely on the construction and cadences of sentences. Some of it is conceptual, but a lot of it is the structure of the sentence and how it lands the way it does, the timing of the joke.

Does working on the publishing side of the business affect your writing?

I’ve worked in small press publishing for 25 years. And I didn’t start publishing my own books until 2018. It’s not that I wasn’t writing all that time. I wrote a few novels that I didn’t even try to publish because they weren’t any good. I love writing, and I do it because I love it. But I don’t feel pressure to succeed as a writer; I just enjoy the act of doing it. There’s a freedom there that is sort of analogous to the freedom of having tenure at a university that allows you to think outside the box.

St. Louisan Martin Riker’s new novel The Guest Lecture is one of the buzziest books of literary fiction this year, getting rave reviews in the New Yorker and the New York Times, among other taste-making outlets. The novel covers one night in the life of the mind of an economist suffering a fit of insomnia on the eve of the eponymous lecture — though that description belies the humor that runs through what Riker has written, a humor that will land especially hard for anyone who every so often has trouble falling asleep. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You’re at the top of the heap in the literary world right now, right?

This kind of coverage is really gratifying, especially the New York Review of Books piece, because it was a really long, substantive, smart piece. I was blown away, actually. It’s the kind of coverage that there just isn’t that much of in the literary world anymore. That was the

Did I read somewhere that David Foster Wallace was a professor of yours?

He was actually my master’s thesis advisor back at Illinois State University in the late ‘90s, and we were friends after. Actually I have in my closet two manuscripts of my own books that I never published with David’s writing all over them. They’re in a box of stuff that I’m going to sell to send my kid to college.

How are you making the most of the spotlight being on you?

I’m anxious for it to be done. I really am. I never enjoyed having to think about whether there’s going to be more coverage or what the coverage is going to be, all that kind of stuff. I’m thankful for good stuff that happens and that kind of attention, but I don’t like having to live in anticipation of it. The good news is that stuff doesn’t last that long. Publicity doesn’t last. —Ryan Krull

Martin Riker. | COURTESY PHOTO

—William P. Eyelash commenting on Jaime Lees’ article “VIDEO: Snowflake Kid Rock Joins Cancel Culture Crusade Against Bud Light”

WEEKLY WTF?!

Storm Watch

Date and Location of sighting: April 2 in Webster Groves

How the tree got there: Storms and high winds were blowing everything around that week.

Looks like the house is undamaged: This tree politely laid down on the house rather than crash through it like a drama queen. How long was it like this?: We’re not sure, but we walked by again on April 4 and it was still there.

Size of tree: We once took a math class that taught us how to calculate the height of tall objects. We failed said class, and that’s why we’re now writers. Impending danger: There seem to be many more trees that could fall at any moment. Let’s hope they’re all polite like this tree if that happens. Did you get a look at that root structure?: We did, and it was shallow as heck, like the tree wasn’t even trying to stay in the ground.

ESCAPE HATCH

We ask three St. Louisans what they’re reading, watching or listening to. In the hot seat this week: three runners at the GO! St. Louis Marathon.

Emily, computer science student at Wash U

Listening to: Nelly Furtado’s 2000 hit “I’m Like a Bird”

“‘I’m Like a Bird’ is the only thing getting me through this race and has been stuck in my head all week.”

Jill, interior plant designer, a.k.a. “a plant lady”

Reading: Parable of the Sower, the first book in Octavia Butler’s Afrofuturist series Earthseed

“[The book] has disrupted my life.”

Katie, RFT intern and Wash U student

Watching: Girls on HBO, the Lena Dunham show produced by Judd Apatow

“It’s very millennial but funny.”

SOMETIMES IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT COUNT

“Snowflaking out with a temper tantrum right before the no snowflake tour!? Not Kid Rock!”

Circuit Attorney’s Race Heats Up

David Mueller, a criminal defense attorney, announces run against Gardner

Written by RYAN KRULL

Criminal defense attorney David Mueller says he will run for St. Louis Circuit Attorney, making him the first challenger to embattled incumbent Kim Gardner.

Mueller, a 37-year-old St. Louis native and political newcomer, tells the RFT he feels called to run for the city’s top prosecutor job because, after decades of population decline, he thinks the city is at an inflection point.

“We’re losing 7,000 residents a year,” he says. “We’re going to go from the 20th largest [metro region] in the country to the 30th in a decade.”

Mueller grew up in the suburb of Normandy and got his law degree from the George Washington University School of Law in Washington, D.C., before moving back to St. Louis in 2013. He took a job as a public defender, working in the St. Louis County trial office. He says he’s witnessed over-policing by tiny municipal police departments and the other systemic issues that plague the region’s po-

Illinois Couple Charged with Killing Infant Son

The couple’s Facebook posts allege someone else was responsible for the death

Written by RYAN KRULL

An Illinois couple in their early 20s were charged last week with the murder of their three-month-old boy, who died in St. Louis last spring.

The Illinois State Police said last Tuesday that Logan Hutchings and Sophia Kelly, both 21, brought their child, Ocean, to a hospital in St. Louis last June.

The baby was found to be suffering a skull fracture and multiple rib fractures.

licing and courts.

Now a resident of Tower Grove South, Mueller says he voted for Gardner but that she hasn’t lived up to the promises of the racial justice platform she ran on. He cites the case of a client, Levi Henning, who was prosecuted by Gardner’s office, as what ultimately motivated him to seek the circuit attorney job.

Henning, 21, was first charged in March 2021 with the murder of Carieal J. Doss. That August, police processed DNA evidence collected from the scene that suggested someone else was there, but Mueller says prosecutors waited six months to disclose that evidence to him — and even then didn’t drop the charges. Mueller says the Circuit Attorney’s Office also had ballistics evidence that tied the killing to a murder committed by another man, but prosecutors sat on that for over a year. Gardner’s office finally dropped all the charges against Henning last month, but only after the young man spent two years in and out of jail.

Mueller says that case was more egregious than anything he saw during his time as a public defender in St. Louis County (and that was when the county’s top prosecutor was Bob McCulloch).

“When I think about systemic problems in [Gardner’s] office, I think about my clients, the young men sitting in the Justice Center without any hope of resolution in a timely fashion,” Mueller said as the charges against Henning were dismissed. “It’s not justice to hold somebody for a year before you can get a case for the grand jury.”

Gardner announced last month that

Ocean passed away June 14 at the hospital, two days after the family arrived.

Both Hutchings and Kelly are from Pinckneyville, an Illinois town of about 5,000 an hour southeast of St. Louis.

Cryptic social media posts in the immediate wake of Ocean’s death suggest the couple blamed someone else for what happened, though they didn’t say whom.

Kelly wrote on Facebook two days after Ocean’s death, “My sweet boy. We will get justice to you.”

Around that same time Hutchings posted, “My world has been turned around 5 times this week and I’ll never have trust in anyone again.”

Now more than a year later, according to Buzzfeed news, on the same day as the couple’s arrests, Logan’s mother also suggested in a Facebook post that someone else killed Ocean. The post appears to have been deleted.

“So before all the keyboard warriors come to judge … remember GOD is our only judge and he will deal with the one

she will seek a third term. She was elected to the office in 2016 after winning a four-way race in the August Democratic primary and facing no opponent in the November general election. In the 2020 cycle, Gardner bested former Assistant Circuit Attorney Mary Pat Carl by 20 percent in the primary and faced only token Republican opposition in the general.

Mueller says that Gardner has undoubtedly been the victim of racist and sexist attacks for the past six years. “But unfortunately, what’s also true is that for six years, she has blamed everyone else for everything that was happening.

“The problem is that she’s fighting everybody all the time,” he says. “Not just the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, not just the Ethical Society of Police. She’s fighting every single one of the judges. She’s fighting the mayor’s office, she’s fighting the Board of Alder-

men, she’s fighting the treasurer and the comptroller. And now she’s fighting with the Attorney General’s Office.”

Mueller says that if he were elected circuit attorney he’d make a priority of chipping away at the office’s case backlog, and that he would personally prosecute cases.

“Miss Gardner does not have a caseload. I don’t know of any case she’s first chaired since her time in the Circuit Attorney’s Office,” he says. “You have to address the backlog first. For me, that means doing it yourself. You need a lot of help. But I’m willing to lead from the front.”

Though he’ll be campaigning against Gardner for the next year, Mueller is adamant that he doesn’t support Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s current efforts to remove Gardner from office.

“To have Jefferson City politicians come in and try to remove a legally elected circuit attorney is not appropriate,” Mueller says. “I trust that the voters of St. Louis City will see for themselves what’s happening and that they will make the right decision next August.” n

who hurt my grandson bc he KNOWS who it was,” she wrote.

Hutchings and Kelly are currently being held in Washington County Jail on $1 million bond. Their next court date is April 20.

Just one month before Ocean’s death, Hutchings posted a tribute to Kelly, to

whom he’d recently gotten engaged. “I’m so proud of this woman for being such an amazing mother,” he wrote. “I love you Sophia Kelly!”

The photos with the post appeared to show Kelly and a newborn, along with an older son. Both boys also appear in Kelly’s Facebook posts. n

David Mueller. | COURTESY PHOTO

Logan Hutchings and Sophia Kelly. | ILLINOIS STATE POLICE

“ You have to address the backlog first. For me, that means doing it yourself.”

States Try to Ease Child Labor Laws at Behest of Industry

In Missouri, a bill to eliminate age verification requirements for children under 16 cleared a Senate committee

Written by ARIANA FIGUEROA

This article originally appeared in the Missouri Independent.

Lawmakers in 11 states have either passed or introduced laws to roll back child labor laws — a push that’s come from industry trade organizations and mostly conservative legislators as businesses scramble for low-wage workers.

In the past two years, those states have moved to extend working hours for children, eliminate work-permit requirements and lower the age for teens to handle alcohol or work in hazardous industries. At the same time, there has been a 69 percent increase in children employed illegally by companies since 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

It is “irresponsible for states to consider loosening child labor protections,” Seema Nanda, the U.S. solicitor of labor, said in a statement to States Newsroom

“Federal and state entities should be working together to increase accountability and ramp up enforcement — not make it easier to illegally hire children to do what are often dangerous jobs,” she said, adding that the Labor Department will continue to enforce longstanding federal child labor protections.

This year alone, lawmakers in seven states have introduced or passed bills that would ease child

labor laws.

“While we’re finding out that child labor is more pervasive and more dangerous than we thought, [these] states have decided, ‘Oh, now’s a good time to weaken the child labor laws,’” said Reid Maki, the director of child labor issues and coordinator at the Child Labor Coalition. “So that’s appalling. That’s really just mind-boggling.”

In Arkansas, the legislature passed a law that eliminates ageverification requirements for children under 16 to prove their age to get a job. A similar bill cleared a Missouri Senate committee earlier this year, and in the House legislation that would extend working hours for teens 16 and older, from 7 p.m. on a school night to 10 p.m., has advanced.

Ohio legislators reintroduced a bill to extend the working hours for teens year-round from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Minnesota lawmakers introduced a bill to roll back requirements that bar 16- and-17year-olds from working in construction.

The Iowa Legislature is currently considering a bill that would allow exceptions to state law prohibiting children aged 14 to 17 from working in more dangerous industries, such as roofing and mining, among other provisions that have drawn scrutiny from labor and children advocacy groups.

“We got a bill that’s written by industry groups and multinational corporations that are looking for cheap labor out of our kids,

and it’s really disappointing,” said Charlie Wishman, the president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.

But Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, a Republican, said there’s valuable experience to be gained as teens work in business and learn communications skills, as well as the importance of showing up for a job on time. “It, you know, teaches the kids a lot, and if they have the time to do it, and they want to earn some additional money, I don’t think we should, you know, discourage that,” she said.

Georgia Republicans introduced and then withdrew a bill that would eliminate work permits for minors 18 and younger, among other things. South Dakota Republicans introduced a bill to extend working hours for children 14 and under. But lawmakers quickly withdrew it.

Farming, logging Maki argued that child labor laws need to be strengthened, particularly relating to work in agriculture. Children as young as 12 can work on a farm because agriculture workers and domestic workers were put in a separate category in the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 that established federal child labor laws.

That distinction was due to racist policymaking by Southern Democrats because during the 20th century, farmworkers were predominantly Black, Maki said.

“We think it’s a legacy of racism, and you know, a lot of the kids

working now in factories and in the field are brown,” he said. “And I think that’s part of the reason why the law hasn’t been fixed.”

The Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs estimates that there are between 400,000 and 500,000 children working on farms in the U.S.

Meanwhile, there’s also a bipartisan push in Congress to allow teens to work in family logging businesses. Members from states with logging interests are backing it, as is the logging industry.

Teens in restaurants

Jennifer Sherer, who published a report for the non-profit, leftleaning Economic Policy Institute with Nina Mast tracking states rolling back child labor laws, said in an interview that some industry groups have different interests when it comes to child labor laws, but they share a common desire to ease restrictions.

For example, the restaurant, hospitality and retail industries have been vocal in wanting to extend hours for teens to work during the school year and during vacation, as well as revising “restrictions on the age at which teens can begin … serving alcohol in restaurants and bars.”

“They’ve been very clear about hoping to access larger numbers of young workers and also to be able to work them for longer hours,” Sherer, a senior state policy coordinator at the Economic Policy Institute, said.

The good old days? Recent legislation by Republicans looks to bring back the days of legalized child labor. | LEWIS HINE

CHILDREN WORKING

Continued from pg 9

In September, the National Restaurant Association expressed its support for legislation by U.S. Representative Dusty Johnson, RSouth Dakota, to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act and allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. year round, as well as allow up to 24 hours of work a week.

“If a high school student can play in a football game until 9 p.m., or play video games late into the evening, they should also be allowed to hold a job if they wish to,” Johnson said in a statement.

Migrant minors at risk

Other industries, such as meatpacking, construction and other manufacturing sectors, are “clearly looking to open up more job categories to youth, sort of dipping their toes into whether they can peel back some of those hazardous orders that have kept certain work sites or specific occupations off limits [to youths],” Sherer said.

Particularly vulnerable to child labor law violations are migrant youth who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border alone.

A year-long investigation by the New York Times found hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children working dangerous jobs in violation of child labor laws.

From October 2021 to September 2022, there were about 130,000 unaccompanied youth who were released to sponsors in the U.S., according to data from the Office of Refugee Resettlement. States that have seen some of the biggest increases in unaccompanied children are Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio and Texas, according to data from the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

“What we’re really seeing is employers hoping to take advantage of a broken immigration system and then roll back child labor standards, so that there are no consequences for violating the sort of bare minimal protections that are in place to prevent exploitation of youth,” Sherer said.

Annie Smith, a law professor who directs the Civil Litigation and Advocacy Clinic at the University of Arkansas School of Law, said children who are undocumented or have family members who are undocumented may be afraid to report worker violations for fear of deportation.

“What I can say from represent-

ing undocumented clients and other forms of labor exploitation, is that there’s just a higher risk of all forms of exploitation among those who have tenuous or no immigration status, so that’s certainly also true for children,” Smith said.

In late February, the Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services announced new efforts to crack down on child labor, following the New York Times report.

Investigations, violations on the rise

The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division said that since 2015, the agency has seen “increases in child labor investigations and violations.”

During fiscal 2022, there were 835 companies that employed more than 3,800 children in violation of labor laws. That’s an increase from fiscal 2015, when 542 companies employed more than 1,000 children in violation of labor laws.

The number of children reported working in hazardous occupations such as roofing also has risen. In fiscal 2015, there were 355 children working in violation of hazardous occupations and in fiscal 2022, there were 688, the highest number since fiscal 2011.

Electric Scooters Return to Downtown, Downtown West

The e-scooters were banned last summer

Written by ROSALIND EARLY

St. Louis city is allowing a “soft relaunch” of e-scooters in Downtown and Downtown West after banning them last July.

Monte Chambers, program manager for the city, said that Bird, an e-scooter and e-bike short-term rental company, received a permit from the city to place no more than 50 scooters downtown this past weekend.

The company has to test “internal compliance” on the ground and had to monitor the use of the e-scooters all weekend.

The rules that Bird had to comply with are that the e-scooter speed cannot exceed 12 mph. This is down from the current 15 mph. In some areas, the speed of the scooters must be reduced to 10 mph.

The Department of Labor recently issued civil fines for Packers Sanitation Services Inc, a company that cleans meatpacking plants, for $1.5 million for employing children as young as 13 to work in dangerous conditions.

The agency investigated 13 plants in eight states, including Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Tennessee. Packers employed more than 20 children at three meatpacking plants in Nebraska, Kansas and Minnesota.

The agency found that children ages 13 to 17 spent overnight shifts cleaning equipment such as head splitters, back saws and brisket saws, and were exposed to dangerous chemicals such as ammonia. Three of those 102 kids were injured on the job.

Child labor laws date to 1836

Laura Kellams, the Northwest Arkansas director for the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, said child labor laws are not only meant to protect a child from partaking in hazardous work environments, but also to guarantee that children go to school.

“The laws are designed to prevent injury, and they’re also designed to protect a child’s ability and opportunity for education,”

she said.

Massachusetts was the first state to pass child labor laws in 1836 that required children under 15 who worked in factories to attend school for a minimum of three months out of the year.

It would take a little over a century to have a national labor law protecting children.

But in Arkansas, advocates fear education for vulnerable students is at risk.

In a new Arkansas law that overhauls public education, there is a provision that allows eighthgrade students to take a “career ready pathway,” in which one of those paths is “immediately enter a career field.”

Josh Price with the nonprofit immigrants’ rights group Arkansas United said the language allows schools to recommend that a student in eighth grade — about 13 to 14 years old — can drop out of school and go straight to work instead.

“We fear this will happen all too often, particularly to Black and brown children and especially if they are from the immigrant community and English is not their first language,” Price said. n

Robin Opsahl and Casey Quinlan contributed to this report.

The company also must make sure that a user can only unlock one scooter per account. If you’re wondering how kids are supposed to scooter with their parents, don’t worry. The city has banned anyone under 18 from operating the rental e-scooters.

There are also rules about where

scooters can be staged and parked, and Bird must make sure it complies with caps on the size of fleets in certain neighborhoods.

Bird’s permit cost $2,500 for the year. Lime, another popular e-bike and e-scooter rental company, is expected to get its permit this week. n

Bird and Lime scooters are back downtown. | FLICKR/MACK MALE

Music Video Street

Lo-Fi Cherokee saw local bands making music videos along the city’s hippest thoroughfare

Words by ROSALIND EARLY

Photos by THEO WELLING

On April 8, bands and fans converged on Cherokee Street for Lo-Fi Cherokee, an event run by Bill Streeter where he and his team shoot more than a dozen music videos in one day.

This year, The Mighty Pines, fronted by The Voice contestant Neil Salsich, played at STL Stylehouse and Future/Modern was spotted outside ’Ssippi. The Bottlesnakes jammed at Brightface Tattoo and Drea Vocalz shot a music video at Blank Space. The event also included David Gomez at Yaquis on Cherokee and Tristaño at the Fortune Teller Bar.

Fans got a chance to meander Cherokee, check out new businesses and see some of their favorite bands in intimate settings. Plus, passersby got the chance to appear in a music video.

A CELEBRATION OF THE UNIQUE AND FASCINATING ASPECTS OF OUR HOME

Photo by Michael Worful / Design by Evan Sult

The duo’s music first pummeled my eardrums when I was a junior at Webster University. A staffer at our student newspaper (picture your best liberal arts student stereotype, Dr. Martens boots and all), played me one of 100 gecs’ most popular songs, “money machine.” It began with what sounded like the twangs of a deep-fried banjo, followed by an autotuned voice wailing, “Hey lil piss baby / You think you’re so fucking cool, huh? / You think you’re so fucking tough? / You talk a lot of big game for someone with such a small truck.”

If someone recorded Avril Lavigne on speed after inhaling a helium balloon, that’d be a reasonable approximation of what 100 gecs sounds like. But only if pockmarked by random bleeps and bloops. And dog barks.

I grew up in Crestwood. The inner-ring suburb is one of the sleepiest municipalities in south St. Louis County and is known most for what it used to have: a bustling mall and a drive-in theater along old Route 66. On the surface, there’s nothing remarkable about these suburbs. Most who grow up there dream of leaving. Young parents move in for the comforting quiet. Strip malls abound. Subdivisions of ranch homes wind through

tion is quickly rebuffed.

“You don’t have to put it down like that!” Les, the band’s lead singer, tells me. “Yeah, St. Louis is great,” says Les’ counterpart, producer Brady.

It was not the response I expected from a duo so wonderfully and wildly weird.

Les and Brady are nothing like the areas in which they were raised. Brady, a Kirkwood High School alumnus, and Les, a graduate of Webster Groves High School, are eccentric and exciting. Their music is erratic and irreverent — a frenzied collage of genres that encompasses everything from nightcore and dubstep to punk and ska. The sound of 100 gecs has been described by Complex as “an anarchic assault on the ears” and “like throwing digital glass into a blender” by Pitchfork

It takes a lot to describe 100 gecs’s sound, because there’s never been anything like

How did normie St. Louis County turn out hyperpop

100 gecs?

I remember nodding politely as the song blared on my friend’s cracked iPhone. She braced for my reaction as I looked at her with furrowed brows; she knew how unhinged it sounded.

The music was cool, I told her, but I wasn’t high enough to enjoy it. I told her anything to politely dismiss the introduction to a band that would eventually change the way I listened to music — just so I could put my earbuds back in and return to listening to Philip Glass, or whatever music I thought I had to like at the time to feel original.

Four years later, that memory reminds me to never be so quick to judge art. The gecs continued to invade various friends’ music libraries. The story of how a gecs concert instantly wiped away one of my best friends’ depressive episodes is a legend among our mutual friends. My vision of 100 gecs changed as time went on. The music transformed from an over-glorified meme to pure genius art. I’m now one of nearly three million monthly gecs listeners on Spotify.

More than the mind-warping music, what baffled me the most about 100 gecs is how the duo became the eccentric pop stars they are now. Dylan Brady and Laura Les, who make up 100 gecs, grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis. Some fellow gecheads don’t believe me when I tell them Les and Brady are from St. Louis and lived in Webster Groves and Kirkwood, respectively — just a few miles away from where

south county like veins. Webster Groves, with its century homes and quaint remnants of the railroad town it once was, has an atmosphere that’s more Mayberry than St. Louis. Less than a 10-minute drive away, Kirkwood isn’t much different.

This sprawling suburbia could not have been a more boring place to grow up. At least, that’s how I felt as a kid raised at the border of west and south St. Louis County. But when I compare county notes with 100 gecs, my descrip-

stars

it. After the release of their first album, 1,000 gecs, Brady and Les unwittingly established themselves as the frontrunners of hyperpop. The new, genre-mashing scene is distinguished by a countercultural sound characterized by auto-tuned vocals, quick beats and excessive distortion. But even that description only scratches the surface of a genre that defies norms practically by definition.

It’s the sound of the internet. It’s audio adrenaline that electroshocks the depressed neurons of Gen Z. It’s simultaneously nostalgic for early 2000s pop yet futuristic. It’s glitchy. It’s fun. It’s … not for everyone, that’s for sure.

So how could Kirkwood and Webster Groves, two of the most normie places, cultivate the creative geniuses behind one of the country’s most up-and-coming acts?

Continued on pg 18

It started with dog food, bloodstains, 25 bands and a geccco.

By Monica Obradovic

The first time I heard 100 gecs, I thought it was a joke.

100 GECS

Continued from pg 17

We’re speaking over Zoom from different sides of the country. Les, 28, and Brady, 29, chat from their homes in Los Angeles. I’m in my south St. Louis apartment. Brady says, “Fuck yeah!” when I tell him where I am.

About an hour into our interview, a conversation about St. Louis snowballs into a tangent on local sports teams and former Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire.

Brady: “They should have let him juice.”

Les: “Me and Dylan have the distinct belief that you should be able to juice in any sport you do. Push your body to the test.”

Brady: “Why not?”

Les: “We’re not the first people to say this.”

Brady: “Won’t be the last.”

Les: “I’ll watch sports again when there’s, like, no holds barred. Let people juice. Make the field twice as big.”

Brady: “Baseball should be scoring as much as basketball.”

Les: “Their game would be over within 30 minutes, and it’d be great. The pitchers just throw balls as fast as they can, and the people batting have to hit and run, and then the next person comes up and tries to hit. There’s no time outs. You don’t have to wait for anything. It’s just …” She claps her hands together in a quick 1, 2, 3.

It’s irreverent sibling-like banter such as this that 100 gecs fans love. It matches their music: quick, uninhibited, fun and all over the place. It’s far from the formulaic predictability of most pop music.

Even so, the gecs never sought to create something so anarchic. Music for Les and Brady began out of curiosity.

Les’ interest in music began in her early teens. Her dad had a huge collection of rock CDs, she says. She listened to Van Halen and Black Sabbath and started experimenting with creating music on her computer in her bedroom. Daft Punk’s second live album, Alive 2007, inspired her to download the free version of Ableton, a music-making software. It was the first time she switched from guitar to keyboard.

The Guitar Center off Watson Road was about three miles away from each of her parent’s houses, and she used to walk there everyday to try different guitars and effects pedals. She went there so

often that the store’s employees pooled money and bought her a Line 6 amp.

Music didn’t seem a possibility for Brady until his sophomore year of high school, when a music teacher at Kirkwood High School, David Cannon, urged him to join the choir. Brady shot photos for his school newspaper and wanted to make films, but choir opened up a whole new world.

“I didn’t really feel like I had access to make music or the skills to do it,” Brady says. “I didn’t even want to do it until I took that class.”

Cannon taught thousands of students over three decades (including pop singer Slayyyter) before he retired last year. But even so, when reached by phone one afternoon, Cannon remembers Brady vividly.

He was “quirky, obsessive and funny,” Cannon recalls. After choir, he also convinced Brady to take a class on music theory, which was where Brady’s creativity “really shined.” Despite Brady’s clear talent, Cannon didn’t expect Brady to become as big as he is now.

“I’m hopeful for my students,” Cannon says. “I always told them that if they make it in the music business, great, but that was never my goal for them. I wanted them to be music consumers, to be the ones who might try out an avant garde concert or go to the symphony.”

Whatever fire Cannon’s classes ignited in Brady, it never went out. Brady started producing music for numerous local artists in his late teens. He’d later go on to produce for Charli XCX, Rico

Nasty, the Neighbourhood and so many more.

How Les and Brady actually met is something of a debate among gecs fans. They give various answers in different interviews, so the truth is unknown. Did they meet at a rodeo — or a house party?

Les tells me the latter. “Dylan was playing tracks, and I was like, ‘Wow, that dude is super duper good at music,’” she says. “‘I have to go home and be better at music.’”

Even more ambiguous is the origin of 100 gecs’ name. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Les said she accidentally ordered 100 geckos online, when she meant to order one. In other interviews, the duo said they saw “100 gecs” spray-painted on a wall outside of Les’ dorm room in Chicago.

The name actually derives from Les’ social security number, she tells me, and she’s surprised fans haven’t figured it out already.

“It’s actually huge for me to be admitting this,” Les says. “You’re getting the exclusive on that one.”

The quick delivery of her answer makes me think she’s only half joking. Then she does my job for me and comes up with a fake headline: “‘Riverfront Times Exclusive: Leaking Laura’s Fucking Social Security Number.’”

“That’s an epic cover,” Brady responds.

“Let the hunt begin,” Les says.

By the time 100 gecs formed in 2015, Brady and Les were in different places musically. Les was producing highpitched electronic music un-

der the moniker osno1 on Soundcloud and Bandcamp. Brady was more known as hip-hop producer Lil Bando at the time. That year, he released his debut solo album, All I Ever Wanted, to critical acclaim. The album featured a moody mix of slow and syrupy tracks that a former RFT music critic praised while describing Brady’s generous use of autotune as “a crutch.” (Autotune would later become a 100 gecs staple.)

Les moved to Chicago for college while Brady stayed in St. Louis, but the two kept in touch. They grew closer as they texted each other what they were working on and what they were listening to.

Gecs’ first EP, the eponymously titled 100 gecs, was a product of what they were listening to on a drive from St. Louis to Chicago — Skrillex and Diplo’s collab album, Jack Ü, and DJ S3RL. They recorded the EP in Les’ dorm room in a week.

Released in 2016, 100 gecs embodies the band’s sound even seven years later, and demonstrates how Brady and Les have made a career out of turning seemingly banal topics into headbangable anthems. Take “dog food,” and “bloodstains.” The tracks’ lyrics seem completely random, making it impossible to decipher their meaning, if there is any. But the pace of both songs, the over-processed vocals, the random noises infused in each, are quintessential 100 gecs.

The song “25 bands and a geccco” has lyrics that include: “I’ve got 25 cans of the pesto / And I’ve got 25 mans but they’re dead though,” along with 12 seconds of dog barks, each bark pitched to a different note to compose a melody.

Brady and Les didn’t blow up until two years later with the release of their first album, 1,000 gecs. By then, Brady had moved to Los Angeles. Les was working in a coffee shop to make rent. She quit soon after the album was released.

“I definitely didn’t think that anything I did would break,” Les says. “[I was] just trying to have fun.”

The album catapulted them from Soundcloud to the mainstream. New York Times critics Jon Caramanica and Jon Pareles ranked 1,000 gecs in each of their Top 10 albums of 2019. The album’s cover featured a photograph of Les and Brady facing a pine tree at dusk with their backs to the camera. The gecs’ cult-like following of fans started traveling to that tree, designating it as a “place of worship” on Google maps open from 7:45 a.m. to 4:20

Continued on pg 20

Dylan Brady and Laura Les of 100 gecs got their start in St. Louis. | CHRIS MAGGIO

100 GECS

Continued from pg 18

p.m. As a result of these “pilgrimages to gecca,” this random tree in an office park in Des Plaines, Illinois, has been adorned with Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, pregnancy tests, a plunger, a hula hoop and naked dolls hung by their necks on the trees’ branches.

Critics kept trying to figure the gecs out. Where did they come from? What were they? What about their music works? But trying to explain 100 gecs or reduce them to a succinct and accurate description is fruitless — and beside the point.

“We want people to have a good time,” Les says. “We’re pop musicians. We’re not trying to make you break your brain trying to pick apart everything. We just ultimately want everybody to enjoy the listen, whether it’s at a show or listening to the album.”

It’s not like they are trying to be one thing, either. Last month, Les and Brady released a new album, 10,000 gecs, an alt-rock follow-up to their freshman effort.

Skeptics question how much of what 100 gecs does is intentional. Are they geniuses or wayward anarchists? Surely anyone who thinks to rhyme “mosquitos” with “Danny DeVito” has put some thought into their music. There’s also the matter of their perfectionism. 10,000 gecs comprises only 10 tracks selected from more than 4,000 demos (“none of them good enough,” according to Brady) after four years of production.

When I interview 100 gecs, I ask all the wrong questions. I wanted to figure out a way to box them into a succinct and accurate description. Hyperloop? Nightcore?

Audio jet fuel? So I ask them what genre they’d ascribe to themselves. It doesn’t result in a real answer.

Brady responds with “alternative pop … whatever Apple Music says.”

“Two friends, having fun, throwing spaghetti on the wall,” Les says.

It wasn’t until weeks later, after talking to the gecs’ old friends and scrubbing through old Soundcloud pages and Reddit threads, that I truly started to understand 100 gecs.

Around 2014 in St. Louis, a ragtag group of young hiphop, jazz, rap and pop artists started their own community, the Hella 314 Collective. Their performances were scantily attended. Their audience was not much more than a few hundred

listeners on Soundcloud.

They didn’t care about notoriety, though. That wasn’t what they were there for. It wasn’t really about the music, either. It was about spending time with one another.

“We were hanging out together every single day,” rapper Robel Ketema says. “Shows on shows on shows, nonstop work.”

Each member of the group had a connection to some other member. For the most part, they all went to south county schools: Kirkwood, Lindbergh, Webster Groves.

How the group formed depends on who you ask. But all the artists’ stories lead to Brady, who produced some, if not most, of each artist’s music throughout the years.

Brady and Ketema made their first song together in Brady’s family’s basement in 2010. Ketema couldn’t remember what they called it. The experience was what he took away.

“After the first song we made together, I just knew it,” Ketema says of Brady’s musical promise. “There was no doubt in my mind at any point.”

Several of the artists in the Hella 314 Collective still make music together. They make up the experimental pop band Cake Pop. The group formed in 2015 and made an entire self-titled EP in one night, according to Ketema. They did close to the same thing for Cake Pop 2, the band’s first album, released in 2021 (though this album was created at the relatively leisurely pace of two days).

Creating music wasn’t a task for them, Ketema says. It was pure creative expression; something fun for them to do during the long and empty days of summer.

“You see that type of freedom and fun with 100 gecs now,” Ketema says. “It’s never stopped being fun for them. I feel like that’s what people love most about them.”

Back in its St. Louis days, the Hella 314 Collective all hung out in Brady and rapper Cali Cartier’s dorm rooms at Webster University (Brady studied audio engineering until he got “kicked out of the major” for having bad grades, he says). They’d freestyle and record whatever sounded best.

“It was a very creative and competitive environment that helped all of us become better artists,” says Kevin Bedford, a rapper now based in Los Angeles.

They all used to fantasize about the future, according to Lewis Grant, a long-time Brady collaborator and friend since the seventh grade.

“I kind of always knew that some,

if not all, of us were going to make it to the main stage,” Grant says.

He wasn’t wrong. Brady and Les have made it larger than they ever would have thought. Other members — Ravenna Golden, Tonina Saputo, Pritty — have all paved music careers in their own right.

Back then, the possibility was palpable, Grant says. They were just messing around, taking themselves seriously while not at the same time. They were late teens and early 20-somethings having fun and working on themselves as much as they were discovering music during those freestyle jam sessions in dorm rooms. Still, it wasn’t all accidental. Something pulled them forward like an invisible rope. And while they laughed and pounded down energy drinks and cigs, listening to nightcore and experimental pop, a desire to be heard outside the dorm room walls and small concert venues sped their momentum forward.

“You can put a lot of time and effort into making the music you want to make, like cool music with your friends,” Grant says. “But at the same time, there is that undeniable thing where it’s like, ‘I want people to hear this. I want people to see this.’ I kinda always knew people would see Dylan and Laura’s stuff on a much larger scale. Not to be like, ‘I fucking told you guys.’ But I low key did.”

Maybe it’s because they’re his best friends, he says. Or maybe it’s because “they make the best music.” But it felt obvious.

There have been certain moments through the years when Grant says he had to ground himself, like when he traveled with the gecs on a European tour last summer. He’d come off stage after opening for them and ask, “Can you imagine, trying to tell us this in like 2013, let alone 2007, that we’d be doing this?” He doesn’t know if he’d believe himself.

It’s funny, looking at everything in hindsight through rose-tinted glasses, he says. At the time, they were just living their lives. And he’s not trying to sound cocky or ridiculous while remembering his confidence in their futures, he says. It just felt “destined.”

“I feel like there were some winds of fate blowing over St. Louis at a certain point that carried us,” Lewis says.

St. Louis wasn’t ready for 100 gecs, says Tonina Saputo, a Los Angeles-based singer and bassist from St. Louis. She remembers when she first met Brady at Kirkwood High School. The “cool, edgy, weirdo kid” would later pro-

duce her first album at a pace Saputo has rarely seen since — even almost a decade later.

But still, Saputo didn’t expect Brady and Les to reach the level of success they have.

“I didn’t know the world would be ready for his type of genre because it’s so out there,” Saputo says.

She was “taken aback” the first time she heard 100 gecs’ music.

“It was so out there for me that I was turned off,” Saputo says. “Then I put it back on and was like, ‘This is genius.’”

Saputo is far from the only person to describe the gecs as genius. I ask Brady and Les whether they felt out of place in St. Louis County as creative people.

True to form, they did not take themselves seriously.

“I was a gremlin more than a creative person,” Les says. “I didn’t feel like I was a creative person for a very long time.”

“Yeah, I mean, I feel generally out of place fairly often,” Brady says.

Out-of-place people make their own communities. That’s what happened with this group until they grew out of St. Louis.

Every single member of the Hella 314 Collective has since moved out of town. Most live in Los Angeles now.

There are so many more artists like them still here. The same dorm rooms where the Hella 314 Collective made its music, the Glen Park Apartments, was where a multitude of different characters lived when I was at Webster University. The same eclectic mix of dreamers: wannabe actors and screenwriters, musicians and English majors — all high on the possibility of things more than the things themselves.

Is there any advice 100 gecs has for those coming after them?

St. Louis is a great place, Les answers, and with the internet, you can do practically anything. But she later adds a comment that sparked the quintessential gecs banter.

“Go to new places, eat fish, look at the mountains, move five or six times, try all the foods that you can, eat a bug once,” Les says. “Yeah, eat SCOBY.” [An acronym for symbiotic culture of bacterial yeast — the basis of kombucha (not a bug)].

“You wanna fry it up,” Brady deadpans.

“Smoke it,” Les adds.

“Yeah, smoke the SCOBY, fuck it.”

The exchange makes no sense. It doesn’t have to.

Because as for my question, it has no right answer. n

CALENDAR

BY RIVERFRONT TIMES STAFF

THURSDAY 04/13 Game On

In addition to being critically acclaimed, this year’s prestige HBO drama The Last of Us led to a wider conversation in film and TV circles about why movies based on video games had been so bad for so long. Many think pieces were written on the topic, and almost all of them mentioned the 1993 Super Mario Bros. film, which by all objective measures fared horribly both at the box office and in the hearts and minds of those who saw it. However, subjectively speaking, the John Leguizamo/Dennis Hopper joint is so bad it’s actually pretty good. There were definitely a lot of, let’s say, “interesting” choices made by all involved. If you haven’t seen the picture, which hilariously cost $42 million to make, rectifying that mistake will be the best $9 you spend this month, guaranteed. It’s screening at the Arkadin Cinema and Bar (5228 Gravois Avenue, 314-221-2173) on Thursday, April 13. The movie starts at 7 p.m., with a Super Mario Bros. video game tournament before showtime. More info at arkadincinema.com.

FRIDAY 04/14

Just Getting Warmed Up

Spring is finally springing, and it’s time to start thinking about where you’re going to spend your warm evenings outdoors. We’re spoiled for good options for this in St. Louis, but there’s a new weekly pop-up in Tower Grove Park (4257 Northeast Drive, 314-771-2679) that is sure to become a hot spot for city dwellers this summer. The Tower Grove Park Beer and Cocktail Garden is a seasonal bar that is open on Friday evenings from 4 to 8 p.m. where you can grab a drink and relax. The bar is located near the ruins on the Pond Loop near the center of the park. In addition to offering drinks outdoors with your community, this week’s edition of the event also

includes the Sunset Bazaar, where local artisans will sell their goods starting at 5 p.m. The pop-up runs every Friday through October 27. Visit towergrovepark.org for more information about this and other events in the park.

Celebrate the Queen

There’s nothing better in the whole world than Dolly Parton. And there’s nothing more fun than a dance party. Combine the two and what do you get? You get the Dolly Parton Inspired Country Western Diva Dance Party This event, held at Delmar Hall (6133 Delmar Boulevard, 314726-6161) on Friday, April 14, will have you breaking out your cowgirl boots and your rhinestone dresses. When they say “country western diva dance party” you’d better bring it because you know the fashion on display will be top-notch. Put on your sparkliest outfit and dance to your favorite country and Dolly tunes until the

cows come home. (Or until the rooster crows, if you take the party to Sauget after hours.) Tickets are $16 each and are available at ticketmaster.com.

ThurtenE

Reasons Why

This weekend, the students at Washington University are once again hosting the ThurtenE Carnival. The annual event is named after the ThurtenE honorary society, which puts the carnival on each year. Fraternities and sororities also get in on the fun by building facades and putting on performances, selling treats and more at the event. This year, the carnival promises to “highlight the rich and historic music scenes of St. Louis.” Head over to the nation’s oldest and largest studentrun carnival near the recreation center. (That’s near Big Bend Boulevard and Snow Way Drive for the unfamiliar, but don’t worry, there will be signs.) The carnival runs Friday, April 14, from 4 to 8

p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, April 15 and 16 from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. For more information, visit thurtene.org.

No Whammies

Why settle for just watching a play when you can be a part of the production? That’s what Broke: The Game Show Show will be all about when it has its world premiere at the Westport Playhouse (635 West Port Plaza Drive, 314-328-5868) this Friday, April 14. The play centers on a wacky game show within a show called Go Broke!, for which audience members are invited to join the fun. The entire production promises to be a nice trippy time, with two cast members playing the same character and an artificial intelligence taking on the role of Virtual Artificial Neural Network Assistant (a.k.a. VANNA). The creators of the show bill it as “part game show, part musical and ALL party!” Tickets are $30 and the production runs at Westport until May 6. The curtain rises open-

The second-ever Counterpublic opens this weekend. | JACOLBY SATTERWHITE

ing night at 7:30 p.m. Tickets and more information at thewestportplayhouse.com.

Civic Pride and Contemporary Art

Dream big at the Counterpublic 2023 Opening Weekend. Counterpublic is a three-month event that occurs every three years with the aim of reimagining civic infrastructures and how contemporary art is woven into St. Louis’ public spaces. To kick off the event there’s a grand opening on Friday, April 14, starting at 7 p.m. You can take a tour of the Brickline Greenway; tour Sky Has No Roof, an art installation at Union Station; see a solo performance from 18andCounting; and watch the premier of Damon Davis’ film The Boy in the Bottle. Starting at 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 15, there will be events at Benton Park, the Griot Museum of Black History and at

Robert Green’s studio at 2205 St. Louis Avenue. Finally, on Sunday, April 16, there will be roundtable discussions and a guided tour of Jacolby Satterwhite’s Spirits Roaming on the Earth at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis. Check out counterpublic.org/ programs-2023 for more details.

SATURDAY 04/15

Play Ball

The Missouri Historical Society’s new Soccer City exhibit is definitive proof of St. Louis’ fútbol bona fides. Timed with the St. Louis CITY SC’s inaugural Major League Soccer season, the exhibit covers 148 years’ worth St. Louis soccer history. It kicks off in 1875, when the first game was held between two groups of lawyers, the Blondes and the Brunettes, at Grand Avenue Ball Grounds, which would later become Sports-

man’s Park. It highlights St. Louis’ claim to be the U.S. soccer capital during the 19th century, when immigrants brought the game here from overseas and the city hosted the only national professional soccer league in 1907. It covers the “heyday,” the ’40s and ’50s, when the United States Men’s National Team stunned England in the World Cup — with five players from the Hill. It ends in 2023, with Tim Parker scoring the first goal in CITY SC franchise history. The exhibit will run through early next year, but there’s no time like the present when it comes to boning up on St. Louis’ storied soccer past. Admission to the museum is free, and Soccer City can be viewed as long as the museum is open. For hours and more information, visit mohistory.org.

MONDAY 04/17

Alright, Alright, Alright

Getting something of a head start on the 4/20 festivities looming on

WEEK OF APRIL 13-19

the horizon, the Factory (17105 North Outer 40 Road, Chesterfield; 314-423-8500) is hosting its inaugural Stoner Cinema in conjunction with Proper Brands on Monday, April 17. The movie on offer will be Dazed and Confused, very apropos considering the event, and the festivities start at 4:20 p.m. outside of the venue, where people can stop at game stations and visit cannabisindustry sponsors to view products. Rock Star Tacos and 4 Hands Brewing will also be on hand to serve drinks and food. Additionally, there will be a ’70s costume contest (or you can come decked out as your favorite Dazed and Confused character) as well as trivia competitions where you can win prizes. For those of you thinking you love pot but can’t leave work that early in the day, don’t worry: The film itself doesn’t start till 7:30 p.m. Dazed and Confused follows a group of teens who have just finished high school in 1976. Tickets to the show are $12, or you can get an Indacouch for up to five people for $100. For more info, visit thefactorystl.com. n

The Super Mario Bros. movie was objectively bad, but you should still see it. | POSTER ART

A Dolly-themed dance party hits Delmar Hall on Thursday. | ALBUM ART

Say Cheese

Steve’s Meltdown, the grilled cheese delivery concept from Steve’s Hotdogs, gives ghost kitchens a good name

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

Steve’s Meltdown

3145 South Grand Boulevard, 314-403-0053. Sun.-Mon. 11 a.m.-9 p.m.

These days, it’s the small victories that are getting me through. It’s light past 4 p.m. Wainwright could be back in the rotation by May. Weed is legal(ish). Our collective action has likely succeeded in bringing back the Choco Taco.

Add to that list the fact that there is a large cohort of our fellow St. Louisans who can have the Don Ho from Steve’s Meltdown delivered to their houses. Without having to put on pants or turn away from The Mandalorian for more than 40 seconds, thousands of our Gateway City compatriots can now pull out their phones, tap a few buttons and enjoy this molten masterpiece within about 30 minutes of when the craving strikes, reveling in the way the substantial heat of the gooey pepperjack cheese is subdued by sweet pineapple jam slathered on the underside of perfectly toasted sourdough, admiring the salty notes of thinly sliced ham and how glorious the entire concoction is when dipped into a sweet, sticky and surprisingly spicy honey-chipotle sauce.

It’s a great time to be alive.

Launched this past January,

Steve’s Meltdown is the latest offering from Danni Eickenhorst, Steve Ewing and Co., the creative minds behind Steve’s Hot Dogs. As whimsical as the concept sounds — and is — the decision to launch Steve’s Meltdown stemmed from their recognition of two important factors driving the hospitality industry in the COVID-changed world. The first is that delivery is here to stay, and restaurants must find a way to embrace that change and make peace with third party delivery apps — which are notorious for the high fees they charge restaurants — in a way that benefits everyone.

The second has to do with staffing, in particular employee retention. Eickenhorst is clear that, while she loves food, she is driven more by the desire to create opportunities for people, and she believes the way to do this as a business owner is to make sure

her employees are empowered to grow within the company.

Steve’s Meltdown is a way to do both of these things. Set up as a ghost kitchen within the Steve’s Hot Dogs storefront on South Grand, Steve’s Meltdown offers a variety of grilled cheeses for either pickup or delivery within a five-mile radius. Diners can order through DoorDash, Uber Eats or Grubhub, or directly through the brand’s website; though not originally conceived of as a dine-in concept, patrons can also order in person at Steve’s Hot Dogs by way of a Steve’s Meltdown QR code and enjoy their sandwiches on site.

Eickenhorst, a grilled cheese aficionado who can no longer eat her beloved sandwiches due to dietary restrictions, understands the dish might not be the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of delivery-friendly fare. She admits

Continued on pg 26

Steve’s Meltdown features a small menu of gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. | MABEL SUEN

STEVE’S MELTDOWN

Continued from pg 25

there was concern of sogginess, so she, Ewing and their culinary team spent significant time doing R&D on different cooking techniques and packaging to ensure that the bread remained crisp well after leaving their kitchen. They settled on a two-step cooking process wherein they bake the sandwich to get the cheese melted and bread toasty, then finish it on a griddle to give it a substantial crunchy exterior. The sandwich is then wrapped in a piece of paperlined foil that retains warmth but allows the grilled cheese to slightly vent so that the steam does not get completely trapped inside the packaging.

Though I ordered and ate my sandwiches on site (I live outside the delivery radius), I had them packaged as if they were for delivery, then let them sit for a few minutes before digging in. Just as Eickenhorst insisted, the sandwiches were melty on the inside and crunchy on the outside. This was a special feat for the Don Ho, which could have easily gone soggy because of the pineapple jam, but I appreciated it just as much on the Forever Young Adult Grilled Cheese, a classic that features colby, American and mozzarella cheese pressed between two slices of golden sourdough. There is nothing to hide behind on this sandwich — no dipping sauce or wacky ingredient that could disguise any technical flaws — which makes its simplicity all the more impressive.

Steve’s Meltdown offers two sandwiches served on ciabatta. The first, That’s Amore, is filled

with both deli-sliced and fresh mozzarella cheeses, then accented with garlicky pepperoni. The bread is both pillow-soft and slightly crisp on the outside, as if it was placed in a panini press. It’s a nice sandwich on its own, but the accompanying marinara turns it into an absolute delight; hunks of tomato and fresh herbs punctuate the zesty concoction and make this offering akin to a pepperoni parmesan sandwich.

Like the That’s Amore, the Mambo Italiano Caprese is filled with luscious mozzarella cheeses, though here the pepperoni is re-

placed with verdant pesto and tart sun-dried tomatoes drizzled with a balsamic glaze. Even with that addition, the bread retains the appropriate texture, delivering a flavorful vegetarian melt.

Eickenhorst and Ewing have big plans for Steve’s Meltdown. In addition to offering weekly specials and adding new grilled cheese varieties to the menu, the team plans on expanding the concept to other area restaurants. The idea is to have Steve’s Meltdown run out of different kitchens throughout the area, therefore allowing diners from

all over the metro region get a taste of their gourmet grilled cheese. If this works, they will then look to other cities with an eye to making Steve’s Meltdown a national delivery brand. If they have their way, there will be no place in the country out of reach from the warm comfort of melty cheese sandwich delivery. What a wonderful moment we are living through. n

Steve’s Meltdown Forever Young $10 Mambo Italiano Caprese ��������������������� $11 �50 Don Ho $12

Steve’s Meldown is co-owned by Steve Ewing (left) and Jeremy Robinson is chef. | MABEL SUEN The Forever Young “Adult” grilled cheese has colby, American and mozzarella cheeses. | MABEL SUEN

Steve’s Meltdown operates out of Steve’s Hotdogs on South Grand Boulevard. | MABEL SUEN

[FIRST LOOK]

A Better Brew

Quarrelsome Coffee, newly opened in the Central West End, is using a unique fermentation method for its specialty coffees

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

The first thing you notice upon entering the doors of the recently opened Quarrelsome Coffee (33 North Sarah Street, 314-260-9008) is just how bright it is.

Located in the Block’s former home in the Central West End, the coffee shop and roaster spans two large, open rooms that are lined with windows. The formerly closed kitchen has been opened up and is now home to the coffee bar, which features a warm, light wood and a speckled-stone top. The walls are old, white-painted brick, and the ceiling is pressed tin.

In short, the aesthetic is a balance of modern minimalism and St. Louis-style Victorian. It’s the present, the future and the past all in one space — which happens to

be the perfect metaphor for Quarrelsome Coffee.

It’s owned by Mark Schwarz — also the owner and CEO of Omega Yeast, which makes craft yeast for breweries — who partnered with Connor James, the coffee program manager. With Quarrelsome, they are bringing together all of Schwarz’s science know-how with James’ passion for the bean.

“We’re excited to be applying a lot of science and knowledge in the coffee world, creating novel drinks and flavors and experiences for everyone,” Schwarz says.

The science comes in because Quarrelsome is preparing its coffee beans through fermentation.

A coffee bean is actually the seed of the plant and grows encased in a red fruit called a coffee cherry. Freshly harvested coffee can be processed in a variety of ways, which often involve fermentation.

Schwarz’s and James’ approach is different both because of how deliberate it’s been, and because they’ve been tapping the products and knowledge available through Omega Yeast.

“Omega Yeast has 100 different strains of yeast that all produce different flavors,” Schwarz says.

“The idea, then, is you can ferment and inoculate yeast to these coffee cherries that eats those sugars [in the berries] and then imparts new flavors that end up getting embedded or infused into

the coffee bean, and then are all released when you roast and then brew the coffee.”

Schwarz has been experimenting with this fermentation method since about 2017, and James joined after the two met about a year and a half ago and recognized a kindred curiosity in each other.

That spirit is the inspiration behind the name Quarrelsome. “It’s a constant reminder to be pushing yourselves and challenging ourselves,” Schwarz says.

A cup of coffee at Quarrelsome begins with James traveling to Costa Rica or Nicaragua to source beans. In Nicaragua, the duo, helped by the brains at Omega, carried out small-scale experiments to discover the yeast strains and processes they wanted to use, which were then scaled up for production.

James then roasts those beans along with more standard farmdirect varietals, and they make their way to consumers’ cups. The two plan to do cuppings and education with those inoculated strains in a side room at Quarrelsome as the business grows.

They hope to eventually build their own fermentation facility close to the source of the beans in the future.

“It’s been fantastic just being connected with a great network of specialty coffee producers who

we’ve been able to build relationships with and source coffee from and then also been able to share knowledge with and gain knowledge from as we frame and structure these fermentations and go through these different test-processing methods,” James says.

But despite the complexity of their processes, both James and Schwarz say that their aim is for Quarrelsome to be approachable without any “snooty barista” stereotypes. In addition to the specialty coffee, the cafe offers traditionally processed coffee for lattes and cappuccinos as well as tea, kombucha and more. In the future, the coffee shop will have a pastry case with goods from Knead Bakery as well as some brews and mocktails.

The goal, they say, is to have something for everyone, so that Quarrelsome can bring people in the door and introduce them to something new. Judging by the number of people who have already found the shop in just a little more than a week after its opening, Quarrelsome is well on its way toward achieving that goal.

“We’re really proud of our initial menu and initial offerings, and it’s super exciting seeing people in this space enjoying what we’re doing,” James says. “Customers are everything, so without them, we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re passionate about.”

Quarrelsome Coffee opened in the former home of The Block (left image) and is owned by Mark Schwarz (right), and Connor James (left) is the coffee program manager. | JESSICA ROGEN

Face Plant

The newly rehabbed Tim’s Chrome Bar suffers exterior damage, but plans rapid reopening

Written by SARAH FENSKE

Sometime last week, the newly rehabbed Tim’s Chrome Bar in Bevo Mill lost its face. A heap of bricks from the exterior of the bar facing Gravois, as well as its distinctive rust-colored sign, plummeted from the two-story building to the sidewalk below.

Bar manager Chelsea Pfister says the damage occurred sometime after 9 p.m. on Tuesday, April 4, and before 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, April 5. A friend driving past first texted her with the news early on Wednesday.

She suspects the damage can be traced to the previous Friday’s storm, which saw much more significant damage.

“On Friday, the winds were really, really bad through here,” she observes. “They may have agitated it, and all it needed was one more push to come down.”

But while the building may look bad right now, Pfister says the building inspector who came by to see it left coowner Pat Schuchard in an optimistic mood. A structural engineer and architect also came out to do further assessments on the property, but she’s hopeful that Tim’s can reopen in a matter of days.

“They’ll have to do a little structural

work out front, but it doesn’t affect the back structure of the building at all,” she says. “We will reopen — and we’re hoping to do so pretty quickly.”

Tim’s opened its doors five weeks ago after a major renovation by Schuchard Event Spaces, which also owns Boo Cat Club, Majorette and (right across the

OPENINGS & CLOSINGS

The ones we gained and the ones we lost in March 2023

BY JESSICA ROGEN

OPENINGS

BB’s Jazz, Blues and Soups (reopened), Downtown

Black Mountain Wine House, Central West End

Bonito Bar, University City

Bootleggin’ Tavern, Forest Park Southeast

Cafe Ganadara, St. Louis Hills

Chef B’s Chicken & Burger Bar, Affton

Chillax Tap & Co, St. Peters

City Winery, Midtown

Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers (Busch Stadium), Downtown

Frida’s (reopened), University City

Hi-Pointe Drive-In, Cottleville

Highway 61 North Bar & Grill, O’Fallon

Hungry Joe’s (Schnucks), Kirkwood

Kobito Poké (Ballpark Village),

Downtown

Mission Taco Joint (Busch Stadium), Downtown

Omen Coffee Co., Midtown

Quarrelsome Coffee, Central West End

Rosé by Peno, Lafayette Square

Sabor K-tracho Restaurant, Maryland Heights

Sado, The Hill

Sawmill BBQ Pub & Grill, Des Peres

Shaquille O’Neal’s Big Chicken (Busch Stadium), Downtown

Tim’s Chrome Bar, Bevo Mill

Twisted Ranch, Central West End

CLOSINGS

21st Street Brewers Bar, Downtown

West

BEAST Butcher & Block, The Grove

Edibles & Essentials, St. Louis Hills

Gezellig Tap House & Bottleshop,

street from Tim’s) Das Bevo, the historic windmill once owned by the Busch family. Tim’s first opened in 1977. Its building, the Irene, dates back to 1923, according to state records.

Pfister says Schuchard left her and others on site with some words of wisdom:

“We’ll be fine. We’re not fragile.”

Says Pfister, “Our very first steps this morning were, ‘How do we get ahead of this and get open?’ We’re eager to get open.”

Follow Tim’s Chrome Bar on Facebook and Instagram for the latest news on that reopening. n

After a bout of windy weather, Tim’s Chrome Bar lost a significant number of bricks and its distinctive sign. | SARAH FENSKE

Yes, You Can

Bring your own food to Cardinals games — the Busch Stadium rules are super chill

Written by RYAN KRULL

The Cardinals may be off to a bit of a lackluster start, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t already been some highlightreel-worthy plays in the first week of the season. There was Jordan Walker’s first big-league home run and that insanely good catch by Dylan Carlson — and for those in attendance at Busch Stadium it would have been a shame to have missed either one while stuck in line for nachos.

With the MLB’s implementation of the pitch clock speeding up the pace of play (opening day games this season were on average 26 minutes shorter), those minutes spent in concession lines have only become more precious.

So consider this your start-ofseason reminder that the stadium’s rules about what you can bring in are actually pretty lax. Busch Stadium’s official policy is that, “Most food items are permitted, but guests should consider our bag policy when deciding what food to bring.” The bag poli-

Let There Be Brunch

Watch the Kentucky Derby at United We Brunch

cy says bags, purses and soft shell coolers should not exceed 10 inches by 8 inches by 10 inches. You can probably fit a lot into those 800 cubic inches.

If we’re reading the rules right, the food doesn’t actually have to fit in the cooler if you’d rather balance everything you bring in your hands like a waiter in a cartoon.

The drinks policy is incredibly laid back as well, except when concerning alcohol, in which case it is draconian. Absolutely no outside booze is allowed in, but you can bring in containers of soda up to two liters in size. The policy also seems to indicate you can bring in as many of these two liters as you want, plus “empty cups, mugs or plastic bottles.”

Not only is this wallet-friendly, but it’s also great for anyone whose specific dietary restriction may not be that well-serviced by the Busch Stadium fare. This is also the best way to make sure

you spend your afternoon or evening in your seat taking in the game rather than standing in a hot dog line wondering why the guy in front of you doesn’t shave the back of his neck.

None of this is to bad mouth the food on offer at Busch Stadium. New this year, you can get Mission Taco and Freddy’s Cheeseburgers. Plus, Shaq’s new operation there will sell you a basketball-sized cookie or a fried chicken sandwich with a bun that is made out of a Vincent Van Doughnut.

We’re just saying that, though we haven’t actually run the numbers, it might be both financially prudent and a wise use of time to swing through the Grove and hit up Vincent Van Doughnut and Grace Meat + Three on your way.

If you feel like you’re drawing any weird stares as you assemble your own fried chicken donut sandwich, rest assured those are only looks of envy. n

As St. Louis as the Arch, Cardinals baseball and stolen catalytic converters, toasted ravioli is a strong contender for our fair city’s most iconic dish. Yet, all t-ravs are not created equal. These five spots take them to the next level.

Anthonino’s

A 20-year mainstay of the Hill, Anthonino’s has cultivated quite the fan base for its ground beef and ricottafilled t-ravs — including Guy Fieri. The crisp exterior and rich, creamy filling make you understand why.

Trattoria Marcella

Steve and Jamie Komorek have been honoring their mamma Marcella since 1995 by serving St. Louis diners extraordinary Italian food and making their restaurant, Trattoria Marcella, one of the area’s most beloved spots. Their delicious toasted ravioli, served with bright tomato dipping sauce, is one of the many reasons it’s remained so popular over the years.

STL Toasted

STL Toasted does not just serve toasted ravioli; its entire concept revolves around it. The City Foundry restaurant serves a variety of sweet and savory options, but its classic beef-filled version shows that this is no gimmick but a bastion of golden-fried pasta.

Lombardo’s

by ROSALIND EARLY

Written

If you loved last year’s United We Brunch, then buckle up because this year we’re doing a United We Brunch: Kentucky Derby Watch Party that will combine everything that’s good: brunch, hats and drinks.

Join the Riverfront Times and presenting sponsor Woodford Reserve for the United We Brunch: Kentucky Derby Watch Party on Saturday, May 6, at Westport Social (910 West Port Plaza Drive, Maryland Heights; 314-548-2876) The event will include signature cocktails from Woodford

Reserve and additional partners Old Forester, Finlandia and Korbel.

The variety of booze is great, because a $60 ticket includes four drink tickets and unlimited food samples from Westport Social, Honey Bee’s, Navin’s BBQ, Herbie’s Graffiti Grub, Southern and Pappy’s Smokehouse. If that’s not enough, you can get a VIP ticket starting at $90

that includes six drink tickets, a swag bag, preferred parking and more.

The party starts at 2 p.m. and lasts till 6 p.m., so you can enjoy the excitement of the Kentucky Derby, which will be playing at the brunch. Dress in your finest Derby Day attire, because there’s a Best Dressed prize valued at $2,500.

Tickets are limited, so grab them now. n

Lombardo’s Trattoria is revered for its oversized, half-moon shaped wonders. There’s a reason this is the first place on most people’s lips when you ask for the ultimate t-rav experience.

O+O Pizza

Chef Mike Risk learned the art of Italian cuisine at Trattoria Marcella, and he has built upon that knowledge at O+O Pizza. Filled with fontina, beef and pancetta tesa, these meat pillows are a decadent concoction made even more extraordinary when dipped in his otherworldly tomato sauce.

CHERYL BAEHR’S TOASTED RAVIOLI PICKS

Food and baseball is just American. | THEO WELLING

United We Brunch will have all the favorites plus some. | MABEL SUEN

REEFERFRONT TIMES 33

what’s it like to be a chemist in a cannabis laboratory?” she said.

A Growing Market

Missouri sees surge in cannabis jobs after legalization vote

Written by REBECCA RIVAS

This story originally appeared in the Missouri Independent

Marcus Kerr was running his own food truck in California in 2018 when he parked by a marijuana dispensary one day.

“I just ended up meeting the owner of this company, and they had my food,” he said. “They said, ‘Hey, can you infuse this?’ Then I started working for the big guys.”

Kerr began creating edible recipes in a California lab, and he’s been in the cannabis industry since. Now he’s excited to be part of Missouri’s new journey into the recreational marijuana space.

Kerr moved to St. Louis about a month ago and joined the Luxury Leaf Cannabis Dispensary team as a specialist. Beyond a career opportunity, cannabis science is something passed down within his family.

“I’m from Jamaica, where it’s growing on the side of the mountains, so it’s in my DNA,” he laughed. “Literally it is, like in my chromosomes.”

Kerr is among thousands of people who have landed cannabis jobs in Missouri since voters approved recreational marijuana use through a constitutional amendment, which appeared on the November ballot as Amendment 3.

The job surge is best seen through the number of licenses the state approves for new employees each month — it’s quadrupled since November.

Anyone who wants to work in the industry — including owners — must get an “agent ID badge” through the state, which includes a background check.

In November, the Department

of Health and Human Services, which is charged with overseeing the state’s cannabis program, approved 264 badges. It doubled in December to more than 500 badges — and then doubled again to more than 1,100 in both January and February.

Christy Essex runs the largest Missouri-based cannabis staffing company, Se7en Staffing & Employment Solutions, and foresees the job growth continuing to shoot up throughout this year.

“Just across the board, you’re seeing an increase in need,” she said. “In the manufacturing and the laboratories even, we’ve actually been staffing for all the entities right now.”

Dispensaries statewide are struggling to keep the shelves stocked, Essex said, so some companies are also hiring temporary “project” employees to get through the “short-term crunches.”

According to DHSS, at the end of February, there were 12,970 individuals with marijuana agent IDs, up from 10,100 at the end of November.

Missouri is seen as the “darling” of the cannabis industry after reaching $102.9 million in sales — $72 million for recreational marijuana — in the first month, said Sloane Barbour, the CEO of engin, a technology platform that helps cannabis companies hire hourly workers.

And Missouri is on pace to become a billion-dollar market.

“Billion-dollar markets like Michigan, Illinois and Massachusetts employ anywhere between 30,000 and 50,000 workers in the cannabis industry,” Barbour said. “It’s enormous job growth, and it really happens quite quickly. So we are seeing customers and partners in Missouri aggressively and actively hiring.”

One potential snag in getting those positions filled quickly is a bill making its way through the state legislature that would require fingerprinting as part of the background checks for all employees.

The bill has already passed the state Senate and is expected to have an easy path in the House as well.

Background checks

Essex has been in workforce development in Missouri since 2014. Around the same time, she began researching the benefits of medical use for one of her family members.

When Illinois and Missouri began embracing medical marijuana, she saw an opportunity to combine her passion for workforce development and educating people about the benefits of cannabis.

“And here I am,” she said. “So my heart’s all in it, all the way around.”

Essex helps train employees at all levels, so they know what to expect when entering the constantly evolving industry, she said.

“You can be a chemist, but

Her company spends a “tremendous” amount of time educating people about the background checks. Many people, especially minorities, she said, automatically assume if there is a background check that they won’t qualify if they have a misdemeanor on their record.

“It puts a level of fear in individuals,” she said.

The constitution states that people with a “disqualifying felony” can’t work in the industry, but it doesn’t specify what types of felony offenses. It exempts marijuana offenses that are eligible for expungement. It also says that if it’s a nonviolent felony offense, employees are in the clear if it has been more than five years since the charge if, in its words, “more than five years have passed since the person was released from parole or probation, and he or she has not been convicted of any subsequent felony criminal offenses.”

According to DHSS, a lot of their review is subjective.

“What is written into law is then applied to each individual record, so it is a case-by-case analysis and can’t simply be determined by a checklist of potential offenses,” said Lisa Cox, a spokeswoman for DHSS, in an email to the Missouri Independent

The recreational or adult use of cannabis has been approved in Washington, D.C., and 21 states, and the medical use has been legalized in 39 states.

Every state handles background checks differently. In California, only owners are required to go through fingerprint-based criminal background checks, not employees. But Arizona requires fingerprint-based background checks for all employees, board members, owners and volunteers.

John Payne, founder and managing member of Amendment 2 Consultants, said lawmakers often refer to what’s known as the “Cole Memo” as the basis for how they go about this process.

In 2013, then-U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Cole issued a memo to address the rise in states legalizing medical marijuana. Payne says it essentially was an agreement that the federal government was going to leave state mar-

Continued on pg 34

Dierra Henderson, a budtender at Luxury Leaf dispensary in St. Louis, checks in clients at the front door. | REBECCA RIVAS/MISSOURI INDEPENDENT

CANNABIS JOBS

But he believes it should be left out.

ijuana programs alone, as long as they meet certain conditions.

“One of those conditions was basically preventing people from organized crime from getting into the marijuana business,” Payne said. “It depends on what the background check is for, right? If it’s for people that have that sort of background, that would be reasonable.”

Fingerprinting

Since December 8, when Amendment 3 went into effect, DHSS stopped requiring fingerprinting for the ID badge applications of employees.

“You have to attest to not committing disqualifying offenses,” Essex said. “Right now, we’re able to get people to work within a 48hour time period.”

Adding in the fingerprinting process, she said, takes that up to 14 days to get an employee to work.

Like California, Missouri’s adult-use law through Amendment 3 only requires owners to go through fingerprint-based background checks, according to DHSS.

Continued from pg 33 [WEED NEWS]

However, the 2018 constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana — which was on the ballot as Amendment 2 — still requires all owners, employees and contractors to go through this process for medical marijuana, Cox said.

A measure, sponsored by Republican Senator Tony Luetkemeyer of Parkville, would revert back to the original fingerprinting process before Amendment 3 went into effect. The language was added as an amendment to a bill regarding background checks for school employees, which was scheduled to be heard in a House committee on Tuesday.

The measure has the support of the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association, which represents cannabis professionals and business owners.

“The bill proposes the same level of background check requirements for all facility owners, employees and contractors regardless of the type of facility licensure,” Cox said.

Essex said the challenge she sees is that there weren’t enough vendors that take the fingerprints to keep pace with the employees for medical marijuana, particularly in the larger cities like Kansas City and St. Louis.

“Hopefully if they do implement the fingerprinting again,” Essex

said, “there’ll be more providers in the state of Missouri that will be able to deal with a large quantity of candidates.”

Columbia-based attorney Dan Viets, who helped write the lan-

St. Louis City, County Pass Weed Sales Tax

Your weed is about to get more expensive

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

St. Louis city residents have decided they’re OK with paying a bit more for their pot. With more than 62 percent of the vote, St. Louis residents have passed a proposition that will allow the city to levy an additional sales tax of 3 percent on the sale of recreational-use marijuana. The city tax will be stacked with Missouri’s existing 6 percent retail sales tax.

The newly passed proposition will not impact sales tax on medical marijuana, which remains at 4 percent.

Profits from the tax will be added to the city’s general fund. Currently, 36 percent of St. Louis’ general fund revenues come from the city’s 1 percent earning tax.

The ballot measure came from a board bill sponsored by St. Louis Alderman Brandon Bosley. In December, Bosley told the RFT that the tax could gen-

guage for Amendment 3, said he doesn’t remember anyone intentionally removing the fingerprint requirements for employees from the recreational marijuana program.

“The motivation, frankly, was to draft something that would meet the concerns that some voters might have about people with criminal history being involved in the industry,” he said of the 2018 constitutional amendment. “If we had to do it over, we might not have required it for medical employees either.”

During a Senate floor debate, Senator Holly Rehder, R-Sikeston, said the fingerprinting measure was “a federal requirement.”

“So it’s putting us in line with federal regulations,” she said, regarding the amendment on her background checks bill.

She was likely referencing the Cole Memo, Payne said, because the federal government doesn’t regulate marijuana at all.

Barbour agreed.

“There’s $32 billion worth of commerce happening … right now in the U.S. that is all technically federally illegal — racketeering of the broadest scale,” Barbour said. “So what that means is that state legislatures … are trying to figure it out as they go. This is pretty uncharted territory.” n

erate about $300,000 annually. He said he hoped the revenue would address “historic inequities,” though what that might mean was not set in stone.

“There’s a plethora of ideas that are being thrown around,” Bosley said at the time.

St. Louis city is not alone in considering the question of new recreational marijuana taxes. More than 100 counties and municipalities, including St. Louis County, had similar measures on their ballots, according to the St. Louis American.

Voters overwhelmingly passed Propo-

sition M in the county as well. In the weeks leading up to the election, Proposition M drew attention because it’s unclear if the language of Amendment 3 allows the county and municipalities to stack taxes, which might mean that the new county tax could only be collected in unincorporated areas.

Missouri Department of Revenue spokeswoman Anne Marie Moy told St. Louis Public Radio that she expects the question to be answered in court.

County Executive Sam Page said funds from the proposition would help address a revenue shortfall. n

Weed prices will be going up due to increased taxes. | BRADEN MCMAKIN

Marcus Kerr started as a budtender and specialist at Luxury Leaf dispensary in St. Louis about a month ago. He’s among thousands who have landed new jobs in Missouri’s growing cannabis industry. | REBECCA RIVAS/MISSOURI INDEPENDENT

CULTURE 37

Last Minute Epiphany

A beloved south city bowling alley will stay open under new management

Written by ROSALIND EARLY

Many were heartbroken when, earlier this year, Epiphany Lanes (3164 Ivanhoe Avenue, 314-7818684) quietly announced that it was closing. The small bowling alley is attached to Epiphany of Our Lord Church and has long been a south city mainstay.

For some, the news was especially hard hitting. “I live in south city and grew up in south city and love south city,” says business owner Kevin McKernan. “I used to have bowling parties and attend bowling parties at Epiphany Lanes when I was a kid.”

McKernan knew he had to do something, so on June 1 he’s starting a new venture: owning and operating a bowling alley.

“That’s the kind of crazy stuff I do,” McKernan says.

The moment that led to this changing of the guard came a little more than a month ago, when the business manager for the church and Epiphany Lanes decided to retire, says Father Michael Rennier, the pastor for Epiphany of Our Lord church.

“We operate Epiphany Lanes as a break-even thing because we wanted to have it available for the neighborhood,” Rennier says. But hiring a business manager to oversee the eight-lane bowling alley would have meant a loss for the venture. Still, it was a sad choice for the parish.

According to Rennier, Catholic churches across south city historically had bowling alleys.

“We’re the only church that still has one,” he says. And he thinks that Epiphany Lanes is one of the few bowling alleys left in St. Louis city. The lanes host bowling leagues, can

be rented out for parties and have some hours for open bowling.

After Rennier reached his decision last month, he told the leagues that the lanes would close at the end of May, which is when the bowling league year ends.

McKernan, who had recently been Googling bowling leagues and trying to find one to join, says the magic of the algorithm put a post about the closure in his feed, and he immediately reached out to Rennier.

“He emailed me the day it came out,” Rennier says with a laugh.

The church agreed to lease McKernan the lanes, and he would operate them. McKernan is no stranger to taking over beloved institutions. Three years ago, he took over Donut Drive-In, another favorite spot in south city.

“We’re going to try to do the same thing that we did there, which was not ruin anything that’s already there that people love,” McKernan says.

But McKernan does have plans to make the lanes more accessible. Unless you live in south city, you have probably never heard of Epiphany Lanes. The bowling al-

ley keeps a low profile. McKernan hopes to build a website and social media accounts for the lanes. He also wants to add simple updates, such as the ability to reserve lanes online. (Right now, you have to call.)

The parish, luckily, has a maintenance person who knows how to take care of the lanes and is

still going to be around to make repairs. “That’s huge,” McKernan says. With that in place, he’s ready to tackle the remaining challenges of running the business. “Part of the fun is the problem-solving of it all. I see it just as a fun puzzle to figure out.”

One issue on the horizon is that the Archdiocese of St. Louis is restructuring its parishes with the All Things New strategic plan. As of right now, Epiphany of Our Lord church is slated to join a pastorate that includes St. James the Greater in Dogtown and St. Ambrose on the Hill. What that means remains to be seen, but the Archdiocese approved McKernan’s lease.

For those nervous that McKernan will increase prices to make the bowling alley more slick and less homey, be at ease. McKernan understands the assignment.

“It’s a relic from the 1950s, and people love it,” McKernan says. “It maybe needs some TLC, but I love that we have a chance to be a part of something that has a long history and meant something to me as a kid, and I think can bring people back together at a time when it’s more important than ever.”

“ It’s a relic from the 1950s, and people love it. It maybe needs some TLC, but I love that we have a chance to be a part of something that has a long history.”

A Triumphant Return

St. Louis Small Press Expo rebrands as SLICE — St. Louis Independent Comics Expo

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

The St. Louis Small Press Expo, undeniably, was fun. The event, first launched in 2014, brought together independent creators of books, comics, prints, literary journals, artworks and more for what felt like the ultimate display of all the types of creativity that could be put down on paper.

of the first orders of business was the expo’s image, and a committee member, Kruttika Susarla, suggested changing the name to be more in vogue with a trend of independent comic expos across the country. Susarla also created a new mascot, Mr. Slice, a little artist holding a stylus or paint roller.

The group hopes the name and the mascot will help SLICE get attention.

“For me, it is a more energetic and relatable brand, something that people can grab onto a bit more easily in terms of a name,” says board member Noah Jodice, who has been wearing many hats in his efforts to help the expo, including a focus on marketing.

“We’re trying to get people to come check out artists, and so we want it to be fun but [also let] people know that these are people who dedicate a lot to their craft,” he adds.

Despite the addition of comics in the

St. Louisans seemed to agree and flocked to Firecracker Press (now Central Print) in Old North and then the Central Library for the event, which grew year over year in number of vendors and attendees. But then COVID-19 came along and, like so much else, the expo shut down.

Thankfully, though, St. Louis hasn’t seen the last of it. A new group has resurrected the event, which is rebranding as the St. Louis Independent Comics Expo, or SLICE. It will return on October 14 at the Sheldon (3648 Washington Avenue, 314-533-9900), and vendor applications opened last week at slicexpo.org.

St. Louis-based comic artist Steenz is leading this second-wave effort as board president. A volunteer with the expo’s original iteration, they were thinking about trying to bring it back when fellow creative Tate Foley reached out with the same idea.

“I was very excited about that because I love the expo,” Steenz says. “I think it’s a great thing to have for St. Louis.”

Steenz and Foley gathered a group of like-minded individuals to reform a board for the event and got to planning. One

name, SLICE will still be a home for a variety of media.

“Printmaking, poetry, book-making — really anything that has to do with print and its format,” Steenz says.

The name isn’t the only thing different about the expo, though. Instead of this being a one-and-done event, SLICE will host programming throughout the year. That starts with a workshop with St. Louis Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts at noon on April 22 at the High Low (3301 Washington Avenue, 314-533-0367).

The events, Jodice explains, are in part about encouraging artistic expression throughout the year and strengthening the already-strong print and creative community in St. Louis.

“I’m really excited about a lot of the programming we’re going to do,” Jodice says. “We’re really trying to give back as much as we’re asking from St. Louis, and I feel like this city is so good at reciprocating the kind of love that you give it.”

SLICE will be announcing events throughout the year. Keep watch on slicexpo.org. n

The expo has returned with a fresh name, SLICE, and a cute mascot, Mr. Slice. | COURTESY SLICE

The New Boss

How Crooked Still frontwoman

Aoife O’Donovan created the ultimate tribute show with Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska

Written by STEVE LEFTRIDGE

Bruce Springsteen may have skipped St. Louis on his 2023 tour, but Springsteen fanatics can find some solace in being only a handful of cities for Aoife O’Donovan’s limited run of shows in which she will perform Springsteen’s Nebraska album in its entirety.

O’Donovan, who spent a decade as frontwoman of progressive string band Crooked Still, is wellknown to Americana lovers for her sensual songcraft, shadowed folk-grass and exquisite ballads. She is currently busy recording the follow-up to her most recent solo album, last year’s elegant, thrice-Grammy-nominated Age of Apathy

O’Donovan can also be heard on dozens of collaborations, including The Goat Rodeo Sessions with Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile, and she is one-third of the siren-summit supergroup I’m With Her with bandmates Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz. That trio picked up a Grammy for “Call My Name” from its debut album, See You Around, in 2020. O’Donovan says another I’m With Her album and tour is only a matter of time.

But first, Aoife O’Donovan Plays Nebraska hits the Sheldon on Sat-

urday, April 15. Aoife called from her home in Orlando to talk about her deep dive into Springsteen’s 1982 dark masterpiece.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

How did the idea to cover Nebraska come about?

Back in 2011, when I was still in Crooked Still, before I had really embarked on my solo career, I got a Monday-night residency at Rockwood Music Hall in New York City. I was doing different sets every Monday, and one week I was like, “I’m going to cover Nebraska start to finish.” So I learned the whole record, and this was before I was really playing a lot of guitar, so looking back, it was kind of a bold move.

Then, over the years, I would sometimes play “Nebraska,” the song, and I did “Atlantic City” a couple of times live, but it wasn’t a big part of my repertoire. During

COVID when people started doing live streams, I decided to do two shows — one of original music and one that was just Nebraska. It was really fun because, 12 years after first doing it, I was able to relearn the songs with much more facility on the guitar. A year later, we listened to the audio, and my manager was like, “You should release this,” so we put it on Bandcamp, and then I decided to play some shows with it. So we’re doing nine shows in the U.S., and we may add a couple on the West Coast, but it’s a very limited engagement.

So the Bandcamp audio is from the livestream?

It is, and it’s coming out on vinyl, too. It’s really cool now because the Bandcamp recording was just a one-off. I knew the songs, but I hadn’t quite internalized them yet. And now I’ve done three Nebraska shows. Everything is so

Aoife O’Donovan brings her version of Nebraska to the Sheldon this weekend. | COURTESY SHORE FIRE MEDIA

AOIFE O’DONOVAN

deeply in there and memorized now, and I’m having much more fun with it.

So you have all the lyrics to “Open All Night” down?

Oh, yeah! I’ve been doing “Open All Night” in my set for the last year with my band, so I could sing that one in my sleep. But all of them now are just so deep in there, and they are all so interwoven. It’s just really fun to sort of put yourself in Bruce’s shoes while he was writing it. I really love the record.

Do you remember the first time you heard the Nebraska album? The first time I heard it, I remember being very scared of “State Trooper.”

Yeah, it’s spooky. It’s very spooky. I remember being in the back of a car and hearing Bruce sort of yipping and hollering, and I was like, “Ah! Turn this off!”

Your parents were Springsteen fans?

Big Springsteen fans. Big music

fans. I really credit them with turning me on to so much.

Does your love of Bruce extend far beyond Nebraska?

Nebraska is my favorite Bruce Springsteen album, but I have nothing but respect for the Boss. And there is this connection because Greg Liszt, the banjo player from Crooked Still, took a leave of absence to go on tour with Bruce and the Seeger Sessions band [in 2006]. I feel like I’m one step removed! I’m a huge fan.

What about your arrangements on the Nebraska songs? Did you mess with those much, or did you play it all pretty straight? I played it all pretty straight. Nothing is really reworked. I definitely make the songs my own, but nothing is drastically reworked the way you might take a traditional song and change it up and reharmonize it or play it totally differently. I kept the songs pretty true to the originals.

Bruce’s vocal character sometimes changes across these narrative songs. Did you find yourself inhabiting some of the characters vocally for this record or even from song to song?

I did. I think you approach a song like “Used Cars” differently than you do for “Johnny 99.” Those songs are sung by two totally different people. So I really tried to make each song have a distinct personality. But there are overlaps. I mean, maybe the character in “Johnny 99” shows up in “Used Cars,” but after a really hard set of circumstances.

Did you take away some things about songwriting from studying Nebraska so closely? Oh, 100 percent. The way he uses these images that come back from song to song. I just love the image of a radio jammed up, for instance. In “Open All Night,” he says, “The radio’s jammed up with gospel stations / Lost souls calling long-distance salvation” and then in “State Trooper,” he says, “The radio’s jammed up with talk-show stations / It’s just talk, talk, talk, talk until you lose your patience.” He sort of takes these images and these ideas and thinks of ways to make them sparkle and make them jump out at you in ways that you weren’t expecting.

I think what’s unique about Nebraska is how much of a record it is from start to finish. The way it ends is just so brilliant: “At the

end of every hard day, people still find a reason to believe.” After this whole record about people who are down on their luck — misfits, murderers, felons — people still find a reason to believe. There’s still a reason to get up in the morning, still a reason to keep going. It’s so hopeful.

What can we expect from the show at the Sheldon?

I’ll play Nebraska start to finish, just me and the guitar. Then I’ll close the show with some songs from Age of Apathy, and the Westerlies and I will collaborate together.

The Westerlies, who are opening the show, are an incredible quartet out of New York. Two trumpets, two trombones. They are some of the most exciting musicians I’ve ever worked with. They are just deep, deep lovers of music and incredible virtuosic players. I think people will be really blown away. n

Catch Aoife O’Donovan Plays Nebraska with special guest The Westerlies at 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 15, at the Sheldon (3648 Washington Boulevard, 314-5339900, thesheldon.org). Tickets are $26 to $37.

HAPPY HOUR SPECIALS

ORDER ONLINE FOR CURBSIDE PICKUP!

Engaging and Provocative

Max & Louie’s What the Constitution Means to Me brings our nation’s principles into the conversation

Written by TINA FARMER

What the Constitution Means to Me

Playwright Heidi Schreck’s provocatively structured What the Constitution Means to Me takes us back to her teen years to posit the value the Constitution holds to us in 2023. Max & Louie Productions and director Nancy Bell ensure the show is funny, thoroughly engrossing and engaging by casting the effervescent Michelle Hand as the playwright.

As a teenager, Schreck spent considerable time touring the country and winning her college tuition as a debate champion. These debates were frequently sponsored by veteran’s organizations, such as the American Legion, and the contests were frequently held in their halls. The show is purposefully infused with the playwright’s memories and personal stories that teach audiences about the Constitution and its Amendments while emphasizing those marginalized or left out of the document.

The skilled Hand’s greatest gift is how effortlessly and completely she becomes her character, and it’s particularly satisfying to watch as the written character is sharp, witty and full of emotional depth. She completely integrates herself into Schreck’s character, and it is almost impossible to see when she shifts to performing as herself, though she announces the change quite clearly.

Scenic designer Dunsi Dai captures the slight dissonance that Schreck, an intelligent young woman, felt debating in front of

the mostly older, white, veteran and male audience with a skewed, tilted-wall effect. The room seems bland and nondescript, though there’s something a little off. Director Bell elicits a similar vibe from Isaiah Di Lorenzo, who plays the moderator at the Legion hall. He turns out to be a kind and sensitive actor, who is then immediately put into the position of moderating an impromptu debate between Hand, now speak-

ing as herself, and a local debate student. The night I attended, the captivating Riley Carter Adams was Hand’s debate partner. Aislyn Morrow and Maahi Saini alternate with Adams in that role during the performance run.

The quick paced, rapid fire one-act play is informative, educational and realistically funny. It is, however, not objective. I am certain there are potential audience members who may

not agree with the lead character’s political views. Those who take strident offense to stories that don’t reflect a more socially conservative viewpoint may be offended. Discussion is clearly encouraged. The script and performances are intentional, the production team and playwright solicit feedback and questions.

The company even provides a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution with each program as the audience enters the theater.

It has often been said that art should “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Schreck’s well-written and reasoned play looks to cause a bit of discomfort in all of us. The play asks us to examine its central question and determine what it means, as individuals and as humans, to continue living under the principles and guidance of a 250-plus years old document that she studied and debated for years. What the Constitution Means to Me is thoughtful, provocative theater at its best because these questions come wrapped around a very human heart embodied by an exceptional performer. n

Written by Heidi Schreck. Directed by Nancy Bell. Presented by Max & Louie Productions through Sunday, April 23. Showtimes vary. Tickets are $15 to $50.

What the Consitution Means to Me taps local high school students to play the role of debators. | JOHN LAMB

Scenic designer Dunsi Dai uses a tilted-wall effect to capture Schreck’s dissonance. | DUNSI DAI

OUT EVERY NIGHT

Each week, we bring you our picks for the best concerts of the next seven days! To submit your show for consideration, visit https://bit.ly/3bgnwXZ. All events are subject to change, especially in the age of COVID-19, so do check with the venue for the most up-to-date information before you head out for the night. Happy showgoing!

THURSDAY 13

BASS DRUM OF DEATH: w/ Dead Tooth 8 p.m., $20. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

DEEP CROSS: w/ Still, With Glee 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

JAKE CURTIS BLUES: 7 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

THE MAVERICKS: 8 p.m., $40-$65. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

MICHAEL GLABICKI OF RUSTED ROOT: w/ Dirk Miller 8 p.m., $25-$32. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

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

TEETHE: w/ JOEL 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

VINTAGE PISTOL: w/ Fleetwood and Family 9 p.m., $9.50-$13. Central Stage, 3524 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, 314-533-0367.

FRIDAY 14

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

DAVID BRIGHTON’S SPACE ODDITY: THE ULTIMATE

DAVID BOWIE EXPERIENCE: 8 p.m., $39.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

THE DOLLY PARTON INSPIRED COUNTRY WESTERN

DIVA DANCE PARTY: 9 p.m., $12-$25. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

HOWARD STREET: 7 p.m., $25. National Blues Museum, 615 Washington Ave., St. Louis.

KANE BROWN: 7 p.m., $37.50-$87.50. Enterprise Center, 1401 Clark Ave., St. Louis, 314-241-1888.

KATIE HUBBARD: w/ Drew Sheafor 8 p.m., $10$15. Central Stage, 3524 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, 314-533-0367.

THE LATE GREATS: w/ Jack Knife Power Bomb, Unraveler 7:30 p.m., $12. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

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

MARC COHN AND SHAWN COLVIN: 8 p.m., $40-$50. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

NATURALLY 7: 8 p.m., $35-$40. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

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

THE ROAD TO POINTFEST 2023: SESSION 4: 7 p.m., $8. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

SAINTS IN THE CITY: A TRIBUTE TO BRUCE

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

SALTY GINGER BAND: 5 p.m., $10. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 S. Kingshighway, 2nd floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.

SINKING SEASON: w/ Reaver 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

THE WAR AND TREATY: w/ William Prince 8 p.m.,

100 gecs w/ Machine Girl

8 p.m. Saturday, April 15. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Boulevard. $30. 314-726-6161.

It’s hard to describe the sound of 100 gecs in a succinct way. It’s a cosmic collage of pop and alternative, dubstep and punk. Laura Les and Dylan Brady are the frontrunners of hyperpop, a genre-mashing scene distinguished by glitchy music that’s both futuristic and nostalgic for the early 2000s. Pitchfork once eloquently equated the duo’s sound to “throwing digital glass in a blender.” In short, you either hate 100 gecs or think its music is the best thing you’ve ever heard. If you’re in the pro-gecs party, this week’s show at the Pageant is surely good news; if you’re anti-gecs or gecs-ambivalent, we’d like to

$29. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

SATURDAY 15

100 GECS: 8 p.m., $30. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

AOIFE O’DONOVAN: 8 p.m., $25-$36. The Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries, 3648 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

BEAU DIAMOND: w/ Summer Like the Season

8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

BLUE MOON BLUES BAND: w/ Kent Ehrhardt 3 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

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

DAVID RUSSELL: 7:30 p.m., $20-$39. The 560 Music Center, 560 Trinity Ave., University City, 314-421-3600.

HAMMOND FEST ‘23: w/ Robert Row, Chris Hazelton, Ryan Marquez, David Gomez, Steve Davis, Eric Slaughter 7 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

humbly suggest you grace your ears with one of the duo’s biggest songs, “money machine,” and get ready to change your tune. If the last time 100 gecs played in St. Louis in 2021 is any testament to the adrenaline-pumping chaos the duo’s music incites, Saturday’s show promises to be a good time.

Prodigal Sons and Daughters: Odds are you had no clue this wildly successful duo has St. Louis roots. Les and Brady both grew up in suburban St. Louis — in Webster Groves and Kirkwood, respectively. Somehow two of the most vanilla places in St. Louis County formed two of the most beautiful weirdos in modern music. (For more on that, be sure to check out this week’s cover story.)

—Monica Obradovic

HUNTER PEEBLES BAND: 7 p.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

JEREMIAH JOHNSON: 8 p.m., $15-$22. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

JOANNE SHAW TAYLOR: 8 p.m., $29-$99. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

KITCHEN DWELLERS: w/ Sicard Hollow 8 p.m., $17. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

NEW EDITION: w/ Keith Sweat, Guy 7:30 p.m., $59.50-$129.50. Enterprise Center, 1401 Clark Ave., St. Louis, 314-241-1888.

NICK AND THE COYOTES: 5 p.m., $10. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 S. Kingshighway, 2nd floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313.

OVEF OW: w/ Nathaniel Carroll & the Party Line, Non-Euclidean Geometry 8 p.m., $5-$10. CBGB, 3163 S. Grand Blvd., St. Louis.

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

RUKA NADE MATINEE BENEFIT: w/ 18andCounting,

Crim Dolla Cray, Ace Of Spit, Googolplexia 2 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

STORMRAZOR: w/ Janatrix, Meatus 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

SWEETIE & THE TOOTHACHES: 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

TRINA BASU AND ARUN RAMAMURTHY: 7 p.m., $21. The Focal Point, 2720 Sutton Blvd., Maplewood, 314-560-2778.

UNCLE ALBERT: 8 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

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

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

WIG PARTY: w/ Nathaniel Carroll & the Party Line, Non-Euclidean Geometry 8 p.m., $5-$10. CBGB, 3163 S. Grand Blvd., St. Louis.

YHETI: w/ Ternion Sound, potions, Toadface, Honeybee 7 p.m., $37. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

SUNDAY 16

CHRIS WEBBY: w/ Ekoh 7 p.m., $25-$59.50. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

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

JOHN MCVEY BAND: 3 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

K CAMP: 7:30 p.m., $30-$59.50. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720. LARRY THE CABLE GUY: 7 p.m., $35-$79.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500.

THE PAULA BOGGS BAND: 8 p.m., $20. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

THE SAINT LOUIS CHAMBER CHORUS: 3 p.m., $10$30. Immanuel Lutheran Church, 115 S. 6th St., St. Charles, 636-946-2656.

SUNNY DAY REAL ESTATE: 8 p.m., $32.50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

MONDAY 17

CHAINED TO THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN: w/ It Is Dead, Ruin Dweller, Daybringer 8 p.m., $12-$15. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

FRENCHY AND THE PUNK: 8 p.m., $10-$15. The Crack Fox, 1114 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-621-6900. LUKE SAILOR TRIP: 5 p.m., free. Strauss Park, Washington & N. Grand boulevards, St. Louis.

MONDAY NIGHT REVIEW: w/ Tim, Danny and Randy 7 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

TUESDAY 18

THE CACTUS BLOSSOMS: w/ Riley Downing 8 p.m., $20-$35. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

FAT HEAVEN: w/ WeedTüth, the Centaurettes, Candylion 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

NAKED MIKE: 7 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

WHITAKER JAZZ SPEAKS: MIDWESTERN MUSIC

MATTERS: w/ Keyon Harrold 7 p.m., free. Jazz St. Louis, 3536 Washington Ave, St. Louis, 314-571-6000.

WEDNESDAY 19

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

CHAMBER PROJECT ST. LOUIS: RETOLD: 8 p.m., $30. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd.,

100 gecs. | ALBUM ART

PICK]

Whitaker Jazz Speaks: Midwestern Music Matters w/ Keyon Harrold

7 p.m. Tuesday, April 18. Jazz St. Louis, 3536 Washington Avenue. Free. 314-5716000.

It would be nigh impossible to find a human being on this planet who is more well-equipped to speak on the link between jazz and modern hip-hop than Keyon Harrold. The celebrated singersongwriter and master trumpeter has worked with artists including Eminem, Jay-Z, Rihanna and 50 Cent, and he even performed at the White House with Common in 2016. Furthermore, the Ferguson native has been serving as the artistic director for Jazz St. Louis since 2021. In keeping, this Tuesday, April 18, will see Harrold leading a talk as part of

St. Louis, 314-533-9900.

COLD: 6:30 p.m., $20-$49.50. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720.

JOHN MCVEY BAND: 8 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

LITTLE STRANGER: 8 p.m., $18. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

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

PROXY: w/ Hippyfuckers, Janet Xmas, Death Pose 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

VENOMOUS PINKS: w/ Bruiser Queen 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.

VOODOO 420: 9 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

THIS JUST IN

2 PEDROS: Sat., May 13, 8 p.m., $15. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

ALAN FERBER NONET: Sat., April 29, 7:30 p.m., $20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

ALEXANDRA SILBER: Fri., April 28, 7:30 p.m.,

the Whitaker Jazz Speaks Performance & Lecture Series, whose goal is to “give jazz music a voice through which to share stories, draw connections, and generate new meaning for this treasured American art form.” For Tuesday’s event, Harrold will explore the way samples from jazz classics have found new life in the hip-hop genre by being interpolated into new pieces of art. It’s sure to be a fascinating talk, and one delivered by a master of the form.

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

THE CAROLE KING & JAMES TAYLOR STORY: Sun., May 21, 7 p.m., $18. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

CHEER-ACCIDENT: W/ Zantigo, Astral Moth, Key Grip, Fri., April 21, 7 p.m., $10. Platypus, 4501 Manchester Avenue, St. Louis, 314-359-2293.

CYBERPLASM: W/ X Harlow, Kong, The Mall, Sun., May 14, 8 p.m., $12. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

DUHART DUO: Tue., April 25, 4 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

ERIC LYSAGHT: Sun., April 23, 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

ERIC ROBERSON: Thu., June 29, 8 p.m., $45. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

ERIK BROOKS: Sun., April 23, 8 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

FEAR: W/ Bastard Squad, Fri., June 16, 8 p.m., $30. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

FUNKY BUTT BRASS BAND: Thu., April 20, 9 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

THE GASLIGHT SQUARES: Sat., May 13, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

GENE JACKSON’S POWER PLAY BAND: Fri., April 21, 8 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

GRAHAM CURRY & THE MISSOURI FURY: Fri., May 12, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

JAVIER MENDOZA: Fri., May 5, 7:30 p.m., $20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

JEREMIAH JOHNSON: Fri., May 5, 8 p.m., $20. The Gaslight Theater, 360 N. Boyle Avenue, St Louis.

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

NAKED MIKE: Tue., April 25, 7 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

NEIL SALSICH & FRIENDS: Fri., May 5, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

AN OCEAN OF RAINBOW STATIC #1: W/ Painted Faces, Mezzanine Swimmers, Birds Need You Now, Green Family, Oxherding, Sun Castle, Aaron Owens, Delia Rainey, Josie Rosie, Molly Pearson, NNN Cook, Rylee Short, Simone Sparks, Sat., April 22, 4 p.m., free. Granite City Art and Design District, 1822 State St, Granite City, 314-565-2223.

ONDARA: W/ Kiely Connell, Tue., June 13, 8 p.m., $30. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

OTM PRESENTS: A VERY DISNEY DILEMMA: Sun., April 30, 4 p.m., $12. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

PAUL NEIHAUS: Thu., April 20, 3 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

RICKIE LEE JONES: Sat., May 20, 8 p.m., $65. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

THE RUMBLE FEAT. CHIEF JOSEPH BOUDREAUX JR.: Fri., June 16, 8 p.m., $25. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

RUNNING MAN: W/ Prunes, Milkface, Loud Shirts, Sat., April 22, 7:30 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

SAMANTHA PAULY: Thu., May 11, 7:30 p.m., $30. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

SCHAFFER THE DARKLORD: W/ Coolzey, Googolplexia, Sun., April 23, 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

Proof of Concept: Predictably, when it comes to a musician covering the music that they live and breathe, the show won’t just be all talk. The evening will culminate in a performance wherein original jazz pieces will be played by a live band, showcasing the transformations the songs saw when they were sampled into hip-hop tracks.

JIM CARUSO’S CAST PARTY: Wed., May 17, 7 p.m., $25. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

JOJO HERMANN: Tue., May 30, 7:30 p.m., $25. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

JOSH RITTER NIGHT 1: Tue., June 6, 7:30 p.m., $55. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

—Daniel Hill

$25. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

ALL ROOSTERED UP: Sat., April 22, noon, free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

ALL TOGETHER NOW: Sat., April 29, 8 p.m., $18. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

AMY FRIEDL STONER: Fri., May 26, 7:30 p.m.,

$20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

ANDREW DUHON: Tue., June 27, 7:30 p.m., $20. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

AS THE CROW FLIES: Fri., May 26, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

BABY TYLER: W/ Fender Bender, Condiments, Mon., April 24, 7:30 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

BACK POCKET TRIO: Sat., April 22, 10 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

BOXCAR: W/ Adam Gaffney, Tommy Goodroad, Car Microwave, Sat., June 10, 8 p.m., $10. San Loo, 3211 Cherokee St., St. Louis, 314-696-2888.

BUTCH MOORE: Fri., April 21, 4 p.m., free. Broad-

JOSH RITTER NIGHT 2: Wed., June 7, 7:30 p.m., $55. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

KEVIN BUCKLEY: Sat., May 20, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

KINDRED THE FAMILY: Fri., May 26, 7 p.m., $62. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

KURT ELLING NIGHT 1: Tue., May 23, 7 p.m., $45. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

KURT ELLING NIGHT 2: Wed., May 24, 7 p.m., $45. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

MARGARET & FRIENDS: Wed., April 26, 3 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

MEGHAN KIRK AND RON MCGOWAN: Tue., April 25, 7:30 p.m., $10. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

MICHAEL MCDERMOTT: Sat., May 27, 8 p.m., $20. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

MICHAL MENERT: Thu., April 20, 7 p.m., $15. Club Riveria, 3524 Washington Ave., St. Louis, 314-531-8663.

MISS JUBILEE: Fri., May 19, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

MR. WENDELL: Mon., April 24, 5 p.m., free.

SEASHINE: W/ Star Guided Vessel, Nightswim, Tue., April 25, 7:30 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309.

SHERIE WHITE: Fri., May 19, 7:30 p.m., $20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745.

SLANDER: Fri., June 23, 10 p.m., $40-$1,000. RYSE Nightclub, One Ameristar Blvd, St. Charles.

SOPHIE B. HAWKINS: Sat., May 13, 8 p.m., $28. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

SOULARD BLUES BAND: Mon., April 24, 9 p.m., $8. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

STANDING TALL FOR CHEROKEE STREET: W/ Lady J. Huston, Sun., April 23, 6:30 p.m., $20. Casa Loma Ballroom, 3354 Iowa Ave, St. Louis, 314-282-2258.

TEARS FOR FEARS: Thu., July 13, 7:30 p.m., $29.50-$399.50. Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, I-70 & Earth City Expwy., Maryland Heights, 314-298-9944.

THAYNE BRADFORD & FRIENDS: Sat., May 27, 7:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090.

VALERIE JUNE: Wed., May 31, 7:30 p.m., $45. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060.

VOODOO DEAD MAY ‘77: Wed., May 10, 9 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

VOODOO SANTANA: Wed., May 3, 9 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811.

THE WELL WISHERS: Sat., April 15, 7:30 p.m., $5. Spine Indie Bookstore & Cafe, 1976-82 Arsenal St., St. Louis, 314-925-8087.

YOUNG BUCK: Fri., June 9, 6 p.m., $20. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. n

Keyon Harrold. | DENEKA PENISTON

PICK]

Quickies

BY DAN SAVAGE

Hey Dan: My partner wants me to give him a ruined orgasm. Where do I go to learn that?

Ruined orgasms are pretty easy — they’re so simple, in fact, that people sometimes give them to (or inflict them on) their males partners by accident. Here’s how you do it: Bring your partner to the point of orgasmic inevitability — get him to that point where there’s no stopping his orgasm; even if Marjorie Taylor Greene were to burst into the room, he’s going to come — and then cease all stimulation. Take your hand off his dick, take his dick out of your mouth, lift your pussy or ass off his dick — whatever you were doing to get him close, stop. He’ll come, but it won’t be anywhere near as pleasurable or intense as his usual orgasms, i.e., the orgasms he has when his cock is stimulated to and through the point of orgasm.

Hey Dan: How can I be more fuckable? I put myself out there, but no one bites. I’m done being a 31-year-old gay virgin. I am a clean person, shower every day, wear clean clothes and was voted “most likely to brighten up a day” in school.

Maybe you’re doing something wrong — but I couldn’t tell you what that might be without meeting you, getting to know you and making polite inquiries about your voting history. But I can tell you what I would do if I were in your shoes: I would hire a brutally honest “life coach,” a personal trainer and a hooker, but in reverse order.

Hey Dan: What’s your #1 tip for someone who has never been to a sex party before? It includes a wide range of ages, genders, orientations and proclivities, and many nervous newbies on the invite list.

Bathe.

Hey Dan: Can a person who has always had open sexual relationships become monogamous?

Yes.

Hey Dan: I never visualize having sex with my husband anymore. In my mind, it’s always someone else. Is that bad?

No.

SAVAGE LOVE

Hey Dan: Why is anonymous sex — in places like bathhouses and gloryholes so enticing to queer people like me?

Lesbians aren’t exactly crowding into bathhouses or around glory holes — nor are asexuals, demisexuals, sapiosexuals, etc., etc., etc. So I’m gonna assume you’re a gay man. Before I write another word: Not all gay men find anonymous sex and/or public sex environments enticing. But the ones who do … they’re not doing it because they’re gay. They’re doing it because they’re men. I mean, if you told straight men there were places where walls had holes in them and women were kneeling on the other side of those walls waiting to suck them off, straight men would go to those places. There’s nothing gay men do that straight men wouldn’t if straight men could, but straight men can’t because women won’t. As for why women won’t … the answer is equal parts disinterest (on the part of most women) and an entirely reasonable fear of male sexual violence (on the part of all women).

Hey Dan: What do you do when you’re bored with the sexual smorgasbord and just want a few quiet nights in?

You spit the dick out and go home.

Hey Dan: Quick etiquette question: Can I use my fucking machine in a hotel room?

You’re allowed to fuck in hotel rooms. But fucking machines — at least the ones I’ve been in the same room with — are pretty fucking loud. They start loud; they stay loud. People fucking, on the other hand, typically only get loud toward the end of the fucking; once you can hear two people fucking in the room next to yours, you know it’s almost over. So while I think we all have to put up with a little noisy fucking in the next room from time to time, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the guests in the next room to put up with the noise of a fucking machine.

Hey Dan: I’m in love with my roommate. I think he likes me, too. I just fear losing his friendship if I tell him. Any thoughts on how I should handle this?

If you don’t open your mouth … your roommate can’t stick his dick in there. Just don’t open your mouth and say, “I’m in love with you,” as that will instantly dial the emotional stakes up to 11. Instead, tell your roommate you’re attracted to him and reassure him — before he can even respond — that you will get over the awkwardness (and him) if he doesn’t feel the same way about you.

Hey Dan: How can I help a quick shooter have a slower draw? This D isn’t lasting long enough for me!

Some medications seem to help premature ejaculators — excuse me: Some medications seem to help persons experiencing premature ejaculation (PEPE). Additionally, some PEPEs can train themselves to last longer by jacking off a few hours before sex with a partner, strengthening their pelvic floors and edging themselves endlessly. But if nothing helps and sometimes nothing does — and delaying penetration until after you’re satisfied doesn’t work (because only a good, long, hard fuck can satisfy you) and your guy isn’t insecure about how his dick works, you should get a strap-on dildo. They’re suddenly everywhere in gay porn … and we all know what that means. (It means straight people will be giving each other strap-on dildos as wedding presents by next summer.)

Hey Dan: Top tips for being a good/smart third when playing with a couple?

Be clear about your expectations — what you’re into, what you’re not, what you’re comfortable with, what you aren’t — and politely decline if they aren’t clear about their expectations.

Hey Dan: I’m a young college professor in New York City and an active Grindr user. Is there a way to block an age range?

In these morally panicked times, it’s probably better to err on the side of not fucking guys young enough to be your students — to say nothing of guys who are your students or who go to your university and might become your students. Unfortunately, there’s no way to block guys by age range on Grindr. So you’ll have to block them as they come.

Hey Dan: Why do people say “ethical non-monogamy” when they just mean “dating”?

Because they mean different things. While some ENM people do date, some people in ENM relationships aren’t interested in dating (or allowed to date) outside sex partners; they don’t describe themselves as “dating” because 1. they aren’t dating and 2. they don’t want to (or shouldn’t want to) mislead potential outside sex partners. And while people who ultimately want a committed ENM relationship can and do date, lots of people who date — lots of people out there fucking around with multiple partners — ultimately want a committed monogamous relationship, and identifying as ENM would be misleading.

Hey Dan: If my bisexual husband is fucking men in the ass with a condom but not using a condom with me — his cis wife am I at risk?

You’re at a slightly higher risk for certain sexually transmitted infections — primarily HPV and HSV. But since your husband doesn’t look at you and see the reason why he can’t fuck other men, I’d say you’re at a slightly lower risk of divorce. (If your parents were so negligent that they didn’t get you vaccinated against HPV, go get vaccinated now.)

Hey Dan: Any queer-cuck related porn that you’d recommend?

Jack Hornwood’s erotic novellas — jackhornwood.com — come highly recommended.

Hey Dan: Would you consider a 67-yearold man who’s had NUMEROUS affairs while in what were supposed to be monogamous relationships and more than a few “friends” who turned out to be more than just friends to have a “propensity” for extra-marital relationships, secrets and duplicity? Asking for a friend.

Honoring a monogamous commitment is going to be a struggle for this guy — assuming he has any interest in honoring a monogamous commitment — and being with him will be torture for your “friend” whether he ever gets around to cheating on her or not.

Hey Dan: I’ve always had to beg my partners to hurt me. Now I finally meet a guy who is legit sadistic, and I’m completely freaked out. He’s very sexy and everything is consensual, and he hasn’t violated any of my limits. But unlike my two previous boyfriends — very sweet guys he doesn’t feel the least bit conflicted about hurting me.

Send him my way.

Hey Dan: My husband and I have been together for 15 years now. He’s never been with anyone else and has recently opened up about wanting to explore outside. I do not have this desire. I love him and ultimately want him to be happy, but I also don’t want to make myself unhappy in the process! Can you recommend how to find a sex-positive therapist for us to help us navigate through this new path?

Check out AASECT.org.

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