Riverfront Times, April 21, 2021 by Riverfront Times

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APRIL 21-27, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

APRIL 21-27, 2021

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RIVERFRONT TIMES

MARCH 6-12, 2019

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APRIL 21-27, 2021

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APRIL 21-27, 2021

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THE LEDE

PHOTO BY THEO WELLING

“It’s a beautiful spring day, and we wanted to celebrate it amongst the flowers. ... St. Louis is unlike any other city I’ve ever visited or heard about. It’s just so family driven. It really is. There’s just so much to do on any given day, and most of it is low to no cost. So it’s perfect.” ANGELICA EARL WITH DAUGHTERS IRIS AND SAMMI, PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDENS ON SATURDAY, APRIL 10 riverfronttimes.com

APRIL 21-27, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Run Away

e’ve all gone a little crazy during the pandemic. Unrelenting stress and an inability to escape into our usual outlets has made our minds go places they normally would not. So when Mark Fingerhut proposed the “stupid idea” of a 24-hour race, it sounded surprisingly sane. He and twenty others left their homes and tried to get as far away as they could in a day’s time. I trailed along, mostly in my car, enjoying every minute of their adventure. I can’t say they all enjoyed every minute, but they all survived with quite the story to tell. —Doyle Murphy, editor in chief

TABLE OF CONTENTS Publisher Chris Keating Editor in Chief Doyle Murphy

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

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

COVER Escape from St. Louis

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

In March, 21 people walked out of their homes and set out on an adventure to remember

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

Cover photo by

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

DOYLE MURPHY

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

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HARTMANN Shift Change Chief Mary Barton Should Resign or Be Removed — Now BY RAY HARTMANN

t. Louis County needs to find itself a new police chief right away. Mary Barton wasn’t right for the job when she was hired as chief last May. She isn’t right for the job right now. And most importantly, there’s no reason to believe she’ll ever be right for it. The problem is as simple as it is incurable for Barton. Running a major police department in 2021 is an enormously daunting task that requires strong leadership internally and an ability to connect with the community and inspire trust externally. Barton strikes out on both fronts. Her presumed strength is a resume as a 40-year veteran on the force. Turns out, that’s actually a glaring weakness: The department is wracked with racial tensions and morale problems across racial lines that are heavily attributed to the old-guard system that Barton embodies, with the exception of her gender. And the only thing she has done for women as chief is to be one. As to the public side of the coin, Barton is especially out of her depth. She palpably despises cameras and microphones and the people on the other side of them. She doesn’t do empathy. As to race relations, she is clueless, at best. In other words, Barton is a woman of keen intellect and plentiful police experience whose skill sets — whatever they might be — don’t even begin to intersect with those needed to be an effective police chief in St. Louis County in the year 2021. She is utterly miscast in her role. That has never been more obvious than last week. Faced with two grave “no confidence” votes — one from Black police officers, the other from the St. Louis County Council — Barton went public to defend herself and displayed why everyone has no confidence in her. She put on a clinic as to how not to do race relations. The Ethi-

cal Society of Police, representing those Black officers, eviscerated her for a “long-standing pattern of delayed responses to our requests and her ineffective actions on the tough issue of systemic racism.” Asked by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to cite some of her accomplishments with regard to race relations, Barton cited the fact that she meets regularly with the Ethical Society of Police. You can’t make this stuff up. Who can forget last June 9, when Barton proved beyond all doubt that you never get a second chance to make a first impression? Barton was appearing publicly before the county council for the first time and was asked about that same topic of systemic racism in the county police department. Barton said there wasn’t any. Next question? That didn’t work out so well. Mind you, this meeting occurred fifteen days — count ’em, fifteen — after the May 25 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. America was engulfed in protests over systemic racism. It was the most significant national eruption on behalf of Black Lives Matter since the 2014 Ferguson riots where BLM all began. Need I mention that Ferguson is a city in St. Louis County? And that the St. Louis County Police Department is a police department in St. Louis County? Barton was destined to be linked forever to that dreadful moment. But many in ever-forgiving St. Louis were willing to attribute it to just having a bad start. There was plenty of time to come back from it, to enact an agenda aimed at gaining trust among Black officers and in the Black community. No and no. The best Barton could offer the Post-Dispatch was to have created “a program that asks officers of different backgrounds to share their personal experiences with each other.” Alrighty then. Perhaps there has been a major initiative to recruit and promote Black officers at the highest levels. Perhaps Barton has declared that serious priority be given to ending racial profiling and the over-policing of Black neighborhoods in the county. Perhaps Barton has been out in those neighborhoods, meeting concerned citizens, showing empathy to their grief and to their struggles, listening to them and promising her department will do

Barton is a woman of keen intellect and plentiful police experience whose skill sets — whatever they might be — don’t even begin to intersect with those needed to be an effective police chief in St. Louis County in 2021. better. Perhaps not. If Barton has done any of that, the Ethical Society of Police must have missed the memo. And the same for those of us in the media. Even Barton’s present-day efforts to walk back her denial of systemic racism shows she’s still in denial: “I’m not going to sit here and tell you there isn’t racism in the police department. There absolutely is,” Barton told the Post-Dispatch last week. “There’s also other problems in the police department. We’ve made a concerted effort over the last year to try and address those.” Notice how nonspecific she was? And how quickly she watered down the mention of race by adding that part about “other problems”? Barton cannot walk back and chew gun. The chief was similarly underwhelming with her response to last week’s no-confidence resolution from the county council. The vote split along a 4-3 partisan divide, but it had lashed out hard: “Mary Barton has fumbled her way through the position of chief with a blatant disregard for normal behavior in a community that has been torn apart due to racial tension, economic inequity and overall mistrust of police officers and a lack of community engagement to build bridges.”

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Ironically, the criticism might have been a positive opportunity for Barton. She might have seized upon the bridge-building mention and offered to meet with her antagonists on the council and in the community. Simply reaching out with a degree of humility might have taken the wind out of their sails a bit. Didn’t happen. True to form, Barton claimed to multiple media outlets that she had been “blindsided” by the county council vote. Really? The criticisms of Barton had been a topic for months from council members — including a letter from council Chairwoman Rita Heard Days — and the referendum was on the agenda and a media topic well ahead of time. The only way Barton could have been “blindsided” is if she didn’t keep up with the news. Doesn’t she have detectives working for her? As to any humility part, forget that: Barton lashed back at the criticism as “unprofessional.” Bottom line: Barton exhibited under heat that she cannot take the heat. And a police chief who can’t take the heat can’t be a police chief. It’s not clear whether the St. Louis County Board of Police Commissioners has the guts to admit its mistake in passing over a dramatically more qualified chief candidate in Lt. Col. Troy Doyle — a Black man with the very skill sets Barton lacks — in favor of settling for Barton last spring. Nor does County Executive Sam Page, who owns Barton’s appointment despite his claim he didn’t like it. Or maybe he did? No one knows. But for now, at least, this is not about politics, or about looking back. It’s about facing the terrible prospect of having a racially torn police department and racially torn community endangered by having a county police chief who just doesn’t get it. Mary Barton is in the wrong place at the wrong time. One way or another, she needs to be moving on. n Ray Hartmann founded the Riverfront Times in 1977. Contact him at rhar tmann1952@gmail.com or catch him on Donnybrook at 7 p.m. on Thursdays on the Nine Network and St. Louis In the Know with Ray Hartmann from 9 to 11 p.m. Monday thru Friday on KTRS (550 AM).

APRIL 21-27, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

APRIL 21-27, 2021

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NEWS Ex-Chief, Watchdog Picked for Public Safety Written by

DOYLE MURPHY

t. Louis police are getting new oversight — and that includes appointing one of the department’s sharpest critics as a top advisor to a new director of public safety. Newly elected Mayor Tishaura Jones announced last week that ex-police chief Dan Isom would take over as public safety director and retired detective sergeant Heather Taylor would serve as a senior advisor to Isom. Taylor is a past president of the Ethical Society of Police, an association primarily of the city’s Black police officers. In that role, she

Charges Filed After Illegal Dump Discovered Written by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

n February 2, a green pickup truck loaded with tires stopped in an alleyway in north St. Louis. As a police surveillance camera rolled, two men began unloading the unwanted cargo, adding them to the haphazard piles that stretched along both sides of the alley. “There were easily a couple hundred tires here,” Detective Vince Stehlin said last week during a press conference at the head of the alley. Behind him were parked three bright orange trucks from the city’s Street Department, a sign of the sort of effort it takes to clear a wellused illegal dumping site. The two men in the green truck, identified by police as Jonathan Fisher and Mark Santanello, are now facing 26 charges, including multiple counts of illegal dumping in the alley of the 4500 block of Maffitt Street in the Ville neighborhood.

Ex-St. Louis police Chief Dan Isom is now the city’s public safety director. | ST. LOUIS POLICE

Heather Taylor formerly served as president of the Ethical Society of Police. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI

regularly called out racism within the police department and spoke out against abusive tactics. Isom served as police chief for four years, retiring in 2012 to teach at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He later served as the state public safety director under Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon. “The work to improve safety in the City of Saint Louis will not be done overnight, but I am confident that with Director Isom’s and

Sergeant Taylor’s guidance under my administration, we will put the public back in public safety,” Jones said in a statement. Jones campaigned in part on a promise to transform the police department and the city’s approach to crime, pledging to provide more options, such as social workers, to respond to emergency situations. Shortly after Jones made it clear during the campaign that

The duo allegedly used the out-of-theway spot on seven occasions. The alleyway is bordered by several boarded-up properties, and so it made for a perfect spot for the pair to leave trash, Stehlin said. “There’s no residents on that side of the street,” the detective noted. “That’s what we usually rely on the community to report this stuff, and there aren’t any residents to report them. They just found a good spot where you can kind of circle around and not be detected.” Overall, Stehlin said it’s difficult to pinpoint a pattern in the city’s illegal dumping. While the city’s Environmental Investigation Unit — also known as the Trash Task Force — investigates hundreds of incidents every year, he estimated the geographic breakdown as a “50-50” split between busts against trash-haulers in the city and St. Louis County. According to the St. Louis City Counselor’s Office, 144 summonses have been issued this year related to illegal dumping. Although the charges are municipal citations, the punishment per charge can include three days in jail, a $500 fine and community service. Central to the Trash Task Force’s work is a network of some 200 surveillance cameras. During the press conference, Mayor Lyda Krewson praised the task

she planned to install a new public safety director if elected, the man who was then in the job, former Judge Jimmie Edwards, announced he would leave the post at the end of March. Edwards had been appointed by Jones’ successor, Lyda Krewson, early in her term as mayor, and he frequently came under criticism for his response to protests, waves of child murders and, recently, a series of uprisings at a city jail. The Ethical Society of Police was among his biggest critics, with Taylor leading the charge. ones took office on Tuesday and has had to move quickly to fill key roles in her new administration. One of those roles is her former job as treasurer. During a news conference last week, she announced that she was promoting her deputy chief of staff Adam Layne as the city’s new treasurer. Layne, who is also a St. Louis school board member, holds a finance degree from George Washington University and a master’s in secondary education from UMSL. It appears Layne will have to resign from the school board as he takes on the new role. n

Tire dumpers were caught on surveillance cameras, police say. | COURTESY ST. LOUIS POLICE force for improving the city’s quality of life and helping the area’s residents. “Trash begets more trash,” she said. “When you have hundreds of tires dumped behind your house or dumped in your alley, that’s way too big for any individual to take care of.” But even when the city intervenes, the trash persists. City work crews have returned to the alley multiple times since February, each time finding new bags of trash and other dumped items. Last

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week, the alleyway featured discarded children’s toys and a busted amplifier. “Alleys tend to be a bit anonymous,” Krewson noted. “It’s not like the trash in front of your house, where people think perhaps, ‘Oh, somebody else will get that.’ And in fact, somebody else usually does. But it’s a major challenge.” The city’s Citizens’ Service Bureau accepts reports for illegal dumping sites — and offers a $100 reward for any complaints that lead to convictions. n

APRIL 21-27, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

House Rejects Resignation of Rep. Accused of Child Abuse Written by

JASON HANCOCK This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent.

he Missouri House refused to accept the resignation of Rep. Rick Roeber last week, with a bipartisan group of lawmakers arguing that the ethics committee should complete its investigation into allegations that he sexually and physically abused his children. “This is a serious allegation that has been brought forth before this body.” said Rep. Richard Brown, D-Kansas City. “It’s not right to accept this resignation and allow this member to escape without us giving full recognition to what has taken place here.” Three adult children of Rep. Rick Roeber, R-Lee’s Summit, publicly alleged that in 1990 he molested his adopted daughter when she was nine years old. He was previously accused of sexual abuse by a fourth sibling. Despite the allegations, which became public more than a month before Election Day, Roeber defeated his Democratic opponent by 300 votes. The House Ethics Committee launched an investigation in January. It was close to completing its work when Roeber announced his resignation on April 13. The announcement came shortly after The Independent reported on a letter House Speaker Rob Vescovo wrote to Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Backer stating that over the course of the House Ethics Committee investigation, “we have learned information that needs to be forwarded to the proper authorities in your jurisdiction.” Roeber has regular weekend visits with a minor child, the letter states, and “given the severity of the allegations raised by Rep. Roeber’s children, we are concerned for the safety of this minor child.” Baker responds later that day

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An investigation of Rep. Rick Roeber continues. | COURTESY HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS

“It’s not right to accept this resignation and allow this member to escape without us giving full recognition to what has taken place here.” in an email to Vescovo, saying she contacted the chief of police in Lee’s Summit and “will work with him to devise a plan.” She also requested transcripts from the ouse investigation so her office could review them “for potential criminal activity.” Roeber made no mention of Vescovo’s letter, Baker’s response or the accusations against him in his resignation announcement. Instead, he said he had to step down because he was moving out of his district. On April 15, Vescovo had the House clerk read Roeber’s resignation letter to the chamber. Ethics Committee Chairman Travis Fitzwater objected, saying the committee should complete its work before Roeber is allowed to resign. The committee plans to issue its report next week. The House agreed with Fitzwater and voted 153-0 not to accept Roeber’s resignation. n

APRIL 21-27, 2021

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THE BIG MAD The Worst Is Yet to Come Shuttered venues, snow in spring and the rise of the GreitensGuilfoyle Hydra Monster Compiled by

DANIEL HILL

elcome back to the Big Mad, RFT’s weekly roundup of righteous rage! Because we know your time is short and your anger is hot: SEE NO EVIL: Missouri House Rep. Rick Roeber tried to get away, tendering his resignation days before the House Ethics Committee released its report on allegations that Roeber abused his young children more than two decades ago — and in response, Missouri’s GOP lawmakers did what they should have done seven months ago: They said, to paraphrase, “No,” and joined with House Democrats to vote 153-0 to reject Roeber’s resignation and his attempt to avoid a public reckoning with his past. On Monday, the House Ethics Committee released its report on Roeber, finding the testimony of his four children and former wife credible. The report detailed the many, many ways that previous attempts to stop reports of abuse were ignored. In one example, the report noted how in 2001 Missouri’s Child Abuse and Neglect Review Board affirmed the abuse claims disclosed by one of his children, placing Roeber on a registry — only to reverse that decision two years later when Roeber was seeking a position at a local church “that would involve work with children.” Only when Roeber attempted to run for a Missouri House seat in a district near Kansas City did the allegations resurface through his now-adult children, who described the abuse to the Kansas City Star in September. Yet, in the November election just one month later, voters ignored the evidence before their eyes and elected Roeber to represent them as a public official. The GOP stood by and let him run — but when he won, the Republicans finally got the message: They blocked Roeber from joining the party caucus and launched the ethics investigation that concluded this week. Now, the House is recommending Roeber be expelled from his position and has referred the case to the Jackson County prosecutor for potential criminal charges. It’s better late than never — but someone like Roeber should never have been there to begin with. For his victims, we can only hope for healing. For

Missouri and its voters, we only feel shame. LET THE MUSIC PLAY: The vaccine is here and the promise of a new world is on the way, but how much longer can our local venues be expected to hang on without heaps of assistance? We’re more than a year into this thing, but venues across the country are still shuttering each week. Many local venues applying for aid were left out in the cold when the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant portal crashed earlier this month, with the Sheldon Arts Foundation, the Pageant and the Muny all encountering problems when they tried to apply. As a country, we’ve already lost so much, and we’re on the verge of losing even more — can these fools who run the websites get them running properly already? Entire regional musical ecosystems are hanging by a thread here, people. Get it together. THE BEST IS YET TO COME: Jesus Christ, this is going to be an even stupider campaign season than we thought. Eric Greitens (official title: disgraced ex-Governor Eric Greitens) announced on Monday he’d hired Kimberly Guilfoyle as the national campaign director for his Missouri campaign to replace U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt. Guilfoyle is an ex-prosecutor, ex-half of a Democratic power couple with California Gov. Gavin Newsom (her ex-husband), ex-Fox News host and ex-fundraiser for ex-President Donald Trump’s failed campaign. If you tuned into the Republican National Convention to see how bad St. Louis’ Mark and Patricia McCloskey would embarrass us, you might feel a bit of gratitude to Guilfoyle for distracting everyone with the craziest shout-speech imaginable. Guilfoyle bellowing “The best is yet to come!” with arms outstretched as if calling down demons in a B-horror movie pretty much stole the show. But now that Greitens has hired Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend for his campaign we’re not only going to have to hear more shout-speeches, but we’ll have to watch every other Republican candidate try even harder to show they love Trump more than Greitens. Attorney General Eric Schmitt is going to have to get a freaking Trump tattoo on his face. It’s going to be so stupid. So loud, and so very, very stupid. SNOW?! SERIOUSLY? SNOW? White cold bullshit falling from the sky in the middle of April? A high pollen count and I gotta wear a coat? What the hell is this shit, even? With COVID numbers falling and the world opening up in tandem with the bloom of spring, it really felt like we were turning a corner, but watching the flakes fall now just brings unpleasant flashbacks to the recent Winter of Our Discontent. No more fucking snow, please. Haven’t we suffered enough? n

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APRIL 21-27, 2021

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APRIL 21-27, 2021

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Escape From St. Louis In March, 21 people walked out of their homes and set out on an adventure to remember

BY DOYLE MURPHY

s adventures go, this one begins inconspicuously. Most of the residents of a quiet street in Dogtown are tucked away in neatly kept bungalows, their cars parked in their driveways on what has become a pleasant Friday afternoon. The sidewalk is all but empty. “This is stupid,” Mark Fingerhut says. A 40-year-old product manager for a software company, Fingerhut is dressed in a red t. Louis ag T-shirt, baseball cap, shorts and a pair of thick-soled Hoka running shoes. A half-filled backpack fastened over his shoulders and chest is the only sign this will be more than a jog around the neighborhood as he starts running up the hill from his house. If all goes right — and he is not convinced it will — he will be gone all night and most of the next day. He will keep running or

walking as St. Louis falls away behind him and the temperature drops from a sunny 51 degrees into moonlit 30s. The plan is to cross state lines and cut south through one county and then another, and then who knows? He has it mapped out in his head, but he has never done this before. Anything could happen. The surprises are what he’s after, and not just for himself. He has somehow persuaded twenty others to leave their perfectly good homes at some point during a three-and-a-half-day window and see how far they can go in any direction on their own two feet in 24 hours. A few will start the next day. Others are already out there, plodding along city sidewalks, rain-soaked trails and the shoulders of highways, going and going and going as GPS locators on their phones chart a starburst of pathways Continued on pg 14

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of place my mind will be in by tomorrow night.”

ESCAPE

Continued from pg 13

emanating from origins scattered across the metro and beyond. As the architect of all this, ingerhut has been planning and coordinating for a few weeks. But now his “stupid idea” is no longer a concept but thousands of literal steps to pound out in what amounts to a series of marathons — all for questionable reward. It begins, fittingly, with a steep uphill. ingerhut chugs up the sidewalk, turns and ogs out of sight.

f necessity is the mother of invention, boredom is the reckless stepdad of adventure. And we have been plenty bored during the pandemic — not to mention stressed and an ious. The sudden evaporation of diversions in arch made it clear that few of us were prepared to be home so, so much. No movie theater escapes. No head-clearing trips to the grocery store. No daylong shifts at the office, and for too many of us, no more obs at all. At the e act moment when we could use even a temporary e it from the chaos invading our lives, nearly all of our usual off ramps were closed. ingerhut was maybe more restless than most. In the past, he has paddled the issouri iver from ontana to the ateway Arch and competed in multiple long-distance kayak races across the state. e passed the early days of the pandemic on a mission to bike every road in ogtown, a pro ect that he says took him about hours to complete and covered more than miles. As t. Louis headed into a second spring of C I restrictions, ingerhut began dreaming up a new pro ect. The ours from ome Challenge was designed to be part socially distant sufferfest and part strategic challenge, combined with elements of camaraderie and shittalking. e oated the idea to friends in the local chapter of the ash ouse arriers — an irreverent bunch whose initiates like to oke that they are a “drinking club with a running problem” — and was surprised to find it actually appealed to a number of the members. “I ust looked at it and thought this is another cra y idea,” says Beth c wen, ingerhut’s friend and fellow asher. “ e’s had a few.” But the more she thought about it, the more she was intrigued. c wen is among tens of millions of Americans who lost their obs

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Previous page: Mark Fingerhut (left, with his cousin, Andy Mayer) persuaded twenty friends to join him on a weekend adventure. Above: Fingerhut jogging out of Dogtown. | DOYLE MURPHY during the pandemic, and she is among the millions more who started to rely on getting outside to relieve the stress of C I fallout. er usual calendar of and races was canceled, so she began walking. “ onestly, during C I times, really the only thing that has helped me stay sane is that I started walking every day,” c wen, , says. And not ust a lap or two around the neighborhood. he gives the e ample of walking from her home on the ill to meet a friend in oulard for lunch and, on a separate trip, circling the Anheuser-Busch brewery while wandering with her husband before returning home. Among those who sign up for ingerhut’s challenge, c wen’s ambitions for the event are considered moderate. he decides that instead of going the full hours, she will walk to a friend’s house in ildwood from the ill, a one-way trip along anchester of more than twenty miles. At the other end of the spectrum is osemary La occa, a -year-old veteran of multiple ultramarathons, including the ark Twain ile ndurance un. n a acebook page set up for the event, one asher okes that La occa “might do hours because she needs to finish listening to the hish song that started at hours.” hile c wen goes west and ingerhut goes south, La occa plans to run across the c inley Bridge from her home in the haw neighborhood and cruise north through Alton, Illinois. It’s not an e act route and she e pects to improvise a bit as she goes. In a typical ultramarathon —

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any race longer than . miles — she could e pect to find aid stations every five or ten miles, but in this one, she will be running alone. er partner Andy c onald plans to track her through the night and carry supplies, but there is an element of the unknown. La occa says she plans to run with mace for the first time in her racing career and will take her normal safety precautions, such as running with only one earbud in so she can hear what’s happening around her. “As a woman, I think it’s a different e perience than it is for a man,” she says. till, she is eager to see what she can do. he’s never run so far on pavement, and the idea of picking her own start time and route is appealing, she says in a phone call the night before she sets out. “I’m interested to see what kind

s luck would have it, the opening day of the challenge is miserable. A cold rain that started the night before blows through the day on winds of miles per hour. Luckily, the e ible format of the ours from ome Challenge means competitors can simply push off their start time. As long as they complete continuous hours, they can begin anytime between noon on Thursday, arch , and midnight on p.m. on unday, arch . ingerhut decides to hold off until riday when the storm is supposed to break, and that seems to be the consensus among the runners. But then comes word that a lone runner has set out. ith rain pouring down across issouri, Aaron uenke takes off from New aven and heads for the aty Trail. “ ere I go ” he posts on acebook. nlike most of the runners, uenke is not a asher, but a friend of ingerhut’s through kayaking, adding to the intrigue of a wildman who would race in this kind of weather. In the following hours, he pops up on the acebook page with gnomic updates a photo of ood waters ne t to a “ ” mile marker at p.m. Another pic four hours later of a shot of whiskey at a bar in ermann. “The aty is so o peaceful,” he posts minutes before p.m. At a.m., he writes “The issouri iver is reclaiming this trail.” And then “If you could only see what I ust went through.” inally, after si teen hours slogging through the rain, uenke calls it quits “I went down with the moon. can’t go any further.” It’s a surprising start to the

From Left: Angela O’Hanlon, Glenn Hooker, Beth McEwen and Don Hovey go west. | DOYLE MURPHY

Rosemary LaRocca has run multiple ultramarathons, including a hundred-miler, but the 24-hour challenge was unlike all the others. | DOYLE MURPHY competition. Before sunrise on the first full day of the challenge, uenke has set the bar at miles. “ k eekend arriors,” he writes. “I can’t wait to see what you’ve got. This is the best that this little old hippie could do this time.”

a occa and c wen both start shortly after a.m. on riday, arch , heading in opposite directions. c wen is oined by a friend from ansas City, on ovey, and they soon meet up with husbandand-wife team lenn ooker and Angela ’ anlon. Their trip is to be a leisurely stroll — if twentyplus miles of walking on hard cement can be described as “leisure-

ly.” They catch outhwest Avenue leaving the ill and follow it west into aplewood. oon, they’re approaching anchester oad. “ e’re at the big turn ” c wen okes. nlike others’ routes that twist and turn, the foursome has chosen a nearly straight shot west. And they have brought no gear another benefit of choosing a commercial district for their ourney is that they can grab a snack — or a beer — any time they wish. La occa, on the other hand, gives off the vibe of a happy warrior as she e its her house. he takes a moment to queue up a hish album before giving her partner a kiss and ogging east.

Mark Fingerhut continues through the night during the challenge. | DOYLE MURPHY

In about an hour, she has passed the Arch. In less than two, she’s at the c inley Bridge, and she has crossed into Illinois before a.m. he turns onto state oute and begins a relentless march north as tractor trailers grind past on their way to and from riverfront shipping terminals. The night before she had described all this as “Type fun — it’s fun later. It’s not fun while you’re doing it.”

ll riday, runners start trekking across the t. Louis metro. ingerhut’s wife, ara, is acting as race coordinator, tracking the competitors on a centrali ed map and updating a ace-

book event page. As the hours tick by, the cluster of points begins to separate into distinct strands heading out in all directions. ltimately, their distances will be measured as the crow ies for purposes of the challenge. Choose an inefficient route and those miles deviating from a straight line are wasted. After leaving ogtown, ingerhut runs south and makes a big left to cross the ississippi iver on the efferson Barracks Bridge. e’ll have to eat some miles on the dogleg in the final tally, but the payoff lies ust beyond the river’s edge on the Illinois side the levee. A singlelane road atop the at top of the berm offers a virtually traffic-free, relatively straight shot south for as far as a human could ever wish to run in a day’s time. As a bonus, it is by design resistant to the kind of ooding uenke saw on the aty Trail early that morning. ingerhut leaves the bridgerattling tractor trailers behind, climbs through a wire fence and scrambles to the top of the levee. The river laps off to his right, and the rumble of the highway soon drifts away. About p.m., he records a video of himself walking along as the sun sets. The field of competitors swelled to ten during the day, but it quickly thins as evening comes. c wen and her crew reach their ildwood destination after about ten hours and end their adventure. Three more daytrippers are wrapped up by p.m. By then, it’s dark and cooling off fast. nly La occa, ingerhut and another afternoon starter, a strong runner named Adam Arce, are left. In his sunset video, ingerhut had already pulled on a windbreaker. Continued on pg 16

Rosemary LaRocca runs along Illinois Route 3 after crossing the McKinley Bridge. | DOYLE MURPHY

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APRIL 21-27, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

A measuring stick tracks the flood waters along a Mississippi River levee in Illinois. Wildlife far outnumbered cars as Fingerhut journeyed south through the night. | DOYLE MURPHY

ESCAPE

Continued from pg 15

“Feeling alright,” he says. “Enjoying the sunset. Starting to get a little chilly and looking forward to a fun night.”

hortly after 9:30 p.m., there is a surprising development: LaRocca has dropped out. In eleven and a half hours of running, she has covered a total of 50 miles, roughly 42 as the crow ies. But the shoulder of Illinois Route 267 in the dark is not the safest place to be, and it’s time to move on to the second phase of Type 2 fun. That leaves only Fingerhut on the levee and Arce on the Katy Trail to run through the night. The temperature has dropped into the 30s, but Fingerhut seems to be in good spirits. “As long as I’m not feeling injured, I’m going to keep going,” he says. His buddy Kelly tracks him down after 10 p.m. for a supply drop. The stars are out, and a cres-

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To the left are low farm fields and the occasional house. To the right, high water pools midway up the trunks of trees like a swamp. There are more raccoons than cars out here at night. cent moon illuminates the gravel of the levee road with stunning clarity. To the left are low farm fields and the occasional house. To the right, high water pools midway up the trunks of trees like a swamp. There are more raccoons than cars out here at night. Fingerhut has changed into long pants and has swapped his meshback baseball cap for a blue stocking cap. He wears an orange buff around his neck, black gloves and an electric headlamp. He has to pump his legs as he stands to keep the muscles from stiffening. It’s now as much of a mental challenge as a physical one. “Some of the folks started early

APRIL 21-27, 2021

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this morning, and when you’re walking all day and then you have to face walking all night, I think that’s really tough,” he says. He intentionally started in the afternoon so the night would come relatively early in his journey. It seems to have been a good strategy. Still, it’s not going to be easy to continue on through the cold and dark. By the time elly departs shortly before 11 p.m., Fingerhut has been on the road for more than nine hours, meaning he’s barely more than a third of the way through the 24-hour challenge. Sunrise is a long way away. If he runs into trouble, his plan is to call his wife and hunker

down with a foil emergency blanket stashed in his backpack until help arrives. Not that it is all grueling. Walking along under the stars, often without a house, much less a human, in sight is an experience of its own. “It’s very peaceful,” Fingerhut says. “You don’t get a chance to be out here like this, especially living in the city.” The glow of St. Louis is far behind him on the northern horizon. A cousin will meet him in the morning, and he hopes to end his adventure tomorrow afternoon with a beer at a riverfront brewery in Chester, Illinois, some 70plus miles from where he started. But for now, he’s taking it all in. “I guess I would equate this to paddling on the big rivers, like you’re on the Missouri River at night,” Fingerhut says. “There’s nothing like it, because there’s no lights, no civilization, just you. The big race we always do is always during a full moon. So it’s super bright and you’re just out there in the middle of this massive river, Continued on pg 19

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RIVERFRONT TIMES

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ESCAPE

Continued from pg 16

and you can see so much just because of the moon. It’s so peaceful you can hear everything.”

ingerhut makes it through the night but had thought of quitting. He crossed 50 total miles shortly after 3 a.m. after tracking inland from the levee. He had planned a stop at Fort de Chartres near Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, as a landmark along his trip, and by the time he arrived at the 268-year-old former French military post, he was wearing down. “There was actually an outhouse,” he says. “And I went in there to use the bathroom, and it was really warm in there, but it smelled absolutely horrible.” Driven outside by the smell but still in need of a rest, he laid down on a picnic table, covered himself with his foil blanket and fell asleep. When he woke about 30 minutes later, he thought about calling it. He had been on the road for more than fourteen hours, and the back of his right knee was hurting. But he soon found himself back on the road. His cousin Andy Mayer met him at sunrise alongside a two-lane road in Randolph County, Illinois. Mayer has brought Fingerhut a breakfast sandwich, and together they walk below the majestic bluffs that once sheltered nomadic hunting parties stalked the oodplain , years before them. Buoyed by the company and the rising sun, Fingerhut seems reinvigorated and says he is feeling better about his chances of making it all the way to 1:30 p.m. and a beer at St. Nicholas Brewing Company in Chester. As they walk, he tells the story of his night. There were wildlife sightings, including a brief meeting with some sort of small beast he couldn’t quite identify. And of course there was the misadventure of the Fort de Chartres crapper, but what stands out was a more celestial encounter. “All of a sudden, it’s like a street light went on above me,” Fingerhut says. “I was like, ‘What?’ I looked up, and it was a massive meteor that ust ashed super bright. In just like a second it was gone.”

here is a British explorer named Alastair Humphreys, whom Fingerhut admires. Humphreys spent four years cycling around the world, covering 46,000 miles and

five continents. e has also rowed the Atlantic Ocean and has run six marathons in the Sahara. But Fingerhut was drawn in by Humphreys’ concept of the microadventure. The Brit took a year off his international quests and pioneered a series of small excursions that excitement-starved average Joes could accomplish in a weekend or even a night. He encouraged office workers to throw a sleeping bag on a hill, sleep under the stars and heat their morning coffee on a camp stove before hustling back to work. Humphreys recommends jumping in ponds and lakes, trekking circles around your home and marking blue moons on the calendar for nights outside. The idea is that a little imagination is all it takes to have an adventure. “The concept stuck with me,” Fingerhut says. “It was like, ‘Holy shit, that’s brilliant.’” Fingerhut made it to 1:30 p.m., but came up just a few miles short of Chester and the brewery. Sara Fingerhut picked him up, and drove the exhausted adventurer home to St. Louis. In total, he had traveled miles, as the crow ies. On Sunday, he and the others met up at Tower Grove Park to swap war stories of their adventures. Arce, the other runner who stayed out all Friday night, had hustled all the way to Hermann (80-plus miles total, as the crow files ust in time to catch the last Amtrak back home. Others reported harrowing encounters — a mountain lion, gun-wielding rednecks, speeding truckers — while on roads and ooded paths. or most, it was the longest distance they’ve ever traveled on foot and something they’ll talk about for years. “I think what I was thinking all along in planning this thing and inviting friends to do it … what I was hoping for is there would be these kind of stories that actually ended up happening to people, like these crazy experiences that people had that they’d be sitting around and talking about and telling each other,” Fingerhut says on the phone. “That’s exactly what we did on Sunday. We gathered in the park, and it was just everyone talking about how they did, where they went, things they saw — just what they experienced. I just kind of sat and looked around. I was like, ‘That’s awesome. I had a part in that.’” He’s not sure if they’ll do it again, or if it will be just one of those weird things that happened during the pandemic. He’s open to another round, but he says he’ll be the one back at the house tracking all those little points on the map as they forge out into the world. n

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APRIL 21-27, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

CAFE

[REVIEW]

Out of Work St. Louis’ bar and restaurant industry is facing a staffing crisis Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

bbey Tampow thought she was finally about to catch a break. or months, she and the rest of her skeleton crew at the Town Country mainstay the Country Club Bar and rill had been working nonstop, struggling to manage an increase in business while painfully shortstaffed. he’d been desperate to hire someone — anyone — to take the burden off her and her coworkers, who were working si ty hours per week, and she thought she’d finally found that person. The applicant seemed enthusiastic about the opportunity and made it through three different interviews before accepting an offer to come on board. Tampow had training for the newcomer all set up, put her on the schedule and was ready to welcome her to the team one weekday lunch a few weeks back. The woman never showed up. “ ne e tra hand would have meant relief for everyone,” Tampow says. “It might be ust one person, but that’s crucial when we are working . It would have meant someone could go to a doctor appointment or do errands they have been putting off because they can’t catch their breath. e always go through this point in the year where we worry about hiring enough people, and it always works out, but this is different. I’ve never seen anything like this, where the lack of help has affected the entire staff. ight now, we’re ust all trying to get through.” The staffing problems Tampow describes are not unique to the Country Club. Throughout the t. Louis area food and beverage industry and beyond, restaurants and bars are struggling to find help. eaching the level of what many are referring to as a crisis,

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“This business doesn’t provide health care, works you to the bone and is fickle. Why would you stay in that?” says Gin Room owner Natasha Bahrami. | MABEL SUEN the inability to find employees is piling grief upon an industry that has already seen more than its fair share of C I - -induced misery, and it is impacting restaurants’ and bars’ ability to recover from the financial devastation of the past year. ithout anyone to serve an increasingly vaccinated dining public eager to return to eating out as usual, businesses have been forced to turn away customers, cut hours and rethink the very nature of how they serve people. “ eople who haven’t dined out for the past year are coming out now and e pecting things to be the same as they were, but this is a changed industry,” says Natasha Bahrami, owner of the in oom and Caf Natasha’s. “ eople say it’s going to be the oaring Twenties with everyone wanting to come out and en oy themselves, but they’re going to have to be patient because people ust aren’t coming back.” To Bahrami, who runs the outh rand bar and restaurant with her mother, amishe, and husband, ichael ricker, the inability to hire staff is something entirely new. In its years in business,

APRIL 21-27, 2021

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Caf Natasha’s has prided itself on its family work environment with little turnover, retaining its employees, sometimes for decades. Now, however, she is struggling to find people to work, as longtime employees leave the hospitality business for industries perceived as more stable. “ any have left the industry — and rightly so,” Bahrami says. “This business doesn’t provide health care, works you to the bone and is fickle. hy would you stay in that? This has called into question the entire stability of the industry.” Bahrami’s sentiment about the systemic issues in the food and beverage business echo those of other restaurateurs, chefs and hospitality workers who see this phenomenon as a long time coming. or decades in the nited tates, the restaurant industry has been plagued by a host of issues that disincentivi e anyone but the true believers from making a career out of hospitality. Low wages, long hours that include weekends and holidays, a culture hostile to work-life balance, lack of health care or paid time off have been the features of restaurant life. As

with many things, the pandemic did not create these issues it e posed the weaknesses. Though recent years have seen a push toward a more professionali ed industry with a better work-life balance, the change has not been broad enough. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the back of the house. If servers and bartenders are currently difficult to come by, finding kitchen help is ne t to impossible. As oyale and Tick Tock Tavern owner teven it patrick- mith e plains, the current crisis shines a light on the pay disparity between the front-facing staff, who make tips, and those in the back of the house, who earn solely an hourly wage. “ bviously, the back of the house needs to get compensated better,” it patrick- mith says. “That’s been the dirty little secret of the business and has bummed me out on so many levels over the years. I’ve been doing my best to address it and have been doing research, but there is no easy solution. hether it’s a tip share, better compensation, a true minimum wage or better benefits package, we should be compensating our people as best as pos-

sible. I e pect restaurant prices to bump up, because we are long overdue for that.” owever, even generous compensation packages are still failing to attract help. At the at Connolly Tavern, owner oe ovanovich is so desperate to find cooks that he is offering a hiring bonus for those who stick with the team for days. e admits it’s a difficult pill to swallow. ith the financial hardships caused by the loss of revenue his restaurant has endured over the past year, he is struggling to increase compensation, even though, philosophically, he believes it is the right thing to do. owever, he cannot reopen — and in turn, make money again — unless he has the staff to do so. It’s a difficult cycle, and one that he thinks will usher in a much-needed change in the industry. “It’s a fact that kitchen workers have been shockingly underpaid for a long time,” ovanovich says. “It’s systemic, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing for wage e pectations to shift up. It’s fair, and it’s long overdue, but we have to make ends meet. I don’t know if, big picture-wise, that means ta incentives for employers paying a living wage or what. Customers are going to have to understand that if we may have to charge more — but then that makes going out to eat less inclusive and accessible for people. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but this is definitely going to lead some folks to rethink their business model as they think of the long-term, bigger picture.” Cary c owell, e ecutive chef of i, ringo and i ico, has come to a similar conclusion. “It’s a reckoning for sure,” he says. or c owell, a longtime industry veteran, the current staffing crisis is unlike anything he has seen in his decades in the business — and it is utterly terrifying. Coming up as a chef at a time where a ob was seen as more of an apprenticeship, he’s seen the industry shift tremendously even as the notion of pricing and compensation has not. Though he understands that no one wants to see prices increase, he thinks people need to be prepared for the cost of their meals to more accurately re ect the inputs that go into their food, though he believes even that

answer oversimplifies the comple web of issues that have led us to where we are today. If industry professionals have one thing in common — other than their shared understaffing problems — it’s that they do not repeat the narrative that the cause of the current staffing crisis has to do with the additional unemployment compensation available to workers as a result of federal C I economic relief packages. At their height, unemployed workers were paid an additional per week in obless benefits this has since been reduced to . Though some recogni e the incentive presented by the increased unemployment benefits — and are hopeful the crisis will abate once this e tra money goes away — most owners and managers are not laying the blame for the shortage of workers at the feet of federal policy. Instead, they point to broader work-life balance issues, health and safety concerns, and the desire for stability that have pushed prospective employees to different lines of work. Though the e planations for the worker shortage may be numerous and comple , the reason why they are unable to run at full-capacity is simple There’s no one to work. As many owners and managers lament, there is a perception in the dining public that the reason they are open limited hours, have stopped lunch service, or turn away tables has to do with safety concerns — that they are not ready to ump back into full operations because of the threat still posed by C I - . hile the virus is still at the forefront of their minds, they are eager to get back to business as safely as possible. owever, they are not willing to sacrifice the quality of their food and service in the process. In the meantime, they beg for patience, kindness and empathy as they work hard to do the one thing that they all want to do serve people. “ ust being patient and kind is everything right now,” says Bahrami. “If people want this industry to survive, supporting your favorite restaurant in a kind way is the best way to do that. ust be patient and know that we are doing our best — and cherish what’s here now, or else it might not be here anymore.” n

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APRIL 21-27, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

O FR

NT TIMES PRE SE NT S

SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 2021 • CHASE PARK PLAZA 11:30 AM-2:00 PM RFT’S UNITED WE BRUNCH RETURNS FOR THE 6TH YEAR!!

There’s no better way to chase away a hangover than brunch with friends. And Riverfront Times is once again bringing together the best restaurants in town with one mission: unite to cure St. Louis’ hangover. In its 6th year, United We Brunch will be more than just bottomless Bloody Marys and Mimosas — enjoy screwdrivers, bellinis, Irish coffee, beer and more! Plus, all the best brunch hot spots in the St. Louis area under one roof.

EVERYONE IS VIP IN 2021!

VIP Gift Bag with Commemorative Glass • Brunch Tastings from more than 20 brunch hot spots Bottomless Bloody Marys, Mimosas, Bellinis, Screwdrivers, beer and Irish Coffee

Covid-Protocols: capacity will be significantly reduced, masks required when not consuming beverages/food, social distancing decals, tables spaced apart, individual hand sanitizer provided, and plexiglass between the restaurants and guests.

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SHORT ORDERS

[SIDE DISH]

Busy as a Bee Mike Chadwick’s passion for breakfast food fuels Honey Bee’s Biscuits + Good Eats Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

ike Shadwick never thought he could make a career out of the food business, so he never tried. Though cooking was his passion, he instead pursued a career in sales, where he worked for ten-plus years before leaving his job to explore computer science. Unemployed for about a year and a half, he was considering his next move when a conversation with his wife would change his course. “My wife and I were just talking one day when she told me, ‘Why don’t you just take the next job you are offered in food?’” Shadwick says. “We knew people in restaurants, so she told me I should just hit them up and work in the kitchen. She told me it didn’t matter wherever that was — that I should just start somewhere. The next day, my sister, who worked at Imo’s in the Central West End, told me they were hiring delivery drivers. Here I was, going from executive to an Imo’s driver, but I figured, why not?” Looking back at his road to Honey Bee’s Biscuits + Good Eats (www.honeybeesbg.com), the food truck he owns with his wife, Meredith, Shadwick realizes it was only a matter of time before he landed in the food business. For as long as he can remember, cooking has been a part of his life, dating back to one of his earliest memories of making breakfast for his mom. Of course, as a three-year-old, what he considered breakfast wasn’t exactly edible. “I snuck down to the kitchen one morning, cracked eggs into a bowl and scraped a spoonful of margarine into it and thought I had made her eggs,” Shadwick

Mike Shadwick found the courage to follow his food dreams with Honey Bee’s Biscuits + Good Eats. | ANDY PAULISSEN laughs. “For me, it’s always been about breakfast food.” Even though he always dreamed of what it would be like to cook professionally, he didn’t think he could make it in the business. It wasn’t until that first shift at Imo’s that he saw he could actually thrive in the industry. There, he hustled and earned a reputation as a valuable employee, and he moved up the ranks, gaining the respect of Nick Imo, who worked alongside him in the restaurant. Early last year, a friend who was a server at Winslow’s Table passed on his information to owners Michael and Tara Gallina, who were looking for kitchen help. Though he’d never cooked on a line, Shadwick went into the interview with a good attitude and a willingness to learn. Impressed, the Gallinas brought him on for his first shift on February 27, 2020. In less than a month, the restaurant was closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Though Shadwick’s experience with Winslow’s Table was brief, it was formative and gave him the confidence to see himself as a restaurant professional. He went back to Imo’s with the intention of getting into management, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he wanted to do something else. In

talking to his wife, it became clear that he was meant to do breakfast food, especially biscuits, and that it was time for him to finally follow his dreams. Together, the Shadwicks launched Honey Bee’s at the Kirkwood Farmers’ Market last June, not knowing what to expect. After selling about 200 biscuits in their first outing, they reali ed they were onto something and quickly started thinking through how they could expand their idea beyond the market stall. Within three weeks of their inaugural outing, they had purchased a food truck and started working on expanding their vision. The Honey Bee’s truck launched this February, and Shadwick continues to be thrilled with the response. The brand continues to have a loyal following at the Kirkwood Farmers’ Market, where it parks on Saturdays and Sundays, and they have also started doing private and corporate events. All the while, Shadwick continues to push himself, spending his free time researching new techniques and recipes and developing his skills — and though he’s as busy as he ever was, he wouldn’t have it any other way. “I feel like I landed where I was meant to be,” Shadwick says. “We had this crazy catering gig a few

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weeks ago where we did food for three separate shifts of employees at this business and logged 24 hours in two days. Even the next day, I was able to wake right up and hop into the kitchen, ready to go. It’s just so much fun, and this has been incredibly rewarding. We’re fortunate.” Shadwick took a moment away from the biscuits to share his thoughts on the St. Louis food and beverage community, the joys of waking up early and another special project he and his wife have cooking at the Kirkwood Farmers’ Market. What is one thing not many people know about you? I’m really creative and come up with many of our rhymes and names for our various menu items. I always enjoyed going places that had different themed specials and fun names and had more of a creative approach to their menu. I try to make our food more fun by using my creativity to give customers that same experience. What daily ritual is non-negotiable for you? Waking up early. I love to wake up before the sun rises because I feel like I have privacy to focus on in-

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Continued on pg 24

RIVERFRONT TIMES

[ FA R M S ]

[MIMOSAS]

Happy Returns

United We Brunch Is Back

Tower Grove Farmers’ Market resumes operation with a welcome new normal

Written by

RFT STAFF

Written by

CHERYL BAEHR The 2021 Tower Grove Farmers’ Market season is now in full swing. | DOYLE MURPHY

f there’s any evidence more obvious than your itching eyes and throat that spring has sprung, it’s the return of the Tower Grove Farmers’ Market (tgfarmersmarket.com). The weekend of April 10 saw the kickoff of the beloved market, which will run every Saturday in Tower Grove Park from 8 a.m until 12:30 p.m. through November 6. This year marks not only the sixteenth season of the market, it also represents a return to normal — albeit a new one — for the event. After a delayed start and significant adjustments in logistics last season due to COVID-19, Tower Grove Farmers’ Market is ready to return in earnest, having spent the second half of last season nailing down health protocols that make for a safe experience for both vendors and guests. “This feels very springlike,” says Dee

MIKE SHADWICK Continued from pg 23

dividual tasks that require more depth of concentration. I’m usually awake by 3:30 or 4 a.m. If you could have any superpower, what would it be? To be able to control time. What is the most positive thing in food, wine or cocktails that you’ve noticed in St. Louis over the past year? The St. Louis food community has been really welcoming and supportive. St. Louis has a very competitive food scene, and it’s an honor to see our customers and supporters continue to show up for us. Who is your St. Louis food crush? There are so many, but a few of my favorites are Mac’s Local Eats, Balkan Treat Box, Sando Shack, Beffa’s and Imo’s. Who’s the one person to watch right now in the St. Louis dining scene? Tropical Moose Shaved Ice. My wife and I just bought this awesome Kirkwood staple, and we’re going to make some fun additions to their current menu. Which ingredient is most representative of your personality?

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Ryan, director of operations for the market. “There is this sort of resurrection or rejuvenation with all of the farmers coming back. It’s really lovely.” According to Ryan, she and the team have spent the past year figuring out how to safely conduct the markets, and they feel comfortable that they have nailed it down. Tents will be spaced two to three feet apart, guests are required to wear masks and social distance, vendors will only accept credit and debit (with only a few outliers), and the markets will take up additional space in the park, which will allow for people to be more spread apart. The extra space is welcome, not only because of COVID-19 protocols, but because this will be the biggest market season to date. A total of 150 vendors have

Thyme is my favorite herb and avor. It represents my personality well because it works well with so many different dishes and avor profiles. If you weren’t working in the restaurant business, what would you be doing? I found the restaurant industry doing what I love to do, which is cooking. So if this doesn’t work out, maybe I would make a job out of something else I love to do like video games or playing with my dog. If i hadn’t found this industry, I’d probably still be in sales. Name an ingredient never allowed in your restaurant. 2 percent milk. What is your after work hangout? Home with our dogs. And if I’m not cooking food, I’m eating it. We love to check out new local spots. What’s your food or beverage guilty pleasure? efinitely s’mores, or reos with peanut butter. What would be your last meal on earth? Pizza from Imo’s (chicken, bacon, jalapeno, extra cheese, light sauce, sweet and tangy as the sauce, well done), a Mac’s cheeseburger and French fries, and a s’more for dessert. n

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signed up to participate this year. Though Ryan admits there may be some no-shows due to potential inclement weather, she was expecting a great turnout. In addition to making the events safe for everyone involved, the Tower Grove Farmers’ Market team is especially focused on making the markets more inclusive. As Ryan explains, she and her colleagues are committed to supporting more BIPOC vendors as part of the market’s overall mission. “The first few years, it was a bunch of old, white farmers,” Ryan says. “We want it to look different. We need it to look different. That’s what we believe in and what we are pushing for.” The bullish outlook on this season’s Tower Grove Farmers’ Market is welcome after the difficult last year many of the vendors experienced. Though the market opened in May of last year, turnout was very low, which forced the team to get creative to support the vendors. “We started the delivery boxes last year when Pat [Patrick Horine, the market cofounder] realized that we needed to do something because people were not comfortable coming out,” Ryan says. “These farmers live and die on Tower Grove Farmers’ Market, so if only 30 to 50 percent of the normal patronage was coming through, they would really fall apart.” The market delivery boxes, inspired by the uptick in grocery delivery platforms like Instacart, did more than provide a lifeline to farmers; it allowed them to thrive. Thanks to a partnership between the market and local delivery service Eat Here St. Louis, Tower Grove Farmers’ Market was able to bring the market experience to people in their homes — something so successful, they plan to keep it going. For those who are comfortable enjoying the market experience in person, Ryan says to expect the feel to be like a marriage of last summer and markets past. In addition to the vendors, food trucks will be located on the other side of Center Cross Drive and a row of adult beverage offerings, dubbed “Booze Alley,” will add to the festive — and, Ryan stresses, safe — vibes. “This is such a community event,” says Ryan. “The fact that our community comes with masks on, practicing social distancing and respecting everyone is really magical.” n

ave you missed brunch? Yeah, us too. Thankfully, the Riverfront Times’ United We Brunch is coming back, retooled with an all-star list of more than twenty of St. Louis’ favorite bars and restaurants, including Bogart’s Smokehouse, the Banh Mi Shop, Taco Circus and Yolklore. And while it wouldn’t be brunch without bottomless bloody marys and mimosas, there will also be Irish coffee, bellinis, screwdrivers and craft beer on offer. To celebrate United We Brunch’s sixth year, all those attending will enjoy VIP status, including a gift bag and commemorative glass. Hosted in the Central West End’s historic Chase Park Plaza Hotel (212 Kingshighway Boulevard, 314-633-3000), the party runs from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. this Saturday, April 24. COVID-19 safety protocols will be in place with attendance capped at 20 percent of capacity, masks (we’ve got them if you need them) required unless eating or drinking, temperature checks, socially distanced tables and plexiglass shields separating vendors. Tickets are $50 with a portion of the proceeds going to benefit Stray Rescue. You can buy tickets and learn more at rftbrunch.com. n

How can you not smile while brunching? | THEO WELLING

Gather, a neighborhood cafe, opens this May in McKinley Heights. | BREA YOIUNGBLOOD

[SLIDES]

Play With Your Food Urban Fort play cafe expands to include Gather, focused on food and coffee Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

f the COVID-19 pandemic made one thing crystal clear for Urban Fort (1854 Russell Boulevard, 314-3764235) co-owners Monica Croke and Megan King-Popp, it was that the overwhelming majority of their business came from the customers who patronized their play area. Even though they prided themselves in serving excellent coffee, tea pastries and sandwiches, they had a hard time getting people to see them as anything but a family play place that happened to have some food and drinks. That’s about to change with the launch of their new cafe, Gather, which will open adjacent to Urban Fort on May 6. The new spot is meant to both service Urban Fort’s play area and be a standalone spot for people who are simply interested in grabbing a cup of coffee and something to eat — something King-Popp feels was difficult previously. “The majority of people who would pass by thought we were a daycare and didn’t know we were also a cafe,” King-Popp says. “For those who did come in, the atmosphere wasn’t conducive for people who don’t understand five-year-olds. People tried to support us at first, but it just wasn’t for them.” To create Gather, Croke and King-Popp built a soundproof wall that now divides the building into two distinct spaces. Urban Fort remains on one side of the wall, with Gather taking up the other. Guests of the play cafe can order from Gather, while those who are not interested in be-

ing on the play side will get a coffee-shop experience, sans kids. As King-Popp explains, the idea to create a distinct coffee-shop concept occurred not long after Urban Fort opened in 2017. Though she and Croke envisioned the place as serving both those with and without kids, it became quickly apparent that, being the only play cafe at the time in St. Louis, the kid-friendly space was the major draw. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she and Croke watched as other restaurants and coffee shops were able to turn to carry-out to sustain their business. Because they were not associated with their food and beverage operation, they were unable to make a go at that transition — so they decided to make a change. “We pooled our resources and decided to make the cafe something new,” King-Popp says. “People didn’t know that we had food, so we really had to rethink things. We decided that we were just going to view 2020 as the year we changed our business model.” Though the change is significant, King-Popp also insists that much of the essential character of their business remains the same. For those who patronized Urban Fort for its play cafe, the vibe should feel consistent with what they’ve become used to. There will just be a more efficient use of space. King-Popp is confident that, once people know about what Gather has to offer, it will become a community spot for everyone. She remains confident in the quality of their products — coffee from the Living Room, espresso from Blueprint, tea from Big Heart Tea Company, homemade pastries and lunch items — and feels excited that the food and beverage side of the business will be more visible. “We see ourselves as approachable,” King-Popp says. “Our brand, as well as our food, is welcoming to everyone, whether you are a family who’s been coming in or a new customer. We’re so excited about this opportunity and have gotten nothing but positive energy from the neighborhood.” n

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APRIL 21-27, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

APRIL 21-27, 2021

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REEFERFRONT TIMES Smoking Root 66’s Weed BY THOMAS CHIMCHARDS

hat makes a man qualified to smoke weed in an authoritative manner? It’s a question that has been rattling around in my brain for a few weeks now as I’ve prepared to write this column, the debut piece of cannabis criticism for the Riverfront Times. A feeling of imposter syndrome set in almost immediately upon accepting this gig, as I wondered hat in the world makes me a person whose stoned ramblings should be printed and disseminated to the masses? And ust who the hell do I think I am, anyway? alcolm ladwell might suggest , hours of practice, and if that’s applicable here, then I’m in the clear. But alcolm ladwell is also an uptight nerd who has probably never even done a knife hit off of a hot stove, so I’m not quite sure he’s the man I should look to for guidance on this matter. o what are my qualifications? ell for one, I did, like, a lot of knife hits in my wild youth. Completely ruined several butter knives, in fact. A downright menace to kitchenware, you could say. But outside of that? I really don’t know. I suppose I’m mostly well suited for this ob simply because of my newfound ability to charm editors into paying me to smoke weed. hich brings me to Root 66’s ogtown location 6660 Manchester Avenue, 314-282-7978) on a recent sunny afternoon. Tucked in a strip-mall parking lot off of Manchester Avenue in a building that was formerly a Taco Bell sits the dispensary that provided me with my first home-state legal weed shopping e perience. pon arrival, I stepped into a lobby akin to an airlock, with the doors to the dispensary oor on the left and a window where a staff member is stationed straight ahead. ere, I handed over my I and medical card and was given

The most expensive root beer float you’ve ever even considered making. | THOMAS CHIMCHARDS a sheet of paper with the words “ oot old armless Agreement” across the top — basically a document with a series of bo es to check proving you’ve agreed not to bring any weapons inside or run any recording devices or anything like that. ith my paperwork in order, my myriad recording devices at the ready and all my weapons set to “kill,” I was bu ed into the sales oor. There, I found a brightly lit space with cream-colored walls and dark green trim. A handful of glass cases arranged throughout the room displayed the shop’s wares, and a friendly employee with tattoos on his arms and an enamel isfits pin on his lanyard — one depicting the Crimson host wearing an Infinity auntlet, interestingly — promptly approached and asked how he could help. At the time of my visit, oot had four varieties of ower in stock iesel Train, an ernando alley , orilla ie and ansas City ush. As is the case with many dispensaries, oot also has an online menu that I’d looked at in advance of my visit, so I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted, but I still took the time to chat up my budtender about the strains on hand and found him to be quite helpful and knowledgeable and persuasive, even, as he successfully upsold me a gram of

a strain I’d not initially intended to purchase . I opted for an eighth of iesel Train . after a discount due to a sale and one gram of ansas City ush . . The store also stocks pre-rolls and edibles, and had ust received a supply of vape cartridges on the day of my visit. Looking over the rest of the selection, I opted to grab a eef Brands Bubba ush oot Beer . , because I have never had a soda that costs more than before and that shit seems wild. After ta es — . in issouri sales ta , . in t. Louis sales ta , . in cannabis sales ta — my total came to . . I left the store eager to sample my new wares. I started with the iesel Train. rown by Illicit ardens, a ansas City-area supplier, the sativa strain is a cross between host Train a e and ast Coast our iesel, whose T C content is rated at . percent. It came in a branded glass ar upon opening it I was greeted with a bright smell that was both citrusy and gas-like there’s a reason for the “ iesel” in the name . The buds are darker green with some nottoo-prominent orange hairs and what looks like a delicious sugarcoating of trichomes, and when breaking them up I found them to be dense but uffy, and a little sticky. n inhale, the smoke has a bit of that diesel avor, bright

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but not particularly rich, and ust a little cough inducing. I felt my eyelids get heavy right away, and soon I found myself to be equal parts talkative and forgetful — it’s the type of weed that will find you suddenly and completely unaware what story you were ust e citedly telling seconds ago, but not too concerned about remembering. The following day, I tried the ansas City ush, also grown by Illicit ardens. A . percent T C indica strain that my budtender told me was in high demand at present there’s that successful upsell , this strain’s buds are a more pale green, with darker green spots and orange hairs, and positively glistening with trichomes note it is possible that my long history with black-market cannabis is in uencing my wonderment at the sparkliness of these strains, since most of the street shit I’ve purchased could not compare in this regard to what I’ve seen so far from the dispensaries . These buds are uffier than the iesel Train, but since I only purchased a gram they came packed in a plastic pouch, and they were a little compressed by the time I dove in. A deep grassy, lightly fruity smell came out of the pouch when I opened it, and there was a dark, almost coffee-like aroma as I broke up the buds. This strain has a pretty mellow taste — I couldn’t really detect much on inhale, but upon e hale there was a light, fruity earthiness to it. y qualifying medical condition happens to be chronic pain, and this strain wiped that out pretty effectively. It also works phenomenally well as an appetite stimulant, as evidenced by the half bag of alape o chips I gleefully dipped in a tub of vanilla ice cream and consumed on my couch. peaking of ice cream, we have to talk about that Bubba ush oot Beer. Bottled by Colorado cannabis-infused beverage company eef Brands and loaded with milligrams of T C, the root beer is ust one of multiple classic soda avors on offer at oot and many other local dispensaries. I opted for this avor for one simple reason I wanted a root beer oat. A tall glass, three scoops of vanilla and one straw later, I was engaged in one of life’s simpler but more enduring

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RIVERFRONT TIMES

The Life-Altering Afterlife of Missouri’s Harshest Drug Law Written by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

ast week’s debut of the Riverfront Times’ dedicated cannabis section reintroduced readers to the case of Jeff Mizanskey, a small-time Sedalia pot dealer sentenced to life in prison in 1994. Although Mizanskey was ultimately freed in 2015 amid public outcry and a governor’s commutation, the law that empowered prosecutors to put a man in prison for life because of non-violent drug charges lived on — and on and on and on. That persistence is apparent in the data obtained in 2020 by the RFT showing more than 200 drug offenders still serving decade-plus sentences without the possibility for early release or parole. Their sentences and parole restrictions rival the range of punishments usually meted out to convicted murderers and rapists — an imbalance that Missouri lawmakers recognized when they voted to repeal the so-called “Prior and Persistent Drug Offender” statute in 2017. Missouri law, however, isn’t so easily fixed. For one thing, the repeal was not retroactive, leaving behind all the drug offenders it had already trapped in prison. But further analysis shows Missouri courts didn’t abandon the statute even after its supposed repeal: Instead, records obtained from the Missouri Department of Corrections list 33 cases after 2017 where drug offenders were sentenced under the pre-2017 law, which mandated a ten-year minimum sentence and no parole for defendants with two prior drug convictions. One such case is that of Berry Livingston. Already on probation from a previous drug possession case, Livingston was arrested in 2013 and charged with drug trafficking in Warren County. Livingston, a St. Louis native, was hardly

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Continued from pg 27

pleasures — and, importantly, the ice cream/root beer combo did a pretty great job of masking the familiar earthy avor of the cannabis, which was only really noticeable as an aftertaste. Man, let me tell you: This stuff knocked me on my ass. A couple hours after consuming it my limbs began to feel like anchors weighing the rest of my body down, my eyes were heavy, and my chronic pain was just a light whisper rather than a mu ed

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Berry Livingston was one of those who were slammed by an old law. | COURTESY BERRY LIVINGSTON a serious dealer — he tells the RFT that before his arrest for a small amount of methamphetamine, his previous two strikes were for “residue” and a Valium pill police found in his car — but he’d spend the next three years in jail waiting for his case to move through the court system. That wouldn’t happen until April 2017. At trial, a jury found him guilty on the new drug charge, but by then, he was on the other side of the repeal that had finally replaced the “prior and persistent” designation after years of work by drug law reformers and lawmakers. Livingston believed his case came with a chance at parole, and he had good reason to: The charging documents showed he’d been charged under the post-2017 sentencing laws. He’d also faced a parole board. “I wasn’t in prison very long, maybe a month-and-a-half, and I got a response from [probation and parole] that I would be released in a year,” he recalls now. “I was grateful. My dad was dying of brain cancer; my mom’s health wasn’t much better. I called them and told them I had a parole day, that I had credit for time served, and I’d be coming home.”

scream. As time wore on in newly impossible-to-quantify increments, I even felt some an iety creep in — which is not normally an issue for me and mostly serves as an indication that I’ve gotten myself pretty outrageously high. I opted to lay down on my couch to try to rela a little, and I swear I was out cold for the night within two minutes. Handle these things with care — they pack a wallop. In all, it’s fair to say I am ecstatic with my first issouri medical dispensary e perience. The staff at Root 66 is helpful and friendly, the products are potent

APRIL 21-27, 2021

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In October 2017, six months after his sentencing, Livingston finally received an official letter clarifying his parole eligibility. The info devastating. His earliest release date wasn’t a few months or a year away; it was December 8, 2025. “You don’t know how hard it was to tell my parents I wasn’t coming home,” he says. “Mom was depending on that, and I couldn’t be there for them when I should have.” Livingston tried to appeal the parole decision, arguing that his case should be judged under the post-2017 sentencing rules. But his arrest had taken place in 2013, when the old rules were in effect — and as many drug offenders have discovered, the 2017 repeal was not retroactive to old cases. Livingston would spend the next several years mounting legal appeals, and he would become just one of three known “prior and persistent” offenders to successfully argue their way to parole eligibility and eventual release in 2018. Livingston and the others had argued that allowing drug offenders the opportunity to face a parole board didn’t change anything about their original sentences

and the purchasing process is hassle-free. It’s easy to imagine that a first-timer with no prior cannabis e perience could step into the doors of this place and be carefully guided through the different options on hand to find the product that best serves their needs — no prior qualifications or e perience with knife hits necessary. Thomas K. Chimchards is RFT’s resident cannabis correspondent and root beer float enthusiast. Email him tips at tommy.chim@riverfronttimes.com and follow him on Twitter at @TOMMYCHIMS.

— it only meant that they could now serve their sentences through supervised release, not in a prison cell. In the spring of 2020, the Missouri Supreme Court took up the argument but disagreed with the drug offenders. Parole, the court ruled, was an essential part of an inmate’s sentence and could not be tinkered with retroactively if the law was later changed. It was another devastating blow. However, before Livingston could be sent back to prison, Governor Mike Parson stepped in, commuting Livingston’s sentence to a form of modified house arrest. It meant Livingston stayed free. But he had already lost so much. His father and mother had died while he was in prison. Even today, his grief is mixed with anger at the system that “pulled the rug out from under me.” “It was a shame,” he adds. “I still get so mad when I think about it.” Livingston’s anguish isn’t unique. Since 2013, the RFT has interviewed and featured multiple drug offenders who experienced similar whiplash as they were informed, sometimes months after their trials and sentencings, that they were not eligible for parole. Aside from Livingston, the RFT uncovered dozens of drug cases where the original arrests took place prior to 2017. In some instances, the slow pace of the legal system meant the defendants didn’t face sentencing until years after the fact, at a time when newly arrested drug offenders — and even prior offenders — could rely on being parole eligible after serving a percentage of their total sentence. Not so for the pre-2017 crowd. Instead, many of these cases involve people who had been arrested while they were already on probation for previous drug crimes. Even if a new crime didn’t involve drugs, the arrest would trigger the full sentence of the previous drug cases — and, according to Missouri law, the sentence must be determined by the law as it exists at the time of the offense. But time isn’t a resource these drug offenders have to spend. Now 61 years old, Livingston is trying to rebuild his life as a retiree. He says he’s living off disability payments related to an old back injury, though he chafes at the restrictions of the “modified” house arrest that requires he wear an ankle monitor and maintain a curfew. Of course, Livingston also recognizes how lucky he is, as hundreds of offenders convicted before 2017 remain in prison without hope for parole or a chance to demonstrate their rehabilitation. That is starting to change, but slowly: To date, Parson’s administration has paroled eight “prior and persistent” drug offenders. Livingston’s case is the only one whose conviction took place after 2017. “I pray to God that they keep happening,” he says of the governor’s commutations. “There’s a lot of people in prison shoved in that hole. They really don’t deserve that much time.” n

CULTURE

[SPRINGTIME JAMS]

For the Smiles Meet the Electric Toothbrush Sisters, St. Louis’ favorite new father-daughter band Written by

JENN DEROSE

he Electric Toothbrush Sisters are everywhere. In the last twelve months, the local father-daughter duo played Stay At Home Fest, St. Louis Public Radio’s House Show, an I Watched Music On the Internet set and an Anti-Fascist Concert Series put on by Patrick Haggerdy, of Lavender Country fame. They’ve released a full-length and a self-titled tape and recently dropped the track “Ring-a-DingDing (Spring Song),” which this author feels is the best song ever written about springtime. Partway through a practice session (the pair were rehearsing a rousing rendition of the Ramones’ “Beat on the Brat”), front-person and eight-year-old child Nina Von Trone Zengerling joined her dad and bandmate, Nick Zengerling (of Bug Chaser, Catholic Guilt and Maximum Effort, to name a few of his dozen-plus projects), and her mother, Sarah Trone, for an interview in their front yard. Electric Toothbrush Sisters started because of the pandemic. As Nick explains, “Kids had to stay home, so we started doing a daily music hour as part of our day. Math, science, reading, music and poetry. Nina started reading poetry and practicing writing.” “And onomatopoeias were one of my poetry assignments,” Nina chimes in. “It was pretty hard.” Onomatopoeias, she explains, are words that sound like what things do: “Birds chirp, chickens bawk.” (It’s worth noting that Nina’s own chicken and close friend Bianca is strutting around their yard for the duration of this interview.) Nick set about putting Nina’s poem to music, and with that, the Electric

Nick Zengerling and his daughter, Nina Von Trone Zengerling, joined by her good friend Bianca the chicken. | JENN DEROSE Toothbrush isters’ first official song — the aptly named “Onomatopoeia Song” — was born. On the mechanics of songwriting, Nina explains that it’s mostly “rhyming things with other things. Like, in the spring song [“Ring-a-Ding-Ding”] — the grass is green, owers are blooming, and you can go outside and take nice walks. o you ust find stuff to rhyme with that!” Other Electric Toothbrush Sisters lyrics are formed from Nina’s life experiences. The song “Dumpster Fire,” for example, came out of a traumatic event many St. Louisans can relate to. “Nina was haunted by this dumpster fire she saw in her friend’s alley,” Nick says. “I couldn’t sleep,” Nina interjects. “All I saw when I closed my eyes was fire.” “So I said that writing a song about her fear might help her get over it,” Nick says. “So she rode her bike in little circles in an empty parking lot, telling me all the things that she remembered from seeing the dumpster fire.” The songwriting tactic worked, and Nina overcame her fear. “Sad Parks” also came from

Nina’s life, when parks and playgrounds suddenly became off-limits to children everywhere. “I was in the car and saw a playground [wrapped in caution tape] and said, ‘This park looks like it’s so sad!’” she explains. “Do you know what you did there?” Nina’s mom, Sarah, asks. “ ersonification ” arah ticks off the other types of figurative language with all the authority of a parent who has guided her child through at-home learning over the last year — “personification, similes, metaphors, idioms and hyperbole.” Nina shrugs. Of course, as any musician writing from experience can tell you, the practice can be tricky when it comes to personal relationships. When asked if Nick was really a “Mean Mean Poppa,” as one December track would imply, Nina laughs, “No!” “Oh, [Nick] is a real enforcer, he really lays down the law around here,” Sarah jokes. “Actually,” Nina giggles, “you’re both bad guys. I’m the good guy.” It’s natural that being in a family band would come with arguments, and even disagreements about who the bad guys are, but

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in this case, the pair are remarkably good at compromise, and use creative differences to make songs better. “We tell each other what should be different, then we agree about what would make it better,” Nina says. “Really, [Nick] is teaching Nina to be disciplined and to work for the things she cares about. They practice and practice,” Sarah says. “Sometimes practice is hard,” Nick says. “Nina likes to move,” Sarah says, explaining that sitting still can be tough for her daughter sometimes. Indeed, Nina loves to dance. Her favorite dance music includes songs by Taylor Swift, ABBA, Katy Perry and Jojo Siwa. Her personal style matches the polished, candy-coated music she prefers — at our interview, she sports a side ponytail in a babyblue scrunchie and a eece pullover with a sparkly, rainbow-colored unicorn on the chest, worn over red plaid leggings. When asked about her fashion choices, she replies, “Mom helps me, but I usually help myself. I like my clothes to pop! Pop means color. I don’t like not-color. Black

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RIVERFRONT TIMES

City Museum landed at No. 2 on a list of the best children’s museums — but it is the first time it’s been honored in more than one category. According to a press release, staff and crew were ecstatic to learn they’d been honored by the national publication. “We’re thrilled to be in the running for two different categories. It was a surprise,” General Manager Rick Erwin says. “Between

this and the increase in attendance we’ve seen over spring break, things almost feel normal.” That increased attendance, especially, is welcome news. City Museum had a particularly rough 2020, with COVID-19 safety precautions forcing the institution to dramatically change its operations. Shutdowns kept the doors closed for months at the beginning of the pandemic, and even when it was able to reopen it had

to do so with a reduced capacity — and reduced revenue. Additionally, the lack of travel as a result of the virus kept tourists from stopping in. At one point last year, a message on City Museum’s website noted that in normal times more than 70 percent of the business’ income comes from tourism to the city of St. Louis — but since tourism was down dramatically due to the pandemic, management had to drastically cut hours of operation in order to save money, opening for a while only on the weekends. But between the decreasing case numbers, increasing revenue and, now, national attention, it would seem the beloved local institution is finally turning a corner. “We wouldn’t have survived the pandemic if it weren’t for locals coming back out to support us,” Erwin says. “People who hadn’t visited in years were buying memberships just to help us keep the doors open. Now we see folks asking their friends to vote for us, unprovoked. We notice. It means a lot.” USA Today readers are encouraged to vote for their favorites in each category up to once per day. The Best Children’s Museum winner will be announced on May 7, and the Best Immersive Art Experience winner will be announced on May 21. For once, we’re not looking at a “lesser of two evils” voting situation — there are few institutions in the world so deserving of such high praise. Now get on over to 10best.com/awards/travel and make sure City Museum gets the accolades it so rightly deserves. n

da messed up and kinda forgot a solo,” Nina says, grinning. “I absentmindedly cut it off,” Nick laughs. “And then she looked at me and goes, ‘That’s ten bucks off your pay!’” “That show was like being inside a disco ball,” Sarah says. “It’s like a secret world inside a nondescript warehouse.” “I wish I could live there!” Nina exclaims. Being that she’s aesthetically drawn to glitter, sparkly rocks and other bright things, it’s no surprise that the light display was the main reason Nina agreed to play the show. “We only play things if Nina says yes,” Nick says. “With school in session, it’s a lot. It’s hard. It’s really up to her. I ask her and she decides what shows we play.” “I hope we don’t go on tour,” Nina says. “Well, unless we have a jacuzzi in the back of the truck.”

“What about a bounce house?” Nick asks. “OK, a bounce house with a jacuzzi!” Nina replies. On raising musically minded children, Nick offers some advice for other parents: “If your kids seem to like music, find out how you can support that. Listen to tons of music — we listen to so much music in our house. And go buy a cheap keyboard. There are so many cheap or free instruments all over, if you look.” “Or if you can’t afford an instrument, you can make one with your mouth or with your body,” Nina adds. “You could clap or snap.” “Or you can whistle!” Nick says. “How’s your whistling coming along?” Nina replies with a determined but unsuccessful airy attempt. “So not too well, huh,” he laughs. “Well, you can turn anything into a drum. The whole

world is a drum!” Nina demonstrates by banging on a few pots on their front porch. “She just happens to live in a house with a ton of music and instruments,” Nick says. “But it’s nothing you want to force on a child, like making your kid take piano lessons.” When asked if she wants readers to know anything we haven’t already discussed, Nina offers some wisdom: “Save the bees! row owers, walk instead of driving and eat organic food! Bees help make most of our food — they help the world have color! We would die without them and the world would look like lava!” “Maybe we should write a doomsday song,” Nick muses. ou can find the lectric Toothbrush Sisters’ music on Bandcamp at theelectrictoothbrushsisters. bandcamp.com. n

[ACCOLADES]

Weird, Wild and WellDeserving St. Louis’ City Museum lands on multiple USA Today top ten lists Written by

DANIEL HILL

ere in St. Louis, we already know that City Museum (750 North Sixteenth Street, 314-231-2489) is one of the best places on the planet. A dizzyingly ambitious tribute to the fine arts of surrealist sculpture and hitting your head on things, the former shoe factory is a beloved playground for metroarea adults and children alike. And word is getting out. So much so, in fact, that USA Today has placed the whimsical wonderland in not one but two categories of its “10Best” reader’s choice poll this year. City Museum is in the running for both Best Children’s Museum and Best Immersive Art Experience — at present it is at No. 10 in the former category and No. 3 in the latter. It’s not the first time the storied space has been recognized by USA Today — in 2020,

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clothes: bleaugh!” She makes a sour face. While nearly all of Nina’s performances have been livestreamed from her family’s sitting room, she felt plenty comfortable performing on a professional soundstage for Electric Toothbrush Sisters’ bonkers set during the Sinkhole-sponsored I Saw Music On the Internet series. “It’s kinda scary going to a different place,” she explains. “It feels weird to play songs in front of strangers, but I’m fine with it.” “We had to wear ear monitors, and there were so many cameras!” Nick says. “I was more nervous than she was.” “Yeah, Dad doesn’t really know how to play keyboard, so he kin-

RIVERFRONT TIMES

St. Louis’ favorite art-installation-turned-surrealist-jungle-gym is rightly getting national recognition. | VIA FLICKR/PAUL SABLEMAN

APRIL 21-27, 2021

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Left Bank Books owners Jarek Steele and Kris Kleindienst. | THEO WELLING

[BOOKWORMS]

Left Bank Books Reopens to the Public Written by

JAIME LEES

t. Louis readers who also love the warm cocoon of a bookstore will be thrilled to find out that Left Bank Books (399 North Euclid Avenue, 314367-6731) is reopening its shop to the public. After closing its doors and moving business to online and curbside at the start of the pandemic, Left Bank Books is now back to serving customers inside

its location in the Central West End. With an announcement made on Facebook, the favorite local shop let customers know that the doors are now open, but that it should be considered a soft opening until the grand reopening this Saturday, April 24, which is Independent Bookstore Day. And though the store is open for browsing again, local customers may still use the curbside service, and far-flung fans may still order online and have their books shipped to them. It is at least partially through the support of longtime customers and fans of independent bookshops that Left Bank managed to stay open during the pandemic, and there’s no reason for that support to end now. Shopping local saves local businesses and helps our city keep its history and character. Keep it up, St. Louis. n

[ F E S T I VA L S ]

Tower Grove Pride Pushed to September Written by

JAIME LEES

he Tower Grove Pride festival has always been among the best local celebrations of the St. Louis LGBTQ community. Once each year, Tower Grove Park (4257 Northeast Drive) turns into one big party for Tower Grove Pride, with a mix of food, games, activities, activism and entertainment all part of the experience. Usually held during Pride month in June, the event last year was postponed until August and then canceled entirely due to COVID-19. This year, the organizers are skipping June altogether and are planning to hold the event this fall in the hope that the pandemic will be under control by that time. Now scheduled for September 25, Tower Grove Pride 2021 will have all of

September sounds pretty good for a Pride celebration in the park. | KATIE COUNTS the same things attendees love about the festival, but with quite a bit less heat and sweating. (Pause for an “amen” for the performers and drag queens who endured the makeup-melting heat of previous Pride festivals.) For more information about the Tower Grove Pride festival as it becomes available, keep an eye on towergrovepride.com or visit the Facebook page of the festival at facebook.com/towergrovepride. n

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SAVAGE LOVE NUMB AND NUMBERED BY DAN SAVAGE Hey, Dan: I’m a cis bi guy in my 40s who doesn’t have a lot of experience with other men. I’m happily married to a wonderful woman who knows I’m bi, and while we’re presently monogamous, we’ve talked about opening things up in the future. If that happens, I’d like to casually hook up with a guy once in a while, but I’m a little anxious about gay hookup culture. 1. Will a lot of guys dismiss me for being bi or married? I assume biphobia is more of an issue when looking for a relationship, rather than a hookup, but I dunno. 2. If I meet a guy and we’re going to fuck, is it weird to bring up condoms? I know: I shouldn’t be afraid to ask to use a condom, and if someone can’t respect that, I shouldn’t fuck him. I’m not and I won’t. But will most guys be a little surprised, especially with PrEP these days? 3. On that note, should I ask my doctor about PrEP when all I want is a very occasional fuck (maybe a few times a year) with someone I’ve vetted and trust about their HIVnegative or undetectable status? I want to be safe, but I don’t want to put superfluous meds in my body. 4. Is the “top shortage” I’ve read about a few times a real thing? Are a lot of guys strictly tops or bottoms? 5. And is there anything else I should know before hopping on the apps? Wondering About Navigating New Arenas Before Indulging 1. There are lots of biphobic gay men out there, WANNABI, but I gotta say… there are more biphobes in the straight community. Yes, straight biphobia is less gallingly hypocritical, I will grant you, but it does more harm; research has shown that having a biphobic straight spouse is the single biggest risk factor for poor mental health outcomes among bisexuals. So I’m happy to hear that your spouse accepts your bisexuality, WANNABI, and I’m going to apologize in advance for the biphobia you’ll encounter from some dumb gay men. But if all you’re after for is some casual sex, WANNABI,

you don’t need to disclose your bisexuality to the men you meet on the apps. You also shouldn’t assume the men you meet on “gay” hookup apps are gay; some will be bisexual, just like you. And while biphobic gay men get all the press, WANNABI, there are lots of biphilic gay men out there — that is, gay men who are really into married “straight” men. If you don’t wanna hide the wife and don’t wanna wind up with a FWB who wants you to leave the wife for him, finding guys who are actually turned on by the fact that you have a wife at home is not a bad strategy. 2. Even at the height of the AIDS Crisis — even at a time when contracting HIV was almost invariably fatal — condoms weren’t used 100% of the time by 100% of gay and bi men. Now with PrEP (a daily pill that prevents HIV infection) and treatments for HIV+ men that make it impossible for them to spread the virus (HIV+ men with undetectable viral loads can’t transmit the virus), fewer gay and bi men are using condoms these days. If you wanna use a condom because you’re not on PrEP and/or you wanna protect yourself and your wife from all the sexually transmitted infections PrEP won’t protect you from — and that would be all the other sexually-transmitted infections out there — insist on condoms and pass on guys who argue with you about it. 3. If you wanna be able to have spontaneous and/or anonymous sex with other men, taking PrEP daily is smart. But you can use PrEP without taking it daily if you’re having sex with other men once or twice a year and you’re making those sex dates at least a few days in advance. Intermittent or “on-demand” use of PrEP is highly effective; take two pills 24 hours before you have sex and one pill a day for two days afterwards. 4. Not all gay and bi men are into anal sex or into anal sex with casual partners, WANNABI, and while most of the men I’ve encountered — most of the men I encountered the shit out of — were functionally versatile, there do seem to be more bottoms out there than tops. Not that “bottom” and “top” are static identities; a guy who’ll bottom for you might be more comfortable topping for someone else, a guy who enjoys

While biphobic gay men get all the press, there are lots of biphilic gay men out there. bottoming when he’s younger might enjoy topping more later in life and vice-versa, etc. 5. Not every photo is recent, WANNABI, and not every guy is decent. Some guys will lie to get in your pants or in your ass or on your dick or on your face. Trust your gut, WANNABI, and be choosy about the guys you invite to rearrange yours. Hey, Dan: I’m a gay male in his mid 40s living in a rainy city. I met and fell for a recently divorced guy with a few teen kids. We progressed quickly, moved to the burbs, made a home, and even had one of his kids come live with us. It was out of character for me to move that fast, but we clicked. I thought he knew what it took to make a long-term relationship work and his postdivorce finances put him in a spot where it really helped him for us to live together. Fast forward five years to me coming home one day with him declaring he was moving to a not-at-all-rainy state with his new boyfriend. New BF had been a mutual friend who I had suspicions about, but I was told repeatedly it was all in my head. Of course the friend made a show of being “really hurt” because he felt I didn’t like him anymore for something he claimed to be innocent of but was actually quite guilty of. So yeah, textbook gaslighting by both of them. Since then what I want from a relationship has changed. I miss and want the emotional connection, the day-to-day stuff, the sleeping in the same bed with someone, the incidental physical affection. Sex, that’s a different story. As soon as I have sex with someone once, maybe twice if it’s really good, I don’t want to continue seeing them. I still want and do have sex, just not with a person I might want a relationship with. My questions: 1. How do I get this? We all know LOTS of relationships where the partners don’t have sex with each

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other anymore, but they all did in the beginning. No one wants this from the start. 2. The close friends I’ve told this to think I’m broken and/or nuts. I think I’m fine. I can’t explain why this is what I want but I know it feels right. Am I nuts? Am I broken? Down To Fuck Or Marry But Not Both 1. You ask for it. That’s no guarantee you’ll find it, of course, but it ups your chances considerably. And while it’s true most loving-butsexless relationships were sexual at the start, DTFOMBNB, not all of them were. So if loving-but-alwayssexless is what you want, well, then you should lead with that. Put it out there. There are gay asexual guys who want partners and dayto-day intimacy and someone to sleep with every night but who don’t want sex — not at the start, not ever. There are also gay cuckolds out there, DTFOMBNB, and while most wanna have sex with their “cheating” partners, some wanna be denied sex by a partner who constantly fucks around on them with other guys. 2. I don’t think you’re broken or nuts, DTFOMBNB, but something has definitely changed. hat you want now, post-traumatic breakup, isn’t what you wanted before. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing… I guess… so long as you can find what you want or aren’t driven crazy by your inability to find what you want. Because it’s definitely gonna be more difficult for you to find a partner ase ual gays and cuckold gays are out there and they’re great, for sure, but they represent tiny minorities of an already tiny minority. So I’m thinking you might wanna unpack this shit with a shrink. At the very least you need to acknowledge that what you want has changed and that it could change again. Do what and who feels right for you now but don’t lock yourself into anything — don’t sign any leases, don’t make any long-term romantic commitments, sexless or otherwise, don’t weld yourself to any self-fulfilling prophecies — at a time when you may still be numb or still be reeling from a traumatic breakup. mail@savagelove.net @FakeDanSavage on Twitter www.savagelovecast.com

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APRIL 21-27, 2021

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