Riverfront Times, November 10, 2020 by Riverfront Times

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NOVEMBER 11-17, 2020

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THE LEDE

PHOTO BY THEO WELLING

“It feels like people have been able to kind of breathe a sigh of relief today. But I think we know that we still have a lot ahead of us since the victory — there’s still a lot of work.” MAGGIE LERCHER, PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION MARCH & RALLY IN DOWNTOWN ST. LOUIS ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7

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MORAL OF THE STORY

ewly retired St. Louis Detective Sgt. Heather Taylor is one of those rare people in the public eye who lots of people know, but few know much about. That’s because she’s always been about the work. Whether it was calling out racist cops as the president of the Ethical Society of Police or tracking down killers as a homicide investigator, she kept the focus on the mission. But Danny Wicentowksi’s cover story of how Taylor came to be the police department’s conscience is simultaneously compelling and heartbreaking. It’ll help you understand why she insisted on crossing the thin blue line when her fellow officers were wrong, why she was never going to back down and why St. Louis is going to miss her so much. — Doyle Murphy, editor in chief

TABLE OF CONTENTS CAN’T

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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 Contributors Trenton Almgren-Davis, Cheryl Baehr, Eric Berger, Jeannette Cooperman, Thomas Crone, Mike Fitzgerald, Judy Lucas, Noah MacMillan, Andy Paulissen, Justin Poole, Christian Schaeffer, Theo Welling, Danny Wicentowski, Nyara Williams, Ymani Wince Columnist Ray Hartmann Interns Steven Duong, Riley Mack, Matt Woods 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 Jackie Mundy Digital Sales Manager Chad Beck Director of Public Relations Brittany Forrest

COVER True Detective Sgt. Heather Taylor retired after 20 years with the SLMPD. Cracking the department’s racism was her hardest case of all

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STEVEN DUONG

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HARTMANN The Josh Hawley Playbook Big words about fraud from a guy who ought to know BY RAY HARTMANN

enator Josh Hawley, the great Missouri Mistake, has unleashed his shamelessness once again. Never one to miss an opportunity for opportunism, Hawley has seized upon the impending demise of Donald Trump to turn the ugliest lie of 2020 into the prettiest wingnut talking point of 2024. In case you missed it, Hawley has already set out on a quest

to become Trump 2.0 in the next presidential election. Hawley has marked the territory around Trump’s latest political waste matter: the preposterous claim that his rejection and ejection by the American people owe to election fraud. In the perverse view of Trumpworld — where Hawley keeps a vacation home — “fraud” is a euphemism for voting against Trump. The lean-and-hungry Hawley — an extraordinarily cynical man — has pounced on the opportunity to exploit the rage of Trump’s base by turning a lie into legislation. On Tuesday, he announced that he had introduced a bill, propping up the myth that there was widespread fraud and the election was somehow stolen. “The debacle of the 2020 election has made clear that serious reforms are needed to protect the integrity of our election,” he says in a press release. In a tweet leading up to his latest stunt, Hawley offered this: “If

last 24 hrs have made anything clear, it’s that we need new election integrity laws NOW. Ban ballot harvesting, guarantee poll watcher access, make ballot counting transparent.” Why yes, we should ban ballot harvesting, just like we should ban barreling a semi through a school playground. Actually, we already have banned both practices — presumably in all 50 states — but the fact that there’s literally zero evidence of ballot harvesting in 2020 did not deter the junior senator from Missouri. Hawley has smartly positioned himself as a proud champion of grievance over Trump’s electoral defeat. In fact, he showed up to share furrowed brows with none other than Tucker Carlson, Fox News’ white-male-grievance guru. The possibility they’ll be competing against one another in 2024 didn’t come up. Instead, the two men spouted right-wing talking points about election fraud. As is customary in

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the red media silo today, one stupid thing — like an allegation that Democrats temporarily mistreated Republicans at one Philadelphia polling site — has morphed into evidence the apocalypse is here. Since accepting defeat does not exist as an option for the narcissist-in-chief, it has fallen upon his minions to make it all about fraud. It is notable that few Republican politicians have volunteered for this mission, but Hawley — ever mindful of that Trump base for 2024 — was happy to sign on even though he might be facing off with a Trump in that race. Mail-in voting is fraud. Sending out universal ballots is fraud. “Urban” voting is fraud. All ballots cast in “Democrat run” places are fraud. Counting ballots in states not loyal to Trump is fraud. Finishing a count before Trump has won is fraud. Reporting numbers unfavorable to Trump is fraud. How absurd is all of this? Look

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no further than the Wall Street Journal, where Karl Rove, one of the slimiest operatives in American political history, held court on the very sort of nonsense that Hawley has peddled. “There are suspicious partisans across the spectrum who believe widespread election fraud is possible,” Rove wrote. “Some hankypanky always goes on, and there are already reports of poll watchers in Philadelphia not being allowed to do their jobs. But stealing hundreds of thousands of votes would require a conspiracy on the scale of a James Bond movie. That isn’t going to happen.” So, thanks for playing, Josh. Hawley will return soon enough to his day job, hammering away righteously against social media giants, a crusade that’s ustified in some respects except that Hawley vaporizes when phrases like “Russian meddling in our elections” are spoken out loud. Like Trump, Josh Hawley’s first, second and third priorities are taking care of Josh Hawley. Consider his political social distancing from his own party just a day after the election, as he retweeted a New York Post piece claiming Trump had fared better with Black voters than any Republican presidential candidates in 60 years. “Republicans in Washington are going to have a very hard time processing this,” Hawley tweeted. “But the future is clear: we must be a working-class party, not a Wall Street party.” That sort of down-home populism might sound more convincing had it not come from someone so passionate about the Trump tax cuts for Wall Street, which gave zilch to the working class. Hawley likely will have more empathy with men in suits than overalls when it’s time to raise money for the next campaign. Hawley’s exploitation of Trump’s apparent loss stood out in sharp contrast to two fellow Missouri senators, one present, one past. His current senior colleague, Senator Roy Blunt, at last mustered some of the political courage that many had hoped for much earlier in Trump’s reign of terror. In fairness to Blunt, he probably figured he couldn’t survive in a state so beholden to Trump as long as the Orange One was in power, especially with those 88 million Twitter followers in tow. But give Blunt credit for what he

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finally said Friday, in an interview with CNN’s Ted Barrett. “Part of the obligation of leadership is you should always have in your mind, ‘How do I leave?’” Blunt said. “Win or lose, both candidates should have been thinking about transition now for some time. And we will have a transition.” CNN’s Dana Bash noted Blunt was the first top epublican senator to say such words, itself a sad commentary of the party and the times we live in. Blunt also called out the Trump campaign for its pathetic inconsistency on counting ballots after Election Day. Trump’s chants of “Stop the count!” where he was winning and “Count every vote!” where he was losing were a bit over the top. “You can’t stop the count in one state and decide you want the count to continue in another state. ... That’s not how the system works,” Blunt told reporters last week. There have been countless moments in the past four years where more words like that — and less complicit silence — would have been welcomed from Blunt. But it is what it is. Besides, Blunt’s comments, however belated, were not nearly as ironic as the more forceful ones from former U.S. Senator Jack Danforth. “By alleging widespread fraud, President Trump’s purpose is to undermine Americans’ belief in the legitimacy of the election and therefore in the foundation of our democracy,” Danforth said in his saintliest St. Jack tone. “He is causing incalculable damage to our country.” Thanks, Senator, but while you’re around, there’s one other thing you could do: direct some of your indignation toward Hawley, the guy whose national political career you helped launch by endorsing him for U.S. Senate snuffing the dreams of epresentative Ann Wagner, no less — about fifteen minutes after Hawley became Missouri attorney general. After all, Senator Danforth, your boy Josh Hawley hasn’t actually turned out to be an enemy of fraud. He is one. n Ray Hartmann founded the Riverfront Times in 1977. Contact him at rhartmann1952@gmail.com or catch him on Donnybrook on 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).

NEWS Election Night With the Resistance Written by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

t is election night on Cherokee Street. Donald Trump’s severed piñata head stares out from behind a restaurant window. His is mouth is a rounded grimace, his eyes rageful and lumpy. Trump’s piñata body is no more; the limbs and torso were torn apart by children in a candy-spouting public spectacle in the leadup to the 2016 election. On this night, Trump’s head is perched on a table inside Yaquis, the restaurant whose owner commissioned the effigy. The position gives pi ata Trump a perfect view of the PBS NewsHour broadcast being projected onto the face of a building across the street. It’s not even 7 p.m., and, in the absence of information, hope and booze are taking its place. A modest crowd sits on folding chairs, drinking and eating in between refreshing their Twitter feeds. A cloud of marijuana smoke billows from a middle-aged man standing next to a Cori Bush campaign sign. Above him, the early results from Georgia flash against the brick backdrop. The sound of a whistle blow breaks the ambiance. “Come on, Georgia! Come on, South!” shouts St. Louis resident Allan Cantada. Dressed in a black shirt that states “Sorry about our president” in multiple languages, Cantada holds a beer in one hand and the whistle in the other. The early returns show Biden with a twelvepoint lead in the critical swing state. Cantada raises the whistle to his lips and unleashes another trill. “It’s still early on, but it’s a good, optimistic sign,” he concedes. “That’s the spirit I’m going for. The energy of tonight is definitely optimism.” Cantada returns the whistle to his pocket, replacing it with his phone. He lights up a cigarette.

Election night watch parties in St. Louis had a much different feel this year. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI He adds, “My next whistle is going to be when Florida posts. I think Florida is the pacesetter to the whole evening.” Despite Cantada’s burst of optimism, his whistle doesn’t return for an encore performance. Florida goes to Trump. Biden’s lead in Georgia narrows and evaporates amid delays and equipment problems. Those gathered for the watch party stare at their phones, tugging at the feeds like a cat pawing at a toy just out of reach. The energy turns to a sour tension, with a menace of familiarity. Four years ago, a crowd had watched election returns on this same spot just off Cherokee, drinking and chatting away their nervousness as the night steadily rolled toward ruin for Missouri Democrats. This year, that story played out much the same way, with the state’s Republicans holding on to the offices of governor, attorney general and secretary of state; Republicans also notched key victories for state Rep. Andrew Koenig and U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner. But history doesn’t always repeat itself, or, at least, not the same way. On the night of November 8, 2016, an impromptu protest march broke out on Cherokee. It wasn’t much to look at, just four people marching and calling “Out of the bars and into the streets!” to the depressed-looking bar patrons

still watching the returns that showed Hillary Clinton’s defeat. This year, the protesters have a new plan. They aren’t on Cherokee Street, but three miles north, setting up chairs and tables around the Firefighters emorial in Poelker Park. With City Hall looming behind them, the attendees connect laptops to projectors. A table is piled with boxes of doughnuts and lunch bags. This is ResistSTL. They are here for one thing: To stop Trump from stealing the election. For the last month, members of ResistSTL have signed up for virtual training sessions on everything from occupying a building to first aid to making banners for use in street protests. The watch party isn’t just for tracking the election results, but also serves as a staging ground against a possible coup — though, at a glance, these attendees seem no less fixated on the returns than the people drinking the night away on Cherokee. The difference, says Keith Rose, is that ResistSTL members are ready to act: “What I’ve noticed is that every time the president does something, people would be so tied to just scrolling their newsfeed, watching the country fall apart in real time, and no one would get out of bed to actually do something.” Rose was the ringleader of the small group of protesters that

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marched along Cherokee Street in 2016. At the time, the demonstration was “a reminder,” he says, “that we don’t have to sit down and watch. We can actually try to impact this.” Rose adds, “That’s what ResistSTL is doing.” On election night, however, there’s just not a lot for Rose and ResistSTL’s members to do. In absence of the boozy distractions offered at the Cherokee watch party, the resisters gathered downtown eat doughnuts, play cards and linger around a projection screen showing the current election map. Among them is Tori Jameson, a pastor at Lot’s Wife Trans & Queer Chaplaincy and the organizer behind a series of “pop-up” weddings at City Hall last month. The matrimonies, sixteen in all, served as a protest against the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett. Tonight, though, as the pastor watches the election results come in, Jameson expresses nervousness at what the future holds, calling it “both hopeful and terrifying in the same moment.” They point out that, even if Trump loses, the nation’s highest court could attempt to roll back access to marriage equality, not to mention reproductive rights. “I serve trans folks primarily,” Jameson notes. “I think that continued Republican administration, nationally and locally, is no good for our rights.” Those rights were on Jameson’s mind when officiating the weddings of those sixteen LGBTQ couples in October. Even though Barrett was confirmed, Jameson contends there’s real value in the kind of “joyful resistance” the weddings put on display. The pastor gestures to the crowd behind them. “There are so many ways to participate and contribute to resistance. This is our family in the streets, so in that way it’s joyful.” But as the night lengthens, there is little joy found in the election watch parties downtown and on Cherokee Street. As Missouri’s Republicans celebrate, Trump and his enablers are attempting to claim victory in just the way that observers feared they would: before all the ballots are counted. For Missouri voters, then, the election is over. But for the resisters, the real contest may only just have started. n

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COVID-19Positive Poll Worker in St. Charles Dies Written by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

n unnamed election judge supervisor in St. Charles County who showed up to work on Election Day after testing positive for COVID-19 has died, the county’s health department announced Thursday. In a press release, the county said that while “a cause of death has not been given at this time,” health officials are now attempting to track the worker’s activities after a private test came back positive on October 30. The worker was told to quarantine for fourteen days, the county learned, but the worker “nevertheless failed to follow the advice” and served as an election judge supervisor at the county’s Blanchette Park Memorial Hall polling site. Epidemiologists are working with the family members of the deceased poll worker, the press release continued, “to determine the worker’s whereabouts prior to the positive test results.” The possible contacts include nine election workers, who have been advised to get themselves tested for coronavirus. Considering the worker was a supervisor, the press release noted, “It is not anticipated that close contacts will include any of the 1,858 voters who were at the polling place Tuesday.” In a statement, Kurt Bahr, the county’s director of elections, said all election workers were “mandated to wear masks or face shields at all times” — a directive that represents a change in policy, as in September the county explicitly told its election workers they did not have to wear masks. The county went as far as encouraging their maskless workers to “act surprised” if a voter challenged them on their lack of health protections. Reached for comment on Thursday, St. Charles County spokeswoman Mary Enger said election workers were, in fact, required to wear masks on Election Day. She explained “there had a been a question” on whether election

Voting in person was even more harrowing in St. Charles it turns out. | DOYLE MURPHY workers are considered county employees under the terms of its limited mask mandate, which re-

quires employees to wear masks while inside county-owned buildings.

Ultimately, Enger said, the election workers “were included in that requirement that they wear masks.” Thursday’s press release quoted St. Charles County Director of Public Health Demetrius CianciChapman, who cautioned, “As this virus continues to spread, all aspects of the healthcare system are working together to remind the community that a positive COVID-19 test result requires that person to be responsible to others in the community.” Cianci-Chapman’s statement continued, “There is no more important duty than protecting the health of our families, friends and those who reside in the community with us.” People who voted at the Blanchette Park polling site are being advised to watch for COVID-19 symptoms and contact the St. Charles County COVID-19 Hotline at 636-949-1899. n

No ‘Compassionate Release’ for Stenger Money Man Written by

DOYLE MURPHY

ohn Rallo, who admitted bribing ex-St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger, will have to continue to ride out the pandemic in prison, a federal judge ruled. Rallo, 55, had requested a “compassionate release,” describing in handwritten letters to Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Webber his fear of COVID-19. The crooked businessman, who also suffered from thyroid cancer, contracted the virus shortly after arriving at the penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, to begin serving a seventeen-month sentence. His bunkmate at Marion, 39-yearold Taiwan Davis, also contracted the coronavirus and died in August. “Having COVID was a horrible experience that I don’t want to have to go thru again,” Rallo pleaded in a letter to Webber. “I have a loving family that needs me ... I don’t deserve a death sentence.” But Webber found that there was no indication that the federal Bureau of Prisons couldn’t provide Rallo adequate health care if he were to get sick again. The judge noted that Rallo had only served four months of his sentence. “Additionally, allowing Defendant to be released now after serving only a fraction of his sentence would not reflect the seriousness of his offense nor provide just punishment for his offenses,” Web-

John Rallo is staying in federal prison. | DOYLE MURPHY ber wrote in a memo filed last week. Rallo pleaded guilty to three counts of theft of honest services in July 2019, admitting he bribed Stenger in a pay-toplay scheme that began in 2014 when Stenger was still a county councilman. The former nightclub owner ran an insurance company and paid off Stenger in political donations with the understanding that the county executive would steer contracts to handle county employees’ benefits to Rallo. It turned out that Stenger didn’t have as much power as he thought and failed repeatedly to get county bureaucrats to follow through on the scam, so he tried to find other ways to use taxpayer

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funds to compensate Rallo. That included hooking him up with real estate deals and smoothing the way for a noshow consulting contract with the Port Authority. The various schemes unraveled in 2019 when Rallo, Stenger and two of the county executive’s circle — his chief of staff Bill Miller and ex-CEO of the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership Sheila Sweeney — were indicted on federal charges. Stenger resigned on the same day the indictment was revealed and pleaded guilty within a week. He remains in a federal prison camp in Yankton, South Dakota. n

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TRUE DETECTIVE SGT. HEATHER TAYLOR retired after twenty years with the SLMPD. Cracking the department's racism was her hardest case of all

BY DANNY WICENTOWSKI

n her final hour as a St. Louis homicide detective, Sgt. Heather Taylor stands in the shade of the orld’s Fair Pavilion in Forest Park. She is surrounded by blue uniforms, though she’s gone casual to her own retirement. Her long maroon cardigan swishes freely, unencumbered by a gun belt. Her feet are tucked into a pair of non regulation Chuck Taylors. Her hair, worn in a cascade of braids, would never fit under a uniform hat as re uired by the police manual. For the past twenty years, she’s served the St. Louis etropolitan Police epartment, much of it as a homicide detective. But as the public face of a police association for Black cops, Taylor has spent the past six years walking a far different kind of line than the stark blue border so commonly splashed across hats and flags. It’s a line she began following long before she put on a badge. And today, on a windy Friday morning, she’s going to finally walk away from it.

“ y main goal,” she remarks as she arrives at the September 25 event, “is to try not to cry.” She’ll fail, but she won’t be the only one. Of the 0 uniformed cops in the audience for this “Final oll Call,” many are members of the Ethical Society of Police, one of two police associations representing cops in St. Louis. The associations have had, at best, uneasy relation ships since their respective origins in the late 1960s. Ethical was of ficially recognized by the depart ment in 19 2, its founders Black officers inspired by the civil rights era. Four decades later, as a new civil rights era arose in St. Louis, Taylor became Ethical’s president. Taylor is deceptively soft spo ken in media interviews, but, for the first time on the record, she spoke at length to the Riverfront Times about herself, including her improbable ourney from a trau matic childhood in north St. Louis to the murder scenes that filled her nights as a detective. As president of Ethical, or ESOP,

Between roles as homicide detective and ESOP president, Sgt. Heather Taylor often found herself in opposition with her own department. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI

Taylor’s voice pierced the blue wall of silence in ways no one could ig nore. In 2016, when she called for then police chief Sam otson to resign, she released a 112 page re port to back up the group’s charges against the department’s racist internal policies. In 201 , she pub licly denounced the police kill ing of Anthony Lamar Smith and called for a guilty verdict in the case of the officer who killed him. She called racist cops racist and put them on blast on Twitter. She didn’t let things slide. Once, when a CBS ews reporter asked her if there were white su premacists in the department, she responded immediately “ es.” hile making a habit of break ing the blue code, Heather worked a long career in that very department. She was tasked with closing murder cases, a rare ustice in a city where witnesses are often too scared to talk and roughly three uarters of all killings go unsolved. But witnesses talked to Taylor. She solved cases. In 2012, she became the department’s first Black woman to make detective supervisor as a sergeant. The retirement ceremony marks

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the close of both sides of Taylor’s uni ue career, one that traversed the lines between cop and activist, authority and watchdog. In her honor, and for the last time, those sides are coming together. On the pavilion’s perimeter, next to a table decorated with balloons and individually wrapped cup cakes, an animated John Hayden, the city’s police chief, mingles with other attendees. He rises to the po dium as the “Final oll Call” rolls through its first speakers. “If I were to describe who Heath er is, in our community, what she represents is inconvenient truth,” he tells the crowd. He okes that he wishes he could call their rela tionship “mentor mentee,” but he adds, “ e argue uite a bit.” He’s not the only chief to do so. As he addresses the pavilion, he obli uely references his prede cessor, otson, who retired under pressure in 201 . In Hayden’s tell ing, otson had tried to put Taylor in her place. “The previous chief didn’t like that inconvenient truth,” Hayden continues. “He told her, ou need to pick your battles.’”

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But there’s a problem, as Hayden explains, with trying to tell a person like Taylor to turn down a battle worth fighting for. “Heather only knows the truth,” the chief says. “ hat she also believes is that the time to do the right thing — is right now.”

n 19 , one year after the founding of the Ethical Society of Police, its future president was born in the Ville neighborhood of north St. Louis. Heather Taylor was the youngest of five, her father a chef and her mother a homemaker and custodial worker. Her older brother, iamond Slater, was her best friend. “ e were extremely close,” she says in an interview, one of several with the Riverfront Times in the days leading up to her retirement. She rarely talks about this part of her life story, the heartache of it, the loss. But to trace the steps that led her to the city’s homicide division, you have to start at the beginning of her relationship with the police. iamond was the first chapter in that relationship. “He was getting into trouble, always running from police or police were showing up at the house,” she recalls. “ e grew up knowing that not all the officers were bad people, but some of them were, some of them were racist. It was still a noble profession.” Sometimes, the police did more than just show up at the front door. hen she was ten, Taylor remembers watching two officers force their way into the family’s home while pursuing Diamond for his latest lawbreaking theft of an ice cream. “They didn’t have a right,” she says now, though of course the officers did it anyway. Taylor says one officer clasped handcuffs around the wrists of her seventeen-year-old older sister for the offense of talking back. Taylor had grown up respecting police. Her cousin had oined the city’s department, and Taylor remembers liking how she looked in uniform; she imagined how it would look on her. Despite the violation of her home, she says the incident didn’t alter her aspirations — she still considered it “a noble profession.” By the time Taylor started high school, her best friend and brother was still getting into trouble. In 19 9, when he was sixteen, the trouble was much worse than stolen ice cream. Taylor sighs.

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Taylor’s “Final Roll Call” ceremony drew some 30 officers, as well as St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell. “She looks you in the eye and she tells you exactly what she’s seeing,” Bell said in his remarks. | STEVEN DUONG “My brother had killed someone, literally a block away from our house,” she says after a pause. “My mother found him, cornered him and turned him in. It was a difficult time, a very difficult time. He was essentially my only friend, and he’s gone. This big piece is gone.” There was no uestion of trying to protect him, Taylor says. Her mother made that clear “He had to be held accountable for what he did.” And he was iamond was charged with second-degree murder and certified as an adult. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Taylor and her family struggled to move on. “I was lucky enough to have a friend who had a basketball hoop,” she says. “It took my mind off it.” The sport helped her become the first person in her family to attend college. In 1992, Taylor, a six foot tall forward, enrolled at Southern Illinois University Carbondale on a scholarship to play Division I basketball. She was still trying to decide between joining a police department or enlisting in the Marines. During her sophomore year, she got a call from home. Her aunt, enise Stith, had been dating a St. Louis deputy marshal named John Parker. Around a.m. on April , 199 , Parker came home, got into an argument with Stith and shot her in the head with a . pistol. Again, Taylor’s family life had been overturned by violence. Her

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coach urged her to go home for the season. Parker was arrested and charged with manslaughter, but Taylor says she later learned from the family’s attorney that he was released just three years into his twelve-year sentence. Two killings. Two convictions. Two systems. It was a lesson she never let herself forget. “ hat happened wasn’t right,” she says now. Her aunt, she adds, “was pretty much the fighter and leader of our family.” The family was never the same. Neither was Taylor. “My brother got 25 years for something he did, and you have someone in law enforcement who only got three,” she says. “Three years for just destroying our family, and he gets a slap on the wrist.” Taylor returned to college but says she was “still in a haze” after her aunt’s murder. She kept playing basketball but dropped out of college before finishing her degree. She returned to St. Louis. Along the way, she met the man who would become her husband, a recent veteran of the ulf ar who urged her to reconsider a career in the military. On September 11, 2000, Taylor took her seat on her first day of the police academy. She’d oin the “noble profession” that had taken her brother away in the name of justice, the same profession whose status had seemingly protected her aunt’s murderer from

facing the same. “It made me want to become a police officer even more,” she says. “I just had this unbelievable belief that I could change it.”

t is often said that St. Louis has two police unions, one white, one Black. This is, confusingly, both accurate and inaccurate. hile the department officially recognizes two police associations, only one — the “white police union” known as the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association has a seat at the table when it comes to contracts and collective bargaining on behalf of the city’s current force of some 1,200 uniformed cops. eanwhile, the Ethical Society of Police counts 2 dues paying city officers, most of them Black. The scope of representation is limited to legal and internal disciplinary cases. However, both associations are roughly the same age, with the SLPOA arising in 196 as part of a blue backlash to the suspension of a group of officers who had brutally beaten two members of the Black Liberators militant group that September. The beatings led to an eruption of protest and drew crowds to the home of Mayor Alfonso Cervantes. eeks later, the state’s Board of Police Commissioners, which controlled the department, ruled that the officers had violated police policy by using “greater force than re uired under the circum-

stances.” According to reports at the time, hundreds of “dissident” white officers reacted in protest, demanding the suspended officers be reinstated and that the board break its own rules by allowing officers to form their own police association. At one meeting, 600 officers reportedly supported a motion for “an epidemic of sickness” if the board did not comply. In a matter of weeks, the police board relented. It reinstated two suspended detectives and lifted disciplinary action against four officers. The SLPOA was born soon after. But Black St. Louis cops had been spurred into action as well. On January , 1969, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch first reported their efforts under the headline “ egro Policemen Plan to Form Own roup.” The story uoted a Black patrolman who dubbed the nascent SLPOA a “white police officers’ group” whose “racialist” members supported the pro-segregation presidential run of eorge allace, far right conspiracists of the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan. Some 0 years later, when Heather Taylor entered the department’s police academy, the divisions in the department were just as clear. The evidence distressed the idealistic former basketball player. “I noticed that right away,” she says. “Blacks sat with Blacks. hites sat with whites. hen you’re an athlete you sit with everyone. here I’m from, you pass the ball to whoever is closest to the basket, who’s ever open, if you want to win.” It wasn’t ust the seating arrangements at lunch that concerned her. Over the weeks of training, she grew frustrated with the way her instructors and fellow recruits described the city and people she would soon be serving. She recoiled when she heard white classmates offhandedly describe the Black Panthers as a terrorist organization. (“I looked at them, like, ou don’t know anything,’” she says now. She found herself thinking “These are the people I have to count on, and we can’t even get ourselves together about simple stuff?” It was in the academy that Taylor started earning the reputation that would follow her for the rest of her career. One day, she says, she “snapped.” “I complained in front of the whole class and instructors,” she recalls. “I told them, e can’t be divided. If we’re going to go out, I’m supposed to rely on you to protect me and save my life. And we can’t even get along ’”

Taylor considered dropping out of the academy, but the next day she was back at her seat, a familiar mantra in her head “I’m going to push on, I’m going to change it, I’m going to do better.” A police department, of course, is not a basketball team. Unlike hoops, police work is governed by the chaotic referees of St. Louis’ geography and population. The court is a nearly 50 percent Black city whose violence falls along the same footprint as its history of poverty, segregation and redlining. Taylor noticed that the department’s command ranks and specialized units were overwhelmingly white. hen she started talking to other Black officers, the advice they gave her was grimly straightforward hen, not if, she confronted racism at the department, don’t expect the St. Louis Police Officers’ Associa-

— “the most pettiest crimes,” she calls them now — busting suspects with a few pieces of crack. “I didn’t make a lot of drug arrests in my career,” she says. In her first years, “I made a lot of stolen car arrests. Violent crime was my push anyway.” She was learning other lessons, too. hile in her first assignment, Taylor recalls a white sergeant attempting to compliment her after overhearing the rookie cop on the phone. The sergeant’s choice of compliment, “ ou’re so articulate,” was one Taylor understood to include the unspoken coda “for a Black person.” Taylor says she tried to gloss over the incident. But later that same month, she says she was back on desk duty and talking with a white lieutenant. Their conversation turned to an open position in the South Patrol’s de-

The divisions between the city’s two police associations couldn’t be more stark. The St. Louis Police Officers’ Association is currently defending five officers charged by federal prosecutors in the beating of a Black officer working undercover as a protester during a 2017 demonstration. The beaten officer, Luther Hall, is represented by the Ethical Society of Police. tion to back her up. That’s where the Ethical Society of Police came in. It was a lesson she learned uickly. She remembers, “ ou knew in police academy there was a Black police association and a white association, with different reasons why they existed.” It wasn’t ust racism that challenged her. On her very first day on duty as a sworn police officer, Taylor sat down at her computer — and was startled to feel the hands of a male sergeant rubbing her head and neck. She remembers jolting away and telling him, “ on’t you touch me.” “He said, Oh I thought you were someone else,’” she recalls. “I knew he was full of shit all day. ho does that I had to work with that sergeant. This is what they don’t prepare you for.”

eather Taylor’s first assignment landed her in the old istrict , a beat covering a chunk of the central corridor south of Highway 44. She started with small drug cases

tective bureau. “I was like, ‘Man, what do I need to get into the bureau ’” she recalls. “And he was like, Oh, we already have a Black female there.’” “It was pretty awful,” she says now. “Like, only one Black female can do the job?” She tried to move on from that comment, too, but, like a lot of the seemingly minor workplace incidents she experienced as a cop, they loomed larger as she perceived the pattern in their practice. Hearing a high ranking officer’s dismissal of her aspirations was an “aha” moment, she says “Like, oh, this is why you only have two Blacks in the division, one Black male, Black female, that’s the uota. It didn’t matter how well you write, how well you investigate.” Taylor’s talent for policing soon pulled her to new assignments. Her first years were spent in the anti crime unit, and then, in 200 , she made detective and was transferred to juvenile cases and sex crimes. There was nothing petty about these cases. The culprits

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were rapists and child abusers. hile some of the crimes left her feeling sick, she was doing exactly what she’d always imagined cops should be doing holding people accountable for their actions. Helping the victimized. Serving justice. In ovember 2012, she oined the homicide division’s night shift. She estimates she investigated 400 murder scenes over the next eight years, a timeframe that saw the city’s annual homicide count climb to the 200s, the highest they’ve been in a generation. People killed each other out of passion, anger or for seemingly no reason at all. Some cases went cold, others led to convictions. But on some level, she admits, she never understood them. “I had a case where a sister murdered her brother over referencing Nicki Minaj as a whore. She stabbed him. Her brother died a year later,” she says. “I can’t fathom it, picking up a knife, let alone being my own brother. I can’t fathom any of my homicide scenes. Someone taking a samurai sword and slicing someone up in a house in south St. Louis I can’t.” hat she could understand, after years of lessons, was the police department. She’d learned that people do things they think they can get away with. She made sure the officers around her understood what she would not tolerate. Clarence Hines spent 21 years as a city cop, including time in the anti crime unit with Taylor in the early 2000s. “ hen I first met Heather, I honestly feel like she was in the process of becoming the Heather that we know and see right now,” he says. “I think she was really looking for her voice, maybe even with some trepidation, wrestling with this idea of what is true justice, what is truth.” He adds, “I think we’ve all been there. Some never get past that hurdle.” Hines retired in 2012 to open a ministry and volunteer his time at Ethical. By then, Taylor had oined the association’s board for a few years. She even ran for president of the organization in 201 , but was defeated by an officer who would loom large in ESOP’s future. After losing the election, Taylor took a break from the Ethical board. In 2014, she was still working murders as the rest of the city slept. That year, however, her integrity as an investigator, and her sense of true justice, would be tested in a very different way. Not by death or

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HEATHER TAYLOR Continued from pg 13

violence, but betrayal.

n late 2014, the president of the Ethical Society of Police was a cop named Darren Wilson. No, not that Darren Wilson. The other one. There are, in fact, two of them in St. Louis law enforcement. That summer, the release of the name of the officer who had fatally shot ichael Brown led internet sleuths to initially misidentify the actual shooter, Ferguson officer Darren Wilson, as St. Louis city officer arren . ilson, who happened to be the recently elected president of ESOP. It was an almost comic mishap at a time of community anguish and national scrutiny for the area’s law enforcement. As the news spread, ESOP attempted to clarify that its unfortunately named president was not the same man who had pulled the trigger. The clarification itself sparked national stories about the ordeal of Wilson’s mistaken identity (which had triggered, of course, a tsunami of harassment and death threats). But later that year, Taylor started getting calls about arren . Wilson that had nothing to do with his name, and everything to do with his leadership of Ethical. One caller asked about missing lease payments for ESOP’s office space. Another was a florist waiting for an invoice to be filled. There was a call from Charter about the group’s outstanding payments for its internet service. “They asked why they weren’t getting paid,” she recalls. “A couple months later, we found out about Darren and what he was doing with the money.” It turned out that Wilson had run a side business as a local comedy promoter, supporting his hustle with $81,000 he’d drained from the Ethical bank accounts. Taylor says she reported him to the police department’s Internal Affairs Division and helped build the case against him. In March 2014, the department suspended him without pay. One month later, a federal grand jury indicted him on nine counts of wire fraud. It wasn’t just the money for Ethical. As a police association that historically struggled to assert itself against the department and the larger SLPOA, Ethical now found itself with a president who had flouted the law and stolen from fellow officers. hen the news of the prosecution broke, the SLPOA, perhaps recognizing an opportu-

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nity to finally corner the market on police associations, reached out with an offer to “absorb” Ethical and its members, Taylor claims. She says she rejected the offer.) While Ferguson’s Darren Wilson never saw the inside of a courtroom, ESOP’s Darren Wilson was charged and eventually pleaded guilty. At his sentencing, Taylor submitted a victim impact statement and asked the judge to throw the disgraced officer in federal prison for twelve months. Outside the courtroom, she told a Post-Dispatch reporter that Wilson was “a clown.” “We held him accountable,” she says now. “What one person did, it did not reflect on all of us.” That may sound like a version of the “one bad apple” argument — a point often raised by police officials in attempts to separate themselves from the abuse wrought by one of their own. It’s an argument that implicates the individual, not the system around them. But Taylor isn’t like other officers. Appointed president of Ethical after the scandal, she set to reshaping the group’s status in the city. No longer would Ethical sit on the sidelines, quietly supporting officers in legal issues and sponsoring social events. Instead it would be loud, and argumentative, and demanding. It would be a systemic change, one instantiated in Taylor’s voice. Going forward, Taylor’s ethics — and her combativeness — would lead the way.

n April 2016, Morley Swingle joined the St. Louis City Circuit Attorney’s Office. A veteran prosecutor in rural Missouri, Swingle’s first city murder case summoned him to the scene of a shooting. It was 2 a.m., and he recalls that rain was pouring down on him as he introduced himself to the detective supervisor on the scene. “Heather Taylor was the first homicide sergeant I met,” Swingle says. “And while we were at that crime scene, we heard a gunshot that occurred on the next block. It was a second murder at another crime scene.” Swingle had spent nearly a decade as the prosecuting attorney in Cape Girardeau, where, he says, “we had maybe four murders in a year.” “So, we had two in one hour in my first call,” he says ruefully. “That was my introduction to working homicide cases in the city of St. Louis.” Taylor impressed him. She was “indefatigable, an Energizer Bunny, and very persuasive.” He saw

in her a “natural curiosity” that seemed to guide her to the right hunches, the right doors to knock on. She found witnesses who had every reason not to talk — but they opened up to Taylor. Often, Swingle says, he would reach out to her with thoughts on a new angle for an investigation, only to find Taylor was already on it. “The nicest compliment you can give a homicide detective,” he says, “is that if I were to be murdered, I would want Heather Taylor investigating it.” Taylor wasn’t just turning heads in the circuit attorney’s office. By 2016, her ascension to the top of the Ethical Society of Police had produced its first ma or action a “no confidence” vote directed at police Chief Sam Dotson. That summer, Ethical released a 112-page report, co-authored by Taylor, exhaustively detailing the frustration experienced by the department’s Black officers. The report read like a case summary, detailing incidents of alleged retaliation, unfair disciplinary policies and missed promotions. The department could talk a big game about diversity, but the report contended it pooled police resources in whiter areas of the city, primarily downtown. The group argued that the department’s promotions system had come to be defined by a racial barrier that prevented Black officers from moving to the higher ranks. Taylor was blunt in a press conference at the time. “We hope Dotson resigns or is fired,” she said. Her hope would come true with the election of St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson, who announced on her first day in office in 201 that Dotson would be retiring. By the time of the chief’s departure, Taylor and Ethical were preparing to weigh in on the upcoming trial of a white former officer, Jason Stockley, who had shot and killed Anthony Lamar Smith in 2011. Although years had passed, Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce charged Stockley with first degree murder, a crime no St. Louis officer had ever been accused of in the city’s history. Taylor hadn’t worked the 2011 shooting as a detective. But internal rumors about the incident — particularly Stockley’s aggressive tactics and his penchant for carrying an unsanctioned A 4 rago pistol on duty — had percolated through the department for years. By the time Stockley was charged with murder, reporters had published videos of the in-car dashcam that had captured Stockley telling his partner “I’m going to kill this motherfucker,” minutes before he did just that, shooting Smith, a

I Retired St. Louis police officer Clarence Hines watched Taylor develop her voice. | DOYLE MURPHY father of a young daughter, five times through a car’s driver-side window. Stockley had his supporters. The St. Louis Police Officers’ Association paid his $100,000 bond and mounted his legal defense with the union’s lawyers. They argued that he had feared for his life after spotting Smith reaching for a revolver on the passenger seat. The SLPOA’s message was what it had always been It would have its officers’ backs, no matter what policies they may have violated or tragedies they escalated. Taylor says its position, and particularly its use of members’ dues to pay Stockley’s bond, “was disgusting.” Stockley’s trial lasted seven days in early August 201 , and then it was left to Judge Timothy Wilson to make a decision. On September 12, while St. Louis awaited a ruling, Ethical released a video in which Taylor addressed the murder charges against a former fellow officer. Like a detective, she analyzed the available evidence. And then she delivered a verdict. “There were several things we found alarming,” she said in the video, “that violated policy, that led us to believe that his actions were that of someone that had committed murder. He wasn’t defending himself in the line of duty.” In Taylor’s perspective, Stockley was undeserving of the loyalty of the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association. She’d watched the dashcam video showing Stockley and a partner chasing Smith by car, dangerously weaving through traffic as they closed in. Stockley’s outburst on the dashcam appeared to show his premeditation. A bystander’s footage of the scene’s aftermath, which emerged

in 2016, set off further alarms in her detective instincts Stockley claimed Smith was reaching for a revolver before he shot him through the driver-side window — but after the shooting, Stockley had recovered the revolver without wearing gloves, contaminating the evidence with his DNA. In fact, only Stockley’s DNA had been detected on the revolver. This was the conduct the SLPOA sought to defend. At trial, prosecutors emphasized the single source of the DNA and attempted to argue that Stockley had planted the weapon to cover up a murder. But on cross examination, the case was ultimately shaky. The seemingly damning evidence was steadily weakened by expert testimony from the department’s forensics investigators. The fact that Stockley had touched the revolver barehanded violated policy, but it also accounted for his DNA on the weapon. It didn’t prove he’d planted it. The case, as so many police shootings do, came down to Stockley’s claim that he’d acted “out of fear for his life.” On September 15, 201 , three days after Taylor called for Stockley’s conviction, Wilson returned his verdict not guilty. “I think Judge Wilson is a coward,” Taylor says now, pointing out that the judge retired almost immediately after finishing the case. She maintains that Smith was murdered. She’s still disgusted by St. Louis Police Officers’ Association’s role in supporting Stockley’s defense. She doesn’t see loyalty in their blue code, but blindness. “That thin blue line is there, yeah, but that doesn’t mean you can’t cross it,” she says. “And you should cross it. You have to.”

t is September 25, 2020, and Heather Taylor is crying. After retiring, her plan is to attend law school in Florida, but she still needs to say goodbye to a lot of people at the World’s Fair Pavilion. “I love so many of you,” she tells the masked crowd of officers and ESOP members. The audience has moved inward, standing now nearly shoulder to shoulder in two groups on either side of the retiring homicide detective. One by one, she addresses officers by name the commanders who believed in her, her classmates from the academy, the next crop of leaders of Ethical. She thanks them. She tells them she loves them. There are important people in Taylor’s life missing from the crowd. The ongoing pandemic kept her parents at home, while her cousins watched via livestream. But under the shade of the pavilion is her brother, Diamond Slater, the beloved sibling who spent most of his life in prison for murder before his release in 2008. She thanks him, too. She speaks of their separation and how it “pushed me into this field.” “Most of all,” she continues, “for our aunt, who’s not here because she was killed by law enforcement. Aunt Denise, I’m here because of you.” These are losses that will never leave her. In the crowd is the mother of a murdered seventeenyear-old boy whose case Taylor spent years attempting to solve, but could never close. It’s one of a number of cases that still bother her. That includes the killing of Kerwin Harris, who died in 2012 after he was put in a chokehold by a St. Louis police officer while a second officer tased him six times. Harris’ death became one of Taylor’s homicide scenes. According to the police report, a witness claimed they heard an officer calling Harris the n-word as the 39-year-old was being choked out. Taylor submitted her case to the circuit attorney’s office for criminal charges, but they never came. The officer who choked Harris remains on the force. In some ways, not much has changed for Black officers in St. Louis in the past twenty years. The department remains roughly 0 percent Black, though not for lack of interest. A 2019 report on the department’s minority recruitment (conducted by the FUSE nonprofit at the behest of the city) faulted “barriers” in its hiring practices, noting that “diverse applicants apply more than white applicants” while at the same time Continued on pg 16

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HEATHER TAYLOR Continued from pg 15

“the demographics of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department do not reflect the communities in which they serve.” And the divisions between the city’s two police associations couldn’t be more stark. The St. Louis Police Officers’ Association is currently defending five officers charged by federal prosecutors in the beating of a Black officer who was working undercover as a protester during a demonstration against the 2017 Stockley verdict. The officers’ text messages revealed giddy excitement over the opportunity to “whoop some ass” on their protest detail. The beaten officer, Luther Hall, is represented by the Ethical Society of Police. But there are signs of change. At Taylor’s retirement ceremony, standing to her right is St. Louis County police officer Shanette Hall. In June, St. Louis County Executive Sam Page signed a memorandum of understanding that officially recognizes the Ethical Society of Police and its 65 members in the St. Louis County Police Department. Taylor, holding back further tears, locks her gaze on the younger officer in the black Ethical Soci-

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ety polo. “Shanette,” she says, “I see so much of you, of who you are, in me. I’m worried” — her eyes move along the line of uniforms before her — “I’m worried that this struggle will be difficult for her,” she adds. “I need everyone here to lift her up.” Finally, Taylor addresses Chief Hayden. “As a mentor, I’m proud of you,” she tells the chief. She tells him that she supports him, even if at times she disagrees with him “most definitely.” “I know it’s been difficult,” the sergeant tells the chief. “Sometimes we’ve made it difficult, those of us who wear this uniform,” she says, and adds, “both Black and white.” It’s time. The officers in the crowd turn the volume down on their radios as Taylor calls into dispatch for a “68” — police code for “out of service.” “4215 …” she says into the radio, her voice traveling out into patrol cars and precincts. “Everybody, stay safe, be fair, take care of each other and our community.” Over the radio, the voice of the dispatcher crackles in response. “4215 ... Heather Taylor, 6009 ... is 68 for the last time.” n

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A line of officers and friends hug Taylor at the end of the retirement ceremony. Taylor plans on entering law school to become a civil rights attorney. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI

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Mohammed Qadadeh left behind a successful career to follow his restaurant dreams at American Falafel. | ANDY PAULISSEN

Taste of Home Mohammed Qadadeh gave up a successful IT career to bring Jordanian comfort food to St. Louis Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

efore opening American Falafel (6314 Delmar Boulevard, University City; 314553-9353) in June of this year, Mohammed Qadadeh enjoyed great success in IT, sales and management with Mastercard. A computer scientist by training, adadeh spent fifteen years with the company, working in both its St. Louis area offices and ubai, where he was Mastercard’s general manager for three countries in the region. When he tells people his background, he admits they think he’s crazy for leaving it all behind to open a restaurant. “They can say, ‘He had it all — a big executive career, he could travel, he could afford the good life,’” Qadadeh says. “To give that all up and start a restaurant is a bit nuts, but I think that job prepared me for this. I really wanted to have my

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own field to plow or my own art to make. It could have been anything, but it formulated into a restaurant, and it’s just right.” Qadadeh moved to St. Louis from Amman, Jordan, when he was seventeen to attend college at Webster University. Immediately upon graduating, he was hired on by Mastercard and moved up in the company. About a decade ago, he was offered the opportunity to work abroad in the ubai office, a ob that had him regularly traveling between Jordan and the United States and gave him perspective on the difference between the food that was available in the Middle East and St. Louis. It sparked something in him. “I feel really connected with food in the Middle East and really couldn’t find anything that was like how I enjoyed it there,” Qadadeh says. “In St. Louis, there is a really diverse food scene, but nothing is true to the taste that I like.” Though Qadadeh dreamed of bringing the authentic Jordanian taste that he loves to St. Louis, he knew he couldn’t do it on his own. About two years ago, he heard that a chef friend was moving to the U.S. from Jordan, and he reached out to him, asking if he wanted to move to St. Louis to help him bring his restaurant

dreams to life. His friend agreed, and together they sketched out a plan for what would become American Falafel. “We started playing around with recipes — my grandmother’s and his grandmother’s,” Qadadeh says. “He told me that his mom did things one way, but that in a restaurant, we should do them another. I told him, ‘No, we’re going to do it your mom’s way, because it’s better.’” In addition to the old family recipes, Qadadeh imported a falafel and a hummus machine from Jordan — equipment he emphasizes is the key reason why his food tastes exactly the way it would if it was eaten on the streets of Amman. He also tested 25 different Jordanian breads before settling on a bakery in Chicago; the bread is baked fresh every day and delivered to his restaurant within five hours of coming out of the oven. However, Qadadeh believes that there is more to what makes American Falafel so special than the food, no matter how good it is. As Qadadeh explains, he did not simply set out to open a restaurant; he wanted to create a community gathering place and become an important part of the fabric of his neighborhood and his guests’ daily lives. Though he says it hasn’t been easy to do during a pandemic, the

[REGIONALISMS]

Hoosier Love The Golden Hoosier, opening next spring, aims to recast a stretch of south city Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

van and Berto Garcia did not want to open a restaurant. The brothers have enough on their plates with their real estate firm, Garcia Properties, and are admitted neophytes when it comes to the hospitality industry. However, when they couldn’t find the right person to open up the right concept in the former Southtown Pub building they own, they knew they had no choice: They needed to take matters into their own hands. “We didn’t really want to be in the business, but we were like, ‘You know, what if a bar opened here and was awesome and clean and family-friendly and super unique and all these dream scenarios?’” Ivan says. “We were looking for something our neighborhood could be proud of, and we started talking about all these things we wanted, but realized no one was going to do that. That’s when the cockamamy idea hatched to do it ourselves.” Over the past several months, that cockamamy idea has solidified into the Golden Hoosier (3707 South Kingshigh-

smiles on his guests’ faces and the relationships he’s built have made it all worth the risk. “I’ll admit it wasn’t an easy decision to make, but you have to make a decision, take that leap and go for it,” Qadadeh says. “And going for it means doing so wholeheartedly — not halfway there and then you cut out. If you commit and put in the work, hopefully it will work out.” Qadadeh took a break from the kitchen, where he’s prepping for his first philanthropic collaboration with Welcome Neighbor STL, a community group that helps immigrants and refugees settle into St. Louis, to share his thoughts on what it’s like to be in the restaurant business at this moment in time, and what gives him hope, even among challenges. As a hospitality professional, what

way Boulevard), a bar and neighborhood gathering place that will open in spring of 2021. According to Ivan, the Golden Hoosier is meant to be a clean, comfortable space with good drinks, solid food and an inviting atmosphere that will cater to the residents around that particular stretch of south city near Chippewa and Kingshighway. In fact, their desire to open the Golden Hoosier is less about wanting to open a bar and more about recasting the area. As a resident, Ivan has long lamented that the prominent intersection — one that he notes sees 25,000 cars a day — has not been living up to its full potential. “This stretch of Kingshighway is near and dear to us and has a lot of potential,” Ivan explains. “I live two blocks from there; that area is highly traveled, and we don’t have our own little district that’s thriving. We’re really passionate about fixing it up and helping it realize it’s potential.” The Garcia brothers started accumulating real estate in the area, and when Southtown Pub closed last August, they saw it as an opportunity to anchor the prominent corner with a comfortable-yetnice bar that the area residents could be proud of. Though Ivan laughs that Berto did not agree with him on the name at first, he came on board when he explained that he meant it to be a term of endearment for the state of mind that blends comfort with a little bit of style. That style is evident the moment you walk into the Golden Hoosier. Though the Garcia are adamant they want the bar to be a come-as-you-are sort of place,

the atmosphere is stunning. A gleaming, restored Art Deco bar lines the side of the front room, and light fixtures from the same period cast a soft glow over the black-washed bronze textured walls while tufted, semi-circle black leather banquettes create a cozy seating area. The most striking design element, however, is the collection of taxidermy animals that are hung throughout the space that set a moody vibe. The Golden Hoosier has an upstairs bar that will serve as overflow seating or a place that can be rented out for events. The bar also boasts an impressive, campground-themed covered bar and patio that allows for plenty of outdoor seating. Though the Garcias are adamant that the Golden Hoosier is, first and foremost, a bar, they are excited about the food element as well. Headed by executive chef Colleen Clawson, whose most recent projects include the wonderful Milque Toast and the pop-up Babaxavi, the kitchen will put out casual food done really well. Ex-

pect items like a burger, fish and chips, and an open-faced Portuguese sandwich that the Garcias say is sure to impress. Ivan is upfront about the challenges that come with opening a bar, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, but he and Berto are pushing through because they truly believe in what they are doing — and he thinks others in the neighborhood will, too, once they get a chance to experience the Golden Hoosier for themselves. “Improving our community is why we do what we do, and we see this as a catalyst for what we are doing,” Ivan says. “We’re well aware of the fact that we aren’t a big company and don’t have endless resources, but it was Dave Chapelle on Letterman who said one time, ‘You can’t fix the whole world, but you can make a corner of it pretty nice.’ I know we have a lot of big problems, but we’re just trying to make our little section nice, and hopefully that inspires people to fix their little corners, too.” n

do people need to know about what you are going through? We want everyone to know that we are so appreciative and grateful for the kindness and support that they have shown us. American Falafel opened in June in the midst of the pandemic, and without the community support we would not be here. It is through their support for partnerships like the one we are doing with Welcome Neighbor St. Louis that we can showcase St. Louis on a national stage. What do you miss most about the way things were at your job before COVID-19? The most fulfilling thing is the interaction with our customers and when you can bring a smile to someone by serving them amazing food or by giving a small gesture of appreciation. What do you miss least?

Nothing. What is one thing you make sure you do every day to maintain a sense of normalcy? In a sense, we are starting to move forward, and we will get through the second wave. I hope we will be back to somewhat normal life by next spring/summer. What have you been stress-eating/drinking lately? HAHAHA, I have put on some weight. I must say, however, that I have been working out seven days a week to burn it off. OK, next question! What are the three things you’ve made sure you don’t want to run out of, other than toilet paper? Good friends and some wine for sure. You have to be quarantined with three people. Who would you pick? My three kids. They might not want to, but I do.

Once you feel comfortable going back out and about, what’s the first thing you’ll do? Travel for sure, maybe skiing, maybe beach. What do you think the biggest change to the hospitality industry will be once people are allowed to return to normal activity levels? No one can really tell how the industry will look post-pandemic. I can tell you one thing: You will always have amazing food and amazing experiences in St. Louis in the future. What is one thing that gives you hope during this crisis? I am always hopeful and optimistic. I am also always encouraged when I see a partnership like the one we are doing with Welcome Neighbor St. Louis and how it can bring the community together to support each other during these trying times. n

The Golden Hoosier aims to brighten up its stretch of south city. | CHERYL BAEHR

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NOVEMBER 11-17, 2020

RIVERFRONT TIMES

CULTURE

[LITERACY]

Save Our Bookstores Left Bank Books in the Central West End is asking for your help to survive Written by

JAIME LEES

he pandemic has been rough on businesses across the country, but independently owned shops are getting hit particularly hard. They often operate on small margins, so any dip in business can be catastrophic — but COVID-19 has brought almost unthinkable losses to a beloved local indie bookstore that has been operating on “sheer willpower” since March.

[ART]

Happy Accidents TikTok’s ‘Gay Bob Ross’ is a St. Louis star Written by

MATT WOODS

t. Louis artist Nicholas Holman gained his claim to fame on TikTok. He has 71,000 followers and 1 million likes since his first post on the social media app in May. Holman says he got 30,000 new followers in one day after posting a video of him painting the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. He also posts videos of illustrations of U.S. states and people’s pets. Holman served at restaurants before making a living on his art alone. A boost from TikTok gave him what he needed to show his talent and focus on art as a full-time career. Holman lets his personality come alive through his videos. Coining himself as “your local gay Bob Ross,” he adds witty commentary to the art he shares on TikTok.

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Left Bank Books (399 North Euclid Avenue; 314-367-6731) says that the last two months of the year usually “account for onethird of our whole year’s revenue,” but how the rest of this particular year will shape up is a big unknown because of the pandemic. As it is now, they say their numbers are “not sustainable,” so they are asking for help to get through these hard times. “With sales at an alarming low, and no additional Federal assistance in sight, there are not a lot of options,” the store’s owners write in a statement. “We’re doing everything we can with what we have. So I am asking you now, if you are at all able, to support us in generous numbers this holiday season.” ore than ust a place to find the latest hardcover, Left Bank Books has been a cultural hub since the business started in 1969. The shop is essential to the soul of St. Louis, and letting it go would feel like someone cut out a big piece of our local heart. And when we think about what kind of world we want after this pandemic finally ends, it

Left Bank Books co-owners Jarek Steele and Kris Kleindienst. | THEO WELLING is a world that definitely includes Left Bank Books. If you want to help them out you just have to do one thing: Find some way to give them a bit of money. If you don’t need any books,

He says TikTok gave him an opportunity that no other social media app could. On Instagram, Holman says he felt like he was posting to no one. Everyone has the chance to make it big on TikTok, he adds. A graduate of Fox Senior High School in Arnold, Holman moved to Arizona in February only to find himself stuck shortly after amid the COVID-19 pandemic. He moved back to St. Louis a few months ago and continued to take off on TikTok. “It just really excites me that this platform even exists, because I think I’ve tapped into a part of myself that I couldn’t really express anywhere,” Holman says. He takes states’ central themes and adds them to his state illustration videos, which have gotten upwards of 100,000 views. Missouri’s includes the Arch with the painting Holman at work. | COURTESY NICHOLAS HOLMAN of Ha Ha Tonka State Park in the background. Holman will paint a portrait of your pet for $75. His website also “Welcome back to the gay Bob Ross contains murals, posters and stickers show,” Holman said to start a video in of his art. He uses his platform for social May. The Bob Ross style shows through causes as well. Holman managed to his soft voice and nature paintings. This raise $3,400 for the Black Lives Matter way there are no mistakes in his videos, movement from T-shirts and other clothing and donated the profit, he says. n only happy little accidents.

NOVEMBER 11-17, 2020

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you can just donate to the cause. But if you’re like us and you need twenty more books always, hit up Left Bank for your next new or pre-loved book purchase. Not only will you be keeping them in businesses, you’ll be keeping local people employed. And don’t worry, you don’t have to even go into the store — they’ll ship your purchase straight to your doorstep just like if you ordered it from one of the big evil guys. But they don’t just sell books, y’all. Left Bank Books can cover you for all of your holiday shopping needs. No, seriously. They have everything. Just check out their online gift shop. It includes the usual T-shirts and tote bags that you can find at many bookstores, but they also offer prints, stickers, face masks, cross-stitch kits, mugs, postcards, funny socks and a large selection of other doodads and must-haves like badass enamel pins in styles that honor lefty favorites like Ruth Bader Ginsberg, libraries and voting. So if you’re one of the lucky few with a bit of extra cash these days, buying from Left Bank Books is a great way to keep your money local and to keep a little bit of hope alive, too. “The sooner you place your orders or come in to browse by appointment, the more certain you can be of finding what you want,” the owners write. “And the more certain we can be of being able to celebrate our 52nd birthday with you next July.” n

Post-Election Selections In pandemic times, it’s challenging to find things to do that don’t put yourself or those around you in danger. And while we’re inclined to suggest that the safest event is no event, we also know that sounds a lot like abstinence-only sex ed, and you guys are probably gonna fuck anyway. So consider these recommendations your condoms: not foolproof, but safer than other options. We only recommend events that take precautions, but ultimately you’re in charge of your own health, so proceed with care. We also list live-streamed events, which are the safest of all, though admittedly not the same. Live-streamed events are the masturbation of events in this way, because — you know what, we’re gonna go ahead and abandon this metaphor before we get in over our heads. —Daniel Hill

ADULT SWIM FESTIVAL 3:05 p.m. Friday, November 13 and 2:35 p.m. Saturday, November 14. Livestreamed event. Free. adultswim. com/presents/. Adult Swim brings its delightfully weird world of comedy, art and music to YouTube this weekend for a two-day exercise in absurdity appropriately dubbed the Adult Swim Festival. The virtual fest will combine musical guests and television programming for an event sure to be unlike any other in this hell year, one only slightly less absurd than the election of the new president was. On the music side of things, expect performances by the likes of J.I.D., Thundercat, Kaytranada, Mastadon, Run the Jewels and the Deftones (among many others); on the TV side, there will be live panels featuring the creators of network favorites including the Eric Andre Show, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Lazer Wulf and Rick and Morty. There will be watch parties, special guests will appear, and things are sure to get weird as hell. Speaking Of: The fest’s schedule of events, which can be found at adultswim.com/presents/, lists four instances of something called a “Miracle Seltzer Pickle Sips Giveaway,” three of which are scheduled to last a total of one minute and one scheduled for two minutes. Your guess is as good as ours as to what on Earth that’s about.

venue Off Broadway will finally open its doors for a real-life live show this week. Sure, it’s been hosting some music trivia nights of late and even a listening party for Middle Class Fashion’s latest a couple weeks back, but its stage has stayed darkened throughout the coronavirus pandemic as far as live music is concerned. But no more! St. Louis’ folksy indie-rock act the Defeated County will play host for a show this weekend celebrating the release of its sophomore LP, An Early Fall, an album three years in the making. Additionally, being that the date happens to be Friday the 13th, the event will take on a spooky theme, with attendees getting $2 off the price of admission if they come in costume. (Halloween comes twice this year!) There will be Tarot readings, drink specials, flow arts and even a one-time-only reunion of St. Louis act Let’s Not, of which Defeated County’s Jeremy Essig is also a member — among other surprises yet to be announced. The Usual Caveats: Technically, the stage you’re used to seeing bands perform on will stay dark for this show — the event will take place in Off Broadway’s patio area. Social distancing will be enforced, Defeated County masks will be provided with admission (and the wearing of masks in general will be required), and attendance will be capped at 50 people.

THE DEFEATED COUNTY RECORD RELEASE

JOHN HENRY/ THE SLEEPY RUBIES DUAL EP RELEASE SHOW

7:30 p.m. Friday, November 13. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Avenue. $15. 314-498-6989. After months of quiet on the live music front, beloved south city

8 p.m. Friday, November 13. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Boulevard. $15. 314-726-6161. When it rains record release shows in St. Louis, it evidently

The Defeated County. | VIA THE ARTIST

Run the Jewels. | DANIEL MEDHURST pours. Across town from the Defeated County’s record release bash at Off Broadway, the Pageant will play host to the Sleepy Rubies and John Henry, with the latter delivering a new slab of music as well the five song Out at Sea EP. Funny enough, this show was initially planned for July at Off Broadway before COVID-19 shut everything down, and is now at the Pageant, competing directly against the different record release show that will happen at that venue instead. St. Louis gonna St. Louis! Regardless of scheduling and venue oddities, fans of local

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music are in for a treat no matter which show they choose to attend. Masks On: In addition to a mask mandate and significantly reduced capacity, the Pageant will conduct temperature checks upon entry and enforce social distancing throughout the show. Seating will be reserved, and guests are required to remain in their seats unless they are getting up to leave or use the restroom. Standing or dancing, even at your seat, is not permitted. A full list of the venue’s COVID-19 precautions can be found at thepageant. com/coronavirus. n

NOVEMBER 11-17, 2020

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NOVEMBER 11-17, 2020

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SAVAGE LOVE FOUR PLAY BY DAN SAVAGE Hey, Dan: Why are threesomes much more accepted in the popular imagination than foursomes? I was just googling “finding foursomes” and the first result is an article about threesomes that takes for granted that people are looking for MFF. That is a form of heteronormativity, right? I am not judging threesomes, of course, but asking why foursomes are perceived as more taboo. Would be interested in knowing more about what you think about this or if you have any resource to recommend as I am approaching this now with my partner for the first time. Willing To Foursome PS: Love what you do with your work. I don’t think the popular imagination has conspired against foursomes or that foursomes are really that much more taboo than threesomes, WTF. Rather, I think threesomes are easier to arrange than foursomes and the popular imagination reflects that fact. Think about it: Finding two people who wanna fuck each other is hard. Finding three people who all wanna fuck each other — Person A wants to fuck Person B and Person C, Person B wants to fuck Person A and Person C, Person C wants to fuck Person A and Person B — is harder still. Adding a Person D to the mix makes the wannafuckmath infinitely more complicated. Which is not to say everybody fucks everybody during a threesome, of course, but at the very least everyone involved has to at least be OK with fucking in very close proximity to everyone else involved. And while complicated to arrange and often emotionally tricky, WTF, threesomes aren’t really that taboo. According to research into sexual fantasies done by Dr. Justin Lehmiller, it’s the single most common sexual fantasy. More than 90 percent of men and nearly 90 percent of women fantasize about having a threesome, according to Dr. Lehmiller’s research; according to other research, roughly onein five people have actually par-

ticipated in at least one threesome. (Full discloser/cumblebrag: I lost my virginity in a MMF threesome.) Many threesomes are heteronormative by design — e.g., they were arranged to fulfill a straight man’s standard-issue MFF fantasy — but judging from my mail, just as many MFF threesomes are arranged to fulfill the same sex desires of often-but-not-alwaysnewly-out bisexual women who already have husbands or boyfriends — less heteronormative and more bisupportive/biexplorative. y mail isn’t scientific evidence, I realize, but it’s what I’ve got.) And for the record, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a heteronormative threesome. Straight guys should be allowed to have and be allowed to realize their sexual fantasies without being shamed, just like everyone else, so long as they’re realizing them with consenting adult partners. And while straight guys have historically done most of the judging and shaming of non-straight/ non-guys over the entire course of human history, the corrective isn’t to heap shame on straight guys with off-the-rack sexual fantasies. It’s to demand that no one should be shamed for their sexual fantasies, and we demonstrate our commitment to that principle by not shaming anyone — not even straight guys — who seek to realize their sexual fantasies with other consenting adults. And finally, TF, there is one place where foursomes are far less taboo and could even be described as standard: the organized and mostly straight and often supremely heteronormative swingers’ scene. If you and your partner are of the opposite sex and are interested in or willing to settle for strictly heterosexual sex where men are concerned, you might find more luck arranging foursomes at swingers’ parties — once those parties are possible again — than on dating apps. Hey, Dan: Where do I go from here? My parents voted for Trump in 2016 and again in 2020. I’m a lesbian. My partner and I have been together for nearly 20 years. My parents have always been supportive; we have a great relationship. But I can’t reconcile their vote for this piece of trash. They’re not even pro-life or religious. I gen-

uinely don’t understand. What The Fuck Do I Do Now? My dad voted for George W. Bush in 2004. Bush’s campaign was pushing anti-gay-marriage ballot initiatives across the country in the hopes that bigots would turn out in huge numbers and put his incompetent ass back in the White House. The fact that the thenpresident of the United States — the worst one we thought we’d see in our lifetimes — was waging a demagogic campaign against one of his own children didn’t stop my dad from voting for him. For a second time. I didn’t stop talking to my father. While I believe we have to confront family members about their bigotries and that there have to be social consequences when people vote for racism and fascism and oligarchy and corruption and disease and death, WTFDIDN, I don’t think cutting off contact with nontoxic/non-QAnon parents or family members is the answer. Where there’s evidence of cognitive dissonance — and a family member voting for someone seeking to harm people they love is certainly evidence of cognitive dissonance — there’s also an opportunity. So I would urge you to express your displeasure to your parents and demand better from them and to keep bringing it up. While text messages from strangers and robocalls often fail to move people, appeals to conscience — sometimes angry ones — from family members often work. I’ve heard from a lot of people over the last few months whose parents voted for Trump in 2016 but voted for Biden this year. I wish I could say my dad was one of them. Maybe next time. There are elections coming up in 2022, and there’s a high likelihood we will see a Trump on the ballot in 2024. (There are two special elections in Georgia in January that will determine who controls the U.S. Senate!) The parents who disappointed you and endangered our democracy in this election are likelier to come around before the next election if you demand answers from them now. Hey, Dan: I’d like to think I am pretty open and understanding to a lot of things. I met a hot guy at

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my job who says he has a fetish for ass. In a sexting session, I learned he was not only obsessed with my ass, but me playing with his too. He later revealed there was only one other woman he felt comfortable sharing his gay fantasies with. Everything involved ass play, sucking dildos or DP. (Eyebrow raised.) I asked him if he was curious about gay sex and he said no. In no way does he want a man, he said, and everything he wanted done to him he wanted a woman to do. We’ve had several sexting sessions and it always shifts to me dominating him or a gay sex fantasy. I really want to be open but he is making this very hard. Questioning Unusual Exceptionally Erotic Relationship This would be easier if you were clear — clear with yourself — about what you want and what’s possible. If you want a long-term relationship that doesn’t revolve around ass play and you couldn’t possibly enjoy a casual sexual adventure with a hot guy who isn’t a good potential long-term partner … then you should stop sexting with him. But if you’re up for a crazy, ass-centered sexual adventure with a hot guy that won’t lead to anything serious or long-term … then get yourself a strap-on dildo and order this not-gay guy to get on his not-gay knees and suck your not-gay dick. I suspect you feel tense after sexting with this guy because you’re left thinking, “My God, what am I signing up for here?” The animating assumption being that “going there” means getting stuck there. But if you told yourself you were only signing up for a crazy night or a crazy weekend instead with this ass-obsessed dude and not a lifetime with him, you would most likely feel a lot less nervous about this connection. In other words, QUEER, being open to playing with this guy doesn’t mean you have to be open to dating him, much less marrying him. But, again, if having a sexual adventure with someone who isn’t a potential long-term partner isn’t something you could see yourself doing and enjoying, QUEER, stop responding to this guy’s sext messages. mail@savagelove.net @FakeDanSavage on Twitter www.savagelovecast.com

NOVEMBER 11-17, 2020

RIVERFRONT TIMES

NOVEMBER 11-17, 2020

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NOVEMBER 11-17, 2020

RIVERFRONT TIMES

SWADE

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Riverfront Times, November 10, 2020

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