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THE LEDE

“It’s crazy. It’s a tough one to fight. For some people, I don’t think there’s anything we can say to convince them otherwise, but it’s hard to listen to that kind of stuff and have to show up at work when you’re dealing with these patients that are struggling for their lives. You’re putting all kinds of machines attached to them, and even then they’re still struggling. These things that we’re doing, it’s not a fix — you’re buying time, is the best way you can put it really. ... It honestly hasn’t stopped since March. Probably even earlier than that. ... We’ve dealt with COVID patients from the beginning. I mean, this thing hasn’t stopped.”

PHOTO BY THEO WELLING

JOSE VICTOR VALENCIA, REGISTERED NURSE IN AN INTENSIVE CARE UNIT AT A ST. LOUIS METRO HOSPITAL, PHOTOGRAPHED ON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11 riverfronttimes.com

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Lessons

here are few reminders of St. Louis’ disappearing population as potent as the city’s public schoolhouses. Once community anchors, a growing number of grandly designed, but increasingly empty buildings have turned into gaping holes, punching through our neighborhoods. St. Louis’ population is less than half what it was a century ago when a lot of the structures were built. The St. Louis Public Schools district has consolidated and closed dozens of them with more seemingly on the way. In this week’s cover story, Riverfront Times staff writer Danny Wicentowski explored (literally in a couple of cases) the afterlives of the vacated schoolhouses as developers move in to turn classrooms into loft apartments. As Danny found, it’s more complicated than just a real estate deal. — 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 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 Chuck Healy, Jackie Mundy Digital Sales Manager Chad Beck Director of Public Relations Brittany Forrest

COVER No More Pencils, No More Books

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

After years of decline, St. Louis is preparing to close more schools. Loft developers are standing 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

Cover photograph by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

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HARTMANN The Politics of Terrible Lawyering Missouri AG Eric Schmitt’s disgraceful duplicity benefits nobodby but himself

f Eric Schmitt’s title read “Missouri Republican Party General Counsel,” one could make the case that he’s doing a reasonably good job. It doesn’t. And he isn’t. Schmitt has violated his oath of office as issouri attorney general, the position to which he was appointed in 2019 by Governor Mike Parson and elected November 3. Schmitt swore to serve the interests of all the people of the state — not just the ones of his

own party — but he has dropped all pretense of doing so. Schmitt has played a leading role nationally in the seditious attempt by Republican attorneys general to overturn American democracy at the behest of Donald Trump. Unlike sixteen other states, Missouri did not merely join in the charade. ts attorney general’s office wrote the amicus curiae brief, both in the failed Texas effort to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to make Trump dictator and a previous one from Pennsylvania. Schmitt has become reduced to a groveling manservant to Trump. Exhibit A is a December 9 tweet: issouri is in the fight, Schmitt proclaimed to please the boss and the base. Contemptuous of the fact that he was elected to serve an entire state and not just the portion that voted for him, chmitt betrayed his office as few have done before him by forcing the state to participate in Trump’s assault on the electoral process. Schmitt’s tweet blasted in bill-

board-sized type the letterhead of indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — a leader of the Trump pac — a fitting testament to just how dirty this mission is. Paxton’s best excuse is that he desperately needs a pardon from Trump. Schmitt has no such excuse. The only thing he has to gain personally from his waste of Missourians’ tax dollars is political gain, not avoidance of jail time. His payoff seems to be frontrunner status in the 2024 Republican gubernatorial sweepstakes. All of this has come at Missouri taxpayer’s expense through use of chmitt’s office for an obviously partisan mission. Asked about that, Marianna Deal, Schmitt’s communications director, said “the brief was written by salaried employees, so there are no specific costs to the office involved. That might make perfect sense were one to assume that the salaried employees of the office have lots of spare time on their hands.

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But suppose the absurd Texas lawsuit had succeeded. It’s hard to envision Schmitt having said, “Oh don’t give us any credit. We just threw together the amicus brief. It took no time at all.” To the contrary, the amicus brief was a serious legal project for an unserious purpose. In a less partisan time, state legislators wrestling with Missouri’s budget crisis might consider trimming some staff in chmitt’s office. They won’t. ere this his first rodeo, chmitt might be forgiven for getting caught up in the tidal wave of Trump’s rage over losing to President-elect Joe Biden. But Schmitt’s use of his office for craven political purposes has followed a tiresome pattern. t is the defining characteristic of his tenure. In August 2019, Schmitt signed on to a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that federal law does not protect lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individuals from workplace discrimination

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under the 1964 Civil Rights law. Like the Texas and Pennsylvania cases, it ended up in the loss column legally but not politically in culturally repressed Missouri. Only thirteen of the nation’s Republican attorneys general (roughly half) shamed themselves by abusing their power to presume to speak for all citizens on that one. As the Kansas City Star reported, “The brief, signed by Schmitt, contends federal law prohibits only sex discrimination and the plain meaning of ‘sex’ is biological status as male or female, not sexual orientation or gender identity. “Chris Nuelle, Schmitt’s spokesman, said the attorney general’s signature on the brief ‘should not be interpreted as speaking to the merits of the issue, but rather the interpretation of the law that is written.’” The defensiveness of that statement is evidenced by its omission from the news section of Schmitt’s official website which had announced twelve other news items that month. Nuelle had directed us to the website for examples of nonpartisan efforts by the attorney general, of which there are many. But while no one accuses chmitt of failing to fulfill the basic duties of operating the office, it’s increasingly clear that his priorities are political. And it’s not as if he has avoided basking in the spotlight they have provided. Until recently the most embarrassing example — of this or any era — was Schmitt’s pathetic attempt to bring the People’s Republic of China to its knees over the spread of COVID-19 to Missouri. As of press time, Chinese President Xi Jinping has not been served for chmitt’s lawsuit, apparently filed with little self-awareness. Schmitt also should have been embarrassed (but was not) by his ludicrous public accusation that State Auditor Nicole Galloway had committed a felony in how she released transcripts from an audit of Senator Josh Hawley’s flyover days as attorney general. Somehow that slander was never followed by charges against Galloway, who happened to be running against Parson. At least that cheap shot was within the realm of partisan politics-as-usual. Ditto for Schmitt’s efforts to try to shut down Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, another politically successful legal failure. But in July, Schmitt took the

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Schmitt’s use of his office for craven political purposes has followed a tiresome pattern. It is the defining characteristic of his tenure. abuse of his office to a new level. He stunned the legal world by interfering with Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s weaponscharge prosecution of St. Louis’ infamous gun-toting preppies, the noxious Mark and Patricia McCloskey. Given that Schmitt’s office would be charged with defending an appeal of any conviction of the McCloskey’s, it was wildly inappropriate for Schmitt to file a brief as a de facto part of their defense team. Again, it represented bad law but good politics. The Republican Party has truly lost its soul under Trump’s thumb, especially in deep-red states like Missouri, where Dear Leader won again by more than 15 percentage points. The nation can only hope that by 2024, Trump will be relegated mostly to its rearview mirror so Schmitt and other Republicans might return to at least some semblance of normalcy in performing their government jobs. If that’s the case, Schmitt would do well to heed some righteous words on the need to keep the focus at home: “Some folks will highlight that our time seems increasingly divisive, and in some ways in Washington, D.C., it is. But strong communities aren’t built by faceless folks from far-away places – they’re built by real people living in them.” That’s what Eric Schmitt told the graduates of the UMKC Law School in a 2019 commencement speech. Apparently, he doesn’t believe it. 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).

NEWS No Charges for Cop in Galleria Mall Shooting Written by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

t. Louis County prosecutors announced last week they won’t charge a police officer who killed a man who they say sparked an armed chase last year through the Galleria Mall. But video of the shooting captured on a police dashcam appears to clash with the initial statements on the shooting offered by the St. Louis County police. The footage does not show Terry Tillman pointing a pistol at either of the two officers who cornered him in a parking garage near the mall on August 31, 2019. Instead, the dashcam presented an unobstructed view of the near-simultaneous confrontation between Tillman and an unidentified ichmond eights officer who, in pursuit of Tillman, was ascending a staircase to the second floor of a par ing garage. t the same time, Tillman was sprinting away from a second officer — and toward the same flight of stairs. s shown on video, the officer was halfway up when Tillman rounded the corner at the top of the stairs. The two men were in sight of each other a fraction of a second before the officer opened fire, stri ing Tillman multiple times in the chest. The department has not named the officer or released any information about his service record. In a news release last week from the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, Tillman was described as running “full-speed toward the officer holding a gun, but this framing fails to convey what’s fully clear in the video — the fact that Tillman had no idea he was running toward an officer at the time. The incident had started that day at 3 p.m., when Tillman was

St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell announced that he would not be filing criminal charges against police officer Terry Tillman. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI walking through the Galleria with a .40 caliber Glock handgun in his pants. Surveillance footage from various mall sources showed the gun’s extended magazine sticking out of his waistband holster as he entered a store and talked with an employee. Tillman was never seen brandishing the pistol, though at one point in the video a store employee talking to Tillman appeared to comment on the protruding magazine. The interaction seemed to prompt Tillman to tuck it further into his pants. But he had already been spotted by several shoppers, as well as two officers wor ing security at the mall. Surveillance and bystander-shot footage showed the officers confront Tillman at a store, but he sprinted away after a brief conversation. In the process, Tillman knocked over a clothing rack and dropped his pistol, which he stopped to recover before continuing his escape. Pistol still in hand, Tillman managed to sha e the two officers, who soon lost sight of him as he dashed across layton oad. But as a manhunt began and officers from multiple departments swarmed the Galleria and surrounding commercial district, two ichmond eights officers eroed in on a parking garage near Simmons Bank just across the street

from the Galleria. The two cops split up, approaching staircases on the east and west sides of the structure. either officer new that Tillman had run up the west stairs just seconds before they’d pulled up in their patrol SUVs. With one officer now cutting off the other staircase, Tillman ran back to the west side of the building, apparently heading for the stairs he’d just taken. e had no idea he was about to confront a ichmond eights officer coming up the same way. In a private screening for reporters, prosecutors showed the moment of the shooting in slow motion. Tillman is never seen raising the pistol in his right hand. Mid-stride, Tillman bursts around the corner, and in nearly the same moment the officer fires several shots while moving backward. The officer stumbles on the stairs, falling the rest of the way and landing on his back on the ground — none of which, as he would later tell investigators, he remembered in the aftermath. Similarly, in a formal interview three days after the shooting, the officer also said he had no memory of firing an additional shot while lying on his back. After that shot, however, the dashcam video recorded him shouting at Tillman, rop the gun, motherfuc er

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Tillman’s response is audible on the video. “I dropped it, I dropped it, he said. These were Tillman’s last discernable words caught on the video. s officers swarmed the scene, the video showed one removing Tillman’s pistol — along with a 28-round extended magaine — and others giving him . Tillman would later be pronounced dead at the scene. The police report noted that the trigger on Tillman’s handgun was depressed, though he’d left the weapon unchambered. The handgun had been purchased by a friend, police found, as Tillman’s criminal history (he had served five years in prison for a robbery) meant he would likely not pass a background check. In a press release, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney esley ell said he couldn’t file any criminal charges against the officer, given what he’d seen in the video. e said he’d met with Tillman’s relatives and told them of his decision. e also showed them the series of videos from the investigation into the shooting. “There is no way to heal the loss of a son, father, brother or friend, and we regret the loss of this young man’s life, ell said in the news release. “But the facts and law in this tragic case do not warrant criminal charges. Although Bell did not release the video to the public or name the officer who too part in the tragic case, his office did release a 127-page redacted investigative file, which featured a transcript of the formal interview between the officer and t. ouis ounty detectives on September 3, 2019, four days after the shooting. t one point, the officer described the moment he faced Tillman at the top of the parking garage stairs. e recounted that Tillman appeared to be “looking bac toward the east staircase and the second officer shouting commands. “I had my gun pointed up the stairs. nd the sub ect came flying, or running, the officer said. e had a pistol about right here in his hand pointing that way. ere the transcript notes that the officer demonstrated by holding his hand near his right hip. e didn’t see me, the officer continued, “and that’s when I fired. n

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Vaccine’s Arrival ‘Historic Day’ Written by

DOYLE MURPHY

ozens of health-care workers were injected on Monday with the first vaccines to arrive in issouri, a turning point in a nine month battle against the virus. Today is a historic and important day for our country, r. le ar a, incident commander of the t. ouis etropolitan andemic Tas orce, said during a briefing. ore than , people in issouri and , across the nited tates have died of the coronavirus since arch. eaths are e pected to continue nationwide at a monstrous clip for the ne t two or three months, even as the rollout of vaccines begins, according to the enters for isease ontrol. ar a said that everyone wor ing to battle the pandemic has spent the past nine months playingdefense against the virus. e warned that we’re still a long way from vaccinating enough people to reach herd immunity but said the beginning of vaccinations sig-

Tragedy After a Roadside Rescue on I-64 Written by

DOYLE MURPHY

n the night of December 4, Justin Macanufo was driving to pick up his wife when two cars nearly collided in front of him. The cars were both trying to merge into the same lane on Interstate 64 near Kingshighway, but the drivers didn’t notice one another until the last second, from what Macanufo could see. One of the cars, a 2009 Pontiac G6, swerved away, overcorrected and fishtailed head-on into a guardrail. “It looked like still basically full speed when she hit the guardrail,” he says. The 36-year-old pulled over, and before he could even reach the Pontiac, it was on fire, he says. The 30-year-old driver was trapped behind the steering wheel with her door jammed shut. Macanufo says he could

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Registered nurse Greg Newsham was the first at Mercy Hospital St. Louis to get the vaccine. | COURTESY OF MERCY nals a change. Today, with the vaccine arriving, we can finally go on the offensive, he said. The first people to get the vaccine were at ercy, which was the first of the four ma or health care systems in the t. ouis metropolitan area to receive its shipment of vaccines. ercy spo eswoman ethany ope said the health system e pects to receive , through the wee in its first allotment across its sites. They started with twenty vaccisee two small kids in the back, so he ran around the side, opened the door and helped them out. He returned for the driver and pulled her through the window. The woman was bloody but alert — and she knew something was wrong. “She shouted, ‘What about Eli?’” Macanufo recalls. In the front passenger seat was a third child slumped against the door. By then the flames were spreading fast from the front of the car. There was so much fire that Macanufo had to turn his head away as he lifted the boy out of the Pontiac. Other drivers had stopped, and another man helped him move the child away from the car. Macanufo says they could hear small explosions as the car burned. Police arrived, and ambulances. The driver walked back and forth between the kids — the frightened, wailing younger children and the unconscious older boy. Macanufo spoke to accident reconstruction officers about what he’d seen, and after about two hours, he continued on to pick up his wife. It was after midnight by the time they made it home. He’d only heard the oldest boy’s name — what about Eli? And he wondered. The next day he searched for news stories and saw that the woman and kids were injured

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nations at ercy outh. nother health care employees were given the vaccine at ercy ospital t. ouis where staff cheered the first in ection for registered nurse reg ewsham. The hospitals planed to build to a full schedule set to begin on ednesday, going from a.m. until p.m. ther sites are scheduled to get shipments in the coming days. ealth is e pected to receive , vaccines by early ne t wee , and , should be available for t. ouis health care wor ers by

Justin Macanufo helped pull a family from a burning car. | COURTESY JUSTIN MACANUFO but alive. He took that as a good sign. Last week, he spoke to the Riverfront Times on the phone, partly because he hoped we might have more information. And, sadly, we did. St. Louis police had reported earlier on the day of the interview that nine-year-old Elijah Alexander

hristmas, spo eswoman tephanie oller ueller said in an email. issouri will have vaccination sites at hospitals and health care facilities across the state. ov. i e arson said in a news release that shipments of the fi er io Tech vaccines will continue to reach the sites through the wee . arson, who caught the virus and has recovered, has re ected repeated pleas of health care e perts to impose basic health orders, such as a mas mandate, which studies have shown to be successful in slowing the spread. n announcing the first shipments of the vaccine, he continued to as people to voluntarily follow safety guidelines. e must stay diligent in our efforts and continue to practice preventive measures, he said. ar a, who is one of those health care wor ers who has repeatedly as ed for a mas mandate, said that it is crucial that no one lets up on any of the practices that are necessary to slow the virus. f you stop fighting while the enemy is still empowered, you’re going to lose a lot of people, he said. ou will lose more people than necessary. ealth care wor ers are in the first group scheduled to get the inections. The state’s plan includes essential wor ers and high ris populations in the first phase of the vaccine rollout. n of Wentzville had died. “Oh my God,” Macanufo said quietly. He remembers medics performing CPR, and he thought the boy had woken up, but he couldn’t be sure. From what he’d gleaned from police, investigators suspected the nine-year-old hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, which might be why he’d been hurt so badly. “They said it wasn’t looking good,” he says. “But I also found the article the next day, and it said they were all in critical condition. So I was like, ‘OK, maybe he’s going to pull through.’” As he processed the bad news, he thought about any kind of lessons or anything that might keep someone else safe. He came up with some standard driving tips: Be aware, wear seat belts and stop if you see someone needs help. He thinks maybe he’ll look into a dashcam, because it might have helped with the investigation. But mostly, he thought about the family. “It’s terrible that this happened to them,” he says. He remembers the two youngest kids — a four-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy — crying at the side of the road. “I hope,” Macanufo says, “that the younger ones mostly forget the crash and just remember Eli.” n

Bill Would Protect Drivers Who Hit Protesters Written by

RUDI KELLER AND REBECCA RIVAS This story was first published by the Missouri Independent.

eacting to a summer marked by protests against police violence around the country, a pair of Missouri lawmakers are pushing for legislation shielding drivers from liability if they hit protesters with their cars. State Senator-elect Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, is sponsoring a bill that would bar lawsuits against drivers for injuries to a person who was bloc ing traffic in a public right-of-way while participating in a protest or demonstration” unless the driver’s action “constitutes gross negligence.” Brattin’s bill is a wide ranging proposal that targets demonstrations in numerous other ways. t would also yan benefits from public employees convicted of unlawful assembly or rioting, withhold state funds from local governments who cut police budgets too much and impose a prison term of five to fifteen years for vandalizing a monument on public property. In the Missouri House, state Rep. Adam Schnelting, R-St. Charles, also wants to shield drivers who injure or kill demonstrators with their cars. His proposal, which covers both civil and criminal liability, would apply to people fleeing an unlawful or riotous assemblage” if “the person reasonably believes he or she or any occupant of the motor vehicle is in danger.” The General Assembly convenes January 6 for its annual session. Legislative staff began assigning bill numbers and publishing prefiled bills on ecember . arly filing assures a low bill number but does not give legislation a priority spot for debate. Brattin, a former House member who is returning to Jefferson City after two years as Cass Coun-

A St. Louis police officer takes down information from a man who drove through a line of protesters in 2017. | DOYLE MURPHY ty auditor, did not respond to several messages seeking comment on his bill. Schnelting told the Missouri Independent that he only intends to protect people unwittingly caught in a riot. The scenario he envisions, Schnelting said, is a twenty-yearold mother with two infants in the back seat caught in a violent situation where rioters are trying to break into her car. he has a right to flee to protect herself without being charged,” he said. Both unlawful assembly and rioting have specific definitions and penalties in state law. Schnelting said he is not trying to legalize ramming peaceful protesters with a car, even if their message is personal. “I have been screamed at plenty of times,” Schnelting said. “That doesn’t mean that I am in danger.” espite the legislators’ intentions, the door opened by the bills, if they became law, is troubling, said Frank Bowman, a professor of law at the University of Missouri who specializes in criminal justice. “Let’s assume I am spooked by the Black Lives Matter demonstrators or the Proud Boys on the corner and I speed away,” Bowman said. “Apparently there is no limitation on how prudent I have to be. This is basically open season on any pedestrian who happens to be within one block, two blocks,

three blocks.” Missouri Protests Throughout the nation this summer, and even into the early fall, people poured into the streets following the emorial ay death of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis who died after a white police officer put his nee to Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes as he lay prone and handcuffed. Some protests turned violent, for a variety of reasons that ranged from instigators within the protesters to provocation by police or opportunistic criminals using cover of the crowd to loot businesses. The scenes were not new in Missouri, which saw similar protests followed the death of ichael Brown in Ferguson and again in when former t. ouis police officer ason hoc ley was ac uitted in the shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith. What was different this summer nationwide, and in some parts of Missouri, was the size, duration and extent of the protests. In Kansas City, what started as confrontation calmed when police tactics changed, KCUR reported. In St. Louis, a day of peaceful demonstration on une was followed by violence that included the shooting death of a retired St. Louis police captain outside a looted pawnshop. In response,

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Mayor Lyda Krewson imposed an overnight curfew. In the run-up to November’s election, many emocrats focused on the grievances expressed by the crowds in the street: police brutality, institutional racism and social ine uities. epublicans, playing to their base, focused on the violent incidents and called for the public to back police actions. It is uncertain what, if any, impact the proposals to shield drivers would have had this summer in two incidents, one in St. Louis and the other in Columbia. No police reports have been made public that provide a complete account. n t. ouis, a ed truc driving through a protest struck and killed Barry Perkins in the early morning hours of May 30, dragging him almost two blocks. In Columbia, on the evening of une , lac ives atter protesters blocked one of the busiest downtown intersections. Two young women were hit when motorists unwilling to go around the protests instead drove through them. Anna Knipfel and Behonsay Williams were injured in two separate incidents about a half-hour apart. There were other incidents as well. n one of the first t. ouis protests this summer, state Rep. asheen ldridge, t. ouis, said people were in the Target parking lot in Brentwood. They weren’t disrupting traffic, but a truck drove through the crowd. The driver later circled back and shot a gun out of the window, Aldridge said. No one was injured. “You’re trying to criminalize individuals who are taking to the streets, but then embracing another behavior of saying, ‘It’s okay, if you see people in the streets, just run them over,’” Aldridge said. Schnelting said his proposal is tied to the definitions of unlawful assembly and rioting in state law, both of which re uire at least si people to gather for the purpose of breaking the law using force or violence. “I want to keep it narrow,” he said. “I have no intention of expanding that.” Other Proposals The provisions that would shield motorists aren’t the only ideas put forward by lawmakers inspired by the summer protests. A handful, proposed by minority emocrats, would do things like ban or limit chokeholds and make it easier for law enforce-

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ment agencies to obtain records of misconduct by job applicants. Meanwhile, Republicans have filed bills creating new crimes against police or shielding their personal information from disclosure in public records like property tax rolls. State Rep. Sara Walsh, R-Ashland, filed a bill ma ing it a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail for directing the light from a laser pointer at a police officer, firefighter, emergency medical worker or other uniformed officer. Walsh could not be reached for comment on her bill. Bowman said the bill would criminalize often innocent behavior. It requires “no proof of a mental state requiring an intent to cause harm,” he noted. “The mental state is only an intention to direct the laser pointer at the person.” The use of laser pointers by protesters was first noted among democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong, who used the powerful lights to disrupt cameras and facial recognition devices used by authorities. Schnelting, like Brattin, also wants to limit benefits available to people convicted of breaking the law at protests. He’s sponsoring a bill to deny unemployment payments for eighteen months to anyone convicted of rioting. The provision in Brattin’s bill would apply only to public employees, taking away health, disability, retirement and other benefits for any state or local government employee convicted of unlawful assembly or rioting. The aim is to deter violence, Schelting said, not protest. “Protesting is a uniquely American thing to do,” he said. “Rioting on the other hand is much worse.” Aldridge, however, said the bill unfairly targets the poor. “You’re basically telling me that there’s going to be an extra penalty if you’re poor, and don’t have a job,” he said. “But if you’re a rich person and do something like this and have a job, you’re not going to get that penalty.” The idea behind the proposal is not new, Bowman said. The law is filled with provisions that are “collateral consequences of conviction,” such as losing the right to own a firearm after a felony conviction. “To the extent anybody cares,

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the overwhelming consensus among criminologists and criminal law scholars is that these kinds of collateral consequences are almost invariably a lousy idea,” he said. And whether either would be applied to anyone is questionable. The St. Louis County prosecuting attorney’s office received two referrals from law enforcement for rioting charges in the past twelve months and declined to file on either defendant, according to Chris ing, spo esman for the office. Brattin’s bill creates new causes of action for civil suits, allows the use of lethal force to protect property by private individuals designated to protect it, denies bail to people convicted of crimes related to demonstrations and creates new crimes for use against protesters. In civil court, Brattin would allow people to sue their local governments for “gross neglect” in protecting property. Defacing publicly owned monuments or public buildings would be a Class felony, punishable by up to fifteen years in prison under one provision of the bill. And among the new crimes it creates is a felony for unlawful traffic interference. In March, a federal judge ruled that the St. Louis ordinance on impeding traffic was unconstitutional — throwing out a law that city police have used to justify arresting, macing and tasing citizens during Ferguson and Stockley verdict protests. U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey found that the municipal ordinance entitled was unconstitutional because it was too vague and didn’t include a free-speech exception. In his opinion, Autrey wrote that the ordinance could apply to “two neighbors who stand and converse in a residential street, or to persons gathering for a neighborhood block party. It applies to a single person or group of persons standing on a sidewalk waiting for an Uber to arrive.” Javad Khazaeli, civil rights attorney at Khazaeli Wyrsch, said the federal case provides the reasoning to why the proposed shield is unconstitutional. “This is written that if somebody sees a protest that they don’t like, especially if it’s bloc ing traffic, that person can just drive through the protest and kill as many people as they want,” he said. “And then just afterwards [say], ‘Oops, I felt I was afraid.’ And then you fight over what is a reasonable assembly, and that’s insane.” n

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No more pencil

No more book 14

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cils

After years of decline, St. Louis is preparing to close more schools. Loft developers are standing by

BY DANNY WICENTOWSKI

t is October 2019, and the old Lyon School is dark. It sits on the end of a quiet street in south St. Louis, fenced and forgotten, a three-story brick castle with boarded front doors and a checkerboard of plywood patches over missing windows. During the day, a few neighborhood kids slide through a gap in the fence to play basketball on a beat-up hoop with no net. They run and dribble on weedcracked asphalt, the same ground touched by a century of St. Louis students. And then one day something changes — and the lights go on at Lyon School. The hoop disappears and the fence is made sturdier. The kids are replaced by construction workers carrying furniture and climbing up ladders to the soaring slate rooftops.

One year later, the transformation is complete. Entering the former schoolhouse, up the wide stairs and cavernous hallways that carried generations of elementary school students, the classrooms are now bedrooms, kitchens and closets. The principal’s office is a studio apartment. The playground has been graded and turned into a parking lot. Matt Masiel, president of Screaming Eagle Development, opens the door to what used to be Lyon’s kindergarten room. The design of the room reminds him of a turret, he says, complete with battlements and a curved wall of five tall windows that nearly reach the ceiling. They flood the room with warm autumn light. Masiel pauses his tour to gaze out the windows. “This is one of my favorite spaces,” he says. Lyon isn’t a trendsetter in St.

Louis real estate. Rather, it is among a half-dozen schools that have emerged from vacancy in the last four years under new management and names. Developers like Masiel have taken some of the grandest and oldest structures in St. Louis and released them into the rental market for studios and one- and two-bedroom loft apartments. In general, the projects aim to leverage the building’s character and history to attract tenants who can afford rents of about $1,000 per month. In Lyon, though, the history still feels alive. When Masiel’s construction crews began clearing out the former kindergarten, they found painted letters still clinging to the original floorboards, a remnant of some long-ago English lesson. The developer crouches down and points to the trail of quartersized circles — dowel rods insert-

ed into the floor — which trace a neat half-ring that terminates against a wall. “They called it ‘circle time.’ It was something they did for kindergarten,” he explains, noting that the rest of the circle continues beyond the newly built wall in the unit next door. “This was one big classroom,” he marvels, “and they just built it into the ground.” Purpose-built buildings like the Lyon School just aren’t made anymore. Built in 1910, at a time when the city was zooming past 700,000 residents, the school’s grandiosity reflected that grand purpose, a kind of temple to the mission of educators in a city whose leaders expected its population to keep growing for decades. More than a century later — now in a city with a population hovering around 300,000 — those expectations are still visible, from the Lyon kindergarten room’s built-in seating chart to the massive, twelve-foot-wide hallways designed by famed architect William Ittner, who envisioned the need to contain and move many hundreds of students between classes and assemblies. Today, those hallways lead to 32 loft apartments. In 2010, the St. Louis Public School District closed Lyon amid budget cuts and decreasing enrollment, one of eleven schools SLPS closed that year. More followed over the next decade, and year by year, the emptied schools became “surplus properties” listed on the district website. Soon developers began buying up schools in neighborhoods with strong real-estate

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markets around the Central West End and Soulard. The historic nature of the buildings come with restrictions. To qualify for certain tax credits, developers must retain the historic character of the structure, which means, for example, that they can’t subdivide large hallways into offices or efficiency apartments. A handful of SLPS surplus properties have been reopened as charter schools or bought by church groups, but of the 21 “success stories” listed by the SLPS website, nine have since reopened as apartments, and more are under development. Lyon is listed among those success stories. In 2018, Masiel’s company purchased the school for $300,000. He went on to spend more than $5 million converting the space into apartments with starting rentals at $920. The price point doesn’t scream luxury apartment, though it’s still higher to accommodate one or two people than the brick row houses being rented to entire families down the block. But from the view of St. Louis’ struggling school system, and for those still part of it, these success stories aren’t storybook endings. Developments like Lyon are an example of the city’s adaptation, but also its diminishment. It is a chapter in the serialized epic of erosion authored by each newly closed school, and together they tell the story of a city struggling, and failing, to support a school system that 100 years ago seemed as impressive and durable as the massive brick schoolhouses it oversaw. And now, it seems like that old story is about to repeat itself all over again.

his school. I should have paid zero for it.” Matt Masiel’s voice echoes off the high trussed ceiling of a two-bedroom apartment that once was part of Lyon’s gymnasium. Like other redeveloped schools, the units in Lyon feature somewhat irregular floor plans cut out of the classrooms and available offices. everal units have been built with new staircases and passageways linking separate spaces into new bedrooms. (In one particularly distinctive touch, a studio apartment features a section of original off-green tiling from a wall that had spent the century as part of a boy’s bathroom.) Masiel isn’t a newcomer to the historic preservation market, and

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Eight years after Lyon School closed, Matt Masiel of Screaming Eagle Development bought it for $300,000. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI yon isn’t his first school redevelopment. In 2019, he and Screaming Eagle completed a $7 million renovation of Nathaniel Hawthorne Elementary School, which became the Hawthorne Apartments. But Lyon proved to be the far tougher job. “This was an anchor of bad shit, for lack of a better word,” Masiel continues. He notes that his cleaning crews found evidence of human encampments and drug use, as well as the obvious signs that thieves had at some point crawled the structure for its metal components. He says the historic front windows needed to be replaced, a cost of $600,000. Today, the Lyon Apartments bear many of the touches found in other repurposed St. Louis schoolhouses. Their vast interiors have been scrubbed and repaired, and many of the lofts include preserved chalkboards as stylish reminders for the new residents. The projects are also buoyed by millions of dollars of public money in the form of tax abatements, a controversial yet widespread form of economic incentive that can zero out a project’s real estate taxes for a decade or more. In large part, that abated tax revenue would otherwise go to t. ouis’ school system. n fiscal year 2017, the abatements lowered SLPS revenue by about $18 million, according to an analysis by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 2018, the incentives accounted for nearly $19 million.

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Kevin Bryant (center) of Kingsway Development aims to rehab the 127-year-old former Euclid School into senior apartments. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI But Masiel insists the abatements are crucial to completing the extensive renovations. “We had every incentive,” Masiel says of the Lyon redevelopment. “We had 100 percent tax abatement for ten years, tax exempt bonds, and still this was a stretch.” Renovating a school can be a valuable investment. Seventeen schools are currently on the SLPS list of surplus properties, and some, such as the 230,000-square-foot colossus that is Dutchtown’s former Cleveland High School, come with land that could be part of a multi-

use redevelopment. Of course, the land comes with a school-sized catch. Masiel might be drawn to the potential development sites available through Cleveland’s proximity to Grand Avenue, but even if he bought the school, he’d have to take on the expensive rehab before building anything else. “They won’t sell you the building unless you have a plan to do the building,” Masiel says, describing his experience with SLPS. “I’d love to do Cleveland, but it’s 200,000 square feet — it’s Lyon

The William Ittner-designed Lyon School, now converted into 32 apartments, is listed among SLPS’ “success stories.” | DANNY WICENTOWSKI

Renovating a school can be a valuable investment. Seventeen schools are currently on the SLPS list of surplus properties, and some, such as the 230,000-square-foot colossus that is Dutchtown’s former Cleveland High School, come with land that could be part of a multi-use redevelopment. times four. You’re talking about a $30 million project before you can do anything outside that.” He adds, “If you gave me Cleveland, I couldn’t make it work.” But the competition for developable schools is growing tighter. Advantes Development has bought and renovated three schools, including luxury apartments in the former Lafayette School in Soulard, and is in the process of turning the former Wilkinson School in Ellendale into 34 loft units. Garcia Properties turned Gratiot School on the edge of Dogtown into a 25-unit apartment complex. Schools in north city haven’t been entirely overlooked, with several reopened as charter schools or bought by church groups. But only two of the eight completed loft-toschool conversions featured in the SLPS “success stories” are located

north of Delmar. That trend may change. In Old North St. Louis, the former Webster School is targeted for transformation into senior apartments, and its developer, Lewis McKinney of LMAC Holdings, obtained even more incentives than Masiel did with Lyon: The $12 million project will get $8 million in federal low-income housing tax credits and a $9.4 million investment from the St. Louis Equity Fund, the Post-Dispatch reported this month. With the cache of SLPS properties continuing to age and deteriorate, Masiel isn’t sure if he’ll buy a third school. “The fact is,” he notes, “the schools out there have had time to be downgraded, or broken into.” It’s a lesson he took from renovating Lyon, which had stood empty only a few years more than Hawthorne, but had suffered

significantly more damage. Then again, St. Louis’ secondhand school market has a tendency to expand. “It’ll be interesting when they do the new round of closings,” he grants. “You never know.”

ndeed, by the time Masiel’s crew started renovations at Lyon, a new wave of school closings was on the horizon. In December , for the first time in t. Louis Public Schools’ history, state data revealed that the district had fallen below 20,000 full-time K-12 students. News of that ignominious benchmar was first reported by the Post-Dispatch’s Blythe Bernhard and Janelle O’Dea. The December 12, 2019, story laying out the brutal facts facing the disctrict featured an ominous prediction attributed to a district spokeswoman: “Any St. Louis school with fewer than 200 students — or about two dozen of the district’s 68 buildings — could be under consideration for closure this spring,” Bernhard and O’Dea reported. School closures have long been a reality for t. ouis, and it reflects the trends that have seen SLPS go from being the largest school district in the state to the fourth in less than a decade. The district’s last mass school closure occurred in 2010, shutting Lyon and ten other schools in a sweep that reduced the district’s total number of operating buildings to 75.

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During the next ten years, the closures continued intermittently. By 2020, SLPS has reduced its holdings to 68 buildings. (By comparison, the Rockwood School District — which last year opened a new 600-capacity school in Eureka — uses just 29 buildings to serve 21,000 students.) In response to the Post-Dispatch’s December 12, 2019, report, SLPS Superintendent Kelvin Adams sent a reassuring letter to the district’s suddenly closurepanicked principals. The letter would be the subject of a Bernhard follow-up story the next day, as she reported the letter both “assured them that no schools have been identified for closure and announced a series of town hall meetings to get community feedback on the district’s future consolidation plans. The town halls convened, and months passed. Then, along with everything else, the process was disrupted by COVID-19. In March, SLPS temporarily closed all of its buildings as the pandemic wreaked havoc on teachers, parents and students. But the pandemic only paused the consolidation process. On December 1, 2020, Superintendent Adams walked to a podium in a school assembly room. Recommendations in hand, he faced the SLPS school board with an update about the district’s stance on school closures. “The notion of looking at our past is really a reminder of what we own, and what remains beyond our institutional reach,” he began. “It is our part tonight to remind the board, and the public, what they are responsible for.” Before presenting the board with his recommendations, Adams digressed into the storied history of St. Louis schools. He mentioned the Des Peres School in Carondelet, which in became the first publicly funded kindergarten in the United States. He praised Sumner High School, founded in 1875 as the first school for lac students west of the Mississippi, and which counts among its alumni Chuck Berry, Arthur Ashe, Tina Turner and Dick Gregory. After a few more minutes of preamble, dams finally dropped the bad news: His proposal called for closing outright a total of ten schools, including Sumner, while converting an eleventh, Carnahan High School, into a middle school. Seven of the schools to be closed are located in north St. Louis. The proposed closures, effective 2021, would impact a total of 2,200 students and 299 employees, Adams said, though he contends staff

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18th Ward Democratic Committeewoman Yolonda Yancie stands in what remains of her old kindergarten room in Euclid School in Fountain Park. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI

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members could join schools struggling to fill teacher and support positions. ccording to the proposal, the savings derived from the closures would go to increasing all school budgets, e panding access to elective courses and fully staffing the remaining schools with nurses, social wor ers, counselors, security officers and family community specialists. n his remar s to the board, dams sounded all too aware of how the news was li ely to land with the families of those students and staff now facing relocation. f the board and the public loo at this as a way of destroying the past then thin there is a misnomer here, he said and as ed that the community not loo at this li e school consolidation or closing, but what we are doing to allot our resources to better support our schools. ut semantics aside, dams also gave the board a page report that set the crisis in star red

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numbers. e’d trac ed ust how e pensive inefficiency can be when it means operating a school built to hold , with a student body diving below . t umner, with an enrollment of , the cost is about , per student, dams found for orthwest’s students, the cost comes to more than , . dams faced pushbac . uring a uestion and answer session, board ice resident usan ones noted that ashon igh chool would be the only neighborhood school left in north city under the proposed consolidation. ther board members raised concerns that charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently operated, would use the closures as an opportunity to absorb local students, further wea ening the system. ut schools are missing too many students, dams replied. ome buildings are already operating with multiple floors and wings shut down, and even then, the is failing to find enough teachers to staff its many schools. dams argued that the district’s

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low salaries ma e it incredibly hard to recruit people. s an e ample, he described an principal at one of our premier schools who had been pressed into service as a math teacher earlier this year when the person hired for the ob left a wee before school started. The board meeting lasted more than two hours, with several members voicing concern about whether the scheduled vote for ecember , ust two wee s later, would give the community sufficient time to respond and prepare. or his part, dams pressed for uic action, and reminded the board of the town halls that had been conducted in anuary and ebruary. e pointed to the star numbers on enrollment, reflecting the underlying reality of the economic and social divisions between t. ouis’ north and south — and the decades long pull of population away from north city. esources have been divested away from this area of the city, and we bear the brunt of it, dams said, but he added, e can’t wal away from facts.

till, dams described the proposal as a ind of compromise, one that would eep open several underperforming schools in neighborhoods that would otherwise lac any school presence. ran ly, ’m giving you ten schools, dams told the board. could have made recommendation for twenty schools, very easily. e paused and repeated himself ery easily.

f architect illiam ttner designed yon li e a castle, then uclid chool in ountain ar was crafted li e one of the city’s erman breweries, a towering structure of deep red bric and omanes ue columns. pened in , the school was designed by erman merican ugust irchner. t’s been closed since . n an overcast afternoon, a cold wind blows against a small tour group assembled beneath the round oman arches at uclid’s grand entryway. nside the dar ened hallways, they ta e careful, crunching steps over the piles of paint fla es and pieces of the Continued on pg 20

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Bill Pietroburgo, an environmental engineer, observes the condition of a stairwell in Euclid School. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI

SLPS schools are already missing too many students. Some buildings are already operating with multiple floors and wings shut down, and even then, the SLPS is failing to find enough teachers to staff its many schools. SCHOOLS

Continued from pg 19

ceiling. They peer at event flyers and homewor assignments still pinned to bulletin boards. mong them is th ard emocratic Committeewoman Yolonda Yancie, who attended Euclid through second grade in the early s. To her surprise, she still remembers the way to her old indergarten classroom. h my god, she says, stepping into the blue-painted room. She wal s over the glass strewn purple carpet to the curved wall of windows overloo ing the schoolyard where she learned to play double dutch at recess.

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remember the circle room, she says. s. alentine was my favorite teacher. he set the groundwor for who am today. That’s how knew exactly where to come.” t’s not ust the memories of a beloved former teacher that stri e ancie it’s remembering that this ind of neighborhood school has all but disappeared in t. ouis. t’s really not fair, ancie says. t’s the community that sets the tone for the children.” uclid is among seventeen buildings currently on the list of surplus properties. t a time when ten more schools may soon be shuttered, it serves as an e ample of what happens to the body of a structure whose bones are approaching a state of termi-

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nal decomposition. espite the building’s age and how long it’s been closed, evin ryant, of ingsway evelopment, comes away from the tour with optimism. e envisions turning the building into senior apartments, a form of affordable housing that would open opportunities for ta credits and other incentives. The biggest thing this uclid is suffering from is a roof, ryant observes. The roof is going to do what a roof does after years of neglect, but roof aside, ’m a fan of the architecture. ust the strength of that building.” uclid isn’t part of ryant’s maor pro ect one mile to the south along elmar oulevard. There, the developer has spent years assembling land and financing for an million pro ect that see s to connect a corridor of ignored north city neighborhoods to the thriving entral est nd. ee s after the tour, in a follow up interview, ryant confirms that he has signed a contract on the school. school redeveloper would be something of a fitting role for ryant, who as a child attended niversity ity’s athaniel awthorne lementary, the same school asiel and Screaming Eagle recently converted to loft apartments.

Turning uclid into apartments would be ryant’s first school redevelopment. fter that first tour, he returned for more exploratory trips through its hallways and descents into its dar basement, finding the boiler room and little hidden passages where they delivered coal.” t’s ust roc solid. ou ust don’t see this ind of construction and architecture anymore, no one can even afford it, he says. ut it’s more than ust the building’s strength and potential for what preservationists call adaptive reuse. There’s sadness, too, he points out, in seeing the physical epilogue to the long decline of St. ouis’ educational system. i e yon and umner and the others slated for closure, these schools represent an inheritance left to rot. Behind the beautiful architecture, buildings that were intended to preserve the best of the previous century are doomed to stand abandoned, monuments to monumental loss. This is the ind of structure where we committed our children. t was ust that important an institution in our community, ryant says of uclid. nd now, he adds, it’s a ghost town.” n

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Lorenza Pasetti is excited to lead Volpi Foods, and even more excited about prosciutto. | COURTESY OF VOLPI FOODS

Pass the Prosciutto Volpi Foods President Lorenza Pasetti was born for the food business Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

rowing up with the legacy of the family business, Volpi Foods, hanging over her, Lorenza Pasetti knew she was expected to carry forth that legacy one day. And, when it was her turn, she proudly did — even if she put in her notice a few times. “I ended up resigning three times in the first ten years, asetti says. “It’s a tough business, and it’s a male-dominated business. There are a lot of stubborn men in this business — some of them I’m

related to. But if you look at it the right way, it can be fun and challenging to get beyond that. I tried to wrap my head around that and use it as a bigger way to change the messaging and provide for some sort of legacy for the family moving forward for my time here. figure didn’t start the business, and hopefully I won’t end it, so I was going to try to make the most out of the time I was given to carry the torch. As president of the storied cured meats producer, Pasetti has been guiding Volpi since 2002. For her, prosciutto, capocolla and bresaola have been a part of her life since she was the little girl who brought salami and butter sandwiches to school — something she recalls as being very different from the PB&Js on white bread her classmates had for lunch. “These products were part of our everyday meals — I mean every day, asetti says. t was very different from what my friends ate, because they weren’t exposed to these products and didn’t un-

derstand them the way people do today. This is very unscientific, but back then, it felt like maybe one out of every ten people knew what prosciutto was. Now, it feels more li e five or si out of ten. Then, if you showed up with a prosciutto sandwich when everyone else was eating mayonnaise on white bread, they looked at you differently. Pasetti’s role has given her a front-row seat to these types of changes in people’s eating habits during the past few decades. As she sees it, the desire for authenticity and to knowing where food comes from has been a boon to artisan businesses like Volpi. She’s observed her customers’ growing willingness to try new things, which inspires creativity in what they cook and, in turn, what Volpi produces. However, she admits that there’s also been a downside. As the quest for authenticity has driven people’s behavior, it’s also called into question whether or not it is possible to be an authentic producer

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of Italian cured meats outside of the old country. It’s a perception she is quick to dispute. “There’s a snootiness that a pig has to be fed a diet of acorns for it to be premium, asetti says. “When I hear people say that our meat here is not as good, I think, eally ’ ’m a firm believer that in America, we have the best meat in the world. We use great raw materials and produce it in a traditional manner. I agree that the way a pig is raised is important. That’s why we’ve put together the Raised Responsibly program that is launching in 2021. I’m not taking anything away from how an animal is raised or its diet. All of that is important, but we have great raw material here. Let’s not cut ourselves short because we’re not in urope. That confidence in everything that Volpi produces is what drives Pasetti. Still passionate about the business 30 years in, she sees it as her mission not only to produce great food for people to enjoy, but

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LORENZA PASETTI Continued from pg 21

also to instill in them a love for that food. “It still really excites me,” Pasetti says. “I love to teach and talk about it, and there are a few of us in the industry who are so passionate about what we do that we can talk for hours — even days. It’s a really interesting business with so many variables to manage. That means it’s never dull, which is very important to me.” Pasetti took a break from the business to share her thoughts on the state of the St. Louis food and beverage community, the importance of saying “good morning” and what gives her hope. What is one thing people don’t know about you that you wish they did? That Lorenza is a female name, not a misspelling of Lorenzo.

What daily ritual is non-negotiable for you? Saying “Good Morning.” It is like saluting to all. If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Reading people’s minds. Who is your St. Louis food crush? There are too many to declare only one a winner. I like to admire from afar and keep favorites close to my vest. Which ingredient is most representative of your personality? Salt. Historical attributes, varied, necessary and flavorful. If you weren’t working in the food business, what would you be doing? I would have gone into another food business – gelato. The food business is one that allows you to create, express yourself and share with others. The people in the food business are generally exciting and pleasant. We have a service mentality and are constant learners always trying to improve

what we do and who we are. As a food professional, what do people need to know about what you are going through? My heart goes out to all the restaurants and their food service employees. Customers can show that they care and support area restaurants by ordering pick-up whenever possible. I know it is hard, but if we all pull together, we can support our neighborhood eateries by ordering out, purchasing gift cards, etc. To all the small business owners out there: Stay calm and stay the course. We’ll get through this together. What do you miss most about the way you did your job before COVID-19? The stability. Each day, there is a new wave of stress put on us — making sure employees are healthy, making sure our grocery stores get product in, making sure our community is able to survive. COVID has made these measures much more volatile, and the stress

[SHORT ORDERS]

BEAST Southern Kitchen & BBQ Now Open Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

avid and Meggan Sandusky have a new jewel to add to their growing barbecue crown: BEAST Southern Kitchen & BBQ (1280 Columbia Center, Columbia, Illinois; 618-719-2384), the husband and wife’s third concept, is now open in Columbia. According to David Sandusky, he and Meggan have always wanted to open a Southern-inflected restaurant, and though they recognize the challenges presented by the current COVID-19 pandemic, the location and timing felt right. “I don’t really know how to stop,” Sandusky says. “I’ve had people tell me not to build out anything right now, but I just don’t know if I can sit here and believe that. I feel like the companies that come out of this [pandemic] will be the ones that dig in. I understand the idea of hoarding cash and trying to save, but we figure if we go down, we might as well go down swinging.” And swinging they are. Though current restrictions prohibit indoor dining in Columbia, the pair are betting on the success of a full-service model for the new restaurant. Unlike Belleville’s BEAST Craft BBQ and BEAST Butcher & Block in the Grove, BEAST Southern Kitchen is the first of their properties to feature a full bar — a service element that repre-

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Buttermilk fried chicken is a new dish at BEAST Southern Kitchen & BBQ. | CHERYL BAEHR sents a significant departure from their business model to date. The new location is a bit of a homecoming for David Sandusky, who began exploring barbecue while working for Bully’s Smokehouse. In June of this year, he and Meggan bought the defunct smokehouse’s Columbia location — the exact same storefront he worked at many years ago — and converted it into BEAST Southern Kitchen & BBQ, transforming the space into a gleaming, cozy restaurant. White trim and dark green woodwork set off the pale gray walls, and glass pendant globes cast a soft light over the dining room. The same aesthetic carries over to the separate bar area,

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which features a long, wooden bar top, high-top tables and shelving made with cast-iron pipes. The bar is not the only element that differs from the other BEAST locations. Though fans of the Sanduskys’ acclaimed barbecue will notice many of the brand’s signature dishes dishes, the menu at BEAST Southern Kitchen & BBQ features several new dishes that give the place its own unique identity. These include items like boudin balls, fried chicken, pit ham and char-roast chuck eye. Also on offer are a handful of desserts, including a chocolate cake based on Meggan’s mother’s recipe. “We’re not trying to recreate the wheel

that brings can be quite overwhelming at times. What do you miss least? Nothing comes to mind. What have you been stress-eating/drinking lately? I’ve recently started making bone broth. I’ve been testing out new recipes every other week, and my favorite so far has been an oxtail bone broth, slow-cooked over 48 hours. What do you think the biggest change to the food and beverage industry will be once people are allowed to return to normal activity levels? People will return to dining out with a vengeance. I hope that our restaurants will be ready for the demand! What is one thing that gives you hope during this crisis? To see our community, whether it be the broader food industry or simply our little neighborhood of The Hill, come together and make sure everyone is cared for. n here,” David Sandusky says. “We’re taking items that aren’t extremely different and trying to make them incredible. For example, the ham and beans is based on my mother’s ham, beans and cornbread. It’s nothing all that different, but it’s just a delicious bowl of ham and beans. We’re not trying to do all this weird stuff. We just wanted to do something that is comforting.” Sandusky credits his culinary director, Ryan McDonald, for many of the new restaurant’s dishes, noting his passion for Southern food and his outstanding friedchicken recipe. “It’s a really great opportunity for Ryan, because he loves to cook Southern food,” Sandusky says. “I gave him room to create, and it’s been a really good fit.” In the midst of 2020’s challenges, the news has not all been bad for the BEAST family. In September of this year, BEAST Craft BBQ was named one of the best barbecue restaurants in the United States by Food & Wine. In November, the same publication honored BEAST Butcher & Block as one of the top butcher shops in the country. However, no matter how many accolades come their way, Sandusky refuses to rest on his laurels and instead continues to push the restaurant group in new directions — something he is eager to show off at the new place. “There’s just a lot to be said about hospitality and sweet tea and fresh air and comfort food and the desire to be in a family environment that is comfortable,” Sandusky says. “Sometimes, I think that can be lost in queue-line barbecue where it’s easy to just consider a customer to be a number. We don’t want to do that; we wanted to push ourselves and create something that would make us better at what we do.” n

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DECEMBER 16-22, 2020

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[SHORT ORDERS]

Holiday Cheers The Royale’s Holly Jolly Courtyard in south city brings safe season’s greetings to a COVID world Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

hen asked why he got into the bar business in the first place, teven it patric mith of the Royale (3132 South Kingshighway Boulevard, 314-772-3600) does not hesitate with his answer. ’m in this business to bring people together, mith says. can create products and put a bag of food in your trun and never tal to you, but that’s not why got in the business. definitely li e people coming together and creating an environment for that. n person is the way li e to do it and the reason people li e our business, so ’m not going to pretend we are something we’re not. That reali ation — something he came to in the early wee s of the pandemic that has wrea ed havoc on the food and beverage industry — is the inspiration behind the oyale olly olly ourtyard, a wintry outdoor watering hole designed to give his guests a feeling of normalcy in decidedly abnormal times. The outdoor setup, which opened the ednesday before Than sgiving and runs through the first wee end of the new year, is a holiday themed soundstage with eclectic decor, fire pits, outdoor heaters, s’mores its, warm coc tails and more. s mith e plains, the olly olly ourtyard is especially festive, given the artistic force behind it. The decor was designed and built by Tara helan, a oyale employee who wor ed as a props artisan for the pera Theatre of aint ouis. nowing what a resource he had in helan, as well as her sister and fellow oyale employee ngela oore, mith gave her free rein to create the winter wonderland of her dreams. ’ve always gone to Tara’s holiday parties and saw what she could do, mith says. o as ed her, ey, can you do something li e this in the courtyard ’ hired her for about a month to put it to-

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The Royale is spreading wintertime cheer with the Holly Jolly Courtyard and other holiday-themed offerings. | COURTESY OF THE ROYALE gether. he didn’t ust go out to a store, buy a bunch of stuff and put it out this is all handmade stuff and her ta ing the time to buy things and put them together. Though mith admits business has been tough, he’s been heartened by the support he’s continued to receive, something he credits to his fierce commitment to creating as safe an environment as possible. s evidence of his efforts, he points to some of his most loyal customers, a group of emergency room doctors and nurses from area hospitals, who have been regularly fre uenting the courtyard after their shifts to unwind. ’m ta ing my cues from them, mith says. f we were ust doing whatever and not ta ing precautions, people wouldn’t be coming in, but we’ve been able to satisfy people by ma ing them comfortable. f ’m getting actual medical professionals in the courtyard, feel li e ’m doing it the right way. owever, mith understands there are many who want to support the oyale from their homes. To that end, he’s also put together several holiday themed goodies that are available on the oyale’s online store. These include everything from bottles of the bar’s signature eggnog, several varieties of bitters made from the oyale’s herb garden, T shirts, hot cocoa, and stoc ings and gift bas ets filled with candied nuts, flas s

DECEMBER 16-22, 2020

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and other essential bar items. or those who choose to come to the olly olly ourtyard, though, mith promises a safe, festive e perience — something he believes we could all use right now. nce started hanging with doctors and reali ing that we could stand outside and create this feeling of normalcy, wanted to create it intentionally, mith

[SHORT ORDERS]

Gerard Craft Launches New Spirits Brand, La Verita Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

erard Craft has been busy during the pandemic. In addition to advocating for the hospitality industry to state and federal officials, helping to spearhead a relief campaign for small businesses impacted by the pandemic, lending his hand at the North Sarah Food Hub and converting the former Sardella into Pastaria Deli & Wine (7734-2 Forsyth Boulevard, Clayton; 314-773-7755), he has one more accomplishment to add to the list: launching a new spirits brand.

says. eople’s spirits are more fierce now than ever. aving a meal when you are full is good, but having one when you are hungry is the best way to eat. verything tastes better and you can feel yourself being re nourished. The fact that we haven’t been able to have this human need, and now we are able to recreate it outside — it’s ust very real. n The celebrated chef recently announced that his company, Niche Food Group, has launched a line of smallbatch amari, liqueurs and non-alcoholic cordials called La Verita, which is available at Pastaria Deli & Wine. Craft tapped acclaimed bar professional Meredith Barry, who was bar manager at Taste before it temporarily closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, to lead the project. “Gerard came to me when Taste closed and said, ‘I don’t want to lose you. What do you think about going into research and development?’” Barry says. “He’d had this idea since Niche and had always wanted to do it, so we bounced a few ideas off each other, he sent me a few recipes and then handed me the reins.” Though Barry considers La Verita to be in the research-and-development stage, she’s proud of what they are already able to offer. This includes a nocino, which is made from Missouri black walnuts, a Meyer limoncello, an arancello rosso and a fernet. Though Continued on pg 24

LA VERITA

Continued from pg 23

La Verita, a line of amaro, liqueurs and non-alcoholic cordials, is now available. | MEREDITH BARRY

the plan is for the brand to launch its own distillery, called Distilleria, for now Barry is sourcing base spirits and infusing them with ingredients to make the products. The La Verita project is personal to both Barry and Craft. For the chef, the “Father’s Fernet” is an ode to his dad, with whom he shares a love for the bitter spirit. For Barry, the limoncello and arancello are based on family recipes, and in talking through them, she got the opportunity to reconnect with her family history. “I come from an Italian American background, and I called my grandmother, who has been making limoncello for a while,” Barry says. “We got to talking about how my great-grandparents lived in this apartment building in Brooklyn that they got to live in because they cleaned it. It was the classic Italian immigrant story. My greatgrandma would make limoncello every holiday season, and we talked all about it. It was wonderful to make that connection during this time.” Barry is taking her grandmother’s advice — like using lemon zest rather than whole peels to make the limoncello — as well as her own research and Craft’s input to do her own experimentation. In a setup she likens to a laboratory,

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“My great-grandma would make limoncello every holiday season, and we talked all about it. It was wonderful to make that connection during this time.” she’s thrilled with the results so far, even if the length of time it takes to know whether or not she has produced something successful can be a bit difficult to handle. “You make it, put in the sugar and then let it rest for a few months,” Barry explains. “It’s not like when you make a drink and have that instant gratification that you made something good. This is a new territory for me, and I’m really happy to be in the testing stage and tasting things along the way.” n

DECEMBER 16-22, 2020

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CULTURE

S3an Alexander’s brand brllantmnds shows off his versatility as an artist. | JESSICA J. PAGE

[ FA S H I O N ]

For the City S3an Alexander’s brllantmnds clothing brand is taking off in St. Louis Written by

TARA MAHADEVAN

3an Alexander started his clothing brand, brllantmnds, for St. Louis. n fact, one of the first pieces he ever created for the label — pronounced “brilliant minds” — was a hand-painted St. Louis hat called For the City that he released in 2016, with a logo flip that features paint drips to signify the city’s creative industry. “St. Louis is everything,” he says. “It taught me to have tough skin, it

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taught me to have confidence — it taught me that you have to know how to move alone sometimes. I wouldn’t be where I am today without being from this city.” This past September, the fashion designer and visual artist released his brand’s biggest collection to date, Big Cozy 3. Inspired by the simple feeling of being cozy — of being “comfortable in your own skin,” as Alexander puts it — the drop featured three pieces: a white long-sleeve T-shirt, navy blue sweatpants and a kelly green hoodie, all adorned with the brllantmnds lightning-bolt-bubbleletter logo. Big Cozy 3 was also Alexander’s most eventful release of the year. While he typically uses the same formula to promote every collection — he makes a commercial and look book, and takes product shots — that didn’t cut it this time around. Alexander had ordered more product for this drop and had to figure out a way to move it. So he introduced Cozy Conver-

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His Big Cozy 3 collection was inspired by the feeling of being comfortable in your own skin. | BINO sations, an Instagram Live series where he interviewed creatives from St. Louis and beyond, whose professions run the gamut of musicians, designers, event producers, visual artists and more. He ended up hosting the series for two months. “The response to it was so great,” Alexander says. “That was a pivotal part to getting this drop sold out. … It became like a therapy session for me. It feels so good to talk to people and realize I think on the same wavelength with all of them.” Just like how he created brllantmnds for St. Louis, Cozy Conversations was for St. Louis too. “I was like, ‘I can use this as a way to continue to build community and have these open dialogues’ — the same dialogue that I would normally have at a pop-up shop or art show. Things that I can’t do now because the world has been shut down all year. t was definitely really eye-opening.” Even though Alexander always

excelled in his school art classes, he never set out to be a designer or visual artist. He began rapping in his youth and pursued art as a way to call more attention to his music. But rap soon took a backseat; he explains that unlike music, art “was another way for people to get an understanding of the type of person I was or who I was, without me having to say anything.” e first started illustrating around 2011, drawing cartoonish figures, animals and bubble letters — reimagining brands like Billionaire Boys Club, Bape, characters from Space Jam and Hello Kitty, and Takashi Murakami’s bear from Kanye West’s Graduation album artwork. Around the same time, Alexander also began ideating brllantmnds after noticing that his St. Louis peers were launching Tshirt labels: Hello Tomorrow, Kid Genius, and Mike Auston’s dont triad. But it was something Alexander wouldn’t revisit until a few years later, after stores like DNA

Alexander’s balloons are “a celebration of all things creative.” | S3AN ALEXANDER STL and Swedlife were already fully operating. During that time, Alexander was focused on honing his painting skills and gaining his footing in the art world. He really hit his stride in his artistic practice when graphic artist Rell Brodie and photographer Jessica J. Page asked him to show his work at their 2015 event Mania; then later, in 2016, Brodie asked Alexander to participate in the art and music event series Vibes St. Louis. And that would become his full-circle moment: He realized he wasn’t able sell his art at his desired price point in the St. Louis market, so he sold his hand-painted or the ity hats for the first time — an item that was more affordable for his audience. His brand took off from there. It took him six years to fully nurture brllantmnds from what he originally conceived of in 2011 — to find something that was true to him. It also took him launching his own art exhibit series, Capacity, in May 2017 to prove to himself that people would show up for him. In November of that year, he dropped the first brllantmnds collection. “Me not being willing to put a

box on my creativity is where the brand came from,” he says. The act of celebration is reflected in the balloon and flower motifs that repeatedly show up in his paintings and designs. While the balloons began as a color study, they turned into something more: “The balloons actually [speak] to exactly what brllantmnds has become — a celebration of all things creative, he e plains. is flower pattern also represents a way to honor yourself. “It comes from the term ‘give so-and-so their flowers,’ he says. t always felt li e if ’m not going to get flowers from everybody else, then what can I do for me?” This year alone, Alexander has released seven collections — and brllantmnds has become his fulltime job. He envisions his brand becoming a brick-and-mortar store and foundational piece for St. Louis’ art, fashion and music scenes. “I want my story to be more than just a store. I want to be a hub for community. I want people to feel comfortable to come shop, to come hang out, to [be in] those environments,” he says. “I want to create a community of people who feel comfortable.” n

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DECEMBER 16-22, 2020

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SAVAGE LOVE GAY DREAM BELIEVER BY DAN SAVAGE Hey, Dan: I’m wondering if you can help me with some dream interpretation. If it helps for context, I’m a single 29-year-old gay man. For just about as long as I can remember, I’ve been having mildly unsatisfying sex dreams in that the dreams never seem to lead to sex itself. My dream partners range from people I work with to people from high school to celebrities I’ll never get the chance to meet. I never dream about someone I wouldn’t want to sleep with in the waking world, given the opportunity. The scenarios are generally different as well. Sometimes the sexual tension is palpable but we’re in a crowded room. Sometimes we get close enough to get started but the setting is off. Sometimes we start to get hot and heavy but the dream ends just prior to the sex. In each case I wake up frustrated and masturbate to finish the fantasy. I’ve been pretty sexually starved during the pandemic, Dan, so you can imagine my frustration when I woke up this morning having almost had dream sex with Andrew Rannells. Can you think of why this might be happening? Any advice would be appreciated! Distancing Real Earnestly And Missing Erotic Romps “Well this is certainly VERY interesting,” said actor, singer, and author Andrew Rannells. “I’m honored I made the list of people DREAMER would actually have sex with in real life, if given the chance.” Seeing as this two-time Tony Award nominee is taken — Rannells fell in love with Tuc Watkins, one of his co-stars in Boys in the Band on Broadway, and the two men now live together in Los Angeles — there’s not much chance of something happening between an anonymous “Savage Love” reader, DREAMER, and Rannells, one of the stars of The Prom on etfli . ut annells was more than happy to do a little amateur dream interpretation for a fan. “As for the root of this issue,” said Rannells, “I suppose it could have something to do with not

having the confidence of actually following through with the full act? Maybe while awake he could experiment with fantasizing about a more complete experience and see if that changes his dream life?” My two cents: Perhaps these dreams are lingering evidence of some shame about your samesex desires — which is why your dream universes conspire to prevent you from having gay sex — or perhaps the continued existence of bigots who would prevent gay men from having sex preys on your subconscious mind and manifests in the form of these frustrating/frustration dreams. Or maybe there’s no way of knowing what the hell is going on here and trying to attach meaning to something as random as a dream is a waste of time or a scam or both. The real takeaway here, DREAMER, is that you now have Rannells’ permission to masturbate about him whenever you like — or at least that’s how I would interpret his encouragement to fantasize about “more complete” experiences with the men who populate your dreams, Rannells included. You didn’t need his permission to masturbate about him, of course, and as a general rule we shouldn’t need to ask the people we want to jack off about for their okay. But Rannells basically offered, DREAMER, so have at. “Ultimately, we can’t control our dreams,” added Rannells. “For instance I have a recurring stress dream where I am supposed to be driving Jessica Lange somewhere and I can’t get the GPS to work. What does it mean? We’ll never know.” Follow Andrew Rannells on Instagram @AndrewRannells. Hey, Dan: After years of receiving oral sex from girlfriends who were careful to never inflict any sort of pain on my testicles, I met a woman who wasn’t so careful. For our fifth date, she came back to my place and we watched a movie. After the movie we began to kiss and soon she was making love to my stiff penis with her mouth while rather roughly massaging my testicles. However this came to be, I was liking it quite a bit. The more pressure she applied to my testicles, the harder my penis became. This has never

happened to me in my 33 years of lovemaking! I actually asked her to squeeze my testicles harder and harder and I can honestly say my penis was harder than it has ever been. Against my better judgment, I asked her to squeeze my testicles as hard as she could. After several seconds of the most intense pressure she could provide, I had the most powerful orgasm I have ever had. All of a

“I asked her to squeeze my testicles as hard as she could.” sudden, I was dizzy and my vision went black. When I finally came back to reality, there was an extraordinary amount of come all over the place. She has made love to my penis dozens of times since in the same manner. My question: Will there be any physical complications to my newly discovered taste for this kind of play? I look forward to your response! This Exquisitely Sensuous Torment Enhances Sex Ball busting — the kink you stumbled on — is inherently risky, TESTES, in that you could actually rupture, a.k.a. “bust,” one or both of your balls. Hence the name. But considering how much pleasure you’re deriving from this and considering how short life is and considering how long you’ve been sexually active and considering how little use you’re gonna get out of your balls once you’re dead, TESTES, I don’t see any reason why you should deprive yourself — at this stage — of this newly discovered sexual pleasure. Well, actually … I can see one reason why you might want to knock this off: When it comes to ball busting, TESTES, there’s no way to eliminate the risk of a physical complication that lands your sack in the emergency room, and ER nurses and doctors have enough on their plates right now. So maybe give your balls a break until after the pandemic is over and then go nuts.

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Hey, Dan: I’m writing in response to WHY, the Italian fellow whose partner has a significantly lower libido than he does. I would like to share my perspective. I have a high libido and my partner of more than twenty years has a low libido. From the perspective of the person with the lower libido, there’s no problem to address. The person with the lower libido gets to have sex whenever they want. When they don’t want sex, it doesn’t happen. If WHY wants to engage his partner in a conversation about this he has to make it clear this is a make-orbreak situation. Use very specific language like, “If we can’t talk about this, I’m leaving,” or, “If we don’t go to counseling, I can’t stay in this relationship.” In my case, I did not communicate how important the issue was and my partner did not think we needed to talk about it because it wasn’t a problem for her and she didn’t know — because I didn’t tell her — how much of a problem it was for me. Eventually I acted out and had a random hookup. We wound up in counseling, which got us talking, but nothing changed the fact that we have very different libidos. More than likely I am moving out when our youngest son goes to college. If I had to do it over again I would have let my partner know exactly how important it is to me that we have a healthy, robust sexual relationship. Having a difficult conversation is better than acting out in a way that puts everyone’s health at risk and damages trust. I have no idea if that would have changed things between us, but I would feel a whole lot better about how things went down. One Man’s Opinion Thank you for sharing, OMO, and here’s hoping you get a chance to “do it over again.” With a new partner, if you wind up leaving your partner, or with the partner you have now, if you stay. There’s nothing you can say to change your partner’s libido, OMO, but if you keep talking you may be able to work out a compromise or an accommodation that takes the pressure off her (to round her libido up) and off you (to round yours down). Good luck. mail@savagelove.net @FakeDanSavage on Twitter www.savagelovecast.com

DECEMBER 16-22, 2020

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DECEMBER 16-22, 2020

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DECEMBER 16-22, 2020

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SWADE

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