RFT 📰

After years of struggle and community backlash, Peter & Paul Community Services closed on a building it says will serve as a new and expanded shelter in north St. Louis. The Little Sisters of the Poor site (3225 North Florissant Avenue) will replace the organization’s 60-bed shelter in Soulard as well as plans to open in a more industrial site nearby. “The biz owners around Sidney Street were dead set against welcoming us there,” an agency spokeswoman explains of the site just east of Soulard where they had won city approval to move.

Administrators at the St. Louis City Justice Center wasted no time violating a judge’s order telling them to allow attorneys to pass their clients legal paperwork relevant to their cases. According to an email that public defender Matthew Mahaffey sent to top jail administrators, one of his attorneys went to meet a client yesterday in the jail and found the paper pass to be locked.  That was just one day after Circuit Court Judge Elizabeth Hogan wrote an order to both Jail Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah and Sheriff Vernon Betts declaring they stop any policies that restrict detainees’ access to counsel. 

The 25-year-old man accused of stomping on a teen girl's head outside a St. Louis County McDonald's has a litany of previous arrests for assault, including one conviction in the City of St. Louis for which he is currently on probation. These details came to light at a bond hearing for Johnny Ricks, who is facing a first-degree assault charge stemming from the April 7 incident. St. Louis County Circuit Judge Krista Peyton ordered Ricks to remain in jail on a $150,000 bond, but not before a back-and-forth between prosecutor Te'Arie Williams and Ricks' attorney Derek Cortez.

St. Louis’ 21c Museum Hotel was named one of the “41 Best New Hotels in North America and Europe 2024” by Esquire last month.  21c Museum Hotel (1528 Locust Street) opened last year in Downtown West in the city’s old YMCA building. While nodding to the building’s past by keeping the gym’s flooring, a renovated iteration of the YMCA's lap pool (now the Locust Street Athletic and Swim Club), keeping the wood paneling and more, the hotel offers luxurious rooms, art galleries, a top-notch bar and incredible, immersive art throughout. 

Say goodbye to the signs that once flourished along Missouri highways, announcing that civic groups or grieving family members were cleaning up the nearby litter: The Missouri Department of Transportation has scrapped its Adopt-a-Highway program. The state agency's decision follows its suspension of the 37-year-old program last May — which came about after family members adopted a section of I-44 in the memory of a man convicted of killing a Kirkwood police officer. Missouri's Adopt-a-Highway survived a legal battle that allowed the Ku Klux Klan to adopt a portion of highway, but it apparently couldn't survive adoption by the family of Kevin Johnson.

The campaign director for a book-burning Missouri Secretary of State candidate took the mic at St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones’ “Cabinet in Community” forum on Tuesday — blasting her as a “diversity mayor” and blaming her for recent high-profile incidents that happened far outside the City of St. Louis’ borders. Jones quickly shut down Maicoll Gomez, who is the brother and campaign manager of Valentina Gomez. A 24-year-old Benton Park resident, Valentina Gomez is attempting to fight the culture wars in the Republican primary to replace Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft.

Allegations of misconduct have roiled Tower Grove Park in recent months — and have apparently led to its director of development being fired.  In February, a group of Tower Grove Park employees wrote a letter to the board of commissioners alleging problems with three senior leaders, claiming “serious instances of sexism, racism and a pervasive lack of professionalism in various manners of communication.”  The three senior leaders named in the letter are Executive Director Bill Reininger, Director of Operations and Special Projects William Rein and Director of Development David Lauber.

Are the young things wafting about the 12th floor of this shimmering Westport Plaza office building too young to know about Mad Men? Are they not old enough to have had bonkers crushes on Jon Hamm, because who didn't? Probably.

A race for the Missouri House of Representatives is now splattered in controversy as one candidate in St. Charles County is accusing the other of having operated a “paintball gun trading scam” — one that he claims resulted in seven felonies against him. Missouri law prohibits people running for office if they have "been found guilty of or pled guilty to a felony." The lawsuit filed Monday by Max Calfo asks a judge to find Michael Costlow ineligible both to run for statewide office and to hold his current position in local government because of the past felony charges against him.

The cocktail wizards behind the Vandy will soon have another locus for their high-proof wizardry. Assuming approval of a conditional use permit by Webster Groves City Council, Matt and Jess Longueville are on course to open cocktail bar Off Elm at 8709 Big Bend Boulevard — two doors down from Bagel Union — sometime in the fall. Since 2017, the Longuevilles have owned STL Barkeep, a kind of moveable cocktail operation with an arsenal of bartenders, which hosts pop-ups at events around town.

For 25 years, Gene Salecker worked as a university police officer. There, Salecker met his wife, a professor, who inspired him to transition to the classroom, where he taught eighth grade for 12 years. Upon retiring in 2015, he became a full-time military historian, writing seven books in total on the Civil War and World War II.

This week brings a pair of new EPs from top-notch St. Louis acts Freddy VS. and Tidal Volume as they team up for a dual release show on Saturday at Off Broadway, with Chicago's Rebecca Jaffe kicking things off. Elsewhere, the inaugural Midwest Diskrust Fest brings together a bevy of hard-hitting d-beat bands from across the country for a full Saturday of fast, filthy fun at the Sinkhole; rapper and producer Mvstermind tops the lineup of St. Louis artists set to greet Saturday's marathon runners at the finish line for an afternoon after-party; and Michigan's Greta Van Fleet brings its progressive blues-rock stylings to Chaifetz Arena on Saturday evening. "But are there any days of the week other than Saturday?" you may find yourself asking.

The Gateway Pundit has filed for bankruptcy protection in a federal court in southern Florida as it faces what could be a massive defamation judgment stemming from their maligning of two Georgia election workers in the wake of the 2020 election. Founded in 2004 by brothers Jim and Joe Hoft, the St. Louis-based website has never let facts get in the way of throwing red meat to their far-right audience.  This lack-of-scruples approach won the site a big audience in the Trump years, during which they had a credentialed White House correspondent who the New Yorker described as more interested in trolling other media outlets than breaking big stories.

Benton Park is about to get a little sweeter when A Spoonful of Sugar opens in the old Cones + Cups space at 2800 McNair Aveue. Although previous ice cream doyenne Diane Lindsay still owns the building, Elijah Jabari has the keys to the door. With an almost-complete degree in Business Administration and Management from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE), he (at 28 years old) is jumping into his very own enterprise.

Two experienced booksellers have come together with plans to open a new independent bookstore in the City of St. Louis this year. The location is TBD, but you can get a sneak peek this weekend on South Grand. Leviathan Bookstore is the brainchild of Amanda Clark and James Crossley, two experienced booksellers who fell in love and decided to form a professional partnership in addition to their personal one.

Thursday 04/25 Backstage Pass Hopefully you're no stranger to the phenomenal productions that take the Muny stage every summer. But have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes?

When Americana band Old Capital Square Dance Club released its album Old Capital in 2019, the RFT lauded its "marriage of truck-driving tracks and country music." The album has its shares of rollicking barn-burners even as several of its tracks limn small-town strife and economic worry. The band hails from Jesse McClary and Zach Anderson’s hometown of Vandalia, Illinois, a town of about 7,000 an hour from St. Louis.

Right-wing Missouri politicians are throwing temper tantrums over free speech on college campuses. These snowflakes want Pro-Palestine protests silenced. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has doubled down on his calls for the federal government to “immediately expel” foreign student visa holders who “are found to have supported terrorist organizations.” Meanwhile, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) called on President Joe Biden to mobilize the National Guard against protestors. 

When Steve Ewing unlocks the door to Steve's Hot Dogs on South Grand, the flagship location of his growing restaurant chain, he pulls open the door handle, which is shaped like a handheld microphone. There must be incredible muscle memory built into such a grip for Ewing, as he has held a similar microphone during thousands of shows as the lead singer for the Urge and in his various solo configurations dating back to his days as a teenager at Webster Groves High School in the '80s. It's Monday morning, an hour before the restaurant opens, and Ewing has walked over from his nearby Tower Grove South home, which he shares with his wife and teenage daughter, to talk with me. He's wearing a track suit that covers his compact frame, built solid from decades as a fitness nut and, more recently, as a competitive amateur bodybuilder.

What happens when the nonprofit radio station you run begins hemorrhaging donors and listeners and, through a series of your own actions, loses the faith of the community it purports to serve? If that station is KDHX, it would appear that you get a raise. According to the station's tax return signed by Executive Director Kelly Wells and dated March 14, Wells was paid more than $100,000 in reportable compensation last year, even as the station's revenue  sharply declined.