A motorist's dash cam caught no fewer than 10 drivers blow through the same red light in downtown St. Louis in less than 30 seconds — a high rate of scofflaw cruising, even by our city's standards. The footage of the brazen driving was taken at the intersection of Cole and Tucker streets downtown on April 7. "Can you imagine if someone came into that intersection, their life is changed forever — and for what?" asks the man whose dash cam recorded the footage.
In history and poetry, Xanadu was the location of the opulent summer palace of Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan and emperor during the Yuan dynasty. In 1980, Xanadu was a fluffy, critically panned movie musical that paired Olivia Newton-John with Gene Kelly and a handful of catchy disco-influenced hits. At Stray Dog Theatre, Xanadu is a cheerfully bright musical that embraces the movie's flaws and turns them into a cheesy good time.
A man was killed last night inside the Coronado Place & Towers, the troubled complex that houses many Saint Louis University students and sits on the edge of its campus in Grand Center. St. Louis Police had scant information about the homicide this morning, identifying the victim only as a Black male in his 20s. They say officers responded to a report of a shooting around 8 p.m. and discovered the victim inside an apartment unit with a gunshot wound to his chest.
Thursday 04/11 Turning Back Time
There are not many true divas in the world, but Cher is unquestionably among their number. For 60 years the Goddess of Pop has been a mainstay of American music and popular culture, showing remarkable staying power and a peerless ability to adapt with shape-shifting sound and timeless style.
A judge in Vernon County, Missouri, has ordered that several candidates who did not pass a GOP vetting test must be removed from the ballot there unless the county clerk can change her mind in the next two weeks. The preliminary order, which came down late yesterday, is a win for the activist wing of the Missouri Republican Party, which wants to exert greater control over who can run as a Republican in the state by forcing would-be candidates to complete a "values survey" and have their criminal and financial records scrutinized by county committees before being allowed on the ballot. The judge’s order doesn’t bar the candidates from running, but does stop them from being able to run as Republicans.
A sports bar concept that used to be known for its servers wearing body paint above the waist — and pretty much only body paint above the waist — has closed its south county location. Social Bar & Grill (4265 Reavis Barracks Road) announced the news on Facebook, saying the landlord's "refusal year after year to repair the significant building breakdowns" was to blame for the sudden closure. Just last month, the bar was seeking to hire additional staff.
A musician from Jackson, Mississippi, staying at an Airbnb in St. Louis was shot on Friday after he allegedly "broke through a drywall" of his rental unit and into an adjoining apartment, according to police. He was naked and screaming that he was going to kill everyone there. Prosecutors charged Patrick McKinney-Rankin, 37, with felonies for burglary and property damage on Saturday.
A one-of-a-kind license plate issued by the City of St. Louis in 1911 has been rediscovered after being tossed in the trash 40 years ago — and nearly lost forever. That's the remarkable story told by Donley Auctions, an auction company based in Union, Illinois. The company now plans to auction the discovery and thinks it should have no problem fetching a five-figure sum.
River barge magnate Mark Mestemacher has a rich history of establishing and supporting wrestling programs for young people around the region. That includes the East St. Louis Wrestling Club, which he founded in 2008 and housed in the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center. But just one year later, the JJK Center shut down due to financial problems, laying off 32 employees.
Attempts to halt the execution of Brian Dorsey, convicted of murder, have failed and he is set to be put to death tonight. In his official final statement Dorsey apologized for his crimes and says he holds no ill will or anger towards his executioners. Two days before Christmas in 2006 prosecutors say Dorsey killed his cousin Sarah Bonnie, and her husband Ben Bonnie, sexually violated her corpse, and left their bodies locked in their bedroom before stealing from their home and fleeing, RFT previously reported.
My first question was this: Why? My second was: What? I asked the first on my way to Nick’s Pub (6001 Manchester Avenue) to pick up an order of its special Wing Week wings; the second at a stop light on my way home from Nick’s when I lifted the lid on my styrofoam clamshell.
A controversial idea that could further hasten the Missouri Republican Party’s sprint to the right will have its day in court tomorrow in Vernon County. At issue is the idea of candidate vetting, a practice that has already been implemented in several counties. It requires would-be candidates seeking to run as Republicans to fill out a questionnaire — described by some supporters as a “values survey” — as well as have their legal and financial records scrutinized before being given the green light to appear on the party’s primary ballot.
St. Louis is booming. Yes, really! That's according to no less than the Wall Street Journal, which recently compiled a list of the 20 hottest job markets in the U.S. — and placed St. Louis at No. 18.
The beer: Crisp Chinos
The brewery: Rockwell Beer Company If your beer wore pants, what kind of pants would it wear? It’s a question that lingers on the minds of Rockwell Beer Company Head Brewer Jonathan Moxey and Zack Kinney, owner of Kings County Brewery Collective in Brooklyn.
A defense attorney who last week went public with a photo of a client lying in his filth in the St. Louis city jail says the Sheriff's Office barred her from meeting with other clients yesterday. "They wouldn't let me back to my clients," Susan McGraugh tells the RFT. "It was total retaliation."
SLICE is back for round two! St. Louis’ premier annual indie-print showcase, the St. Louis Independent Comics Expo, will return for the second time on Saturday, October 26, at the Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries (3648 Washington Avenue). SLICE, a nonprofit organization, brings writers, artists, poets and printmakers from all over to display their self-published books, comics, zines, magazines, poetry and more.
As Cardinal season got underway last week, a different season was already in full swing: the sprint to collect signatures to get a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights on the Missouri ballot. If pro-choice activists can collect 171,000 signatures, Missourians will get a chance to vote this fall on whether abortion should be legal up until the point of fetal viability. Last Thursday, as a sea of red and white streamed into Busch Stadium, we caught up with Dana Sandweiss, who runs the Access MO political action committee.
A lawsuit filed nearly three years ago on behalf of detainees who say they were wantonly maced in the St. Louis city jail is scheduled to be heard by a jury in July after a federal judge refused to dismiss the case. U.S. District Court Judge Henry Autrey wrote in an order issued on Thursday that the detainees and their attorneys bringing the suit “present evidence of a continuing, widespread, persistent pattern of unconstitutional misconduct by the officers in deliberately violating the constitutional rights of pretrial detainees.”
At 3:30 p.m. on the patio of Earthbound Beer, the sounds of Cherokee Street collide. Strums from Ricky Dortch’s guitar seep through the walls from Yaqui’s on Cherokee and couple with warm-up riffs from Vallie Golde and her band as they set up inside of Earthbound. Mexican ballads blare from car stereos as they pause at Cherokee and Iowa, where the neighborhood’s infamous eclectic electric keyboardist also stands on the corner.
According to a recent batch of internal communications that were sent to KDHX's volunteers and subsequently leaked to the RFT, station leadership would very much like its volunteers to stop leaking its internal communications to the RFT. In a missive sent to KDHX's volunteers late last week, Director of Volunteer Connections Andrea Dunn makes the downright shocking assertion that the station's internal communications "are being shared with the media, namely the RFT" (gasp!), as well as with a group of the station's former volunteers who in the last year were either fired or quit in solidarity with those who were. Dunn takes aim at the "volunteer or volunteers who have continuously not heeded the request for confidentiality" and announces that the station is "actively investigating who may be behind the sharing of our communications."
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