RFT 📰

There’s cardamom in the coffee. There’s berbere in the lamb. But these don’t taste like American spices.

A pair of AirPods and what lawyers say was some shoddy police work resulted in an innocent middle-class Ferguson family having their front door smashed in by the St. Louis County SWAT team last May. Around 6:30 p.m. on May 26, Brittany Shamily was at home with her children, including an infant, when police used a battering ram to bust in her front door. “What the hell is going on?” she screamed, terrified for herself and her family.

When Heather Roth’s daughter, Margaret, asked to have cotton candy at her sixth birthday party instead of cake, she knew she had to make it happen.  “I had to figure out how the hell I was going to make cotton candy,” she says. “That’s basically how Rosie Cheeks and the whole concept of the cart started — by being an experience for her and her friends.”

The conservative outrage express is barreling hard toward the school board governing the Lindbergh School District, courtesy of a political action committee run by Martin Bennet, a Des Peres man who is the regional manager of an Internet services company that markets to schools. Direct mail flyers began appearing in the mailboxes of Lindbergh voters last week that were paid for by the St. Louis County Family Association Political Action Committee, which Bennett launched in January. The flyers promote the candidacies of David Randelman and David Kirschner, who are among the four candidates vying for the two seats on the eight-member board at stake in the April 2 election.

This afternoon a St. Louis jury sided with a former Harris-Stowe State University professor, determining that she had endured a hostile work environment and was owed $750,000 in compensatory damages. Beverly Buck Brennan, who is the daughter of Jack Buck and sister of Joe Buck, taught speech and theater classes at the historically Black university from 1993 until 2017. She directed the Missouri state school's speech and theater program, describing much of her time there as a dream job. 

Four clothing enthusiasts came together to create the ultimate one-stop-vintage shop for bigger bodies. Maura Hampton, Tricia Stoecklin, K Scott and Erica Hallmann created Ethical Bodies x the Good-ish (2218 South Jefferson Avenue) by combining their separate online, pop-up thrift stores into one brick and mortar in south St. Louis. It opens Saturday with a sizable grand opening celebration.

The St. Louis man that Tucker Carlson previously suggested was an "agent provocateur" working for the feds during the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 has pleaded guilty to federal charges. Guess that whole "agent" thing didn't work out too well? Daniel Donnelly Jr., now 46, had become a familiar sight in St. Louis when the Cardinals were playing at Busch Stadium, running laps around the stadium with his face painted red whenever the team most needed to rally.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced today he will be investigating the Hazelwood School District's diversity, equity and inclusion practices after student Kaylee Gain was brutally assaulted by a fellow student near school grounds two weeks ago. Video of the assault went viral, shocking the conscience of the region and leading to charges against Gain’s juvenile assailant.  Gain is white.

Earlier this week, fast food juggernaut Wendy's announced a brand-new offering: the Orange Dreamsicle Frosty. To which St. Louis said, "YAWN." After all, we've been drinking these creamy orange dreams since 1967.

When Nick Gusman answers the door of his Tower Grove South bungalow, he's wearing a T-shirt from a writers' week festival for high school students that I booked him for back in 2019. Performing on stage in the high school auditorium, Gusman had been in solo acoustic-and-harmonica folkie mode, playing and singing songs from his then-new debut album, Dear Hard Times. Despite playing for an audience of teenagers who had never willingly listened to folk music much less had ever heard of Nick Gusman, the troubadour nonetheless won the kids over, one of whom later told me that he "didn't think he liked that kind of music" but that he loved the songs and sounds coming out of Gusman that day.

Police in Nashville, Tennessee, this morning recovered the body of a 22-year-old Mizzou student who was missing for the past two weeks.  Police say Riley Strain was recovered from the Cumberland River in West Nashville Friday morning, approximately eight miles from downtown.  “No foul play-related trauma was observed,” the Metro Nashville Police Department said.

Legislation that would compensate victims of radioactive waste and U.S. nuclear bomb tests faces an uncertain future after it was left out of a federal appropriations bill Thursday, outraging members of Missouri’s Congressional delegation.  But advocates for St. Louis-area residents exposed to World War II-era radioactive waste remain “extremely hopeful” as compensation remains closer than ever to passage. “We feel like we’re going to get RECA, guys,” Dawn Chapman, co-founder of Just Moms STL, said in a live video on Facebook.

The late Shirley Chisholm is having a moment. The first African American woman elected to Congress, and the first woman to run for president of the United States, Chisholm, who died in 2005 at the age of 80, is the inspiration for Shirley, a compelling but dramatically stilted docudrama starring a superb Regina King. The Netflix film continues an unexpected small-screen Chisholm boon, beginning with Udo Aduba’s vibrant depiction of her in an episode of the Cate Blanchett series Mrs. America and continuing in Hulu’s recent History of the World: Part 2, which finds an exuberant Wanda Sykes starring in a sitcom called Shirley!

Rouge Bistro — the heavily meatball-themed restaurant inspired by the Meatball Shop in New York City — bounced into Midtown last month, claiming a space formerly occupied by Olive Bar at 3037 Olive Street. Owner Julian Davis has set a dazzling stage. Splashed in bright red paint, industrial-ceilinged and lit like a New York catwalk, Rouge Bistro is a gobsmacker even without the waterfall at the entrance.

A new cannabis seltzer created in St. Louis by two former students of the Washington University School of Business has made its debut. Triple THC-infused seltzers come in three flavors — lime, cherry-lemon and grapefruit — and contain 3 milligrams of THC per can. The company uses hemp-derived delta-9 THC, meaning it’s legal under the federal Farm Bill and can be purchased outside dispensaries.

The Missouri Republican Party filed a lawsuit yesterday trying to boot a one-time “honorary” Klu Klux Klan member off its primary ballot for governor.  Darrell Leon McClanahan III has a history of racist and antisemitic associations and has been photographed attending what he called a “Christian Identity Cross lighting ceremony” — an event that, while it featured a burning cross, he insists was definitely not a cross burning.  He filed to run for governor on the first day of filing eligibility last month, and earned a spot at the very top of the ballot.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland came to St. Louis today to announce new federal investments in the city’s national park. Overall, the city will see $17 million in new funding for the Gateway Arch National Park. Haaland and Mayor Tishaura Jones Thursday afternoon unveiled the spending plan at Kiener Plaza. 

A St. Louis judge today allowed a lawsuit filed by critics of KDHX's leadership to proceed, rejecting the radio station's attempt to have it thrown out of court. At a 1 p.m. hearing at the 22nd Circuit Court, St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Jason Sengheiser ruled that a group of associate members and would-be board members of the community radio station can proceed with their lawsuit. Lawyers for the Double Helix Corporation, KDHX's parent company, had argued unsuccessfully for the case to be dismissed.

A St. Louis man who sought refuge in a dumpster after careening his truck into a school bus full of children six months ago has now been charged for all of that and more. This morning, prosecutors filed charges of leaving the scene of an accident and possession of a controlled substance against 26-year-old Jeremy Mitchell. Last September, Mitchell was behind the wheel of a Ford truck when he hit the side of a school bus filled with students outside Cardinal Ritter High School in Grand Center.

Riverfront Times Founder Ray Hartmann announced his campaign for Congress last week. Yesterday, the only other Democratic candidate announced he was dropping out of the race.  Hartmann announced his intention to retire from journalism and run against U.S. Representative Ann Wagner (R-Ballwin) on the March 14 episode of Nine PBS' Donnybrook.