RFT 📰

In Missouri, 16-year-olds can carry guns, own a business, drive a car and fly a plane. But they can’t vote.

Chances are high that St. Louis won't see deluges of rain, flooding, tornado or freak hailstorms this week. Strangely, it won't even be over 100 degrees in the Lou. Yes, that's right.

Yesterday, as many as 30 cars parked were broken into near Busch Stadium as the Cardinals played the Dodgers. According to KSDK, the break-ins occurred at several parking lots around the stadium, including on South Broadway, Clark Avenue and South 4th Street. Last fall, a Board of Aldermen bill attempted to make parking more secure on lots like those around the stadium.

Nightlife and the bar scene are coming back in full force to the South Grand dining strip after COVID-19 caused a couple mainstays to close up shop. If you need proof, check out the May 10 RFT cover story about South Grand.

Big Bird, Kermit the Frog, Count von Count, these characters are Muppet icons, and Matt Vogel plays them all. He started in 1996 as an understudy to Caroll Spinney who famously played Big Bird on Sesame Street.

The juice is bright orange, headily ginger-spicy and, despite the kick, easily sippable. It’s delicious and — its creators promise — good for me. 

I think it might be the best song I ever wrote," Kip Loui tells me. That's quite a claim from a songwriting lifer who will turn 60 this year and has been copiously tunesmithing since high school. He's speaking about "Cold Out There," the title track from his new album, which he considers his first-ever honest-to-goodness solo record.

After seeing Monica, the new film by Italian writer-director Andrea Pallaoro, I’m sure opinions will be divided. Shot in a narrow aspect ratio and composed almost entirely of static shots, Monica could be dismissed as a chilly exercise in rigid formalism.

This morning Governor Mike Parson appointed Gabriel Gore, an attorney with the politically connected Dowd Bennett law firm, to serve out the rest of Kim Gardner's term as St. Louis circuit attorney. Parson annnounced Gore's appointment in front of the seal of the circuit attorney's office that earlier this week had Gardner’s name above it. With Parson were city officials including Mayor Tishaura Jones and police chief Robert Tracy.

A south city alderman is being sued over an alleged scheme to exclude investors from a cannabis operation and refuse to issue the investors their rightful shares.  The lawsuit filed in St. Louis County Court last week alleges Alderman Bret Narayan and his brother, Rahm Narayan, tricked two cannabis entrepreneurs into contributing their money and expertise into Occidental Group Inc., a Missouri cannabis operation created by the Narayans. 

Every Monday, a group gathers to protest outside KDHX’s Grand Center studio from 4 to 6 p.m. They’re members of Save KDHX 88.1, a Facebook group with more than 800 members devoted to protesting what they see as the failings of an institution they once loved.

When Phill Wamser's older brother Jake called him on Tuesday night, Phill let the call go to voicemail. The brothers and business partners had been going back and forth all day, preparing for the launch of their new game, Shiner. He needed a break.

On Tuesday, Valerie Schremp Hahn left the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Post-Dispatch is her hometown newspaper, and she'd written for it for 26 years. As a features writer, Hahn's byline has often accompanied some of the most enjoyable stories in it, but now she joins a long line of colleagues who've moved on this year — some by choice, others not.

I first came to St. Louis in the late August of 1966 to attend Saint Louis University. I was born in San Francisco and grew up in San Mateo, California.

In between promotional posts about his upcoming book and a few pictures of his family, James Comey has shared a post on Instagram praising local ice cream sandwich company, Sugarwitch (7726 Virginia Avenue, 573-234-0042). Yes, that James Comey, the highly controversial former FBI guy who some say gave Donald Trump an advantage when he reopened the investigation into the nothingburger that was the Hillary Clinton email “scandal” just two weeks before the 2016 election. Why was he in St. Louis, and how did he come to choose Sugarwitch?

Thursday 05/18 The Bright Side Stereotypes lead to assumptions and conclusions that may not be true and can make people feel demeaned, excluded and unseen.

The annual and beloved Bark in the Park event returns this weekend for its 28th year, this time at Tower Grove Park (4257 Northeast Drive, 314-771-2679) on Saturday, May 20. The pet festival is sponsored by the Humane Society and brings events for people and their pooches. In addition to the expected festival fare, Bark in the Park features a 5K race and one-mile walk.

In the months leading up to former St. Charles County Prosecuting Attorney Tim Lohmar's abrupt resignation, his office pursued prosecution in two cases where judges later appointed special prosecutors due to a conflict of interest between Lohmar and the alleged victim. That alleged victim in both cases, who the RFT is not naming, is a 38-year-old O’Fallon woman.

Roberto Zanti might never have gone into the restaurant business were it not for an act of teenage rebellion — and the unintended consequences of his father's punishment. "When I was 14 years old, I skipped school, and my father found out," Zanti recalls.

The owner of a Cherokee Street bar that many neighbors accused of being a magnet for crime was charged with murder earlier this week. Arnaud Jones, 41, the owner of the Exotic Bar and Grill, was charged on Monday for a September 2022 murder which occurred when Jones allegedly fired from his downtown apartment out onto Lucas Avenue at men whom he suspected of trying to break into his car.