RFT 📰

The St. Louis restaurant industry is banding together to support three of its own following a Saturday afternoon fire that tore through three homes in the city's Ellendale neighborhood. Of the three houses involved in the blaze, one was owned by Harrison Massie, general manager of the popular south city bar Small Change (2800 Indiana Avenue). Massie lived at the house with his wife, Sandra Manzoni and their friend, Eli Chang.

Em Holmead loved working in the medicinal cannabis industry. As someone who uses cannabis for their own chronic pain and anxiety, Holmead enjoyed helping patients find similar comfort as a cannabis advisor at Root 66 Dispensary off South Grand Boulevard. Yet, after working there for several months, Holmead felt employees deserved more than what they earned, for their long hours, low wages and scant benefits.

Understaffing, broken pay promises and low morale among nurses at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital have inspired a no confidence vote against hospital administrators. On Wednesday the National Nurses Organizing Committee, the nurses’ union, called for a no confidence vote for Rita Fowler, vice president of patient care services and chief nursing officer, and Chris Greenley, human resources director. In-person voting closed on Wednesday, and virtual polls will close Sunday at midnight according to the Advocate, a hospital nurses’ newsletter.

Being part of a Tony Hawk video game soundtrack is probably the most punk-acceptable equivalent of a getting a GRAMMY. The Screaming Females’ single “Let Me In” can be heard on 2020’s Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2, a full-on remake of the first two games in the franchise that features most of the original iconic soundtrack alongside a new set of songs from various artists. Maybe it’s cliche to say that the band fits right in, but that’s probably because the songs on those early soundtracks likely inspired the Screaming Females’ distinct collision of punk and alternative rock.

We live in a world where a high school student from the Five Towns in Long Island, New York can upload a song to the internet and become a famous rapper seemingly overnight. The path that Lil Tecca’s 2019 single “Ransom” took from its debut on a hip YouTube channel to peaking at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart is the same basic map that millions of musicians try to follow, only to veer off-road or crash and burn out altogether.

"Art installation missing," read the subject line of a tip the RFT received this week. "The hammer and sickle sculpture is missing from 2732 Cherokee Street," continued the email, concluding: "Solve this mystery lol." Spoiler alert, we didn't, but we were intrigued.

Earlier this year we profiled Elizabeth Cooke, a tragic criminal mastermind — or, perhaps, social media mob victim. Seemingly everyone in St. Louis had strong feelings about Cooke after her story went viral last year, when a man whose truck she was attempting to steal began filming her. He then posted the video, as well as the much of the rest of her life, online.

When Jamie and Steve Komorek opened Trattoria Marcella (3600 Watson Road, 314-352-7706) in 1995, they were insistent on being a different kind of Italian restaurant — a more traditional eatery as opposed to the St. Louis-style Italian spots on the Hill that the city's diners had come to associate with the cuisine. To signal that intent, they left a certain dish off the menu that showed just how serious they were about standing apart from the crowd. "We didn't do toasted ravioli," Jamie says.

Last month, St. Louis area diners breathed a collective sigh or relief when they heard the news: Bar Les Frères (7637 Wydown Boulevard, Clayton; 314-725-8880), the sultry Clayton bar and restaurant founded by restaurateur Zoë Robinson in 2012, would reopen under new ownership after its two-year hiatus — and even better, that new ownership was none other than the highly-regarded restaurateurs Michael and Tara Gallina. Perhaps no one was as thrilled as Robinson. "The timing was impeccable; the other deal I had been working on for it fell apart the day Tara contacted me," Robinson says.

Google “Mark Wahlberg Catholic,” and before you type out the third letter, “Mark Wahlberg Calvin Klein” delightfully autocompletes. That the actor’s faith is still outshined by the 1992 underwear campaign that transformed him from rapper “Marky Mark” to fashion icon is perhaps of no surprise. After all, this is the guy whose breakout film role was playing porn star Dirk Diggler in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 opus Boogie Nights. Wahlberg is the high-school dropout who for decades has epitomized the blue-collar American Adonis — from a philosophizing firefighter in I Heart Huckabees (2004) to a working-class boxing contender in The Fighter (2010).

It doesn't have to be a weekend to find something to do in the Lou. We have our picks for the week here, but you can also find our picks for the weekend here.

The weekend is upon us and there is a lot to do this weekend, St. Louis. Something for everyone hits the streets of the city, whether it's for music lovers, Anime enthusiasts or those who want to make the Earth a better place. Here are our top picks for the weekend — and don't miss our picks for the rest of the week.

Amy Le's most foundational memories revolve around restaurants, a fact that should be no surprise considering her actual formative years revolved around restaurants. The daughter of a restaurant owner, Le found herself in the same situation as other kids with hospitality-centered lives: She and her older brother, Phil, would go to school, head straight to their mom's Chinese restaurant after dismissal, park themselves in a booth to do homework, have a snack and take a brief nap, then finish their night answering phones, packing to-go orders, doing dishes and helping out with any tasks their mother needed to keep the family business going.

St. Louisan Steenz Stewart finds inspiration everywhere — from the moment they wake up till the moment they fall asleep — they’re finding ideas for their nationally syndicated comic Heart of the City. These ideas show up in the comic strip, which has now been compiled into a book: Heart Takes the Stage, out on May 3. “Heart Takes The Stage is really cute,” Stewart says.

Who cares if it’s increasingly difficult to get premium Cardinals coverage in the Post-Dispatch? We’ve still got Seeing Red, the great Redbirds baseball podcast hosted by former P-D columnist Bernie Miklasz and Deadspin co-founder Will Leitch.

Thirty-one year-old Joshua Miley has been at the Bonne Terre prison since July 2020, when his parole was revoked for stealing and burglary convictions. On February 5, Miley was attacked by four other inmates in his cell, stabbed more than 40 times and thrown over a railing, according to his mother. After being air-evaced to a hospital in St. Louis, he received 38 staples, more than 20 stitches and treatment for a punctured lung, he told us.

The forthcoming debut album from three-piece punk band Inches From Glory is many things — a comeback from heartbreak, a love letter to punk, an outlet for healing from mental illness. However, they stipulate, there is one thing the album is not.

After a year in office, St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones sees a lot of work that still needs to be done. The mayor gave her first State of the City address at Harris Stowe University Tuesday night, just a day before her one-year anniversary of taking office. Jones made several proposals in her speech, including a commitment to funnel $150 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to north St. Louis in an effort to "reverse decades of disinvestment in our neighborhoods."

It's a golden era for cannabis edibles, a time when famed chefs are getting into a market previously reserved for sketchy guys with goatees. And while the edibles of yesteryear regularly incapacitated us for hours or days, today's products are clearly labeled and, for the most part, accurately dosed.

For St. Louis-based musician Beth Bombara, "it's always tour o'clock somewhere." The phrase, first uttered by husband and bandmate Kit Hamon, jibed with Bombara, and she began using it as a tagline on her website and social media.