RFT 📰

Chopping down a Christmas tree was a tradition in Andy Rachelski’s family. When his wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, some customs had to change. 

Danny Williams won’t say exactly how much actor John Goodman donated to the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. All he’ll reveal is that it was a “sizable gift” in the “five-figure range.” 

A Tower Grove South storefront that has long been vacant has found itself a new inhabitant. STL Steak and Cakes opened at 4278 Connecticut Street this week. The business, which has sold its goods from the Soulard Farmers Market for the last few years, announced its opening on Facebook, writing, "Drop by for your favorite cheesesteak and desserts!"

Former St. Clair High School teachers Brianna Coppage and Megan Gaither were already having quite the 2023 when, this week, they went Hollywood — or at least South Park, Colorado. Coppage and Gaither taught English and English Language Arts at the rural Missouri high school until October, when they were separately outed as OnlyFans performers — and swiftly forced out of their classrooms.

This year, once the presents have been presented and the PJs have been cast aside, why not kick off Christmas right with a feast fit for the Nice List occupant that you are? Casa Don Alfonso (100 Carondelet Plaza, Clayton; 314-719-1496) brings a bit of decadence to this year's proceedings with a Christmas Brunch Buffet from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Thomas “TR” Reis was the type of man who grabbed life by the balls.  Reis partied hard, hunted deer and fished.

Unless you have very small children, or are really into trains, you may be surprised to learn that the Polar Express, that dead-eyed animated Tom Hanks movie based on the book with the same name, is a huge holiday classic. It's such a classic, the evil geniuses at Warner Brothers have created a way for families to overextend their holiday budgets on the opportunity to ride the real Polar Express to see the real Santa Claus at the real North Pole.

Oftentimes when choosing what weed to hunt down to review, it's a matter of cruising on some shop menus then picking something that you'd think consumers would like to try. But this time, the weed selected me.

The St. Louis Police officer accused of assaulting Bar:PM co-owner Chad Morris was accused of assaulting a bystander to a 2019 incident, causing serious injuries including multiple broken bones. That incident took place just a short distance from Bar:PM. 

El Monstero 8 p.m. December 21 through 23 and December 27 through 30.

Ferrari gives Adam Driver a second chance to give an award-worthy performance as a real person with an Italian accent. Some of you may remember when Driver slapped on an accent to play doomed fashion magnate Maurizio Gucci in Ridley Scott’s biopic House of Gucci a couple years back.

St. Louis’ favorite alt-weekly — OK, only alt-weekly — is hiring a staff writer to help sharpen our coverage of City Hall and local politics. This is a full-time position with benefits.

Bob and Joann Baehr loved going to the original Mainlander at the corner of Hanley and Bonhomme in the late 1960s to early 1970s Clayton. It was one of their regular haunts — a place they'd go before or after bowling at Tropicana Lanes or dancing at the Chase Park Plaza.

Pretty much everyone who's attended has fallen in love with Music at the Intersection. We're talking not only critical acclaim but also just your average St. Louis concertgoer. As proof, we point to the crowds that packed the Grand Center stages in September.

New video shows a St. Louis Police SUV running a red light moments before it smashed into Bar:PM early Sunday morning.  The video, posted to Twitter last night, shows the SUV on South Broadway headed north, past the intersection at Nagel, and blowing through a red light.

The St. Louis police officer behind the wheel of the SUV that smashed into Bar:PM in the early hours of Monday morning had no toxicology test done on him in the wake of the incident. At their weekly briefing, St. Louis Metropolitan Police Lieutenant Colonel Renee Kriesmann said that no such test was conducted on the officer because the police only do those tests when there is a "reasonable suspicion" of drug or alcohol use, which police didn't feel was the case following the crash.

One detainee bit another this morning at St. Louis’ troubled City Justice Center, an incident severe enough that one inmate is facing assault charges while the other had to be taken to the hospital. The St. Louis Fire Department has confirmed they were called to the jail around 5:30 a.m. and that they took one detainee to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

Midtown’s new Hidden Gem (3118 Locust Street; instagram.com/hiddengemstl) is the perfect dive bar to live out your pink, disco fantasies. Lucky for you, it opens to the public at 6 p.m. today.

Thursday 12/21 Let's Get Crackin' In one of St. Louis' most enduring traditions, the St. Louis Ballet is mounting a full roster of performances of Tchaikovsky's 1892 two-act ballet The Nutcracker through December 23, with numerous options to accommodate the younger ballet lover in your life (think: 2 p.m. matinees, 7 p.m. evening performances).

Not for the first time, the City of St. Louis' handling of public records requests has made it the target of a lawsuit, this time from a resident who wanted to know what city officials were saying about attempts to regulate short-term rentals. The resident’s lawyer, Dave Roland, says the suit seeks to prove that how the city handles requests for emails is unlawful.