RFT 📰

The largest menorah in the history of Missouri is about to start glowing downtown. Starting tomorrow, Chabad of Greater St. Louis will begin erecting the 29-foot tall menorah in Kiener Plaza (500 Chestnut Street), a few blocks from the Arch.

Community radio station KDHX is down another two DJs — both part of a cohort of DJs being required to undergo mediation to keep their volunteer roles. On November 28, Jeffrey Hallazgo, a.k.a Dr. Jeff of the Big Bang, resigned on air after accepting an online streaming position with WFMU in New York after 22 years with the station.

Last month was a relatively peaceful one by St. Louis standards. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department tells the RFT they recorded only seven homicides in November — a number significantly lower than recent Novembers in the city. 

St. Louis’ esteemed event venue the Caramel Room (1600 North Broadway) has been brought back to life after its closure in October 2022. Pure Catering, led by Timothy Eleby, Joseph Westbrook and Ashlee Freeman, reopened the beloved venue's doors late last month.

Last year, the City's Finest was Exhibit A in a ProPublica investigation into how St. Louisans are increasingly paying private policing firms to enforce the law within their neighborhoods. Now the City's Finest is itself accused of breaking the law. A lawsuit filed last week in federal court accuses the St. Louis-based private policing firm of failing to pay overtime in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act and Missouri's minimum wage law.

St. Louis has gone movie mad in recent weeks. After years without any major productions based here, actors including William H. Macy and John Corbett have been in the Gateway City for a production based on On Fire, the inspirational bestseller by John O’Leary. 

I ascended the flame-illuminated stairs to Russell Jackson’s limestone Portland Place mansion, where Place & Time Private Dining Experiences & Events was hosting one of their monthly dinner parties last month. Standing at a desk at the home's palatial entrance was Caitlin Franz, who welcomed guests and handed each one an envelope containing their seating assignment.

Another detainee died at St. Louis’ troubled city jail this morning, the Department of Public Safety said. The detainee, whose identity has not been released, was found in his cell at the City Justice Center unconscious from an apparent suicide attempt at approximately 6:09 a.m.

Get ready to stay up late on the Loop. Up Late (1904 South Vandeventer Avenue), the popular late-night eatery that opened last spring inside World's Fair Donuts, announced today it will be opening a second outpost on the Delmar Loop. The eatery said it would open at 6197 Delmar Boulevard, which was previously home to Chicken Out.

There’s something about golden milk that sounds so California, Gwyneth Paltrow, yoga and crunchy granola. But one sip of the beverage at Century Coffee Company (3730 Foundry Way, centurycoffee.com), and your preconceptions will come tumbling down around you.

A 37-year-old St. Louis County man was hit with 41 felony charges today after allegedly going on a month-long crime spree in which he repeatedly rammed stolen cars into businesses, which he then burglarized. The 41 charges appear to be in addition to the many felony offenses Romel S. Taylor was already facing.

First Run Theatre takes on the serious subjects of loneliness, depression and mental health with Leannán Sidhe, a sanguine exploration that manages to remain warm and hopeful despite the lead character’s current state of mind. A sympathetic cast and satisfying conclusion keep the short, three-part play from venturing too far into maudlin sentimentality or emotional excess. 

The Missouri appeals court is choosing not to intervene in an order that blocks the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from publishing a story about an accused cop killer. A St. Louis City Circuit Court judge ruled that the Post-Dispatch may not publish information from the mental health evaluation of Thomas Kinworthy, who is currently in jail on charges of killing a police officer in the Tower Grove South neighborhood in August 2020.

A wealthy St. Louis couple will have to pay $215,200 in fines after applying herbicide to a neighbor's trees near their Maine vacation home. Arthur Bond III, the nephew of former U.S. senator and Missouri governor Kit Bond, and his wife, Amelia Bond, former president and CEO of the St. Louis Community Foundation, violated Maine's shoreland laws by using a herbicide bought in from Missouri on the beachside property of their neighbor, Lisa Gorman — the widow of L.L. Bean's former president. According to a consent agreement with Maine's Board of Pesticides Control, which the Bonds signed, in the fall of 2021, Amelia Bond put herbicide on two oak trees she thought were dying.

This October, I unveiled a new initiative from my company, Cannabis Cult, a sampler dubbed the Connoisseur Pack, at Greenlight's Underground event in Independence. I'd first gotten the idea to put together a sampler pack in September, and I then

Awards season is upon us, which means famous people winning Oscars and Grammys while we mere mortals watch from home and imagine that those shimmering humans have it all. Standing on that stage, gold statue in hand, must surely be a perfect moment.

The members of the Funky Butt Brass Band are drinking whiskey at a table in the back of a south city dive bar. As soon as I arrive, trumpeter Adam Hucke hops up to order a little Tennessee mouthwash for me, too.

A jury found a 23-year-old from south St. Louis County guilty of involuntary manslaughter earlier this week, six years after, while speeding on Gravois Avenue in a luxury sports car, he struck a pickup and killed its passenger.  That crash happened in December 2017, when Mahdi Gayar was 17.

A 20-year-old Indian student was viciously beaten, forced to conduct menial labor and kept in slavery conditions by a cousin in Defiance, Missouri, as well as two other local men, prosecutors said today. St. Charles County Prosecuting Attorney Joseph McCulloch gave details this afternoon about the ordeal the young man, an Indian national, experienced.

A few St. Louisans woke up Wednesday morning in Benton Park to find their cars lifted up on concrete blocks, their wheels and tires both missing. “Why they didn’t take this side, I don’t know,” says Carl Duney, whose Honda was left with only two wheels.