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RFT 📰

Proper Brands Brings Back Charitable Wallflower Poster Exhibition

2 weeks 2 days ago
Proper has brought back its Wallflower poster exhibit for the second year to benefit the Last Prisoner Project and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI. CEO and co-founder John Pennington says he wants to set the bar for cannabis companies to go beyond just helping their patients and customers but also the community they’re in by collaborating with the New Growth Horizon Foundation as well as Friends for Good to give back to organizations in need.  “The New Growth Horizon Foundation has five main areas of giving: Mental Health & Qualifying Conditions for Medical Marijuana, Criminal Justice & Re-Entry, Education and Employment, Homelessness & Housing, and the Betterment of Missouri,” Pennington says in a statement. 
Paula Tredway

Man Killed in Parking Lot of Quality Inn in Florissant

2 weeks 3 days ago
A man was shot and killed Sunday morning in a hotel parking lot near the intersection of highways 170 and 270 in Florissant. A police spokesman confirmed that the shooting took place around 11 a.m. on April 7, 2024, at the Quality Inn (55 Dunn Road, Florissant). Police said a person of interest is now in custody, but could answer no further questions at this time.
Riverfront Times Staff

St. Louis Aldermen Vote Down Bill to Ease Process for New Shelters

2 weeks 5 days ago
A contentious debate that took up more than two hours of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen meeting today led to a tie vote that effectively killed a bill that would make it easier to place shelters for the unhoused in the city. Board Bill 227, sponsored by Ward 7 Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier and co-sponsored by Aldermanic President Megan Green, would reform the city’s plat and petition process for approving shelters.  After a lengthy discussion at today’s meeting, seven alders voted in favor of the bill, seven against it, with one person voting present.
Kallie Cox

Kitchen Fire Closes Stella Blues Indefinitely

2 weeks 5 days ago
Beloved Tower Grove South bar Stella Blues (3269 Morgan Ford Road) is closed indefinitely after fire broke out in the kitchen earlier this afternoon. Bar manager Zoe McKelvie says the south city favorite was open for business when her phone started blowing up around 1:30 p.m., with employees, neighbors and friends all sharing news that the kitchen was engulfed in flames. "Apparently some sort of grease fire broke out in the kitchen," she says.
Sarah Fenske

Sheriff Bans Phones at St. Louis Jail Over Photo of Detainee in Feces

2 weeks 5 days ago
St. Louis Sheriff Vernon Betts is reportedly no fan of Corrections Commissioner Jenifer Clemons-Abdullah, yet he’s following her playbook this week after taking flak for a photo of a detainee left in horrendous conditions.  On Monday, the RFT reported on the photo that attorney Susan McGraugh snapped of her client, Lamarr Pearson, who was lying on the floor of a jail cell in his own excrement. Pearson is paralyzed, with no control of his bowels.
Ryan Krull

‘Soldier for the Church’ in St. Louis Kidnapping Cleared for Release

2 weeks 5 days ago
A second African immigrant accused of holding a woman against her will at a St. Louis church was granted bond today, over the objections of city prosecutors. If Grace Kipendo posts $3,000 and complies with other conditions, he will be free until his felony kidnapping case goes to trial. Kipendo was taken into custody in February after a woman fled the Mount of Olives Ministry in south city, saying she had been held captive in a room there and showing rope marks around her arms and ankles.
Ryan Krull

Saint Louis University One-Ups Wash U, Inks Jon Hamm for Commencement

2 weeks 5 days ago
One week after Washington University announced it had secured a beloved celebrity to give this year's commencement address, Saint Louis University has upped the ante: The Jesuit university has enlisted a beloved and smoking hot celebrity to give its address. And its choice is also a St. Louis native. Take that, Wash U!
Sarah Fenske

In Dev Patel’s Monkey Man, Vengeance Is a Bloody Beast

2 weeks 5 days ago
When we are first introduced to the protagonist of Monkey Man — who is identified only as “The Kid” (Dev Patel) — he’s taking a savage beating in an underground fight club. Each night, he dons a ragged ape mask and plays the heel, allowing the fan-favorite champion to pummel him into a pulp, all to the enthusiastic cheers of a bloodthirsty crowd. If pressed, the Kid would probably insist that he’s just trying to make a buck in a world where the odds are stacked against the have-nots.
Andrew Wyatt

Zillow Names St. Louis the Best Market for First-Time Home Buyers in 2024

2 weeks 5 days ago
The results are in — and it turns out there's no better place to be a first-time home buyer this year than in St. Louis. That's according to real estate marketplace company Zillow, which analyzed cities across the U.S. with eye towards both affordability and camaraderie. It used the following four metrics to assess the conditions facing first-time buyers in 2024:
Sarah Fenske

As St. Louis Aims for Safer Streets, It's One Step Forward, Two Car Crashes

2 weeks 5 days ago
Alonzo Harris knows the dangers of St. Louis streets more than most. He's a postal carrier, which means a lot of time on foot, and with a route that extends from Montana to Chippewa, he sees the worst of Dutchtown drivers. "It's like a NASCAR track down Louisiana," he says, smiling as he walks his route at Osage and Louisiana streets.
Lauren Harpold

Activists Slam Jones’ Plan to Put Tiny Homes at the Workhouse Site

2 weeks 5 days ago
For the second week in a row, activists, members of the unhoused community and service providers packed City Hall to oppose St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones’ idea to build tiny homes for people who need housing on the site of the city’s former jail. The mayor has suggested the idea without officially settling on it — and it has drawn intense pushback from activists. Last week, the public was cut off and unable to speak on the plandue to a lack of overtime funding for STL TV.
Kallie Cox

Runaway Bull Is Captured in St. Charles — and Spared from Slaughter

2 weeks 6 days ago
After five days on the lam, officials in St. Charles have captured the escaped bull who was running amok in the city. On March 29 the bull was in a commercial transport trailer that was involved in a highway accident — and apparently took his chance and made his escape. That’s according to the City of St. Charles Animal Shelter, which posted rather pun-filled updates about the fugitive on Facebook. 
Kallie Cox

Man Gets Probation for Throwing Liquid at St. Louis Judge on MetroLink

2 weeks 6 days ago
A 27-year-old man already on probation for assaulting a city sheriff's deputy at the downtown Schnucks is now on even more probation after throwing an unspecified liquid at a St. Louis Circuit Court judge last year. Judge David Mason was riding the MetroLink last October when Deobra Duran Williams threw a brown liquid on the judge, who uses a wheelchair.
Ryan Krull

Lion's Choice’s Newest Sandwich Was an Employee's Menu Hack

2 weeks 6 days ago
Lion’s Choice is ready for Version 2.0 — and it's starting by giving one of its signature items an employee-inspired reboot. The Original Roast Beef Sandwich remains on the menu, but now you can also order what it's calling the Remix: roast beef, two slices of Swiss cheese and a garlic aioli sauce sandwiched between two pieces of buttered Texas toast. CEO Fred Burmer says the sandwich is just one piece of an "awakening" for the beloved St. Louis-based fast food company, which first debuted in 1967.
Paula Tredway

How Pervy Pill Peddler Dr. Craig Spiegel Got Popped

2 weeks 6 days ago
In March 2022, Bridgeton police investigated pediatrician Craig Spiegel for a possible sexual assault after the mother of a patient accused the doctor of forcibly putting his hands down her pants. The patient’s mother was in an exam room where, moments before, Spiegel had been performing a check-up on her son. That investigation fizzled after five months, with no charges being filed.
Ryan Krull

August: Osage County Is Rife With Dark Humor and Intense Emotions

2 weeks 6 days ago
Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize and Tony award-winning drama August: Osage County takes an intimate look at a seriously dysfunctional family and its varied, often disturbing, dynamics. The Repertory Theatre St. Louis lays the troubled family’s turbulent relationships and dark secrets bare in a stunning production that is, frankly, the most compelling and captivating interpretation of the script I’ve ever seen. Beverly Weston, a professor and once promising poet, and his wife Violet have been married for a long, contentious time.
Tina Farmer

The Wedding Band Recalls a Forbidden Love in the Time of Legal Segregation

2 weeks 6 days ago
Alice Childress’ The Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White is a powerful examination of miscegenation that’s at once tender, hopeful and realistically prejudiced. The Black Rep explores this moving script in an excellent, nuanced production highlighted by captivating performances. From enslavers abandoning (or selling) their children born by Black women to laws against marriage between people considered to be of different races to prohibitions against affection and marriage among same sex couples, our country has constructed barriers and fought against love time and again.
Tina Farmer

Immigrant Restaurateurs Are Chasing the American Dream on Gravois

2 weeks 6 days ago
The American dream is alive and well in Bevo Mill. What was originally a German-centered neighborhood has over the decades become home to immigrants from Iran, Mexico, Syria and more. In the late 1990s, the dense, walkable neighborhood housed so many refugees from Bosnia that it took on the nickname "Little Bosnia."
Paula Tredway