a Better Bubble™

RFT 📰

Man Faces Charges for Digging Up Grandmother’s Corpse in Berkeley

5 months 4 weeks ago
A Houston man with roots in Missouri is facing a criminal charge related to his attempt to dig up his grandmother’s grave at a long-neglected cemetery in Berkeley.  That charge, filed by county prosecutors yesterday, stems from this past August when a police officer responded to the Washington Park Cemetery to find 73-year-old Zebulun Nash “covered in dirt” and talking on a cell phone, police say.
Ryan Krull

VIBE Cannabis' Liquid Sunshine Showcases Tree1Four Genetics's Strength

5 months 4 weeks ago
Genetics play a massive role in the cannabis industry, with each plant coming from a long line of previous iterations. I've seen some fun genetics in Missouri's legal marijuana industry, such as selections from Bloom Seeds and Exotic Genetix, but I wasn't expecting to see a local legacy seed breeder get its genetics into a large legal grow operation.
Graham Toker

My Morning Jacket Was in Top Form at Stifel Tuesday

5 months 4 weeks ago
“The goal is to get lost,” My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James said in a recent interview. “The goal is to be gone.” James was not talking about disappearing from public view or walking away from performing or breaking up My Morning Jacket, which looked like a strong possibility not long ago.
Steve Leftridge

Levels Nigerian Cuisine Serves Some of St. Louis Most Thrilling Fare

5 months 4 weeks ago
Ono Ikanone had a choice when working out the recipe for pepper soup with goat meat at his restaurant, Levels Nigerian Cuisine: temper the heat to appeal to an American dining public less used to the spice level that defines the dish in West Africa or boldly showcase the flavors you'd get at a restaurant in the heart of Lagos. You understand which way he chose to go the moment the spoon touches your lips and they immediately begin to tingle.
Cheryl Baehr

Honey Bee's Midtown in Beffa's Began With a Friendship — And a Tragedy

5 months 4 weeks ago
Walking into Beffa's, you can't immediately discern how much has changed in a relatively short time. The colorful glow of the bar's LED lights mingles with the sunlight streaming in from the street. The bartenders extend warm greetings and show customers how to order food through a QR code posted at each table.
Alexia McCullison

Fontbonne Contemplates $5.2M Deficit, Major Cuts

5 months 4 weeks ago
Fontbonne University in Clayton is facing a significant budget shortfall heading into next year and its leadership has proposed cutting more than 20 degree programs and 18 faculty positions to make up for the projected red ink, according to internal documents obtained by the Riverfront Times. Those documents say that the school's operating budget has a $5.2 million deficit for fiscal year 2024.
Ryan Krull

Tesseract Theatre's The Mad Ones Gives Beautiful Life to a Coming-of-Age Tale

5 months 4 weeks ago
Whether a novel, play or musical, coming-of-age stories succeed best when they create a sense of immediacy and empathy with the audience. Tesseract Theatre Company’s emotionally connected and realistically raw production of The Mad Ones, by Kait Kerrigan and Bree Lowdermilk, gives the story the heart and resonance it needs to thoroughly entertain. 
Tina Farmer

The St. Louis Area's 5 Biggest Evictors, 2021 to 2023

5 months 4 weeks ago
As part of his deep dive into Missouri's State Assistance for Housing Relief program, reporter Mike Fitzgerald filed Sunshine Law requests to determine how much the program granted to some of St. Louis' biggest evictors. Here's what he learned from comparing data from Princeton University's Eviction Lab with records obtained via the Missouri Sunshine Law showing how much each entity was granted through the federally funded SAFHR program designed to keep tenants housed during the COVID-19 pandemic. 1.
Mike Fitzgerald

St. Louis Restaurant Openings and Closings: October 2023

6 months ago
For her school's high school superlatives, her classmates voted Alex Pifer "most likely to show up with bagels." It's no wonder that some years later she opened a real-deal, New York-style bagel shop, Boiled & Baked, which debuted in Soulard last month. "I've always loved bagels," Pifer told the RFT.
Jessica Rogen

St. Louis Man Charged with Killing Motel Clerk Who Refused Him a Room

6 months ago
A St. Louis man was charged with murder today for the July killing of a motel employee who refused him a room.  Police say that 36-year-old Marquis Black killed the employee at the First Western Inn Motel in the city’s Near North Riverfront neighborhood on the afternoon of July 29, 2023.
Ryan Krull

Apotheosis Closes Cherokee Shop, Faces Lawsuit on South Grand

6 months ago
Two years ago, Apotheosis Comics & Lounge made a bold move. The locally-owned comic book store on South Grand opened a second location at the corner of Jefferson and Cherokee streets in the wake of the pandemic’s pummeling of small businesses.
Monica Obradovic

Andoe's Society Page: The Olympian Who Won't Give Up on East St. Louis

6 months ago
Last fall, what began as a column about LaSalle Park’s unique history morphed into a cover story as I learned about its equally fascinating present. In a region too often known for its racial and socioeconomic divides, the residents of LaSalle Park’s Historic District and the bordering affordable housing community LaSalle Park Village were putting in the work to operate as one neighborhood.
Chris Andoe