RFT 📰

A St. Louis arcade bar that was previously plunged into a reckoning over allegations of sketchy behavior, Parlor (4170 Manchester Avenue, 314-833-3063), appears to have quietly closed its doors. A Google search has the Manchester Avenue bar marked as "temporarily closed." Meanwhile, listings for the first floor space as well as the office space on the second floor have been posted for lease through Tower Real Estate Group.

On Saturday, November 4, Soo Kim and her fiance, Michael Rey, excitedly approached the front doors of Takashima Record Bar, eager to work out the final details of their wedding reception, which was scheduled to be held at the Grove bar and vinyl listening lounge four weeks later. They had an appointment with the general manager for 3 p.m., but when they arrived just before that and found the doors locked and the place dark, they became suspicious.

Aly discovered cannabis in her early 20s. Smoking the plant alleviated her depression and anxiety, she says.

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.

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.

The average salary for a new public school teacher in Missouri is around $41,000 a year. An adult fan subscription site and an East Side strip club want to pay one teacher significantly more than that for a single night's work.

“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.

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.

Spin has a thing for the St. Louis music scene. Yesterday, the legendary music magazine published an article — nay, an ode — to what we have going on here.

The Dwarves w/ Direct Hit, Ultraman 8 p.m. Saturday, November 11.

Thursday 11/09 Funny Business This week, more than 100 comedians will launch a takeover of St. Louis for Flyover Comedy Fest, a laugh-filled comedic invasion stretching across several venues and 30 separate events.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund. If you're going to write about the eviction industry in St. Louis, then there is one person you absolutely have to mention: University City attorney Matthew Chase.

This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund. Spanish Cove Townhomes by Pepper Pike Management is located off a busy road in Florissant.

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.

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.

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.