Trigger Warning: This column discusses suicide, homophobia, addiction, and trauma. Please take care while reading. As I cross over the Kingshighway viaduct—what we all just call “the bridge”—heading toward the south side, I start to think. This drive always freakin’ triggers me. The older I get, the more I understand how deeply those triggers…
Spend more than six months in St. Louis, and you’ll find everyone knows someone who knows you. St. Louis is a big small town of distinct social, political and professional circles that overlap only slightly at their fringes. Tyler “Tai” Davis, who passed away on January 9, 2026, was that rarest St. Louisan, someone who…
As a 55-year-old lesbian, I often look back on my twenties and the “safe” spaces we created for ourselves—spaces that became our family. Coming out of the closet (as we called it back then) meant you’d better know how to survive and how to find your people. I came out at a time when it…
When Nick Fruend, 36 (Janessa Highland when in drag), travels the region, the Miss Gay Missouri America naturally scouts talent, especially in smaller cities like his native Springfield, Missouri. He’s proved to be an effective recruiter. “When I was traveling and performing frequently, I did a ton of shows all over,” Fruend says. “I’d talk…
Mary Todd Lincoln is having a moment. Cole Escola’s gleefully unhinged portrait of the First Lady built a cult following off-Broadway before arriving on Broadway last season with Tony nominations and audiences already primed to laugh. The show’s success was confirmed at the Tony Awards, where Escola won for Best Actor in a Play and…
A Newsweek cover forty years ago declared a “video generation,” with young and old and black and white Americans eager to record birthdays, weddings, and other significant events in their lives. There is no identifiable LGBTQ person included on that cover, but queer people in the 1980s were as eager as everyone else to document…
He eats terribly. He drinks like a fish. He never has any money—if an employer won’t give him time off for an event, he simply quits. He’s tumbled through a second-story plate glass window at The District Hotel. He’s been run over by a car. He’s been struck by lightning—twice. It’s almost incomprehensible that “Mayor…
Each Soulard intersection has its own tribe and vibe during Mardi Gras, and the stretch of Russell near Menard is ground zero for LGBTQ+ folks and those who love the spectacle we put on. Known as “The Sequin Circuit,” the compact area is bookended by Bastille and The Hi-Hat Lounge, offering options for shelter should…
The Epstein Files have pulled back the curtain on how power often operates — dividing and distracting the public while wealth and influence concentrate at the top. At a moment like this, it’s critically important that we scrutinize our candidates and ask where their loyalties truly lie. When you follow the money, the contrasts in…
The new nonfiction debut by poet, critic and Washington University writing professor Eileen G’Sell, Lipstick, gets beyond the gloss. Through rigorous research and candid conversations with lipstick fans and haters alike, the book moves past what you’ve already read about the iconic cosmetic’s history, ingredients and occasional double duty as an economic indicator. It explores…
