When we rang in the year 2000, it wasn’t about a new year or even a new decade. We were celebrating a new millennium (setting aside the boring technicality that the millennium actually began in 2001). Prior to that, it felt like each decade was distinctive from the last. Visuals come to mind when someone…
Men of the Match: Kevin Hayes, Jr. & Mike Lehmkuhle are Bringing Dating Back
What is it about new romance that captivates us? Supermarket checkout lanes are lined with cover photos of attractive, freshly minted couples. We even went through a phase of coming up with cute names for them, like TomKat and Brangelina. Whatever the reason, public interest is undeniable. The dominance of hookup culture has made getting…
Black Tulip Chorale Celebrates 500 Years of LGBTQIA2+ Music With Free Concert Nov. 16
Black Tulip Chorale closes its second season with a performance celebrating more than 500 years of music from LGBTQIA2+ artists, ranging from art songs and arias to 21st century pop music. Featured artists for the “Our Song” concert include Grammy award winner Christine Brewer and members of the St. Louis Wind Symphony. Production manager Ken…
New Cabaret Venue Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge Opens with Ken Haller Oct. 31
Twenty years ago pediatrician and cabaret favorite Ken Haller started a special fund for a yet-to-be-determined retirement passion. Although he has no plans to retire at the moment, when producer and entrepreneur Jim Dolan invited him to invest in a Central West End cabaret venue this past March, Haller basically said, “Take my money!” See…
Bear Season in St. Louis Begins Oct. 31: HiBearNation 25
Hundreds of rooms are booked at the host hotel, and guests from as far away as Australia are making their way to St. Louis for one of the world’s largest bear gatherings: HiBearNation 25. This will be the 25th year the Show Me Bears have put on this major event, and HiBearNation 25 Chairman D.…
Rough & Tumble: Sitting Down With the St. Louis Crusaders
Rugby involves a lot of whoring. In fact, the whoring is one reason there’s such a brotherhood between players across the sport. As if that weren’t intriguing enough, they even have hookers on the field (for real!), and all of this goes on under the watchful eye of “the Sir.” OK, I may have inadvertently…
Letter from the Editor: Chris Andoe
If you’ve been around the St. Louis scene a while, what I’m about to say might make you feel really old: Many LGBTQ twenty-somethings don’t know who Nancy Novak is. The five years she’s been in exile (or retirement) is a lifetime in the bar scene where Novak reigned. But for those of us who…
Author & Professor Patrick Dilley to Present from Acclaimed New Book at Prime Timers This Saturday
Patrick Dilley, Professor of Higher Education and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, will be presenting from his newly published book at this month’s Prime Timers St. Louis organizational meeting, Saturday, August 10, 2019. Gay Liberation to Campus Assimilation: Early Non-Heterosexual Student Organizing at Midwestern Universities, was published in February by…
A Word from Editor Chris Andoe
We’re honored to once again partner with Pride St. Louis and #Boom to bring you this combined Official Pride Guide and summer issue of Out in STL. On this monumental anniversary, we contemplate where we’ve been and how far we’ve come. Associate Editor Melissa Meinzer and Steven Louis Brawley of the St. Louis LGBT History…
Strike a Pose: St. Louis has a storied ball scene — and its stars are ready to strut their stuff at Pride
It was 2001 when Mechee Harper took her nineteen-year-old friend Meko Lee Burr to Chicago for his first ball. “We ended up taking over a KFC as our dressing room,” Harper recalls. “And the employees were like, ‘Well, alright!’” The underground, largely black and Latinx LGBTQ ball culture has mostly existed out of mainstream awareness…