This feature originally ran in the October 25, 2023 issue of The Riverfront Times The year was 2015, and I’d been trying to set up an interview with Janet Kolar, Alton’s hearse-racing “Mistress of the Macabre” and proprietor of the Historic Museum of Torture Devices. I had first been drawn to Alton while exploring…
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The Divine Dozen: The Region’s Best Gayborhoods
Critical Mass: The minimum size or amount of something required to start or maintain a venture. Our 2018 “Where We Live” cover story proved to be among our most widely read. Even years after it was released, readers would tell us that it had informed their decision on what neighborhoods to call home. With the…
A History of St. Louis’ Drag Scene
St. Louis’ LGBTQ+ ancestral family tree includes countless drag performers and gender nonconforming individuals. Currently, St. Louis lays claim to having the world’s oldest performing drag queen – John Chaney, who performs at the age of 94 as Bonnie Blake, a St. Louis legend. Chaney and others have paved the way to advance LGBTQ+ rights…
‘We Have to Fight’: Incarcerated Transgender Missourians Are Latest Target of Missouri Lawmakers
Jessica Hicklin may be best known as the trans woman who took the state of Missouri to court over access to gender-affirming care while incarcerated, with a successful ruling in 2018. Now five years later, as Missouri state legislators are sponsoring an array of bills targeting transgender health care, she describes this as a dark…
The Hearse Chaser: Steven Brawley Preserves LGBTQ History
The nickname came up for the first time this past summer. When I heard of my friend Ed’s passing, in addition to being saddened by the loss of a special person, I was immediately concerned about his personal collection of local LGBTQIA+ history. What would happen to it? I got nervous. While I was researching…
Arch Rival Roller Derby Is a Queer Sanctuary
When I joined St. Louis’ flat-track roller derby team in 2016, one of the first things I was told was, “Nobody joins roller derby if they have a perfectly happy life. Usually, they’re dealing with some shit.” That was certainly the case for me. I was 22, newly enrolled in graduate school at Washington University…
Sex Work: The MO Ho Justice Coalition Is Here to Help us Get Free
Many in the queer community are quick to remind us that Stonewall was a riot and that it was started by trans sex workers of color. Images of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera flood Instagram all year round, but especially during Pride Month. We love to cry out that Pride exists because of the…
Chris Andoe is Ready to Talk
Chris Andoe learned to tell stories in his grandmother’s backyard on the north side of Tulsa, Okla. “I’m from a family of storytellers,” he says. At 46, he’s a current St. Louis Magazine contributor, former editor of Out in STL and the author of the recently released “House of Villadiva,” a book that straddles multiple…
Biker Clubs and Queer History: Stories of Rebel Queers in St. Louis
Picture it: St. Louis, 2003. You’re a young queer person from southern Illinois, in the big city for your first-ever Pride parade. You’re scared shitless, horny as hell and trying to look cool. You’ve managed to score prime real estate on the parade route because in your nervousness you accidentally showed up two hours early.…
Nailing Down Nancy
As Nancy Novak Returns for a Final Farewell, One Writer Seeks to Understand her Polarizing Legacy Less than a week after I signed up to profile Nancy Novak, I realized it would be anything but reporting as usual. For starters, there’s absolutely no need to dig for dirt or persuade sources to talk. Even five…
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