After Jon, an eighth-grade student at a St. Louis area private Catholic school, heard about how a star football player at John Burroughs School had come out and managed to remain calm despite being put on blast by the infamously hateful Westboro Baptist Church, he decided to reach out to the player. His Instagram conversation…
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Pride and Zero Prejudice
“What’s unique about The College School is that we are a private, independent school for everyone,” says Vincent Flewellen, the school’s director of equity and inclusion. We’re seated in an open area that I happen to know was once used as a library. It’s next to the principal’s office and directly across the hall from…
The Night Dustin Mitchell Tried to Perform a Exorcism With a Snake In Dallas
This piece is an addendum to our longform feature, “Dustin Does Dallas,” which appeared in our Spring 2018 issue. On June 28, 2017, police near Dallas, Texas arrested Dustin Mitchell, a former St. Louis-area con man, for falsely presenting himself as an attorney. He spent six hours in jail, then his wife bailed him out.…
Dustin Does Dallas: How an Infamous STL Con Man Devastated DFW
On the morning of June 28, 2017, the doorbell rang at the luxurious townhome of Mr. and Mrs. Dustin Mitchell. The couple assumed it was a delivery, and Dustin answered the door in his pajamas to find an entire SWAT team there to arrest him. “What’s going on?” exclaimed Lacey McCullough as she watched her…
How a Salvaged Home Movie Is Unlocking the Secret History of Gay St. Louis
Most of the details of April 27, 1996, have melted away in Geoff Story’s mind, but he rightly remembers it being a Saturday. His Saturday ritual in those days was to scour the pages of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for notices of estate sales. He loved estate sales. They allowed Story, then a 27-year-old advertising…
What Does the Future of Pride Look Like — in a City with Many Pride Celebrations?
Let’s set aside for now any tension among the various pride celebrations in St. Louis and establish this: There are a million legit ways to be proud. You can catch gleaming beads at one of the city’s largest parades. You can set up a booth at a street party to let your neighbors know you…
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