Charlotte Sumtimes talks, walks and acts like it’s the 1920s. She’s a middle-aged drag queen running St. Louis’ underground jazz scene, rubbing elbows with bootleggers and staying clear of the Klan. She drinks bathtub gin, she curses, she fights, she meanders on cobblestone streets past breweries and brothels. In reality, Charlotte shares a body with…
Lesbian bars have been disappearing across the U.S. for decades, and St. Louis is no exception: In the past five years alone, Novak’s, R Bar, Absolutli Goosed and Lilly’s Music & Social House have all shuttered. We sat down with Kristen Goodman, former co-owner of Lilly’s Music & Social House, to find out why that…
There’s a superstition, particularly in the South, that eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Eve will bring good luck. So at the dawning of 2018, Dianna Watson, the head chef at Crafted in Tower Grove East, decided to add her favorite version of them to the menu: black-eyed-pea fritters. Her plan was fairly simple: She…
If you’ve been out on the prowl recently — whether that entails seeking Mr. Right, seeking Mr. Right Now, carousing in after-dark homo hot spots or exploring the internet’s ever-booming global gay boomtown — there’s something about gay men you can’t help but notice: As a group, we are aging. Unlike other groups, however, we’re…
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.…
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 Lacy McCully as she watched her…
I’m a proud, homegrown St. Louisan. This city is like my own emotional hot-tub party: The water is warm and full of all my favorite people. I’m comfortable and relaxed. I feel validated here, too, in certain ways, but there’s another type of validation that’s rarer — and requires venturing into the unknown. Last winter,…
Here’s some Russian collaboration that we can get behind: In early February, I attended a dinner and panel discussion hosted by Pride St. Louis. The organization has embarked on an ambitious cultural exchange project with Avers, an LGBTQ group from the Samara region of Russia. Several members of Avers were in town and attended the…
So, okay, for this one thing we’re pretty biased. But tomorrow night, there’s no other place you should be besides the launch party for the newest issue of Out in STL. We’re really proud of it. Come get your hands on a gorgeous copy of the magazine for an update on the jaw-dropping antics of…
Over its 30-year history, the Gateway Men’s Chorus has performed plenty of light-hearted tunes, but at their concerts this weekend, they’ll be trying something different: the 55-member chorus will use song to reckon with harsh truths. The show “We Will Rise” has music that touches on transgender rights, suicide, mental illness, and other issues. Perhaps…
