One step into Rafael Adón and you find yourself in an intimate mashup of eras. On one hand, this boutique at 1901 Park Avenue in Lafayette Square is as artistically curated as the best of Instagram and Pinterest. On the other, the commerce that takes place here is decidedly old school, harking back to the…
Salam Alhamdy hadn’t been in the office more than an hour when he became fixated with setting up a sexual encounter. On that May morning in 2016, the 33-year-old was still living in Kansas City. Business travelers were always on his radar, and one was ready and waiting at an airport hotel. He fired off…
“I think of myself very much as a storyteller — probably a storyteller first and then a singer second.” For cabaret artist Ken Haller, the stories that weave his songs together are the important part of his shows. “The thing about the cabaret is that it’s about creating an emotional space for the audience so…
This ain’t your grandad’s telethon! Starting at noon tomorrow, the Metro Trans Umbrella Group of St. Louis will stage a 24-hour variety show on Facebook and YouTube to raise money for MTUG’s many trans-oriented programs. The telethon will have a bit of everything: Musician Kristen Goodman will play a set, designer Maxi Glamour will put…
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…
Death. Taxes. Dudely bro-dawgs monopolizing bike rides. Some things you must endure, but others you can adjust. For more than four years running, a group of women has converged on the first Monday of every month for a social bike ride: the Monthly Cycle. They pedal a different fifteen-mile route each time through a mix…
The history of drag in St. Louis is both colorful and politically important. The St. Louis LGBT History Project has unearthed examples of “female impersonator” news stories dating as far back as the 1870s — including one of a man who died from wearing a corset too tight, crushing his organs. St. Louis’ masquerading laws,…
If all you know about Lea DeLaria is her gimlet-eyed prison persona Big Boo on Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, well, truthfully, you’re off to an OK start. Boo brings butch sexiness into the mainstream in a way we haven’t much seen before, which is quite cool. But there’s so much more to know!…
Twenty years ago, I was living in Oklahoma City and decided to spread my wings and move to a larger metropolitan area. I wanted to be within a comfortable day’s drive of my family in Tulsa, and I had a few options, none of them ideal. There was no adventure in moving to Dallas. It…
Today is World AIDS Day, and it’s worth taking a moment to take stock. First celebrated in 1988, it’s a day for people worldwide to show solidarity against the disease. The breathtaking devastation of the epidemic’s mysterious and stigma-filled beginnings in the 1980s is not today’s reality. Fewer people are dying and we understand far…
