52nd City: August 2005

Musical Chairs

Singer/songwriter/vocalist Gretta Ganter of Maid Rite will be performing her last show with Maid Rite soon, with the final gig with them coming at the Art Outside Festival at the Schlafly Bottleworks in a couple weekends. She'll be joining the regrettably named (but appealing power-pop) Tight Pants Syndrome over the next month.

If you're a friend of any member of the Helium Tapes, hit the band up for a rough cut of a four-song, sampler CD that they're passing around these days, with the tracks: "Greedy," "Carry Me," "Morning Glory," and "Magnolia Bloom." The group, which played the Lot Festival on Saturday, has been recording at the phone studio of erstwhile Phonocaptor Jason Hutto.

Ans since power-pop was namechecked a genre above, it's nice to see local p-pop kingpin Jordan Oakes writing some clips for the Post-Dispatch lately. The compilation disc he recently saw hit the market - "Yellow Pills: Prefill Numero 004" - is getting some nice press in national mags. Fans of chiming guitars and skinny ties already know to pick it up, but the local connection will hopefully find it getting some extra action in St. Louis.

Good Friday (and Saturday)

The first Friday of every month is becoming a must-night-out for local culture fans and it seems that this weekend is boasting more top shows than most.

At Gallery Urbis Orbis, the venue celebrates the fall-long, winding-down process on 10th Street with the paintings of of Iowa's Arbe Bareis, who hung his one-man show this past week. Working with remarkably vivid colors, the postcard for this Friday's opening (5-10 p.m.) shows why the artist is gaining notoriety throughout the Midwest, and beyond, with detailed work that's so sharp it seems to pop from the canvas, the images as crisp as photography. With all due respect to curator Alan Brunettin's photos and paintings, it's a treat to see the visiting artist's work adorn the walls at Urbis.*

At Mad Art Gallery, Paul E. Jost and Peter Pranschke will show a work of paintings, digital imagery and multi-media illustrations. The opening runs from 7-11 pm. on Friday, in the shadow of the brewery.

On Saturday, the newish Shaw's Gallery debuts an exciting show of rock'n'roll poster art, created by known names and some sleepers, from all over the country, including artists from LA, Chicago and Kanas City. The poster for the show was designed by St. Louis' own Eric Woods of Firecracker Press. A variety of KC musicians will add to the festivities, titled "Paper Cuts and Track Marks," from 7-10 p.m, at 4065 Shaw.

And we won't even peek ahead to the Art Outside festival next week...

*We'd be remiss in not adding this note: 52nd City's "Trash Can Full of Change" will make it's true debut at this show. Simple concept: we need money to do online and print publishing projects in 2006. We assume you have some spare change. We'd like you to drop your change in our Can and we'll spend the money wisely. Thanks and see you at Urbis!

Used Book Fantasia!

The Carondelet YWCA is running their annual book fair 'til Wednesday the 31st. The hours are 9am to 9pm, with a $6 per bag or box night on Tuesday. (For those who've never been to the Carondelet Y, it's on 600 Loughborough). We just returned from a three-hour stint there, where we wandered around the basketball gym, basement and upstairs offices. The rooms runneth over with books, records, tapes and paper ephemera (& there's two outdoor tents as well).

Really, if you're looking for a great used booksale, I don't think you can do better than Carondelet. The poetry table at most booksales is lousy with Rod McKuen and vanity press, faux-beatnik doggerel, but I found two or three fantastic poetry titles today. Also great is the "Special, Rare, or Old" room. That's where I found "The Eclectic Shopper," a round-up of shopping columns published in the P-D in the early '70s; it's full of descriptions of the milliners and watch repairmen who plied their trade in the city 30-odd years ago. Here's an excerpt from the "Pipes" chapter: "Mrs. Henry A. Jost, proprietor of Jost's Pipe and Tobacco Shop, is one of the 60,000 American women who smoke pipes. Mrs. Jost believes that that many men and women pipe smokers don't know how to smoke a pipe - 'even if they have smoked for 35 years.' She and Harvey Raspberry give lessons in the shop. There are two comfortable chairs in the corner of the shop where a smoker can sit and have his smoking progress checked under the watchful eyes of Mrs. Jost or pipemaker Raspberry."

So here's what we scored:

VINYL
The Unknown Dvorak (Czech, Croatian and Serbian folk songs)
Gregorian Chants by the Vienna Hofburgkapelle Choir

BOOKS

Goethe's Faust, translated by Randall Jarrell
Wolf, Jim Harrison
Dust of Death, O.S. Guinness
Heartlands of Today, Art & Society, Vol. 3
The Book of Powerful Secrets
Addiction to Perfection, Marion Woodman
Encyclopedia Brown Shows the Way, Donald Sobel
The Ceremony and Other Stories, Weldon Kees
Memento Mori, Muriel Spark
Taxonomy and Nomenclature of Fungi, GR Bisbee
The Gregg Shorthand Dictionary
The Poetic Mind, Frederick Clarke Prescott
View with a Grain of Sand, Wislawa Szymborska
The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeez, James Thurber
Truth, Emile Zola
Joe Hill, Wallace Stegner
Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl
Pictures of the Gone World, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Young Pillars, Charles Schultz (pre-Charlie Brown comix w/ spooky stretched-out Peanuts characters as college students)
The Eclectic Shopper, Patricia Rice
All Quiet On the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear, Matthew Fox
Strange Women of the Occult, Warren Smith
CIA and American Labor, George Morris
A Short History of India and Pakistan, T. Walter Wallbank
Plunkett of Tammany Hall, William Riordon
Pac-Mania! Haller Schwartz
The Partridge Family No. 5, "Terror Night," Vic Kroom
Dr. Eichenlaub's HOME TONICS and REFRESHERS for Daily Health and Vigor
What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Noam Chomsky
Spoon River Anthology, Edgar Lee Masters
The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
Life of Ben Johnson, James Boswell

Total: $28.00 (which included two hot dogs and two bottled waters). Not bad, I say. Especially that Powerful Secrets book - it smells like cigar smoke (or maybe Mrs. Jost's pipe smoke?), but it was only .75, and it really is full of powerful secrets - like how to meditate effectively when you're extremely busy, how to win at Blackjack and how to get your FOIA requested expedited.

Bugs that You Will Like

For years, the Ded Bugs have been my favorite live band in town, though I seldom actually see them. For shame! Oh, there's the occasional trip to the one-and-only Creepy Crawl for a set, but those are only intermittent visits to Downtown's dankest nightspot. Of course, there are the five records to listen to, but those slices of prerecorded music only do the band a fraction of justice.

It's onstage where the Bugs really make their mark. Befitting a group's that's been together the better part of a decade, the group's got that hard-to-define "tightness" onstage. The songs have the urgency of punk, but also the musicianship and chops that come with years of live work. Though all the members would share credit for their sound, primary vocalist Matt Meyer's got a certain "aw-shucks" star quality that just makes his - and the band's - work that much more appealing.

Often playing with bands that picked up instruments in the just the past few years, the group's also opened for a host of pop-punk acts over the years, seldom failing to better the groups on their bills, whether young or old. And they seem more the former, with songs and lyrics that jump back to the teenaged years; favorite topics include horror films and cereal. Tracks like the recent "Band on Tour" and "On the Punk Page" are clever enough. But as we're praising the live show, don't expect to hear them in crystal clear totality.

This weekend, the band offer oldtimers, cheapskates and the curious a chance to catch the Bugs in a near-matinee setting, as the group plays The Lot festival at the Tap Room, this Saturday, August 27. They'll start at 6:30 p.m. and will set a high bar for the rest of the groups on the bill that evening. There's no charge, though you may want to pack a dollar, or two, for a Ded Bugs button or 45. They're pretty neat.

Mike D

The Riverfront Times has employed a very small stable of photographers over the years, with only three main shutterbugs finding an editorial home there over the last two decades-plus. Prior to the long, continuing run of Jennifer Silverberg, Mike Defilippo held the post for a number of years, creating a host of evocative cover shots and interior images; all of that work came during a time when the paper utilized considerably more photography on the cover.

One of the best features produced by Defilippo was the weekly "Big Picture," a single page devoted to a single image caught that week, often while the photographer was out on another shot. Taken as a large group, the works combined for a classic "slice of life" perspective on our town, a fact proven by a show at Flo Valley a couple years back.

Though still employed by a wide variety of corporate, political and editorial concerns, Mike's work hasn't been as public in recent years. Though that's changed with a new feature on Mayor Slay's site. (Though the photos, curiously, don't feature the photographer's byline.) It's nice to see my old co-worker's snaps in a new, digital format. Already, the breadth of work is starting to show, including a pic of City Museum "finisher" Mary Levi, the most recent addition.

Free Candy Fireworks!

This Sunday's Free Candy may go down in South St. Louis history.

Here's the details, from Amanda Doyle:

"This Sunday, August 21, at 7 p.m., Hartford Coffee Company (at the corner of Hartford and Roger in beautiful Tower Grove South, 3974 Hartford, to be exact), you will experience an episode of Free Candy like no other.

Guests:
* Aaron Belz, curator of the "Readings @" series of poetry readings, will
be on hand to announce the new season and talk verse, verily.
* Ray Hartmann, founder and former editor of the Riverfront Times, newly
installed as the president of the trustees of our local ACLU chapter, will
talk liberty and maybe journalism and maybe, just maybe, get into a
Donnybrook-style smackdown with Amanda & Julia!
* the reunited-and-it-feels-so-nice Sugar Daddies will play a swan song
(seriously, we hope they work up something about swans) and your old
favorites.
* our trademark shenanigans and also...bargains!

Plus, there's free candy. Mmmmm."

I've seen Ray enough on Donnybrook to know he's an interesting talk-show guest. And I actually know Aaron as a pal, and have seen him on stage as both performer and emcee. He has a dry, wicked sense of humor and really comes into his own when he's in front of an audience.

This guestly juxtaposition just gave me a really stupid, but delicious idea: I need to write a poem about Donnybrook. Now *there* is a villanelle waiting to happen if ever there was one.

Are You Chicken?

My trip to the Missouri State Fair over the weekend was sort of a bust. It rained almost the entire weekend so I didn’t get to shoot all the film I wanted…no carnies on the midway, no dusty cowboys in stiff Wranglers, no chubby preteens carrying wilting paper plates of funnel cakes. A downpour forced me to retreat to the poultry building, where I quickly burned a roll of film on an astonishing number of breeds. The birds were freaky; crazy Tina Turner types with feathers sprouting like fountains out of their scalps, roosters with combs as big and thick as my hand, and one variety that looked like a giant tan powdery puff—no trace of a face.

I briefly became enamored with the idea of raising chickens in my backyard (like I need another project). Normally, I wouldn’t consider such a daunting responsibility as animal ownership except that my parents already have a small brood of chickens. Listening to a crowing rooster at daybreak brings a special satisfaction—the world seems entirely wholesome during those indifferent interludes of cock-a-doodling. So I did some quick internet research, which revealed that the city of St. Louis allows four chickens (as pets) per backyard.*

However, further investigation caused me to question my plan. Over the last ten years many possums and raccoons have called my deep and lush backyard home. I haven’t had much luck persuading them to live elsewhere. I’d be crushed if these critters were caught in the hen house. So the whole idea quickly became complicated. I need to think about it some more. Right now, I’m too chicken to try.

The website Path To Freedom has all sorts of useful urban homesteading advice, including raising chickens in the city.

* C. No person shall raise or keep chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, guineas, peafowl or rabbits within the City, and the raising or keeping thereof is declared a public nuisance; except that such animals may be raised or kept within biological laboratories, hospitals, pet shops, slaughter houses, stockyards, zoological gardens, or itinerant or temporary shows; and except that such animals may be raised or kept where not more than four in the aggregate of all animals, including domestic animals and a pot-bellied pig, are kept as pets within any one parcel of property unless the owner obtains a noncommercial kennel permit. (Ord. 62853 § 7, 1993.)

Young Fiction at Washington Post

Has anyone been to the Washington Post yet? Apparently it's a new coffeeshop downtown. I like the name, and I suspect I would probably prefer the coffeeshop to the newspaper (ah, I'm a New York Times gal, I admit it). For those who have not been there (like me): the address is 1312 Washington.

This Friday from 7-9pm, they are hosting a young fiction writers reading, including Colleen McKee, Allison Creighton, Andrea Jackson, Emily Lowery, Jim Mense and Seema Mukhi. I've heard Colleen and Emily read, and they're quite good (Colleen's reading for Art Outside, and I saw her read at the KDHX Midwest Mayhem poetry stage in May. Her poems are humorous, and she has amazing Louise Brooks hair).

If you know you can't make it down to the Washington Post to hear young fiction writers, then I recommend this little audio bit at the Washington Post (Newspaper) website, featuring an old, dead writer: Eudora Welty. "Why I Live at the P.O." is an example to young fictionists everywhere, i.e., "this is how it's done."

"Cheap Beer, free poetry and borrowed towns"

Poet and River Styx editor Richard Newman is having a party/reading at Dressel's Pub Above on August 27th at 7 pm to kick off the "Borrowed Town to Town" world tour, to promote his newest book, Borrowed Towns. He'll also have copies of his wildly popular Monster Sonnet book available. For more info on other reading dates, you can visit Richard's website. Says the author about his website, and his tour: "make sure to run your mouse over all the silly drawings. Roadie and groupie applications available upon request."

Thursday Whim: Stone-Covelli @ Cookie's Jazz

Speaking of music classics and the bright nostalgia they can summon: my parents always flooded the house with a mix of psychedelia, blues and free jazz. None of it seemed comforting to me as a kid, especially the jazz. It felt too lonely, bottomless and chaotic. Beatles songs, no matter how cosmic, were poppy and colorful and felt like a completed picture puzzle by the time the song faded out. Jazz was unsymetrical, a big sonic question mark. The vast blank space inside of a free jazz song always scared me more than my mom's "Crazy World of Arthur Brown" album - even more than the Hellfire song. Of course, most of the jazz clubs in Salt Lake played what my dad refers to as "roast beef music," and that sort of jazz was about as scary as Doc Severnson, which is to say not at all.

But we evolve. Hearing Dave Stone play at Mangia on Fridays is one of the high points of living near South Grand. His trio has the expansive/contractive free jazz thing going, including the blank spaces, but it's soulful, not spooky. I guess staring into the abyss of adulthood, with all its uncertainty, is what helps the ear make sense of free jazz. Once you are okay with living your life without metaphorical insurance policies, it's one of the most exhilirating forms of music out there.

So on that note: if you are looking for something to do with yourself tonight, the Stone-Covelli Jazz Quintet is playing at Cookie's Jazz and More in Webster at 8:30 pm. I've never been down to this club, but it looks like there's a nice selection of drinks and snacks, and it's smoke-free. (I'm sure the brass and woodwind players are genuflecting to the proprietor for that). Cover is only $5, and the first twenty folks who ask John Covelli for a CD single will get one for free.

Trivia Update

We are over the 50% mark for sold tables at the Mad Art/52nd City Trivia Challenge, with nine groups committing. Boy, we sure appreciate the support! Your money will go towards our first project, which is a quarterly print magazine showcasing St. Louis talent in the areas of fiction, poetry, illustration, and photography. Please continue to encourage your colleagues and friends to reserve a table for this special night of trivia and fun. Email tcrone@sbcglobal.net or call 314-776-6929 for more information.

Oh, the classics

I’d like to be able to bring some music reviews of a more contemporary nature, however, lately; I’m a fan of the classics. Tonight, after a full four hours of catching up on Mad Art work and a full hour of wine at Juniper Grill with Tracy, I was able to enjoy on the way home, Carole King’s Tapestry. Although I am a little buzzed on sauv blanc, I don’t think that is a prerequisite for enjoying “I Feel The Earth Move”. I’m no aficionado but the piano on this is so right at home, I feel just like I’m kindergarten age and in the back in the back seat of my parent’s vanilla pudding colored Buick LeSabre on the way to the city to visit my grandma in Ferguson. The same with “It’s Too Late” which really brings me back to my grade school years. My dad was more of a country music fan. Every Thursday night up until I was six, the turntable would light up with a mix of my dad’s favorites, Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash, and my mom’s favorites, Carole King and Aretha Franklin, while we prepared for the trip to the city to visit my grandparents. So I feel like I had a great mix songwriters and singers growing up. And I had a great appreciation of “the city”. I grew up in the country, but we always looked forward to our weekly visits to the city…where there were sidewalks and we could walk to the drugstore for fancy candies. So every time I hear a version of “Natural Woman” the hairs on my neck stand up and I feel like I’m going somewhere special. When I got in my car to leave Mad Art and told Tracy I was going to listen to Carole King’s, Tapestry on the way home she shouted, “you’ve gotta burn me a copy,” and I do. Because everyone deserves this pleasure. Treat yourself to this. Soon.

Sub-Radar: Soldiers Memorial

Though I've been to two Strassenfests, I've never been seen the doors of the Soldiers Memorial open during that weekend. But they opened the doors this year, and what a strange treat it was to step inside. From what I gather from born-and-bred St. Louisians, the museum is a bit of a sleeper; but the interior is as intact a St. Louis time capsule as you're liable to find. There's a lot here for history and architecture lovers, both outside (the stylized ornamental pylons on the building's facade, terazzo mosaic inside the loggia) and inside (Moderne-style walls made with stone inlay, Deco display cabinets).

I will admit that it felt odd to be looking at knives, grenades and a melted beer bottle that survived Hiroshima knowing that outside the walls, kids were riding the Ferris Wheel and Father Time was doing the polka with a long line of sexy grandmas. I am far from being a military history buff, but I still found this little museum strangely compelling, especially the dioramas (including one that uses a wisp of angel hair glued to the mouth of a cannon to simulate smoke; when was the last time you saw angel hair?). There's also a case dedicated to art made in wartime, including metal vases created by prisoners of war from empty munitions shells. Also notable are several photos of early 20th-century St. Louis that you probably won't see elsewhere.

Of course, as I write this, the Memorial is on the brink of shedding its sleeperdom status: on August 27 (the day after the 52nd City Trivia Night!) Sauce Magazine is throwing its "Sauce in the City" party on the premises. It will be interesting to see how they work with the space, and whether the event will spark some interest in the building and the museum. Whether or not you go to the Sauce party, the spot is well worth a solo trip during a downtown lunch hour.

Webster U Film Series: Love That Calendar

Getting a copy of the Webster University Film Series quarterly calendar makes me feel like a kid getting a candy catalog. All those documentaries, retrospectives, flashbacks... it's really too much! Mentally, I check off at least a dozen films per calendar, though I physically struggle to make it to that many, which makes me resort to begging director Michael Steinberg for loaner tapes of the rest. (And he can't afford to have everybody doing that; he even shushes me away, broadly hinting but empty-handed on a regular basis.)

The current calendar - covering August-October - is one of the more intriguing ones of recent vintage, including: looks back at David Lean and Jim Jarmusch; visits with six filmmakers/screenwriters; several interesting docs, including "Bob Smith, U.S.A." which tracks seven American men of that name; and, "Barbarella" at the Bottleworks.

The most fun thing not on the screen is the 1st Annual Film Series Movie Poster Sale, taking place at the Winifred Moore Auditorium on August 27, from noon-4 p.m. A couple years ago the WUFS auctioned off a portion of the collection, but there're literally hundreds of posters available for purchase. Even if you haven't seen the movies, some of the posters are so evocative that'll you'll hang them without the need to view.

For a calendar, call 314-968-7487.

Readings @ The Schlafly Tap Room

Pencil this in your planner, punch it into your PDA, pin it onto your pinafore...Readings @ The Schlafly Tap Room start September 1st!

Housed at the City Museum and Contemporary Art Museum in years past, this season the “Readings @” series hunkers down in the prestigious Club Room of the Schlafly Tap Room. All events are free and there is a full bar in the reading area. This is a great way to experience a vibrant connection to national poetry culture (75% of poets are from out of town!) while imbibing St. Louis’s finest beer. Curated by Kick Ass Award winner, Aaron Belz, the readings feature an impressive line-up available at http://belz.net/readings/.

What: Eight Events / Twenty Readers
When: First Thursdays of each month starting September 1st, continuing through April 6th
Time: 8-9pm
Location: The Schlafly Tap Room @ 2100 Locust Street (at 21st)
Admission: FREE
Info: http://belz.net/readings/ or aaron@belz.net

Buena Festa(s)

Tell your constitution to buck up: it's high festival weekend, and you may soon be drinking lots of beer. Not only at the Strassenfest , where you can chase your souvenir stein of pilsner with a ride on The Zipper, but at the Tap Room's Schlaffenfest, where rumor has it that they will be offering haircuts performed by a barber who specializes in mullets. Even better, the fest benefits KDHX and the band lineup includes the excellent Good Griefs, whose drummer Maggie St. Germaine once told me (very sagely) that "rock 'n' roll is NOT cheesy."

But pace yourself: there's another festival this weekend, one that might get easily drowned out during a weekend rich with air-guitar showdowns, toilet-seat horseshoes, potato pancakes, tubas and spry old guys in leiderhosen (not to mention beer, beer and more beer). Tomorrow night the Way Out Club presents WOW! Fest (that's Women of the Way Out, for those of you not endowed with psychic powers). Four local girl bands are on the docket, with proceeds going to Let's Start, an local nonprofit that assists women transitioning from prison life to living on their own. On the docket: Maid Rite, Reigning Heir, That's My Daughter and the beautifully monnikered Bitch Slap Barbie. Just a $5 donation at the door, and remember: you can drink beer at WOW!Fest, too.

Sneak peek: Atomic Cowboy

Though I'll write at further length about the Atomic Cowboy in the Post-Dispatch, in a few weeks time, I couldn't help but jot down a couple quick thoughts today. In fact, after getting a walk-through earlier this afternoon, I'm jazzed about the opening, which should come in the first week/two of September.

After a successful run as one of the catalysts of the "Maplewood Revival," the Cowboy closed up, awaiting a move to the newly-minted "Grove." The space has taken a while to get going; initial estimates were for a spring launch, but based on the results today, the extra time was well-spent. There's a neat mix of woods and metals, retro furniture and new fixtures, plus indoor and outdoor spaces, each with a decidedly different feel. The back patio, with a Quonset hut bar area, might wind up the best spot in the place, with a "bamboo sanctuary" featuring mutliple varieties of trees, along with some interesting sculpture, salvaged from a local public works project.

The kitchen, too, is something, created from scratch and featuring a Mexican menu for dinner and late-night carousing. A segmented indoor space allows for a variety of looks and seating options, including at the bar, at tables and in the loungier, second room, filled with '60s couches; a DJ booth in that space has been specially built for needles to not jump, with steel reinforcement going into the basement to ensure smooth spinning. That's detail, folks.

The guess here is that this'll be a very cool, rather popular place. Looking forward to the month after the opening, once the "what's new" crowd has had a first cycle-through.

BoardLinkStL

I attended a Readiness to Serve workshop presented by BoardLinkStL this week. This pilot program seeks to invigorate St. Louis area nonprofit boards by enhancing governance through innovative recruitment, matching, and education services. We were able to access the beta site where potential board members can create a pretty extensive profile in an effort to be matched with a non-profit organization. Kind of like match.com for do-gooders. Users pay a small fee granting access for one year, giving them plenty of time to find the perfect fit. Non-profit fees are based on a sliding scale. Designed by Bravo:Smart, the beta site was pretty impressive. The fully functioning version is scheduled to launch in mid-September.

I was amazed to learn there are over 9000 non-profit organizations in the St. Louis metropolitan region. The limited exposure I’ve had dealing with non-profit boards hasn’t been that positive, so I am very excited to see some real effort being made at educating both sides. Participating non-profits are required to attend training and the program is being evaluated on the length of the relationships made, not just the initial match. The program is being developed and supported by a variety of institutions including UMSL, Washington University, Focus St. Louis, United Way, RAC, Nonprofit Services Consortium, etc.

I highly recommend this program to anyone interested in taking community involvement a step further. I know so many bright and resourceful people who are already making a positive impact on the city through a variety of informal and formal efforts. Board membership at a non-profit seems like a logical, and fulfilling, next step.

Visit www.BoardLinkStL.org for more information.

Wrestling at the Chase

To listen to sports talk radio is to often hear: overcaffeinated hosts, shouting over one another and the callers; endless pitches for car stereo outlets and cell phone vendors; and round-and-round recitations of the latest transaction. To actually get a long-form, intelligent conversation on any topic is to hope against hope, even as the genre should be loaded with potential for in-depth interviewing.

Today, the midday "R&R" show on KFNS 590 am offered a fabulously entertaining, four-segment interview with Larry Matysik, the longtime voice of Channel 11's legendary "Wrestling at the Chase." Now, some might roll their eyes at the notion of a wrestling interview as being anything other than a campy collection of anecdotes and yarns. And, sure, there were some of those served up by Matysik, as co-hosts Bob Ramsey and Jay Randolph, and fan callers, tossed enthusiastic softballs to Matysik.

But as any St. Louisan of a certain age knows (especially if they're a guy), "Wrestling at the Chase" was a cultural touchstone for St. Louis, first a Satruday night, then a Sunday morning tradition for thousands of weekly viewers. In a day-and-age of regional wrestling federations, few towns enjoyed as active and robust a wrestling scene as St. Louis, where the Kiel Auditorium and the Arena/Checkerdome were regularly filled for matches, each of them smartly previewed and built-up by the weekly TV show.

Matysik's new book, wisely and simply titled "Wrestling at the Chase," will be offered at a signing at Left Bank Books on Thursday, August 11 at 7 p.m. Can't wait to read it and looking forward to more radio chat with Matysik, a great natural storyteller and pitchman.

Book it: Trivia Night - Aug. 26

To raise some funds for a variety of upcoming, artistic projects, the little crew behind 52ndcity.com is throwing a Trivia Night at the Mad Art Gallery, 2727 So. 12th Street, on Friday, August 26. The questions begin at 7:30 p.m.; the registration's at 6:45. Tables are priced at $100, with up to 10 players assigned per team; in fact, our first table's just been secured by the good folks at Gallery Urbis Orbis. Food is BYO, while drinks will be available via the Mad Art's full, cash bar.

Though trivia nights are no stranger to the local entertainment calendar, with competition for teams fierce, we believe that our set of 10 rounds will offer some intriguing twists on the usual topics. Think of the name of the hosting organization. The name of the venue. What used to happen at the venue. Those hints'll give you a little taste of the eclectic nature of our game, augmented by the likes of 50/50s, an arts raffle and the like.

With limited seating available, we'd invite you to book a table early, by calling 314-776-6929. Operators are currently standing by.

Greetings, readers!

In coming weeks, we'll roll out considerably more info on what we're up to with this blog and the affiliated 52ndcity.com website, which is currently in that notorious, "under construction" phase.

Expect, though, a variety of comments on local pop cultural topics, penned by Andrea Avery, Stefene Russell and, um, me. You can access us, currently, through blog.52ndcity.com or through stlsyndicate.com, whose Kingpin, Brian Marston, enabled all the technology to make this here thing happen. Grazie.

Here's to many happy posts ahead!