St. Louis Magazine

“I’m overly excited to cheer with the crowd in the supporter section and be able to get the full experience as a season ticket holder. Not to mention, can I try all the food by the end of the season?” —Kylie Green, Digital & Print Production Manager“Seeing St. Louis come out in droves to support yet another sports franchise is just so satisfying.” —Emily Wells, Art Director“After years of teams coming and going, I can’t wait to jump back on the STL soccer bandwagon and check out the shiny new stadium.” —Christine Jackson, Managing Editor…

SOCCER’S AT fever pitch in St. Louis—in fact, it has been for some time. Fans spilled onto the street outside Amsterdam Tavern during the World Cup last November to cheer for the U.S. men’s national soccer team, including St. Louis natives Josh Sargent and Tim Ream. During the soccer stadium’s debut, late last year, fans rooted on the club’s developmental squad, CITY 2, despite the fact that they were losing by three and the game was an exhibition match. Heck, a Ted Lasso-themed bar even opened in The Grove last December. Of course, St. Louis’ love affair with soccer started long before we found out the city was getting an Major League Soccer team. Simply skim the timeline running through this month’s cover feature (p. 46)—from the first reported game in…

THE DEFENSE ATTORNEY TRAVIS NOBLE recently wrapped up a two-week jury trial, a DWI case that he calls possibly the worst he’s seen in his 35-year career. His client was charged with a DWI felony after a car crash that killed a young couple and their infant. The defendant was traveling 107 miles per hour when he hit the other car; a blood test revealed his blood alcohol content was more than double the legal limit. “It was the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen,” Noble says. “And the jury found him not guilty of the DWI.” Noble was able to introduce doubt into the jurors’ minds that his client’s blood sample was handled correctly. Noble has tried more than 200 DWI cases, and 95 percent of them are alcohol related,…

IT’S A BEAUTIFUL SPRING MORNING, and you’re doing 25 miles per hour down Kingshighway, like the responsible motorist you are, when you spot it: a pothole the size of Mark Twain Lake right in your path. Is…is that a portal to hell? you wonder as you clench everything and hold your breath. It’s too late to swerve and too late to slow down, and now all you can do is wait for the tell-tale pop! sound of a punctured tire and picture your hard-earned $600—the average cost of car repair after damage from a pothole, according to the American Automobile Association— going out the window.¶ It might be cold comfort in the moment, but there is actually a network of asphalt scientists working on improving the life of the material…

Fred Ssewamala lost his mother at age 3. His father, stepmother, brother, sister, and friend were shot by government soldiers when he was 11, during the second, brutal Obote regime in Uganda. Yet he has always felt absurdly, profoundly lucky—because he lived, because he had family who took him in and teachers who urged him on, and because he made it out of his Ugandan village to this country. He is now the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor at the Brown School at Washington University, and he has created—and runs—more than 20 economic-empowerment and public-health programs across Africa, easing the lives of kids who are ill, destitute, or ashamed; stabilizing families; and creating a pipeline of highly educated young Africans. His success there is teaching students here what works. HOW DO…

2. Draw the lower beak and a circle for the eye. 3. Fill in a small circle for the pupil and draw a small eyebrow above the eye. 4. Draw a large rounded line for the belly and a small rounded line for the top of the head. HOW TO DRAW HALFTONE WHEN CARL REED was a child, he didn’t see many characters who looked like him in comic books and cartoons, so he convinced himself that some of his favorites were Black. He decided that Destro from G.I. Joe was the Black character. Same with Panthro from ThunderCats. Now, years later, Reed, who is the executive producer and co-founder at Lion Forge Animation, has teamed up with Nine PBS to bring more diverse characters to the screen with Drawn In, a multimedia series…