![]() ![]() Here’s a semi-beatnik, sitting next to two members of the Boneshakers motorcycle club. Here are kids on the front lawn of a restaurant, selling dogs for $5. Even in the small collection hanging in Joe’s Cafe, you sense her street-smart style. Instead, her lens was trained on the small moments that (seemingly) made the place special. ![]() A photographer who lived and worked in the Square, Blumberg didn’t set out to capture the “big” concepts of what was happening there. Christman notes that Frank Moskus never actually painted scenes of Gaslight, so this inter-generational work captures something altogether new.Īnd rounding out the show is the work of Thelma Blumberg. Also featured is Moskus’ son, Joe, who’s painted several scenes of Gaslight, based on photos taken by his father. Paintings are featured from the late entertainer and bar owner Frank Moskus, who, with wife and musical partner Jan Mahannah, ran clubs in Gaslight and, later South City. Pieces are tucked into whatever show takes place around them, an effect Christman rather enjoys.Ĭurrently, this space (renamed Joe’s Cafe Gallery from Ars Populii Gallery earlier this year) hosts a show dedicated to Gaslight Square. Today, his Joe’s Cafe Gallery serves as the de facto micro-home of that collection, which he’s built with fellow enthusiasts Jim May and Greg Rhomberg. Lately, for example, he’s been showing some of his vast holdings of local signage, which he envisions as a much-larger St. Louis’ past clearly influences his work and collecting. Most impressive is that he’s a regional artist, which is to say that St. His work can be spotted around town, in public and private settings. Maybe it’s a respect thing: He’s created two of the more amazing spaces in town (Beatnik Bob’s in the City Museum and Joe’s Cafe, found below his home in DeBaliviere). Though I’ve known artist Bill Christman for about a decade, I’m still a bit thrown by him. And anyone with an interest in the history of St. Today, and for the next few weeks, they’ll be available for viewing. The missing ingredients to some of those projects, though, were the photos of Thelma Blumberg. ![]() For a few years, Gaslight nostalgia was being served, in heaping doses. Margie Newman produced a special for KETC, on the eventual demolition of the original Square buildings. “The Nervous Set” was revived by the New Line Theatre. A new musical about the Square was produced by the late Chris Jackson. Around the same time, talks of a documentary film were starting eventually Bruce Marren and Daniel Pearlmutter completed two, one-hour specials. Louis and started writing a few shorter stories for the RFT relating to the block. O’Day was emotionally affected the experience, feeling almost a body blow as he looked at the remaining, damaged structures.įrom there, I organized a neighborhood clean-up through Metropolis St. When interviewing a Gaslight comic and emcee named Danny O’Day for the Riverfront Times, we wandered down Olive. And I soon found myself wandering around Olive and Boyle, for any reason. That club, the Prestige Lounge, was almost like a weed that’d popped up, albeit briefly, in the most unlikely of places. Though I twice visited a Gaslight venue owned by the late Lou Bonds in the early ‘90s, the Square had already been left for dead two decades before. ![]() Though, in retrospect, I’ve always simply known that I’d missed out on the greatest musical and cultural collision that our town ever knew (and might ever know). And I never came up with that exact, set, ready answer. “You’re too young to have been at the Square, so why are you doing this?” It was a legitimate question. The other constant memory was this question, asked virtually every time I sat down with a subject. In fact, a distinct memory of the end days of the project is walking up to houses all over the area on crutches: I had torn my right Achilles. Of my dream list, virtually everyone came through whenever possible, we talked in person, rolling old-fashioned tape for later transcription. But nobody committed the story to the longer print form, which felt like something of a surprise.ĭeciding to take an interview-based approach to the project (eventually dubbed and released as “Gaslight Square: An Oral History” in 2004), I set out to talk to at least 50 residents, performers, business owners and regulars. Literally hundreds of those had appeared over the years, in St. 25, 2012 - At some point in the early 2000s, I realized that our city’s Gaslight Square heyday had never been captured in book form. ![]()
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