STL Spotlight: The Good Stuff, v. 1

Today, we'll introduce a new, li'l mini-feature that we'll update over the coming weeks. Each time out, we'll point to a handful of St. Louis-centric items that'll hopefully entertain and enlighten you to St. Louis culture and civic affairs.

=========

You might not often think of poets as particularly and riotously funny, but Aaron Belz has the ability to read at a stuffy gallery one night, before opening at a comedy show the next. His latest work, The Bird Hoverer, is a real treasure and he's been supporting St. Louis poetry through the Observable Books and Observable Readings project over the past half-dozen years. We claim him as our own, though we are sad to see him departing our town for a teaching gig in California later this summer. He's a gem.

For fans of hip-hop, few St. Louis shows bring as much to the table(s) as The Remedy, a weekly staple of community radio station KDHX. The show's description: "Raw hip hop from the past, present and beyond with DJ G.Wiz - the godpops of hip hop & DJ Needles - the godson." Both are among the finest DJs in St. Louis, with Needles just winning the Best DJ category in the popular, annual Riverfront Times Music Awards. You can find streams of the last couple shows at the station's website. Here's a direct link to the show's page.

A compendium of local blogs by and about St. Louisans, the STLSyndicate allows for a quartet of local blogs to chime in at a single aggregator space, with more a dozen contributors taking part in the discussion. Content varies day-by-day, as you'd expect in a town with as many strange and interesting events taking place as we do.

For comics fans, you might want to know that St. Louis has a lively scene of original, underground comic artists, many of them working both solo and as parts of rotating collectives. You can find a fair bit of their work at the University City Loop's Star Clipper Comics, or you can visit the website of the one of the ringleaders of STL comics, Ted May. There, you can find links to blogs and other project pages.

The busiest videoblogger in St. Louis is Bill Streeter, who has had impact both locally and nationally with his Lofistl.com, a compilation of live band recordings and interviews with local and nationally-touring acts. Though his early work sprinkled in a variety of really nice, pocket-sized STL documentaries, his recent posting shows a definite trends towards the musical. If you're into the rock, you'll enjoy some of these clips. Also, we'll post up soon a clip, or two, from his Lofisessions, a series that he's recording and producing at the City Museum.