Arts & Entertainment >>

• Best Dance Club
  Velvet
  Gone are the days, at least for now, in Washington Avenue clubland when competition for high-profile DJs meant that we freaks could hear cool house -- and, less frequently, techno and drum & bass -- nearly every weekend. Sadly, now we're punished with no-names clogging up the decks downtown,... More >>
• Best DJ
  DJ Tape
  In an era when every schmuck with a 2000 VW Bug and a pair of Adidas digs in the crates for old vinyl and thinks he's goddamn DJ Shadow, the timing is perfect to take it back -- er, take it back, then forward -- to the middle school. Inspired by the bedroom-based pause-tape phenomenon perfected... More >>
• Best New Theater Group
  (Mostly) Harmless Theatre
  The (Mostly) Harmless Theatre has produced just two full-scale shows, Defying Gravity and Fuddy Meers (as well as an evening of 10-minute plays), but both displayed polished, mature and professional work worth watching. The ambitious company is under the artistic direction of Robert Neblett, who... More >>
• Best Lifetime Achievement In Radio
  John Ulett
  Dear John: It's hard to believe we've been together for 25 years. Most DJs are lucky if their careers last that long, but somehow you've managed to remain not just employed but employed by the same station for the whole run. Sure, there was that brief suspension when your foray into political... More >>
• Best Topless Club
  Diamond Cabaret
  The always tasteful Diamond went truly upscale this year, installing a members-only section dubbed the Diamond Room that features a so-called data port, which is essentially a soundproof glass booth featuring a small desk and phone jacks so you can get your e-mails out and call the boss to... More >>
• Best Imported Theatrical Productions
  Death of a Salesman and War of the Worlds
  This category used to be called Best Play Seen in St. Louis, the implication being that a local production probably wouldn't be the best. This year, we're picking two bests, one imported and one homegrown, not comparing but acknowledging them as different, noncompeting creatures. In this first... More >>
• Best Movie Theater
  Tivoli Theatre
  Newcomers to St. Louis probably don't know that before Loop master builder Joe Edwards renovated the Tivoli, it had fallen into a ghastly state of disrepair. The last days before its doors were boarded up made for hardy cinematic excursions. If it was raining outside the theater, it was raining... More >>
• Best Nonmusic Radio Show
  Lavender Limelight, KDHX (88.1 FM)
  This particular category is as much mash note as it is actual award. Linda Serafini and Neil Greppin, the talented hosts of Lavender Limelight, have recently jumped from their long-running and always entertaining gay-news-magazine program to the KDHX Friday-morning show. And although their... More >>
• Best Bar/Nightclub
  Way Out Club
  The Way Out Club could easily win in other, more music-oriented categories, as it did last year, when we deemed it Best Rock & Roll Bar. Indeed, the beloved saloon has live music almost every night, an impressive percentage of which is good to great. But we love the Way Out for other reasons,... More >>
• Best Local Theater Production
  Dinner With Friends
  Hands down, the best production mounted locally was the St. Louis Repertory Studio Theatre's Dinner with Friends, Steve Woolf's flawless interpretation of Donald Margulies' Pulitzer Prize-winning play. This was theater at its best: no gimmicks or blockbuster sets, just a great, close-to-the bone... More >>
• Best Radio Station For Music
  WSSM (106.5 FM)
  Since its debut in October, music-intensive "Smooth 106.5" WSSM has been a breath of fresh air in radioland, introducing brightly talented, lesser-known artists such as guitarist Marc Antoine and new-age keyboardist Keiko Matsui and reintroducing past favorites -- Luther Vandross, George Benson... More >>
• Best Cheap Date
  Beer and previews at the Ronnies 20 Ciné
  As major-studio movies have stripped away more and more of those pesky plots and character-development portions of motion pictures, it becomes possible to consider them as nothing more than long highlight reels. Once you've made that leap, you can decide to forgo watching a flick from beginning... More >>
• Best Alternative-Rock Bar
  Rocket Bar
  Once known as a haven for math-rock and emo-core aficionados, the Rocket Bar now boasts a more inclusive booking policy, one that welcomes '60s jangle-pop, eccentric post-punk and all manner of other alt-rock subgenres. With a healthy mix of national touring bands and high-quality local acts,... More >>
• Best Rock & Roll Club
  The Pageant
  The Pageant, we're willing to admit, may be too prettified and pristine to qualify as Best Rock & Roll Club. Despite corporate co-optation and an embarrassment (in both senses) of potbellied geezers croaking out 30-year-old hits, rock remains -- at its still-vital heart -- the music of... More >>
• Best Gay Bar
  The Complex
  For Queer As Folk fans, the Complex is about as close as St. Louis can come to Babylon, the club where Michael, Dr. Dave, Brian, Justin, Ted and Emmett regularly socialize. The booming sound system cranks out some great disco/dance tunes while a light show and mirrored disco ball gleam in the... More >>
• Best Place To Hear Jazz
  Spruill's
  When jazz guitarist Russell Malone came to St. Louis, he played nice and neat for the freshly shampooed crowd at Bistro Europa, where there's no smoke, plenty of light and free valet parking to lure the suburbanites. Toward the end of the evening, Malone informed the crowd he was bringing up... More >>
• Best Ethnic Radio Show
  Sabados Tropicales, KDHX (88.1 FM)
  Every Saturday, from 2-4 p.m., Sabados Tropicales features a cultural calendar in a combination of rapid-fire Spanish and English with a selection of salsa, meringue and cumbia from Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Panama. Hosts Matthew "Mateo" Mulcahy (originally from... More >>
• Best Place To See Rock Chicks Working
  Black Thorn Pub
  Some may call the Black Thorn Pub home simply because it's their neighborhood bar, and a comfortable and friendly bar it is. A wider circle seeks it out because it makes some of the finest pizza on the South Side, and it truly is marvelous pizza. Others, though, are drawn to the modest pub by... More >>
• Best Places to Watch a Play
  Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
  Our biggest bugaboo: theaters without fixed seating that insist on lining up their chairs one behind the other. What's so difficult about staggering rows? The various companies who inhabit the ArtLoft Theatre still haven't figured out the best use of that space for either sets or audience; if... More >>
• Best Fiction Writer
  Qiu Xiaolong
  Death of a Red Heroine is a bona fide hit. The mystery that combines modernist poetry, Chinese cuisine, the Cultural Revolution and a murder that hints of illicit sexual activity in prudish Red China made it into paperback this year, with a blurb from NPR naming it one of the best books of the... More >>
• Best Musical
  Miss Havisham's Fire
  For the second year in a row, the best musical was presented by Opera Theatre of St. Louis; its revamped revival of Dominick Argento's Miss Havisham's Fire was a trim, dynamic and entertaining production. But where oh where can St. Louisans go for a good Broadway musical? The Muny is, well, the... More >>
• Best Place To Enjoy a Full Night Of Rock For $12 or Less
  Frederick's Music Lounge
  Operating in its current incarnation for just over a year, Frederick's Music Lounge provides a perfect alternative to the overpriced and oversnooty venues that sometimes seem to be the norm in St. Louis. There's never a cover during the week, and a pitcher of Stag costs less than parking at... More >>
• Best Hoosier Bar
  One Nite Stand
  If the bar sign featuring a Confederate flag crossed with Old Glory doesn't tell you that this isn't some froufrou fern bar, the big display sign out front, covered with chicken wire, probably will. As you enter, signs are posted prohibiting drinking and loitering outside. Inside, behind the... More >>
• Best Casino
  Harrah's
  We like casinos with plenty of table games and lavish buffets that fill you up for less than a 10-spot, places where you don't have to wait for a seat at the $5 blackjack table, where a fresh drink is always at your elbow and the cocktail waitresses personify glamour. Unfortunately, we're far... More >>
• Best Trend In Local Band Merchandise
  Baby T's
  There was a time in the world of band T-shirts when the only rule was "bigger is better," and consequently the baggy slacker look served to androgynize an entire generation of concertgoers. Fortunately, some enterprising St. Louis acts have recently realized that not all 20- to 40-year-old... More >>
• Best Lesbian Bar
  Novak's Foxhole Bar & Grill
  This friendly neighborhood place features great half-pound burgers (served with fries and your choice of cheese for close to $7), good appetizers and a fun atmosphere. Although you'll probably see more women at Novak's, the bar and grill employs women and men, and both are welcome there. When... More >>
• Best Dance Program
  Compania Nacional de Danza
  Sexy, sexy, sexy. If you were on a date for this exquisite Spanish ballet company at the Fox, undoubtedly you were necking before you got back to your car -- that is, if the ushers hadn't already been forced to pry you to out of each other's arms to extricate you from your seats: "Down in front!... More >>
• Best Open-Mic Poetry (1 Comment)
  Legacy Books and Café
  Every Friday night from 9 p.m.-midnight, poetry becomes Spoken Word Groove. At this venue, free verse and hip-hop meld into dynamic performance, complete with a backup band. Performances runs the gamut from timid first-timers nervously clutching the microphone to spoken-word powerhouse... More >>
• Best Visiting Artist
  Paul Taylor
  Dance St. Louis and its director, Sally Bliss, scored another grand coup this year by commissioning the organization's first dance piece from America's greatest living choreographer, Paul Taylor. Taylor, 70, arrived in St. Louis with his gorgeous, energetic company to take them through the paces... More >>
• Best Use Of Obsolete Computers
  8-Bit Construction Set
  The 8-Bit Construction Set is an audio love letter to those heavenly early PCs: the Atari and the Commodore 64. Created in the form of a 12-inch record -- you know, an LP -- the release, put out by this city's best record label, Beige, is as much an art object as it is a record. One side is... More >>
• Best Sculptor
  Soo Sunny Park
  Sculpture is such a tricky little medium because it is such a dilemma for the artist to transcend the object: How do you transform this shape that you made into more than a three-dimensional object that -- if turned over on its side -- would make a nice coffee table? Women sculptors must also... More >>
• Best Slam Poet
  Zaire Imani
  In a smoky bar in the mid-'80s, Marc Smith, a construction worker with a need to read poetry, started an open mic for a less-than-enthusiastic crowd. One night, as a particularly bad poet read, an angry patron shouted, "You suck!" In that moment, competitive performance poetry, known as "slam,"... More >>
• Best Bar Ambience
  Mike & Min's
  Pull out a clean shirt and pull up a chair. Mike & Min's bar in Soulard is one of those places that fits like an old guitar strap. Each bar in this city creates its own mood. M&M's attracts a casual breed on weekends, most of whom appreciate great jazz and blues. The result is a bar ambience... More >>
• Best Film Series
  Fontbonne College
  OK, we know we've named the Webster Film Series the best arts institution, and last year we awarded the Fontbonne series, curated by Patricia Brooke and John Hodge, best new film series, but we can't leave well enough alone. Maybe it's because Fontbonne is St. Louis' forgotten college, that... More >>
• Best Theater Troupe Or Company
  Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
  The Rep's preeminence in St. Louis theater is so long established that it's always tempting to cite another company as the year's best as a simple provocation, a break in a boringly long skein of victories. Last year, in fact, we chose to laud Opera Theatre of St. Louis, a world-class... More >>
• Best All-Ages Anarchist Collective Reopened Under New Management
  Tin Ceiling Theater
  It's a tribute to the long shadow cast by the Centro Sociale -- the Hill-based punk/anarchist spot that existed for about a year-and-a-half at 2700 Macklind -- that just about every advertisement for every event that occurs at the Tin Ceiling includes the parenthetical addition "formerly the... More >>
• Best Gallery Exhibition
  Lezley Saar at the Forum for Contemporary Art
  Lezley Saar's portraits of rappers -- intense, confrontational, like close-ups on the wide screen -- was the antidote necessary to dilute the terrible show of Miles Davis drawings downstairs at the Forum. Even though the Davis scribblings were the main event, the real goods were in Saar's... More >>
• Best Post-Weekend Comedown
  Mondays at the Upstairs Lounge
  You may have spent your Saturday getting down to the latest jiggy beats or hard house, but that doesn't mean you're up for it when Monday has kicked your ass and Tuesday is staring you in the face. In keeping with your delicate state, the Upstairs Lounge gives one of the city's more unique and... More >>
• Best New Open Mic
  The Shanti
  Anytime less-than-talented performers, armed with a guitar and delusions of grandeur, use drunks as guinea pigs, things can get ugly. Open-mic nights are always a gamble. The Dimby Production Open-Mic Night on Tuesday nights at the Shanti, however, has better odds than most. Here, the drinks... More >>
• Best Arts Happening
  Arousal
  Arousal wasn't meant to be known as the exhibit where some guy jerked off in front of everybody, but that's a little like saying the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal really wasn't about sex. Arousal was to be an exhibit in which Saturnalia could be celebrated and explored by artists and audience in a... More >>
• Best Arts Institution
  Webster Film Series
  The Webster Film Series may not sate the hunger of local cinephiles, but it goes a long way toward providing them a more complete meal. Under the direction of Vickie Woods and Catherine Cathers, the Webster series makes evident with each season -- chronicled on a splashy flier that gets marked... More >>
• Best Rock-Music Programming
  KDHX (88.1 FM)
  Rock may be the best-selling genre of music -- with rap nudging ever closer in second place and what passes for country music coming in a distant third -- but the rock fan's choice of commercial-radio fare is mostly limited to mainstream pap, endorsed by clueless executives and puréed to... More >>
• Best Bizarre Onstage Banter
  Bob Pollard
  It certainly seemed like just another fantastic concert by Guided By Voices that fateful spring evening at Mississippi Nights, but Bob Pollard's bizarre midset rant soon changed all that. An unprovoked Pollard launched into a tirade against Scat Records, the St. Louis-based label that's perhaps... More >>
• Best Public Sculpture
  Eric Orr's "Oceans of Time" and "North of Yesterday" at the Saint Louis Galleria
  Artificial environments call for a semblance of nature. The little pond that HOK designed in the middle of the Galleria is pretty lame, making an obstacle to walk around rather than an oasis at which to congregate. Artist Eric Orr, who did some wild stuff with blood and glass and the shadows of... More >>
• Best Local Artist
  James Michael Smith
  James Michael Smith's paintings are wholly present. Painted in rich, textured earth tones, his canvases become a skin, a coat, a broad, intricate curtain. The wrinkles and folds of muslin, obsessive gestures made with charcoal and graphite, safety pins gouging the crustily painted surfaces: The... More >>
• Best Poet
  Carl Phillips
  Carl Phillips has promised that he won't publish a book next year, so this category will be open to others in 2002. Phillips, who directs the creative-writing program at Washington University, doesn't think of himself as prolific, but the pub dates of his five books are enough to make most... More >>
• Best Radio Gimmick
  "Keep Rollin'!" segment, KATZ (100.3 FM)
  Most nights of the week on 100.3 The Beat, you can hear unabashed joy. It comes at the hands of Big Sexy Cool DJ Kaos, who, with a little help from modern technology, conducts a segment called "Keep Rollin!" The concept is pretty simple: We've got cars; we've got phones; we've got radios --... More >>
• Best Hype About the Local Arts Scene
  Art in America
  Just in case anyone was wondering, St. Louis has a healthy art scene. Art in America says so. From the Arch to Richard Serra's "Twain" to the Pulitzer Foundation to Laumeier Sculpture Park, there's art here, all right. And artists, too: Michael Byron and Dawn Guernsey, to name a couple with... More >>
• Best New Building
  Headmaster's Residence, the Principia
  St. Louis architect Adrian Luchini designed a structure that belongs in its landscape. Viewed from above to where it rests near the base of a hill on the Principia campus, the headmaster's residence unobtrusively merges with the terrain. The wide brown span of its roof, built to resemble a... More >>
• Best Radio Commercials
  Zipatoni Industries on KDHX (88.1 FM)
  We're not really sure what it is Zipatoni does, and the company's as-of-this-moment award-winning radio commercials don't really clear the matter up. The on-air promos hint at some sort of "Zipatoni Global Industrial Complex" and mention that you can make arrangements to tour the facilities --... More >>
• Best Glimmer in the Darkness
  The Beat and Q95 Duke It Out
  The commercial-radio pie has been neatly sliced. Each format has a station, each corporate owner is rolling in the dough from this lack of competition. One station for each taste. The result: airwave drivel. No competition means no need for adventure. Boredom. The one shining exception: the... More >>
• Best Art Gallery
  Mad Art Gallery
  If you really could meet a special someone at an art opening, Mad Art would be the place to do it. Not far from the grand Anheuser-Busch brewery, nestled amid the cozy, historic red bricks of Soulard, is an old police station and lockup that functions astoundingly well as an occasional gallery... More >>
• Best Unseen Hand Shaping St. Louis Music
  Jim Utz, Vintage Vinyl ombudsman
  Look, if you want definitive proof of Jim Utz's greatness as a record-store employee, you're gonna have to dig. Jim is not one of those attention-grubbing, glamour-hog, name-tag-wearing service drones who cheerfully barks, "HI, MY NAME IS JIM! ARE YOU FINDING EVERYTHING OK, AND WOULD YOU LIKE TO... More >>
• Best Free-Music Venue
  Forest Park Boathouse
  Forest Park is so full of cool shit, we usually barely notice it. The Boathouse is just about the most overlooked nice thing in it. If you're of an aquarian mind, you can rent a canoe and paddle around for an hour. If you're just looking to socialize, you can buy a beer (Schlafly brand... More >>
• Best Museum Exhibit Of 2001
  Christian Marclay
  For those who go to the St. Louis Art Museum to get away from the banality of television, Christian Marclay's Currents exhibition might have been cause for revulsion. There in the middle of the gallery was a big boob tube showing Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup, but the sound didn't match David... More >>