cwe
The Saint Louis Chess Club is reopening this October after a 30,000-square-foot expansion that meant taking over the leases of three adjacent storefronts at the intersection of Euclid and Maryland avenues in 2019. Some say the transformation will have created the most advanced chess venue in the world. Here’s what’s coming:

  • New Features: A chess-themed restaurant, expanded classrooms, upgraded broadcast studios and a world-class tournament hall
  • Grand Reopening Events: October kicks off with Clutch Chess: The Legends, a 12-game Chess960 showdown between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand—a historic rematch 30 years after their 1995 World Championship duel (Also known as Fischer Random Chess, in Chess960 the pieces on the back rank, excluding pawns, are shuffled into one of 960 possible configurations.)
  • Championships: The U.S. & U.S. Women’s Championships run Oct. 12–25, followed by the Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown featuring Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana and Gukesh Dommaraju
  • Hall of Fame Inductions: Chess giants the likes of Irina Krush, Bruce Pandolfini, Pia Cramling, and Jan Timman will be honored during the festivities

The club’s location, 4657 Maryland Ave. in the CWE, remains the same, but the vision of the StL as the epicenter of global chess is bigger than ever.

the metro
You know what time it is? No, no, no; it’s not nearly early enough to hang or inflate the Halloween decorations—please wait until mid-October. On Aug. 26, Starbucks returned fresh pumpkin spice coffee and related products to its stores. That includes cozy favorites such as …

  • Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew
  • Iced Pumpkin Cream Chai
  • Pecan Crunch Oatmilk Latte
  • And a new twist: Pecan Oatmilk Cortado

If you’re more of a home brewer, Starbucks has already stocked grocery shelves with pumpkin spice coffee grounds, K-pods and creamers—available now through December. If the 17 Starbucks within a one-mile radius of us (Just kidding. Really!) are any indication, there are already pumpkin spice muffins in stores that offer pastries. If just hearing the term ‘pumpkin spice’ makes your nostrils go all a-flutter, you’re covered. Candles are everywhere year-round. Need a cardboard pumpkin-spice air freshener to hang from your rearview mirror? Check Quik Trip or Mobil On-The-Run. Need a plug-in? Target or Walmart. And if that doesn’t ease your jones for the unmistakable fall ‘flava,’ most every brewer makes a pumpkin-spice beer. Hefty manufactures trash bags with the “refreshing” scent of cinnamon and pumpkin spice. Reportedly, they sold out in 90 minutes last year. If you really need to “enjoy the go,” the aroma is in TP tubes. And if your cat is even more finicky than the average feline, somebody’s blending it in scoopable kitty litter. Beyond all that, there’s probably a treatment center in California or Florida that will give you 28 days or so to get over it.

ladue
Andrew Morton, internationally bestselling biographer and author of The Queen and Diana, will make a presentation and lecture Oct. 25 about his latest volume, Winston and the Windsors, a compelling story of the hot-and-cold relationship between the House of Windsor and Winston Churchill. Morton appears at 7 p.m. for the discussion at Clark Family Branch of our county library, 1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd., directly across from Plaza Frontenac. Few figures in British history have been so deeply and consequentially involved with the royal family as Churchill. In Winston and the Windsors, Morton, world-renowned biographer and authority on celebrity, presents his joint biography of Churchill and the House of Windsor, the royal family in the World War II era. “Churchill was unique in his role: helping to shape not only a reign, but an entire royal dynasty,” Morton has said. Morton argues that Churchill’s influence extended far beyond politics—he was both a confidant and a challenger to the monarchy, and his dynamic with the Windsors was pivotal to the evolution of the British Crown in the 20th century. Tickets can be purchased through Eventbrite. Seating will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

notable neighbors
forest park
His illustrious career in the theatre began when he was still in primary school in Indianapolis: Tom Ridgely, producing artistic director of our St. Louis Shakespeare Festival,, played an important role in his grade-school production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Originally cast as Pig Pen, apparently he had enough of that elusive ‘It’ factor to merit his switch to the show’s only anthropomorphic star, Snoopy the beagle. These days it’s mostly all Shakespeare, all the time. Ridgely has the freedom and has felt encouraged to put a new spin on these 500-year-old classics as well as produce new works. During one of the hottest summers the metro has experienced in forever, his troupe put on a work inspired by the metro’s most beloved free institution—Romeo & Zooliet, where nobody dies, even though the mutually antagonistic Montague and Capulet families are represented by herbivores and carnivores. Juliet is a lovable grizzly bear and Romeo, a prairie dog. Their puppet costumes were created by none other than the artisans responsible for the elaborate larger than life-sized creations in stage productions of The Lion King. Speaking of Hamlet, from which Disney’s animated feature was mostly adapted: Not long before opening night of a production of Hamlet in Shakespeare Glen at Forest Park, the actor in one of the key roles, Laertes, tore his Achilles tendon. Serendipity stepped in to rescue the savvy director—one of his stars, the actress playing Ophelia, knew that another actor had just finished up a run in Indiana as Laertes and was soon to return home to NYC. Ridgely convinced the man that his services were needed, and he changed his ticket. “Oh, the things a director has to go through,” Ridgely says, with a mock sigh. Making lemonade out of lemons is always part of the assignment. Gallons of it, if you use the May 16 tornado as a backdrop. It messed things up in the Glen, such that the scaffolding company and other vendors had to return for necessary fixes. But TourCo, one of Ridgely’s subsidiary companies, has been stepping out primarily with its spin on the beloved comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream for one-night Shakespeare in the Streets appearances in metro communities from Kirkwood to East St. Louis, Illinois. “This is a way for them to get their stories heard,” he says. The company of six actors adapts the script to make it relevant to the specific place they perform, whether O’Fallon Park or Clayton, through Sept. 14. For a better look at what else is behind a very expansive curtain encompassing the Fest’s 25 years, visit stlshakes.org.