52nd City

2005 St. Louis KICK ASS Awards

Second Annual St. Louis KICK ASS Awards
Gallery Urbis Orbis, 419 North 10th Street
Friday, November 11 @ 7 p.m.
Sponsored by 52ndCity.com and Gallery Urbis Orbis
Admission is all the change you can donate at the door – really!
Info: thomascrone@yahoo.com

The second annual Kick Ass Awards will be offered to 13 St. Louisans, collaborators and organizations, dedicated to quietly improving the civic life of this City and region. The event will celebrate the works of the 12 nominees profiled below – along with a special, mystery award going out to conclude the night.

The Kick Ass Awards were begun in Austin, TX, in January 2004, by local journalist, author and educator Spike Gillespie. An erstwhile St. Louisan, Spike gave out awards to deserving local folks who didn’t always get a public nod appreciation for the work they were doing around that community. A second ceremony was held at Austin’s amazing bookstore, Book People, this past winter, but not before St. Louis embraced the idea with an event late last year, held at Downtown’s Gallery Urbis Orbis, with the full blessing of Spike.

This year, the event’s organizers have formed a website and eventual publishing company, 52nd City Media, currently represented online at 52ndCity.com. The publishers of the site and a small committee of volunteers selected the nominees for 2005.

Admission to the event is free, but… we’d love donations in the form of change. Literally, we possess a “Trash Can Full of Change,” which appears at various civic and cultural events around town. We’d ask that those attending the event check their change at the door.

Here are the winners for the Kick Ass Awards for 2005:

Michael R. Allen & Claire Nowak-Boyd: Preservationists and architectural historians, Allen and Nowak-Boyd stay busy maintaining the Ecology of Absence website and co-curating Cine16.

Pat Brannon: He’s the owner of the Casa Loma Ballroom and the President of the Cherokee Business Association. As proprietor of the Casa Loma, he has retained the historical integrity of the building and stayed true to it's 70-plus year history; the ballroom floor is one of the last "floating" dance floors, and is usually filled with folks dancing to Swing, Mexican or Bosnian bands. He has also hosted folk-dance groups, boxing benefits and Mardi Gras balls. Through the Business Association, Brannon has also helped to incubate many of the Mexican tacquerias, groceries and specialty shops currently flourishing on Cherokee.

John Burse: An architect and partner with the firm Mackey Mitchell Associates, John has contributed greatly to his adopted home of St. Louis through numerous architectural projects, as well as the rehab of his personal residence in Old North St. Louis. John has been a great champion of the Old North St. Louis neighborhood and has been a leader in the revitalization plans for that incredibly cool area which lies just north of Downtown.

Ivy Cooper: Cooper encapsulates the local art scene weekly in the Riverfront Times, where her observations are critical but fair. Her careful manner and dedication to covering as many local galleries as possible offers tremendous hope for the visual arts in the St. Louis community.

Cynthia Daly: Proving the tremendous impact of the individual volunteer, Daly gracefully coordinated many of the behind the scenes details of the wildly successful fundraiser for Stray Rescue, Mad Arf.

Dylan Hassinger: A full-time college student, Hassinger finds time to blog at his new outlet www.progressivestl.com, while hosting the KDHX funk-and-groove overnight show, Good Times.

Stephen & Sara Hale: Veteran Schlafly employees and major proponents of all things local, Sara was a major force in launching Art Outside, the alternative art fair focused on local talent, and Stephen serves as a local convivium leader for the SLOW Food organization.

Ann Haubrich: Long an activist on the local cultural scene, Ann has been involved with numerous organizations and events including River Styx, Artica, Art Outside, Hoobellatoo and St. Louis Artworks. Ann founded the Community Arts Training Institute (CAT) which has trained over 100 Fellows to implement arts programs in the community. Additionally, Ann has been co-producer of KDHX's Literature for the Halibut for 13 years.

Teresa Mithen: Mithen graduated from Yale Seminary and is the Pastor of St. John's Episcopal Church. In addition to her ecumenical responsibilities, she has been active in the larger community, opening St. John's fellowship hall to small, local performing arts groups and selling fair trade coffee to raise money for the Living Tree Mural Project, a piece of public art that will be created in collaboration with SCOSAG and the African Mutual Assistance Association of Missouri. She is also active on the St. Louis Interfaith Council, advocating for social justice and religious tolerance.

Mystery Award: Um, you’ll just have to be there.

The Publishing Group: This loose collective of writers and artists, created and continue to run an independent after-school arts program for St. Louis City schoolchildren. They aim to empower kids both scholastically and personally through the exploration of creative writing and art. Through mentorship with established, working artists, students create their own stories, poems and art, which is then collected and published, anthology-style. The Publishing Group is currently working on a compilation CD in collaboration with KDHX, Books Grown on My Tree, that will feature the students performing their own work.

Peter Venezia: Trendsetter, pied piper, businessman. A few years back in Maplewood - before the development we see now was happening - Peter established the Atomic Cowboy, a groovy bar and lounge. A place of high style, great warmth, good music and good fun. His original vision has developed into what is now the grander Atomic Cowboy a bit further east at 4140 Manchester in the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood.

Webster University Film Series: Regarded as one of the best collegiate film outlets of its kind, we dig this exhibitor of independent, foreign, classic and thematically-linked cinema.