The Gateway

Some Midwest states have little to no regulations of Flock Safety cameras or other automated license plate readers. As surveillance companies face bipartisan backlash, that is likely to change during the next legislative session.

As a Black teen joining the punk rock scene in a predominantly white Maryland suburb, G’Ra Asim was sometimes an outsider among the outsiders. His parents moved east from St. Louis when he was 9. Asim is now a creative writing professor at Washington University, and plays guitar in two bands. In a new book of essays, he charts his path through 21st-century romance and pop culture.

Route 66 turns 100 this year. One of the prominent features on the mother road that made car travel from Chicago to California possible was the small motels people would stop at along the way. Most of them are long gone, but one of them has been rescued, and is back open. St. Louis Public Radio’s Jonathan Ahl takes us to the Shamrock Court Motel in Sullivan.

Since the St. Louis band Foxing went on hiatus, Conor Murphy has focused on Smidley, and they have new album with new inspiration.

There's a headstone in the central Illinois town of El Paso for the first Black man to cast a ballot in the state, but historians aren't sure if that's where David Strother is actually buried.