Kansas City News Blog

Kansas City graffiti artist Scribe demonstrated his work outside of Creative Coldsnow last weekend with the camera rolling. Here's the time-lapse movie by Phil Koenig. Cool stuff.

​Hopefully this isn't a million years old -- I just noticed it last week at the southwest corner of 19th and Broadway.

You can't really see it in this picture, but at the feet of the anarchist (protester, whatever) there's a molotov cocktail and a gas can.

​It's probably no surprise to hear gang members are getting younger, but anti-gang education in elementary schools? Yes, it's like that now.

"We used to think if we produce information and work in partnership with the district that we could get our message out there in the high school and it would be all right," said Major Jan Zimmerman, commander of KCPD's Narcotics and Vice Division. "But obviously we need to be in the middle schools. We need to be in the elementary schools."

Last night, the AdHoc Group Against Crime hosted a public forum on gangs, which drew about 50 people, including police, business leaders, pastors and educators and felt like a Gangs 101 class for the community.

It went something like this. Your kid might be in a gang if you see:

1. hand signs
2. gang symbols or graffiti, especially on school books
3. tatts
4. roll calls, which are hand-written lists of gang members

Police are trying to get a handle on the problem, but seven detectives are responsible for the 322 square miles of Kansas City that includes about 3,300 gang members spread out in 42 known gangs, said KCPD Master Detective Eric Benson. Gangs these days are built around neighborhoods but have no discernible hierarchy. They control the drugs and weapons, and use drive-bys to settle turf disputes. Speaking of which, if you see gang graffiti x'd out and another tag along side it, run.

Police continue to solicit information from community members so they can identify gang members and put a stop to drugs and weapons trafficking, but cops-community relations aren't perfect, and as far as talking to cops, well, we know how that goes.

Love,
Your friend at the bus stop, 20th and Main.

Nadia Pflaum

By NADIA PFLAUM

More after the jump!

By NADIA PFLAUM

"It's been a tool shed, a spare room, a crack house..."
Art collector Tom Deatherage ticks off the different uses for the graffiti-coated bus parked behind his gallery, the Late Show, at 1600 Cherry. Deatherage is fluttering around the bus, cleaning up debris, and waves me on when I ask to take a picture. I'm hardly the first -- people stop and snap it all the time.

"Hell, one of these days, I might hafta start livin' in it if I lose the building," Deatherage proclaims, before going back to his tinkering.

By NADIA PFLAUM

No offense, but it just isn't as good as the stuff next door.

By NADIA PFLAUM

Detail after the jump. JUMP!

By NADIA PFLAUM

These dudes near 3rd and Wyandotte are so not Disney.

by NADIA PFLAUM

The train tracks that run parallel to Southwest Boulevard are an ever-changing, rolling gallery.

by NADIA PFLAUM

This collaborative mural is only a few months old, painted during an art show at la Esquina, the Urban Culture Project's newest exhibition space just off Southwest Boulevard.

by Nadia Pflaum

I love the prehistoric-cave-drawing aspect of these, and also the silver word bubbles.

by NADIA PFLAUM

More faces, this time stenciled on a door in the alley behind the Arts Incubator on 18th Street in the Crossroads.

By MATT SPENCER

Great artwork tours all over this country, but these rolling installations don't go anywhere near Nelson-Atkins.

By NADIA PFLAUM

I revisited these murals behind the Foxx Equipment building on Southwest Boulevard because the fleeting glimpses I got of them while driving by on Broadway just weren't enough.

By Nadia Pflaum

I caught up with an artist named TIM! (as he likes it to be spelled, exclamation point and all), who gathered fellow artist friends together to paint this quirky wall next to Pittsburgh Paints at 2645 Southwest Boulevard earlier this year. TIM! says an artist named Dane Bonner painted this owl and chicken:

This deer is courtesy of Femme 9:

By Justin Kendall

Spotted this ultra accurate tag on the back door of Bazooka’s Showgirls while walking to work Monday. A week ago, I spotted some of Bazooka’s talent taking a scantily clad smoke break by the door. Damn this smoking ban!

By NADIA PFLAUM

The superstition says that where there are a pair of shoes slung over a power line, it marks a spot where a person was murdered.

I don't think that's the case here (or if it is, it's coincidental). Observant graf fans might notice this same LUSH tag on freights.

I like the idea of shoe tags.

Time Warner Cable and KCP&L probably don't agree.

by NADIA PFLAUM

Caught this very cool metal plate affixed to a pole at 17th and Main -- those are our offices in the background. Nicely done.

By NADIA PFLAUM

Photos from underneath an underpass on Southwest Boulevard.

This has Femme 9 written all over it: