Kansas City News Blog

​TO: Highwoods Properties, Plaza Management Team
FROM: Mr. Green and Ms. White, co-presidents, Plaza Light Bulb Installers United
RE: Plaza Lighting Ceremony

Dear Country Club Plaza Overseers:

As the union representatives for the hard-working people who string up the Plaza's fabled lights, we must write to express our grave concern about what's happening here on the Plaza.

As you know, the Plaza Lighting Ceremony has been a Thanksgiving-night tradition in Kansas City for 80 years now. This year's ceremony, from 7 to 8 p.m. on November 26, looks to be just as wonderful as always, in no small part due to the dedication of me and my co-workers. But we're worried. Too many other outdoor shopping malls around here are starting to have their own ceremonies, and it's threatening the Plaza's status as Kansas City's pre-eminent place for holiday lights. 

For example, tonight, November 19, there's the "City Lights Annual Downtown Holiday Lighting Ceremony" from 5:30 to 6:25 p.m. at Barney Allis Plaza. It presents stiff competition in the entertainment line-up: There's a countdown to the lights going on; one of the cast members of Wicked is supposed to "perform a holiday song"; and the Ray-Pec Panther Pride Marching Band is supposed to perform. How can you beat that? Downtown is also gunning for us in the do-gooder department, since it's the kickoff for the Salvation Army's Christmas Campaign. And there's FREE cookies, FREE hot chocolate and FREE coffee. And they're bragging about the "First Annual Santa Parade to Cosentino's Market and the Power & Light District" after the festivities. 

It only gets worse.

Photos by Nicole Reinertson

Performance from Vesuvius Tribe

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Just in time for the first truly dreary, winter-foreshadowing weekend of the fall, the Arts Incubator made several hundred fans feel all warm and cozy Saturday night.

The annual Turn On the Heat fundraiser, which banks money to keep the collective's artists from freezing in their warehouse workshops during the frigid months, was certainly part sizzle. Ceiling-dangling acrobats from Voler aerial fabrics! Fire-breathing jesters from Vesuvius Tribe! Bizarre cheerleaders in, uh, psychotic Easter bunny outfits!

But the packed event was decidedly chill, as well. Under a canopy of Christmas lights, patrons cradled giant mugs of gourmet chili and crunched on freshly fried, delectably thick-and-greasy tortilla chips. They chatted with artists and indulged in the open bar. They grinned and joined toddlers dancing to banjo stylings and flamenco guitar.

For those who missed it, click here for a slideshow.

Photos by Nicole Reinertson

Durwin Rice directs volunteers at Tulips on Troost

​Durwin Rice, founder of Tulips on Troost, smiled with confusion and delight at the downright balmy temperatures on Saturday morning. "I feel like we're in the wrong month," he said with a grin.

Normally, volunteers who pitch in for the planting events in the fall have to bundle up and keep warm with the knowledge that, come spring, the bulbs will create a cascade of blooms down Troost Avenue. But during the November 7 planting, it felt like spring already and many of the more than 40 volunteers shucked off their sweatshirts to dig in the dirt.

Thus far, Rice said, the organization has planted more than 230,000 tulips on the busy thoroughfare, but Saturday's event was a little different. A few months ago, EcoTulips, a Virginia-based business, donated 500 bulbs to the Kansas City group. Rice said the organic bulbs seem even stronger and healthier than conventional varieties, so the ToT founder bought a bunch from the Virginia retailer. On Saturday, the first bulbs untainted by pesticides and fertilizers went into the ground.

Though volunteers spread out at locations from 83rd Street all the way up to 39th Street, there's still plenty of places to plant. Next week, ToT is hosting another planting. But, before you RSVP, click the photo or here for a slideshow of Saturday's event.

If a combination of national crisis and personal character define a transformational president, Barack Obama is squandering his historic circumstances by being, well, too nice.

That was the mostly disappointed analysis from three political and media experts who visited Kansas City for the Harry S. Truman Library Institute's third annual "Forum on the Presidency." At last night's discussion about "Presidential Leadership in Transformational Times," Robert Kuttner best summed up the panel's perspective.

Photo by Nicole Reinertson

from left: Timothy Naftali, Robert Kuttner, Arianna Huffington, Joseph Nye

​"He'll be either the next [Herbert] Hoover or the next [Franklin D.] Roosevelt because of the crises he faces," said the author, columnist and co-founder of The American Prospect.

At this point, Kuttner and his fellow panelists aren't convinced Obama will be the latter.

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Pitch photographer Scott Spychalski survived Halloween night at downtown's Power & Light District. As to the fate of the folks in his photos ... we're not so sure. Click the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man for a slideshow (and look out for Luke Skywalker riding a tauntaun).

On Friday night, the Folly Theater was full of men and women in tuxedos and ball gowns, sipping wine and greeting each other with kisses on the cheek. The audience for Ailey II was a who's who of city elite: Congressman Emanuel Cleaver; Tom McDonnell, CEO of DST Systems; Kansas City City Manager Wayne Cauthen.

Photo by Nicole Reinertson

​But those weren't the VIPs at this performance.

Up in the balcony, the back rows of the renovated venue were packed with kids in jeans and parkas, all students in the Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey dance programs. Because of KCFAA's unique ties to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City, local kids get an unprecedented chance to see and study with some of the nation's most talented young dancers. While the slate of Ailey II performances, which raised more than $180,000 for local youth programming, started on Thursday, the professionals spent plenty of time off stage and in the community.

Tyrone Aiken, KCFAA's executive director, says the dancers visited not only area schools, like Cristo Rey, but also traveled to Lansing Correctional Facility to perform for the prisoners. Later in the week, more than 3,000 children packed into the Folly for mini-performances that, Aiken says, had students dancing in their seats. On Friday, the show had a similar effect, bringing the audience of movers and shakers -- and wide-eyed students -- to their feet for a standing ovation.

Click here for a slideshow of the stunning performance.

First, a confession: Last year, my friends and I were among the last standing staggering at Beer Fest, sucking down samples of specialty brews even as the cleaning crew was shooing us off the premises.

Photos by Nicole Reinertson

​But this year was different. 

Beer Fest is an annual fundraiser for the Kansas City Free Health Clinic and the AIDS Service Foundation. For several hours each fall the top floor of a parking garage at The Legends shopping district transforms into a brew-swilling heaven where several thousand beer fans belly up to folding tables stocked with more than 300 types of suds.

Just as in 2008, the place was packed with dudes sporting pretzel necklaces and women teetering drunkenly in their high-heeled boots on a chilly Saturday afternoon. For the first two hours, the atmosphere was festive as the golden booze flowed freely.

Alas, the tap ran dry far too soon.

By 3:30 p.m., it was already slim pickings. When I ambled over to the Breckenridge Brewery table to try their Agave Wheat, there was no sign of the Colorado company. By 4 p.m., a full hour before the end of the event, the sample tables were virtually bare.

But, unlike the other beer purveyors, Boulevard Brewing Co. showed up with a truck full of kegs. A long line formed in front of the Kansas City crew, and they kept our glasses full long after all the other options had expired. Luckily, the local hero saved the not-nearly-drunk-enough day.

Click here (or on the photo) for a slideshow of the event.

​A curious flier recently made its way to the office of The Pitch. "Say Yes To Peace," it proclaims. "Pull  Up Your Pants."

The man behind the flier is Ozell Lincoln, a 42-year-old computer programmer who was inspired to take action against violence in the urban core after a friend was killed in 2002. He's working on getting 501(c)(3) status for his new organization, Say Yes to Peace, which aims to help young people find housing, gain a GED or college tuition, and afford better clothing and transportation. 

The "Pull up your pants" campaign, Lincoln says, is a message he takes directly to younger people. As one might expect, most aren't eager to hear it at first. "They look at it as a direct attack on them," Lincoln says.

According to Lincoln, the initial conversation usually goes something like this:

Lincoln: Why do you sag your pants?
Sagger: It's just fashion. It's more comfortable.
Lincoln: Well, if it's not so important really, why is it so offensive for older people to ask you to pull up your pants?
Sagger: They're trying to tell me I can't be me.
Lincoln: Do you see how it might be offensive to others when you're showing your underwear outside your pants?
Sagger: Other people shouldn't care what I do.

"I try not to preach at 'em, that doesn't work," Lincoln says. "Usually, we get to the point of them saying, 'Well, I guess it doesn't make a big difference to me, so I'll try (not sagging)."

Photo by Nicole Reinertson

​A few minutes before 3 p.m., a limo pulled up on the west side of Mill Creek Park. Like any given Saturday afternoon, a wedding party piled out of the vehicle, brushing off their gowns and readjusting their ties before posing in front of J.C. Nichols fountain. But, on this particular day, the bride and groom stopped dead in their tracks.

Circling the famous fountain was an army of blood-covered zombies.

Rightfully undeterred by the dreary weather, more than 100 horror fans showed up to cruise the Plaza for the 2009 Zombie Walk. Dripping with gore and dressed in elaborate costumes, they staggered through the shopping district. Click here or the photo to see the zombies.

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This weekend, the Insane Clown Posse played the Granada in Lawrence Saturday. Enter the Juggalos. The grease-painted masses took over the streets. The hippies were pissed. Click the photo for the pics, including a just-married couple of Juggalos.

Click on this silver asphalt-scraper to peep more photos from Sunday's Hoptoberfest lowrider show in Minor Park.

Phil Shafer

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Rob Hutson and Terry Sanchez run Weird Stuff Antiques at 901 Tracy Ave. And that's a sweet '65 Caddy covered in fur.

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Last week, the Crap Archivist discovered Weird Stuff Antiques at 901 Tracy Ave. in downtown Kansas City. Weird Stuff's manager Rob Hutson and owner Terry Sanchez were cool enough to let us look around -- and snap some pics. They even offered us a free kitten. No thanks, guys. But if anyone needs one ... stop in.

Here's the treasures -- many of them oversized -- that we saw. Click here for a slideshow. 

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The American Royal's celebration of "agrarian values" paraded through the streets of downtown Kansas City on Saturday. Photographer Scott Spychalski captured the action, including parade winners (congratulations to the Schlagle, Gardener-Edgerton and Kearney high school marching bands!). Here's a curb-side close-up of what you might have missed.

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The Kansas City Renaissance Festival celebrates the gaiety of Anglo civilization's rebirth with more than 500 costumed characters on 13 stages and 16 acres of shaded lanes in Bonner Springs. Pitch Clubs Editor Berry Anderson caught some of the hot, dusty action, which continues through October 18. Click the photo for a slideshow.

John and Esther McMurry

​Last night, Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser hosted a celebration of a few things all from the same era: the Dairy Queen on Independence Avenue, which has been there forever; John and Esther McMurry, who run the place together; and the beehive hairdo, which the Mrs. sports something fierce.

Just look at that thing. You could hide a full rack of billiard balls in there.

As Pitch food critic Charles Ferruzza wrote over in Fat City on Monday, The McMurrys have owned and operated the Dairy Queen for 29 years as the neighborhood changed around them. That's why the Funk proclaimed them good people --business people -- and stood around the parking lot eating hand-dipped Dilly Bars and rubbing elbows with neighborhood personalities. Amy Ford was there.

Esther started working at the DQ as a counter girl 13 years before she and John bought the place. As with the beehive, when this woman finds something she likes, she sticks with it.

​I was waiting for a friend outside the gated-off streets of Westport on a Saturday night this past summer when I saw two girls walk up to a Westport security guard and hand over their I.D.s.

"Sorry, you gotta be American to get in here!" jeered one guard, handing the IDs back. The girls turned and left wordlessly. I caught a glimpse of one of the I.D.s in the girls' hands. It was a Mexican I.D.

Hoping that scene was an isolated incident, I dismissed it until the other day, when Sergio Chavez told me that he's been hearing complaints all summer from Latino friends who've been turned away from the gay bars they used to frequent.

Chavez is well-known in the gay and Latino communities in Kansas City. He hosts a Latin drag show at Bar Azul in Kansas City, Kansas, on Saturday nights, and he says after closing Azul one recent night, he and some friends -- all over 21 -- headed to another regular hangout, Missie B's on 39th Street, which is open until 3 a.m. That night, the security at the door turned away  anyone with a Mexican I.D. -- even identification issued from the office of the Mexican Consulate on 1600 Baltimore in Kansas City.

"My friends were embarrassed," Chavez says. "I don't want them to feel different. They already feel different enough."

He's particularly frustrated, given the support he's shown the gay community in Kansas City.

"I participate in the AIDS Walk, in the Pride Festival downtown," Chavez says. "I don't want to see my people treated like this." 

​In 2001, a California psychologist came up with a cross-dressing concept to raise awareness about domestic violence: Have men shove their bulky feet into petite, women's footwear and hoof it for a whole mile.

The national Walk a Mile in Her Shoes campaign sauntered -- and stumbled -- across the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus last night. Dozens of professors, students and fraternity members donned high heels to raise money for the Kansas City Anti-Violence Project and the UMKC Violence Prevention and Response Project.

Never thought you'd catch Kansas City Star columnist Lewis Diuguid sporting a pair of black pumps? See pictures after the jump.

Red Front's liquor license will be suspended for two days after selling alcohol to minors, liquor control announced today.


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Red Front's suspension is scheduled to begin Monday, September 28 at 6 a.m. and end Wednesday, September 30 at 3 a.m.

Red Front will be closed both days, and the bar's employees will get training on how to not sell booze to minors.

On Mexican Independence Day, the match between these two soccer rivals meant a giant party at Arrowhead Stadium. Final score in the exhibition game: Chivas 2, Club America 1. Biggest winners: 26,119 fans.

Click on the photo for a slideshow.

Scott Spychalski

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​Remember the crying baby elephant statue that PETA was trying to gift to the city to protest the circus's treatment of animals? Well, that didn't work out. Instead, they got a permit to display Ella PhantzPeril, as the thing is called, on the corner of Grand and Pershing. Not exactly the city's busiest corner.

"We were hoping for a spot with more foot traffic," said Jill Oakley, a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals intern from British Columbia, Canada. When I saw her at 5:30 p.m., Oakley had been on shift since 1 p.m. She said she'd handed out about 50 fliers, but given the loneliness of the street corner, it looked like PETA's action against the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus amounted to a protest of one.

Still, Oakley was giving out gruesome DVDs documenting alleged animal torture as filmed by one of PETA's undercover operatives, and doing what she could to change minds about going to the Over the Top circus.

She also said PETA had something in mind for tomorrow's elephant walk (no, not the one you were forced to do as a fraternity pledge), which will parade from Union Station to the Sprint Center.

​At the Capitol in Jefferson City, the Tour of Missouri bicycle race has become a political football, a passive-aggressive battle between Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder (a Tour booster) and Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon (who threatened to pull the state's funding for the event this year).

In Kansas City on Sunday, the Tour was more like a massive tailgating bash, with roving revelers cruising downtown on foot and by bike, ringing cowbells and dancing in the streets.

The festivities started on Saturday morning, with several hundred local amateurs riding up to 50 miles on quiet streets for the Tour's official charity event, the AIDS Bicycle Challenge. When the pros showed up the next day, though, those sleepy streets were packed with cowbell-toting cycling enthusiasts who followed the race from its start in St. Louis; families on tandem bicycles who took in the spectacle over picnic lunches; and even tattooed rabble-rousers, who shucked off their shirts and chased the spandexed athletes though the Westside.

Click here for a slideshow.

We didn't have to look very hard for today's "as seen in the city" item. It was right out in our parking lot. Add it to the Kansas City date, and bikini rapture, and we've got the first three pages of Kansas City's next tourism brochure.

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But what, oh what, type of pipe is it? Could it be a crack pipe? A hash pipe? A marijuana pipe?

Mystery pipe, your secrets are many.

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You might need it if you're behind the wheel after a night of drinking at Red Nightclub and Lounge (316 Northeast 72nd Street). An alert member of the Pitch Action News Team returned to HQ with this one, advertising Matthew J. Rose, attorney at law.

Talk about reaching your customer base. 

​If you're like me, you've thought, "I'd go to church once and awhile, sure -- IF THEY SERVED BEER."

Then Pastor Timmy Gibson's got our number. He's the head of Mercy Church (formerly the Olathe Life Fellowship), and starting Wednesday, September 16, he'll be hosting services at Abe & Jake's Landing on 8 E. Sixth Street in Lawrence at 9 p.m.

The bar will be open before and after services. But -- you guessed it -- there's no open bar during services. There's allllways a catch.

Pastor Timmy's really excited; check out the video promo he made:
 

Ryan Gross celebrated Santa-Cali-Gon Days in Independence last week.

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Santa-Cali-Gon Days, Independence's annual festival celebrating its place in history as the starting point for the Santa Fe, California and Oregon trails, was last week. Pitch Clubs Editor Berry Anderson was there to capture it all and put it in this slideshow, which includes a mohawk-sporting 3-year-old, foul-mouthed clowns and fried Pepsi.

A scary monster hangs out with Tara Fay Hansen at Greaserama.

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Last weekend was Greaserama at the Boulevard Drive-In and photographer Scott Spychalski was there to capture it all. Here's Scott Spy's shots in a slideshow.

​Freeway approaches are popular places from which panhandlers solicit money for gauze, chewing gum and pints of booze. The Downtown Council has decided to make some of these access points less conducive to begging.

Two Downtown Community Improvement District team members held "Have a Great Day" signs near the Broadway Bridge this morning. Motorists who made contact with the yellow jackets received pamphlets instructing them not to give money to scruffians with cardboard signs. 

"Aggressive panhandling will stop will when people stop rewarding such behavior -- it's that simple," the pamphlet says.

The response has been positive. "People honk and wave at me all the time," yellow jacket Alex Ingram (pictured) said as a light mist fell on the Garment District."They've all been good. I haven't had any negative."

Surely somewhere a homeless war veteran (real or advertised) was grumbling about the incursion.

See art like this piece by Deng Wushu on display in the Crossroads.

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1. Meander all over the Crossroads because it's First Friday, yo.

2. Party down in Independence Square, where the Santa Cali Gon Days Festival kicks off today.

3. Party downtown, where the Kansas City Irish Festival starts today.

4. Get ready for some football -- Australian style. On Saturday, local Australian rules football teams square off in Gillham Park.

5. Get greasy. The two-day rockabilly car/art/movie/drinking fest known as Greaserama happens Saturday and Sunday at Boulevard Drive-In.

6. Go swimming for the last time. Jackson County beaches close for swimming on Monday, which happens to be Labor Day.

Jamie Burkart in Great Accomodations

​As I watched Jamie Burkart and his brave band of fellow artists ship off from Kaw Point in a boat made of recycled materials in July 2007, I admit, I was worried for their safety. Their intent was to sail their bicycle-propelled craft all the way down the Missouri and Mississippi rivers "until the taste of salt." They had their share of dramatic moments, but, proving that artists and idealists are the most resourceful people on the planet, Burkart and crew made it all the way to the Gulf of Mexico four months after they departed Kansas City.
 
That experience didn't satiate Burkart's fascination with the Missouri River and how it shapes Kansas City. On Tuesday his latest artistic endeavor opened at the Paragraph Gallery. But, while the door is open -- a revolving entry fashioned from four discarded wooden slabs fastened together -- the project is still a work in progress.   

​Since I commute down Troost Avenue on a daily basis, I noticed Head Space a few months ago. It's the brain child of Noah Holland, a Vermont artist who moved to Kansas City nearly a decade ago to apprentice with a local glassblower. Since April he and his business partner have been selling hand-blown pipes at the Rastafarian-colored digs at the intersection of 4srd Street and Troost.

Just this week, though, I noticed a new form of art on the outside of their shop. Aaron Sutton, a local painter, started work on an eye-catching mural.

Check it out.