By DAVID MARTIN The beleaguered housing market is making an impact on homelessness in a way that has nothing to do with foreclosures. Jackson County charges a $3 document fee on real-estate transactions. The county’s Housing Resources Commission distributes the money to shelters and agencies that work to prevent homelessness. The fund did well when home sales were robust and…
Tanner’s Halloween Party
Costume Contest & Halloween Party
Blackest of Black
%{}% By CHARLES FERRUZZA I’ll have to give City-Bluz an honorable mention here. He took a look at this week’s “Where Is It?” photo and guessed that it was the two-year-old Hawg Shed Bar-B-Que in Buckner, Missouri. Actually City-Bluz, it’s the new, three-week-old Hawg Shed Bar-B-Que in Lexington, Missouri. I ate there last week and it was delicious. The ribs…
By JEN CHEN There are more ways to decorate a sugary frosted cake than the typical “Happy Birthday” or “Congratulations.” Take, for example, this unusual way to combine art, mystery and buttercream frosting. Categories: A&E, Dining
By PETER RUGG We’ve told you about Pastor Eric Williams of the Calvary Temple Baptist Church twice in the last two years. He was one of the first ministers willing to openly discuss HIV infection rates, and he’s one of the driving forces behind the week of prayer for victims of the virus here in Kansas City. Now his church…
%{}% By CHRIS PACKHAM Asshole consumers are dragging the economy down by prioritizing their “food” and “medicine” purchases over small luxuries like blood diamonds, stairlifts for gliding easily between the floors of their houses or ride-able miniature Silver Spoons railroads for luring young children to their back yards, the bottom has totally fallen right out of the market for those,…
By ANDY VIHSTADT Local Symbol Heavy producer Topp Boom knows the importance of voting, so to put a little extra swagger in your step next Tuesday, he’s posted a disco-funk Election Day anthem. Download it below along with his 2007 Halloween mix. Wait, if you’re going to tack on the Vol. 1 addendum, aren’t you obligated to a sequel? MP3:…
By NADIA PFLAUM Driving along State Line Road between 43rd Street and Shawnee Mission Parkway, you see almost as many Obama signs as Halloween pumpkins. That makes the one McCain-Palin sign stand out all the more. The next address over displays an Obama sign. What seems a little awkward, though, is that the two addresses are halves of the same…
I was talking with a source over coffee when the conversation turned to — what else? — coffee. We wondered whether there was a Java Girls in Kansas City. Java Girls is a coffee chain described by its founder as “Part Starbucks and part Hooters.” Basically, it’s girls in skimpy outfits serving coffee out of a small drive-through coffee store….
By OWEN MORRIS Hey — some Kansas Citians were recently running the Dublin Marathon in Ireland. What a great place to work up an appetite for some beer while also disproving the notion that we are a fat city. After all, how do rumors like that get started? (Irish KC) Uh-oh. Companies are already promising to cut back or cancel…
By JEN CHEN Back in June, my co-worker Justin went to Barnes & Noble on the Plaza and found a handwritten note stuck in a book. As he documented in this Plog entry, he unfolded the note and found something akin to a missing persons ad. The writer, a young woman, left the letter for a guy she spotted on…
By ALAN SCHERSTUHL Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from area basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power. Do Cats Have ESP? Author: Jeane Dixon Publisher: Aaron Publishing Group Date: 1998 Discovered at: Salvation Army, 1223 Santa Fe, Olathe The Cover…
As Brick owner Shari Parr says, “We don’t wanna just sit and chew our fingernails” tonight. So she has booked a band that’s sure to soothe the nerves of anxious voters: Solid Gold Easy. Expect vintage licks and attire from the local classic-rock cover band. The first set of songs starts around 9, and the bar TVs will be on…
Bare Soundz is an exuberant celebration using tap as song. Savion Glover merges jazz, contemporary and Caribbean beats berating life into tap as percussion and percussion as sound. Sat., Nov. 1, 8 p.m., 2008 Tags: Night & Day, Savion Glover
The Orchestra rides into town to perform all the classic Ennio Morricone music including The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Once Upon A Time In The West and For a Few Dollars More. With a fistful of humor and a bucket-load of fun, the Orchestra underscores these brilliant musical adventures with all the sound effects of the iconic spaghetti…
The Kansas City Chiefs recently announced that Daktronics will retrofit the football-shaped scoreboards at Arrowhead Stadium (1 Arrowhead Drive, at Interstate 70 and the Blue Ridge Cutoff). The high-definition video displays may not be ready until 2010, which is fine, because the Herminators don’t make many plays worthy of the big screen. At noon, the Chiefs line up against the…
As Brick owner Shari Parr says, “We don’t wanna just sit and chew our fingernails” tonight. So she has booked a band that’s sure to soothe the nerves of anxious voters: Solid Gold Easy. Expect vintage licks and attire from the local classic-rock cover band. The first set of songs starts around 9, and the bar TVs will be on…
The Robert Smith Halloween costume is not easy. The time and money invested in hairspray and lipstick alone can deter even the most dedicated superfan. A cheaper solution might be an Einstein wig and a red Sharpie. (You already own an ass-kicking pair of black Doc Martens, a bucket of mascara and white face powder, right?) Wait a sec —…
NewEar, Kansas City’s contemporary chamber music ensemble, doesn’t play typical classical music. “It’s classical,” says Ingrid Stölzel, composer and vice president of NewEar’s board of directors, “but it’s not Beethoven.” The group’s approach, Stölzel explains, is the creation of “sound worlds.” NewEar ignores the metronome of tradition at 8 tonight at Unity Temple on the Plaza (707 West 47th Street)….
Orson Welles once called a film studio “the best train set a boy ever had.” But his fellow filmmaker David Lean took a more literal approach to playing with trains. From the intimate drama of 1945’s Brief Encounter to the panoramic splendor of 1984’s A Passage to India, Lean indulged his fascination with trains throughout a storied film career. Unlike…
