If Mom wanted a motorcycle for Christmas, consider taking her to see some freestyle motocross. Because nothing like a bag of cotton candy and a front-row view of tattooed studs clearing 70-foot gaps on off-road bikes can better say, “I wish I could have bought you a Harley.” Motocross has been on steroids ever since the sport’s acrobats figured out…
Ladies and gentleman, start your engines. Wide Open Motorcycle magazine is throwing a weekend coming out party for the city’s biker bandits and two-wheeled rebels. The event features a best-in-show contest, with $1,000 for the winner. In all, more than 20 grand in gas, cash, trips and prizes will rain down like confetti on participants of the two-day extravaganza. Giveaways…
When artists Steve Curtis and Steve Larson opened S2 Studios a little more than a year ago, theirs was the only ground-floor space in the then-fledgling Pressroom Studios (750 Armstrong in Kansas City, Kansas), the converted building that once housed the Kansas City Kansan’s press. To combat loneliness and build a community, Curtis and Larson revived a tradition that Curtis…
Amanda Nervig, a recent Kansas City Art Institute fiber-arts grad, makes goofy little alien-looking creatures out of brightly colored yarn. She also spins decidedly nonalien-looking tank tops, miniskirts and dresses out of acrylic and nylon. Her collection includes sweaters decorated with pictures of her cat, Tellulah. Watch her clothing creations in action at her fashion show at Harling’s Upstairs (3941…
(302 West Eighth Street, 816-221-5299). Fill your jazz hands with $3 drafts, $4 glasses of wine and $5 martinis from 4 to 7 p.m. and with $5 bombs after 9 p.m., at this reopened downtown spot. Mondays, 2009 Tags: 548, Night & Day
(4311 West 119th Street in Leawood, 913-345-9444). The trendy Crossroads meeting place has opened a second location. Tonight, enjoy 25 percent off all glasses of wine and the usual attentive service. Mondays, 2009 Tags: leawood, Night & Day
(9720 Quivira in Overland Park, 913-492-3900). Across the street from Oak Park Mall is KC’s newest gastropub, which offers $2 you-call-its today — that means $2 wells, calls, bottles and drafts, not Patrón or blender drinks. Mondays, 2009 Tags: Night & Day, overland park
(415 East 18th Street, 816-889-9378). More loungey and with less weird shit on the walls, Stretch and Anton’s newest venture offers $7 glasses of Cycles Gladiator Pinot Noir and Yalumba Viognier on Mondays. Mondays, 2009 Tags: 3859, Night & Day
The seeming spontaneity of David Mamet’s famously stylized dialogue — as casually rattled off by, for instance, William H. Macy — is the cumulative result of thousands of hours of writing, memorizing, blocking and rehearsing. If that much preparation and forethought went into sex, there would be no such thing as little babies, and then where would we be? OK,…
Who did you vote for? No, that’s not a political question. You may not give a hoot about David Cook, but for many of your fellow Americans, his contest with David Archuleta was the biggest race of 2008 (sorry, Obama). Cook, a guitar-totin’ Blue Springs native, briefly put the KC metro on the map when he beat out teenage Archuleta…
Whad’ya mean, you’ve never heard of Kurt Metzger? He may appear to be just another tall, doofy dude armed with a microphone, but comedy fans are familiar with his work as a writer for Chappelle’s Show and The Gong Show With Dave Attell. Such comedic friends in high places are all well and good, but Metzger has the top-notch talent…
For Iain Ellis, Ph.D., the best show of 2008 was the Slits in Lawrence. “It was one of those bands that I didn’t see back in the day, and they came to the Replay on, I think it was St. Patrick’s Day, so the bar was just hopping with drunks,” he remembers. “It was just a really brilliant, different kind…
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Odette Yustman plays Casey, a well-heeled young suburbanite who’s been having bad dreams. The night terrors begin to infest her waking life when a whey-faced grade-schooler cryptically intones: “Jumby wants to be born now.” Trying to figure out what that means leads Casey and The Unborn into a thicket of exposition involving suicidal mothers, mad geneticists and Jewish folklore. The…
It’s been seven years since Marc Broussard’s debut EP, Momentary Setback, hinted at a promising career to come. But Broussard quickly became a victim of ambiguity — he’s not quite rock, not quite R&B and not quite country. And it’s not quite fair that the Carencro, Louisiana, native hasn’t found a wider audience. Like former tour mate Gavin DeGraw, he…
If you had to find one Kansas band for putting your David Cook-worshipping baby brother through rock-and-roll boot camp, Black Gasoline would proudly answer the call. While it’s tempting to surmise that the Wichita band’s shock-and-awe rock stems from an aspiration to be louder than the Learjets manufactured in its backyard, the five-piece unit more likely takes inspiration from British…
Much of Black and White, the December release from Park Hill product Dakota LaTier (aka Elite), ventriloquizes the lyrical strategy of another, more famous rapper — Lil Wayne. Similar to Wayne in his less complex moments, Elite’s singsong flow relies on similes and metaphors that compare wildly disparate concepts, invoking in the listener the sort of reactions — Did he just…
Many of today’s hip-hop personalities and R&B royalty would have fans believe that they’ve got the genuine Midas touch, but few in recent years can truly back that claim up. The Tallahassee-born T-Pain, however, is one of these chosen few. It’s no wonder that Akon snatched him up for his own imprint, Konvict Muzik, upon hearing his rendition of the…
When I tell friends that the Cammisano family moved the Copa Room from a free-standing building in midtown to a strip center in Lenexa, their immediate reaction is always the same: “Why out there?” It’s a knee-jerk response from die-hard midtowners, who seem to gripe about any restaurant located west of Mission Road. I had to endure a litany of…
Walt Kowalski growls a lot — a dyspeptic rumble that wells up from deep inside his belly when he catches sight of his midriff-baring teenage granddaughter text-messaging her way through her grandmother’s funeral, or when his good-for-nothing son and daughter-in-law suggest that he sell his house in a gang-infested corner of suburban Detroit and move to one of those retirement…
Kansas City is enjoying the most thriving comedy scene that I’ve seen in my lifetime. Not at the stand-up level, where the big clubs are overpriced temples to the hacks. And the low-rent clubs feature too many sweaty, shouting open-mikers polishing sets from three years ago. Instead, it’s among the seat-of-the-pants improv crowd. Westport audiences can catch the old-school Comedy…
Like most cities of its size, Kansas City gets millions of dollars in federal money to provide safe, secure and affordable housing to its residents. For 30 years, the city used an outside agency, the Housing and Economic Development Finance Corporation, as a middle man to divide federal money and handle housing programs. The HEDFC’s no-bid contract was renewed each…
Every once in a while, someone in public office decides that the city’s prostitutes need managing. In 1918, the director of the Kansas State Board of Health complained to Tom Pendergast about the number of soldiers who contracted venereal disease while on leave in Kansas City. Pendergast promised health exams and jail sentences in an effort to calm the health…
Dear Mexican: I’m a Spanish teacher, and I’ve been hearing my students say a phrase that I am unsure what it means (if it truly means anything, which they swear it does). They say it’s a Mexican saying: Tiki tu madre. I don’t know what “tiki” means. So I was wondering if you could shed some light on the subject…
