%{}% Basically, I’ll do just about anything for money, up to and including dressing up in pleated khakis and working in your call center. I don’t have much in the way of conscience about that. On “Office Food Day,” I’ll even set up a mini Crock Pot in the break room and fill it up with Li’l Smokies. I have…
The magazine Restaurants & Institutions (R&I) released its annual list of the the 100 highest grossing indepent restaurants in the country and once again, no places in Kansas City made the cut. The overwhelming majority of restaurants are located in either New York or Las Vegas (more than twenty venues are listed in each of those cities). Chicago had the…
Flickr: Foto Blitz Color I used to hear such interesting comments, hilarious asides, invective about cheapskates, morning-after confessions, and brilliant observations in the waiter station during my serving career (back when we could still smoke back there, if that says anything) — I thought it would make a good musical. I still do, although today’s New York Times review of…
Hooligans, don’t get your hopes up, but Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium is one of 70 venues in the United States being considered to host the the World Cup in either 2018 or 2022. Don’t feel too special, though; every major college football and NFL stadium in the country is on the list. Hell, they even list the home of the…
First Fridays are all right, but there’s not another one for three more weeks. Fulfill your desire for fresh, local art this weekend by heading west — to the West Bottoms that is. Various artists are opening their studio doors to the public tonight and Saturday. Here’s where to go: 1409 Studios 1409 West 11th Street More than 20 artists,…
%{}% In honor of Royals opening day, here is an excerpt and an interview with author Bruce Weber, who just wrote a book on how umpires see the game. Australians are having trouble moving wine, especially ones in the mid-level price range. The culprit is one of their own — Yellow Tail. Despite what this blog and the media reports,…
When I was interviewing people for this week’s cover story on health-care reform in Kansas, one Republican and one Democrat whispered two dreaded words — but told me not to quote them. Those two dreaded words? “Single” and “payer.” As in a government-funded health-care system for everyone. Those words are so scary for politicians because as soon as you say…
In the course of making a record, most musicians (myself included) consider it a productive day if a couple guitar parts and a vocal are completed. Then there’s people like Doby Watson, who make us all jealous by knocking out a whole record in six hours. Mr. Watson and collaborators A.P. Swearengin and Matt Dill went into The Punch studio…
Hoping to bring its special brand of fun to the city of Portland, Oregon, the developer of the Power & Light District is bragging on its half-finished achievements in Kansas City. Cordish and the Portland Trail Blazers of the NBA are working on a plan to put an entertainment district in the city’s Rose Quarter. The proposal has met skepticism…
A welfare check in the 1100 block of Pacific turned up the body of a 43-year-old woman. View Larger Map At about 2:30 p.m. Thursday, a woman called 911 after her mother didn’t answer the door. The daughter hadn’t heard from her mother in several days. Kansas City police obtained a search warrant and found the woman dead inside the…
Lawrence police executed a search warrant Monday at the apartment of University of Kansas student body president candidate Tutu Lee, the Lawrence Journal-World reported today. The Journal-World hints that it might have something to do with this campaign video, which shows Lee and another guy shooting guns and Lee saying he’s running “to get his girlfriend back.” This one’s called…
Charles Ferruzza Collection Original Unity Vegetarian Inn, 913 Tracy Avenue Restaurateurs are trying all kinds of gimmicks to get penny-pinching patrons back into the restaurants. Last month, several news sources reported on restaurants that gave customers the right to “pay whatever they wanted for their dinner.” It’s an interesting concept (especially since most customers have always paid whatever they wanted…
%{}% Only one commenter even bothered to venture a guess for this week’s Where is it? But, hey, she got it right. Let’s hear it for Shari Webb! This offbeat sculpture has been in storage for several years, ever since its former home, the Coyote Grill in the now-razed Mission Center Mall, closed in 2006. But now that the former Yahooz…
One of the best Happy Hour deals in town can be found at Webster House, the historic building — which opened its doors in 1885 as the Daniel Webster Elementary School — that now serves as a combination antique shop, gift salon, interior decorating business and restaurant. Who knew? I certainly didn’t until I was taken for a nosh yesterday…
Wake up, KC! No more sleeping on Ron Ron. In this stylized, one-two punch of a video, the local MC turns from party boy to gangsta, starting off with the slow, funky club melter “Hey, Honey,” complete with spliced-in ho’s and Ron in Ladies’ Man attire. Then he flips to his side G at about the 2:20 mark, upon the…
Snapped this photo on my walk home from work yesterday. It’s from a parking lot across the street from the AMC Mainstreet Theatre in the Power & Light District. People were actually forking over $20 to park in the lot last night, and the “special event” was Nickelback at the Sprint Center. How much does it usually cost to park…
Guitar Hero, in addition to turning completely around boring grown-up mingling houseparties where no one has anything to talk about but their kids and food, has also given weathered old classic rockers a reason to keep executing scissor-kicks in this here age of hip-hop world dominance. The latest to receive the GH boost: skeletal butt-rock balladeers Aerosmith. On the platformed-heels…
Getting unfriended on Facebook sucks. So I feel for Clay County detective Jeff Harman, who lost a Facebook friend recently. Harman’s “friend” was allegedly the Rev. Robert M. Black, a super-disappointed 40-year-old who thought he was chatting with a 13-year-old girl named Ally Miller. These things never end well. KCTV Channel 5 and KMBC Channel 9 have all the gross-you’re-an-old-man…
