The Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office just announced that cousins Stephen A. Reed, 16, and Shane Reed, 17, have been charged in connection with the murder of Ryder Spillman this Easter. Stephen Reed is been charged with first-degree murder and criminal possession of a firearm by a juvenile, and Shane Reed is charged with aiding a felon and criminal possession…
I don’t think the sign taped to the front of the locked entrance to the Oak Street Coffee Shop — “Look for Some Delightful Surprises in the Coming Year” — was meant to be ironic. The sign was posted after Oak Street Coffee owner Martha Pruitt closed her six-year-old coffeehouse in January. The building’s owner, Ron Zoglin, put up the…
This Easter, 16-year-old Ryder Spillman was shot dead near the Thomas Edison Elementary School in Kansas City, Kansas. Now details are emerging about what could have led to the homicide, and police say a feud between rival skateboarders may have been the cause. Categories: News Tags: Ryder Spillman, skateboarding
%{}% NEWS FLASH! Did you know that print media have been having a bitch of a time with fiscal solvency? Oh, I see. Well, those of you who volunteered for that cryogenics experiment back in World War II: Know that as the time locks blow on your hyperbaric chambers, your shivering bodies emerge into a whole new world. The latest…
Richard and Theresa Ng own six Bo Lings restaurants in the metro: three in Overland Park and three on the Missouri side (the locations on the Country Club Plaza, Zona Rosa and the City Market). But they’ve often ventured into different entrepreneurial sidelines, like their short-lived fortune-cookie factory (the machine that made the cookies sort of looked like a Rube…
Spotlight is on you, Kansas City: What do you think is the worst concert announcement of the year so far? Of course, we have to be honest: The recent press release that we received about a double bill between Maroon 5 and Train on September 4 at Starlight was the inspiration for this post. (Gavin DeGraw and Matt Nathanson are…
You might be on a first-name basis with your server. But guess what? So is every other table. If you want to get to know the servers, hostesses and bartenders around town, you need to visit the Employee Lounge — a new blog focused on the service industry from freelance graphic designer Linh Trieu and photographer Tina Magee-Jenks. Fat City…
Somehow, the David George Band has long existed in the Kansas City scene without playing the Brick, until now (though, admittedly, David George has played solo gigs there before). Members of the band recently collaborated on the Heaven Help Us project, a communal song dedicated to relief aid in Japan, post-earthquake and post-tsunami. Other collaborators on the project, which is…
Regulars at Winstead’s on the Plaza (101 Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard) have likely been ordering the same thing since the place opened in 1940. Calvin Trillin once famously wrote that “Winstead’s serves the best hamburger in the world,” and you’d find plenty of people in the aqua-toned dining room who would agree with him. But for younger generations, the “best…
Fans of the brilliant Fox show Arrested Development fondly remember the recurring “And that’s why you always/never/don’t____” jokes in which Bluth family patriarch George Bluth would teach his children simple lessons by setting up elaborate scenarios that ended with him violently tearing off a man’s prosthetic arm and launching a horror-film arc of fake blood before his terrified children. The…
%{}% UPDATE: Kansas City police say the victim of this morning’s homicide was 40-year-old Julie Johnson. Original Story: A man called a relative and said he had killed his girlfriend, Kansas City police say. Kansas City police found the body of a woman in her 40s dead inside a home at 103rd and North Tracy around 12:21 a.m. Police say…
It looks like Kanrocksas did indeed score a few of Lolla’s headliners. The newly formed Kansas City, Kansas, festival snagged Eminem and Muse. Other bands playing both festivals include A Perfect Circle, Kid Cudi, Flogging Molly, Arctic Monkeys and, well, every other band announced yesterday except the Flaming Lips (pretty sweet), the Black Keys (hell yeah), D12 (nothing wrong there)…
When you get your electric car, now you’ll have someplace to charge it. The Boulevard Brewing Co. installed an electric-car charging port in its parking lot last week, as part of its stated commitment to sustainability. The company also added a set of solar panels to the roof of the brewery, which will offset about 1.5 percent of its yearly…
Spring is in the air, bringing with it the sound of wedding bells. And every time a bell rings, we ask, “Where’s the cake?” Because here at Fat City, we know that the best (or worst) part of a wedding is the food. The Knot, a go-to website for all things wedding, recently released its list of Top Wedding Food…
Forget the little black dress and that white T-shirt that goes with everything. New black and white essentials are coming to the Plaza today. Cupcake A La Mode (4639 Wornall, across from Houston’s) opens its new shop at 10 a.m. The cupcakery divides its menu into black and white options — chocolate and vanilla. Cupcake A La Mode moved from…
You heard the big announcement about Kanrocksas lineup already, right? Well, starting today, you can snag tickets to the two-day festival at the speedway in KCK. Categories: Music Tags: kanrocksas
The world came to Kansas City, Kansas, on Saturday, April 23, at the annual Wyandotte County Ethnic Festival. Odds are, it was the only place in the city where you could find an accordion player, coffee from Colombia and Gambian wooden sculptures. Click on the photo above to see the inside of the festival captured by photographer Forester Michael. Categories:…
David Garwacke is probably not a name with which most people are familiar. However, his website, If You Make It, has become an invaluable resource for anyone needing a primer on the East Coast pop-punk and indie underground. His Pink Couch Sessions, a series of acoustic performances on a big pink couch, have featured cult favorites like the Measure ,…
Who’s ready to see a midget bleed tonight?” The 4-foot-6-inch man with the microphone was born Steve Richardson, but tonight he’s Puppet the Psycho Dwarf. He’s kneeling in the middle of a sagging wrestling ring. Over the next 30 minutes, the structural integrity of this red-canvas square will be challenged with an onslaught of blood, sweat and piss. The soundtrack:…
It may come as a shock, but probably five people reading this recognize Danzig — the metal band fronted by cartoonishly bizarre horror-punk legend Glenn Danzig, of course — because of an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Let that sink in for a minute. (On the show, Glenn Danzig buys Carl’s house.) Though Danzig’s cultural force may have, er,…
One of punk’s enduring institutions, Social Distortion formed in 1978 and released its seminal ode to suburban anomie, Mommy’s Little Monster, five years later. It was another five years before Prison Bound, thanks to frontman Mike Ness’ skirmishes with the law and heroin. The album widened Social D’s punk sound with country and rockabilly, a move that bore fruit with…
In indie’s electronic landscape, Joe Pug is a man of tradition. His foray into music began not on a laptop but on a simple acoustic guitar. (After all, laptops are fragile and don’t fare well in the boxcars and pickup beds that Pug sounds like he travels in.) He has branded himself firmly as a folk troubadour of yesteryear, with…
