Blitzen Trapper, with Ages and Ages Many Blitzen Trapper songs follow a loose formula: Hijack a melody from Dylan or the Beatles, then toss in a blazing guitar à la Bowie or Queen to imbue it with dramatic flair. I care less for those than I do for their more streamlined meditative folk songs, which tend to do away with…
Don’t hate Spike Nguyen for opening a franchise restaurant. The 40-year-old entrepreneur from Vietnam wanted to go into business by himself — he used to run a burger place in Houston with his brother — and he was impressed by the operation of the Sacramento-based Pho Hoa Noodle Soup chain. After Nguyen moved to Kansas City, he bought the franchise…
Kansas City, Kansas-based Metro Pro Wrestling finally — finally! — got the attention of The Kansas City Star in Sunday’s Star Magazine. The attention is a good thing, but the story, “Off the mat: Pro wrestling, and all its wackiness, returns to KC area,” is horrible. I’m not sure I’d call a man stabbing another man in the head with…
Kansas City’s media watchers all have a take on why Nick Wright’s ratings have improved this summer. Detractors say he’s riding the temporary swell of Royals’ games to a few fractions of a point’s lead in a small, yet significant, demographic. Fans say rival and longtime rating’s champ Kevin Kietzman’s show has become stale and predictable. Real journalists, however, look…
Categories: Music Tags: Pitchfork Music Festival
Can’t a man just eat a bacon chocolate bar in peace? Every relationship should be allowed to develop in its natural course, but those who would push for labels might ruin something special before it has even started. Before I can fall in love with salmon collars or alligator schnitzel (two mentions of schnitzel on Fat City today has to…
%{}% A federal grand jury has indicted Kansas City, Kansas, tactical team members Jeffrey Bell, Darryl Forrest and Dustin Sillings for allegedly stealing a PlayStation Portable and a Flip cam while serving a search warrant at a resident’s home last July, according to KMBC. The federal indictment unsealed Monday also accuses the three of stealing money, video games, a Nintendo…
Last week’s opening of the two local Trader Joe’s stores in the metro — reported in Fat City by Jonathan Bender — got lots of media hoopla, including an excellent radio report on KCUR 89.3’s KC Currents program yesterday. (It will be rebroadcast tonight at 8.) The Ward Parkway store was wildly crowded on Sunday morning — two days after…
Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen is known for running his mouth to reporters. He uses slurs. He rants. And he complains. But Guillen may have finally said something worth listening to. The skipper told ESPN reporter Doug Padilla that he likes to visit the Negro Leagues Hall of Fame when he’s in Kansas City. Taking his appreciation of the…
The Brick is one of my favorite places in town for happy hour, but regrettably, that’s just about the only time I make it there for a visit. It feels a bit strange to walk in after dark, kind of like going to work on a Saturday. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one a little off somehow — there was…
Of all of the places in Kansas, I’d peg Lawrence as the one open-minded enough to accept a donation of marijuana. But apparently the Goodwill there is too stuffy to accept some free bud. Some goodhearted, thoughtful, caring, charitable person dropped a small amount of pot in a Goodwill dropbox in Lawrence, according to the Lawrence Journal-World (via the Wichita…
Justin Werner is the pride of Topeka, Kansas. How could he not be? The 21-year-old is the world record holder for having the biggest tonsils. No need to call Guinness. They already know. The Topeka Capital-Journal spotlighted Werner’s gigantic tonsils — one measured in at 2.1 inches long, 1.1 inches wide and 0.7 inch thick and the other at 1.9…
Carter Holton is a pastry chef in search of perfection, whether it’s in perfecting a recipe or plating a new dessert. So Fat City decided to make it difficult for him by asking him to describe the perfect dessert. His description of a rum baba (after the jump) sounds fairly close to that ideal. On Thursday, Holton explained how…
In an era when seemingly every restaurant is attempting to find ways to incorporate the latest trends or bring in badly needed revenue, it’s nice to see somebody deciding to do one thing very well. The above tweet from Grunauer is a funny reminder that the Viennese restaurant in the Freight House District does exactly that. Here’s to sticking to…
Construction on the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts seems to be proceeding nicely. It’s almost time for that sucker to open. Last week, details of the venue’s inaugural season were released, and it includes some pretty exciting performances. Categories: Music Tags: kauffman center for the performing arts
I have to hand it to Subway. It takes guts to include Kansas City in the nationwide roll-out of its new BBQ Pulled Pork sandwich. The same kind of guts that once led me to demand from a waiter the strongest cheese in a restaurant in a tiny French town. I’ll let you guess how that worked out. The Atlanta…
Police officers always tell us not to leave our vehicles running unattended. They may want to take their own advice. Alex Coomer, 29, is accused of stealing a police cruiser left running with the keys in it at 10th Street and Broadway around 3:50 a.m. Saturday. Hey, that’s my neighborhood! After the jump, a stoner movie reference. Categories: News Tags:…
This came in late Friday afternoon: A jury convicted Bernard Jackson of all 18 charges of rape, sodomy and robbery from incidents in 1983 and ’84. The jury found the 53-year-old Jackson guilty of seven counts of rape, seven counts of sodomy and four counts of robbery. Categories: News Tags: Bernard Jackson, Waldo rapes
St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark) recently announced that she would release her upcoming album, Strange Mercy, on September 13. Last week, Clark unveiled Mercy’s cover (pictured above) and announced plans of a tour, which includes a stop at Lawrence’s Liberty Hall, on October 7. Categories: Music Tags: Fruit Bats, Gillian Welch, st. vincent
Nearly three decades after restaurateur Joe Accurso took over the old Main Street Deli at 5044 Main and transformed it into a popular neighborhood Italian restaurant, he’s getting out of the day-to-day restaurant operation. Accurso, who opened his current restaurant at 4980 Main in 2009, sold the restaurant to his cousins on July 1. Craig Accurso — senior vice president…
