Occupation: “Art lady” might be my favorite descriptor. I am co-director of Charlotte Street Foundation, a nonprofit that nurtures, supports and connects artists in Kansas City through cash awards, project grants, commissions, studio residencies, exhibition and performance opportunities (through our Urban Culture Project), professional development training, etc. Hometowns: Alexandria, Virginia, and Delmar, New York, growing up. But since my parents…
Noah should probably get comfortable at the zoo. It looks like Noah, the Platte City wallaby made famous by a daring Thanksgiving Day escape and romp about town, will not return to his owner, Emily Wood. The Platte City board of aldermen voted last night to agree with the early findings by the Public Safety Sub-Committee that Noah was an…
Lakeside Tavern is dishing up chili cheese tots, burnt ends and a portobello mushroom dish that is in the style of a chicken-fried steak in Leawood’s Mission Farms. Photos by Angela C. Bond.
Ashford Stamper This is one of the finest roasted chickens in the city. We don’t all get the chance to huddle around a fire and wooden spit so often these days; but there’s still something primal and comforting about roast chicken. And unlike the caveman days, you’re not left hoping you get the burnt side instead of the raw side…
Flickr: MacKinnon Photography We’ve all got to learn to let go of the glass. Sometimes you don’t want a meal or night at the bar to end. And sometimes you might decide to take a memento of your evening out. In younger, more foolish days, I may have liberated a half-full pint glass from a bar under my shirt (this…
Kansas City’s The Casket Lottery has played the occasional show here and there over the past few years, but it seems that the band’s full-on reunion is now a full-on thing. They’ve signed to No Sleep Records, which will release their already-recorded fifth album later this year. Additionally, No Sleep will be releasing 7-inches from the band and singer-guitarist Nathan…
Sweet ride, Kay. Kay Barnes hasn’t been mayor of Kansas City since 2007 but, God bless her, she’s keeping her name in the papers. In an interview featured in the fall-winter issue of Aristocrat Motors’ clientele publication, Today’s Aristocrat (motto: “Settle for more” — really), Barnes assures us that she’s staying busy teaching at Park University, and she’s crazy in…
Happy New Year, and with a different way to read this column: This week, I rank 2012 from the sign that has the most challenges to the one that has the least. Check for your DOD (Degree of Difficulty), from 1 to 10. The lower the number, the less challenging 2012 will be. Please note that we are all transforming,…
Westport Road between Main and Broadway was blocked off in the last days of 2011 after an air-conditioning installation went awry, igniting a blaze that ravaged the 175-year-old Westport Presbyterian Church. Days later, the street reopened, and everything returned to normal in Westport. Right? No, no. The same day of the fire, Stone Spirit Lodge, a “metaphysical store dedicated to…
A particular kind of silence is present at a half-empty bar gig. It was lingering like a lazy ghost at Coda the first Thursday of 2012. The occasion was a band competition of sorts. Two acts, each representing a charity of its choosing, were scheduled to perform. Afterward audience members would use their dollars to vote for their favorite. A…
Like plenty of people, I’ve been watching a lot of Louis C.K. lately. And I kept hearing the comic in my head as I watched Roman Polanski’s squirmy, tone-deaf new movie, Carnage, which traps four good actors in empty moral slapstick. Jodie Foster, bug-eyed and twitchy, comes on like she’s still stuck in Panic Room. Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz…
Essentially a one-woman stage play dressed as a biopic, The Iron Lady, written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd, is an unfocused portrait of a figure whose importance it takes for granted. In these surroundings, Meryl Streep’s impeccable turn as Margaret Thatcher, the United Kingdom’s first and only woman prime minister, is an award-worthy performance in search of…
The two men don’t toast. Absorbed in their work, they bring the matching snifters up to their noses, letting the aroma of the room-temperature, slightly flat beer stand in for conversation. This is the smell of collaboration. “I smell the nibs, but it’s the cacao instead of the cocoa smell. I also get malt,” says chocolatier Christopher Elbow as he…
The Life and Times, with Major Games and Waiting for Signal Allen Epley is the former frontman of Shiner, one of the more prominent acts associated with the heavy, mathy, post-hardcore sound that wafted out of Kansas City in the 1990s. He’s now the main guy in the Life and Times, a trio that blends his old band’s earth-shaking angularity…
Yes, there’s a body of water on the grounds of the Mission Farms development at 105th Street and Mission Road, but I’m not sure it’s fair to call it a lake. A big, pretty pond is more like it — the kind you find on farms and golf courses. So the Lakeside Tavern, which opened in Mission Farms two months…
Dan Weinbaum is leaving TV news. KMBC stalwart Dan Weinbaum is leaving TV news behind. The longtime reporter and anchor is leaving Channel 9 to become the director of communications for Olathe, Kansas-based nonprofit Heart to Heart International. Weinbaum announced the move in an e-mail to news outlets Tuesday. He had been with Channel 9 for eight years after moving…
Michael Bruce’s hoodie allegedly gave him away. Kansas City police believe they’ve solved a triple homicide. Michael Bruce, 20, has been charged with second-degree murder in the killings of Phillip Hall, Stacy Roberson and Raymond Hill. Hall, Roberson and Hill were found shot to death inside an apartment at 901 East Linwood on September 18, 2011. Court documents say Bruce…
Former Kansas City television host and convicted sex offender “Uncle” Ed Muscare died in prison Monday night. Word comes from Muscare’s wife, Marion, who posted the above YouTube video Monday night saying Muscare died due to lung cancer (h/t: Fox 4). Muscare was 79. In 2009, Muscare resurfaced, posting bizarre videos to YouTube, including one of a dog suckling on…
SPACE THANG from PAT VAMOS on Vimeo. Last October, local filmmakers Jori Sackin and Pat Vamos screened Space Thang, a 40-minute mashing up of ’70s sci-fi porn and original animation, at the Strand Theater, the old-school porn house on Troost. It was good times, although when I went outside to smoke pot before the movie started, I lost my seat…
Beer Advocate Raise a glass at Royal this week. If you’re looking up at the clock and thinking it’s only Tuesday, odds are you’re going to need something strong to get you through the rest of the week. Royal Liquor (1301 W. 103rd St.) is not a bad place to turn to in your time of great thirst. That’s because…
If you’ve heard of the Bottleneck’s new VIP promotion, the Star Card, you may have some questions. Like: “Where do I get one?” “What the hell is this?” “Is this another douchebag bottle-service thing?” “How much does it cost?” “Can I use this to save money on my car insurance?” And so on. Thankfully, the kind folks at the club…
