The Thai Chicken wrap at Longboards. Somewhere between the Zone and the Atkins diet, wraps got a bad name. They were dry, thin, flavored (the color indicated the “flavor,” green was veggie, red was spicy, white was bland) and stuffed full of slimy turkey or alfalfa sprouts. It was a crime against sandwiches. Thankfully, the wrap’s good name is being…
Hillsdale Bank Bar-B-Q Southern Living thought this sauce was money. Whether it’s what you top your barbecue with or the actual meat coming out of the smoker, it seems like no list is complete without a Kansas City-area entry. Three metro joints, Hillsdale Bank Bar-B-Q, Oklahoma Joe’s and Papa Bob’s Bar-B-Que, earned some national love recently for their sauces and…
Toronto’s Sandro Perri works primarily as a singer-songwriter, but don’t pigeonhole him as a “guy crooning with acoustic guitar.” He uses electronic flourishes and accents to pepper his work, making it more come-down chill-out music than coffeehouse background. Perri opens for Destroyer, another singer-songwriter who works outside the genre’s standard definitions, this Sunday, June 10. Listen to Perri’s “Love and…
The scene at Howard’s grand opening on First Friday. The hoop-house garden adjacent to Howard’s Organic Fare and Vegetable Patch is visible from southbound Interstate 71. The greenhouse’s white, circular ribs stand out improbably, like dinosaur bones bleaching in the sun, next to delivery trucks and construction vehicles. Howard’s is no less surprising. The market at 900 East 21st Street…
The Royals fan base is just hungry for wins. “I just want to see a win,” Ken Wharton of Emporia, Kansas, tells me when I ask what has brought him to Kauffman Stadium this past Sunday. His fingers scratch an itch not far from his heart, under the light-blue Royals jersey he’s wearing. He thinks for a second about what…
Technically, Prometheus is neither a remake nor a reboot. It isn’t even a franchise extension of the original Alien — “shared DNA” is how the filmmakers have characterized the curious bond between the two movies. They do share the same parent: director Ridley Scott, taking care not to draw direct connections (except in one instance) between the new movie and…
Thanks to some new activity on the 1700 block of Oak, First Fridays have been a little louder this year on the east side of the Crossroads. The most recent arrival on the block is Kultured Chameleon, a graffiti-and-glass gallery at 1739 Oak. Next door at 1735 Oak, commercial photography space 8183 Studio is up and running. And since late…
Sarah Pinzl, the female lead in The Night of the Assassins, walks stiffly in her period costume. “She’s wearing a bullet-impervious corset,” explains Wendy Thompson, the steampunk-themed production’s writer and director. “Yes,” Pinzl echoes. “It’s pretty tight indeed.” The play, part of Thompson’s eighth season of Mystery Train — billed as a “Murder Mystery Dinner Theater” — takes place on…
If you could manage to stretch the words fuck you into a full minute and a half, you’d have an idea of what Bombs Over Broadway is communicating on the 10 songs comprising Nuclear Saturday. Every track on this EP — the Kansas City punk band’s second — is a sneering face behind an upraised middle finger. With the exception…
High Diving Ponies combines the distortion and noise of My Bloody Valentine with the powerfully catchy sensibilities of Hum — but that’s a quick, cheap and ultimately facile assessment. On its latest, Suspended in Liquid, the Kansas City band sketches a hypnotic background throughout that manages not to sound like just a series of experiments in sonic oddity. Where High…
There’s an art to slotting an opening track, and all the best ones seem to possess some kind of charismatic momentum that sweeps you up and propels you into the world of the album. “In the City,” from locals Thee Water MoccaSins’ debut, From the Rivers of Missouri and the Banks of Fear, does just that. A whine of feedback…
Antennas Up is known around these parts for playing a brand of dance pop that falls somewhere between cheeky and geeky — Kansas City’s They Might Be Giants, say. But just as comic actors long for dramatic roles, goofy-nerdy bands eventually aspire to be seen in a more serious light. You can detect a trace of this phenomenon on the…
An Evening With the Beatles Well, not exactly. But a splendid time is guaranteed for all at this tribute show, where a number of Kansas City’s veteran musicians gather to celebrate the music of the Fab Four inside a church. Among the performers lined up by event organizer and KKFI Signal to Noise host Barry Lee: Kasey Rausch, Cody Wyoming,…
E. Spencer Schubert didn’t realize that an innocuous photo that he posted to his website would be news. But it was. On May 8, Schubert was hauling, in his beat-up Dodge pickup, the bronze busts that he had sculpted of former slave Dred Scott and of controversial radio host Rush Limbaugh, for upcoming inductions into the Hall of Famous Missourians…
It never occurred to Kansas-born Michael Brillhart to open any other kind of dining venue than a Thai restaurant. “It’s what I know,” he says. For nearly two decades, Brillhart worked in his uncle’s successful Thai restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama. When he decided it was time to launch his own place, he returned to Kansas. And he brought a solid…
A young woman bound to a cross, her eyes turned upward, is marched through a narrow street by masquerading revelers. A man is sucked underwater in the greedy embrace of a mermaidlike creature. A happy youth astride a scarab beetle sails ahead through space, bringing a lighted staff and, with it, the dawn. There’s a lot of drama in David…
Owen Morris Waldo’s iconic Kennedy’s Bar and Grill was destroyed in a 2007 fire; it’s now getting another new life. There will be an Irish wake this Saturday night at Kennedy’s Bar and Grill at 512 West 75th Street. “A wake, a last call, the final round,” says general manager Jeff O’Brien. After a long run in Waldo – including…
Anti-abortion advocate Angel Dillard had God guiding her pen hand. It was God who told Angel Dillard to pen a threatening letter to Mila Means last year while the Wichita doctor was training to perform abortions. The Associated Press reports that Dillard is claiming that the threatening letter she is accused of sending was “divinely inspired,” and thus, it should…
Artist Jim Mahfood began his career in Kansas City. While the St. Louis native attended the Kansas City Art Institute, his work for zines like Flavorpak, as well as his own self-released comics Cosmic Toast and Girl Scouts (to say nothing of his illustrations for The Pitch) made him a respected name around the area. After graduation, Mahfood found work…
Saison-Brett is on shelves today. When a brewmaster tells you something is among his favorite beers that he’s made over the course of his career, you may just want to think about picking up a bottle. Saison-Brett, the latest Smokestack Series release (last on shelves in June 2011), is a beloved brew for Boulevard brewmaster Steven Pauwels. The rest of…
KMBC Michael Trogdon is facing charges after an alleged biting incident in Lawrence. In police stations and newspaper bullpens, two is worrisome and three is a trend. So let’s not go throwing around the “z” word just yet. Only a week after the Miami story of a “nude face-eating cannibal” went viral, an Overland Park man is accused of attacking…
Sami Dowd Chez Elle will become a new forum for public readings every second Saturday. Jennifer Leigh Coates is a professional writer, a copywriter at Sandweiss Koster Inc., with interests in poetry, short fiction – and crepes. Crepes? One afternoon, at Chez Elle, the Crossroads creperie at 1713 Summit, Coates was having lunch in the cozy dining room and started,…
