Amigoni’s tasting room shows the sunny side of the West Bottoms. The Amigoni Urban Winery is so hot right now that even thieves have taken notice. Someone with wire cutters made off with owners Michael and Kerry Amigoni’s bottle-shaped sign two weeks ago — the only hiccup in an otherwise smooth coming-out party for the couple’s three-month-old tasting and event…
benketaro Admit it, you want to learn to put up your vegetables. Those poor, parched squirrels running around my neighborhood devoured every tomato plant in my backyard — the few plump red ones and even all the green ones — a couple of sweltering weeks ago. No tears were shed by me: It became one less area to have to…
Float’s hammocks only exist as photos for now. One way to measure a thing’s success is to note how fast people miss it when it goes away. By that standard, artist Jarrett Mellenbruch’s “Float” — the dozen hammocks that were until recently arranged on the south lawn of the Bartle Hall Ballroom as part of the 2012 Avenue of the…
Charlie Weis is interested in recruiting Penn State players. In the wake of this week’s NCAA evisceration of Penn State’s football program, there was one piece of news that had college coaches across the land licking their proverbial lips: Penn State players can transfer to other universities without losing playing eligibility. This means that coaches at big football programs will…
Confession: I’m biased. I love Fringe — or, anyway, the idea of it. I love the festival’s motley collision of invention and audacity. Now I just have to learn to love its scale. This thing just gets bigger. In its eighth season, that means a program of 80-plus local, regional and national theater, dance, art, music, film, magic, stand-up, performance-art…
The largest federal false-claims tax-fraud scheme in Missouri history was operated out of a karate studio in a shabby row of businesses in Blue Springs. It was there, say federal prosecutors, that between 2008 and 2011, Gerald Poynter II, also known as “Brother Jerry Love,” issued more fraudulent tax forms than black belts. Poynter and 13 defendants, whom he referred…
More hillbillies than usual — the hippie kind, not the scary Deliverance kind — are in Lone Jack this Thursday through Saturday. That’s owing to the second annual Dawg Daze of Summer Festival, which brings 30 acts — mostly along the jam-folk-bluegrass continuum — to three stages at Lake Paradise Resort. The fest is a mix of bands both national…
The most recent release from Golden Sound Records is Hidden Pictures’ Rainbow Records, a sunny, indie-pop joint with boy-girl harmonies and crunchy power-pop tones. (Think She & Him if they existed in the days of 105.9 the Lazer.) The Pitch recently chatted up frontman and songwriter Richard Gintowt about the record. The Pitch: We talked earlier about Hidden Pictures working…
As business plans go, starting a record label is roughly as advisable as enrolling in a trade school for switchboard operators or investing in a door-to-door milk-distribution company. (Working in print media is a shade less fiscally prudent.) Recorded music is a decreasingly viable commodity, and by now most of us understand why. The Internet has changed the way people…
Sonic Spectrum Dealer’s Choice This month’s installment of the Sonic Spectrum Tribute Series happens to fall on organizer Robert Moore’s birthday, and as such, the theme of the evening is shifting from the usual “a bunch of local bands cover one artist” to what Moore is calling “Dealer’s Choice.” He has picked four local acts and supplied each with a…
Chinese restaurants have been in Kansas City for nearly as long as locals have gone out to eat. Chinese settlers arrived here in the 19th century as railroad employees or laborers, and some stayed in the river town to open their own small businesses. As far back as 1900, the city directory listed several Chinese eateries, and soon the city’s…
Stephen Dinsmore “Ball Game, Camera Men” Stephen Dinsmore paints America’s pastime in the style of that other crowd-pleaser: French Impressionism. (Last year’s Monet exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art drew nearly 100,000 visitors, though the movement implied in Dinsmore’s brushy, gestural forms is more in line with Degas’ ballet dancers.) Despite the athletics on display in Dinsmore’s paintings of…
This year’s Pitch Music Showcase is on a Saturday (August 4) rather than the usual Thursday. I am a fan of this scheduling, as the absence of work the following morning would seem to translate to a drunker, rowdier, better party. Perhaps because of this, the suits downstairs are telling me that we’ve sold more advance wristbands than in any…
Can’t we just leave road disputes to this? This might make you think twice before honking at some buffoon dawdling at a green light or trying to turn left at a busy intersection during restricted hours. The Star reports that a driver honked at a fellow motorist who was not moving at the bottom of the exit ramp at Missouri…
Rep. Cleaver doesn’t care for human-werewolf-vampire love triangles. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver is a scary-film fanatic, but he does not care for the Twilight films. In fact, Politico has a highly amusing story of Cleaver writing letters to his colleagues in the House of Representatives urging bipartisanship, and he uses the epically popular franchise to help make his point. “As my…
Cafe Trio will offer slices of contest winner Kevin Bogan’s cheesecake for a month. The number 1111 (which numerologists believe means “a new start in life”) was a lucky one for cheesecake-loving Kevin Bogan, who won the “Great 8” Dessert Competition hosted by Cafe Trio (with assistance from The Pitch). His recipe for Bananas Foster Cheesecake received the greatest number…
Jefferson For Congress No wigs for the Jefferson of 2012. Don’t call it a comeback. A little over 236 years after serving in the Continental Congress, Thomas Jefferson is running for the U.S. House of Representatives. The former president has not been re-animated. Rather, he’s being honored by a Libertarian candidate challenging U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Wichita) in Kansas’ 4th…
Sports Ramblings from Indy The U.S. Men’s National Team is headed back to Livestrong. Tickets for the U.S. Men’s National Team World Cup qualifier at Livestrong Sporting Park against Guatemala go on sale at 10 a.m. today. The match is set for October 16 at 6 p.m. The United States currently leads Group A, having beaten Antigua & Barbuda 3-1…
The Village is coming to the Farms. The restaurant shuffle continues at Mission Farms. Less than a month after Lakeside Tavern closed in the Leawood development (Bluestem’s Colby and Megan Garrelts intend to open Rye in the space this fall), Avenues Bistro has also shut it doors. But the spot at 10681 Mission won’t remain empty for long. Tavern in…
There will be no more fried chicken at You Say Tomato until the owners get a well-deserved rest. Randy Parks needs a rest. Since opening the combination neighborhood grocery store and bruncheonette, You Say Tomato, inside the old Weneck Brothers market at 2801 Holmes in 2006, Parks and his partner, Mark Wingard, have put in some long, long hours: cooking,…
Lobster corn dogs are one of chef Geoffrey van Glabbeek’s signature dishes at the new Reserve restaurant and bar. The Reserve chef Geoffrey van Glabbeek The Reserve, the dining room in the Ambassador Hotel, had a “soft opening” over the weekend. The veteran server Giovanni Luongo was working the room: “No one knew the place was open, really, but I…
Facebook: KC International Airport Pork & Pickle opened earlier this summer at KCI. At 10:40 p.m. on a Sunday night, I watched a man buy a banana from another man, and it changed everything. I have been no fan of the dining options at Kansas City International Airport (at this time last summer, I was asking if it was the…
