It’s exhilarating to be in a new restaurant when it’s in the full flush of its opening hype. When a place opens with sizzle — great word of mouth, full stations from opening to close, people not just sitting or standing around the bar but crammed around it like Katy Perry fans waiting for an autograph — it gives off…
Anton Kotar says he’s counting down the days to open his namesake saloon and restaurant. Seven months ago, I wrote a Fat City post about restaurateur Anton Kotar turning the old Daddy’s Backdoor gay bar at 1610 Main into a sophisticated restaurant, saloon and butcher shop. At that time, Kotar said the venue would be open in mid-March. That was…
A shootout left a bystander dead on Monday. A rolling gun battle Monday night at 33rd and Jackson left one person dead. Kansas City police say the victim, 27-year-old Tyree Stuckey, was an innocent bystander. He was shot in the head. Detectives are looking for the people involved in the shootout. If you know something, call the TIPS Hotline at…
Bacon-Fest, an homage to all things porcine, was Saturday, August 25. The annual fundraiser for the Rehabilitation Institute of Kansas City brought crowds hungry for bacon to the nonprofit’s parking lot on Main Street. Photos by Brooke Vandever.
Gigamesh The Gusto Lounge announced a pretty darn impressive show yesterday. Gigamesh is the headliner for the free, 21-and-older show on September 20, which starts at 10 p.m. Superb local support from Brent Tactic, Bill Pile, JT Quick, DJ C-Mac, KCDC, and DJ Jochen. A few other notable announcements: Thievery Corporation is set to play the Midland on October 10….
Port Fonda has gone from food truck to brick-and-mortar restaurant, and the dishes suggest the newest restaurant in Westport is going to be sticking around for a while. Photos by Angela C. Bond.
Great news, Kansas City! To depart journalism for a more lucrative career in advertising, public relations or marketing has long been interpreted — by other journalists, at least — as a sign of compromised ideals (or else exhaustion). Flacks serve products, companies, corporations. Journalists serve truth. An advertising salary may buy you a big, comfortable bed, the thinking goes, but…
The abnormally warm — excuse me, I mean hot as boiling acid — summer has heightened my excitement for the return of all things fall, creepy and cold. (I’d wager that the sentiment of the majority of Kansas City Metro citizens is similar.) Childish anticipation aside, autumnal pastimes are just generally delightful. For example, the fast approaching season makes violently…
Design.Co This chart holds the key to every kind of coffee drink. Fat City is usually about uplifting and inspiring readers to fill their gullet with fried or seared bits of culinary excellence. At times, you probably wonder if Oprah herself is behind this keyboard, touch-typing out small electronic missives. Alas, all of you are not getting a toaster. But…
Gosling would be at home in Olathe. When Olathe drivers get behind the wheel, it’s apparently hands at 10-and-two and a commitment to signaling before switching lanes. In the eighth annual “Allstate America’s Best Drivers Report,” produced by the Allstate Insurance Co., Olathe is ranked as the 14th safest driving city. Olathe-ites are 15.2 percent less likely to get into…
Peyton Hillis is hoping to run his way onto your team this year. The cynical among us would say Chiefs fans are already playing fantasy football every year, even if they aren’t in a league, trying to poach $20 from friends based on the real-world performance of their virtual teams. But if you’re in for the long haul of a…
Brooke Vandever It was bacon by the trayful on Saturday. I don’t get people’s ravenous appetite for all things bacon. Was it the advent of the Atkins Nutritional Approach that started the bacon bliss? Did y’all just say, “Fuck it” and board the bacon bus with a shout of “peace out!” to your HDL cholesterol? The smell? I don’t get…
Name: Ryan Davis Occupation: Creative manager, Alamo Drafthouse Mainstreet Hometown: Kansas City Current neighborhood: Blue Springs Who or what is your sidekick? In life, it’s my wife, Angela, but if I were to turn into a masked vigilante, I would have to go with my dog, Tyler Durden. Mostly because I want to see him in a cape and mask….
The Kansas Speedway promises a newly repaved track with better, faster racing. NASCAR drivers don’t like alterations to their tracks, explains Pat Warren, Kansas Speedway president, while cruising around the newly paved 1.5-mile track in a Toyota Sequoia. “They hate change,” Warren says, leaning the SUV into a banked turn as construction crews work on the infield under an overcast…
At the root of the most bitter romantic disagreements is a desperate plea that takes many forms but boils down to Why are you like this? The only people who ever have good answers (No, why are you like that? doesn’t count) are in the movies. Onscreen, as in life, people rarely utter the question out loud. But the push-pull…
Along with the dregs of Hollywood blockbuster season, August is when Wisconsin’s Beloit College puts out its annual Mindset List — that widely reported roundup of cultural touchstones deemed unlikely to mean anything to incoming university freshmen. This year’s includes things like cars that rely only on radio signals for sound (because children of the MP3 age never had to…
Lawless, director John Hillcoat’s follow-up to the Cormac McCarthy adaptation The Road, is little more than a testosterone-slicked period melodrama. But on its own limited terms, it’s brutally effective, an outlaw drama about real-life Prohibition-era bootleggers that traffics in heightened emotions, corn-pone humor and over-the-top violence. It’s the latest in a fruitful partnership between Hillcoat and songwriter-turned-screenwriter Nick Cave, who…
Not long ago, during my daily, useless Internet travails, I happened upon a website about artisanal pencil sharpening. (There is even a book out now inspired by it, called How to Sharpen Pencils. John Hodgman is involved.) After a few minutes of research, I determined that the site was a parody of some kind. But that it was unclear to…
Once the dark, grubby site of an occasional hip-hop night or a small rock show, the Pool Room, at Ninth Street and Iowa in Lawrence, hasn’t been much of a draw in recent years. But that appears to be changing. Over the past year, Barnyard Beer — a brewery owned by Andy Agnew and operated by Lawrence residents Mike Hummell…
Kansas City Reggae Jamboree It’s Labor Day weekend — no work on Monday! That means Saturday and Sunday are wide-open for unlaborious activities like sitting around and getting faded and listening to reggae bands. If that’s your jam, the KC Reggae Jamboree at Californos has you covered. Saturday, it’s acoustic from Joel Castillo (77 Jefferson), plus sets from Firehouse Dub…
For every freak drawn to Full Moon Productions’ annual haunted-house auditions, there’s at least one geek. At an August open call, one young man, his long hair tucked inside a do-rag, an even longer beard left uncontained, paces back and forth in front of Amber Arnett Bequeaith and her small staff. “Do you have a character that you like to…
