Who is Todd Akin talking about? Cornered, doubling down and newly friendless, Todd Akin is going into attack mode to save his U.S. Senate campaign. Tuesday afternoon, he launched a page on his website declaring that he was “still standing” and asking supporters to stand with him and kick in $3 donations. The nutty part of Akin’s attempt to reconnect…
The five-year-old Greater Kansas City Bartending Competition has grown into the Paris of the Plains Cocktail Festival, a weeklong celebration of KC’s revitalized cocktail culture. Three can’t-miss events from the lineup: * If you’ve seen any of that revitalization up close, you’ve recently had a drink made with bitters. But it’s a talented chef who can figure out how to…
Driftwood Driftwood’s smokers are set to smoke. Any competitive barbecue team worth its rub will tell you the same thing: Barbecue just tastes better in a parking lot. The fact that the sun is shining and beer is being quaffed is irrelevant. You’ll have to forgo the suds, but Kansas City’s newest food truck is hoping the old axiom holds…
Alpha jam-band Phish hasn’t released new material since 2009’s highly forgettable Joy, but then it’s not about the albums with Phish. It’s about the live experience, brah. It’s about selling enough Sammy Smiths in the parking lot to make it to the next show, brah. It’s about that tasty “Guyute” tease during “Harry Hood,” brah. I kid; I kid because…
Photo by Sabrina Staires Name: Jenny Jackaway Occupation: Executive director, Pages & Chapters Tell us about your work with Pages & Chapters and Open Books: Pages & Chapters began in fall 2011 with home visits to urban families to provide support in the area of literacy. Summer 2012 added more programming at the Waldo Branch of the Kansas City Public…
Have you seen this van? It belongs to the Good Foot, and some asshole stole it. According to the band’s Facebook page, someone took the white, 18-passenger, 1995 GMC Rally van on August 20. It was last seen around the 4200 block of Charlotte in Kansas City, Mo., at 12 a.m. The van was empty, fortunately, but still. If you…
Santoro neatly puts together gin and grapefruit juice in this cocktail. In what was billed as a five-star restaurant in Normandy, France, I once looked a waiter in the face and said, “Plus fort fromage.” Asking a Frenchman to bring me the strongest cheese available was a questionable decision, and I have rarely shown similar audacity since. So I’m a…
A neglected son asks his father for money. Hears: Son, I don’t have it. When paternal help isn’t forthcoming in The Queen of Versailles, it’s because Dad is David Siegel, the embattled Westgate Resorts founder whose poor decisions drive Lauren Greenfield’s judgment-inducing documentary. By the time that offspring, middle-aged middle executive Richard Siegel, goes to his pops for a handout,…
Dozens of agitated bees hover around Joshua Anderson’s head and shoulders. The farm manager is standing in a former cattle pasture, in the shadow of Nebraska Furniture Mart. He shifts his weight from one work boot to the other, absently flicking at the ear that got stung when the bees were delivered in June to the Boys Grow farm in…
Is it possible for a 30-year-old man to attend a carnival by himself without being perceived as a pederast or some manner of pervert? The short answer is no. An individual with extraordinary charisma and grace might successfully navigate such terrain, but these qualities elude me. Still, I am not a pervert, not really anyway, and so it was with…
Two years ago, Texas songwriter Sam Baker performed in Kansas City as part of the Folly Theater’s Cyprus Avenue series, and toward the end of one of his big, painful folk songs, a quiet calm enveloped the room. It was the kind of song that opens up a previously undiscovered cavern of loss in the heart. Audience members dabbed at…
Hearts of Darkness, with the Good Foot A couple of Sundays back, Hearts of Darkness took home the 2012 Pitch Music Award for Best Live Act, an outcome that came as a surprise to roughly nobody. Despite playing around town on a regular basis, the local funk-Afrobeat crew almost always draws large, eager crowds. There’s a lesson here for bands:…
A friend of mine called the other day to tell me how much she liked a new restaurant and saloon in Waldo. “I’ve been telling all my friends that they just have to go to Recovery.” She may well have friends who need to go into recovery (who doesn’t?), but the actual name of the place she likes is Remedy…
A question mark punctuates the title of the Kansas City Artists Coalition’s new group show — What Now? — and the phrase itself suggests a little uncertainty, a little anxiety. But the pieces that Janet Simpson, the organization’s executive director, has chosen indicate that most of the invited artists in this memorable exhibition confidently answer: “I am doing this now.”…
Remedy is a new Chicago-style gastropub in Waldo, delivering American fare with a twist. Photos by Angela C. Bond.
Google feels your pain, apartment dwellers. Monday night, Google sent e-mails to apartment and condo dwellers who’ve been having trouble preregistering for its superfast Internet (and TV) service. Google admitted that its records weren’t up to snuff. “This process itself has been long and painful for many of you,” said the e-mail, which hit my inbox around 8:15 p.m. “We…
Reverb is out now. The Boulevard Brewing Co. is reaching a new stage in its product development, one where it can look back on what it has done as the inspiration for where it’s headed. Reverb Imperial Pilsner, the latest Smokestack Series release on shelves today, brings that very concept to the glass. Boulevard is revisiting the style that inspired…
Kansas Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder has apologized over and over for swimming buck naked in the Sea of Galilee after Politico broke the story on Sunday. The nude splash happened a year ago when Yoder and other members of Congress were in Israel on a privately funded fact-finding trip. It’s not on the level of Todd Akin’s rape gaffe, and…
Mike Lundgren takes the long view with TEDxKC. If you haven’t been online in the last three years, it’s possible you haven’t heard of TED talks, the bite-sized presentations that attempt to explain grand ideas or theories in 18 minutes. Starting in 2006, TED (technology, entertainment and design) talks were published free online for anyone with time to burn. Presentations…
