Archives: May 2013

It’s First Friday, and we have an app for your art gallery tours

intev The Pitch’s First Friday app will guide you through the Crossroads art party. Unfortunately, the weather isn’t cooperating with this month’s First Friday. But there’s a lot of great stuff to see, snow be damned. Need a guide through the Crossroads Arts District? We’ve partnered with intev LLC, which has created an app to help you find the galleries,…

Celina Tio opens Collection tonight, despite snow and rain

Celina Tio’s Collection will offer a special $5 First Friday menu at Collection tomorrow. Ignore the bright-yellow Kansas City Cafe sign still hanging on the side of the red-brick building at 1532 Grand. “That was supposed to come down yesterday,” says restaurateur Celina Tio with a sigh. “I may get on the ladder and take it down myself.” Kansas City…

KC’s Reggie B is on a new track with Rakim (yes, that Rakim)

Reggie B makes some noise. Yesterday, Brooklyn-via-Toronto hip-hop producer Marco Polo dropped a new mixtape, Newport Authority 2. On it, there’s a track called “Cur$ed (What’s Wrong Remix)” that features legendary NYC rapper Rakim (of Eric B. and Rakim). That same song also features a melodic chorus from Reggie B, whose name you might recognize if you pay attention to…

IKEA looks to fall 2014 opening after picking contractor J.E. Dunn

File J.E. Dunn gets to build this retail attraction soon. Swedish furniture- and meatball-maker IKEA picked J.E. Dunn – who else? – to build its store atop the Great Wall of Merriam. The prolific Kansas City contractor gets to work with civil engineer Shafer Kline & Warren on the tricky task of building a massive store to replace a barely…

AG Eric Holder to Sam Brownback: Nice try on gun law

File Good things didn’t come in the mail for Brownback on April 26. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will have none of Kansas’ new gun-law hijinks, telling Sam Brownback that a recently passed bill purporting to protect Second Amendment rights is actually unconstitutional. Holder sent Brownback a letter on April 26, one day after Senate Bill 102 became effective, warning…

The Sucka Free Producer’s Showcase is tonight at RecordBar

Wandering Mayor. In print this week, we checked in with Sephiroth, who hosts the Sucka Free Producer’s Showcase. It’s a night devoted to the city’s beat makers and producers, and it goes down this evening at RecordBar. On the bill: Wandering Mayor, Dan Matic, Topp Boom and Leonard Dstroy. Seven bucks gets you in. Categories: Music Tags: sucka free producer’s…

Potbelly Sandwich Shop is coming to Overland Park

Facebook: Potbelly Potbelly is getting ready to fill more bellies. Potbelly Sandwich Shop has picked a second Kansas City area location. The franchise, which is like Google Fiber for Chicagoans, has received approval from the city of Overland Park to build a 2,134-square-foot restaurant at 6751 College Boulevard (near the southwest corner of College and Glenwood). A drive-through was not…

Iron Man 3

This will sound like faint praise, but it’s something of a wonder that we aren’t sick of seeing Robert Downey Jr. suit up as Iron Man. Unlike Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow, whose appearance in even the first, delightful Pirates of the Caribbean film diminishes in the memory with each lame successive installment, Downey’s Tony Stark has managed to stay in…

To the Wonder

It’s probably best to see Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder or any Terrence Malick movie — or any movie, really — with diminished expectations. Two years ago when Malick released The Tree of Life, only the fifth feature film in a career going on four decades, the rapturous reviews produced a critical lock step that kept a lot of viewers…

Streetside: Hi-Dive makes a well-timed splash in 39th Street West

The 39th Street West neighborhood is home to a number of city-famous establishments — Jazz, Donna’s Dress Shop, d’Bronx, Room 39 — but is not exactly an entertainment district. At least, not in the way Westport, the Plaza and the Power & Light are. It’s a great area for happy hour, dinner and maybe a drink after dinner, but by…

The warped, artful folk of David Bennett’s Akkilles

When David Bennett started playing music, he gravitated toward conventional folk songs: “These kinds of ballads where it’d be just me and an acoustic guitar, maybe a girl singing harmonies or something,” he says. “I got a little bored of that.” For the past few years, the 26-year-old Kansas Citian has been recording homemade demos as Akkilles. On these recordings…

Talking with Sephiroth about the Sucka Free Producer’s Showcase

I don’t want to rap. I don’t want to be a DJ. I just want to make some dope fucking beats.” So says local hip-hop musician Sephiroth. And he’s not alone. Particularly since the death of legendary producer J Dilla, in 2006, interest in producing has grown, and the art form continues to evolve. This is true both at the…

At the Unicorn, an artist’s spellbinding journey

Art is Asher Lev’s passion, his language, his way of interacting with everything around him. He can’t remember a time when he didn’t paint or draw. But this need clashes with his ultra–Orthodox Jewish faith and upbringing. It’s narishkeit (foolishness), time stolen from studying and serving God. And Asher’s subject matter goes against his religious teachings — surely driven, he’s…

How TIF flushed Swope Ridge to make way for soccer

Pat Humston moved to Swope Ridge in 1968. Back then, she and her husband, Jim, liked that the neighborhood felt almost rural, though it was well within Kansas City’s borders. Nestled near Swope Park, south of where 63rd Street meets Interstate 435, Swope Ridge is a working-class enclave that even today seems bucolic thanks to its narrow, winding, hilly streets,…

Jeff Francoeur, it’s not cool to hit your coach in the junk

Frenchy needs to learn some boundaries. The Royals thumped the Rays 8-2 at home Tuesday night. It was just the win that fans needed to get the bad taste of the two games – 9-0 and 10-3 losses – out of their mouths. But it wasn’t an entirely painless night. Royals outfielder Jeff Francoeur clubbed a triple in the seventh…

Accurso’s

Anthony Accurso has remade his family’s restaurant in his image. Take a look at some of his dishes, courtesy of photographer Angela C. Bond.