Archives: June 2013
Nancy Jo Sales talks The Bling Ring in her new book
Photo by Jayne Wexler In writer-director Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring, a troupe of spoiled California teens tries to wriggle into Paris Hilton’s world by breaking into her house (along with a bunch of other celebrity homes) and stealing armloads of swag. It sounds like a broad comedy (and it’s an effective laugh generator), but Coppola is telling a true…
J.J. Rizzo’s aunt and uncle plead guilty to voter fraud charges
J.J. Rizzo remains in office. John and Clara Moretina, the uncle and aunt of Missouri state Rep. J.J. Rizzo, pleaded guilty to voter fraud charges Friday. The two were given a fine of $250 and are barred from ever voting again. In May, John Moretina pleaded guilty to voter fraud in federal court. The couple lived in Gladstone but voted…
Overtime Sports Bar & Grill gets it game on in Overland Park
Facebook: Overtime Sports Bar & Grill It’s officially Overtime in OP. It’s game time for the Overtime Sports Bar & Grill in Overland Park. The new sports bar opens tonight at 5 p.m. in the former Paddy O’Shay’s space at 11300 West 135th Street (135th and Nieman) The sports bar has 50 beers on tap and 36 flat-screen TVs throughout…
Maker Faire and other weekend possibilities
Brooke Vandever Gordon (second from right) will be speaking this weekend at Maker Faire. Maker Faire is no longer just about the latest electronics or hacks. The annual event at Union Station has absorbed tenets of the Slow Food movement and will have local growers on the schedule this year to talk about the art of “making” food. John Gordon…
Eleos Coffee House: Coffee, sandwiches and a little Gospel
There’s a little java – and Jesus – brewing at Eleos Coffee on Independence Avenue. There are coffeehouses – quiet places to sip a latte, read a magazine, eat a pastry – in almost every neighborhood in the Kansas City metro. In the city’s Historic Northeast, not so much. There are plenty of saloons in this area, which boasts the…
The Beacon: It’s closed…temporarily?
There have been rumors swirling around the restaurant community for weeks about The Beacon: A Kansas City Tavern at 5301 Main. The 14-month-old restaurant had reportedly seen business partners depart (including Whitten Pell, who was the managing partner, proprietor and the public face of the venue when it first opened, and who left last year) and employees quit since the…
Papa Lew’s Soul Delicious is closing on July 7
Papa Lew’s will end a long run in Kansas City’s Jazz District next month. One of the most beloved soul-food buffets in Kansas City, Papa Lew’s Soul Delicious – a culinary icon at 2128 East 12th Street for more than three decades – will close July 7. The owners of the restaurant, Dorriss Lyman (the widow of the restaurant’s founder,…
The Thirsty Girl takes Coffee Girl’s juices on the road
Facebook: The Thirsty Girl KC is about to get on the juice. Coffee Girl’s Cafe has always been the happy marriage of a smoothie shop and a coffee bar. And now that marriage has produced a fledgling business. The Thirsty Girl, a beverage-centric truck, gets rolling next week, with a drink menu that has been in development over the past…
Twin Peaks is coming to Independence in 2014
Facebook: Twinpeaks Olathe Twin Peaks is expanding into Independence. It makes sense that Kansas City would have a pair of Twin Peaks. The Kansas City Business Journal reports that a new Twin Peaks restaurant is slated to open in Independence in January 2014. The mountain lodge of a sports bar with servers in cut-off khaki shorts and tied-off plaid tops…
Streetside: A new album from the Grand Marquis; Kill Devil Club residencies; Louder Than Bombs returns
Following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Blues and Trouble, the new album from old-school swing, jazz and jump-blues local act Grand Marquis, sees the light of day this week. The five-piece is celebrating twice: once with a show on the official release date (Tuesday, June 25) at Westport’s excellent new record store, Mills Record Co., and more grandly on Friday, June…
As You Like It is all the Shakespeare you need this summer
Last year’s Shakespeare Festival tackled two shows: the ever-delightful A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the weighty Antony and Cleopatra. This summer, the festival has dispensed with a tragic half to concentrate on the season-appropriate As You Like It — flowers, weddings, the love of nature and the nature of love. And what better setting for this diversion than the Summer…
Jazz Beat: Trumpet Summit at the Blue Room
I’ve told Mike Metheny more than once that there aren’t enough opportunities to hear him play. Whether he’s on trumpet or his magical EVI (Electronic Valve Instrument, introduced to him by little brother Pat), or whether he’s blowing lyrical solos on a standard or the inventive lines of his own compositions, Metheny’s jazz performances are a rare Kansas City treat….
Madeline Farrell and Wilson Vance have turned Booty Jamz at the Riot Room into one of the hottest weekly parties
When Madeline Farrell and Wilson Vance took over as Wednesday-night DJs at the Riot Room a year ago March, their rap- and R&B-themed night at first had “a really intimate house-party vibe,” Farrell says. These days, not so much. Every week, a huge, diverse crowd swells and bobs on the Riot Room’s patio. Bodies bounce to tracks like “Blow the…
Music Forecast June 27-July 3: Marilyn Manson and Alice Cooper, Alejandro Escovedo, Los Lobos and Los Lonely Boys, and more
Marilyn Manson and Alice Cooper Alice Cooper pioneered shock rock in the 1970s by murdering chickens and staging fake executions onstage. Marilyn Manson took up the mantle in the 1990s with his industrial-metal songs full of drug references, anti-religion messages and — my favorite — the obviously false rumor that he had one of his ribs removed so he could…
Dirty Wars journalist Jeremy Scahill takes aim at U.S. secrecy
As the national security correspondent for The Nation, Jeremy Scahill has posed some challenging questions about how the United States should conduct itself during wartime. His 2007 book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, recounts how the company became a major player in the war in Iraq while removing layers of public accountability. Scahill’s latest book,…
Susan Stuckey told Prairie Village police to shoot her. Records show she didn’t have to wait very long.
Susan Leslie Stuckey died violently the morning of March 31, 2010, shot three times by a Prairie Village Police Department sergeant who had forcefully entered her apartment. The shooting wasn’t supposed to happen. Though Stuckey, a 47-year-old woman with a long history of mental illness, had told the police officers outside her apartment that she wanted them to kill her,…
Voltaire starts its own movement in the West Bottoms
Zurich’s legendary Cabaret Voltaire was an avant-garde oasis while World War I devoured Europe. Almost a century later and a continent away, as hipsters devoured the Crossroads, the West Bottoms’ R Bar was a different kind of oasis. One gave the world Hugo Ball’s Dada manifesto. The other gave Kansas City Ron Megee’s giant, illuminated R. Both flourished briefly —…
Tracy Krumm and Tanya Hartman share a conversation at Sherry Leedy
The value of an artwork can’t be measured by how long it took to conceive and make. But how long it holds your attention is another thing. The dual exhibitions at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art — Tracy Krumm’s In the Making and Tanya Hartman’s We Write Ourselves Anew — cast lines of thought at each other across the rooms, and…
Kansas City GLBT advocacy groups celebrate Supreme Court DOMA ruling (Photos)
Equality supporters were in a festive mood Wednesday evening. Kansas City GLBT advocacy groups joined those from around the country today in celebrating the Supreme Court decision overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. The ruling means that legally married same-sex couples will receive the same federal benefits as heterosexual couples. The local groups held a rally in Illus Davis Park…
UMKC Conservatory downtown arts campus gets $20 million boost from Julia Irene Kauffman
Mayor Sly James says a downtown arts campus is not a “pie-in-the-sky endeavor.” The long-sought downtown arts campus for the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance took a major jeté toward coming a reality today. At a press conference on stage at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts this afternoon, Julia Irene Kauffman announced that the…
The new Sporting Kansas City mural is complete, and it’s a good look for the Crossroads
It was time for change on the wall of 1712 Main. After more than a week of painting, Boulevard Brewing and the Roasterie’s shared “hometown brews” ad/mural on the side of 1712 Main has been covered with a new mural promoting the Major League Soccer All-Star Game that Kansas City hosts July 31. At the risk of committing Kansas City…
Sara Lee has its own Twinkie knock-off in a store near you
Ashford Stamper No, it’s not a Twinkie…it’s a knock-off! If it looks like a Twinkie, feels like a Twinkie and tastes like a Twinkie…is it a Twinkie? Here’s the deal: You can wait until July 15 for the original Twinkie to return to store shelves (the bankrupt Hostess now has new owners, as Jonathan Bender reported yesterday) or you can…
Parkville opens its Wednesday Farmers Market today at English Landing Park
Facebook: Parkville Farmers Market Parkville Farmers Market opens today. You can add another farmers market to your rotation. The Parkville Farmers Market opens today in the parking lot of English Landing Park at 2 p.m. and runs until 5 p.m. Keep an eye out for honey from the Santa Fe Trail Honey Farm. There also are baked goods, eggs, jelly,…
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