Archives: August 2013
Martin Manley’s suicide website appears to be mostly taken offline
Manley was 60. Sad news broke this morning when it was reported that former Kansas City Star sports stats editor and writer Martin Manley killed himself at an Olathe police station. Normally, media outlets don’t report on suicides, but they generally do when it happens in public and is news. But the story of Manley’s suicide got weird when it…
Westport Movies in the Parking Lot and other weekend possibilities
Flickr: Pete’s Place Toast the end of summer with a beer float. If you’ve got to plan a date this weekend, you’re all set. This Sunday is Westport Movies in the Parking Lot. Head over to the lot behind Harry’s Bar and Tables (501 Westport Road) for a night of eats and drinks and a trio of films: Waiting, Office…
Hickok’s Bar & Grill has closed in the River Market
Matthew Taylor Hickok’s had style. Hickok’s Bar and Grill has moseyed on from the space at 528 Walnut. After two and a half years in the River Market, the Southwest-style bar and grill has closed. It had a vibrant happy hour for a while, and I once inexplicably spent St. Patrick’s Day there with a plate of nachos. Back in…
Janelle Monae is coming to Kansas City in November
Rolling Stone Monae makes the world go ’round. Two Novembers ago, Janelle Monae – a soul-funk queen/fashion icon improbably born in the KCK neighborhood of Quindaro – was back in KC for the Mayor’s Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony at Crown Center. In what is either a high or a low point of my professional career, I briefly interviewed her in…
OSHA cites JJ’s Restaurant and the company laying cable in February explosion
Heartland Midwest and JJ’s owners were blamed by OSHA. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration released the findings of its investigation into the February explosion of JJ’s Restaurant on the Plaza. The report cites both the restaurant owners and Heartland Midwest LLC, the company that was laying fiber-optic cable at the scene. In a release, OSHA asserts that the Heartland…
Sam Cassell will be live and in person at Lufti’s on Friday
It’s Cassell and catfish tomorrow at Lufti’s. Ever since the Sprint Center opened, diehard basketball fans usually get one shot at satisfying their National Basketball Association fix (the Miami Heat are slated to play the Charlotte Bobcats on October 11). But tomorrow, hoop heads can chat with Sam Cassell at Lufti’s Fried Fish (3037 Main). The three-time NBA champion, now…
Jon Dee Graham is playing a house show in KC this weekend
Daniel Perlaki Jon Dee Graham Americana journeyman Jon Dee Graham is a Texas-famous musician who has gigged with outside-of-Texas-famous performers like Alejandro Escovedo, Patty Griffin, John Hiatt and James McMurtry for many years now. He writes plenty of his own stuff, too, though, and this Sunday he’ll be in KC to perform some of those for us. It’s a Money…
Which Kansas City bar would you want to see on Bar Rescue?
Spike Who would you rescue? Bar Rescue, the reality extreme makeover show for booze halls on the decline, has apparently been in Kansas City recently scouting potential makeover spots. Host Jon Taffer attempts to change the culture and the look of a business during the hourlong Spike television show. There’s a Kansas City connection with Jeff “Stretch” Rumaner, who lent…
Streetside: Hobnobbing at the 2013 Pitch Music Awards
About a month ago, I foolishly agreed to introduce some nominees and winners at this year’s Pitch Music Awards, held last Sunday night at the Uptown Theater. I would be onstage only a few minutes, but still I spent the better part of last week filled with great dread about it. By the time Sunday rolled around, I was outwardly…
Everybody shines in KCAT’s Picnic
Some live for theater and some for the theater experience, the kind that stays with you long after the curtain call. The Kansas City Actors Theatre has opened its “A Classic American Summer” series with a Picnic for both segments of theater lovers. It’s an immediate satisfaction that lingers in its pleasures and its pull. William Inge’s 1953 play won…
Jazz Beat: Harold O’Neal Trio at the Blue Room
Harold O’Neal grew up in Kansas City and attended the Paseo Academy of the Arts. Bobby Watson mentored him. So did Ahmad Alaadeen. He has toured the world and performed with Bono, and been interviewed on NPR and reviewed by The New York Times. But he still has love for his hometown. Two years ago, O’Neal spent New Year’s Eve…
Scammers’ Phil Diamond and the art of punk crooning
The plural nature of the name Scammers implies a group, but it’s just one guy — Phil Diamond — plus a Boss pedal, a looper and sometimes a synthesizer. On a Saturday night in late June, Diamond was setting up his rig on the floor upstairs at MiniBar. He wore denim shorts and a Southwestern-style tank top that revealed his…
Music Forecast August 15-21: Kurt Vile, Y’allapalooza, STS9, Umphrey’s McGee, Bob Mould, more
STS9, with Umphrey’s McGee Sound Tribe Sector 9 has been fucking around with computers and dance music since Skrillex was getting wedgies out on the playground. The Santa Cruz, California, quintet started on the periphery of the jam-band scene, but as the popularity of electronic music in the United States has skyrocketed, so has that of STS9. The group also…
Co-director Joshua Oppenheimer talks about The Act of Killing
Austin, Texas-born filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer spent years researching one of the most horrific genocides in history. He has emerged from the process with a festival-favorite documentary — one spiked with surreal humor and musical numbers. To make The Act of Killing, which opened Friday, August 9, at the Alamo Drafthouse, Oppenheimer and his collaborators put retired paramilitary Indonesian gangsters on…
Will Royster challenged a 40th District political dynasty three years ago and got screwed. Now, he won’t let it go
Will Royster thumbs through a pamphlet while patiently waiting for the Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners’ July 25 meeting to begin. The clock on the wall is frozen at 8:58 in this dark, windowless room in Union Station’s basement. Royster is equally frozen in time. He has waited three years to face the commissioners in this room, which he…
Ryan Brazeal opens his imaginative Novel on the West Side
Chef Ryan Brazeal’s five-week-old Novel is the most distinctive restaurant to open in the metro in a long time, and perhaps the most ambitious, too. But it doesn’t offer a perfect dining experience. Not yet. For one thing, the space itself — last known to eaters as the unconventional bistro called Lill’s on 17th — is impossibly petite. Novel’s size…
At Plug Projects, Brandon Juhasz hears you asking for more
A melancholy sigh for the usual: It’s OK to be average. There is, after all, only so much room at the top of the doughnut pyramid. Wait, doughnuts? Yes. Artist Brandon Juhasz has set a pyramidal stack of pink-frosted doughnuts on a low pedestal made to suggest imitation marble. It’s a meeting of desire and mediocrity, a sure lure for…
The Pitch Music Awards 2013 (photos)
Angela C. Bond A little housekeeping as we close the door on The Pitch Music Awards season. List of PMA winners here. A Streetside roundup from Sunday night here. And photos from the party and show here. Thanks, everybody, for coming out and being great! Categories: Music Tags: pitch music awards
Kidnapping suspect found dead in Wyandotte County jail cell
McPike was found dead in his cell last night. The suspect in a Missouri kidnapping was found dead Tuesday night in his Wyandotte County jail cell. Elijah McPike, 23, of Gilman City, Missouri, was picked up in Kansas City, Kansas, on August 9, and he was awaiting transfer back to Harrison County, Missouri. Authorities suspect McPike killed himself. McPike was…
Buffalo chicken wings: Finding the real thing in Kansas City
This is the place where chicken-wing lovers pay homage to Buffalo’s namesake dish. I was in Buffalo, New York, last weekend and finally made it to the legendary Anchor Bar, the downtown saloon – not all that far from that city’s waterfront – where the dish now known as Buffalo chicken wings was invented (an almost accidental creation, like many…
Novel
Novel is now open in the former Lill’s on 17th space. Take a look inside with these photos by Angela C. Bond.
Find The Pitch
