Archives: November 2013

Pumpkin-spice lattes are in season. Sigh

Pull on your yoga pants and your hoodies, everybody, because it’s time to talk about fall – specifically, the season’s most ubiquitous harbinger: the pumpkin-spice latte. This beverage has become a ritual like pies on Thanksgiving or 10 a.m. beers on Chiefs Sundays. Just ask Twitter. To wit: “It’s so goddamn autumn outside, I want to burn a pile of…

Emily Elmore, creative director, managing partner at Single Wing Creative, answers The Pitch‘s questionnaire

Name: Emily Elmore Occupation: Creative director, managing partner at Single Wing Creative Hometown: Ozark, Missouri Current neighborhood: Beacon Hill What I do (in 140 characters): I help create brands and market businesses. What’s your addiction? Diet Coke What’s your game? Pro Football 1861 What’s your drink? Greyhound Where’s dinner? Voltaire What’s on your KC postcard? The Royals, the Crossroads and…

Streetcar Authority talks conflicts of interest

It’s just before noon on Halloween, and Tom Trabon wants to hurry the Kansas City Streetcar Authority along. The group overseeing the development of Kansas City’s 2-mile streetcar line is about halfway through its agenda, 50 minutes after the meeting started. Trabon wants to get it wrapped up in the next 10 minutes so that the media and other members…

Lee Hill Kavanaugh, longtime Star journalist, has reportedly quit

The bleeding continues at 1729 Grand. A few weeks back, the Star laid off one of its best investigative reporters, Karen Dillon. Yesterday, our city’s paper of record reportedly lost another veteran female journalist: Lee Hill Kavanaugh. Both had been with the Star since the ’90s. Kavanaugh was a general assignment reporter who was the first female the Star ever…

Moti Mahal

Moti Mahal isn’t Bollywood-slick, but some of the food is really good. Photos via Angela C. Bond.

Jimmy John’s to build drive-thru store at Ninth and Broadway

When this building is demolished, a new Jimmy John’s restaurant will take its place. The rumor is true: Illinois-based Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches is planning to open a drive-thru building next to the historic Majestic Restaurant (built as Fitzpatrick’s Saloon in 1911) at 931 Broadway; the red-brick building to the north of the restaurant is currently being demolished. Not everyone…

Just one week left for Folk Alliance International conference and camp early registration

The 2014 Folk Alliance Conference and Winter Music Camp is taking place February 19-23 at Kansas City’s Westin Hotel, and there’s just one week left to sign up for the discounted early bird registration.  As the FAI’s new home, this marks the first year that Kansas City is hosting the conference and camp. The conference brings together music-industry professionals from…

The Deer Tracks at RecordBar last night: “It’s like being on a sugar rush”

The Deer Tracks RecordBar, Kansas City Monday, October 4, 2013 Elin Lindfors doesn’t look like she belongs with regular people. She has a very slight build, with a Snow White complexion, waist-length white-blond hair, and arresting gray-green eyes. She’s startlingly beautiful, like some kind of fairytale creature. Have you ever seen the Last Unicorn? Lindfors is the human version of…

Mac Lethal is getting a TV show on FX based on Texts From Bennett

Lethal grabs some of that development deal cash. Earlier this year, Kansas City rapper/pancake flipper Mac Lethal released a novel based on Texts From Bennett, his viral-hit Tumblr that purported to document Lethal’s relationship with his 17-year-old, wannabe-gangsta cousin, Bennett. The Star found the book to be “lethally funny.” LOL. Yesterday came word that FX has purchased Texts From Bennett…

Toro Y Moi is coming to the Granada tonight

Chaz Bundick’s stage name is synonymous with that whole “chillwave” subgenre that got popular for, like, a minute back in 2010. Why? Put on any Toro y Moi album and you’ll find yourself wanting to groove in slow motion to the relaxed electronic vibe that Bundick sends pulsing into the room. The latest Toro Y Moi release, Anything in Return,…

Crafts & Drafts 2013

The Pitch’s first Crafts & Drafts was Saturday, November 2, at the Uptown Shopping Center. Take a look back, courtesy of Pitch photographer Angela C. Bond.

Café Hà Tiên, Vietnamese café, opens in south Kansas City

Carol Meunier The new Café Hà Tiên in south Kansas City serves very good, inexpensive Vietnamese favorites. If the month-old Vietnamese restaurant, Café Hà Tiên at 1032 West 103rd Street (located inside a former frozen-yogurt venue), is using a form of team-waiting to serve the patrons in its intimate purple and baby-blue dining room, it either needs a new team…

Research-tax boosters make their last pitch for sales-tax increase

John Spertus doesn’t mince words when asked what he thinks of the organized opposition to a half-cent sales-tax increase for translational medical research in Jackson County. “I find it to be reprehensible,” Spertus says of some of the disinformation he thinks tax opponents spread by mail and other means. Spertus is the clinical director of outcomes research for St. Luke’s…

New video for local producer Hataraqq features vintage jazzercise clips

Javan Brewer, a.k.a. Hataraqq, is a Kansas City producer who specializes in trippy, synthed-out beats, and his song “Slow Wok” happens to be a perfect match for vintage jazzercise clips and Eddie Murphy bit samples.  Chris DeLine, formerly of Mills Record Co. and currently residing in Nashville, put the video together.  “He wanted something like Daft Punk’s ‘Revolution 909’  with…

The Deer Tracks bring sublime electro-pop to RecordBar tonight

The Deer Tracks’ David Lehnberg and Elin Lindfors refer to their music as “Northern light experimental electronica,” which would be pretty easy to make fun of if it weren’t strangely accurate. For nearly three years, the Swedish duo has been creating shimmering electro-pop that sounds like the soundtrack to a dark, dystopian fairytale – the kind of fairytale you don’t…

Tivoli Cinemas in Westport needs to raise a lot of money to stay in business

As we’ve previously noted, Hollywood studios will soon stop producing film prints and switch entirely to digital projection. This puts the onus on movie theaters to convert to all-digital projection, which costs a lot of money. At Tivoli Cinemas, in Westport, the price tag is roughly $70,000 per each of its three theaters. Jerry Harrington, owner of the Tivoli, says…