Archives: June 2014
Pee Party: MiniBar
Tiny toilets? Read and find out! Pee Party is an irregular column in which we investigate restrooms around town. The line system at most grocery stores – where you choose the checkout lane that seems like it will move the fastest, and then dumbly commit to it – is wrong and should be eliminated. Instead of many separate lines, there…
The Monkees proved last night at the Uptown that they’re more than just a nostalgia act
The Monkees The Uptown, Kansas City Wednesday, June 4 “Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees!” Let’s be honest: There’s no other way the show could’ve started, and there’s no easier way to instantly win the heart of my 8 year-old self who watched Monkees’ reruns on Nickelodeon. The Monkees, while once referred to as the Prefab Four, have undergone a critical reconsideration…
Guess where else is thinking about a tax increase? That would be Johnson County
Kansas City, Missouri, grabbed no shortage of headlines over the last month for the various sales-tax hikes and renewals facing its residents this year. But Johnson County, the wealthiest county in the metro area, also might consider a tax increase of another kind to make ends meet. County Manager Hannes Zacharias’ proposed 2015 budget contemplates a small mill levy increase…
The Westport Beer Festival kicks off the first Kansas City Craft Beer Week
Throw out your calendar. The first Kansas City Craft Beer Week doesn’t stop at day seven. No, the party ends on day nine, with the conclusion of Boulevardia, Boulevard Brewing Co.’s supersize weekend festival of beer, food and music in the West Bottoms. Before we punch our tickets to Boulevardia, though, we have a lot of craft beer to drink,…
Jorge Arana Trio’s ‘Snake in the Grass’ is your Crossroads Summer Block Party song of the day
The third annual Crossroads Summer Block Party is going down this Friday, June 6, and there’s a handful of well chosen acts in the lineup. Chances are, you’re familiar with some of these local favorites, but in case you’re not, we’re counting down to the end of the week with a “song of the day” from one of the bands….
Nick Cave documentary ‘20,000 Days on Earth’ to have advance screening at Alamo Drafthouse June 25
This month is proving to be bounteous for fans of Nick Cave. In addition to his June 18 performance with the Bad Seeds at the Midland, Cave has scheduled an advance screening of his multiple Sundance Award-winning music documentary, 20,000 Days on Earth, for June 25 at KC’s Alamo Drafthouse. (The film goes into wider release in September.) This screening also comes…
Spin’s Gail Lozoff and her partners have plans for the Kabuki location
Gail and Richard Lozoff decided on sushi for their first date, back in 1985. They went to Kabuki Japanese Restaurant in Crown Center. Nearly three decades later, the Lozoffs and their two business partners – Ed Brownell and Michael Kramer – are about to put a Spin Neapolitan Pizza restaurant in the former Kabuki location, on the first floor of…
McLain’s Bakery changes hands – but not a certain recipe
A McLain’s Bakery pineapple roll – that square of puffy, glazed pastry embedded with a dollop of pineapple jam that glistens like a canary diamond – is one of Kansas City’s culinary mainstays. In local memory, it sits alongside a Stroud’s chicken breast or an LC’s Bar-B-Q french fry. The recipe has been the same for generations (though I swear…
St. Paul and the Broken Bones recruited a mass of new believers last night at RecordBar
St. Paul and the Broken Bones, with John & Jacob RecordBar, Kansas City Tuesday, June 3 For the full slideshow, go here. Read our interview with Paul Janeway here. Jesus must have been really upset when Paul Janeway decided not to recruit in his name. Last night at RecordBar, the would-be pastor and frontman for Birmingham, Alabama’s St. Paul and the Broken…
Patrick Mullin, social-media project manager, answers The Pitch‘s questionnaire
Name: Patrick Mullin Occupation: Social-media project manager Hometown: Overland Park Current neighborhood: Downtown Overland Park What I do: Social media by day, more social media by night, occasional beer blogger, frequent beer drinker, constant father. What’s your addiction? Twitter. It’s my favorite mix of comedy, news and commentary on everything happening from a local to global scale. If they ever…
The Fault in Our Stars is about to make Shailene Woodley even bigger
For the center of so much activity — so many doors opening to reveal cameras and trees of lighting equipment, so many entourages slipping swiftly out of one room into another next door — the mezzanine level of Nashville’s Loews Vanderbilt Plaza is curiously quiet. A publicist pads across an expanse of carpeted lobby, beckons an interviewer from the waiting…
Jazz Beat: Will Matthews Organ Trio, featuring Bobby Floyd, at the Blue Room
The B-3 organ has a special place in jazz, and lately, its popularity has seen an upturn in KC. (Green Lady lounge, for example, replaced its piano with a B-3 in the upstairs space.) The sound, when driven by a master, can be an energetic swing dripping with the blues. Ohio’s Bobby Floyd is one such virtuoso, and he’s the…
Music Forecast 6.5-6.11: Chuck Prophet, John Butler Trio, Black Joe Lewis, and more
Chuck Prophet Even if you don’t count Chuck Prophet’s work as a guitarist in the 1980s and early ’90s with the progressive psych-rock band Green on Red, the Californian has put together a prolific career. His 12th solo album, 2012’s Temple Beautiful, has been compared with Velvet Underground–era Lou Reed, and the influence is obvious. Prophet’s arrangements are so masterfully…
Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear know how to roar
The Backroom Gallery in Independence is about the size of a modest living room. It boasts a smattering of mismatched tables and chairs, and a pewlike bench against one wall that faces a small, square platform functioning as a stage. There’s room enough for about 20 people inside, and early on a Friday night, Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear…
Loose Park offers sweet sonic temptations
“Did you bring earplugs?” Matthew Dunehoo asks me as I head into Loose Park’s practice space. The band’s guitarist and lead singer seems genuinely dismayed when I say no. “Your ears will be destroyed.” Drummer Mike Myers, whose basement this is, saves my hearing and produces a pair. Bassist Beckie Trost directs me to a couch bookended by two big…
The city and the Aviation Department grounded facts that the mayor’s KCI task force should have seen
In March 2013, the Kansas City Aviation Department hired local public-relations firm Global Prairie to sell the city at large on the idea of building a shiny new single-terminal airport. For its fee (the firm got about $63,000), Global Prairie worked the local media, including The Kansas City Star, Kansas City Business Journal and The Pitch. It pushed a smattering…
A look at Missouri’s 2014 legislative clown show
Despite the most corrupt ethics laws in the nation and a rising tide of tea-party gubment haters in the House and Senate, Missouri has mostly escaped national-laughingstock status. That has been, in part, due to Jay Nixon, the governor since 2008, who isn’t a Brownback. He’s a moderate Democrat unwilling to sign especially crazy legislation. But after the recently wrapped…
Anne Lindberg opens her final KC show before a move east
People-watching at an Anne Lindberg exhibition can be almost as moving as the art itself. Another viewer enters the gallery. Halts at the threshold. Gasps. That’s how it goes for this artist, whose works, steeped in processes of the “old brain,” evoke primal, nonverbal responses. Your first look at Lindberg’s site-specific installations — delicate threads sweeping across gallery spaces, connecting…
Platte City’s Chaz 325 tells no lies about its comfort food
Seven appetizers are listed on Chaz 325’s laminated menu, but it’s apparently all about the onion rings. “They’re hand-battered and served with our own Cajun sauce,” my server told me one evening. “Everyone is crazy about them.” I pictured every man, woman and child in Platte City, where this restaurant opened three months ago, waving an onion ring happily in…
Austin Rodeo Tickets Nearly 20% Lower Than San Antonio & Houston Rodeos
Every February once the Super Bowl is over and done with there is always a bit of a gap left by football that stretches until the start of spring and baseball season. There is no better marker to show that the beginning of spring is right around the corner better than the annual rodeo. Three of the best rodeos in…
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