A protracted dispute between City Hall and the owner of three low-income apartment buildings along Armour Boulevard, in midtown, seemed on its way toward resolution last week. But then surrounding neighborhoods caught wind of the arrangement. The Kansas City Neighborhoods, Housing & Healthy Communities Committee was supposed to vote on something of a compromise between the city and Maine-based Eagle…
Tara Light stands inside Fable wearing a seersucker summer dress and a sun hat — a stylish look that can require serious effort. “I really should apologize for how I look,” she says with a warm smile. “I’ve been so busy working on my fall collection at home that I lost track of time, didn’t get around to washing my…
Name: Beth Follmer Occupation: UMKC Bloch School director of events and freelance event consultant Hometown: Independence, Kansas (yes, Kansas, not Missouri) Current neighborhood: Armour Hills What I do (in 140 characters): Events — big, small, cool, swanky, corporate, cozy. You get an invite? I make it happen. What’s your game? When I worked for Sundance, we had a great bar…
With his lean frame and angular face, Frank Murphy still looks like a serious runner, though bad knees have kept him from his passion for three years. Murphy’s devotion to the sport (he has published biographies of marathoner Buddy Edelen and distance master Stephanie Herbst) was one reason that he and his wife bought a charming stone house on Gladstone…
Every garage band dreams of a spot with no neighbors, free of noise complaints and rental fees. Outside of bands successful enough to buy studios, few have it quite as good as Lawrence’s Westerners, half of whose members live in an old farmhouse in the middle of a cornfield in rural-feeling North Lawrence. The farmhouse, whose nearest neighbor is a…
I have now seen what has to be the gayest sushi roll in Kansas City: the Fire Island Roll, served at the two-year-old Mint Asian Café & Sushi. No single component of the roll, including the name, stereotypes it as queer. There’s tempura shrimp and avocado, capped with a jaunty slice of spicy tuna, and dotted with a hint of…
Most Tuesday nights, the six Philistines gather at the Crossroads’ Midwestern Musical Co. for rehearsal. On this particular evening, though, with only four members present, the musicians pay more attention to the bottle of scotch in the corner of the room than they do to their instruments. Vinyl is spinning in the background — an old Monkees record now, before…
Joyce Manor, Seahaven The title of Joyce Manor’s latest album, Never Hungover Again, sounds like a promise just waiting to be broken. Lead singer Barry Johnson’s singing often gets compared with Morrissey’s, and the angst dial for this California pop-punk ensemble tends to be set on high. Johnson’s lyrics seem continually to inform the listener that he is down and…
This Saturday at Harmon Park, the Prairie Village Jazz Festival brings a load of jazz talent to town. As the volunteer booker for this event, I would know — though these artists stand on their own. Among the headliners: Joe Lovano, whom DownBeat magazine’s annual Critics Poll has repeatedly named as the best tenor saxophonist in jazz today. His rich…
Ten minutes after arriving at the new QuikTrip on Little Blue Parkway in Independence, I was working on a 2,000-calorie dinner. At least, that was my best guess — the only numbers I found on the menu were prices. At the chain’s invitation, I’d come to sample its new made-to-order food items — from its QT Kitchens line — that…
Johnny Li and Shelly Zheng specialize in sushi, as well as hibachi and curry dishes, at Mint Asian Café & Sushi in Lee’s Summit. Read Pitch food critic Charles Ferruzza’s review here, and browse photos by Angela C. Bond.
When the Colorado-based Jax Fish House & Oyster Bar opens on the Country Club Plaza in late September (or, more likely, October 1) at 900 West 48th Place, there will be at least two familiar faces in the exhibition kitchen: Chef Bobby Bowman, a veteran of both Webster House and Lidia’s, has been hired as executive chef; Kelly Conwell —…
Ten months ago, the Corner Restaurant in Westport had a new chef, Mickey Priolo, and two owners: Dawn Slaughter and Michael Pfeifer. Flash-forward to today and Pfeifer is gone (Slaughter purchased his interest in the venue several months ago), and this is the first day of work for the restaurant’s newest chef, Stephanie Dumler. Dumler replaces the venue’s second chef,…
Since its inception in 2005, Montreal’s Islands has seen more than a few changes. The brainchild of Nicholas Thorburn (of Unicorns fame), this rock-pop outfit — now based in Los Angeles — has cycled through no fewer than 10 members in less than a decade. The present four-piece incarnation seems about as stable as the previous ones, but Thorburn has…
The easiest way to get some attention in The Kansas City Star these days seems to be by sounding off in some manner about the performance of Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Sly James. Twice in the past week, Yael Abouhalkah, the City Hall watcher for the Star’s editorial board, has come to the mayor’s defense against people who have taken…
We’d almost forgotten about Bishop Allen and its likable high-fructose pop. It has been five years, after all, since the group founded by Brooklyn’s Justin Rice and Christian Rudder last put out new material (2009’s Grrr…). Now, this favorite early-aughts act is back with Lights Out, an album that sounds kind of like the band has been holding onto it…
Pee Party is an irregular column in which we investigate restrooms around town. A perk of living in one place for a long time is the civic knowledge that builds up by watching establishments turn over. To be able to rattle off a list of a commercial building’s previous tenants is, for a sad man like myself, one of life’s…
