On November 11, the United Professional Horsemen’s Association national championship started its annual five-day competition here. The event, involving Saddlebred horses, Hackney ponies and road horses, was held at Kemper Arena, with which the American Royal — the UPHA’s host — has a long-term lease to stage various horse and livestock shows and rodeos. The American Royal, a 115-year-old nonprofit…
In a great interview out this week, Chris Rock tells New York Magazine’s Frank Rich that making a dramatic movie is easier than turning out a good comedy. “Let’s put it this way,” he says. “Take Anchorman. Now switch the directors of Anchorman and Gone Girl and give them their movies to do. Adam McKay’s going to get closer to…
Trumpeter Chris Botti may have won the 2013 Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Album, but he’s a solid jazz musician, too. He studied with trumpet genius Woody Shaw, and four of his albums have hit No. 1 on Billboard’s jazz charts. This is his charm: Botti’s smooth, intense sound breaks boundaries between musical styles. He has toured with Frank Sinatra…
Haerts Attention, lovers of 1980s synth-tastic baby-making music: Brooklyn’s Haerts is here for you. The group’s self-titled debut is a dreamy listen, suited for equal parts true love and bad decisions. To be fair, it’s not all “Sexual Healing”–themed cuts. “No One Needs to Know” finds lead singer Nini Fabi bemoaning an unfulfilling relationship, while “Giving Up” — clearly written…
There’s a lot more to an Irish jig than fast picking and fancy footwork. Around here, no one knows this better than the Elders. Since 1998, the Irish-American roots band has barnstormed the metro with its own take on traditional Celtic music, writing original songs that sound as true and timeless as the Highland hymns that inspired them. But old-fashioned…
Ryan Heinlein gives me a cringing look of terror when I ask what style of music his band, the Project H, makes. He tenses up and scoots ever so slightly away from me. “You don’t have to know the answer,” I say. Heinlein sighs, slumps in his seat and reaches for his coffee. He tells me that he has always…
On June 6, Kathryn Pruett heard several loud knocks on the door of her Plaza condominium. When she answered, she found Curt Whitlock, an agent with a Lee’s Summit company called Scoian Properties LLC, flanked by two Kansas City police officers. Whitlock told her that her home had been foreclosed on, and he would return in a week to change…
Pete Fullerton had a nice job for more than two decades when he ran the Platte County Economic Development Council. Up there, he helped cities in western Missouri’s most prosperous county strike deals to lure new businesses or expand existing ones. It was a job largely free of the political push-and-shove that typically accompanies economic-development positions. Fullerton seemed perfect for…
Steve Greer, the former co-owner of the iconic Golden Ox restaurant in the West Bottoms, has been retired for only four months, but he’s already bored and looking for a new job. “I’ve painted every room in our house,” Greer says. “I’ve run out of rooms to paint. And my wife tells me I have to get back to work.”…
Sprint, an Overland Park-based telecommunications company whose new Tokyo-based parent company maybe wants to move it to Silicon Valley, is struggling. New CEO Marcelo Claure, hired in September to replace outgoing Dan Hesse, is trying to turn the ship around, following a failed merger attempt with T-Mobile. It’s an uphill climb: Last year, the company was rated the worst service provider in…
Elvis Costello has just announced a string of North American tour dates in the spring, and Kansas City is one of the lucky first stops, on Thursday, March 5, at the Uptown Theater. The Grammy Award winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer is going solo for his “Detour” dates, which should thrill even fair-weather fans. Costello is known…
RecordBar will be reopening at 9 p.m. tonight after having a weekend full of, uh, sewage issues. According to owner Steve Tulipana, RecordBar has long had issues with the sewer line special to the Westport strip mall the venue calls home. On Saturday night, things took a turn for the worse when the main sewer line encountered a severe block….
The Kansas City Star’s homepage — your one-stop source for recipes, celebrity froth and reports of grisly crimes committed in other states — marks Cyber Monday with a wire story this morning about Amazon’s coming armada of order-picking robots. Missing from the Star’s website is any mention of Amazon’s impending closure of a Kansas distribution warehouse, one of the company’s…
Local community-radio station KKFI 90.1 has launched its annual online holiday auction today, and with more than 100 items up for bidding, there’s a good chance you can knock off at least a few names from your Christmas gift list. Some notable items: a one-year family membership to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, a personal tour of Kauffman Stadium and…
