In keeping with the DIY-punk spirit that brought Vandals Punk Rock Club to life, bartender and manager Michelle Wyssman is now endeavoring to purchase the bar and music venue through a grassroots, community-sourced approach. Yesterday, Wyssman – who was instrumental in the remodeling of Vandals and getting the name legally changed from its former Black & Gold Tavern – launched a…
If there’s one thing Kansas City music fans know well, it’s that our town could use a music venue designed for a capacity of around 1,000 people. We’ve got some strong club options (RecordBar, the Riot Room, the Tank Room) and some beautiful theaters (the Midland can fit 3,200, the Uptown 2,300), but there’s a gap when it comes to…
If you haven’t managed to catch the story yet, 96.5 the Buzz’s Afentra – of the radio show Afentra’s Big Fat Morning Buzz – had a less than stellar Saturday night. According to the story over at KCTV Channel 5, while Afentra was out at Missie B’s with a friend, she was allegedly attacked by a deranged douchebag after she…
One of Kansas City’s most beloved pie producers, Tippin’s — the pies outlasted the local restaurant chain by more than a decade — will be a first-time featured vendor at this year’s Sugar Rush, an event sponsored by The Pitch on Thursday, January 29, that combines sweets, coffee and liquor in a setting both congenial and confectionary. Tippin’s plans to serve…
An appraisal firm hired by the Johnson County Commission last year to study the market for the King Louie building at 8788 Metcalf decided that it would make sense to hear from a broker who once listed the property for sale. Audrey Navarro, a broker for Kessinger Hunter, told Valbridge Property Advisors that the old bowling alley and ice rink…
LTS Management, an online payday lending operation located at 908 Baltimore in downtown Kansas City, more or less went poof last year, following the U.S. government’s crackdown on its business model. A tremendous amount of money is at stake in such operations, which is why everybody involved in them is scrambling to conjure up new ways to replace the unrealistic profit…
New Year’s Eve is traditionally a holiday about endings. And so it was for Eric Carter, the 38-year-old executive chef at Providence New American Kitchen, the two-year-old dining room inside the President Hotel at 1329 Baltimore. Carter’s last working day at the hotel — where he had overseen the cuisine for nearly five years, including several in the short-lived Drum…
If you’re involved in the local music scene even a little bit, here’s something you’ve probably wished for at one point or another: a virtual Rolodex containing contact information for musicians, producers, bands, music stores, studios and everything else music-related. The good news: The Folk Alliance International is well on its way to providing you with such a resource. They…
The idea was a good one: Open a local outpost of a popular Manhattan, Kansas, restaurant and hire one of Kansas City’s most celebrated chefs to create a new and imaginative menu. The result was Cocobolos (or “Cocobolos by Michael Smith,” according to an early menu), in the PrairieFire complex at 135th Street and Nall. The developers of the PrairieFire…
The small club of political consultants in Kansas City got a little smaller on Thursday night when Pat Gray died. He was 69. Health problems had dogged Gray for more than a decade and had become more apparent over the last year. He kept working nonetheless, and was tapped to work this upcoming round of Kansas City, Missouri, City Council…
Grazzhopper, 40 Watt Dreams Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Grazzhopper is a duo — banjoist and guitarist Cody Brewer and guitarist Dylan Angleton, who share vocal duties — but you’d be forgiven for thinking there were at least three other players in the band. Together, Brewer and Angleton create intricate folk songs that have as fierce a heart as any banging rock band….
When the first incarnation of the Ship opened on 10th Street, the year was 1935 — just after Prohibition had ended. One can only imagine the epic, liver-destroying parties that this Kansas City treasure housed. The Ship operated for nearly 60 years at its original location before being torn down to make room for a park, but the signs, bar…
Since 2009, Wisconsin native and Seattle-via-Los Angeles resident Nika Roza Danilova has performed as Zola Jesus, creating layered, inky goth-pop that haunts a listener long after the record stops. The latest Zola Jesus album — last October’s Taiga — finds the 25-year-old carving a fresh path for herself using the tools that she has spent years sharpening. Taiga’s stark, intense…
Let’s say you buy a house, a fixer-upper. You know it’s going to take some money to get it in shape, but you end up spending close to the purchase price. But now it’s a dream home, right? Now let’s say, after all that money and time, your property is worth about a quarter of your investment. That’s one way…
The kitchen inside Matt Roth’s childhood home in Shawnee has changed little over the years. Vintage magnets, collected from various U.S. cities, are arranged in careful rows on the refrigerator. Dark-orange and avocado-green utensils hang from the cabinets and the walls. The floor, a brown-and-gold geometric motif, meets a bold lime-colored shag carpet as the kitchen gives way to the…
A year ago, I visited a brand-new local restaurant that was clearly — in fact, almost proudly — doing everything wrong. From the décor to the menu to the presentation to the bar, all of it spelled disaster. This was amusing the first time I tried to eat there. But my second meal in the place veered from erratic to…
Big scoop by the Associated Press today: According to information that the AP obtained from an open-records request, a federal grand jury is investigating Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback over loans made to his 2014 re-election campaign. Carol Williams, the executive director of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, has been subpoenaed and must appear before a grand jury next week, according…
The phrase “jazz vespers” conjures images of a worship service with some rhythmic flair. But starting Sunday, January 11, and continuing on the second Sunday of each month, the First Baptist Church of Kansas City puts a new twist on that notion. The church introduces the Kansas City Jazz Vespers series with its first free (and secular, in case you…
In 2009, the Missouri Department of Transportation had $1.3 billion to spend on constructing and maintaining the state’s roads and bridges. By 2014, that budget line item had shrunk to $700 million. MoDOT now projects that its construction budget will get hacked down to $325 million by 2017 — and keep in mind that it requires $485 million a year…
Nearly a decade after Face the Promise, Bob Seger is back with a full-length album that he says may be his last. Ride Out, released last October, contains six original tunes from Seger and four covers and is not, perhaps, the magnum opus for which the 69-year-old legend will be remembered, but it’s still a worthy album that serves as…
