Once I began poking around downtown Kansas City, Kansas, for places to eat lunch, I realized that the possibilities were so bountiful, my personal project could take weeks. Yesterday I finally stopped in to eat at a venue that I’ve passed a dozen or more times: the six-year-old Burritos La Chiquita, a bright-orange building at 1328 Minnesota Avenue. There are a…
If things had gone differently, restaurateurs Andy Lock and Domhnall Molloy, the owners of the Summit Grill & Bar in Lee’s Summit and in Waldo, would have announced their plans to turn the 69-year-old Arnold Hall, at 123 Southeast Third Street in Lee’s Summit, into a new restaurant, 3rd Street Social — on May 24, that town’s official “Joseph Arnold…
Chef Martin Heuser told me at least three times that the bison he just added to the lunch, dinner and lounge menus at Affäre, his Crossroads restaurant at 1911 Main, formerly led happy, stress-free, grass-eating lives on the Kansas prairie before, you know, being slaughtered. I couldn’t resist asking: “Will eating bison with a stress-free childhood somehow make my life…
Matthew Hendrix spent much of his young life in and out of mental institutions before he was convicted for his role in the 2010 shooting death of Kansas City businessman Michael Tutera. Hendrix was 17 on the evening of May 27, 2010, when he and others entered Tutera’s Sunset Place home just south of the Plaza to carry out a…
“We all have a little bit of history here,” Luke Sardello says when I ask him why he and his partners have chosen Kansas City for their second record store — more than 500 miles from their first shop, which is in Dallas. Sardello, J.T. Donaldson and Waric Cameron this week open their Josey Records at 1814 Oak, in the…
Say hi to Bruce Boxleitner (pictured here), who — unlike co-star Jeff Bridges — plays the title character in the original, splendidly dated Tron. The likably wooden actor peaked early with this 1982 Disney production (which is more complicated than you remember), but at least he got to play an iconic part in a benchmark of early computer animation. Tron…
Few things say summer like an outdoor Dave Matthews Band show. Those in the Missouri area will get that experience during right in the middle of summer when the band comes to Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in St. Louis on July 15. The July shows comes in the middle of a long summer tour for the band that runs through the…
We like zines. We even write about zine people sometimes! Now here we are writing about them again because we recently caught wind that a big zine convention is planned in Kansas City later this summer. Kansas City Zine Con #1 is set to be held in the Valentine Room at the Uptown Theater Saturday, August 29, from 11 a.m….
The city of Kansas City, Missouri, yesterday announced that it is soon to launch a new program aimed at offering micro loans to local artists. The program is a collaboration between the Economic Development Corporation and AdvanceKC. Justine Petersen — an organization that has awarded more than $1.8 million in micro loans to 154 small businesses in Kansas City since 2012,…
Dogs can be crafty creatures. Sometimes a little too tricky for their own good, like a few of the pups at the Great Plains SPCA (5428 Antioch, Merriam). Some of those dogs have a knack for escaping the play area. So a couple of volunteers have started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to buy a cover for the play pen. Here’s their plea:…
The popular Trolley Track Trail won’t get clogged by vehicle traffic headed to a forthcoming grocery and apartment project near the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The long-awaited Whole Foods-anchored mixed-use development near 51st Street and Oak, just west of UMKC’s administrative office building, made it to a KCMO City Council committee on Wednesday. The project contemplates 170 market-rate apartments atop…
THURSDAY, JUNE 18 Sierra Nevada Beer Masterclass, with brewmasters Steve Dresler and Scott Jennings, at Tapcade (1701 McGee), 6 p.m. $10 ticket includes tasting glass, pint glass and six samples. Firestone Walker happy hour, with David Walker and tappings of Stickee Monkey, Bretta Weiss and Sucaba, at Flying Saucer (101 E. 13th St.), 5-7 p.m. Founders tap takeover, with KBS,…
Instead of making birthday cake, Aaron Confessori and Rich Wiles, the co-owners of the Westport Cafe & Bar, are celebrating the venue’s fifth anniversary with free frites. It’s an offer good through the end of June. When Confessori was a 19-year-old college student at Wichita State — majoring in ceramics — he would make the occasional foray to Kansas City,…
The bar at Bristol Seafood Grill is all but empty when I arrive for happy hour on a Monday — a welcome lull for bartender Austin Jacobs. He has only just arrived, and the task I’ve given him — whipping up one of the restaurant’s brand-new Porthole cocktails – requires some concentration. The Porthole is, for starters, the vessel itself:…
Name: Andy Dandino Occupation: Art director and creative strategist, Kansas City Public Library Hometown: Kansas City, Missouri Current neighborhood: Waldo What I do: As part of the library’s creative team, I help share stories about the amazing things the library does to support the KC community. What’s your addiction? Puns (much to the chagrin of my friends and colleagues). Aside…
There are better Belle and Sebastian albums than Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, but the Scottish outfit has never made a more energetic record. Songs such as the opening “Nobody’s Empire” and the sweaty “Enter Sylvia Plath” amp up yester-B&S’s gentle gambol to Daft Punk-like BPM. Bass lines wriggle. You can smell heat coming off the keyboard patch cords….
Tyler, the Creator Tyler, the Creator seems intent on pushing his listeners to their limits on his latest album, Cherry Bomb. The 13 tracks pluck juicy notes from electronica, soul and R&B, spliced with Tyler’s steady flow. But it’s not always to the benefit of the song. Regardless, Tyler carries unabashedly on, apparently reveling in the chaotic spiral he has…
The annual Jazz in the Woods festival has been dismissed in recent years by “true” jazz fans for its emphasis on smooth music, but don’t let that deter you from this weekend’s 26th-anniversary celebration. More than 25,000 people came out to enjoy the sets last year, and this year’s lineup isn’t anything to sneer at. The last album from bassist…
Last year, Lawrence’s Free State Fest dropped “Film” from its name in order to more accurately represent what the organizers wanted to offer. No longer just a film fest, this weeklong arts extravaganza now includes stand-up comedy, author appearances and a healthy dose of music. We’ve rounded up a few highlights. Musical Theater Well, not quite musical theater. But some…
Last year’s Center of the City was the festival’s biggest, loudest yet, a colossal three-day weekend packed with local and regional punk acts taking over the bar Vandals in April. Vandals is no more, but Center of the City is back for a fourth go-round, with a new home. Beginning Thursday, June 18, and stretching over Friday and Saturday, 34…
A deaf son, and a family deaf to his emotional needs, share the stage in the Unicorn Theatre’s production of Nina Raine’s Tribes, a play that speaks with uncommon clarity about assimilation and frustrated communication. The playwright’s views are filtered through a family of self-absorbed academics and artists who may as well be laborers at the Tower of Babel. Nightly…
Five years ago, the Living Room Theatre opened in the Crossroads. And, as any 5-year-old might, the Living Room is celebrating its birthday by binging, shouting and vomiting in a room of strangers. The occasion is John Kolvenbach’s On an Average Day, a play the company first staged in its inaugural season. And though Kolvenbach’s script ultimately offers more to…
I don’t live in Kansas City, Kansas. I don’t work there, either. But I cross the Kaw with some frequency — to eat. My Crossroads desk isn’t far from some perfectly fine lunch options. But not long ago, I found myself craving the street tacos at El Camino Real, on Seventh Street in downtown KCK. So I headed over the…
