Archives: July 2015

Real World KC? No, but the show is casting here Saturday

The show that spawned the reality-TV phenomenon MTV’s Real World is gearing up for its 31st season. So casting is under way — and the search rolls into town this weekend. “We’re about halfway through the casting process, but that doesn’t affect anyone’s chance of being chosen,” says casting director Themi Chahales. New York, Los Angeles and Miami are among the…

Kansas City, Missouri, City Council passes convention hotel deal

Since building the Vista Hotel in 1985, and then refashioning it into a Marriott Hotel after the Vista failed financially, and since expanding Bartle Hall (for which the city remains about $250 million in debt), Kansas City has seen its status drop as a convention city. But the City Council will make another investment to attempt to reclaim a lofty…

Rex Sinquefield thinks raising the minimum wage is an injustice to African-Americans on par with police shootings

A majority of Americans support raising the minimum wage. Kansas City just passed an increase to $13 an hour by 2020, and a similar ordinance is being reviewed on the other side of Missouri, in St. Louis. This is happening all across the country, of course, as more people understand the inherent injustice of billion-dollar corporations paying full-time workers wages…

The Campground’s Christopher Ciesiel talks crowdsourcing ahead of Saturday’s pop-up fundraiser

Christopher Ciesiel and Cristin Llewellyn have been entertaining guests in their backyard since 2011, when the husband-and-wife team built a bar in their shed and started stocking the booze. In the years since, Ciesiel has slowly built a reputation around his craft cocktails — thanks, in part, to a few off-site gigs and guest-bartending spots at local bars.  By the spring…

Bluestem’s Boulevard beer dinner coming August 31

Colby Garrelts and Megan Garrelts, owners of Bluestem restaurant in Westport, are finally doing the Boulevard beer dinner that they’ve had in mind for a long time. “We’ve done beer dinners at Rye,” chef Colby Garrelts says, naming the couple’s Leawood restaurant. “Over the years, we’ve tried to get something going at Bluestem but couldn’t get it nailed down. This…

Kansas man gets one year in jail for his 17th DUI. Wait, how many?

On one hand, the penalties for DUIs in Kansas (and Missouri, and America) are somewhat draconian. Have an extra drink or two with dinner, get pulled over by a bored cop in Johnson County, and — after bail, fines, court costs and legal fees — you’re staring down a several-thousand-dollar dent in your bank account, two days in jail and…

Van Halen showed its age at Cricket Wireless Amphitheater last night

Van Halen Cricket Wireless Amphitheater, Bonner Springs Wednesday, July 22 “You can’t go wrong with Van Halen and 50,000 watts of power” was the first comment I overheard as I walked into the amphitheater, and it might’ve been the most accurate distillation of a hard rock concert ever uttered. Would that it had been a more accurate description of the…

See this now: Emmet Gowin: Photographs at the Nelson

Back in 1997, while discussing his photography’s evolution from people to landscapes, Emmet Gowin told the art magazine Bomb, “You look at what we do to the earth and you realize that we have written, symbolically, on the ground in such a way that people with feeling and eyes can recognize the destructiveness of the hand that’s doing the writing.”…

Drink This Now: the Ian Fleming at Jax Fish House & Oyster Bar

Anyone with a special place for the Vesper martini — the one that Bond made famous, with gin, vodka and Kina Lillet — needs to get down to Jax Fish House & Oyster Bar and sip on the Ian Fleming. It’s a pretty straightforward riff on the classic cocktail, head bartender Kenny Cohrs told me on a recent visit: Three-parts…

Paul LeVota, Independence senator, accused of sexual harassment by intern in Jefferson City

A Missouri Senate investigation released on Wednesday outlines claims of sexual harassment by a student intern against Missouri Sen. Paul LeVota. The long-awaited investigative report details allegations by a University of Central Missouri intern working in LeVota’s (D-Independence) office, accusing the senator of making sexually charged remarks and later retaliating against her when she rebuffed his advances. LeVota denied her…

KC Bier Co. taps Oh Hell-Yes triple helles, Border Brewing brings back Double IPA, Mother’s flight night at Barley’s Leawood and more beer events

Thursday, July 23 
 Chimay Dorée, Dieu Du Ciel Aphrodite tappings, at Flying Saucer (101 E. 13th St.), 7 p.m. Mother’s flight night, with MILF imperial stout, Doozy double IPA, Making Trouble IPA, Chocolate Thunder nitro porter and Three Blind Mice brown ale, at Barley’s Brewhaus (5031 W. 135th St., Leawood), 4 p.m. Mother’s beer dinner at Genovese (941 Massachusetts,…

Is the artisanal Pop-Tart a trend worth toasting?

If you want to try one of Heirloom Bakery & Hearth’s homemade Pop-Tarts, you have to get up early. I stopped by the almost maddeningly popular Brookside café on a recent afternoon hoping to savor one of the fruit-filled pocket pastries, only to stare at an empty platter. An employee told me that the breakfast sweets usually sell out by…

Zebedee’s RPM has a new Crossroads location and a new name

Last month, the lease ended on the 39th Street location of Zebedee’s RPM. The local record store has just announced a brand-new location in a different neighborhood: 1830 Locust Street, in the Crossroads — the former home of Midwestern Musical Co., which closed last July.  To celebrate the fresh beginning, Zebedees is also changing its name. It will now be…

Kansas City Chorale’s Katie Crawford discusses crushing on the Nelson-Atkins, talking to strangers and more in The Pitch‘s questionnaire

Name: Katie Crawford Occupation: I excel at keeping myself occupied. I’m a proofreader at MMGY Global, a professional singer in the Kansas City Chorale, and I’m also the Chorale’s marketing coordinator. If that wasn’t enough, I’m a freelance writer and editor, too. Hometown: Minneapolis Current neighborhood: Southmoreland South. I have a pretty big crush on my next-door neighbor, the Nelson-Atkins…

Douglas Schwietert’s We Sell Memories is a beautifully unresolved valediction

Amid the dozens of assemblages and paintings by Douglas Schwietert filling a fifth-floor studio in the Hobbs Building, one of the canvases leaning on the floor shows two women sitting under a tree, crying. Dressed in Victorian white dresses, with hairstyles to match, they cover their faces and weep into each other’s arms. A large, stately house is behind them…

Music Forecast 7.23-7.29: Tim McGraw, Graham Nash, Robert Earl Keen, CES Cru and One Direction

One Direction When Zayn Malik relinquished his One Direction throne in March, millions of fans worldwide mourned his departure. To their credit, the remaining four members of the English-Irish boy band soldiered on, and Tuesday, the group’s On the Road Again Tour — in support of last year’s Four — stops at Arrowhead Stadium. Though we thought the dated boy-band…