Archives: September 2015
Highwoods putting the Country Club Plaza up for sale
Highwoods Properties, the real estate firm that has owned the Country Club Plaza for more than 15 years, is putting the Kansas City destination up for sale. In a presentation to investors published on Wednesday, Highwoods announced that it has hired a listing agent to sell all or most of the Plaza. It wants to use proceeds from the sale…
Commuter rail inches ahead in Jackson County
Jackson County will receive help from the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority to secure financing for an 18-mile Rock Island corridor railway from Union Pacific Railroad. Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders has long coveted the Rock Island line as part of a larger commuter rail plan that he announced years ago, but which stalled amid struggles to acquire lines from…
Former KC Uber driver organizing national strike against the rideshare company
When Abe Husein started driving for Uber this past March, he says, rides in Kansas City cost $1.85 per mile. When he quit, in August, rides were down to $1 per mile. Good for riders, bad for drivers. Husein, 29, is an investment-minded guy who owns a rental property in town. He says he was driving for Uber to save…
Tasked With Facing Flawless Bengals, Chiefs Head To Paul Brown Stadium For Week 4 AFC Showdown
Following a rough road loss to the Green Bay Packers on Monday Night Football, the Kansas City Chiefs could be facing a must-win situation when they travel to Paul Brown Stadium to take on the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 4. That’s because their second consecutive loss in dropped them to 1-2 on the year, and with how the rest of…
Take your dog to Big Rip, CsBev garage sale, bottle share at the Belfry, Boulevard Collaboration No. 5 release party and more beer events
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1Local brewery night, with Tallgrass, Nebraska Brewing, Walnut River, Coop, Charleville, Empyrean, Mother’s, and Thunderhead, at Barley’s Brewhaus (11924 W. 119th St., Overland Park), 4–8 p.m. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2 Visions of the Flint Hills art benefit for Friends of Konza Prairie, with Tallgrass, at Buttonwood Art Space (3013 Main) New Holland Carhartt Woodsman, Mischievous and Pilgrim’s Dole release,…
Vince Staples had the crowd bouncing last night at Liberty Hall
Vince Staples and Ebony Tusks Liberty Hall Tuesday, September 29 Perusing Vince Staples’ Instagram, you’ll come across an iconic, stark portrait of Ian Curtis, posted by the precocious Long Beach rapper just six weeks ago. The parallels Staples draws between his own work and that of Curtis’ band Joy Division (the short-lived Manchester post-punk act that would go on to…
A beefed-up World Series of Barbecue takes over Arrowhead Stadium this weekend
Barbecue loyalists know that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But at the American Royal’s annual barbecue competition, that smoke and fire didn’t always mean food for hungry attendees. The fragrance was intoxicating, but food-safety regulations made sampling that aromatic meat impossible. This year, sampling is still off-limits, but visitors to the contest have, for the first time, an array of…
The Royals’ postseason play calls for new gear. Here’s what to wear
%{}% Win or lose, the Kansas City Royals have had a heck of a year, and nothing brings a city together like a team in the throes of a pennant race. The players’ easy camaraderie and peculiar magic have extended beyond the ballpark, prompting strangers — waiting in line at the grocery store or playing neighboring slots at a casino…
El Portón Café opens midtown takeout shop next week
Restaurateur Jose Garcia has a motto: “I always tell people, ‘Think big.’ If you can’t think big, why think at all?” That was his response to my question about his new satellite restaurant, El Portón Café, which is scheduled to open next Tuesday, October 6, at 240 East Linwood. “Isn’t this a cursed location?” I asked. “You have to think…
Make48 co-founders Rich Brull and Curt McMillan discuss inventing ahead of this weekend’s conference
Names: Rich Brull and Curt McMillan Twitter handle Brull: @SteelTableGroup McMillan: @CurtMcMillanKC Hometown: Kansas City Current neighborhood Brull: Parkville McMillan: Midtown What I do Brull: I am a husband, father, serial entrepreneur, inventor, and FTC robot team coach. McMillan: Raising two new biz kids — Make48 invent-a-thon and live streaming studio, Story-Torch. Serving as president for Inventors Center of KC. What’s…
Ridley Scott’s The Martian sticks the landing
Junior-high English teachers looking for boldfaced, extra-literary examples of key narrative principles, take note: This is a big week for man-versus-nature and man-versus-himself conflicts at the movies. Tell the kids. As my peer Bilge Ebiri notes about Robert Zemeckis’ new The Walk, that bravura ode to will, teamwork and ingenuity toes its tightrope free of any human adversary, and is…
Sicario
Emily Blunt enters Sicario wary and tense, her head down. She’s playing an FBI agent named Kate Macer who has excellent reasons to feel anxious — even if she doesn’t yet know all of them. As the film’s opening scene plays out, Kate and her team of kidnapping specialists find not hostages in a nondescript Arizona house but dozens of…
The Walk makes a dizzying statement of artistic principle
%{}% At the start of Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk, Joseph Gordon-Levitt — playing famous French wire-walker Philippe Petit — stands atop the Statue of Liberty, in front of the New York City skyline, and directly addresses the camera about the 1974 day that he walked between the towers of the World Trade Center: “They call to me … they stir…
Music Forecast 10.1-10.7: Ghost, Of Monsters and Men, Kristin Chenowith, and Jr. Jr.
%{}% Of Monsters and Men The latest album from Icelandic electro-pop group Of Monsters and Men, Beneath the Skin, is a sprawling, elegant set that evokes the ethereal splendor of the band’s native country. You can practically feel the wind whipping through the fjords on “Crystals” and “Hunger.” Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir’s singing rises and falls around lush electric guitar chords…
The Grisly Hand tries some new tricks
%{}% Friday, the Grisly Hand follows up its excellent 2013 full-length, Country Singles, with a new record. And you’ve got to give full credit here: Though it would have been simpler for these six musicians to retread their well-worn Americana for another easy win, lead songwriter and guitarist Jimmy Fitzner wanted to take a different route. “If anyone asks, we’re…
Jazz Beat: Tim Whitmer and the Consort Band with Lori Tucker, at Unity Temple on the Plaza
Unity Temple on the Plaza enters its 22nd jazz season Wednesday with Tim Whitmer and the Consort Band. Pianist Whitmer has been vamping in Kansas City for decades — you can see him most Fridays at Green Lady Lounge and Saturdays at the Phoenix — but his shows at Unity Temple, each first Wednesday of the month, are special. The…
After six years, Be/Non has a new album
%{}% As experimental space-rock masterminds go, Brodie Rush is a pretty down-to-earth guy. The man, whose weirdo art ideas and prog leanings have flavored the act Be/Non since its 1994 inception, turns out to be a nice borderline-innocuous fellow. When I meet him at his midtown home, he’s in domestic mode: His kid is parked on the living-room couch, wrapped…
República’s tapas campaign needs more of its two-man ticket
%{}% The Country Club Plaza was designed by architect Edward Buehler Delk to look like a neighborhood in old Seville, yet, in 92 years, there has never been a truly Spanish restaurant of note here. That oversight is among the reasons that Alan Gaylin, founder and CEO of Kansas City’s Bread and Butter Concepts, saw visions of paella in his…
Joshua Farmer, a leader of the local tiny-house movement, vanished two weeks ago. Who was he?
Joshua Farmer, the diligent and enthusiastic president of the Tiny House Collective Kansas City, sold a composting toilet for $200 to a fellow member of the collective Monday evening, September 14. Nobody has seen him since. Farmer stopped returning messages from friends and posting to Facebook Tuesday. He missed an interview with a local TV station Wednesday. That Friday, Farmer…
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