Archives: November 2015
Topp’d Pizza serving a Thanksgiving leftover pizza
%{}% Chad Talbott, owner and operator of the 10-month-old Topp’d Pizza at 3934 Rainbow, listens to his customers — even when he thinks some of their suggestions border on the highly unusual. “I have a regular customer who’s been nagging me about offering a Thanksgiving pizza,” Talbott says. “And at first I thought it was crazy. But the more I…
Journey, the Doobie Brothers are at the Sprint Center in May
%{}% On Saturday, May 28, you can have it any way you want it — er, as long as that means singing along to Journey and Doobie Brothers’ tunes at the Sprint Center. The two legendary rock bands are joining forces for a co-headlining 2016 tour. Dave Mason opens. Tickets are on sale Saturday, December 5, at 10 a.m. Details…
Farm to Market Bread Co.’s Panettone makes a hell of a holiday dressing
%{}% Last Friday, the Kansas City-based Farm to Market Bread Co. released its annual holiday loaf, a classic Italian panettone — the sweet yeast bread closely associated with Milan, Italy, and baked with dried cranberries, bits of candied orange and a sprinkling of toasted almonds on the surface — to area stores. The cylindrical bread will be offered through the holiday season…
New Music Monday: Listen to Berwanger’s ‘Demonios’ off his forthcoming EP
%{}% Candy-sweet choruses and Josh Berwanger’s smooth, childlike singing play over grandiose guitar riffs on “Demonios,” the first single off the eponymously titled EP, out on December 11 on High Dive Records. There’s something wholly satisfying about the song’s lyrics — Berwanger merrily tells the listener that life is such a joke and begs for someone to make the demons…
Sam Brownback is even less popular than Bobby Jindal
%{}% Like Kansas, Louisiana enacted ruinous Grover Norquist-style income tax cuts in the last few years. Like Kansas, Louisiana’s economy has suffered for it. Like Kansas, Louisiana has a deeply unpopular governor. Anyone notice a pattern? A national poll out on Friday reports that Sam Brownback and Bobby Jindal are the two most unpopular governors in the country. Unfortunately for…
It’s not just turkey dinner at local restaurants for Thanksgiving
%{}% The Thanksgiving Day holiday is one week away and it’s not too late — if you’ve been dawdling, like me — to make a reservation at one of Kansas City’s more popular dining venues November 26. But I wouldn’t wait too much longer to call in a reservation. And if you do wait until the very, very last minute,…
Chiefs Can Gain Playoff Steam With Win Against Lowly 2-7 Chargers
For the Kansas City Chiefs to even be in the “still alive” portion of the AFC playoff picture graphic is impressive enough. The Chiefs lost five consecutive games after their season-opening win against the Houston Texans, and once running back Jamaal Charles was injured and deemed out for the season, it was beginning to look like a recipe for a…
PorchFestKC will not return to the West Plaza next year; organizers seek new location
%{}% In June 2014, Kansas City welcomed PorchFest — a concept that had been gaining traction across the country since its debut in Ithaca, New York, in 2007 — to the West Plaza neighborhood. The first year was a success and was — for the most part — received enthusiastically by the community. When the event took place again in…
Beaujolais Nouveau Day means wine specials at these local spots today
%{}% Each year, on the third Thursday in November, the French — and French wine lovers — celebrate the arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau. This morning at 12:01 a.m., the wine became available for public purchase, and today, several Kansas City restaurants are also breaking open the boxes of special shipments. It’s like an early Thanksgiving — a day for those of…
Cristina Muñiz, Annie Woodfill and Zach Voss speak in Tungs
%{}% The Charlotte Street Foundation’s latest guest-curated exhibition at its Paragraph and Project Space galleries includes two artists of Vulpes Bastille’s Other Windows, which also ends soon. Joel Damon, half of the curatorial team of Omaha, Nebraska’s Project Project, has titled the show Tungs — a pseudo-etymological take on the organ that is largely responsible for making human speech possible. As…
James R. Carnes charged with deceptive online-payday-lending scheme by the CFPB
%{}% Yet another Mission Hills businessman has been accused by federal regulators of defrauding the public via deceptive payday loans. This time, it’s James R. Carnes. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced yesterday that it had charged Carnes and his former company, Integrity Advance, LLC, with violating a whole host of laws, including the Truth in Lending Act, the Electronic…
Mission Gateway on the ropes; developer can’t get enough votes on Mission City Council to pass a site plan
%{}% What hope is there for Tom Valenti if he can’t even get a majority of the Mission City Council to approve something as basic as a site plan? The Mission City Council on Wednesday dealt a blow to the New York developer’s latest idea for Mission Gateway when a narrow 4-3 majority on the council declined to give him…
Screenland Armour hosts bottle share for Dan the Beer Man, Boulevard puts on Class of ’89 Pub Crawl on 39th Street and more beer events
%{}% THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19 Canned beer — canned food drive, benefiting Harvesters, at the Boulevard tasting room (2501 Southwest Blvd.), 4 p.m. Bring canned goods and receive a discount in the gift shop. Also, cans of Pop-Up IPA and Heavy Lifting IPA will be available for $3 each, with proceeds going to Harvesters. Firestone Walker Velvet Merkin tapping, at Flying…
Kansas City, Missouri, City Council committee advances a measure to raise legal age for buying tobacco and vaping products to 21
%{}% Smoke ’em if you got ’em, 18- to 20-year-olds — it looks like you won’t be able to buy cigarettes in Kansas City, Missouri, soon. The Kansas City Neighborhoods and Public Safety Committee on Wednesday recommended approval of an ordinance that raises the legal age for buying tobacco and vaping products in Kansas City from 18 to 21. It’s…
Mick Harris, President of McCormick Distilling, on the acquisition of Broker’s Gin and the company’s legacy
%{}% Last week, McCormick Distilling announced that it was purchasing Broker’s Gin Ltd., which produces the award-winning Broker’s London Dry Gin. This is big news for the Weston company. Though McCormick has been producing gin for years, Broker’s marks its first entry into the premium imported category, making this product one of the most prestigious in the McCormick portfolio. (In…
The metro’s first female passadores help tame an old Elephant at Espirito Do Sul
%{}% Brazilian-born husband and wife Edson and Leonice Ludwig, formerly with the Fogo de Chão churrascaria on the Country Club Plaza, are just weeks away from opening their own Brazilian steakhouse: Espirito Do Sul at 11900 Metcalf, in Overland Park, site of the former Elephant Bar. This won’t be the first Brazilian steakhouse to operate in this suburban shopping center. Eight…
Nathan Kurtz, senior program officer at Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, talks Global Entrepreneurship Week and more in The Pitch Questionnaire
%{}% Twitter handle: @nathankurtz Hometown: Yakima, Washington — apples, wine and hops! Current neighborhood: Shawnee, Kansas What I do: I help create favorable conditions in Kansas City for new firms to start, grow and thrive. What’s your addiction? Playing ultimate frisbee, watching Ohio State football, raising my kids and helping entrepreneurs grow businesses. I love to see people create opportunities…
Secret in Their Eyes
%{}% %{}% Well, this could have been way, way worse. Not much less silly, but way, way worse. Writer-director Billy Ray’s who-asked-for-this remake of El secreto de sus ojos — Argentina’s 2009 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film — dispenses with much of its source material’s sap, along with a welcome chunk of its running time. At a lean…
Spotlight remembers why real reporting matters
%{}% %{}% A few years ago, a small reissue label put out the first commercial recording of David Shire’s score for All the President’s Men. The album is brief, its music minimal, quiet, repetitive — motifs more than themes, instrumental color more than melody, the sound of thread being steadily unraveled. The tones are low, like Hal Holbrook’s Deep Throat…
Kelsey Wroten draws near something big
%{}% %{}% Kelsey Wroten’s illustrations are easy to like and, increasingly, easy to spot. The 2015 Kansas City Art Institute graduate has already worked with brands such as Nike, Nickelodeon, DC Comics, Bitch magazine and Vice. (Also, full disclosure, she recently contributed an illustration to The Pitch.) Her characters, stylish and youthful, can sometimes appear bored, in an amusingly exaggerated…
Vulpes Bastille’s Other Windows shows a faraway nearby
%{}% %{}% What came to mind when I first walked through Other Windows, the group exhibition now at Vulpes Bastille, sounds a little grandiose now. Examining the works by Olivia Gibb, Cristina Muñiz and Annie Woodfill (curated here by Kansas City Art Institute painting instructor Jonah Criswell), I thought of Venice. I thought of the kaleidoscopic, impossible Venice of Italo…
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