%{}% The first First Friday of 2016 is also the first day of the year, so lots of galleries are taking the holiday for what it is, a day off, instead of launching straight into the new. But more than a few spaces are open in the Crossroads for the evening, and you can probably get to most of them…
%{}% Be it Frank Sinatra, the Police, Tom Waits, or Cannibal Corpse, it’s the time of year for musicians to get together and give the gift of the music they love to you, the listeners and viewers. What this means is that, while there’s a couple originals here, it’s mostly a bunch of cover songs in this month’s Cine Local….
%{}% Can New York developer Tom Valenti deliver a Walmart to Mission? Or maybe the question should be: Does Mission even want one? It’s difficult to detect much support for the big-box retailer as it’s envisioned on Mission’s most valuable piece of undeveloped land. Valenti, the Cameron Group principal who has been unable to get construction started at Shawnee Mission…
The AFC West will send two representatives to the NFL playoffs this season as both the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs clinched spots before Week 17. Although the Chiefs would have enjoyed the Broncos losing to the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday night, the Chiefs are still in play for the AFC West division title. The Chiefs, who play the…
%{}% THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31 Burger bar, vintage beers and bourbon flights (pick from three with different price points, including Pappy Van Winkle), at the Belfry (1532 Grand), $75–$175, 9 p.m., and midnight toast with Boulevard 2013 Saison-Brett; RSVP at events@collectionrestaurant.com. New Year’s Eve party, with preset reservations for tables, at Flying Saucer (101 E. 13th St.), 6 p.m.; reservations must…
%{}% You know what I love best about drinking in this city? All of the opportunities to do it well. Take it from the woman who has happily — in the name of cultural significance and hard-nosed journalism — swirled, sipped and shot her way through nearly every drink menu in the metro. It’s a good time to be thirsty…
%{}% Occupation: Missionary priest, nonprofit leader and socialpreneur Twitter handle: @Mathews_J Hometown: Kansas City, Missouri Current neighborhood: Squier Park, east of Troost What I do: I am priest of St. Mary of Egypt Orthodox Christian Church; executive director of Reconciliation Services, a community-building organization at 31st Street and Troost; husband; and dad of three boys, all avid scouters. What’s your…
%{}% %{}% Something awful must have happened to Quentin Tarantino in the past couple of years. The writer-director’s new The Hateful Eight echoes Pier Paolo Pasolini’s punishing Salò — it’s a perfectly realized indictment of the malign foundations that prop up so much of history, written big and blood-red across the breathtaking, snow-covered hills and plains of America the Graveyard….
%{}% %{}% Making Movies, Your Friend The final show at RecordBar features two of the area’s busiest and most noteworthy acts: Making Movies, performing Latin rhythm-infused rock, and singer-songwriter Taryn Miller, known as Your Friend. Both have had a stellar 2015, and 2016 is shaping up to be equally excellent, with new music promised in the new year. Bring your…
%{}% %{}% A week before Christmas, RecordBar co-owners Steve Tulipana and Shawn Sherrill are struggling to find the balance between managing their busiest season and closing the doors forever on their club’s first address. In July, the two announced that their lease at 1020 Westport Road, in the Old Westport Shopping Center, would expire December 31 and that their landlord,…
%{}% %{}% I don’t take notes at every meal. Sometimes I go out to eat just to eat and I leave my reporter’s notebook at home. I’m a believer in Gore Vidal’s mantra: “To write is to erase from memory.” That has been true in my case, though I do remember most of the weird dinners over the years (the…
%{}% %{}% Can do. That was the mantra adopted by Boulevard Brewing Co. in 2015. John McDonald, the founder of Kansas City’s biggest brewery, broke the aluminum news in The Pitch a year ago November. By April, the first six-packs of a new IPA, Heavy Lifting, had started showing up in liquor stores. Twelve-ounce cans of Unfiltered Wheat, Pop-Up IPA…
%{}% %{}% Question: What is the biggest difference between the two-month-old Dempsey’s Burger Pub in Westport and the Lawrence original? Answer: Customers. I’ve never been in the Lawrence venue when the saloon and burger emporium wasn’t bustling, jarringly noisy and vibrating with upbeat energy. The Kansas City Dempsey’s, not so much. After four meals in the place, in the space…
I haven’t changed my New Year’s resolutions much over the past eight years or so. Each January 1, I basically recycle the same feeble goals. It isn’t that I lack the instinct for follow-through or the very best intentions. But anymore, it’s the ritual itself that counts. Achieving my goals is not as important as recognizing that I have goals….
One-Man Band Stand If you’ve caught a performance by A.J. Gaither, with his homemade cigar-box guitars, or by one-man band Brody Buster, you know that these men possess a strange and wonderful superpower. They, along with artists Cooper CW Ayon and Lou Shields, are bionic-transformer types, Iron Men: individual human beings one moment, full-blown orchestra the next. It’s hard to…
It’s been too long since we’ve had the chance to hear trumpeter Hermon Mehari and saxophonist Andy McGhie together. As they weave through bop standards and original compositions, you can hear the push and pull of complemetary ideas, like brothers finishing each other’s sentences. And they’re just two of a five-piece ensemble — composed of some of Kansas City’s next-generation…
A new year should be a new beginning. But 2014’s baggage weighs heavy as we try to push into 2015. So we’ve made a list — a special list, a wish list — of the people and organizations we’d love to leave in the past. It’s not that the inept, the perverse and the just plain mean don’t sometimes amuse…
