Archives: March 2016

News

Sporting Innovations, the Sporting KC-affiliated tech company, settles lawsuit with former co-founder Asim Pasha

Steve Vockrodt,

Sporting Innovations, now known as FanThreeSixty, has settled its 2015 trade secrets lawsuit against Asim Pasha, the tech company’s co-founder. The settlement was filed in federal court on Monday. It settles claims by Sporting Innovations, first reported on by The Pitch in 2015, that Asim Pasha conspired to use the company’s proprietary information to start a competing organization. Sporting Innovations, which…
News

Jennifer Lapka Pfeifer’s Rightfully Sewn chooses its first class

Angela Lutz,

Jennifer Lapka Pfeifer considers herself a “budding Garment District historian.” Sitting in the Tea Drops café at the H&R Block building downtown, where Pfeiffer works for the Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation, she told me she’s recently gotten to know several women who worked as seamstresses when Kansas City was an epicenter of clothing design and manufacturing in the…
Dining, Food & Drink

In which I just keep (gladly) handing Unbakery and Juicery $20 bills

Angela Lutz,

Convincing me to try Brookside’s new Unbakery and Juicery took only three words: raw pad Thai. I know vegan chefs are basically wizards, capable of concocting familiar flavors out of seemingly disparate ingredients — cashew-based cheese, for instance, or scrambled eggs made of tofu. Still, I wasn’t sure how the Unbakery would pull off raw noodles, an essential component of…
News, Politics

Missouri lawmakers, after another resignation in disgrace, decide once again that they don’t need no stinkin’ ethics reform

Steve Vockrodt,

Promises to implement some semblance of ethics reform have stalled once again in the Missouri General Assembly. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. I remember sitting in a Crossroads coffee shop with then-state Rep. Jason Kander a few years back and listening to him explain to me how hard it was for the Kansas City Democrat to push basic ethics…
News

Sarah Breiby, production manager and butcher at the Local Pig, talks the East Bottoms life, trains, butcher jokes and more

Justin Kendall,

Instagram handle: @queenofthebottoms Hometown: Olathe Current neighborhood: East Bottoms — or, as we like to call it, Easy Bottoms What I do: I cut up animals, and tell customers what is in the breakfast pot pies: sausage, eggs, cheese, potatoes, OJ, Cap’n Crunch. That’s a classic butcher shop joke. What’s your addiction? Kitty’s Cafe all day. What’s your game? Scrap…

Music

DJ Spooky brings his art-music-and-science mashup to JCCC Saturday

Natalie Gallagher,

I can barely hear Paul D. Miller when he answers his cell phone. When I reach him, he’s in the middle of a mountain hike near Boulder, Colorado, seemingly enveloped by wind. It shouldn’t be surprising that Miller — known globally as DJ Spooky, that Subliminal Kid — is fielding interviews in the wilderness. The driving force behind Miller’s artistic…

Music

Hot 103 Jamz kicks off an ambitious talent search

Nick Spacek,

This weekend, radio station KPRS 103.3 — the FM staple known as Hot 103 Jamz — holds the first of three new music showcases, hosted by morning show co-anchor Brian B. Shynin’. The station’s music director, Chris Harris, likens the events to mixtapes, saying they present a variety of strong new talent for a low price. “There’s a lot of…

Music

Matt Otto Quintet with Walter Smith III, at the Blue Room

Larry Kopitnik,

Houston native Walter Smith III is part of a fresh generation of jazz musicians gaining national acclaim. On his 2014 album, Still Casual, saxophone solos pull you in with crisp vigor wrapped in unexpected elegance. Smith is in Lawrence this weekend for the KU Jazz Festival. But Thursday night, Matt Otto, whose own saxophone solos match ideal tone with imagination,…

Music

Music Forecast: Carly Rae Jepsen, Kacey Musgraves, Ben Rector

Natalie Gallagher,

Kacey Musgraves Kacey Musgraves has a playful, tongue-in-cheek approach to modern country. Her lyrics are filled with rather harmless humor (I ain’t pageant material, I’m always higher than my hair, she quips on the title track of her latest album, Pageant Material), and her melodies are buoyant and cheery, letting you know that no matter what she says — even…

Movies

True/False returns with another set of prize-worthy documentaries

Dan Lybarger,

In a high point of last Sunday’s Academy Awards telecast, Louis C.K. admonished the film community and audiences for not paying more attention to short documentaries. Whoever won the category’s Oscar that night, he said, would cart the trophy home “in a Honda Civic.” For several years now, the True/False Film Festival, in Columbia, Missouri, has programmed enough documentaries to…

A&E

Firing up First Friday ahead of March’s big ceramics conference

Tracy Abeln,

It’s a good thing that Oklahoma’s fracking earthquakes cause only tiny tremors here in KC, because almost every gallery in the area (including Lawrence) is full of breakables right now. March 16-19, the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) is in town for its 50th annual conference, with this First Friday an informal prelude. You can get…

News

As Overland Park Sen. Greg Smith seeks re-election, his daughter and his politics stay inextricably linked

Steve Vockrodt,

Michael Czerniewski is running for Kansas Senate District 21 for one reason: to oust Greg Smith. Smith has been in the Legislature since 2010, first as a House Republican and, since 2012, as a senator. He sought political office following the high-profile murder of his daughter, Kelsey Smith. (Senate District 21 covers major portions of Overland Park and Lenexa.) Kelsey…
News

The ethics debate in Jefferson City is becoming a comedy routine

Steve Vockrodt,

If you read only one story in today’s edition of the Kansas City Star, make it this one by Jefferson City correspondent Jason Hancock. In it, he describes what we all knew was coming in this year’s debate over ethics among Missouri lawmakers. Predictably, meaningful ethics rules are stalling as elected leaders quibble over the significance of receiving gifts from…