Archives: November 2016

You’re welcome: 26 places to eat Thanksgiving dinner that aren’t your family’s house

Spare yourself this year’s horrific post-election family conversations and annual cooking meltdowns by heading out of the house for Thanksgiving this year. Dozens of restaurants are offering holiday-themed specials in addition to their regular menus, and many are open late. Reservations? You’ll want to make them. But there’s also no shortage of places ready to welcome you as a last-minute…

Allied pits Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard against a terrible script

Intelligence officer Max Vartan (Brad Pitt) has been informed that his wife, former French resistance fighter Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard), is a Nazi spy, but he doesn’t believe it. He’s been told not to investigate the matter on his own, but he asks a first-time pilot flying over enemy lines to contact a man on the other side to prove…

Shawnee Mission School District forbids teachers from wearing safety pins

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, safety pins have emerged as a gesture of solidarity toward marginalized groups — women, immigrants, people of color, Muslims, and the LGBT community — who have pretty good reasons to be concerned about life in Trump’s America.Over in the Shawnee Mission School District, though, this simple symbol of compassion has been deemed excessively…

Strfkr and Deerhunter coming to Lawrence early next year

The Granada has announced two enticing reasons to head to Lawrence in the early months of 2017. Deerhunter will be appearing at the venue on Tuesday, January 24, and Strfkr headlines a month later, on Tuesday, February 21. Deerhunter is making this Lawrence date during a curiously paired tour with Kings of Leon, and Strfkr is touring on Being No…

Kris Kobach isn’t the next U.S. attorney general, but let’s not celebrate just yet

A puffed-up Kris Kobach spent this week giving interviews to media outlets in his self-appointed role as immigration-policy spokesman for President-elect Donald Trump. That wall along the Mexican border? A sure thing, Kobach said. A registry for immigrants from Muslim countries? Possibly! (Kobach loves a good registry.) Deportations by the truckload? Coming right up. Trump’s staunchly anti-immigration campaign notwithstanding, however,…

Here’s the deal on Lyft returning to Kansas

Last week, we reported that Lyft was hiring drivers in the area. Then a Lyft representative denied to us that it was launching in Kansas City. So why were local drivers getting texts from Lyft about training and orientation? The answer arrived today: Lyft is relaunching in the area, but only in Kansas, not Missouri. “The current regulations in Kansas City, Missouri…

Dead-mall aficionado Seph Lawless on why he says Metro North Mall is the creepiest in America

Metro North Mall, which has been closed for two years, was briefly trending on Facebook today.That’s due to a viral-ish article published in The Huffington Post, which called the Northland mall the “creepiest mall in America.” It was written by the photographer and documentarian Seph Lawless, whose work is largely inspired by decaying, rotting, abandoned, and otherwise apocalyptic-seeming locations in…

Young Thug, Har Mar Superstar and Black Violin lead your music week

Young ThugOn the cover of Young Thug’s September-released album, Jeffery, the 25-year-old rapper wears a periwinkle-and-white costume by haute designer Alessandro Trincone — the androgyny suggesting an artist comfortable in the spaces between. His music heartily reinforces this perception. Young Thug — born Jeffery Lamar Williams — has never taken the traditionalist’s approach. On Jeffery, his voice dips and drags, twists…

Charlotte Street asks a timely question, leading your Third Friday rounds

After the week we have had, what could be more timely than an exhibition about what it means to be living in the United States? Charlotte Street Foundation curator-in-residence Lynnette Miranda starts her work in Kansas City with ¿Qué Pasa, USA?, opening at la Esquina (1000 West 25th Street) Friday, November 18, with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m.Miranda…

The Handmaiden seduces this week, while everyone else vies for dictatorial control over you

Thursday, November 17Believe it or not, 2016 isn’t the first year that Americans yearned for a totalitarian leader to singlehandedly fix everything. Way back in 1933, the politically muddled bizarro Depression fantasy Gabriel Over the White House conflated democracy with dictatorial control. %{}%In this movie, the archangel Gabriel (no joke!) takes possession of a president (Walter Huston), then changes the course of…

Chef Carlos Falcon walks us through Jarocho South, set to open in mid-December in south Kansas City; plus the week’s restaurant events

The second location of chef Carlos Falcon’s celebrated seafood restaurant, Jarocho Pescados y Mariscos — called simply Jarocho South — is set to open next month at 131st Street and State Line Road. That’s good news for those in the southern part of the metro, but the original’s regulars have reason to be curious, too. The newer restaurant features a…

Hank Charcuterie does damn near everything perfectly

After a year of discomfiting political and cultural shakeups, take heart: Positive change remains possible. At least in Lawrence, where Hank Charcuterie, a hyper-local, meat-minded restaurant, keeps growing — and keeps getting better.Hank is no secret to LFK residents, who have enjoyed owner and executive chef Vaughn Good’s homemade sausages and tasting plates since 2014. But Good had loftier aspirations,…

The Paris climate conference finally signaled consensus on global warming. That was last year.

If President-elect Donald Trump actually believes all the warnings he issued during the election about the threats of immigration, he should be talking about ways to slow global warming as well. Rising sea level, caused by the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps, will probably displace tens of millions of people in the decades ahead, and many may…

KCK settles lawsuits with police arrested but not charged after a sting

At noon on January 4, 2011, a 10-man tactical unit descended on a house in Kansas City, Kansas. But no arrests were made until after the police van returned to an underground garage at Kansas City, Kansas, police headquarters.Awaiting the tactical unit was a group of commanders, including the former and current chiefs, who ordered the officers out of the…

Jason Kander belittles Kris Kobach, who is rumored for post in Trump cabinet

Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, who ran a stout race against U.S. Sen Roy Blunt, leaves office in January. But he’s making it clear that he intends to remain active in state and national politics.First, Kander, a Democrat, posted a feisty message after coming within three percentage points of unseating Blunt. More than a requisite thank-you-for-your-support, Kander encouraged the…

Ben Helt, of the Midwest Coffee Trading and the Specialty Coffee Association of America, talks beans and roasting and speaks a little Spanish in The Pitch‘s Questionnaire

Occupation: Sales at Midwest Coffee Trading and e-learning manager for the Specialty Coffee Association of AmericaInstagram handle: ben_heltHometown: HarrisonvilleCurrent neighborhood: Southern Raytown, Kansas City borderWhat I do (in 140 characters or less): I hook up roasters across the country with the right coffee for their customers and run SCAA e-learning programs for coffee folks everywhere.What’s your addiction? Coffee and burnt…

Incoming Kansas City Star editor asks first question at Obama’s news conference

President Barack Obama tapped Colleen McCain Nelson, who is leaving The Wall Street Journal to run the editorial page at The Kansas City Star, to ask the first question at his news conference on Monday.After his opening remarks, Obama called on Nelson, acknowledging that Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary and Kansas City superfan, had put her name at the top of the list…

Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys take a Hollywood ‘Walk’

This weekend sees the wide release of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the film based on the 2012 Ben Fountain novel about Iraq War veterans. Directed by Ang Lee, its cast includes Kristen Stewart, Vin Diesel, Steve Martin, Chris Tucker, and the unknown Joe Alwyn as the title character. The film also features tunes from Rex Hobart and the Misery…

Sting is coming to … the Uptown?

In one of the more unlikely concert announcements of late, news came through in the middle of the night that Sting would be appearing in Kansas City February 16. The unlikely part of the announcement is not that he is coming to our fair city (though that certainly has become rare), but that he is playing the Uptown, which has…