Monday, January 1Our favorite spot to hit up on New Year’s Day is the Brick (1727 McGee Street), which is celebrating its “Hair of the Dog Day” for its 19th straight year. Beginning at 9 a.m., you can load up on the biscuits and gravy bar, $1 Bloody Marys, food specials including some with black-eyed peas, or items from its…
Things change quickly these days, especially in politics, and a play written in 2000 would probably need a refresh. That’s what director Cynthia Levin, at the Unicorn Theatre, has done with prolific playwright Lee Blessing’s Chesapeake — with his blessing and his contributed tweaks. Originally a two-act, one-man monologue, Chesapeake here runs 90-plus minutes without intermission, with a woman (Katie Karel) in…
Dear Dan: I have been with my unicorn boyfriend for four months. The sexual chemistry between us is out of this world! I’m a woman who’s very open-minded when it comes to trying new things: I’ve had threesomes and foursomes, tried every toy on the market, done anal sex, BDSM, and many other things. He is sexually experienced, but he’s not…
Everything looks different from two stories up.That’s the first thing I learn when I reach the top of the wall at North Kansas City’s RoKC climbing gym, my arms shaking from some combination of fear and adrenaline. I’m totally safe, of course, having securely clipped my harness into a mechanism that will catch me if I fall, but when I…
Sometimes, advance warning of bad news doesn’t fully prepare you for its reality. So it is for the regulars of Mario’s, Westport’s beloved red-sauce nook. The restaurant announced last January that the clock was ticking: December 30, 2017, would be its last day, after close to 50 years. Writing on the restaurant’s website, owner John Waid explained that the “final year is…
The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery awarded Amy Sherald’s “Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance)” first place in the 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. It is the image you see on this page, and I’ll talk about it more in a minute. But time is running out for you to see it in person at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. If it’s not…
Back in October, we talked with Kansas City, Kansas, rapper Aaron Alexander about his introspective, anime-inspired debut album, Memento Mori. The record has won praise from hip-hop blogs and Alexander’s peers alike. Memento Mori was a digital release. Now, the first physical copies of the album are available — and if you buy them in the next few days, your money…
“That couch has a pretty good story,” Adam McGill tells me, grinning.I’m standing in the middle of Do Good Co., the shop McGill owns with his wife, Krystal Pina-McGill. Both of them are stylish and attractive in an effortless, nonthreatening way — at least I’m pretty sure they’re not judging the leggings and baggy “nama-stay in bed” T-shirt that have…
“The world is built on a wall. It separates kind. Tell either side there’s no wall, you bought a war.” — Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright, above), Blade Runner 2049The best movies of 2017 were those that in some way acknowledged the societal walls that either materialized or became more fortified after President Donald Trump was elected. We’ve lived with walls…
Maybe your 2017 was a disaster, but your New Year’s Eve doesn’t have to be. A few options for the holiday:Ça Va (4149 Pennsylvania) has a midnight champagne toast included with its $10 cover, along with food and bottle specials. Call 816-255-3934 to reserve bar seats (tables are all already snagged up). Tannin Wine Bar (1526 Walnut) is offering a four-course…
“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” — Sam von Schamm (Hessian Yosemite Sam), “Bunker Hill Bunny,” 1949Turns out the beaten are rarely offered rank among their recent adversaries. And one doesn’t much like to be a joiner anyway. So it goes for politics, for media — for you name it — within the poisonous contrails of this absurd, draining year that just jetted…
Dear Dan: I am a 22-year-old Italian man, 100 percent straight, sensitive and sporty. I have been reading Savage Love for years in Internazionale. I have one question for you: Why do I always fall in love with lesbians? Why do I instantly fall in love with girls who have that something more in their eyes? Something melancholy and perhaps insecure?…
Kansas City’s past — as cowtown and cattle hub, as commercial force, as recession survivor — is readily visible in its buildings. But what about KC’s future? Cranes dot the horizon as luxury rentals rise, but viable empty properties, some of them storied, await their next chapters, or else obliteration.Preventing the destruction of unique or otherwise worthwhile structures is central…
It’s a moving target, that threshold separating “fledgling adult-olescent” from “functional grown-up who opened a Roth IRA (while drunk),” but I suppose I’ve crossed it. I know this because I’m now expected to contribute to family holiday get-togethers. But I don’t feel like balancing a casserole on my knees for a five-hour car ride, so my version of fulfilling this…
If you are the type of person who has casually followed this year’s most dramatic local news story — that would be Kansas City’s grueling civic march to build itself a new airport — you could be forgiven for getting the impression that, over the past five days, something very bad has transpired. Something that puts the airport project in…
Repeal 18th Bar and Bistro is the latest in a line of establishments celebrating Kansas City’s mobbed-up middle finger to Prohibition. But it may be the first of its kind in North Kansas City, bedding down in the burgeoning commercial corridor that’s already home to Chicken N Pickle and the Cinder Block and Calibration breweries.Father-daughter team Edward Collins and Ann…
Monday, December 18Test your hard-earned knowledge of Boulevard Brewing Company’s beers tonight at Chicken and Pickle (1761 Burlington Road, North Kansas City). You’ll be presented with six beers; guess all of them correctly and you’ll receive a $25 gift certificate to Chicken and Pickle. The games begin at 7 p.m. Tuesday, December 19Chef Anakaren Ibarra and Happy Gillis owner Abbey-Jo Eans…
Friday night’s sold out show at the Uptown Theater made it abundantly clear: For better or worse, a young generation of middle- and working-class Americans loves $uicideboy$. Droves of mallrat teens and disaffected young adults filled the space, privy to the fact that this New Orleans hip-hop duo’s cocktail of violently occult raps, acrobatic Memphis flows, and blown-out trap production is…
Dear Dan: As a 36-year-old straight woman with autism, I am often misidentified as lesbian because my social signaling must read as masculine. I am not bothered by this. However, it is annoying when someone who should know better thinks I would hide it if I were LGBTQ. I’m very direct and honest — sometimes to my detriment — and the…
If you love movies but rely on streaming services to watch them, your life is about to get more complicated. In a little more than a year, all Disney-owned content will leave Netflix and move to a dedicated platform. If you want Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm titles — films and TV shows that make up a disproportionately large share…
Todd Rundgren’s discography overflows with amazing work. As a performer, it includes Nazz and the amazing “Open My Eyes,” solo hits such as “I Saw the Light” and “Hello, It’s Me,” and the stadium-rock staple “Bang the Drum All Day.” Factor in behind-the-boards credits on the Band’s Stage Fright, the New York Dolls’ self-titled debut and XTC’s Skylarking, among numerous…
The Russians finally won, I guess: John’s Space Age Donuts, maker of delicious fried dough since the Cold War, closes permanently in a few days. Owner John Taylor Jr. tells the Shawnee Mission Post today that “sometime next week,” the last apple fritter will be dropped in the last bag and sent home with the last customer. Pitch contributor Chase Castor…
First, we were hungry, so we went looking for food. Not (just) for ourselves, of course. We set out to build a better gift basket, made up of KC originals — the special pantry items we covet for our own. (And we felt an extra buzz about a certain Raytown apiary.) From pickles to sauces, breads, baked goods, candy and cheeses,…
