Monday, March 19The Pitch’s Taco Week kicks off today. Specialty tacos can be snacked upon all over town for 50 percent off their price. (We suggest eating twice as many tacos as you normally would, as opposed to just pocketing the savings.) Visit any of the following restaurants to get your fill this week: Port Fonda (Westport), Mission Taco Joint,…
What matters more: the stories we tell about ourselves or the stories coded into our DNA? That’s the question at the heart of the Unicorn Theatre’s production of Informed Consent, a modern morality play for an ambiguous age. Playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer was inspired by real events. In 1989, the Havasupai Indian tribe agreed to let a team of Arizona State University…
Sex with Strangers, the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s latest production, asks a question I never thought we’d need an answer to: What if the only thing professional women needed to rise to the top was a good lay? The play, by House of Cards writer Laura Eason, opens in a remote bed and breakfast in rural Michigan in the middle…
We’ve got tacos on the brain lately: The Pitch’s Taco Week begins next Monday, March 19. But for W. David Keith, every week is Taco Week. Last fall, he started a podcast, Taco the Town, that’s dedicated to tacos in Kansas City. Each week (on Taco Tuesday, naturally), Keith invites a guest onto the show to talk about his or…
The fourth annual Everything Is Not OK Fest in Oklahoma City this past weekend highlighted all of what’s right, and a little of what’s wrong, with punk rock in 2018.OKC is pretty close to KC — about five hours by car — and each of the fest’s four years have featured a handful of Kansas City bands. On Thursday night,…
“Often,” C.J. Janovy writes of gay-rights activists in her new book, No Place Like Home: Lessons in Activism from LGBT Kansas, “these citizens knew they would lose, or that they might win at city hall but that their victory might be reversed by angry petitioners. But part of the point was to engage in a few months of debate that brought…
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Beautiful songs, hard-edged music, and hypnotic visuals await you in this month’s roundup of local music videos. Kunzite, “Vapors” Mike Stroud of Ratatat has joined up with Agustin White of White Flight to form Kunzite, whose debut album, Birds Don’t Fly, came out earlier this year. White was a former member of local pop-punk band the Nuclear Family and one of…
Tuesday, March 13Up north, Repeal 18th (1825 Buchanan) is hosting a Japanese whiskey tasting beginning at 5 p.m. Guests will learn about and sample a variety of premium Japanese spirits, including the Akashi, Iwai Tradition, Hibiki Harmony and Nikka Pure Malt labels. Tickets are $30; purchase them and find out more about the event via Eventbrite. Wednesday, March 14Made a little…
When people describe the five-year-old Westside restaurant Novel, they inevitably use words that allude to its modest confines. Intimate. Romantic. Cozy.These descriptions are plenty accurate. But they describe an atmosphere that owners Ryan Brazeal and Jessica Armstrong never intended for their restaurant. Despite all Novel’s genuine charms — from the rich, warm wood that lines its walls and floors to…
Finding a common thread through the many materials used in “Darkness with Blue Sky” is, at first, a disorienting task. Ceramics, a series of pencil drawings, actual dirt, and an image made entirely of drilled holes might lead one to believe the artist has suffered some kind of mixed-media identity crisis. But French-born Myriam Mechita hasn’t made a successful decades-long…
When it awards contracts, the federal government by law grants preferred status to certain groups, such as businesses owned by women and minorities. Such quotas also apply to veteran-owned businesses. This is a good thing. Unfortunately, companies who want an edge in obtaining these often-lucrative contracts will occasionally stoop to the level of misrepresenting themselves as being owned by a…
Perched behind the counter at Into the Mystic, Eddie Smith — gray beard, wavy hair, a black shirt beneath a soft black vest; Dr. Jacoby minus the menace — radiates a vaguely guru-like spiritual positivity. “I love those singing bowls,” Smith says to a customer browsing his Mission, Kansas, shop. “I just love the way they move energy around the room.” In…
Monday, March 5Tannin Wine Bar & Kitchen (1526 Walnut Street) is hosting a wine dinner tonight featuring Barolo wines. Italian winemakers Francesca Vaira (G. D. Vajra Estates) and Pietro Oddero (Poderi Oddero) will be on hand representing their labels for the four-course meal. A couple of sample courses: handmade pasta with a poached quail egg, peanuts, speck and butter sauce…
It’s a 17-degree afternoon in January, and, save for a few bundled-up runners, the outdoor track at Johnson County Community College is predictably deserted. The steeplechase water pit — a rare amenity for a community college program — is dry. Former JCCC runner Nick Cole gives a quick tour of the school’s track and field grounds, which includes a 400-meter…
After four years in business in Lawrence, Vaughn Good is planning to close the doors to his celebrated restaurant, Hank Charcuterie (1900 Massachusetts). Hank’s last day in business is set for Sunday, May 20.But Lawrence’s loss is Kansas City’s gain: Good and his wife and partner, Kristine Hull, are moving operations to Kansas City. This fall, the couple plan to…
Neither Michael Brewer nor Tom Shipley are technically Kansas City natives; Brewer was born in Oklahoma, Shipley’s from Ohio. But they landed here in 1968 after a stint trying to break into the music business in Los Angeles. “We saw the lifestyle out there and pretty quickly realized we were not Hollywood guys,” Shipley says. They knew a couple locals…
Blue Oyster Cult with John Michael Montgomery The Kansas City Auto Show Wednesday, February 28 Last night, a surprising double bill of ’70s rockers Blue Oyster Cult and ’90s country star John Michael Montgomery celebrated the opening night of the KC Auto Show. The crowd was sparse but enthusiastic. Both acts played all-killer, no-filler sets loaded with hits. Here’s what…
Who could forget when the KenTacoHut opened at 119th Street and Metcalf, back in the nineties? Lots of people, probably. Lots of people probably forgot that. But I have not! What a hedonistic thrill it was to order a Personal Pan and a chalupa in the same building, for the same meal. It felt like the future. Talk about thinking…
