On Friday — a welcome chilly fall evening — the wordy indie-rock act Car Seat Headrest ended its 2018 tour at Crossroads KC. The set saw CSH joined by opening act Naked Giants, a band that has seemingly been subsumed into Car Seat Headrest on a permanent basis. Several hundred deep, the audience hung on and sung along with frontman…
The parcel of land that is now home to one of the happiest places in Kansas City was once so overgrown and rife with waste and trash that it was civically classified as “found,” which is another way of saying nobody had even considered developing it for anything. But Dave Hensley and Leib Dodell saw potential. Yes, it was located underneath the…
Now a veteran of Kansas City Fashion Week, Georgina Herrera’s line HER will have jewelry designs walk the runway on this season’s final show on Saturday. Herrera grew up deeply involved in the jewelry industry. Her family owned a jewelry manufacturing business in Mexico, but it wasn’t the career she envisioned for herself. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in industrial…
Ever since Broadway Deli opened in May, I’ve been hearing the same question from well-intentioned foodies: “Is it authentic?” Questions about authenticity rank near the bottom of the utility pile for me. Ask: Is it delicious? Ask: Is it executed with care? Ask: Will I dream-drool that I’m being chased by a giant, sexy pastrami monster weeks after my visit? (Answers:…
For this month’s Cine Local, we’re going longform. We have two recent performances in their entirety from rapper Tech N9ne and the punks in Ruined Orgasm, as well as a vintage set from Random Aztech sometime in the early ’90s. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s a full half-hour tour documentary on Cowboy Indian Bear. It means you’ll be staring…
Swimwear designed to inspire all women and “increase confidence, beauty, and strength” is the mission behind Justin Houpe’s Naava Swim line. As a United States Army Veteran who served a tour in Iraq during “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” Houpe found fashion and design as a way to cope with war. He’s a father, too, and his three daughters are another reason…
How do you love people who hate you? It’s a revealing — and self-reflective — question posed by Martin Luther King Jr. in Becoming Martin, a play at the Coterie Theatre that opens the company’s 40th season. King is just a teenager in this smart, affecting story, which takes place 1944-48, when he’s attending the all-male, historically black liberal-arts Morehouse College,…
Strong, sophisticated, and feminine: those are the three pillars behind Rachel Pollak’s namesake line. A graduate of Johnson County Community College in apparel designs and technology AAS, Pollak’s designs throughout her career have included mixed colors, patterns, and textures that create “wearable statements.” During New York Fashion Week earlier this year, she presented her Autumn/Winter 2018 collection with Oxford Fashion…
What does it mean to be a Kansas City composer? For Open Spaces, a collection of artists takes on that question in a concert of new works. Not since the 1930s has the city been defined by one genre, and Daniel Morel conceived of “Kansas City Composed” as a way to showcase the variety and individuality within the city’s contemporary classical…
Nick Vedros was 16 years old when he bought his first camera: a 1969 Nikon F, from Crick Camera. Nearly 50 years later, Vedros — a professional photographer whose client list includes Apple, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Capital One, among others — recently found himself at Crick once again, though under very different circumstances. It was late 2017, and the store…
Jac Heath, Emma Walters, and Olivia Jane are the three designers behind Marmalade, a collaboration project with designs that “incorporate a 50s color palette with silhouettes from the 70s.” The three designers are fashion design and product development students at Stephens College in Columbia. This season is their first time working on a line together, and Kansas City Fashion Week…
Amy Ray is one half of the iconic, long-running folk-rock duo Indigo Girls. But she cuts an impressive figure off stage as well, supporting causes like Honor the Earth, the Indigenous environmental group Ray and Indigo Girls’ Emily Saliers co-founded with activist Winona LaDuke. (The pair headlined a Water is Life Festival in Duluth this past summer.) Ahead of Indigo…
When the late-summer heat gets sticky and sleepy, I think wistfully of spring — when gardens were lush with hopeful blooms, when the city air didn’t taste like asphalt, when I could step outside without immediately acquiring the smell and sheen of the kid manning the Twinkie fryer at the state fair. I crave something fresh and light, something with…
By Jesse Lirola Fiddle player with hot-jazz swing revivalists the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Experimental indie-rock with the Bowl of Fire. Contemplative folk-classical solo albums. Andrew Bird’s career is a series of gentle zigs and zags that add up to a diverse and impressive body of work. This Saturday, Bird performs with the Kansas City Symphony at the Kauffman Center. These…
Monday, September 24Cinder Block Brewery (110 East 18th Street) is marking five years in business with a week full of events and special releases that begins today. For example, try Cinder Block’s new spiced cider on Tuesday, the Imperial Coffee Hop’d (with cocoa nibs and Messenger coffee) on Wednesday, small-batch peach mead Thursday, and the Hop Cuddle 4.0 NE IPA…
Waxahatchee with Anna St. Louis and Night Shop Friday, September 21 The White Schoolhouse Petri Productions made the inspired decision to take advantage of Friday’s gorgeous slide into fall weather and move this show at Lawrence’s White Schoolhouse outside. By the time the show started, around 8 p.m., I’d helped park cars, gotten a fire going, and drank a blackberry…
Dear Dan: I am newly divorced and have started a relationship with a man I’ve known and deeply cared about for decades. The sex is amazing — from start to finish, I feel better than I ever did even in the best moments with my ex. And in the most intense moments? He makes me see stars. He is a…
Let’s talk local fashion. We have some big names in Kansas City, many of whom will be represented on the Union Station runway starting Wednesday, September 26.This year’s Kansas City Fashion Week — now in its seventh year and fourteenth season — features four nights of show filled with local designers. On the schedule: the latest lines by HER by Georgina…
Everyone wants to play Willy Loman. Everyone wants to play Blanche DuBois. The American theatrical canon is full of chewy, challenging performances that undoubtedly breed better actors. But do they breed better audiences?That was the question I kept asking myself on the way home from the Kansas City Actors Theatre’s troubling (and troubled) production of A Moon for the Misbegotten. A Moon…
As curator and owner of the Strawberry Swing, Kansas City’s beloved indie craft fair, Katie Mabry van Dieren has helped put #shoplocal on the map around here since taking over from founder Heather Baker in 2014. But van Dieren also has a new nonprofit that’s already showing a lot of promise: the Troost Market Collective. You may have noticed some…
Bethany Helms’ vintage Ash & Bleu Cheese Company trailer pops up at various places around town, but the easiest place to reliably find it is the Overland Park Farmer’s Market on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. There, you can taste and purchase fresh farmstead cheeses from places like Hemme Brothers Creamery in Sweet Springs, Missouri, and Prairie Fruits Farm in Champaign,…
My Fair Lady, with its semantically troubled title, is a (very popular) musical dating to the mid-1950s — book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, music by Frederick Loewe — that follows up on a (very popular) 1938 movie, all based on George Bernard Shaw’s (very popular) 1913 English play Pygmalion (which is itself taken from the Greek myth of…
The nearly full moon is rusty orange, its brightness fading, and the only thing I can see looking out toward the Missouri River is a lap of waves and the occasional bounce of a flashlight or headlamp. It’s 6 a.m. on a late-August Saturday, and about 30 of us have gathered at Platte Landing, in Parkville, canoes and kayaks in tow….
Beck Hansen reminded the audience at Starlight Theatre of a surprising local connection he has to the area: he used to spend summer in Overland Park as a kid. He’s been coming around more lately, too. Last summer, his band opened for U2 at Arrowhead Stadium, and three years prior to that he shared the stage at Starlight with Willie…
