Archives: September 2018

Parlor Food Hall’s grand opening is Friday, plus Troostapalooza and Oktoberfest events: KC’s food and drink events for September 17-23

Tuesday, September 18 In honor of National Cheeseburger Day, Hogshead KC (4743 Pennsylvania Avenue) will be offering its much-loved cheeseburger — thick-cut bacon from Daily’s Premium Meats in St Joseph, a fresh egg from Good Natured Family Farms, pickles from KC Canning Co. and an egg bun from Farm to Market Bread Company — for $10 (regularly $14). Thursday, September…

Drugs or love — or both? — in the Unicorn’s latest, The Effect

Is it love or is it dopamine? That’s the well-worn question hanging over The Effect, the Unicorn Theatre’s 45th season opener. Lucy Prebble’s script, though — which won the 2012 Critics Circle Award for Best New Play — is both subtler and smarter than that premise suggests. The play opens in a drug-trial unit at Rauschen Pharmaceuticals, where Dr. Lorna James…

Photos: Bad Bad Hats’ catchy indie rock at the Bottleneck

Bad Bad Hats The Bottleneck Wednesday, September 12 Last night at the Bottleneck, a loyal cotillion of indie-loving college-aged kids gathered to see Minneapolis’ Bad Bad Hats and Seattle’s Cumulus knock out some beautiful, chiming tunes. The show kicked off a solid half-hour before the advertised start time, so Cumulus played to a smaller crowd than it might have otherwise….

Kansas City has its own price-gouging pharmaceutical company

Down in the East Bottoms, at 1800 North Topping Avenue, is a pharmaceutical company called Nostrum Laboratories. This company makes a drug called nitrofurantoin, which is an antibiotic that treats urinary tract infections. Nitrofurantoin is categorized as an essential medicine by the World Health Organization.  Last month, Nostrum’s CEO, a man by the name of Nirmal Mulye, decided to quadruple the…

A chat with Gillian Welch, who plays the Folly this Friday

With her musical partner, David Rawlings, singer-songwriter Gillian Welch crafts rich and intricate folk songs that have influenced a generation of musicians. (Most recently, Courtney Barnett covered Welch’s “Everything is Free” for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon’s Cover Room series, and you can hear a direct line from one artist to the other in just four minutes.) Welch reissued…

In Mandy, rural-acid weirdness and a healthy dose of ‘crazy Cage’

For two hours — indeed, if we are lucky — the movies transport us. Images conjured by light dance on screen while music and sound booms through the auditorium speakers. But after we leave the theater, all that remains is the memory of the experience. The memory of writer-director Panos Cosmatos’ newest nightmare concoction Mandy remains oh so vivid. Piercing…

Q&A: Dominic Palermo of Nothing, ahead of the band’s Friday show at RecordBar

As blissful as many Nothing recordings can be, Domenic Palermo and his band are no strangers to chaos. During a violent period in Philadelphia’s early-aughts hardcore scene, Palermo was involved in a fight that resulted in a two-year stint in prison for aggravated assault and attempted murder. Some of the lyrics from the band’s acclaimed debut, Guilty Of Everything, were…

As the Troost corridor develops, food is leading the charge

Spend any time around urban planners and you’re likely to hear them talk about the need for “eyes on the street.” They’re quoting Jane Jacobs, the urban activist who wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Jacobs saw eyes on the street as the key to safe, thriving neighborhoods — and she was careful to specify she meant…

More scooters are on the way to Kansas City

Those black scooters that you’ve lately seen people riding? They are made by a company called Bird. On Tuesday, you will begin to see green scooters around town. That’s because Lime — the Uber to Bird’s Lyft — will be dumping a fleet of dock-free scooters around Kansas City.  Lime’s app-based pay system is the same as Bird’s: a dollar to unlock…

The American Royal, City Market’s Grub Crawl, wine dinners, and more: KC’s food and drink events for September 10-16

Monday, September 10Chef Kelly Conwell of Stock Hill (4800 Main Street) will be creating dishes from Smithfield’s DURoC line of pork products for a free open house event today from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Guests who register for the event via Eventbrite will enjoy Conwell’s bites as well as paired cocktails and desserts. The event also includes some giveaways. Get a…

Tuesday at Starlight: Counting Crows, with Live

It has been a quarter of a century since Counting Crows released its breakthrough album August and Everything After, a fact that will rightly fill many millennials with mortal dread. This tour celebrates those songs — “Round Here,” “Omaha,” and, of course, “Mr. Jones” among them — and features fellow ‘90s alt-rock hitmakers Live in the opening slot. ♦Counting Crows, with…

Sunday at the Kauffman Center: Punch Brothers

Led by mandolinist and cheeky Prairie Home Companion host Chris Thile, Punch Brothers recently dropped album number five, All Ashore — another collection of classy, curious, and worldly bluegrass. Madison Cunningham opens.♦Punch BrothersSunday, September 9Kauffman Center for the Performing Artskauffmancenter.org Categories: Music

Sweetheart of the Rodeo turns 50: a chat with Chris Hillman ahead of Sunday’s Folly show

The first country-rock album ever made? A deeply debatable topic, but the answer returned by many fans of the genre is The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The Byrds was a revolving-door kind of band, and in 1968 its formation included Roger McGuinn on guitar/banjo; Kevin Kelly on drums; Chris Hillman on bass; and Gram Parsons on piano/guitar. Sweetheart was Parsons’…

Eden Alley, vegetarian staple of the Country Club Plaza, has closed

Nearly a quarter-century after opening at Unity Temple on the Plaza, Eden Alley has shut down operations, the restaurant announced yesterday on Facebook.Eden Alley opened in 1994 and grew from a 40-seat dining room to 130 seats by 2011. It is one of a very few vegetarian restaurants in Kansas City. The western stretch of the Country Club Plaza on which…

The Paris of the Plains Cocktail Festival, Shake Shack’s opening, and much more: KC’s food and drink events for September 4-9

Thursday, September 6Rub elbows with industry leaders nationwide — as well as the city’s brightest bar talents — during the annual Paris of the Plains Cocktail Festival, which runs Thursday through Sunday. PoP Fest includes lectures, tastings, dinners, parties, competitions and so much more. The event is geared toward those in the industry, but hobbyists will also find a lot…