Letter from the Editor: The best is yet to come

7 hours ago

Brock Wilbur,

Dearest readers,

Welcome to the “Best of 2025” Issue of The Pitch magazine—homegrown right here in Kansas City. This is our annual gala. The big night, but done our way. Informal attire required, the bar is cash but will never be cashed, and no one goes home until the afterparty’s afterparty. This magazine is the stack of glossy paper we work towards all year, and in its binding are the stories that make this year singular, spontaneous, spectacular, and shareable by all who wish to join. Each issue of our magazine holds a special place in our hearts, but the Best of outings are the pinnacle performances we’ll talk about for years to come.

We’re goddamned proud of this. That’s the gist, if you weren’t picking up the vibes. We’re goddamned proud because we are in the business of telling KC stories, and this is 2025’s encyclopedia of moments that can’t be forgotten. These are flashes of what makes life worth living, what makes fights worth forcing, and a pure, uncut packet of the good shit.

This is the big show. Now we’re passing the spotlight to you.

To build the Best of 2025 magazine, over the course of five months, we’ve watched members of the public nominate and vote, across several rounds, to highlight the people, businesses, creators, musicians, artists, organizers, and general inspiration engines that defined your year. En masse, the public overloads our systems with your opinions, your voices, and your ballots—with the end result of finalists and runner-ups in 450 categories. We have something for everyone, and everyone has a reason to go home happy.

This year, across those 450 categories, there were 2,421 nominations, and over 407,793 votes. These are, I reiterate, in no way affected by anyone on the publication’s side. I don’t even vote here. These results represent your voices alone, and no one will ever put a finger on that scale.

If you’re the recipient of a category victory this year, please understand that not only are you great at what you do, but your friends, neighbors, and even strangers took time out of their lives to make sure you got exactly what you deserved. If you didn’t make the cut on these lists, then I promise you 2026’s issue is still a long way off, and I’ve learned that in this city, absolutely anyone with the drive and dedication can rise to the top. If 2025 isn’t your year, you have not been left out or let down. You’re exactly where you need to be to swoop in and sweep the competition off their feet in less than 12 months. Godspeed. Rising tides raise all boats, etc., things of this nature. We’ll all be better for it.

All of that voting and those awards live in the back half of this issue—YOUR PICKS. The first half of the magazine, OUR PICKS, is where the primary writers and editors from the site are singling out the things, small and large, that changed our 2025—as a group, as a part of community, as just some person that was lucky enough to glimpse a look at the small slips in the veil, where the promise of a better world is seeping through, and where our expectations were obliterated. Some are huge spectacles, others are incredibly tiny slivers of lives well lived. Each paragraph has a place in our parade.

2025 was not an easy year. It was not a good year. It was a year for which history is going to have to reckon with a lot of darkness, disappointment, confusion, and damnation. Don’t worry. We’ll keep wrestling with every moment of these antagonisms on a daily basis. We’ll keep reporting on the ways that we can all fight back. But this issue gets to live as a reminder, purely and simply, of all the good that is worth fighting for.

We at The Pitch want to thank you for everything you’ve given us in 2025. Each story you shared, the thousands of you that answered our questions at events or picked up the phone when we called, or brought a situation to our attention because you trusted us to be the only publication to take you seriously… You are not just who we do this for, you are who we could do none of this without.

As this magazine passes through its final editorial read-through, I’m sitting at a large table in a huge room. I’m surrounded by many of my favorite people in the world, and all we are discussing is how many of you are our favorite people in the world. Right now, a vinyl record is playing at full blast, we’ve got pens and highlighters giving perfectionist passes to each word of the issue, and the only thing on our minds is how lucky we are to be able to be here, and to watch you shoot for the stars. You’re an inspiration. We’re following in your path.

We intend to keep doing exactly that, no matter what life throws at us. There’s an upcoming stretch after this issue hits stands where The Pitch more likely than not will be unavailable in print form for a while. The world has reached a point where the finances and unexpected hurdles keep changing on a dime, and in order to keep serving KC the way we want, there will be a period where picking up these glossy pages won’t be an option. That’s fine, actually. We’re genuinely excited about how much time this frees up for us to do more in-depth, timely, daily reporting on all the things that matter to you—stories and breaking news that the added work of publishing a physical magazine increasingly ate into. As always, we are at www.thepitchkc.com, each and every day, writing stories we’re proud of that highlight the best, the worst, and the weirdest of what the metro has to offer.

We will not be paywalling the website. The Pitch will always be accessible to all, and it belongs to the people. Our membership program, which you can subscribe to for only $8 a month, brings with it expanded stories, bonus material, and personal dispatches from the team about our passions that are a bit more off the beaten path—and some private surprises for those of you who value supporting the brand of local cheerleading/journalism/exploration that we’ve been doing here since the ‘80s.

This is our 45th year, and as such, this issue revolves around 45 rpm records. The Pitch was born in a record store years before I was born, and the party will hopefully still be raging long after I’m gone. Thank you to all of you for reading. Thank you for your support. Thank you for being a part of our lives, and thank you for letting us impact yours.

I’ve never had a job where my first thought each day is “Who will I meet today and how can I change their world for the better?” From all of us on the team who get to live this dream, thank you for giving a little direction each year, to make sure this positivity project doesn’t disappear. We’d all be lesser without The Pitch, and we can still make this entire expanding project into so, so much more.

Pitch in and we’ll make it through,