Summer is Back: June 2021

Summer is Back!

The new normal is here.

WORLD RECORD WATER SLIDE, HAUTE DOGS, GALLON-SIZED PINA COLADAS AND MORE SUMMER FUN. Vidal Blanc OUR NEW FAVORITE LOCAL WINES PAG E 8 8

Timber Wars AN ODD, BITTER BATTLE OVER A NUISANCE TREE PAG E 2 6

Summer Fashion LOOKS WE LOVE FROM LOCAL SHOPS PAG E 6 6

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KANSASCITYMAG.COM JUNE 2021

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OUR MISSION

We love Kansas City like family. We know what makes it great, we know how it struggles and we know its secrets.

Through great storytelling, photography and design, we help our readers celebrate our city’s triumphs, tend to its faults and revel in the things that make it unique.

PUBLISHER

Kathy Boos kathy@kansascitymag.com EDITOR IN CHIEF

Martin Cizmar martin@kansascitymag.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Nicole Kinning nicole@kansascitymag.com ART DIRECTOR

Katie Henrichs katie@kansascitymag.com SENIOR DESIGN CONSULTANT

Julie Babcock julie@kansascitymag.com DESIGN INTERNS

Natalea Bonjour Camille Caparas Tara Doll COPY EDITOR

Kelsie Schrader SALES

Melanie Bremer melanie@kansascitymag.com Sarah Perfect sarah@kansascitymag.com WRITERS

Natalie Torres Gallagher, Kim Horgan, Amijah Jackson, Anne Kniggendorf, Hampton Stevens, Kathleen Wilcock PHOTOGRAPHERS & ILLUSTRATORS

David Babcock, Caleb Condit, Joanna Gorham, Samantha Levi, Rebecca Norden, Jeremey Theron Kirby

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JUNE 2021

52 SUMMER LOVIN’

44

66

88

Mod Ways

What to Wear

Take a Sip

A look inside a midcentury gem from Donald Drummond.

12

KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

Splashy summer fashion picks for getting back out on the town.

Vidal Blanc is our new favorite Missouri wine grape.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CALEB CONDIT AND REBECCA NORDEN

What’s new and what’s back this summer in KC.

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In This Issue JUNE 2021

S WAY

37

T H E LO O P

21

Tee Time

TA S T E

Play Ball

The Kansas City Monarchs’ apparel has a touch of tradition.

Westport’s Kobi-Q Sushi has unique combos.

How to play KC’s unique urban golf course.

38

Calm and Cool

A CBD store-medspa in Leawood.

40 44 24

26

Ready Player 1

Throwing Shade

What does a massive new esports arena mean?

Father Figure

MidcenturyMade

93

A Donald Drummond work in OP.

94

Inside a tense battle over a tree in Prairie Village.

31 Calendar O N TH E C OVE R

06.2021 SUMMER FUN | S U M M E R FA S H I O N

The new normal is here.

WORLD RECORD WATER SLIDE, HAUTE DOGS, GALLON-SIZED PINA COLADAS AND MORE SUMMER FUN. Vidal Blanc OUR NEW FAVORITE LOCAL WINES PAG E 8 8

Timber Wars AN ODD, BITTER BATTLE OVER A NUISANCE TREE PAG E 2 6

kansascitymag.com

Summer Fashion LOOKS WE LOVE FROM LOCAL SHOPS

Local chocolatier Jessica Washburn of nationally known Bliss Chocolatier generously offered to make us these watermelon popsicles, which were shot by Caleb Condit and Rebecca Norden.

PAG E 6 6

KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

96 Backstory SPECIAL SECTION Scan the QR code to get the recipe.

91 92

16 Editor’s Letter Summer is Back!

88

Our ultimate Father’s Day gift guide.

E V E RY I S S U E

14

87

Roll Call

76 Guide to Aging Well

Full Bodied

The Missouri wine grape leading the way.

Smoke Show Looking into Black barbecue history.

Hot Shot

This local chili oil is life changing.

Newsfeed

The latest in KC food news.

Cool Beans

Parisi’s small batch roaster shares his local faves.

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FROM THE EDITOR

C O N T R I B U TO R S

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KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

Jeremey Theron Kirby PHOTOGRAPHER

The photos of the urban golf course at Harris Park and this month’s home feature were taken by Jeremey Theron Kirby, a portrait and landscape photographer originally from Vancouver, British Columbia.

Most days, Jeremey can be found piloting drones for Digital Aerolus, a Lenexa-based startup.

Natalea Bonjour

DESIGN INTERN/PHOTOGRAPHER

The photo of Nick Scott of Parisi was taken by intern Natalea Bonjour, a Kansas City native and recent graduate of Pittsburg State University, where she majored in graphic communications with an emphasis in digital media.

Jessica Washburn CHOCOLATIER

The popsicles on our cover were made by Jessica Washburn, a transplant to Kansas City who creates beautiful and delicious confections for Bliss Chocolatier in Blue Springs.

MARTIN CIZMAR ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID BABCOCK CONTRIBUTOR ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOANNA GORHAM

W

here were you when you realized that— after dozens of false starts and busted projections—we were finally on to the new normal?

I was on the patio at my favorite taproom in town, which had remained shuttered for the entirety of the pandemic, when I realized I had spent about three hours there, talking to two guys I’d never met before, maskless, without worrying about infectious disease. Oh, we’d made the customary disclaimers about our vaccination status at the beginning of the chat—a ritual which is quickly becoming the new handshake—but after that we’d spent hours debating football and pizza ovens without revisiting the subject. It was... well, pretty normal.

Fourteen months ago, I used this space to make a promise to you: “These are trying times, and we don’t know what the next month will bring. But know that we’re here, working hard to serve our community as journalists.

If you’ve got a story idea, a cause to promote or an important question that needs to be asked of people in power, we’ll do our best to help.”

We did just that. Not only did we keep you up to date on challenging times for the city’s culture and economy, but we also published lengthy interviews with the father of the MRNA vaccine, a scientist who has studied coronaviruses for a decade, and allowed mental health experts to share concerns about the silent toll taken on our little ones. We dove into the culture of mask-wearing before it was a political football and gave teachers a platform to anonymously share their concerns about the return to in-person classes. We did what we said we were going to do with this platform, and I hope it helped just a little.

This editor’s note is typically the last thing I write every month, when I can pause and take stock of what’s in the issue you’re holding. Looking at the June book, I’m startled by the normalcy. With the exception of large events and touring shows, it sure feels like we’re on to a new era.

Our summer fun package (page 52) is a look at the best ways to spend these warm sunny months, and this year we’ve divided it into activities that are brandnew and activities that are coming back.

There’s a lot of great ideas in there—more than enough to fill out your calendar for the next three months. But I strongly suspect that, as I write this, even more is in the works.

Martin Cizmar Get vaccinated if you haven’t yet, then EDITOR IN CHIEF get out there and enjoy it.

MARTIN@KANSASCITYMAG.COM

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Mariner Wealth Advisors (“MWA”), is an SEC registered investment adviser with its principal place of business in the State of Kansas. Registration of an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training. MWA is in compliance with the current notice filing requirements imposed upon registered investment advisers by those states in which MWA maintains clients. MWA may only transact business in those states in which it is notice filed or qualifies for an exemption or exclusion from notice filing requirements. Any subsequent, direct communication by MWA with a prospective client shall be conducted by a representative that is either registered or qualifies for an exemption or exclusion from registration in the state where the prospective client resides. For additional information about MWA, including fees and services, please contact MWA or refer to the Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website (www.adviserinfo.sec.gov). Please read the disclosure statement carefully before you invest or send money.

COURTIER

S H O U T- O U T

NUMBERS FROM THIS ISSUE

48

Number of different holes you can play on just three acres at Harris Park golf course PA GE 2 1

1,100

Number of homes cult favorite mid-century builder Donald Drummond constructed in KC PA GE 4 4

1/2

Acreage of Missouri’s largest swimming pool, which is in Lone Jack PA GE 5 4

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KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

GOLDEN HOUR

Our May issue featured an interview with Michelle Reeves, culinary director of the new Golden Scoop ice cream shop in Overland Park. Golden Scoop (see page 60) not only serves delicious ice cream but also provides meaningful employment to people with developmental disabilities. It’s been a huge hit with readers.

“Jessica and I took our kiddos on Saturday. There was a line out the door, but it moved quickly and we chatted with people in line. The kids decreed the ice cream was delicious! We had a fun time sitting in the back decorating the hot coffee sleeves. Oh, and the coffee was wonderful too... Must try the affogato (ice cream and espresso). It is delightful!”

—Traci Higbee “Went Saturday with family and it was a wonderful experience. Line moved quickly, staff was friendly and kind, and the ice cream was really good!”

—Delona Gorrell Potter “We went late Saturday afternoon, but by 4:30 pm they came out to say they had run out of ice cream. Best to arrive earlier in the day.”

—Nancy Gay “We went too late on Saturday—sold out! Bad for us,

“

Editor Martin Cizmar takes his annual Father’s Day gift guide very seriously and was thankful that the Stax company does, too. They loaned him a pair of very expensive headphones shipped directly from Japan to assure that you, the reader, have the very best gifting advice.

PA GE 4 0

awesome for them! We will try again.”

—Dana Rosenthal Campbell

BEHIND THE SCENES

“Also check out Heartstrings.

They do similar work and pre-Covid did office visits bringing human and pet treats to purchase that were assembled by their special needs employees.”

—Aimee Clardy “This is a wonderful example of people helping people.

Our family is already planning on stopping by when we move to OP this summer.”

—Tiffany Bowles Thomas “Special needs is an offensive term.

They employ disabled people. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being disabled. Euphemisms that act like there is something wrong with it are ableist. Please update your language.”

—April May

Photographer Samantha Levi shoots model Alahna for our summer fashion feature outside Miami Ice in Westport. Onlookers complimented the model’s outfits while passing cars honked and cheered her on.

PA GE 66

CONTACT US

Kansas City

P.O. Box 26823 Overland Park, KS 66225-6823 (913) 469-6700 EMAIL: editor@kansascitymag.com

I told the city, ‘Hey, I did this, so it’s probably going to die anyway, so let’s just bring it down.

There’s no laws against it. That’s the best part.’”

—PRAIRIE VILLAGE RESIDENT JOHN MICHAELS EXPLAINS WHY HE ATTEMPTED TO KILL A SWEETGUM TREE ON THE EDGE OF HIS PROPERTY, BEGINNING A COSTLY AND TIME-CONSUMING BATTLE WITH THE CITY

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913-344-9989

The most comprehensive exhibition on Auschwitz featuring more than 700 original objects.

Exhibition Opens June 14 Tickets at UnionStation.org An Exhibition By

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A woman’s dress shoe belonging to an unknown deportee to Auschwitz (1940s) Courtesy of ©Musealia

We are pleased to announce a speakers series associated with the exhibition. These online and live events are free and open to the public but require pre-registration. Schedule, additional information and registration are available at UnionStation.org.

20 KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

L E A D I N G T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N I N K A N S A S C I T Y

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEREMEY THERON KIRBY

FIT TO A TEE Chris Harris bought up a whole block and tore down his own boyhood home to make room for one of the most unique golf courses in the world.

BY M A R T I N C I Z M A R

KANSASCITYMAG.COM JUNE 2021

21

THE LOOP FIT TO A TEE

know much about golf but finds it relaxing to come play on his days off, “especially when the wife is mad at me.”

Don’t bring a driver. The longest shot at Harris Park—from the back tee box on the third hole—is just sixty-five yards. That means a sand wedge or nine iron will work.

The newly completed Harris Park is a unique urban golf course—here’s everything you should know about its design.

G

O L F P R O S will tell you mastering the short game is the secret to success.

Monster drives grab attention, but shaving strokes elsewhere is the way to win.

For Chris Harris, that’s a lesson about life. Harris Park, the pitch-and-putt course he built at 40th and Wayne in the Ivanhoe neighborhood, is designed to push players’ short game.

“I wanted to recreate the short game as best as I possibly could and get as many shots as I possibly could and still have it be a nice place to spend time playing,” he says.

Harris has been working on this project for twenty years. After acquiring the rest of the lots on the block for between free and five hundred bucks, he tore down his own childhood home to make room for the first green.

The course makes great use of its tiny footprint, which accounts for one side of a city block. There are four greens, each with four possible holes you can play by moving the flag around.

And there are three tee boxes leading

22

KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

to each green. That means there are a total of forty-eight possible holes on just three acres.

For Harris, it’s not about finding the next Tiger Woods; it’s about the next Brad Owen—that’s the name of the head groundskeeper at Augusta. “Our main objective is to have people be around the game, and you never know what door may open,” he says.

It’s also a course that will challenge pretty much anyone.

“Everything in this neighborhood is tough,” Harris says. “We want this to be tough so that when you learn to play it and you go somewhere else, it’s easy—you have been maxed out in the game of golf and the game of life.”

It’s public. It bears repeating, since Harris says people in the neighborhood tend to think of all golf courses as private. As we play a round on a Monday morning, he waves to a man who he’s seen creep by many times.

Harris waves him up. “This is for you,” he says. “Come on up and play.”

Among the people to take the cue is Eugene Coody, who says he doesn’t

It’s a deceptively difficult course. The rough is rough. The greens are fast and tricky—if you miss by four inches on the second green, you can go over the lip and roll ten yards. “My thought was, if I make these greens harder, when they go other places and the greens aren’t so hard, the game becomes easier,” Harris says. “If you’re used to being maxed out and you get something that’s easier, oh my goodness, that’s nice. So I want these greens to be as hard as I possibly can.”

If you want to donate, yard care equipment is more useful than clubs and balls. While he’s appreciative of any help offered, Harris says he’s already got enough loaner balls and clubs to last a long time. “The way we’re playing, we’re not losing a lot of balls,” he says. On the other hand, mowers, clippers and the like are helpful. “We want kids to learn to take care of this course,” he says. “There’s a lot of money in taking care of golf courses.”

It’s not about making professional golfers. Harris Park isn’t about golf, really.

“It’s not about sports,” Harris says. Rather, it’s about shaping the community. “The kids that come here, this is what’s normal to them,” he says. “If they came to play and it was like the area where I grew up, they’re going to be uncomfortable. I like to say Harris Park is a spark plug. It’s that spark to say, ‘We can take back our communities.’ I would like to see one of these in every community across the United States.”

EUGENE CODY SINKS A PUTT ON THE FOURTH GREEN. PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEREMEY THERON KIRBY

Plan to play a full round. The course is set up so that people can play each green in a rotation. That means you don’t just waltz around playing each hole at whim.

You rotate around and back. “A lot of pros have this in their backyard,” he says. “I wanted to build this course so pros can practice any shot here, whether it’s the rough, whether it’s tripping over sand boxes—everything you’d encounter.”

THE GAME HAS CHANGED A skeptic learns to appreciate the massive new esports arena in Overland Park.

BY H A M P TO N S T E V E N S

E S P O R T S A R E A B S O L U T E LY H U G E . If you aren’t part of the gaming universe, it’s hard to understand how incredibly gargantuan gaming has become. Last year, total spending on video games in the US, including games, consoles and accessories, reached $56.9 billion. That’s more than movies and recorded music combined. It’s gobsmacking.

Nowhere is this growth more evident than at Levelup Esports Arena, which opened in Overland Park in April.

One of the largest gaming and esports venues in the country, covering more than fifteen-thousand square feet, Levelup includes broadcast and production facilities, a purpose-built arena with a hundred gaming PCs, dedicated streamer studios, console gaming suites, merchandise and, almost incidentally, a bar and restaurant. It’s quite the big tadoo.

Governor Laura Kelly made an appearance for the opening.

The educational component at Levelup is especially interesting. Youth league play, K-12 after-school programs and boot camp training are all on the calendar. At first glance, this seems odd. Boot camps for video games? Weird, right?

Only if you live in the past. Nearly two-hundred colleges and universities in this country offer some sort of gaming scholarship. Which they should. Think about it. Which makes more sense: scholarships for games that billions play or a

24

KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

“

The best remedy for alienation and antisocial behavior is real human contact.”

scholarship to row crew? Nobody’s going to pay to watch you row boats on a river.

For an oldster like me, the dynamic around these youth programs echoes the dynamic around gaming itself. At first, it’s easy to object in an old-manshakes-fist-at-cloud sort of way. A little more thought can lead to reassessment and, eventually, a begrudging respect.

No, gaming isn’t perfect. Jokes about basement-dwellers are common enough to be cliché, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t real drawbacks to such a sedentary pastime. For an activity with “sports” in the name, esports sure demand an awful lot of sitting.

Virtual violence is also an issue. There are legitimate questions about the connection between violent games and human aggression. Is it a direct, causal link? Of course not. But it’s equally preposterous to suggest that violent games have no effect at all. You will never convince me that it’s completely healthy for a human being to spend several hours a day pretending to kill.

There are also cultural concerns. The gaming audience has grown. These days not everyone fits the teen boy stereotype. In 2020, surprisingly, roughly forty percent of gamers in the United States were female. As the demographic has changed, the games have changed with them. Titles with explicit violence and sexist stereotypes have been joined by more varied and inclusive games.

Perhaps in response to this perceived encroachment on their “turf,” a segment of more traditional gamers have developed a half-ironic, Cartman-esque culture of bigotry and abuse. It’s ugly.

There are, however, counters to all of these anti-game talking points. Yes, absolutely, there are unhealthy things about gaming. There are also unhealthy things about football, action movies, cars, red meat, and pretty much everything else on the planet.

If you’re genuinely concerned about gamers who are stuck in a basement for ten hours a day, Levelup is an undeniably good thing. It’s a place where players can meet in the flesh, sharing their passion and making real world connections they otherwise never would. The same goes for the nastier aspects of male gamer culture. The best remedy for alienation and antisocial behavior is real human contact.

A gaming venue like Levelup can offer it.

That’s nothing to shake your fist at.

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY @LEVELUPARENAGG

THE LOOP SPORTS?

COMPASS REALTY GROUP IS A LICENSED REAL ESTATE BROKER AND ABIDES BY EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY LAWS.

Compass Realty Group is a licensed real estate broker in Missouri and Kansas and abides by Equal Housing Opportunity laws. All material presented herein is intended for informational purposes only. Information is compiled from sources deemed reliable but is subject to errors, omissions, changes in price, condition, sale, or withdrawal without notice. No statement is made as to the accuracy of any description. All measurements and square footages are approximate. This is not intended to solicit property already listed. Nothing herein shall be construed as legal, accounting or other professional advice outside the realm of real estate brokerage.

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THE LOOP TIMMMMBER!

A Kafkaesque battle over an undead tree exposes simmering tensions in changing Prairie Village.

BY M A R T I N C I Z M A R

takes landscaping seriously. Michaels and his wife recently built their four-thousand-square-foot dream home in Prairie Village, but he still does all his own lawn work. “I love it—and I’m picky,” he says. “I don’t want big riding lawn mowers going across my lawn, rutting it up.”

Another thing Michaels didn’t want: the sweetgum tree planted between his sidewalk and the road, which locals call “the right-of-way.”

Michaels plotted to rid himself of the tree, setting off a protracted legal battle and sparking a heated confrontation that led to the forced resignation of a member of the Prairie Village Tree Board.

It’s an incident that not only shows just how seriously Prairie Village takes trees but also exposes tensions in a sought-after inner-ring suburb where the lots are often worth more than the modest homes sitting on them, prompting a wave of “teardowns.”

Sweetgum trees, which dot the south side of the city and first-generation suburbs, were once trendy. They’ve fallen out of favor, mostly because of their hard, spiky “gumballs,”

JOHN MICHAELS

26

KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

which litter yards and sidewalks. In Prairie Village, where a ten-member tree board hosts monthly meetings, the trees are not on the list of forty-seven approved species for planting on city property.

“There’s nothing positive about that tree other than the shade,” Michaels says. “In a lot of cities, they are actively removing them.”

When he was building his home, Michaels asked if he could pay to remove the tree, replace it with a five-inch white oak and donate a thousand bucks to the city’s tree fund. His offer was opposed by several people, including neighbor Connie Link McKenzie, at the time a member of the tree board. “I was talking to her about this tree one day in the street when we were building the house,” he says. “She said I shouldn’t have built a home where I had to cut down trees.

“Prairie Village has experienced a construction boom over the past several years,” Link McKenzie says. “The smaller lot sizes have exposed our mature hardwood street trees to injury and/or death during the building process.”

Things boiled over when Michaels’ contractor started to cut down the tree. He was confronted by Link McKenzie, who used abusive language.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 28

“

They killed the tree after taking me to court for killing it.”

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“I joined the Prairie Village Tree Board with the hope of helping our community protect one of its most prized hallmarks,” says Link McKenzie. “My passion for our city trees, the stress and high-tension of the situation, and finally the rude and dismissive attitude of the [contractor] culminated in the loss of my composure and comments I regret.”

The city’s public works director, Keith Bredehoeft, confirms that Link McKenzie “was removed from her position on the tree board… based on behavior that did not represent the city well.”

The fight didn’t end there. Michaels read through city code and learned there was no law to prevent him from killing the tree—a loophole the city has since closed with a new ordinance. So, last October, Michaels went out and “drilled about fifteen holes in this tree and put herbicide in it.”

“I told the city, ‘Hey, I did this, so it’s probably going to die anyway, so let’s just bring it down,’” he says.

“There’s no laws against it. That’s the best part.”

Bredehoeft was “very surprised” to get Michaels’ call. “Mr. Michaels was told not to remove the tree,” he says. “He clearly understood this.

Subsequent to understanding this, he called me and told me he knew the tree would be dead soon. This action triggered all that followed.”

The city dispatched an independent arborist to appraise the tree.

That arborist told Michaels he likely hadn’t killed the tree because it was dormant and not sucking up the herbicide. “He tells me, ‘The chances that you put enough herbicide in there to do anything is very small,’” Michaels says.

Because the tree was valued at four thousand dollars, the city referred the matter to the Johnson County District Attorney, who declined to press charges because it was unclear that Michaels had violated any law. Rather than drop the matter, the city wrote up Michaels for doing work in a rightof-way without a permit.

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KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

WHY SO C E DA R O U S ?

The land where Kansas City now sits was originally tallgrass prairie—trees were scarce, as buffalo roamed through grasslands where stalks topped out at the height of an NBA center. This vibrant ecosystem was not favored by early American settlers, who considered it “unlivable.”

Settlers were given extra land if they promised to plant trees. Yet the state of Kansas is still largely un-treed. Less than three percent of the state is under canopy.

This may account for Prarie Village’s obsession with trees.

The city’s Tree Board approves every tree planted on city land and names a resident as the year’s “Arbor Day Honoree”—last year’s winner made an online directory of every tree in a city park plus every “state champion” tree in PV. And, yes, the state tracks “champion” trees—Kansas State University identifies champs based on height and the width of their trunks and crowns. Prairie Village has eight state champion trees, including two oaks and a river birch.

The state champion sweetgum is on Belinder Drive in Leawood.

“They took me to court saying I killed a tree,” Michaels says. “I just defended myself. For four grand, I’m not going to spend five grand on an attorney. My question to the city arborist on the stand was, ‘Are you one hundred percent sure that what I did killed the tree?’”

The city prevailed in city court. Michaels was fined four thousand dollars to pay for the removal of the tree and the planting of a new one.

Then, in April, the tree started budding leaves.

“The tree was budding,” Michaels says. “In court, the arborist said I killed it, and this spring it budded. They said it would be between thirty and sixty days until the tree could be removed. Instead, after it bloomed, they sent a crew immediately. They took that tree down, stumped it and got rid of everything. They killed the tree after taking me to court for killing it.”

While taking down the living four-thousand-dollar tree, the work crew did approximately five thousand dollars of damage to the concrete in Michaels’ new driveway. Michaels says the city agreed to pay for it.

Michaels says word has spread about the tree, and he and his wife have been confronted about it while on walks in the neighborhood and at Starbucks. The tree is now gone, but tensions remain—partly, Michaels thinks, because his new house sits on a teardown lot.

“There’s a group of people in Prairie Village that absolutely hate the new construction,” he says. “The short-sighted people say, ‘Well, my property taxes are going up because this guy built this house.’ The people with some foresight say, ‘Wow, my property values are going up because this guy built this house.’”

Link McKenzie says that the situation has been challenging “for those of us who care deeply about our city’s urban forest” but that her involvement ended with her dismissal from the Tree Board. She declined to say whether she supported the city cutting down the tree after it budded.

“This particular ordeal has been costly to the taxpayers of Prairie Village in both time and money,” she says. “Our beautiful tree canopy is one of the many valuable assets that makes Prairie Village the lovely community it is.”

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We’d like to give you

ENJOY A NIGHT ON US! Plan a getaway to Springfield, Missouri, between April 1 and June 27, 2021and we’ll pick up the bill for one of your hotel nights!

Participation is simple and is designed to fill your trip with some of the best food and fun that Springfield has to offer.

How it works: Visit the local attractions and food and drink establishments participating in this program between April 1 and June 27, 2021.

Then, make a qualified purchase at THREE (3) attractions, THREE (3) food & drink establishments and spend at least TWO (2) nights in a participating hotel, and we will pay for one of your nights! *Hotel rooms must be reserved 48 hours before you plan on arriving. *Limited to the first 3,000 participants.

Explore Springfield at

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Be sure to check out the Terms and Conditions so you know exactly how to get your free night.

WHERE YOU WANT TO BE IN JUNE

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY @MUSEALIA

June

14

GO: Auschwitz: Not Long Ago.

Not Far Away opens June 14.

Open to visitors 10 am–6 pm Monday–Sunday. $15-$23.50.

Recommended for ages 12 and up. unionstation.org

RECENT AND CLOSE

Hate is on the rise.

From Holocaust denial and cemetary defacement to mass shootings at synagogues in Poway and Pittsburgh, Jew hate once more spreads like a vengeful cancer.

But anti-Semitism is not the only prejudice on the move. Demonization of “the other’’ is growing everywhere.

An exhibit years in the making, Aushwitz: Not Long Ago. No Far Away explores one of history’s greatest crimes through more than a thousand heart-wrenching artifacts and photographs. Its twenty thematic galleries were curated by an international panel of experts and scholars and

lovingly brought to Kansas City by Union Station president and CEO George Guastello. From inception to aftermath, visitors will experience the cold-blooded murder of a million human beings in a profoundly personal way, witnessing objects like an SS helmet owned by Heinrich Himmler, a crematorium showerhead and poignant, simple items like a prisoner-made chess set.

The exhibit, Guastello stressed in a phone call, is ultimately a story of hope. These victims are not statistics, symbols or martyrs. They were real human beings with dreams and foibles.

Collectively, they show the perseverance of love in the face of unspeakable horror and the simple humanity that can stop it from happening again.

—H A M P TO N S T E V E N S

KANSASCITYMAG.COM JUNE 2021

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T H E B E AT C A L EN DA R

classic seated in-person wine dinner at 1900. Chef Linda Duerr will prepare a meal paired to wines selected by Frost and Corso.

June

10

BOULEVARD DRIVE-IN, 1050 MERRIAM LANE, KCK. $10 PER CAR. KCYA.ORG.

Kansas City Young Audiences filmed dancers performing in small groups in its auditorium this spring and made a video that will be screened at the Boulevard Drive-In.

4

June 8, 6 pm THE RESTAURANT AT 1900, 1900 SHAWNEE MISSION PARKWAY, MISSION WOODS. $125.

THERESTAURANTAT1900.COM.

Michael Corso is a Chicago-based importer of French wine who’s been in the business for fifty years, starting at The House of Glunz, which bills itself as Chicago’s oldest wine shop. Corso was the first boss of local legend Doug Frost.

This is a return to the

June 4, 7:30 pm KNUCKLEHEADS, 2715 ROCHESTER ST., KCMO. $20. KNUCKLEHEADSKC.COM

Testimony: African American Artists Collective June 5-30 GALLERY L8 (PROJECT SPACE) AT NELSON-ATKINS MUSEUM OF ART, 4525 OAK ST., KCMO. FREE, TIMED TICKET RESERVATION REQUIRED.

KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

This room-sized installation

by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer features an upside-down canopy of mountainous terrain created by thousands of suspended light bulbs, which mirror the heartbeats of the visitors below. It’s high-tech stuff, using touchless remote photoplethysmography and vision algorithms to detect your pulse.

Tony Hinchcliffe June 11-12 THE COMEDY CLUB OF KANSAS CITY, 1130 W. 103RD ST., KCMO. $22-$30 PER TICKET, SOLD BY TABLES OF TWO, THREE, FOUR OR TEN. THECOMEDYCLUBKC.COM.

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe has been on top of the two biggest trends in comedy: podcasts and roasts. He’s a regular on Joe Rogan’s podcast and has been a staff writer for the past six Comedy Central roasts. He’s also known for his one-hour comedy special, One Shot, which was done in a single take and distributed

by Netflix.

Sara Morgan

Up-and-coming local Sara Morgan has the low-key, neotraditional country sound that’s reemerging thanks to acts like Tyler Childers and Sturgill Simpson. Her repertoire includes plenty of pedal steel and songs like “Never Been to Nashville“ and “Church in a Bar,” which explore her estrangement from mainstream southern culture. The Arkansas native and Olathe South High grad will perform solo and acoustic to celebrate the release of her new album, Another Nail.

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Michael Corso Wine Dinner

24

Kicker Country Stampede June 24-26

HEARTLAND MOTORSPORTS PARK, 7530 S.W. TOPEKA BLVD., TOPEKA. COUNTRYSTAMPEDE.COM.

Large musical festivals are slowly returning, and the country genre leads the way. This three-day music festival in Topeka has on-site camping and a track record of booking megastars-in-themaking (Taylor Swift, Kenny Chesney). This year’s event is headlined by Luke Combs, Sam Hunt and Maddie and Tae.

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY RESPECTIVE VENUES

June 1, 7 pm

This show at the Nelson, which will run through next March, shares the testimonies of the Kansas Citybased African American Artists Collective and “embodies the reciprocal powers of authentically speaking one’s truth and being called to stand in witness.”

The collective began with a 2014 gathering of local artists around a table at Gates and now includes more than one hundred and fifty artists. The show features the work of three dozen local artists, including painters, sculptors, poets, photographers, performance artists and illustrators.

June 10-30

KEMPER MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, 4420 WARWICK BLVD., KCMO. KEMPERART.ORG

W H AT YO U WA N T TO D O T H I S M O N T H

Dance-In at the Drive-In

Pulse Topology

LUCKY FOR YOU, THERE’S NOTHING TO DO HERE.

In Nebraska, we believe that only boring people get bored. So we invent our own fun.

Like when we realized that a livestock tank would float, and thought, “It’s a boat.” Soon, “tanking” became the preferred method of meandering down our slow-moving rivers.

It might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but if it sounds as good to you as it did to us, go to VisitNebraska.com for a free Travel Guide. And welcome aboard.

T H E B E AT I N T ERV I E W

Rising country star Halle Kearns spent five years in KC before making moves in Nashville.

BY K AT H L E E N W I LC O C K

your typical female country music musician. Like a few famed names before her—see: Kacey Musgraves and Maren Morris—the native Missourian, raised in Columbia, is revolutionizing the country music industry. Gone are the days of donning dirty leather boots and singing ballads about tractors and beer. In comes bubblegum pink iridescent pantsuits, pop beats and disco props.

Kearns came to Kansas City in 2015 and built her career by performing gigs at local venues, coffee shops and wineries before making the move to Nashville in 2019. In April, the twenty-four-yearold released her new single, “Plans,” which People described as a “pop-country tune that highlights her ability to fuse relatable storytelling with catchy melodies.” This rising tune comes after a successful release of her EP, Finally, in December, which has 2.7 million streams and counting.

HALLE KEARNS ISN’T

What led you down the path of singersongwriter? This is the thing that lit my soul on fire and just made me feel like I had this bigger purpose, so it was something I knew immediately that I wanted to pursue right out of high school. So a lot of it was trial and error, trying to figure out how to go about booking a show. There were a lot of cold emails. I actually used to take my guitar around and walk into music venues and be like, “Hey, hire me,” which is totally not what you’re supposed to do, but it ended up working out because a lot of people were kind enough to explain how it’s done. A lot of it really just snowballed on itself.

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KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

Why country? It’s what I grew up on. I’ve been listening to it since I was little. My first memories are listening to country music, and the first song I’ve ever sang was If I Fall

by The Chicks. It was complete babble, but I’ve loved country music since I was tiny, and it’s what I grew up on and what naturally came out.

So I think it’s just the genre I feel most connected to based on my upbringing. I think a lot of it was the environment I was raised in, and I think both Columbia and Kansas City have country roots. That’s just naturally what came out when I started making music, but the love of music and that bug I have inside me

KC FAVO R I T E S Power & Light District “I went to a ton of P&L concerts during my time in KC, and the atmosphere was unbeatable every time.”

Gates BBQ “For obvious reasons…”

River Market “River Market is one of my very favorite places to go with my family, and anytime someone came to visit over a weekend, I brought them here.”

that pursues it is more of a God-given thing that would have happened no matter where I was born or raised.

What is your favorite memory in your career so far? My favorite performing memory was definitely the first time I had played for the Blue Note, which is my hometown venue. And it was really special to get to step on that stage for the first time. It felt really validating and like a nod that I was on the right path.

Showing my dad “Shoes to Fill” for the first time was really, really special. He was actually in Nashville, we got in my car, and I just told him it was a mystery song. I hit play and we all started crying.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KELSEY MAGGART

BIG “PLANS”

Where do you pull inspiration from in writing your songs? I like writing my own story and my own thoughts and my own perspectives on things, so that’s where I always try to grab from, whether it’s a present-day experience or something I’m reflecting on right now. My family is also a big influence. It’s a win for them, too, because they’ve been through all the ups and downs and heartbreak and success and everything you can imagine with me.

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COME AND

Clown AROUND

Clown around with us while learning at our Edventure summer camps and connect with the great outdoors!

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KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

Home Ball Cap, $30

C U R AT I N G A B E A U T I F U L L I F E

Away Ball Cap, $30

Pennant, $35

Home Jersey, $60

SAME BALL GAME

A reborn team calls for classic merch. The new Kansas City Monarchs of KCK are issuing apparel that nods to the historic Negro Leagues team of the same name that played at Muehlebach Field a century ago. The classic red-lined pinstripe jerseys or the cardinal and navy interlocking KC caps both have a timeless look that also feels contemporary. — N I C O L E K I N N I N G G O : Shop at the ballpark’s Team Store (1800 Village West Parkway, KCK), open 10 am-4 pm Monday-Friday on non-game days or at monarchsbaseball.com.

KANSASCITYMAG.COM JUNE 2021

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SINGULAR SPA American Shaman’s medspa combines CBD with traditional medspa treatments.

BY N I C O L E K I N N I N G

founder Vince Sanders scouted a spot in south Overland Park for his envisioned medspa clinic, it wasn’t much. “It was empty,” he says. “Gravel floors, no plumbing, no electrical. That strip mall has been there twenty years, but nobody ever built out that spot.”

The massive local CBD company—they recently sent Russia its first batch of CBD ever—is constantly pushing into new spaces, sometimes unexpected ones. Sanders’ vision was to create a fullservice spot where someone could get Botox, control migraines—and stock up on the company’s CBD. “American health care is to fix [your body] when it’s broken,” Sanders says. “It makes more sense to me to maintain it just like you would a car, right? You change your oil. And we’re trying to do WHEN CBD AMERICAN SHAMAN

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KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

everything as naturally based as humanly possible.”

He enlisted the help of the Kapurs, a husband-wife duo that specializes in aesthetics and medicine.

Khyati Kapur, a physician’s assistant who has twenty years of experience in the medical field, says she’s always been drawn to aesthetics and shifted into the space a few years ago.

“With aesthetics, it doesn’t matter how many years of experience someone has,” she says. “There’s always new stuff that comes out. There’s always new things DID YOU to learn and to keep up with and new K NOW ? techniques. That’s the best part about American this field—it’s an evolving space.”

Shaman’s At the American Shaman clinic, cannabidiol, or CBD, is Khyati is primarily an injector and extracted from does fillers, hormone replacement organic hemp. therapy, microneedling and plateletrich plasma—a regenerative treatment that can help with joint pain, hair loss and scarring.

Khyati herself is a champion of CBD. “I am a big believer that CBD is right for a lot of people,” she says. “I’m a big believer in it for sleep. Sleep is a huge component of how hormones are shifted.” Khyati also often uses American Shaman topical CBD products on patients to soothe injection site pain.

Khyati’s husband, Dr. Rahul Kapur, is a physician who will join the clinic soon. He’ll use his expertise in creating IV bags for patients.

“He’s been able to create IV bags that have helped post-cancer patients get nutrition they need,” Khyati says. “He creates these protocols and researches and just has this robust knowledge in this space.”

Sanders and Khyati say that a possible future addition to the medspa is ketamine-assisted therapy, which is said to help with PTSD, depression and anxiety and is becoming a rising trend of therapy in Kansas City. Sanders also adds that yoga and psychology could make it on the medspa’s menu soon.

“We’re here trying to keep your body in balance or homeostasis, the way it was designed in nature,” he says.

GO: CBD American Shaman Medspa & Clinic. 11709 Roe Ave., Suite B,

Leawood. 913-400-3166.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATALEA BONJOUR

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S WAY T R EN D S

DAD’S LOOT HERE

3

BY M A R T I N C I Z M A R

5

2 1

I T ’ S V E R Y P O S S I B L E I take this Father’s Day gift guide too seriously.

When I flip through similar articles published elsewhere, I’m often startled by how superficial they feel compared to gushy Mother’s Day guides. Did this writer even spend three-hundred-and-sixty-four days a year on the hunt for the perfect objects for their annual Father’s Day gift guide? Everything on here I’ve owned or tested. It’s personal and geared toward my own interests, yes—but it’s also rooted in the closest thing this wacky postmodern world has to universal truth.

Yeti Colster Can Cooler There was a time in my life where I found all manner of koozie and can coolers to be ridiculous.

Maybe I’ve grown less rugged, or maybe today’s modern slimline aluminum cans pass their chill faster, but I’m a convert. I’d no sooner drink a naked can of Bud Light Lime than I would eat a prime porterhouse with a plastic spoon.

Yeti is synonymous with premium chilling products and these can coolers are a worthy addition to their line. Sturdy, effective and easy on the eyes. $25, yeti.com 3

4

1 Ugg Olsen Slippers Last year I recommended a set of bison leather L.L. Bean moccasins. I have those, and they are indeed very nice. But it’s hard to beat these slips from Australia-born Ugg— both plusher and sturdier.

The fluffy wool liners keep your feet both warm and cool.

The sole is thin enough for comfort around the house but thick enough to sustain a direct shot from a Lego block.

And, of course, they’re not lacking for looks. These are the slippers Tom Brady wears.

If you dad says he doesn’t want the slippers Tom Brady wears then he’s a liar, a fool or both. $110, ugg.com

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KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

2 Third Eye Headlamp For most dads, there’s no such thing as “too many flashlights.” Every glove box, junk drawer, bedside table and deep closet needs one. And of course you need a handful of spares in the basement in case there’s a blackout.

This stylish headlamp by California artist Sean Anderson boasts 168 lumens, so it’s not going to blind anyone but with six power settings and a retina saving red light mode, it’s ideal for camping. It’s light, sealed with an o-ring to make it waterproof, and also very stylish. $50, thirdeyeheadlamps.com

4 Milam & Greene Triple Cask Straight Bourbon Milam & Greene is based in Blanco, in the heart of Texas Hill Country. The bourbons down there get oaky in a hurry because of the high heat and humidity. To balance that tendency, they’ve blended spicy three-year-old Texas bourbon with four and eleven-year-old Tennessee whiskeys. There’s a lot going on—spice, fruit and vanilla along with oak. It’s cask-strength ninety-four proof, and like

mine with one cube of ice. $45, milamandgreenewhiskey.com 5 Stax SRS-3100 Stax headphones—the company calls them “earspeakers”—are electrostatic, which means they rely on totally different technology than other headphones, using a very thin diaphragm to conduct an electric-charge that reproduces sound.

You really need to hear them. I recently introduced a friend to my own Stax headphones.

His mouth hung open for an hour as he picked up things he’d never heard before on albums he’d heard a hundred times.

When it comes to Stax shopping, the SRS-3100 have a few advantages that make them a perfect go-big dad’s day gift. First, they’re actually on the cheaper end of the Stax spectrum and second, the classic rectangular housing are iconic. They really are magic—there is nothing like them. Warm them up, put on your dad’s favorite album, and look away when he cries a little. $1,100, stax-international.com

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KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

SPONSORED CONTENT

ReeceNichols Continues Fundraising for Ronald McDonald House Charities

R

eeceNichols Real Estate, the leading real estate brokerage in Kansas and Missouri, has once again, partnered with Ronald McDonald House Charities of Kansas City (RMHC-KC) with a goal of generating $100,000 for the charity in 2021.

This year’s campaign will benefit four Ronald McDonald House Charities in the areas ReeceNichols serves: RMHC-KC, RMHC of the Four States in Joplin, Missouri, RMHC of the Ozarks in Springfield, Missouri and RMHC-Wichita, in Wichita, Kansas. 273 ReeceNichols agents are slated to take part.

In 2020, a four-month pilot program for the Gold Key Project involving 38 ReeceNichols agents raised $31,000, providing 310 nights for families to stay at the Ronald McDonald Houses in Kansas City. It costs Ronald McDonald House Charities $100 for a family to stay one night at one of their houses; therefore, each agent involved in the pilot program

pledged to give $100 to RMHC-KC from every house they helped buy and sell. The pilot program exceeded its original goal by more than 500%.

“We take pride in helping people find their forever home, and we’re excited to have the opportunity to provide a home away from home to keep families close together while they’re going through a hard time,” said ReeceNichols President & CEO Mike Frazier. “We found in Ronald McDonald House Charities a partner with shared values and commitment to the community. Through this partnership, we’re bringing hearts and homes together for a greater purpose.”

“RMHC-KC is so thrilled with the results from these fantastic Gold Key agents!

Just as families with sick children need us during this pandemic, we need the support from our community, and ReeceNichols is unwavering in their support of our charity and the families we serve,” said Tami Greenberg, CEO of RMHC-KC. The Gold Key Project will run from April 19 through October 31, 2021, with agents

committing to donate $100 from each transaction that closes during that time period to the Ronald McDonald House nearest them. ReeceNichols’s lending partner, Prosperity Home Mortgage, LLC, is also pledging to give a donation to Ronald McDonald House Charities.

The Gold Key Project will continue as a yearly program.

If you’d like more information visit: reecenichols.com

KANSASCITYMAG.COM JUNE 2021

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S WAY HOM E

DRUMM-ED UP DREAMS This Overland Park Drummond home is a mid-century modern masterpiece.

BY N I C O L E K I N N I N G | P H OTO G R A P H Y BY J E R E M E Y T H E R O N K I R BY

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KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

K

ANSAS CITY IS FILLED WITH

that’s for sure.

There are Tudors and bungalows lining the streets of Brookside, Victorians in Pendleton Heights, Greek Revivals along Ward Parkway and even Italianates in pockets of Olathe.

And in a few spots around the city, you’ll find a Drummond. The mid-century home style by builder Donald Drummond, characterized by a flat roof (known as “flatties” and inspired by Bay Area builder Earl W. “Flat Top” Smith), is typically ranch or split level, has an open floor plan and has big glass windows against post-andbeam structures.

There are just over a thousand Drummondbuilt homes in the city, all constructed between 1946 and 1964. They usually come in batches.

“These homes were built for the DID YOU sports car-driving, pipe-smoking, K NOW ? wine-drinking enthusiast,” Kansas This was City real estate broker Scott Lane the first told CA-Modern magazine, which is low-voltage home built in part of the Eichler Network. Joseph its day in this Eichler, a builder out of California, is subdivision. known to be the godfather of these modern homes in the mid-century.

“These homes were for the owner who read The New Yorker magazine and had a refined appreciation for modern living.”

Realtor Missy Price recalls a time twenty years ago when Drummonds were a tough sell.

“No one was that familiar with them,” she says.

“It doesn’t have a basement and storage is limited.

They have flat roofs. There are some things that are kind of scary that are not really the norm for Kansas City.”

Two years ago, Price and her partner, Julie Inman, were in the market for a home— specifically for something more modern than the traditional homes they’d previously lived in. They got lucky when they landed their Drummond in Overland Park, just as popularity for the home style was growing.

“A friend of ours actually told us about it when it went on the market,” Price says. “That weekend, there were multiple offers on it. We were the lucky ones.”

Price and Inman say there’s always a steady parade of cars to check out the lineup of Drummonds on their street. “Even I used to do that!” Inman says.

COOL HOMES,

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S WAY HOM E

1 FURNITURE Both Price and Inman have furniture-finding abilities in their blood: Price’s grandparents were antique dealers, and Inman’s mother, according to Inman, is a “dumpster diver.”

“We sold everything traditional that we had in our homes prior,” Price says. “We knew we couldn’t just put a normal sofa and furniture in here. Everything needed to be a little bit sleeker and lower. We both just kind of

1

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like to collect and look and play and see what works and what doesn’t work.”

Most of the items in their home are from Facebook Marketplace, including notable vintage designer pieces like Lane Acclaim walnut tables and Gunlocke chairs.

Along with scouting vintage steals on Marketplace, they like sourcing furniture from West Elm, Populuxe, Crate and Barrel and the West Bottoms.

2

2 KITCHEN Since they moved in, Price and Inman have barely touched the kitchen— including the cable track lighting system with modern pin lights. “[Lighting is] really kind of hard to do because we don’t have a space between the roof and the ceiling,” Price says.

The bright orange backsplash is actually a painted wall with glass over it. The laundry unit sits in the corner of the kitchen; because Drummond homes don’t have basements, this is something you’ll see a lot of in his work.

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S WAY HOM E

3

3 BACKYARD

Outdoor living spaces are a common—and virtuous—feature of Drummond homes. This sheltered, openair outdoor seating area is decked with comfy furniture and an electric cone fireplace.

Concrete slab pavers throughout the yard lay on top of Mexican beach pebble.

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KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

4

4 TRAILER The couple purchased the trailer last fall, and Inman has been busy renovating the interior, using her expertise as an electrical engineer to gut the electrical and start fresh.

“This had an old propane heater and I didn’t feel comfortable using it,” she says, so she equipped the trailer with an electric heater along with an icebox, oven, stovetop, bunk and pull-out bed.

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Uniquely Diverse NEARLY

Arabic Burmese Czech English

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VENDORS AND

French German Hmong Karen

Saturdays 7:30 A.m. - 1:00 p.m. thru november

17

DIFFERENT LANGUAGES

Lugunda Malagasy Mandarin Nepali

Pennsylvania Dutch Russian Spanish Tongan Sign

Wednesdays 7:30 A.m. - 1:00 p.m. thru september

SUMM IS BA 52

KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

ER CK!

2021

Missouri's largest pool, boozy popsicles, a new night market and more ways to soak up summer.

WORDS BY

Martin Cizmar, Natalie Torres Gallagher, Kim Horgan, Amijah Jackson, Nicole Kinning i L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y

Katie Henrichs PHOTOGRAPHY BY

Caleb Condit, Tom Lighthouse, Rebecca Norden

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POP YOUR BUBBLE Level up with these popsicle picks

Paleterias Tropicana Peer into the freezers at any of the Tropicana locations throughout the city and you’ll find a dizzying array of bright paletas. There are nearly fifty varieties of Mexican ice pop, from sunshine-y mango speckled with red chiles to pale green pistachio flecked with nuts.

Crown Me Tipsy Treats Crown Me Tipsy offers a range of popsicles in your favorite cocktail flavors—strawberry lemonade vodka, tequila sunrise, piña colada—all made with fresh fruit and plenty of booze.

KC Wine Co. Reclaim a forgotten part of your childhood

and celebrate your adulthood with Vine Coolers from KC Wine Co. These squeeze tubes are filled with frozen wine cocktails, including sangria, “winearita,” “lemoncello” and peach bellini.

Frutopia After you’ve gorged yourself on delicious tacos on Independence Avenue, treat yourself to a refreshing paleta from Frutopia. There’s café con almendras (coffee with almonds) for the grown-ups and an aquamarine chicle (bubblegum) for the kids.

Paletas from Palerterias Tropicana

IT ’S BACK

Missouri’s largest pool is at a campground in Lone Jack SHANNON GRAY HAS A VISION for Lake Paradise Resort, which she and her husband bought two years ago: “Picture Dirty Dancing right in Kansas City—that’s how it’s going to be,” she says.

While she’s still working out some details on her plan to revive the seventies-era resort near Lone Jack to match the golden age of the Catskills, Gray (no relation to Jennifer) does have one very impressive asset to build around.

Lake Paradise (lakeparadiseresort.com) is home to a half-acre pool, the largest in Missouri. It’s a pool that

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SWIM

IT’S NEW

could easily fit hundreds of people, with floats. There are no water slides or diving boards—just a pool as large as a lake. “We’re old school, baby,” Gray says.

“It’s an amazing place. It’s in the middle of the countryside, right smack in the middle of nowhere—all of a sudden you drive around the corner and see this gorgeous pool that sits right on the lake.”

The resort has camping, cabins and spots for RVs, but you can also buy a day pass for the pool ($10 adults, $5 children). Get there early on humid weekends, as the revived park is starting to get a lot of attention in KC. “We put it on social media and it went absolutely nuts since everything else was closed and it’s so large you can easily stay distanced,” Gray says. —MARTIN CIZMAR

Record-breaking water slide at Oceans of Fun A F T E R D E L AY I N G I T S debut because of the pandemic, Oceans of Fun (worldsoffun.com) has just opened a new, record-breaking water slide called Riptide Raceway. At almost five-hundred feet long, it’s the longest slide in the world where riders race on foam mats. The slide starts with a climb up a five story staircase. Riders claim their mat and line up at one of four chutes to slide through a full loop and four tunnels before splashing into the pool. Worlds of Fun’s waterpark sibling opened Memorial Day weekend with the new slide as part of its lineup. —AMIJAH JACKSON

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SHOP

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KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

IT ’S BACK

FINEST OF THE FINE

Art is again the focus of First Fridays at the Crossroads WHEN IT BEGAN almost twenty years ago, First Fridays in the Crossroads (kccrossroads. org) were all about art—the main attraction was gallery shows that drew dozens. The event slowly grew into a large street party before crowds started staying home following a tragic fatal shooting in August 2019. Last year, the event was canceled because of the pandemic. This year, the event returns with a renewed focus on the arts. So far, gallery owners report that this year’s attendees are far more attentive to the shows, with artist talks taking center stage. —AMIJAH JACKSON

IT’S NEW

Drink beer and shop for vegetables at Shawnee’s Moonlight Market DOWNTOWN SHAWNEE is blossoming with the rebirth of its historic Aztec Theater and the opening of an enviable collection of brewpubs. To capitalize on the energy, the suburban city is launching a new mid-month Moonlight Market (4-8 pm on June 17, July 15, August 19, September 16 and October 21) that’s a combination farmer’s market and street fair, with live music and shopping. They’re allowing open containers in the parking lot of city hall, and the pubs have opted into the city’s very bureaucratically branded “Common Consumption Area.” The new liberalization of liquor laws paves the way for St. Patrick’s Day Parade partying and a totally lit Old Shawnee Days.

—MARTIN CIZMAR

Fine arts events picks

July 10 CASTLES, COTTAGES, AND CRIME

June 1 GREETINGS, SAUL STEINBERG Saul Steinberg is best known for his illustrations that have graced The New Yorker covers and his extension work for Hallmark cards and calendars. This retrospective at Crown Center looks at midcentury works from the Hallmark archive. Open during Crown Center shop hours. Gallery at 2450, Level 2. Free.

June 12 SYMPHONY IN THE FLINT HILLS Probably the prettiest concert you’ll ever see (symphonyintheflinthills. org), the symphony performs outdoors amidst the rolling tallgrass prairie near Council Grove.

The Nelson-Atkins’ (nelson-atkins.org) collection of tiny ceramic buildings from the mid-1800s has been in storage for forty years and includes tiny replicas of “murder houses” where notable crimes were committed.

August 5 HAIR Musical Theater Heritage (musicaltheaterheritage. com) stages the iconic hippie-era show Hair from August 5 to 22 at the four hundred fiftyseat former American Heartland Theatre, which will be held to forty percent capacity.

August 27 M A RY ’ S W E D D I N G KC Rep’s (kcrep.org) production of the epic love story set during World War I will, appropriately enough, open at the World War I Memorial for a onemonth run starting in late August.

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6

OV E R -T H E TO P LO C A L H OT D O G S

BY NATALIE TORRES GALLAGHER

Ssong's Dog AT S S O N G ' S Earlier this year, we welcomed a newcomer to the local hot dog scene—Korean hasdogeu from Ssong’s Hotdog in OP (ssongshotdogks. com). A beef frank is speared on a stick, coated in a panko, rice flour and wheat flour batter, deep-fried and served with a host of condiments.

Mama Mia AT F R I C & F R A C Fric and Frac’s (fricandfrac.net) homage to an American classic and our fair town’s Italian heritage extends to its hot dog menu, where you will find the Mama Mia: Italian sausage slathered with basil marinara and mozzarella on a sesame roll.

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Chorizo Rojo Dog AT W E I N E R K I T C H E N Wiener Kitchen’s (wienerwagonkc.com) glorious hot dog-burrito mashup starts with a house-made chorizo sausage wrapped in a handmade hybrid flour and masa tortilla, then gets topped with an onion-jalapeno relish, hot sauce, cilantro-lime aioli and a fried egg.

Chili Cheese Dog AT TAY ' S B U R G E R S H A C K The next time you’re at Tay’s Burger Shack (1019 Armour Road, North Kansas City), go against the grain and order the chili cheese dog. The chili is made with grass-fed Missouri beef and boasts a zesty punch of spice— perfect when it’s ladled over a Nathan’s Famous hot dog.

EXTRA HOT The Oklahoma AT T H E B R I C K The Brick’s (thebrickkcmo. com) humble all-beef hot dog gets a long strip of bacon luxuriously twirled around the frank, plus a brief dunk into a thick Boulevard beer batter and a trip to the deepfryer before being topped with onions and mustard in a bun.

Jack Russell AT C H A R L I E H O O P E R ’ S Why eat your mac and cheese out of a bowl when you could eat it on top of a hot dog like a real champion? The Jack Russell dawg at Charlie Hooper’s (charliehoopers.com) has your two favorite childhood meals in one mouthful, topped with bacon.

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SPOON

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FRESH AIR

IT ’S BACK

After a tumultuous winter and spring, Betty Rae’s is back and under new ownership

Four great outside activity picks

ALEC RODGERS IS THE KNIGHT in shining armor

we didn’t know we needed. The former Betty Rae’s employee purchased the two ice cream shops in Waldo and River Market (bettyraes.com) from owners David Friesen and Mary Nguyen in February. Both shops were closed sporadically throughout the pandemic, and early in the year, the future of the brand seemed uncertain—until Rodgers stepped in. Under his guidance, both Betty Rae’s locations reopened in April, offering the original menu full of the flavors Kansas Citians have come to love, like the decadent goat cheese-apricot-candied walnut and the signature burnt end ice cream. —NATALIE TORRES GALLAGHER

IT’S NEW

June 21 MAKE MUSIC KANSAS CITY Since 1982, the longest day of the year has been home to this worldwide event, and it’s happening in KC for the first time (makemusicday.org/kcmo). Look for free concerts on streets, sidewalks, venues and parks across the city.

July 17–18 N I G H T C AT F I S H I N G AT K AW P O I N T

A new Overland Park ice cream shop provides sweet opportunities IF THE WOES of the world hang heavy on your shoulders, please take yourself on a self-care break to the Golden Scoop (thegoldenscoop.org) in Overland Park, where coffee drinks and ice cream cones are served with such warmth that even the iciest pirate heart would melt into a gooey puddle. The nonprofit shop has eighteen employees (“Super Scoopers”), all of whom have a developmental disability. Golden Scoop’s mission is to provide meaningful employment for this overlooked population. When you visit, Super Scoopers will greet you, take your order, create fancy foam art on your latte and build your triple-stacked cone. The offerings at Golden Scoop are, well, solid gold: Try “My Father Was A Jam Maker,” made with strawberry jam from a Super Scooper’s brother, or Lucy 41, a luscious dairy-free vanilla named for Super Scooper Lucy Wagner. Forget Disneyworld: This is the happiest place on earth. The ice cream is just a bonus. —NATALIE TORRES GALLAGHER

The confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers is home to some of the biggest catfish in the country. At this night fighting tournament at Kaw Point (allamericancatfish.com), anglers will try to reel in a record-breaker.

July 22-August 8 F E S T I VA L O F T H E B U T T E R F L I E S Butterflies, caterpillars and moths take center stage at the nine hundred seventyacre Powell Gardens (powellgardens.org), which celebrates the pollinators with a number of special events.

September 11 SHAKE THE LAKE The shores of Longview Lake will be home to a new country music festival: Shake the Lake (shakethelakefest.com) has a lineup headlined by “Small Town Boy” Dustin Lynch and “Buy Me a Boat” singer Chris Janson.

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4 R E A S ON S W H Y P I C K L E B A L L I S THE HOTTEST SPORT RIGHT NOW Last year, the Sports & Fitness Association declared pickleball the fastest-growing sport in America. Local pickleball pro Katherine Tomlin, a certified pickleball coach and co-host of the pickleball-focused podcast In a Pickle with Kat and Jamie, explains why this miniaturized version of tennis exploded.

1.

3.

COURTS ARE E V E RY W H E R E

IT ’S ACCESSIBLE

A regulated pickleball court is a third of the size of a tennis court. Their small size makes them easy to fit into apartment complexes—like downtown’s Flashcube Apartments—and at parks and rec centers across the city. Tennis centers have taken note.

“A lot of tennis places are switching over,” Tomlin says. “They’re starting to realize that they can draw in a lot of pickle dollars.”

2.

G A M E S AR E QU ICK “Games only take about fifteen to twenty minutes,” Tomlin says. “You can go out with one friend and drill or play singles. You can get three or four and drill.”

Many retirement hotspots, like Naples, have a pickleball court on every corner. Because courts are small, it's less cardio-intensive than tennis and easier on the joints for older folks. And yes, because there is not too much running involved, playing with a belly full of beer is completely doable.

4.

I T ’ S C H AT T Y Because courts are smaller, players can more easily carry on a conversation—or playfully taunt.

“There's a lot of ribbing that goes on,” Tomlin says. “You know, if someone is teasing me, I'm throwing it back at them, rattle them a little. It's all in good fun, but we leave it on the court. You always tap paddles at the end of the game, no matter what happens.”

Scan for a list of KC pickleball courts

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KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

IT ’S BACK

The Opal Wapoo returns, again putting KC at the top of the heap in gravel rides and races THE PANDEMIC forced the cancellation of most

bike races in the area, including the internationally famous Unbound Gravel (formerly the Dirty Kanza) and this lower-key gravel grinder. The scenic Opal Wapoo (opalwapoo.com) is held around Excelsior Springs, just thirty minutes from Kansas City, and includes roughly nine thousand feet of climbing on the hundred-mile route. Riders will pedal through curvy, hilly gravel roads lined with

RIDE IT’S NEW

trees as they explore the beautiful Missouri countryside. The race/ride takes place on June 26, during the city’s Waterfest, which celebrates Excelsior Springs' mineral water heritage with a parade and custom car show. The race starts at 7 am from the Historic Hall of Waters, where riders will be escorted out of town by a 1953 John Deere tractor.

There is also a shorter fifty-two mile route offering a less greuling taste of the winding gravel countryside, but still all of the fun. Participants get free post-race beer and the satisfaction of conquering some pretty tough hills. —KIM HORGAN

For those about to Rock, a new bike trail with the area’s longest pedestrian bridge ONE OF THE MOST ambitious bike trail projects in the country just got a whole lot closer to completion—with a signature bridge to boot. The Rock Island Trail (bikerockisland.com) will tie KC to St. Louis by bike trail via the well-known Katy that crosses the state. The first phase, six and a half miles, was finished in 2019 and is headlined by the historic Vale Tunnel, a railroad tunnel built in 1904. The new phase is set to open in June and extends the trail from Brickyard Road to Kauffman and Arrowhead (sadly, the K does not have bike racks at this time). This phase is just over seven miles and will have three trailheads, two in Raytown and the last at the stadiums. The new section has five bridges, the most notable being the Wildwood Bridge, a three hundred-foot trail bridge just outside downtown Raytown. It’s the longest in Jackson County and a stunner that’s sure to be all over Instagram this summer.

There’s now just one short section to finish around Pleasant Hill before KC to STL is easily bikeable. —KIM HORGAN

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SLURP

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KANSAS CITY JUNE 2021

IT ’S BACK

KC Daiquiri Shop expands its frozen jugs of summer cheer to two new Kansas locations WE’VE BEEN A LITTLE obsessed with KC Daiquiri Shop since it opened in Power & Light with a walllong line of slushie machines spinning away. The shop was inspired by a popular Dallas spot and makes its daiquiris using rum and vodka in flavors like Piña Colada, Georgia Peach and Strawberry.

They serve them by the glass or in milk jugs—quart, half gallon, gallon—mixing as many flavors as you like. We recommend a Triple H of Hulk, Hypnotic and Hurricane. Now, there are two new daq attacks, one in Overland Park (8725 Metcalf Ave.) and the other at the newly refurbished Monarchs stadium (1800 Village West Parkway, KCK). —MARTIN CIZMAR

SUMMER JAMZ We asked notable music scenesters for their summer playlists

Addie Sartino

DJ Ashton Martin

Lead singer of indie rock band The Greeting Committee

Perennial winner of the title of Kansas City’s Best DJ and the official DJ of Sporting KC

“It’s Still Cool If You Don’t”

by Briston Maroney “Gone” by Baby Boys

IT’S NEW

Beer slushies land at Crane IF YOU SWING by Crane Brewing in Raytown

(cranebrewing.com) this summer—the parking lot happens to be a trailhead for the Rock Island Trail, where you can see the massive new bridge on page 63—you might notice something unexpected behind the bar. Slushie machines. In a brewery. Yes, Crane is now making beer slushies, often using their sour beers spiked with spirits. The concoctions are devised by their bartenders and change daily. One recent offering was built from the house’s Guava Weiss with marg mix, tequila, pepper syrup and lime.

“Our bartenders get to be creative in using our beers, local wine and spirits,” owner Christopher Meyers says. “Plus they are hitting the spot like adult slushies, especially this summer and for all the bike riders jumping off the Rock Island Trail.”

—MARTIN CIZMAR

“Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan “Oh Mandy” by The Spinto Band “Frankie Muniz” by BLACKSTARKIDS

Lonnie McFadden Legendary local jazzman who runs the newish Lonnie's Reno Club “Tutu” by Miles Davis “Smooth Operator”

by Sade

“Freak Like Me”

by Sugababes “Casamigo” by MC Beezy “Dom Dolla” by Pump The Brakes “Soul Sacrifice” by Dombresky “Take a Step Back”

by Dr. Fresch and Marten Hørger

Calvin Arsenia Local jazz-alternativeR&B vocalist “Tell Me You Love Me”

by Sufjan Stevens

“Is This Love” by Bob Marley

“Chemtrails Over the Country Club” by Lana Del Rey

“Come Get To This”

by Marvin Gaye

“Godspeed” by James Blake

“Funky Stuff” by Kool & The Gang

“Vacancy” by Son Lux and Kiah Victoria

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SUMMER HEAT SUMMER A hopeful summer is ahead. Embrace it with these vibrant, retroinspired looks perfect for a night on the town.

66 PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAMANTHA LEVI WORDS BY NICOLE KINNING MODEL ALAHNA

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2021

HALLS Amanda Uprichard dress, $255

THRESHING BEE Sugar + Lip set, $67 Coach straw bucket purse, $72 Novy Jewelry earrings, $17 Novy Jewelry necklace, $24

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2021

SUMMER HEAT . June ’21 . 69

LADY BYE Pacif ica dress, $119 Pearl headband, $30

SUMMER HEAT . June ’21 . 70

CLOTHOLOGY:135 Beulah dress, $118

HALLS Crosby by Mollie Burch Isabelle dress, $258 STEVE MADDEN Lynden Bone boots, $130

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The Starr Women’s Hall of Fame is dedicated to honoring the accomplishments of women — past and present — whose contributions leave a lasting impact on Kansas City and beyond.

I N T RO D U C I N G Kansas City’s next class of extraordinar y women

Sister Berta Sailer

Dr. Norge Jerome

Sister Corita Bussanmas*

Audrey H. Langworthy

Rafaela “Lali” Garcia

Carol Marinovich

Dr. Gayle Holliday

Karen M. Herman

Nelle E. Peters* †

Rosilyn Temple

Sonia Warshawski

2021 STARR WOMEN’S HALL OF FAME

INDUCTION CEREMONY TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 2021 5:45 p.m. Preshow 6 p.m. Starr Women’s Hall of Fame Private Broadcast Celebration

For more information about the inductees and induction ceremony, please visit umkc.edu/starrhalloffame

UNDERWRITING SPONSORS UMKC Starr Education Committee | Martha Jane Phillips Starr Field of Interest Fund at the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation EVENT MANAGER AND SHOW PRODUCER:

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* Posthumous recognition. † Photo credit: [Kansas City, Missouri, Photograph Collection, P1116, #018652.] The State Historical Society of Missouri, Photograph Collection.

KANSAS CITY MAY 2021

ERCE 21045329

C H R O N I C PA I N R E S E A R C H S T U D Y

ARE YOU SUFFERING FROM CHRONIC BACK AND LEG PAIN? WE ARE SEEKING VOLUNTEERS FOR A SPINAL CORD STIMULATION STUDY YOU MAY QUALIFY IF YOU: • Are between 21 and 80 years old • Suffer from chronic pain of legs and back • Have had no relief after back surgery • Are interested in a non-opioid treatment option Qualified participants* will receive • Evaluation and treatment from Specialists • Compensation for time and travel to attend study visits *Health Insurance required | Note: Kaiser not accepted at participating sites

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS STUDY, CONTACT: NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH CENTER

913.825.2314 | nicole.l@neuroscienceresearchctr.com KANSASCITYMAG.COM MAY 2021

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SPONSORED CONTENT

The Latest Innovations in Aging in Place O’REILLY DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, LLC

T

he developer who completed the historic renovation of the Folgers Coffee factory buildings in downtown Kansas City, transforming them into the posh Roaster’s Block apartment community in 2017, has quietly continued expansion in the Greater Kansas City market. O’Reilly Development Company recently opened The Madison in South Kansas City with three other local communities slated to open in 2021 (The Princeton, The Wellington and The Westbury). These state-of-the-art, ‘continuum of care’ communities have all been designed with quality of life for people over the age of 55.

Continuum of care is a system of care that guides and tracks residents over time through a comprehensive array of social and health services.

“The continuum of care concept is one that O’Reilly and Arrow Senior Living Management have embraced fully. Allowing residents to age in place and become comfortable in each community while having cutting edge technology in our industry, like wellness monitoring, allows us to set ourselves apart from your common person’s perception of what senior living looks like,” said Tim Moore, Regional Director of Operations, Arrow Senior Living Management, LLC. The Springfield, Missouri-based owner has constructed three ‘continuum of care’ communities in the Kansas City area and one in Columbia, Missouri. There are also three communities in the Springfield area.

The communities have been constructed by O’Reilly Build, a division of O’Reilly that employs ‘valued engineering,’ a term used to describe how their thoughtful design is paired with material selection that is sustainable and efficient.

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The Madison Senior Living

The O’Reilly

The O’Reilly Senior Living Senior Living brand of communities are unique brand of in design as they provide seniors a high-quality, active and engaged communities lifestyle throughout their post-reare unique tirement lives. For example, the in design as independent units are housed in they provide stunning three story lodge-style buildings featuring luxurious comseniors a highmunity common areas, offices, a quality, active commercial kitchen, beauty shop, and engaged and exercise and social rooms. lifestyle All units feature fully equipped throughout kitchens and include washer and dryer units. their postThe memory care common arretirement eas feature Life Stations, which lives. allow for purposeful wandering.

Each Life Station is designed to engage by triggering memories of tasks important to a resident throughout his/her life. For instance, Life Stations include a nursery area for acts of nurturing, a wardrobe to promote grooming habits and work stations to give a sense of purpose and accomplishment. Nurse stations will provide a hub for care partners and nurses to conduct care updates and paperwork.

Each O’Reilly Senior Living community offers three lifestyle options for residents with unique

LOCATIONS NOW OPEN: THE MADISON SENIOR LIVING 14001 Madison Avenue Kansas City, MO 64145 Phone | 816-627-1726 themadisonseniorliving.com

COMING SOON: THE PRINCETON SENIOR LIVING (Opening 2021) 1701 SE Oldham Parkway Lee’s Summit, MO 64081 Phone | 816-875-4950 theprincetonseniorliving.com

THE WELLINGTON SENIOR LIVING (Opening 2021) 1051 S. Withers Road Liberty, MO 64068 Phone | 816-222-0379 wellingtonseniorliving.com

THE WESTBURY SENIOR LIVING (Opening 2021) 550 Stone Valley Parkway Columbia, MO 65203 Phone | 573-818-7030 westburyseniorliving.com

OUTSIDE THE KANSAS CITY AREA: The Castlewood Senior Living, Nixa, MO The Township Senior Living, Battlefield, MO The Wildwood Senior Living, Joplin, MO Cedar Trails Senior Living, Freeburg, IL

needs, including senior apartments for independent living, assisted living, and memory care.

The services and amenities focus on supporting residents’ physical, social, and emotional needs. Each community offers a regional restaurant dining experience and 24-hour grab and go options, a robust events calendar with daily events and entertainment, scheduled transportation, and more. Through the years, many of the communities have been awarded as best-in-class locally and nationally.

Senior-friendly apartment design features award-winning wellness technology to foster peace of mind. Communities are equipped with technology concentrating on resident wellbeing that offers passive monitoring of changes in care, predictive capabilities for illness detection, and emergency notification for falls and other crises. Thermal readers and mask detection equipment have also been integrated in response to COVID-19. In addition, O’Reilly communities are also designed to the NGBS Green Building certification standards.

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So whether you prefer coffee or tea, at Aberdeen Village you’ll find everything you need, all in one place.

OFFERS INCLUDE CHOICES OF ENTRANCE FEE OR MONTHLY FEE REDUCTION OPTIONS! CALL 913-393-9878 OR VISIT WWW.ABERDEENVILLAGE.COM/CHOICES TO LEARN MORE. (Offers apply to independent living private pay residents only. Other terms and conditions may apply.)

OLATHE, KS • A PMMA (PRESBY TERIAN MANORS OF MID-AMERICA®) SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY

GUIDE TO

Aging Well You’ve reached an important chapter of your life. It’s time to take care of yourself physically, emotionally and spiritually. And we’re here to help. Our Guide to Aging Well has plenty of resources and tips to help you navigate the changes of growing older and living life to the fullest.

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GUIDE TO

Aging Well

The Right Moves

BY A N N E K N IG G E N D O R F

A corrective exercise specialist shares moves to keep muscles relaxed and the body aligned.

E

VEN IF YOU HAVEN’T BEGUN feeling

the pangs of aging yourself, you’ve likely seen parents or grandparents lose their perfect posture and move differently than they once did. No one stays young forever, but with the right exercises, a lot of the stiffness and discomfort associated with aging can be allayed.

Ray O’Kelly is the owner of Superior Fit Body in Waldo. He holds a Corrective Exercise Certification through the National Academy of Sports Medicine and has been training older clients for thirteen years.

“They know they need to stay active,” O’Kelly says.

“If they stay active, it helps their posture, it helps their

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core, it helps their range of motion, mobility, lifestyle.”

When he meets a client, one of the things O’Kelly has the person do is stand with her heels and head against a wall. Can she raise her arms straight out in front of her? Some people can do it but then can’t raise their hands straight above their heads in the same position.

The inability to do either tells O’Kelly that the muscles along the front of the person’s body are too tight, or overactive, and need to be stretched—a lot—and the muscles along the back are underactive and need to be strengthened.

“Your body should be a straight line,” O’Kelly says. “When you raise your arms up above your head, your fingertips should line up all the way through your heels.”

And, often, the older a client is, the less straight that line is. So O’Kelly starts

with dynamic stretching, not weights or aerobic activity—his goal is to regain some range of motion and strengthen the core.

“When someone says ‘core’ they automatically think, ‘Oh, let’s work our abs,’” O’Kelly says. “It’s not about that. It’s about working your balance. I have a lot of my clients sit on a balance ball, balance on one leg, do things on unstable surfaces.”

He says that consistency is key, so he urges people to see him three or four times a week and continue doing their “homework” on days when they’re not with him, which often means taking a walk, balancing or doing arm raises.

For one eighty-five-yearold client, the homework is simply to lie on a hard surface until his muscles relax enough to allow his head to rest on the floor, which sometimes takes as long as three minutes.

He says what causes the tightness is not only inactivity but also many years of hunching forward at a desk or even wearing high heels too often; the muscles are out of balance with each other.

With the right exercise, a lot of that balance can be regained. “If I can help someone get up from a chair without any assistance or even to roll over in bed, then I’m doing something right,” O’Kelly says.

OPENING FALL 2021 Located in Meadowbrook Park, this boutique community offers assisted living, memory care and independent living and provides seniors with a worry-free retirement experience. Join us and discover elegantly designed common areas, chef-prepared culinary experiences, private underground parking and an array of other amenities that will ensure that you love the way you live!

CALL TO SCHEDULE A PERSONAL TOUR TODAY!

913.325.4907

9300 Parkside Drive, Prairie Village, KS 66207

WELCOME TO

BETTER

Memory Care

Maggie’s Place at Colonial Village is a new memory care community unlike any other. Our unique village concept is designed specifically for those who desire the latest and best in memory care support in an environment that is safe, comforting and stimulating— a home where your loved one can continue to live life to its fullest.

Now Open!

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Amenities & activities designed for living: • Private room & bath in cottage-style home • Safe, secured doors & fenced courtyard • Central “main street” & walking paths • Medical & care staff with specific Alzheimer’s & memory care training • Group & individualized activities • Outdoor clubhouse with patio • Many other specialized amenities

LEARN MORE AT MaggiesPlaceKC.com (913) 318-1880 12610 W 137th Street Overland Park, KS 66221

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GUIDE TO

Aging Well

Get Your Hugs In

BY N IC O LE K I N N I N G

Science says you can leverage joy to live longer and lower your risk of dementia.

W

HAT IF WE TOLD YOU

that gardening could help you live longer? Or a long hug with a friend, or listening to positive affirmations, or spending time with your grandkids?

Seems almost too good to be true, but Dr. Carolina Aponte Urdaneta is not one to argue on that. Urdaneta specializes in geriatric psychiatry, and before the pandemic, she and her business partner, Christina Henry, started a program called Healthy Aging Revolution, where small groups of older individuals would gather to talk about ways to better this chapter of their lives.

“We would walk through things that people really need to be doing to have these years be more present, more abled, healthier and fulfilled,” Urdaneta says. As the program was growing legs, the pandemic hit and her patients could no longer gather for these sessions, but she hopes that sessions can restart soon.

The concept of happiness prompting a longer lifespan isn’t new: A Harvard study began tracking the health of two hundred and sixty-eight Harvard sophomores—one of which was future president John F. Kennedy—in 1938. The eighty-year-long

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study dove into the participants’ health and life conditions like career, marriage and family and showed that close relationships and contentment led to a longer lifespan than fame or wealth.

Long life isn’t just attributed to happy relationships, though. Urdaneta points to epidemiologist David Snowdon’s famed Nun Study, which found that nuns, who live homogeneously and to serve others, had a low risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Positive sentiments were found in the diaries of the healthy nuns in the study; less positivity in diary writings correlated with greater mortality.

In his book Aging with Grace, Snowdon says that habitual anger and hostility are known risk factors for heart disease, and depression is a risk factor for both heart disease and stroke.

Urdaneta recommends finding purpose in life: “Purpose can look like a job. It can also look like a grandmother taking care of her grandchild, or a husband tending to the garden for his wife,

or volunteering at an animal shelter,” she says.

Urdaneta also recommends being intentional: When the time comes to gather with friends and loved ones again, you should immediately schedule the next gathering.

“People get busy,” she says. “You have to put in the time.”

Although she doesn’t prescribe religion, Urdaneta has patients who find solace and community in their churches, places of worship or in whatever sense of spirituality they might observe. “If that’s a part of your makeup, it has definitely been shown to bring fulfillment and joy and some resiliency in life,” she says.

The final way to spark joy might be a hug. “When people are nurtured and are physically touched, we release oxytocin, which helps us get to a homeostatic state,” Urdaneta says. “This, in turn, means that your blood pressure and heart rate are controlled and that your brain is not getting inflammatory responses to anxiety.”

CALL FOR YOUR PERSONAL TOUR

Mission Square

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GUIDE TO

Aging Well

The Century Diet

BY A N N E K N IG G E N D O R F

L

OOK I NG FOR T H AT ON E SU PER FOOD

that will keep you fit and healthy well into old age?

Let us know when you find it. Experts agree that whether you’re thirty years old or eighty, the key to good health and longevity is a variety of healthful foods.

“If you like having an apple a day, by all means, have an apple a day—but also have some broccoli, have some grapes, have some whole grains, have a little bit of everything,” says Dr. Nick Marchello, a registered dietitian and professor at Northwest Missouri State University and the University of Kansas Medical Center.

He says one of the things that does change with age is calorie needs. Diet and exercise regimens—or lack thereof—often fossilize in the first few decades of life, and once injury or aging makes activity more difficult, a naturally slower metabolism and that lack of activity create a drop in caloric requirements.

Marchello says his mother had been fairly sedentary since her early thirties and had subsisted on what he calls the “Midwestern diet” of meat, potatoes, corn, peas and little else.

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Diabetes runs in the family, and his mother was diagnosed at age sixty-six.

To improve her health, Marchello helped his mom set goals that were specific, measurable, realistic and time-bound. Instead of saying she wanted to lose one hundred pounds, she aimed for twenty, lost them within a year and is now off medication. “It can be done,” he says. “Is it a cake walk? No. It requires making some changes.”

Annie Nelson agrees.

She’s worked in nutrition for almost fifty years and is retired from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

“I tell people that there is really no bad food,” Nelson says.

“We just should eat in moderation but limit empty calorie foods as much as possible.”

Nelson recommends eating different colors and types of vegetables and fruits, whole grain cereals and breads, seeds, nuts, avocados and salmon and limiting saturated fats.

If you’re looking to eat a low-sugar diet, don’t be fooled by the “sugar-free” label. Nelson says those products tend to contain a lot of carbohydrates.

“If [an older person is] eating healthy, getting variety from all the food groups and increasing the fiber in their diets, I don’t see a big change they’d need to make as opposed to someone that’s younger.”

Senior Care Authority Personalized assistance in locating the best senior living and care options.

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GUIDE TO

Aging Well

Communities Aberdeen Village 17500 W. 119th St., Olathe

Faith-based nonprofit dedicated to providing residents a culture of Christian values with a full range of Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) options. The 35-acre campus in Olathe is part of a larger nonfor-profit community of Presbyterian Manors of MidAmerica (PMMA).

Lakeview Village 9100 Park St., Lenexa

Charming neighborhoodstyle living for active older adults. Residents enjoy all the benefits of independent living with access to medical assistance if and when those services are needed. Recognized by US News and World Report as one of the best shortstay facilities in the United States.

Northland Rehabilitation & Health Care Center 4301 N.E. Parvin Road, KCMO

A Tutera wellness center with emphasis on recovery and rehabilitation.

Multiple dining rooms feature restaurant-style menus customized to the individual’s specific dietary requirements. Long- and short-term residents have access to a full spectrum of services including physical therapy, occupational therapy and a robust schedule of programs.

Maggie’s Place at Colonial Village 12610 W. 137th St., Overland Park

Kansas City’s newest memory care facility has taken extraordinary care to create a place that feels

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like home. There are five cottage-style homes with 12 bedrooms in each, all with a private en suite bathroom and built around a main street meant for exploration and connection.

The staff is well-trained in helping with home chores, medication and physical needs customized to the individual’s unique cognitive concerns.

Meadowbrook Senior Living

Senior Care Authority seniorcare-kansascity.com

Offers senior clients valuable information regarding independent living, assisted living, and memory care at no charge by evaluating area communities and finding the best living solutions for them. They also provide consulting services to help seniors and their families navigate the complex systems of healthcare.

9300 Parkside Drive, Prairie Village

Silvercrest at College View

Located on the southwest corner of what was the 136-acre country club known as Meadowbrook Golf Course is a boutique community; this new property offers a desirable location for roomy independent, assisted and memory care living environments surrounded by beautiful trees, walking trails and water features within Meadowbrook Park.

This worry-free retirement community features elegantly designed common areas, chef-prepared culinary experiences, private underground parking and an array of other amenities to ensure residents ‘love the way they live.’

13600 W 110th Terrace, Lenexa

Mission Square 6220 Martway St., Mission

A new, unique independent senior living community featuring one- and two-bedroom maintenance-free homes designed for people 55 years of age and older. It reflects the culture, location and ambiance that people of all ages have come to love about the city of Mission and its surrounding neighborhoods.

Independent, assisted and memory care living options including services catered uniquely to people living with Alzheimers and dementia. Residents experience full days of purposeful and meaningful engagement opportunities that are designed for a worry-free lifestyle.

St. Anthony’s Senior Living 1000 E. 68th St., KCMO

A new gated, resort-style retirement community that offers one- and twobedroom senior apartment homes in independent residential as well as assisted living and memory support.

The soaring high-rise building offers scenic views with floor-to-ceiling windows in the independent living homes and is fully staffed with a skilled care team in the assisted living and memory care units. It is a Catholic-faith based community designed to help seniors enjoy aging.

Residents have access to chef-prepared, restaurantstyle meals, fitness classes, community engagement and life many forms of life enrichment activities.

O’REILLY DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, LLC

The Madison 14001 Madison Ave., KCMO

The Princeton Senior Living 1701 S.E. Oldham Parkway, Lee’s Summit

The Wellington Senior Living 1051 S. Withers Road, Liberty

The Westbury Senior Living 550 Stone Valley Parkway, Columbia

O’Reilly Senior Living communities are designed to provide seniors an active and engaged lifestyle. Each O’Reilly Senior Living community offers three lifestyle options for residents with unique needs, including senior apartments for independent living, assisted living and memory care.

The services and amenities focus on supporting

residents’ physical, social and emotional needs.

Each community offers a regional restaurant dining experience and 24-hour grab and go options, a robust events calendar with daily events and entertainment, scheduled transportation and more. Through the years, many of the communities have been awarded as best-in-class locally and nationally.

The senior-friendly apartment design features award-winning wellness technology to foster peace of mind. Communities are equipped with technology concentrating on resident well being that offers passive monitoring of changes in care, predictive capabilities for illness detection and emergency notification for falls and other crises. Thermal readers and mask detection equipment have also been integrated in response to COVID-19. In addition, O’Reilly communities are also designed to the NGBS Green Building certification standards.

Conveniently located near shopping and dining, we offer independent living, assisted living and memory care. Join us today to discover a worry-free, retirement experience with an array of amenities that will ensure you love the way you live.

CALL TODAY TO SCHEDULE A TOUR!

866.554.9957

13600 W 110th Terrace, Lenexa, KS 66215 SilvercrestCollegeView.com

StAnthonysKC

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No buy-in fee plus a $3,000 move-in bonus!* Call 816.846.2200 today to schedule your personal tour or visit StAnthonysKC.com to view our lifestyle video. *Limited time offer. Call for details.

1000 E. 68th Street, Kansas City, MO 64131 KANSASCITYMAG.COM JUNE 2021

85

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FISH ‘N’ CHIPS ROLL AND 3 BALL, TWO STRIKE PHOTOGRAPHY BY CALEB CONDIT AND REBECCA NORDEN

E AT I N G A N D D R I N K I N G W E L L I N K A N S A S C I T Y

ROLL MODEL

It starts with a pale squiggle of yuzu mayo and shredded kani crab, which rests atop each rice-wrapped bite like fresh snow on a mountain. Inside the roll are: tempura-fried calamari, garlic chips and a dusting of fresh lemon zest. The first bite is all texture—soft, wet, creamy, crunchy—and then flavors kick in, the fresh fish, then the garlic sailing to your senses on a current of citrus.

This is the fish ‘n’ chips roll from the newish Kobi-Q Sushi (425 Westport Road, KCMO, kobi-q.com), one of a handful of specialty rolls that will, at first blush, raise your eyebrows — until you’re plopping one piece after another into your mouth. There’s also a vegan pickle roll with umeboshi plums and spicy pickles, a lucky cat roll with crispy salmon skin and, if you feel compelled to cut carbs, though we cannot imagine why, a pretty little number called “3 ball, two strike,” featuring halved avocados stuffed with spicy tuna.

Kobi-Q Sushi in Westport opened in February. Its big sister, Kobi-Q in the Crossroads, focuses on Korean comfort food, but married duo Mila and Justin Sehorn and chef Huy Ku Kwon took the opportunity to branch out with the Westport Kobi-Q. “We weren’t strangers to sushi,” Mila says. “We had done a little at the Crossroads when we opened in 2018, but it didn’t take off like we wanted it to. This has been a great way for us to have fun with the rolls and really play with the combinations.” — N ATA L I E TO R R E S G A L L AG H E R

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BLANC IS THE NEW BLANC Missouri wine trends are shifting away from syrupy sweet to light and sophisticated.

Vidal Blanc is leading the way.

BY N ATA L I E TO R R E S G A L L AG H E R

Red Fox Winery & Vineyards, Red Fox Vidal Blanc

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K A N S A S C I T Y H A S many excellent restaurants with impressive wine lists pulling interesting bottles from around the globe. Very few of them stock wine from the hundred and thirty or so wineries spread throughout Missouri.

That’s largely because the bulk of the offerings are sweet wines that aren’t suited to food pairing.

But that has less to do with soil, climate or the capability of our farmers and more to do with local preferences. Missouri wineries have simply been responding to consumer demand, according to every winemaker I’ve talked to in the area.

But lately, Missouri wine is getting drier.

Vidal Blanc stands apart as my new favorite local grape. This crisp, dry white can carry you on a summer evening aboard a boat or an elegant al fresco dinner.

In a blind tasting, you probably couldn’t pick it out from a nice Italian pinot grigio.

French hybridizer Jean Louis Vidal developed Vidal Blanc using a combination of Tuscan

Trebbiano and French Rayon d’Or grapes. The grape made its way to the Finger Lakes and eventually the Midwest. Today, it accounts for about six percent of all wine grown in Missouri.

(Norton, the top local variety, is around eighteen percent.)

When winemakers describe Vidal Blanc, they are quick to praise it for its versatility and resilience to frigid winters. It can produce bone-dry whites and ice wines in the same vintage. In Missouri, where growers have long favored native American grapes (Norton, Concord) and French-American hybrids (Vignoles, Chambourcin), the rising popularity of the Vidal Blanc heralds a trend toward Vitis vinifera and the maturing palates of local wine lovers.

These five Vidal Blancs are not just good for Missouri wine— they’re good, period.

Red Fox Winery & Vineyards Red Fox Vidal Blanc, $15, redfoxwinery.com Twenty-one years ago, Nick and Kayvon Jaberian were growing berries. Area winemakers came calling to purchase fresh fruit, and the father-and-son team saw an opportunity. They’ve been growing Vidal Blanc grapes since 2007, fermenting the juice in stainless steel and bottling it as an unaged dry white. It opens with a spritz of grapefruit and green apple.

“We’re not manipulating the wine that much, so in the end, our Vidal Blanc is going to be very clean and crisp, which is how people should expect it,” Kayvon says. “It seems to be getting more popular each year.”

Peculiar Winery Blissful Vidal Blanc, $16, peculiarwinery.com Vidal Blanc was among the nine varietals Peculiar Winery opened with in June 2019. Chris Gough purchases most of the grapes, and he gets his Vidal Blanc from Red Fox. But his bottling is much different from the one offered just a few miles down the road: It’s rounder and fuller-bodied, with juicy apricot and citrus notes. There’s still zippy acidity, though.

“We ferment the juice immediately after harvesting to keep that fresh profile,” Gough says. “I consider Vidal Blanc an anchor to our everyday offerings. It’s the Missouri dry white, and we’ve seen popularity increase so much even within the last couple months.”

Still, Gough says, Vidal Blanc doesn’t outsell Peculiar’s sweet wines. “Down here in Cass County, it’s a sweet market,” he says.

Fence Stile Vineyards & Winery Reserve Vidal Blanc (2016), $21, fencestile.com In a testament to the versatility of Vidal Blanc, Fence Stile offers it in five different bottlings: dry reserve, sweet, late harvest dessert, dry orange late harvest and sweet white port-style— all made with the same grape.

“Vidal Blanc has a thick skin and it’s extremely disease-resistant, so we have more time with it and it hangs on the vine longer,” says Fence Stiles owner-winemaker Shriti Plimpton. They start picking in mid-September and stop around Thanksgiving. “Leaving it on the vine gives it deeper, raisin-y flavors and allows us to do creative things.”

The Reserve Vidal Blanc shines brightest here—this pale, dry white opens with ripe pear and lip-smacking citrus.

nearby Fence Stile.

The Van Till Vidal Blanc is a very dry pale white—just high notes of bright apricot and tangerine. It is distinctively different from the other white wines offered at the winery, and there are many: Van Till has over thirty different wines in its cellar, and none are distributed.

“A lot of people in Missouri look for sweeter wines, but any wine that has the capability of being dry excites us,” says Van Till.

Stonehaus Farms Winery Strother Ridge Vidal Blanc, $13, stonehausfarms.com When Brett Euritt’s parents began Stonehaus Farms Winery in 1996, it

Van Till Family Winery, Missouri Vidal Blanc

was meant to be a retirement hobby with fruit wines. A decade later, Brett Euritt took over and began planting wine grapes. Like Van Till, he didn’t go looking for the Vidal Blanc, but 2010 was a short crop year, and there was a grower near Jefferson City that he liked.

“I brought it in and gave it a run, and people really received it well,” Euritt says. He’s refined the wine somewhat with yeast changes, and like everything in the Stonehaus portfolio, the Vidal Blanc is coldsheltered, cold-fermented, coldfiltered and cool-bottled, which helps duplicate the flavor profile year to year. The Stonehaus Vidal Blanc is semi-sweet (it’s got about two percent residual sugar) and similar to a Riesling. There’s a joyful burst of pineapple and a pleasantly tart grapefruit finish.

“It seems like the driving customer base pushes more for a very fruity and sweeter wine, and that’s the go-to for our customers,” Euritt says. “Our Vidal is the driest we make, and it covers the folks who come to us and don’t want something sweet.”

Fence Stile Vineyards & Winery, Reserve Vidal Blanc

Van Till Family Winery Missouri Vidal Blanc, $25, vantillfarms.com Cliff Van Till did not intend to offer Vidal Blanc. His winery grows nine varieties of grape in its small test plot, and Vidal Blanc is not among them.

The winery purchases most of its grapes from commercial growers, and when they couldn’t get Chardonel they ended up with Vidal Blanc grapes from

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farmers to faraway markets. Though tastes varied, spare ribs appeared to be a cut of meat that was less desirable than others. African American entrepreneurs took advantage and, according to some anecdotes, got racks out of the slaughterhouses’ garbage or paid for them at cheap prices, barbecued them and sold them to a ravenous public.

Adrian Miller’s thorough new history of Black barbecue will give you some things to chew on.

BY M A R T I N C I Z M A R

A

DRIAN

MILLER

HAS

adopted the sobriquet of “Soul Food Scholar,” so it should be no surprise that he takes a scholarly approach to his books about southern foodways.

Miller is an attorney, former White House staffer and a James Beard Award-winning author. In his new book, Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue, Miller turns his attention to the grand tradition of smoked meat as it exists in America. To compile the story, Miller combed through more than three thousand oral histories from formerly enslaved people and reams of historical newspapers.

“I think what distinguishes me from many other barbecue writers is my tendency to go deep on the historical context and my dedication to telling the story from an African American point of view,” he says.

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Miller’s book goes to great lengths to undermine some of the most common stories about American barbecue—for example, dedicating a chunk of the book to the Native American roots of barbecue. But it also celebrates Black pitmasters and examines why the food media that used to celebrate Black barbecue has lately become obsessed with white “craft barbecue.”

“The media coverage of these white guys is so intense, comprehensive and constant that one could easily wonder whether Black people barbecue at all,” he writes.

Growing up in Northeast Ohio, ribs were synonymous with BBQ—you mention this in the discussion of the long end, short end and center cut. Gates in KC also does this, of course. Any idea why?

So many Rust Belt cities were significant meatpacking centers at one time during their histories. The slaughterhouses used railroads and rivers to connect rural

What can all of us white BBQ writers do to better our approach to Black barbecue? So much could be done. First, white barbecue writers need to bring Black barbecuers to their readers’ attention. As I traveled around the country, I was stunned and depressed by the number of restaurant critics in a city who knew very little about the African American barbecuers in their community.

Second, stop being lazy and do the work to find these folks. Look how much love Jonathan Gold got in Los Angeles for eating off the beaten path and sharing those places with a larger audience.

You quoted someone who said Black cooks might feel unwelcome when they see confederate flags flying at BBQ competitions. Would it help if a sanctioning body like the KCBS implemented a ban? I’m not sure what the impact would be since there are so few African Americans competing, but it would be a step towards creating a more welcoming environment.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAUL MILLER

SMOKE AND FIRE

Do you think that Patillo’s has been given due consideration for the Texas Monthly top BBQ list over its history— which, of course, long predates the current guy who does BBQ coverage for them, Dan Vaughn? I think Patillo’s has been historically slighted. After dining there, Vaughn has publicly acknowledged that he needed to be more mindful of how the R E A D ways he evaluated barbecue MOR E: restaurants possibly excluded A longer African American-owned restau- version of this rants from receiving accolades. interview Yet, overlooking Black-owned appears barbecue joints is a more recent online. phenomenon. If you look at the very first Texas Monthly best barbecue list published in 1973, Black barbecuers were decently represented.

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FINAL VOTING FOR THIS YEAR’S BEST OF KC READERS POLL IS NOW OPEN AND WILL END AT MIDNIGHT ON JUNE 17 vote.KansasCitymag.com KANSASCITYMAG.COM JUNE 2021

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SPICE UP YOUR LIFE Suggested pairings for this chili oil: literally everything in your fridge.

He makes his own spice blends, handgrinding each red and green Szechuan peppercorn—the two major varieties, the latter hard to find locally—with star anise and cassia root. He’s found that he needs a blend of high-quality canola oil and high-heat proof vegetable oil: His oil cooks for eight hours, until the chiles are almost caramelized. And then he lets it rest for two to four weeks.

There are endless uses for this condiment. Spread it on pizza, glaze salmon with it, drizzle it over eggs. This chili oil breathes fresh life into anything it touches.

GET IT: Watch for batch releases at instagram.com/jchang.

kitchen and jchangkitchen.square.site.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEREMEY THERON KIRBY

BY N ATA L I E TO R R E S G A L L AG H E R

pretty and small—just four ounces. The blue label is printed with delicate cherry blossoms.

The batch number is marked in tidy script: 12. And inside, a stormy scarlet liquid, glossy, shiny, layered with secrets.

This is the chili oil by J. Chang Kitchen.

James Chang sells the cult favorite condiment about every other month via online releases with an option to pick up locally at Waldo Thai, where Chang has been the general manager for the last three years.

Chang’s batches run up to three hundred and fifty bottles, and the recipe evolves each time. There’s a certain brand of red Szechuan chiles he prefers.

I T ’ S A H E X AG O N A L JA R ,

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TA S T E B I T E S

NEWSFEED

WHAT’S NEW IN KANSAS CITY FOOD & DRINK King G

Tapped In

Brunch Wars

King Me

Also back in a big way? Brunch. Two hip morning chains, Snooze and The Shack, are both expanding across the south side of the city. Denver-based Snooze has locations in eight states, now including Kansas, where they opened last month in Overland Park.

(A location in Westport opened just before the pandemic hit.) Meanwhile, St. Louis-based The Shack has opened in the former Big Whiskey’s American Restaurant & Bar in Lee’s Summit, having already set up shop in three places in JoCo.

King G, an upscale beer bar and deli-influenced restaurant, is coming to the brewery-dense Crossroads neighborhood in July. The new project gets its title from Gambrinus, a name you know if you’ve spent any time in the world of European beer, and comes from industry veterans Eric Flanagan (Westport Ale House, Bridger’s Bottle Shop) and Howard Hanna (The Rieger, Ça Va). King G will have a horseshoe-shaped bar upstairs and an intimate basement space that, with luck, may grow into the type of scene the Rieger’s lower level was known for. Hanna is making sandwiches using local meats and bread from the excellent new Blackhole Bakery on Troost. Among the sandos on standby are muffuletta, a Japanese-style egg salad sandwich and an eggplant and artichoke sandwich with Lebanese garlic sauce, deviled egg potato salad and burrata plus oils and spices. The spot will also have natural wine and what they’re billing as “unpretentious” cocktails.

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY RESPECTIVE VENUES

Going Uptown

Message Delivered One thing that sadly won’t be returning is Kaldi’s Coffeehouse. The St. Louis roaster pulled out of KC after the pandemic, taking its delicious gooey butter cake with it. However, its two spots on the Plaza aren’t sitting fallow, as Messenger Coffee opened in both on May 12, serving its coffee and baked goods from Ibis.

Also incoming to the Crossroads is Society, which bills itself as an “art-driven restaurant, bar and event space with a sophisticated edge.” Society takes over the former Jacobson’s space and is richly decorated with pieces from local artists and makers. Society’s majority owner Scott Mars told CityScene KC that the space would be a “higher-end alternative to the Power & Light District.”

He sees the space, which will tune TVs that normally show art installations to sports for big games, as “cutting edge.”

One of the surest signs yet that the pandemic is waning: BKS Artisan Ales has reopened its patio. The Brookside brewery, one of the best and most popular in town, is known for its hazy IPAs. BKS always had limited hours, it but fully shuttered its tiny taproom at the start of the pandemic and has been selling four-packs of cans to-go since—the weekly allotment of cans sold out online in approximately five minutes. In mid-May, BKS finally welcomed drinkers back to the front patio for a Saturday afternoon session from 1 to 7 pm. Alma Mader on Southwest Boulevard, another of the city’s best breweries, has done the same.

New ’Cue Also returning late last month after a corona closure is Poi-O, which has moved from the Westside neighborhood to KCK and undergone a branding tweak from “wood-fired grill” to “Mexican BBQ.” As reported by The Pitch, the new location was formerly a Subway sandwich shop and still has its drivethru window, though the sleek black building with a modern wood fence is otherwise unrecognizable.

Chef Carlos Mortera told The Pitch the menu will specialize in wood fireroasted chickens served with the traditional array of fresh tortillas, salsas and escabeche, but the menu has expanded into ribs marinated in adobo, kimchi fried rice, charred broccoli and an elote-style cheesy corn bake.

KANSASCITYMAG.COM JUNE 2021

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EYE OPENER Parisi’s Nick Scott is leveling up the brand’s coffee with exponential growth and coveted limited-edition beans.

BY M A R T I N C I Z M A R

P E R F E C T DAY Breakfast “My favorite place to go for breakfast, which I don’t go to often because I treat it as a special occasion, is Succotash. They have some really great stuff on their menu, and my wife is glutenintolerant, so they have great options on there for her. Most days, I’m going for something fast—I’m a donut guy, so I go to Lamar’s and get a couple double chocolate cake doughnuts.”

Lunch “My favorite place to eat lunch is Ricos Tacos Lupe. It was literally across the street from the old Parisi—when we were over there, I was eating at Ricos like three days a week. We still get groups together and make the drive down. It’s not on their menu, but they will make a specialorder quesadilla.”

Dinner “I really like Italian food, but not a lot of Italian places have gluten-free options. I really love Garozzo’s. They have one gluten-free pasta option and my wife happens to love it. So we go a few times a year and really savor that experience.”

Smokes “I’m a locker member at Fidel’s Cigar Lounge in Westport.

That’s where I go to escape—drink my bourbon, smoke a cigar. Even though there’s people there, it’s the same people. It’s like your own private lounge.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATALEA BONJOUR

T H E B E S T C U P O F C O F F E E Nick Scott has ever had came from Long Miles co-op in Burundi, a tiny landlocked African nation.

“It tasted like plums and fig and honeysuckle,” Scott says. “It really made me question coffee as a whole. It made me wonder, ‘Hmmm, I wonder how good coffee actually can be—because this coffee is really, really good.’”

At Parisi, where the Topeka native now works as head roaster, Scott is entrusted with creating that type of eye-opening coffee experience for others. When he came on board in 2018, Parisi was roasting about a million pounds of coffee per year. Now, it’s ten million pounds—exponential growth over just a few years.

That’s because the appetite for specialty coffee—the green beans are independently graded to be higher quality than the beans that go on to become Folgers—has ballooned.

Much of Parisi’s product is white-labeled for others.

“Coffee’s becoming a more affordable luxury in people’s lives,” Scott says. “We make a great product at a very attractive price, so it’s almost a no brainer. Let’s just make a really good product, let’s make it so it’s really affordable, and let’s sell the hell out of it.”

The profitability of that large-scale roasting allows Scott to pursue “really cool projects” under the Parisi label, like a single-origin roast made from beans grown at the Finca Los Pinos farm in the Matagalpa region of Nicaragua. The beans undergo an anaerobic fermentation process that involves coffee cherries resting in an environment without oxygen to develop surprising new flavors.

“In the coffee world, you want things to be cool, you want things to be progressive and new,” he says. “Everything has to change all the time.”

Scott currently has a Burundi coffee that evokes his conversion cup available for sale at Parisi shops. Parisi is also, as of this month, serving one of the best coffee lots produced in Ethiopia, a product of a grading process known as “cup of excellence.” Scott says it’s one of the top three cups he’s ever had. If you see it, act fast.

“We want that coffee to only be on the shelves for, like, fourteen days before we pull it,” Scott says. “That coffee is really delicate, it’s really nuanced, and after fourteen days, it’s not presenting the way we want it to present.”

We asked Scott for some of his favorite spots around town.

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BACKSTORY

2017

“

I worked at Schlitterbahn after the Verrückt accident.

BY A M I JA H JAC K S O N

IT WAS SUMMER 2017, and I was getting ready to work my first job. I was so happy that Schlitterbahn hired me that I didn’t think anything about the tragic accident on the Verrückt water coaster the previous year.

I remember hearing about the accident on the news and thought that the park was going to shut down. But it didn’t, so I worked there.

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I was hired as an admissions cashier— taking payment and putting on wristbands—so I was one of the first people that guests saw coming into the park. I was responsible for answering questions, but I felt uncomfortable talking about the Verrückt accident, which killed a ten-year-old boy. I remember a few times where customers would ask if the slide was opened, and they would also ask why it was permanently shut down. I

thought it was absurd that not everyone had heard about the accident, but the slide was still visible, and as people rode the lazy river, they floated right past it.

The park’s entire approach to the grisly accident on its most famous attraction was to just pretend it hadn’t happened. Then again, that’s how some guests acted, too.

During our orientation, we were given a tour of the park. As we were approaching Verrückt, our manager said, ‘Oh, we won’t go over there.’ I remember looking at my friend in confusion, amazed that managers were just sweeping the accident under the mat instead of properly training us on how to speak about it.

Halfway through the summer, on one of our busiest days, we had a line almost to the end of the parking lot. I will never forget my conversation with a guest. ‘Hey, is that slide open today?’ ‘Which slide?’

I asked. He pointed at Verrückt. ‘No sir, that slide is closed permanently,’ I said.

He got upset because his family drove all the way from Texas to ride it. Hadn’t everyone heard about a fatal accident at the largest waterslide in the world? It was everywhere on the news. I told my supervisor what had happened, and he told me that I should just tell anyone that asks about Verrückt to Google what happened.

As a teenager, I did not think much about the situation, but looking back, it’s bizarre we had no training whatsoever on the topic. It seemed like at least once a shift someone would ask something regarding Verrückt.

The next year, I went back to work at Schlitterbahn. There were fewer questions, but the park was much less busy. There were constant complaints from guests about half of the park being closed. The main attraction was the lazy river. Customers often complained about how they would make long drives from Texas, Branson and other places just to arrive at Schlitterbahn and find it half-closed—including, of course, the Verrückt.”

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY ARCHIVES

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