May 2022: Great Stays

Tree house at Sundance Ranch, Excelsior Springs, MO

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COURSE CORRECTION

PICKIN' CHICKEN

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

How the pandemic helped stall the decline of golf

Introducing the city's new best fried chicken dinner

Jewelry trends are moving away from gold and back toward gems

Experts in matters We’re moving heart care forward, so you never miss a beat.

The AdventHealth Heart & Vascular Institute is holding your heart care to a higher standard – from the routine to the revolutionary. With leading-edge cardiac treatments and surgeries, including Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR), heart-rhythm restoration and comprehensive rehab plans, we’re here to help you feel whole for your whole life.

Learn more about our reimagined Heart & Vascular Institute at HeartCareKC.com

of the heart. care experts.

Your Path Home Begins with Malfer & Associates

Hallbrook

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At Malfer & Associates, Compass Realty Group, we offer a variety of benefits to maximize the value of your home in today’s market including home staging, extensive marketing including print, social, digital, and professional photography and videography.

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*From staging to renovation, we can leverage our exclusive Compass Concierge program to prepare your home for the market with zero upfront costs or interest.

Malfer & Associates is a team of real estate agents affiliated with Compass Realty Group, a licensed real estate broker 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. Photos may be virtually staged or digitally enhanced and may not reflect actual property

Exclusive Member Exclusive Member

Learn more about how Learn more about how Malfer & Associates Malfer & Associates simplifies the selling process. simplifies the selling process.

a x e Len

H VISIT BOTH MARKETS

DAILY The Lenexa Public Market offers an exciting and evolving array of local merchants that serve up authentic global flavors in one easy-to-access destination.

Whether you’re in the mood for sweet or savory, we’ve got you covered for every meal (plus snack time).

Grab and go, or dine and unwind at our place.

FRIDAY We’re all about patio party vibes to cap off a busy week. Kick back around the fire pits, sip local brews and revel in a rotating mix of live local music acts and area food trucks at Friday Night Sound Bites.

WEEKEND Time to treat yourself.

Indulge in breakfast or brunch favorites like donuts and coffee or burritos after picking up seasonal produce and other locally crafted items at the neighboring Lenexa Farmers Market.

Bring a friend, grab some grub and groove into the weekend.

Check website for dates, times and lineup.

8750 PENROSE LN., LENEXA, KS  LENEXAPUBLICMARKET.COM  @LENEXAPUBLICMKT

H

H LENEXA CITY CENTER

H

LOVES

LOCAL

SHOP We’re bursting with color, flavor and activity! The Lenexa Farmers Market is your source for locally grown, raised and made products.

Each week, we showcase dozens of hardworking small businesses. Browse for high-quality goods and connect with your community.

DIG IN The Farmers Market offers something fun for every taste and age.

• Yard games and kids’ educational activities • Expert yard tips and easy recipe ideas • Native Plant Sale (May 21) • Teddy Bear Picnic (July 16)

SATURDAYS (through October): 8 a.m. to noon

• Progressive Dinner (July 24)

TUESDAYS (June–Aug): 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

• Farm-ula 500 Veggie Race (Sept. 17)

RELAX Live music and featured local artists add to the Market’s ambience. Sip a classic cocktail on Saturdays while you shop.

Drop by the Lenexa Public Market and Lenexa City Center Library while in the neighborhood.

Rent an e-bike and cruise or stroll the trails in nearby Central Green Park.

17201 W. 87TH ST. PKWY., LENEXA, KS  LENEXA.COM/FARMERSMARKET

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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

Mary Henn mary@kansascitymag.com ART DIRECTOR

Katie Henrichs katie@kansascitymag.com ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR

Makalah Hardy makalah@kansascitymag.com GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Kayla Masisak

DESIGN INTERN

Natalea Bonjour

COPY EDITOR

Kelsie Schrader WEB COORDINATOR

Madison Russell SALES

Angie Henshaw angie@kansascitymag.com WRITERS

Dawnya Bartsch, Nina Cherry, Lauren Fox, Natalie Torres Gallagher, Rob Henrichs, Susie Whitfield PHOTOGRAPHERS & ILLUSTRATORS

Zach Bauman, Josh Beecher, Chase Castor, Caleb Condit, Joanna Gorham, Jeremey Theron Kirby, Samantha Levi, Rebecca Norden, Nate Sheets

OUR LOCATIONS KIDSMILEKC.COM KANSAS CITY

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

14420 Metcalf Ave. Overland Park, KS 66223

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Located deep within the rocky, forested terrain of the Missouri Ozark Mountains, Big Cedar Lodge is a remote haven of natural beauty that brings conservation to life.

Connect with family by connecting to the great outdoors.

b i g c e d a r. c o m

M AY 2 0 2 2

54 GREAT STAYS 6 places around KC for a quick and cool getaway

44

68

Brookside Basics

City Cultivation

A home in Brookside is renovated with organic materials and clean neutrals.

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

Meet KC’s growing community of urban farmers

86 Southern Supper

A new spot in the Crossroads is serving real Southern food.

Don’t play games with

your health.

M A R G O M M A M

When detected early, breast cancer has a 99% survival rate.

Risking breast cancer is a game you won’t win! When it comes to breast health, it has been proven that early detection, with annual screening mammograms, save lives.

If you are due or overdue for your annual mammogram, do not delay it any longer.

Schedule online, call, or walk in today for your 3D mammogram and walk out with results!

In This Issue M AY 2 0 2 2

S WAY

39

T H E LO O P

21

Bounce Back

TA S T E

Diamonds are Forever

85

Tempura Tacos

Comfy Clogs

86

Southern Comfort

The current trend in luxury jewelry

Golf courses and country clubs are making a post-pandemic comeback.

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Prevention & Peace

44

A local shoemaker works with artisans from all over the world to make ethical, quality clogs.

Frankly Forward

An Overland Park therapist launches new book on feeling stuck and how to overcome it.

Back to Earth A home makeover with clean neutrals and earthy textiles

Loudest Fan

A local group is working to end the cycle of violence.

The latest on Nick Wright of Fox Sports Network

Editor’s Letter

34 Backbeat 05.2022

O N TH E C OVE R

Tree house at Sundance Ranch, Excelsior Springs, MO

G R E A T S T AY S | U R B A N F A R M E R S

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COURSE CORRECTION

PICKIN' CHICKEN

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

How the pandemic helped stall the decline of golf

Introducing the city's new best fried chicken dinner

Jewelry trends are moving away from gold and back toward gems

KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

A new spot in the Crossroads offers an upscale Southern menu.

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Perfect Day

90

Claws Out

91

E V E RY I S S U E

16

29 Calendar

Om

Thai fried chicken tacos at Tiki Taco

52 Travel Guide 75 Ask the Expert

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Grace Ames is in charge of farm, food and fun at Colonial Gardens.

Nighthawk debuts an intensely smooth hard seltzer.

Newsfeed

The latest in KC food news

’Cue Card

Barbecue joints around KC are making some unique desserts.

FROM THE EDITOR

C O N T R I B U TO R S

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

Josh Beecher

PHOTOGRAPHER

The photos of the Hotel Vandivort were taken by Josh Beecher, a photographer and videographer based in Springfield.

Kayala Masisak

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

The photos of the Night Claw hard seltzer at Nighthawk were taken by contributor Kayla Masisak, a graphic designer, photographer and allaround creative person from Kansas City. She loves smiley faces, dogs and bright colors.

Natalea Bonjour

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

The portrait of Grace Ames of Colonial Gardens was taken by intern Natalea Bonjour, a Kansas City native and graduate of Pittsburg State University, where she majored in graphic communications with an emphasis in digital media.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOANNA GORHAM

I

’m pretty much always planning a road trip. I just like to get out on the road—whether it’s driving up to Green Bay for a football game and then over to Minneapolis for a few spins around the ancient barrel-roofed ice arena where The Mighty Ducks was filmed, or going down to Florida for a few days of sugar sand beaches and a dip in a bright blue swimming hole.

I’ve done those trips just in the last three months—with visits to Tulsa and St. Louis beside.

I know a lot of people who don’t love a long drive, but if I’ve got the Cocaine & Rhinestones podcast going and a few Starbucks Doubleshots in the cooler, I’m pretty much good to go.

This is why our May issue, which always has a regional travel theme, is a personal favorite of mine.

This year, I got to spend a great weekend in Tulsa. And if you have any doubt whatsoever about how great a weekend in Tulsa can be, I hope the story on page 56 conveys some of my excitement. But I didn’t even have space to get into some of my favorite moments from that weekend, which included a couple of drinks at the Saturn Room, a great Tiki bar and a slice of peanut butter pie for dinner at Antoinette Baking Co. From editing this magazine, I can tell you that there is more than enough going on in Kansas City for you to ever need to hop in the car. But, I usually find that these little getaways make me even more appreciative of the comforts of home and better attuned to all the things that make KC a great place to live. And, of course, among those things is the central location—this time of year a road warrior can get deep into the Rockies or down onto the Gulf in a day’s drive.

The spots we picked are all a little closer: Omaha, Springfield, St. Louis, the Flint Hills and Excelsior Springs, where you can stay in the tree house on our cover. Associate Editor Mary Henn took those last two trips and was so impressed with the history and friendliness of the two towns that she’s planning a road trip to survey other charming little burgs in the area.

I know that feeling all too well—roadtripping is addictive, especially if you end up staying in a great hotel. The more you get out, the more you want to get out.

Because the hotel industry has been hammered by the pandemic, this year we’re making them the star of the show in our Great Stays package on page 54.

We’ve profiled six great newish hotels and given you a few tips on what to do during a weekend stay at five (we figure you know your way around St. Louis).

We hope that this feature helps point you to some great stays this month—in my personal opinion May is the queen of all road trip months since the weather is nice Martin Cizmar but cool and the summer crowds are still at EDITOR IN CHIEF bay. Drive safe, and see you in June!

MARTIN@KANSASCITYMAG.COM

ST. LOUIS AQUARIUM

See Where It Takes You

stlouisunionstation.com

Discover the St. Louis Aquarium, Ropes Course, Carousel and more when you stay at the St. Louis Union Station Hotel.

COURTIER

NUMBERS FROM THIS ISSUE

4K+

Number of golf courses that closed across the country between 2017 and 2019 alone PA GE 2 1

29

Number of buildings on Ninth Street east of State Line. Twenty-four were saloons and liquor retailers during Prohibition.

PA GE 9 4

9

Number of farms and agricultural businesses along fifteen blocks of Woodland Avenue in KCMO PA GE 6 8

SHOUT OUT

MARKET BOOM

Our April issue was dedicated to the current real estate scene in KC—specifically, the eleven neighborhoods that have blown up the biggest in the last couple of years.

And people had a lot to say about new developments cropping up, cute neighborhoods with favorite hangout spots and some more serious issues like gentrification, as well as supply and demand.

I read the article on booming neighborhoods, which was really good, and wanted to challenge the comment that “there is no inventory” or “less inventory now than 2020.” Agreed, on a daily basis, it certainly feels like there is no inventory or that it has dropped significantly.

But I did an MLS search on Residential Sales year over year and found that from March 2019–March 2020 41,683 properties sold, from March 2020–March 2021 45,128 properties sold, and from March 2021–March 2022 46,179 properties sold.

According to NAR, 6.1 million existing homes sold in the United States in 2021, the most since 2006. The argument can be made that it’s just not an inventory problem, we have seen a glut of buyers enter the market that exceeds (what would be normal) supply, and the velocity of the market hampers inventory to keep up. Part of the inventory issue is because we are also woefully behind in

“

new construction. Since the bubble burst in 2006–2009, we just haven’t kept pace on new construction to meet demand. The current market is crazy, and a perfect storm of many factors and much more complicated than just “no inventory.” —Alicia Holmes So there is one Kansas City area here, and it’s all lumped into one neighborhood.

Westside isn’t Crossroads isn’t Union Hill isn’t Beacon Hill. And the major problem is that Beacon Hill is undergoing MASSIVE gentrification and has led to displacement of longtime residents, much the way Westside did in the 2000s. There’s a lot more to a real estate boom to unpack and it’s not all positive.

—Courtney Lewis Interesting. Giant houses are being built non-stop here on the far West Side of Olathe too. —Lynne Hermansen We like living in Parkville... downtown is so cute, close and has several good places to eat and love the Farmers’ Market. —Linda Miller Magee

Get up high and set something on fire, and you’re going to get people’s attention.”

—RICHARD RENNER WHO RUNS THE LAWRENCE BUSKER FESTIVAL

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

Last month, we hosted our espresso martini festival in the West Bottoms, which we could not have done without the help of Josh Melgoza and the rest of the team at 9th & State.

If you want to learn more about Melgoza we recorded a podcast episode with him.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Caleb Condit sets up his deer stand to get the perfect shot of the Robbers Roost Tree House in Excelsior Springs.

CONTACT US

Kansas City

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

Enjoy Life The Enclave & The Estates ONLY 20 CUSTOM BUILD OPPORTUNITIES REMAIN

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see the

Book Your Tour MissouriPenTours.com

History Home to the “Bloodiest 47 acres in America” Jefferson City’s dark side focuses on the old Missouri State Penitentiary – nicknamed “The Walls” because of the limestone walls surrounding it – which operated 1836 until 2004.

Plan Your Trip VisitJeffersonCity.com

feel the

History Located at Ike Skelton Training Site, the Museum of Missouri Military History houses many artifacts and weapons of war from the Revolutionary War to the present era.

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

NEW COUNTRY The pandemic may have reversed the long decline of golf and given a new life to country clubs.

BY S U S I E W H I T F I E L D

KANSASCITYMAG.COM MAY 2022

21

After decades of decline, both golf and country clubs have bounced back in the pandemic era.

F

OR MORE THAN A CEN-

most of Kansas City’s upscale neighborhoods have been built with golf courses as the main attraction.

From Mission Hills to Loch Lloyd, a home on a golf course has been seen as the fulfillment of many an American Dream.

So when homeowners in Overland Park’s Deer Creek development were told that their golf club would be closing on April 1, they reacted with understandable dismay.

Because of concerns regarding the condition of Deer Creek’s golf course, its owner, GreatLife KC, had proposed a plan to build a $65 million apartment complex that “would save the course and stabilize and mitigate the erosion issues on it.” The Overland Park City Council denied the proposal, dooming the course.

Brett Klausman, president of GreatLife KC, issued a statement that said although the company had worked hard to save the golf course, “the next phase for the land where the

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

golf course sits is in development.”

Because golf courses are often located on prime real estate, developers lick their chops when courses have to close their doors. In 2004, Old Leawood Country Club was sold and, after a decade of planning, used for large new homes.

In 2014, Homestead Country Club underwent major renovations and sold part of its property to a residential developer. Meadowbrook Golf and Country Club in Prairie Village also closed in 2014, and its hundred-plus acres were developed into a park and a mix of residential and commercial property. Similar plans are being made for Brookridge Country Club in Overland Park.

According to the Pellucid Corporation, a market research company based in Illinois, the number of golfers in this country declined by nearly ten million between 2002 and 2016.

Nationally, more than a thousand golf courses have closed since the sport’s peak in 2003 and more than four hundred closed between 2017 and 2019 alone.

Trend watchers began to wonder: Were country clubs going the way of the buffalo?

Then came the coronavirus. Golf became one of the few “safe” social activities. According to the National Golf Foundation, national golf course closings declined by half from a peak two years ago, and golfers played twenty-five million more rounds of golf. Although the average age of a golfer is fifty-four, Forbes reported that more women and young people had become interested in the sport, fueling a resurgence that could make Deer Creek an outlier.

Kansas City called nine local country clubs, and almost all responded that membership was now at or near capacity, with some running a waitlist. Several said that Deer Creek’s corporate ownership—most country clubs are run by members— meant that a lot of money could be made by using the property for new construction in a booming housing market.

Michael Stacks, general manager for Indian Hills Country Club for twenty years, believes that in past years, several golf clubs closed because of over-building.

Indian Hills, however, will soon celebrate its hundredth anniversary.

Stacks says that because the pandemic allowed more people to have the option of working from home, a renewed interest in being active outdoors has created a high demand for tee times. “We used to see members leave and be replaced quickly,” Stacks says. “But now people aren’t leaving.”

Likewise, Milburn Country Club’s general manager James Nanson has also seen a widespread interest in club membership develop.

The irony that the Covid-19 pandemic would actually be the salvation of country clubs and the game of golf is not lost on Rob Sislowe, membership director for Nicklaus Golf Club at Lionsgate.

“Golf offers the perfect balance in these difficult times,” Sislowe says. “It combines social distancing with camaraderie and recreational activity.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEREMEY THERON KIRBY

TH E LO O P N EW COU N TRY

MAKING PEACE A local group works with survivors of violence to break the cycle.

BY L AU R E N F OX

A L M O S T E V E R Y D AY, M A R Q U E L L H A R R I S V I S I T S T W O H O S P I TA L S :

Research Medical Center and Truman. And almost every day, he sees new survivors of gunshot wounds, stabbings or blunt force trauma.

Harris is a hospital responder for the violence prevention program Aim4Peace. He’s tasked with visiting survivors of violence at the hospital, building rapport with them and letting them know that the group can help them break the cycle of violence—such as by helping them find a job or get counseling.

“It’s that whole same message, added on with, ‘What can we do for you not to be sitting here with a hole in you?’” Harris says.

Aim4Peace has existed in Kansas City since 2008, but with the rising homicide rates in recent years, the success of the violence prevention program has been called into question. The program does have a powerful advocate in Mayor Quinton Lucas, who believes in the program and is increasing its funding in his proposed budget.

Rashid Junaid, who manages Aim4Peace, says that violence spreads like a disease. The program, which is run by the health department, is based on an epidemiological model. Like transmittable diseases, people who have high exposure to violence are more likely to become violent.

“We have to reprogram their type of lifestyle and put them on a path of responsible living,” Junaid says. “Get them some alternative ways to resolve violent conflicts because right now, they resolve conflicts with violence.”

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

Aim4Peace tries to interrupt violence and then change the norm. To do that, the organization’s seven employees are tasked with community outreach that includes talking to survivors in the hospital.

Not all people Harris encounters in the hospitals are eager to talk, but Harris says consistency is key.

Recently, he walked into a hospital room to see a teenager who had been shot and whose head was swollen to the size of a watermelon. The first time he talked to the teenager, the teenager just stared right back at him, offering no response.

“What I’ve learned is you can’t take that personal,” Harris says. “You just got to keep trying because maybe he wanted to talk, but man, I ain’t ever been shot in the head (knock on wood), so I don’t know what he was going through mentally or emotionally.”

When Harris followed up later that week, he was able to meet the teenager’s aunt in the hospital room and get in contact with the teenager’s mom. Now, the teenager is one of Aim4Peace’s clients.

Junaid says a lot of the work of Aim4Peace comes down to building relationships.

“It’s relationship-building over time,” he says. “People don’t want to know that you think you know everything.

They want to know that you care.”

Harris says it’s important for their clients to know they are coming from a clinical approach, they are run by the health department, and they are not trying to get anyone locked up. “We just want to interrupt violence,” Harris says.

Aim4Peace works within the police department’s East Patrol District, in an area that runs roughly from 27th Street to Blue Parkway, between Wabash Avenue and Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard.

The program used to have a street team that conducted mediations on-site. Although it is hard to measure things that don’t happen, Aim4Peace does point to statistics that show homicides in the area they work in escalated in years where the program had fewer street team members. For example, in 2014, when Aim4Peace had eighteen people on its street team, there were five homicides in the area they work, known by police as sector 330. In 2016, when Aim4Peace had nine people on its street team, there were twenty-seven homicides in sector 330.

Junaid says that Aim4Peace has had to scale back its staff due to the conclusion of federal grants in 2021.

However, the mayor’s proposed budget would solve that problem. Part of the increased funding would go to six new positions for the program.

For Harris, the work is all about building others up. He says Aim4Peace gave him the platform to do it professionally.

“I always felt like a leader, and this actually just gave me more backing to pull people to this side,” he says.

“Pull people out of the streets and help people just start to live life.”

ILLUSTRATION BY MAK ALAH HARDY

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25

T H E LO O P I N TERV I EW

Nick Wright of Fox Sports Network is America’s loudest Chiefs fan.

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

A L O T O F P U B L I C P E R S O N A L I T I E S L I V E I N D E AT H LY F E A R of the @OldTakesExposed Twitter account. Not Nick Wright.

“If you’re afraid of showing up on it, you’re going to mute your opinion,” says Wright, the Kansas City native who co-hosts Fox Sports 1’s morning show, First Things First. “The keys to success in this business: You have to be authentic, you have to be honest, you have to be consistent, you have to be your true self and you also have to be unafraid of being wrong.”

Wright grew up in south Kansas City, where his dad worked as a firefighter and president of the local firefighters union.

“My dad will tell you there was a moment when I was a little kid where I finally realized I was not going to be a professional basketball player,” Wright says. “And from that moment on, I always just wanted to talk about sports for a living.”

That’s a big, hazy dream, but it started to become more clear when Wright attended a benefit dinner with his mother and met the emcee, legendary sports broadcaster Bob Costas.

“I walked over to him and introduced myself and asked him where he went to school and what he did, and he told me he went to Syracuse and worked at WAER, and from that moment forward I decided

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

FAVO R I T E S P OT S Anthony’s Restaurant on Grand “I kinda grew up there. It’s not blood family that owns it, but it’s family.”

Arthur Bryant’s “The best barbecue in the world. Jack Stack is also really spectacular, but it’s almost in a different category.”

Bo Ling’s “I’ve lived all over, I’ve traveled a lot, and I live in New York City. I have yet to have a Chinese food dinner that’s better than Bo Ling’s.”

ILLUSTRATION BY MAK ALAH HARDY

WRIGHT OR WRONG

that’s what I was going to do,” Wright says. “I bought a Syracuse flag and put it above my bed. It was the only school I applied to.”

Today, Wright lives in a Harlem brownstone and, for now, still records his show from his living room—for our Zoom interview, the blue wooden backdrop you see on TV was off-kilter in the background. His day starts at 5 am when he gets up and readies himself for his show’s morning meeting. He records his show, then, a few days a week does a podcast with his twenty-three-year-old son. After family time, meals and napping, he settles in to watch sports until midnight or so.

And when he’s watching, he’s not trying to mute his rooting interests. “I felt it was important to not pretend I’m not a fan—I’m still a fan,” he says. “I don’t think it’s my job to be unbiased. It’s my job to be honest about the biases I have. Being a Chiefs fan on TV was a little easier when Wright began his TV career—the team went from 1993 to 2015 without winning a playoff game. That kid Patrick Mahomes was still at Texas Tech.

So Wright began talking about the Chiefs on TV. Wright’s fortunes rose with the team. He’s had a number of viral clips related to the Chiefs—including a few that aged poorly during the slow start to the 2021 season. Wright had argued after Mahomes’ week one win over pick-tossing Baker Mayfield that it was time to “seriously consider” whether the Chiefs might go 20-0, as former receiver Tyreek Hill had predicted.

“People were enjoying clowning me when they were 3-4 and people thought they were going to miss the playoffs,” he says. “I enjoyed being someone who never abandoned ship, and I was totally right that Mahomes was going to get it together and turn it around.”

Wright has of late been beefing with Kevin Durant on Twitter (full disclosure: I have also beefed with @easymoneysniper) and continues to be bullish about the Chiefs even with Hill headed to Miami.

“I trust Mahomes enough that I think the offense is going to be an A-minus offense at worst and probably an A-level offense almost no matter who’s around him,” he says. “The offense will be fine.”

But, then again, he might be wrong.

“Nobody actually claims they can see the future, so all of our predictions are just that: predictions,” he says. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen.”

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za’s love for this area comes from her roots. She is proud to call Kansas City home, and she loves sharing how great this community is. Krystle understands buying or selling a home is one of the most important financial investments that a person can make. It is her belief that the process should be seamless for clients and her goal is for you to be completely comfortable with your decision. As a licensed REALTOR® in 3 states with experience serving clients across the metro, as well as a background in escrow closing, Krystle will help you navigate the home buying and selling process. Whether you are relocating, downsizing, or upsizing, Krystle is dedicated to helping you work towards your real estate goals and will be in your corner every step of the way. “Krystle was on top of things from the very beginning. I feel like I hardly had to lift a finger and the process was smooth sailing on my end. I know that’s because of the hard work she did for me. With every new development, she let me know as soon as possible in order to keep me up to date. She was excellent at answering my questions, as well. Would definitely work with her again!”

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CALEB CONDIT AND REBECCA NORDEN

W H E R E YO U WA N T TO B E I N M AY

May

07 GO: Wettest Block Party on Saturday, May 7 at the corner of Ninth St. and State Line, KCMO. 4–11 pm.

BOTTOMS UP

In August of 1907, the Kansas City Times reported that the Ninth Street block from State Line to Genessee Street in the West Bottoms was “the wettest block in America.” When Kansans went dry after banning alcohol in 1881, Missourians opened pubs right on the border to serve their neighbors.

By that September, two dozen of the twenty-nine buildings on Ninth Street were occupied by saloons and liquor retailers. One of those, a building constructed by Pabst Brewing at 1717 W. Ninth St., has recently been restored to its roots by owners Heather Hamilton and Sean Smith.

Hamilton is honoring the history of the West Bottoms with the Wettest Block Party.

As part of Historic West Bottom Heritage Days, an outdoor festival with live music will be held on the boozy block on the border of Kansas and Missouri.

“Because the event is a part of Heritage Days, it’s really meant to draw attention to the history of this other side of the West Bottoms,” Hamilton says. “This side doesn’t get a lot of attention, and it’ll be a nice chance to get people down here to see a different part of the West Bottoms and realize there’s still a lot of potential here.” —MARY H ENN

KANSASCITYMAG.COM MAY 2022

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

07

Jason Isbell May 5, 7 pm He’s a staple in every indie-folk playlist: Singer-songwriter Jason Isbell is doing a show at the Uptown, where he’ll perform hits from his latest record, Georgia Blue, which came out last fall.

Originally released for charity, the album is composed of covers that celebrate music from the state of Georgia artists like Brandi Carlile and John Paul White of The Civil Wars. Thursday, May 5. 7 pm.

Uptown Theater.

Buddy Guy May 5, 8 pm Arguably the greatest living bluesman, Buddy Guy is in his mid-eighties but remains in remarkable health and still possesses the blues on an almost mystical level. As DownBeat says, Guy performs like a man half his age. He is playing Knuckleheads in support of 2018’s The Blues Is Alive and Well, an affirmation of health for himself and the tradition he has dedicated his life to. Thursday, May 5. 8 pm. Knuckleheads.

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

The Old Man and the Old Moon May 6, 8 pm KCRep has a new, whimsical American fable running this month that blends puppetry and live indie-folk music. The Old Man and the Old Moon is an epic tale of love and triumph created by PigPen Theatre Co. and was called “a phenomenon” by the Boston Herald. Opening night is Friday, May 6. 8 pm.

Spencer Theatre.

Lenexa Art Fair May 7, 10 am May typically offers some of the best weather KC sees all year, and the annual Lenexa Art Fair is a great way to spend a Saturday—live jazz, wine, food trucks, activities for kids and the works of more than fifty local artists. Saturday, May 7. 10 am–7 pm.

Lenexa Civic Campus.

Sheep Shearing at Missouri Town May 7 Missouri Town 1855 in Lee’s Summit takes you back to Kansas City’s time as a frontier town.

In those days, giving sheep their annual spring haircut to make woolen clothing was not as much of a pageant as it will be this Saturday when kids can also try the diversions of the day, which included stilt walking, egg racing, tin punching and log sawing. Saturday, May 7. 9 am-4:30 pm. Missouri Town 1855.

Savor the Season May 12, 6 pm Kansas City magazine is debuting its first Savor the Season event, the first in what will be a series of dining experiences. Executive chef of the Savoy Brandon Brumback will prepare a customized three-course meal with complimentary cocktail pairings crafted by Lifted Spirits Distillery. You’ll also learn how to create the cocktails served as you tap into the tastes of spring at this first-of-its-kind event. Thursday, May 12. 6–9 pm. The Savoy.

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY RESPECTIVE VENUES

May

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

Sum 41 May 18, 7 pm Often hailed as “the Candian Blink 182” but sometimes dismissed as merely “the Canadian Bowling for Soup,” this Ontario-based pop-punk band will always and forever be known for their pledge to never “be a casualty to society” in breakout single “Fat Lip.” Rewatch the “Fat Lip” video today and you might be struck by the extent to which the scene outside the convenience store anticipates Letterkenny.

Expect a tight show since Sum 41 still plays hundreds of shows a year—after the Uptown, it’s off to Council Bluffs. Wednesday, May 18. 7 pm. Uptown Theater.

Sweeping the Chimney through the Mantle of the Earth May 21 Charlotte Street Foundation presents another stellar exhibition, Sweeping the Chimney through the Mantle of the Earth, featuring nine contemporary artists. The exhibit is curated by Char-

lotte Street Studio resident Andrew Ordonez and presents new interpretations and recordings of nature while considering the physiological extension between the body and Earth through the lens of social and environmental unrest. Through Saturday, May 21. Various times. Charlotte Street Foundation’s new gallery at 3333 Wyoming St.

Tori Amos May 31, 8 pm And thus we come to the ‘How I Spent My Quarantine’ era of album releases, where favorite artists share the varied revelations that came amidst their lockdowns. For Tori Amos, the classically trained pianist and singer-songwriter known for compositions that run the range from piercing to devastating, it’s all on Ocean to Ocean, which she wrote in her adopted hometown of Cornwall on the southern English coast. “I was in my own private hell, so I told myself, then that’s where you write from—you’ve done it before,” she told Brooklyn Vegan. Tuesday, May 31. 8 pm. Kansas City Music Hall.

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Animal Collective May 28, 8 pm

The electro psych-pop band from Baltimore may never have lived up to the heaps of praise ladled on them when long-defunct blogs wondered aloud if they might have a career trajectory that tracked Radiohead, but their new album, February’s Time Skiffs, has still gotten friendly B-level reviews. Time Skiffs is still gauzy and atmospheric—completely directionless to the ears of enemies who have not changed their minds—but now uses the hurdy-gurdy and the taishogoto. Saturday, May 28. 8 pm. The Truman.

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Phoebe Bridgers May 31, 8 pm Known for her gothy, folk-adjacent vibe, Phoebe Bridgers emerged in the late 2010s and is gaining even more traction lately for her songwriting, producing capabilities and smashing a guitar on SNL last year. Catch her under the stars, as she is set to perform an outdoor concert at the end of the month. Tuesday, May 31.

8 pm. Starlight Theatre.

KANSASCITYMAG.COM MAY 2022

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T H E B E AT MON EY SH A K ER

The Lawrence Busker Festival brings world-class street performers to town.

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

R I C H A R D R E N N E R had already been working full time as a street performer for almost two decades when he decided his adopted hometown of Lawrence would be the perfect place for a festival featuring others who make their living playing music, juggling, clowning, playing with fire and the like.

“One day, I was walking through downtown and just noticed that the performers that were there were pretty low talent—close to panhandling,” he says. “People with harmonicas and maracas and that type of thing. And I thought to myself, ‘We can do better than this.’”

Street performing—Renner’s act is slapstick comedy and circus arts—isn’t panhandling, despite some confusion. How can people easily tell the difference?

“I always say it’s up to the legitimate street performer to be so damned good that people totally know the difference,” Renner says.

You should be able to easily tell the difference at the Lawrence Busker Festival. The four-day event in downtown Lawrence features twenty acts from Australia, England, Canada and across the U.S. “These people are top-notch,” Renner says. “They travel all over the world doing this, and they make their living solely off this.”

BUSKER LINGO The Lawrence Busker Festival started in 2008 and has been held every year save 2020. The event is free, of course, though attendees are THE TIP encouraged to swing by the ATM and The audience that gathers.

“I did a show before a tip of stock up on fives and tens. The level of a hundred people.” performance is high by any standard, with acrobatic feats and NY-based THE PITCH breakdancing twins Tic and Tac, who The spot on the street have been written up in the Washwhere a performer stages ington Post and the Miami Herald. their act. “I can do a show in front of ten people, and They’re acts that stop people in their I can do the same show tracks even outside the context of in front of two hundred a festival. people,” Renner says. “I “I’ve seen people start with nobody want to do the show for two around and you think, ‘Oh man, why hundred people. I’ll make a lot more money. So I’m even bother,” Renner says. “But they looking for the right pitch.” start working and little by little stopping one person, stopping two people, THE HAT three, four, and before I knew it they How much the performer had a hundred people around. That is made. “Hey, how much was your hat at that show?” a legitimate skill.”

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GO: The Lawrence Busker Festival is May 27–30 on Eighth Street and Massachusetts

in downtown Lawrence. Free. See the schedule at lawrencebuskerfest.com.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN MUTRUX

STREETS OF WAGE

There are three well-known shortcuts—height, fire and noise.

“Get up high and set something on fire, and you’re going to get people’s attention,” Renner says. “Then make a loud noise. You want to bang on a pot or something.”

The festival takes place on Eighth Street, which is closed off. Attendees are allowed to drink beers from sponsor Free State while they watch. The most prized seats are at Sand Bar’s patio overlooking the festival. Renner books the festival so that each performer works a few different sets during the four days—but crashers are both tolerated and encouraged.

“We have control over five different sites, so I don’t control the whole downtown area,” he says. “So if somebody wants to show up and find a place and perform, I can’t stop them—they’re adding to the event.”

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B AC K B E AT T H E T W EN T I E S

T H R E E TO S E E

LIVE ON

Three May shows that exemplify the cutting edge of KC jazz today

A recent trip to New York reminded me just how much Kansas City jazz has to offer.

BY N I N A C H E R R Y

Riff Generation, Friday, May 20 at 7 pm, The Medallion Theater, 300 E. 39th St., KCMO

THERE’S A COMMON

M Y T H that Kansas City jazz ended with World War II,” local jazz historian and author Chuck Haddix says.

While the narrative of the 1920s and ’30s in Kansas City is an exciting tale—that of a newly bustling, “wide-open” town rife with Tom Pendergast’s political regime and freeflowing liquor throughout Prohibition—it continues to permeate the image of Kansas City jazz nearly a century later.

But Kansas City jazz is not a mere museum piece. It has been living, breathing, evolving and, most of all, thriving long past Pendergast’s reign or World War II. “We’ve always had a very vibrant scene, and we have one of the most lively scenes in the country today,” Haddix says.

Despite being far smaller than the other major jazz cities, Kansas City has live jazz of a high caliber every single night. This can be said of few other cities in the country today.

During a recent trip to New York City, while exploring the clubs and strolling through the streets of Harlem and the Village, I kept finding parallels between the jazz scenes— not in style but in quantity and quality. And as much as I profoundly enjoyed the NY scene and my evening at the Village Vanguard, I went home appreciating KC even more. Our jazz scene is world class, but it’s often overlooked, even by locals.

More plainly, KC’s jazz scene is slept on.

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Eddie Moore, Sunday, May 8 at 6 pm, Corvino Supper Club, 1830 Walnut St., KCMO

KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

While artists like Bobby Watson, a living legend who made his homecoming back to KC over twenty years ago now, are renowned all around the world, most Kansas Citians don’t even bat an eye at the name, unfamiliar with much of Kansas City jazz beyond Charlie Parker.

Where is the interest in the music being created now?

From the early days of Bennie Moten and Mary Lou Williams to the eternally original Bobby Watson to the ultramodern yet irrefutably soulful Logan Richardson and every important figure in between, Kansas City has continually

been home to innovators. Some of today’s trailblazers include, in addition to Watson and Richardson, Peter Schlamb, Eddie Moore, Adam Larson and Hermon Mehari. But no matter how “out of the box” the music of these luminaries may have seemed to some at the time, they remained deeply tied to the blues-heavy, unmistakable Kansas City style and tradition.

“We have to recognize that today’s artists on the scene are all an extension of the tradition,” Haddix says. “We need to celebrate and honor musicians that are on the scene today, too.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CALEB CONDIT AND REBECCA NORDEN

“

1 2 3

Chris Hazelton’s Boogaloo 7 with Julia Haile, Friday, May 6 at 9 pm, The Ship, 1221 Union Ave., KCMO

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Whether it’s immersing your family with the sharks at Johnny Morris’ Wonders of Wildlife National Museum & Aquarium or grabbing a bite at one of hundreds of great local restaurants. We love our city and know the best places to eat, drink and play. See you in Springfield, Missouri!

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAMANTHA LEVI

Dainty gold jewelry has been in for a minute now, and it’s likely not going anywhere—people are even getting lightweight chains fused on for permanent looks. But we’re seeing a lot more rhinestones and diamonds lately. The turn toward sparkle and glitter may have something to do with trends from the Y2K era coming back around: crochet, baguette bags and, especially, rhinestone earrings. And we aren’t talking about simple studs. Rhinestone earrings are here in a variety of forms. We like bling that dangles and drops, like these 18K White Gold Celestial Rae Diamond Earrings ($5,700) and 18K White Gold 57 Collection Diamond Matchstick Earrings ($15,080) from Tivol. — MARY HE N N

KANSASCITYMAG.COM MAY 2022

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S WAY T R EN D

THE HAPPY MIDDLE A local KC maker has partnered with artisans all over the world to create timeless footwear and redefine the idea of ‘luxury’.

BY M A R Y H E N N

has always loved making things with her hands. After studying economics at UMKC, Seymour even went into baking before dabbling in shoemaking. It wasn’t until 2018 that she decided to move to Milan and study the craft of shoe pattern making and design. Now she is the founder and CEO of Saint Maur, a local footwear brand that is creating comfortable, quality clogs.

“I’ve always liked clogs,” Seymour says. “I find them comfortable—I’m not a high heel person. I’ve always found clogs to be the happy middle, where you get the height but still the comfort and safety.”

Seymour sees clogs as a shoe style that appeals to many people of varying ages, styles and cultures.

What’s cool about her clogs, she says, is “part of them are handmade by a maker in Cameroon.” Seymour has connected with a handful of artisans from all over the world. While all of her shoe designs are done here in Kansas City, Seymour partners with makers in places like Abuja, Nigeria, and León, Mexico, to create shoe patterns and prepare the upper pieces of her

(She’s doing research on using European vegan leather.)

Right now, you can find Saint Maur’s shoes at local pop-up events for KC makers and artisans and see her designs on Insta (@saintmaur_kc).

Seymour is also working on making sandals, which she hopes to release in time for the warmer months, and she’s finishing her website (saintmaurkc.com) to sell her shoes directly.

“I think Kansas City is having a sort of fashion and art renaissance where people are buying more local handmade goods,” Seymour says. “In places like Italy, that’s always been there. But I think we are seeing more of that here now, and it’s really exciting.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY FEDERICA DANZI AND MICHELE BATTILOMO

CYNTHIA SEYMOUR

designs. Then those pieces are shipped back to the US and assembled in Saint Maur’s KC-based studio.

“It’s been remarkable meeting different artisans who share the same passion,” Seymour says. “They’re not just people who are hired.

I really feel like they’re my partners and my collaborators.

For me, it’s important to uplift BIPOC voices and artists and to tell people the story of how their shoes are made.”

Seymour’s own story is inspired by a range of cultures and backgrounds. While she spent most of her life in western Kansas, her father’s family is from the Bahamas and her mother is from South Korea. Seymour’s husband is from Italy, and his family has supported her shoemaking by putting Seymour in touch with Italian shoemakers and craftspeople. Most of Saint Maur’s leather is supplied from Italy, and Seymour has been using a lot of vegetabletanned leather because the production process is environmentally friendly.

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

S WAY I N T ERV I E W

FAVO R I T E S P OT S Sway Salon in Roeland Park “Kristen Asher is my stylist there—I have to give her a shoutout.”

What inspired you to become a therapist? I became a therapist because I was a hot mess of a disaster throughout my twenties and into my thirties. And then I got better. And after I started to get better, it was like, “Oh, my God, if people knew just a few things about the brain, they’d know things can change.” I had this huge life pivot from what I was doing to going to grad school and becoming a therapist in my mid-thirties.

Becoming a therapist was sort of the outpouring of my own journey to sanity, so to speak.

In The Science of Stuck, you talk about easy-to-use techniques that helped keep you afloat when you were facing your own struggles. What are some of those techniques, and how did they keep you going? It’s not magic. It’s not like, “Hey, smell this essential oil and all of your problems will be gone.”

Finefolk You don’t need giant shifts to get unstuck. The little “Finefolk is my micro-changes that we’re all capable of making today, favorite boutique we’re so quick to write off. in the city. I go to Leslie for all my media styling.

I hear this every day. “Well, yeah, I went for a fiveHer taste is curated—I minute walk, but it’s not like I did a marathon.” But love it.” if you don’t start counting the small wins, you’re not going to get to the big changes. We’re all so concerned with getting to the end. And the book is really about the bridge between where you are and where you want to go.

Just knowing a little bit about the brain can help us make small changes. If you’re feeling like you’re procrastinating, exposure to cold is a really good way to get your system out of stuck. The problem isn’t in our thinking; the problem is in our bodies. We get stuck because our bodies do physical things that keep us stuck. So if you know how to work with the body, you can start to create space to make better choices.

The Bar “I live right up the street from The Bar in Mission.

My husband, my dog and I sit on the patio there all summer.”

UNSTUCK An Overland Park trauma therapist just launched a new book about feeling stuck and finding a way forward.

BY M A R Y H E N N

is how trauma therapist and author Britt Frank describes her former self. After recovering from addiction and her own mental health issues, Frank decided to go to graduate school at KU and become a therapist in her midthirties. Now, she has her own private practice in Overland Park.

In addition to running her own practice, Frank gives lectures on healing and trauma work at different events and festivals like the Kansas City Wellness Consortium.

Frank just launched her new book, The Science of Stuck, in which she contemplates burnout and dissatisfaction, feelings heightened in our post-pandemic world. After fifteen years of studying and researching therapy techniques, trauma and selfhelp books, Frank decided to compile a single book with basic tools meant to help people move out of feeling stuck in life.

We talked to Frank about writing The Science of Stuck, becoming a therapist, techniques for becoming unstuck and a few of her favorite spots in Kansas City.

“A H O T M E S S O F A D I S A S T E R ”

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

The book talks about mental health not being a mental process, but a physical one. I think many people would push back against that notion. Can you explain what you mean? People get mad at me about that one. And I’m the first to say that I’m a drug addict, I’m in recovery from eating disorders, I have clinical depression, and I take psych meds. So I’m certainly not saying that anyone’s symptoms are fake or that pain is not real.

But it’s important to know that you have a nervous system. We drive around our lives in these bodies, and for many of us, it’s like being in a car and not knowing where the brake is.

If you don’t know that your nervous system has something called a freeze mechanism, the symptoms of freeze can look like clinical depression, but it’s not the same thing. And the symptoms of being stuck in flight [or fight] are going to look like a panic disorder, but it’s not a disorder.

It’s often that a nervous system that is stuck will present as a mental illness. And there’s no stigma or shame in having a mental illness. But it’s really helpful to know that your body has a gas pedal and a brake pedal. And if you don’t know that your brake pedal is stuck to the floor, that’s gonna look like depression. Mental health is not just all in our minds.

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

A BROOKSIDE BACK-TO-BASICS A century-old home in Brookside gets a ‘Down to Earth’ renovation with organic materials, clean neutrals and the help of Cicada Company’s Tara and Kyle Davis.

BY DAW N YA B A R T S C H | P H OTO G R A P H Y BY N AT E S H E E T S

C

O N V E R T I N G A T H R E E H U N D R E D - P O U N D WAT E R

trough into a bathroom sink was just one of the challenges that made the renovation of this Brookside home truly one to remember.

“We, along with the homeowners, wanted to make a statement in the powder room,” says Tara Davis of Cicada Company, the design and construction firm behind the renovation.

“Luckily, Kyle can figure out how to build anything,” she says of her husband and business partner Kyle Davis, who turned the small but hefty drainless trough into a useable sink. The stone sink definitely makes a statement.

The Davises, who co-founded the Cicada Company, worked diligently with the homeowners of the century-old structure in Brookside to keep the integrity of the house while making it unique, modern and livable.

“To me, this project is a mixture of the old and new, and much of the inspiration comes from using organic materials,” Tara says of the two thousand square-foot house. She and her husband worked within the home’s original footprint but modified the floor plan to fit a more modern lifestyle, such as turning a hallway into a pantry.

The result is a comfortable and clean space that honors the home’s history with many original details left intact throughout the house, such as glass doorknobs, doors, interior trim and wood floors.

They nicknamed this house “Down to Earth” because of the neutral colors, layers of textures and use of organic materials throughout.

In this case, the homeowners contacted the Davises before they purchased the house and asked the design duo to take a look to see if they thought it had potential. “The homeowners really liked the location, but it didn’t have enough bathrooms and a few other things, so they didn’t think it would work,” Tara says. “But I said, ‘We can add bathrooms.’”

“We walked through it, the layout was great,” Kyle says. “It had great character. We knew we could successfully renovate this home.” The complete renovation also consisted of all-new plumbing, electrical wiring and insulation. It is very important to the integrity of the project that all aspects of an older home be upgraded, Kyle says. “We don’t want to put all this work into just making the surface look good.” The homes need to function, too.

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1 LIVING ROOM The clean white plaster walls in the living room contrast with the home’s original dark brown trim.

Although many of the home’s traditional elements were left untouched, the Davises decided to completely redo the living room’s painted brick fireplace.

“We framed out and built a new façade over the old fireplace and created a little wedge,” Kyle says. The result is an organic, almost sculpturallooking centerpiece for the living room that blends in with many of the organic furniture and art choices.

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2 POWDER ROOM The Davises chose to paint the small guest bathroom a Burnt Sienna shade to make it pop and stand out from the paler, more neutral colors of the rest of the home while still keeping with the house’s natural feel and rustic elements, such as the rough-edge stone sink.

To install the garden trough turned sink, Kyle custom-designed metal brackets that seem to cradle the fixture and bolted them into the wall studs directly behind the sink to secure it into place. To make it functional, he also had to drill a hole and create a drain. The warm and worn brass faucet was originally just a spigot that a garden hose would attach to with an on and off valve.

To make it work for the bathroom, Kyle installed plumbing in the wall that creates the perfect warm temperature. So without any adjusting and with just one twist of the spigot knob, pleasant lukewarm water is released, just right for washing hands.

3 KITCHEN Although they worked completely within the original floorplan, the Davises made several modifications to open the kitchen up and make it more functional, including removing a wall and turning a hallway into a pantry.

A natural light wood color similar to the hardwood floors was chosen for the kitchen cabinets, and textured subway tiles in varying natural colors were installed vertically for the backsplash.

The Davises chose brass hardware that will develop a natural patina over time.

“We want a timeless and durable design that will age well,” Tara says.

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KANSAS CITY MAY 2022

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SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

TRAVEL GUIDE 2022

Planning a trip or a fun

staycation? Our annual Travel Guide highlights the best places that

aren't far from home.

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2022

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

GET OUT OF TOWN St. Louis Union Station stlouisunionstation.com

Take an adventure like no other to St. Louis Union Station this summer.

Discover the St. Louis Aquarium with over 13,000 animals and an immersive experience guaranteed to get your hands wet. Ride the St. Louis Wheel, swing from the Ropes Course, get lost in the AMAZEing Mirror Maze and more. St. Louis Union Station is also home to the AAA Four Diamond Curio Collection Hotel. See Where It Takes You.

21c MUSEUM HOTEL

www.21ckansascity.com

Nestled between the Power & Light District and River Market, 21c Museum Hotel hosts a free contemporary art museum and the historic Savoy restaurant. Explore the museum or venture down the block to hop on the Street Car. When you return, grab dinner and drinks at The Savoy and then head upstairs where your luxury king room awaits.

TRAVEL GUIDE

GET OUT OF TOWN Springfield, MO

springfieldmo.org

When you visit Springfield, MO, ask a local! We know the best places to have a “hair-raising” good time! (See what we did there?) We love our city and know the best places to eat, drink and play!

So come see us in Springfield!

We’ll show you around.

STAY AND PLAY

STAY AND PLAY

GET OUT OF TOWN

Kansas City Zoo kansascityzoo.org

KC Watersports kcwatersports.com

No boat, no problem! You can spend the day on a private lake learning to wakeboard or take your skills in watersports to the next level with challenging rails, ramps and sliders.

Families can enjoy a shaded beach, while others may want to take in the tiki bar and Surf Shop. There is something for everyone. Rental equipment is available.

Home to more than 1,700 animals stretched across 202 acres, the Kansas City Zoo has been a standout way for families to enjoy the outdoors for more than 100 years. Thanks to continuous improvements and major openings around the corner, there’s always a new adventure at the Zoo. Coming this summer, alligators!

STAY AND PLAY

Visit Jefferson City visitjeffersoncity.com

Bike the Katy Trail and experience Missouri’s heartland in JCMO! Safely cross the “Big Muddy” to admire views of the stunning Capitol Complex. Make sure to book a tour at our historic attractions and conclude your visit by shopping and dining in the city’s charming downtown.

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Six amazing new hotels for epic weekend getaways from KC

WO R D S Martin Cizmar, Mary Henn, Rob Henrichs, Natalie Torres Gallagher P H OTO G R A P H Y Zach Bauman, Joshua Beecher, Caleb Condit, Rebecca Norden

TULSA, OK

The ‘Half’ Way In the heart of Tulsa’s Arts District, a former flophouse has blossomed into a boutique hotel.

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

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HERE’S A SIGN IN THE WINDOW of the dive bar below Tulsa’s newish 21 1/2 Boutique Hotel that says “YOU DON’T KNOW S*** ABOUT TULSA.” It comes off a little aggro as you’re walking past a pub with Christmas lights on the ceiling and into the type of hipster hotel with pictures of shaggy-headed Scottish Highland cows on the wall. But if you pop into that bar, called Caz’s, a friendly bartender will explain that it’s just sort of true—and she’d be happy to answer most questions you have about Oklahoma’s second city, which surprises a lot of people who don’t think of it as an oasis of arts and culture.

That hotel you’re staying at? She used to party there—pretty much every bartender in town lived or partied there during the years it was called the Boston Apartments, the name still stamped in cement above the stairs you take up to your room, where you’ll check in using a code emailed to you at this lobby-less operation.

In its apartment era, the building was full of “service industry kids” who all agreed it was “haunted as f***.”

These days, the dozen rooms are mini-suites that still resemble pre-war apartments, with wide galley kitchens and large windows overlooking the streets below. You may not be able to get the TV remote to work, but there are wooden candelabras, a full fridge and ornamental ceramic bowls you could theoretically use for cereal.

The building’s owner, Davis Sharp, owns a large swath of Tulsa’s Arts District and is a “building hugger” who tries to keep as many original details as possible, says manager Kimberly Honea. These downtown apartments were originally marketed to railway workers. Sharp kept what he could intact, which is why they have the original massive cast iron sinks big enough to bathe a baby.

You may be relieved to know that the gentrification of this particular building has left no real resentments, according to the Caz’s bartender. These days, people are worried about noise complaints from the newer, fancier apartments overlooking the landmark rock club Cain’s Ballroom a few blocks away.

The stories start flowing when you ask about the address, on a street called Reconciliation Way. It was, until recently, named for a merchant named Tate Brady, a disgraced city father and Klansman who played a role in Tulsa’s infamous 1921 race massacre and the depopulation of Greenwood, the prosperous Black neighborhood that followed—but that’s a longer story, best GO: 21.5 Reconciliation told down at the Greenwood Cultural Way, Tulsa. Typical Center (greenwoodculturalcenter.org). rates are $100-$150.

As the sign suggests, you have a lot to 21andahalftulsa.com. learn about Tulsa.

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Four/For Tulsa is equal parts folksy and artsy—the kind of town where a guy will holler to warn you that you don’t need to feed the meters on weekends and where the mixologist at a nationally recognized Tiki bar will complain vocally about a visiting couple from Lee’s Summit who refuse to believe that any bar doesn’t stock Fireball for a round of shots.

Here are some spots from the artsy side—four musical destinations not to miss.

Cain’s Ballroom

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Find a list of the best music venues in the country and Cain’s Ballroom (423 N. Main St., Tulsa) will be on it.

This club, which celebrates its centennial in 2024, rose to prominence as the home base for Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Everyone from Garth Brooks to Sex Pistols has played inside the sandstone brick walls of this former garage, which still sounds great.

Woody Guthrie Center

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The most influential singer-songwriter in American history and the father of the folk movement hails from the tiny town of Okemah, an hour south of Tulsa. There’s not much more than a small statue and mural in Okemah, but Tulsa has a large museum dedicated to his legacy, the Woody Guthrie Center (102 E. Reconciliation Way, Tulsa). An audio tour guides you around Guthrie’s lyrics sheets, instruments and sketches and includes a section dedicated to the Dust Bowl and its role in Guthrie’s career and worldview.

The Bob Dylan Center

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Among Guthrie’s many admirers was a young Bob Dylan, who, after leaving Minnesota for New York, would visit his idol in the New Jersey psychiatric hospital, where Guthrie was dying of Huntington’s Disease.

Dylan has a notoriously complicated relationship with his own hometowns—he’s chosen to place his archives right next to those of his original idol, in Tulsa. The Bob Dylan Center (116 E. Reconciliation Way, Tulsa) is opening a few days after this issue is released and will house a museum and research center with more than a hundred thousand pieces of Dylan’s material, including never-before-seen film performances and photographs.

Tulsa Theater

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Like Brady Street and the Brady Arts District, this theater (105 Reconciliation Way, Tulsa) was recently renamed to remove its association with a problematic figure. It’s a massive landmark that, at the time of its construction, was the largest theater between Kansas City and Houston. Everyone from Buddy Holly to U2 has played the theater over the years

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OMAHA, NE

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The Gemstone of Blackstone All things Jazz Age are roaring back, and you can see it in the design of hotel projects like Omaha’s Cottonwood Hotel.

BY R O B H E N R I C H S

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PENED IN 1916 as the Blackstone Hotel, this space has hosted John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Serving as the place to stay on the route from San Francisco to Chicago, the hotel remained popular through the 1970s before the building was renovated to become a downtown office space. The two hundred-room hotel reopened with a refreshed design and new owners in late 2020 after a $75 million renovation.

The renovation was inspired in part by Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, and those touches show in the period-appropriate solarium that overlooks the new pool deck and front lawns that can extend Gatsbian get-togethers.

The hotel has three restaurants: the traditional American Committee Chophouse, French-influenced Orleans Room and cafe Petite Orleans. In the basement there’s a cocktail GO: 302 S. 36th St., lounge called Cottonwood Room, Omaha. Rates start at $145. where the bar sits in the metaphorical thecottonwoodhotel.com. shade of a full-size Cottonwood tree.

Three Sips Three bars you can’t miss at Omaha’s Old Market District Omaha’s Old Market District is a warren of brick walls, hidden doors, hometown brews and local flavor. Among the art galleries, bars with live music and a wide range of shops, there are three watering holes you just can’t miss.

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Havana Garage

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Wicked Rabbit While not technically in the Old Market, it’s certainly worth the short trip to see this fun speakeasy (1508 Harney St., Omaha). Walk into the unassuming liquor store next to Hotel Deco and you’ll be greeted by a clerk who operates the store. When you’re ready to go down the rabbit hole, they’ll swing open a shelf full of liquor bottles to let you into the bar. Inside, the wide selection of craft cocktails and liquor bottles may seem a bit intimidating, but you can’t go wrong. If you’re lucky, you may even encounter a bartender with some serendipitous snark: When one was asked to make a dealer’s choice, he responded “I can do $1,200 a drink, so I would clarify.” One standout is the traditional Ramos Gin Fizz, a cocktail notorious for its long shaking time. "It actually takes me longer to make a Jack and Coke,” says the bartender. Why? “Because I don’t carry Jack!”

The Havana Garage (1008 Howard St., Omaha) is ideal for the cigar lovers who find themselves in the Old Market. Hosting one of the largest humidors in the region, Havana Garage’s helpful and expert cigar staff will be happy to help you find the perfect pairing for your drink. Their patio is a wonderful place to kick back and chat while enjoying some live music.

Brickway Brewery & Distillery

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In the heart of the Old Market, Brickway Brewery (1116 Jackson St., Omaha) is one of the leaders in the Omaha beer and distilling scene.

Of note on the menu, the stouts are standouts, and the jalapeno pineapple Pilsner is a cult favorite. In the spirit category, the distillery offers gin, bourbon, rye and rum, among others. Offering some tasty snacks as well, Brickway is a great place to spend a few hours sampling some of the best Omaha has to offer.

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ST LOUIS, MO

Book the Look St. Louis’ Angad Arts Hotel is one of the most unique in the country.

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

ALK DOWN THE HALLWAY on the

first floor of the Angad Arts Hotel in St. Louis and you’ll see pages of poetry hanging from the walls.

The pages are from Quarantine Chronicles by St. Louis poet Jared C. Lewis, who started writing a poem a day in March 2020, including a piece called “Let’s See Where This Goes,” which was all too prescient: “so what comes next/is for the spirits to know/but I know in my gut/it’s just the beginning so.”

But it’s also just the beginning for Angad Arts Hotel, which opened at the end of 2018 and was just starting to get recognized by publications like USA Today when the pandemic hit.

Even by the standards of an arts hotel—the category of boutique lodging with gallery spaces and surprising details—the Angad is one of the most unique in the country.

“Our front is in the back and our bottom is at the top,” says Vanessa Rudloff, the staffer who selects pieces for the galleries around the hotel. “Everything is upside down and backward. We are definitely an arts hotel.”

The front entrance doesn’t face the Fabulous Fox Theatre across the street, which on our stay was hosting Hamilton. Instead, you enter around the back, by walking under a fire escape. Inside, a small gallery hallway leads to the elevators which take you up to a stunning lobby—yes, the lobby is on the twelfth floor.

That lobby is built around The Chameleon Lamp, a table lamp the size of the Berenstain Bears’ house with a shade that shows a four-hour non-sequitur loop by Zlatko Ćosić, the video artist.

The other art in the top-floor lobby, which rotates every six months, is done by artists selected by Rudloff, who chooses only artists who live within a two hundred-mile radius of St. Louis.

The rooms themselves are also little galleries, including memorable “eye” pillows designed by local artist Paula Haniszewski GO: Angad Arts Hotel, from across the river in 3550 Samuel Shepard Belleville. They’re available Drive, St. Louis.

Typical rates for $200 per pair if you’re $150-$250. shopping for a souvenir.

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SPRINGFIELD, MO

Stonecutters of Springfield An upscale hotel in downtown Springfield was built by Freemasons.

BY N ATA L I E TO R R E S G A L L AG H E R | P H OTO G R A P H Y BY J O S H B E E C H E R

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PRINGFIELD’S HOTEL VANDIVORT was originally a Masonic Temple, and you’ll see evidence of that in the glorious crown molding, iron pillars and the Masonic initiation coins on display in the library.

Brothers John and Sam McQueary, who own the hotel, are natives with deep local roots, and you can see that in their approach to the four-story property, which honors the 1906 building’s history while making space for original works by contemporary Springfield artists.

In the eighties, the building was converted into office space (though the original Masonic ballroom was left intact). But don’t worry—you won’t find any outdated wood paneling here. The

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lobby is designed to impress. Mixed materials—hardwood floors inlaid with light hexagon tiles, sumptuous leather seating for the tables made from reclaimed local oak—make a bold statement.

In 2019, the McQuearys added a forty-eight room expansion dubbed “V2” just a few yards from the main building. The rooms match the mood of the hotel: clean, comfortable and brimming with warm details like record players and vintage vinyl that’s ready for you to spin while you get ready for your evening. Sing along to Neil Diamond as you enjoy the floor-to-ceiling views of downtown Springfield, but know that the best panorama can be found at Vantage, the ritzy rooftop lounge crowning the building.

Here, grasping one of the bar’s signature drinks (the Pearfection

features brown butter-infused tequila), you can take in the jigsaw pattern of buildings that have sprung up over the city’s history while the sun sinks beneath the Ozark skyline.

The year it opened, the Vandivort became Springfield’s first Four Diamond hotel. I’m guessing the first-floor hotel restaurant, The Order, had something to do with that. The space is comfortable—it’s the kind of place where strangers will lean across the table to ask if you’re also in town for the same concert or art opening—and the food gets high marks for both style and substance. (The seared duck

breast with a confit croquette and miso butter carrots was exceptional.) The restaurant’s centerpiece, a striking chandelier-like cluster of blown-glass orbs that hovers like friendly ghosts above your table, is by glass artist Terry Bloodworth, the Chihuly of the Ozarks.

Chances are you’ll be just as entertained by the parade of downtown revelers stopping to take selfies with Felix the Space GO: 305 E. Walnut St., Springfield.

Cat, a bronze statue Rates start at $199. posted just outside the hotelvandivort.com.

Order’s corner windows.

Commercial Break C-Street’s recent revival has made it our favorite street in Springfield.

Springfield has more than one claim to fame.

It’s not only the birthplace of Route 66 but also the site where Wild Bill Hickok won the first Wild West quick-draw shoot-out in 1865.

It’s home, too, to the Wonders of Wildlife National Museum and Aquarium (the state’s number one attraction, where you can pet stingrays and point out all the fish you recognize from Finding Nemo). But the Queen City of the Ozarks is also a hotbed for the arts, international cuisine and good vibes—perfect for your weekend getaway.

And the spot to be is C-Street, which has had a recent revival.

Around six years ago, on my drive back to Kansas City from Branson, I stopped in Springfield for lunch. I was intrigued by Cafe Cusco—Peruvian restaurants are not common in southern Missouri—and was delighted to find Pisco sours on the menu. But I don’t recall being especially inspired by much else on Commercial Street, or C-Street, as the locals call it. There were a handful of other businesses and restaurants spread over six blocks, but there were plenty more buildings that sat empty or boarded up.

Today, C-Street is booming. Cafe Cusco is still a popular destination, and owner Joe Gidman loved the district so much that in 2018, he introduced a second concept called Van Gogh’s Eeterie just up the

street. The Dutch diner specializes in pannenkoeken—crepe-like pancakes prepared with sweet or savory fillings—and soused herring.

La Habana Vieja opened in 2021, serving Cuban classics like ropa vieja, and in February, Beyond Bliss brought smoothies and freshbaked cakes to the party.

It’s more than enough to sustain you while you pop in and out of C-Street’s hip shops. At Chabom Teas and Spices (also owned by Gidman), you can find rare green peppercorns and premium THC teas. Vintage enthusiasts will love browsing the retro racks and mid-century modern furniture inside Hakaar’s Bazaar.

And just try to talk yourself out of those neon pink skates at Bees Knees Roller Skate Shop (it opened in September).

At the east end of C-Street, you’ll find Askinosie Chocolate, a lauded bean-to-bar factory from chocolatier Shawn Askinosie.

Between samples of single-origin dark chocolate, you might inquire about other projects in the neighborhood, like the proposed rehabilitation of the historic Jefferson Avenue Footbridge, which previously offered residents a safe path over the train tracks dividing Springfield’s north and south sides. The Missouri Hotel has been vacant for almost a decade, but there are plans to restore it to its original 1927 splendor and open the doors to travelers once more. And there are endless Instagram selfie opportunities thanks to the murals, mosaics and sculptures from local artists lining the sidewalks and alleys.

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E XC E L S I O R S P R I N G S , M O

Head in the Clouds Sleep among the stars in a tree house in Excelsior Springs.

BY M A RY H E N N P H OTO G R A P H Y BY CA L E B C O N D I T & R E B E C CA N O R D E N

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T THE END OF 2018, Melissa and Beau Claridge bought two hundred

acres of untouched land just ten minutes southeast of downtown Excelsior Springs. “There was nothing here other than the barn and that little farmhouse, which was a long-term rental and still is,” Melissa says.

Also on the property is a fifteen-acre lake, prime for fishing, kayaking and paddleboarding. When Melissa and Beau purchased the property they now call Sundance Ranch, they had a vision of building a tree house deep in a scenic part of the woods. And while they originally built it for their own family, they now rent the tree house to those wanting to escape into the wilderness.

The Robbers Roost Tree House is nestled among oak and sycamore trees, and a clear stream flows just beside it. At night, fairy lights illuminate the entire tree house and two bridges that cross over the stream to a cozy fire pit area, hiking trails, limestone bluffs and an outhouse with lighting and a composting toilet. The tree house sits about twelve feet off the ground and is outfitted with a queen bed, reading chair and three screened windows that open to let in a breeze. A lithium generator provides lighting and phone charging, and a propane fireplace keeps the tree house toasty on chilly nights. There’s also a propane burner and chairs on the deck for cooking and enjoying the view from up in the branches.

“The lake has a trail around it, and you can hike down along the creek, too,” Melissa says. “And there are little GO: 12607 State Route O, Excelsior Springs. cut-throughs between the bluff and the creek. They’re Tree house stay is neat trails—all big and open. There are little rock grottoes, $165 per night. like little outcroppings, and they have waterfalls when it’s sundancekc.com. raining, and in the winter, there’ll be big ice curtains.”

Old Waters Craft beers and diner-style burgers in downtown Excelsior Springs

ABOVE: Rayʼs Diner BELOW: The Atlas Saloon

Downtown Excelsior Springs is just under a ten-minute drive from Sundance Ranch, and there are many drinking, dining and shopping options—including two breweries, a wine mercantile, a diner and a museum, to name a few. Our favorites include The Atlas Saloon and Ray’s Diner, two Excelsior mainstays that have been intact for decades. Actually, The Atlas has been in the same location since 1894, making it the oldest bar in Clay County and one of the oldest in Missouri.

The Atlas is, as it has been for years, a charming local dive bar, but recently brewmaster Keith Hudson has started making some extremely smooth German lagers in the back. Hudson, a retired engineer, with his longtime friend and owner of The Atlas Jim McCullough, replaced what used to be the bar kitchen with a small brewhouse. Hudson carefully brews a handful of lagers at a time, and each is named after one of the twenty-nine mineral springs that drew people from all over the country for their healing properties around the early twentieth century.

Today, Hudson uses the famous waters of Excelsior Springs to brew lagers. When asked if he’s supplying to any local taps, Hudson said, “If you want our beer, you gotta come here.”

Catty-corner from The Atlas is Ray’s Diner, which has served the same classic diner staples—biscuits and gravy, hamburgers, breakfast sandwiches—for many years. Stepping into Ray’s is like stepping back in time. The small diner hasn’t changed much of its interior, the service is impeccable, the food is great, and the prices have remained mostly unaffected by time, too— you can get a hamburger for $2. For the most authentic diner experience, sit at the bar, put your phone down, and chat up the locals.

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F L I N T H I L LS , KS

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History in the Hills The historic Elgin Hotel will transport you back in time with its Victorian-era antiques and charm.

BY M A RY H E N N | P H OTO G R A P H Y BY Z AC H B AU M A N

the small town of Marion, and in the middle of Marion is the Elgin, a historic hotel.

The Elgin is a three-story limestone building that was commissioned in 1885 and built a year later to stimulate an economic boom. It proved to be more symbolic of the small town’s aspirations than its achievements.

But the Elgin is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has been given a new life thanks to current owners Jeremy and Tammy Ensey, who purchased the property in July 2016.

While the windows and the limestone building itself are the only original attributes that remain intact, The Enseys restored some of the Elgin’s original Victorian charm by replacing many of the furnishings with antiques and replica items. Prior to the Enseys purchasing the property, its previous owners, Jim and Nancy Cloutier, spent almost two million dollars renovating the hotel’s interior to what it might have looked like in the late 1800s with dark woodwork, stained glass, transom windows, chandeliers, and more. “It was their [The Cloutier’s] vision to restore it,” Tammy says. “And then it became our vision to run it.”

On our visit, things were quiet—they handed me the keys and went home for the night. While retaining its period charm, the hotel now offers several modern amenities, like smart TVs, wifi, jacuzzi tubs, a full-service bar and a restaurant. A separate limestone building in the back of the property that was once a changing room in the early twentieth century has been converted to a game lounge with billiards, a poker table, darts and leather sofas.

“We try to mix the modern amenities with the antiques,” Tammy says. “We know it’s not comfortable to sleep in an antique bed. But when we put in GO: 115 N. Third St., the library on the third Marion. Typical rates floor, we tried to keep that start at $140. old-world feel with the historicelginhotel.com. old-style wood.”

Some of Marion’s best food includes Cali-style street tacos.

Marion is fourteen hundred miles from Hermosa Beach, but you only have to go a half mile down Main Street from the Elgin to get authentic California-style street tacos. Chef Josh Tajchman and his wife Alison started a taco truck called That One Place (1018 E. Main St., Marion, KS) when they moved from L.A. back to Josh’s hometown of Marion. Tajchman’s menu includes traditional beef and chicken tacos, but one of our favorites is the sweet Thai pork taco, with seasoned pork carnitas, citrus slaw, pickled jalapenos and cotija cheese. And everything is fresh, from the pico and homemade salsas to the house-fried chips.

Once you’ve gone the distance between the Elgin and That One Place, you’ve seen most of Marion—there’s one other notable restaurant, the hotel’s own restaurant, Parlour, which changes its menu every weekend.

On the way to Marion from Kansas City, you’ll pass through Cottonwood Falls and Emporia. Cottonwood Falls offers antiques, history and a few bars while Emporia—substantially larger than both Marion and Cottonwood Falls—is a college town with several charming shops, eateries and breweries. There’s even a new moonshine distillery in Emporia, Trolley House Distillery, which has a large patio and often features live music.

That One Place

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West Coast Crunch

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Growing in the grid

Meet Kansas City’s burgeoning community of urban farmers.

BY NATALIE TORRES GALLAGHER PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHASE CASTOR

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Get on the highway and head out of Kansas City in any direction and you’ll hit fields sooner or later—soybeans, corn, rice, cotton. These tracts of acreage are usually what come to mind when we picture a farm, and in our heads, there is little connection between what we pass on our way to Hy-Vee and what ends up in our fridge.

But farms are not one-size-fits-all, and they don’t have to be located miles out of town. In Kansas City’s Ivanhoe neighborhood, a fifteen-block residential corridor along Woodland Avenue between 24th and 41st streets is home to nine agriculture operations. Five of these businesses qualify as farms, though they don’t look that way at first blush—more like substantial and vibrant gardens that take up quarter- or half-acre yards.

The produce grown on these plots doesn’t end up at the grocery store, but it still feeds the community. Two miles away, Cultivate KC is quietly fostering a community farm program on just over an acre of land that was once home to Westport High School’s track.

Kansas City has a bounty of urban farms—that is, farms operating in a city’s urban core—that even farmers market devotees don’t have on their radar. Business models vary, but the farmers all talk to each other, and most have ties to the KC Farm School or Cultivate KC. “We use the word ‘coopetition,’” says Cultivate KC staffer Daniel Robinson with a laugh. “We cooperate and share, but we're a little bit competitive with each other, in a good way. If we see Urbavore doing something that works, we try it.

Ultimately, we just want to help each other grow and better serve our individual communities.”

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Cultivate KC Katherine Kelly founded Cultivate Kansas City in 2005. Back then, there was little urban farming happening in the area, and Cultivate KC’s main goal was to promote urban agriculture as an important arm of a healthy food system.

The nonprofit was a major proponent— many would say the catalyst—for the local urban farming movement.

Cultivate KC has four programs, including the three-year-old Westport Commons Farm, located on a former track field located behind the old neighborhood high school.

“We have market stands and we have an EBT machine,” Daniel Robinson says.

“We’re sharing land with other growers here, including some refugees who have graduated from our program.”

One March afternoon, Robinson oversees a handful of volunteers as they shape beds for cool-season crops (leafy greens, broccoli) in the new eighty-footlong hoop house. One in the group is a regular volunteer and a Midtown neighborhood resident who seems to know his way around a backhoe. Robinson focuses his attention on the novices in the group. He points out a patch of dirt in the field that has been designated for an upcoming “compost fest,” where a large composting system will be built by volunteers. Two graduates from the program farm a nearby plot, and the rest of the farm is managed by Robinson.

All produce grown at Westport Commons ends up back in the community: The on-site farm stand is open once a week during the growing season, and produce is also sold via the New Roots CSA. What isn’t sold is donated to Midtown nonprofits and, in an effort to cut down on waste, the farm partners with local chefs, including Johnny Leach (the Town Co.), Rick Mullins (Café Sebastienne) and Teddy Liberda (Buck Tui).

“Selling directly to chefs is a no-brainer,” Robinson says. “We can literally grow their recipe in a bed and they’ll take it. There’s no packing it up and taking it to market and worrying about if it will sell or not.”

To the west, the Juniper Gardens Training Farm sprawls over nine acres in KCK. This offshoot of Cultivate started in 2008 as a partnership with Catholic Charities, where families from refugee communities enter a four-year program called New Roots for Refugees

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that empowers them to start farm businesses by growing and selling produce.

“Catholic Charities leads on recruitment and sales while Cultivate KC is focused on the production side, managing the site and teaching and working in infrastructure improvement,” says staffer Semra Fetahovic. “Once the families graduate, we help them transition onto their own farms.”

The Juniper Gardens Training Farm is in its fifteenth growing season this year, with ten families in the program.

Of the forty families that have graduated so far, thirty-one are still growing in Kansas City. During their time at Juniper Gardens, families sell their produce at local farmer’s markets, through their CSA and through wholesale orders for local restaurants.

“Farming has been pushed to be able to sell things at the lowest possible price, and that has so many negative implications for agriculture and community health,” Fetahovic says, referring to widespread pesticide use, pollution and environmental degradation. She also highlights the income disparity between farmers and consumers.

“People go to a store and if a bundle of cilantro is more than fifty cents, they think, ‘Why would I pay for that?’” she says. “With the local food movement, we’re pushing back against that. We’re saying, ‘The value of this cilantro is not fifty cents. It’s worth two dollars.’”

Woodland Greenway Since 2018, Neil and Lisa Rudisill have managed a half-acre microfarm on their property in Kansas City’s Ivanhoe neighborhood. They grow a variety of greens (kale, arugula, Swiss chard, mustard greens) plus radishes and beets. They sell most of it directly from their home.

But if you ask Neil about Woodland City, he’s quick to pivot to a related—and similarly named—project: Woodland Greenway, a fifteen-block corridor between 24th Street, 41st Street and Woodland Avenue that includes five urban farms and four community-led initiatives.

“We chose to start our farm in the Ivanhoe neighborhood because of the interest that the neighborhood had in encouraging small-scale agriculture,” Neil says. “Starting in 2012, the neighborhood council was taking vacant lots and turning them into green spaces.

They wanted to start a small farmers market and wanted to teach the community how to grow food, and that’s what really attracted us.”

In 2006, Neil heard about a new sustainable agriculture program at Johnson County Community College.

“They taught you these small-scale agricultural practices,” Neil says.

Neil graduated from a nursing program in 2016 and took a job with the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council growing the local food system.

Young Family Farm

“They gave me the opportunity to build out a health program, and I chose food as the intervention strategy and farming as the mechanism,” Neil says.

“A community farm with small neighborhood plots was an easy, approachable way to start a farm—all because the people in Ivanhoe said, ‘Hey, we want local food.’ This wasn’t about supplying local restaurants or filling market orders—this was a neighborhood that wanted to be more resilient.”

Before the pandemic, Neil sold his produce primarily to restaurants and the rest at the weekly Ivanhoe Farmer’s Market. When Covid hit, that model had to change.

“We started thinking about direct-toconsumer, on-farm sales,” he says. Each week, he’d send an email with offerings to a list of subscribers, who would make their selections and pick them up on a designated day. Woodland City—like many local urban farms—experienced its best sales year in 2020.

“The growers in our community are having so much more success selling off their farms that none of them wanted to come back to the market,” he says. “So we said, ‘Let’s make the farmers market more of an event.’ Now, consumers have seven different farms to pick from, all within walking distance.”

Young Family Farm Alan and Yolanda Young have been rooted in the Ivanhoe neighborhood since they purchased a two-story shirtwaist house there in 1986. At that time, the neighborhood had the highest volume of crime in the city. In 1997, after a decade of neighborhood organizing efforts, Alan restarted the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council, the community group that had been defunct. That wasn’t about urban farming—that was about restoring and beautifying the neighborhood. The farming came later, almost by chance, when the Youngs purchased an acre plot near their home.

“Initially, we wanted to use it as a space where our kids could play, but that didn’t last very long,” Yolanda says. “We ended up digging ground for a small garden and it expanded over time. In the late 00s, we became serious about gardening.”

Alan says, “We would be out working [in the garden] and more and more people would stop and inquire about buying

produce, so we started to look at ways to maximize the amount of food we could produce on the small amount of land that we had.”

The Young Family Farm uses a smallplot intensive technique, an organic production system with a high crop yield. They helped launch the Ivanhoe Farmers Market in 2010 in the parking lot of the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Association, and as the market’s footprint grew, so did the Young’s farm: What started as a three-bed plot has expanded to twenty-seven beds dedicated to growing a variety of vegetables and herbs.

There’s even a beehive for honey production. The Youngs’ extended family all help with the farm in some capacity.

Since Covid, the Young Family Farm has switched to selling from a farm stand on Wayne Avenue instead of the market.

The Young Family Farm sounds like a well-oiled machine, but for Alan and Yolanda, it’s an accidental business that grew out of their dedication to the local community—one more thing they do to help the Ivanhoe neighborhood flourish.

With the farm operating in the middle of the neighborhood, it’s become a conversation-starter and impromptu open-air classroom for many residents.

“People who come to our site have never seen vegetables out in the wild,” Alan says. “They’re used to seeing produce that’s ready for consumption.

People see where their food is coming from—we’ll often cut it while they’re waiting—and I’ve discovered that a lot of social capital is built around working on the land. People want to hang out and talk about the vegetables. It’s just really helped to change for the better overall.”

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Urbavore On a chilly mid-March afternoon, Brooke Salvaggio and Dan Heryer lead a trek around their farm near Swope Park, less than ten minutes from the Country Club Plaza. It’s mostly shades of brown this time of year— dry leaves, bare branches, dark mud that splashes up pant legs—but the couple has no problem distinguishing the various plots they have in progress across the thirteen or so acres they call Urbavore.

A soon-to-be patch of strawberries is kept safe beneath scattered straw. Salvaggio gestures as she walks: There’s garlic in that field, asparagus in this one, lots of greens and root vegetables in these. She throws a hand to some scarecrow trees, what remains of an apple and pear orchard.

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“We grow organically, and we had this idea that we’d have this large organic orchard,” she says with a laugh. “Missouri weather is awful for fruit in general, and everyone told us that was stupid and impossible, and they were right.”

It’s one of the countless lessons Salvaggio and Heryer have learned since founding Urbavore in 2011. The fruit trees are not a total loss: Those orchards are now pastures for their hogs. It’s all part of Urbavore’s self-sustaining ecosystem—like the quarter-acre pond on the edge of their property that supports their off-grid water supply. The pork, vegetables (particularly the strawberries, which Urbavore has become locally famous for) and chicken eggs are the farm’s bread and butter. And until Covid, the bulk of their sales came from farmers markets.

“Before Covid, markets were all we’d ever done,” Heryer says. In 2020, Urbavore began offering online sales: During the growing season, they update their website with that week’s offerings and designate time for people to pick up their purchases. “Once we realized people would come to us, it was a game-changer.”

The couple went from working around the clock during market season to having something that resembled a weekend.

“Covid gave us Saturdays off for the first time in twelve years, and that’s as much of a weekend as a farmer gets,” Heryer chuckles.

Moving away from the market model has allowed Salvaggio and Heryer to take a lead role in the city’s only curbside composting service. Nearly ten thousand pounds of waste (vegetable scraps, stale bread, animal bones, yard trimmings) from around two thousand households end up on the pile at Urbavore, which previously had to buy truckloads of compost.

Westport Commons Farm

2 Birds Farm Even for an urban farm, 2 Birds Farm is unusual. The parcel is a whopping twenty acres. And though it is technically located in an urban core—less than four miles from downtown Shawnee—the farm near Lake Quivira feels positively rural compared to its peers.

2 Birds was officially founded in 2019 by Laura Christensen and Katherine Kelly, less than a year before Kelly retired from Cultivate KC. They plant over fifty varieties of vegetables, specializing in broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, leafy greens and tomatoes, and they harvest chicken eggs. This year, if the weather cooperates, they’ll offer pickyour-own-strawberries. And someday soon, their herd of goats—currently employed as pasture-keepers—will become meat breeds.

The bulk of the produce from 2 Birds Farm is sold weekly at the Brookside Farmers Market and via a CSA that offers home and office delivery. There are a handful of chefs and restaurants that purchase directly from the farm, but Christensen has never really aimed for that business.

“Connecting with those chefs has been totally accidental,” she admits. “Johnny [Leach of Town Company] came to Brookside Market and was asking what I was excited about. There was this tiny green early cabbage—usually you think of cabbage as this bland commodity crop—but I thought it was extraordinary, and I said that I would love to have someone who cooks for a living be able to do something great with this. And he did, and he bought it consistently from me for that whole season.”

Still, Christensen has found that she prefers selling at the market and catering to the specialized needs of a handful of chefs to the logistics of providing for many restaurants. Part of that is the price point: The produce from 2 Birds Farm costs more than what most wholesale accounts or restaurants can afford. Christensen acknowledges the conundrum.

“There’s a constant tension between wanting to feed people and having accessible, local, healthy, fresh food that you’re producing, and trying to have a functional business,” she says. “I can’t afford to eat at most fine dining restaurants, but they’re helping me stay in business and they appreciate what I’m doing.

And because most of my business is at the farmers market, I can say, ‘Oh, I have a chef that loves this,’ and it’s a little bit of a boost in marketing my product.”

Christensen is a vocal advocate for variety—in crops, in consumers, and particularly in farm models. There is no one-size-fits-all way to farm, and learning from her peers and their practices is still exciting.

“You can’t draw a line around what an urban farm is,” she says. “It can be me on twenty acres in a city with a bit of sprawl or someone on a quarter-acre lot growing a few special crops or someone doing hydroponic growing. It’s worth considering all of those because having a complicated food system makes us resilient when stuff goes wrong.”

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TH E

When considering any task, it’s important to do your homework.

These professionals offer their expertise on an array of popular subjects in order to help you decide what’s right for you.

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Ask the Expert

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Dr. Cristyn Watkins ABOUT

Q: How long have you been in Kansas City?

Dr. Cristyn Watkins is the visionary of aNu Aesthetics™ and Optimal Wellness. She has earned an outstanding reputation in the community for being an innovative physician since 2006.

She is a double boardcertified family medicine and functional medicine physician, certified master injector, and national trainer in Regenerative Medicine.

A: Dr. Watkins was born and raised in Kansas City and dreamed of having an innovative medical center from a very young age. After medical school and residency, she opened aNu in 2011 in KC North, then added River Market in 2020 and most recently in Leawood this year.

Her passion is to help individuals feel their best inside and out and believes in providing you with excellent personalized care for ‘aNu You’!

Q: Why choose aNu?

Optimal Wellness Q: What services do you offer?

A: aNu offers Advanced Aesthetics, Laser Treatments, Body Contouring, PRP and Ozone Therapy, IV Therapy, Medical Weight Loss, Bioidentical Hormones, Infrared Sauna, Sensory Deprivation Float Pod, LED Light and Functional/Wellness Medicine.

They also offer ‘aNu MD’, Dr. Watkins’ personal line of Medical Grade Skincare and Supplements.

Q: What is Functional & Wellness Medicine?

A: Functional medicine looks at the entire body, the mental and physical condition of the patient, the nutrition and exercise levels, stress levels, and all potential imbalances that may exist in

their bodily systems. Many factors can cause the imbalances in the body – inflammation, bacteria, viruses, toxins, emotions, digestion, anxiety, and poor diet. Every patient responds differently to various therapies and treatments, which is why a patient’s progress is closely monitored and adjusted to their therapies as needed, creating and tailoring a plan, personalized specifically for them.

Q: What are your most popular services?

A: • N eurotoxin (Botox etc.)

•C osmetic Fillers • I V Nutritional Therapy and Ozone •T urbo Shots (for energy detox, weight loss) • L aser and RF (Halo, BBL, Vivace, Morpheus) •B ody Contouring (CoolSculpting, EVOLVE) •B io-Identical Hormones •M edical Weight loss • F unctional Medicine with Dr. Watkins

A: A Medical Director is on-site, at each location, to oversee the day-to-day operations and procedures being provided.

When choosing your provider, this should be a critical element in your decision-making process.

At aNu, Dr. Watkins personally trains, supervises and practices alongside her highly skilled medical staff, consisting of three board-certified physicians, four nurse practitioners, nurses (RN/BSN/LPN), licensed aestheticians, certified laser specialists and medical assistants. She is constantly learning how to expand the services at aNu and continues to explore all of the advancements in anti-aging therapies to make her patients feel young and vital!

Q: How can I become a patient?

A: Call any of the three locations for a complimentary one hour consultation or visit www.anuaesthetics.com

aNu Aesthetics™ and Optimal Wellness North Location 10090 NW Prairie View Road Kansas City, MO 64153 Phone: 816.670.4406 | River Market 547 Grand Blvd Kansas City, MO 64106 Phone: 816.339.5053 | Leawood 11401 Nall Ave, Suite 218 Leawood, KS 66211 Phone: 913.298.6230 | anuaesthetics.com

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Georgia Cirese, RN, CANS, CLT ABOUT

your injector, asking questions to qualify their level of experience. It’s not the price of the product you’re paying for, but the injector’s training and expertise!

Georgous Aesthetic Bar opened in October, 2019 by Registered Nurse, Certified Aesthetics Nurse Specialist (CANS) and master injector, Georgia Cirese. Georgia has been in the aesthetics industry for more than 20 years and is recognized as a top aesthetics trainer, national speaker and key opinion leader. She has even been nicknamed to be one of the original or “OG Injectors” in the aesthetics field.

Q: Is there an alternative to Botox?

A: Yes, there are four different types of neuromodulators for cosmetic purposes. Botox was developed first (2002), followed by Dysport (2009), then Xeomin (2011) and most recently Jeuveau (2019). Other treatments such as resurfacing lasers, microneedling, and chemical peels are great supplemental treatments, however; they don’t offer the same efficacy for dynamic lines and wrinkles as neuromodulators and dermal fillers.

Botox & Fillers Q: When should you consider Botox?

A: You can begin using Botox as a preventative treatment when expression lines and wrinkles become apparent at rest or without making expressions. The long-term goal is to soften and prevent deeper lines and wrinkles.

Q: What’s the difference between Botox and Fillers?

A: Botox is used in the facial muscles that we use to make facial expressions and can also be used therapeutically to treat migraines, TMJ and hyperhidrosis. Dermal fillers are used to replace volume

Q: What other prejuvenation and rejuvenation aesthetic treatments do you provide? and fill wrinkles in areas such as the cheeks, temples, smile lines, and lips as well as many other areas on the face and body.

A: Other treatments that are safe and effective include laser light based treatments (fraxel resurfacing, photo rejuvenation, laser hair reduction, etc.), microneedling, Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP), chemical peels, bio-stimulating injections, facials and medical grade skincare.

Q: What qualifications and experience should an injector have?

A: When looking for an injector, you should ensure they are a licensed medical professional (RN, APRN, RNC, PA or MD), because regulations and laws vary state-to-state, with some states not requiring a licensed medical professional to perform treatments. Training is one of the most important qualifications, as well as years of experience injecting. You should also interview

Georgous Aesthetic Bar 4505 Madison Ave. Kansas City, MO 64111 | 816.946.8484 | georgouskc.com

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Tim Herre, DDS ABOUT

and stressed, wreaking havoc on our personal and professional lives. The good news is we have the ability to permanently change the size and volume of ones airway for 24/7 improved breathing with the use of a biological dental appliance. No more managing with just a nighttime appliance or CPAP. My goal is to help you BREATHE,

Dr. Tim Herre is a graduate of Saint Thomas Aquinas and UMKC dental school. He is a third generation dentist in Johnson County and is passionate about Kansas City. He practices holistic and biological dentistry with an emphasis on treating TMJ disorders, childhood growth and development and airway/ sleep concerns for all ages.

His wellness philosophy aims at treating the root cause of disease, which enables you be the best version of yourself.

SLEEP, THRIVE!

Q: Should I be concerned if my child snores, mouth breathes, grinds their teeth, has ADHD or wets the bed?

Holistic Dentistry Q: Is there a solution to my chronic TMJ pain?

I can’t deal with this!

A: Jaw pain, worn teeth, receding gums, headaches, earaches and clenching or grinding your teeth are all common TMJ symptoms.

These are all signs that the chewing system is breaking down and not functioning properly. By focusing on the root cause of the symptoms, the chewing system is able to be conservatively rejuvenated back to a state of optimal health and well-being. This type of dentistry isn’t focused on managing the disease with

a typical night guard but asking why and what is causing the breakdown and providing a permanent fix. The good news is there is hope for those suffering from long-term chronic pain.

Q: I don’t sleep well: I snore, I never feel rested when I wake up, and I’m tired of wearing a CPAP. What is going on?

A: Up to seventy million Americans are affected by chronic sleep disorders. It’s well known that sleep apnea can cause systemic disease such as high blood pressure, fatigue, weight gain and diabetes. Now we know that grinding one’s teeth and snoring can be directly linked to the size of one’s face, jaw and airway. When our jaws don’t grow properly, our airway from inside the nose to behind the tongue become a choke point to our breathing. As a result, we aren’t able to breathe properly, we get inadequate restorative sleep, and our health suffers. This can make us more irritable, anxious

Herre Holistic Dental KC 11201 Nall Ave., Suite 120, Leawood, KS | 913.491.4466 | holisticdentalkc.com

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A: YES! The above symptoms, plus crowded teeth, enlarged tonsils, tongue tie and inability to nurse, are all signs there is a problem. In our modern society, there is an epidemic among children due to poor growth and development of their jaws and face. If not addressed early in life, the airway becomes constricted and may predispose your child to needing teeth removed for orthodontic purposes, sleep apnea, TMJ and other health issues. We screen and evaluate all childrens’ growth, airway and tonsils with a 3D scan of their jaws. The ideal age for this is three to six years old to harness the child’s true growth potential. My goal is to catch any potential airway issue at an early stage so your child can grow and develop to their full potential.

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Maniza Ehtesham, MD, FACP ABOUT

gain, trouble with sleep onset or maintaining sleep, frequent awakenings, frequent urination at night, headaches, restless legs, nightmares, acting out dreams, hallucinations etc.

Dr. Maniza Ehtesham is a boardcertified sleep physician and the medical director at Excellhealth Sleep Center. She is an associate professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and enjoys teaching medical students and residents. She has also served as an associate residency program director at UMKC. She is currently a staff physician at Advent Health Shawnee Mission and Excellhealth Sleep Center.

Some questions answered in regards to Sleep Disorders:

Q: How do I test for a sleep disorder?

A: Typically, you may be referred to a sleep physician for a consultation and based on your symptoms and comorbidities, he/she may order either behavioral therapies like cognitive therapy or order a home sleep test or in lab sleep test and thereafter based on results discuss treatment options with you. Some labs may be ordered as well which may be key for optimal sleep.

Q: What do I do if I can’t shut off my mind and fall asleep?

Q: How many hours should an average adult sleep?

A: Preferably seven to eight hours but a minimum of six hours.

Q: How important is sleep for your immunity?

A: Sleep improves your immunity.

In addition to eating immune boosting foods and adding exercise daily – getting your 7-8 hours of sleep is very important for your immune system to function optimally.

Q: What are the consequences of poor sleep?

A: Inadequate sleep can lead to many short-term and long-term consequences. Some short-term effects include fatigue, attention deficit, focus problems, decreased productivity in your day, anxiety, increased appetite, etc. Some long-term effects include Depression, Bipolar disorder, Hypertension, Obesity etc.

A: Our mind and body need some time to wind down before they can shut themselves down to hibernate for several hours. Typically, a relaxing routine before bedtime helps you unwind and sleep well.

You can choose a few activities that you do every day as a habit, this will help improve your sleep onset. For example, light stretching, meditation, warm bath or shower, soft music or white noise, etc.

Things to avoid include electronics, like TV, phones, laptops or any sources of bright light close to bed time. Eat at least 3 hours before bedtime and avoid heavy exercise close to bedtime. Avoid excess fluid intake close to bedtime. Try to keep the room temperature cool, about 65° F is ideal for sleep onset, and have loose fitting and comfortable clothing.

Q: What are the risks of leaving a sleep disorder untreated?

A: Sleep disorders have been linked to many chronic diseases. Persons with sleep apnea have been found to be at increased risk for cardiovascular diseases like hypertension, stroke, coronary heart disease, irregular heartbeat and strokes. Laboratory research and epidemiological studies have found that short sleep duration results in metabolic changes that may be linked to obesity and diabetes.

Studies have also indicated that depression may decrease once sleep disorders have been effectively treated and sufficient sleep cycles are restored. The interrelatedness of sleep and depression suggests that irregular sleep is a driver for this disease.

Q: I do shift work, and find it difficult to sleep, what do I do?

A: Avoid bright lights at the end of your shift as well as caffeine in the later part of the shift. Eat your meal while at your shift if possible and avoid heavy meals close to bedtime, a light snack is ok when you arrive home. Avoid distractions and head home as soon as your shift is completed. Use dark glasses on your way home to avoid light stimulus. Go to your room as soon as you arrive home and start your wind down routine as noted above. Try to use blackout curtains in your room. Keep phones and other devices on silent and try to get at least 6-8 hrs. If needed, use a sleep aid temporarily to set your sleep cycle after discussion with your physician.

Q: How do I know if my poor sleep is due to a sleep disorder?

A: Common symptoms of sleep disorders include snoring, gasping/ choking in sleep, excessive sleepiness/naps in day, attention/ concentration/focus/memory problems during daytime, weight

Excellhealth Sleep Center 10640 W 87th St, Overland Park, KS 66214 | 913.203.4040 | excellhealthsleep.com

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Katie Dunn Fitzgerald ABOUT US

Mariner Wealth Advisors, a privately held national advisory firm founded in 2006, offers clients wealth management services designed to help them navigate their financial future. Our teams, including tax, estate planning and trust services, investment management and insurance, are under one roof, which provides clients with a coordinated, personalized experience. Our advisors are focused on partnering with clients for whatever life brings their way and are committed to always putting their interests first.

As a senior wealth consultant, Katie Dunn Fitzgerald helps business owners and senior-level executives formulate and implement financial plans, while actively volunteering in the Kansas City community.

Katie’s current community involvement includes serving the following organizations: the University of Kansas Health System, Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, the Foundation board for Johnson County Community College, the United Way of Greater Kansas City Tocqueville Society, BOTAR, multiple women’s causes and her children’s grade school.

Act authorized the Small Business Administration to provide Paycheck Protection Program loans to small businesses to cover payroll and other basic expenses.

The added benefit of these loans is they can potentially be forgiven if certain rules are adhered to. The other option we’re recommending small business owners explore are Emergency Injury Disaster Loans. These already existed prior to the CARES Act but were expanded significantly to provide additional assistance.

If you own a business, I highly recommend visiting MarinerWealthAdvisors. com for a more in-depth discussion of both of these loan options.

Wealth Advice Q: What is the most pressing topic you see clients needing to address right now?

A: With the ongoing personal and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, clients who own small businesses are having to navigate a crisis that’s truly unprecedented. At Mariner Wealth Advisors, we’ve been really focusing on educating those clients about what their options may be in pursuing financing for their business as a result of the recent legislation passed and how those decisions will impact their personal financial plan. While we don’t know how this whole thing will end up, our objective is to make clients as educated and updated on the legislation to help them make informed decisions for both the short- and long-term.

Q: Should I apply for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) or the Emergency Injury Disaster Loan?

A: In short, if you own a small business, even as a sole proprietor or as an independent contractor, I recommend that you seriously consider applying for these loans. The recent CARES

*MWA does not provide all services listed in this piece. Some services are provided by affiliates and are subject to additional fees. Additional fees may also apply for tax planning and preparation services.

This article is limited to the dissemination of general information pertaining to Mariner Wealth Advisors’ investment advisory services and general economic market conditions. The views expressed are for commentary purposes only and do not take into account any individual personal, financial, or tax considerations. As such, the information contained herein is not intended to be personal legal, investment or tax advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any security or engage in a particular investment strategy. Nothing herein should be relied upon as such, and there is no guarantee that any claims made will come to pass. Any opinions and forecasts contained herein are based on information and sources of information deemed to be reliable, but Mariner Wealth Advisors does not warrant the accuracy of the information that this opinion and forecast is based upon. You should note that the materials are provided “as is” without any express or implied warranties. Opinions expressed are subject to change without notice and are not intended as investment advice or to predict future performance. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Consult your financial professional before making any investment decision.

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.

Mariner Wealth Advisors 5700 W 112th St., Suite 200, Overland Park, KS 913.647.9700 | marinerwealthadvisors.com

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Ask the Expert

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C. Lan Fotopoulos, MD ABOUT

Q: Who would benefit from the Intracept Procedure?

C. Lan Fotopoulos, M.D., is an interventional physiatrist specializing in minimally invasive and interventional procedures in the treatment of spinal disorders, including epidural injections, vertebroplasty, kyphoplasty, radiofrequency ablation, spinal cord stimulation and sacroplasty. From skillful diagnosis to advanced treatment options and attentive follow-up care, you’ll find a comprehensive range of orthopedic services at Kansas City Orthopedic Alliance.

Physiatry

A: Intracept is indicated for patients with chronic low back pain who don’t have a spinal instability or scoliosis, but they do have changes present on an MRI, called modic changes. These patients generally have experienced chronic low back pain for more than six months and have not responded to nonsurgical treatments.

Intracept addresses modic changes that stem from degeneration rather than a tear or rupture. An MRI and physical examination will be performed to determine patients who qualify.

Q: What is the Intracept Procedure?

Q: What are the key benefits of the Intracept Procedure?

A: When patients don’t respond well to nonsurgical treatment methods for lower back pain, they often think spinal fusion surgery is their only remaining option. But for some, there is another type of treatment that could relieve their back pain: the Intracept Procedure. It’s an outpatient, minimally invasive procedure that

targets the basivertebral nerve, which is located in the bones of the spine (vertebrae).

Q: How does Intracept help relieve chronic low back pain?

A: The pain-sensing basivertebral nerve is responsible for applying innervation to the bony end plates of the vertebral body. When the Intracept probe burns that nerve, it blocks the pain signals before they have a chance to branch to those end plates.

A: Intracept is a minimally invasive, outpatient procedure, so the recovery period is rapid—often not more than a couple of days. It is implant-free and preserves the structure of the spine.

There are no restrictions placed on patients afterward, and in many instances the pain relief is almost immediate.

Kansas City Orthopedic Alliance Overland Park: 10777 Nall Ave Ste 300, Overland Park, KS | Kansas City, Missouri: Saint Luke’s Medical Plaza #1, 4320 Wornall Rd., Ste. 610, KCMO | Leawood: 3651 College Blvd. Leawood, KS | Belton: Belton Regional Campus, 17067 S Outer Rd Ste 301, Belton, MO | 913.319.7600 | kcorthoalliance.com

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Ask the Expert

S P E C I A LS PAE D C IVA LE ARDTVIESR IT NI S GI N GS SEECC TTI OI ON N

Senior Care Authority where we can help with situations such as skilled nursing placement, family mediation, community education, and a plethora of other topics that affect our region’s seniors.

Q: What types of factors differentiate one senior community from another?

A: We research each community in depth to understand the level of care they can provide for our clients. Every place is different, so before we set up any tours with our clients, we ensure that the community can fit the individual’s unique needs. We accompany them on the tours and help them weigh their options to make an informed decision. Once they move in, we follow up to make sure it’s a good fit. All of this is at no charge to the private-pay independent, assisted living and memory care clients.

ABOUT US

We help guide seniors and their families to excellent outcomes. Don previously worked 10+ years as a food and beverage director in a senior community and developed a heart for working with this age group.

His father suffered from Alzheimer’s, and Don had to juggle his father’s needs with his full time career, so he knows the struggle what families face. Elaine is a pharmacist and has a decade of experience in long term care.

Senior Care Q: Why did you choose Senior Care Authority as your next career path?

A: The challenges Don faced with caring for a sick and aging parent made him wish for someone to help guide him through the complexities of the senior care world. Our goal is to know the systems inside and out, which can help families make informed decisions. Don is a Certified Senior Advisor and keeps current with continuing education to help people navigate the often confusing options out there.

Certified Senior Advisor (CSA)

Q: Explain your services?

A: We meet the person wherever they are in their journey and help devise the best next steps. We offer placement assistance for independent living, assisted living, and memory care at no charge to our clients. We also specialize in elder care consulting

Senior Care Authority 22052 W 66th St., Suite 179, Shawnee, Kansas | 913.488.8609 | seniorcare-kansascity.com

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THREE COURSE MENU

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The Savoy at 21c Thursday, May 12th

Doors Open: 6:00 Dinner: 6:30-8:30 COURSE ONE Di Bufala Burrata Apricot, Strawberry, Radicchio

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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

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The Wade Brothers had a vision for Tiki Taco on West 39th Street. Brothers Lyndon and Lindsey Wade are local photographers and video artists known worldwide for commercial work on behalf of A-list clients like Nike and Google. They took over this vaguely tropical Mexican restaurant (1710 W. 39th St., KCMO) as a placemaking project that came with the solemn obligation to sate after-bar crowds with cheap tacos. To handle the culinary side, they tapped former Westport Cafe co-owner Richard Wiles, who supplemented classic ground beef in crunchy shells with fare like these Thai fried chicken tacos.

The chicken is fried in a tempura batter seasoned with a spice blend that includes ancho chili, paprika and cumin and then gets a nice kick from a dousing of Thai chili sauce. It comes in a perfect Yoli tortilla for $4. It’s double the size of most street tacos and available from the to-go window out front so you can grab one on your way to the next spot.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CALEB CONDIT & REBECCA NORDEN

—MARTIN C I ZMAR

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TRUE GRITS At Lula Southern Cookhouse, they make “real Southern food—not Midwestern Southern food.”

BY N ATA L I E TO R R E S G A L L AG H E R P H OTO G R A P H Y BY C A L E B C O N D I T & R E B E C C A N O R D E N

S

for lots of reasons.

No one can deny that, whatever you call it—soul, Southern, comfort—dishes like fried pig tails have roots in slavery. It’s too much to unpack here, but it’s well worth acknowledging before heaping praise on a new restaurant where so much of the menu comes from Southern foodways.

At Lula Southern Cookhouse, pig tails are the second best-selling appetizer, right behind the blue crab pimento cheese fritter.

Other comfort food staples—blackened catfish, gumbo gravy—are stacked on the menu at prices no one charges for comfort food (the baked mac and cheese is twenty-four dollars, though it is generously laden with ham). If you glanced only at the menu, it would be easy to write off Lula as another trendy restaurant capitalizing on the appeal of Southern cooking.

But Bradley Gilmore did not come haphazardly to this concept for Lula.

Gilmore—who shares the chef-owner title with business partner Brandon West—was born and raised in Pittsboro, North Carolina. (Brittany Socha Gilmore, Gilmore’s wife, is a third owner.) The restaurant is named for Gilmore’s primary cooking inspiration: his granny, Lula Mae Bryant.

“My whole life in the South was around supper and breakfast and the things it took to make that happen,” he says. “I knew if I ever got the opportunity to do my own restaurant, it would be focused around Lula and the way she cooked: real Southern food—not Midwestern Southern food.”

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At Lula, portions are handsome and flavors are rich because they have to be. But there’s more to it than that. Consider the classic Brunswick stew: There is nothing outwardly spectacular about this murky reddish-brown bowl, but each spoonful is a comforting delivery of tender lima beans and chunks of rabbit and pheasant in a thick, tangy, tomato-y broth. It’s delicious, and it doesn’t taste like anything else around these parts. (Gilmore omitted the traditional squirrel meat.)

Lula is located at the edge of the Crossroads in the space that belonged to sushi restaurant Nara for fourteen years. Gilmore and West opened in November on a month-to-month lease and did not enlist any heavy-duty renovations on the interior. Booths have been reupholstered with smart tan leather, accent walls have been painted robin’s egg blue, and clusters of warm Edison bulbs dangle from the rafters. A smiling portrait of Lula is posted behind the host stand, welcoming guests.

I’m guessing Lula did not sous vide her pig tails for twenty-four hours, nor is she likely to have coated them in rice flour and flashfried them, but I believe she would appreciate the effect (they eat like chicken wings). She would approve even more of the choucroute garnie, wherein the kitchen employs its own Creole seasoning blend, pork shoulder and pork fat to make a fabulous andouille sausage.

Test the Tabasco-glazed carrots on the plate at your own peril—the fiery batch I had was definitely not “Midwestern Southern.”

As for the other appetizers, you will be tempted to order triple dip, a routine cloud-pleasing trio of pimiento cheese, creamy ham salad and warm crawfish. I urge you to look just one line below it and opt instead for the vegan collard rolls, a surprising combination of jackfruit boudin sausage stuffed into steamed collard leaves and served over a sweet potato hash.

That Gilmore manages to synchronize the flavors without muddling them makes you curious to know what else he could accomplish were he deprived of animal products.

But let’s not take the butter out of Lula. It plays a central role in the grits, a taste of which will make you endlessly grateful for those ample Southern portions. Growing up, Gilmore was used to plain grits that you dressed up on your plate, but guests at Lula will suffer no such labor. Here, grits are cooked down with heavy cream and whisked with white cheddar and lots of butter. They are dreamier than any truffle risotto, silkier than any fairytale porridge, soothing enough to drown out the sounds of your conscience telling you that it would be rude not to share.

Those grits show up in several places on the menu at Lula. You may enjoy them as the spotlight-stealing co-headliner in the requisite shrimp and grits, where charred shrimp and crispy fried pig ears are more like textural sprinkles. You will find a blue cheese version of them served with the grilled beef coulotte.

Catfish is another Southern staple, though it is usually offered fried. Not at Lula.

“I got tired of everyone thinking every Southern dish has to be fried,” Gilmore says. So he makes a blackening paste with oil and the Lula Creole seasoning and rubs it into a thick catfish filet. This is grilled and served atop tender collard greens that are cooked down with ham hocks and dirty rice and prepared in the Louisiana tradition with finely chopped chicken livers and oysters.

The menu does not want for seafood, so don’t feel bad about skipping

the NOLA Pot Pie. A chaotic mix of oysters, crawfish, shrimp, andouille sausage and gumbo gravy are tossed into a shallow tin dish and covered with puff pastry. Cast iron or a dutch oven would help take this dish’s internal temperature past lukewarm.

The fried chicken is the undisputed star at Lula, and it almost didn’t make it on the menu. Competition is stiff, Gilmore says, and he didn’t want to mimic Midwestern comfort food spots like Rye or Brookside Poultry.

“When we had chicken in the South, it was a big production and Lula would always do plenty of sides,” Gilmore says. “We realized that we couldn’t be a Southern restaurant and not do fried chicken, so we wanted to replicate that experience here.”

A whole fried chicken and three sides goes for $75, a price that the Colonel would squawk at, but consider that the half-chicken (with two sides for $40) is easily a meal for three people. Also consider that it is the best fried chicken in Kansas City.

Here is what Gilmore says the kitchen does with their Campo Lindo chickens: They are broken down and brined in brown sugar, garlic and sage for twenty-four hours. They are dipped in buttermilk and dredged in a mix of flours, cornstarch and seasoning. They are fried in peanut oil until they resemble sun-kissed, scraggly desert ridges.

The fried chicken comes with biscuits made from a recipe that chef Jonathan Justus (Justus Drugstore, Black Dirt) helped the Lula team perfect. They weigh as much as a cotton ball and last about three bites, and their only fault is that they are perhaps too perfect. No matter: A sip of your pecan old fashioned—one of several excellent whiskey-heavy cocktails on the drink list—and your suspicions will dissolve.

Desserts are humble childhood relics, and at least the banana pudding (layered with peanut butter cookies and vanilla wafers) is blessedly petite.

And though we had scarcely recovered from dinner, the simple apple crisp a la mode was somehow what everyone at the table needed: Warm, familiar— almost like something you’d get at granny’s house.

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TA S T E PER FECT DAY

Grace Ames puts her farmkid roots to work at Colonial Gardens in Blue Springs.

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

W H E N YO U G R OW U P O N A CAT T LE FA RM , there’s always something to do—haying, milking, putting up the neighbor’s hay when a storm comes rolling over the Ozark foothills.

For Grace Ames, that was life growing up on her father’s farm in Cassville, just north of the Arkansas border. Everybody in her family farmed and maintained multi-acre kitchen gardens besides. “I would go over to my uncle’s house and before we could do anything fun, it would be like, ‘OK, we’re picking corn for an hour first,’” she says.

That’s the right background for her current job at Colonial Gardens in Blue Springs, where she’s in charge of “farm, food and fun.” That means in the course of a week she could be waking up before dawn to attend the birth of a calf (Sterling Moo-homes) and then running a farm-totable dinner and planting blueberries.

“I’ve literally gone from covered in farm dirt to in a dress for an event in less than five minutes,” she says.

Colonial Gardens has a large natural foods market, where you can buy everything from heirloom tomatoes to Clear Creek fruit brandy. They also sell a wide variety of home goods ranging from hammock chairs to Smithey cast iron pans. You can buy planting potatoes, bird feeders, garden hoses and very fine St. Louis-made salamis.

“The unifying theme is that we really are trying to do things to make a healthier world,” she says. “But I’m not going to lie, occasionally I’ll find something and be like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know we had that.’”

Ames interviewed at Colonial Gardens in February 2020, when the natural foods store in Springfield where she’d been working closed. She ended up passing on the job to stay in Springfield—she’d moved there at age eighteen for college and started her career at a fine dining club—and instead took a job running the deli department for a traditional grocery

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couple of times, but is there any way you’d take me for this position?”

She’s since set about building the garden’s culinary and events program, which includes field trips, you-pick berries, yoga classes and dinners that use lots of ingredients grown on Colonial Gardens’ eighty-acre site. On a typical day, you can find her at the Gardens—on or off the clock.

“Truly, I love my job so much that I love starting my day here with coffee,” she says. “Even on my days off I will often come here.”

P E R F E C T DAY Morning “Scout’s Coffee (1400 W. Main St., Blue Springs) is an adorable coffee shop in an old bungalow on Main Street, right around the corner from my house.”

Noon “I love Third Street Social in Lee’s Summit (123 S.E. Third St., Lee’s Summit). I like to make a meal of appetizers, so I’ll do the deviled eggs and fried Brussels sprouts.”

Night “If I’m staying local, I am just going to grab a beer and some snacks at East Forty Brewing. They actually work with local farmers, too—they use pumpkins that we grow for their pumpkin ale. We have sold them ginger before, tomatoes for their tomato soup.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATALEA BONJOUR

GROWING GARDEN

store chain. “It sucked the life out of me,” she says. “I came home crankier and crankier every day. I was working with frozen food and I was pulling in crap full of preservatives, which is just so far from who I am as a person.”

She eventually came back around to Colonial’s owner Tory Schwope, who also owns a massive multi-state tree farming operation, to say she was finally ready to make the move. “I didn’t tell anybody that I was going to do this,” she says. “I called him and said, ‘I know I’ve said no a

FINAL VOTING STARTS may 16 Voting among the five finalists in each category opens on Monday, May 16. Final ballot closes on Friday, June 10.

Winners will be announced online and in print on Monday, August 1.

SCAN HERE TO VOTE!

TA S T E DR I N K

CLAWS UP Cracking cans of a complex house hard seltzer at Nighthawk lounge

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

the laborious process behind the house hard seltzer at Nighthawk lounge below the Hotel Kansas City (1228 Baltimore Ave., KCMO) on a Saturday night. “Dude, we were soaking the almonds in a grappa earlier this week,” says bartender Johnny Lancaster. “I’ll tell you about it if I can get a little break.”

The breaks never come, as a big and thirsty crowd watches honky tonk quintet Lorna Kay’s One Night Stand play a cover of “Islands in the Stream.”

Craft breweries have attempted hard seltzers since the White Claw era began, with mixed results. The Night Claw, as the lineup at Nighthawk is called, is a little closer to a canned cocktail, using vodka as the base liquor and pumping in some bubbles. Unlike most canned cocktails, there’s an emphasis on light and breezy flavors and drinkability.

The whole idea behind the Night Claw lineup, says Nighthawk general manager Zach Shore, was that “from the guest’s perspective” it’s as simple as the bartender cracking a cold one and handing it over—the customer doesn’t need to know anything about the liqueur infusion process.

“We wanted to take what we know about craft cocktails and implement into it a canned cocktail,” Shore says. “We can take all of those elements and do all of the work behind the scenes.”

Flavors like cucumber mint have enough going on for anyone who wants to think about how peeled cucumbers are infused with Fernet Menta herbal liqueur, but they remain plenty poundable for those who just want to watch the show.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY K AYLA MASISAK

THERE’S NO TIME TO EXPLAIN

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TA S T E B I T E S

The One

NEWSFEED

WHAT’S NEW IN KANSAS CITY FOOD & DRINK

Casual Relationships

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY RESPETIVE VENUES

Hop Up Back in 2015, Ryan Triggs and two business partners started growing hops in Kansas. The small green flowers, which look like pine cones, are the bittering agent in beer and contribute to the floral, citrusy and fruity flavors that make IPAs so popular. “Things are going really well, but we’re only growing three acres of hops down there, so it wasn’t really enough to be a full-time job,” Triggs says. Eventually, they decided they either needed to up their acreage or add another line of business by opening their own microbrew taproom—which they did with Tall Trellis Brew Co. (25600 W. Valley Parkway, Olathe). “We’re providing hops to about seventy different breweries right now, so the goal is to highlight a lot of beers from the breweries that have been supporting us,” Triggs says. (Those beers are marked on the sixteen-beer tap lineup with a little hop cone.) As the name implies, Tall Trellis will be brewing its own beer on a small one-barrel system pending the necessary inspections and approvals. Some drinkers may not be totally familiar with what a hop cone looks like—Tall Trellis will correct that as the summer goes on and the hops planted around their courtyard climb the surrounding trellises. “I’m excited to use that as an educational tool,” Triggs says. “I’m excited for people in Kansas City to get up close and personal and be around the plants and see what they look like and how they’re grown.”

Kansas City has its first Indonesian restaurant with the opening of Spicy One (6551 W 119th St, Overland Park). The Southeast Asian nation is home to more than thirteen thousand different ethnic groups and has one of the most diverse cuisines in the world. Spicy One is especially proud of its Rendang Spicy Beef, which is slow-cooked in coconut milk with spices and chiles and its Martabak Telur, a stuffed pancake that’s a popular street food. Indonesia is the fourth-most populated country in the world but a blogger who did the math found fewer than a hundred Indonesian restaurants in the U.S., most in California. Spicy One received an official visit from the Indonesian consulate at the end of April.

‘Happy’ in Spain One of Kansas City’s culinary power couples will decamp for Spain, reports Jenny Vergara of Feast.

Abbey-Jo and Josh Eans own Happy Gillis and Columbus Park Ramen Shop but are moving to Valencia, on the country’s eastern shore, with their three children. The big move came from a mid-pandemic moment of clarity.

“We realized we were always working way more than we were at home with the kids and each other, and we also saw how easily everything we had been working so hard for could be taken away,” Josh Eans told Feast.

They’ve sold their home and cars and saved enough money to make it for a year without jobs while renting an apartment in Valencia. They will continue to own Happy Gillis, which will be run by a longtime manager. The ramen shop has remained closed since the start of the pandemic. >>In addition to this scoop from Feast magazine, we have a scoop about Feast magazine. The venerable St. Louis-based food publication is retracting to its home turf and stopping its KC coverage beginning in June. It’s a sad loss for local food media.

Two notable local fast-casual restaurants are expanding with new concepts. We have a soft spot for Haha’s Pizza Hub on Main Street, which we’ve included in roundups of the best New York pizza not just because it’s good pizza but because it feels more like being in outer Brooklyn than anywhere else in KC. Brothers Fouad and Firas Haha were raised in Jordan and are tapping their background for a sister concept, Haha’s Kebabs and Shawarma. According to the Star, it will be around the corner at 204 W. 39th St, on the edge of Westport. Look for chicken and kofta kebabs, plus hummus and Greek salad.

>> Up in the Northland, a venerable burger spot is doing something similar, also reported by the Star.

Tay’s Burger Shack opened in 2014 and has a loyal following that will tell you it’s the best burger in town.

Now owner Kent Harrison is trying his hand at Philly-style steak sandos with Tay’s Cheesesteaks at 315 Armour Road. Harrison tells the Star that he’ll use grass-fed beef from a Kearney farm but bring in traditional Amoroso’s rolls from the land where it’s always sunny.

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Kansas City’s barbecue dessert game is pushing into new territory.

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

A

in the West Bottoms, pitmaster-owner Justin Easterwood is “always looking for creative ways to use the flavor of fire.”

Easterwood likes a kiss of smoke in everything—including dessert. That led him away from the traditional banana pudding he had on the menu when we named him the second-best pit in the city last year and to a new smoked cheesecake.

“We end up cold-smoking the cream cheese up to four hours to get a real good smoke flavor,” Easterwood says.

That cream cheese is whipped with heavy cream, vanilla bean and sugar, then put into three-inch cake pans with Graham cracker crust and set. It’s topped with a sauce made from fresh strawberries that are macerated in their own sugars overnight and cooked down with chipotle peppers.

“People have responded very well,” Easterwood says. “It’s been our most popular dessert the last month and gets a lot of compliments.”

It’s part of a trend in KC where pitmasters are moving beyond the banana and into creative desserts that often use pieces and parts from the rest of the menu. At the Harp Barbecue pop-up, owner Tyler Harp makes chocolate chip cookies with the tallow that cooks off his brisket. At Plowboys in Blue Springs, Todd Michael Johns is making caramel corn with brisket tallow. A recent batch featured a salty version spiked with Jameson and a cinnamon version made with Fireball.

So far, the only barbecue operation with a pastry chef is Fox & Pearl, which does Sunday barbecue brunches branded as Night Goat Barbecue. Pastry chef Nadine Donovan, a recent Denver transplant with an impressive resume, has worked to use the byproducts of the snout-to-tail approach taken by chef Vaughn Good, who broke into the business as a butcher. The restaurant buys half-hogs to make into sausages, hams and smoked pork belly, which was the standout on our recent visit.

“When you butcher in-house, which we do, we have a lot of

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY CALEB CONDIT AND REBECCA NORDEN

BEYOND BANANAS

excess lard to use up—which is awesome for pastries,” Donovan says.

For the Night Goat menu, which has some overlap with the regular Fox & Pearl menu, she’s made a “real” banana pudding with banana bread chunks, salted caramel and vanilla bean whipped cream. She’s also done spiced oatmeal cream pies with marshmallow fluff and chili lime churros with dulce de leche.

This brings us to the Night Goat exclusive Pop-Tart, which is filled with date jam and topped with house-cured bacon bits and maple frosting.

“A fun thing to do with barbecue desserts is to sort of play into that sense of nostalgia—giving an adult a Pop-Tart,” Donovan says.

While the dish starts with pastry dough made from lard rendered in-house, it also doesn’t take itself too seriously.

“Mirroring eating with your hands and being a little bit messy is important to carry through into the desserts,” she says. “You don’t want to chow down on barbecue and then have a dessert that’s really fussy.”

It’s More Than

May 16-22, 2022

AdventHealthChampionship.com The AdventHealth Championship delivers a world-class golfing entertainment experience that features the next generation of PGA TOUR stars while also positively impacting the Kansas City metro community. Proceeds from the AdventHealth Championship will benefit the AdventHealth Foundation and select local charities, making a difference in the KC we all love!

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THE SCENE UP ALL NIGHT

The Scene HAPPENINGS IN KANSAS CITY

Up All Night: A Celebration of the Espresso Martini Last month, Kansas City magazine hosted Up All Night: A Celebration of the Espresso Martini with 9th & State in the West Bottoms. The event sold out in under a week, and six bartenders from some of Kansas City’s best joints were there slinging the caffeinated cocktails.

The lineup included Hannah Jones from Corvino, Kaitlyn Wedd from The Golden Ox, Danny Faught of West Bottoms Whiskey, Taylor Reazin from Il Lazzarone, Levi Roye from Mercury Room and 9th & State’s own Josh Melgoza. And not a single one of them missed—all of the coffee creations were a hit. You can find some of the espresso martinis on menus at the bars mentioned, but a few were specially created for the event.

If you missed this one, don’t sweat it. We’re already thinking about planning our next drink festival.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY CALEB CONDIT AND REBECCAN NORDEN

SURREAL ESTATE T H E S TO R I E S B E H I N D K A N S A S C I T Y ’ S M O S T E Y E - C ATC H I N G B U I L D I N G S

LACES UP

A

WH I TE

A LUMINUM

FAÇA DE

WR APS St. Teresa’s Academy’s chapel as if it were an intricately woven mantilla of lace. It’s delicate but sturdy and striking.

When the all-girls Catholic school in the heart of Brookside decided to build a new chapel and academic space on the main campus quadrangle in 2011, they knew it needed to be well thought out. The space was in a prominent location, and it would serve as the spiritual heart of the school and gateway to campus.

The school hired the firm Gould Evans Architecture, who went about surveying the students and faculty to learn what type of structure they envisioned.

A “vision for the chapel emerged as a soft, feminine, contemplative space flooded with light and connected to nature,” state the architects. There was also a strong desire to connect the chapel

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to the narrative of St. Teresa, the patron saint of lacemakers.

“Achieving harmony between sacred and secular is the very essence of the school’s mission,” according to the architects.

The result was a ten thousandsquare-foot building housing a hundred-and-fifty-seat chapel and several classrooms that can also convert to banquet facilities. The building’s interiors are clean and modern yet contemplative and peaceful. The chapel has an almost ethereal feel, with tall narrow windows that flank the wall curving around the altar. They show glimpses of the white aluminum façade on the outside and let in dappled light—a modern-day alternative to stained glass.

Gould Evans brought in Zahner,

a metal engineering and design company headquartered in Kansas City, to help build and design the unique metal screen that envelops the chapel. Because of the substantial thickness and curvatures, several iterations of manufacturing design research went into making the lace skin work, Zahner says.

“The design team conducted material experimentation and digital fabrication explorations to translate the concept of creating a lace scrim into built form.”

It was also important that the new chapel be able to stand out yet also blend in with the other brick buildings of varying age that dot the campus at the school, which was founded in 1866, making it the oldest school in the city.

—DAWNYA BARTSCH

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KDOG PHOTO

The chapel at St. Teresa’s Academy pays homage to the patron saint of lacemakers.

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