The Pitch: August 13, 2015

1 august 13-19, 2015 | free | Vol. 35 No. 7 | pitch.com

Ka ns as Cit y wa nt s to Ke ep a Co nv en tio n Ce nt er Co ns ulta nt ’s re po rt bu rie d.

By

Stev e vock rodt

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august 13-19, 2015 | Vol. 35 no. 7 E d i t o r i a l

judgment day

Editor Scott Wilson Managing Editor Justin Kendall Music Editor Natalie Gallagher Staff Writers Charles Ferruzza, David Hudnall, Steve Vockrodt Editorial Operations Manager Deborah Hirsch Events Editor Berry Anderson Proofreader Brent Shepherd Contributing Writers Tracy Abeln, Jen Chen, Liz Cook, April Fleming, Larry Kopitnik, Angela Lutz, Dan Savage, Nick Spacek

a r t

Art and Production Director Jeremy Luther Contributing Photographers Zach Bauman, Angela C. Bond, Barrett Emke, Chris Mullins, Sabrina Staires, Brooke Vandever

a d v E r t i s i n g

Advertising Director Mick Moore Senior Classified Multimedia Specialist Steven Suarez Multimedia Specialists Savannah Cox, Becky Losey, Alex Sharp, Ruby Wetzel Director of Marketing and Operations Jason Dockery Production and Digital Coordinator Ashley Reed

B u s i n E s s

Publisher Amy Mularski

Del Kimball, Sam Furseth and other online payday lenders are still doing big business — in court.

s o u t h c o m m

Chief Executive Officer Chris Ferrell Chief Financial Officer Ed Tearman Chief Operating Officer Blair Johnson Director of Financial Planning and Analysis Carla Simon Vice President of Human Resources Ed Wood Vice President of Content Patrick Rains Vice President of Production Operations Curt Pordes Chief Revenue Officer David Carter Director of Digital Sales and Marketing David Walker Controller Todd Patton Creative Director Heather Pierce

n a t i o n a l

a d v E r t i s i n g

VMG Advertising 888-278-9866, vmgadvertising.com Senior Vice President of Sales Susan Belair Senior Vice President of Sales Operations Joe Larkin

b y dav i d h u d n a l l

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missing numbers Kansas City wants to keep a convention center consultant’s report buried. b y s t e v e vo c k r o d t

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d i s t r i B u t i o n

The Pitch distributes 45,000 copies a week and is available free throughout Greater Kansas City, limited to one copy per reader.

Additional copies may be purchased for $5 each, payable at The Pitch’s office in advance. The Pitch may be distributed only by The Pitch’s authorized independent contractors or authorized distributors. No person may, without prior written permission of The Pitch, take more than one copy of each week’s issue. Mail subscriptions: $22.50 for six months or $45 per year, payable in advance. Application to mail at second-class postage rates is pending at Kansas City, MO 64108.

back to kamp Britt Adair expands her summer punk festival.

c o p y r i g h t

The contents of The Pitch are Copyright 2015 by KC Communications, LLC. No portion may be reproduced in whole or in part by any means without the express written permission of the publisher.

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24 4 6 7 9 11 15 17 19 19 22 29 32

Questionnaire news streetside i will dare feature agenda film fat city on tap this week music d a i ly l i s t i n g s savage love

m ean wh i l e at p i tc h . c o m CLARETTE CLuB in Mission closing — making way for the Peanut?

ST. TERESA’S ACADEMy removes the Coppinger name from the track, and will return payday-lending donations.

The Pitch: cover by jeremy luther

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Questionnaire

Leanne BreiBy 8/15

dOuG bEnSoN MOvIe iNtErRuPtIoN

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8/16

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8/14

Director of communications, Greater Kansas City Community Foundation

Hometown: Olathe Current neighborhood: Downtown KCMO What I do: I encourage donors to give to the causes they care about through charitablegiving accounts, also known as donor-advised funds.

What’s your addiction? Doing. Anything, really

— concerts, sporting events, bike rides, happy hours. My friends have started to call me doanne. It’s not my favorite nickname.

What’s your game? Kickball. Current second baseman of the AAF-KC Kickball League dynasty, Kikkuboru Dojo.

What’s your drink? Whatever Adam Smith at the Milwaukee Deli decides to shake up.

Where’s dinner? Local Pig. My sister is a butcher there.

Finish this sentence: “Kansas City got it right when …” It started promoting itself. Hello top-10 lists!

“Kansas City screwed up when …” It turned the heart of the city into a surface-parkinglot oasis.

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town to the bottoms. (Shout out to Jared Ficklin’s TED Talk at TEDxKC 2013.)

“In five years, I’ll be …” Rich in Southwest Rapid

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“I can’t stop listening to …” 90.9 the Bridge. I love its emphasis on local music.

“I just read …” A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby.

The best advice I ever got: “Most fun wins.”

Worst advice: “Don’t become a Jayhawk.” I come from a long line of K-Staters. They weren’t thrilled when I chose KU over their alma mater.

My sidekick: My “Chiefs wife” Megan O’Halloran. We just celebrated our third anniversary as season ticket holders.

What is your nemesis? Junk food. I’m a seri-

ous junkie.

What’s your greatest struggle right now? My cat was just diagnosed with diabetes. I’m thinking about changing his name to Wilford Brimley.

My dating triumph/tragedy: Does riding an elevator with Travis Kelce count as a date?

My brush with fame: As a kid, I was on the cover

of a woodworking magazine with a red wagon and a litter of Dalmatian puppies. No one has recognized me yet.

My soapbox: Grammar matters, even in a text

message.

Rewards points. Either that or I’ll have more stamps on my passport.

Who’s sorry now? Anyone who left early during

“I always laugh at …” My best friend, Sara Cahill.

My recent triumph: Successfully mounting my bike on a Main Street MAX bike rack during rush hour.

She’s a middle-school math teacher, but she belongs in a comedy troupe.

Photography: Brett Pruitt & East Market Studios

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“Kansas City needs …” A gondola from down-

“I’ve been known to binge-watch …” Anything

by Ken Burns. The National Parks and Baseball are my favorites.

the AL Wild Card game.

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NEWS

JUDGMENT DAY

Del Kimball, Sam Furseth and other online payday lenders are still doing big business — in court.

n June, a three-judge panel of the Missouri Court of Appeals issued an unusual opinion in the case of Erica Hollins v. Capital Solutions Investments Inc. In 2006, Hollins took out a $100 loan from CSI, a consumer installment lender.

She made only one payment on the loan, then stopped responding to CSI’s requests for further payment. The balance quickly grew. CSI eventually was granted a default judgment against Hollins for $912 — $729.90 of which was interest.

Hollins then filed a class-action suit seeking to have her judgment — and the judgments of several other individuals who had borrowed from CSI — vacated, on the grounds that CSI did not disclose how interest was calculated on their loans. CSI filed a motion for summary judgment, and the judge agreed that the case had no merit. Hollins’ case was dismissed.

The Missouri Court of Appeals upheld the U.S. Circuit Court’s ruling but also wrote an opinion blasting Missouri’s usury laws, which permit interest rates as high as 1,950 percent. One member of Hollins’ class-action suit had taken out a $100 loan and then been hounded for $4,105. Another plaintiff paid $5,300 on an $80 loan and still had a remaining balance of $19,643.

Presiding Judge Kurt Odenwald called CSI’s loan practice “obscene and usurious.”

He went on: “The amount the lenders are attempting to collect on these types of loans shocks the conscience.” In a concurring opinion, Judge Robert G. Dowd Jr. wrote: “Such drastic imbalances in what is borrowed, what is paid back, and what is still owed demonstrate the inherent injustice in these lending arrangements.”

“I’ve been practicing in this area of law for 33 years, and I’ve never seen a Missouri appeals court publish an opinion like this,” says Bernard Brown, a local consumer-protection lawyer. “They’re outraged that they have to enforce this terrible law, and this opinion is them crying out for people in the state to sit up and take notice.”

W

hen rich people can’t pay their debts, the process is a bit less predatory, a bit more polite. Eventually, though, judgments and garnishments and bankruptcies come down the pike. That’s what’s beginning to happen in the case of LTS Management.

As The Pitch has reported, LTS Management was an online payday-lending operation that at one point employed more than 100 people in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Two years ago, the federal government implemented a coordinated effort — commonly referred to as Operation Choke 6

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SPENCER PULLEN

I

Point — that pressured banks to discontinue processing payments to and from lenders such as LTS Management. These companies routinely used the Internet to lend money in states that had outlawed such transactions due to their high interest rates and fees.

LTS — whose business model, according to documents obtained by The Pitch, relied on the average borrower paying back double what he or she initially borrowed — crumbled. Its owners, Del Kimball and Sam Furseth, were subsequently revealed to be over-leveraged. They owe a lot of people a lot of money. Some clarity as to just how much money they owe arrived last week in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Western District of Missouri.

Most of the time, bankruptcy is entered into voluntarily — you’re in debt and out of money, so you fi le for bankruptcy in order to begin the process of straightening out your finances. Far less common is involuntary bankruptcy, which occurs when an individual or an entity refuses to organize and pay what’s owed. (Kimball, for example, recently refused to show up for a courtordered debtor’s exam in Johnson County; a judge there subsequently issued a bench warrant for him.) In that event, creditors file an involuntary Chapter 7 petition, stating their claims. Three such petitions were fi led against LTS, Kimball and Furseth on Wednesday, August 5.

BY

DAVID HUDNALL

The sums are staggering.

E a rl ier t h is yea r, a n ent it y ca l led NorthRock LLC obtained a $35 million judgment against LTS and other related entities in Jackson County, Missouri. In addition, Northrock obtained a $7 million judgment against Kimball and Furseth. (In settling a dispute over the priority of claims with two other LTS creditors — KB-2011 LLP and Netfinance LLC — NorthRock assigned half of its interest in those judgments to KB-2011 LLP and Netfinance.) Jensen Marketing has a judgment of $1,753,069 against Freemont Ventures LLC, an affiliated entity whose sole members are believed to be Kimball and Furseth, in Jackson County. Benjamin Burford has a judgment of $214,890 against LTS in Jackson County. In Johnson County, Kansas, eData Solutions has a $13.6 million judgment against Kimball and Furseth. CoreFirst Bank & Trust has a $500,000 judgment against Kimball and Furseth, also in Johnson County.

Those are all court-ordered judgments, none of which have been satisfied or appealed by Kimball or Furseth. Additional sums are at stake in asserted claims working their way through various courts. For example, American Express Bank has filed suit in Jackson County, claiming that Kimball and LTS have outstanding unpaid balances totaling more than $200,000. In federal court in Colorado, a lobbying firm called Chesapeake Enterprises has alleged that Kimball owes it $575,000 for unpaid services.

Last week’s bankruptcy petitions against Kimball and Furseth are these creditors’ best shots at recovering what they claim the men owe them. But because Kimball and Furseth have so far stonewalled creditors, questions remain about where this $55 million in judgments is, and whether any of it is left.

Filings in the Chesapeake case suggest that Kimball has been scrambling since the fall of 2013 to broker some kind of international payday-lending deal — what Cole Kimball, Del’s cousin, describes in e-mails to Chesapeake as “an $8 billion euro deal” [sic] involving operations in the U.K., Mexico, Russia, Hong Kong and Kiev.

Kimball and Furseth’s attorney, John Mullen, did not respond to The Pitch’s requests for comment. Court records show that Mullen recently withdrew as counsel for Kimball and Furseth in the eData Solutions case in Johnson County. Mullen may not even be able to represent them in their bankrupty case. As court records show, he’s also a creditor: Kimball and Furseth owe him $138,000 in unpaid attorney’s fees.

E-mail david.hudnall@pitch.com

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StreetSide

NON-FIT

By

CrossFit, annotated

Natalie GallaGher

L

My eight-minute AMRAP wrapped at 7:46 p.m. My glasses were foggy. I may have popped an eardrum. Maybe I blacked out for a few seconds.

Snyder slapped the back of my sweatsoaked shirt. “Good job, girl! See you tomorrow, right?”

Sure, coach. Sure.

I

Zach Bauman

et me start by saying I’m not super-fit.

I never have been. I never will be. I like cheeseburgers and chocolate, and my fries had better come with mayo. If my doctor saw me at a bar, she’d send me to detox. My version of a marathon involves Netflix and takeout.

So when I loudly told friends — and coworkers, and random people I met at shows and bars — that I was starting CrossFit, the response was a mix of amusement and concern.

CrossFit, I was told, was for monstrously buff, protein shake–pounding freaks of nature. I didn’t even have enough muscles to open a jar, my roommate reminded me, laughing cruelly.

How was I going to lift weights?

With a little research, I found the Fundamentals program at CrossFit Memorial Hill.

There’s no shortage of CrossFit gyms around these parts, but for someone completely new to the workout, CFMH’s Fundamentals sounded like a good offer: For $100, I’d get 12 introductory classes that would go over the basics.

So, a few months ago, I went through the monthlong course. We reviewed the most basic movements — squats, situps, pushups — and more complicated lifting techniques. I learned about burpees (hellish combinations of squats, planks and jumping jacks in one move), double-unders (when the jump rope is supposed to miraculously pass under your feet twice in one jump) and wall balls (throwing a medicine ball against a wall and hoping it doesn’t give you a nosebleed on its way down).

All these things, I was told, were going to prepare me for the real CrossFit classes — these exercises but much faster and without the patient voice of Fundamentals coach Josh Snyder.

(A monthly membership at CFMH costs $30$150, depending on the package.) And after I got through Fundamentals, I did start taking those classes — twice a week, and then once a week. And then I’d take a week or two off. Once I skipped a month. Maybe a month and a half.

I don’t know. Why are we counting?

When the summer heat took a break, I started to feel like I should be a functioning adult again. I returned to CMFH. It had been so long, I thought I needed a refresher course.

I went to a 6:45 p.m. Tuesday Fundamentals class.

CFMH requires the Fundamentals program for everyone who wants to join the gym, regardless of skill level, so I was joined by five people, in varying shapes and sizes: two college-aged women who seemed to know each other; a tall, muscled guy who obviously had experience in weight training; a larger guy who wasn’t quite sure what to do with his limbs; and a svelte older woman.

“Today we’re doing squat therapy,” Snyder told us. He gestured to the whiteboard and

CrossFit Memorial Hill 2535 Jefferson, crossfitmemorialhill.com walked us through the skills we would be learning: air squats, back squats, wall balls, slam balls. My brain translated this to sitting and throwing. No big deal.

“When I’m telling you, ‘Hey, drive your feet away from each other, keep your chest up, keep your butt reaching back,’ those are all conscious thoughts you need to have,” Snyder continued, his voice booming. “Movement is purposeful. I want you to feel the weight on the outside of your foot when you squat. If you don’t feel that, you need to make a mind-body connection and think about it. When you push your feet away, you should feel your glutes turn on. You should be conscious of every single little part of moving. That is building block number one.”

From left: nutrition coach Sabrena Merril, Scanlon and Snyder in a rare moment of rest Snyder continued this speech as he corrected our postures and we worked through the exercises. I did goblet squats — squats with kettlebells — and felt kind of proud. Real quote from Snyder: “Shit, girl, have you been going to another gym?” Yes! Fitness goals were mine! I could feel my glutes activating, and they were on fire!

But the class wasn’t over.

“The next workout is an eight-minute AMRAP — as many rounds as possible — of this,” Snyder said, gesturing to the whiteboard.

“Eight goblet squats, then eight situps, then eight wall balls. So squat, abs, squat. This is the part where I stop talking and you start sweating.” Snyder paused. “Questions on the next eight minutes of your life?”

Do I have to?

I did.

pitch.com

didn’t go the next day. I waited for my thighs to convert from gelatin back into human flesh. It took a couple of weeks. But this time, when I returned, I went for a Wednesdayafternoon CrossFit class with coach Matt Scanlon, co-owner of CFMH. I stumbled into a workout built around squats and weightlifting. Scanlon called this “dynamic effort squat day.” Now, Fundamentals might have taught me how to work through an hour of weighted box squats, low-to-high box jumps, single-arm dumbbell full-cleans (squats with dumbbells) and burpees, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to die when it was over. The sticky, exhausted high-fives from my fellow CrossFitters assured me that I wasn’t alone.

Afterward, I lamented to Scanlon that, despite the soreness I would feel in the morning, I would probably never look like one of the toned, lean bodies that dominated his gym.

(Admittedly, it would help if I kept a regular workout schedule.)

“The fitness industry is fucking terrible,” Scanlon told me. “There are so many assholes that are a part of it. The reality is that there is always going to be somebody that’s 5 or 10 percent fitter than you. The important part of this ecosystem is that everyone has somebody behind them that they’re pulling up, and that person has someone they’re looking up to, a goal they’re working toward. We’ve got a lady in here who’s going to give birth in a week.

She’s doing a scaled CrossFit, but she’s here.

She gives inspiration to our best athletes. Having all these different levels of people in here is crucial.”

He continued: “It’s functional movement.

At the end of the day, it’s like, ‘Hey, did you go to the bathroom today? Cool, you could probably do everything that we do here.’ And that’s our goal when we talk about functional movement. We don’t differentiate between abilities.”

Two days after Scanlon’s class, I still needed to pound my thighs before I got in and out of my car. I told myself that this pain was muscle growth. I had a doughnut to congratulate myself.

Yes, guys. I’ll see you next week.

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i will dare

To CaTCh a PredaTor

By

A ngel A l u t z

In which I reluctantly celebrate Groundhog Day in my yard, six months late.

O

n a steamy July morning, a three-word text from my boyfriend jarred me out of my summer daze: “Check the trap.”

Before dawn, he had baited a cage with some cantaloupe and placed it just outside the garden of our East Side home. He’d been doing this for weeks but had caught only possums.

That day, though, I wandered outside to find a sleek, brown animal cowering at the back of the trap — a groundhog.

I imagined the scene: An oblivious denizen of my overrun yard had surfaced in search of a refreshing snack when SNAP! — eviction notice.

The animal and I regarded each other. In its beady eyes steeped nervous rage. Its paws grasped furiously at the wire mesh. The closer I came to the trap, the harder the muddled marmot slammed its body around inside it.

Can groundhogs die of stress, I wondered?

I didn’t need that on my conscience.

“Oh, hi, little guy,” I said, as though addressing one of my cats. For the first time, I felt sorry for the animal — an unexpected about-face given how often I’d cursed it and its brethren whenever I found a half-eaten fruit in the dirt instead of a ripe tomato on the vine.

I knew from the marks on my ruined produce that the animal had sharp teeth capable of expertly removing sizable chunks of flesh, tomato and otherwise. And I knew that many rodents also carry rabies. So when I carried the cage to my car, I held it at least a foot away from my body as the groundhog pressed its smooth, black nose against the wire.

I snapped a photo of my terrified passenger and texted my boyfriend: “Holy shit, it’s in the backseat.” And it was about to embark on its first car ride.

I’d read that groundhogs can find their way back to a burrow from up to 5 miles away.

Not wanting to take any chances with this particular rodent’s homing sense, I chose a release spot more than 13 miles from my home, near Swope Park. After spending the spring watering, weeding and watching caterpillar-size cucumbers slowly swell to the size of my forearm, I had grown attached to my food. I was willing to take extra steps to protect it.

The groundhog was not my only enemy. In the spring, soggy weather (the sixth-rainiest May in 140 years) assaulted the yard, leading to a proliferation of mosquitoes and other bugs and forcing my boyfriend and me to use pesticides for the first time. (We made this call reluctantly after something devoured our broccoli plants overnight.)

We also see lots of deer near us, and we have learned that deer do not give one fuck.

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Moving day for this groundhog Lured by greenery that’s still lush late in the season, they wandered into our yard and ate our sunflowers and our Brussels sprouts, as though daring us to take action.

But once in a while this season, I’ve peered out at the garden in the morning and seen a flash of orange peeking through the maze of plants: a ripening tomato, one that has survived flooding and bugs and nonresident mammals. No enterprising groundhog was going to spoil that for us.

When the groundhog and I had nearly reached our destination, I realized that my passenger hadn’t moved in a while. They do say moving is among the more stressful life experiences — especially if it involves being caught in a steel trap while ordering breakfast. Had panic overcome the animal?

No. Instead, the steady movement of the car had soothed him, enough so that I began to like it a little. Those beady eyes now seemed a bit soulful, the sharp toes like tiny, wrinkled Tootsie Rolls. “You OK, dude?” I asked, turning around and waving my hand in front of the cage.

The animal flailed wildly, banging itself again into the sides of the cage. The bonding was over.

At the drop spot, I carried the cage back into a thatch of trees and popped it open.

The groundhog bounded off into the brush.

Back in my car, I sent a text: “Problem solved.” For a moment, I worried about what the groundhog would eat that night. But then I imagined biting into a ripe, red tomato slice with salt, basil and fresh mozzarella — and I forgot all about it.

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Ka ns as Ci ty wa nt s to Ke ep a Co nv en tio n Ce nt er Co ns ulta nt ’s re po rt bu ri ed .

By Ste ve voc kro dt

J

ust before the Kansas City, Missouri, City Council’s July 23 vote to approve a $311 million downtown convention hotel, Mayor Sly James made a point about including experts and facts in political discussions.

“As a trial lawyer, I will tell you straight up: If I wanted to prove a certain point or make a certain statement and get an affidavit to get my case in court, I could find an expert to say whatever I wanted them to say,” James said from the lectern during an afternoon council session. “It’s all a matter of how much you’re willing to pay them.”

His statement was an apparent reference to a researcher’s appearance the day before at the Kansas City Public Library.

Heywood Sanders, a University of Texas–San Antonio professor, had spoken to about 200 attendees at the library about his decades-long research into the national convention business.

His general findings: Municipal leaders ignore the economic principles of supply and demand when large and

midsize cities build convention centers and convention hotels. The supply of convention space has far outstripped convention-business demand over the past 12 years.

Sanders’ appearance had become a piece of political theater. Kansas City Star columnist Steve Rose lambasted Kansas City Public Library director R. Crosby Kemper III for allowing Sanders to deliver an openly critical talk at a publicly funded institution without providing a counterpoint.

James did not attend the Sanders lecture, nor did any of the City Council members who voted the next day.

“Let’s use facts and data to make decisions,” James said during the July 23 council meeting. “Facts and data support the decision we’re about to make.”

That decision by the council was a unanimous vote to fund about half of the $311 million hotel project with public sources, through a pledge of convention and tourism taxes and a maze of other development incentives.

In keeping with his story about his trial-lawyer days, James and the city relied on an expert’s report to justify backing the 800-room hotel. Despite the public money going into the project, however, the public isn’t allowed to see the “facts and data” that the city considered when approving about $165 million in subsidies.

That report was submitted by a consulting firm in Chicago called HVS. The firm is among a handful of consulting outfits working with cities and hotel developers — essentially both sides of the hotel-development industry — to evaluate how a proposed project might fare continued on page 12

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Missing Numbers continued from page 11 economically. The Pitch has requested a copy of HVS’s report several times.

Chris Hernandez, a spokesman for Kansas City, denied The Pitch’s request to view the HVS report, citing an exemption in Missouri’s open-records laws that allows cities to keep documents related to contracts under wraps until those contracts are finalized.

With the city signing off on its incentives for the hotel project, it’s unclear what remains to be done in order for the city to make the HVS report public. And it’s not an insignificant document. Its projections of the future convention hotel’s occupancy and revenue form the foundation for how bonds will be issued and repaid.

The development team also doesn’t appear to want the consultant’s report to be evaluated publicly.

Mike Burke, a local lawyer who is leading a group of investors providing the privateside funding of the Hyatt convention hotel, says he’s reluctant to release the HVS report while his development team seeks additional backers.

“There’s some sensitivity to releasing anything that’s old or anything that causes us grief with the bond buyers,” Burke tells The Pitch. “The minute we put it out, somebody with the Show-Me Institute will say it’s unrealistic,” he adds, referencing the libertarian Missouri think tank that has been critical of the hotel project in a series of online posts.

(Library director Kemper is Show-Me’s cofounder and chairman.)

Sanders, the hotel and convention expert, says that, in his experience, it’s unusual for a consultant’s report to remain unseen by the public when the project in question will receive public financing. “I’m flabbergasted that they keep refusing to release a report that they’ve announced publicly and ostensibly informed their decision making,” he tells The Pitch. “If they’re trying to hide it that much, there’s usually a reason.”

The Pitch has reviewed HVS’s financial projections of similarly sized hotels in other cities. Predicting the future is hard to do, of course. But HVS has sometimes made it look harder than average, missing on some of its projections by spectacular margins.

H

VS consultants are no strangers to the Kansas City area.

In 2010, one of HVS’s consultants gave a presentation to the Kansas City, Missouri, City Council. Only a few years had passed since the opening of the Bartle Hall expansion (for which the city still owes $223 million), and the consultant made no bones about what the city was still missing: a 1,000-room

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convention hotel. Hans Detlefsen, the HVS consultant who delivered the presentation, told city leaders that KC was missing out on $125 million in convention revenue every year because there was no such hotel.

For a look at the kind of volume that a shiny new hotel can yield, the City Council could have driven a few minutes to Overland Park, which caught the same convention fever from HVS about 15 years ago. In 2000, the Kansas suburb hired HVS to develop a study on how a convention center and an adjacent 412-room Sheraton hotel would fare. HVS predicted that, by 2013, the hotel would generate $37 million a year.

Overland Park built the project and retained ownership of both facilities. That means it also owns any shortfalls associated with the project. Since the hotel opened, in 2002, it has consistently failed to meet the projections set forth by HVS. For example, in 2013, the most recent year for which figures are available, the hotel reported $21.4 million in revenue — about 27 percent less than HVS’s figure. In 2012, when HVS’s study projected $36 million in revenue, the hotel fetched $19.9 million.

Some years, that gap has been narrower, but at no time in its history has Overland Park’s convention Sheraton met the expectations outlined by HVS. In recent years, the hotel itself has posted an operating profit, which means that its revenues from rooms, food, drinks and rentals add up to beat operating expenses. But investors who bought the bonds need to get paid.

Since 2007, Overland Park has tapped into its transient guest tax to make debt-service

Counterclockwise from top left: Burke, bullish on the hotel; Sanders, skeptical of it; an envisioning of the KC skyline with the hotel. payments. In 2014 alone, that amount was $3.4 million.

T

he year in which Overland Park opened its convention center and hotel, 2002, was the last year when U.S. convention demand was in line with available convention space.

This fact is neither in dispute nor obscure.

Hunden Strategic Partners, a Chicago realestate consultant, was hired last year by Fort Worth, Texas, to evaluate the convention business and recommend ways by which that city could make more money from it. The Hunden report included a study of national convention trends. For example, the supply of convention space steadily increased from 2002 to 2013, growing by about 34 percent, according to the report. The amount of space paid for by convention planners — convention demand — had gone up and down over those 11 years but ended up at about the same level in 2013 as it had been in 2002, stymied by increasing travel costs and better technology.

In spite of that trend, cities have proved generally eager to add to convention-space supply.

Baltimore is one such optimist. In 2008, that city built a 757-room convention hotel at the behest of former Mayor Martin O’Malley (that city’s leader till 2007 and now a longshot candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016), who could point to a

13 report produced by HVS that made the Hilton seem like a winner.

The hotel would overlook Camden Yards, the home stadium for the Baltimore Orioles, and would be adjacent to the city’s convention center. By 2010, HVS projected, the hotel would be running at 72 percent occupancy.

Up went Baltimore’s Hilton. In 2010, it reported 62 percent occupancy.

Beyond occupancy, a hotel’s performance is evaluated by its revenue per available room, or RevPAR: how much money an average room fetches in a given year.

The Baltimore Hilton’s projected RevPAR in 2011, according to the HVS report, was $154.25.

The actual figure that year was $114.50.

In April of this year, a city audit there revealed that while the hotel should have been profitable by now to the tune of $7 million a year, helping line Baltimore’s municipal budget, it had consistently underperformed from Day 1.

“It’s a sad example of the misallocation of scarce capital and misbegotten development strategy,” Loyola University–Maryland economics professor Stephen Walters told The Baltimore Sun. Like Overland Park’s Sheraton, Baltimore’s Hilton does well enough to cover its operational expenses but not its debt payments. In 2011, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded its credit ratings for the bonds that Baltimore had issued to finance the hotel’s construction. The Moody’s report said revenues were “well below expected levels,” and indicated there was lower demand for hotel space given that Baltimore’s convention center competes against other East Coast cities for convention business.

Several of those competing cities have expanded, or plan to expand, their convention facilities.

B

altimore briefly considered selling its Hilton, but city officials continue to bank on the idea that the hotel will someday perform better.

Phoenix, on the other hand, is strongly considering selling off its 1,000-room downtown Sheraton hotel. The Arizona Republic reported in April that Phoenix leaders were tired of using taxpayer money to keep the hotel afloat when funds might go instead toward a new basketball arena for the Phoenix Suns.

The hotel was supposed to have performed far better, according to HVS. HVS evaluated Phoenix’s Sheraton plan before construction and signaled that the hotel would be a moneymaker. But in nearly every respect, HVS’s projections on the Phoenix Sheraton have been wrong. And not just by a little bit. Comparing HVS’s projected 2013 performance with what that year actually yielded shows:

• Projected occupancy: 251,850. Actual occupancy: 209,938.

• Projected occupancy rate: 69 percent.

Actual occupancy rate: 57 percent.

• Projected average room rate: $193.03.

Actual average room rate: $146.93.

• Projected RevPAR: $113.19. Actual RevPAR: $84.51.

• Projected total revenue: $85.4 million.

Actual total revenue: $53.9 million.

“If you forecast 5 or 10 percent off, that’s one thing,” Sanders tells The Pitch. “If you’re getting half or a third of what the consultants say, that’s a problem. And that keeps happening.”

KC

K

ansas City leaders have claimed that the city won’t be on the hook financially for the hotel if it goes under. That’s true: The convention center hotel, as vetted by the City Council, would not be city-owned, as are Baltimore’s and Phoenix’s and many others across the county. And the public-financing component of the proposed hotel does a reasonable job of keeping the city’s general fund out of the development.

If the hotel performs well, the city could share in a small portion of the profits, similar to its arrangement with the Sprint Center.

And some convention hotels fare relatively well financially; those in Dallas, Austin and Denver come to mind.

Kansas City, however, faces a steep climb.

Once a top convention city in the 1970s, culminating with the Republican National Convention at Kemper Arena in 1976, Kansas City has since seen its standing among convention planners drop steadily, in spite of several substantial investments (including two Bartle Hall expansions).

For a nearby lesson in the no-sure-things nature of convention hotels, look at St. Louis.

Missouri’s other big city renovated the historic former Statler Hotel and reopened it as a Renaissance Grand in 2003 to serve its nearby convention center. HVS was the consultant on that project. By 2009, the hotel had gone into foreclosure because its owners couldn’t make interest payments on the hotel’s debt.

It finally sold last year for $32 million — well below the $98 million in bonds that had been issued for the project.

According to Sanders, the St. Louis hotel was supposed to be supported by a large influx of new, major conventions to that city — specifically, according to HVS’s projections, an increase from 33 to 56 major conventions a year. When that uptick in business didn’t materialize, the hotel collapsed.

The value of the bonds supporting the St. Louis venture is about 33 percent less than those being contemplated for Kansas City's new convention hotel.

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MORE WINNING. MORE OFTEN.

15

ZACH BAUMAN

WEEK OF AUGUST 13-19, 2015

Daily listings on page 29 

Dog Days Oasis

Andy’s — Missouri’s 29-year-old custard chain — put down pretzel-shaped stakes in Westport earlier this summer, fortifying midtown against the heat with cold concretes and chilled blackberries. For personal testimony about the healing properties of the desserts here, see Fat City, page 21.

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A

short list of the actors who have played Ernest Hemingway as various shades of glowering in filmed life stories: Stacy Keach, Clive Owen, Victor Garber. At least as convincing in a comedy: Corey Stoll, a Woody Allenized version of Papa in Midnight in Paris.

A shorter list of all the actors who have played David Foster Wallace: Jason Segel. He stars in The End of the Tour, the production of which enraged DFW purists. As though a pure understanding of Wallace, or the DFW so many claim as their own — or stodgy old Hemingway, for that matter — is available at all.

Before any dramatist could attempt to reconstitute them, Hemingway and Wallace also played versions of themselves in public, and each grappled in semiprivate (neither could have expected their correspondence, or virtually any other utterance, to stay private) to reconcile his talent with his persona. Both ended their own lives, further complicating legacies already made difficult by literary fashions, hype and jealousy. The two share little else in common — no one could mistake one’s prose for the other’s. But you’d be hard-pressed to name many other writers whose roles as cultural signifiers so eclipse the work itself — writers drafted into standing for more than the sum of their words.

There have always been authors we discuss without having read deeply (or, sometimes, at all); these we sometimes call best-sellers. There also are writers we claim for ourselves because they convey to us a depth that reading or discussion alone seems unable to plumb. And these we have, for most of a generation now, bundled into one figure and called DFW. David Foster Wallace wrote Infinite Jest, the 1,079-page novel that, upon its 1996 publication, became as much a lifestyle accessory as a book to be read, like any other, one sentence at a time. Its success spawned debate, skepticism and imitation. And Wallace, the philosophy geek turned MFA student turned writing teacher turned bandanna-wearing generation

signpost, thereafter worked in the book’s long shadow — or in the shadow of DFW, the messianic distortion of him assembled by readers and pretenders.

The End of the Tour, adapted by playwright Donald Margulies from David Lipsky’s entertaining Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace, shows us where Wallace and DFW begin to converge. To this junction he is, for dramatic purposes, conducted by the movie’s version of Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg, a sack of lemons), Salieri to Wallace’s Mozart. The moment is the winter of Jest’s publication, the last date on Wallace’s suddenly packed calendar of readings and interviews. Lipsky has elbowed his way onto the scene, ostensibly to profile Wallace for Rolling Stone but, in cruder terms, to touch Elvis. Lipsky’s initial literary contact high makes for a smart, funny first half of Tour; Wallace’s determination to remain out of reach drives the haunting remainder. (Director James Ponsoldt, with help from cinematographer Jakob Ihre, keeps these halves consistent visually, shooting in a flat, matter-of-fact way that suggests a ’70s movie about the ’90s.)

Segel, whose style up to now has been uncomplicated hangdog, here becomes a very complicated hangdog. He capably summons the real-life Wallace’s expressions, gestures and voice, yet he does something beyond: He plays the writer with a topcoat of Wallace fanboy, channeling the very purism that has been lobbed against Segel the actor to show us the seductions of sudden literary fame. His Wallace struggles not to be his own fan, so that he may tend his genius without calling it that. Segel also signals Wallace’s clinical depression in ways far more subtle than one clunky scene spells out. It’s a lovely performance, one that elevates The End of the Tour above its source material’s somewhat self-serving genuflection.

E-mail scott.wilson@pitch.com

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fat c i t y

A

few weeks back, Matt Moore returned to Martin City Brewing Co. after a tasting in Lawrence. The company’s co-owner and founder walked into the dark brewhouse after 9 p.m. Korn videos were playing on a television.

Brewmaster Nick Vaughn was standing behind the bar, scribbling notes on a whiteboard.

“Nick, what are you doing?” Moore asked.

“Coming up with the next great ideas,” Vaughn replied.

That’s how Moore remembers the encounter. Vaughn’s version is slightly different.

“I was also watching Kottonmouth Kings videos for a while,” Vaughn says. “And Digital Underground. I think there’s a country one in there somewhere.”

But Moore and Vaughn agree that the whiteboard was covered with about 10 beer recipes, along with potential names, some paying homage to horror author H.P. Lovecraft.

“They sit there in the back of your head and they become reality,” Vaughn says of his ideas for new beers. “A million ideas float around, and eventually you have to throw 10 ideas at the wall until one sticks.”

A lot of those ideas are coming to fruition.

On a mid-July morning, Moore, Vaughn and assistant brewer Grant Bergmann rattle off project after project when I ask what’s new. I ask how they keep it straight.

“I don’t think we keep it very straight,” Moore admits. “If we kept it straight, we wouldn’t have been out of IPA for the last two weeks.”

There’s a good reason for the IPA drought.

“The tanks were empty,” Moore says.

Variety won’t be a problem for MCBC with plenty of new beers set to be tapped at the pub (500 East 135th Street) and distributed in bottles through Central States Beverage.

The first to hit store shelves: bomber bottles of Quid Feci (a saison fermented in pinot noir barrels with cherries and Brett), Coming Undone (a Flanders red), Dream Quest (a golden ale fermented and aged in chardonnay barrels) and Colour Out of Space (a Belgian black ale fermented and aged in barrels with Brett).

Those beers are already available at the pub.

So are flagship beers Belgian Blond and Abbey,

Ryes and shine Torn LabeL’s firsT boTTLe reLease is a Kansas excLusive.

T

he Kansas side of the state line is getting something Missouri won’t: Torn Label Brewing Co.’s first bottle release, KC P’Rye’d. Due to Missouri’s backed-up label-approval process,

ju s t in k e nd a l l

send their Belgian beers to market.

which come in six-packs of 12-ounce bottles.

Later this year, Moore expects to release 22-ounce bottles of Brandy Barrel–Aged Tripel, Imperial Porter, Bourbon Barrel–Aged Abbey and Big Boy imperial stout.

To handle the uptick in production, MCBC is adding two 30-barrel fermenters, along with a 30-barrel foeder this week. Bergmann brings out an unlabeled bomber. It’s the Apposite, a Belgian pale with Brett.

“That’s kind of why we’re bringing a foeder in,” Moore says, “is to make that in big quantities along with other stuff.”

“He doesn’t like Brett beers, but he likes that one,” Vaughn says. “That’s my gauge: How much have I skewed his tastes?”

Look for Apposite in large-format bottles and on draught in September. Also on the way, an American wild ale called Fortune Royale, which Moore says is a “blackberry blood orange sour,” and a quad being aged in tequila barrels with agave.

Up next is the release of Martin City’s collaboration with Bier Station — Station to Station Berliner Weisse — Saturday, August 22, at the beer bar (120 East Gregory Boulevard).

Backed-up label approval in Missouri delayed its debut. Expect the pale beer to be served, just as it is in Germany, in a traditional goblet-style glass with flavored syrups (Woodruff) to cut the tartness. It will also be sold in six-packs of 12-ounce bottles at the pub.

Then, in September, MCBC will release a dark, chicory-wheat beer in collaboration with the magazine Feast as a fundraiser for KCPT Channel 19. The beer will be available only at the brewery.

This week, Hard Way IPA begins winding its way through the trademark process. MCBC garnered headlines earlier this year after beating Anheuser-Busch by a day to file for the rights to the “hard way” moniker.

“In a month or two, they’ll say that it’s been approved, and then there’ll be a 30-day waiting period for somebody to challenge it,” Moore says. “If Anheuser-Busch wanted to challenge it, they could probably kill it and just challenge it forever. But I don’t know if they’re going to do that.”

the red-rye ale with Simcoe will be released this week in bomber bottles exclusively in the Sunflower State.

“I would love to be able to release it in Missouri,” Torn Label’s Rafi Chaudry tells The Pitch, “but it’s a hop-forward beer, and any delay in shipping while we await label approval is only going to hurt the beer.”

Fret not, Show-Me Staters. This

By

Thursday, augusT 13

Lagunitas brewers table, with head brewer Mary Bauer and tappings of Mozanga, Lil’ Sumpin Special, Gnarleywine and Pils, and food pairings from chef Derek Owen, at Flying Saucer (101 E. 13th St.), 7 p.m.

Hops for Heroes with Torn Label, benefiting the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Kansas City, at Maker Village (606 E. 31st St.), $20, 5:30-7:30 p.m.

Friday, augusT 14

Bur Oak tasting, at Gomer’s (9902 Holmes) Draft Choice Saison release party, at Ameri-

Bergmann brings Moore a sample.

“Hard Way?” Moore asks him.

“It wasn’t done the easy way.”

“Hard Way’s not carbonated yet, but damn, that’s delightful,” Moore says.

Still, there is one beer that Moore wants MCBC to master: a hoppy saison.

“I’m happy with our saisons, but I want the best fucking saison on the planet,” Moore says. “He [Vaughn] says I want a Tank 7. I don’t think I do.”

I tell them it’s interesting that Martin City has emphasized Belgian-style beers.

“I was forced to admit that I’m a very aboveaverage Belgian brewer, I guess,” Vaughn says.

It traces back to a yeast strain that Vaughn had worked with during his days as a brewer at 75th Street Brewery. “Now we’re a Belgian brewery in Kansas City.” “[Co-owner] Chancie [Adams] and I never would have thought we’d open up a Belgian brewery,” Moore says.

“We do everything,” Vaughn says. “It’s just the Belgian beers are the more out-there ones that people get. We’re pretty diverse.”

“If it was just Grant and I, we’d have all the IPAs and stouts in the world,” Moore says. “So it’s a great mix.”

sports (3200 N. Ameristar Dr.), 3 p.m.

Sonoma Cider tasting, at Mike's Wine & Spirits (21 W. 63rd St.), 4–6 p.m.

saTurday, augusT 15

Free State tap takeover, with 28 taps and

a firkin including Old Backus Barleywine vertical (2009, 2011, 2014) three blends of Owd Mac’s imperial stout and Octoberfest, at Bier Station (120 E. Gregory Blvd.), 11 a.m.– midnight.

Unico Brew Festival, at Zona Rosa (8640 N. Dixson Ave.), 1–5 p.m.

Summer Beer Fest, with Cinder Block, Big Rip, KC Bier Co., Boulevard, Gordon Biersch, McCoy’s, 23rd Street Brewery and Torn Label, at 75th Street Brewery (520 W. 75th St.), $45 VIP and $35 GA, 2–6 p.m.

sunday, augusT 16

Foam on the Range: Journalist Cindy Higgins discusses brewers and breweries in early Kansas, at the Kansas City Central Library (14 W. 10th St.), 2 p.m.

Foos beer social, at Bier Station (120 E. Gregory Blvd.), noon.

Tuesday, augusT 18

Lagunitas Mozango release party, at Bier Station (120 E. Gregory Blvd.), 5–11 p.m.

E-mail justin.kendall@pitch.com

is only the beginning of Torn Label in stores. The next beers set to be released in the larger-format bottles are Tongue-Lash sour ale and Lumber Lung oaked brown ale, which was tapped earlier this week in the tasting room at 1708 Campbell. Both beers will be sold at the taproom and distributed in Kansas and Missouri, pending label approval.

— J.K.

Pure Pork Awesomeness beer dinner, with Torn Label and pairings by Top Chef’s Kevin Gillespie, at Rye (10551 Mission, Leawood), 6:30 p.m., $100 per person or $165 per couple with a signed copy of Pure Pork Awesomeness, RSVP at 913-642-5800.

Wednesday, augusT 19

bLacKTop

Idea Men

Martin City Brewing Co.’s masterminds

pitch.com

Cinder Block glass night, with Willibecher glass and operations manager Sarah Hearn, at Flying Saucer (101 E. 13th St.), 7 p.m.

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21

FAT C I T Y and lettuce wraps, of course.

BY

A NGEL A L U T Z

ZACH BAUMAN

KENDALL QUACK

CHILLING OUT IN AUGUST

How? With concretes

D

riving down Westport Road on one of the hottest days of the summer so far, I spotted a sign I couldn’t ignore. “Key lime pie concretes,” it read. I hit the brakes.

I needed this not to be a mirage. I needed delicious relief from the punishing heat. Even with my car’s air conditioner at full blast, sweat wouldn’t stop beading on my forehead, wouldn’t stop rolling down my face.

It was real. I had just rounded a midtown bend toward Andy’s Frozen Custard, which opened in June to immediate local rapture.

This offspring of the Ozarks original — near the high-traffic gateway to Westport — draws crowds from midday until late at night, and for good reason: The thick, rich and creamy core product here could probably hold a flagpole in place.

The 29-year-old chain’s popularity also has a lot to do with the fact that Andy’s knows just which add-ins, in which amounts, make a concrete phenomenal. I’m all about combining cookie dough, Heath Bar chunks and pretzels, and when I order this at Andy’s, I get a little bit in every bite.

On my first visit, I tried the blackberry concrete, which was loaded with large chunks of real fruit. The small is a gut-busting 16 ounces, so I shared it with my boyfriend. Normally I’d dig all the chunks out and leave the plain ice cream for him, but this time there were plenty of berries for us both.

But on this hot afternoon, I had the Key lime pie concrete to myself, making it just a little more delicious. Key lime filling and crunchy graham cracker chunks were swirled throughout the custard perfectly.

The other regular-menu concretes are

combinations that Andy’s has thought up so that your overheated brain doesn’t have to ponder all the options. I’m a fan of the James Brownie Funky Jackhammer, which blends vanilla custard with peanut butter, brownies and hot fudge. Other menu options include floats, Italian ices, and traditional hot fudge sundaes (with pecans).

Not long after my day-improving Key lime concrete, I saw a new sign posted out front: “Peaches are in season.” So they are. And I’m already looking forward to pumpkin-pie and candy-cane concretes this fall and winter. Because no matter the weather, concretes make everything better.

LET US NOW PRAISE LETTUCE WRAPS

Every time I eat at Blue Koi for lunch, the food coma hits before I’ve even returned to work for the afternoon. My brain fills with television static, and my body feels like it’s going to melt off my chair, leaving behind a chilispiced soy puddle.

I mean this as a compliment.

Friends have suggested that I eat only half of the tofu with black bean sauce and save the rest for later. That’s silly. The whole mountain of food is going in my face hole right now. Every last grain of rice.

But when I need to remain slightly more alert during the second half of my day, I look to the vegetarian lettuce wraps here. This is what moderation looks and tastes like: chopped tofu, peanuts, scallions, carrots and other veggies, served with a stack of crisp, fresh iceberg lettuce to allow a DIY assembly line for your

tongue’s umami trigger. It’s a filling but relatively light affair; you won’t need a nap if you eat the whole thing.

Lulu’s Thai Noodle Shop also serves a good lettuce wrap. The spicy chopped tofu (also available mild) comes with full leaves of romaine, along with a refreshing array of carrots and bean sprouts and red cabbage, a lime wedge, and thick peanut dipping sauce that’s tasty enough to eat by itself. Blue Koi’s lettuce wraps would win in a fight, but this is a peaceful dish, and there’s room for both.

We’ve established that lying down for an after-lunch nap is perfectly reasonable, but sometimes even sitting down for a midday meal isn’t an option. So I was jazzed to discover that Westport’s Which Wich does a killer to-go lettuce wrap. This thing is not puny; in fact, I’m pretty sure it out-bulks many sandwiches I’ve eaten.

Like similar chain restaurants, Which Wich allows total customization of your sandwich, from fillings and spreads to toppings and cheese — and yes, such an array can be crammed into a lettuce wrap. My favorite version combines a black-bean patty (carnivores, there are plenty of options for you, too), hummus, pickles, olives, chili sauce and feta cheese, for a kind of veggie gyro wrapped in fresh romaine rather than stuffed into pita.

The result is a filling lunch that doesn’t knock me on my ass (and can even be eaten in the car — especially if I’m not driving). I may want to cut the coma-inducing carbs out of my lunch, but that doesn’t mean my lunch has to be petite.

E-mail feedback@pitch.com pitch.com

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Music

ChemiCal BalanCe

Allison Rose Williams and Brandon Thomas experiment with a new Pheromone.

By

N ata l ie G a l l a Ghe r

he Riot Room’s calendar still lists Allison Rose Williams as Monday’s first performer, but the singer tells me to expect something else that night, a new project: Pheromone. There is no online presence for this act, she adds with a smile — no Bandcamp page, no SoundCloud link, no social media. Pheromone’s music isn’t ready to live on those platforms yet — a fact that doesn’t seem to perturb Williams or her creative partner, Brandon Thomas, even as the clock winds down to their first live set.

The two are chatting next to each other at a small table at the 30th Street Filling Station when I get there to talk with them.

With their heads bent close together, they look more like a pair of high-schoolers gossiping in the cafeteria than they do two 20-something adults discussing the potential purchase of a high-end vocal processor that Williams wants.

“Those things are so difficult to master,” Thomas says, with a laugh that suggests he’s out of arguments.

It’s not hard to imagine how such a product would figure into the sound that Williams and Thomas are creating with Pheromone. Before our interview, Williams had shared everything that she and Thomas had been working on — video clips, halffinished song snippets — and it painted a heady picture. The duo’s R&B and neosoul reflect Thomas’ intelligent production and Williams’ sultry phrasing.

“I grew up in Florida, and soul and blues isn’t something I’ve ever been around, but it’s always a sound that I’m drawn to,” Williams says. (She moved to Kansas City in September 2013.) “And if I’m being honest, it’s really hard for me, vocally. I feel like it would be easy for me to sing folk or country, but that’s not where my interest is, and I don’t want to settle for something that’s already in my grasp. So I’m taking vocal lessons. I don’t feel like I’m at where I want to be as a singer, but I’m progressing in that direction.”

The two have been working together on Pheromone since April, in what Thomas describes as a piecemeal process: He creates an instrumental melody, adding drums and electronic beats, and Williams meets him with lyrics. He tells me that they have five songs ready to be recorded, and studio time is booked for later in the month. Neither Williams nor Thomas is new to the craft. Thomas, an associate producer with AEG and the Grammy Association, has worked on tracks for national artists; before Pheromone, Williams performed solo and with a four-piece band called Rose & Louise, which earned local radio play.

“I wanted this to be a completely differ-

22

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zach bauman

T

Pheromone Opening for Alyssa Robbins, with Jessica Paige and Calvin Arsenia Monday, August 17, at the Riot Room Opening for Noah Guthrie, Gabe Dixon Friday, August 21, at the Riot Room ent thing than my other musical projects,” Williams says, “partly because the sound is so different. And I didn’t want to take the full credit for it by saying ‘This is Allison Rose,’ because it’s very much him [Thomas], too.”

The two hope to have an EP ready by early September — too late for this first show together. As for Monday’s gig, its logistics are also a work-in-progress. Translating something that so far has been done on computers in living rooms requires Williams to move among guitar, bass and piano, depending on the song, with Williams to split time between a drum kit and a live production station.

“It’ll look simple, but it’ll sound big,” Thomas tells me, though nothing about the set-up sounds simple. “I’ll be in the back of the stage. The very back,” he says, laughing.

“I’m totally comfortable being the frontwoman,” Williams says. She’s petite, with

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dark-blond hair and impressively large eyes, and it is no great shock to learn that she models. The spotlight, Thomas is convinced, will welcome her.

“I really believe in Allison,” he tells me, and the compliment seems to unnerve her for the first time in our conversation. “You always want to know you’re working with a good person, and talking to her, you can feel how true she is to her music and how dedicated she is. She knows what she wants, and she’s training to further her expertise.

She’s serious about getting better, and I find that really inspiring.”

Williams taps her nails anxiously on the table. The spotlight is one thing, but glory isn’t the point. “There are holes that we help each other out with,” she says. “It helps that we share a path and goals and a deadline.”

She goes on: “My last band, I felt like I was the only one driving it. People didn’t want to practice, they didn’t want to take certain shows because we weren’t getting paid enough money, which was pretty laughable to me. Through my experiences with that, I found that it’s really important to be on the same page and have the same vision as the people you’re working with, and I’ve found that with Brandon.”

E-mail natalie.gallagher@pitch.com

Musical match: Thomas and Williams

J a z z B e at Mark LowrEy and La Fonda aLL StarS, at takE FivE CoFFEE + Bar

Take Five Coffee + Bar closes Saturday, succumbing to structural issues with its space and minimal foot traffic.

But it goes out with class — and AfroCuban jazz by Mark Lowrey and La Fonda All Stars (named for the Southwest Boulevard restaurant where they rehearse). Pianist Lowrey, percussionist Jua n- C a rlos C hau ra nd (f rom t he ensemble Making Movies), drummer John Kizilarmut and bassist Dominque Sanders play original arrangements of classic jazz by such artists as Tito Puente, plus modern pop by the likes of Michael Jackson and Oasis, reimagined in a Latin style. Then, after the All Stars’ sets conclude, musicians are invited to stop by and close down Take Five by jamming on into the night.

— Larry Kopitnik Mark Lowrey and La Fonda All Stars, 8 p.m.

Saturday, August 15, at Take Five Coffee + Bar (6601 West 135th Street, 913-948-5550), free admission.

23

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music

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Britt Adair expands her summer punk festival.

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ast year, the now-defunct venue Vandals was home to the inaugural Summer Kamp Fest — a three-day punk blowout featuring more than 30 local and regional acts. Britt Adair, then the booker at Vandals, was the principal Summer Kamp Fest organizer, and she had every intention of making it a recurring event.

But Vandals shuttered in March, and Adair had to find an alternative route. This time, instead of three nights on the same stage, she has spread the bands among different locations.

This second Summer Kamp Fest kicks off Friday, August 14, at MiniBar, and continues Saturday at Harling’s Upstairs before closing Sunday with an all-ages set at FOKL Center.

I chatted with Adair about the evolution of the fest and how she plans to keep it alive.

The Pitch: How did Summer Kamp Fest get started?

Adair: Summer Kamp Fest got started by me being inspired by all the other festivals in Kansas City. Last year, Vandals was getting on its feet, and it was kind of a home for punk rock. I had approached my business partner at that time, [former Vandals manager] Michelle Wyssman, about getting more out-of-town bands to play shows there. And when Vandals closed, I kind of felt defeated. But then I felt like there are so many awesome, active venues in Kansas City, why not see if they were interested? And I’m really excited to see that everyone wants to see a Summer Kamp Fest III and IV and beyond.

How has Summer Kamp Fest changed from last year?

This year, it’s in three different locations — in part because Vandals closed. It’s going to be three nights, one at MiniBar, one at Harling’s and the final night at FOKL, which will be allages. The bands are pretty much all different, with the exception of a couple that played last year.

I try to keep it as DIY as possible, with the sponsors being small and local and the venues being really low-key. I’ve been approaching it differently than last year in that sense. We’re also making the sets shorter and having less bands play every night. I think next year, when I plan it, I’ll try to have more all-ages venues involved.

What sets Summer Kamp apart from other festivals, including the punk-oriented Center of the City Fest?

I feel like Summer Kamp Fest is going to be the grittiest festival that you can go to. I mean gritty in the sense that it’s very no-frills, and the festival is just $5 to get in. It’s a quick way to see a bunch of bands that are kind of unknown, since a lot of the bands that are touring and playing Summer Kamp Fest are a little under-the-radar. Center of the City is

pitch.com

zach bauman

L

a fest that brings in a lot of local bands, and it’s really, really awesome, but I wanted to get more out-of-town bands in. A lot of these bands just pass through town and play house shows, so for some people it’ll be a chance to hear some of them for the first time.

There are around 24 bands playing this year, and about half are out-of-towners, coming from Minneapolis, Texas, Arkansas, all over. It’s hard to get bands to come here from the coasts, but I think that’ll be another goal for next year.

It seems like it would be difficult to get bands that are used to playing house shows on their own schedule to commit to something like Summer Kamp Fest.

Well, as far as booking that many bands in one weekend, approaching them with enough notice means they were able to build tours around the event. And I feel like the punk-rock and rock-and-roll scene has gotten so good in Kansas City in the last five years that musicians do really want to come here and play.

Organizing this whole thing sounds like a thankless labor of love. Why is it important to you?

Last year, being the first year, was terrifying. I didn’t know if people would show up or even care, but when I did see people coming through the door, excited to be there and wanting to hear the bands, I just felt like I had to keep it going. I don’t make any money on this festival. I’m doing this for fun and so that everyone can have a good time. It’s really for the good of the scene.

I feel like it’s important for Summer Kamp Fest to exist because I want the bands that play to know that they have a home here. It’s comforting to know that there are other annual

Adair: the grrrl behind the curtain

Summer Kamp FeSt II Friday, August 14, at MiniBar (21 and older) Sister Mary Rotten Crotch, Rat Brats, Assault and Battery, Concrete, Braindead, Reacharounds, Slugs, Lovecraft, Drugs & Attics Saturday, August 15, at Harling’s Upstairs (21 and older) The Uncouth, Frontline Attack, Red Kate, Bad Taste, Thelma and the Sleaze, Faultfinder Sunday, August 16, at FOKL Center (all ages) The Chasm, Bad Boyfriends, the Oaks, Wick & the Tricks, Radradriot, Dishpit, Drop a Grand, Izzi Savage and the Cannibal festivals in other cities, that they happen year after year — it makes you feel grounded. There are some bands that you’ll only see at festivals.

In some ways, it’s like a family reunion. That’s what I want to happen here.

Another reason why I book it is because I want to put women in the front, because I am a feminist and I try to take the time to connect other women in the music scene. There are a lot of female performers this year at Summer Kamp Fest, and that’s a continuous goal — to bring more women into punk rock and rock and roll. I don’t want Riot Grrrl ideas to become a thing of the past. It almost feels like a mission for me, and this fest is a big extension of that.

E-mail natalie.gallagher@pitch.com

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Music

Music Forecast 1515 WESTPORT RD. • 816-931-9417

By

n ata l ie G a l l a Ghe r

meantime, she and Rawlings have announced a new summer tour. The intimate Folly Theater should prove an ideal match for their music.

Don’t skip this show.

Friday, August 14, Folly Theater (300 West 12th Street, 816-474-4444)

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My Morning Jacket

In April, My Morning Jacket released The Waterfall, the first album by the Louisville, Kentucky, band in four years. And though the tracks unfurl with guns blazing — a triumphant return to form for the band — the album feels like an extended vacation, with mystical riffs and a hazy, trippy reverb coating such songs as “Tropics (Erase Traces)” and “In Its Infancy (The Waterfall).” Jim James remains a captivating frontman — half rock star, half witch doctor.

You don’t need to be a huge My Morning Jacket fan to enjoy this show, but chances are that after you attend, you will be.

Thursday, August 13, Starlight Theatre (4600 Starlight Road, Swope Park, 816-363-7827)

Rodrigo y Gabriela, with Making Movies

Most acoustic-guitar acts can’t claim Rodrigo y Gabriela’s intense and multidimensional sound. It’s not enough that the Mexico-viaIreland musicians are guitar virtuosos, bending their intricate melodies and supple rhythms

My Morning Jacket: out of the shadows to ethereal patterns. No, these two also marry their influences — flamenco and heavy metal — in an unlikely but wholly successful union.

Friday at the Uptown, bear witness to spellbinding musicianship that will stay with you for days. Local Latin-rock fusion band Making Movies opens.

Friday, August 14, Uptown Theater (3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665)

Gillian Welch

The last album we heard from folk singer and songwriter Gillian Welch was 2011’s The Harrow & the Harvest. That album came after an eight-year drought from Welch and her partner, songwriter and guitarist David Rawlings, and the reward for Welch’s loyal fans was wholly felt. The Harrow & the Harvest is dark, sparse and deeply intuitive. Who knows when we’ll see another album from Welch — perhaps we’ve got another four years to go — but in the

f o r e c a s t

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Lake Street Dive

If Rachael Price ever wanted to strike a career on her own — solo singer, gospel choir ringleader, Broadway superstar, whatever — the path would be easy for her. This woman has a voice that could shatter mirrors and stop traffic with its booming volume and robust phrasing. But Price seems comfortable with her role as frontwoman in Brooklyn four-piece Lake Street Dive, and it’s no wonder. With the help of bassist Bridget Kearney, drummer Mike Calabrese, and guitarist and trumpeter Mike Olson, Price has the perfect support for her voice (and occasional ukulele playing). See Lake Street Dive Tuesday at Knuckleheads in support of last year’s superb Bad Self Portraits.

Tuesday, August 18, Knuckleheads Saloon (2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456)

K e Y

Pick of the Week

International Flair

Date Night

Rock On

Dance Pants

Worth the Weeknight

Songs of Summer

A Folkin’ Good Time

So Much Soul

Guitar Gods

Intimate Show

Band to Watch

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PB

Miguel has come a long way since his earnest 2012 breakthrough album, Kaleidoscope Dream. You may remember that album’s best songs, its title cut and the hit single “Adorn,” as the tracks that gave your significant other bedroom eyes. But this year’s Wildheart is having none of that. Miguel still wants to seduce you, but this time around, his lyrics don’t go probing around the deeper side of your sexuality. Three years later, Miguel is over the romance. But that isn’t to say this Grammy winner won’t pull out all the stops for his Midland concert. Earlier this month, an ab-flashing Miguel crowdsurfed in NYC. Whether you’ve got a partner to gyrate with on Sunday night or you plan on making a friend, at the very least you’ll have better luck here than on Tinder.

Sunday, August 16, the Midland (1228 Main, 816-283-9921)

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The Secon of poetry,

Terance Wil Art, Atkins A

1717 Main St, KCMO bazookasshowgirls.com

Adam Ferr and Dinner

29 continued from page 15

Thursday | 8.13 |

Gillian welch

Comedy

TheaTer

Dates and times vary.

fr iday

Gilda: a Tribute to the Beloved Comedienne Gilda Radner, featuring Helena K. Cosentino |

8.14

Adam Ferrara | 7:30 p.m. Improv Comedy Club and

Dinner Theater, 7260 N.W. 87th St.

Fishtank Performance Studio, 1715 Wyandotte, brownpapertickets.com

al G o r ur lch. e W h wit

Harpoon’s Good Time | 6-9 p.m. Replay Lounge, 946

Massachusetts, Lawrence

The Gin Game | KC Actors Theatre, at H&R Block City Stage Theater, 30 W. Pershing Rd., kcactors.org

Julian mcCullough | 8:15 p.m. Stanford’s Comedy Club, 7328 W. 119th St., Overland Park

Old School | by Harvey Williams, KC Melting-

pot Theatre, Just Off Broadway Theatre, 3051 Central, kcmeltingpot.com

expo

missouri State Fair | Missouri State Fairgrounds, 2503 W. 16th St., Sedalia, mostatefair.com

Wouldn’t It Be Loverly? The Best of Lerner & Loewe | Musical Theater Heritage at Crown

Center, 2450 Grand, musicaltheaterheritage.com m seliger

SporTS & reC

royals vs. Angels | 7:10 p.m. Kauffman Stadium

MUSeUM exhibiTS & evenTS

muSiC

Gillian Welch | 8 p.m. Friday, at the Folly Theater, 300 W. 12th St., follytheater.org As Cities Burn, emery, We Are the Willows, Foreign Sons | 6 p.m. Jackpot Music Hall, 943 Massachusetts, Lawrence

Havilah Bruders, dan doran | 7 p.m. The Phoenix,

302 W. Eighth St.

Julian mcCullough | 7:45 & 9:45 p.m. Stanford’s Comedy Club, 7328 W. 119th St., Overland Park expo

molly Hammer & Ken Lovern | 7 p.m. The Broadway Kansas City, 3601 Broadway

John paul’s Flying Circus with KoolAid |

7:30 p.m. B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ, 1205 E. 85th St.

Kelli Lynn and the Skillet Lickers | 8:30 p.m.

Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715 Rochester

missouri State Fair | Missouri State Fairgrounds, 2503 W. 16th St., Sedalia, mostatefair.com LeCTure

The Billy meier uFo Case and Cover-up | 7 p.m.

Unity Temple, 707 W. 47th St., unxnewsmagazine.com CommuniTy BeneFiTS

my morning Jacket, Hippo Campus | 7:30 p.m.

Starlight Theatre, 4600 Starlight Rd.

Gerald Spaits/Charles perkins Quartet | 7 p.m.

The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St.

The Turtles, the Association | 7:30 p.m. Missouri State Fairgrounds, 2503 W. 16th St., Sedalia

Friday | 8.14 |

paul Thorn | 8:30 p.m. Knuckleheads, 2715 Rochester

exeter, roll on Z, Awaiting eli, Sidewise, Hemlock, Counterfeit | 7 p.m. Davey’s Uptown Ramblers

niGHTLiFe

Amanda Fish Band, Lonnie mcFadden | 4:30 p.m.

Flirt Friday | 9 p.m. VooDoo, Harrah’s Casino, 1 Riverboat Dr., North Kansas City

Club, 3402 Main

The Phoenix, 302 W. Eighth St.

Jeff Harshbarger | 8 p.m. Take Five Coffee + Bar, 6601

Girl 2 Girl Social | 6 p.m. Uptown Arts Bar, 3611 Broadway

mike Scott’s Vinyl resurrection | 10 p.m. Local

FiLm

randy mcAllister | 9 p.m. B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ,

The Ship, 1217 Union Ave.

moon Honey, no Cave | 10 p.m. Replay Lounge, 946

Tipper, Quixotic, Seied, Spankalicious, dspang | 7:30 p.m. The Midland, 1228 Main

Westport Flea Market, 817 Westport Rd.

Kansas City Bomber, benefiting Fountain City Roller

Derby | 10:30 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, 1400 Main

The Verdigris: In Search of Will Rogers and Calls to Okies, with filmmakers Bradley Beesley, Beau

Jennings and Ben Steinbauer | 7:30 p.m. Tivoli Cinemas, 4050 Pennsylvania, tivolikc.com

royals vs. Angels | 7:10 p.m. Kauffman Stadium muSiC

Comedy

Blackbird revue | 5 p.m. Hotel Phillips, 106 W. 12th St.

Adam Ferrara | 7:30 & 10 p.m. Improv Comedy Club

Cowboy Cabaret, featuring Starhaven rounders | 6 p.m. RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd.

and Dinner Theater, 7260 N.W. 87th St.

Rd., unionstation.org

High Lonesome | Jackpot Music Hall, 943 Massa-

SporTS & reC

Terance Williams | 6-9 p.m. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Atkins Auditorium, 4525 Oak

Gridiron Glory: the Best of the Pro Football Hall of Fame | Union Station, 30 W. Pershing

Burgers, Brews, and Brainteasers: A Benefit for Swope Health Services (SHS) | 6:30-9 p.m.

L i T e r A r y/ S p o K e n W o r d

The Second Annual Women & young Ladies of poetry, hosted by Mia Plant, Desiree Rodgers and

everette devan with Sharon Thompson, BmW | 5:30 p.m. The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St.

W. 135th St., Overland Park

me Like Bees, Westerners | 10 p.m. Replay Lounge,

946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

def Leppard, Tesla, Styx | 7 p.m. Missouri State Fairgrounds, 2503 W. 16th St., Sedalia

A Centenary of Australian War Art | National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial, 100 W. 26th St., theworldwar.org

chusetts, Lawrence

1205 E. 85th St.

Massachusetts, Lawrence

rodrigo y Gabriela, making movies | 7 p.m. Uptown Theater, 3700 Broadway

Tap, 7300 W. 119th St., Overland Park

Soul preservers featuring elliott oliver | 9 p.m.

Saturday | 8.15 | perForminG ArTS

dominique Sanders, Tim Whitmer | 5:30 p.m.

Quixotic’s Gravity of Center | 7 p.m. Lied Center of

Summer Kamp Fest ii, featuring Drugs & Attics, Sister Mary Rotten Crotch, Concrete, Assault and Battery, Slugs, Reacharounds, Lovecraft, Rat Brains, Brain Dead | 7 p.m. MiniBar, 3810 Broadway

Comedy

Green Lady Lounge, 1809 Grand

Sunsquabi | 8 p.m. The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence

Kansas, 1600 Stewart Dr., Lawrence, lied.ku.edu

Comedy City | 7:30 p.m. The Exchange Event Space, 113 W. Lexington, Independence

Adam Ferrara | 7 & 9:45 p.m. Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater, 7260 N.W. 87th St.

continued on page 30

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30 continued from page 29 The Kansas City Summer Comedy Series |

Sen. Claire M C CaSkill

art exhibitS & eventS

8 p.m. Uptown Arts Bar, 3611 Broadway

Thom Kaz’s Hypnaughty | 7:30 p.m. VooDoo,

Harrah’s Casino, 1 Riverboat Dr., North Kansas City, voodookc.com

Julian McCullough | 7:45 & 9:45 p.m. Stanford’s

Autumn Twilight, Dwelling Among Mountains | Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art,

su n day

4420 Warwick Blvd., kemperart.org

8.16

Adam Cvijanovic: American Montage |

by Stand dy. la r you

Comedy Club, 7328 W. 119th St., Overland Park

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 4420 Warwick Blvd.

Prateek Srivastava, Maeret Lemons, Amy Shanker | 8 p.m. MiniBar, 3810 Broadway

emmet Gowin: Photographs | Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak, nelson-atkins.org

ExPo

Philip Haas: The Four Seasons | Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak

Missouri State Fair | Missouri State Fairgrounds, 2503 W. 16th St., Sedalia, mostatefair.com

Marco Maggi: Drawing Attention | Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 4420 Warwick Blvd.

CoMMuniTy EvEnTS

Sly’s Rock the Block, with basketball, video and carnival games, live entertainment, community zone and more | 4-11 p.m. Union Station, 30 W. Pershing Rd., kcmayor.org

Pedal to the Metal | The National Mu-

Sen. Claire McCaskill talks about her memoir, Plenty Ladylike | 2 p.m. Unity Temple on the Plaza, 707

W. 47th St., rainydaybooks.com

SPoRTS & REC

Foam Glow 5k | 5:30 p.m. Cricket Wireless Amphitheater, 633 N. 130th St., Bonner Springs, cricketwirelessamp.com The Moneyball 5-on-5 Basketball Tournament | 8 a.m.-6 p.m., $250 per team, the College Basketball Experience at Sprint Center, 1401 Grand

Royals vs. Angels | 6:10 p.m.

More

EvEnts

Kauffman Stadium

Spikes for Tikes, benefiting the Sunflower House | 4 p.m., $200 per team, Shawnee Mission Beach Volleyball, 19800 Johnson Dr., Shawnee, sunflowerhouse.org Onl

ine

at

M pitCh.Co

ida McBeth | 8:30 p.m. The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St. Justin Moore, Easton Corbin | 7:30 p.m. Missouri

State Fairgrounds, 2503 W. 16th St., Sedalia

Meta Hi-Fi | 10 p.m. Uptown Arts Bar, 3611 Broadway

Sunday | 8.16 | L i T E R A R y/ S P o K E n W o R D

Boz Scaggs, Booker T. | 7 p.m. Uptown Theater,

3700 Broadway

Foam on the Range: Early History of Kansas Brewers and Breweries, with journalist and histo-

rian Cindy Higgins | 2 p.m. Kansas City Central Library, 14 W. 10th St., kclibrary.org CoMEDy

The Sluts, Tall Tales, the Thundercats | 6 p.m.

The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

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Broadway

Ashes to immortality, Tornado Rose, Kansas City Hustle | 8 p.m. The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence

Baby Bash, Play-n-Skillz | 7 p.m. Aftershock, 5240

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Cinemaphonic with Cruz & Cyan | 10 p.m. Replay

Datura Records’ DatJam iv | 10 p.m. Replay Lounge,

DJ E | Quaff Bar & Grill, 1010 Broadway

Music Hall, 943 Massachusetts, Lawrence

946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

Scott Easterday, David Regnier | 6 p.m. RecordBar,

1020 Westport Rd.

Mark Lowrey and La Fonda All Stars | 8 p.m.

Take Five Coffee + Bar, 6601 W. 135th St., Overland Park

the pitch

MuSiC

816 Day, featuring Coniac, Solizo, Pen II Life, the Beat

Touch-a-Truck, benefiting Harvesters Community

Food Network | 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Overland Park Convention Center, 6000 College Blvd., Overland Park

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Jeff Harshbarger’s Alternative Jazz Series |

7 p.m. RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd.

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Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak

Adjustment, UPS, Ava Mercedes, Brown Bottle Flu and more | 7 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

Sugar Ray, Better Than Ezra, uncle Kracker, Eve 6 | KC Live Stage at the P&L District, 14th St. and Grand

heads Saloon, 2715 Rochester

World War I and the rise of Modernism |

Adam Ferrara | 7 p.m. Improv Comedy Club and Din-

MuSiC

Alex Abramovitz & His Swingin’ Kansas City Jazz Band | 8 p.m. The Broadway Kansas City, 3601

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Experience at Sprint Center, 1401 Grand

Zack Mufasa | 8 p.m. Californos, 4124 Pennsylvania Emmett o’Hanlon of Celtic Thunder | 7 p.m. Kansas City Irish Center at Union Station, 30 W. Pershing Rd.

seum of Toys and Miniatures, 5234 Oak, toyandminiaturemuseum.org

A U G U S T 1 3 - 1 9, 2 0 1 5

Lounge, 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

DJ Zammy, vG, DJ Cache 22, a benefit for One Kan-

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Monday | 8.17 |

SPoRTS & REC

sas City Radio | 9:30 p.m. RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd.

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State Fairgrounds, 2503 W. 16th St., Sedalia

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J Bomb, Second Hand King, Zen people, Barrel maker, Dxct, DJ mahf, DJ KFan |

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rural Grit Happy Hour | 6 p.m. The Brick, 1727 McGee

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St., Sedalia

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14th St. and Grand

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Main

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elegant Knock with DJ Approach | 10 p.m. Replay

Joe posnanski discusses his new book, The Secret of Golf: The Story of Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus | 6:30 p.m. Kansas City Plaza Library,

4801 Main, kclibrary.org

the Hump with Alv Diesel | 10 p.m. MiniBar, 3810

comeDy

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missouri State Fair | Missouri State Fairgrounds,

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Kansas city t-Bones vs. Amarillo thundercats | 7:05 p.m. CommunityAmerica Ballpark, 1800 Village

Blue monday Jam with Dwayne mitchell | 7 p.m.

The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St.

Don’t Know Dorothy, Grayson Smith, Break the Fall | 7 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway Alyssa robbins, Allison rose Williams, Jessica paige, calvin Arsenia | 7 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048

Broadway

Girlz of Westport | 8 p.m. Californos, 4124

Pennsylvania

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1813 Grand

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Broadway

Sleeper, marcobiotics, radB, metaphysics Audio | 10 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway turntable matinee with the cowtown playboys | 8 p.m. Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club, 3402

Main

W. 119th St., Overland Park

missouri State Fair | Missouri State Fairgrounds,

E-mail submissions to calendar@pitch.com or enter submissions at pitch.com, where you can search our complete listings guide.

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A U G U S T 1 3 - 1 9, 2 0 1 5

BALLS for admitting to himself that he has a creative sex drive,” said Donald Roger, the sadistic entrepreneur behind Shotgun Video, a gay BDSM porn studio that specializes in CBT. “Instead of wasting his time on why-amI-bored-with-this sex, HISBALLS can look forward to a passionate and fascinating sex life.”

To say Roger shares your kink is putting it mildly: Just torturing another man’s balls — listening to that man moan and groan — is all it takes to make Roger come.

“People say that has to be trick photography,” said Roger, whose “no-hands loads” are featured in Shotgun videos. “But it’s not a trick!”

I’m going to quickly answer your main question and then let Roger give you some advice that might actually be useful: Hardcore kinksters — kinksters who find it difficult to come in vanilla situations — make conventional sex a little better by entertaining fantasies about their kinks.

But you know what’s better? Dating guys who share or are open to your kinks.

“Finding appropriate partners is harder for seriously kinky men, but it’s a lot easier now than it used to be,” Roger said. “Recon is a worldwide cruising site that caters to alt-sex men. HISBALLS can choose a profile name for himself (like MuscleCBT — that guy is notorious), he can put up a few pictures and, most importantly, he can write out what he’s looking for. He can tell people if he’s a top or a bottom, give some indication of what experience he’s had, focus on what he wants, but also tell people what his no-fly zones are — as in ‘no unsafe sex, no drugs and no Republicans.’”

You c a n a l s o f i nd k i n k y g uy s at

D a n S ava ge young age, who don’t suffer from depression or anxiety, who don’t have abandonment issues, and whose childhoods were comparatively issue-free. It’s natural to wonder how you got to be kinky, but kinks are pretty random and pretty inexplicable.

Dear Dan: I’ve been reading your column for a

while, and you always advise kinky people to go seek the same within the kink community. But in my experience, the kink community is very “sex right away, get to know you later”-oriented. So I have two questions. First, as someone who’s a bit of an old-fashioned romantic, is there somewhere I can go to find sexually compatible people who are willing to let me get to know them before we fuck? And second, it’s very difficult for me to come in vanilla situations, which has caused some awkwardness in the past. My fetish is intense CBT (cock and ball torture). It’s pretty specific, and in my (admittedly limited) experience, most guys aren’t very willing to let me inflict that kind of pain. Seeing as I’m probably not going to stop dating people from the general pool (shy 24-year-old cub, not into hookups — I take what I can get), do you have any advice for making conventional sex a little better for me?

By

Adam4Adam, Manhunt, and BigMuscle — and you’ll find kinky guys in the general dating pool, too. And you’re not obligated to jump into bed and/or immediately start torturing the cock and balls of someone you’ve just met.

“HISBALLS can suggest going to a movie or dinner, or taking in the entire opera season together first,” Roger said, “or go straight to bed if it seems right. He should go at the speed that’s right for him. And he’ll be surprised — or more likely stunned — at just how many romantic, CBT-oriented men there are out there.”

A quick programming note about CBT: You can really hurt someone — you can really damage someone — if you attempt CBT without knowing what you’re doing. That’s why Roger produced a series of instructional videos for men who are curious about CBT. Look for videos numbered 59, 60 and 62 at shotgunvideo .com, a series of lectures/demos.

Dear Dan: I lost my dad young and I had a bunch

of issues growing up. I’m probably gay. I love the idea of light bondage, and I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. I feel like I’ve been on a self-discovery thing over the past year and have caught tidbits that bothered me. I have depression/anxiety and the old “abandonment complex,” and I’m still insecure about a lot of this. Is it reasonable to blame psychological trauma for my sexuality — the possibly gay thing and the kinks?

Troubled Over Yearnings Dear TOY: The inclination to blame your sexuality and kinks on your loss is understandable, but it’s not reasonable. (Sorry about your dad, kiddo.) Because when you think about it — when you apply reason — you quickly come to this: There are lots of gay men out there who are into bondage who didn’t lose their dads at a

Dear Dan: Your advice to UGH last week was fine in general — he’s the frustrated man whose wife isn’t interested in sex — and a pretty solid rehash of your standard advice for people trapped in sexless marriages. But I’m writing because you missed something that may have been key: “Currently, she can last having sex for nearly half an hour before feeling exhausted and stopping, regardless of me reaching orgasm or not.”

Two things: (1) Half an hour of PIV sex when you’re not feeling it would take a vat of lube and probably still be painful. (2) His wife lies there getting the inside of her vagina sanded off by Jackhammer McGee here and then has the nerve to ask him to stop when it’s too much “regardless” of HIS orgasm?!? What about her orgasm? What about her delicate vaginal tissue getting torn up? Not that he will magically consider her pleasure if he’s blind to her comfort and general well-being, but it might help him put his marriage in perspective.

Engaged Reader Represents Dear ERR: Thanks for your e-mail, and I really should’ve spotted that. We all have our blind spots, and this is definitely one of mine: When someone says they were having sex for half an hour, I don’t think of 30 minutes of PIV/PIB, as I don’t define “sex” as “penetrative vaginal or anal intercourse.” My working definition of sex includes mutual masturbation, oral, fantasy play and PIV/PIB. So when someone says, “My partner can last having sex for half an hour,” I imagine half an hour of oral and mutual masturbation and penetration all jumbled together.

I need to bear in mind that not all of my readers define sex the same way I do — indeed, far too many people believe penetration is sex and vice versa. Thanks for the reminder.

CONFIDENTIAL TO AMERICAN WOMEN: Did you watch the big GOP debate last week? Scott Walker said he supports a ban on abortion with no exception to save the life of the pregnant woman, and Marco Rubio said women impregnated by rapists should not be allowed to get abortions — and not one of the other eight men onstage objected, not even the one supposedly pro-choice candidate. That would be George Pataki, the “pro-choice Republican” who bragged about defunding Planned Parenthood when he was governor of New York.

Have a question for Dan Savage?

E-mail him at mail@savagelove.net

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