The Pitch: September 3, 2015

1 SEPTEMBER 3-9, 2015 | FREE | VOL. 35 NO. 10 | PITCH.COM

esses use in s u b r e h t o d As Cerner an Ka n s a s , h t w o r g ir e th T IF t o e n s u r e e e z in g t h e ir u q s p e e k i r u a n d M is s o ns. p o o r e s t c it iz e

BY ST EV

E VO CK RO DT AN D MI KE M C GR AW

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sep tember 3-9, 2015 | Vol. 35 no. 10 E d i t o r i a l

upside-down land

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, Mike McGraw, Dan Savage, Nick Spacek

a r t

Art and Production Director Jeremy Luther Graphic Designer Ashley Tebbe 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, Ruby Wetzel Production and Digital Coordinator Ashley Reed

m a r k E t i n g

Director of Marketing and Operations Jason Dockery

As Cerner and other businesses use TIF to ensure their growth, Kansas and Missouri keep squeezing their poorest citizens.

B u s i n E s s

Publisher Amy Mularski Office Administrator Jessica Kittams

b y s t e v e vo c k r o d t a n d M i k e M c G r aw

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

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small tables, big plans Howard’s Grocery opens, and Dojo Kenichi stays mysterious.

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

by charles ferruzz a

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on t he c oVe r

back to the well Chris Garibaldi revives his Lotuspool Records. b y n ata l i e G a l l aG h e r

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Questionnaire feature agenda shop girl art stage fat city on tap this week music d a i ly l i s t i n g s savage love

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Questionnaire

Digital designer and art director

WHERE COOL DOGS STAY!

Twitter handle: @lisidesign Hometown: Denver, Colorado Current neighborhood: Westport What I do: I’m a designer with a focus in

typography and illustration. Sporting KC, Rally House and KC FilmFest are a few local brands I’ve helped develop. I also have a passion for all things cryptic.

7200 WYANDOTTE ST. KANSAS CITY, MO

What’s your game? Mario Kart 64. The people

Where’s dinner? Spin. I always get two pizzas, so I have lunch the next day.

What’s on your KC postcard? It’s something

with the little iconic details. The Shuttlecocks, the Western Auto sign or the TWA rocket. I also love the Sky Stations because they’re super-weird and they add that extra element of awesome to our skyline.

“I can’t stop listening to …” Dream On,

Dreamer; Bring Me the Horizon; and August Burns Red. I’ll listen to pretty much anything with double bass drums and screaming.

“My dream concert lineup is …” To go nostalgic, it’d be Finch, Thrice, Thursday, Senses Fail and Emery. Still with me?

+3 83

at life and our existence from a different perspective.

stadium. Hosting the Big 12 tournament is clutch, too. Rock Chalk!

Simon Singh is essentially my Bible.

“Kansas City screwed up when …” They built

What’s your hidden talent? I’m especially good at forgetting birthdays and anniversaries.

My brush with fame: My wife and I were in

the stadiums so far from downtown. We have a cool skyline to begin with, but imagine how much better it’d be if they were all in the downtown area. That being said …

“Kansas City needs …” A monorail to Sporting Park, ha. … But seriously.

“As a kid, I wanted to be …” An astronaut. What

kid didn’t, though? I’m still obsessed with space, the universe and theoretical physics — only now I’m afraid of flying.

“In five years, I’ll be …” Designing logos, websites and puzzles still. That’s what I love to do and would probably be doing even if I wasn’t paid to do so.

“I always laugh at …” Internet memes, fart

jokes and bad puns.

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

Aliens and Through the Wormhole.

“I’m reading …” The Martian. The Code Book by

What’s your guiltiest pleasure? Wasting hours upon hours reading about conspiracy theories. We all know the pyramids were built with the assistance of dinosaurs.

The best advice I ever got: Stick to the side

roads.

New Orleans a couple of years ago and while we were waiting at a restaurant, Rob Corddry and his family let us go ahead of them to be seated. He gave me the look like, “We’re cool, man.” After doing a little research, we learned that they had just finished filming Hot Tub Time Machine 2 a few days prior.

My soapbox: Stop putting two spaces after a pe-

patience, and I don’t know what I’d do without her by my side.

riod. This is incorrect. You need only one. Two spaces originated from peoples’ (bad) habits of typing two spaces on a typewriter, which used monospaced type. The (bad) habit continued to modern-day keyboards, only now, fonts are designed with adequate space, which is only one.

Who is your hero? Family and wife being

My recent triumph: I recently released a mobile

Worst advice: “Make the logo bigger.”

My sidekick: My wife, Jamie. She has a lot of

the obvious answer, but I’d say Carl Sagan.

He popularized modern science, and there was no one as creative as him. He straddled the line between religion and science and devoted his life to understanding the meaning of both and how they related to each other. He really challenged people to look

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My favorite toy as a child: Legos, Ninja Turtles and MicroMachines. I’m also surprised I was able to make friends growing up because I played so much Nintendo 64.

My dating triumph/tragedy: I’m married to the prettiest woman ever, so I must have triumphed at some point.

Finish this sentence: “Kansas City got it right when …” They gave the soccer team their own

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What’s your addiction? Gummy bears. Lots of them, all the time. Haribo brand is best, but any kind will do.

What’s your drink? Beer. I’m a simple man, so

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ns p la n t a r T IF T ’s r e n r Ce

BY STEV E VO CK RO DT

E

ditor’s note: KCPT Channel 19's September

4 episode of Kansas City Week in Review focuses on corporate welfare and the fraying social safety net. On the program, the Hale Center for Journalism's Mike McGraw and The Pitch’s Steve Vockrodt discuss their reporting in the stories here (which also appear together at flatlandkc.org).

N

eal Patterson personifies 21st-century Kansas City entrepreneurialism.

He is his generation’s Henry Bloch or Joyce Hall, the head of a company he started from nothing — Cerner Corporation — and made KC’s most prosperous business.

Cerner, a health-information technology firm, makes more than $3 billion a year. The company’s market capitalization — the value of its outstanding shares — is $22 billion. And it has made a significant imprint on the skylines of North Kansas City; Kansas City, Kansas; and Kansas City, Missouri.

As Bloch’s H&R Block and the Hall family’s namesake greeting-card company have fallen on hard times in recent years after decades of flourishing, Cerner has only continued to grow. In July, the company secured an $11 billion contract with the U.S. Department of Defense.

Patterson has been richly rewarded for his work. His net worth, estimated by Forbes magazine, reached $1.9 billion in 2015. That

makes him one of the 1,000 richest people in the world and the third richest in Kansas City, behind Garmin co-founders Min Kao and Gary Burrell. Patterson’s partner from the outset, Cliff Illig, has a $1.2 billion net worth.

Patterson also embodies another element of Kansas City’s corporate reality: the use of public funds to ensure his company’s continued success.

Cerner has embarked on redeveloping south Kansas City’s former Bannister Mall site into a $4.3 billion office complex. Through a maze of public incentives, 40 percent of the project’s cost — about $1.7 billion — will be covered by taxpayer sources.

City officials are keen on leveraging two forms of tax-increment financing — a heavily used development tool in Kansas City (see sidebar) — to secure what Cerner says will be an additional 15,000–16,000 jobs in one of the metro’s most moribund zip codes. And Cerner, of course, is keen to write off close to $2 billion in project costs.

Cerner officials say the company would lose money without the incentives. Even with the incentives, they claim, the campus is a “break-even” proposition.

“It turns out to be break-even for us,” says Mike Nill, chief operating officer for Cerner.

“For us, it’s not a real-estate investment transaction. It’s a transaction to provide office space and develop a part of the city.”

The dead zone that once housed Bannister

Mall was at one time slated to become the site of a new soccer stadium for what was then the Kansas City Wizards, a team owned by OnGoal LLC, a partnership involving Patterson, Illig and others. Corporate entities, some tied to the Cerner co-founders, spent $30 million buying up 200 acres in and around the Bannister Mall site. But the Wizards were lured to Kansas City, Kansas, by a flotilla of state and local incentives there. The entities that had picked up the Bannister Mall property sold it to Cerner for less than the appraised value, as determined by an independent study, opening the door for Cerner to seek TIF. Greg LeRoy, executive director of the corporate-subsidy research organization Good Jobs First, says Cerner’s TIF deal is the largest of its kind. Anywhere. “Head and shoulders, it’s the biggest,” he tells The Pitch.

It’s also the largest economic-development project ever undertaken in Missouri.

Ed Ford served on the City Council and was chairman of the influential Planning, Zoning & Economic Development Committee when the Cerner TIF was passed. He says the Cerner proposal goes beyond typical new class-A office space.

That’s the idea, Nill says.

“Inside the buildings, we’re going to have a lot of great amenities for our associates,” Nill tells The Pitch. “Cerner is obviously very focused on health — the health of our associ-

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ates and the care aspect as well. There will be a fitness center. It will feel like a healthy environment when you drive onto the campus.”

The project will be built in 16 phases over 10 years, resulting in 4.7 million square feet of new development, giving Kansas City, Missouri, its long-sought Corporate Woods–scale project. (That Overland Park office park is now on the market and expected to fetch as much as $350 million, a considerable profit above its most recent sale price of $290 million in 2006.)

“To attract the type of employees they believe they’re going to need to make this work, they really have a Taj Mahal office complex going on,” Ford says. “And is it reasonable to expect taxpayers to pay for that increase?”

Ford and the rest of the City Council were unanimous in answering that rhetorical question: Yes. “I guess my answer was, in that particular case, given the circumstances, the number of jobs, the fact that it was the old Bannister Mall site, the opportunity to take what I think is blight that might not develop for years — if ever — and replace it with an office complex that employs tens of thousands of folks, I think that instance you weigh everything,” Ford tells The Pitch. “You say, ‘I prefer not to go that high, but this is really a transformational project for south Kansas City.’”

The lure of jobs, new businesses and continued on page 8 S E P T E M B E R 3 - 9, 2 0 1 5

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s California’s population and economy surged in the early 1950s, housing needed to keep pace. In this climate, TIF was born.

The idea was simple: Cities and counties, anticipating future tax revenue from a development project, offered to temporarily forgo that revenue and instead redirect it back into that project. Developers who might not otherwise consider redeveloping blighted areas now had an incentive to build in what before had been risky areas.

The idea worked well enough to spread across the United States, landing in Missouri in 1982. At one point, all but one state — Arizona — had TIF laws on their books.

And then the idea worked too well — for developers. In 2012, California abolished TIF after it had ballooned into an $8 billion business.

In Missouri, attempts in the past few years to curtail TIF have fizzled out in the Missouri General Assembly. For lawmakers, TIF’s appeal to developers as a means to finance large-scale projects outweighs its effect on schools and other tax-funded public concerns.

In Kansas City, where there are 66 active TIF projects, $35 million in tax revenues will bypass city coffers on its way back to developers. That’s more than the city’s most recent budgets for neighborhood and housing services ($32.1 million), public health and medical care ($30.3 million) and street maintenance ($13.6 million).

City leaders cite the promise of jobs as a key justification for TIF projects. But TIFs don’t always yield the number of jobs that developers promise.

According to a Missouri Department of Revenue annual report for TIF in 2013, all of Kansas City’s TIF projects combined should have resulted in 20,581 jobs. But the report shows that 15,971 were realized. (TIF fares better at retaining jobs, keeping 11,572 within Kansas City. But those same TIF projects were supposed to retain 12,025.)

Downtown Kansas City is a tapestry of TIF projects. City leaders lavished the tool on the south loop and the Crossroads Arts District in the late 1990s and early 2000s, hoping to reverse decades of urban-core decline.

Today, almost all of the south loop — notably

the Power & Light District — is within a TIF district. The improvements are undeniable, but so is the ongoing cost. Taxpayers give up $12 million-$15 million a year to finance the city’s P&L debt, and downtown lost 16,000 jobs from 2001 through 2011.

Across Missouri, 185,136 jobs were anticipated over the years among the 451 TIF districts that reported to the Department of Revenue. As of February 2, 2014, 67,627 had been created. In all, nearly $5 billion in TIF-reimbursable project costs were listed among the $24 billion in development.

TIF’s purpose is to spur development in blighted areas where a developer couldn’t otherwise attract enough private capital to make a financial pro forma add up. In Kansas City, however, TIF projects often overlook the most troubled census tracts in favor of already attractive ones. In 2007, University of Missouri–Kansas City economics professor Michael Kelsay found that 88 percent of KC’s TIFs were concentrated in four of the city’s six council districts. The two council districts left out, the 3rd and the 5th, sit predominantly on the East Side, where poverty and unemployment are prevalent.

Little has changed since then. The Brywood Centre is an example of a rare East Side TIF. Located at 63rd Street and Blue Ridge Cutoff, the small strip mall is home to an assortment of stores. One of them is a paydayloan business, an enterprise that’s notorious for exploiting poor people. Despite the help that TIF provided, the project defaulted on its bonds in 2013.

Much of the Country Club Plaza is within a TIF district. One such project helped along

by TIF was the development of the Plaza Colonnade, which includes the Plaza Branch of the Kansas City Public Library and an office tower. That tower brought jobs, most of them from law firm Husch Blackwell; however, most weren’t new jobs but instead workers from the firm’s former location in Crown Center.

Another TIF project on the Plaza: Kirkwood, a luxury condominium tower. That

oliticians and economic-development professionals like to say the public doesn’t understand tax-increment financing. But it’s a pretty simple concept to grasp.

Let’s say you own an undeveloped parcel of land in midtown Kansas City, one that is assessed $10,000 in property tax. Your $10,000 property-tax bill breaks down like this (and for the sake of simplicity, we’re ignoring replacement taxes, communityimprovement districts, etc., and focusing on major taxing jurisdictions): • $6,164 to Kansas City Public Schools • $1,990 to Kansas City, Missouri • $640 to Jackson County • $623 to the Kansas City Public Library • $296 to Metropolitan Community College

• $152 to the mental-health levy • $94 to the Board of Disabled Services • $38 to the blind pension fund Your property is zoned for commercial use, and you’d like to develop it into a shopping district. So you request and receive TIF. Within a year, your lot that’s full of weeds becomes a gleaming new development. Jackson County looks at what’s there now and decides that the property is worth $100,000 in taxes. But because you used TIF to develop the property, your tax disbursements broken out above remain the same for the next 23 years.

If you’d built your development without TIF, then the school district would receive $61,640 from taxes assessed on your property. But because you used TIF, the district

receives the old amount: $6,164. That’s because TIF captures 100 percent of new property taxes in a TIF district and redirects the proceeds to the development itself.

In this case, you subtract $6,164 from the $61,640, which gives you $55,476. That’s the amount of “new taxes” that your development created, which you can use to pay off eligible costs on your project.

Repeat the same scenario with all the taxing jurisdictions and you end up with $96,137 in TIF that you can use each year to fund certain project costs.

Now, your new development has created jobs. Let’s say 50 people work there, each with an average salary of $50,000. TIF captures half of the economic-activity taxes (EATs) generated by a TIF project and re-

directs the funds back to the development.

Kansas City’s 1 percent earnings tax counts as an EAT. So one employee making $50,000 generates $500 in earnings taxes. Multiply that by the number of employees (50) and you get $25,000 in earnings taxes generated by your project. Because you have TIF, half of that ($12,500) goes back to your project each year, and the other half goes to City Hall.

Sales taxes are EATs, too. If your project generates $50,000 in nonstate sales taxes each year, the same amount as your earnings taxes ($12,500) goes back to your project.

So in all, your development generates an annual $146,137 to pay off your project over 23 years (in a wildly simplistic scenario where wages and employees and sales taxes never change). Pretty favorable for you.

— S.V.

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upside-down land continued from page 7 reshaped skylines is all but impossible for politicians to turn down. Developers understand this — especially here, where TIF is rubber-stamped almost every time it’s requested.

TIF deserves credit for refashioning downtown Kansas City. A similar sprucing up is under way now on the Bannister Mall site, with cranes positioned to start work on the first two buildings of the Cerner campus (where 3,500 employees will work).

The Cerner TIF directs all new taxes — property and economic-activity — in the Bannister Mall development area back to the company to assist with costs.

But the tool has also had the tendency to not perform to expectations. More often used in tonier enclaves of Kansas City than in poorer ones, it can divert millions from school districts, libraries and municipal budgets.

Tif explained

P

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$17 million project was able to leverage $12 million from TIF.

T

IF has been a useful tool in redeveloping languishing parts of Kansas City’s urban core.

The Midtown TIF, for example, replaced dilapidated, crime-ridden housing along Main Street and Linwood Boulevard with a suburban-type shopping district anchored

by Costco and Home Depot. (The TIF also includes the Sun Fresh-anchored shopping center in Westport.) The TIF cleared truly blighted property, provided employment opportunities for inner city job seekers, and developed or rehabbed single-family housing nearby.

It’s one of former Kansas City Councilman Jim Glover’s favorite topics.

“The idea was, we use TIF to create housing in the area so more people would shop at the shopping center,” he tells The Pitch.

“More people would use the Home Depot, and more people would use the Sun Fresh.

The market is constantly rebuilding itself.

There are more people living in midtown because of the housing program off the shopping center than ever before. That means the sales [at the shopping center] are higher.”

Other TIFs, particularly Northland projects like the Shoal Creek TIF and the Kansas City International Airport Corridor TIF, count as successes. But some that haven’t panned out are noteworthy for adding expense atop failure.

The Prospect North TIF, an 80-acre mixeduse development proposed in Clay County, never got off the ground. Eventually, the developer sued Kansas City, which agreed to settle the case for $6 million.

Kansas City also settled a lawsuit over a failed TIF project at 63rd Street and Prospect, the infamous Citadel project. That settlement was for $15 million, though the TIF Commission took title to the property.

S

teven Potter, the director of the MidContinent Public Library, says he spends too much time dealing with TIF. Potter represents his library district in TIF Commission meetings, not only in Kansas City but also in any other city within MidContinent’s boundaries that administers the incentive.

A TIF commission — an 11-member board in any city that offers TIF — vets developers’ proposals and then makes recommendations to the city council, which has final say. The boards all share a built-in imbalance: Six of the members are appointed by the mayor of the city, whereas school districts and counties have two members each. A last member represents libraries and other smaller taxing jurisdictions.

Potter voted on the Bannister Mall redevelopment three separate times. He says he

voted in favor of the Cerner redevelopment because it included what’s called a Super TIF, a financing arrangement that redirects not only 100 percent of property taxes but also 100 percent of economic-activity taxes to a project rather than just 50 percent. Under Super TIF, cities have more at stake because more of their revenue goes into a project.

“The thing that made me feel good about this — if you can feel good — is everyone was all in because it was a Super TIF,” Potter says. He adds that the aggregate effect of TIF on Mid-Continent means that about $3 million in tax revenue which would go to his library district gets redirected to development projects. For a library, $3 million isn’t insignificant.

“Frankly, money like that would probably allow us to operate longer, would have allowed us to give our employees pay raises over the last couple of years, let us look at approving our buildings without taking out bonds,” he says.

Taxing jurisdictions such as libraries and schools exist in constant tension with TIF. Dennis Carpenter, superintendent of the Hickman Mills School District, said on an episode of KCPT Channel 19’s Kansas City Week In Review earlier this year that economic development was one of the bigger ongoing challenges facing his school district.

With respect to the Bannister Mall redevelopment, he said: “We’re excited to have Cerner as a neighbor, and they are going to do great things for our students with partnerships and the like. But at the end of the day, we’re a school district with $66 million in deferred maintenance that’s out there. And Cerner — over the life of the TIF, conservative numbers tell us they’re going to abate $400 million in taxes.”

Cerner says it’s mindful of this effect. To assuage concerns, the company has earmarked $8 million for a community-improvement fund, $6 million of which would go to Hickman Mills for general use and for careerpreparation programs.

Potter says discussions have taken place in recent years to determine whether there’s a way to make TIF more equitable between cities and other taxing jurisdictions. A working group during the past two years floated the idea that taxing jurisdictions would get to start with a 50 percent diversion of their future tax revenues instead of the full 100 percent. That would make things relatively equal with cities.

Potter says Kansas City representatives stood in the way.

“The most interesting thing that happened when we proposed that was one of the representatives from the city said, ‘We can’t do that. We’re putting our money at risk,’” Potter recalls. “I said, ‘Welcome to the party, pal. That’s what we’ve been living with for 30 years.’”

E-mail steve.vockrodt@pitch.com continued on page 10

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THE PITCH

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t s e v r a H Bitter

By Mike M cGraw

K

ansas Gov. Sam Brownback this past Sunday renewed his call for other states to follow Kansas’ lead and adopt sweeping welfare reforms.

He and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez signed a Washington Times op-ed urging fellow governors to reinstate work requirements — widely relaxed during the recession — for low-income families seeking food assistance.

The Sunflower State’s march to “end government dependency” has been under way for some time. In April this year, Brownback signed one of the most restrictive welfarereform bills in the nation. And he called on other states to follow suit and “promote selfreliance,” in part by barring welfare recipients from spending on such things as ocean cruises and lingerie.

Missouri and 24 other states were already making similar efforts, using similar tactics.

But while lawmakers made a very public display of barring welfare-funded purchases at Victoria’s Secret, a torrent of tax breaks and government subsidies was quietly flowing to wealthy businesses and farmers — including more than $1 million to Brownback and his family since 1995.

Those payments get a fraction of the rigorous oversight that Kansas and Missouri politicians have devoted recently to a few welfare cheats, says Philip Mattera. He’s research director for Good Jobs First, a policy think tank that, according to its website, compiles data “promoting corporate and government accountability in economic development.”

“It’s been a perennial issue and a matter of concern,” Mattera says.

That’s not to say big money doesn’t leak

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from the multibillion-dollar welfare pipeline.

Fraud, waste and mismanagement have always plagued the system. Many on welfare acknowledge that they cheat or know someone who does. Some who cheat are simply playing the system; others say their benefits are so low that they have no choice.

That’s why advocates have long pushed to reboot America’s outdated approach to poverty, with its flawed assumptions and antiquated data. The income guideline defining poverty in the United States dates back to the 1940s, and many services for the poor are still based on multiples of that guideline.

For example, free legal services are available in Missouri to those making up to 125 percent of the poverty limit. For a family of three, that limit is a gross annual income of $20,090, or $1,674 a month, to house, feed and clothe three persons. Someone wanting legal assistance in, say, a landlord dispute, could make no more than $2,092 a month.

“It is ridiculous to believe someone making more than that can actually afford to pay a lawyer out of their own pocket,” says Janice Franklin, who retired recently as the managing attorney at Legal Aid of Western Missouri’s Joplin office.

But the Show-Me and Sunflower states don’t have legal aid in mind when they crack down on the poor. Lawmakers instead insist that welfare recipients are blowing their state dollars on booze and other verboten purchases — and they’re determined to put a stop to it.

To accomplish this, legislators in both states have targeted beneficiaries of one of the best-known poverty programs: Tempo-

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rary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF. It helps support about 1.6 million families nationwide, the vast majority of them headed by single mothers. Its benefits are usually less than $400 a month and are available only to the poorest of the poor — people with earnings far below the poverty cutoff line. In Kansas, a single mother with two children cannot qualify for TANF if she makes more than $518 a month. In Missouri, the cutoff is $540.

You’d think that the fuss over TANF would be related to rampant fraud or an overcrowded roster of recipients. But, thanks in part to evertightening eligibility guidelines, TANF spending on cash assistance to families with children is actually way down nationwide, including around here. In 2005, the average monthly number of Kansas TANF recipients (total persons, not families) was 44,681. By this year, that number had dropped to about 15,000.

Kansas-administered TANF now helps support fewer than 6,000 families (including 10,000 children and 3,300 adults), a 20-year low. There are 25,000 TANF households in Missouri (about 42,000 children and 18,000 adults).

The lower numbers have, in fact, created a sort of windfall for states like Kansas and Missouri.

Because federal block grants have remained steady, even as fewer families have qualified for TANF, states have been diverting up to two-thirds of their TANF grants to other noncash state programs meant to help the poor, such as child care and child welfare.

This could potentially free up state dollars for other purposes, such as filling huge gaps in state budgets. Indeed, federal auditors say TANF has evolved into a “flexible funding

stream” that has outrun their ability to ad- vapor ciga equately monitor how states use all those ets, fortun federal dollars. cruises, b What’s more, federal rules allow states piercings. like Kansas and Missouri — states with fewer money at TANF recipients — to spend less money over- video arc all on welfare-to-work programs. parks, eith In 2001, Kansas spent 5 percent of its fed- ference of eral TANF money on work-related activities, Kansas lis according to an analysis by the Center on other state Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan Some s research group working to reduce poverty. and elsewh (Missouri’s spending on those activities fell 2012 fede from 12 percent in 2001 to 4 percent in 2013.) whether s According to the center’s analysis, which interested uses the states’ own data, total work-related ing agains spending on Kansas TANF recipients dropped “No on to just 3 percent in 2013. thing,” sa That makes Kansas one of just 14 states at the Pub spending less than 5 percent of its federal ring cruise TANF block grant on putting welfare recipi- a rhetorica ents to work — the very reason that legislators The rea say they passed reform efforts in the first of the HOP place.

TANF elig Kansas officials slice that pie a little difAs for f ferently, however. A spokeswoman for the the free fa Kansas Department for Children and Fami- state data lies says the agency is actually spending 45 act in the fi percent “more per client” on work-related by a conse activities than it did in 2006. that only 3 Both statements are probably true, says three-mon Liz Schott, a senior fellow with the Center on tially” que Budget and Policy Priorities’ Welfare Reform $45,000 o and Income Support Division. But she adds The fla that Kansas officials are “carefully picking ous $203 t their facts here.” Schott asks what happened the Power to all those former TANF beneficiaries who questiona are no longer eligible. She wonders if they got drawals fr jobs or if they’re now getting by with neither operation jobs nor TANF payments. expect to Kansas officials counter that they helped more than 6,000 welfare recipients get back to work last year. wo yea

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gation lead a char he new Kansas TANF restrictions were erally fun codified this spring in what state Repub- Supplemen licans call the HOPE Act (Hope, Opportunity commonly and Prosperity for Everyone), which Brown- numbers w back signed in April. about food One provision — since dropped because and lobste it went awry of federal rules — would have At $75 b barred TANF recipients from withdrawing up the lar more than $25 at a time using their electronic year Farm benefit cards. ers, such a As Kansas author Sarah Smarsh notes in a the form o July post on The New Yorker website, that in But in M turn would have enriched a private company — and, esp that charges Kansas welfare recipients up to gets turne $1 for each transaction (plus ATM fees that states hav average another $3). “It’s hard to think of a compared more twisted irony than a corporate welfare Kansas recipient being paid by state government to stamp exp oversee a single mother’s access to public fiscal year assistance funds,” Smarsh writes. federal su Still in place in the HOPE Act reforms is a nearly $1 b long list of prohibited purchases that includes Since 1 gambling, guns, dirty movies (and sexually senator an oriented adult materials), alcohol, cigarettes, about $50,

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11 vapor cigarettes, lottery tickets, concert tickets, fortune-telling, sporting events, ocean cruises, bail bonds, tattoos, massages and piercings. Kansans can’t spend their TANF money at nail salons, spas, lingerie stores, video arcades, swimming pools or theme parks, either. A survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures shows that the Kansas list of no-nos is longer by far than any other state’s.

Some state restrictions passed in Kansas and elsewhere were already prohibited under 2012 federal rules, raising the question of whether state legislatures have been more interested in political posturing than guarding against cheating.

“No one disagrees that fraud is a bad thing,” says Patti Prunhuber, a staff lawyer at the Public Interest Law Project, “but barring cruises and swimming seems to me like a rhetorical solution in search of a problem.”

The really important and unfortunate part of the HOPE Act, she adds, is that it reduces TANF eligibility to three years.

As for fraud, it has plummeted alongside the free fall in total number of recipients. The state data that spurred Kansas lawmakers to act in the first place— analyzed and published by a conservative watchdog group — show that only 3 percent of all transactions over a three-month period in 2012 went for “potentially” questionable purchases. That’s about $45,000 out of $1.5 million.

The flagged transactions included a dubious $203 transaction at Johnny’s Tavern, in the Power & Light District. Also counted as questionable, however, was $8,578 in withdrawals from cash-advance and payday-loan operations — places where the state should expect to find people down on their luck.

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wo years ago, the U.S. congressional delegations from Missouri and Kansas helped lead a charge to cut spending for another federally funded welfare program: SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), commonly referred to as food stamps. SNAP numbers were swelling, and anecdotal stories about food-stamp recipients dining on steak and lobster abounded.

At $75 billion–$80 billion a year, SNAP eats up the largest portion of the $100 billion-ayear Farm Bill. Much of the rest goes to farmers, such as those in the Brownback clan, in the form of crop subsidies and insurance.

But in Midwestern states such as Missouri — and, especially, Kansas — the arithmetic gets turned on its head. That’s because both states have relatively few SNAP recipients compared with the number of farmers.

Kansas ranks 36th among states for foodstamp expenditures, about $395 million in fiscal year 2014, but sixth in the amount of federal subsidies paid annually to farmers — nearly $1 billion.

Since 1995, Brownback — as both a U.S. senator and now a governor — has collected about $50,000 in sorghum, wheat and conser-

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback vation subsidies for his farm in Linn County.

His father and a brother have received a total of $605,000 over the same period.

His office did not return an e-mail asking for Brownback’s opinion as to whether farm and corporate subsidies get adequate oversight compared with welfare payments.

No one knows for sure how much fraud there is in either program. But some research suggests that fraud in farm subsidies and subsidized crop insurance far outpaces foodstamp fraud.

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, wonders how farm subsidies are still justified when net farm income recently hit a 40-year high. “The biggest scandal with farm subsidies is that they exist at all,” reads a 2009 Cato report.

Farmers, however, are pikers compared with corporate subsidies and tax breaks handed out in Missouri and Kansas.

From 2010 to 2014, for example, Kansas issued $370 million in state grants that allow employers who create new jobs to keep as much as 95 percent of their workers’ state income taxes for up to 10 years. Wichita-based Koch Industries — whose chief owners, David and Charles Koch, backed corporate tax breaks that have left Kansas with a $700 million budget deficit — also has a prominent place at the corporate trough. Data and published reports show that, over the past 15 years, Koch Industries and its subsidiaries have benefited from more than $166 million in tax breaks and subsidies.

Getting a real count on the additional jobs that those subsidies helped create is another matter. But that doesn’t appear to have gotten anywhere near the scrutiny that has surrounded food stamps and cash assistance in recent years.

“The poor could certainly avoid some of their problems with more sacrificial conduct, like avoiding cigarettes and beer,” says one advocate, a lawyer who represents poor clients. “But until you’ve been there, until you’ve been side by side with it, it’s hard to say. Given the graft and corruption among the wealthy, who am I to say?”

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Our location is a two-story studio with three control rooms, one video editing room, three recording isolation booths, two large recording rooms, a CYC film stage (with green, white and blue backdrops), and one video screening room. There is ample space for any sized band, and the ability to run multiple sessions simultaneously. We’re located in the heart of Kansas City’s young and vibrant Westport community, Los Angeles, Nashville, Atlanta, Seattle, Miami and New York. With this great coverage we’re everywhere the industry is for maximum effectiveness, and to reach & meet client needs.

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13 WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 3-9, 2015

Among September 4’s First Friday art is this photo by Dominik Zaugg. See our Hit List on page 17, and find the rest of our events listings on page 26. pitch.com

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shop girl

West x West

West End Salvage sets up shop inside Good Ju Ju’s West Bottoms space.

From left: Hal Davis, Don Short and Joe Davis at their shop

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on Short still isn’t used to people asking for his autograph. Two years after his reality show, West End Salvage, began appearing on HGTV and the DIY Network, he often notices people noticing him, as well as Joe and Hal Davis, the two brothers who work with him at his 50,000-square-foot antiques warehouse, West End Architectural Salvage, in Des Moines, Iowa.

“What do you do with an autograph, any

way?” he asked. “Just because we’re on TV doesn’t make us special. We’re just regular guys.”

In early August, these regular guys started a pop-up shop inside Good Ju Ju (1420 West 13th Terrace), the eclectic West Bottoms antique store that opens only First Friday weekends. When I met up with Short and the Davis brothers at Good Ju Ju on a Thursday afternoon, the three men had just finished unloading their goods and were beginning to tag each item — and there was still plenty to be done. They seemed tired but excited to

be expanding to Kansas City, where they’re planning to operate their Good Ju Ju satellite shop each month for the foreseeable future.

Short said he was looking forward to drinking some of our “cool beer,” and Hal said the West Bottoms has a good vibe. When I asked if they loved the Royals (even though the most exciting part of that particular afternoon’s game had been left fielder Ben Zobrist trying to wrangle a rogue squirrel that wandered onto the field), I got a couple of halfhearted shrugs.

They don’t need to know about baseball.

By

A ngel A l u t z

Their specialty is reclaimed and recycled items from New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, England and the Middle East.

Short has been collecting the pieces himself and purchasing from other collectors since he began renovating properties full time in 2004.

Many of their items for sale feature repurposed tiles, which have been used to refurbish tabletops and frame mirrors, and to dress up jumbo numbers and letters into gorgeous artifacts of personal expression. Other items include light fixtures, picture frames, glass jars and, oddly, metal turn-of-the-century leg braces.

“You want to try them on?” Short asked.

I said yes, but he was joking, which is something that these three do a lot. Case in point: When I asked if I could take their picture, Short asked if I preferred their shirts on or off.

With their affable demeanor and often surprising humor, it’s easy to see why these regular guys have been such a TV hit. They should also be popular on First Fridays.

When I told them that Kansas City’s monthly celebration of art and music shuts down several city blocks for a giant street party, they looked impressed. Short said they were happy to be a part of it.

“Come see us this weekend,” he added.

Then Short and the Davises got back to work.

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Three ways to show your love for the home team.

Eat at Empanada Madness.

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here’s something mystical — and weird — about America’s pastime. It’s one of the few sports that inspires grown men to earnestly discuss “the baseball gods” on a live radio broadcast or openly admit to wearing the same pair of yellow pants to every home game in order to please said gods.

Even talking about luck and jinxes can be enough to incur the wrath of these fickle deities, so I will do nothing of the sort. Instead, here are a few ways to show your love for the Royals as they start their sprint toward October.

If you follow fun-loving Royals catcher Salvador Perez on Instagram (if you don’t, you should), you’ve probably heard of Empanada Madness (906 Southwest Boulevard). It’s Salvy’s favorite spot to savor the flavors of his native Venezuela. The South American restaurant serves classic dishes such as hallacas (Venezuelan tamales), arepas (stuffed corn cakes) and fried plantains, as well as menu items named for Perez and fellow Venezuelans Omar Infante and Alcides Escobar.

Listen to Tech N9ne.

Lorenzo Cain might have given everyone in town 17–38 reasons to download Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen,” but Eric Hosmer is drawing attention to a local rap dignitary. This summer, Kauffman Stadium has blared Tech N9ne’s “Hood Go Crazy” every time Hoz comes to the plate, prompting thousands of Royals

fans to put down their nacho helmets and sing along.

Get your hands on some baseball memorabilia.

If you want some old-timey baseball flair, West Bottoms antique shop Good Ju Ju (1420 West 13th Terrace) has got you covered. One booth is packed with turn-of-the-century photographs and gloves that do not look like they could safely stop one of Kelvin Herrera’s 100 mph fastballs. I also found metal “Straight Outta Kauffman” cutouts that will add a little swagger to any living-room wall, and engraved Royals and Chiefs necklaces made of flattened silver spoons.

Just down the street, grab a copy of The Night the World Turned Royal Blue at Restoration Emporium (1300 Liberty). The charming children’s book, by local author Jason Sivewright, details the Royals’ improbable transformation from hopeless losers to home-

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town heroes. I bought the book for my godson; if that kid doesn’t become a Royals fan, I’ll feel like a failure. The classy vintage store also has sleek Kauffman Stadium refrigerator magnets and a selection of locally made shirts.

Finally, River Market Antiques (115 West Fifth Street) is worth the drive downtown. I had to browse a bit but found some surprising treasures. My favorites: a 1980 World Series yearbook and a Royals team cookbook from 1969, the year the team was founded.

Thanks to the latter, I know Ewing Kauffman’s recipe for cashew-beef casserole and how to make (then minor leaguer) Paul Splittorff’s banana-nut bread. There’s also pitcher Tom Burgmeier’s Italian meatballs and sauce, though I’m not sure I’d trust a recipe from a man who claims that he’ll eat anything “that doesn’t bite me first.”

Then again, sometimes you’ve got to take one for the team.

— A.L.

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art

two by two

R

emember Y2K? Kelly and David Kuhn do. The couple used the turn of the century and its millennial anxiety as their cue to open Blue Gallery (118 Southwest Boulevard), which, over the past 15 years, has become a staple destination for local art. For this month’s First Friday (6–9 p.m. September 4), the featured exhibition at Blue zeroes in on KOLLABS, the partnership of Luis GarciaNerey and Anke Schofield. The pair’s Royal Garden is a series of paintings of animals and people involved in open-ended narratives, sometimes in domestic environments.

Meaning antlered, feathered or furry creatures perching on luggage or settled under chandeliers. It’s almost like what doomsayers envisioned back in 1999.

A new neighbor to Blue, Weinberger Fine Art (114 Southwest Boulevard), presents a different two-person show: Ebb & Flow, by Ruth Borum-Loveland and Debbie Barrett-Jones. Both women use a meditative process to make sense of the chaos of life through their art. Barrett-Jones is a master of woven textiles, whereas BorumLoveland works in pen, photocopies, paint and wood-burnings, making microscopically detailed forms through a calculated series of manipulations.

Another interesting pairing is on view at the Late Show (1600 Cherry), where the figurative paintings of Adolfo Martinez meet the nonrepresentational color-block paintings of Laura Nugent. Martinez is well-known for his “sofa” paintings, originally a joking response to the classic TV ads trumpeting convention-center pileups of “starving artists.” Today, those works show just one way in which he puts Mexican and other cultural

signifiers in front of viewers. Nugent, meanwhile, has stopped inserting birds and other forms into her many-layered and long-built works, leaving pattern and color to deep appreciation and inspection.

There’s a more direct interpretation of nature in two unrelated photography shows.

Gallery 504 (504 East 18th Street) is showing Gary Alanko, who visits from the Northwest to mingle for First Friday, amid music by Daniel Hamilton (5–9:30 p.m.). Alanko’s skill lies in capturing a sense of place, such as the Columbia River Gorge, and teasing the light to convey much more than a merely beautiful, postcard-ready shot. And at Boveri Realty (1819 Wyandotte, second floor), Swissborn Dominik Zaugg presents a selection of bright, professional photographs showing what he calls “the changing nature of our world.” These include scenes from our city as well as from the West Coast, where he traveled last year. Zaugg has called Kansas City home for the past decade, though he has been to 40 countries. He speaks seven languages — not counting his nonverbal gift for visually interpreting what most of us take for granted.

The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center (2012 Baltimore) continues Onward: Kansas City Art Institute Foundation 50th Anniversary Exhibition, featuring works by as many foundation class teachers as could be mustered.

Among the 60 or so: Brett Reif, who also has a stellar, short-term show on view at the University of Kansas’ Art & Design Gallery.

New to Leedy-Voulkos this month is Taylor White, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran from Quantico, Virginia, who can be filed under “emerging artist” but whose intense

September’s First Friday

By

T r a c y a bel n

is full of intriguing pairs.

life experiences have already yielded very moving and technically accomplished works.

Front/Space (217 West 18th Street) is offering something completely different: time travel. No joke — and no prior experience necessary. Arrive between 7 and 10 p.m. and learn how to do it from Zanzibar Dior, who studied with the late Sandy Weymouth and now travels the country teaching small groups. What do you have to lose?

September’s other notable shows include, at Beggars Table (2010 Baltimore), Image of Now in Fresh Paint by Trudi Burns, who makes screen-size shots of familiar objects such as coffee cups and cupcakes on a table. At Vulpes Bastille (1737 Locust), there’s a collaborative exhibition from Tobias Fike and Matthew Weedman. Titled The Space Between, it unites their shared love of outer space and investigates the unknown through photography, sound, video and sculpture. (From their respective homes of Colorado and Indiana, the between is Kansas City.) Todd Weiner Gallery (115 West 18th

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Clockwise from left: “Pulled Through” by Barrett-Jones; “Untitled” by Taylor White; “Untitled” (video still) by Tobias Fike Street) hosts a reception for Olga Hotujac, a Russian impressionist showing Home and Away.

Missouri Bank Crossroads (125 Southwest Boulevard) hosts Other Worlds, collaborations in pigment between Lori Raye Erickson and Christel Highland. And a husband-andwife team have a show together in two venues: Visceral by Alisa Ross and D. Ross (known as “Scribe”) focuses on the concept of beauty and repulsion and what’s underneath the surface, with half at Fraction Gallery (130 West 18th Street) and the other half at Windhorse Gallery (1717 Wyandotte).

Grand Arts (1819 Grand) hosts a closing reception 6–9 p.m. Friday for A Universe of Collisions, which closes Saturday. It marks Grand Arts’ last show.

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police academy 1-7 ThouSandS of VoiceS

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confess I’m biased: I’ve always loved West Side Story. Fortunately for me — and for anyone else who cherishes the 1957 musical — Spinning Tree directors Andy Parkhurst and Michael Grayman do, too.

They met while appearing in a European tour of West Side Story in 1998. Grayman had worked under original choreographer and director Jerome Robbins (who won a Tony for this work) and Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book. They have both performed Robbins’ steps, and now they’ve largely re-created them in Spinning Tree’s fresh, vibrant and timely revival. I had worried that, almost six decades on, a show about ’50s-era gangs would feel dated. But any concern was unfounded. I laughed. I cried. I struggled not to sing along.

Leonard Bernstein’s jazzy, syncopated score — influenced by his symphonic background — played in a continuous loop in my head following Spinning Tree’s show, making me want to reprise the choreography myself.

Good sense prevailed — I didn’t — but that’s the effect that this intimate, dance-filled musical had on me.

Laurents’ script and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics (WSS was Sondheim’s Broadway debut) weave social statement into a tale that strongly parallels Romeo and Juliet. Bernstein’s distinctive compositions rhythmically balance those Shakespearean forces of attraction and opposition.

The enmity involves two gangs: the white Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks. No one talks of building a wall to keep people out, but the resentment toward immigrants will sound familiar to anyone paying attention to current politics. The rivals’ sit-down “war council” may seem quaint in the age of the drive-by shooting, but the gang members’

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West Side Story Through September 5 Spinning Tree Theatre, at the Arts Asylum, 1000 East Ninth Street, 816-569-5277, spinningtreetheatre.com knives and street fights remain real-world alarming — a credit to the cast members’ depictions of tough. The police, too, display menace and prejudice. “I’ve got the badge, you’ve got the skin,” Lt. Schrank (a very good Kevin Fewell) says to Sharks leader Bernardo (Donovan Woods, excellent), who responds by whistling an ironic “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” There’s comic relief, too. Trevor Belt’s more bumbling cop gets serenaded in “Gee, Officer Krupke,” whose lyrics still resonate.

But it’s the force of attraction that’s at the heart of this musical, which is a love story — a tragic love story, but one that’s also laced with humor. The show’s hero is Tony (Jacob Aaron Cullum, in a standout performance).

He has given up the gang life, to the consternation of his friend, Jets leader Riff (Daniel Parman, also good). “Without a gang, you’re an orphan,” he tells Tony, who reluctantly agrees to attend that night’s big dance.

Cullum’s beautiful “Something’s Coming” foreshadows his meetup with Maria (a perfect Megan Herrera), a recent immigrant who is all innocence and longing. His lovely “Maria” tells us later just how he feels.

No shots are fired at the gathering, but there’s little mixing, either. Bernardo and his girl, Anita (Vanessa Severo), make an entrance that exudes chemistry. The women attached to both gangs aren’t mere decoration but a force all their own, particularly Severo in this supporting but significant role. Onpoint and charismatic, she leads a rousing

From left: Severo (in red dress) leads Shark Girls in “America”; Herrera and Cullum find love at first sight.

“America” with Rosalia (a strong Shon Ruffin) and the other “Shark Girls”: Kyra Weinberger, Tiffany Powell, Jodi Pyltsov and Rebecca Carroll. Meanwhile, Tony and Maria have left the party to cement the deal in their balcony scene, a tenement on Manhattan’s West Side.

We know the path this story takes, yet its details reward. And this production is filled with more noteworthy performances than I can mention: Cullum and Herrera’s “One Hand, One Heart”; Severo and Herrera’s “A Boy Like That” and “I Have a Love”; Kip Niven, as Doc, who runs the drugstore where Tony works and the Jets congregate; Kenneth Personett as Action, a leading member of the Jets; and Daria LeGrand, who does good work here as a tomboy who just wants to be accepted.

It isn’t perfect. The music sometimes overpowers the voices; seating occasionally restricts the view, including at crucial moments; and the balcony scene at times feels off-pace, a little rushed here, slower there. But these distractions don’t diminish the edge-of-theseat tension and enthralling action; the fine ensemble performances; the depth achieved with lighting (by Sean Glass), blocking and, of course, choreography (including the fights,

by Samantha Barboza); and the distinctive music, played here by a nine-piece orchestra — percussion, woodwind, strings and horns (conducted by pianist Gary Green).

It’s a captivating show whose main drawbacks really are these: The play comes to an end, and the production itself closes soon.

E-mail deborah.hirsch@pitch.com

19

FAT C I T Y

small tables, big plans

Howard’s Grocery opens, and Dojo Kenichi stays mysterious.

By

Charles Ferruzza

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raig Howard thinks he makes the best cheeseburger in Kansas City.

It’s too soon to say, but I can tell you that it’s very good. And Howard has put in enough hours to justify some bragging.

The 34-year-old entrepreneur has spent most of a year turning the long-vacant former auto garage at 1708 Oak into a combination market, lunch café and catering kitchen.

(He owns the business with Cory Imig and has hired general manager Allison Muller.)

Wednesday, September 2, he unveils Howard’s Grocery, Café & Catering with a soft opening and a limited menu. When the business officially opens the next day, the chalkboard mounted near the cash register will show more options, including daily specials.

Naturally, those specials will change often, but Howard says the menu will always feature his distinctive burger: two patties of grilled beef from Golden Rule Meats in Walker, Missouri; two slices of his house-made American cheese; pea shoots; a sauce made with house-made mayonnaise, ketchup, organic Worcestershire sauce and pickling juice; pickled vegetables; and organic tomatoes. A Farm to Market potato bun holds it all together.

The other constants on the menu: a veggie burger, two kinds of salads and a pasta selection. Howard is very big these days on his own ravioli, stuffed with golden chanterelles, coated with a pea-shoot pesto and set in fresh tomato “Sunday sauce.” It’s delicious.

When Howard’s operation is up and run-

ning, he’ll serve food from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Wednesday through Friday (with Tuesdays added before the end of the year). First Fridays, he says, he’ll serve burgers until 9 p.m.

“We’ve got ideas for special-event dinners that we’ll be hosting from time to time,” he adds.

“As long as we can fit it around our catering business.”

Howard’s catering clientele is the main reason that his storefront is closed Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. He designed his open kitchen so that he can effectively use it for both a weekday lunch café and a commercial catering kitchen. During the week, customers will be able to e-mail their lunch orders to the café and pick them up later.

The third component of the new business might be his most ambitious: a 24-hour market, selling locally sourced organic food and running on the honor system. Members of his market who have paid the $60 annual fee will use an access code, allowing them to shop at any hour. Those who shop after-hours will fill out their own sales tickets, which will be entered into a computer system the following day.

There’s not a lot of seating in this operation. A 12-seat communal table, made of reclaimed wood, dominates the dining area.

Howard figures that much of his lunch business will be takeout, sold to office workers in the surrounding neighborhood. A grab-andgo refrigerated section will feature salads, sandwiches and side dishes.

Howard’s Grocery and Café serves a very good burger (inset).

There seems to be plenty of afternoon street parking on this stretch of Oak Street, and Howard says the city has plans to add back-in spaces.

WALDO

D

on’t ask if you can still purchase a ticket to the first dinner of chef Kenneth E. Booth’s pop-up project. The 10-course meal sold out almost as soon as he announced it on the Dojo Kenichi Facebook page.

Space, you see, was very limited.

“There are only eight seats for the first dinner,” Booth says.

The term dojo kenichi translates roughly as “the house of learning for the wise one.”

It’s an apt name for a venture by an accomplished kitchen hand who’s ready to add to his knowledge. Booth, who started his local culinary career at the Farmhouse six years ago, quickly moved up from grill cook to chef de cuisine, and he recently stepped down from that full-time position to take a part-time role as the restaurant’s butcher and prep cook.

“I had talked to the owner of the Farmhouse, Michael Foust, in July, about going part time,” he tells me. “If I’m going to focus on opening my own restaurant, I wasn’t going to be able to put in the time that the chef de cuisine position continued on page 20

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the pitch

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the pitch

S E P T E M B E R 3 - 9, 2 0 1 5

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continued from page 19 requires. This gives me more time to create the kind of restaurant that I want.”

Dojo Kenichi, for instance.

Booth has been a fan of Japanese cooking and culture since he was a child, when his father, an officer in the U.S. Marines, was stationed in Okinawa. “We were invited to the home of my father’s friend for a traditional family dinner,” Booth says. That led to the boy’s first taste of sushi. “That night is still one of my fondest memories.”

Inspired by that formative experience, Booth wants Dojo Kenichi to feel like a memorable dinner in a private home. His first popup was priced at a memorable $108 a person, and those seats went fast.

Despite the Dojo Kenechi name, Booth says his pop-ups won’t focus exclusively on Japanese cuisine. “My background is in both Japanese and French cooking,” he says. “I want to use both those influences as well as the ability to use the bounty of produce and meats from the Midwest.”

The second Dojo Kinechi is tentatively scheduled for October. As with the first, its location won’t be announced at fi rst. “I’m keeping it a mystery as I get my name out there,” Booth says. “I’m going to focus on the pop-up restaurants for the next six to eight months as a way of getting my name and my ideas out there. I’m thinking of offering carryout Bento-box lunches next year, too.”

Eventually, he adds, he’ll lease a restaurant space. His ideal location, he says, would be in Columbus Park “or another up-and-coming neighborhood.” He hasn’t decided whether to join the recent ranks of crowdfunding ventures. “I’m thinking about it as a way of funding renovation or repairs for the space that I eventually lease,” he says. “But my business plan is very simple.”

The space, too, sounds simple: a reservation-only venue with just one table.

“It’s all about the spirit of community,” Booth says. “I want to open the restaurant in a true community and make dining with

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4

Tasting, at Brookside Wine & Spirits (600 E. 63rd St.), 5–7 p.m.

Tallgrass tasting , at Gomer’s (12740 W. 87th St. Pkwy., Lenexa), 4–6 p.m.

Cinder Block deck party, at Gomer’s (201 S.E. Hwy. 291, Lee’s Summit), 5–7 p.m.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5

Festival of the Lost Township, at Crane Brewing Co. (E. 62nd St. and Raytown Rd., Raytown), $100 VIP, $35 GA, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.

A couple of things you need to know about Saturday’s Festival of the Lost Township.

Though Crane Brewing is hosting the Labor Day–weekend beer festival, the Raytown brewery won’t be pouring its beer. (Crane received federal approval of its brewer’s notice too late to pour.)

And the fest won’t be taking place at the still-under-construction brewery but at E. 62nd St. and Raytown Rd., in Raytown.

There are plenty of reasons to go, including an all-star lineup of chefs (Celina Tio, Michael Corvino, Howard Hanna, Ryan Brazeal, among them) and, of course, lots of good beer (4 Hands, Firestone Walker, Jolly Pumpkin and many more). VIP tickets cost $100 and GA is $35. Designated drivers get in free.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8

Tallgass tasting, at Rimann Liquors (3917 Prairie Ln., Prairie Village), 4:30– 6:30 p.m.

Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest release party, at Barley’s Brewhaus (16649 Midland Dr., Shawnee), 4:30–6:30 p.m., plus experimental Hop IPA on tap.

Sierra Nevada beer school, at Hy-Vee (1525 E. 23rd St. S., Independence), 5 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9

Tallgrass tasting, at Rimann Liquors (15117 W. 87th St. Pkwy., Lenexa), 4:30– 6:30 p.m.

Out now: North Peak Hooligan (hoppy

pumpkin ale) and Jolly Pumpkin La Parcela (sour pumpkin beer).

E-mail justin.kendall@pitch.com

21

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S E P T E M B E R 3 - 9, 2 0 1 5

THE PITCH

21

22

Music

ZACH BAUMAN

back to the well

I

’m a few minutes late meeting Chris Garibaldi at Parkville’s Bentley Guitar Studios, on that river town’s idyllic Main Street.

Garibaldi — lead singer, guitarist and occasional trombonist for the local rock band Suneaters — is perched on a bench inside the shop, teasing chords from an electric guitar.

He isn’t one to wait idly.

We move into Bentley’s acoustic room to talk, and Garibaldi, 44, perches on the edge of the stage. His day job, he tells me, is as a technology consultant, and he looks the part: tall, with thick-framed glasses and mad-scientist curls. He crosses one khaki-clad leg over the other and places his hands atop his knees, like a professor satisfied that he knows the answers. What he could teach, though, isn’t offered in school: fronting a rock band and running a record label.

Garibaldi’s easy disposition is part of what has made Lotuspool Records, the label he cofounded in 1992, a survivor. It has outlasted early signees: locally beloved acts such as Bully Pulpit, the Weightmen, Panel Donor, Zoom.

“We started the label when we were very young, and the bands that were on it were very young, too,” he tells me. “Back then, you could put out an indie record and get a lot of attention and press. At that time, there was a lot of support for indie music — and then Nirvana 22

the pitch

S E P T E M B E R 3 - 9, 2 0 1 5

Garibaldi is a master multitasker. hit, and that support was still there, but then all of a sudden a lot of other people started showing up. Major labels started making us offers, started making our bands offers, and people started to get a different perspective of what we were supposed to be doing.”

Lotuspool Showcase: Chris Cardwell, Heidi Lynn Gluck, and the Suneaters Thursday, September 3, at the Tank Room Around 2000, Lotuspool went on an unofficial hiatus. The label was never inactive, Garibaldi says, though by then he had amicably parted company with his co-founding friends, including Matt Hyde (who now owns the 715 restaurant in Lawrence). Garibaldi spent most of the early aughts living in Los Angeles.

“Lotuspool was always in my mind,” he says. “I just always figured that I’d get back to it when the dust sort of settled, and we could really make some decisions about how we could move forward.”

By 2011, a few years after Garibaldi relocated to Parkville, he and Scott Hartley — bass-

pitch.com

Chris Garibaldi revives his Lotuspool Records.

ist in the recently formed Suneaters — had forged a fresh vision for Lotuspool. In 2012, as the label marked its 20th anniversary, the two had begun brainstorming a comeback.

“I was on the periphery when he [Garibaldi] started Lotuspool 22 years ago,” Hartley tells me. “I always admired how dedicated he was to putting out his friends’ music, and it wasn’t half-assed. He’s one of those guys who executes on it. So we started discussing how we wanted to resuscitate the label and get some new artists and push it forward. I’ve always been the guy that’s relentlessly — sometimes obnoxiously — forced new music on him, so I might be more discerning and adventurous in terms of the artists we sign.”

“We’ve really tried to find a mixture of what we consider good music, which is not music of one particular style and typically not music that is the current style of the day,” Garibaldi says. “We like stuff that challenges the listener.”

Sure enough, the present-day Lotuspool roster has the feel of something handpicked — by a stubbornly idiosyncratic hand. Besides, of course, Suneaters (whose debut, Suneaters I, was released in 2011), are singer-songwriter Chris Cardwell (also the drummer for Suneaters), electric-guitar duo Hollow Body, Chicago’s Bully Pulpit and Lawrence folk-pop songstress Heidi Lynne Gluck. There’s also a smattering of other obscure and relatively inactive bands, including Zoom — which last released an album with Tim Kerr Records in 1994 — and Krafty Lovelordz, a high school band from Garibaldi’s Chicago adolescence.

“A lot of the things that we do are counterintuitive to running a label, like signing bands that don’t tour,” Garibaldi admits with a laugh.

“That’s not a good idea if you want to be a huge label. Signing bands that don’t usually stand up next to each other, bands that are uncommon, that’s not the way it’s done. But we haven’t made money in years, so we don’t really care.”

The point, Garibaldi insists throughout our conversation, is to support his artists and get their music into the world. And in Gluck, he and Hartley may at last have a defining figure for their label.

“The trick is that Heidi is very serious about having a career as a musician, and she deserves one,” Garibaldi says. “That’s one thing that’s really important for us: that we don’t underserve her or her talent. We want to make sure that Heidi Lynne Gluck has the musical career that she deserves because she’s so good, and we want to be tending to that like a good label should.”

In April, Lotuspool put out Gluck’s debut EP, The Only Girl in the Room, which is among the strongest local releases this year — one that sounds ready for a wider audience.

By

N ata l ie G a l l a Gher

“It was clear really fast that it was artists first across-the-board with Chris,” Gluck tells me. “It wasn’t so that I could be like, ‘Oh, I’m on such and such a label.’ I just wanted help to get these songs out, and it really seemed like he would be able to do that without a bunch of runaround. And he did. I would love to be heard more, and I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t be the people who could help me achieve that.”

Garibaldi has developed what now feels like an almost old-school tool to develop his acts: an in-house multimedia production team (helmed by Kansas filmmaker W. David Keith). People still make music videos, after all, and some go viral. And Lotuspool has three more releases slated for this year (one each from Matt Hyde, Bully Pulpit and Suneaters) and four already on the books for 2016.

“One of the mistakes we made as kids running the label was that we made a lot of shortterm decisions,” Garibaldi says. “We didn’t have foresight. We were too concerned about paychecks and debt. And now it’s like, ‘Let’s take the thing that we do well, which is to foster interesting music, and not worry about the little things.’ Let’s see if we might be able to figure out something that might make the music bigger. That’s the goal.”

E-mail natalie.gallagher@pitch.com

J a z z B e at PEtEr Martin, and thE JackiE allEn QuintEt, at thE BluE rooM

Thanks to the Arts Midwest Conference in Kansas City this week, the Blue Room offers a rare Wednesday-night show that features a couple of conference guests — including the esteemed pianist Peter Martin, who regularly travels with Grammy Award-winning jazz singer Dianne Reeves as music director. He has performed with Wynton Marsalis, the New York Philharmonic and at White House dinners. Wednesday, Martin will perform a solo piano set that will make you feel alive.

He’s followed by the Jackie Allen Quintet.

Allen, who is based in Nebraska, sings with a seductive sass and is unafraid to stretch and explore through a phrasing all her own.

At the Blue Room, it’s two world-class treats for a single cover.

— Larry Kopitnik Peter Martin, 9 p.m., and the Jackie Allen Quintet, 10 p.m. Wednesday, September 9, at the Blue Room, 1600 East 18th Street, $10 cover for both shows.

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S E P T E M B E R 3 - 9, 2 0 1 5

THE PITCH

23

7/8/15 9:03 AM

24

music

J

ohn Darnielle is a storyteller. Yes, he is also a bandleader — having fronted the Mountain Goats since founding it in 1991 — and a novelist whose Wolf in White Van was nominated last year for a National Book Award. But foremost in each of these pursuits is a commitment to characters, to filing away intricate details, which makes his songs and his prose shine and stay in the memory.

The Mountain Goats’ latest, the prowrestling-themed Beat the Champ, is further proof of Darnielle’s mastery. A listener, even one with zero interest in wrestling, can easily get lost in his exploration of the sport’s complex emotions, battles and violence.

The Mountain Goats are touring this fall, and Darnielle is performing a handful of shows solo — including a concert date at the Lawrence Arts Center Wednesday, September 9. Ahead of the show, Darnielle chatted with us via e-mail about his latest projects.

The Pitch: Tell me about what led you to writing a series of songs inspired by wrestling. I 24

the pitch

S E P T E M B E R 3 - 9, 2 0 1 5

John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, solo Wednesday, September 9, at the Lawrence Arts Center, in Lawrence

know you didn’t begin with that theme in mind.

Darnielle: It was after a few [songs] stacked up — like, the first one seemed cool, but I wondered if it didn’t need more context — “Southwestern Territory” — like, imagine that as a stand-alone song on an album that doesn’t have an explicit thematic link or whose theme is less defined — it’s kind of a character sketch in that setting. I don’t think of myself as doing character sketches, for whatever reason; I feel like context, even when it’s just roughly traced, really places a song. Does that make sense? So I wrote another one. It was what was on my mind, and they felt cooler together — like, if you sit with the images and tropes for a while, instead of

pitch.com

By

John Darnielle opens up.

DL ANDERSON

winner’s circle

The Mountain Goats’

Darnielle stands alone. being asked to just think about wrestling for one three-minute song, then the ideas and emotions in the song might make more sense.

After about four songs, it was pretty clear, you know — like, you can’t really have an album with four songs about wrestling and eight songs about whatever else. I mean you could, if you were Van Dyke Parks, maybe.

But I decided to just go all out at that point.

How did you go about making songs about wrestling feel universal?

I don’t think about an audience when I’m writing. I can’t. I feel like if I were thinking, “How can I make this more universal?”

I would feel uninspired. I just assume that whatever I’m writing about, if I get down to the core of it, it’ll be understandable by anybody because they’re just human stories — about working, about dreams of success, about hitting the wall. You know? Everyone works — labor’s universal. If I’m writing about

n ata l ie g a l l a gher

people in their work, then there’s something anybody can understand. The actual wrestling — it’s like science fiction. We can’t really relate to the crew of the USS Enterprise, but we can because the point isn’t that they’re in space. It’s that they live and work together and share triumphs and pitfalls.

How does it feel, revealing so much of yourself to an audience of strangers over and over again, night after night?

It feels really intense, to be honest — I try not to talk about it or dwell on it. I don’t want to sound like I’m saying, “How I suffer!” or anything, you know. I mean, it’s intimate, right. It’s a vulnerable thing to disclose, to share. But that’s also an electric and inspiring feeling, and it connects me to the songs, which is great because then I can hit that point of playing where even something I’ve been playing for 10 years feels brand-new. I get therapy here at home; I think if I didn’t, the toll of sort of digging up graves every night might be harder on me. I see how some performers can get pretty lost. But I take good care of myself. I keep perspective. I love what I do, and the idea that it might be useful to others somehow is a huge blessing to me.

Changing gears for a moment: Why did writing a novel appeal to you?

I just don’t really think about what I’m going to do before I do it, is the thing. It’s not architecture — I don’t first conceive of the structure and then draft a blueprint and then carry out the plans. So I didn’t sit down and say, “I think I’ll write a novel.” I just wrote a little story. It turned out to be the last chapter.

Then I wrote a bunch of other stuff. Then I threw a lot of it away. Then I dragged it into a folder and didn’t think about it for a long time. But I don’t ask myself questions like, “How am I going to express this idea?” I just get a thought to do something and start doing it and see where it goes. It’s open-ended exploration. That’s the whole appeal of doing it!

Do you prefer one thing over the other, writing versus performing?

They’re not really related to each other.

Performing is more exhausting. It’s like rock climbing — you get to some very high places!

But it takes an actual toll on your body. Writing doesn’t tire me out. I wish I could do it all day (which I used to do, really). But it’s just so different, you know — it’s internal. Performing is sharing, making connection both onstage and from stage to audience. Writing is spelunking. If I had to give one up, I’d stay home and write; I can’t imagine not writing.

But I can just barely imagine not performing, too. It’s a big part of who I am, and songs really come to life in front of an audience.

E-mail natalie.gallagher@pitch.com

he r

25

Music

Music Forecast

omething tual wresan’t really rprise, but at they’re k together

By

n ata l ie G a l l a Ghe r

most animated punkgrass around. Twentythousand Strongmen is just one man, Mikee Pruitt, who delivers the volume of a small army. KC Rain Dogs is an acoustic four-piece specializing in old-time folk, with hints of Bessie Smith and Muddy Waters. Break out your boots and get ready to dance the weekend away.

Saturday, September 5, Westport Saloon (4112 Pennsylvania, 816-960-4560)

of yourself over again,

est — I try don’t want suffer!” or intimate, isclose, to nd inspirthe songs, n hit that thing I’ve and-new. I if I didn’t, ves every how some take good love what e useful to g to me. hy did writ-

Wishbone Ash

what I’m Sister Sparrow & the Dirty Birds ng. It’s not Brooklyn’s Sister Sparrow & the Dirty Birds ive of the have enough members to comprise the rhythm t and then section of a high school band. Though each down and player is excellent, one stands out: lead singer st wrote a Arleigh Kincheloe, who conjures a powerful st chapter. mix of retro soul and blues. Her voice is remiuff. Then I niscent of a scratchier Amy Winehouse, and ged it into she knows just how to wind up her instrument for a long and unleash it for maximum impact — usually tions like, just after a breathtaking sax solo, right before ea?” I just the drums drop. The band is on tour in supstart doing port of its excellent The Weather Below and ended ex- shouldn’t be missed at the Bottleneck.

Thursday, September 3, the Bottleneck of doing it! her, writing (737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-841-5483)

ach other. s like rock gh places! Lauren Krum ody. Writ- Lauren Krum is best-known for her role as could do it all lead singer of local country outfit the Grisly ut it’s just Hand. But Thursdays in September at Ça Va, ernal. Per- you’re able to hear her pristine, prairie-wild ction both e. Writing up, I’d stay ot writing.

Pick of the Week erforming, So Much Soul ongs really Sing It, Sister e.

Locally Sourced

h.com

Dirty Birds are the words. voice curve around a different set of tunes.

Instead of the usual folksy fare, Krum is treating the audience at Ça Va to renditions of pop and jazz standards, with the aid of guitarist and fellow Grisly Hand member Mike Stover. Ça Va doesn’t take reservations, so show up early for the first set at 8 p.m.

Thursday, September 3, Ça Va (4149 Pennsylvania, 816-255-3934)

Monzie Leo and the Big Sky, Twentythousand Strongmen, KC Rain Dogs

Roots and blues and folk, oh my! That’s what’s on the menu Saturday night at Westport Saloon. Lawrence weirdos Monzie Leo and the Big Sky — helmed by the titular Leo, a hulking, barrel-voiced force — lead the bill; if you haven’t sampled the raucous sounds of the band’s full-length, Sunsets, Sunflowers and Sons of Bitches, you’re missing out on the

f o r e c a s t

Andy Powell is the only remaining original member of Wishbone Ash, the influential prog-rock band formed in England in 1969.

Don’t let that bother you. Instead, use the band’s Sunday-night Knuckleheads show to immerse yourself in a bit of rock history: Wishbone Ash was one of the first bands to experiment with harmonizing guitar parts — a common practice today that was groundbreaking in the ’70s. The band is on the road now in support of last year’s Blue Horizon, an album filled with lush guitar work and infused with a few slivers of psychedelia. Sunday at Knuckleheads, rediscover an old favorite.

Sunday, September 6, Knuckleheads Saloon (2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456)

Brent Best

If you’ve heard of Brent Best, it’s likely because of his Texas country-rock band, Slobberbone, which he fronted for two decades before going on a kind of hiatus in 2004. (The band has reunited for multiple runs since then.) Slobberbone prided itself on rough-and-tumble music.

And on Best’s long-awaited solo debut, Your Dog, Champ, he doesn’t distance himself from that hard-knock attitude — he just delivers it differently. The 11 songs on Your Dog present the lessons of a wiser, world-weary cowboy who still has a sense of humor and a few songs left to sing. Tuesday at RecordBar, discover a new side to this old dog.

Tuesday, September 8, RecordBar (1020 Westport Road, 816-753-5207)

K e Y

These Boots Were Made for Dancin’

From Across the Pond

Twang With Me

Residency

Prog On

Worth the Weeknight

Blast From the Past

United States of Americana

pitch.com

PB

the pitch

m o n t h x x–x x , 2 0 0 x

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26 continued from page 13

Thursday | 9.3 |

fesTival of The losT Township

TheaTer

Dates and times vary.

Comedy

At Home at the Zoo | Starting Wednesday,

Kansas City Actors Theatre | City Stage at Union Station, 30 W. Pershing Rd., kcactors.org

John Caparulo | 7:30 p.m. Improv Comedy Club and

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

Black Bewitched | Late Night Theatre, Missie

david Nihill discusses his book Do You Talk Funny? 7 Comedy Habits to Become a Better (and Funnier) Public Speaker | 6:30 p.m. Kansas

B’s, 805 W 39th St.

City Plaza Library, 4801 Main, kclibrary.org

Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean | Through Saturday, Orange

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

Massachusetts, Lawrence

satu r d

marc “Skippy” Price | 8 p.m. Stanford’s Comedy Club,

9.5

7328 W. 119th St., Overland Park

Labor

CommuNiTy BeNefiTS

mid-Coast Pop-up Shop & T-Shirt Runway Show, benefiting Truman Medical Center | 6-10 p.m., $30, the Monarch Room, 1701 McGee, tmccollective.org film

Jaws | 7 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, 1400 Main SPoRTS & ReC

Kansas City T-Bones vs. laredo lemurs |

7:05 p.m. CommunityAmerica Ballpark, 1800 Village West Pkwy., KCK

Royals vs. Tigers | 7:10 p.m. Kauffman Stadium

Rd., Raytown, festivalofthelosttownship.org

Hans Predator, Arc flash | 10 p.m. Replay Lounge,

946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

John Caparulo | 7:30 & 9:45 p.m. Improv Comedy Club

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

midnight metal Series, featuring Zuul, North, Moun-

luis Powell, Scott Shaffer, Brandon Patrick, Aaron Naylor, Chavis Nicely, mid-Coast improv Showcase | 7 p.m. Uptown Arts Bar, 3611 Broadway

Casino, 1 Riverboat Dr., North Kansas City

tain Doom, Medicine Theory | 11:30 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

4048 Broadway

Copacetic, Ginjahbeard, Hummus, Info Gates, Lemroc Evil, Rick Maun, Scotty Wu, Vertigone | 9 p.m. RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd.

The Broadway Jazz orchestra | 7 p.m. The Broad-

The Re up: KC Battle Rap | 6 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

marc “Skippy” Price | 7:45 & 9:45 p.m. Stanford’s Comedy Club, 7328 W. 119th St., Overland Park f e S T i VA l S

SantaCaliGon days | Noon-11 p.m. Historic Indepen-

dence Square, between Osage and Memorial Dr., and Truman and Walnut streets, santacaligon.com

Sister Sparrow & the dirty Birds | 8 p.m. The

film

Crosseyed Cat | 7:30 p.m. B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ, 1205

NiGHTlife

KKfi first friday film Night: Muddy vs. the Wolf | 7:30 p.m. Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715 Rochester

dead man’s Hand | Jackpot Music Hall, 943 Mas-

Victor & Penny, Sara morgan, John Blegen with Brian Ruskin, megashia Jackson, Jeanette Powers, laura Packer, Beth Byrd-lonski ,

Champagne Campaign, Bloom, Not of the Body | 8:30 p.m. Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club, 3402 Main

Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence

E. 85th St.

sachusetts, Lawrence

diamond empire | The Brick, 1727 McGee fitts of fire | 10 p.m. Jazzhaus, 926-1/2 Massachusetts,

Lawrence

Kevin frazee Trio | 5:30 p.m. Green Lady Lounge,

benefiting the Music and Memory Program at the Heart of America Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association | 6:30 p.m. Uptown Arts Bar, 3611 Broadway

Friday | 9.4 | PeRfoRmiNG ARTS

1809 Grand

Tom Hall, Katy & the Girls, the Bon Ton Soul Accordion Band | 7 p.m. Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715

Rochester

26

the pitch

KC Chamber orchestra presents Mozart and Mendelssohn: Reaching for the Stars | 8 p.m.

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, 1601 Broadway

The Oldest Boy | Unicorn Theatre, 3828 Main, unicorntheatre.org

Our Brother’s Caper, presented by KC Mystery

Train | Crowne Plaza Hotel, 1301 Wyandotte, kcmysterytrain.com

West Side Story | Through Saturday, Spinning Tree Theatre, at the Arts Asylum, 1000 E. Ninth St., spinningtreetheatre.com

Comedy

denny laine, the Cryers | 7 p.m. VooDoo, Harrah’s

Pop-up Beat Show, featuring Ace Fadal, Ben Swiller,

way Kansas City, 3601 Broadway

Day w eeken d brews

festival of the lost Township, presented by Crane Brewing Co. | 11 a.m.-4 p.m., $35-$100, 62nd St. and Raytown

muSiC

Bones Jugs N Harmony, Whiskey for the lady, Sterling Witt, miry Wild | 7 p.m. The Riot Room,

ay

Mouse Theatricals, the Percolator, in the alley between the Lawrence Arts Center and Ninth St., Lawrence

MUseUM exhibiTs & evenTs A Centenary of Australian War Art | National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial, 100 W. 26th St., theworldwar.org Gridiron Glory: the Best of the Pro Football Hall of Fame | Union Station, 30 W. Pershing

Rd., unionstation.org

Lives in Fabric: Textiles of the Wornall/ Majors House Museums | 1-4 p.m. Saturday-

Sunday, 8201 State Line, wornallmajors.org

Boogaloo 7, electric Tinks, Tim Whitmer Quartet | 5:30 p.m. Green Lady Lounge, 1809 Grand Brody Buster Band | 10 p.m. Jazzhaus, 926-1/2 Massachusetts, Lawrence

Chef’Special | 8 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

SPoRTS & ReC

Royals vs. White Sox | 7:10 p.m. Kauffman Stadium muSiC

Atlantic express with Hal Wakes | 8:30 p.m.

eggs on mars album-release show | 8 p.m. Records with Merritt, 1614 Westport Rd.

ex-Acrobat, After Nations, dJ Ken Jankowski | 8:30 p.m. MiniBar, 3810 Broadway

Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715 Rochester

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

Wes Blackman & Roundmidnight with lady d, BmW | 5 p.m. The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St.

Godzillionaire, Scrappy’s Attic, the Waterdog Nation, the Bus Company, Real Adults, Throckmorton Potentate & the Weird machine,

Bobaflex | 7p.m.Aftershock,5240MerriamDr.,Merriam

benefiting Pet World | 6 p.m. Replay Lounge, 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

continued on page 28 S E P T E M B E R 3 - 9, 2 0 1 5

pitch.com

27

dnesday, at Union org

re, Missie

, Jimmy

y, Orange the alley nd Ninth

Join us for an evening of celebration,

KC

KC

networking & making memories.

28 Main,

C Mystery yandotte,

Spinning 0 E. Ninth

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28

kansas city irish fest

art exhibits & events Above/Below: Tenements by Thomas Luna | Kiosk Gallery, 916 E. Fifth Street,

fr i day

9. 4

Powered by

kioskgallerykc.com

t your G et o u . e g r en

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

4420 Warwick Blvd., kemperart.org

Adam Cvijanovic: American Montage |

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 4420 Warwick Blvd.

Gallery Conversations drop-in Tour | 1 p.m.

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 4420 Warwick Blvd., kemperart.org

emmet Gowin: Photographs | Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak, nelson-atkins.org Philip Haas: The Four Seasons | kansas City irish Fest | Opens for the weekend at Crown Center, 2450 Grand, kcirishfest.com

continued from page 26 Greaserama Preparty, featuring Silver Maggies,

Douglas County Quintet, Colonel Gibber | 8:30 p.m.

RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd.

Connie Hawkins and the Blueswreckers | 9 p.m.

B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ, 1205 E. 85th St.

kansas City Renaissance Festival | 10 a.m.7 p.m., 633 N. 130th St., Bonner Springs, kcrenfest.com SantaCaliGon days | 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Historic Inde-

pendence Square, between Osage and Memorial Dr., and Truman and Walnut streets, santacaligon.com

Mark Lowrey Trio | 9 p.m. The Broadway Kansas

September to Remember with Jon Rock, Seuss, Geeksquad | Jackpot Music Hall, 943 Massachusetts, Lawrence

Sharp 9 | 8 p.m. The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence

1744 Broadway

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak

dane davenport Cd-release show, Slow Motion Commotion | 6 p.m. Coda, 1744 Broadway Grand Villanova | 10 p.m. Local Tap, 7300 W. 119th

More

EvEnts

On

at line

pitch.co

m

Festival of the Lost Township , presented by Crane Brewing Co. | 11 a.m.4 p.m., $35-$100, 62nd St. and Raytown Rd., Raytown, festivalofthelosttownship.org

St., Overland Park

John d. Hale Band, outlaw Jake and the Chain Gang & Ryan Manuel | 7 p.m. The Granada, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence

Molly Hammer | 8 p.m. Hotel Phillips, 106 W. 12th St.

SPoRTS & ReC

Jazz brunch with the Cynthia van Roden Trio |

kansas vs. South dakota State football | 9 a.m.

10 a.m.-1 p.m. Chaz on the Plaza, 325 Ward Pkwy.

L i T e R a R y/ S P o k e n W o R d

Royals vs. White Sox | 6:10 p.m. Kauffman Stadium

Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715 Rochester

City Market Summer Book Sale | City Market,

MuSiC

Saturday | 9.5 |

20 E. Fifth St.

Memorial Stadium, 11th St. and Maine, Lawrence

The Bon Ton Soul accordion Band | 4 p.m. Kanza CoMedy

John Caparulo | 7 & 9:45 p.m. Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater, 7260 N.W. 87th St. Marc “Skippy” Price | 7:45 & 9:45 p.m. Stanford’s

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

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

The Cave Girls, dynamite, defense, That dragon, John keck | 9:30 p.m. RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd.

Cleric, Hot and ugly, Hoser, digester | Jackpot Music Hall, 943 Massachusetts, Lawrence

F e S T i Va L S

kansas City irish Fest | Crown Center, 2450 Grand S E P T E M B E R 3 - 9, 2 0 1 5

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

F00d & dRink

Jason Vivone and the Billy Bats | 9 p.m. Coda,

the pitch

Pedal to the Metal | The National Mu-

The Late Show: The Garbage Pail Kids Movie |

Alamo Drafthouse, 1400 Main

Murderhead, Bleed the Victim, Meatshank, Vanlade | 8:30 p.m. Davey’s Uptown, 3402 Main

28

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

World War I and the rise of Modernism | FiLM

City, 3601 Broadway

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak

pitch.com

The Crumpletons | 7 p.m. Jazzhaus, 926-1/2 Massachusetts, Lawrence

ed Jurdi & Gordy Quist, John Goolsby | 9:30 p.m.

La Fonda allstars, Rock Paper Scissors | 4:30 p.m.

The Phoenix, 302 W. Eighth St.

Love, Charity and Rock & Roll, featuring Trapt, Shaman’s Harvest, Chance the Arm | 5 p.m. Crossroads KC at Grinders, 417 E. 18th St. organ Jazz Trio | 9:30 p.m. Green Lady Lounge,

1809 Grand

Paper Buffalo, Baio Wolf, young Bull, the Fog | 8 p.m. The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence Jeff Porter | 6 p.m. RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd.

29 Chris Ruest | 9 p.m. B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ, 1205 E.

Missouri Tigers vs. souTheasT Missouri

85th St.

Voyager, Eyes of Iolite, Braingea | 10 p.m. Replay Lounge, 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

The Waspmen, the Biff Tannens, Gulch, Exeter | 8 p.m. Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club, 3402 Main Charles Williams | 8:30 p.m. The Blue Room, 1600

E. 18th St.

satu r da y

ComEdy

9.5

John Caparulo | 7 p.m. Improv Comedy Club and

College footba ll is back .

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

F E s T I Va l s

Kansas City Irish Fest | Crown Center, 2450 Grand, kcirishfest.com

Kansas City Renaissance Festival | 10 a.m.7 p.m., 633 N. 130th St., Bonner Springs, kcrenfest.com santaCaliGon days | 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Historic Independence Square, between Osage and Memorial Dr., and Truman and Walnut streets, santacaligon.com

Monday | 9.7 | pERFoRmInG aRTs

Kansas City symphony’s pops in the park |

FIlm

E.T. The Extra Terrestrial | 6 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse,

F E s T I Va l s

spoRTs & REC

Kansas City Renaissance Festival | 10 a.m.7 p.m., 633 N. 130th St., Bonner Springs, kcrenfest.com

Royals vs. White sox | 1:10 p.m. Kauffman Stadium

santaCaliGon days | 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Historic Inde-

musIC

Barb Wire dolls, Wick & the Tricks, Goat Rainbow | 7 p.m. Aftershock, 5240 Merriam Dr., Merriam The people’s liberation Big Band | 7 p.m. Record-

Bar, 1020 Westport Rd.

We will be looking for you!

missouri Tigers vs. southeast missouri | 3 p.m. Faurot Field, Columbia

5 p.m. Theatre in the Park, 7710 Renner, Shawnee, kcsymphony.org

1400 Main

M U At h l e t i c D e pA r t M e n t

Sunday | 9.6 |

Each week, Pitch Street Team cruises around to the hottest clubs, bars and concerts. You name it, we will be there. While we are out, we hand out tons of cool stuff. So look for the Street Team...

pendence Square, between Osage and Memorial Dr., and Truman and Walnut streets, santacaligon.com

l I T E R a R y/ s p o K E n W o R d

The power of Reading and Writing, co-presented

by Literacy KC and the Writers Place | 6:30 p.m. Kansas City Central Library, 14 W. 10th St., kclibrary.org ComEdy

Comedy open-mic night | 8 p.m. The Tank Room,

1813 Grand

open-mic night | 8 p.m. Stanford’s Comedy Club, 7328 W. 119th St., Overland Park

spoRTs & REC

Royals vs. Twins | 7:10 p.m. Kauffman Stadium

FIlm musIC

IFC Free screening: Goon | 7 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, 1400 Main

B ac on -F es t n o Ca si @ A m er is ta r

B @ A m a c o n - Fe s t erista r Casi no

Clint ashlock’s new Jazz order | 9 p.m. The Broadway Kansas City, 3601 Broadway

spoRTs & REC

The pyrex World Tour all White launch party | 6 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

Bangers | 8 p.m. The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire,

Royals vs. Twins | 7:10 p.m. Kauffman Stadium

Lawrence

627 Big Band | 8:30-11:30 p.m. Green Lady Lounge,

santaCaliGon 5k | 8 a.m., $25-$35, BinghamWaggoner Estate, 313 W. Pacific, Independence

1020 Westport Rd.

slow ya Roll, up the Funx | 5 p.m. Replay Lounge,

musIC

1809 Grand

946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

Brent Best, the Roseline | 9:30 p.m. RecordBar,

dan Bliss | 7 p.m. B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ, 1205 E. 85th St.

steve lambert | 7 p.m. The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St.

dojo | 8 p.m. Green Lady Lounge, 1809 Grand

Hampshire, Lawrence

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

lyric lab: music open mic | 9-11:30 p.m. Uptown

The Wilderness | Jackpot Music Hall, 943 Massa-

unearthly Krow, nefirum, damned by the pope, Hossferatu | 8 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

sovereign states | 8 p.m. The Bottleneck, 737 New

chusetts, Lawrence

Wishbone ash, Road Warriors | 8 p.m. Knuckle-

heads Saloon, 2715 Rochester

Tuesday | 9.8 |

Arts Bar, 3611 Broadway

mayday, Kap Kallous | 7 p.m. Aftershock, 5240 Mer-

riam Dr., Merriam

mark montgomery | Jazz, 1823 W. 39th St.

pERFoRmInG aRTs

mike Zito & the Wheel | 7 p.m. Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715 Rochester

Cirque Eloize id | 8 p.m. Starlight Theatre, 4600 Starlight Rd., kcstarlight.com

Fe s t B a c o n - r C a s in o r is t a @ Ame

Ba co n- Fe st @ Am er is ta r Ca si

no

michael martin murphey, sara morgan | 8:30 p.m. Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715 Rochester

continued on page 31 pitch.com

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“BLINDINGLY BEAUTIFUL AND METICULOUSLY ASSEMBLED.” “A MOVING TALE OF SUPER HUMAN PERSEVERANCE.” —THE PLAYLIST

—TOM KEOGH, THE SEATTLE TIMES

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A FILM BY JIMMY CHIN AND ELIZABETH CHAI VASARHELYI

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31 continued from page 29 Lee Scratch Perry, 77 Jefferson, Boss Hooligan Soundsystem | 7:30 p.m. Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

Jennifer Batten | 9 p.m. Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715

Potter’s Field | 6 p.m. RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd.

Lounge, 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

Rochester

Mike Coykendall, the Harrisonics | 10 p.m. Replay

Nick Schnebelen Band | 7 p.m. B.B.’s Lawnside

Amanda Fish | 7 p.m. B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ, 1205 E.

She Sees Ghosts, From Myth and Legend, How to Make a Hero, Vitalis | Jackpot Music Hall, 943

the Fritz | 8 p.m. The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire,

BBQ, 1205 E. 85th St.

Massachusetts, Lawrence

Zanzibar Drummers | 6:30 p.m. Uptown Arts Bar, 3611 Broadway

Wednesday | 9.9 | PerForMiNG ArtS

Cirque eloize iD | 8 p.m. Starlight Theatre, 4600

Starlight Rd., kcstarlight.com

85th St.

Lawrence

A La Mode | 7 p.m. The Phoenix, 302 W. Eighth St. the Loveless | 9 p.m. Davey’s Uptown Ramblers

farmers markets Briarcliff | 3-6 p.m. Thursday, Briarcliff Village, 4175 N. Mulberry Dr.

Brookside | 8 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday, Border Star

City Market | 6 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, 8 a.m.3 p.m. Sunday, 20 E. Fifth St.

North Kansas City | 7 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Caboose Park, southeast corner of Armour and Howell

Cottin’s Hardware Store | 4-6:30 p.m. Thursday, 1832 Massachusetts, Lawrence

Friday Night Market | 4-9 p.m. The BadSeed,

oceanside Hotel, Derek Astles | Jackpot Music

Gladstone | 7 a.m.-noon Saturday, 2-6 p.m.

Wednesday, Gladstone Hy-Vee, 7117 N. Prospect, Gladstone

Dr., Merriam

ivanhoe | 5-7 p.m. Friday, Nutter Ivanhoe Neighborhood Center, 3700 Woodland

organ Jazz trio | 9 p.m. Green Lady Lounge, 1809

KCK | 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, Keeler Women’s Center,

Brian ruskin Band | 7 p.m. The Phoenix, 302 W.

KC organics and Natural Market | 8 a.m.-

CoMeDy

Dan Cummins | 7:30 p.m. Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater, 7260 N.W. 87th St. exPo

Arts Midwest Conference | Kansas City Convention Center, 301 W. 13th St.

SPortS & reC

extreme Midget Wrestling | 7 p.m. The Granada, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence

royals vs. twins | 7:10 p.m. Kauffman Stadium Mike Shannon Charitable Golf Scramble | Noon.

Hillcrest Country Club, 8200 Hillcrest

Sporting KC away game | 9:30 p.m. Alamo Draft-

house, 1400 Main

MuSiC

Grand

Eighth St.

Northeast | 4-7 p.m. Thursday, 3001 Indepen-

dence Ave.

1909 McGee

on the Cinder, uberflicker, Highwesthus, Mobs, the Protesters | 7 p.m. Aftershock, 5240 Merriam

13th St. and Highland

Montessori, 6321 Wornall

Club, 3402 Main

Hall, 943 Massachusetts, Lawrence

Niles Garden | 4-6 p.m. Monday, Clymer Center,

2220 Central, KCK

olathe | 7:30 a.m. Saturday and Wednesday, Black Bob Park, 14500 W. 151st St. 107th Street | 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Saturday, Grand Court Retirement Center, 501 W. 107th St.

overland Park | 7 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday,

7:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Wednesday, between 79th and 80th streets, west of Metcalf

Parkville | 7 a.m.-noon Saturday, 2-5 p.m. Wednesday, English Landing Park, First St. and Main

raytown | 2-7 p.m. Thursday, 1-8 p.m. Saturday, 6210 Raytown Rd., Raytown

12:30 p.m. Saturday, Minor Park, Holmes at Red Bridge Road

rosedale | 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday, 4020 Rain-

Lawrence | 7-11 a.m. Saturday, 4-6 p.m. Tuesday, 824 New Hampshire

St. Luke’s | 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Thursday, St. Luke’s Hospital, 4401 Wornall Rd.

9:30 p.m. RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd.

Lee’s Summit | 7 a.m. Saturday and Wednesday, corner of Second and Douglas, Lee’s Summit

Shawnee | 7 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Shawnee City Hall, 11110 Johnson Dr.

12th Street Jump | 7 p.m. The Broadway Kansas

Liberty | 7 a.m.-noon Wednesday, Feldmans Farm

troostwood youth Garden & Market |

Vela, Pamona, Junkyard Genius, So, Higher Consciousness, Fallopian Fire | 6 p.m. The Riot

Merriam | 7 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday, 4-7 p.m. Wednes-

Room, 4048 Broadway

day, Merriam Marketplace, 5740 Merriam Dr., Merriam

Waldo | 3-7 p.m. Wednesday, Habitat for Humanity

Ken Waldman’s roots Music Variety Showcase, featuring the Aching Hearts, Spencer & Rains,

Mission | 7 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday, Mission Farm and Flower Market, 5613 Johnson Dr.

Zona rosa | 5-8 p.m. Thursday, Zona Rosa, 8640

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Jackie Allen Quintet with John Moulder, Peter Martin | 9 p.m. The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St.

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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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Dear Dan: I’m confused about my sexuality.

For many years, I thought I preferred heteroromantic asexual relationships. Exposure to select reading material — thanks to my gender-studies classes — has me convinced I’m an asexual t-type (i.e., “top,” but I prefer not to use such connotative terms) female who is attracted to slight and feminine men. I don’t want to take off my clothes or engage in oral, anal, digital or vaginal sex. Instead, I want to design sexual situations that comely young gentlemen will consensually enter: restraints, CBT, whippings, play piercings, fisting. To make matters worse, I’ve never been in a sexual situation or romantic relationship. I’m 23 years old. Extremely low self-esteem and a lack of trust in other people — especially men who are attracted to women — prevented me from reaching out to others, let alone informing a potential partner about my unusual interests. Fortunately, extensive therapy sessions have improved my self-image and willingness to take risks. Developing a romantic friendship with a potential partner is essential.

I doubt I’ll have much luck on the Internet or at munches, given that so many men doubt the existence of exclusively t-type females. I also don’t fit or wish to fit the stereotypical Bettie Page–esque image of a t-type female. Dressing up in PVC and playing Mistress is not my thing.

Do you have any recommended how-to guides or communities for t-type females?

Beyond Envisioning Any Solutions T-type P.S. I’m trapped in the closet.

Dear BEAST: You should go to munches and put yourself out there on the Internet because in both those places/spaces, you’ll meet — I promise — other t-type/Dominant women and the men who want to worship them and suffer at their hands.

Your knowledge of the BDSM/kink/fetish community seems pretty distorted — it sounds like your exposure has been limited to reading materials distributed in your gender-studies classes — but I can assure you that there are men out there, some of them slight and feminine, who not only don’t doubt the existence of exclusively t-type/Dominant females but also are actively seeking them. But you’re not going to find them under the rocks in your garden or at the back of your fridge. You’re going to have to enter kinky places/spaces to meet kinky guys.

There’s another type of person in those kinky places/spaces you need to meet: mentors. It’s particularly important for someone with your interests — CBT, whippings, piercings and fisting are not JV kinks — to meet, speak with, and be mentored by knowledgeable players. These are varsity-level kinks — they are skill sets that take time to acquire. You’ll need instruction from people with experience be-

By

D a n S ava ge tim” may experience your play as sexual even if you’re experiencing it differently, i.e., you may not feel like you’re having sex with them, but they’re going to feel like they’re having sex with you. Is that OK with your particular flavor of/theories about asexuality?)

P.S. You’re not trapped in the closet — that door locks from the inside. You can open it whenever you’re ready. * Some other point along the gender spectrum.

Dear Dan: I’m a foot-fetish guy who split up with

fore you start torturing a guy’s balls or sticking (clean and sterile) needles through the head of his cock or his nipples because you could do serious and lasting damage to someone if you’re winging it. Munches are your best bet for meeting the players and educators in your area who take mentorship seriously. Be open about who you are (an asexual t-type female/ Dominant woman), your ideal partners (slight and feminine sub guys who are into SM, not sex), and your experience level (nonexistent).

Ask about classes, don’t do anyone/anything that makes you uncomfortable and do the reading. (Check out Greenery Press.)

You know who else you’ll meet in the kink scene? Women who don’t fit stereotypical Bettie Page–esque images, don’t dress up in PVC and don’t play Mistress games — but you’ll also meet women who enjoy doing all of those things, as well as women who could take or leave Bettie Page, Mistress games, etc., but who dress up because it turns on their partners and/or attracts the kind of men/women/ SOPATGS* they’re interested in restraining and torturing. When someone is indulging your thing (a slight and feminine guy is giving you his cock and balls to torture), it’s simply good manners to indulge his things (letting him call you “Mistress,” if that’s something he enjoys, or pulling on a little PVC).

And give yourself permission to grow — or to continue growing. You used to think you were one thing (a hetero-romantic asexual), and now you realize that you may be another thing entirely (an asexual t-type/Dominant female who is attracted to slight and feminine men).

Who knows what you’ll learn about yourself once you actually start having IRL experiences?

(Also, most guys into hardcore BDSM — particularly hardcore masochists — regard CBT and whippings and piercings as sex. Not foreplay, not a substitute for sex, but sex. Something to think through before you have a slight and feminine guy’s balls in your hands: Your “vic-

my girlfriend of four years. She was into all the foot stuff, and we got into lots of other kinks. My concern is about meeting new women. I’m worried that I’m not going to be able to perform for vanilla sex. I feel almost doomed to being solo unless I meet someone who is into the same stuff I am. I was able to do vanilla with my ex, but I don’t know if I can do vanilla stuff with other girls. Do you have any advice on what I can do to change my mind-set? Is it possible for me to perform vanilla activities if I’m present and relaxed with a girl?

Just Asking You Dear JAY: You told your last girlfriend about

your kink, and you can tell your next girlfriend about it. Act like it’s no big deal — “I have a thing for feet” — because it’s no big deal. But if you’re too shy to say anything or you’re afraid of being dumped by a girl who’s a foot-fetishphobe (you should be in a hurry for those girls to dump you), there’s only one way to find out if you can perform vanilla activities with a new girl: Give it a try.

Dear Dan: I had an Ashley Madison account.

But I did not create “my” account. Anyone can register an account using anyone’s e-mail address, and deleting fake accounts costs money.

Now my e-mail address is on a public database of AM users. People with accounts on AM are victims of the hackers, which you thankfully addressed in your last column. But members — actual and fake — were first victims of Ashley Madison. Shitty security aside, AM is a hub of extortion: no e-mail verification, pay-to-delete (not that your account is actually deleted!) and tons of fake accounts purporting to be women (to balance the real, paying accounts from men).

My happily monogamish wife and I use OkCupid and FetLife, which helped us find our way to local swinger and BDSM clubs. There are websites that aren’t reliant on fake users and extortion to build and then entrap a user base.

Fuck Ashley Madison Everywhere Dear FAME: Thanks for sharing. have a question for Dan savage? e-mail him at mail@savagelove.net

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Simple, Uncontested + Filing Fee. Don Davis.

816-531-1330

Kratom

Powders, liquids & capsules in stock now! Bali, Maeng Da, Green Malay, Borneo Red Vein & Indo White Vein.

LEGAL CBD

Cannabidiol is still legal in MO & is in stock now! Available in oral, edible, & e-liquid options. Experience the next revolution!

Available at

Main Street Tobacco @ 4307 Main Street (43rd & Main) 816-531-4441 AND KC Smoke & Vape @ 1605 Westport Road (Just East of Stateline) 816-931-4434.

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Newly Remodeled Showroom Featuring FULL LINE of: Detox & Whizz Kits, Vapes, Glass & Sex Toys 8401 E Truman Rd, KC, MO 816-252-3370 9am-Midnight 7 days per week pitch.com

Attorney since 1976: 913-345-4100, KS/MO. Injuries, workers comp, criminal, divorce, DUI, traffic, and more. Low fees, Call Greg Bangs.

CAN YOU GET OUT? WWW.ESCAPEARTISTKC.COM KC Crossroads (18th & Oak)

Escape Puzzles

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Hersouth.com 99.7% Toxin Free w/n an hour We can help you pass Coopers 3617 Broadway, KCMO 816.931.7222

Kratom

Powders, liquids & capsules in stock now! Bali, Maeng Da, Green Malay, Borneo Red Vein & Indo White Vein.

Volume discounts available. Try them before it’s too late!

Main Street Tobacco @ 4307 Main Street 816-531-4441 or try FREE SAMPLES at KC Smoke & Vape @ 1605 Westport Road 816-931-4434.