The Pitch: June 2017

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the pitch | June 2017 | pitch.com

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Contents

the pitch

Editor Scott Wilson Staff Writer David Hudnall Proofreader Brent Shepherd Contributing Writers Tracy Abeln, Traci Angel, Liz Cook, Karen Dillon, April Fleming, Natalie Gallagher, Deborah Hirsch, Ron Knox, Larry Kopitnik, Angela Lutz, Dan Lybarger, David Martin, Eric Melin, Annie Raab, Aaron Rhodes, Barbara Shelly, Nick Spacek, Lucas Wetzel Art Director Christie Passarello Contributing Photographers Zach Bauman, Jennifer Wetzel Graphic Designers Katy Barrett-Alley, Amy Gomoljak, Abbie Leali, Liz Loewenstein, Melanie Mays Publisher Amy Mularski Director of Marketing and Operations Jason Dockery Senior Classifieds & Multimedia Specialist Steven Suarez Multimedia Specialists Becky Losey, Ryan Wolkey Office Administrator and Marketing Coordinator Andrew Miller

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QUESTIONNAIRE

Haley Harrison The KMBC Channel 9 journalist won’t wear organge again.

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news

Broken Windows The KCPD spent big in 2014 to make a potentially explosive lawsuit go away.

The cracks are starting to show.

By David Hudnall

Wright Was Wrong The for-profit career college is gone, but its students are still at the fringe of the job market. So is Wright’s former president, if you believe his alimony petition.

By Barb Shelly

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Feature

Wheel People Kansas City lags far behind when it comes to bicycle culture and bikefriendly infrastructure. A new plan is in the works, but I wanted to test how my Bianchi and I could handle some basic KC trips right now.

By Ron Knox

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cover story

Summer Guide Here’s where we’re spending our season.

By April Fleming

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Café

The Whiff of Main Street Stock Hill, the Plaza’s platinumcard steakhouse, nails a lot — just notthe red meat.

By Liz Cook

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Drink

Milking It Bartenders are rediscovering what Ben Franklin knew: the value of the curd.

By Natalie Gallagher

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45

A Place for My Stuff Peering into Oracle for tarot and taxidermy, and getting turned on at Vintage Edison.

True Colors KC rapper-producer Kye Colors plots his next mixtape.

shop girl

By Angela Lutz

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Arts

The NEA Bomb Money for art is always scarce, but KC and regional creators will really suffer if Donald Trump has his way with federal arts funding.

By Ron Knox

Music

By Aaron Rhodes

PLUS: Kevin Morby is back, and a new Lawrence punk comp emerges ... from the library.

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going out

Concerts..................................................50 Events......................................................52

voice media group

National Advertising 1-888-278-9866 vmgadvertising.com

Distribution

The Pitch distributes 35,000 copies a month and is available free throughout Greater Kansas City, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies may be purchased for $5 each, payable at The Pitch’s office in advance. The Pitch may be distributed only by The Pitch’s authorized independent contractors or authorized distributors. No person may, without prior written permission of The Pitch, take more than one copy of each week’s issue. Mail subscriptions: $22.50 for six months or $45 per year, payable in advance.

Application to mail at second-class postage rates is pending at Kansas City, MO 64108.

copyright

Signing Off A fond goodnight to Late Show owner Tom Deatherage, who died in May

The contents of The Pitch are Copyright 2017 by KC Communications, LLC. No portion may be reproduced in whole or in part by any means without the express written permission of the publisher.

By Tracy Abeln The Pitch main phone number: 816-561-6061 The Pitch address: 1627 Main, Suite 700, Kansas City, MO 64108 For information or to leave a story tip, e-mail: tips@pitch.com For calendar submission consideration, e-mail: calendar@pitch.com For classifieds: steven.suarez@pitch.com or 816-218-6732 For retail advertising: amy.mularski@pitch.com or 816-218-6702

41

First Person

Father’s Day Seven steps to being a parent without losing your identity — or your mind

By Lucas Wetzel

Drink

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By Angela Lutz

Watching, Less Waiting Even as of this summer’s most intriguing films are headed straight to your living room, the big screen calls.

Sweet Relief Boozy Botanicals lets me make a mocktail that’s impossible to make fun of.

southcomm

Chief Executive Officer Chris Ferrell Chief Financial Officer Bob Mahoney Chief Operating Officer Blair Johnson Director of Human Resources Becky Turner Executive Vice President Mark Bartel Vice President of Content/Communication Patrick Rains Vice President of Production Operations Curt Pordes Creative Director Heather Pierce

The Pitch:

Film

By Eric Melin

Powered by PT’S COFFEE

on the cover

When this guy says it’s summer, it’s time for our annual summer guide.

Photo by Zach Bauman pitch.com | june 2017 | the pitch

TOC.indd 3

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questionnaire

“My dream concert lineup is ...” Arcade Fire opening for Radiohead “I just read ...” Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Dreamland by Sam Quinones. We’ve been reporting on the opioid epidemic this year for our series called “State of Addiction.” Dreamland came highly recommended. It’s an illuminating look at the crisis, from the pharmaceutical companies to street-level heroin dealers.

What’s your hidden talent? Give me a toolbox and a YouTube video, and I can fix (almost) anything.

What’s your guiltiest pleasure? See “I’ve been known to binge watch…”

The best advice I ever got: Nothing worth having comes easy.

Worst advice? Redheads look great in orange.

My sidekick? My 3-year-old daughter, Caroline. She’s a tiny, unintentional standup comedian with sass, personality and beautiful blond curls for days.

Who is your hero? My Grandma Ruby is a strong woman who faces adversity with courage. My grandpa suffers from dementia, and the compassion and devotion she gives him is true love. They’ve been married 68 years in June.

Haley Harrison Journalist

Twitter/Instagram handle: @HaleyKMBC Hometown: Topeka Current neighborhood: Prairie Village What I do (in 140 characters or less): I anchor the 5 p.m. news on KMBC and the 9 p.m. news on KCWE, with Steven Albritton.

What’s your addiction? Spinning. It’s an hour of cranking out endorphins and burning calories with an added bonus: I get to sit for most of it.

What’s your game? The general calculus of my day. There’s a constant series of equations in my head, juggling my time as mom, wife, employee, etc.

What’s your drink? Pretty basic: grande coffee, light cream, one Splenda.

Where’s dinner? Work week: at my desk.

Saturday: ideally, Port Fonda. Sunday: around our dining room table.

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Who (or what) is your nemesis? Greenapple licorice

What’s on your KC postcard? Our city skyline set against a big, bold blue sky

What’s your greatest struggle right now?

Finishing this questionnaire

Finish these sentences: “Kansas City got it right when ...” We embraced the “Paris of the Plains” mentality and invested in arts, culture and innovation.

“As a kid, I wanted to be ...” a TV reporter. My parents watched the local and national news nightly. From a young age, I understood the power of visual storytelling.

“In five years, I’ll be ...” Older and wiser “I always laugh at ...” Classic screwball comedy. Essentially, every scene in Bringing Up Baby.

“I’ve been known to binge watch ...” Too much. Master of None, House of Cards, the BBC’s Sherlock and Arrested Development, to name a few.

“I can’t stop listening to ...” Podcasts.

NPR’s Planet Money is a favorite.

My favorite toy as a child: A Hello Kitty doll with a black eye from when I accidentally dropped it in a parking-lot oil puddle

‘From a young age, I understood the power of visual storytelling.’

My dating triumph/tragedy: Awkward first date with my now husband, Deron. I’m lucky he believes in second chances.

My brush with fame: A Washington, D.C., cocktail reception attended by, among others, Jessica Alba and the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Still wondering what I was doing there.

My soapbox: Don’t ever tell someone — especially a woman — to “smile more.”

What was the last thing you had to apologize for? Forgetting someone’s name Who’s sorry now? Me, always me My recent triumph: Potty-training a toddler

the pitch | june 2017 | pitch.com

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news

Broken Windows

Lora’s vehicle, after KCPD officers fired more than two dozen rounds into it.

The KCPD spent big in 2014 to make a potentially explosive lawsuit go away. The cracks are starting to show.

by David Hudnall

A call came into dispatch about a carjacking. A man said his car, a black 2003 Toyota RAV4, had been stolen at gunpoint near the 7-Eleven convenience store at 1701 Independence Avenue, in northeast Kansas City.

The suspect was a black man, around 30, possibly wearing a black hoodie. The man who had called the police believed his cell phone was still in the car. He had a locator app installed on it. The Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department helped the man ping the phone to determine its coordinates.

The phone was in what appeared to be an alley just south of Independence Avenue, between Cypress and Elmwood avenues.

It was 1:45 a.m. Monday, November 18, 2013. The Kansas City Chiefs had played a nationally telecast game hours earlier, losing to the Denver Broncos. Crime often spikes on nights like these, and the East Patrol Division — in which the alleged victim’s phone and vehicle were suspected to be — was understaffed. So KCPD officers Dakota Merrill and Shane Mellott, who worked Central Patrol Division, were sent to the scene.

Mellott was 30 years old at the time.

Merrill, who comes from a law-enforcement family — his two older brothers are on the KCPD force, and his father is a former

Missouri Highway Patrolman — was 23.

Speeding down Independence Avenue, they passed Cypress, then made a U-turn and swung their police SUV down Cypress before turning left into an alley. They slowed to a stop and took in their surroundings, shining their flashlights out the side windows.

They paused here for about 15 seconds. A wind gust blew little leaves across the alley, illuminated by the car’s headlights.

To their right, the officers noticed another, perpendicular alley. They backed up, turned onto it, and spotted their target: black RAV4, license plates matching the radioed description. It was parked in front of a chain-link fence in the backyard of a twostory house.

Merrill and Mellott got out of their car and approached the vehicle with flashlights out and guns drawn. It was dark in the alley, and the windows of the RAV4 were tinted. They shined their lights into the car and concluded that it was unoccupied. The officers retreated to their car to discuss their next move, and were soon joined by Michael Buckley, an East Zone officer who had just arrived. Merrill shined his flashlight in the direction of the RAV4, to indicate to Buckley where the suspect’s vehicle was parked. As he did, the

He unloaded his entire clip — 16 bullets — into the car, shattering the glass of the car windows.

red brake lights of the RAV4 flashed, and the white reverse lights came on.

The three officers rushed toward the Toyota with their guns drawn. They yelled at the driver to stop the vehicle and raise his hands. Because of the tinted windows, the police could not see inside. Merrill banged on the driver’s-side door and demanded that the driver shut the car off. The car then lurched forward into the chain-link fence in front of it.

Merrill began firing. He unloaded his entire clip — 16 bullets — into the car, shattering the glass of the car windows. Mellott, positioned at the driver’s-side rear door, fired 12 shots of his own. Buckley, who stood by the passenger-side rear door, did not discharge his weapon.

When the smoke cleared, the officers discovered a man named Philippe Lora inside the car, covered in blood and slumped over the driver’s seat. Twenty of the 28 bullets fired had entered his body. When KCPD detectives arrived, Merrill and Mellott both stated that they had fired on Lora because they’d heard a gunshot come from inside the car. But no firearm was found in the car.

KCPD investigators brought a gun-sniffing dog to the scene. No gun. pitch.com | june 2017 | the pitch

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news

Orange cones show where KCPD shell casings were found at the scene.

A post-settlement photo taken from Lora’s Facebook page, later submitted as evidence in a separate court case

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Smith says he believes it’s the largest settlement in the history of the KCPD.

Lora was in critical condition when his ambulance arrived at Truman Medical Center. Incredibly, he survived. He owes his life to the fact that a bullet traveling toward his heart was halted by his spine. That bullet, along with several others, remains lodged in Lora’s body. He is permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

Today, Lora lives in a modest, newly constructed house in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. He’s 40 years old. When I visited, in early May, he was lying on his back in a bed set up in the living room. The room was empty except for a TV in one corner and the wheelchair that waited beside Lora’s bed.

Lora told me he was legally prohibited from discussing what happened the night of November 18, 2013. I asked him instead if he could tell me how the injuries he’d suffered had changed his life.

“Look at me, man,” he said, pulling up his shirt to expose several large scars. “I got all these bullet holes in me. One leg won’t bend up. The other leg won’t bend down. People have to help me into and out of that thing [the wheelchair]. I piss in a bag. I shit in a bag. They fucked me up. All you got to do is look at me.”

In December 2013, Lora filed a civil lawsuit against the KCPD officers who shot him.

His attorney, David Smith, originally sued Merrill, Mellott and Buckley, because the KCPD would not disclose which of the officers at the scene had discharged their weapons. When Smith learned that Buckley had not fired his gun, he dropped the complaint against that officer, narrowing the defendants to Merrill and Mellott.

Smith’s law office is located inside One Park Place, the white-and-black condominium tower at the corner of 31st Street and Southwest Trafficway. The building sits on one of the highest points of land in Kansas City, and out Smith’s wide, west-facing window, the view is majestic, stretching miles and miles into Kansas.

Smith has been suing the KCPD for years, but when I met with him recently, he was eager to stress that he is not a cop hater.

“I actually really like cops,” he said. “I have family members who are cops. My problem is the us-versus-them mentality that causes some of them to shoot first and lawyer up later. Their bad days can be lethal, and when they’ve done wrong they should promptly admit it.”

The Lora case echoed other cases Smith had worked on. In 1998, Smith represented the mother of Timothy Wilson, a 13-yearold African-American boy who was shot and killed by KCPD officers after a high-speed chase. Toward the end of the pursuit, Wilson’s pickup truck got stuck in mud in a residential lot; while he was revving the car back and forth to escape the mud, three of the four officers on the scene fired on him.

The officer who fired five shots at Wilson initially told a homicide detective he had shot Wilson because Wilson was driving his pickup truck toward him. Later, that officer’s story changed. He now said he thought he had seen Wilson reach underneath a coat on the passenger seat, where he feared a gun might lay.

Another officer who fired on Wilson also testified that he had shot Wilson because the pickup was moving toward him. But it later emerged that the pickup was veering away from that officer when he fired his shots.

“Nobody was in danger of being run over,” Smith says. “They were to the side of the car.”

Smith tried the case, and a jury awarded Wilson’s mother $700,000 in damages.

In 2000, Smith represented the family of Carol Ann Kerns, a white, 37-year-old pregnant woman who was killed during a routine traffic stop in 1999. After being pulled over by an officer on Southwest Trafficway near downtown, Kerns drove away as the officer walked back to his squad car to run her license. He fired on her and killed her. As Kerns was dying, she crossed into oncoming traffic on Interstate 35.

“His excuse was that he thought she was going to run him over,” Smith says. “But she was driving in the other direction, away from him.”

A grand jury declined to indict the officer. But Smith won a $400,000 settlement in federal court.

Opposing the KCPD in the Lora case, Smith was armed with a particularly favorable set of facts. To begin with, an investigation by the prosecutor’s office of the carjacking incident yielded no charges against Lora.

Then there was the Swiss cheese–like nature of the officers’ rationale for shooting.

They said they fired because they’d heard a gunshot, but there was no gun. Merrill offered as additional justification that he had seen Lora reach into the car’s center console, which he said he believed could contain a gun. But Merrill fired into the driver’s-side window, which was tinted. Indeed, Smith says, Merrill and Mellott had failed to notice Lora was in the RAV4 when they checked it the first time because of the dark windows. If they couldn’t see Lora seated in the car before, how could Merrill have seen the driver’s hand move toward the center a few moments later?

“Merrill shot Philippe [Lora] when the car was wedged up against a fence going nowhere, and I think Mellott shot simply because his partner was emptying his clip,” Smith says. “There is a loose pattern to the reasons officers give in a lot of these cases, particularly when the shooting victims are in cars. First, they say they fired shots because they were afraid the suspect was going to run them over in a car. Then they say they saw the suspect reach for something. Finally, they say they heard a shot. You see these same excuses over and over again.”

the pitch | june 2017 | pitch.com

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news

Smith also identified technical breaches of KCPD protocol in the aftermath of the shooting. For example, Merrill’s brother, who was not on duty, was allowed past the crime-scene tape.

“After an incident like this, the police are supposed to be treated like suspects,” Smith says. “But they [KCPD investigators] don’t treat them like suspects. They let Merrill and Mellott hang out together at the scene afterward. They let Merrill’s brother come through the crime-scene tape and comfort and coach him. They did what’s called a ‘walk through’ — where the investigating cops get together and hear the officers’ joint account of what happened before they commit a statement to paper or on video.”

Smith continues: “That’s not how it is with regular suspects. With regular suspects, you separate them and get them on video immediately. You don’t give them time to get their stories straight.”

Lora’s civil case churned for nearly a year, a period during which police shootings came to dominate the news. Ferguson exploded in August 2014, setting off a wave of civil unrest across U.S. cities. Smith says he believes Ferguson would have been a “verdict enhancer” had the case gone to trial.

But it didn’t. In January 2015, the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners voted to settle the case. Neither the case nor the settlement has previously been reported in the media. But the KCPD has confirmed to me that the amount the department agreed to pay was $4.8 million.

Smith says he believes it’s the largest settlement in the history of the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department.

This spring, as I was investigating the Lora shooting, I learned of another black man in Kansas City who had been shot in his car by the police. His name is Brandon Finch, and KCPD officers fired more than a dozen bullets into his 23-year-old body one night last fall.

Shortly after Finch was shot, a local lawyer, Tom Porto, requested Finch’s investigative case file from the police. The KCPD responded by filing a lawsuit seeking to exempt itself from fulfilling the request, on the grounds that a criminal investigation of Finch was ongoing. Porto argued that the KCPD was in violation of Missouri’s open-records laws.

The judge split the difference, ordering that the KCPD hand over the case file to Porto but adding a two-month protective order to it.

In May, about a month after the protective order expired, I requested from the KCPD the incident report related to Finch, as well as all supplemental documents, photos and video pertaining to the investigation.

The KCPD denied my request. All I received from the department was a heavily redacted incident report. Curiously, one of the offi-

cer’s names was redacted, but the other officer’s name — Craig Leach — was not. Finch’s name was also blacked out, despite the fact that I had referenced his name to request the report. The department informed me that all of the supplemental information I sought was a closed record, “due to the investigation still being open.”

I’ve pieced together details of the Finch shooting through other means. On October 8, 2016, police received reports that someone was driving near 43rd Street and Wabash, firing a gun from the car’s windows. Officers dispatched to the area came upon a silver 2005 Mercury Sable, which raced away when the driver spotted the police car. Police pursued the car for 12 blocks before the driver reached a dead end at 44th Street and Mersington.

Dashcam video shows the officers exit their car slowly, their guns drawn. The Sable is stopped. As they approach it, the driver slowly reverses the car. The two officers immediately begin firing into the Sable. Leach fires six shots. The other officer on the scene — the one whose name is redacted in the report sent to me by KCPD — is the first to fire, unloading a total of nine bullets into Finch.

That officer’s name: Dakota Merrill.

In March, a use-of-force committee convened by the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office cleared Merrill and Leach of any wrongdoing in the Finch shooting. In statements given three days after the shooting, they said they had fired because they were in fear of being run over by the car — which, police video confirms, was moving very slowly. Merrill also said he thought Finch was reaching for a gun. (A gun was found in Finch’s vehicle.)

In April, Finch was charged with armed criminal action and discharging a weapon from a moving vehicle. Porto, who is representing Finch in the criminal case, declined to comment on whether Finch would bring a civil suit against the KCPD for excessive use of force. Like Smith, Porto has successfully sued the KCPD on excessive-force cases, resulting in damage settlements of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past few years. Two of the officers in recent Porto excessive-force suits are no longer with the KCPD. Merrill, meanwhile, is still on the force.

Mellott and Leach are also still employed by the KCPD. The police department declined to comment on whether it views Merrill’s employment as a liability, given the $4.8 million Lora settlement and the possibility of another civil suit from Finch. But it has confirmed that Merrill is now working administrative duty. It is unclear if that reassignment is permanent.

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News

Wright Was Wrong

The for-profit career college is gone, but its students are still at the fringe of the job market. So is Wright’s former president, if you believe his alimony petition.

by Barbara Shelly

Bankruptcy cases generally don’t trigger sweeping orations from the bench, but U.S. District Judge Robert D. Berger didn’t hold back last month when he ordered an insurance company to pay $3 million to former students of the now-defunct Wright Career College. Representing the students, Berger said, was “a social good” performed by the Independence law firm Humphrey, Farrington & McClain. “It’s promoting good public policy in the United States,” he said.

Yes. But the lawyers representing 260 exstudent plaintiffs would be the first to say that their work would not have been needed had good public policy been applied much sooner to rein in the predatory practices of Wright and other profit-seeking schools.

“What I heard time and time again when talking to these students was about the hope that had been taken from them,” says Andrew Smith, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys. “They found people that the rest of the world had set aside and they said, ‘We’ll be the ones to help you.’ They sold hope that they never had the right to sell. These students wanted more than a worthless piece of paper.”

Like other so-called career colleges, Wright’s campuses in Overland Park, Wichita, Omaha, Oklahoma City and Tulsa roped in students with aggressive sales techniques and promises of degrees and certificates that would open doors to good-paying, purposeful jobs. Instead, they delivered exorbitant tuition, fees sometimes exceeding $1,000 a semester

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(excluding books), inept and ever-changing instructors, and, finally, worthless credentials.

Humphrey, Farrington & McClain, like its plaintiffs, was prepared to expose Wright’s sleaziness in a trial. But the school filed for bankruptcy in April 2016. The best the lawyers could do was negotiate a settlement with the insurance company representing Wright’s corporate owner, Mission Group Kansas Inc. Former students who joined the lawsuit will receive payouts ranging from about $2,000 to a high of $10,000; most will be in the neighborhood of $5,000.

“Small solace,” is how Smith describes the settlement agreement. “It’s not absolute justice, but it’s the best we can do in an imperfect system with a really bad defendant — a bad actor,” he says.

While waiting for their settlement checks — which should be disbursed in a matter of weeks — students might take another measure of small solace from a different legal action: a petition filed recently by John L. Mucci, the longtime Wright officer who was the school’s president when it went belly-up.

Mucci asked the court to amend his divorce agreement to free him from paying spousal support to his former wife. The designated amount — $3,630 a month — was affordable back in 2011, when Wright was paying him a monthly salary of about $25,000, Mucci argues in the petition. But now he finds himself out of work and unemployable — just like many of his former students. His ex-wife, meanwhile,

has a good-paying job with the Federation for American Immigration Reform — an extremist anti-immigrant group known as FAIR. (Add an online payday lender to the family portrait and we’d have an exploitation trifecta.)

Mucci’s petition paints a portrait of woe.

“The closing of the schools and the bankruptcy filing have garnered substantial negative coverage in the media, which has negatively impacted his [Mucci’s] ability to obtain employment,” it states. Compounding the ex-president’s blues, it seems that Wright, in the confusion surrounding its bankruptcy filing, neglected to submit a required periodic audit to the U.S. Department of Education. That error, according to Mucci, bars him from seeking employment with other college-level education institutions that receive similar federal funds.

“Petitioner’s employment options are also limited because his knowledge, skills and abilities are germane to post-secondary educational management — an occupational field that he cannot pursue,” his court filing states.

Mucci is pushing 70, but it’s never too late to consider a career change. Maybe something like surgical technology, a field that Wright Career College marketed as a great opportunity for its students.

Before Mucci enrolls, though, he might want to have a chat with Brian Wroten, who saw Wright’s television ads as he was recovering at home from cancer treatment. Wroten had received an encouraging prognosis, engendering in him good feelings about the medical profession. A certified electrician who had also worked in sales, Wroten was looking for something different. He signed up for $32,000 worth of loans and started classes.

Yes, Wroten ignored several red flags about Wright’s aggressive recruiting, but Wright’s admissions counselors had told him that someone with his skills and credentials could easily find a medical-technician job. His starting salary, they told him, would be in the $60,000– $70,000 range, and he could expect to parlay that into a six-figure income in a short time.

Wroten knew almost immediately that he’d made a costly error. Most of his fellow students, he tells me, lacked college-level skills: Many couldn’t write legibly or do basic math. The instruction, he says, was subpar. And Wroten learned only after he was on the hook that a good starting salary for a surgical technician in this area is about $40,000 — barely enough to keep his student loans current.

Still, Wroten resolved to stick it out. “I thought: If I can get out of here at the top of the class, I can still get a good job and I’ll be all right,” he says. Toward the end of his training, he insisted on being placed in an “externship,” for on-site training. He was one of the few in his class to be accepted to train at a Kansas City hospital, but the experience was a disaster.

“I quickly found out that what I learned at Wright was not enough to keep up in this field,” Wroten says. The hospital asked him to leave.

Once he’d completed his course, Wroten answered every ad he could find for work as a surgical technician. “I learned that putting Wright on my résumé was wrong,” he said.

Married and the father of a 6-year-old son, Wroten has started a handyman business and says he is fortunate to have enough financial cushion to survive the debacle of Wright Career College, which he calls “the biggest mistake of my life.” He knows many of his former classmates are not so lucky.

Unlike the multitude of for-profit schools that follow a similar exploitive model, Wright was established as a nonprofit corporation.

But the school was certainly profitable for its leaders. The 2014 tax returns of its corporate owner, Mission Group Kansas Inc., show that the chairman, James Miller Jr. of Naples, Florida, took compensation totaling $743,295 from Wright Career College and “related organizations.” Miller’s wife, Gayle Miller, earned $122,283 as a director for Mission Group Kansas and for work with “related organizations.” Mucci’s total compensation that year was $241,719.

Wright reported almost $34 million in revenues in 2014, but almost $38 million in expenses. Financial data for 2015 — the year preceding Mission Group Kansas’ bankruptcy — is not publicly available. Attempts to reach Mucci and Miller were unsuccessful.

Humphrey, Farrington & McClain began assembling its lawsuit in 2014, alleging that the school “entices prospective students to enroll and apply for student loans they cannot pay back through a systematic, deceptive marketing scheme.” That charge pretty much summarizes the business plan of much of the profit-seeking college sector. Members of Congress, state attorneys general and regulators from the U.S. Department of Education have known about its scams for years but never mustered the political will to step forward.

Instead, students have been forced to hire lawyers to have any hope of justice — assuming their state legislatures didn’t block their path to legal action, as Missouri Senate President Ron Richard and other unscrupulous lawmakers attempted this year.

Humphrey, Farrington & McClain continues to receive calls from ex-students who tell of garnished paychecks, eviction threats and looming homelessness as they struggle with tens of thousands of dollars of student debt incurred while attending as little as a single semester at Wright Career College. Meanwhile, Mucci, ex–college president and cash-poor ex-husband, lists as his address a gated townhouse and apartment community in Johnson County. Miller, the kingpin of the five-campus empire, has disconnected his Florida telephone number.

I mention Mucci’s reportedly diminished circumstances to Wroten, and he responds with a bitter laugh. “Oh, that’s too bad,” he says. “Join the crowd. I’d love to stand behind him in the unemployment line.”

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City Manager Troy Schulte confers with Joe Blankenship (second from left) and BikeWalkKC’s Maggie Priesmeyer at a recent Bike KC outreach meeting.

Wheel People by ron knox

Kansas City lags far behind when it comes to bicycle culture and bike-friendly infrastructure.

A new plan is in the works, but I wanted to test how my Bianchi and I could handle some basic KC trips right now.

zach bauman

The first thing I hear is the rumble.

It starts low, distant. It could be nothing — just passing traffic on some nearby street. But then the sound grows louder, gets closer. The rumble approaches. A quick backward glance and I see a pickup truck — not big, maybe one of those midsize Toyotas more suited for moving a couch than hauling drywall. But it’s coming up fast, and I am on a bicycle and we’re in Volker, and there is very little room on either side of the road for evasion. The truck and I, we are coming to an impasse.

Riding a bicycle anywhere unfurls an array of visceral sensory cues: sights you’d miss from a car, odors pleasing and not. But when you ride in the city, it’s the sounds that are most important. A squeak or a rattle from the bike signals some degree of trouble. A beeping means some nearby box truck is backing up, driven by someone who almost surely cannot see you.

And a rumble — well, a rumble means that some high-tonnage machinery is moving near you, in an adjacent lane or at some intersection. Everything will probably be fine, but your fingers still grip the brake levers, ready to squeeze. And a rising, unseen rumble that seems to be racing up behind you means that someone is going to have some fast decisions to make.

The man in the truck chooses to pass me.

It’s the middle of rush hour on a Friday, 8:30 a.m. or so, and traffic is heavy. The truck driver and I are on a quiet section of 41st Street that I use to cross Southwest Trafficway into Westport. I’ve ridden my bike in cities for years, and I move fast. My bike isn’t some carbon-fiber racer, but it’s new and has plenty of gears, and I ride with intent. I also am not shy about the space I use. I want to prevent drivers from passing too close because they think they can sneak pitch.com | june 2017 | the pitch

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First stop: coffee near UMKC. So far, so good.

around me — “taking the lane,” cyclers call this. But this driver doesn’t care. The rumbling closes in until it’s next to me, the truck passing about a foot from my leg. I glance over as the dude in the truck speeds by.

About a hundred feet later, he slams on his brakes at the stop sign at Southwest Trafficway. I pull up next to him, and we both wait in silence for traffic to clear.

By my standards, this doesn’t count as a close call. But I make a note of the truck and its particular rumble because on this day, I’ve set out to document what it’s like for a cyclist to ride Kansas City’s roads for actual transportation — a thing advocates inside and outside City Hall say they want more people to do.

Cycling in Kansas City is at a crossroads.

For the first time in years, city leaders are poised to detail a new plan that would create the bike lanes, paths and cycle tracks advocates say are key to luring would-be riders onto the streets. The vision, if successful, would mean miles of new on-street bike lanes and, in time, the emergence of a true culture of cycling in the city.

For now, cycling culture here remains a fantasy. Kansas City is a car town through and through. After the city published a

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damning audit of the existing bike master plan, last December, city leaders scrapped it. Now, with a different plan on the way, I wanted to spend a day riding my bike around Kansas City and document just what it’s like — and what the city should do in the coming months and years to make things better for everyone on wheels.

Let’s begin this on a high note: I like riding a bike in Kansas City. It can be strenuous and jagged, and it requires creative zig-zagging and some fitness. But an experienced cyclist will find nearly unlimited space and peace around here in which to ride.

At the moment, however, Kansas City is one of the worst bicycling cities in America.

At a time when both recreational and commuter cycling are increasing nationwide, KC cyclists who embark on city streets are virtually unprotected by dedicated space. For nearly two decades, Kansas City’s elected officials and city staff have understood this deficiency but have met it with piecemeal bicycle plans devoid of any chance for enactment.

“There was minimal political will to really start investing in bicycle infrastructure,”

I like riding a bike in KC. At the moment, however, it’s one of the worst cycling cities in america.

says Eric Bunch, co-founder of advocacy group BikeWalkKC and perhaps the most active proponent of cycling in the city. “They could have had a plan but didn’t have the political will.” Observers say Deb Ridgeway, who for years led the city’s cycling initiative from the pulbic-works department, worked hard to build up cycling culture inside City Hall. But in the end, the paint wasn’t hitting the road. Advocates demanded answers.

Four or five times, those advocates suggested to the city auditor’s office that Kansas City leaders were failing to achieve the city’s goal of improving life for cyclists and that the office should find out why. By April of last year, investigators from the office had begun combing documents, interviewing city officials and at times riding bikes and driving cars along the city’s existing and planned bike routes to find out what had gone wrong.

The office examined various incarnations of the existing bike plan, which was first pondered in the 1997 FOCUS comprehensive city plan and then expanded in multiple city documents over the years, including the 2002 Major Streets Plan, the Walkability Plan a year later, Trails KC in 2008 and so on. That year, the council also pledged to make Kansas City a League of American Bicyclists platinum-level city by 2020.

Platinum is the top ranking the league can bestow, and the designation is rare. Only five cities won the award last year — Portland, Oregon; the Colorado cities of Boulder and Fort Collins; Davis, California; and Madison, Wisconsin. To gain the designation, cities must show they spend money on cycling, teach bike safety, foster a community of advocates and, above all, provide bike lanes and trails and other facilities.

To help Kansas City build such a bike haven, the City Council created an advisory committee to oversee planning and give city leaders feedback on progress toward the platinum goal. By 2011, the group had recommended that the city draft a full update to the Bike KC plan to include a list of appropriate bike facilities, routes and design standards. The recommendations were crafted so that the resulting bike infrastructure would be easy for anyone to use, even those who weren’t usually inclined to ride on the street in traffic. This meant a network of on- and off-street bike lanes, and paths that would connect vital neighborhoods around the city.

But while the city has indeed placed green “bike route” signs along hundreds of miles of roads — riding a bike upon some of which would be dangerous at best and deadly at worst — it has installed just 38 miles of dedicated bike lanes around the city.

And those that do exist are disconnected from one another, so that there is no way for people to get from one bike lane to the next without riding without them for blocks or miles at a time.

the pitch | june 2017 | pitch.com

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This detachment means that even when the city has done things right, the effort has done little to inspire new ridership. The new buffered bike lanes along a revamped parcel of 20th Street in the Crossroads, for instance, should be a model for every other line of paint the city uses to separate bike and car traffic. Maybe they will be, but those lanes at the moment connect to no other bike lanes in any direction. In order for riders to put rubber to that particular stretch of road, they must traverse streets that offer scant room for nonmotorized traffic.

According to the audit, fewer than a quarter of the city’s existing bikeways are actually suitable for everyone who might want to ride a bike; more than half received a “D” grade, meaning they are amenable only to a few experienced adults willing to brave fast-moving traffic or hostile road conditions. There just aren’t many streets right now where casual cyclists feel comfortable — which means that the people who need bike lanes to ride on don’t use them, and the people who don’t need bike lanes don’t, either. So the gleaming new lanes on 20th Street await the people for whom they were built. People like me, who are wary of unobservant drivers, veering into the new lanes as they text their way through the Crossroads. So it goes for the rest of the city’s disjointed bike infrastructure.

The auditor’s office grew convinced that the city had mishandled its long-term bike plan enough to render it unusable. Its comparison plans included those in Denver and Portland — two major cities with more established bike cultures than Kansas City — as well as Overland Park, a suburb that mushroomed thanks to the prevalence of car culture. But set against bicycle plans in those and other cities, the Bike KC master plan lacked nearly every building block for success. It included no description of current facilities or state of biking in the city, no implementation plan, no guidelines for how future bike lanes and paths should be designed. There were no goals, no benchmarks.

“If anyone took a look at the existing bike plan, it was clear it was not sufficient to meet the city’s goals,” Bunch says. “There’s never been a systematic approach to the implementation of bikeways. That’s why you have this system — or the lack thereof.”

When the report was released in December, city leaders and local press called it “scathing.” Doug Jones, the city auditor, said it was simply a critique of the way things had been done in the past. “It was critical,” Jones says. “It was very pointed, and very critical of what had gone on before.”

Post-audit, the city is building a new bike master plan, consulting with the public and stakeholders on the design, process and funding for a new bike-lane network. That will all take time, of course.

But what is life on a bicycle like right now in Kansas City?

Hand-wave emoji to that driver and his rumbling truck, I’m headed now to Crows Coffee, a shop nestled in the strip mall along 51st Street near the University of Missouri–Kansas City campus. I ride here once a week or so to drink coffee and work. It has one of those old-fashioned, multi-wheel bike racks outside that actually fits no bikes at all and isn’t attached to anything, so I spend some fraction of my brainpower hoping no enterprising person with a truck comes by and snatches the whole thing, bikes and all.

There are many ways to get from midtown to UMKC, but my route takes me past the strangest and most ill-thought-out bike lane in the city. On a stretch of Oak that runs alongside the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, between 43rd Street and Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard, the city has painted a single bike lane, along the outside of the southbound lane. It’s a nice gesture — perhaps a nod to bike-clad students going to and from UMKC or the Kansas City Art Institute — but it’s on the wrong side of the road.

Southbound on this stretch of Oak is downhill. This is the easy side of the street.

Anybody can coast down a hill — a bike, a car, a baby in a stroller — so a separate bike lane isn’t necessary here. It’s the opposite, northbound lane that could use the protection: It’s a steep climb for two blocks, and the curb is perpetually clogged with buses dropping kids off at the museum, folks taking care of the Nelson’s lawn and whatever else. Go north here, and you’ll likely take up the middle of the lane — which means cars have to either crawl along behind you or try to pass you in the oncoming lane.

The story goes that, before there was a lane in either direction here, Bunch, of BikeWalkKC, was leading a group of officials from the planning department around the city to help them understand cycling in the city. He took one group to the hill in question and pointed out how useful a bike lane might be on the uphill side of the road. The planners thought it was a great idea. Weeks later, when it came time to put a stripe on the road, a planner who was not with Bunch that day instructed the construction crew to paint it on the downhill side of the street.

The story may be something of a fable, but the hill is real, and if you’re going to ride a bike in the city, you must be ready and able to climb it and many more just like it.

It’s easy to forget about the city’s hills in a car, where ascent is simply a question of the angle at which a driver presses the gas pedal.

But on foot or on a bike, the city’s ups and downs become obvious. More or less any bike ride from one place to another here requires climbing at least one hill, if not several. And it’s on the city’s hills where you face the reality of riding a bike in KC.

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The muscular cyclists of San Francisco or Seattle would scoff at our paltry Great Plains grades — indeed, the elevation changes only about 400 feet from the river basin to Hospital Hill on downtown’s southern edge. But the most bike-friendly communities grew up around less punishing topography: Neighborhoods around Portland’s Willamette River are flat and easy to ride, and Denver, where Bunch used to live, is flat most everywhere.

“A 3-mile bike ride here is a lot different than a 3-mile bike ride in Denver,” he says.

Bike lanes on the KC’s steepest uphill climbs would make riding on them far safer and more comfortable. City leaders know this. Without the lanes, your only ally is the right bike (ridden with some grit). So I leave Crows and climb the Oak hill until it flattens by KCAI, before dipping down to 40th Street, where Oak momentarily ends. There, I turn left and climb another disheartening rise almost to Main Street, before turning into the angular parking lot of a bike shop that deals in the precise wares an unstriped Kansas City needs.

Inside her bike shop, Christina Decker shows me different species of two-wheeled steel and aluminum and carbon fiber, each with a different purpose. The road bikes sit across from the register — Bianchi, mainly (the brand I ride at the moment), but also Giant and a few other brands. Next to these are the off-road beasts, with their bulging shocks and their bulbous tires, ready to chew up dirt and gravel; the top model here, a muscular carbon-fiber Pivot that looks like it was beamed from space, runs about $8,500.

Then we get to what Midwest Cyclery — Decker’s family store, which she took over from her father last year — does best: the commuters. It’s a broad category, one that includes fast-looking cyclocross bikes with disk brakes as well as loopy, steel city cruisers that will get you where you want to go ... eventually. There are electric pedal-assist bikes to help flatten those hills; she rides one, though she admits that doing so feels close to cheating. But mainly, there are the hybrids — the road-bike-cruiser crossbreeds that some bike scientist somewhere has decided are the most comfortable and convenient machines for urban use — especially for new or inexperienced riders who want a bike that is easy on the roads and easy on the wallet. Decker sells a ton of them, she says, more than any other style in the shop.

“You are standing in the middle of what I would lead them [new riders] to,” she tells me as I inspect a set of gears. “It’s the size of the tires and the geometry of the bike itself — the comfort that it gives. It’s a mixture of all of the bikes we just walked around and looked at.”

If this summer is going to be your first on a bike in this city, your bike will matter. Your

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old, rusty Fuji or Schwinn that has been harboring cobwebs in your garage since the Clinton administration might not do the trick. Decker and her mechanics tell stories of people dragging their old steel beasts into the shop to get tuned up, only to learn that replacement parts and labor send the bill into the triple digits fast. Meanwhile, the shop’s new bikes start at around $300. The same is true at most any commuter-focused bike shop, including the excellent Family Bicycles in Waldo, or even at the corporate bike stores in the suburbs where your dad bought his $3,000 Specialized.

Sacrilege to some, but here it is: A new bike will last longer, ride better and make your life easier.

I’m sure the folks at 816 Bike Collective scoff at such disregard for the potential of older bikes, and I know firsthand how nice they can be. I have a 1986 Fuji Allegro, top of the line for that year and a true steel beauty even now. I’ve dropped a couple hundred bucks on the thing already — new handlebars, brakes and saddle — and she’s still not my daily driver. That’s my 2014 Bianchi, lightweight steel with a carbon fork, a triple chainring up front (don’t judge) and nine more gears in the back.

It fits a rack for my bags or my kid’s bike seat, and it crushes every hill it meets. This is the bike you want in the city.

Even the entry-level hybrid at a good shop has most of what you’ll need — the lightweight frame, the soft ride, all the gears you need. In a city with next to no bike infrastructure whatsoever, being able to ride at a good clip while climbing hills and navigating whatever other impediments might be in your way is crucial. If owning a good bike means you ride more often and feel more comfortable doing so, then it’s worth it — even when new and better bike facilities begin to appear on city streets.

Again, a plan for those facilities isn’t in place yet — more on that in a minute. But for now, the city has planning projects out for bid or nearing construction that should lead to new bike lanes on city streets this summer — if the city can navigate the maze of bureaucracy and funding that for years has stood in the way of such projects.

A BikeWalkKC cycle-track demo

Midwest Cyclery owner Christina Decker tells me that new riders should probably start with a good hybrid.

Bikes aren’t cars, and bikes aren’t pedestrians. They’re a third thing, and forcing people who ride bikes to do so on something intended for drivers, or something built for foot traffic, makes life harder for everyone.

Bikes are extraordinarily efficient transportation machines. They require minimal fuel (“20 miles per burrito,” or however that joke goes), they are lightweight and they omit no greenhouse gases. They also move far faster than any pedestrian, so to put them on sidewalks, as some critics of bike lanes suggest, is madness. I don’t want to navigate my bike around people strolling the

the pitch | june 2017 | pitch.com

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Dedicated bike parking downtown is virtually nonexistent.

sidewalks of Brookside, and no one pushing a child in a stroller or walking a dog wants me riding up behind at 10 miles an hour.

And sidewalks in Kansas City are treacherous enough as it is. It’s one thing to have to step over a slab of pavement that’s been twisted by a bulging tree root; it’s another to safely surmount that obstacle on a bike. (Also, Missouri statute bans cyclists from riding on a sidewalk “within a business district.”)

Bikes can also be grindingly slow. Bikes that are geared and constructed for off-road conditions simply cannot move very quickly — and a confusing number of Kansas City bicyclists tend to ride such things around the city. This category also includes the 150 B-cycle bike-share vehicles that are installed in 30 pay-as-you-go corrals between Waldo and downtown. The B-cycles are exceedingly easy to ride in part because they have only three gears — which means they are not fast.

Another trade-off for the people-powered efficiency of the bicycle is safety. If basically anything bumps or jostles you on a bike, or if you are forced to brake suddenly at high speed, there’s a chance you’ll lay the bicycle down.

This is part of why expecting bicyclists to share car traffic lanes with drivers is unrealistic — especially in Kansas City, where the lack of traffic density encourages habitual speeders.

Leaving the bike shop, I head north. I’ve taken a full day off from my job, primarily to do this ride but also to take care of a few other errands. So I’m going to get a tattoo, at Mercy Seat in the Crossroads.

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On Main, traffic is almost constant, and taking a lane can feel treacherous.

Rather than take my chances on Main Street during the Friday lunch hour, I ride up 41st a few blocks east and then turn to ride north. I’ve chosen Warwick rather than any number of perfectly fine north-south residential roads because I know it is wide, its traffic is light, and its hills are passable: easy riding to 39th, then uphill north to 36th. But the road ends at the box-store plaza where Costco sells people enormous amounts of stuff they don’t need. I jog over to Gillham.

Gillham is six lanes wide here, and traffic is steady and moving quickly. I just need to make it to Linwood before I can take Cherry into the Crossroads, so I wait for a few cars to pass, turn left and move to the far-right lane. Traffic lightens, and the riding is easy.

I turn right on Linwood, then quickly left onto Gillham Road and cross 31st Street, where the street name changes to Cherry and everything calms.

At 25th Street, on the edge of Hospital Hill, Cherry ends. Rather than ride farther east, I aim again for Gillham and try to experience at least a bit of what it’s like to ride a bike where people actually drive. Traffic is light but steady. I ride north for a moment, then duck onto Locust, which here is a short service street that runs alongside Children’s Mercy Hospital. The detour is rewarding; from that perch on the hill, the downtown skyline stretches out in front of me.

The road deposits me back onto Gillham — which immediately becomes Oak because whatever — and there I am, in traffic, going across the bridge that spans the railroad tracks leading to and from Union Station.

There is no shoulder, only the concrete wall of the bridge, and it would be harrowing in perhaps another city with more traffic, but here and now it is just as easy and scenic as any other stretch of my daylong ride. A car passes in the lane next to mine, but there is no one behind me and everyone seems comfortable with their speed. In a few blocks, I turn on 17th Street and get to McGee. A few minutes later, a series of needles deposits ink into my epidermis.

Later, after lunch at Lulu’s nearby, I ride to those new bike lanes on 20th Street. If things were different, I would then use any of the three major north-south thoroughfares — Main, Broadway, Grand — to return to midtown. But I don’t. I’ve done it before, and it’s just unpleasant enough to dissuade me from doing it today. Grand, where the city has long planned to shrink the street by two lanes and install separated bike boulevards, provides an easy ride through the Crossroads but elevates at Crown Center, slowing you down.

The rumble of traffic behind you can be incessant — and then it spills out onto Main, where traffic is almost constant and taking a lane can feel treacherous.

So I ride east, first along the lanes of 20th and then, when it ends, north to 19th Street.

To get back to Westport, I decide to take

Charlotte, a one-way, southbound street that pairs with the northbound Holmes a block over. Charlotte and Holmes have bike lanes on them through the Crossroads, and Charlotte’s lane stretches north until it connects to the Heart of America bridge and beyond. But the lane ends at 19th Street for no reason other than the failures listed in the Bike KC audit. Still, I turn onto Charlotte and begin the climb up Hospital Hill — not some killer incline that forces me up out of my saddle, but a long, slow burn of elevation change past Truman Medical Center and up to 27th Street.

Even with the grind of the hill, though, I’m experiencing the best parts of riding a bike in Kansas City. Charlotte is Missouri River–wide at first, and even when cars pass, they are so far from me that I hardly notice them. And when the lanes narrow and traffic grows around the hospital, I still find plenty of space to ride in.

Connecting Charlotte and Holmes from the Plaza to the Crossroads is on the city’s list of potential bike gains this year because both are due for resurfacing. Count me in favor: Charlotte south of 27th Street is a pleasant, rolling ride down a quiet one-way street, and it would be the perfect place for the city to experiment with different kinds of separated bike lanes. It could, for example, put a one-way lane on each road between the parked cars and the curb, protecting cyclists while maintaining all of the space and parking that residents will surely demand.

Rides like this make clear how great an opportunity the city has as it rewrites its Bike KC plan. The city has a network of quiet, spacious streets just waiting to be connected to the infrastructure proposed for key thoroughfares.

Finding where to make those connections is one task now before Wes Minder, who took over from Deb Ridgeway as the city’s primary bike and pedestrian coordinator the day the audit was released. To do it, he must unite different branches of the city’s bureaucracy, install some oversight over our roads and boulevards and then plan and construct a comprehensive bike network, all while navigating the city’s addiction to wide roads and ample parking.

A couple of weeks ago, Minder and Joe Blankenship, the planning official in charge of running the Bike KC update, rode the length of Ninth and 12th streets, from downtown east to Winner Road, to see which would be easier for bicyclists. (In this case, the wider and ostensibly busier 12th Street seemed to offer more space and less traffic than Ninth.) But Minder and Blankenship — both avid cyclists — can’t ride every road.

They need people to get out there and ride, and then tell the city what works and what doesn’t. “We’re looking for that kind of feedback from people who ride corridors that we’re not aware of,” Minder says.

the pitch | june 2017 | pitch.com

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feature

The city has also put together a steering committee that includes advocates and officials from around the city and local government. Mark McHenry, co-chairman of the bike-pedestrian committee of the MidAmerica Regional Council, sits on the steering committee and says the city has done a good job getting the right parties to the table to help design the new bike plan.

“We’re definitely heading in the right direction,” he says. “I’ll tell you, having lived here awhile, we’re a much more bike-focused community than we were 20 years ago.”

The main difference, he tells me, is that people are engaged now. As the audit pointed out, residents now look to bikes for more than just recreation and exercise. They want to get places — to work, to the store, to their kids’ daycare. They want a bike culture — not to replace cars but to exist alongside the Midwest’s affinity for driving.

“You literally have to get out and get on a bike,” McHenry says about how to create this culture. “It seems simple, but that’s the truth.”

Dan Fowler has war stories about biking.

The 2nd District councilman is a serious and confident rider, and he logs scores of miles on big group rides whenever he has time. So he has ideas about how dedicated bike lanes around the city could make cycling among KC’s cars feel less like combat.

Most folks would like to try riding a bike in town but feel intimidated by drivers and the city’s lack of any discernible bike culture.

That hesitation creates a chicken-and-egg paradox in the minds of city officials and bike advocates: How can the city’s bike culture improve if people are too afraid to actually put their bikes in the road and ride? And if people won’t ride en masse, how can bike culture ever improve?

The answer to the riddle is easy to say and difficult to execute: The city must craft a comprehensive plan to construct bicyclefriendly facilities on the roads of Kansas City. Those facilities must create both the feeling and the reality of safety. The city must also integrate these facilities into the existing car-based infrastructure so that drivers and cyclists are aware of one another and are able to safely interact in places with the most potential for harm — at intersections and along the city’s hills.

Observers are confident that process is in place now. Bunch, from BikeWalkKC, says he can see deep shifts within city government that suggest a desire to change the culture and structure of biking in the city. “I think that we’re starting to put the recipe together,” he says.

Everyone I talked to for this story expressed admiration for City Manager Troy Schulte’s swift response to the audit. Just eight days after it came out, Schulte’s office issued a statement, agreeing with its findings

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and lamenting the state of the existing Bike KC plan: “Simply put, the current plan does not assist the city in achieving the objective of making Kansas City a platinum-level city for bicycle mobility.”

Schulte directed the staff shake-up that put Minder in charge of overseeing bike facilities in the city and Blankenship in charge of the new Bike KC plan. Jones, the city auditor, says he has never seen a city manager react to an audit so quickly and decisively.

Still, if the new Bike KC plan will continue to strive for a League of American Bicyclists platinum status, the city has a long way to go. KC holds a bronze designation from the league — the lowest rank. To reach even a silver rank, the league asks cities to install bike facilities on about half of their highspeed commuter roads, so that cyclists can use the most practical thoroughfares as easily as drivers do. Kansas City has none. The league also recommends that just more than half of all city roads have bike lanes; this is also part of the path to silver. Just 6 percent of Kansas City roads have such facilities at the moment. Ridership too low, bicycle fatalities too high. The list goes on.

As part of a recent bike-plan meeting in midtown, at the Foreign Language Academy, Blankenship and other officials huddled outside as attendees and others took turns riding B-cycle bikes up and down a temporary, two-way cycle track the city had built on Warwick. Schulte, the city manager, rode a couple of laps as people snapped pictures on their phones.

Blankenship says that even though the new plan won’t be finalized until sometime in 2018, people should expect changes now. The downtown bike loop, from Grand to Third Street, will soon connect to those fancy new lanes on 20th Street. A long-planned bikeway along Armour Boulevard might happen this summer, too, but issues remain before work there will begin. Leaders expect the new plan to address some of those lingering concerns — including the difficulty of obtaining and using federal and state funding, and the barriers to soliciting and receiving bids from contractors to do the work.

Blankenship squints in the sun. The challenges to constructing a comprehenvsive cycling plan in Kansas City loom before him and his staff. They are starting from scratch. Nothing that came before — no half-baked plan, no green “bike route” sign or green line on a map — matters now.

Everything must transform: the way the city plans for, pays for and executes bike facilities. The culture, too, must evolve — both in the neighborhoods, where cars and the parking they require rule, and in the city’s urban corridors.

“I don’t have the answer today,” Blankenship says. But any change for bicycling in Kansas City starts with him and starts now.

Participants at the outreach meeting offer route feedback on maps.

Schulte tries a B-cycle.

Ridership shows signs of rising to meet better infrastructure.

the pitch | june 2017 | pitch.com

5/22/17 1:51 PM

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summer guide

s y a w Al the Sun

You thought it would never get here.

And you know it'll go by fast. Do these things, and you'll do summer 2017 right.

By April Fleming

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zach bauman

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summer guide

Elvis Costello has been no stranger to KC this decade, having appeared at the Uptown and Yardley Hall in the recent past. Yet this outdoors summer appearance — with his full band, the Imposters, and featuring music from his Imperial Bedroom album on its 35th anniversary — promises to be a highlight even by EC standards. crossroadskc.com

Tig Notaro

S

ummer, in all its mosquito-buzzed, sweat-soaked glory, is finally here. Three months of barbecues, patio drinking and pool dips also brings music festivals, outdoor movies, sporting events, offbeat shopping and the occasional celestial thrill. With that in mind, here’s The Pitch’s handpicked list of seasonal musts — with special visual guest Marc Hayes, our summertime model, a dedicated midtowner and anti-shut-in whom you're likely to see at some of these very events. Basically, here are the places you’ll find us for the next three months. So wax your ride, check the tint on your eclipse shades, hydrate as needed and get out there with your fellow Kansas Citians to eat, play, drink and dance (or find some shade). See you under the sun.

Uptown Theater (3700 Broadway) Stand-up comic Tig Notaro may always be best-known for one devastatingly funny night in 2012, when she went onstage in Los Angeles and confessed to the audience that her mother had died and that she had been diagnosed with cancer. The impossible feat — to make that shitstorm funny — won her heaps of well-deserved praise. Five years later, she has long been in remission and has seen her public profile rise while her private life has seemingly flourished: She has married and had children. And she has written a lot more material, on the heels of her terrific Amazon series, One Mississippi. tignation.com

Off-the-Wall Film Series: To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar

June Friday, June 2 Gay Pride Kansas City

(through June 4) Berkley Riverfront Park, 1298 East Riverfront Road Kansas City’s Gay Pride Festival marks its 42nd year celebrating our LGBTQI community with performances by Australian pop star Betty Who, DJ Citizen Jane, and American Idol alums David Hernandez and Frenchie Davis (among others). In addition: workshops and free health checkups, youth hangouts, a marketplace and an animal-adoption booth. gaypridekc.org

Jazzoo

Kansas City Zoo (6800 Zoo Drive) The Kansas City Zoo’s largest annual fundraiser regularly brings in more than half a million dollars, helping to defray the costs of feeding specialty diets to the zoo’s 1,700-plus animals. During the event the zoo opens its doors to partygoers who eat and drink their way through dozens of vendors while enjoying live music from three stages. Tickets are $175. jazzookc.org

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Sprint Center (1407 Grand) Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are on the road for their 40th anniversary of supplying direct-to-veins classic American rock. Joe Walsh performs opening duties. sprintcenter.com

Friday, June 9 Vintage Market Days

(through Sunday, June 11) Longview Community College (3801 Southwest Longview Road, Lee’s Summit) Venture beyond the West Bottoms for your vintage and antique shopping this weekend with a stop at Vintage Market Days, a local market held in various locations throughout KC over the course of the year. This weekend’s market happens outdoors at Longview Community College in Lee’s Summit. Dozens of vendors will be out selling antique and vintage goods, clothing, furniture, crafts, food, artwork and plantings. vintagemarketdays.com

Elvis Costello & the Imposters

Crossroads KC (417 East 18th Street)

Kansas City Central Library (14 West 10th Street) The library’s summer series of free rooftop movies files this 1995 film — with Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze and John Leguizamo as drag queens — under this season’s “Misfits, Music and Mayhem” theme. The jaunt begins at 8:45 p.m.; doors at 8, with free beer and popcorn. kclibrary.org

Friday, June 16 Boulevardia

(through Sunday, June 18) Stockyards District (Genessee Street and Butler Way, West Bottoms) The local beer-food-and-music fest returns this year with its massive beer-tasting event, loads of food and an impressive music lineup including Local Natives, the Joy Formidable, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Guster, Saint Motel, the Strumbellas, the Struts and the Heydaze, among a slew of local acts. boulevardia.com

David Sedaris: Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002

Rainy Day Books (2706 West 53rd Street, Fairway) Rainy Day Books is going all out for literary superstar David Sedaris today, projecting his reading in the store outside, in Rainy

Day’s parking lot (which will be closed to cars and for which attendees are encouraged to bring blankets, chairs and other festivallike accoutrements). Your ticket purchase includes a hardback copy of his new book as well as the chance to meet Sedaris to have your copy signed. rainydaybooks.com

Kansas City Symphony Season Finale

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts (1601 Broadway) Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony close out their season tonight with performances of the Russian master Rachmaninoff ’s Second Symphony, followed by Barber’s Violin Concerto. For younger listeners, the symphony is also performing the score to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone the following weekend. tickets.kcsymphony.org

Saturday, June 17 Fiesta Filipina

Filipino Cultural Center (9810 West 79th Street, Overland Park) The annual Fiesta Filipina gives you a chance to sample heaps of homemade Filipino cuisine, including pork kebabs, chicken adobo, pancit (a savory rice noodle dish), lumpia (long, thin pork egg rolls) and much more. Also: performances by the Sinag-Tala dance troupe and the Sampaguita choir, among others. Exhibits, vendors and games round out the day. filipino-association.org

Friday, June 23 The Big Slick Celebrity Softball GAME, and The Kansas City Royals vs. the Toronto Blue Jays

Kauffman Stadium, 1 Royal Way The Big Slick charity event once again lures dozens of household names to KC for the weekend, including hometown products Jason Sudeikis, Paul Rudd, Rob Riggle and Eric Stonestreet. In this benefit for Children’s Mercy Hospital, your ticket purchase today is good for two games: the celebrity softball matchup (Jon Hamm, are you coming?) and an MLB contest that might be worth sticking around to see. mlb.com/royals

Saturday, June 24 Maker Faire

(through June 25) Union Station, 30 West Pershing Road Celebrating all things made with human hands, Maker Faire takes over Union Station today. The gathering brings together pitch.com | june 2017 | the pitch

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summer guide

inventors, engineers, farmers, cooks, hobbyists, kids — generally anyone interested in creative expression and the art of making stuff. kansascity.makerfaire.com

Movies, to the Improv tonight. Watch a movie with him as he and special guests mercilessly mock it. improvkc.com

KC Nanobrew Festival

Tuesday, July 4

Berkley Riverfront Park (1298 East Riverfront Road) A Pitch Best of Kansas City “Best Beer Festival” winner, the Microbrew Festival at Berkley Riverfront Park once again offers attendees a chance to choose from up to 250 different home brews while sampling from 10 food trucks and other vendors. Tickets are $35. eventbrite.com

Westport Beer Festival

Westport Road and Pennsylvania Down the road, the Westport Beer Festival is a different kind of beast: 35 local and national breweries and four craft distillers slinging their wares in the street in front of McCoy’s Public House. Sample beers from Ballast Point, Boulevard, Crane, Oskar Blues, Perennial Artisan Ales and more.

Tickets are $25 and benefit AidsWalkKC. beerkc.com/westportbeerfest

Award Winners Tasting

Green Dirt Farm (19915 Mount Bethel Road, Weston) At last year’s American Cheese Society’s American Cheese Society Conference and Competition (the Oscars of American cheese), Green Dirt Farm took home a staggering nine awards. Its award winners are showcased today, along with wine and cocktail pairings, at the company’s farm in Weston for $85 a person. greendirtfarm.com

JuLY Saturday, July 1 Heart of America Shakespeare Festival

Riverfest

Berkley Riverfront Park (1298 East Riverfront Road) The city’s biggest fireworks display is accompanied by full night’s worth of music (the Phantastics, 1980s tribute band Members Only, more), 14 food trucks and kids’ activities. Admission between 4 and 5 p.m. is free; tickets afterward are $5. kcriverfest.com

Friday, July 7 Crown Center Weekender flick: The Parent Trap

Crown Center, 2450 Grand Movies don't get much more parentfriendly (or twin-friendly) than this one, which kicks off a summer-long series of free films at Crown Center Plaza. (Also in July: How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Remember the Titans and Jurassic World.) Outside food and drink aren’t permitted (food, drink and alcohol are available for purchase on site), but chairs and blankets are welcome, and bands and food trucks are on hand before showtime. crowncenter.com

Saturday, July 8 Adventure Hunt Go on a full-day, Amazing Race-ish scavenger hunt around Kansas City to unload one of 10 prize packs, including Go Pros and KZ gear. The winner gets a six-day stay at Red Frog Beach Resort in Bocas del Toro, Panama (airfare not included unless you are one of the top four teams nationwide). Tickets start at $50. adventurehunt.co/products/Kansas-City

Sunday, July 9 Queen and Adam Lambert

Southmoreland Park (4600 Oak) The annual outdoor KC Shakespeare Festival is staging its second-to-last performance of Hamlet for the season at Southmoreland Park. The free production stars Overland Park native Nathan Darrow (House of Cards, Gotham, Billions) in the title role. kcshakes.org

Sprint Center (1407 Grand) We won’t pretend this is akin to seeing Queen with Freddie Mercury, but American Idol alum Adam Lambert does have the chops to carry Freddie’s tune. If you want to see Queen in KC this century, well, this is as close as you’re going to get. sprintcenter.com

Sunday, July 2

Tuesday, July 11

Doug Loves Movies

Improv KC (7260 Northwest 87th Street) Stoner comedian Doug Benson brings his perennially popular podcast, Doug Loves

24

An American in Paris

Starlight Theatre (4600 Starlight Road) During its run on Broadway, An American in Paris received 12 Tony Award nomi-

nations for its stage interpretation of the classic film. Prepare for lots of dancing and a score by George and Ira Gershwin (with whom there’s no going wrong). kcstarlight.com

Friday, July 14 Off-the-Wall Film Series: Wet Hot American Summer

Kansas City Central Library (14 West 10th Street) Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler and Bradley Cooper go to a very R-rated camp in this installment of the library’s rooftop-movies series. Beer, popcorn, mustaches.

Saturday, July 15 ’90s Charity Bar Crawl for Urban Ranger Corps

Kelly's Westport Inn (500 Westport Road) From 2 to 7 p.m. today, a chunk of Westport devotes itself to the most lamentable decade of the last century. Organizers of this event, which helps fund the youth-doinggood-works program, want to see every last bandanna and grunge T-shirt in the metro at Kelly's, Westport Saloon, Johnny Kaw's, Ale House and Dempsey's Burger Pub. Slap bracelets are involved.

Tuesday, July 18 Blondie and Garbage

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts (1601 Broadway) The Kauffman Center doesn’t book many shows like this: the “Rage and Rapture” tour, which features Blondie in its first KC appearance since 2009 (and only its third ever), and Garbage, fresh off of its 2016 return to recording. kauffmancenter.org

Thursday, July 20 Fringe Festival Beginning today, KC’s largest arts festival, in its 14th year, kicks off a 10-day run, with hundreds of performances in more than 15 venues. You’ll see theater, spoken word, dance, variety, performance art, cabaret, visual art and film. kcfringe.org

Friday, July 21 Steve Martin and Martin Short

Starlight Theatre (4600 Starlight Road) Comedy legends Steve Martin and Martin Short are continuing a slate of shows that combine stand-up, film clips and musical performances, including from Martin’s bluegrass band, the Steep Canyon Rangers. kcstarlight.com

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summer guide

Friday, August 11 Off-the-Wall Film Series: Harold and Maude

Kansas City Central Library (14 West 10th Street) The library’s “Misfits, Music and Mayhem” emphasizes the first word in that string with this 1971 classic. Beer, popcorn, weird love.

Saturday, August 12 Tour de Fat

Crossroads KC (417 East 18th Street) Fort Collins, Colorado, company New Belgium Brewing is hosting the 18th Annual Tour de Fat, a touring carnival of sorts featuring live bands (in KC the featured act is Atlas Genius), circus performers, buskers and, of course, beer. Tickets are $15 (or $20 depending on when you buy them) and benefit BikeWalkKC. newbelgium.com

The New Pornographers

Sunday, July 23 Powell Gardens Barn Dinner with chef Alex Pope

Powell Gardens (1609 Northwest U.S. Highway 50, Kingsville) The barn-dinner series at Powell Gardens showcases the renowned Heartland Harvest Garden, deemed (by Powell Gardens) “the largest edible landscape in the country.” Tonight’s dinner is prepared by chef Alex Pope (the Local Pig, Cleaver & Cork). powellgardens.org

Tuesday, July 25 Violent Femmes and Echo & the Bunnymen

Crossroads KC (417 East 18th Street) The best music by post-punk mainstay Echo and the Bunnymen and angsty act Violent Femmes has aged well, so this should be one of those sweaty, high-energy summer nights that Crossroads KC is good at supplying. crossroadskc.com

AUGUST Thursday, August 3 Alt-J

Starlight Theatre (4600 Starlight Road) The EDM-influenced British rock band

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Alt-J is playing its biggest stage yet in Kansas City on the heels of a new album, Relaxer, released in June. kcstarlight.com

Friday, August 4 Festival of Butterflies

Powell Gardens (1609 Northwest U.S. Highway 50, Kingsville) This event, which begins today and runs through August 20, showcases a variety of locally raised, native butterflies in the Butterfly Breezeway; or venture into the conservatory to view tropical species. Kid-friendly exhibits, including those involving caterpillars and dragonflies, are also open. powellgardens.org

Crown Center Weekender flick: Back to the Future

Crown Center, 2450 Grand See this classic 1985 adventure comedy for free at Crown Center Plaza tonight. crowncenter.com

Wednesday, August 9 Bruno Mars

Sprint Center (1407 Grand) In an era when album sales are generally flat, Bruno Mars has sold 26 million of them: an incredible feat. Mars’ live performances are a good indication of why. From the elaborate dancing and singing to the massive staging, this is pure pop entertainment. sprintcenter.com

Liberty Hall (644 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence) See Neko Case, A.C. Newman and their power-pop mainstay in one of the region’s classic venues. libertyhall.net

Wednesday, August 16 Kendrick Lamar

Sprint Center (1407 Grand) Few artists ever achieve the universal respect that the 2017-model Kendrick Lamar is now enjoying. His newest release, Damn, somehow improves on his brilliant To Pimp a Butterfly, with smart storytelling and clever delivery. sprintcenter.com

Thursday, August 17 KC Improv Festival

Kick Comedy Theater (4010 Pennsylvania) The two-weekend annual KC Improv Festival begins this weekend. The schedule hasn’t been announced, but past headliners include Jason Sudeikis, Mick Napier and Susan Messing as well as the Cook County Social Club. kcimprovfestival.com

Saturday, August 19 Sporting Kansas City vs. FC Dallas

Children’s Mercy Park (1 Sporting Way, Kansas City, Kansas) As of press time, Sporting KC and FC Dallas were atop the MLS Standings for the 2017 season. If you can swing it, sit in “the Cauldron” for one of the rowdiest experiences a sports fan can have (outside of Allen Fieldhouse).

Monday, August 21 Total solar eclipse

Rosecrans Memorial Airport (100B Northwest Rosecrans Road, St. Joseph) Just 45 minutes north of KC, St. Joseph is directly in the totality path of this summer’s solar eclipse — the first of its kind in the United States in 38 years, and our only chance to witness totality around here in our lifetimes. Head to Rosecrans Memorial airport for a free event organized by Front Page Science, which has invited astronomers and set up safety-filtered telescopes for the event.

Here you can view the eclipse for 158 seconds, just one second short of the maximum time possible. stjomo.com/eclipse2017

Friday, August 25 The Vintage Whites Market

National Airline History Museum (201 Northwest Lou Holland Drive) The large-scale vintage market is a great place to shop for vintage clothing, furniture, primitives and home décor. This ticketed event also brings in guests for demos and talks. Last year’s guest of honor was Pioneer Woman star Ree Drummond. thevintagewhitesmarket.com/kansas-city

Saturday, August 26 Moonshine on the Farm at Deanna Rose Farmstead

Deanna Rose Farmstead (13800 Switzer Road, Overland Park) Normally an immersive farm experience for kids, the farmstead is opening tonight for an adult fundraiser featuring live music, hayrides, heavy appetizers, drinks and games (giant Jenga, for example). Tickets are $50 a person. artsandrec-op.org

Sunday, August 27 Farm-to-Table Dinner with chef Vaughn Good

Green Dirt Farm (19915 Mount Bethel Road, Weston) Venture out to Green Dirt Farm’s ridiculously idyllic farmstead for a farm-to-table experience with one of the area’s most impressive chefs (especially when it comes to protein), Vaughn Good of Hank Charcuterie in Lawrence. The dinner features fresh lamb from the farm’s flock as well as sheep and cow’s milk cheeses, made on site. Tickets are $200 a person. greendirtfarm.com

the pitch | june 2017 | pitch.com

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The Whiff of Main Street

The lamb meatballs were tender and pungent. provided by stock hill

Stock Hill, the Plaza’s platinum-card steakhouse, nails a lot — just not the red meat.

by Liz Cook

I thought I knew what I was getting into.

I’d planned my visits with the care of a pensioner plotting a bucket-list cruise, plotting exactly where to splurge and where to save.

I’d received a $250 reimbursement cap from this very paper. (“All right,” my editor joked at the writers’ meeting when I pitched this as my next restaurant. “Everybody throw 20 bucks on the table.”)

But nothing quite prepared me for the delirious cosmic joke of being handed an $80 bill for a solo dinner (at which I had ordered neither drinks nor dessert) while Lee Dorsey’s “Working in the Coal Mine” played over the speakers.

Griping about the tab at a place like Stock Hill — Bread & Butter Concepts’ platinumplated vision of a modern Kansas City steakhouse — seems asinine. The 14,000-squarefoot restaurant isn’t coy about its price point, from the glittering accents to the white tablecloths to the metric Winklevoss of sport-coated servers. The branding is clear: Expense accounts encouraged; student-loan debtors need not apply.

No, my complaint is with the food. It’s always good at Stock Hill, but it’s seldom great.

Owing perhaps to a surplus of conservatism in the kitchen, the flavors here simply are not as luxe as the price or the presentation.

Nearly every plate is at least competently executed, which is no surprise considering who’s at the helm. Joe West, Stock Hill’s executive chef, served as Bluestem’s chef de

cuisine before starting his own pop-up supper club, Kusshi (which was to have debuted inside Erik Borger’s midtown ramen warehouse, Komatsu; the deal soured). And he is capable of boldness here: The wood fire– grilled oysters, an appetizer, delivers a classic steakhouse dish, each forkful lightly smoked and sleazed with hot butter. Another traditional comfort: a velvety crab bisque, dainty enough for a starter but flaked with enough tender king crab to make a light lunch.

The Akaushi short ribs offer a glimmer of West and chef de cuisine Spencer Knipper’s capacity for invention. When I ordered the dish, each of the three stout ribs came coated in a sticky bordelaise — bitter on its own — that melded perfectly with the other accompaniments: a creamy onion soubise, a fresh green spiral of bone-marrow-and-spinach sauce, and a stamp-size leaf of red-veined sorrel.

Still, if I could order only one appetizer, I’d pick the fire-roasted lamb meatballs, which are tender and pungent, nestled in a sweet, spoon-coating medjool date sauce and tipped with a bubbly vadouvan-curry emulsion. The sauce is elegantly composed, sparking with intermittent flashes of fresh lime and cilantro.

And the feather-light curry froth makes the dish’s heavy flavors feel summery.

Lunch is a (slightly) more economical way to sample Stock Hill’s menu, and the dining room had several open tables on my weekday visit. The short-rib sandwich was the biggest hit that day. The wine-braised

Tapping into the 4800 Main building’s boardof-trade history, one of the signature oldfashioneds is called the Wolf of Main Street.

ribs were tender and subtly sweet, thanks to a snowcap of caramelized onion, creamy horseradish and melted gruyere. The saltand-pepper bun was sturdy enough to support the meat but yielded softly to the touch.

I’m holding out on you, though. How is the steak, the restaurant’s raison d’être? How are the high-end steaks, seared on a woodfired grill?

In a word: weak.

At lunch, Stock Hill offers three 7-ounce takes on steak frites. The hanging tender, a cheaper cut not on the dinner menu, was flavorful enough when I sampled it, with a consistency approaching that of pot roast.

But the ribeye plate was a disappointment, and the pre-sliced filet, which I ordered medium rare, arrived chewy and undersalted, with a bitter, burnt crust. (The slim fries were hot and crisp, and I preferred them to what the menu calls “triple cooked French fries,” which are available as a side and are well seasoned but suffer from mushy innards.)

Our server urged us to come back for one of the heartier dinner steaks, but the issues seemed to scale with the meat. Stock Hill has 11 steaks on the menu, with an emphasis on wet-aged, dry-aged and wagyu ribeyes and Kansas City strips. This is where you expect to pay, and so you do: $37 to $64. The kitchen will halve a hefty steak and plate it for two without surcharge or visible judgment. If you go this route, however, give the women in your party fake mustaches to wear. I split pitch.com | june 2017 | the pitch

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café

the dry-aged Kansas City strip ($46) with my husband and soured the rest of his evening railing humorlessly against the his-and-hers steak knives our server delivered with the meat. His: a sensible, wood-handled blade with a serrated tip. Hers: a tampon-sized, pearlescent-handled prop knife suitable for Kate Moss cleaning her fingernails.

They brought him the better half of the steak, too. While I was busy sawing through my half with (delicate! feminine!) exertion, my husband was gliding through a piece of perfect, sushi-red strip. We found some equality, though: As I’d found at lunch, both halves of the steak were underseasoned and bitter-crusted.

Stock Hill’s house rubs and sauces lend the steaks a much-needed flavor boost — though it perhaps goes without saying that at this price point, they should shine on their own. Diners have four fluids to choose from, including a house-made steak sauce (boozy and thin) and a creamy horseradish (conventional but satisfying). My favorite was the wasabi-yuzu chimichurri, a clean green paste with an assertive brightness.

A few of the nonsteak entrées had similar flaws — I’m thinking of a pork-shank osso buco that was tenderly, exquisitely cooked … and bland. But West’s menu pulses with abject brilliance. The supporting players to that pork shank — glossy polenta and an “excessively roasted shallot” (essentially a nutty onion jelly) — were rich and satisfying. And the bread served before the main course — a soft, yeasty muffin — was bursting with

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cheesy, herby flavor. It was the steakhouse equivalent of a Red Lobster cheddar biscuit, and I unabashedly adored it.

The family-style sides are mostly worth ordering. Though several are standard steakhouse fare (whipped potatoes, plus-size fries), West fashions each with an unexpected edge. A creamy risotto comes laced with the justifiably trendy Hen of the Woods mushroom. And the horseradish hash browns inflict no stiff sinus burn; the dish is instead a well-executed gratin with a peppery kick and a tortoise-shell-stiff lid of oven-crisped cheese.

The king-crab tortellini turned out to be the highlight of all three of my visits. The surprising dish is an imaginative, nostalgiaevoking take on summer sweet corn slathered with butter and salt. Fresh corn kernels and a sprinkle of puffy popcorn give the crab-stuffed pasta a playful air, and a duo of pickled chanterelles add buoyancy to the popcorn-butter sauce. That red-veined sorrel shows up here, too, complicating all that sweetness and light with a small, bitter (and welcome) charge. Each bite transported me to a corn-on-the-cob stand in rural Iowa, blasted by the July heat.

That’s no small bit of Proustian conjuring for a restaurant of this ambience. Stock Hill’s dining room has been assembled from Lehman Brothers surplus, all gold and glass and leather and greige. It’s a fitting vibe for the 4800 Main building, which once housed the Kansas City Board of Trade; tapping into that history, one of the bar’s signature oldfashioneds is called the “Wolf of Main Street.”

The king-crab tortellini (left) was a highlight, but the pork shank (top) was bland, the dessert called “Lime” (center) was too beachy, and the ribeye frites (bottom) disappointed.

Stock Hill

4800 Main 816-214-8607 stockhillkc.com

Hours

Lunch: 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m.

Monday–Friday Dinner: 5 p.m.–10:30 p.m.

Monday–Thursday, 4:30 p.m.–11 p.m. Friday–Saturday, 4:30 p.m.–10 p.m. Sunday

Prices

Cocktails: $12–$18 Appetizers: $14–$24 Entrées: $22–$64

Best bet: Sip a Steakhouse Punch in the bar and split the fire-roasted lamb meatballs and the wood fire–grilled oysters with a friend. If you stay for dinner, order the king-crab tortellini.

Blame Scott Tipton, Bread & Butter’s beverage director, for that groaner. Tipton designed the cocktail menu, which features rotating old-fashioneds, top-shelf Manhattans and a slate of whiskey-centric signature drinks. Much like the food, the cocktails update retro recipes (swizzles, punches, martinis) with trendy techniques and white-shoe ingredients (fat washing, tobacco-smoke wafting, gold-flake mossing).

I’ll vouch for the Kansas City Steakhouse Punch, a tiki-tinged drink that combines corn-sweet Rieger whiskey with apple whiskey, Chinato and falernum. The resulting cocktail is smooth and roundly spiced, with a lick of smoke from oaky Lapsang Souchong tea. My only objection: It’s cooled by an oversize ice raft that protrudes well over the lip of the glass. Mine slapped me across the mouth whenever I angled for a sip.

The Hello Yellow Brick Road was less successful. The blend of rye, cognac and sherry I tasted one night was uniformly sweet, even after the small salad of mint had wrought its herbal magic. Worse, the presentation came off like a Trump Tower burlesque of swank.

The pink-copper mug arrived domed with nugget ice and stippled in gold flakes. But after a few minutes’ melt, the gold flakes had forged unappetizingly into the shape (and color) of a microwaved cheese triangle.

The Rocking Chair, a scotch-based oldfashioned, was somehow even flashier. The old-fashioned glass arrived inverted on a tiny cast-iron pan, trapping a skein of cherry-tobacco smoke underneath. “It makes a great Snapchat story,” our server told us, then lifted the glass with a flourish, wafting the smoke around us with the solemn grace of a ribbon dancer. There’s no tasting it on Snapchat, though, and I admit that the drink itself was too good to mock. That wisp of smoke permeated the liquor, adding dusky bite to the seductively balanced blend of Auchentoshan American Oak, honey and bitters.

Diners with lustier appetites (and more robust budgets) can follow their aperitifs with one of pastry chef Kelly Conwell’s creations. Skip the “Lime” — although the lime curd was tart and firm one recent evening, the dessert was beachy in both flavor and texture (a too-grainy chocolate-grahamcracker base; a sandy-textured pineapple sorbet). The “Meyer Lemon” is a better bet: a handsomely plated dessert, trimmed with thin shards of meringue and a rich crème fraiche ice cream.

Stock Hill isn’t yet living up to the imagination of its chefs or the polish of its swarming servers. This town has better options for special-occasion splurges. But in many respects, Stock Hill is doing what an upscale steakhouse is supposed to do — spinning a cocoon of lavish comfort around a menu safe enough for bankers with hypertension, and attractive enough to give their girlfriends something to Instagram on the ride home.

the pitch | june 2017 | pitch.com

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DRINK

tweaks her clarified-milk-punch recipe with every new batch. Lately, she’s been using Four Roses Bourbon, kirschwasser (a clear German brandy distilled from cherries), dry curaçao, green tea and lemon juice.

“I boil whole milk and pour the punch into the hot milk,” Almeida says. “You have to pour the cocktail into the milk, not the other way around, or it won’t curdle the way you want. It took me a few tries to get it right.”

Her persistence has paid off: Almeida’s milk punch is selling well.

“I wanted to put a clarified-milk punch on the menu because, first, they’re easy to prepare ahead of time, which makes service easy,” Almeida says. “Also, they’re delicious.

I have never had a milk-punch cocktail that wasn’t super-tasty. I love that this is becoming a real trend — it’s a lot of fun to see bartenders experimenting with new ways to use old techniques.”

Milking It

Extra Virgin’s Santoro mixes a glass of B-for-D. zach bauman

Bartenders are rediscovering what Ben Franklin knew: the value of the curd.

by Natalie Gallagher

Clarified milk punch: The phrase doesn’t suggest a thirst-quenching, crushable cocktail. If you’re like me, you picture a nutrientenriched formula being ladled into Dixie cups on Christmas morning at a nursing home, the word punch a convivial little lie.

But at craft bars around the country, clarified-milk-punch cocktails are showing up on menus — and turning out to be not just dignified but downright drinkable.

Clarified milk punch recipes originated in England three centuries ago as a way of extending the life of a drink. A drinker who wanted to stretch her pound further would take whatever she wanted to preserve — brandy or rum, usually — and add citrus juice and hot milk. Hot milk curdles when it joins an acid, forming cheese curds. In the old days, the mixture would go into a barrel and age. Today, most bartenders let the cheese curds form, strain them off and then barrel-age the resulting batch.

Stateside, legendary lush Benjamin Franklin did his best to spread the milkpunch gospel. He included his own recipe — six cups of brandy, three cups of whole milk, two cups of lemon juice — in a letter to a friend in 1793. But tankard fashion was fickle even then, and peak milk punch died with Charles Dickens, in 1870, when bottles of the stuff were found in his wine cellar.

Over the past decade, however, bartenders have resurrected the tradition. One local heavyweight who has fallen in love with the stuff? Brock Schulte, former bar man-

ager at the Rieger, a partner in local cocktail collective Liquid Minded Concepts and the co-owner and bar manager at the Monarch Cocktail Bar & Lounge (due to open this summer on the Plaza). He says he’ll never again assemble a cocktail list without a milk punch.

“It sounds disgusting,” Schulte admits, “but in doing this preservation process, people found that you could also improve the flavor of the drink. It almost sounds silly to say that we’re reinventing things that people used to do, but that’s what’s happening. And we’re doing it faster and with a lot more variety.”

In the 1700s, most spirits were about as subtle as turpentine. The process of clarifying, then, not only extended a liquor’s life but also softened the drink by eliminating tannins and impurities. The result was a far smoother libation that derived its weight and body from the milk but retained little of that product’s color or cloudiness.

Today’s alcohol is immeasurably better, but the virtues of dairy still apply. The casein — the protein that’s left after you strain the curds — acts like egg whites, Schulte says: “If you shake it, you get this really interesting texture that isn’t as fluffy as a flip but that will definitely put a layer of foam on the top of your cocktail.”

Better still, today’s milk punches can be batched ahead of time and kept for extended periods without spoiling. It’s a benefit that rewards experimentation — not to mention the drinker, if the drinker starts with the cocktails below.

The Pearlescent Punch SoT (1521 Grand, 816-842-8482, sotkc.com) One of the advantages of a clarified-milk punch is that the dairy absorbs the flavor properties of whatever agent you add to it.

And the infusion need not be exotic to taste brilliant. Witness the early arrival of strawberry season at SoT. In his Pearlescent Punch, bar manager Taylor Madden combines puréed fresh strawberries with lemon oleo-saccharum (oil made from lemon zest and sugar), hibiscus syrup, orange juice, rhubarb liqueur and Tom’s Town gin.

“After I build the first part of the cocktail, I boil milk, then dump the strawberry-spirit mixture in,” Madden says. “Once I start to get that curdle going, I’ll turn it off and let it sit for a few hours, and then I’ll strain off the curds.”

When a guest orders the Pearlescent Punch, Madden isn’t content to serve the batch straight. The clarification process might have removed the cloudiness, but the finishing touch in his cocktail is an edible pearl powder, which he adds to the liquid and shakes with ice. For cocktail enthusiasts who need a little extra sparkle in their lives, this is it.

Clarified Milk Punch Affäre (1911 Main, 816-298-6182, affarekc .com) Chelsea Almeida, the bar manager at Affäre and president of the Kansas City chapter of the United States Bartenders’ Guild,

Goonies Never Say Die Extra Virgin (1900 Main, 816-842-2202, extravirginkc.com) For plenty of kids (and not a few childish adults), the primary vehicle for letting Vitamin D into the body is a bowl of cereal — drowned in milk. Extra Virgin bar manager Berto Santoro acknowledges this with his Goonies Never Say Die cocktail, a milkpunch riff that unites Angel’s Envy bourbon and Honey Nut Cheerios–steeped milk.

“We take Honey Nut Cheerios, oven-bake them for 10 minutes — just to crisp them up — and soak in milk for half an hour,” Santoro says. “Then we strain the Cheerios out, add local honey to the remaining liquid and blend that together.”

Finally, Santoro says, comes the whiskey, which gets shaken with ice until it’s thick and frothy, then dumped into a snifter and garnished with crushed Cheerios. Breakfast, anyone?

Three more worthy glasses: Westport Café and Bar (419 Westport Road, westportcafeandbar.com) The punch here features bourbon, cognac, Honeycrisp apples, ginger, spices, citrus and black tea.

Aep (1815 West 39th Street, aeprestaurant.com) Aep’s Clarified Thai Tea Milk Punch gives an Asian flair to this recipe with Aviation gin, Thai tea, turmeric, kaffir leaf and betel nut.

Manifesto (1924 Main, basement, manifestokc.com) At Manifesto, the Hydrangea Milk Punch uses a base of pink peppercorn–infused Bols genever (Dutch gin), Cocchi Americano Rosa vermouth and Giffard Pamplemousse Liqueur, with a thyme liqueur and Julie Ohno’s No. 22 lavender bitters. pitch.com | JUNE 2017 | the pitch

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DRINK

“I wanted to do something different,” Bisbee says.

Sweet Relief

zach bauman

Boozy Botanicals lets me make a mocktail that’s impossible to make fun of.

by Angela Lutz

This is the time of year when magazines such as this one line up to remind you that nothing eases you into your lawn chair on a balmy evening better than a cold cocktail.

I’m not here to dispute this. But I did wonder whether I could find an after-work indulgence equal to that summertime pleasure — without the alcohol.

So I’ve called on Cheryl Bisbee. Her Boozy Botanicals is a line of organic syrups designed to let home bartenders replicate the craft experience under their own roofs. I figured the aromatic flavors in her creations would also make fine mocktails, and she has invited me to her Northeast KC home to experiment.

“I’ve always been kind of a foodie, and I fell in love with the classic cocktail renaissance,” she tells me, her seven varieties of syrup at the ready. “I like combining flavors you wouldn’t think about.”

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The Boozy Botanicals lineup does just that, with batches of rosemary mint, classic rose, cardamom spice, ginger hibiscus, three pepper, lavender Earl Grey, and vanilla allspice (the newest addition) produced in her commercial kitchen in Lenexa. Inspired by flowers and gardening, Bisbee tries to use as many locally sourced ingredients as she can, though she says that can be challenging with some of the more uncommon flavors.

Because it’s a cool, rainy day, Bisbee makes me a cup of hot tea with a splash of lavender Earl Grey as she tells me how she became an artisan-cocktail enthusiast. After a multi-decade legal career, Bisbee says, she felt like she’d “done it all” — she’d been a trial lawyer, a corporate lawyer, even started her own practice. “In 23 years as a lawyer, I drank a lot,” she jokes.

As Kansas City’s craft cocktail scene grew, so did Bisbee’s fascination. She fell in

‘It’s versatile and easy. You can infuse anything with luxurious flavors.’

Cheryl Bisbee

love with J. Rieger & Co., helping hand-label bottles of the company’s locally distilled spirits. That’s when she noticed there was a dearth of locally made mixers on the market.

So, in the fall of 2015 she quit practicing law and became an entrepreneur. Since then, she has taught herself how to mix, package and market Boozy Botanicals, often using friends and neighbors to taste-test new flavors.

“Everyone says it starts on the coasts and ends here,” she says. “These flavor profiles are out there — I wanted to do something different.”

Bisbee lines up the bottles on her kitchen counter, where the eye-catching labels look classy and inviting. She mixes a splash of each with soda water and slides the glasses my way. I inhale each one deeply before taking a sip, as I would at a fancy wine tasting. The classic rose smells like a gorgeous bouquet yet avoids tasting overly floral. The vanilla allspice offers a distinctive twist on a classic. But my favorite is the three pepper — a blend of jalapeño, Serrano and Anaheim that tickles my nose with each sip.

“I like it when my food hurts me a little,” I confess, relishing the mildly spicy, fizzy concoction.

Bisbee and I discuss just how to enjoy Boozy Botanicals sans, well, booze. The rosemary mint, she advises, is her go-to for iced tea (1 ounce per glass). Mixed with sparkling water, the cardamom spice is a rocking replacement for ginger ale (though it also makes a mean Moscow mule). The vanilla allspice complements hot or iced coffee.

Naturally there’s also the Italian cream soda, which Bisbee’s website (boozybotanicalskc .com) tells you how to make: 1 or 2 ounces of syrup mixed with 8 ounces of sparkling water, poured over crushed ice and topped with cream). I ask her about lemonade, and she recommends squeezing fresh instead of buying a premade product; her syrup makes the beverage sweet enough without the added sugar, she says. Finally, there’s the all-purpose “Boozy tonic,” which calls for 1 ounce of flavor with tonic water and a splash of lemon or lime to cut the sweetness. “You can’t go wrong with that,” Bisbee says.

In addition to drinks, Bisbee says the syrups can be used in lieu of water in a bundtcake mix as well as in fruit salad and pie fillings. The three-pepper, she says, is excellent for caramelizing veggies (say, for a summer cookout) and goosing salad dressings — or you can pour it over vanilla ice cream.

“It’s versatile and easy. You can infuse anything with luxurious flavors,” Bisbee tells me. You’d expect her to say as much about her own product, but I can’t disagree. I can also pronounce every ingredient on the label, which counts for something. “We all have a sweet tooth once in a while,” she adds, and again she’s right. Besides, when you’re not drinking, you’re entitled to an extra scoop of summery, peppery ice cream.

the pitch | JUNE 2017 | pitch.com

5/22/17 1:57 PM

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The Light Pours Out of Him

Ligon in his element Angela Lutz

Jim Ligon’s Vintage Edison gets brighter and brighter.

by Angela Lutz

On a chilly spring afternoon, I find Jim Ligon in his Crossroads workshop, the door wide open to let in some air. The room is gently illuminated by several light fixtures he has crafted from empty liquor and wine bottles. The hum of power tools greets me at the entrance — Ligon is working on a chandelier for a client of Vintage Edison, his one-man custom lighting company. As I approach, he puts down his drill and introduces himself.

“You look familiar,” he says.

I scan his face and observe his laid-back attire — Kansas City trucker cap, flannel shirt, denim jacket. He looks familiar to me, too, though I’m pretty sure we haven’t met.

“That’s Kansas City for you,” I say.

Odds are many midtown residents have seen Ligon around. Since moving here from New Orleans, in 2001, he has gotten to know the city while working as a bartender. Seven years ago, while slinging drinks at J.J.’s on the Plaza, where he still works part-time, he grew to admire the cool glass bottles he shepherded. And then he grew sick of seeing them end up in the trash (or, later, consigned to a Ripple bin).

So he thought of a unique way to repurpose those empty beauties. His grandfather owned an electrical contracting company in New Orleans, and Ligon grew up helping him on the job. It seemed obvious: He

36

should turn those liquor-drained bottles into lamps and chandeliers.

“I would look at the bottles and picture them as lights,” he tells me. “But then again, I picture everything as lights.”

That’s when Vintage Edison was born.

For the past seven years, Ligon has customdesigned business and residential light fixtures that unite his two loves: booze and electricity. His workshop, which is open to the public on First Fridays, houses several stunning examples: a row of vanity lights made from Bulleit Bourbon bottles, a standalone floor light whose dangling bulbs are encased in wine bottles, a chandelier featuring hand-blown tequila bottles.

The glass in that chandelier, he tells me, “creates a sparkle.” He shows me how a tabletop light made from the same type of bottle casts a starry glow on the wall behind it, as though the vessel were asking to be turned into a lamp. “It gives it a whole new life.”

Ligon’s inventions also give new life — as well as a touch of industrial elegance — to the rooms they inhabit. Many of Vintage Edison’s residential clients come to him hoping to update older homes: New light fixtures are an easy way to increase a property’s value. He advises people to design their homes around the lighting, which can lend dramatic effect to even the most mundane-seeming space.

‘These bottles are worth more to me than what’s inside to begin with.’

Jim Ligon

To keep up with demand, Ligon has started a recycling program with about 20 restaurants and bars in town. They collect bottles for him, and he gathers the loot once a week — “checking the traps,” he calls it.

“These bottles are worth more to me than what’s inside to begin with,” he says.

As Ligon’s business continues to grow, he’s eyeing his own storefront somewhere near 31st Street and Cherry. He says he has seen a lot of artists move to that area as they vacate the Crossroads, driven out by rising costs — an effect, in part, of the streetcar line. He compares the development of the Crossroads to what has taken place on the Plaza and in Westport over the past decade, with small, local businesses pushed or priced out in favor of corporate chains.

Still, he recognizes that this is one price of progress, and he has deep affection for his adopted hometown. In his time here, Ligon says, he’s seen Kansas City grow from a place where downtown was empty after dark into a “successful, bustling city.” And he tells me Kansas City is still a great, supportive place for artists and makers.

“When I moved here, Kansas City could either be considered a big town or a small city, but now it’s a bona-fide city,” Ligon says. “It’s the hidden gem of the Midwest. There’s a tremendous amount of support among artists and musicians, and I enjoy being a part of that.”

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Animals, essences, animal essences

A Place for My Stuff

Angela Lutz

Peering into Oracle for tarot and taxidermy

by Angela Lutz

“We have a bat guy,” Jane Almirall tells me.

I’m browsing the shelves at Oracle, and I’ve just come across a small tree, on which taxidermied bats hang like Christmas ornaments.

“Cool,” I say.

But her answer to my question — where did you get these fuzzy critters? — raises still more questions. For one: Where does the bat guy get the bats?

But then, Oracle is made of conversation starters. Row upon row of animal skulls, for instance, with chickens and turtles among the represented species. There’s jewelry made from crystallized cicadas. There are tiny glass jars filled with stones said to bolster various self-improvement efforts.

I’m here for the shop’s “tea and tarot” event, which is exactly what it sounds like — Almirall offers everyone who enters a cup of hot green tea and the opportunity to sign up for a $10 tarot reading. The cards have never successfully swayed me, but I never stop hoping that they exude actual prescience, that they’ll reveal some secret that will guide me toward a six-figure salary or momentarily decrease my anxiety. I add my name to the tarot list and take in some of the store’s

intricate displays while I wait.

There’s a lot to see. Founded in 2013 by Almirall and Carrie Parker, who were joined shortly thereafter by Alessandra Dzuba, the Crossroads retail shop celebrates, the women say, “the odd, the beautiful and the bizarre.” The second time I visit, all three women are behind the counter, looking radiant as the afternoon sun spills into the room and a curtain of incense hangs on the air. I’m still eager to learn more about the taxidermy on display, an impressive collection that includes a fox, a porcupine puffer fish, and a deer that surveys the room from atop a large armoire. Again, I ask Dzuba: Where does it all come from?

“We work with local farmers and conservationists,” she tells me. “It’s all ethically sourced. The whole animal gets used, so nothing goes to waste. Some have been attacked by animals or were nuisance animals to farmers. The ostriches come from a place where they raise them for meat. But the newer taxidermy is all natural death.”

Having assumed taxidermy to be among the more brutal art forms, I find this information nothing short of revelatory. And it’s

‘All kids are born with this witchiness.

Then it kind of gets stomped out of you.’

Jane Almirall

Oracle

130 West 18th Street 816-982-9550 oraclekc.com

a relief to consider that these creatures are being appreciated after death — a thought I recognize as unusual for me, considering my husband is just a few green beans short of being an obligate carnivore. Turns out ,Oracle is the kind of spot that thrusts you headfirst into unexpected gratitude; I’m oddly grateful to see a shelf lined with small mammal skulls.

“I have a real soft spot for bad taxidermy,” Almirall adds, leading me across the room to a pair of bug-eyed baby skunks perched on a log. “They were made by a grandma who taught herself. I’ll be crushed if anyone buys them.”

She says this in a way that conveys real respect for someone who would attempt to skin and preserve an animal with zero formal training and only slightly more skill. In fact, Almirall knows firsthand how hard it is to produce good taxidermy. She recently took a class (she loved it, she says) and found it more challenging than other crafts she has attempted. In addition to her taxidermy training, Almirall is also Oracle’s stone expert, able to explain the metaphysical properties ascribed to each shiny artifact.

“When we construct talismans, we think about what people want to bring into their lives,” she says of the objects, which she calls “support tools.” She adds, “Sometimes you’re drawn to a stone and you don’t know why.”

As I peruse the jars, I pause on one containing sodalite, a shiny blue rock that purportedly helps with communication and conflict resolution — a boost I could really use. Though many people are skeptical of the stones, Almirall tells me she’s always had an easy time believing in alternative sources of guidance.

“All kids are born with this witchiness,” she tells me. “We’re drawn to plants, animals, moonlight — we have vivid imaginations. Then it kind of gets stomped out of you as an adult.”

Oracle is definitely the place to rediscover your inner mystic. Each of the women plays a vital role in keeping the shop wonderfully witchy. One of Dzuba’s specialties is insect spreading — the beautiful butterflies and moths you often see flawlessly displayed in frames. She tells me she’s been doing it since she was 5, when she used to keep specimens in her parents’ freezer. She’s also “in charge of all the bones,” she says, a phrase I think belongs on her business cards.

Parker is a psychologist who specializes in intuitive counseling, as well as numerology and astrology. Her practice, Sacred Psyche, shares a space with Oracle.

As for that tarot reading on my first visit: The cards assured me that, even though things are hard now, they’ll get better soon.

That’s the kind of message easily dismissed as vague and impersonal, but I felt charged by it. I grabbed a handful of sodalite on my way out. pitch.com | june 2017 | the pitch

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The NEA Bomb

Whitney Manney says federal support for the arts is crucial. iRon Knox

Money for art is always scarce, but KC and regional creators will really suffer if Donald Trump has his way with federal arts funding. by ron knox

Whitney Manney sits askew behind an immeasurably cluttered desk, dragging watercolor paint along white paper with the tip of a brush. Manney says she spends most of her time at this desk, which she keeps inside the vast white studio space at Westport Road and Main Street that previously housed multiple generations of drugstores — “26/8” is how she describes the hours spent designing her audacious dresses, tops and jackets, which straddle the worlds of fine and applied art.

She has been hustling in the Kansas City art community since her sophomore year at the Kansas City Art Institute, when she began designing and hosting runway shows. Even now, eight years later, the grind is real: Manney works three jobs to make her art happen.

When she received $1,000 from the MidAmerica Arts Alliance two years ago, it changed things. She knows it’s not a ton of money, but when you’re hustling, it all helps.

At the time, she had become discouraged by

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runway shows and their momentary display of outfits that had taken weeks or months to create. She wanted something more permanent — a clothing installation she could pair with an opening-night show, the best of both worlds. She partnered with the Box Gallery downtown, which put her collection on display for a month.

That show wouldn’t have been possible without the money, Manney says. The outfits for it were digitally printed, a process that isn’t cheap. The grant also went toward the materials she used for the enormous, 25-foot-by-10-foot weaving she crafted during the gallery’s opening hours, and to fund her time as a living part of the installation.

Manney’s grant is part of the nearly $26 million in federal arts funding that has flowed into Kansas City–based organizations since 1998, according to government records. Now, however, for the first time in at least three decades, that money is at risk

of vanishing, along with the national organization in charge of delivering the grants.

The National Endowment for the Arts is once again on the chopping block as Congress considers President Donald Trump’s proposal to eliminate it altogether.

Artists and organizations that have used federal money to fund art here and regionally say that, were the money to go away, arts programs in the Midwest would remain. But if the NEA is done away with, as Trump wants, the amount and the scale of resources — from individual art projects to arts programming and childhood arts education — would be diminished, especially in rural areas.

“A lack of NEA money would constrain all of the rest of our money,” says Michael Donovan, the head of the Missouri Arts Council, which helps deliver federal and state money to rural and underserved parts of Missouri.

“We’d still have to stretch it. We’d still have to get funding to the rest of the state.”

What’s more, Donovan and others say, the elimination of federal arts funding would stifle diversity in art and limit opportunities for artists like Manney to experiment with form and presentations that defy commercial sensibilities. The federal money “makes art more accessible and more diverse for more people,” Donovan says. The council’s folk-arts program, for example, funds apprenticeships in art forms with specific cultural ties to Missouri communities, such as old-time fiddling and gospel singing. That program is funded entirely with federal dollars. If it disappeared, programs that teach young people traditional music and art might also.

The Missouri Arts Council is part of a web of local and regional organizations that absorb federal arts funding and distribute it to communities statewide. While the NEA funded only a dozen Kansas City–based organizations directly in 2016, the Missouri Arts Council, according to its records, sent money to 614 organizations, theaters, schools and libraries to help anchor arts programming and fund artists.

Trump’s threat to cease all federal funding of U.S. arts wouldn’t necessarily kill the council, or the Mid-America Arts Alliance, which delivered Manney’s grant, right away. Federal arts money makes up only about a third of the alliance’s budget annually; only about 13 percent of the Missouri Arts Council’s budget comes from NEA funding. But both organizations say the loss of federal money would leave them searching for ways to plug funding gaps in the communities they serve, particularly in rural areas where access to other arts money and patronage is limited.

“There would need to be some kind of seismic shift for trying to find new funding sources,” says Todd Stein, chief executive of the Mid-America Arts Alliance. The alliance is by far the largest recipient of NEA money in the Kansas City area, taking in more than $20 million since 1998, records show. But, as the NEA funding partner for much of middle America, the alliance grants its money to artists from Nebraska to Texas.

In Kansas, where arts funding has been a target of the state’s government for years, the loss of federal money would be far more dire.

The state’s Creative Arts Commission is a oneto-one partner with the NEA, meaning that the Kansas agency meets the NEA’s matching fund requirement, and federal money makes up about half of the agency’s budget. The state lost its NEA and Mid-America Arts Alliance funding after the state shuttered the former Kansas Arts Commission in 2012, and matching funds from the NEA didn’t return until 2014, records show.

Peter Jasso, the head of the Creative Arts Commission, says there is now little risk of the state again eliminating its arts spending, so the federal matching funds are secure — as long as there are federal funds to be matched.

“What we can do with half of our budget is

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arts

very significant,” Jasso says. Without putting a number on it, Jasso says a significant amount of the commission’s money is directed toward rural communities — including some so small that schools or libraries, rather than arts-specific organizations, receive money to help provide a platform for local art and artists. The same efforts are made in Missouri, where state and federal funding now reach 95 percent of state congressional districts.

The situation is better in Kansas City, but the federal money still matters. The Coterie Theater has secured at least $10,000 in NEA grant funding most years since the turn of the last decade. Federal funding makes up just a sliver of the children’s theater’s annual budget, says Joette Pelster, its executive director, and it rarely wins every grant for which it applies. But the money that does come in helps fund new shows that otherwise might be too risky for the theater to produce. “There would definitely be hesitation doing it if we couldn’t get a federal grant for it,” Pelster says.

Pelster’s description jibes with the stories of other artists and organizations who receive funding directly from the NEA, or from a local or regional organization that funnels federal money into local arts. Would they vanish if the NEA’s funding dried up? Probably not.

But some of what they do would suffer or end without the funding — which means less art, and fewer opportunities for artists to create and display their works.

Over the past decade, the NEA has also granted millions to the city’s historic jazz district, at 18th Street and Vine. Among musical genres, jazz is perhaps uniquely reliant on grant funding, especially when it comes to historic preservation efforts in Kansas City and elsewhere. For example, in 2011 the NEA gave close to $80,000 to the Metropolitan Arts Council of Greater Kansas City to help fund planning for the restoration of the historic Boone Theater, which had sat derelict along 18th Street since the 1950s.

Redevelopment suffered from numerous delays and revamped plans — it was once set to become the Kansas City home of Folk Alliance International; now Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey plans to operate the theater — but the city asked for general-contractor bids in February, and work to repair the building appears to be moving ahead.

Meanwhile, the American Jazz Museum, which operates in the district, is an annual recipient of NEA funding. The money funds several several programs, including the museum’s jazz festival. It is unclear how and whether the festival would proceed if that funding were halted. (The museum did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.) The list of other local NEA grant recipients covers the artistic spectrum, from the Nelson Gallery Foundation and the Unicorn Theatre, to the Lyric Opera and the Friends of Alvin Ailey.

It remains uncertain whether Congress will send Trump a spending bill that strips away federal arts funding. Ben Martin, the head of the Missouri Alliance for Arts Education, has been travelling to Washington, D.C., for nine years as part of a national arts advocacy outreach day on Capitol Hill. Each year, he says, he and others from the arts community have asked lawmakers to maintain NEA and National Endowment for the Humanities funding at current levels; legislators have, for the most part, done just that. This year, three days before the trip, Trump released his budget proposal. Martin and the arts community took notice.

“In this case, it was: Save the NEA,” Martin says of the message he and his fellow advocates took to the Hill. He met with lawmakers from around Missouri, including U.S. Reps. Emanuel Cleaver and Billy Long. (The latter’s southwest Missouri congressional district includes Springfield and Joplin.) Democrats and Republicans alike said they support federal arts funding and had no intention of eliminating money for the arts and humanities, Martin says. Even staffers for U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, who has glued himself to Trump, have appeared supportive of continuing the NEA and its programs. “I think there’s going to be plenty of votes to pass a budget that includes funding for NEA,” Martin says.

The reasons for saving the NEA should be clear even to the rural and small-town Midwesterners who voted for Trump. Half of the NEA’s 2,300 annual grants are directed toward what it calls “underserved communities” — those outside urban centers, where funding and support for the arts is often scarce. Private donors and foundations are typically concentrated in cities, and their money tends to remain there.

“There are plenty of large donors out there,” Martin says. “But when you rely on the private donors, you’re relying on the private donor’s whims.” It’s only through a public mandate, Martin says, that arts organizations in smaller communities can ensure access to at least some financial support.

That speaks to the federal money’s primary role: to expand the diversity of voices that create the fabric of artistic life and expression in America. Manney, who toils for hours in her studio to create art that bends genres and challenges convention, says she applies for grants regularly; she has won some, including an ArtsKC Inspiration grant in 2013, and missed out on others, like the Harpo Foundation grant she still covets.

“It costs me, like, a smooth $2,500 to do a show,” she says. The cost of putting on a full runway show became so prohibitive that she didn’t do one in 2016. But her creative drive goes on anyway. “It’s definitely crucial,” Manney says of federal support for the arts — to help artists afford their craft, and to let them know there’s still a caring, curious audience out there, people who want to see the creation happen.

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pitch.com | June 2017 | the pitch

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Deatherage, as painted by David Gant a few years ago

en, an assemblage by the MoMo Gallery curator known only as Mott-ly hangs on the wall — a small cardboard box with a doll’s severed arm rising in front of an American flag. Beside the arm is the torso of a well-toned man. Mott-ly, a longtime friend of Deatherage’s, gave him the piece for his birthday a couple of years ago. A note on the back reads “Birthday suit for Tom.” “It means really nothing,” Deatherage says about the creepy design. “It’s just delightful.”

Signing Off

A fond goodnight to Late Show owner Tom Deatherage, who died in May

by Tracy Abeln

Back in 2005, The Pitch profiled Late Show Gallery owner Tom Deatherage, who died as this issue was going to press. Accompanying the cover photo was text that called him one of the city’s “most colorful characters.”

To read Bryan Noonan’s story again — and you should; it traces the man’s life up to that point, from his difficult childhood to his San Francisco awakening to his framing apprenticeship to his emergence as a gifted art dealer with a savant’s eye — is to be reminded just how much that understated the case.

Toward the end of the piece, Deatherage tells Noonan he’s had a brainstorm: an exhibition of Deatherage portraits by artists he’d worked with over the years. “I don’t give a shit what people think,” he says. “I think it’s a great idea.”

Five years later, a painting of Deatherage was a highlight of David Gant’s epic Portraits of the Crossroads, which came to the LeedyVoulkos in the summer of 2010. Reviewing that show in these pages, Chris Packham recognized the “unpredictable humor in Late Show Gallery owner Tom Deatherage’s eyes.”

Gant told him, “Don’t be fooled. Tom’s drinking a vodka-tonic out of that wineglass.”

There was more to Deatherage than high color and high times, as most every tribute to the late figure has attested. There were lows, too. And both ends of the spectrum were complex, driven by shifts in KC’s art community and the Late Show’s role in it.

Every year, sometimes month after

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month, Deatherage would say, “I’m going to close the gallery.” Not enough sales. Not enough press. He would growl his complaints, threaten to be gone. Well, the Late Show — the building at 1600 Cherry where Deatherage worked and lived — finally reached its crossroads May 16. Deatherage died that Tuesday, reportedly among friends and at peace. He was 74, and he’d outlasted a number of his own predicted ends.

The Crossroads iteration of Tom’s Late Show Gallery — named for a 1977 cult movie, I think he once told me — opened in June 2004. It’s a place many of us cherished. Despite Tom’s rough personality (also because of it), the Cherry address made a welcoming home for casual parties, patio conversations (always with cocktails) and, of course, some of the best art to be found in our city. Here’s how that 2005 profile describes the place and its master: [It] had been a corner grocery store and a warehouse. He laid wood floors and stripped some of the walls down to the bricks, leaving others with cracked plaster to create a rough, industrial background. He put up corrugated sheet metal to accent other walls and hung lights from the rafters. Then he covered the walls with art.

There’s art on every wall where Deatherage lives and sleeps. A painting of a naked red demon hangs in the bathroom, over the toilet. In the kitch-

My first memory of Tom involves a Mardi Gras event, an early version of the local art community’s now-classic parties, complete with krewes, costumes, a parade, and maybe a car set on fire. I don’t trust my memory about that burning car — maybe it wasn’t that year, which I recall as 2002 — but I do know that I was with someone I would end up marrying, and he was a particularly bad date that night because he found himself in a shouting match with Deatherage. Yes, of course alcohol was involved. Mardi Gras.

Artists. Tom. Tom’s bad side (or the part that could bring out someone else’s).

Deatherage was trying to recruit my future spouse to be part of a show, but this meant rebuilding a bridge. Sometime in what seemed to me the distant past (the 1990s), there apparently had been a misunderstanding. Back then, Deatherage ran his gallery out of a house in Hyde Park, and his decisions about when and whom to exhibit could, and often did, turn on a dime. And if one of Tom’s game-time decisions had affected you at some point? There might be shouting later.

When The Pitch’s 2005 story arrived, Tom had been on Cherry for a year. A scene late in the profile captures a not-atypical encounter between Deatherage and a couple of the art rubberneckers who were becoming ubiquitous during the early First Friday boom: Around 10 p.m., a trolley stopped at the Late Show, and a fresh group of guests walked in. Deatherage, who generally speaks politely to newcomers and sometimes warms up to them by wrapping an arm around their shoulders, saw three women gradually surround a Joe Gregory painting of three pears standing upright in soft colors. Deatherage walked over. “It’s faux fruit,” Deatherage said to the women.

One complained that the wall in her house was red and the painting wouldn’t match.

“That’s a goddamn poor excuse not to buy a painting,” he slurred.

In the kitchen, a pretty blond woman stared at a painting of a roach. It was

by Deatherage’s new talent, Kyle Richards. She was unable to take her eyes off the hairy insect but couldn’t explain

why. “I don’t even like bugs,” she said.

“That bug is great as shit,” Deatherage said, then gushed about Richards.

“I just love the kid’s work. I love the kid.

You can’t go wrong with him.”

A man who looked to be in his early 30s was also entranced with the pears.

Deatherage stepped over and began his negotiation. They came to an agreement: $300. The man asked Deatherage if he would be around the next day for him to pick up the painting.

“I live here. I’m always in this hell.”

Turning to leave, the man said he would be back around 1 p.m. “I’ll bring cash, too.”

“That’s good,” Deatherage said with a smirk, within earshot of everyone upstairs. “I’ll go buy some drugs.”

Another night, another hustle. At story’s end, Tom offers a clear-eyed self-assessment.

“I’m really proud I’m part of the art scene, and I really am part of it,” he says. “I realize it, and it makes me feel good. I thought I was just kind of edgy, but I’m part of the scene. I can still see through the bullshit. I’m happy I can see through the shit, and I think I did. But I understand how little time I have left and am trying to make the most of it. Because I’m 62, but I’m pushing hard.”

He turned out to have another 12 years — of life, of the Late Show — in him. And he made a lot of the time.

My last memory of Tom was about three months ago, when I stopped at the Late Show on a Saturday (regular gallery hours) to see Travis Pratt’s show. Deatherage was not well that day, and when an already grouchy person given to salty language (that’s an understatement) is curt and quiet, you know better than to linger. That afternoon was a contrast to a visit we’d had last September, when I went to see Colby Smith’s show at Tom’s, and he was gracious and open and, as usual, working on the next show he’d curate. Sure, plenty of language was flung around — Tom was never shy about his history, habits, loves and motivations — but the words came from warmth. This curator, given to referring to himself as “Art Pimp” or “Art Daddy,” knew how to make someone like me — awkward, struggling as so many of us do with feeling valid in our work — feel at home, as though we were related.

Tom loved the family he made for himself this way, and the Facebook tributes pouring over his page right now catalog the wide scope of people who loved him.

Besides that love for Tom, what those people, those artists and members of the arts community here and beyond, have in common is that we hate cancer, and we hope Tom rests well now. We hope he finds all the sailors and art and booze, etc., he can handle in the afterlife. I don’t know if he had regrets. One of mine now is that I never got on Tom’s bad side.

the pitch | june 2017 | pitch.com

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First Person

2. Be yourself.

5. Choose a social-media strategy.

3. Accept that your friendships will change.

6. Give a shit about the world.

Everyone has different ideas about the right way to raise a child, and it’s easy to compare your approach to what other parents do: Who has the most natural birth plan? What did your own parents do better? What amount of processed food isn’t just unhealthy but unconscionable? From all of this, you have to find your own idea of what’s right. Which means you must communicate frequently and honestly with your partner, and find family members and friends you can trust. Do that, and you’ll build confidence in yourselves, which in turn will give your children confidence in you.

I remember when my friend Miles Bonny — the KC rapper and musician who has since moved to New Mexico — first introduced me to his playful, dynamic baby daughter. “It’s like they arrive with their personalities already formed,” he said. “You just have to nurture and encourage it.” Or, as another friend of mine phrased it, “put them on your shoulders.”

Father’s Day

Seven steps to being a parent without losing your identity — or your mind

by Lucas Wetzel

One summer night in 2012, I was at a friend’s birthday party when I noticed a red baby carrier in the corner of the living room.

It was after 10 p.m., and I was thinking about cracking another beer. But the presence of the sleeping infant gave me pause. That kid’s parents should probably take her home soon, I thought. Then I realized: That’s our kid — we are the parents. Fortunately, my wife had limited herself to LaCroix and was able to steer the stroller home safely while I walked a step behind in a half-drunken, new-dad daze.

I did not settle overnight into my identity as a parent.

Five years and another kid later, though, I’m starting to get the hang of things. In fact, I’ve learned a few things along the way — the kind of things that don’t necessarily make you an expert but do qualify you to impart a survival tip or two. Parenting is not the usual subject matter for this publication — but it wasn’t my usual subject, either. So if you have kids, know someone who does, or are thinking about starting a family, maybe you’ll find some value in this, my perspective on how to be a parent in a way that doesn’t deprive you of your identity (at least not completely).

Charlie Mylie

1. Consider the tardigrade.

Tardigrades (also known as water bears) are amazingly resilient microscopic animals that can survive temperature extremes, intense radiation levels and even the vacuum of outer space. They do so by retreating into a dormant state, shutting down for years or even decades. While raising a child doesn’t shut down your life completely, you will find that it feels like it at first.

You will learn to function without sleep, existing on an upside-down schedule that may bear no relation to your previous life and/or the outside world. Eventually, you’ll resume normal activities, but starting out, it’s easiest to accept defeat in advance. You simply won’t be able to do all the things you want to do in the way you’re used to doing them.

Instead, focus on scheduling a weekly event or activity — a yoga class, a book club, a jam session — that will provide a semblance of normality and help pull your identity out of its dormant state. This likely will require some help from your partner, for whom you can return the favor. Supporting each other as individuals, as well as parents, goes a long way toward improving your quality of life as a family.

Having a child affects your friendships. You might not be as available or as energetic as you once were, and your interests might begin to diverge from your friends’. But that doesn’t mean the fundamentals of your relationships have to change. When it comes to conversation, the new parent will probably welcome — and might even crave — talking about subjects other than kids. Try to find venues that can accommodate everyone, such as a park, a kid-friendly coffee shop or pizza place, or one of your homes. Meanwhile, if you’re the friend of a new parent, don’t feel pressure to fawn over the baby or hold the baby if you don’t want to. Just smile at the kid, acknowledge him or her by name and have an honest compliment at the ready.

4. Explore Kansas City.

Not to cheerlead, but Kansas City is a great place to raise a kid. Among numerous popular but not overly crowded destinations, standouts include Science City (where a new outdoor exhibition space is opening this month), the Kansas City Zoo, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (which hosts a variety of kid-friendly cultural events throughout the year). The Museum at Prairiefire is a fine educational trip, and the Coterie Theater at Crown Center makes an entertaining introduction to the stage. Farmers markets offer an edifying alternative to grocery stores and a more personable means of consumption. Some of the best overall resources for families are public libraries, which typically host storytimes and craft activities. Nature centers such as Lakeside (in Swope Park) and Anita B. Gorman (east of the Plaza) are open in all seasons, and we’ve picnicked in every park and green space we can find. And, yes, there’s always the streetcar. Kids love the streetcar.

From the moment our children are born, we essentially become their brand managers.

And the chief tool of this new job is social media. There’s no easier way to announce a pregnancy or a birth or to share early milestones.

But remember that parenthood can pretty quickly consume your feed — and dominate the feeds of your family and friends.

From saturation to suspiciously quiet, everyone has a different approach to child-enhanced social media (see No. 2 on this list).

Some folks never fail to share pics of junior’s mealtime, while others keep images of their offspring completely private. One approach that can work well is to set up a blog for pictures, video or other media and share the URL (and a password) exclusively with family members and close friends. That way you can post with abandon for your inner circle and, depending on what you and your partner decide, show highlights to a wider audience.

I won’t lie: Sometimes, when I look around as I sit in traffic or read the news, I start to wonder whether the planet might be better off without us. But having kids has helped me to keep those nihilistic flashes in check and instead think about making a difference. My wife and I have tried to teach our kids respect for others as well as the planet, while also noting how we want and need to improve ourselves. In addition to reading lots of books, we’ve attended protests with our kids, and traveled together as a family as much as we can. Visiting different places teaches kids that not everyone lives as we do, which will likely help them appreciate those differences later in life.

7. Have fun.

Being a parent is a serious job, but people have been doing it since the dawn of history.

We’re not unique, then — and we’re not so challenged that we can’t stop to enjoy the experience. In fact, it’s much better if we do. Some of my favorite activities with the kids have also been the simplest: an observational walk through the neighborhood, an afternoon at home drawing pictures, a raucous piggyback parade through the aisles of SuperTarget while singing spontaneous nonsense verse.

To tell you to cherish every moment would be ridiculous — you do not have to weep with happiness at dirty diapers, unexpected wake-up calls or vivid streaks of marker on the new Ikea table. You will struggle with patience sometimes. But as any tardigrade can attest, the bad moments pass. And all of the moments pass quickly — a cliché that turns out to be true. I suspect the best thing to do is to make the most of them. So by all means, go to that birthday barbecue that might go late — just be sure to appoint a designated stroller. pitch.com | JUNE 2017 | the pitch

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film

long strange trip

Watching, Less Waiting

Even as some of summer’s most intriguing films head straight to your living room, the big screen still calls.

by Eric Melin

Streaming subscription services are the biggest challenge to the movie industry since the rise of television in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Back then, Hollywood responded with CinemaScope and other double-wide presentations, emphasizing vibrant color and epic scale. Today, giant Costco TVs and prevalent high-speed internet have made a ho-hum norm out of blockbusters in the den.

Thus the rise of IMAX 3-D and its attendant upcharge, the big studios’ transparent plea to lure audiences back to the box office. Meanwhile, more and more independent films go straight to streaming rather than fight for a small piece of a diminishing pie.

OK, that sounds a little downcast for summer, the traditional season of the zeitgeistdefining spectacle. But there’s more to life than the new Spider-Man (which comes out July 7, as you doubtless already know if you’ve turned on your big TV lately). Which is why this particular preview of summer movies includes streaming debuts alongside the theatrical bows, with an emphasis on indie titles.

Leaving aside the debate about where and how you watch what you watch, there’s still much to look forward to.

June

The six-part Long Strange Trip, a careerchronicling documentary about the Grateful Dead and its enduring cultural imprint, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January to solid reviews, with many a critic noting that you didn’t have to be a fan of the band’s

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music to find it compelling. Director Amir Bar-Lev is perhaps best known for his affecting 2010 doc, The Tillman Story, and if his new four-hour production doesn’t feel as selfindulgent as one of the Dead’s live shows, it promises to hit the spot anyway. Long Strange Trip is on Amazon Prime June 2.

On June 9, a new season of Orange Is the New Black arrives on Netflix. It’s also the day Tom Cruise tries to resuscitate one of Universal’s deathless movie monsters with the big-budget, CGI-wrapped The Mummy.

Shrewd fans of indie horror, however, have been anticipating Trey Edward Shults’ It Comes at Night, also in theaters June 9.

Shults’ debut — the dread-filled drama Krisha — was a stunner that easily made my top 10 last year. Night, starring Joel Edgerton and Carmen Ejogo, is about two families hiding out in a house while an “unnatural threat terrorizes the world” (to quote the studio synopsis). The writer-director has already proven himself more than adept at psychological suspense, so adding elements of the supernatural seems like a reasonable idea.

Two unusual and promising female-led projects arrive on June 23. That’s when Netflix issues all 10 episodes of GLOW, a fictional comedy-drama set in the 1980s and loosely based on the real-life Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. Starring Alison Brie and Marc Maron, the show was created by Nurse Jackie vets Carly Mensch and Liz Flahive, and is executive produced by Orange Is the New Black’s Jenji Kohan. I’m crossing my

If Bar-Lev’s new four-hour production doesn’t feel as self-indulgent as one of the Dead’s live shows, it promises to hit the spot anyway.

fingers that it’s not one of those lazy shows that uses 1980s nostalgia as a crutch for all its jokes (Hello, The Goldbergs!).

Ana Lily Armirpour’s The Bad Batch, meanwhile, features cannibals in the desert in a dystopian future, and comes to theaters the same day. Her debut was the excellent A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, a vampire tale that eschews the normal trappings of that genre, so look for a similar norm-defying sensibility here. The film features Keanu Reeves and Jim Carrey in smaller roles.

From the world’s premier film festival to your home in one month: South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Mother) unleashed Okja at Cannes late last month, and Netflix is adding it worldwide June 28. Starring Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal and Paul Dano, it’s only Bong’s second English-language movie, and it looks to be some kind of creatureout-of-water E.T. story, with a heaping dose of corporate-power satire. If Swinton is anywhere near as nutty as she was in his last film, Snowpiercer, she’ll be worth watching all by herself.

Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) wasted a lot of time developing AntMan for Marvel before dropping out of the project over creative differences, so he can be forgiven for making us wait four years. His latest action-comedy, Baby Driver — about a freelance getaway driver with an ear for music — is in theaters June 28, riding high on strong buzz from South by Southwest earlier this year. I’m counting on Wright to continue to push the boundaries of film language, as he did with the inventive visual gags of 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

In theaters June 30, the Kidman-aissance continues with Sofia Coppola’s first new movie in four years, The Beguiled. Nicole Kidman is the headmistress at a Southern seminary that takes in a wounded Union soldier (Colin Farrell) during the Civil War. If it’s anything like Don Siegel’s 1971 adaptation of the same book (featuring Clint Eastwood), expect no small amount of psychosexual chaos. It’s ripe material for Coppola, an expert at matching prestige drama moves with exploitation vibes.

July

In 1975, Steven Spielberg created the modern summer blockbuster with Jaws. Now you can see the classic as America experienced it back then — on sprocketed, analog 35mm film — at the Alamo Drafthouse July 1 and 2.

In one of the biggest Sundance deals ever, Amazon spent $12 million to pick up Michael Showalter’s comedy The Big Sick.

Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley) stars, and co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, Emily V. Gordon; it’s based on the couple’s real-life courtship. Part feel-good culture clash romcom and part illness recovery drama, it’s Amazon’s bid for big word-of-mouth this summer. Expect a full theatrical run (opening in Kansas City July 7) before it becomes part of the company’s permanent streaming catalog.

the pitch | june 2017 | pitch.com

5/22/17 3:52 PM

film

World War II drama, Dunkirk, lands, having been shot almost entirely on IMAX 65mm cameras. Over the past 10 years, Nolan has arguably redefined blockbuster filmmaking with big ideas and set pieces that don’t talk down to the audience, so even if the script gets too cloying for its own good (see Interstellar), Dunkirk will almost certainly make a strong sensory impact, especially in IMAX.

August

The Big Sick

the dark tower

Also opening July 7 is the moody, lowbudget A Ghost Story, written and directed

by David Lowery (Pete’s Dragon). If you read the summary without knowing anything else about it (dead guy visits his grieving lover), you’d be forgiven for thinking it sounds like 1990’s Ghost. But there’s not likely to be any cross-dimensional pottery lovemaking. Lowery is reuniting Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara from his own Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, and this looks to summon that film’s ethereal charm and longing.

Sleeper alert! PattiCake$ is the story of an overweight working-class white woman from New Jersey who has dreams of becoming a rap star. Although it may have some fairy-tale elements to the plot, the key word being thrown around at Sundance was “authentic.” Based the ecstatic buzz for newcomer Danielle Macdonald in the title role, I’m giving her early odds on a dark-horse Best Actress nomination as well. It opens on

the coasts July 7, and will probably be in theaters here a week or two after that.

The rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise has stayed focused on its original racial allegory so far, and with Matt Reeves again helming War for the Planet of the Apes, out July 14, there’s no reason to think it won’t also quietly continue exceeding expectations. Two days later, the dragonsand-boobs “prestige” soap opera Game of Thrones returns on HBO for its second-tolast season. Never fear, Westeroseans! There will be years of backstabbing and bloodletting to come! The cable network has four — yes, four — GoT spinoffs in development.

Having shot portions of three of his last four movies with large-format IMAX cameras (instead of merely “upgrading” to IMAX after the fact, as most filmmakers do), Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Inception) is always looking for ways to make the theatrical experience more special. On July 21, his

Will The Dark Tower launch countless other movie and TV properties set in King’s multiverse? I’m already tired just thinking about it.

Ron Howard and J.J. Abrams spent years attached to a film adaptation of Stephen King’s eight-volume The Dark Tower. On August 4, a movie based on King’s self-described “magnum opus” hits screens, helmed by Danish director Nikolaj Arcel. What do we know after 10 years of development hell? It stars Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba, and will be a sequel of sorts to the seventh book in the series. Will it launch countless other movie and TV properties set in King’s multiverse? I’m already tired just thinking about it.

Kathryn Bigelow again teams with screenwriter Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) for Detroit, a tense drama based on another tumultuous real-life event — 1967’s 12th Street Riot. With police action and racial bias at its core, Detroit couldn’t be more timely.

Aubrey Plaza has been crying. Wearing a hoodie, she strides angrily into a wedding and maces the bride in the face. It’s hard to tell from the trailer exactly what’s happening in the dark comedy Ingrid Goes West, which won the screenwriting award at Sundance this year. Suffice to say that, with the reigning queen of dry humor on board as a disturbed woman who’s obsessed with social media “influencer” Elizabeth Olsen, I’m definitely in. It also opens August 4. Busy day.

On August 11, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon take The Trip to Spain. The third in Michael Winterbottom’s series of road-trip movies, in which the two English comedians verbally spar with each other while struggling to accept their own advancing age, it looks to be a reliably good time. Good Time, which just premiered at Cannes last week and also opens in theaters August 11, promises a way different path to bliss. Directed by gritty indie filmmakers Ben and Josh Safdie (Heaven Knows What), it’s a New York–set psycho-caper in which Robert Pattinson is involved with a bank robbery gone wrong.

On August 18, the small-screen equivalent of The Avengers finally makes its way to Netflix, following five series that introduced Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist to audiences. Each of those had markedly different tones (and wildly varying levels of quality), so it will be interesting to see whether Marvel’s The Defenders has any cohesiveness at all. The potentially good news (at least in terms of a casting coup) is that Sigourney Weaver joins the cast as the villain. pitch.com | june 2017 | the pitch

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the pitch | June 2017 | pitch.com

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5/22/17 4:42 PM

music

Kye Colors has big plans.

True Colors

Kansas City rapper-producer Kye Colors plots his next mixtape.

by Aaron Rhodes

I meet Kye Colors at Joe’s Barbershop on an overcast, late spring day. His father runs the business, which is located in a plain strip mall off the Paseo, on the south side of Kansas City. The shop’s walls are painted a dark red and plastered with sports memorabilia.

An episode of Family Feud is blaring from a television at the center of the room. Kye (born J’kye Slatton) doesn’t work here, but he steps out from behind the front desk to greet me.

His dad’s store is a convenient spot to sit and talk after Kye, 17, finishes his school day at Hogan Preparatory Academy. He tells me he’s been writing raps since he was in elementary school. Back then, his favored implement was a crayon — a preference that factored into his choice of stage name.

Kye has released two projects so far, the more recent being a mixtape called 00, issued when he was 15. That tape and the singles that followed it earned praise from a range of local artists, solidifying the young man’s place within Kansas City’s hip-hop scene.

He tells me that he plans to finish high school, then study audio engineering in community college — depending, he adds, on how far along his music career is by then.

He’s just about to finish his junior year; he has time to weigh his options.

I ask him about his new single, “House Party.” Kye wrote and produced the song, as

he did with the rest of the material on his upcoming tape. The track features hints of gritter hip-hop — a signature Kansas City style — as well as West Coast G-funk bass lines.

Kye says it’s unlike the rest of his new stuff.

It’s also unlike his old stuff. Previous singles of his, including “Sweet Chin Music” and “Get Right,” consisted largely of Kye all but shouting at his listeners. This track finds him more composed, confidently riding the song’s groove and crafting a memorable chorus.

The lyrics tell a story of a night out partying with friends — an outing that ends in gun violence. It plays like Kye conveying a cautionary tale to himself, even as it also demonstrates an obvious increase in focus since that first release. To hear it is to root for Kye to stay in school, graduate and then learn to fully master the recording studio.

The rest of the tape, he says, will showcase his version of soul-sample-based production, following in the footsteps of Kanye West and other acts that gained attention a decade ago for pioneering that style. Now that trap-style 808s dominate the modern hip-hop landscape, Kye’s sampling flashback could be a canny way to set himself apart from the competition.

The name of the new tape also seems destined to leave an impression. Kye is calling it Milk Is Nasty — an absolute truth, as far as he’s concerned. (He harbors a schoolboy

distaste for the drink, unless it’s strawberry flavored.) The phrase has another meaning, though: It’s a reference to a teacher of his who is leaving the profession because his students didn’t want to learn. Here again is Kye the appreciator of a good education: He says he wants to feed hip-hop fans something new.

Other material on the tape covers personal issues, Kye says, experiences he’s had growing up in Kansas City. One song is about educating non–Kansas Citians on the slang term boosie (meaning fraudulent). Another song clarifies that the “Colors” in Kye Colors is not a reference to the LGBT community, as some have apparently assumed.

I point at his plain black T-shirt and mention that he isn’t dressed too colorfully.

“Black is a color, bro!” he says with a laugh.

Kye aims for Milk Is Nasty to help him attract a larger following, but he doesn’t expect to become famous overnight. He already has a vision for his debut album (and a title: Roy G. Biv), which he hopes to release in 2020.

By then, he says, he’ll have had time to save up a bigger recording budget and find at least one big-name collaborator.

“I always wanted to work with Tyler, the Creator,” Kye says. “For just one song, man, that’s it. One song.”

I ask Kye if he sees himself becoming an artist with a niche fanbase or would rather be a Top 40 act. He doesn’t have to consider

his answer long: “Top 10,” he says.

He pictures a Drake-like future: “Everybody knows, if they just see my face, like, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s Kye Colors.’ If I’m about to drop a song, the whole world will just stop and listen to it.”

Not that Kye lacks a Plan B. In a less Drake-like world, he says, he’d try his hand as a singer. Failing that, he’d move to producing and engineering full time.

Regardless, he plans to give back to Kansas City artists.

“When I do work on the album and it turns out good — like, successful things happen for me, for the people around me — then I feel like then it’s going to have to get bigger than this. I wanna have to start helping out people in the community, like younger artists that don’t get to get heard, and I could mentor them to be better.”

The first step toward a more Color-ful community: Milk Is Nasty’s online availability in late June. (Plans for Milk T-shirts and an outdoor concert called Jammy Jam are also in the works.)

Before I leave his dad’s shop, I ask Kye what he wants listeners to hear when they play his new tape. We’ve talked awhile, and I’ve heard him at his most verbal, but this answer is another shorty that’s sharp and obvious.

“They gon’ say: ‘Damn. Play it again.’ ” pitch.com | june 2017 | the pitch

Music A.indd 45

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music

music

City Living

Morby is about to hit the road in a big way.

L.A. singer-songwriter Kevin Morby’s latest contains echoes of his KC past.

by Aaron Rhodes

When Kevin Morby isn’t at his place in Los Angeles, or touring the world, he can often be found hanging around Kansas City. The 29-year-old singer-songwriter recently bought a house here, which he shares with a friend, local filmmaker Christopher Good. It’s a stone’s throw from downtown Overland Park, close to where Morby’s family lives. He just picked up a stereo for the living room, which allows him to enjoy a pastime that mostly wasn’t accessible to him when he was growing up here: buying records.

“Throughout my whole [formative] years, there were no record stores [in KC],” Morby recalls. “There was Recycled Sounds for a while, but then that closed down probably when I was 14 or 15. And then there were just no record stores in the area. So just the fact that you can choose what record store you want to go to [these days] is pretty mind-blowing.”

Morby lit out for New York in 2006, at the age of 18. He did well for himself there, playing bass in the psych-folk outfit Woods and co-fronting the more rock-oriented act The

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Babies. About four years ago, Morby took leave of those bands and relocated again, to Los Angeles, and began recording solo albums. He’s been prolific. This month marks the release of the fourth Kevin Morby record, City Music, out June 16 via Dead Oceans.

City Music acts as a sort of companion piece to Morby’s critically acclaimed 2016 record, Singing Saw. The airy, often dreamlike indie-folk compositions on Singing Saw were written at the same time as the songs that appear on City Music. But if Singing Saw is a record for driving out into the desert mountains, the more electric City Music is more of a soundtrack for walking down a bustling sidewalk surrounded by skyscrapers.

“Singing Saw is very rural and rootsy, so I kinda wanted to create the opposite of that,” Morby says. “Where that [Singing Saw] speaks to more of a country landscape, I wanted it [City Music] to speak to an urban landscape.”

Oddly, Singing Saw — an album inspired by the rural areas around Los Angeles — was recorded in New York. Sticking true to this running series of contrasts, City Music

‘Whatever I think I’m ripping off, people always think it’s something else.’

was recorded in Stinson Beach, California, at Panoramic Studios, in a house-turnedstudio overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Morby recorded vocals as he gazed out into the night sea. He says he likes having a distance between where he is and what he’s writing about. “It’s kinda good to step outside of it and look at it from the outside perspective when you’re documenting it,” Morby says.

Some tracks on City Music see Morby reacquainting himself with his KC punk roots. He grew up attending and playing punk shows at downtown Kansas city venues such as the Stray Cat and MoMo Gallery.

That influence was detectable in his previous work — the Babies had a punkish wildness to them, as does Morby’s band when he performs his solo songs on tour — but it’s more pronounced on City Music.

Folk for the punks? Punk for the folks?

Call it what you want (although don’t call it folk-punk). “1234” is a snappy blast that name-checks all four original Ramones.

“Caught in My Eye” is a stripped-down cover of a love song by the Germs; it’s unclear whether Darby Crash would approve.

Dylan has always loomed large in Morby’s songs, and elsewhere on City Music, tracks, such as the wordy and electric-guitar-heavy “Tin Can,” call to mind Highway 61 Revisited–era Bob. Morby acknowledges the Dylan influence but says he hears more Velvet Underground in that song.

“It’s funny: Whatever I think I’m ripping off, people always think it’s something else,” Morby says, pointing out a different song that he thinks sounds like Townes Van Zandt but in which others have said they hear Leonard Cohen. “They’re all kinda coming from the same place, so any of those comparisons are fair,” he says.

Those iconic artists all share a literary bent, something Morby has been increasingly angling toward in his solo career. Nestled between the bluesy “Dry Your Eyes” and City Music’s soulful title track is “Flannery,” a spoken-word excerpt from the Flannery O’Connor novel The Violent Bear It Away, which Morby was reading while writing the album. The passage describes a child riding away from a house fire in a car, toward a city that he’s never seen before. The bright lights of the city frighten him, and he confuses them for the fire he just escaped.

“I just like that sentiment of a city kind of resembling a fire,” Morby says. “I think it’s a really good metaphor. And also it’s just a thing I’ve seen a million times being on tour.

That is kinda how it looks.”

Morby will see dozens of cities in the coming months. A massive tour stretching through November will take him across the U.S. and to Europe. In the midst of it, he’ll stop in at RecordBar on Thursday, September 14, to play City Music for one of the only cities that can legitimately claim him as its own. Lucky us.

the pitch | june 2017 | pitch.com

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pitch.com | June 2017 | the pitch 47 5/19/17 9:02 AM

5/22/17 4:43 PM

The Havok on Polaris (from left): Michael Lay, Colby Earleywine and Tony Mendez

muSic

JAcob GiLL PhotoGrAPhy

Hey, Ho, Let’s Go ... to the Library A new punk comp rewrites the book on where and how Lawrence bands can record.

by Nick Spacek

In 2015, Tony Mendez was looking to get his band, the Havok on Polaris, back onto local punk’s radar screen.

At the time, the pop-punk act had just recorded Fan Dance, which the guitarist and singer describes as a bunch of songs he and his bandmates had written in high school. In an effort to spread that music and to transcend it, Mendez contacted similar local artists about throwing some of their songs together with Havok on Polaris’ material.

“I was just trying to get back into the music scene,” Mendez tells me. We’re drinking tallboys in front of Frank’s North Star Tavern in Lawrence, with engineers Chris Maddox and Tyler Truesdell. He flashes a wry grin and shrugs his shoulders. “Kind of selfish reasons, I guess, but just to kinda get in contact with other people,” he says.

It worked. The resulting compilation — Lawrence, KS Punk Rock — made the rounds

on social media, and beyond. People as far away as Brazil have pulled tracks from it to soundtrack YouTube videos. And the connections made then have remained in place and been further augmented.

Which means now there is Lawrence, KS Punk Rock Vol. 3, slated to feature a who’s-who of every loud, fast, angry band in town: perennials such as Four Arm Shiver, Stiff Middle Fingers, the Rackatees and the Hemorrhoids (now known as Hatchet Game). But this year’s installment also sees the likes of the Vedettes and Folklore Suburbia making their first compilation appearances.

“We got a bunch of new bands,” Mendez says. “We don’t want anyone to feel left out.”

That’s something of understatement: Engineer Maddox is in three bands himself (Nancy Boys, Sunday Heroine and Bloom), all of which turn up on the album. He’s proof that Lawrence is riding a wave of loud, fast, heavy

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music — a wave that breaks against such regular events as the LKxRR showcases, organized

by Treet Ward of Young Bull, and the Replay’s Three Headed Thursdays.

The two previous Lawrence, KS Punk Rock compilations have helped build this wave, though none of the tracks was tailor-made for the project. This time, though, Mendez wanted to send a new current through the connections he’d made: For the 2017 iteration of LKPR, Mendez called on every act to record a new track. And he had the studio space picked out: the Lawrence Public Library’s Sound + Vision Studio, where the musicians wouldn’t have to pay.

“It’s always been newer stuff, but this year the idea was really to use the library, because it’s a tool there for bands to use,” Mendez says.

The Sound + Vision Studio is — per its Facebook page — “a professional recording studio ... free of charge to use for all of your creative needs.” It has three editing bays, in addition to a full studio setup.

“I love it,” says Maddox, who has worked as an on-call engineer for Sound + Vision, as well as at Lawrence’s Daybreak Studios. “It’s a great space, and they’ve got great mics. I’ve rented it out for practice space before.”

“It’s such a great facility with great people, and it’s such a cool deal,” says Jim Barnes, who manages the studio. “It’s kind of about maintaining relevance, which this library does a really good job of.”

Barnes took over Sound + Vision from Ed Rose in February, after an eight-year stint as a freelance recording engineer and musician, touring with and recording artists, as well as mixing various projects for television. He was attracted to the position at the library because it would keep him involved in the community.

“When you’re self-employed in a job, sitting in front of a computer, it’s pretty solitary sometimes,” Barnes says of leaving the freelance world. “Just meeting the wide variety of people that we have come into the library and use our facilities is one of the coolest parts, because there’s something different every day.”

In addition to full-band recordings, such as the annual Girls Rock Lawrence sessions, Sound + Vision has been booked for poetry

readings, oral histories and even crystal singing bowls for meditation. It’s an impressive setup that doesn’t require tremendous expertise to use; anyone with a smattering of knowledge can get something recorded, and even that thumbnail skill set can be acquired for free, thanks to occasional how-to sessions.

“We call them ‘Sound + Vision Basics,’” Barnes says of the introductory sessions to the studio, but he sees them more as open houses.

“You can walk into the library and know what’s up, but here [for the studio] you have to wait until there’s an opening to kind of pop your head in. It’s a little mysterious, for sure.”

“There’s always a learning curve,” Barnes adds. “But learning is part of it here. Even if that first session is just a learning opportunity, by the time they come in again they’re a lot more comfortable.”

The use of Sound + Vision by all the bands for Lawrence, KS Punk Rock Vol. 3 dovetails neatly with Barnes’ concept for the studio, and how its mission fits in with that of the library as a whole. “As far as music goes, that’s the perfect use for it,” he says. “Everyone’s using their own library card – all of these people from the community using it one session at a time.”

Like Barnes, Mendez has set out to reach beyond those already in the know. And just as Barnes has thrown open the door to Sound + Vision, Mendez hopes to make the new LKPR a little more public than past volumes when it comes out at the end of the summer. He plans to put on a show with as many artists from the compilation as possible; Kurt Mangold (Extra Ordinary) and Maddox are organizing an allday showcase that would share a backline and put each band onstage for a few songs.

And if you’re a band in Lawrence that hasn’t been contacted? Well, Mendez wants to hear from you, even with 20 bands already confirmed. (Seriously, he says: call up lawrencekansaspunkrock.bandcamp.com — where the first two compilations can be found as free downloads — and hit him up.)

“I want to build lasting friendships between all the bands and people in our music scene,” he says, “something that this community of Lawrence musicians could be proud to be a part of.”

Featuring free nightly concerts with internationally renowned musicians of the highest caliber

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the pitch | June 2017 | pitch.com

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Orgasm Responsibly

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concerts

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50

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Saturday, June 17 Willie Nelson Dwight Yoakam Robert Earl Keen Starlight Theatre

THURSDAY, JUNE 29 Ed Sheeran Sprint Center

the pitch | june 2017 | pitch.com

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calendar

Symphony in the Flint Hills

Deer Horn Ranch (near Junction City, Kansas) 6:45 p.m.

The annual paean to prairie prettiness and fancy music returns tonight when Symphony in the Flint Hills imports the Kansas City Symphony to Geary County.

The ensemble will play classical works against a backdrop of the postcardready Flint Hills, with guest singersongwriter Michael Martin Murphey.

Other events surround the concert; see symphonyintheflinthills.org for information.

June 16 and 17

Strawberries, Fields Eleven more things to do in June

Boulevardia

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by Annie Raab

Small Bites Wine Pairing: Rosé

June 2

June 3

Electrosexual Pride Weekend Kickoff

Vaile Mansion Strawberry Festival

The Batcave at Rhythm & Booze (2111 Washington) Electrosexual kicks off Pride weekend with a party (9 p.m. to 2 a.m.) and a drag halftime show. The LGBT-friendly pop-up dance event, which organizers call “a roaming disco for the sexually cosmopolitan,” celebrates the queer community with dance, outreach and alternative programming. See facebook .com/electrosexykc.

June 2-4 Kansas City Pride Fest

Berkley Riverfront Park Gay Pride Kansas City’s annual celebration of equality, compassion and happiness brings the usual array of performers, vendors and cheer. Details at gaypridekc.org; directions to the park at berkleyriverfrontparkkc.com. Tickets: $7.50-$18.50

52

Vaile Mansion (1500 North Liberty Street, Independence) Built by Col. Harvey Vaile in 1881, the locally famous three-story gothic structure opens its doors once again for the Strawberry Festival. With 100 craft and antique dealers, entertainment, food and beverages from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., this is the Vaile Society’s annual big deal, marking the history of this unique mansion. Admission to the grounds is free; mansion tours run $6 for adults and $3 for children. Details: vailemansion.org.

June 9 Lenexa Food Truck Frenzy

Corner of 87th Street Parkway and Renner Road, Lenexa Like food trucks and the suburbs? A rich day awaits you at the Lenexa City Center, which has invited food trucks from around the metro to a one-day confab.

Come hungry and sample some of the area’s best roaming restaurants, including El Tenedor, Casual Foodie, Wilma’s, the Waffler and more. It goes from 11 a.m to 1:30 p.m. See lenexa.com.

Fence Stile Vineyards & Winery (31010 West 124th Street, Excelsior Springs) From 5:30 to 7 p.m today, cook, author and beer expert Pete Dulin invites you to taste hors d’oeuvres and four wines on the rolling hills of Excelsior Springs.

Sample the six grape varietals of the working vineyard and refine your rosé palate. Reservations required: $30 a person, $25 for wine club members. See fencestile.com.

Dragon Boat Festival

Brush Creek, on the Plaza One day a year, a bit of ancient majesty alights on KC’s least breathtaking waterway. The Chinese tradition of dragon-boat races pits human-powered crafts against one another, each lavishly decorated to match fierce and colorful namesakes. The annual event (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) includes traditional Chinese games, performances, food and music. See chinagardensociety-kc.org.

Stockyards District (1600 Genessee, West Bottoms) It bears repeating: Boulevard Brewing Company’s Boulevardia — which pairs beers near, far and rare with live performances by local bands and a lot of crafts for sale — returns for another Father’s Day weekend. You know what to do. See boulevardia.com.

June 17 Michael McDonald and Boz Scaggs Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts (1601 Broadway) Speaking of Father’s Day-friendly outings, here’s one for moms, too — especially parents of baby-boomer vintage. Make all the yacht-rock jokes you want, but McDonald and Scaggs still have what they’ve always had, and they’re performing in an air-conditioned space for a change. Zero shame in this smoothness, which commences at 7:30 p.m.; details and tickets at kauffmancenter.org.

June 17 and 18 Fiesta Filipina

Shelf Life: Cotton

The Brick (1727 McGee) The storytelling event Shelf Life returns at 8 tonight with a plain-sounding topic: cotton. Bringing objects and stories of the fabric of our lives are Hector Casanova Cinderhouse, Mario Gipson, the Minister of Information, Mel Neet and Nora Nneka.

Ticket holders are entered into a raffle for a mystery object. Doors open at 7 p.m.; tickets are $10. See shelflife.club.

Filipino Cultural Center (9810 West 79th Street, Overland Park) Filipino food, cultural dances, live music and an exhibition to commemorate Philippine independence come to OP this weekend, at the recently renovated Filipino Cultural Center. From noon to 8 p.m. Saturday and noon to 6 p.m., enjoy pork kebabs, halo-halo, chicken adobo and other eclectic Filipino food, along with family-friendly activities. See filipino-association.org.

the pitch | june 2017 | pitch.com

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