The Pitch: May 2017 by FW Publishing

MAY 2017 I FREE I PITCH.COM

Leavenworth tries to break free of its prison-town image. PAGE 8

Swordfish Tom's quietly ices the cocktail competition. PAGE 32

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Contents

ON ThE cOvER

Bob Wasabi owner Bob Shin Photo by Zach Bauman

Chico Sierra

All the cocktail froth, none of the dairy

Leavenworth, the East Side

Waynez World III is no mere sequel

PLUS

QUESTIONNAIRE

NEwS

POlITIcS

Katheryn Shields, Kevin Yoder

STREETSIdE

Troost life

cOvER STORy

Eight of our favorite KC dishes

dRINk

MUSIc

Profile ......................................................14 Event of the Month .............................35 Fat City ....................................................36 Café ..........................................................38 Books ......................................................42 Screen .....................................................46 Art.............................................................48 Concerts .................................................54 Calendar .................................................56

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3200 N AMERISTAR DRIVE KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI 816.414.7000 AMERISTAR.COM Must be 21 or older to gamble. Must be a mychoice member to receive mychoice discount. Must be at least 18 or accompanied by an adult to enter Star Pavilion. Must be at least 21 to enter Depot #9. Tickets available online at ticketmaster.com (service charges and handling fees added by ticketmaster.com), or at the Gift Shop. No refunds/exchanges unless canceled or postponed. Offer not valid for persons on a Disassociated Patrons, Voluntary Exclusion or Self Exclusion List in jurisdictions which Pinnacle Entertainment operates or who have been otherwise excluded from Ameristar Kansas City, MO. Gambling problem? Call 1-888-BETSOFF. ©2017 Pinnacle Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved.

pitch.com | May 2017 | the pitch

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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, Jennifer Wetzel, 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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Just 45 Minutes froM downtown kansas City pitch.com | May 2017 | the pitch

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questionnaire

The best advice I ever got: A dear friend persuaded me to find help for my mental health issues. Worst advice? My at-risk coordinator in high school told me to drop out. My sidekick? Less of a sidekick and more of a co-conspirator, Erika Noguera has been letting me steal her ideas and throw them into some of my latest projects. What is your spirit animal? I have a bull tattooed on the back of my neck. There are times I can relate to an animal used for its aggression as entertainment. In a way, my artistic expression is a side effect of the stress society has placed on my mental health. Plus they’re meaty. Who is your hero? My mother. She raised six kids while making minimum wage, beat cancer and continues to be actively involved in the lives of her grandchildren. Who (or what) is your nemesis? The 45th president of the United States is my current nemesis. With friends and family of various ethnic, religious and sexual identities, I don’t think I have to state the grievances I have with that monster.

Chico Sierra

Visual artist, writer, photographer, musician Twitter handle: @chico_sierra Instagram handle: @chicosierra Hometown: El Paso, Texas Current neighborhood: Historic Northeast What I do (in 140 characters or less): I communicate through visual art, photography, music and writing. My aim is to learn more about myself through how others see my work. What’s your addiction? I smoke blackbox American Spirits because I’m addicted to nicotine. I really should quit. What’s your game? Currently, I’ve been consistently losing at chess. What’s your drink? A 16-ounce Americano, with an extra shot. Every morning.

Finish these sentences: “Kansas City got it right when ...” It chose to embrace its art community by funding projects by local artists, performers and musicians. “Kansas City screwed up when ...” It chose to fund developments that cater to citizens of Johnson County and forgot all about the history and beauty in communities like 18th and Vine, the Westside and the East and West Bottoms. “Kansas City needs ...” To provide more entertainment for youth in the midtown area. Idle hands, y’all — they need to do things. “As a kid, I wanted to be ...” Rich and famous. Growing up a foot below the poverty line gave me ambitions out of line with the goals I currently I have. I’m content with my financial situation as long as I am able to continue creating work.

Where’s dinner? Tacos El Gallo on Southwest Boulevard. If you haven’t been, you’re missing out.

“In five years, I’ll be ...” Traveling extensively. I love Kansas City, but there is a lot of the world I’ve yet to see. Don’t worry, babies, I will always return.

What’s on your KC postcard? Every mural in the Kansas City area painted by local artist José Faus. If anyone embodies culture in Kansas City, it is him. He’s the real deal.

“I always laugh at ...” Corny animal memes. The one with the koala not being a bear but having all the “koalifications” ... I’m laughing as I type.

“I’ve been known to binge watch ...” Doctor Who. I’m a huge nerd trapped in a cholo’s body — I even have a tattoo of the Tardis. If you don’t know what that is, I don’t care about ya. “I can’t stop listening to ...” Chicano Batman’s Freedom Isn’t Free album. I can’t explain the feelings of both nostalgia and freshness that drip from that record. “My dream concert lineup is ...” Any lineup that ends with the Roots. I’ve seen them several times and they are by far the best live act ever. The way they incorporate their opening acts into their set keeps each performance brand new. “I just read ...” Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins, drenched in pop-culture and political references, along with the constant weaving in and out of parallel storylines, kept my wandering mind engaged. What’s your hidden talent? I don’t have the ability to hide any of my talents. I’m an attention seeker and show off as much as I can. What’s your guiltiest pleasure? Christopher Cross. “Sailing Away” is the prettiest song ever written, I don’t care what Bon Iver fans have to say about it.

What’s your greatest struggle right now? To create art about my own personal experiences while still addressing the swelling fascist tide. My brush with fame: I played bass in a band with my good friend Valerie Ponzio, who has been making waves on The Voice. I couldn’t be more proud. She’s going to be huge. My soapbox: Get active. Right now is the time to jump on the right side of history. When families are being threatened with deportation, people are being denied entry into this country because of their religion, and the rights that minorities have been fighting for are being ripped away, people need to get involved. What was the last thing you had to apologize for? Probably to The Pitch for taking far too long to fill out this questionnaire. My recent triumph: If I’m being completely honest, the fact that I’m dealing with my depression and other mental health issues has me feeling pretty triumphant. I was in a pretty dark place for a year or so and was contemplating suicide often. There was a point when I noticed the amazing people I’ve surrounded myself with, and realized that I owed it to them to not only stay alive but to live a more full expressive life. Life is kind of dope if you let it be.

the pitch | month 2017 | pitch.com

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news

Small City, Big Government

Meriwether’s: hotspot of a new Leavenworth zach bauman

In federally fueled Leavenworth, rumbles of revitalization — and some anxiety about Trump by David Hudnall

Two years ago, Mountain and Andrew Kimley were living in midtown Kansas City but mulling a move to somewhere more remote. Mountain was employed as a midwife. Andrew, her husband, worked as a chef at the West Side vegan mainstay Füd and, later, a south Kansas City spot called Pita Mediterranean Grill. One day, Mountain got a call: Was she interested in buying her grandfather’s house in Leavenworth, Kansas, 45 minutes northwest of downtown Kansas City? “Leavenworth wasn’t as totally off the grid as we’d been imagining, but it seemed like a step in the direction we wanted to go,” Mountain told me. She’s 43, with grayish hair, a septum piercing, and tattoos on her right arm all the way to her fingernails. “I don’t think we knew whether we’d stay, or if we’d like it here.” But they have, and they do. I met Mountain and Andrew in early April inside Meriwether’s, a café and market on the western edge of downtown Leavenworth. They were

sitting at a table with Christina Carter, the owner of Meriwether’s, catching their breath after the Friday lunch rush. The three are business partners in Meriwether’s, and business is good. Since opening as a small graband-go espresso bar in late 2015, it has expanded twice: first into the room next door, to accommodate breakfast and lunch service, and more recently into a space upstairs, where it books events and offers local consignment goods. Today, it’s a burgeoning hub in downtown Leavenworth. Local art adorns the walls, and on the menu are fancy doughnuts (try the strawberry basil), coffee roasted in Kansas City, and sandwiches made with organic ingredients. Andrew — 27, burly, gingery beard, cheflike — makes the food, and Mountain, a former barista, oversees coffee and front-of-house duties. (Carter now lives in Fort Leonard Wood, where her husband, a Marine Corps major, is stationed; she handles

back-end business logistics from afar and visits frequently.) “We definitely get a lot of people who drop in and are surprised something like this exists in Leavenworth,” Carter said. “We love our little corner here. I think we all believe that in 10 years we’ll be really glad that we started this business here when we did.” Is Leavenworth underrated? Could this 35,000-person city — the oldest in the state — be the next Crossroads, a neo-Lawrence? That would require a lot more people like the Kimleys relocating there. But squint and you can see seeds of promise. The downtown has lovely, well-preserved architectural bones, and spaces are cheap and plentiful at the moment. A couple of old downtown factories have been converted into lofts. There’s a farmers market. Two hotels are coming. So is a brewery. In small ways, it’s starting to remind Mountain of her childhood visits, in the late

1970s and early 1980s, to her grandfather’s house in Leavenworth. “We’d go downtown — he actually owned the building located across the street from us [Meriwether’s] — and there were people everywhere,” she says. “Restaurants, corner pharmacies, five-and-dimes, Ward’s department store, a packed movie theater on the weekends.” She goes on: “Then, at some point, everything moved out of downtown and they started building out on the corporate strip south of town: Kmart and Price Chopper and a little mall that’s gone now. But now that’s all dying and downtown is kind of coming back. So for me it feels like I’m returning to my roots in a way — and that Leavenworth is, too.” Renewed interest in living and working in walkable downtowns — a national trend — is a factor here. Wendy Scheidt, executive director of a downtown advocacy group called Leavenworth Main Street, points to $71 mil-

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news

lion in renovations and new construction in the 28-block downtown since 1995. “We’re not one of these new developments that’s built to look like an old downtown,” Scheidt says. “We’re the real deal: the first city in Kansas. And we have a tremendous amount of independent businesses — hardly any franchises at all. I think those are really strong selling points for people and for businesses.” Economic development incentives have also played a role. A small-business grant program, administered by the city of Leavenworth, will match up to $5,000 for repairs to façades, windows, doors, signage and other nonmaintenance upgrades. (Meriwether’s is one local business that took advantage of the program.) When Kansas City–based historic preservation development firm Foutch Brothers wanted to convert an old downtown stove factory into upscale lofts, Leavenworth drew from its economic development fund to build Foutch a parking lot as an incentive. (Foutch has also developed senior and lowincome housing in Leavenworth.) The $20 million project began leasing units, 186 in all, in early 2015. “It’s kind of a big small town, or a small big town,” says Steve Foutch, CEO of Foutch Brothers. “City Hall makes it pretty easy politically and financially to get your project through.” That a large studio or a one-bedroom at the Stove Factory Lofts leases in the $900 range — not terribly far from Kansas City prices — raises the question of who is willing to pay that amount to live in a slowly gentrifying downtown in a distant suburb of Kansas City. The answer has to do with the federal government — specifically, Fort Leavenworth, a major economic driver in the city. “People think of Leavenworth as a prison town, but that’s not really the case anymore,” says Melissa Bowers, a spokeswoman for the city. “The federal prison isn’t maximum security anymore, and there’s no long-term inmates. The military presence here has far more of an impact on the city.” The university located at Fort Leavenworth is the intellectual center of the Army, and it brings 1,300 new residents into the community every year to enroll in one- and two-year programs. In 2016, roughly 14,000 people lived “on post,” meaning on the military grounds. They contribute to the local economy — the fort was estimated to have an economic impact of $2.3 billion to Leavenworth last year — but thousands more military members (and their families) live “off post,” and this more transient population is part of why Foutch sees promise in Leavenworth. Because they’re only in Leavenworth for a month or three months, or a year or two years, they’re likely to be renters. What’s more, the federal employees and military members who come to Leavenworth come with guaranteed money to spend on housing in the form of a federal per diem. Un-

Optimistic developers are treating downtown Leavenworth like KC’s Crossroads. Above: Meriwether partners Andrew and Mountain Kimley (center) and Christina Carter (right) with their staff.

“It’s one of the last pieces of what you could maybe call the KC metro that hasn’t really filled in yet.” Caleb Buland

til recently, the per diem in Leavenworth was significantly lower than it was across the river in Missouri. This was an incentive for federal employees to stay in Missouri when visiting Leavenworth. But the city lobbied Washington to raise the per diem, and succeeded in 2010. That has inspired confidence not only among residential developers like Foutch, but also among hotel developers, who can now confidently command higher room rates. A Hampton Inn debuted downtown in 2015, and a 107-room extended-stay Hilton (built with the assistance of tax-increment financing) is scheduled to open later this year. The federal government, in other words, has been very good to Leavenworth. That Donald Trump received 63 percent of the vote in Leavenworth County last November is perhaps not surprising, given his campaign promises to build up the military. It’s good for Foutch’s business, for example. “If Trump is going to increase military presence, that starts with training,” Foutch says, “and that goes through Leavenworth. So we think we’ll have strong demand and probably increasing demand [for leasing units] under Trump.” Elsewhere in Leavenworth, though, unease has set in. One of Trump’s first acts was to institute a federal hiring freeze. In early April, Leavenworth city representatives traveled to Washington to lobby federal legislators for wiggle room on the freeze. According to documents adopted by the city commission, Fort Leavenworth would face “significant pressure” from a hiring freeze, particularly at the university, because such a freeze would prohibit the Army from hiring contractors to fill in gaps created by professors who move on to other positions. The documents indicate that the school would operate at only 82 percent teacher capacity under a freeze, resulting in decreased student loads. The documents also express concern about not being able to hire maintenance contractors to repair and renovate buildings at the fort.

Jeffrey Wingo, a spokesman for Fort Leavenworth, downplays the impact: “Fort Leavenworth has less than 50 positions that are on hold, pending the lifting of the hiring freeze,” Wingo says. In mid-April, Trump announced that he was lifting the freeze, but his decisions have been erratic, offering little reassurance about the future. Meanwhile, Leavenworth is in the running for a second federal prison, and city officials have expressed concern about federal funds tied to the project drying up. Ditto a proposed public-private partnership to build a new hospital on the grounds of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Developers remain bullish about downtown, though. In March, the ribbon was cut on Carnegie 601, a mixed-use residential project with 11 units and space for an art gallery. The building, constructed in 1902, was one of numerous Carnegie properties across the country a century ago. (The project availed itself of historic tax credits and a 10year freeze on property taxes.) It housed the Leavenworth Public Library until 1987, when it became the Carnegie Arts Center, which closed in 2012. Today, studios start at $450, two-bedrooms at $800. “It’s a piece of old Midwestern America,” Caleb Buland, whose Kansas City firm, Exact Architects, designed the Carnegie 601 renovation, says of Leavenworth. “It’s one of the last pieces of what you could maybe call the KC metro that hasn’t really filled in yet. I think you’re going to see over the next 15 years a lot more activity in these storefronts downtown. The fabric is already there, just waiting for it.” The crew at Meriwether’s certainly hopes so — when they have time to ponder such things. “Honestly, we’ve been so busy over the last six months that I haven’t had time to read the news or think much about anything outside of this place [Meriwether’s],” Andrew says. “Our business is just exploding right now.” pitch.com | may 2017 | the pitch

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news

Scenes from the corridor about to benefit from a new sales tax

East Side Shocker

Zach Bauman

Kansas City voters approved a hail-Mary sales tax to benefit a majority-black chunk of the urban core. Now what? by David Hudnall

Inside Johnny’s Donuts and Hamburgers, in early April, I ordered a half-dozen doughnut holes and asked the man behind the bulletproof glass what he thought about the election. Two days before, Kansas Citians had voted to tax themselves to fund economic development on the East Side. Johnny’s, at 44th Street and Prospect, sits in the middle of the area that would benefit from the tax. Were people in the neighborhood excited about the outcome? What difference did they think it might make? “Election?” the man asked me. I explained the ballot measure, an eighth-cent sales tax estimated to send $8 million a year over the next decade to the area extending north from Gregory Boulevard all the way down to Ninth Street, and west from the Paseo to Indiana Avenue. I tapped on the glass, pointing down at copies of The Call for sale in front of the window. The headline about the election sat above the fold. He shrugged.

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“Won’t make any difference either way,” the man said, dropping my bag of holes and my change into the deposit tray and sliding it my way. I got a similar reaction from a middle-aged guy doing yard work outside a home near 29th Street and Indiana: Never heard of it. At the McDonald’s at 14th and Prospect, I asked an old-timer reading the Star in a booth. Nope. I dropped by that same McDonald’s the next day to eavesdrop on Eggs and Enlightenment, a Friday-morning ritual on the East Side at which locals gather to bandy about community issues. Surely here the One City initiative, as its petitioners called it, would figure into the day’s conversation. But most of the informal meetup was spent talking about how marijuana decriminalization — another measure that had passed on the same ballot — would affect young black men in Kansas City. I had to leave before the meeting concluded, so I later called Sonny Gibson, a local historian of African-Ameri-

can culture in Kansas City, to ask whether I’d missed any juicy discussion. He acts as a sort of moderator of Eggs and Enlightenment, banging a long gavel on the table when it’s time to change topics. Gibson told me he had voted against the tax. “We’re not going to get anything out of it,” he said. “By the time that money trickles down to the community, there’ll be hardly anything left. Go back and look. It always happens this way. It’s the top echelon of decision makers who benefit from these things, not the people of the community.” I asked him what he’d like to see happen with the $8 million a year. “How about the city comes out and cleans up these streets and alleys that are full of dead trees, overgrown trees, brush, debris?” he said. “How about a program that makes it so elderly citizens don’t have to go to bed with their raincoats on because they got a leaky roof on their house? How about that? But we

won’t see that. Because the people making these decisions, they don’t have leaky roofs.” Not everybody views the passage of the One City initiative through shit-colored glasses. The city councilors who represent the Prospect corridor districts say they’re heartened by the vote. Fifth District Councilwoman Alissia Canady called it a “huge victory for Kansas City.” Jermaine Reed, in the 3rd District, said the constituents he’d spoken to were excited “because, over the last 40 years, they have experienced disinvestment of resources in their community. He added that the vote would “create a catalyst for redevelopment” along Prospect. Surprise seemed to be the most common reaction to One City’s passage, though. The initiative started out as a grassroots petition cobbled together by many of the usual East Side institutions: Freedom Inc., the Urban Summit, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City, the Urcontinued on page 12

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news

“Honestly, I think people kind of view it as a miracle.” Melissa Patterson-Hazley

ban League, Communities Creating Opportunity. It represented a counterweight to the ballot item that received top billing in April’s municipal election: an $800 million bond to pay for sidewalks, bridges, streets and other infrastructure repair across the city. If the $800 million “GO bond” was a plea to invest in the future of Kansas City, One City was a shout to invest first in a long-forgotten part of the city, home to its poorest residents. Many of the One City supporters opposed the $800 million “GO Bond,” and vice versa. Virtually nobody gave One City a prayer. The conventional wisdom was that the (predominantly white) Northland vote would sink it. Not even our popular black mayor supported it, citing concerns that don’t sound far removed from Gibson’s. “I can’t support a tax I have zero idea what it’s going to be used for and controlled by zero people that I don’t know who are going to be,” Mayor Sly James told the Star. City Manager Troy Schulte also opposed it, telling the Star that he “would quibble that the Prospect area has been ignored.” As evidence, Schulte pointed to the recent groundbreaking of a grocery store at Linwood and Prospect, a new police crime lab at 26th Street and Prospect, and the demolition of Land Bank houses throughout the corridor. But on Tuesday, April 4, more than 60,000 people — about 25,000 more than voted in the 2015 mayoral election — hit the polls and awarded One City roughly 52 percent of the vote. “The strategy was to reduce the loss in the Northland to about 40 percent, have a slight

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win in the western corridor, an even split everywhere else and drive the vote margins up in central city areas,” Kenneth Bacchus, a former city councilman and supporter of the initiative, told me. “Well, we only received about 35 percent up north, but made up for those losses [south of the river].” “It did well — better than we’d thought it would — in Brookside and Waldo and Hyde Park,” Melissa Patterson-Hazley, the initiative’s campaign manager, told me. “That was important. I don’t think it would have passed otherwise.” Patterson-Hazley said even people who worked on the campaign were stunned at the result. “Honestly, I think people kind of view it as a miracle almost,” she said. Following the election, local pundits raced to give credit to the mayor for leading the way on the passage of the $800 million infrastructure bond. (The Star christened him “King James” in one editorial.) Certainly, the vote reflects the electorate’s confidence in James and the council to responsibly handle their tax money. But how to explain the victory of One City, which James opposed? I suspect both the Go Bond and One City wins have just as much to do with an anti-Trump bump — liberal voters mobilized and eager to have their voices heard in the first election after November — as they do with their feelings about the mayor. A better yardstick of James’ political brilliance will be whether he can sell a new airport terminal to a bunch of tightfisted old-timers who fear change. Regardless, the city must now figure out how to administer millions of tax dollars

“Getting development done in urban areas like this is expensive,” says Urban League President Gwendolyn Grant.

that it wasn’t planning to have. The first step is to form a five-member commission to decide how the cash gets doled out. Three spots will be appointed by the mayor and council, one will be appointed by Kansas City Public Schools, and one will be appointed by Jackson County. Reed says plans are under way for the council to meet soon to discuss appointees. Gwendolyn Grant, president and CEO of the Urban League, says her organization would like to see “a cultural heritage district along Prospect similar to Chinatown in San Francisco or Little Italy in New York.” She adds: “Also, we need money for pre-development costs. Getting development done in urban areas like this [the Prospect Corridor] is expensive. Funds to defray the costs of blight removal, land acquisitions and environmental issues would be helpful in accelerating development.” An expansion of bus service along Prospect is also on the table. The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority is holding its breath on federal funds that would allow it to bring MAX service to Prospect. Dick Jarrold, vice president of regional planning for the KCATA, says resources from One City could potentially fund projects complementary to the expansion, such as retail developments near major stops or infrastructure connecting bus passengers to local amenities. “But we don’t know enough about how this program will be administered to say at this point how beneficial it will be to it [the Prospect MAX],” Jarrold says. Uncertainty seems to be the consensus at this point. Meanwhile, cautionary tales lurk within the boundaries that will benefit from One City. Over the past 25 years, the city has spent in excess of $100 million in public dollars to revitalize the 18th and Vine District, with little evidence of economic development to show for it. Likewise, the city’s attempts to redevelop the Citadel site at 63rd Street and Prospect — where Canady says she’d like to see One City funds support a mixed-use development — failed spectacularly, resulting in a decade of lawsuits, criminal charges and the loss of millions in taxpayer money. Bacchus says the only concerns he’s heard from East Side residents are that the City Council will try to “hijack the process and use the dollars in ways not anticipated by the petitioners.” He thinks it’s key that a plurality of the commission members live within the geographic corridor. “It [the commission] should include people who have shown over the years that they actually support the uplifting of these areas,” Bacchus says. “Good common-sense community people without any organizational conflicts.” No organizational conflicts: That’s a tall order in this city. But the voters have spoken — even if it’s unclear what they can expect.

the pitch | may 2017 | pitch.com

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4/20/17 3:54 PM

profile

Filmmaker Jon Brick at work editing his documentary

Uncommon Strength

Jennifer Wetzel

Behind the scenes with the director of Kansas City’s most urgent new film by Lucas Wetzel

Rosilyn Temple is part of a club she never asked to be in. After her 26-year-old son, Antonio “Pee Wee” Thompson, was fatally shot, in 2011, she decided to take a stand against the violence that had caused so much pain for her and others in her community. She also realized she wasn’t alone — that many other mothers in Kansas City had lost sons to gun violence and would also do anything to prevent others from suffering that heartbreak. In 2013, Temple founded the Kansas City chapter of Mothers in Charge, a group of grieving mothers, grandmothers, aunts and sisters that serves as a liaison between the community and law enforcement by responding to homicide scenes, comforting families, holding vigils and advocating for violence prevention. In 2015, Mothers in Charge received the FBI Kansas City division’s Director’s Community Leadership Award, and The Kansas City Star’s editorial board named her Citizen of the Year. But while the efforts of KC Mothers in Charge are well known in Temple’s East Kansas City neighborhood, they remain mostly unseen by the rest of the metro. Jon Brick — a filmmaker and video producer who moved back to Kansas City several years ago — is working to change that. Brick was first introduced to Temple when asked to help produce a 5-minute video to help Mothers in Charge gain nonprofit status. Two and a half years later, he’s on the verge of completing a feature-length documentary. During his initial 45-minute visit with Temple, Brick says, he found himself speech-

Profile.indd 14

less. “The more time I spent with her, the more I realized how important her role is,” he says. “Very few people have that kind of credibility in the community with that level of trust from the police.” That relationship provides the film with its title, Uncommon Allies. Temple is a dynamic presence in the film, embracing families, joking with small children, laughing with police officers. Privately, we see her shedding tears when recalling the trauma of her son’s murder, which remains unsolved. Because Mothers in Charge works so closely with the Kansas City Police Department, Brick began accompanying officers and sergeants on ride-alongs, walking rounds and even a pair of high-speed chases. What emerges in the rough cut of his film is a much more nuanced view of law enforcement than what you’ve seen on, say, Cops. “The police are just a microcosm of society,” Brick says. “I don’t want to make it sound like I’m goo-goo over the police, but the police in Kansas City are a very diverse group, and I think they’re making a unique effort to brand themselves.” A key to their success, Brick adds, is an effort to be “more human” — handing out baseball cards and teddy bears to kids, staging a flash-mob style electric-slide dance at the Westport St. Patrick’s Day parade, or throwing their support behind citizens like Temple. One of the most charming sequences in the film depicts an officer walking around Concourse Park, in the city’s Historic Northeast, talking to teenagers, kids and parents, pretending to be terrified of going down a big slide,

cracking jokes that even he knows are terrible. It’s a winning, self-effacing performance — unscripted, Brick insists — that could have been lifted from a sketch on late-night TV. That fuzzy feeling is fleeting, though. In another scene, the same officer appears alongside stunned family members gathered at a homicide scene — the third that day. Brick was there, too, and the experience is one he’ll never forget. “That changed my life,” he says. “I couldn’t sleep for days. Hearing that first scream from the family members as they find out what happened ... that was the most emotional experience of my life.” Temple was at all three homicide scenes that day, hugging family members, talking with officers, asking young men on the scene when enough would finally be enough. The situation reinforced to Brick how critical her role is. “I asked her how she does it, and she said she was just running on adrenaline at that point,” he says. “She’s such a beacon of strength and hope for these families. There’s no one else like her.” As a self-described “white boy from Johnson County” who now lives in Brookside, Brick says he’s troubled not just by the violence on Kansas City’s East Side, but by how oblivious people are to it elsewhere in the city. “I’d wake up and expect to read in the paper about what I’d seen the day before, but none of it was in the paper,” he says. “If the shooting doesn’t involve celebrities, young children or a police officer, media outlets often choose not to cover it.”

Brick is quick to admit that his film does not offer solutions. And while it avoids making any overtly political statements, Uncommon Allies features dozens of police figures, politicians, media experts and ordinary citizens discussing topics such as education, guns, law enforcement, blight and media bias — chronicling Temple’s own experiences and past hardships as a way to explore a wide range of issues. “No one has an answer to fix this,” he says. “What the film does do is make the questions feel more urgent.” Once completed, Brick hopes to license Uncommon Allies to high schools and universities as a way to spark discussion. The rough cut has already been shown at an event hosted by ArtsKC, which awarded Brick a grant in 2016, and at a criminology seminar at Central Missouri State University in April. Documentary directors don’t have an easy time finding money, but Uncommon Allies recently gained fiscal sponsorship from the International Documentary Association, which allows organizations and individuals to make tax-deductible contributions to the film. (Details and donation information are at documentary.org/film/ uncommon-allies.) In spite of the film’s often dispiriting subject matter, Brick says Temple’s story is one that can inspire hope and positive action. “If someone like her, who grew up with next to nothing, can make such a difference, imagine what someone from a more privileged background can do,” he says. “It only takes one person to change the herd mentality.”

the pitch | may 2017 | pitch.com

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politics

Shields: “I’m very much of an extrovert.”

Art of the Comeback

zach bauman

Left for dead after being indicted, Katheryn Shields is back at City Hall — and thinking of running for mayor. by David Martin

Katheryn Shields is used to close elections. In 1994, as a Kansas City, Missouri, city councilwoman, she ran for Jackson County executive. She won the Democratic primary by just 173 votes before cruising in the general election. By the end of her third term as county executive, Shields was the target of a federal investigation. Prosecutors were not able to build a corruption case. But a few days after leaving office, Shields and her husband, Phil Cardarella, were indicted in an alleged scheme to inflate the sale price of their home near Loose Park. While other defendants in the mortgage-fraud case were found guilty, a jury acquitted Shields and Cardarella. Shields ran for mayor while she was under indictment. Wary of the investigations and controversies that had marked her time as county executive (The Pitch once called her “Katheryn the Grate”), voters gravitated to other choices. She finished 10th in a crowded primary. In 2015, after spending a sufficient amount of time out of the public eye, Shields completed a remarkable political comeback:

She reclaimed her former seat on the City Council, defeating Jim Glover, who had returned to the council in 2011 after serving three previous terms. Shields’ margin of victory in the general election was 173 votes, the same thin margin that had put her on a path to becoming county executive. “I’m not a stranger to squeakers,” she tells The Pitch. Up to the last minute, Shields was collecting the signatures necessary to get on the ballot. She filed for the at-large seat, the one she had held during her first stint on the council. Casual political observers who thought the indictment would end her career dismissed the power of loyalty and the appeal of name recognition. “I feel like I can usually count on support from labor,” Shields says. “I can usually count on support from the minority community. I have ties to the Northland, having grown up there. Obviously, I live in midtown and have a long history here.” Kansas City’s East Side tipped the election. Shields significantly outperformed Glover in the wards where the black political club Free-

dom Inc. is active. In one ward east of Troost Avenue, Shields won more than 60 percent of the vote, countering Glover’s strength in the predominantly white southwest corridor. Shields says she has built a good reputation in the black community, dating back to her work on Alan Wheat’s 1982 campaign for Congress. But she acknowledges that Freedom Inc.’s endorsement was crucial. Her campaign wrote the club a check for $1,500 after the primary, according to campaign-finance records. Upon taking office, Shields hired a Freedom campaign worker as her council aide. Shields stayed out of the headlines after being acquitted in the mortgage fraud case, but she never disappeared. She served for two years as the executive director of the Westside Housing Organization. She got involved with Save Our Plaza, the group that worked to prevent Highwoods Properties from putting up a suburban-style office building on the north end of the Plaza. And she joined the board of the Historic Kansas City Foundation. Dan Cofran, a lawyer who served with Shields on the council in the 1980s and ’90s

and a spokesman for Save Our Plaza, tells The Pitch he may have encouraged Shields to make another run for city office. “She is a strong historic-preservation advocate,” Cofran says. “The voices for historic preservation were not as strong as they had been in the past.” In addition to preservationists, Shields drew support from critics of the city’s willingness to award incentives to developers. Even former nemesis Mike Sanders, who succeeded Shields as county executive, preferred her to Glover, who was seen as the candidate friendlier to tax-increment financing. (The city’s decisions to abate property taxes on new development affects the county and other taxing jurisdictions.) Calvin Williford, a former aide to Sanders, who stepped down at the end of 2015, describes Shields as an ally for “sensible” economic development. “I think she is a tremendous advocate for basic services and a range of progressive causes,” he adds. Cofran says he appreciates that Shields has “very good motor skills in government.” But for Mayor Sly James, Shields’ baggage seemed to trump experience. James de-

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Politics

“I thInk she Is a tremendous advocate for basIc servIces and a range of progressIve causes.” calvin Williford

clined to appoint Shields as the chairwoman of any council committees when he made the assignments after the election. Though she was familiar with the City Council, Shields has had to adjust to wielding less authority than she did when she was county executive. “All the power — not all the power, but 90 percent of the power, once the budget is done — resides with the county executive,” she says. But even elected officials invested with a lot of power have to work to build consensus, she adds. “So in that way, it’s not really different than being a councilperson.” Shields, the mayor and the other members of council were successful in rallying the public behind the city’s plan to sell $800 million in bonds over the next 20 years. Voters approved the infrastructure package, which will raise property taxes, in April. Shields says she wants to work next on controlling water and sewer rates. In 2010, the city reached an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency to make extensive improvements to its sewer systems, at a cost estimated to exceed $2.5 billion over 25 years. As assessments have increased, Shields says some homeowners are paying more for water services than they are in property taxes. She thinks the city needs to work with the EPA to modify the agreement. “The only way to get it under control is if we can make the case to EPA that we don’t need to design all that we initially designed,” she says. Preservationists were not able to save the Plaza-area apartment buildings designed in 1927 by architect Nelle Peters. In early 2016, the council voted against granting the structures historic designation, siding with the owner, who said they were in too much disrepair to be rehabbed. The buildings were demolished for redevelopment. A few months later, however, Shields was heartened when the council rejected two developments in different areas in and around the Plaza. She had complained that one of the proposals exceeded the density guidelines in the recently approved Midtown/ Plaza Area plan. “I was really proud of my colleagues,” she says of the council’s decision to respect the land-use plan. Shields, 70, has found that she still enjoys public office. “I’m very much an extrovert,” she says. “I enjoy being out with people. You may not in the moment enjoy somebody if they’re just telling you everything that’s wrong in the world. But essentially I like getting out and talking to people. I enjoy working with groups of people to find solutions for problems.” Shields opposes term limits. She says that forcing out elected officials once they have learned the job is a poor way to run a government. At the same time, she is considering a run for mayor in 2019, when James reaches his two-term limit. “I am thinking about it,” she says. “I don’t know where I’m going to land on that. But, yeah, I am.”

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politics

Is This Chameleon Endangered?

David Miranda, center, is a veteran Democratic operative who is heading up an early move to displace U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder. barbara shelly

Kevin Yoder’s lack of true colors makes him newly vulnerable. by Barbara Shelly

Had U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder deigned to show up at a recent town hall meeting called in his honor, he would have deprived a crowd of nearly 400 the opportunity to snicker at his absence. But Yoder has been dodging gatherings where rabble rousers might be present, and this one fit the bill. So organizers propped a cartoonish mug of their Republican congressman at the foot of the speakers’ table and carried on without him. By being a no-show at what organizers called a “town hall for Kevin Yoder,” at an Overland Park church, the politician at least provided certainty. The audience didn’t need to investigate which Yoder had appeared in their midst — the reassuring moderate Republican, the tea party conservative, some new hybrid version. And the Yoder-less town hall stood head and shoulders above the “telephone town hall” that the man himself had staged the evening before. The faceless congressman had blandly droned on about the drawbacks of Obamacare and “European health care,” and talked up his chairmanship of Congress’ “civility caucus.” It was, by design, a snooze of an event; everyone but Yoder could hear the collective eye-rolling. There’s about to be more noise than that. It’s safe to say that interest in Yoder is at an alltime high. Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in his congressional district in November, and Democrats in Kansas and Washington have announced that it’s game on come 2018. Key to that effort is David Miranda, a veteran of numerous campaigns, most recently the successful effort to oust North Carolina’s

GOP governor, Pat McCrory. Now the Kansas Democratic Party’s 3rd Congressional District director, Miranda brings a welcome savvy to a party that has stumbled for years in Kansas. He entertained the town hall crowd with a sharp summary of Yoder’s penchant for talking one way and voting another. “Yoder has no core beliefs or values,” Miranda said. “Yoder cares about Yoder.” But, as thrilling as it is for progressives to contemplate a coup, Yoder’s political obituary is premature. His district still leans red — deeply so in areas such as Olathe. Its bluest pockets in Wyandotte County do a poor job of turning out voters. And the superstar candidate required for Democrats to oust a well-financed GOP incumbent has so far not materialized. (Jay Sidie, the little-known opponent who pulled a disappearing act in the crucial days before last year’s election, would best serve his party by remaining invisible.) For now, there is at least fun to be had watching Yoder squirm. After years of demoralized torpor, Democrats and moderate Republicans in Yoder’s district have roared to life, seeking to affect what’s going on in Topeka and Washington. At least half a dozen groups in Johnson County are busy recruiting candidates, raising money and providing a steady pipeline of “resistance” opportunities, including weekly gatherings in front of Yoder’s Overland Park office. I visited there on a recent Tuesday and found about 30 senior citizens amiably holding signs and waving to motorists, who honked in solidarity. A few more folks were inside, talk-

ing with Yoder’s staff. If not exactly a show of force, it was at least a message that some constituents are wise to their congressman. “My impression is, he’s a mugwump,” said Ardie Davis, who is best known around these parts as a barbecue aficionado. “He tests the wind, and his mug is on one side of the fence and his rump is on the other.” That’s a more colorful version of Miranda’s point. Yoder’s one guiding compass is his desire to prolong and advance his political career. Lacking true colors, he is the most accomplished chameleon in Kansas politics. Back in the day, as a political science student at the University of Kansas, Yoder served as a Democratic Party intern. Fast forward a few years and here he is, a practicing lawyer living in Overland Park, running for the Kansas Legislature as a moderate Republican. Pause the highlights reel at 2010 and we find Yoder parroting the tea-party line as he tops a crowded field to become the GOP’s nominee for the open 3rd District Congressional seat, which he goes on to win. Early in his congressional career, Yoder told journalists and others that he needed to establish his conservative credentials in order to ward off a primary challenge from the right. His unspoken message to moderates: Bear with me — I’ll come home to you when it’s safe. Yoder spent his first three terms in office voting for every “repeal and replace” measure the GOP put forth to discredit Obamacare. He voted twice to shut down the government and sponsored an amendment that rolled

back an essential protection of the 2010 Dodd Frank law to rein in Wall Street and the big banks. He took thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from payday lenders and fought the Obama administration’s effort to check the worst of their abuses. At the same time, Yoder has always taken pains to link himself to a cause or two that progressives in his district will appreciate — more funding for medical research, for instance. While moderate Republicans in Johnson County have turned on GOP Gov. Sam Brownback and some conservative state lawmakers with a vengeance, they have mostly remained loyal to Yoder. “He has good personal relationships with moderates,” says Stephanie Sharp, who helps run campaigns for moderate Republicans seeking legislative seats. “He works on that.” Schmooze the moderates, vote alongside the conservatives. So far, it has worked. But, as Yoder’s remarkable ability to adapt to the political environment is being tested, his political pigment is transforming before our eyes. After years of churning out falsehoods about the evils of Obamacare, he suddenly couldn’t decide whether he approved of U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s replacement plan — the one that went up in flames almost as soon as it was exposed to the open air. Yoder also ostentatiously broke ranks with his party and voted against a recent bill that allows Internet providers to mine and sell the online history of users. That earned him a laudatory editorial in The Kansas City Star, which asserted that Yoder had “resisted playing party politics and instead tried to do right for his constituents.” The newspaper failed to note that this show of independence was a blip. Before this year, Yoder had voted with his party 97 percent of the time. Yoder has assiduously courted conservatives in his district, and can probably get away with a pivot toward the middle. “I’m not really too worried about where he is right now,” says Greg Cromer, chairman of the Conservative Republicans of Southern Johnson County. “I feel pretty confident that he’ll represent the district the way it needs to be represented.” A statewide run — perhaps for governor next year — would present a more challenging political calculus. Yoder would need to position himself as conservative enough to win a Republican primary, then swing to the middle to attract enough votes from an electorate fed up with what conservative Republican governance has done to Kansas. It’s a tough sell, even for a quick-change artist. And Yoder isn’t fooling many people anymore, even in his own party. “As good as he is at community service, he comes off as disingenuous and inauthentic,” says a politically active Republican who counts Yoder as a friend. That’s the thing about being a chameleon. Once predators catch on to the disguise, all defenses are gone. Yoder is looking more exposed by the day.

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streetside

Urban Renewal

Justin and Rashaun Clark bring positive vibes to a corner of Troost. by David Hudnall

Visualization works. That’s been Rashaun and Justin Clark’s experience, anyway. Back in 2009, the young couple was living in Chicago. Justin was staging for Michelinstar chefs like Phillip Foss and would go on to cook at the Fairmont Hotel. Rashaun was styling hair at a salon in Lincoln Park. Thinking about their future together, they made a vision board full of images reflecting their long-term professional goals. One of the overarching ideas was that they’d live together in an apartment above a storefront business they ran together. “A lot of people do that in Chicago,” Rashaun says. “We were like, ‘That’s what we want. That would be ideal.’ We visualized it happening in Chicago.” Eight years later, that part of their dream has been realized — though not precisely as they’d imagined. Their live-work space is in Kansas City, at 41st Street and Troost, rather than in Chicago. And instead of one business, it’s two. The Clarks’ shared vision — visualization? — started to poke through into reality almost two years ago. Having moved back to Kansas City, Rashaun (she grew up near 41st and Bellefontaine) opened a salon, Love Over Hair, in a space off 55th Street and

The Clarks and their businesses zach bauman

Troost. She was looking for a new space to accommodate her expanding services — she now employs an aesthetician, a barber and another stylist — and her landlord, Jonathan Abnos, mentioned he’d just bought a building farther north along Troost. (The former tenant was Freaks on Troost, which closed after the owner was accused of installing an elaborate camera system to spy on a woman who lived in the building.) The Clarks scouted the space and loved it, particularly the fact that they could live upstairs with their three girls, ages 10, 5 and 4. “It was amazing,” Rashaun says. “It was exactly what we had talked about years ago.” In March 2016, Rashaun relocated Love Over Hair to 4103 Troost. And this past January, Justin opened a breakfast-and-lunch place next door, at 4101 Troost. It’s called Urban Café, and in all kinds of ways it’s unlike anything the neighborhood has seen in years. Most notably: You can get real food at Urban Café. Menu items include vegan chickpea tacos, a sweet-potato parfait and several kinds of smoothies. “We’re trying to do healthy food that tastes good,” Justin tells me. He’s seated beside Rashaun at a table in the middle of their eatery, both of them in matching Urban Cafe T-

“I think Troost has changed tremendously since I grew up here.” Rashaun Clark

shirts. “And we’re trying to create connection with this community. A lot of our vegetables are grown in the Manheim Community Garden, which is just a few blocks away.” Justin says he wasn’t really planning to open his own spot. Since moving to Kansas City, he’d worked as chef de cuisine at the Westin, and then as a caterer for Truman Medical Center. “It was cooking for CEOs and doctors at Truman,” he says. “Lunches for office meetings and things like that. It did allow me to experiment with some healthy alternatives, though, like cooking with barley or couscous. Not using a lot of oil. Some of those ideas, I think, led to what I’m doing here.” He quit Truman Med to take care of his mother, who had developed colon cancer. She’s better now, and Justin says she attributes her recovery in part to the vegan diet she adopted. (She now makes her own kale chips, which are for sale at Urban Café.) The experience got Justin thinking about opening a place where someone like his mother — or Rashaun, who’s vegetarian — could eat. “There’s nothing else healthy around here,” he says. “Maybe you can get something kind of healthy at one of the Jamaican places. But I felt like there was a real need around here for healthy food. There’s a real need in this neighborhood for more than food, to be honest.” “It needs love,” Rashaun says. “Needs love.” Spend an afternoon pulling on doors along this midtown stretch of Troost, and it’s hard to disagree. Not a lot of those doors tug open. New businesses are rare. Most of the economic activity is auto-related — buyhere pay-here lots, tire shops, car washes — or the usual inner-city mix of fast-food chains, dollar stores and predatory lenders. Justin says it wasn’t until he looked at the neighborhood with fresh eyes that he began to see potential. “Everybody has these feelings they bring to the idea of Troost,” he says. “But pretty soon after moving in over here, you notice it’s a pretty multicultural place. I’ve found it inspiring that we see all types of people coming into the café.” “I think Troost has changed tremendously since I grew up here,” Rashaun says. “I think there is an energy around here that people are really beginning to tap into.” She cites a couple of neighbors — Olivia’s, a braiding shop next door to Love Over Hair, and Heart of the Dove, a holistic wellness center at 43rd and Troost — as allies of sorts, small businesses adding positivity to Troost. It’s 3:30 p.m. — closing time for Urban Café, and appointment time for Rashaun at the salon. A photographer will be coming by the next day to shoot the couple for this story. Justin rubs his head and laments his need for a haircut. Rashaun smiles. “I’m next door,” she says. “I can do that for you.” pitch.com | may 2017 | the pitch

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A Progressive Stance

Peaceful, but not today: teacher Yao Li

As KC’s LGBTQ community clears its throat, it also learns to break a chokehold. by Annie Raab

I walked into the LGBT self-defense class at Inner Space Yoga and I knew right away: I’d worn the wrong shoes. The boots had smooth wooden soles, bad for gripping the studio’s polished floor. I was about to slip and slide my way through the next hour. I left my bag in a cubby up front and stepped into the room as 15 or so other people trickled in. A tranquil shrine had been built in the one small window of the studio. “It’s very calming,” said Yao Li, the kung fu teacher and one of the evening’s instructors. “Very om. Peaceful. But not today!” He threw a punch into the air and mimed a little bit of ass-kicking. In a space meant to promote meditative states of mind, we had assembled to learn how to mess someone up. More precisely, we wanted to know how to mess someone up before that someone could mess us up. Yao Li met his wife, Dorri, in their early stages of kung fu practice. Together the pair founded the Boston Kung Fu Tai Chi Institute and have been practicing self-defense for more than two decades. “We’re going to start with a series of joint lubrications,” Dorri Li said, facing us. We clasped our hands together and swiveled our wrists around, loosening the sockets. We rotated our elbows, shoulders, necks, knees, ankles and hips, the whole class creakily gyrating together as we prepared for battle. I heard myself emit groans and pops, and doubt welled up inside me. Was I up to this physically? Could I keep a straight face? Dorri instructed us to plant our feet out to our sides and bend our knees as though

astride a horse. “We’ll start with Tiger Claw,” she said. “Everyone bring your fists to your hips. Strike with your palm, like this.” She demonstrated, curling her fingers in and directing the heel of her hand out, ready to make contact against an attacker. The goal was to bash the nose hard enough to break it — maybe worse. “When you strike with one hand, keep your other hand at the hip.” Dorri locked her clenched fist to one hip and launched her other hand into a perfect Tiger Claw. I mimicked her, but each time I struck the air, the smooth bottoms of my shoes slid farther apart. In these shoes, on this floor, I was a tiger more likely to end up in an unwilling split than to land a bone-to-brain kill shot. If I were going to win a fight for my life, I’d need to improve my balance. I trained in tae kwon do for years before moving to Kansas City, leaving martial arts with 10 belts — one away from black. From a young age, I had certain techniques drilled into my head over and over, from breaking a grip to throwing a punch, until each motion informed my body’s every movement. The art of self-defense emphasizes grace, power and a Zen-like concentration on form — all things that are likely to vanish during the violent surprise of an assault. This is the real goal of self-defense: to practice enough that thought doesn’t interrupt instinct if the time comes. I was out of practice, but I was feeling signs of muscle memory. We moved on to the elbow strike, which requires a pivot at the same time one elbow is shot into the attacker’s jaw. Elbows, palms,

heels and knees are the body’s “hard spots” — the most useful tools in hand-to-hand selfdefense when you aim them at an opponent’s softest flesh. Heels find toes, elbows find temples, and knees find tender groins; this is how you inflict maximum damage. As we thrusted our elbows from one side to the other, Yao Li walked the room and offered feedback to each of us on our form and our stance. More important, though, was our intent — the willingness to hurt a body that means to hurt yours. “You need more intent,” he coached. “Intent is what will matter.” The other half of that thought was left unspoken but was lost on none of us: It could save your life. Earlier this year, a Seattle woman training for a marathon stopped to use a public restroom in a park. She was attacked and beaten by a sex offender who had been hiding in one of the stalls. The woman, Kelly Herron, fought back. Three weeks before the encounter, she had taken a self-defense class, and a burst of adrenaline brought back her recent training. She credited it with saving her from a worse fate. One in five American women is sexually assaulted sometime in her life, and rape and sexual assault are the two most underreported crimes in America, thanks to a humiliating examination process and a victim-blaming culture. That startling statistic is even worse in the transgender community, especially among youth and persons of color. The dawn of the Donald Trump administration promised even less security — even as it began to bring people together in unexpected ways.

This is what led Mac Adkins to develop the class at Inner Space. Adkins, whose Electrosexual dance parties and queer zine, For Your Eyes Only, have earned him a following, has turned his attention to safety and inclusion in KC’s LGBTQ community. He models his work here on efforts in other cities where progressive resources are being established for LGBTQ youth and gender-nonconforming persons. “After election night, there was this sudden surge all over the country in progressive community building,” Adkins told me. “I saw other cities start teaching LGBT self-defense classes, and I had been taking kung fu classes with Master Yao for several months at Inner Space, so this class seemed like a logical progression.” Those who identify as LGBT have unique concerns about safety today, Adkins says. “Even after we accept our identity and come out, it’s still hard for many of us, myself included, to feel at ease, even when life is going smoothly. Learning self-defense not only empowers you physically but mentally as well.” I confronted another mental hurdle as the class went on. Striking an opponent is one thing, but escaping a grip on your throat — and then causing your attacker to submit once you’re free — is an implausible outcome for sensitive folks like me. But Steve Krischel, the third instructor of the class, was about to remind me how it can be done. “I’ll tell you a little about myself,” he said. “I was in an accident that left me physically transformed when I fell two stories and lost my left hand.” He held up the hand, which clearly worked, and showed us the pale scars on the underside of his wrist. Krischel served as a detention and probation officer for years before becoming a professional sports-massage therapist, and he has retained his skills. The wrist lock is a difficult move to perfect, but it ends like this: your attacker begging for mercy as your one-handed grip renders him powerless. The maneuver involves breaking a chokehold and then twisting one of the attacker’s palms to face him. You bend his wrist and apply enough pressure to bring the assailant to his knees. It looked easy, of course, when Krischel demonstrated on Yao and a few students; each quickly fell to the floor. But as we paired up against each other to try the move for ourselves — I partnered with Laura Frank, who owns Inner Space — the need for lots of practice became clear. Still, my spirits rose as the class went on, and more practice started to sound good. Some of that was doubtless endorphins from so much physical activity, but there was something else, too. I felt proud. I was remembering something I knew how to do. I was taking my safety into my own two, almost deadly, hands. The next class is at 6 p.m. Friday, May 19, at Inner Space Yoga, 514 East 31st Street.

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By April Fleming and David Hudnall Kansas Citians can rightly claim themselves citizens of a serious food-and-beverage town. Beyond the usual discussion about barbecue, past mention of the bartenders and baristas and chefs who have scored accolades and competition hardware, when you talk about KC food, you talk about options. Tell someone you love a sandwich in Brookside, and she’ll answer with a convincing story about her favorite ramen. It’s getting hard to

narrow down just where to lay down your meal money when you’re hungry. Trust us — we’re hungry, and we talk about food a lot. So we took an informal office poll and assembled a list of our favorite dishes available in the city right now. We like most of the menus at most of these places, but if we had to narrow our choices to just one apiece ... Well, we didn’t have to, but we did. Here they are. continued on page 27

zach bauman

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Bob Wasabi’s poke bowl

When renowned sushi chef Bob Shin and his family relocated to Kansas City to open Bob Wasabi, they wanted to introduce the city to poke, a Hawaiian dish featuring hunks of fresh, raw tuna (poke in fact means “to slice”), served with fresh vegetables and bathed in a light, soy-based dressing. They didn’t know that their timing would turn out to be perfect: A poke trend was starting to spread across the country. To Shin, this was simply a dish he had come to love while living on Maui, where he ran one of the many restaurants he has been involved with during his long career. Shin serves his poke bowl with generous portions of ultra-fresh tuna and radish sprouts drizzled with a sesame-oil-and-soy dressing, served over perfectly cooked rice with sesame seeds sprinkled on top. Shin will tell you that the key is the quality of the fish, and he prides himself on sourcing the freshest in the city. He’s right. For those who like spice, Shin’s spicy fish bowl, heh duhp bap (similar to Korean bibimbap), is the poke dish for you. Here, the rice and sashimi (tuna and octopus, typically) are topped with crunchy, fresh cucumber, a sauce centered on gochujang (the addictive Korean chile paste used as a condiment) and a dollop of bright-orange roe. Yes, yes, that’s two dishes, but there’s almost no deciding at Bob Wasabi, which is why Shin is on our cover this month. (A.F.) Bob Wasabi, 1726 West 39th Street, bobwasabikitchen39.com

Slap’s BBQ’s burnt-end plate

Ragazza’s eggplant parmesan

Chai Shai’s veggie samosas

A couple of San Franciscans rolled up to the counter at Slap’s, in Kansas City, Kansas, the other day. The Giants were in town for a two-game series against the Royals, and these fans were decked out in orange-and-black jerseys. “What’s the most popular thing on the menu?” they asked the man taking their order. “The burnt ends and the ribs are at the top of the food chain here,” he responded. We tend to agree: Our go-to at Slap’s is the burnt ends, gooey and juicy and tender enough to make you feel like you’re eating something illegal. The burntend sandwich is wonderful — it’s called the End Is Near — but we’re not going to pass up the burnt-end plate, which comes stacked with sliced white bread, pickles and jalapenos, and your choice of two sides (cheesy corn and baked beans, please). It comes to about $15, but it’s good for leftovers if you can muster a modicum of selfcontrol. On our way out the door, we noticed the Giants fans seated at a picnic table near the entrance. We were going to ask them what they thought about Slap’s, but their mouths were too crammed full of burnt ends to answer. We settled on “Go Royals” and made our way to the car. (D.H.) Slap’s BBQ, 553 Central Avenue, Kansas City, Kansas, slapsbbqkc.com

Laura Norris first made the eggplant parmesan that she serves at Ragazza when she was in high school, working from her mother’s recipe. Norris has worked with and refined the dish ever since; it was a neighborhood favorite at Christmas parties for many years before she opened her Westport restaurant, and it is one of Ragazza’s most popular and enduring dishes. Norris’ parm starts with pan-fried, house-made breadcrumbs in oil and garlic; they will coat the slices of eggplant. The dredged and breaded eggplant is then fried to crispness and layered with Ragazza’s tangy house red sauce (thickened with extra tomato paste) and then mozzarella. And not just a few layers — Norris’ dish is stacked so tall that it’s easy to confuse with lasagna. The dish can be messy if not made in large batches, so Norris’ staff cooks up large pans of the eggplant parm and then cuts generous individual portions to serve, bubbling hot, in small castiron pans, one diner at a time. The dish is decadent and cheesy, the eggplant almost meaty, but the bright acidity of the tomato sauce keeps it from feeling heavy. You don’t think you’ll eat the entire portion, until you’re staring at the bottom of the dish. (A.F.) Ragazza, 301 Westport Road, ragazzakc.com

To our mind, samosas are in the holy company of pizza and sex: Even when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good. At Chai Shai, though, that belief system is moot, because the samosas are never, ever bad; they’re the best in town, and they have been since the day this Indian-Pakistani joint opened on a quiet Brookside corner seven years ago. What’s Chai Shai’s secret? Less breading, for one. Some places deep-fry their samosas into oblivion, but Chai Shai’s arrive delicate and flaky, with just a thin layer of fried dough between your face and the potatoy goodness inside. We’re not vegetarians, but we favor the veggie samosas. (The ones with chicken and beef are good, too.) They come with a coriander-and-greenchili dipping sauce, but we ask for the red chutney sauce, which is sweeter. Resist the urge to split an order with your companion. You’ll want both. (D.H.) Chai Shai, 651 East 59th Street, chaishaikc.com

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Corvino Supper Club and Tasting Room’s late-night burger

Chef Michael Corvino is known for his artful, modern approach to food, but he also knows how to please a hungry, late-night (largely service-industry) crowd. His after-10 p.m. menu includes Korean-style fried chicken, crispy pork ribs, and egg sandwiches served with white-sturgeon caviar (a touch of fancy had to come somewhere). But it’s the $8, dinerinspired cheeseburger that will change your life. Corvino cooks two thin patties of houseground beef chuck on a French plancha, a type of flat-top grill that delivers a perfect, umami-embedding sear. He then adds house-made super-sour dill pickles, caramelized onions, aioli and Muenster cheese (which delivers the meltiness of American without the processing baggage). The bun (also made on site) echoes a Parker House roll. The result is a gooey, juicy burger that goes great with a cold Hamm’s. To eat one is to immediately contemplate ordering another. (A.F.) Corvino Supper Club and Tasting Room, 1830 Walnut, corvino.com

The Antler Room’s vertuta

El Torito II’s tacos

Freshwater’s barramundi crudo

You could describe the Antler Room’s vertuta simply as the cheesy bread of your dreams, but that captures only one simple part of how savory and delicious the dish is, without any reverence for its elegance or the process behind its creation. Originally developed by sous chef Andrew Heimburger as a staff meal, the vertuta was so good that it made its way onto the menu — one of the only items on the Antler Room’s revolving list to be regularly featured. Vertuta, as Heimburger explains, is a traditional Moldovan savory pastry that’s typically made with the dry Slovak cheese syr; at the Antler Room, though, it’s been reimagined with cheddar and parmesan. Heimburger stretches strudel dough over a large prep table until it is paper-thin, then brushes it with garlic- and shallot-clarified butter, cheddar and parmesan, and a Georgian condiment called phkali — the Antler Room’s version of which contains charred eggplant, swiss chard, walnuts, garlic and fenugreek. The dough is then folded and twisted into a spiral, and the resulting food is addiction on a plate. (A.F.) The Antler Room, 2506 Holmes, theantlerroom.com

Kansas City, Kansas, suffers no shortage of authentic taquerias. Some, like El Camino Real and San Antonio, are among the city’s favorites. Yet the one we keep returning to, nestled deep on Central Avenue, is El Torito II — not to be confused with El Torito I (Olathe) or El Torito III (the Historic Northeast), respectable in their own rights but not as bustling or consistently good as No. 2. El Torito II’s taqueria, adjoining its sister supermarket (which offers a surprisingly large, high-quality butcher counter, a bakery and a range of mostly Mexican grocery staples), is actually a full-service kitchen. You can go for chile rellenos, birria, tortas and arrachera. But before you go for that steak, savor the street tacos. Choose from a wide variety of proteins: flavorful asada (slices of marinated steak), sweet and savory al pastor (pork marinated in chile, achiote paste and pineapple), carnitas (roasted and then grilled pork shoulder), chorizo (spicy sausage), buche (pork stomach — better than it sounds), tripa (beef intestine, not for novices), cecina (pulled pork), tender lengua (beef tongue) or chicken. Top with El Torito’s house-made salsas, including the mouth-numbing but addictive salsa chilena, a creamy green habanero sauce that defies you to keep eating, then defies you to quit. (A.F.) El Torito II, 1409 Central Avenue, Kansas City, Kansas, eltoritosupermart.com

Chef Calvin Davis has dedicated 25 percent of the menu at his new restaurant to freshwater fish, and among his offerings are a few relatively conventional breeds (rainbow trout) as well as some surprises. A standout in the latter category: his on-trend barramundi crudo. Barramundi, or Asian sea bass — in recent history available only in Australia and Southeast Asia — is now being farmed in Iowa. Davis slices his barramundi like a surgeon and serves it with rendered pork fat, candied walnuts, raw radish and microgreens, finishing the dish with his take on XO sauce, that spicy, crunchy Asian flavor that's typically made with shrimp and bonito flakes. Davis’ version involves a pleasantly intense, house-made capicola that’s part of Freshwater’s charcuterie program. The rich sauce and pork fat render the firm, light fish more savory without weighing it down. Try it as part of Freshwater’s $60 tasting menu or as a standalone dish. (A.F.) Freshwater, 3711 Southwest Trafficway, freshwaterkc.com

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Heritage Flavors Krokstrom Klubb chef Katee McLean finds her voice in Scandinavian cuisine. by April Fleming

With midtown’s Krokstrom Klubb and Market, chef Katee McLean, somewhat remarkably, can take credit for opening one of the first Scandinavian restaurants in the United States. With that duty has come much explaining — starting with how Scandinavian food differs from Nordic food. The latter, relatively rare itself, can be found in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and New York. “When you say Nordic, you are saying hyper-seasonal,” McLean explains. “You focus on one ingredient — say, garlic. Then it’s garlic done 18 ways. It’s not about traditionality — it’s about what’s available. Scandinavian is food from the home. It’s what they would eat there, the common dishes, a lot of them traditional. Some of this you would do in cafés for lunch, but you would never serve it for dinner [at a restaurant], which makes people think, ‘Why would you give me what I eat at home?’ ” So, unless you live around Minneapolis or in the heavily Swedish Lindsborg, Kansas, ostkaka (a cake made from cheese curds), smørrebrød (a sort of open-faced sandwich served on dense rye), gravlax (cured salmon) or tunnbrödsrulle (a popular Danish street food) are likely new to you. But even if you know those dishes, you haven’t had them McLean’s way. Her approach at Krokstrom mixes the chef’s interpretations with traditional recipes, with everything on the menu approachable and artfully presented. Krokstrom thus gives the uninitiated an opportunity to sample Scandinavian food for the first time, while providing people of Scandinavian heritage something long absent from local tables.

“Our target demographic was totally offbase,” McLean says. “We thought it would be young hipsters and foodies, but it’s not. I mean, some of them come, too, but there are so many men and women, in their fifties or older, from Johnson County, that say, ‘It’s the food my mom or my grandma made.’ They think that’s so weird, but then they’re excited.” McLean, who grew up in Platte City, is of Swedish descent; her grandmother’s name was Krokstrom. McLean began working in the service industry while she was in high school, and, at the University of Missouri, set out to study food science. She soon realized it wasn’t a good fit. “I didn’t want to make fake flavors,” she says. “I wanted to create something new. I wanted to cook.” So she moved back to the Kansas City area and enrolled in the culinary program at Johnson County Community College, moving through what she describes as the “long haul,” studying both front and back of house and ultimately landing a spot on a culinary team that traveled to an international culinary competition in Singapore. The trip included a stopover in Hong Kong, with the team spending two weeks in each megacity, learning new cooking techniques and unfamiliar types of cooking equipment. But for McLean, the key revelation was in the native food, with its deep roots in tradition. “As a young chef you are constantly trying to find what makes your cuisine you,” McLean says. “When I came home [from China], I reached out to my family, asking, ‘Why don’t we have traditions?’ My mom

McLean, above, has brought an unexpected culinary culture to midtown. zach bauman

"I thought, 'What insanely high person thought of this?' "

said, ‘Do you think every kid had pickled herring or a pickle shelf? Remember Grandma’s cinnamon rolls and cream puffs? They’re not like American ones. They are Swedish.’” This realization ignited McLean’s will to learn Scandinavian cooking. She pored over family cookbooks and scoured the internet for variations on traditional foods. She learned that Scandinavian cooking does without olive oil — there is instead rapeseed oil — and makes strong use of vinegar, lending even creamy dishes a tart brightness. (McLean believes the latter is meant to evoke sunny flavors in a country that spends the winter in perpetual darkness.) While she studied, she took positions with PB&J restaurants, working at Shawnee Mission Medical Center, Newport Grill and Paradise Café in Overland Park. What she learned was that she wanted to try it herself. She and her husband, Josh Rogers (who today is the manager of Krokstrom), thought they might begin modestly with a supper club. But the opportunity to lease the space at 36th Street and Broadway presented itself, and Krokstrom opened its doors in February 2016. In her second year at the helm of a kitchen, McLean continues to experiment. This month, she debuts a new spring-summer menu that features a host of new items: Danish housecut pickled fries, sprinkled with bay seasoning and served with mayonnaise and sweet and green onions; smoked duck carpaccio, served with wild-rice salad, rutabaga and radish and drizzled with horseradish vinaigrette and lingonberry reduction. She is also offering her take on that cheese-curd cake ostkaka — hers being a rabbit ostkaka served with peas, carrots, cumin oil and tarragon vinegar. The new dish she is most eager to unveil is the tunnbrödsrulle, a food that sounds like it could never work but has become a latenight staple in cities such as Copenhagen. Tunnbrödsrulle (say tunes-broad-row-ee) is fashioned out of a flatbread filled with mashed potatoes, shrimp salad, a hot dog, cucumberand-onion salad, lettuce, mayonnaise, sour cream, mustard and ketchup. “I thought, ‘What insanely high person thought of this?’ ” McLean says with a laugh. “But we thought we needed to try it. So I just got straight-up hot dogs from Fritz’s and made it, real-deal. I was wondering how we all were going to try it, so I rolled it up real tight and cut it into slices. It kind of looked like sushi. All the servers came over, and we just started laughing. They said, ‘It’s done.’ Sometimes you just trust it, respect it, try it and are blown away.” McLean’s Tunnbrödsrulle adheres closely to the original but uses lefse rather than a thicker flatbread, and a ketchup curry instead of the ketchup-and-mustard combo. It satisfies by hitting a major chord of flavors and textures: sweet, savory, tart, soft, crunchy. Like so much of what McLean makes at Krokstrom, you didn’t know you wanted it. But you do.

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No Small Drinks, Only Small Spaces

Cockson wants you to just be quiet and sip. zach bauman

At the cocktail time machine Swordfish Tom’s, Jill Cockson’s focus is on focus. by April Fleming

From the drink ingredients to the bygone hospitality flourishes to the industrial-vintage décor, James Beard Award nominee Jill Cockson knew every last detail she wanted to pour into Swordfish Tom’s — and it shows. Her 30-seat, spirits-only bar, which opens this month in the Crossroads and instantly summons the golden age of cocktails (historians put that roughly between 1860 and Prohibition), functions as a deeply seductive time machine. The martinis and Manhattans and daiquiris taste the way you imagine they did at their long-ago inception, made as they are with what Cockson calls “real” ingredients: premium, fresh juices and herbs, tailored tonics and aromatics. No blue drinks. (Also: no beer and no wine.) “I believe the future is in smaller, focused spaces,” Cockson says. When you arrive at 210 West 19th Terrace (in the same building that houses the Sprint Accelerator office), you walk downstairs and into a waiting room. A red light and a green light stand sentry by the door to the bar itself. You can guess what each means. (Cockson, who isn’t taking reservations, estimates that a red light will keep you waiting 10 or 15 minutes.) Enter and a concierge greets you with an overview of how

it works: cash only, service just at the bar. You are to silence your cell phone and take no photos; conversation is meant to remain quiet. You imagine a trap door opening under you if you ask for a shot. Cockson tells me that this isn’t about pretentiousness or intimidation. Nor has she tried to build a better speakeasy. Swordfish Tom’s is simply its own kind of establishment, influenced heavily by her time as managing partner and bartender at Lincoln, Nebraska’s the Other Room (the bar program for which earned her that Beard nomination). She recalls that customers there once told her that, because they had a special-needs child, that were able to go out only a few times a year; that stuck with her, reinforcing her desire to build a sanctuary from the rudeness and clamor that typically accompany high-volume drinking. “You just never know why people are going out,” she says. “It’s not always for fun. Maybe it’s a friend they never get to see. Maybe they are trying to keep a relationship together and they just need to connect. Maybe there’s a terminal illness. Whatever it is, our job is to provide an atmosphere where they can build memories and share stories.” Cockson recounts another experience

that has shaped her vision for Swordfish Tom’s, a recent trip to visit a friend dying of cancer. “It was kind of the elephant in the room: This might be the last time that I see you,” she says. “So when I was choosing where we were going to go out that night, I wanted to be positive it would be somewhere that we would have a good experience. I didn’t want my last memory of my friend to be some jackass grabbing her ass and wrecking her night.” She found the right place then, and she means to give the same thing to her guests now. Cockson even does ice her own way. She purchased two Clinebell ice makers, capable of producing 300 pounds apiece of crystalclear, sculpture-grade ice every two to three days. With the ice from one, she and her staff will cut 2-inch cubes of ice for her bar. With the other, she plans to sell specialty ice to caterers, event planners and maybe even other bars (another definition, perhaps, of hospitality). Most of her focus will remain on the hospitality and drinks at Swordfish Tom’s. But all of these touches support the drinks, which reveal their own passionate dedication. Topping the menu are four cocktails that center on Colonel Jesse’s Small-Batch Tonics (a line she developed

and has been selling for several years). The Loch Ness Tonic, for instance, consists of Hendrick’s gin, St. Germain Elderflower liqueur, Cockson’s cucumber-ginger tonic syrup and club soda. There also are 12 cocktails that will change seasonally, two barrelaged cocktails and an extensive list she calls “the Manhattan Project.” To her, that classic drink has virtually endless merit. Among her Manhattans are the (Glen)Mo’ Money, with Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban, a house-made port tonic and Angostura bitters, garnished with a branded orange twist; a smoky Mexican version with Del Maguey Vida Mezcal, PX Sherry, Ancho Reyes Ancho Chile Liqueur and spiced chocolate bitters, served with a dehydrated orange wheel; and the War of the Roses Manhattan, made with Four Roses bourbon, Imbue Petal & Thorn Vermouth and Koval Rose Liqueur, garnished with a lemon twist. There are a dozen more. “I love the template of the Manhattan because you’re always going to have a balanced cocktail so long as you follow the recipe,” she says. “It’s a 2-1-2: 2 ounces of your base spirit, 1 ounce of your sweet or modifier — a vermouth or a cordial of some kind — and then 2 dashes of bitters. As long as you stick with that template, it works.”

the pitch | may 2017 | pitch.com

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cover story

"The ranch is very peaceful. I enjoy sharing that with family and friends. People have come to see another side of me at the ranch," says Jim Bichelmeyer. Silkville (below) was functional for less than 20 years but served as a cooperative silkworm farm. The cocoonery was housed in this barn. Today the Bichelmeyer Ranch concentrates on cattle but also houses horses, chickens, a few cats and one dog (named Gin).

Family Acreage

Bichelmeyer Meats still thrives on its rural roots. Story and photos by Jennifer Wetzel

Every Saturday, dozens of people of all ages, backgrounds and appetites line up inside Bichelmeyer Meats, in KCK. They will find common cause at the 60-foot meat counter, with its KC strips and its pig snouts, its staples and its delicacies. This is the centerpiece of a family-owned business that has been on the same site for more than 70 years. Bichelmeyer Meats was founded in 1946 by John Bichelmeyer, the grandson of Bavarian immigrants who later worked as butchers in Kansas. Today the market is run by his sons Jim and Joe and grandson Matt. While the operation relies on its share of modern technology — a website, social media, livestreamed cattle auctions — other aspects remain enchantingly old-school: handwritten tickets for custom processing orders, a taco-bar menu written in black Sharpie, cattle-ranching practices that have gone largely unchanged down the decades. Bichelmeyer Land and Cattle is situated on 4,000 acres of rolling hills near Williamsburg, Kansas, about an hour southwest of Kansas City. The land was first settled by Ernest de Boissière, a Frenchman whose anti-slavery sentiments had made him an unpopular figure in New Orleans. De Boissière set up a silk-farming colony in Franklin County in 1870, employing dozens of French immigrants and their families to produce up to 300 yards of silk fabric a day. As the workers left or assimilated, the

silk farm shut down, but several of the original stone structures remain, and today the land is still referred to as Silkville Ranch. Depending on the season, the ranch has about 500 cattle, split between red angus and black angus. They graze on native grasslands, supplemented by grain and silage at the Nunemaker-Ross feed lots near Lawrence. The diet includes spent grain from Boulevard Brewery, which Joe Bichelmeyer likes to joke keeps the cows relaxed by providing a low-level beer buzz. Day-to-day operations are run by Lowell and Teresa Anderson, with weekend help from the Bichelmeyers. Because the ranch and the market are owned by my husband's family, I've been able to visit and photograph Silkville for the past several years. "Ranching allows me to observe how nature works, not only with the cattle but with the hawks, the birds that are flying, the snakes that are crawling on the ground, the coyotes that I see running across the pasture, how all this enters in and makes the whole of the ecology," Jim Bichelmeyer says. "I've come to understand what needs to be done in nature a little more, how things usually work out for the best when you hold off intervening for a while. "You learn to read not only cattle, but the temperament of your horse, or how horses vary in their temperament,” he adds. “I've come to learn how people's temperaments vary. It's part of life."

The breed ratio is 50 percent black angus and 50 percent red angus. Breeding is regulated within the ranch, and many of the heifers are sold after the four-year mark to other cattle ranchers. The market offers street tacos on Saturdays.

the pitch | may 2017 | pitch.com

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event of the month

May is Bike Month! Join us at one of many bike month events. Women-Only Confident City Cycling

Tour de Bier May 17

May 9, 16, 23

Bike to School Day

Taste Goes All-Star The Pitch’s biggest food event welcomes back past Golden Fork winners to vie again for the prize while you sample the city’s best food and drinks. Hints of summer seem to show up a little earlier every year, from the 85-degree day in March that throws your thermostat into chaos, to the tank tops and sandals that must be unpacked in April. But for us, the season’s official start remains The Pitch’s Taste of Kansas City (Thursday, May 18, at the KC Live Block, 13th Street and Grand). Now in its 15th year as a mid-May institution, Taste features samples that loudly announce summer, such as Tallgrass Brewing’s Key Lime Pie beer and Popcorn Heaven’s KC Mix (cheese, caramel and a house-made cinnamon sauce that’s as red-hot as August). “It makes your taste buds beg for more,” Popcorn Heaven owner Jaimie Tolbert says of the KC Mix flavor — and the same could be said for the rest of its scorching lineup, which also includes Southwest Hot Wings and Jalapeno Ranch. Spicy is one thing, but muggy is another. “Birthday cake and strawberry cheesecake do not like hot weather,” Tolbert says, so if you have a sweet tooth, root for a mild night. Alternately, if you just can’t get enough heat, stop by Hot Helga’s table and dip all your popcorn in Smokin’ Hot Helga Nordic Mustard (with chunks of fresh habaneros) — then take a cold, refreshing sip of Tallgrass Raspberry Jam Berliner Weisse so you don’t combust. The 2017 roster includes more than 20 other local food and beverage vendors, among

them Tom’s Town, the Homesteader Café, Brancato’s Catering, Cleaver & Cork, District Pour House + Kitchen, the Aladdin Holiday Inn Hotel, Blue Bird Bistro, the Fig Tree Café and Bakery, Pickens Sweet Treats and Trago. Adding intrigue to the event is the annual Golden Fork competition, during which six chefs use a mystery box of ingredients to seek spontaneous culinary greatness. Participants include defending champion Shaun Brady, of the Ambassador Hotel; 2013 winner Jason Wiggin, of Tavern at Mission Farms; 2012 champion Charles d’Ablaing, of Rosso at Hotel Sorella; and Bryant Wigger, of Tavernonna Italian Kitchen at Hotel Phillips — previous restaurant, 12 Baltimore, claimed the prize in 2014 and 2015. “I don’t know much about that at all,” Wigger says of Hotel Phillips’ legacy. “I have been in SoCal for the last 16 years.” Back in 2013, though, he had a memorable cooking-competition experience well outside California’s borders as one of three North American chefs chosen to participate in the televised event Taste Taiwan. “I had to make pizza dough and teach the local tribe how to use their pizza oven for pizza and bread,” he recalls. While there won’t be an educational component to Golden Fork, Wigger has prepared something for the locals to try: Nonna’s meatballs, with Pomodoro and house ricotta, will be available at the Hotel Phillips table. Taste of Kansas City sponsors include Topgolf, Cooper’s Hawk, Leinenkugel’s, On the Border and Costco. Tickets are $35 (GA) and $45 (VIP); doors open at 6 p.m. for VIP guests and 6:30 p.m. for GA.

May 19

May 10 Learn about these events and others at www.bikewalkkc.org

We’re full of it. Authentic KC food and drink, that is.

Our menu features steaks, chops and seafood designed with a creative flair by our Executive Chef. All can be perfectly complemented with a hand-crafted cocktail or wine selection. Enjoy an unmistakably authentic Kansas City experience. Only at Providence New America Kitchen, in the Hilton President hotel. For reservations, call (816) 303-1686 or go online at providence-kc.com. Complimentary Valet Parking for our Providence guests

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Bike to Work Day

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fat city

Microwaveable meals that are more “grocery-store café” than Lean Cuisine are a great idea — in theory. Angela Lutz

Case by Case

Eat Fit Go flatters my certainty that I’m too busy to steam my own veggies. by Angela Lutz

On a Sunday evening, a small crowd of people in workout clothes filled the small shopping and dining area of Eat Fit Go in Prairie Village, examining the glowing refrigerators, with their stacks of neatly packaged, premade meals. One woman, a yoga mat tucked under her arm, considered the merits of citrus salmon versus “smart” chicken before settling on some breakfast tacos. Her decision made, she muttered a polite “excuse me” as she slid past me toward the register. Since opening in Kansas City late last year, the Omaha-based grab-and-go healthfood store has popped up in two more locations, with another couple on the way. The target demographic: calorie-conscious

folks who want to eat healthy but lack time to cook. Ostensibly, microwaveable meals that are more “grocery-store café” than Lean Cuisine sound like a great idea. But it’s not for everyone. “I think I’m just going to get Chipotle,” my husband said, who had picked up and then quickly returned to its spot a fajita chicken bowl. He had determined that it would not be enough food to satisfy his massive caloric requirements. “I think it looks good,” I said, recalling the recent Sunday evening I’d spent assembling five salads in Mason jars, only to end up with soggy kale and dry chicken by Wednesday. “It’s convenient, at least.”

Eat Fit Go is a legit choice for a quick, healthy meal if you’re in a hurry.

The store’s brightly illuminated, greenand-white interior seemed designed to distract us from the fact that, in a mere 12 hours, most of us would be back at the office, groggily tapping at keys behind a desk. I felt temporarily suspended in a Pinterest post: Eat Fit Go means to provide a mental vacation from the annoying reality of meal prep, especially for self-identifying “work hard, play hard” types. (Two of the chain’s locations are a few doors down from Power Life Yoga outposts.) With a large enough budget, you could feasibly stock up on breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for the week here, requiring nothing more than a microwave and 10 minutes to prepare and devour the kind of food you would have made yourself if you hadn’t spent your entire weekend insisting you were “too busy” while languishing on the couch watching Netflix with your cats. (Maybe that’s just me.) The nutritional information is prominently displayed on each label, outlining the exact portions you never get quite right on your own. It bears mentioning that even a demonstrably unskilled cook such as I could, with a little time and instruction, probably prepare most of the dishes stocked in the Eat Fit Go fridges. They’re pretty straightforward: chicken and broccoli over rice, for instance, or steak and potatoes and green beans. Simplicity isn’t necessarily a bad thing — these meals appeal to a variety of tastes, leaving you free to dress them up or season them as you like. But at $7 to $12 per package, being a “work hard, play hard, eat smart” type every day would be prohibitively expensive. Eat Fit Go is a legit choice for a quick, healthy meal if you’re in a hurry, though. I decided to snag the appealingly named Look Good Naked Salmon, as well as Tiffany’s Good Morning Sunshine for breakfast the next morning. Layered atop an assortment of yellow squash, zucchini and carrots, the reheated salmon was fresh and tasty, if a bit bland. At Eat Fit Go, I’d noticed a variety of hot sauces lined up near the in-store microwaves, and once I got home and tasted my salmon I understood why — it needed a little boost in the flavor department. I doused mine with salsa verde before happily finishing it off. The next morning, I nuked the breakfast dish, a three-layer concoction containing rice, scrambled egg whites, ground turkey and a smattering of cheddar cheese and pico de gallo. Again, I needed to break out the salsa verde, but it proved a satisfyingly straightforward breakfast. I’ll probably pop back in sometime when I’m harried and hungry, but for those reasons only — I’m not expecting to be blown away. And that’s fine. Sometimes you just need to shove some food in your face, and at such moments you’re better off with salmon and veggies than with a burger and fries.

the pitch | may 2017 | pitch.com

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café

The pork chop (left) is among the surest dishes at Brown & Loe. zach bauman

Brown & Loe

429 Walnut 816-472-0622 brownandloe.com

Hours

A for Effort

Brown & Loe brings polish and a (mostly) strong menu to the City Market. by liz cook

The bartender wasn’t happy with the drink. He strained a blush-pink cocktail with the focus of a chess grandmaster, siphoned a taste with a straw — and scowled. Not good. Not great. He tipped the glass into the sink behind the imposing wooden bar. He started again. I’d been waiting 20 minutes for that cocktail, but I couldn’t help admiring the effort. That bartender fits right in at Brown & Loe, a restaurant where you can feel — and sometimes see — the struggle toward perfection. The drinks and the food aim high. And, much of the time, they make the grade. Brown & Loe opened on the edge of the City Market last August, but it already has

Cafe.indd 38

the feel of a permanent tenant. Much of that comes down to décor — the lofty dining room once housed the Merchants Bank and has kept a few of its original architectural features. There’s the vault, yes — now a semiprivate dining room for six — but also the pale coffered ceilings and the frosted white globe lights and the columns dressed in marble the color of old money. At dinner, early evening light streams through the lanky southern windows, making the restaurant’s restrained palette seem more stately than spare. But the centerpiece is the bar, 40 sprawling feet of chestnut-brown wood and matching brass-trimmed stools. That’s no surprise when you consider the owners:

5–10 p.m. Sunday and Monday, 5–10 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 5–11 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Prices

Cocktails: $10 Small plates: $5–$16 Entrée: $40–$45

Best bet

Sip an Americano Sparkler and split the Garden Block with a friend. Save room for the grilled short ribs — and one of Joy Costa’s desserts.

Kate McGlaughlin and Harry Murphy of Harry’s Country Club. The alcohol selection at Brown & Loe isn’t quite as extensive as that of Harry’s, with a modest wine list and a solid slate of drafts and bottles. (The menu doesn’t list prices for the beers or the cocktails, an obnoxious pretension no matter the room’s elegance.) But the cocktails, developed by bar manager Ruth Dyer, put a welcome emphasis on retro flips and fizzes, giving protein-craving meatheads (hi) cause to rejoice. The Clover Club is a light, balanced blend of gin, lemon, raspberry and vermouth, topped with an egg white shaken just long enough to add a frothy foam lid. The egg white shines again in the Sloe Gin Fizz, a milder, sweeter drink with a subtle prune-y edge. And yolk lovers can take comfort in the Cynar Flip, which adds a creamy softness to its bitter botanicals. Less successful: the Hop Fix, which doesn’t yet live up to its name. Although I like Firestone Walker’s Luponic Distortion, the beer’s bite mysteriously vanished in the brew of gin, beer and grapefruit I was served. (Brown & Loe lets you select your spirit; I deferred to the bartender.) The grapefruit added a screen of complexity, but the drink was ultimately flat and oversweet. And the Blonde Negroni, which swaps Campari for Luxardo Bitter Bianco, was a tad harsh and syrupy. I preferred the Americano Sparkler, a dry, effervescent riff. Brown & Loe has a wide selection of starters, but its variety-show boards won my affection. Both take cues (and ingredients) from the neighboring City Market, though the menu isn’t precious about it. The word local is notably absent from any dish descriptions; a chalkboard hanging by the kitchen quietly names the farms and ranches of the day. Thanks to that focus, vegetarians at my table weren’t resigned to relish-tray afterthought. The Garden Block I ordered was an expedition of textures and flavors, filled to its edges with fresh vegetables, unusual pickles and three wee canning jars of grains and spreads. The finest of these was the mushroom pâté, a cold and herby paste with a brisk, smoky bite. The pâté was just as satisfying scraped over soft flatbread as it was scooped with a spindly, lattice-cut chip. The other two jars contained a thick butter-bean hummus (riddled with fragrant rosemary) and chewy, butter-yellow lentils in a sweet-tart vinegar dressing. All three proved fine complements to pickled Brussels sprouts (fork-tender), pickled peppadew peppers (sweet with a shy heat) and shaved discs of watermelon radish (as colorful as they sound). The bad news: The Garden Block is no longer on the menu. “This is our first menu change since we opened last August,” McGlaughlin tells me. She plans to stick to traditional fallwinter and spring-summer menus, phasing items in and out as the seasons demand. The good news (for carnivores): The chef ’s board, which is still on the menu, was just

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café

as well-stocked as the Garden Block, if a bit more predictable. Slices of smoked gouda and sharp cheddar (creamy and inoffensive) were fanned alongside white anchovies, generous chunks of salty linguica sausage and wedges of Braunschweiger. A tablemate proclaimed the latter the Malört of meat — distinctive, divisive, with a dedicated niche following. Brown & Loe’s rendition is mild and herby, as gracious an introduction as diners are likely to find. An unexpected hit: a garnish of pickled grapes, which offered a tart sparkler of flavor between the fattier bites. Nearly every dish on the menu boasts some similar small or surprising pleasure, evidence that executive chef James Paul and sous chef Aaron Salinas have achieved something increasingly rare: a coherent menu robust enough to appeal to varied appetites (both literal and fiscal) and focused enough to set a style. Think homespun comfort food that went to college in the South. Nowhere does this theme coalesce more satisfyingly than in the grilled short ribs, which swim in a rich and savory root-beer jus. The plate I was served was velvety but not overly fatty. The accompaniments — creamy and unassertive grits; firm but well-cooked collard greens — soaked up the meaty gravy without competing for the limelight. The dry-aged pork chop (well done yet moist) was another success. Spiced honey butter and vibrant slices of bourbon-braised apple amplified, rather than buried, the meat’s flavor. But the stars of the plate were the baked red peas, served in a glossy, spooncoating sauce the color of dark chocolate. This is earnest food well executed. But not every dish lives up to its ambition. Small slips or flavor miscues teased all three of my visits. And when the venue is this strong, trivial errors can take on outsize importance, like an out-of-tune flute in a renowned symphony. This was true of both the least and the most expensive plates on the menu. The cheeseburger and fries ($12) looked promising but proved structurally unsound. A confession: I’m ready to retire the bread-and-butter-pickleson-burgers trend. Here, the pickles added a discordant sweet note that, together with the fennel-pollen aioli, overwhelmed the flavor of the meat. Worse, their placement beneath the burger sogged through the sesame-seed bun, forcing an emergency knife-and-fork deployment halfway through the meal. The fries were likewise soft for my taste. On the other end of the spectrum: the $30 Lisbon Stew, a collage of fish and shellfish that tasted like a heartier, tomato-thick caldeirada. The dish was nearly worth the price tag: The shrimp were enormous and juicy, the mussels mild and tender, the cod flaky and flavorful. But the smoky slices of linguica sausage were too tough to blend with the bowl’s delicate textures, and the toothy tomato broth was underseasoned. A little more experimentation would make both dishes better values.

Brunch service is nearly a requirement for any restaurant in the bustling City Market, and Brown & Loe’s weekend menu merits the trip. Bonus: The restaurant takes reservations for brunch, which means you can actually snag a table. The coffee’s fresh, and the bar makes a fine Bloody Mary (thick and savory, light on the citrus; the Goldilocks of morning booze). But the Southern-slanted hangover food is the main draw. The Market Benedict stacks poached eggs, collard greens, house-cured bacon and red-eye hollandaise atop a nutty brown-butter cornbread (crisp home fries on the side). Again, the plate I sampled landed shy of a home run. While thematically fitting, the cornbread base crumbled into curds at every attempt to chase an even-layered bite. A chewier bread — or more even, thorough browning — might yield a sturdier base for the silky benedict. Also tantalizingly close to perfection: the jerk-chicken chilaquiles. The dish was bright and satisfying, with mild queso fresco to lighten up the rich hunks of dark-meat chicken. The warming spices were perhaps too subtle on my visit — the flavors leaned more Southwestern than Caribbean. But the dish could also benefit from a little quality control; my chicken arrived with a bonus knob of crunchy cartilage from a leg joint. During brunch rush on a sunny Saturday, the servers were confident and composed. I’d heard complaints about slow service when Brown & Loe first opened, but general manager McGlaughlin seems to have worked out the kinks. Drinks are another issue (see: that half-hour cocktail, which my server comped unprompted). But food came out swiftly on all three of my visits, and servers topped off glasses and whisked away plates without hovering. One quibble: Though two of my three visits overlapped the restaurant’s posted happy hours, I never received a happy-hour menu (or even a tacit acknowledgment that one existed). I consoled myself with the dessert menu instead. Pastry chef Joy Costa’s small, competent menu fits effortlessly into Brown & Loe’s upscale, down-home vibe. The Dixie Pie (which has since sadly seceded from the menu) was worth every groan of the food coma. The crust checked off a slew of seemingly contradictory boxes: soft, chewy, airy, puffy-fluffy. And the salty-sweet filling was the platonic ideal of pecan pie, which is too often cloying. Brown & Loe’s rendition laced a stiff bourbon-chocolate ganache with chewy toasted pecans and a spiced cherry compote. Other bites I tried were no less fine: the Key-lime pie had a firm, tart curd and a chewy graham-cracker crust, while the strawberry-basil sorbet (flavors rotate frequently) was sharp and fresh-tasting. Not every dish at Brown & Loe reflects the restaurant’s physical polish, but the space is striking and the food charming and thoughtful. McGlaughlin and Murphy have made a fine bet with the Merchants Bank building. A few menu tweaks could yield a restaurant that’s rich without seeming to try too hard.

Breakfast  Brunch  Lunch  Coctails 4059 BROADWAY / (816) 931-4401 / THECORNERKC.COM

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drink

So much froth, zero dairy zach bauman

manager Zac Snyder to search for an alternative to egg whites. He found it in aquafaba. “Aquafaba is garbanzo-bean brine,” he says. “It’s literally just the liquid inside of a garbanzo-bean can, but it does contain some protein and soluble plant solids, and it works exactly like an egg white, which can give a cocktail a light, foamy texture.” Aquafaba’s applicable properties were discovered in France in 2014, when it gained popularity as a substitute for egg whites in meringues; then it crossed the Atlantic and crept onto bar menus. Today, you can find it at Westside Local in Snyder’s version of the Port Light, a tiki classic. Though the 1960s recipe calls for whiskey, Snyder favors brandy to complement his passion fruit–tamarind syrup and fresh-squeezed lime juice. “Making the drink is an involved process because it’s treated exactly like an egg-white cocktail,” he says. “We combine everything, wet shake it with ice and then dry shake without ice to fluff the cocktail and really build that foam.” Snyder’s Port Light works like a tropical brandy sour, one with some curves. The passion fruit–tamarind syrup tiptoes between sweet and sour to play against the smooth, creamy aquafaba layer. It’s a glass of island life to sate landlocked folks — and, yes, vegans. “The Local has always been very respective of dietary restrictions,” Snyder says, “and I try to maintain the idea of being sensitive to those needs at the bar. But honestly, finding creative solutions to cocktails for those diets makes for a great challenge.” The Westside Local, 1663 Summit, 816-997-9089, thewestsidelocal.com

Maurice Cox, Merchants Pub & Plate

Veg On

Your local bartender wants to tap into your inner vegan. by Natalie Gallagher

It’s easy to feel bad for vegans, a population born to punchline maybe half of all service-industry jokes. (The other half of behind-the-scenes quips about high-maintenance guests are of course reserved for gluten-free diners.) Disdain toward this group has cooled somewhat in recent years, but it seems unlikely ever to fade entirely from this bone-crunching barbecue town. Even cocktails aren’t without complication for those who eschew animal products. There’s no need to ask for a meatless margarita, but that splash of Worcestershire sauce in a house Bloody Mary mix renders the brunch staple an anchovy-containing moral hazard. Meanwhile, White Russians, Brandy Alexanders and eggnog contain dairy, offlimits to vegans.

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Still, the recent craft-cocktail surge has led bartenders to deeper experimentation, to the benefit of certain dietary exiles. Agave nectar can stand in for honey, almond or coconut milk can solve for that White Russian in a pinch, and aquafaba is having a star moment. Leading this milkless frontier around here are three bartenders I visited with recently.

Zac Snyder, Westside Local

It’s not that the bar at Westside Local is hard to find — it’s that you might just miss it on your way from the dining room to the patio. There’s only a few feet of wood — enough room for perhaps four people to get very cozy with one another. The lack of space (and a proper dishwasher) is in part what led bar

There’s only one designated vegan cocktail on the menu at Merchants Pub & Plate in Lawrence, but it’s the only one you’ll need. The Herbalist — made with tequila, herb oxymel and aquafaba foam — is the brainchild of bartender Maurice Cox, with an assist from chef Emily Peterson. “Emily introduced aquafaba to me,” he says, “and she suggested a flip cocktail, which I thought gave us a great opportunity to show off another cool bar ingredient we’ve been working on, which is our herb oxymel.” Oxymel — a mixture of vinegar and honey — is a traditional folk medicine with a few hundred years’ worth of history and a new life in craft cocktails. Thick and syrupy, it’s most similar to a shrub. “The thing that makes an oxymel an oxymel is that it has a vinegar component, an herbal component and honey,” Cox says. “It’s more viscous and more textured. Oxymels can be floral and spicy or woody and earthy — it just depends on the herbs you use. In our herbal oxymel, we have sage, thyme, parsley, rosemary, some vegan clover honey and an apple cider vinegar.” For the Herbalist, Cox dry shakes the

the pitch | may 2017 | pitch.com

4/20/17 8:58 PM

drink

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aquafaba and the oxymel, then introduces tequila with ice, shakes again and strains the butter-yellow liquid into a coupe glass. There’s a lot of complexity in these 4 fluid ounces. Tequila is an unconventional spirit for a flip cocktail, but here it fuses a strong backbone to Cox’s herb-garden oxymel. You taste no compromise. “It’s important that we’re able to create a really special experience for everyone — including people with dietary restrictions,” Cox says. “They can immerse themselves in the experience of a craft drink with everyone else and not have their dietary needs be an obstacle. I think we’re going to see a lot more of that mentality: It’s not about making exceptions for certain guests; it’s just thinking outside the box in terms of recipe development, which is part of the job.” Merchants Pub & Plate, 746 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence, 785-843-4111, merchantsonmass.com

Katy Wade, Voltaire

Voltaire’s Katy Wade didn’t set out to create a vegan cocktail. You might say the cocktail found her. “I was in Thailand last summer, and every mom-and-pop eatery would serve you ice water in these tin mugs — like Moscow mule mugs,” she says. “I finally understood why people love Moscow mules so much,

because they’re so cold and refreshing. And that inspired me to put something that reminded me of Thailand into those mugs when I got back.” Aside from sharing the same copper mug, Wade’s Mai Thai Coffee has nothing in common with a Moscow mule. She combines Auchentoshan American Oaked Scotch, J. Rieger Caffe Amaro, house-made coffee syrup, spicy chili tincture and coconut milk for a liquid experience that might confound even the most experienced drinker, vegan or not. “Coconut milk is a great product, and a little underutilized in the bar realm,” Wade says. “It’s something our kitchen is always going to have around, and it stays on the shelf longer than cream.” At Voltaire, the Mai Thai Coffee often pulls double duty. The vigorous shake that Wade gives it causes a frothy, frappé effect, so her vegan cocktail can also serve as a gluten-free, dairy-free dessert. “I think vegan cocktails are picking up because bartenders view them as kind of a cool challenge, and we all like challenges — it’s a cool thing to be able to master,” Wade says. “But more important, I think it’s nice that more people are being conscious of various dietary needs. The last thing we want to do is isolate someone.” Voltaire, 1617 Genessee, 816-472-1200, voltairekc.com pitch.com | May 2017 | the pitch

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books

Grep Hoax

Poetdaughter

Patricia Lockwood, onetime ‘smutty-metaphor queen of Lawrence,’ owns the memoir now, too, with Priestdaddy. by Scott Wilson

How foolish to want to write about Patricia Lockwood. In fact, I don’t really want to write about her, would rather read and reread her words. But writing about her — at least until I get to the part where I call her and she speaks for herself — is the only way to put into print three salient facts about or related to the 35-year-old poet and newly minted memoirist before she visits KC this month. One, she is brilliant.

Books.indd 42

Two, her audience, from her 63,600 Twitter followers to the stuffier echelons of lit culture, is vast by poetry standards. It’s a fame tethered in part to a deeply resonant poem called “Rape Joke,” initially published online and still a ricocheting samizdat powerhouse well after its official inclusion in her first mainstream collection. And it’s a fame expanded by a memorably fulsome 2014 New York Times Magazine profile (headline:

“The Smutty-Metaphor Queen of Lawrence, Kansas”) and by various borderline-randy appreciations published in print and online. Three, people who undertake the task of interviewing Lockwood or reviewing her work tend to find their prose sucked into her wake, the non-Lockwood writer bobbing up and down and casting about for descriptions and metaphors that might illustrate his subject’s brilliance (sometimes weighed down

by their duty to tell you that she is young and photogenic). I just did it myself, and I’m not even James Parker, the estimable Atlantic columnist who last month wrote that Lockwood’s poetry is “like the internet talking in its sleep.” That’s an apt simile, and Parker is clearly a fan, yet it feels reductive, even — especially? — assigned to a poet whose lines are themselves distilled to a fine, weaponsgrade powder. (See? I did it again, and truly I did not mean to.) These three facts are verses in a song destined to be sung about Lockwood whenever she issues a new article, poem or book. Her writing is, even at its most provocative, approachable and deliciously quotable, and she’s not one to be unnecessarily oblique when referring to blow jobs or abortion. Also, she is only getting better. The latest evidence of her elastic talent is that just-out memoir, Priestdaddy. It chronicles her complex, itinerant upbringing as the child of a man who entered adulthood an atheist and, after marrying and siring kids (and mainlining The Exorcist), became a Catholic priest — a priest different from the rest of the order in ways other than his daddyhood. “Every so often, during his rages, my father would yell ‘HOMEY DON’T PLAY THAT’ at the top of his lungs, to demonstrate how much he would not accept the bullcrap of whatever was going on,” Lockwood writes. “No one knew where he had picked it up. Did he stay up late and watch In Living Color after we were in bed? He pointed at us and shouted it, HOMEY DON’T PLAY THAT, like it was one of the commandments. Who was homey? Was he homey, or was it God?” Priestdaddy, then, is unusually rollicking for a book that addresses faith, marriage (Lockwood married at 21, and her husband’s health figures into the story) and family. I called Lockwood — who spends much of the book staying with her parents and her husband in Kansas City (after the younger couple moved out, they lived in Lawrence before ending up in Savannah, Georgia) — to ask her about it. The Pitch: Part of the world you describe in the book — your religious, protected childhood — sometimes seems like something from the 19th century. To what degree do you feel in or out of your generation, your time, your family’s time? Lockwood: I feel very far out of it, actually. I felt alienated from group movements. But I also feel alienated from the music of my time, the popular TV shows. A lot of times, when you grow up in a circumstance like I did, you weren’t allowed to watch or listen to things because of your parents’ beliefs. Because of my father’s overruling taste, we were not allowed to watch, like, really random stuff — Boy Meets World, Roseanne. Boy Meets World, that’s continued on page 44

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books

a Christian-ass show, straight up. But really it was just because he hated those things and wanted to watch his own stuff. So I feel slightly distanced from my own generation, like I’m inhabiting it as a witness. I’m watching people and thinking, like, You like these Kardashians? You’re very pungent and sharp-witted on Twitter — enough to make an interviewer a little fearful of asking a dumb question. I would never make fun of someone that way. When I do these interviews, I’m the one who’s going to say something so fucking stupid that they’ll have to shoot me into the fucking sun. Do you catch people doing the opposite, performing for you so that they’ll sound better in your writing? This is the first time I’ve written about people in my life in this way, but I’ve never felt anyone clam up. And people don’t think so much about poets that everything is material to them. But my mother did perform for me, which was a wonderful blessing that we will enjoy for years to come. She’s sort of the MVP of Priestdaddy. You could see a switch turn on: She got funnier. It was a thing that brought us closer together as it was happening. And now that you’re not under the same roof and you’ve written about her family, what are your conversations with her like? She’s read parts of the book but not all of it yet. Mostly when I talk to my mother, she just narrates various near-miss car crashes, to be absolutely honest. When I live away from her, I don’t end up talking as much to her. It’ll be interesting to get back [for her KC reading]. What about your dad? He seems pretty severe sometimes in the book. I don’t think he’ll read the book. There’s a strangeness in realizing that you can have kids and you can have an experience with them, a shared memory, that’s completely different from how it happened. It’s difficult for my father to imagine other lives. He’s empathetic — he counsels people — but many of the things he has said to me, you think: If you knew very basic things about me. For my dad, kids were like continuing the existence of the family name. He likes to have them, but I don’t know if he’s ever thought about what I do in a room when I’m alone. He’s much more lighthearted now that everyone is grown. Among the kids there’s a shared sense of humor. Part of it is about our secret freedom from a person who is a very strong personality. He believes we inherited our sense of humor from him, but that’s 100 percent wrong. We got it from our mother. You wrote about Donald Trump’s campaign for The New Republic last year. How have you felt since November? I have retreated into myself a little. I’ve kept to myself more. The election was a shock on a very primal level: that half of

Books.indd 44

the country, half the people you’re intimate with, found this to be a possible timeline. It’s difficult. I feel more alone and am probably not talking to people who did feel that was a possible timeline. It seems such a fundamental disconnect. Is it something you should bridge? What about the Catholics I know? That’s so strange to me. Trump is so at odds with Catholic thinking, Catholic thinking in its very cell. The day after the election, I walked outside and I was dressed in, like, this huge sweatshirt, looking like i’d been smacked around, like a haunted wraith. And I passed all these people who seemed happy, and I was like, What is going on? It’s something white people are waking up to, that feeling of walking around going, Is it you? Did you do this? How much does completing a book like Priestdaddy reset your agenda? It’s not a book I ever thought I would write, though everyone I talked to about my childhood told me I had to write a book. It may have opened up a series of possibilities. I could write about going to Ireland with my mom. I could write essays, other books. But there is right now a need to write poetry. While I was writing Priestdaddy, I was not really able to do the work that, to me, feels more essential to a sense of myself. I have that thirst to be doing that again. How far along are you on the next poetry collection? I actually have a lot more than I thought — maybe half. With Priestdaddy, you think 350 pages is insane, but a poem can be six words long. You’ve said you don’t like to talk about your writing process, but has it changed since the memoir? Do we even have the explanatory power to describe process? It comes more from the fact that you’re worried about getting it wrong, saying something false or facile about something important to you. It’s absolutely a nonverbal animal instinct. There’s nothing more to it than that — you know when something doesn’t work. It’s almost a physical feeling inside of you, an unsettled feeling. You’re working on a poem, working to right — R-I-G-H-T — something in yourself, to bring it plumb, correct. To begin as I did, in retreat from the sort of home life I had, meant that I never wrote personal things, confessional things, or not in the way that other people did. But in this, it’s all I was thinking about — along with whether I was being fair, being just, getting things right. On Twitter, my absurdity floats free, evokes the body and sex but could be talking about cucumbers or bolts at the hardware store. I’m using things in almost a combinatorial way. The voice in Priestdaddy is more my natural voice, when I’m writing straight. The scenes with my parents were naturally absurd, so they had to be written

“He believes we inherited our sense of humor from him, but that’s 100 percent wrong.”

in a way that conveyed the household as absurd as it actually was. Uniquely for someone in your line, you don’t have an MFA. You’re an autodidact who didn’t go to college. How does that affect you as a public-reading, book-touring writer? On a personal level, I get along with all of the people I read with, in a writerly sense. But it’s strange to do institutional things. I did my first panel at Clemson recently. I was sitting there and I was like, What the hell are we doing? It was like being in a weird zoo. I was just sort of sitting there, maybe a little dissociated. Lectures I don’t feel as comfortable with as readings. Part of my function is to observe the strangeness of the writer in the world now. I think it is crucial and useful to have people for whom it remains strange what happens in the academy. And there are pyramidscheme aspects of writing programs, but I think I’d like to work with students. I think I have more freedom. When you’re an autodidact, you get used to following your own trail a little. You read a book and it leads you to a dozen other books, tangentially. I’ve always read obsessively. I’d do that even if I’d gone through however many programs. I’ve followed my own path. You’ll have these huge blind spots, but it does mean that the people you read, you read very deeply. My friend Mary was over last night, and we were watching Anne of Green Gables. There was nothing objectionable in those books, so I read everything by Lucy Montgomery and read very deeply when I was, like, 11, and I was saying I thought I knew more about this specific time period, with its mores and manners, than about anything else. I know about World War I from the Canadian perspective because of those books — which is stupid in a way but kind of marvelous. She’s the reason I know who Lord Kitchener is. We miss authors like her, who give so much historic and day-to-day detail. What’s the deep reading right now? I’ve been reading Memoirs of Hadrian [a novel by Marguerite Yourcenar about the titular Roman emperor]. I wanted to read something that was engaged in political thinking and philosophy but was removed from our time. I wanted to put myself into the mind of a leader who was not a pile of garbage. Is it working? It gives a long view of a life. It can be good to remember that history is long. It can be good to remember that you’re going to live a long fucking time. Patricia Lockwood reads from and talks about Priestdaddy: A Memoir (Riverhead Books, $27) at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 10, at Mid-Continent Public Library’s Woodneath Library Center, 8900 Northeast Flintlock Road. Two tickets come with purchase of the book from Rainy Day Books; see rainyday books.com.

the pitch | may 2017 | pitch.com

4/20/17 8:05 PM

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screen

Northwestern promises: What’s happened in Twin Peaks over the past 25 years?

Back to the Woods

Can a revived Twin Peaks teach TV something new? by Eric Melin

It is happening again. No television event this year has more expectation riding on it than Showtime’s May 21 return of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s groundbreaking cult TV show, Twin Peaks. When the series concluded its second season, on June 10, 1991, FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) had discovered a temporary portal to the Black Lodge and entered the Red Room he’d been dreaming about over the show’s run. There, murdered teen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) sat down on a couch next to the Dancing Dwarf (Michael J. Anderson), snapped her fingers and said (backward, of course): “I’ll see you again in 25 years.” More than that promised quarter-century has elapsed since Lynch premiered his 1992 theatrical prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, at the Cannes Film Festival. This month, Cannes — the most prestigious film festival in the world — is adding TV to its mix for the first time, premiering two new episodes of Twin Peaks. The French, at least, get it. Recall that there had never been anything like Twin Peaks on TV before. When the ethereal freakout of a pilot aired on ABC in 1990, America’s top-rated drama was Murder, She Wrote — the show on which Angela Lansbury outwitted murderers, annoyed lawmen and wrapped each mystery up with a tidy bow. Twin Peaks began with a murder mystery (“Who killed Laura Palmer?” was soon plastered on the cover of every magazine in the country), but Cabot Cove’s

Film.indd 46

most famous resident would certainly have met her Waterloo — if not her end — trying to solve it. Here we were confronted with a perversion of TV’s small-town notions, a Mayberry keeping unspeakable secrets and haunted by pure evil. Week after week during its original run, I watched Twin Peaks and wondered how this show — which featured a delusional businessman who thinks he’s a Civil War general, a widow who claims that the log she carries around can predict the future, and a bow-tied giant who offers absurd clues such as “The owls are not what they seem” — had ever made it to the air. Laura Palmer herself was the homecoming queen, the seemingly perfect high schooler. Yet signs began to indicate that she had somehow been involved in drug running and prostitution just over the Canadian border. The idea that something sinister bubbled just beneath the surface of an idyllic community was a theme that Lynch had explored four years earlier in his notorious Blue Velvet. That film — which begins with a severed ear found in a field just beyond the white picket fences — sharply divided critics but won the director an Oscar nomination and a reputation as a master of surreal menace. Not the kind of master favored by the Standards & Practices suits at one of the big broadcast networks. What exec looked at gun-toting Blue Velvet madman Dennis Hopper, huffing gas through a mask, and said, “Get me that director for Sunday night!”?

Well, Gary Levine. That’s who helped to develop Twin Peaks for ABC and oversaw its production back in the 1990s. Now he’s executive VP of original programming at Showtime. So the route to premium cable is easily enough traced. And this time, there will be no restrictions: no commercial interruptions and no limits on explicit content. Levine gave Lynch and Frost complete creative freedom — as long as they both worked on every single episode. This is important because, back in ’91, ABC execs got antsy that Frost and Lynch had opened too many mysteries without solving any of them. Chiefly, the show had played too coy about revealing Laura Palmer’s murderer; the network forced the creators to do just that midway through the second season. It was a fatal mistake. Viewers jumped ship after the murder was “solved” (nothing is ever truly solved on Twin Peaks), and the ratings took a nosedive. Cancellation soon followed. It remains a teachable moment for any good showrunner who has been hired since. (Lost co-creator Carlton Cuse has said on several occasions that he and his cohorts viewed Twin Peaks’ fast toppling as a “cautionary tale.”) So, with the value of unsolved mysteries better understood all these years later, Twin Peaks was ready for Lynch and Frost again — or they were ready for it. Either way, the number of episodes planned for Showtime doubled after shooting, from nine to 18. The two-hour premiere of Twin Peaks, which is set in the present day, airs May 21. Two additional episodes will then become available to stream, and the show will become weekly after that. It was originally designed to be a one-run limited series, but Lynch has also told at least one cast member that if people liked it, he and Frost would consider doing more. Most of the original cast is returning, and the list of actors playing new roles in the series is fittingly bizarre, from Lynch regulars Laura Dern and Naomi Watts to Michael Cera, Trent Reznor, Eddie Vedder and Lauren Tewes (once The Love Boat’s sunny cruise director). It’s impossible to know whether Twin Peaks can recapture the country’s collective imagination, but one thing is certain. Even surrounded on the cable menu by so much so-called “peak TV,” there will still be nothing else like it. Another notable show that premieres this month is Amazon’s I Love Dick, created by Transparent’s Jill Soloway and loosely based on Chris Kaus’ 1997 cult novel. The show tackles the book’s unique epistolary structure by telling its story in the first-person, framed by struggling New York filmmaker Kathryn Hahn’s letters to Kevin Bacon’s Dick, the guy who leads the writing seminar that has led her and her husband to Marfa, Texas.

Hahn is perfect for the role. The actress’ natural comic timing and vulnerability are key in keeping her self-obsessed character just likable enough, while Bacon channels his rugged good looks and charm into making the straight-talking Dick more than simply a judgmental prick. If the pilot episode is any indication, I Love Dick will explore all kinds of uncomfortable subjects related to sexuality and infidelity with a feminist slant and an interesting comprehension of why confidence is so damned sexy. The first season of I Love Dick arrives May 12 on Amazon Prime. Another cult hit — and one that’s more in line with Twin Peaks than I Love Dick — is now available on a 4-disc DVD-and-Blu-ray boxed set, in a new 4K restoration, from Arrow Films. Richard Kelly’s 1980s-set, doomand-gloom high school epic Donnie Darko had a tiny theatrical run right after 9/11 before disappearing. It became iconic thanks to a second life on home video. Kelly then released a director’s cut with new computergenerated graphics and onscreen titles that spelled out the specifics of its time-traveling device a little too much. Providing those answers lessened the impact of the original Darko, in which Jake Gyllenhaal channels every kid’s teenage alienation into suburban legend. My preferred cut is the theatrical release, but both have been restored for this new box, which also includes a commentary track for each and enough extra features to keep the biggest Darko fan as sleep-deprived as Donnie for a long time. Also new on Blu-ray is Catfight, a 2016 movie that should have received more press when it was released. Anne Heche and Sandra Oh play two adult women who act like children in this viciously funny and absurd indie black comedy from writer-director Onur Turkel. The cover of the Blu-ray hints at the farcical brutality within, with a determined Heche holding a bloodied Oh in a headlock. And that’s only the first bloody confrontation between the two women, whose lust for retribution and destruction dominates the rest of the movie. Catfight is, if you haven’t guessed, not for everybody. But its over-the-top laughs are grounded in a very real dissatisfaction with modern life. Even its backdrop — a world mired in pointless war and fart jokes — seems more relevant today than it did even a year ago. Also this month, the Alamo Drafthouse is showing The Lure on May 17 as part of its new Film Club series, which specializes in new indie and international releases. Does a Polish horror-musical dramedy about two mermaids who come ashore to perform at a run-down strip club sound cult-y enough for you? Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Lure has trouble making compelling sense of its premise, but it is does boast a committed tone and style, elevating it beyond a simple exploitation picture.

the pitch | may 2017 | pitch.com

4/20/17 4:55 PM

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art

Sierra among his latest watercolors, works in progress that tell a vivid personal story

Living Proof

Chico Sierra inhabits his best work-in-progress self at Garcia Squared. by Tracy Abeln

“I can’t do anything if I’m dead.” So says Chico Sierra, who is called Jason on official documents and uses “Capitán” as a middle name on social media, and who is telling the truth. Sierra has met me inside the Garcia Squared Contemporary gallery, a room inside the Bauer Building that has again achieved calm in the days since the most recent First Friday. The echo of the few people walking the wood-floor hallway outside is faint, our only audible reminder of the rest of humanity. On one wall are Sierra’s watercolors — in mostly primary colors, with the occasional earth tone to set off a bright emerald green. The art here is a coalescing work in progress that began before a March 3 opening and collectively tells an insular narrative involving two main characters. One is a bull, the other a bird, and they appear to

Art.indd 48

be suffering. They are pierced with arrows. And interspersed with their repeating images is Mary, quintessential mother, representation of understanding and care. “I have been doing acrylic on canvas for a long time,” he says, talking about his recent shift to using watercolors. (Sierra will also exhibit a piece in Chicano Voice: Heroes, Comunidad and Agents of Change, which runs May 5 through June 24 at the Mattie Rhodes Art Gallery.) “I wanted sort of that illustrative, storybook kind of look. There are characters in this whole thing, representative of two people: myself and this other person.” He says the story was already there, so the work is quickly accumulating. When he’s at work (his day job is at City Market sandwich shop the Bite), he’s conceiving images that will soon find their way to paper. Sometimes he’s actually painting there,

“My heart is out of control and feels like it’s constantly being torn apart by something.”

in a basement studio or, recently, on one of the walls. In his home studio, he keeps tools for three forms of expression ready to meet whatever ideas spring to mind: painting, poetry and music. “If I don’t have a guitar around, I’ll lose my shit,” he says. “Even if I’m not using it, I need it around. Everything I do informs everything else. I am able to clear my head while playing music. It helps inform my work. Writing is the same way. It sort of gets things moving. If I can’t say it with words, I’ll paint it. If I can’t paint it, I’ll say it with words. And if I write a really bad poem, I’ll turn it into a song.” So what is the story? Self, relationships, experience, he says — ultimately, life. Sharing and learning. The basic desire to be alive, even when your heart is a pincushion or you have unwittingly pushed barbs into someone precious yourself.

the pitch | may 2017 | pitch.com

4/20/17 4:57 PM

art

“The person who is sort of involved in these pieces, it’s definitely a collaborative effort,” he tells me. “She informed a lot of this work and she conspired, but also, when she sees my stuff she’s had a lot of the same language. The relation we’ve had has been very informative. When she sees my work and says how she feels, it makes sense.” Sierra believes everyone is creative, even down to the intangible object that emerges from a conversation, especially a coming together over art. “If someone is explaining my work to me, or how it makes them feel, then they are creating something in my mind, and I can use that,” he says. He isn’t precious or somber about this; he jokes that it’s free therapy. To encourage that interchange, and to mix in other relevant media, Sierra’s display here includes words, some trailing along the tendrils of plants painted on the wall as a backdrop, a loose frame. The words are, in fact, the fruits of the kind of dialogue we’ve been talking about. “I wanted somebody else’s ideas to be there, to talk about it, too,” he says. “So she did what she does. She wrote some poetry.” The she in this case is his friend Erika Noguera, and one of her striking poems at Garcia is in three parts, blended with the visual work, each little page penned in black block letters and dabbed with cobalt blue. It begins: “Kings and light beings / a halo of clouds / punctuated / sometimes dripping / bleeding / like a heart / will ….. “ Parts II and III describe roses blooming from cacti and Mother Mary’s role in shooting arrows at birds who “fly unheeded / carrying the world ….. while buffalo roam / amidst / the / burning / desert / grass.” Mary’s image here is serene. She’s standing or waiting, stolid and strong. And while Sierra talks about the hoofed animal as a bull, an icon of Mexican and Spanish culture that represents raw power (and himself) but acquiesces to domestication in order to conduct necessary relationships — to get along in the world — buffalo are similar beasts. The roaming buffalo of Noguera’s poem are native to our continent, even if they may not have dipped as far south as El Paso, where Sierra grew up, and which he describes as “the worst kind of desert.” (He once called a friend to insist that he’d never want to be buried there.) In any case, the animal — like everything else here — is open to interpretation, and Sierra says he is looking forward to talking to more people about what they see. “The heart has always been in my work,” he says. “More than my mind, my heart is out of control and feels like it’s always constantly being torn apart by something. It’s life, and sometimes it’s good and sometimes really terrible. It is exposed. That’s the way I’ve lived my life. I want to deal with all these things, want to express them, not have them locked up.”

Having heard this from him — having been reminded that you can’t do anything when you’re dead — I begin to see the animals on the wall as peaceful. They may be slumped over or lying on the ground, but they are yet alive. They are on pause. He explains, “Most of the bulls are wounded, the idea of exhaustion. I wanted to speak to the idea of how I felt at the moments when I did want to take my own life. It wasn’t being dead that I wanted, but a break, rest. There’s a sort of exhaustion with my mind and my art and how much I feel about things. I wanted to speak to it ... at least to myself.” This is not Sierra as the stereotypical long-suffering artist. It is Sierra seeking to transcend, to be honest about what compels us to keep living, to ask the viewer to be equally honest about the need for expression. His art isn’t a provocation but rather an imploring that we stay in conversation.

“I paint because I want people to see it. And sometimes I want people to tell me what they see, so I can understand what I’m trying to say,” he says. “Sometimes you have a feeling and you don’t know what it is. There’s something in your subconscious that’s giving you these ideas, and there’s no better way to know what that feeling is or what you’re trying to say than having other people see your work and tell you what they think. Our minds are all sort of tied up in the same way.” Israel Alejandro Garcia Garcia: Bordes Carnosos, works in progress, with guest artist Jason “Chico” Sierra; Lipstick Jungle series, giclee prints by Garcia; and new work, mixed media on paper by Sierra. Through May 20 at Garcia Squared Contemporary, 115 West 18th Street, garciasquared.com pitch.com | may 2017 | the pitch

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the pitch | May 2017 | pitch.com

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music

They’re Worthy

Campbell and Edmonds at the bar

First-time fest Waynez World 3 aims to unite punks from KC and beyond. by Aaron Rhodes

Longtime friends and Blind Tiger coworkers McKayla Edmonds and Zach Campbell got drunk together one night and found that they shared a fantasy. Their mutual desire was simple, almost innocent: a punk festival. But not that kind of punk festival. “Honestly, there hasn’t been too much going on as far as festivals go in Kansas City for quite a few years — not any that I’m particularly interested in at least,” Edmonds says. “And that’s no stab at anyone. It’s just not what I’m into.” It’s safe to assume that Edmonds means Center of the City, Kansas City’s punk confab of the past five years. If you frequent punk shows in Kansas City, you’ve seen evidence of a fundamental divide. One circle favors bands whose songs are generally longer and more melodic. Shows from these bands often take place in dive bars. The second circle prefers bands that play shorter, less melodic songs. These acts like to gig at houses and DIY spaces. Center of the City, give or take a few performers, has largely been assembled and played by bands of that first circle. If your local punk intake is modest, you might reasonably ask: “Isn’t the Blind Tiger a dive bar?” It sure is. But it’s a dive bar with convenience on its side. DIY venues that opened their doors to punks in recent years

(including FOKL and Art Closet Studios) have closed, and record store owners aren’t always eager to host late-evening shows that attract fans one pogo away from bending the sleeve of a rare Smiths album. Meanwhile, a handful of punks who played in several bands together and hosted house shows relocated to Olympia, Washington, in the summer of 2016, leaving promoters scrambling to relocate shows. The Blind Tiger’s basement has been home to slam-dance enthusiasts most weeks since. Edmonds says she hopes to unify Kansas City’s punk community through the threeday fest, called Waynez World 3. “I just wanna bring people back together and actually show that we all still support each other and each other’s bands,” she says. “It’s just about getting a group of people together that like the same thing, or similar things.” (About that name: Edmonds and Campbell say the homage to the Mike Myers movies — the first of which stands as a valentine to underground enthusiasm — is the result of a whole other drunk conversation. “It’s pretty silly because we were all just drunk talking” Edmonds says. “Me, Zach and Devin [McKernan, of the band Agent] were thinking about what we should call it, and then Zach just said, Waynez World 3. And it kinda stuck.”)

Waynez World 3

May 12-14 at the Blind Tiger, 3945 Main

“It’s a little bit of something for everyone, if you like loud rock music.” Zach Campbell

Some of the 32 bands playing WW3 include Bib (one of the hottest Midwest hardcore bands, recently signed to East Coast label Pop Wig), Nancy (a duo with a legitimate claim to being the catchiest New York punk band since the Ramones), and Q (a St. Louis group that routinely brings its own furniture to smash during sets). Edmonds notes her excitement for bands like Lard Boys, Cruelster, and the Cops. Campbell name-checks Black Panties. “It’s a little bit of something for everyone, if you like loud rock music,” Campbell says. “I think that’s the one prerequisite.” Local bands taking part include longrunning oi! punk band the Uncouth, D-beat warrior Agent, and punk-turned-stoner act Chasm. Preceding the Saturday night headliner (Nancy) will be the final set of Edmonds’ band the Vitamens, dormant since last year, when drummer Claudia Dambra and guitarist David Kupsch moved away. The Vitamens’ lone EP has racked up more than 7,000 listens on YouTube since the members parted ways, and labels in both California and, of all places, Ukraine have made tapes of it. Plans for a tour before the move fizzled out, so Edmonds decided the festival would be a fitting time for a last bow. Many friends of the band will be in town. Another special happening related to the fest is a cover show the day before the fest begins. Kansas City locals will jam their favorite songs at the Blind Tiger on May 4, to benefit the KC Pet Project animal shelter. Edmonds’ new band, Hard Leather, plans to play songs from several different artists; another group will be sticking strictly to tracks by Iggy Pop and the Stooges. (“Stairway to Heaven” is strictly ... you know.) To supplement bands’ take from ticket sales, Edmonds and Campbell have set up some extra amenities for festivalgoers. VIP tickets grant access to a private patio, beverages, food and merchandise. The fest will also include vendors selling clothing, records and other wares. Punk enjoys a long history of opposing corporate interests, but Edmonds and Campbell have opted to accept alcohol sponsors for this year’s fest. Again, the idea is to increase the payout to those playing. “If anyone’s upset about that, sorry — we’re getting bands more money than they would any other place,” Edmonds says. Edmonds and Campbell had never booked an event of this scale before, but so far their only serious lament seems to be the lack of an additional stage. “There’s not really another venue in stumbling distance,” Campbell says. As showtime approaches, they may find more to worry about. “It’s going to be fun, but it’s also going to be very stressful,” Edmonds says. “We just want to make sure everyone gets taken care of.” pitch.com | may 2017 | the pitch

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music

Beat Connection

Kansas City-born producer Judge talks about his life in Los Angeles. by Aaron Rhodes

You’re in a Hollywood mansion (OK, a mini-mansion), and the party is going strong when you see a Royals baseball cap hovering over the DJ booth. Yup, you’re at Lil Aaron’s place, epicenter of a semi-mysterious new brand of internet hip-hop coolness. And you’ve spotted Paul Judge. He’s usually the lone Kansas Citian at these raucous get-togethers of up-and-coming rappers and internet celebrities. He’s also often one of the most talented musicians in the room. Judge, 26, is known simply by his last name to nearly everyone he works with; he was reluctant to let me use his first name here. He first posted photos of his face on social media only this year. He moved to Los Angeles in 2016 but has been making music since he attended Rockhurst High School, having grown up watching older brothers Michael and Matt play in punk bands (Culture Camp, Der Todesking, Anne Emergency) and done time in some rock bands himself. He says he can’t remember the bands’ names and doesn’t think much of the music he made then. “It was so bad,” he tells me. Compared to his punk-leaning siblings, the hip-hop-loving Judge is something of a black sheep. His first time dabbling in his preferred form involved making beats with drum machines and GarageBand software. Soon came

CD-Rs full of beats, given to a Rockhurst classmate to rap over. Judge also formed a comedyrap duo with his best friend and says they grew a substantial local following. By the time Judge was 18, he was delivering beats to Kansas City locals and rappers online — and getting paid. “I had songs that popped on the internet and stuff,” he says. “But to actually make money doing this, it’s very hard to do if you’re not in L.A.” So, after graduating from the University of Missouri with a bachelor’s degree in English, he set out to make music production his career. During a 2015 visit to Los Angeles, Judge met Lil Aaron (born Aaron Puckett), laying groundwork for a future partnership. During a series of studio sessions, Judge and Puckett discovered how well they clicked. “I met him, we went into a session, and within 20 minutes we made a song,” Judge says. “And we were both just like, ‘Wow, you’re dope.’ ” Puckett signed a publishing deal in early 2016, moved into that mini-mansion and invited Judge to join him. Puckett has his own family ties to DIY punk. His brother Kora plays in several bands in their home state of Indiana, including CHUD, Laffing Gas and Bugg. Each has played Kansas City in the past few years and (and would have fit neatly alongside various of the Judge brothers’ old projects).

“To actually make money doing this, it’s very hard if you’re not in L.A.”

Since establishing residence in the Golden State, Judge has made some noteworthy associations — including underground icon Bones and multimedia savant Yung Jake. But among the many collaborations on Judge’s SoundCloud page, the name that stands out the most may be ILoveMakonnen’s. Judge and Y2K coproduced “Prolly” — a Lil Aaron single featuring the “Tuesday” crooner. “I had been a Makonnen fan for so long, and then I was just suddenly watching him in our living room, rapping on my beat,” Judge says. Colonizing the Billboard charts doesn’t mean Judge is leaving his hometown behind. Two rising Kansas City stars — Rory Fresco and Dettsa — worked with Judge when he was back in town for the holidays at the end of 2016. Dettsa has dropped two songs produced by Judge since then and promises more are on the way. “It’s different,” Dettsa says. “His shit is hard.” Judge attributes his music’s appeal to his broad taste and his ability to mix different sounds and genres. “Hip-hop is where I come from for sure, but I do a lot more than that,” he says. “I’m doing a lot of pop, R&B, urban, etc.” He readily cites his influences, saying he wants to make beats that “bang like Metro Boomin” that are also “artsy and cool, like Cashmere Cat.” Meanwhile, countless internet-using millennials have been exposed to products of the mini-mansion. Puckett — when he’s not welding together Warped Tour pop-punk and Atlanta trap for his own music — has written songs for numerous other artists. He has his ASCAP bona fides thanks to work for Icona Pop and Dev, for instance, and hints that he’s done ghostwriting for even bigger acts. And then there’s one of the biggest memes of 2016: “Dicks out for Harambe.” Following the slaying of a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo, a friend of Puckett and Judge who goes by SexualJumanji tweeted: “We comin with them dicks out to avenge Harambe.” Two days later, during a Fourth of July party, Judge and Puckett found themselves tossing back and forth a shortened version of the tweet. Thus was born the phrase that comedian — and mini-mansion party guest — Brandon Wardell picked up, on his way to being lauded by Rolling Stone as the “voice of a generation.” Mini-mansion roommates Mikey and Rashaun help, too, working on graphics and merchandise and collaborating with Judge and Puckett on more visual projects. “It’s like a little factory,” Judge says. “We’re all always collabing on ideas and stuff.” Judge says he has finished work on a new EP consisting of solo, EDM-style instrumental tracks, due out soon. A full-length “producer album,” featuring verses from rappers and other guest appearances, is being worked on for release in late 2017 or early 2018. Until then, the next track you see by Lil Aaron, or any other promising new rapper ascending SoundCloud, might say: “Prod. by Judge.”

the pitch | may 2017 | pitch.com

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C e l e b r a t i n g

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concerts

May 2017 Thursday, May 4 Lewis Del Mar The Madrid

Friday, May 5 Garth Brooks Trisha Yearwood

Sprint Center (see sprintcenter.com for six additional Brooks dates)

Jason Isbell Strand of Oaks Uptown Theater

Bush

Kansas City Power & Light District

Tuesday, May 9

David Gray

Uptown Theater

Sunday, May 21

The 1975

The Black Angels A Place to Bury Strangers

Red Hot Chili Peppers Irontom

Starlight Theatre

Thursday, May 11 The Wild Reeds Blank Range

Madrid Theatre

Wednesday, May 17 Monday, May 21

The Bottleneck, Lawrence

The Chainsmokers Kiiara

Meat Puppets Mike Watt

The Greeting Committee Rachel Mallin and the Wild Type

Sprint Center

RecordBar

J Roddy Walston and the Business

Tuesday, May 23

RecordBar

The Bottleneck, Lawrence

Gov’t Mule

Uptown Theater

Wednesday, May 24

Thursday, May 11

Trey Songz

Branford Marsalis, Kurt Elling

George Benson and Kenny G

Arvest Bank Theatre at the Midland Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

Thursday, May 25

Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo Rick Springfield Starlight Theatre

X, Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real, Elise Davis, Duncan Hill Sara Morgan Outlaw Jim and the Whiskey Benders Knuckleheads

Carrie Nation and the Speakeasy

The Bottleneck, Lawrence

Why

The Riot Room

Saturday, May 6 DeLa Soul Talib Kweli Ro Ransom Stik Figa

Crossroads KC

Monday, May 8 Kristin Chenoweth

Lied Center, University of Kansas, Lawrence

Wavves

RecordBar

Saturday, May 13

Thursday, May 18

Chance the Rapper

Arlo Guthrie

Jaheim Carl Thomas

Ha Ha Tonka Trapper Schoepp and the Shades

Sunday, May 14

Friday, May 19

Lalah Hathaway, Brandy, John Scofield, Chick Corea Trio, Oleta Adams, Bobby Watson, the Hot Sardines, more

Soundgarden The Dillinger Escape Plan

Bone Thugs-n-Harmony Twista

Roger Waters

The Besnard Lakes The Life and Times

Marsha Ambrosius and Eric Benét

Providence Medical Center Amphitheater

Arvest Bank Theatre at the Midland

Starlight Theatre

RecordBar

Monday, May 15 Kehlani Micah “Noodles” Mahinay, JAHKOY, Ella Mai Granada Theatre, Lawrence

Tuesday, May 16 Coheed and Cambria

Arvest Bank Theatre at the Midland

Sprint Center

Uptown Theater

RecordBar

CrossroadsKC

Uptown Theater

Bluegrass in the Bottoms 2017 (also May 20) Yonder Mountain String Band, Railroad Earth, Greensky Bluegrass, the Infamous Stringdusters, Fruition, Joshua Davis, Shook Twins, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades Knuckleheads

Saturday, May 20 Big Freedia RecordBar

Friday, May 26 KC Jazz & Heritage Festival (through May 28)

American Jazz Museum, 18th & Vine District (details at kcjazzfest.com) Sprint Center

Cole Swindell Kip Moore Michael Ray

Providence Medical Center Amphitheater

JoJo

Liberty Hall, Lawrence

BJ Barham Adam Lee

The Bottleneck, Lawrence

Making Movies RecordBar

Sunday, May 28 Everclear

CrossroadsKC

the pitch | may 2017 | pitch.com

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calendar

other Obscura Day All day Saturday, May 6 This is Missouri’s second year participating in the worldwide Obscura Day, orchestrated by Atlas Obscura, a DIY tourism organization that embraces unusual aspects of cities far and wide. Think there’s nothing left of Kansas City to explore? Join local tour guides on a canoe trip through an abandoned mine, a tour of the Hair Museum, and an afterparty in a secret location. (Ticket prices vary; see atlasobscura.com.)

May 2017 ART Chicano Voice: Heroes, Comunidad, and Agents of Change 6 p.m. Friday, May 5 Mattie Rhodes Center What role do heroes play in our lives? Local artists tackle this question as community and art converge at the Mattie Rhodes Art Gallery. Artists were invited to address the concept of heroes in KC (and the Midwest’s) Chicano community. Opening night celebrates Primitivo Garcia, Ruben Garcia, Nellie Lozano and more, with new work by Kansas City Chicano community artists and activists. (mattierhodes.org)

2017 Annual BFA Exhibition Closing Reception 5 p.m. Friday, May 5 H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute The Kansas City Art Institute’s annual BFA Exhibition showcases the final projects of candidates earning their bachelor’s degrees: the next wave of artists entering area galleries. Also on tap: readings by art history and writing majors. (kcai.edu/artspace)

PARTY The Derby Party 3 p.m. Saturday, May 6 Kansas City Museum Expect the usual mint juleps and whisky sours at the lovely Kansas City Museum as it celebrates world-famous equestrienne (and former residenct) Loula Long Combs and the Kentucky Derby. Naturally there will be Southern food, drinks and a live screening of the race, along with yard games and hat and clothing competitions. Tickets cost $45$75. (kansascitymuseum.org)

OTHER Kansas City Tattoo Arts Convention May 19-21 Sheraton Hotel at Crown Center Even if you’re not looking to get a tattoo, the third annual Kansas City Tattoo Arts Convention features live paintings, performances, burlesque and unique vendors. But if you are looking for new body adornment, you’ll see famous tattoo masters and can have your ink done on site. Tickets are $20 a day or $40 for the weekend. (worldtattooevents.com)

Celebration at the Station 3 p.m. Sunday, May 28 Union Station Marking this centennial of America’s entrance into World War I, the Kansas City Symphony hosts its annual free Memorial Day weekend concert at Union Station, within sight of the WWI Museum. Expect fireworks, songs from both world wars, and music by guest Patti Austin. Bring blankets and lawn chairs. (kcsymphony.org)

ArtsKC Encounter: Folk Songs and Stories 5:30 p.m. Thursday, May 18 The Writers Place (writersplace.org)

THEATER Lost in Yonkers Starting Friday, May 5 Corbin Theater Company (corbintheatre.org) Team Shakespeare Presents: Julius Ceasar May 18-20 Kansas City Museum Free, on the lawn (kansascitymuseum.org)

Pastiche: A Play by Multiple Playwrights 8 p.m. Friday, May 26 The Buffalo Room

the pitch | may 2017 | pitch.com

Calendar.indd 56

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