The Pitch: November 2017

NeWs: TraCkINg THe ePa’s CaTHy sTePP

PAGE 15

Music: oral TruCk

sToP love

November 2017 I Free I PITCH.Com

PAGE 48

House Work

Why the food industry is hot in KC pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

PITCH_1_Cover1117.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 1 1

1

10/23/17 10/21/17 10:42 4:55 PM AM

50 SUMMERS OF LOVE

BRET MICHAELS

SHAMROCK FC MMA

ALMOST KISS & KC/DC

NOVEMBER 3

NOVEMBER 11

NOVEMBER 18

DECEMBER 15

MERRY KISSMAS

SINBAD

RODNEY CARRINGTON

GENE WATSON

JANUARY 20

FEBRUARY 9 & 10

FEBRUARY 24

Join us in the Star Pavilion for our thrilling upcoming shows. Get your tickets at ticketmaster.com or visit the Ameristar gift shop to receive $5 off the standard ticket price with your mychoice® card.

Free Live Entertainment 8:30p –12:30a HUDSON DRIVE • November 3 THE BUCKET BAND • November 4 DESERT WINE BAND • November 10 OUTLAW JIM & THE WHISKEY BENDERS • November 11

NOW AND THEN • November 17 PHIL VANDEL • November 18 FLASHBACK • November 24 AMANDA FISH • November 25

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.

2

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

Untitled-11 1 Pitch_11-17_56.indd 2

10/17/17 10/20/17 12:49 3:18 PM

Contents

29 6

25

ashley scoby A fitness counselor gets hip to KC.

House work From the front of the house to the kitchen, KC restaurants feel a staffing crunch.

Questionnaire

10

news

the out-of-towners Seeing that TIF’s sketchy magic no longer fooled Kansas Citians, a developer and a grocery dynasty took their show to Smithville.

By DaviD HuDnall

who’s Cathy stepp?

This region’s unlikely No. 2 administrator at the EPA dislikes regulations — and transparency.

By Karen Dillon

18

PolitiCs

sunflower showdown The ACLU’s Micah Kubic is the anti-Kobach.

By BarBara SHelly

21

Profiles

the Dreamer Immigration lawyer Angie Williams gives legal help to asylum seekers — and a kidney to husband Francisco Ortiz.

By Traci angel

Cover story

By april Fleming

29

feature

Climbing the walls Indoors at RoKC, I follow Gov. Greitens up a wall. Outdoors, experienced rockers handle Cliff Drive.

By angela luTz pHoToS By cHaSe caSTor

32

first Person

Ghost town Antioch Park’s iconic Dodge Town meets its demise — or does it?

By lucaS WeTzel

THE ZEROS & BOOGIE WONDERLAND

DECEMBER 31 Join us in the Star Pavilion on New Year’s Eve at 8p!

Purchase tickets online at ticketmaster.com or at the Ameristar Gift Shop.

34

Café

taking sides EJ’s Urban Eatery adds up to more than just a meat-and-three.

By liz cooK

38 art

Magnetic resonance Kendell Harbin’s VHS safari hunts a very delicate species: memory

Before the fall Cydney Ross’s Structural Integrity tears down architecture before we do it to ourselves.

By annie raaB

By Tracy aBeln

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 | november 2017 | the pitch

PITCH_3-4_TOC1117.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 3 3

3

10/23/17 10/21/17 10:44 5:54 PM AM

contents

Do You Suffer From Facial Acne?

We are seeking participants for new before & after photos for our #1 selling LEROSETT® Clay Treatment! For over 30 years, LEROSETT® has been a favorite of professional skin care experts to treat acne naturally.

whoop Dee new Alter’s bad-mother-FOMO parties are performance-art medicine.

By annie raaB

42

arts

Qualified Participants will receive:

· 1 year supply of medical grade skin care products · Professional skin care examination at no cost · Clear skin (based on our 97% success rate) Clinical will last 12 weeks. One visit bi‐weekly to our office located at 435 and Metcalf in Overland Park, KS is required. Our Board Certified esthetician will monitor your progress. Participants must be over the age of 18.

To be considered, please contact us via phone at: 866-551-5505 or email info@gunillaofsweden.com.

For more information please call: 866‐551‐5505 www.gunillaofsweden.com

ACCOUNTANTS!

Please Read. This is not a gimmick.

Beyond vintage Classics Uncorked opened its latest season with a welcome airing of recent works.

By liBBy HanSSen

44

sHoP Girl

Donations unleashed Going animal at Do Good Co. By angela luTz

47

MusiC

risin’ How Got What U Like Records became a cultural beacon in south Kansas City By aaron rHoDeS

oral truck stop love TSL then and now (yes, now), as told by everyone who was there By nicK SpaceK

• Have you outgrown your current position?

• Can you be the lead accountant in a fast growing recognized small business?

• Does a challenge excite you?

• Are you ready to master new software, experience great culture, and advise the CEO and President directly?

• Do you know a great accountant that is looking for a brighter future?

If you said yes to all of the following we want to hear from you.

looking for one accountant to head our financial operations. We offer an serves team lunches daily. We offer a competitive salary depending on

qualifications from 40-70K per year starting plus benefits (Health, Dental, Vision, 401k matching).

2.

3 to 5 years of accounting experience (or a great reason why you should get the job with less).

3.

Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.

5.

Have the ability to ignore the instructions on the right of this page and put the phrase Attention To Detail in the subject line.

6.

Excellent knowledge of general accounting.

7.

Creative, critical and analytical thinking.

4.

8.

Attention to detail.

Understand how to calculate the cost on a manufactured product.

distribution

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

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

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

amazing work culture, great benefits package, and an on-site chef that

Accuracy in all aspects of your position.

voice media group

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

copyright

area that thinks outside the box (hence the big ad in this paper). We are

1.

southcomm

Chief executive officer Chris Ferrell Chief financial officer Bob Mahoney Chief operating officer Blair Johnson Director of Human resources Becky Turner executive vice President Mark Bartel vice President of Content/Communication Patrick Rains vice President of Production operations Curt Pordes Creative Director Heather Pierce

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

We are a manufacturer of medical and laboratory equipment in the Liberty

Please have the following qualifications:

the pitch

editor Scott Wilson staff writer David Hudnall Proofreader Brent Shepherd Contributing writers Tracy Abeln, Traci Angel, Liz Cook, Karen Dillon, April Fleming, Libby Hanssen, Deborah Hirsch, Ron Knox, Larry Kopitnik, Angela Lutz, Dan Lybarger, David Martin, Eric Melin, Annie Raab, Aaron Rhodes, Barbara Shelly, Nick Spacek, Lucas Wetzel art Director Julie Whitty Contributing Photographers Zach Bauman, Chase Castor, Jennifer Wetzel Graphic Designers 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

If this is you, take the next step.

Please send your resume to Resumes@TrippNT.com and use the subject line “Accounting Position” Please include a cover letter.

All responses are completely confidential.

The Pitch:

All responses will get a reply.

On-site interviews will take place the weeks of November 14th through 17th and December 5th through 8th We look forward to hearing from you!

If you are not an accountant, but know and love a good one, please share this posting. We want to hear from them.

Powered by PT’S COFFEE

on tHe Cover

Jerry Marcellus, Maggie Lawlor and Terry Ng’endo, of the JCCC hospitality and culinary program pHoTo By zacH Bauman

4

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

PITCH_3-4_TOC1117.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 4 4

10/23/17 10/21/17 10:44 5:55 PM AM

Lakeside Live Live MUSic at tHe winery and brewery

Endless Variety, Matchless Talent!

OVER 25 PERFORMANCES • 2017-18 SEASON

- 14 Wines - 9 Beers - Tasting Room - Lakeside Views - Event Venue - Lakeside Overnight Suite - Full Menu - Destination Dinners - RV Hookups -

Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear Saturday, December 2 Mother and son music magic.

Tickets on sale now!

jccc.edu/CarlsenCenter | 913-469-4445 NO ONLINE FEES | FREE PARKING | WINE & BEER AVAILABLE

Book your hoLiday parties today!

19203 Old US 40 Higginsville, MO 64037 660·584·6661 arcadianmoon.com Just 45 minutes from downtown kansas City pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 5

5

10/20/17 3:56 PM

questionnaire

kidding — this was a great idea, and I can’t wait to eat a Z-Man about four times a week when this place opens.)

“Kansas City needs ...” More extensive public transportation. I spent a summer in New York City and got spoiled by never having to drive anywhere. That’s an extreme example, but it will be awesome when Kansas Citians won’t have to rely on paying for an Uber to get to and from downtown, the Plaza and Westport.

“As a kid, I wanted to be ...” A sportswriter.

I was lucky to live my dream for several years before moving on to other things and seeking out new dreams. I also always wanted to write a book, so maybe that’s next on the agenda.

“In five years, I’ll be ...” 29, and hopefully making the world a better place.

“I always laugh at ...” That “Why You Always Lying” YouTube video. It came out a couple years ago as a parody of that old R&B song called “Too Close,” and it’s just so outrageous you have to laugh. When the backup dancers come out, I lose it every time.

“I’ve been known to binge watch ...” House of Cards and Mad Men. Roger Sterling might be my favorite TV character ever.

“I can’t stop listening to ...” I can’t choose one, so I’m just going to say this year’s collection of new rap albums. Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Future, 21 Savage, Ace Hood, Rick Ross and 2 Chainz all released new projects this year, and it’s made for a great year musically.

Ashley Scoby Fitness counselor, writer

Twitter handle: @AshleyScoby Hometown: Glasgow, Kentucky Current neighborhood: Quality Hill What I do (in 140 characters or less): I’m in sales at a local gym, but I also keep a foot in freelance writing after recently transitioning out of journalism.

What’s your addiction? Caffeine, like every other American. Even if I didn’t need it to get through daily life, I would still drink coffee because I love the taste.

What’s your game? I’m undefeated in people-watching since ’93.

What’s your drink? I’m a Kentucky girl, born and raised, but it took moving out of my home state to really start to appreciate bourbon. A good Old Fashioned is my go-to. (Repeal 18th makes one of the best in the city.)

6

Where’s dinner? Really any Mexican restaurant, and Kansas City has a ton of good ones. Some of my favorites are Ponak’s, Los Tules, Los Corrals (and its giant margaritas) and El Patron. There’s also this amazing taco place in the Independence Avenue area — I don’t even know the name of it. Or maybe I just want to keep that one secret.

What’s on your KC postcard? There’s an abandoned castle near the 18th and Vine district that I’m in love with. It’s covered in the coolest graffiti, and it’s really a beautiful hidden piece of the city.

Finish these sentences: “Kansas City got it right when ...” It welcomed me with open arms. I moved here last year from Detroit, which can be a difficult place to live. I didn’t know a soul here when I arrived, but Kansas City has very quickly become home for me.

“Kansas City screwed up when ...” It decided to put a Joe’s downtown. I’m really not looking forward to gaining 20 pounds. (Just

Worst advice? “Try this drink — it’s called a Long Island iced tea.”

My sidekick? My planner. I bought one of those specialty planners that has each day divided up by the hour, segments for planning your year out, and gridded pages that I can use to plan out my workouts. I don’t really go anywhere without it.

Who is your hero? J.K. Rowling. She was truly at rock bottom in a lot of different ways, then dug herself out by her own sheer will and brilliance. Now she’s respected around the world and donates more money to good causes than most of us could hope to ever even make.

She also uses her platform to be particularly savage on Twitter against slimy politicians, and I love every second of it.

Who (or what) is your nemesis? Complacency.

What’s your greatest struggle right now?

Not being constantly angry at our current political situation. We’re better off turning our anger into passion, which we can then use to make change. But, man, is it hard sometimes.

My dating triumph/tragedy: The Kansas City dating scene can be … lackluster, but I wouldn’t consider it tragic. I think it can be considered a triumph to be happily single in today’s society.

We (especially women) are often made to believe that we have to be with someone else in order to have a complete life. But breaking out of that mold and making a complete life for yourself on your own can feel pretty damn good.

“My dream concert lineup is ...” Kendrick Lamar (who was incredible at the Sprint Center, by the way), Tupac’s hologram (since we can’t have the real Tupac, I suppose), and Beyoncé.

My brush with fame: Until this year I was a sportswriter, so I’ve been around a lot of famous people — most of them are much more boring than you would expect. I also once stood in a Starbucks line next to Eva Longoria. (Celebs need $6 lattes, too.)

“I just read ...” I’m guilty of reading several books at a time, so I’ll give the last two. One is called Nobody, by Marc Lamont Hill, and it delves into several situations ranging from Ferguson to Flint, and examines the inequality that some of our most vulnerable populations experience. I also just finished Two Hours, which is a book about the quest to find a runner who can finish a marathon in, yes, two hours.

My soapbox: If you follow me on Twitter, you know I have a few: You don’t have to experience oppression in order to understand it and fight against it. Millennials aren’t ruining/killing everything. Rap music (most of it) is poetry.

Work-life balance is one of the most important things you can figure out. Ketchup is bad.

Burritos are better than tacos (don’t @ me).

What’s your guiltiest pleasure? Taco Bell.

What was the last thing you had to apologize for? As Beyoncé would say, I ain’t sorry.

The best advice I ever got: Go your own way. We get stuck in these arbitrary ideas of what it means to be successful, and when we fail to fit inside that box or travel down the typical path, we’re told that we’re not doing it the right way. So being able to redefine my idea of success, and figure out my own way to get there, has been the product of some great advice.

Who’s sorry now? Climate-change deniers.

My recent triumph: Earlier this summer, I went to Seattle and ran my first half-marathon. It came less than a year after having hip surgery last summer, so that felt awesome. And I just did the October one here in Kansas City.

November 2017 the pitch pitch || November pitch.com 2017 || pitch.com the

PITCH_6_QuestionnaireScoby.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 6 6

10/20/17 10/20/17 11:59 3:21 PM AM

FIERCELY LOYAL. ALWAYS THERE WHEN YOU NEED. REPRESENTING YOU SO WELL, THEY’LL THINK WE’RE YOU.

GOT YOUR BACK BY STANDING AT YOUR SIDE.

LAST: NEGOTIATOR

NEXT: MATCHMAKER

{

MAKING SURE YOU NEVER HAVE TO GO IT ALONE Have you ever been around someone who truly loves what they do? Their passion is infectious. You can practically feel their integrity. You want those people around you, especially when you enter into the world that they live and breathe. Now imagine that world is buying or selling a home. That person is a REALTOR®, they’re the ones who will not only have your back but the backs of all home and privaate property owners.

LOYAL DEDICATED COMMUNICATIVE TRUSTWORTHY PROACTIVE CREATIVE AVAILABLE EDUCATED PROTECTIVE EMPATHETIC

Why? Because they love it. And because it’s right.

R E A LTO R S ® TA K E O N M A N Y R O L E S .

WWW.WHICHROLE.COM pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 7

7

10/20/17 3:20 PM

GROW YOUR SPIRIT

$

695 Cremations

FULL SERVICE, AFFORDABLE QUALITY FUNERAL SERVICES

816-231-GATE

at Independence Boulevard Christian Church Come worship in an historic church in an intimate setting. Join our robust mission to urban brothers and sisters. Visit our open and affirming congregation this Sunday.

10:45 am Sunday WorShip monday night micah miniStry 5:30 - 7 pm

Rev. Lee Chiaramonte

606 Gladstone BLvd • KCMO 64124 • 816-231-0016 www.ibcckc.org /

! r e b m e v O N

YES, YES

It’s a great month, it’s a great time of year! So, celebrate each holiday as it arrives, thankfully and deliciously.

Foo’s can help, with quarts and pies in your favorite flavor.

(Open daily for foolishness.)

Living. Lending. Local.

Thank you Pitch ReadeRs foR voTing us #1 BesT MoRTgage CoMpany in The 2017 BesT of kC

Mention “Best of KC” for a $500 credit toward your closing costs.* *Expires December 31, 2017.

8

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 8

10/20/17 3:21 PM

News

The Out-of-Towners WithtIF’s sketchy magic no longer fooling Kansas Citians, a developer and a grocery dynasty took their show to smithville.

by DaviD HuDnall

Jeff Becker has seen some TIFs in his day.

In 2001, Becker founded the Arts Incubator, a nonprofit offering studio space and business advice to emerging artists. It was located at 115 West 18th Street, in the heart of what we now call the Crossroads Arts District. Today, the Crossroads is where Kansas

Citians go to drink a $14 cocktail served by a man in a vest. Back then, the view from any Arts Incubator window was one of blight and post-industrial decay. The neighborhood was decidedly pre-gentrification: high crime, abandoned buildings, a thin advance of artists and other brave pioneers.

IllustratIon by Kelly Castor

To attract further waves of such persons and businesses to the Crossroads (and elsewhere), Kansas City has, in recent decades, used a handy magnet called tax-increment financing — in short, a tax break for developers. Under a TIF deal, a developer agrees to build something new on a blighted property; in exchange, the city freezes the taxes on that property for a certain period of time (often as long as 23 years). Thus, as the assessed value of the property increases (because it has now been developed and is therefore more valuable), any “new” tax revenue is returned not to the usual recipients of taxes (the school district, the county, the city, the library, etc.) but rather to the developer.

In addition to running the Arts Incubator, Becker also served for nearly a decade as a board member of the Crossroads Community Association. In that capacity, he regularly examined TIF proposals from developers seeking financial incentives in order to renovate old properties in the Crossroads.

“On the board, we’d assess each proposal as to whether it was thoughtful, what it would bring to the community, did it make sense to claim the property was blighted, etcetera,” Becker says. “We didn’t technically have any say in the final decision, but we developed a relationship with the city where, anytime a new development plan surfaced in the Crossroads, the city always came to us and asked us whether we endorsed it.”

That scrutiny didn’t keep a number of questionable TIFs from being handed out in the Crossroads over the years, but some of the more egregious plays were halted by engaged citizens (and journalists).

Citizens in more far-flung parts of the Kansas City metro have historically been less sophisticated about matters of urban planning. This is true of Smithville, where Becker and his family moved in 2011, following the closing of the Arts Incubator. With his kids approaching school age, Becker and his wife wanted to settle down in a place with, he says, a “really good school district and a small-town feel.” Smithville fit the bill.

“At the time, they had just approved a bond to build a performing-arts center,” Becker says. “It made me feel like they had interest in advancing the arts. The priorities in Smithville just seemed right to me, from what I could tell.”

In addition to purchasing a home in Smithville, Becker bought a building downtown and converted it into an arts space and coffee shop called Three Link Gallery. Along with Jonathan Justus, owner of the well-regarded farmto-table restaurant Justus Drugstore, he hopes to bring, as he puts it, “the creative culture of the Crossroads into the more small-town type of setting of downtown Smithville.”

There’s little sign of that yet. Many of the old buildings downtown sit vacant. Foot traffic is virtually nonexistent. There is scant evidence of a burgeoning arts scene. But one vestige of the Crossroads has followed Becker to pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

PITCH_9-10,12_NewsA Smithville.indd 9

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 9

9

10/21/17 2:43 PM

10/23/17 11:01 AM

News

Smithville: TIF. And neither he nor Justus is happy about it. Neither is the school district.

Neither, in fact, are numerous other locals.

Smithville, home to its popular namesake lake, straddles Clay and Platte counties 30 miles north of downtown Kansas City.

Most commercial activity there lies along U.S. Highway 169. About a mile south of its Main Street, on 169, lie several dozen acres of undeveloped land. The only structure on this land is a brick-and-stone monument with the words “Smithville Commons” on it. You can see it from the road.

Back in the mid-2000s, Smithville planned to build a 28-acre development on this land.

It was to contain a 100,000-square-foot anchor tenant (probably a Lowe’s or a Home Depot), a 60,000-square-foot big-box retailer (perhaps a grocery store) and four pad sites for restaurants and other commercial use. The developer requested a TIF from Smithville as part of its proposal. The Smithville Commons land was hilly and difficult to build on, the proposal asserted, so part of the TIF money would be put toward leveling the property and installing sewer connections and water lines.

The leveling was completed, but the utility work never came to pass. Neither did construction of the buildings.

“The economy fell out in 2008, and after that it was real tough finding tenants,” says Jack Hendrix, planning director and community development director for the city of Smithville. “No tenants, no deal. It was bad timing. In the end, they [the developer] lost it to the bank. It’s been sitting empty like that ever since.”

A half-mile down 169 from the Smithville Commons site is a Price Chopper. Four years ago, Cosentino’s Food Stores, which owns 29 grocery stores in the Kansas City metro, pur-

10

chased the grocery store — it was previously a Big V’s Country Mart — and rebranded it. Soon after, Cosentino’s and its surrogates approached the city about finding a larger site in Smithville on which to build a new and improved Price Chopper.

“They said they wanted to stay in Smithville and gave us general parameters and asked us to help them look,” Hendrix says.

“We would throw out potential sites and let their engineers take a look. They wanted a site with visibility from 169. They needed a larger location where they could expand.

They wanted more open access because traffic is heavy around the current Price Chopper.

Things like that.”

This June, a proposal surfaced. Price Chopper would become the anchor tenant at a new development located on the old Smithville Commons property. The new development would also include space for a tractor dealer, a hardware store and 5 acres for other potential commercial tenants.

The primary liaison between the city of Smithville and Cosentino’s as they worked out what ultimately became the Smithville Marketplace proposal was Frank Ross III, who goes by Trip. Loyal Pitch readers may recognize the name. Driving home from a 2010 Chiefs game, young Trip blew through a stop sign at 35th Street and Euclid and T-boned a Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department vehicle. Both officers in the car were injured, and Ross’ blood-alcohol content was recorded as 0.185 — more than twice the legal limit.

Ross had a couple of things going for him, though: An assistant U.S. district attorney was riding in his car at the time of the crash, and Ross’ father, Frank Ross Jr., is a big wheel at Polsinelli, one of the mightiest law firms in Kansas City. In the end, he skated. After entering a guilty plea, Ross received a generous 40 hours of community service.

DavID HuDnall

It’s a pretty sWeet Deal — provIDeD you WorK For CaDenCe or CosentIno’s.

Formerly a commercial real estate agent for Lane4, Ross recently struck out on his own with a commercial real estate company called Cadence, of which he is a principal. Ross has also, in the years since his joy ride, fortified his position by marrying into the Cosentino family. Not surprisingly, a recurring theme in Cadence’s short history — it was formed in 2015 — is the development, or redevelopment, of shopping centers featuring Cosentino-owned grocery stores. Also perhaps not shocking, given the fact that his father runs Kansas City’s go-to law firm for TIF deals: Cadence would seek public subsidies on the Smithville Marketplace proposal.

To recap: Trip Ross’ new real-estate firm (Cadence), represented by Ross’ father’s law firm (Polsinelli), would develop a property in Smithville for Ross’ in-laws (Cosentino’s). And in order for the deal to go forward, Cadence wanted TIF money from Smithville taxpayers.

And it wanted a lot of it: roughly $10 million in tax breaks for a $35 million project.

Cadence’s argument for why it needs a handout of this magnitude rests on a few wobbly positions. First is that the Smithville Commons site is still blighted. This requires a person to believe that an empty patch of land constitutes blight. Second is that this shiny new development would, in the words of Polsinelli lawyer Evan Fitts, “create tremendous spinoff and economic benefits” for Smithville.

Tremendous? Certainly a new Price Chopper would generate economic activity — at that new Price Chopper. But what about the old Price Chopper, now empty? Buildings that size are difficult to backfill, because only a small pool of potential tenants is substantial enough to take over such a lease.

Hendrix says he believes a farm-supply store, such as Orscheln or Feldman’s, would be a good candidate for the old Price Chopper. But there’s already a glut of real estate

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

PITCH_9-10,12_NewsA Pitch_11-17_56.indd 10Smithville.indd 10

10/23/17 10/21/17 10:57 2:43 PM AM

When it comes to crafting real taste in our blends, two ingredients are all we’ve ever needed.

Tobacco Ingredients: Tobacco & Water Discover our difference at AmericanSpirit.com* CIGARETTES

Kansas City Pitch Weekly 11-02-17.indd 1

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 11

*Website restricted to age 21+ smokers Š2017 SFNTC (4)

9/29/17 10:21 AM

pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

11

10/20/17 3:24 PM

News

on the market. Just drive a few miles south on 169 to Barry Road and you’ll see several empty big-box stores — and that’s in an area closer to Kansas City and more economically vibrant than Smithville.

“All this proposal does is just turn an existing grocery store from a tax-paying property into a TIF property,” Justus says. “We’re not gaining an employer and we’re not gaining any employees. Nobody’s coming to Smithville for this grocery store. My restaurant anchors downtown Smithville, and people come here from other places to eat. Now, I’m not suggesting I’m going to ask for a handout for my restaurant, but I could at least make an argument that I’m actually bringing people to town.”

“They’re moving a grocery store half a mile up the road,” Becker says. “Which, OK, the new Price Chopper will be nicer and have more organic items and an updated shopping experience. But it’s not bringing anything substantial to town. And what we’ll end up with is with a truly blighted area where the current Price Chopper is, because they won’t be able to find a tenant once they leave.”

A similar chain of events recently occurred in nearby Kearney. Cosentino’s bought a Big Value grocery store, turned it into a Price Chopper, ran out its lease, and then received a TIF to build a new Price Chopper. The old Price Chopper sat vacant for two years, until the school district finally bought it — meaning it’s financial dead weight now, publicly owned and thus no longer a tax-generating property for Kearney.

Speaking of schools: The Smithville Marketplace TIF is a rotten deal for the Smithville School District.

Smithville, like many metro towns north of the river, is growing. Its population has doubled over the past 15 years, to nearly 10,000 people. The overwhelming reason why more people are choosing to settle in Smithville is the school district: A 2015 city-contracted survey found that 95 percent of new residents attributed their move to the presence of good schools. In the last 10 years, the Smithville School District has grown by 400 students and is projected to grow by 400 more over the next decade. To keep pace, residents have in recent years passed bonds and a levy increase to fund the construction and renovation of school buildings.

Under ordinary circumstances, tax revenue from commercial properties in Smithville (which are taxed at 32 percent) would help shoulder the cost of educating all those new children. Given that the schools receive 66 percent of all property-tax revenue in the city, they’re the ones that stand to lose the most under a TIF, which freezes their main source of revenue for up to 23 years. Often, TIF proposals take this into account, and a city will bake into a TIF deal a guarantee that the school district won’t be adversely affected. This is achieved by stipulating that

12

a very small percentage — sometimes none — of the property-tax revenues generated by a TIF can be diverted away from the schools.

The deal will be structured so that sales taxes, not property taxes, are the primary resource used to pay the developer.

But within the Smithville Marketplace TIF, Cadence will capture 100 percent of all new tax revenue for the next 23 years. It will then slice off a mere 10 percent of those new revenues for the schools and contribute an annual payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) estimated at $23,000. Originally, Cadence offered no PILOT, making this nominal concession — from Cadence’s point of view, anyway — a compromise.

Not compared to the old TIF at Smithville Commons, though. That TIF, on property abandoned after the market crashed in 2008, yielded a far more equitable deal for Smithville’s schools. It directed only 50 percent of the property taxes from the schools for 15 years. “As TIFs go, the TIF negotiated at Smithville Commons in the mid-2000s was a reasonably fair compromise, and the district was prepared to support a new TIF that had those terms,” Todd Schuetz, superintendent of the Smithville School District and a member of the TIF Commission, tells The Pitch.

“We didn’t know they were going to ask for 100 percent over 23 years until they passed out the project materials at that meeting. We were blindsided.”

A closer look at those materials doesn’t inspire confidence in the integrity behind the request for a $10 million public subsidy. Does $56,000 per acre sound like a reasonable price for land in Smithville, Missouri? That’s what Cadence has proposed: $3.7 million in tax dollars to buy a 66-acre site with a fair-market value of $460,000.

Cadence also retains the right to sell pads within the site (again, a site taxpayers are paying for Cadence to purchase) to any entity it chooses, keeping all of the profit.

There’s more: Smithville taxpayers are also paying a substantial portion of the construction costs of the new Price Chopper. Usually TIF monies go toward a project’s necessary public improvements (water, sewers, roads, etc.). At Smithville Marketplace, though, the plan calls for the city to pay $1.7 million toward the construction of a private business.

Pretty sweet deal — provided you work for Cadence or Cosentino’s.

In Smithville, as in most places, TIF proposals are heard first by a local TIF commission, and then by the city’s governing body — in the case of Smithville, the Board of Aldermen.

On July 12, Ross and Polsinelli lawyer Evan Fitts presented their plan to the Smithville TIF Commission. It passed, 6-3, with representatives from the schools and the library voting against. Less than a month later, the full Board of Aldermen heard the Cadence pitch.

In a testament to either the civic fluency of Smithville residents or the increasingly abysmal reputation of TIFs, the Cadence plan attracted a healthy opposition at these meetings. Many, like Becker, cited direct experience with TIFs. “I’ve been working in the field of taxpayerfinanced projects for 25 years, and I’ve seen a lot of these presentations,” Matt Webster told the aldermen. “You should reject this or, at the very least, delay it. Hollowing out a school district to pay for your development is considered poor practice virtually everywhere.”

Webster — a vice president and director of capital markets for Ameritas Investment Corporation; not exactly Karl Marx — also noted that the two largest TIF districts north of the river (the Shoal Creek TIF and the KCI Corridor TIF) both hold school districts harmless by collecting only sales-tax revenue. Webster further objected to the inflated prices Cadence was asking the city to pay for the land and the property.

“Some of these budget items are simply unconscionable,” Webster said. “You could have them [Cadence and Price Chopper] build their own store, or build on their own land, and make the school district whole. This TIF will create a precedent where, I promise you, everybody who comes after will ask for the same deal.”

Steve Wolcott, a former school board president who sat on the TIF Commission when Smithville Commons was approved, also registered a dim view of Cadence’s proposal.

“You’re taking a significant taxpayer in this district [Price Chopper] and moving it to a tax-free zone,” Wolcott said. “At minimum, the developer should be agreeing to hold the school district harmless. Not by a percentage, but a hard dollar amount in sales-tax revenues that might be lost and also in property tax revenues. This could cause severe economic hardship to a school district that’s trying to keep ahead of future development.”

Ross and Fitts told the aldermen at the meeting in August that they were working on a short timeframe to get the deal done. The second-largest potential tenant in the proposed development, Heritage Tractor, was looking to consolidate its two locations (one in Kearney, the other in Platte City) inside Smithville city limits, but needed to know if it could count on Smithville Marketplace to be its new home.

For that reason, Ross and Fitts claimed, a vote was necessary that night. Excessive deliberation regarding the terms of the TIF would compromise Cadence’s ability to lock down Heritage.

“They say they’ve been working on this for four years, and yet now we have to rush it through in one night?” asked Ruth Dickinson, a Smithville resident who previously served on a TIF commission in Nebraska. “I’m concerned that our city is being taken advantage of.”

All indications are that Dickinson was correct. Though one alderman, Cory Booth, made a motion to delay the vote, it failed. When

the time came, all but one of the aldermen supported the Smithville Marketplace TIF. Within a week, Heritage Tractor announced that, actually, it would not be moving into the Cadence development. It had bought a building down the road instead.

Fitts at Polsinelli did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Neither did Ross at Cadence. Ditto Cosentino’s. After initially agreeing to an interview, Smithville Mayor Brian Fullmer stopped replying to phone calls and emails. Alderman Bob Arnold passed me off to the city’s development department. Alderman Melissa Wilson, the lone vote opposing the Cadence TIF, would not elaborate on her decision other than to say that she felt more time was warranted before votes were cast.

Alderman Booth, who favored delaying a decision in August but ultimately voted in favor of the TIF, defends his vote as a compromise to ensure Price Chopper’s continued presence around Smithville.

“They don’t have to go far to jump Smithville city lines,” Booth says. “They said they have to expand to compete. In their current location, they can’t expand, because they don’t own the building. That’s a danger. Also, Smithville Commons has been an eyesore for 11 years now, and this was our first offer on it.”

Hendrix, the Smithville development director who was instrumental in assembling the deal, emphasizes the previous lack of interest in the Smithville Commons site.

“I think one frustration from opponents is that the ‘but-for’ test has not been met,” he says. “As in, would this development occur if not for the city giving the developer these incentives? My evidence there is that this spot has sat vacant for 10 years.”

But why the haste? Why not craft an incentives package that won’t starve the schools? Or one that arrives at a sale price for the land that doesn’t so transparently favor the developer?

“End of the day, the developer profit is specifically identified in the plan,” Hendrix says. “It’s 8.2 percent, which is on the low end of the trigger for these types of deals.”

Like just about everything related to this plan, though, that figure is misleading. The 8.2 percent profit does not take into account the cool $1 million in “developer fees” Cadence has carved out for itself in the plan. In other words, Cadence will make a million dollars, plus an 8.2 percent return. On a project for which it is putting up zero equity.

“Was it rammed through? I would say yes,” Booth says. “But I don’t think that deal was going to get any better. If you believe what the developer and city staff said about the difficulties of developing that property, there wasn’t much wiggle room there. I’m not saying we didn’t get hornswoggled — maybe we did. But that’s why I voted the way I did. I believed the developer and I believed what city staff told us.”

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

PITCH_9-10,12_NewsA Pitch_11-17_56.indd 12Smithville.indd 12

10/23/17 10/21/17 10:58 2:43 PM AM

Time is running out!

Sign up at HealthCare.gov for 2016 coverage.

The deadline to enroll is January 31.

RHCI ACA The Pitch 2.3125 by 5.6667- 101217B.pdf 1 10/12/2017 10:48:54 AM

Need health insurance?

URBAN MINING

Plans are changing.

kansas city’s original first friday weekend market

The enrollment period only lasts six weeks this year, so don’t wait.

C

Enroll today!

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

Have questions?

Get FREE, in-person help:

Do you think you have conjunctivitis (pink eye)?

You and/or your child may be able to participate if you (or they):

CMY

K

CALL

NEXT EVENTS

NoV 2 - 5 NoV 30 - DEc 3 High-style antique & midcentury furniture, art and artifacts for the home.

Vintage and contemporary original art.

urbanminingvintage.com 3923 main street in kansas city

• have had pink eye symptoms (e.g. redness, watering/ discharge, or irritation) in at least one eye for no more than the past 3 days • are interested in taking part in a research study for up to 13 days • are willing to travel to the study center for appointments.

2-1-1 OR VISIT

CoverKC.org You may be eligible for financial help.

Qualified participants may receive the non-antibiotic investigational drug and study-related procedures and visits at no cost. Health insurance is not required to participate.

To find out more, and to see if you qualify, call:

Open enrollment Nov. 1–Dec. 15

1-877-802-1810 www.PinkEyeClinicalTrial.com

CTM_Alt Patient BW Print Ad [V01 USA]

You can get FREE, LOCAL help from a trained assister.

Dogs need vacations, too.

THE GETAWAY FOR PAMPERED POOCHES

BOARDING

(816) 361-3388

DAYCARE

SPA

7200 WYANDOTTE STREET KANSAS CITY, MO 64114

TRAINING

POOCHESPARADISE.COM

pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 13

13

10/20/17 3:27 PM

14

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 14

10/20/17 3:27 PM

news Nobody’s quite sure where Stepp (seen here in Wisconsin) lives or works now.

Who’s Cathy Stepp?

This region’s unlikely No. 2 administrator at the EPA dislikes regulations — and transparency.

by Karen Dillon

Donald Trump’s surprise factory pumped out a local mystery in August when the White House appointed Cathy Stepp to a top position at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 7 headquarters in Lenexa. Stepp is well known in Wisconsin, where she has taken sharp stances against environmental regulation. But what’s she doing here?

Over the summer, the Trump administration said Stepp’s title would be acting director, and that she would help carry out the EPA’s agenda in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa. And when the White House appointed a top regional administrator, Stepp would become that person’s second-in-command. This came to pass in early October, when the White House appointed Jim Gulliford, a former EPA chief during President George W. Bush’s term.

Gulliford has spent more than three decades working in the environmental field. Stepp has no similar qualifications on her résumé, and it’s unclear why she has been summoned to the agency as a political appointee to a job that did not previously exist — at a time when Scott Pruitt, Trump’s EPA secretary, is asking for an unprecedented 31 percent reduction of his annual budget.

Stepp has so far refused interview requests.

Her supervisors in Washington, D.C., have also kept mum. In the most specific statement shared to this point, EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman says: “Cathy Stepp brings a wealth of knowledge to EPA, and will serve an important role leading EPA’s Region 7 efforts to protect human health and the environment.”

EPA officials have insisted that any request for information about Stepp must be submitted through the Freedom of Information Act, a process that sometimes takes years to get a response.

In fact, EPA officials have refused to disclose such basic information as Stepp’s salary and her job description — facts that are matters of public record and are typically posted on government websites. Google does not reveal much, either. Stepp, 54, graduated from a Milwaukee suburban high school in 1981.

She and her husband owned a small homeconstruction business. In more recent years, they rented and sold used trucks and other equipment. They had an apartment in Elkhart, Wisconsin, and a few years ago bought acreage near Branson, Missouri, and built a home.

Stepp enjoys hunting, and has been photographed with the occasional slain deer.

In 2002, Stepp was elected to the Wisconsin legislature, but dropped out after one term, saying she was a traditionalist and wanted to be home to spend more time with her two children and her husband. She didn’t leave politics

behind altogether, though; in Wisconsin, she became a vocal critic of what she regarded as unnecessary environmental regulations imposed on construction companies (such as the business she and her husband ran). In 2011, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker appointed Stepp to head the state’s Department of Natural Resources, an agency with 2,500 full-time employees and a $575 million budget. She did not have any experience leading such a large organization; Walker said he’d chosen Stepp because he wanted someone with a “chamber of commerce mentality.” She made headlines by favoring businesses over the enforcement of environmental regulations, despite the risk of public harm. She was unpopular with environmentalists and Democrats, but conservative Republicans liked her. Last year, she campaigned for Trump, appearing onstage with him several times.

Her record in the Badger State is in step with Pruitt’s pro-industry to-do list. While she was head of the Wisconsin DNR, enforcement of environmental regulations dwindled.

At least two audits were critical of the agency; one found that, 95 percent of the time from 2005 through 2014, the DNR had failed to issue violation notices to known wastewater polluters. According to news reports, she also greatly restructured the agency, shedding many of the science and environmental professionals. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that on her watch, the DNR blacklisted citizens who were perceived as having asked too many questions.

“We are very concerned about her role and her record on the environment,” John Hickey, director of the Sierra Club’s Missouri Chapter, tells The Pitch. “We need the EPA to be the sheriff. If the EPA is not going to stand up to polluters, we’ll see them in court.”

Stepp seems unlikely to earn the Sierra Club’s confidence. But what are her priorities?

Absent an official description of her duties or word from the woman herself, her mission is a big blank. Her salary is likely pretty good, though. Her peers in such roles have generally drawn salaries of $150,000 to $200,000 a year — though, unlike Stepp, those persons have held post-graduate degrees and racked up considerable experience in science, policymaking or both.

The EPA hasn’t said whether Stepp works at its Lenexa office, where her staff is. Asked whether she has worked or may work from her home in Branson, or in Elkhorn, Wisconsin (eight hours from Lenexa and outside Region 7’s jurisdiction), the EPA would not say. Other questions the agency would not answer, other than to direct that they be re-

WiscoNsiN Public RAdio

peated in a Freedom of Information Act filing: What qualifications led the White House to put Stepp in charge of one of the 12 EPA regions? What are her plans for EPA policy and enforcement? What are her thoughts regarding some of the main issues affecting Region 7 (renewable energy, polluting power plants, climate change, fracking and earthquakes, clean water)?

In 2011, soon after Stepp was appointed to be Wisconsin’s DNR director — with a $125,000 salary — she and her husband, Paul Stepp, bought 4 acres of land near Branson.

They completed building a 2,000-squarefoot, three-bedroom house there in 2014.

They seem never to have alerted the Taney County Assessor’s Office about the home, though; since construction ended, they have continued to pay a tax bill of $28 a year for the acreage alone.

Glenda Giles, Taney County’s deputy assessor, expressed surprise when I asked her about the house in September. Since that conversation, the county has appraised the house at $115,220 and set property taxes at $1,117 a year. Giles said the Stepps would receive a corrected tax bill in November but would not be required to pay back taxes because the oversight was determined to have been that of the assessor’s office.

“We do have taxpayers who do come in and say, ‘We are building a house and our house is finished,’ because they want to know how much their taxes are,” Giles told me last month. “In this case, they didn’t notify us.”

She expressed some disappointment about this.

Stepp did not respond to questions about her Branson home.

The same year construction on the Branson home was finished, the Stepps still had their apartment in Elkhorn, 62 miles from Cathy Stepp’s DNR job in Madison. (Google Maps indicates that, were Stepp commuting to work from the apartment, her trip would take about 90 minutes a day.) According to election records in Walworth County, where Elkhorn is located, the Stepps registered to

vote there on October 23, 2014, and are still registered in that precinct.

Wisconsin Secretary of State records connect Paul Stepp to a company called Magnum Truck & Equipment, with him as principal agent and the Elkhorn apartment as the business’s principal office. News stories about Cathy Stepp have referred to her as having at one time been vice president of the company. The Pitch called two numbers that were listed on websites advertising Magnum Truck & Equipment in Elkhorn and two other Wisconsin cities. Both phone numbers had been disconnected.

When I called a third phone number found on property records, Paul Stepp answered, saying, “Magnum Truck and Equipment, can I help you?” After he confirmed who he was, I asked him whether he was still living in Wisconsin.

“I’m not going to answer anything at all,” he said. I asked to speak to his wife. He replied, “I’ll let her know you called.”

One EPA official, who asked not to be identified, told me that Branson is now Cathy Stepp’s primary residence. The official said Stepp’s commute “is her responsibility” before saying, perhaps in jest, that she “will not be taking government-funded planes” to work.

The same official said that the EPA is not providing Stepp with a driver and will not pay for hotels or apartments in Lenexa.

Still, the official refused to say whether Stepp would work from her home in Branson or would keep regular office hours in Lenexa.

Stepp, Taney County officials confirm, has not registered to vote there and will not be eligible to vote in the November election.

In April, Stepp met with EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt, his chief of staff and the EPA’s White House liaison for one hour, according to Pruitt’s calendar, which The New York Times obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. No other information regarding the meeting was available. Trump has given jobs to numerous persons who worked on his campaign or otherwise supported his White House run. A recent Politico article pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

PITCH_15-16_NewsB 15 Pitch_11-17_56.indd EPA_R.indd 15

15

10/23/17 10/23/17 12:54 1:27 PM

news

Voted

Best The so-far-untaxed Branson house

ow offer We n

GROOMING up Pickrop off & D !

1-2 DAY Place your order online at

Barkerybath.com or by phone!

BROOKSIDE 118 W. 63rd Street

816-333-2275 16

LEE’S SUMMIT

817 N.E. Woods Chapel Rd.

816-554-2284

listed almost two dozen campaign workers who had been hired at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where they will work in jobs typically held by farm experts. The campaign workers, Politico reported, had little or no experience in federal policy and lacked credentials for their jobs — including, in some cases, a college degree. Among the USDA hires were a truck driver, a cabana attendant and a landscaper.

Bowman, the EPA spokeswoman, told me that Pruitt was able to appoint Stepp under a little-known rule in the Safe Drinking Water Act. That law permits the agency to appoint “not more than (30) scientific, engineering, professional, legal, and administrative positions … without regard to the civil service laws.”

The EPA has made a number of political appointments using the Safe Drinking Water Act, according to a letter to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, written by Sens.

Sheldon Whitehouse, of Rhode Island, and Tom Carper, of Delaware, both Democrats.

Richard Davidson, Whitehouse’s spokesman, told me that the GAO was planning to investigate the EPA’s hiring practices, including possible abuses of that hiring exception.

According to the senators’ letter, the appointments may have circumvented Trump’s own ethics rules, which were put in place soon after the president took office to, as he has often put it, “drain the swamp.” Stepp’s appointment is in keeping with several other patronage nods Trump has made on Pruitt’s

advice. In an administration noted for having kept hundreds of positions vacant, the president has already appointed to federal jobs several people who are climate-change deniers or opponents of environmental regulations, or who lack scientific qualifications for their jobs, according to a New York Times story.

For instance, Trump recently appointed a former Texas environmental regulator to head the Council on Environmental Quality. That newly minted bureaucrat, Kathleen Hartnett White, has argued that carbon dioxide “is a harmless gas that should not be regulated,” according to the Times. In October, Trump nominated Andrew Wheeler, a coal lobbyist, to be Pruitt’s No. 2 man at the EPA. The Sierra Club, in a recent press release, said that EPA political appointees who lack basic knowledge about science are “dangerous for America,” leading to a “nightmare scenario for anyone who wants clean air and clean water.”

Pruitt understands exactly how controversial his environmental policy and his political appointments are. Because of threats reportedly made against him, according to The Washington Post, he has requisitioned an 18-person, 24-hour security detail — a first for an EPA administrator. To staff the detail, the EPA has reassigned special agents who typically investigate environmental crimes.

At least those EPA employees know where their boss is.

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

PITCH_15-16_NewsB EPA_R.indd 16 Pitch_11-17_56.indd 16

10/23/17 12:55 PM 10/23/17 1:30 PM

Pitch-Nov2017.pdf 1 10/19/2017 2:39:44 PM

C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

Untitled-21 1 Pitch_11-17_56.indd 17

17

10/19/17 3:28 10/20/17 4:23 PM

politics

Sunflower Showdown The ACLU’s Micah Kubic is the anti-Kobach. by barbara Shelly

Every story improves with a villain. And for a pumped-up crowd in the Lied Center at the University of Kansas on a balmy October evening, a certain swaggering fabricator is most hiss-worthy — a down-ballot Kansas politician turned national menace.

The American Civil Liberties Union has brought some of its home-office leaders to Lawrence to launch its “Let People Vote” initiative, carefully laying out a case that Republicans are systematically obliterating voting rights in America, and a grass-roots movement is needed to stop them. Now, Faiz Shakur, the ACLU’s national political director, taps a local guy to talk about Kansas’ own Darth Vader.

“Micah,” Shakur starts, “who is Kris Kobach?”

Perched atop one of those awkward talllegged chairs that exist only to make public speakers uncomfortable, Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Kansas, seizes the moment as though he’s just caught the football with nothing but open field ahead.

“Kris Kobach has been the secretary of state here in Kansas since 2011, and during his tenure he has earned the nickname ‘the king of voter suppression,’ ” he says. “Mind you, there are quite a few contenders for that particular crown in the country today, but he is the undisputed champion.”

Kubic proceeds to deliver a blistering indictment of the man who co-chairs Donald Trump’s fraudulently named Election Integ-

18

rity Commission — and wants to be the next governor of Kansas.

“Who is Kris Kobach?” Kubic asks, repeatedly and with relish.

“He’s someone who puts up barrier after barrier to make it harder for people to register. ... He’s someone whose policies unsurprisingly harm African-Americans and Latinos more than anyone else. ... He’s someone who uses false narratives to push his ideas.”

And now, Kubic announces, warming up to his closer, Kobach has a platform to inflict upon the nation the ideas he’s used to suppress voter registration and turnout in Kansas. “Ideas that are usually illegal, frequently unconstitutional, and always, always wrong.”

Kobach watchers know he likes to promote himself as “the ACLU’s worst nightmare.”

That plays well with Kobach’s base — an anti-immigrant crowd prone to picturing the ACLU as a commie-enabling klatch of radicals. But the audience in the Lied Center — a mostly 50-plus, decidedly unradical-looking group of Midwesterners — understands that Kobach has the equation backward. So do the hundreds of people around the nation who are watching a live-streamed version of the Let People Vote event: The ACLU is Kris Kobach’s worst nightmare.

The organization’s lawyers are smarter than Kobach is. Its donation base — swollen from the backlash to Donald Trump’s election — is deeper than any legal fund in Kansas’ bankrupt state government. And the ACLU

has the advantage of defending liberties that most Americans cherish, whereas Kobach is fighting for a narrow nativist vision tailored to those on the margins.

ACLU leaders clearly have no intention of sitting back on defense. By portraying Kobach as a national peril, they aim to rally citizens to oppose the kinds of voting restrictions he favors. And what better way to show your contempt for the man than to get more people to the polls?

“While Kobach attempts to attack the right to vote, the ACLU is taking the fight to him,” Brian Tashman, a strategist for the group, writes in a blog post. “In advocating for the protection and expansion of voting rights, People Power activists will be combating Kobach’s destructive policies that brought chaos to his home state.”

By promoting the “Let People Vote” event, the ACLU assembled a contact list of people around the country who, its leaders hope, can mobilize quickly when needed.

Kobach’s status as the face of GOP efforts to suppress minority votes around the country has raised the politician’s profile, yes. At the same time — and perhaps more crucially — he has elevated the profile of the ACLU’s Kansas chapter.

Which makes Micah Kubic the anti-Kobach.

When Kubic took over as executive director, in January 2015, he was one of three staff members. “I came in and made the coffee,” he tells me. “I took out the trash. I wrote our testimony for legislative hearings.”

Now eight staffers work out of the Kansas ACLU’s nuts-and-bolts headquarters in an Overland Park office complex, near Shawnee Mission Parkway, and the chapter is still hir-

ing. It opened a satellite office in Wichita this summer. Although the chapter gets involved in a range of topics, its priority areas of advocacy are criminal-justice reform, defending the rights of immigrants and, of course, voting rights. Kubic spends much of his time making appearances and giving speeches — about 150 a year, by his count.

This is not unlike Kobach’s schedule. The two men are also alike in that they share outsize brainpower, elite academic credentials and supercharged ambition. But their motives, ideals, associations and experiences are very different.

A short version: Kobach, 51, graduated at the top of his class from a Topeka high school, earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a law degree from Yale, then made a name for himself by crafting laws to harass undocumented immigrants and make it harder for certain groups of people to vote.

He has collaborated with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has described as a hate group.

Kubic, 33, graduated at the top of his North Kansas City High School class, earned a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University, then picked up a master’s degree and a doctorate from Howard University. His specialty is black politics. His work experience involves community building. He is the youngest-ever board chairman of People to People International, Mary Eisenhower’s international peace-and-friendship network.

I first heard about Kubic years ago, from teachers at Foreign Language Academy in the Kansas City Public Schools. Kubic was in college by the time my child reached middle school there, but the staff still talked about him.

November 2017 the pitch pitch || November pitch.com 2017 || pitch.com the

PITCH_18-19_Politics 18 Pitch_11-17_56.indd KubicACLU.indd 18

10/20/17 10/20/17 12:09 3:33 PM

politics

Kubic (in the bow tie) spoke at the ACLU’s October 1 Lawrence event.

zACh bAUMAn

Mary Morin, a computer teacher, recalls that she assigned her students to compile a booklet consisting of an original poem and a few other poems that they liked. Kubic turned in a binder three or four inches thick, she says, complete with his own illustrations.

By the time he reached his senior year in the North Kansas City School District, Kubic had racked up national honors in debate and writing competitions and scored a couple of prestigious internships. The Clay County Commission actually declared a Micah Wade Kubic Day to recognize his accomplishments.

Kubic accepted the honor dressed in a suit and a bow tie — a flourish he still favors. “I’ve always worn bow ties, and now I love them,” he tells me. “People give them to me for gifts, and I have about 150 of them.”

Once Kubic left for college in Washington, people figured they’d seen the last of him in KC. But immediately after graduation, he turned up at City Hall, working as an aide to Councilman Troy Nash, for whom he had campaigned as a teenager.

“He kept that place running,” Nash says.

“He just moved so fast. Everybody and everything was important to him. He really is one of the most gifted human beings I’ve ever met.”

Nash recalls a day when Kubic — who worked almost constantly and didn’t get outside much — ducked into Nash’s office, looking paler than usual. “Who is that?” Kubic asked his boss. Nash poked his head out and saw Schylon Clayton, an African-American woman who worked as an aide to another councilman. Several years later Kubic and

Clayton married; they have a son.

Kubic returned to Washington in 2007 to obtain advanced degrees from Howard, a historically black university. Then it was right back to Kansas City, where he took jobs at Greater Kansas City LISC, a communitybuilding group, and the Full Employment Council before signing on with the ACLU. In the Kansas office, much of the heavy lifting for the past nine years has been the work of Doug Bonney, who recently retired as chief counsel and legal director but will continue to take some cases. Bonney worked on ACLU cases even before he joined its staff, and his résumé is loaded with successful outcomes in litigation involving church-and-state conflicts, LGBT matters, and legislative overreach on abortion and other issues. He had watched as unfounded allegations of voter fraud gave rise to legislative actions in Missouri and other states. When Kansans elected Kobach secretary of state in 2010, Bonney guessed that defense of voting rights might take up some of his time.

He was right. Bonney and other lawyers from the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project are involved in four cases stemming from a Kansas

law, designed by Kobach, that requires proof of U.S. citizenship — usually a passport or a birth certificate — in order to complete a voter registration. That stipulation conflicts with federal law, which says states must offer a simple registration form, requiring no proof-of-citizenship papers, at motor vehicle offices. So far, Bonney and his colleagues have consistently thwarted efforts by Kobach and his allies to disenfranchise or limit voting for Kansans who register with the federal form.

Bonney tells me he sleeps just fine at night, untroubled by nightmares about Kobach. “I guess he believes his false claims that there’s this rash of noncitizen voting going on,” he says. “I don’t doubt his sincerity. It just doesn’t seem like an issue that has much of a chance at success.”

In the courts, this is turning out to be true.

But confusion about voting requirements is complicating efforts to register new voters in Kansas. And a request by Kobach’s federal commission for intrusive data on voters prompted several thousand Americans to cancel their registrations.

If Kobach is giving Kansas a bad name among civil-liberties advocates, Kubic is do-

ing his best to repair it. “I love this place,” he says. “I believe in this place. I think it’s important to defend the state’s history and reputation of being the free state. Not just a free state — the free state.”

Being an almost ridiculously optimistic sort, Kubic will tell you that the challenges of defending civil liberties in the land of Kobach aren’t so much daunting as they are invigorating.

“I love the fact that we have the opportunity here to stop bad ideas from going viral,” he says. “When we can stop terrible policies that undermine civil liberties and civil rights here in Kansas, other folks aren’t even willing to try them.”

This strikes me as wishful thinking.

Republican state legislatures toss bad ideas around like candy at a parade. If court rulings, fact checking and truth telling were enough to stymie such efforts, the phony notion of voter fraud would have been forgotten long ago.

Still, better to be the state where bad ideas are wrestled to the turf than the place that lets them fester. Kobach may be too arrogant to have nightmares, but the ACLU and its Kansas chapter mean to keep him fully awake. november 2017 2017 | the pitch pitch.com | November

PITCH_18-19_Politics 19 Pitch_11-17_56.indd KubicACLU.indd 19

19

10/20/17 11:32 10/23/17 12:10 AM PM

Missouri Western Means Business Masters in Information Management Enterprise Resource Planning using SAPTM �2 locations: St. Joseph and Kansas City �SAP TERP 10 Certification class and exam �Evening class times

MBA

On Campus

Masters of Business Administration �General Business �Enterprise Resource Planning �Forensic Accounting �Animal and Life Sciences AVAILABLE ONLINE BEGINNING FALL 2018.

everything is possible

Missouri Western is an equal opportunity institution.

20

missouriwestern.edu/business (816) 271-4351

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 20

10/20/17 3:50 PM

profile

The Dreamer

Immigration lawyer angie Williams gives legal help to asylum seekers — and a kidney to husband Francisco Ortiz.

by Traci angel

Angie Williams is at her desk, on her phone.

She’s at her desk a lot of the time, on her phone more than that. Williams is an immigration lawyer. And if her profession had somehow not existed before Donald J. Trump was elected to the White House, this turbulent year would certainly have forced its invention.

She attended St. Teresa’s Academy in Kansas City and then Baker University in Kansas.

She earned a master’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of Kansas, then a law degree from the University of Missouri–Kansas City. At first, her private practice concentrated on municipal and state criminal cases. Now, her load is federal criminal and immigration cases.

She talks, and I look around her office.

It’s lined with bookshelves, which are packed with frames and prints containing quotes and legal references. “Love and Compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive,” reads one such message, credited to the Dalai Lama. The décor seems designed to comfort her clients, who have good reason to feel anxious. She works for immigrants and families facing deportation, for people who have gotten into trouble with the law. Many of her cases involve people from Latin America seeking asylum from corruption and violence. A prominent example: Mercedes Zelaya, whose husband was assassinated in front of their home in the Honduras.

Meanwhile, every week seems to yield some new policy from the Trump admin-

istration, some new tampering with somebody’s rights. The Muslim ban right after the president was sworn in. This fall’s threat to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals protection for immigrants brought to the United States as children.

Williams’ phone keeps ringing. And she keeps answering.

She nods and continues talking into the phone for a moment and then hangs up. This call was about help of a different kind.

“I just found out that I am a match for my husband,” she tells me. “He needs a kidney.”

She was tested last November and learned she was what’s called a “cross match.” Blood from the donor and the recipient are mixed to make sure they are compatible. More testing was done to verify whether she could give him a kidney.

“We had a pretty good idea, but this is the final word,” she says.

“Do you need to call him?” I ask her.

“I’ll call him later,” she says. She’s still working, though now with the knowledge that she’ll soon have to take some time away.

“Immigrants are always the scapegoats,” Williams says. “You can always find an easy blame. They are always taking jobs, using too much welfare — whatever it is, you can always blame immigrants for it because they are always outside and other and they are not ‘us.’ ” The reality is the opposite, she says. Most economists say immigrants are good for the

Williams and Ortiz at home before surgery

U.S. market — more likely to set up their own business, and statistically younger, making them better for the Social Security program.

She tells me her change in practice was inspired by time spent helping at a detention center in Artesia, New Mexico, three years ago.

“It was so bad that I still have flashbacks about it,” Williams says. “It was so bad. It was such a betrayal of everything that I have held dear about being a lawyer and about our form of government. The conditions, the way they were treating people, they way they were blatantly ignoring people’s due process. It was in the middle of nowhere, and these women and their children were put in these trailers, essentially, and just force-fed through this asylum process in such a slipshod manner.”

And now?

“What has been happening since the new administration is panic,” she tells me.

The Obama administration was hardly lax; some families were split up, some persons with criminal histories were deported. But enforcement criteria was much more case by case in the eight years before Trump, she says. “If an undocumented worker was arrested for a traffic violation, you had a much better chance that immigration would not pick you up.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s mission under Trump, Williams says, is to “pick up whoever you can pick up.”

“I represent Muslims, and the Trump ban is leaving us daily to wake up to a new concern,” she says. “It’s a completely unprecedented attack on immigration.”

Zach Bauman

“What has Been happenIng sInce the neW admIstratIOn Is panIc.” Williams

Mercedes Zelaya sits at the dining room table inside the Kansas City, Kansas, home of Judy Ancel, with whom she and her kids have been staying for more than a year. Zelaya fled her home country of Honduras, escaping with her children after they saw Nelson Noel Garcia Lainz — Zelaya’s husband, the children’s father — shot to death in front of the family’s home.

Williams is representing Zelaya as she seeks asylum in the United States. Ancel, the former director of the labor-studies program at UMKC, remains a labor activist and is president of the Cross Border Network board.

“Her great fear is that she will be denied asylum, and it will not be safe to go home.

Her husband’s family has suffered several threats,” Ancel says.

Lainz was part of the same organization as Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores, the leader of a group called Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. COPINH has clashed often with other political groups as it advocates for indigenous rights.

“We were for a number of days seeking refuge around the country,” Zelaya says of the time right after her husband’s slaying — three pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

PITCH_21-22_ProfileA21 Pitch_11-17_56.indd AngieWilliams.indd 21

21

10/23/17 10/21/17 10:59 4:50 PM AM

profile

months of being chased and hiding. With Ancel helping to translate, she goes on: “We were really scared to stay in one place. We had to always keep moving. In my country there is no protection for people who are victims of crime.”

She had no family in this country, but she did have one friend in the Independence area. So Zelaya and her children set out for Missouri.

“We rode 17 hours in a container in a back of a truck with more than 100 people,” she says. “We felt like cattle.” The truck moved only at night. There was no bathroom. There was no food. Maintaining circulation meant an air conditioner that kept everyone uncomfortably cold. At one point, Zelaya says, the driver was stopped by Mexican immigration; he paid a bribe to get back on the road.

Eight days later, dropped off by the driver, they crossed the Rio Grande on small craft — and found U.S. immigration officials waiting for them as they emerged. Who helped you cross the water? they asked. No one, Zelaya said.

“They were angry, and we were put one by one in a van,” she says. “We were wet and they gave us uniforms. We spent five days being detained until a friend sent bus money.”

Because they were seeking asylum, officials fastened a tracking bracelet to Zelaya’s ankle. She wore it for eight months; immigration officials removed the shackle but added a monitoring device to her phone. Now she

22

waits for permission to start working, and for a hearing next spring. Her kids are in school, learning English.

Even asylum cases as compelling a Zelaya’s often don’t end well.

Denials of asylum by immigration judges continued to rise last year, according to a report published by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an independent database that gathers statistics on issues of justice and law enforcement. “As of the end of September 2016, overall asylum denial rates for [fiscal year] 2016 had risen to 57 percent.”

For asylum seekers without a lawyer, the chances of being sent away increased dramatically. Last year, the same report notes, “immigration judges denied 4,515 unrepresented asylum seekers’ claims 90 percent of the time. ... In contrast, if represented, the odds of denial last year was 48 percent.”

“One of the problems about immigration and immigration discussion is that it’s so multilayered, and most people don’t understand it and it just turns into this discussion about documented and undocumented,” Williams says. “And that is true not only with the problem itself but how to fix it, and how to fix the situation of how to help people who have lived in the country for 10 years, and how to help those who are arriving at the border and seeking asylum from South America. Those are completely different issues.” (Refugees are similar to asylum seekers, except they can apply for

refugee status before entering the United States, Williams says.)

Between 2006 and 2013, Williams had three asylum cases. But since 2014, she has taken some 70 cases, for clients from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. She says 95 percent of her clients now are asylum seekers.

Three noisy dogs — Poncho, Cisco and Chuy — greet me when I arrive at the home Williams shares with her husband, Francisco Ortiz, on the the west side of Waldo. A small print of Picasso’s “Don Quixote” hangs near the doorway.

Williams is in the kitchen, preparing dinner. Tonight, that means opening packages from Blue Apron, the meal-delivery company.

On the menu: pan-seared steaks and oven fries.

“We’ve been doing this for a long time,” she says. “Even before he [Ortiz] started with dialysis. They send you all the fresh ingredients, all the vegetables and spices. Essentially all you need is salt and pepper and olive oil.” She turns to Ortiz: “Did you turn the oven on?”

For the past year, Ortiz has had to go for dialysis every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The couple makes dinner on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ortiz, 38 and a document specialist at a law firm, has been on the transplant list since August 2016. Now the operation is three weeks away. He had suffered from diabetes for years, and kidney disease runs in his family.

“If I wasn’t a match,” Williams says, “he might be on the list three to five years — and that is the fast track.” She was the first person doctors tested; friends and family members also volunteered to be tested. “He doesn’t love that I’m doing this,” she says. “But I’m going to get my way.” She turns to him again and says, “Well, you’d do it for me if I needed it.”

The couple met when Williams was seeking strategic counsel — not legal advice but tips to improve her World of Warcraft game.

“He had been playing the game longer than I had,” she says of their virtual introduction.

“I was terrible.”

“I kind of took her under my wing,” Ortiz says.

Ortiz moved to Kansas City from Dallas in 2013, and they married the next year. They still play the game, shouting at each other from different rooms.

As they continue making dinner, Williams takes a butcher knife and starts slicing corn kernels from a cob while Francisco studies the cooking directions. She picks up some cherry tomatoes.

“Did you put a lot of garlic in the sauce?”

Ortiz asks his wife.

“I put all the garlic in the sauce,” she says.

On September 13, Williams and Ortiz arrived at Research Medical Center for the operation that would transfer one of Williams’ kidneys to her husband.

By then, Williams had cleared her office desk as much as she could, ahead of a recovery she knew would take weeks. A recent announcement had been made: The Trump administration will seek to eliminate DACA. “It is just nonstop with everything taking place,” she told me a couple of days before the surgery. “I don’t have answers. I’m really stressed out about it and I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Her clients’ cases have been continued while Williams and Ortiz recover.

Zelaya’s asylum hearing is months away.

Now, in recovery after the transplant, I’ve found Ortiz sitting up in his chair, watching television. His new kidney is working; he started producing urine soon after the transplant, he says.

Down the hall, in a dark, cool room with the shades drawn, Williams is in an expected amount of pain. Our conversation will be short. Nurses and medical staff have given her a certificate commemorating her donation, she tells me. “They said that because of me, not only did I donate a kidney but now he has received one and everyone on the wait list moves up a spot.” For the first time in the interviews we’ve conducted, in which we’ve discussed her work and her life, she becomes emotional.

“For me, it was a no-brainer,” she says. And her expression shows a new understanding of the difference one person might make.

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

PITCH_21-22_ProfileA22 Pitch_11-17_56.indd AngieWilliams.indd 22

10/23/17 10/21/17 11:19 4:50 PM AM

profile

Harbin (right) has something for any old night.

Magnetic Resonance

Kendell harbin’s VhS safari hunts a very delicate species: memory

by Annie RAAb

Do you remember the last time you dialed a residential landline? If your communication habits are anything like mine, it’s been, what, maybe a decade? Ten years since you had to summon an outmoded etiquette: What if she’s not home? Will there be an answering machine? When will she get the message?

What if someone else — a roommate, a partner — answers?

I’d tapped out the numbers and initiated the call, but now I wondered these things. I’d seen this particular phone, could picture it sitting in the dining room of the communal house where it still ably performed its duty — a dining room being a perfectly normal and correct place to put a shared telephone connected to wiring installed at least a generation ago. And now I imagined that old device ringing, the sound echoing through someone’s house, where I enjoyed no control over who might answer. I recognized the effort I was exerting to keep from hanging up and instead sending a text.

Kendell Harbin answered on the third ring, her voice sounding something less than crisp on her analog equipment.

Harbin reverted to the landline as part of an ongoing project she has undertaken. She means to preserve and celebrate obsolete technology. Not for nothing, she’s also interested in a kind of self-preservation: “I don’t want to be so accessible wherever I am. If I’m not home, I can’t talk.”

I was calling her to ask about a non-telephonic subset of this effort, one centering on that charmingly degradable entertainment software familiar to anyone born before 1997: the VHS tape. Over the past few years, she has transformed her bedroom into a semi-comprehensive VHS library. With more than 500 of those clunky plastic tapes in her possession, Harbin has spent many hours of informal research on what she

says was an important moment in cultural history.

“I have bad taste in movies,” she tells me.

“What I have is an addictive personality that ran rampant when I finally had the space to collect as many videos as I wanted.”

Now comes the next phase, an endeavor she calls the Roaming Center for Magnetic Alternatives. The roaming part is a 1994 GMC Safari. The center part is that Harbin has cleared enough space to house all those tapes in the Safari, on shelves custom-designed for a life on the road.

Do you remember the last time you even drove by a Blockbuster? Do you remember a Blockbuster ever driving up to you? Harbin’s Safari will do just that; it’s a lending library, driven by someone targeting areas where people have been, as she puts it, “media marginalized.”

“If you’re low-income and part of a minority group, you’re less likely to go on to study something like video production,” Harbin tells me. “Therefore, it tends to be the same kind of person who gets behind the camera. And that person decides what gets put in front of the camera. This perpetuates a certain type of image about who makes up humanity.”

This, then, is the alternative part of her mission.

Alongside recognizable titles such as Hocus Pocus and Bagdad Café — films presumably green-lighted by the usual straight white men — Harbin has collected films such as The Watermelon Woman, the diary-style Videos by Sadie Benning, and tapes discarded by public libraries due to low circulation. She has tried in particular to rescue works that address queer belonging in a hetero-dominant culture.

(Inasmuch as there’s a thematic metaphor at work in the RCMA, it’s the deteriorating magnetic medium representing the historic rarity of gay filmmakers and cinematic expressions

zach bauman

of queer issues — especially in the relatively benighted, AIDS-fearful VHS era.)

Harbin means for her unconventional tapes to reach unconventional people, and she’s preparing to drive deep into the rural heartland — parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nebraska and Texas — to find young people who might be struggling with an unconventional identity. “Visibility for the queer population is an issue, especially in film media,” she says. “In one sense, the point of the project is to give people an outlet to see themselves represented. In another, it’s a project about what media representation looked liked in the VHS era. There is this big outreach component, and I don’t see the conversation about film diversity in the VHS era happening until I give people the resources to explore how this came to be.”

But what about YouTube? What about our age of the cloud, of phones you can take anywhere for private viewing and conversation?

Why VHS? I ask Harbin over our hard-wire connection.

“To me it’s obvious why this format deserves investigating,” she says. “We don’t question why we teach and study bookmaking and filmmaking, because those are historically esteemed. The VHS is technically shitty, but it had such huge cultural impact and significance to my generation.”

Beyond that, Harbin is playing a hunch, using her RCMA as a divining rod to unearth whatever roots connect the generation who experienced VHS as a marvel and a boom, and ... those of us who came later.

“My generation is coming into adulthood and beginning to influence the world,” she tells me. “This is happening at the same time the timestamp on VHS tapes is saying SELFDESTRUCT. There has to be an overlap.”

Harbin was born at a moment when the VHS camcorder usurped film as the dominant means of home moviemaking. Out there somewhere — everywhere — are thousands of hours of amateur cinematography and de facto sociology. Christmases, birthdays, proposals, weddings, embarrassments. Human encounters. Documentation of the way

we lived not very long ago. Marooned on a defunct format, though, all of these moments are at risk. The means of their storage is slipping away. In another 25 years, the contents of even a fairly well-stored tape are likely to be lost. Digitization isn’t impossible, but it’s neither cheap nor widely available.

Here, then, is the mercy in RCMA’s mission: on-site migration for those who want to convert their VHS tapes into digital or audio files. “I offer this service with an optional audio track, so people can narrate what’s going on in the footage,” Harbin says. “Anyone can bring me their VHS tapes, and I will migrate the content to a digital file to share, which they keep. RCMA will keep the tape if they don’t want it anymore. But I never want to take videos too far from where they belong.”

In fact, RCMA’s Rosebud moment involves an unknown home video. Harbin was in the process of moving her grandmother into an assisted-living center when she uncovered a tape with no label. When she slid it into the VCR, Harbin realized the film contained the story of her grandmother’s life. Someone in the family had possessed the foresight to begin a project in the early days of film, and then transfer the old medium to what was then more readily accessible. Now, on this chunky, unremarkable videocassette, Harbin saw her grandmother as a 4-year-old, then as a bride marrying Harbin’s grandfather, then becoming a mother. She watched her own mother grow up as the tape unspooled, then saw her grandmother start over with a girlfriend, and then saw another family story unfold.

All of this on an old VHS tape that someone could easily have thrown away without a thought, unable to play it now that DVDs are giving way to streaming. Harbin understood that someone needed to preserve what she could have lost. Yes, some of her Safari’s customers will want the commercial stuff from the Reagan and Clinton years. But on the road, she also hopes to set about preserving messy, beautiful personal stories. And watch them, too. On the other end of that landline, I hear Harbin tell me, “It’s a real gift to be able to watch these now.” pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

PITCH_23_ProfileB KendellHarbin.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 23 23

23

10/23/17 10/21/17 10:54 4:53 PM AM

WELCOME HOME

TO THE CHURCH OF THE RESURRECTION Discover a church that speaks to your life, challenges your mind and inspires you to make a difference in the world.

Because you deserve the best One church with four locations. Join us for worship this weekend. cor.org Leawood

13720 Roe Ave. Leawood, KS 66224

24

West

24000 W. Valley Parkway Olathe, KS 66061

Downtown 1522 McGee Kansas City, MO 64108

Blue Springs

601 NE Jefferson St. Blue Springs, MO 64014

Sp aonpenn.c om 4 1 4 3 p enn syl va ni a av e.

Kansas ci t y, mo 641 1 1

•

816- 53 1- 860 0 T he Font a i ne 901 W est 48t h pl .

Kansa s c i t y, mo 641 1 2

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 24

10/20/17 3:51 PM

cover story

From the front of the house to the kitchen, KC restaurants feel a staffing crunch.

by April Fleming

pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

PITCH_25-27_CS JCCCulinary.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 25 25

25

10/23/17 10/21/17 11:03 4:59 PM AM

cover story

This page, left: Cockson, owner of Swordfish Tom’s. Above: Marcellus with two JCCC students: Maggie Lawlor (right), who works at Jax Fish House, and Terry Ng’endo, who works at La Bodega in Leawood.

Far right and opening page: the Antler Room

There’s no gossip like restaurant gossip.

A KC restaurant owner told me a story recently about an old job: “At a previous restaurant I managed, we had a food runner who was dating a cook. The cook decided it [the relationship] was too intense and decided to pull back. At the end of the night, the chef comes upstairs and says, ‘I need you down here immediately.’ I get downstairs [into the kitchen] and … there is blood everywhere.

Luckily, we quickly found out that it was fake blood.

“This food runner was mad about this cook trying to break up with her, so she brought in these packets of fake blood and sprayed it all over. We found the cook outside, so embarrassed, covered in ‘blood.’ Like, a year later, we were still finding random blood spatter.

The day before, she had taken scissors and cut up his clothes and shoes and put milk inside of everything. A crazy person.

26

“I called her immediately, of course. I told her, ‘I assume you know why I’m calling.’ She said, ‘No, why?’”

One unifying theme of restaurant gossip tends to be that old saw: Good help is hard to find. Not just front- and back-of-the house workers who don’t vandalize the premises, but well-trained personnel who want to get into business and stay there awhile.

For people who like to go out for food or drinks, talent shortages can be obvious. You might see your server outside smoking before your drinks have arrived or your order has been taken. You might order a ridiculously expensive steak, only to have it come out 40 minutes later, cooked medium well instead of medium rare. I speak from experience on both counts, yet there’s more than just anecdotal evidence of a vexing issue: Hospitality

growth may be outpacing that industry’s ability to recruit and keep high-quality, motivated employees.

According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2016 data, food service in Missouri represents 11 percent of the state’s labor force, with 302,500 jobs; this is expected to grow by 9.6 percent over the next 10 years. A quick perusal through Kansas City’s food and beverage classified ads on Craigslist demonstrates that a crunch could already be here. From dishwasher to manager, every type of position is available in abundance, in environments ranging from fine dining to fast casual. Bonuses — sometimes in the hundreds of dollars — are available for certain positions, even dishwashers. From a prospective employee’s perspective, it would seem to be a buyer’s market. So where is everybody?

Leigh Ann Tubert, a hospitality-management recruiter at Horizon Hospitality Services in Leawood, estimates that demand for her services is up 30 percent to 40 percent from just a year ago. “We are certainly seeing an upswing in people contacting us,” she tells

me, “because they are putting ads out there and not getting a response. There are openings, but there just don’t seem to be a group of qualified candidates.”

Tubert acknowledges the highly competitive hiring atmosphere, but she says KC restaurant owners aren’t feeling desperate when they need to fill management positions. She is now actively recruiting, but so far she hasn’t had to look outside Kansas City very often.

(Most restaurants, she adds, prefer local workers.) She says her agency has seen noteworthy demand from fast-casual restaurants, a segment of the industry that has grown faster than others over the past two years and may be siphoning away a disproportionate number of people.

The relative ease with which Tubert says management positions can still be filled doesn’t seem to apply when it comes to cooks — particularly trained chefs.

“We are certainly at market-saturation point where there are just so many new op-

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

PITCH_25-27_CS JCCCulinary.indd 26 Pitch_11-17_56.indd 26

10/21/17 4:59 PM 10/23/17 11:05 AM

cover story

portunities out there and we just don’t have enough staff out there,” says Jerry Marcellus, professor of hospitality and American Culinary Federation chef-apprenticeship coordinator at Johnson County Community College. “There’s always been a high demand for graduates of the [JCCC apprenticeship] program, and there’s also kind of an issue with the industry too. There’s always been a revolving door. But as the city is expanding, the issue of finding quality help has heightened.”

Marcellus has been with the culinary program at JCCC for the past 16 years; before that, he helped open another successful vocational program, the Broadmoor Bistro in the Shawnee Mission School District. The chef-apprenticeship program at JCCC has long been popular: It pays apprenticeship wages, is tailored to a given student’s needs and involves direct training and placement in some of the city’s best kitchens (including those at Novel, Story, Rye, Jax Fish House and Oyster Bar, and Michael Smith). He says the demand for chefs is as high as he’s ever

“As these other plACes Are hiring CheFs, it lessens the Amount oF CheFs AvAilAble.”

Jerry marcellus

seen it, and he believes that at least part of the reason is that restaurants are no longer the only ones competing for chefs. The surge in fast-casual dining and the changing home-preparation marketplace, from Whole Foods to services such as Blue Apron and HelloFresh, have spurred grocery stores to compete. Gone are the sad doughnut cases and limp deli sandwiches, replaced by falafel counters and staff dietitians and meal kits for purchase. Hy-Vee wants chefs now, and not just one or two. So do healthcare facilities and retirement communities — where, Marcellus says, patrons expect restaurant-quality food.

“It used to be that you had chefs, and then other food outlets. But now, as these other places are hiring chefs, it lessens the amount of chefs available,” he adds. Rare might be the Food Network devotee who dreams of going to culinary school and then working at a nursing home, yet such places sometimes offer highly competitive salaries. And there are intangibles that appeal to some chefs: regular hours, little or no night work, even benefits. Health insurance and paid time off are rare even in high-end restaurants, but more common in the corporate structures of grocery chains and retirement communities.

“There is still a big attraction to do the big, upscale style of cooking, but a lot of careerchangers who have researched the industry are interested in pursuing careers in nontraditional segments of the market. One of the big attractions of those jobs are a more predictable lifestyle,” Marcellus says.

The proximity of eager JCCC students notwithstanding, smaller and more upscale restaurants often rely on word-of-mouth to bring in new staff members. Leslie Goellner, who owns the Antler Room with her husband, chef Nick Goellner, says their restaurant has been fortunate in this regard.

“Other than finding a brunch cook, we haven’t had much trouble finding people,”

she tells me. “Usually, when someone goes, they can recommend another person.”

Jill Cockson, owner of the recently opened spirits bar Swordfish Tom’s (a pocket-sized space with about 15 seats), acknowledges that staffing is one of the most challenging aspects of her job, even running a business with a smaller footprint. She says a lack of experienced managers contributes greatly to turnover and other front-of-house issues that result in bad customer experiences — the kind that lead to a far less welcome word-of-mouth.

“Everyone complains that there’s no good help out there,” Cockson says. “There’s plenty of potentially great help … [but] people want to hire and then open a week later with a staff of 60, and expect everyone to be on the same page. People scoff at corporate or chain restaurants, but there’s a reason that they’ve been able to scale and grow. Part of that is providing a training curriculum that provides consistency and brand identity to their staff, and having staff understand their vision.”

The traditional model of promoting servers and bartenders to management positions doesn’t necessarily prepare someone for her new responsibilities, either — which, she warns, can lead to a cycle of ineptitude. “Because there’s a lack of available help [across the board],” she says, “there is a lack of qualified managers to develop adequate training curriculums.” (Cockson also points out an often-cited problem: industry-wide low wages, which contribute to high turnover, burnout and other staffing problems.)

Meanwhile, 2017 has brought an array of new bars and restaurants to the metro, with more slated to open throughout the fall and winter. Hospitality is a profession that seems poised to remain at high demand.

Especially for hard workers who aren’t into fake blood. pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

PITCH_25-27_CS JCCCulinary.indd 27 Pitch_11-17_56.indd 27

pitch.com | November 2017 | the pitch

27

10/21/17 5:00 PM 11:06 AM

pB10/23/17

REQUEST YOUR SONG FOR THE KIDS!

STARTING THURS. DECEMBER 7TH FROM 6A - 6P CALL TO DONATE AT

Kansas CitY ChirOpraCtiC Are you in pain?

We can help!

Auto & Sports Injuries • Headaches Neck & Back Pain 1 Hour Massage

$40

($30 savings)

$50

Initial Evaluation & Chiropractic ($130 savings) Adjustment

Thank You for voting us Best Massage and Best Chiropractor in the 2017 Best Of KC 4510 Belleview Suite 100 | Kansas City, MO 64111

(816)753-4600 • www.kansascitychiropractic.com Conveniently located between The Plaza & Westport 28

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 28

10/20/17 3:52 PM

feature

Indoors at RoKC, I follow Gov. Greitens up a wall. Outoors, I let experienced rockers handle Cliff Drive.

by AngelA lutz | Photos by chAse cAstor

Andrew Potter

Everything looks different from two stories up.

That’s the first thing I learn when I reach the top of the wall at North Kansas City’s RoKC climbing gym, my arms shaking from some combination of fear and adrenaline. I’m totally safe, of course, having securely clipped my harness into a mechanism that will catch me if I fall, but when I look down, my fear of heights gets the better of me. Everything on the ground suddenly seems so small, and I feel a surge of intense existentialism.

“Holy shit, I’m up so high!” I yell.

This elicits not so much as a shrug from the more experienced climbers scaling the other walls in the large, cavernous room. Apparently I’m not the first newbie they’ve seen overcome with excitement.

Down on the floor, Andrew Potter, who co-owns RoKC with his brother, Frank, gazes upward and smiles. “Good job,” he says. “Now let go.”

I remember what Andrew’s wife, Alexis, RoKC’s director of community outreach and

marketing, told me when I arrived: “Climbing helps you trust yourself, the equipment and the other person.” She said she’d conquered her own fear of heights and started climbing when she met Andrew, and now the couple shares a love of the sport, as well as a 6-monthold daughter.

I will myself to trust and release my grip on the wall. I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be the last thing I ever did, but the auto-belay system keeps me in a safe glide to the ground — where I promptly lose november 2017 2017 | the pitch pitch.com | November

PITCH_29-31_PhotoEssayRoKC.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 29 29

29

10/20/17 5:07 4:27 PM

feature

my balance and fall over backward. Andrew laughs a supportive laugh. It’s clear he thrives on introducing new people to his favorite activity.

As he shows me around the spacious gym, with its 15,000 square feet of climbing walls, its setup for bouldering, its fitness center and yoga area, Andrew tells me that he was an Army brat, which let him climb all over the world as a kid.

“I was basically a small monkey,” he says of his natural talents. “Kids are meant to be climbers. We lose it when we get older and sit in chairs all the time, but much of it is ingrained.”

Andrew later joined the military, doing three tours in Afghanistan. Opening this gym was his exit plan, and his status as a veteran business owner has attracted attention from Gov. Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, who had come in earlier that morning for a very public climb. Alexis tells me the scene was chaotic, with news cameras, the fire department and various security personnel. By the time I arrived, things had calmed down.

Alexis’ infant daughter was napping on her grandfather’s shoulder, and a few people were chatting at tables near the building’s entrance.

“How did the governor do?” I ask. “Was he a decent climber?”

She tells me he did OK, pulling out her phone to show me pictures of him scaling a boulder while a crowd of people watched.

We both agree that we wouldn’t want anyone watching us climb — especially not news crews with cameras. Andrew later adds that he doesn’t like everything the governor is do-

30 30

ing, but he says Greitens has done a lot to help veteran business owners.

And RoKC has helped Kansas City’s climbing community. Andrew says Kansas City was an ideal location to open the gym, and his hunch was well informed; the location attracts all comers — soccer moms, avid climbers, couples on first dates. “It’s less about business and more about community,” he says.

“Everyone is welcome. You never understand where someone is at when they walk through the door. If someone is at their worst and we are kind to them, it creates a ripple effect throughout the community.”

The gym caters to all skill and fitness levels, offering classes that teach climbing basics and help indoor climbers transition to outdoor routes. Cliff Drive, in Northeast KC, is Andrew’s favorite local option. Each route up RoKC’s walls is clearly marked to let climbers know what kind of challenge they’re in for, which is helpful for beginners like me.

After watching me complete my first two climbs — and explaining that women often take more naturally to climbing because they rely on the strength of their whole body instead of just their arms — Andrew leaves me to my own devices. I stick to routes with large handholds that look easy to grab, and I go until my arms are weary. By the time I leave, I’ve figured out how to land without falling.

And I’m a little less afraid of heights.

Photographer Chase Castor hung out with some dedicated outdoor climbers as they scaled Cliff Drive.

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

PITCH_29-31_PhotoEssayRoKC.indd 30 Pitch_11-17_56.indd 30

10/20/17 4:28 PM 10/23/17 11:34 AM

feature

This page: Zane Winter (in orange), Rob Rice (stripes), Hannah Kloster (yellow), Shanna DiPaolo Keller (black) and Alan Keller (red)

pitch.com | November 2017 | the pitch pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

PITCH_29-31_PhotoEssayRoKC.indd 31

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 31

31 31 10/20/17 4:28 PM

10/23/17 11:39 AM

first person

Ghost Town

Archival photos show Antioch Park as it once was.

Antioch Park’s iconic Dodge Town meets its demise — or does it?

by Lucas WetzeL

One morning last month, my wife sent me a two-word, one-emoji text. The words were “Antioch Park.” The emoji was one signalling mourning.

Uh-oh, I thought.

Had the park’s Wild West village, a beloved children’s play area for something like half a century, been torn down? If old Johnson County’s Boot Hill was itself 6 feet under, there were going to be many more little emoji tears crisscrossing wireless networks.

Her next text was a shock. She had sent me photos of bulldozers and construction fencing where the general store, the schoolhouse and the blacksmith shop used to be. It was like seeing a Trump wrecking ball swinging toward Sesame Street. Dodge Town was no more.

Maybe this was inevitable. Antioch Park is the oldest property in the Johnson County Parks system. It opened in 1958, and the iconic Dodge Town was built three years after that.

Gunsmoke was still on TV, but the Hollywood Western was nearly dead, give or take midcareer Clint Eastwood. Still, pint-size gunfighters and preschool cowgirls populated this place well into the present day. I remember playing there as a kid, darting in and out of those replica storefronts, holing up sometimes in a Lincoln Log–looking jail built to contain felons no taller than a whiskey barrel. It was a Hollywood-backlot version of my prairie heritage, and for my parents it was a very reliable diversion.

In recent years, I’d gone there with my own two small kids, who loved the play area’s town-within-a-town complexity and

32

oversized-playhouse sense of scale. Even my mom had played in Dodge Town as a kid.

She and I could agree that Dodge Town’s iconic structures have looked a bit worse for the wear in recent years, but I’d argue that signs of decay are true to the Old West. Why tear it down?

I dialed the county’s parks and recreation office, trying not to sound inappropriately upset as I explained why I was calling. The woman who answered forwarded me to the communications department, and I left a message.

After I hung up, I tried to summon some adult perspective. This was just a park, after all — no different from any other playground or attraction that lives in memory longer than on the Earth. Sometimes we have to say goodbye to such places. And every visit there, I admit, was not awesome. Forty-niners and wagoners and suchlike didn’t win the West playing fair, and their distant suburban descendants aren’t necessarily little angels, either. Yesteryear’s plastic-gun roughhousing doesn’t feel innocent anymore.

On a hot, bustling afternoon at the park last summer, I felt a modern jolt seeing something that used to appear unremarkable: Two boys scaled the roof of the hotel and pointed toy pistols at the children below. “Aww, it’s like a little terrorist training camp!” I said to a parent next to me, who it turned out did not speak English. When I saw the boys’ actual dad — barbed-wiretatted biceps bulging out of a black Under Armour tank top — I put my sarcasm on

IT wAs lIke seeIng A TrumP wreckIng bAll swIngIng TowArD sesAme sTreeT.

mute. No, this wasn’t the Dodge Town of my youth.

Then again, my fondest Dodge Town memory isn’t from the pre-internet age but from last year. Scattered showers had dampened the afternoon, but the sky had cleared enough to head to the park with the kids, and we took turns hopping along the staggered circular stones along the pond before heading to Dodge. While my kids were busy booking each other in and out of jail, the rain returned with a vengeance, forcing us to take shelter in the smithy. Pa Ingalls I’m not, but this was sublime.

After lunch, I got a call from Richard Smalley, the parks department’s marketing and communications manager. “We’re rebuilding it,” he said before I could restate the question I’d blurted onto his voice mail. He explained that drainage issues and structural problems with the schoolhouse were beyond fixing, so the town elders (OK, the parks department) had decided to replace the entire village. He forwarded me a news release with a little more information about the playground’s makeover.

When it reopens next year, Dodge Town will feature most of the same buildings: the bank, the Pony Express outpost, a city hall with a clock tower, a general store, faux horses and cows, a blacksmith shop. The livery will not return; instead, kids will have a new train station (and a nonmoving train). Even the blacksmith shop will reopen, allowing a new generation of young people to pretend-learn a trade — and their parents to file away sepiatinted memories of the moment when their kids decide they never want to work with their hands.

The Western movie that was my Antioch Park childhood has ended, but I can take comfort knowing a sequel is on the way.

November 2017 the pitch pitch || November pitch.com 2017 || pitch.com the

PITCH_32_FP AntiochPark.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 32 32

10/20/17 5:09 4:20 PM

Friends Sushi & Bento Place

The only ticket site that puts money in your wallet.

Voted KC’s Best Sushi multiple years!

Free delivery available!

Friendssushikc.com

1808 W 39th St, Kansas City, MO 64111 (816) 753-6666

www.anytixx.com Coupon Code: The Pitch pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 33

33

10/20/17 4:57 PM

Café Espresso-rubbed brisket with mac and cheese, and greens

Taking Sides

Zach BaUman

EJ’s Urban Eatery adds up to more than just a meat-and-three.

By Liz Cook

Mondays

Noon til 3pm everything on the menu is half off limited time offer!

Come this Monday!

dat Good

! e t s Ta

home of the Chick-a-Roni

Pitch Critics’ Choice Best Sandwich 2015

Call-In’s Welcome • 816.214.5773 oPEn: Mon 12 - 3pm / Tues 11 - 9pm Thurs - sun 11 - midnight 7025 Prospect Ave., KCMO 64105 34

Some people love whale song. I prefer the white noise of a busy dining room. Not because it soothes but because it informs.

You can glean a lot about how a restaurant is doing if you listen to the buzz of conversation. Pay attention to the ease with which voices sail over the ambient clank of dishes and the pleasing hiss of a sauté pan. Gauge the day’s sales by the timbre of a server’s voice. Is it frantic, maybe, or hushed, with a stodgymuseum chill?

At EJ’s Urban Eatery, a lunch spot specializing in fine meats presented without fuss, what you hear in the air is a hit. Just a couple of months after its debut in the West Bottoms, people are here at times other places are dead. Your fellow diners sound pleased to be here, then delighted by the food, then quietly sated. Yes, some flavors will benefit from more time to develop, but already the execution is pinpoint-precise.

The restaurant is the brainchild of chef John Cedric Smith, whose restaurant bona fides include stints in Paris and New York and, around here, time at upscale haunts such as 801 Chophouse, Pig & Finch and the Jacobson.

This new venture, with business partner Erik Gaucher, is decidedly more casual, styled after Southern “meat and three” cafeterias (one meat, three side dishes). Their 100-year-old building previously housed Jerry’s Woodsweather Café — once a blue-collar classic, later the short-lived Screaming Eagle Bar & Grill. Smith and Gaucher have made a few updates, including a new mural by Jesse Hernandez, but the workaday feel remains.

No one’s going to miss the Walmart-issue patriotism of its immediate predecessor, but one look at the crowded dining room will swell your chest (and your gut) with pride in the democratizing power of meat. On all three

of my visits, the brick-and-wood-framed dining room burbled cheerily with a mix of casual and corporate patrons. The setup mirrors the clientele, blending cafeteria casualness with full-service flair. Diners order meals at the host stand, choosing from a chalkboard list of specials, then receive drinks and desserts from a designated server.

This allows Smith and his staff to fix plates more quickly, a crucial advantage for those popping in over a regimented lunch break. The menu has a handful of rotating sandwiches and specials, such as a brisket grilled cheese on Texas toast that’s no-frills — unless you count as a frill slices of meat so enormous they test the bread-fusing power of a tasty cheddar-and-swiss blend.

But the raison d’eating is the meat and three. The espresso-rubbed smoked brisket is fatty and flavorful, with a well-seasoned bark and a peppery white barbecue sauce. Even better are breakfast ribs that come with pickled jalapeños and redeye hollandaise. The pork spareribs are a firmer, chewier style, rich with hickory and hammy flavor. Nothing’s in danger of falling off the bone — instead, Smith gives you the primal satisfaction of gnawing spice-bright meat straight off the rib.

But my favorite meat so far doesn’t come from the Great Plains. If I could have the shrimp with Creole Guinness butter as my meat and my sides, I’d do it. The shrimp are Lane Bryant–issue: thick, supple, bursting with rich, buttery flavor. The sauce could be more assertive with the Creole spice, but the dish is nearly perfect as it is.

The sides are as home-style as you’d hope, with a few dressy touches. My roasted Brussels sprouts arrived nicely charred, with lots of caramelized sugars and a nutty flavor. The continued on page 36

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

PITCH_34,36_Cafe EJ's.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 34 34

10/23/17 10/21/17 10:53 5:09 PM AM

Voted Best Mom & Pop restaurant in The Pitch’s Best Of KC.

Now taking special orders for holiday tamales!

OPEN CHRISTMAS EVE Beer & Wine To Go! 1667 Summit KCMO

Breakfast/Lunch 816-471-0450 tues - sat 6am-5pm (kitchen hours 6am-3pm)

sun 6am -3pm

Breakfast  Brunch  Lunch  Cocktails

1667 Summit , KCMO 816-471- 0450

4059 BROADWAY / (816) 931-4401 / THECORNERKC.COM

From full service to express drop-off and everything in between, you can rest assured that you will get the menu and service you need to make your next corporate event a success.

Book Early and Save!

Ask us about our 2017 Corporate Holiday Party Promotion

Brancato’s

CATERING

BrancatosCatering.com sales@BrancatosCatering.com 816.765.4707

pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 35

35

10/20/17 3:55 PM

Café

continued from page 34

mes

nFl ga

gs n i w 75 BuD lite all uring

D

¢

ans $1.5F0 Dom C g n i K ’s

Chie

917 W 44th St. KCMO 64111

ThEsE arE grEEns for pEoplE who imaginE ThEy don’T likE grEEns.

EJ’s Urban Eatery

1414 West Ninth Street 816-491-8262 ejsurbaneatery.com

Hours

all Day happy hour every Day

3 Wells $ 50 2 Domestic Bottles $ 5 House Wines $ 5 Craft Drafts $

late night menu thursday - sunday 10pm - 12am

Brunch Bottomless

Saturday & Sunday 10am - 2pm

Bloody Mary’s & Mimosas

Book your holiDay party toDay 36

15

$

contact thepoint.craig@gmail.com for availability and pricing

Lunch: 10:30 a.m.–3 p.m.

Tuesday and Wednesday Lunch, happy hour: 10:30 a.m.– 6 p.m. Thursday and Friday Breakfast, brunch: 8 a.m.–3 p.m.

Saturday

Prices

Meat and Three: $12 Sandwiches and specials: $10-$15 Sides: $4

Best bet: Order the Gulf shrimp

in Creole Guinness butter for your “meat.” The braised greens, roasted Brussels sprouts and Creole fries are your three. You won’t have room for dessert, but order the white-chocolate bread pudding anyway.

Creole fries I sampled were thick-cut, crisp and lightly spiced. And the mashed potatoes are consistently right: creamy-textured under a buttery gravy the texture of silk.

Still, the side to beat is the braised local greens, a tender mix of collards and turnip greens slutted up with smoky hunks of ham, fragrant notes of garlic and onion and a judicious application of vinegar and hot sauce.

These are greens for people who imagine they don’t like greens. I don’t care if a bunch of collards broke into your home, squeezed the toothpaste from the top of the tube and flushed the cap down the toilet — Smith’s greens are so good, they redeem the very idea of the dish. They might be the best in the city right now.

Not everything earns the same pardon. A few sides and specials I ate were inadequately (or confusingly) seasoned. The mac and cheese, for example, is comforting but too simple, with a flatly cheesy flavor profile that’s on-brand for cafeteria style but cries out for alium, some grated nutmeg, something off the herb rack. (I know it’s there; I ate those greens.) Ditto the potato salad, which never transcends picnic familiarity.

And I’m sorry to report that the Nashville hot chicken, a Thursday-only dish with which I’d made an excited appointment, was a frustrating date. The half-chicken was transcendently fried, with craggy, rust-red skin that stayed crisp and light. The white meat was so plump and juicy you could have run it through a citrus reamer, and the tender dark meat defied my fingers to keep off it, manners be damned. But here, too, the spice failed me; the blend on a recent Thursday was too bitter, almost tannic with paprika. And given that the “hot” here is calibrated for Midwesterners (tongue-testing but not tear-jerking), that bitterness overwhelmed. One of the central pleasures of Nashville hot chicken is the denouement: the sweet, stick-to-your-teeth white bread that comes underneath, soaked adultery-red with drippings from a five-alarm fowl. The spice paste at EJ’s made that ritual less compulsory the night I was there. But if Smith tweaks his blend, I’ll be back, ready to buy bigger pants afterward.

Dessert offerings on recent visits included Dixie pie and a red-velvet cake. If it’s available, order the white-chocolate bread pudding, a salty-sweet indulgence with the makings of a signature dessert. The white chocolate lends the bread pudding a fudgelike texture, dense enough to sponge up the accompanying warm caramel sauce without dissolving into mush.

And the sauce itself is nutty and surprisingly delicate, trimmed with roasted pecans for a cozy fall feel.

The easygoing crowd during any weekday lunch is a testament to EJ’s early success. With a few flavor adjustments, the eatery seems likely to transcend its Southern roots and become a Kansas City classic.

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

PITCH_34,36_Cafe EJ's.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 36 36

10/23/17 10/21/17 10:53 5:09 PM AM

kc's Best inDian Dining Lunch & Dinner Buffet - catering ď‚Ź gLuten free anD Vegetarian OptiOns

Happy Hour 7 Day s a weeK 7217 West 110th Street Overland Park, KS 66210 913-345-8744

3-6pm & ReveRse fRom 10pm - close $ 6 m a R g h e R i ta a n d m a R i n a R a p i z z a 20% off all alcohol Kansas City 412 Delaware | st Joe. 1628 FreDeriCK

kckOrmasutra.net

illazzarone.org

Ship our sauces and seasonings anywhere! www.gatesbbq.com

A Kansas City Tradition Since 1946...Buy Gates!

pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 37

37

10/20/17 3:57 PM

art “WeighT of The World”

“The Badlands”

Before the Fall

Cydney Ross’s Structural Integrity tears down architecture before we do it to ourselves.

by Tracy abeln

It’s nearly impossible for me to look at the title piece of Cydney Ross’s first solo exhibition, Structural Integrity, and not see a reference to the World Trade Center, destroyed on 9/11. But in this collection of eight large clay buildings and three smaller studies, the sculptor isn’t drawing such literal associations.

Architecture, her art reminds us, frames our space. It represents human intervention to change the environment, and then it, too, changes, altered by more human activity or by nature’s long rebuke. Ross, a 2013 graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute’s ceramics program and an ArtsKC advanced fellow, is interested in the arc of various structures — bridges, skyscrapers, Asian pagodas, the iconic dome of the U.S. Capitol Building.

She’s drawn to the process of construction as well as by what happens much later. The deterioration, sometimes due to neglect. The tearing down. And the decimation wrought by combat.

“To see built environments ravaged by war,” she writes in a statement for this show, “makes me wonder how we got here and where we’re heading as a society.”

She is an optimist, though — a ruinshalf-full sort. Her buildings, which rise up in twisted ways from dark bases of rich, rough earth, are not representations of a done-deal apocalypse. We see broken shards, pylon pieces, bits of rubble, yet Ross makes this somehow beautiful. The ravaging hand at work seems to have been neutral, expressing not one or another side of a conflict but rather time’s passage. Her sculptures

38

don’t answer questions as much as they ask us what we see: a coming together or an unraveling.

On the eve of her exhibition’s opening, at Kiosk Gallery, Ross told me she has tried to be politically active — attending protests, voting, donating to charities. She said she’d been inspired rather than discouraged by the conversations undertaken since the 2016 presidential election. But as an artist, she wants her work to transcend topicality.

“I’m consciously trying to channel the craziness going on,” she said. “Things are scary right now, but there’s an awakening going on.

People are more willing to talk about issues they find taboo. We have a responsibility to talk about what’s going on in the world.”

The buildings in Structural Integrity, she added, are a kind of cautionary tale. What crumbles before us at small scale prods us to make a difference while there’s time, to change things now and maybe stay ahead of disaster.

Ross told me she’d been influenced lately

by The Battle for Home, architect Marwa al-Sabouni’s 2016 book about Syria’s colonial-influenced built environment. Among its lessons is the way in which the Brutalist architecture imposed during the first half of the 20th century contributed to societal breakdowns. When we look at bombed-out concrete blocks in Homs or Aleppo, we don’t immediately recall that the buildings were not culturally native.

There are elements of this history in the works at Kiosk, with titles such as “Rise,” “What Will It Take,” “Structural Integrity” and “Calling In.” In the porcelain blocks

Ross at Kiosk Photo by tRaCy abeln

Cydney Ross Structural Integrity Through November 9 Kiosk Gallery 916 East Fifth Street cydneyross.com kioskgallerykc .com

waffled with windows, we see: “Please, let’s talk about invasion. Let’s discuss war.”

When Ross and I came to “The Badlands” — a low, compact sculpture whose stoneware base is stretched into geological spires sheltering a small, domed building that’s topped with its own reaching spire — she told me that it references an episode of sexual harassment. With #MeToo crescendoing on social media even as we were talking, I felt in Ross’s art the post-2016 collective openness to talk about what is keeping us fractured and in pain. “These problems have always been here,” she said. “They are just more apparent now.”

Take “The Weight of the World,” a masterful rendition of the U.S. Capitol’s neoclassical forms, slumped and sunk into an upturned bowl for a base, mirroring the dome above.

There are broken buildings inside, a few of them painted with highlights of gold. Money in politics, America’s vast resources, the complicity of Congress (and its electors) in violence of all sorts — these themes roll around in the tension Ross physically captures in clay.

There is tension between control and chaos in all the works here, created through techniques such as overfiring terra cotta (basically burning the material until it fails) or freezing and thawing porcelain before it goes into the kiln (also a way to induce structural failure). Ross wants the unexpected to play a part in her sculptures at their creation. Natural forces (chemistry, gravity) outside of calculated control helped to build all of this art. And in every accident, Ross tells us, there may lie an opportunity — though taking advantage of any such luck to bring about change requires work.

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

PITCH_38_ArtA CydneyRoss.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 38 38

10/23/17 10/23/17 10:51 9:09 AM

12:21 PM

Celebrating 20 years!

Authentic Chinese KIN LIN specializing in C H I N E S E R E S TAU R A N T

Hunan style cusine

grown by h and

mad e by han d

We Deliver

Serving Local Craft Beer, Asian Beer & Wine accommodating vegetarian & vegan

GIft Cards Now avaILabLe 314 E 51 St. Kansas City, MO 816.561.4334

www.joespizzakc.com

8 16 .22 1.7 55 9 | bl uebi rdbi s tro. c om 17 00 Summi t Street

4058 Pennsylvania Kansas City, MO 816-931-2777 “KC’s Favorite Pizza”

order online

KinLinKCMO.com

Bring this Coupon in to any of our locations 5901 Johnson Dr., Mission, Ks 66202

913-362-7700

Best cheap eats are in OLATHE!? YES!

3395 Main street

Celebrating 20 years!

Tues. & Thurs. lunch special.

1 slices

$ 50 Family FEaSt $29.99 20 strips 2 large sides 1 dozen donuts

limited time offer 11am-2pm

Kansas City, Mo 64111

816-561-7176

3801 s. 291 hWy

Lee’s suMMit, Mo 64086

816-537-9851

and receive

6 free

donuts

with the purchase of 6 donuts

705 se MeLoDy Ln

Lee’s suMMit, Mo 64063

816-524-5515

Completely Different . . . and Absolutely Better!

1110 E Santa FE St OlathE, KS 66061 (913) 210-5170 StripSchicKEn.cOm

Good at listed locations only, only good with donuts with a hole, © Lamar’s Donuts International 2016

pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 39

39

10/20/17 4:05 PM

ARt

Whoop Dee New

Zach Bauman

alter’s bad-mother-FOmO parties are performance-art medicine.

by Annie RAAb

From behind the warehouse door, you could see the green glow. It was drawing us toward it like bugs to a porch light. Beyond, we expected something like a bug’s paradise, an unexpected verdant terrain in the city.

Past the door and through a vine partition was the night’s version of an urban Eden: Alter Art Space, where I’d RSVP’d to an event themed “Garden.” I paid my $5 cover and passed into an environment significantly different from the warehouse district outside.

As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could make out a pillow-stuffed lounge area, wicker patio furniture and a large pink earthworm on an Astro Turf lawn. I’d brought a friend with me, having correctly predicted I’d be among the oldest people here. (I’m not yet 30.) We ducked into a tiny house set up on the corner of the lawn. The floor was lined with pillows and blankets, conducive to sleep or opium ingestion. We sat down and I wondered again: What the hell is Alter Art Space?

“It’s not a party. It’s a fun, interactive installation. We share the space with Awful House, an experimental musical showcase run by a small group of people, and we share many of their ideas about how a space should function.”

That thumbnail explanation comes from Boi Boy, one of the main organizers and a selfdescribed “Alter’s Mommy,” who approaches the project as a New York club kid would have embarked on a DIY endeavor circa 2002: The personality is the driving force behind every concept.

40

Boi Boy hadn’t really answered my question, but now I could see that nobody else here appeared to know where they were or why they’d come, either — or to much care.

People’s expressions indicated instead a collective thrill of shedding daytime identities for something liminal and anonymous. This thrown-together Eden was refashioning itself, minute by minute, into a cooly hedonistic little Gomorrah.

Every few years, something like this happens to performance art in Kansas City. The urge to conjure some subterranean happening strikes a handful of people, and there follows a seance to summon older, better parties. Sometimes what appears from the mist is closer to a long-dead great aunt, perfume heavy, lipstick smeared, gaudy rings slipping off fortune-teller fingers. A decade ago, the scene was loudly dominated by Whoop Dee Doo, the hard-toclassify conjugation of public-access children’s TV hour and grown-up costume party. But since that outfit dissolved (everyone grew up and moved to New York or Los Angeles), efforts to fill the vacancy have been sporadic at best. Boi Boy and fellow Mommy Bo Hubbard have emerged as clear successors to the Whoop with their monthly underground art installation-slash-dance party.

“We play to your FOMO [fear of missing out] factor,” Boi Boy tells me. “If an event is only up for one night, we can get as many people in there as possible.”

The mommies’ challenge, they say, is to create opulent-feeling and immersive settings

on a post–art school budget. Found, donated or salvaged materials make up the majority of props in any given installation, the upside of which means that everything you see is meant to be handled. Other props are alive. Volunteers serve as human statues (safely off the dance floor), holding their disciplined poses for long stretches while musical guests and drag shows unfold around them.

Guests are encouraged to dress according to the theme of the night. As you’d expect, “Birth” yielded some eye-popping costumes.

(It may sound as though Alter’s themes are following a biblical arc, but November promises something closer to a Western hoedown.)

For “Garden,” the crowd is also impressively adorned, the organizers having made themselves the centerpieces. Boi Boy has donned a massive collar of pink tulle to complement a face painted yellow, and Bo’s pastel Marie Antoinette gown matches a cotton candy– pink wig. All night, the two artists haul their skirts around the room and keep the energy of the project humming.

At one point, I see a young woman dressed in a flamingo costume that would turn Björk’s head.

“Ava is our mascot: the Funmingo,” Boi tells me. “Ava is inspired by Clara the Carefree Chicken, an iconic club kid from the New York scene.

“Flamingoes are the most underrated mascot,” Boi adds. “They can drink arsenic! They get frozen in the tundra, go to sleep, then later, when the ice melts, they just walk off!”

The Funmingo is one of Alter’s only consistencies from one night to the next. “We’re trying to create as many repetitive expectations as we can with Alter,” Bo says. “Because the entire installation changes every month and there is so much instability, we want small

things people can expect every time.” This is the problem they’ve given themselves, the challenge of collecting and displaying a mixture of the familiar and the unseen, and of finding artists to contribute and volunteers to participate. These elements aren’t all performative, but each is necessary to this particular performance art.

It’s not easy, Boi says. “Our motto is: We’re here, we’re queer and we’re tired.”

But that’s part of why I’m here tonight, and maybe everyone around me has been similarly motivated: We’re all tired lately.

We deserve a break from the news, the endless tumbling dominoes of political impasse and embarrassment, the ripping of the social fabric from our shoulders. We’ve been overthinking everything else, and feeling too much besides.

Why solve a puzzle on the Astroturf in an old building, in the low light and the interactive din? That would defeat the purpose of Alter.

Thanks to a couple of big imaginations, there’s a small monthly suspension of realworld horror available. I tune out my own thoughts and listen: The PA is being tested on the dance floor, and there’s a consistent pulse of laughter nearby. I walked into Alter Art Space with too many questions, and what I see now is a solution: Boy Boi and Bo have set up a way for socially conscious people to recover some of their wild side — play with art, dance in extravagant costumes, slip briefly into the alternate reality that hovers between daytime responsibility and theatrical self-indulgence — without inviting judgment. In a fake treehouse on a fake lawn, I ease back into my pillow and feel really relaxed.

Alter Presents: Hey Hay Saturday, November 25 (see facebook.com/ alterartspace or @alterartspace on Instagram)

November 2017 the pitch pitch || November pitch.com 2017 || pitch.com the

PITCH_40_ArtB Alter.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 40 40

10/20/17 5:10 4:23 PM

pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

Untitled-4 1 Pitch_11-17_56.indd 41

41

10/20/17 10/20/17 10:18 4:06 PM AM

arts

Beyond Vintage

Eric Williams

classics Uncorked opened its latest season with a welcome airing of recent works.

by Libby Hanssen

A certain quiet agony pierces you in the wine section. You’ve narrowed things down, roughly. You know the grape and the price.

Now, though, it’s guesswork, informed less by expertise than by the attractiveness of the label.

So it often is with new classical music, too.

Someone respects a particular product enough to put it in front of you. But will you like it?

There’s good reason to trust the Kansas City Symphony’s Classics Uncorked concerts, which have become a reliable (and affordable) way to sample flavors outside the ensemble’s usual palate.

September’s “Future Favorites” show, kicking off the latest season of the relatively lowkey event, presented an exciting, entrancing spectrum of works by living composers. By the symphony’s standards, it was an audacious program.

The series is by design a low-commitment proposition. Though appeal remains for the KC Symphony diehard, it’s an alluring experience for the symphonic-curious listener: an early postwork hour on a weekday evening, an inexpensive ticket that includes a post-show glass of wine, lighting designed to engage the eye, approachable music introduced with informal onstage comments.

Jason Seber conducted, his manner at the podium comfortable and inviting. If he were a sommelier, he’d sell a lot of wine. In September, his anecdotes and descriptions —

42

enhanced by demonstration snippets played by the orchestra — illuminated the music. This concert included two popular 21st-century works, by Christopher Theofanidis and Mason Bates, and two pieces less frequently played (but no less enjoyable).

Jonathan Leshnoff’s “Starburst,” a co-commission by the symphony that premiered in 2009, opened the bill. The work is cinematic, a cosmic fury of rhythmic forces.

Kentucky native Rachel Grimes composed the next entry, selections from her meditative “Books of Leaves.” Seber met her when he was with the Louisville Orchestra. “I have admiration and respect for her work, and it’s nice to put her in the spotlight,” he said.

The selections were taken from Grimes’ hypnotic, album-length work for piano, originally orchestrated for LO’s inaugural Festival of American Music. In contrast, Theofanidis’ “Rainbow Body” fluctuated between the heroic and the mystic, an aural representation of the Tibetan Buddhist belief that an enlightened person’s body is, upon death, absorbed into the universe, its energy remitted as rainbows across the sky. Based on a chant borrowed from 12th-century abbess Hildegard of Bingen, the work is lyrical and billowing, cut through with fractures of shimmering metallic timbres.

Bates’ propulsive “Mothership,” commissioned in 2011 by the YouTube Symphony, closed out the set, melding an electronic

“i hatE thE Word classical.”

Jason seber

heartbeat with acoustic timbres to deliver swells and punches. While the most futuristic sounding, it’s an approachable work, though not all of the improvised voices were brought forward enough. The variety impressed with subtleties and nuance.

Later, I asked Seber about the Kansas City Symphony’s role in advancing concert music into the new century. The conductor is an enthusiastic amateur chef, and he likened the allure of new music to the buzz that greets a trendy restaurant or a new recipe. The trick is in generating that curiosity. We’re preconditioned to cling to the familiar and stick with the misconceptions, too. Some still insist that all of Arnold Schoenberg’s music is too angular, but then miss the chance to appreciate his “Verklärte Nacht.” Then there is the matter of labeling. “I hate the word classical because I think of the classical period [roughly 17501820],” Seber told me. “But then contemporary turns people off, too. Art music? That sounds stuffy. What about orchestral music?

Or just ... music?”

Each new generation reacts to the previous one, but the pendulum of ideas now swings faster. Living composers draw not only from past centuries but also from genres that live outside the concert hall. Grimes performs as a soloist and in the indie-rock chamber ensemble Rachel’s, while Bates, along with being the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ inaugural composer-in-residence, brings club music to the orchestral tradition as DJ Masonic.

New music, with all its perceived challenges, doesn’t stay new and expectations change. Look up old reviews of now venerated pieces and see for yourself. But a major U.S. symphony with a now–$100 million endowment isn’t about to abandon music from the 18th and 19th centuries, the foundation of its repertoire. As Seber told me: “Music has gone so many different directions. It takes time for our ears and eyes to adjust.” On Seber’s side is the way in which digital access — and the infamous YouTube/Spotify wormhole — can cultivate awareness with casual listeners.

To help, the program guide suggests further listening for each of the pieces.

He went on: “Every orchestra should be a reflection of their community.” Subscribers, he knows, are the symphony’s community, and they demand the bread and butter of the older repertoire. But the art form hasn’t stopped moving forward in the new millennium. The organization has, he added, an “obligation to balance giving people what they want and giving them what they don’t know they want, and doing it in a meaningful way.”

“It’s a matter of getting enough people to trust you,” Seber said. This season’s first Classics Uncorked showed that the trust is well earned.

Classics Uncorked continues in 2018. See kcsymphony.org.

November 2017 the pitch pitch || November pitch.com 2017 || pitch.com the

PITCH_42_Arts ClassicsUncorked.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 42 42

10/20/17 10/20/17 12:28 4:06 PM

12:28 PM

Come in and mention

to ReCeive ouR “thank you” speCiaL! Come visit us at ouR newest vapoR Room 816 LoCation!

7113 nw BaRRy Rd, kansas City, mo Lenexa (21+)

GLadstone (21+) Raytown (18+)

pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 43

43

10/20/17 4:07 PM

ShoP feature girl

Donations Unleashed Going animal at Do Good co.

by AngelA lutz

“That couch has a pretty good story,” Adam McGill tells me, grinning.

I’m standing in the middle of Do Good Co., the shop McGill owns with his wife, Krystal Pina-McGill. Both of them are stylish and attractive in an effortless, nonthreatening way — at least I’m pretty sure they’re not judging the leggings and baggy “namastay in bed” T-shirt that have dominated my wardrobe since I gave birth to my son two months ago. I’ve been eyeing the plush, bluish-gray sofa in a way that’s admiring bordering on covetous — not an uncommon reaction to the merchandise in this “nonprofit lifestyle store.” That’s McGill’s phrase, and if it — or both partners’ conviction that everything for sale at Do Good comes with a story — sounds a trifle silly to you, then you haven’t shopped here yet.

Originally from Anthropologie, the luxurious lounger had, McGill explains, endured a little extra love from someone’s pets and needed to be reupholstered. Someone offered to dress up the sofa for free before donating it to Do Good, where it looks classy and inviting in the warm natural light that spills in through the large windows facing busy West 39th Street. I just bought a new couch a couple of years ago, but I can’t help imagining this one in my living room, where it would definitely get a little more love from my own pets.

“A lot of our donors are pet owners,” McGill tells me. “But now it’s like a brand-new couch.”

44

Most everything at the shop is “like” brand-new, having arrived by way of donors, both corporate and private, who tend to be well-heeled. All of the store’s proceeds, over operating costs, benefit KidsTLC and KC Pet Project.

“I’m really passionate about animals and animal welfare,” Pina-McGill says. (She’s a proud cat owner.) “I’ve always wanted to put my skills to use doing something good.”

The racks are lined with designer duds at affordable prices — think Marc Jacobs, Armani and Diane Von Furstenberg, as well as pieces from boutiques such as Free People, Madewell and Anthropologie. The space is also stocked with home furnishings and accessories. But make no mistake: Do Good Co. is not a thrift store.

“We spend a lot of time going through donations,” McGill says. “We’re a curated-goods store. It’s an affordable way to get designer clothes.”

Pina-McGill says donations have come in steadily, which is a good thing considering that business has been brisk since opening day, this past June. Back then, she assumed they had enough inventory — a backlog of items collected by KidsTLC and KC Pet Project board members over about three years — to last into 2018. (It was those board members who started planning Do Good Co. Having volunteered at KC Pet Project and the local SPCA, Pina-McGill knew some of the folks who wanted to open the store, and says the opportunity for her and McGill to run it “to-

zach bauman

“I’m really passIonate about anImals anD anImal welfare.”

Krystal Pina-Mcgill

tally fell into our laps.”) By July, stock was running low.

To keep the racks fresh, Pina-McGill, who has a background in retail, accepts donations not only from the Kansas City area but also from small boutiques across the Midwest, adding new items every Wednesday.

“We don’t want to oversaturate KC with the same brands,” she says. “We have a really eclectic, revolving inventory of designer apparel and high-end home furnishings.”

The shop’s philanthropic reach extends beyond Kansas City. As I’m browsing, I notice that the shelves are peppered with colorful, handmade wicker baskets. When I ask Pina-McGill about them, she explains that they were made in Kenya, with 75 percent of sales benefiting the Africa Network for Animal Welfare, which promotes the humane treatment of animals on the other side of the globe. Most of the warm fuzzies stay right here in town, though.

“We want to create a unique avenue for people to help,” she says. “People can come in, buy a $28 shirt, and feel good knowing it’s helping kids and pets.”

As I run my fingers across a soft striped sweater I’d like to buy, I realize it’s also helping class up my lazy wardrobe. I feel good about that, too.

Do Good Co.

1320 West 39th Street, 816-216-1526, dogoodkc.org

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

PITCH_44_ShopGirl DoGood.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 44 44

10/23/17 10/21/17 10:49 5:29 PM AM

SEX IS NOT ONLY AWESOME! IT CAN BE GOOD FOR YOU TOO?

whaaaaat...?

HELPS KEEP YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM HEALTHY

that will affect about 30% of women at some point in their lives.

“Sexually active people take fewer sick days,” says Yvonne K. Fulbright, PhD a sexual health expert.

BLOOD PRESSURE LOWERED

MAKES YOU EVEN MORE HORNY “Having sex will make sex better and will improve your libido,” says Lauren Streicher, MD. She is an assistant clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

IMPROVES WOMEN’S BLADDER CONTROL A strong pelvic floor is important for avoiding incontinence, something

Research suggests a link between sex and lower blood pressure, says Joseph J. Pinzone, MD. He is CEO and medical director of Amai Wellness.

ORGASM’S CAN RELIEVE PAIN

SLEEP LIKE A BABY

“Orgasm can block pain,” says Barry R. Komisaruk, PhD, a distinguished service professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. It releases a hormone that helps raise your pain threshold.

Night, Night!

LESS LIKELY TO GET PROSTATE CANCER

COUNTS AS A WORK OUT “Sex is a really great form of exercise,” Pinzone says. It won’t replace the treadmill, but it counts for something.

STRESS BE GONE

Men who ejaculated frequently (at least 21 times a month) were less likely to get prostate cancer during one study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

LOWERS HEART ATTACK RISK A good sex life is good for your heart.

Besides being a great way to raise your heart rate, sex helps keep your estrogen and testosterone levels in balance.

“After orgasm, the hormone prolactin is released, which is responsible for the feelings of relaxation and sleepiness” after sex, says Sheenie Ambardar, MD. She is a psychiatrist in West Hollywood, Calif.

Being close to your partner can soothe stress and anxiety.

Ambardar says touching and hugging can release your body’s natural “feelgood hormone.” Sexual arousal releases a brain chemical that revs up your brain’s pleasure and reward system.

Source: Meb-MD

SO LETS ALL HAVE MORE SEX THIS MONTH! HERE IS A 30 DAY RELATIONSHIP CHALLENGE...

DAY 1: Sign up for a class together, or learn something new together.

DAY 2: Get it on in a place you’ve never done it before, even if it’s just a different room in the house.

DAY 3: Find a scenic location, and watch the sunset together.

DAY 4: Dress up, and have a fancy date night.

DAY 5: Leave a sweet, sexy, or romantic note somewhere they will find it.

DAY 6: Make time for morning sex.

DAY 7: Stay up late talking. Really catch up and check in with each other.

DAY 8: Go see a concert or show together.

DAY 9: Take turns photographing each other.

DAY 10: Take a scenic road trip, and sing your favorite songs at the top of your lungs.

DAY 11: Cuddle up on the couch, and watch a romantic film, TV show, or book together.

DAY 12: Do one spontaneous thing for the other — either in the bedroom or elsewhere.

DAY 13: Send each other compliments throughout the day. The sexier, the better.

DAY 14: Go out somewhere, and show a little PDA.

DAY 15: Experiment in the kitchen, and cook up something new.

DAY 16: Take a bubble bath or shower together.

DAY 17: Challenge each other to a board game.

DAY 18: Try something new in the bedroom.

DAY 19: Have a couples date with friends.

DAY 20: Model new clothes or lingerie for each other.

DAY 21: Rent a hotel room to get away from your regular routine for a night.

DAY 22: Make a list of the reasons you love them, and share it.

DAY 23: Spend a tech-free day together.

DAY 24: Pull out old pictures from your early dating days, and revisit the honeymoon phase.

DAY 25: Go for a run, take a hike, do yoga, or work out with each other.

DAY 26: Make a playlist for each other.

Pick songs that mean something to you both.

DAY 27: Spend a day giving back to the community together.

DAY 28: Give each other massages.

DAY 29: Rearrange a room in your house.

DAY 30: Turn on some slow music, and dance.

Moonlight Adult Boutique 8801 E Truman Rd. Kansas City, MO 816.214.5958 Sun-Sat 10am-12am

8910 E US HWY 40 Kansas City, MO 816.255.3431 Sun-Sat 10am-3am

4732 SW Topeka Blvd Topeka, KS 785.783.8980 Sun-Sat 9am to 1am

5053 State Ave. Kansas City, KS 913.283.9709 Sun-Sat 9AM-1AM

www.moonlightadultboutique.com • Orgasm Responsibly pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

Moonlight Adult Boutique.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 45 1

45

10/19/17 4:08 10/20/17 4:49 PM

46

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

Untitled-16 1 Pitch_11-17_56.indd 46

10/17/17 4:09 10/20/17 1:18 PM

music

“I WoULd Get emaILs: ‘Is tHIs a Home oR Is tHIs a stoRe?’ ” Mark harper

Risin’

How Got What U Like Records became a cultural beacon in south Kansas City

by AAron rhodes

Mark Harper was a child when he dug his first crate, rifling his older brother’s vinyl collection. His brother, who is 10 years his senior, had moved out, but he often invited Harper over to hang out on the weekends.

“There wasn’t much to do, but there was a crate of classic rock,” Harper says.

By the time Harper enrolled at Ruskin High School, in the mid-1990s, his tastes had shifted more toward hip-hop. He had his own set of turntables, and his mother would sometimes drive him to area record stores on the weekends. He recalls frequent stops at Bannister Mall — home to both a Musicland and a Camelot Music — and to 7th Heaven, on Troost. These treks eventually expanded beyond south Kansas City to stores along Independence Avenue, where Harper would snatch up every new R&B or hip-hop release he could manage.

Harper never considered himself a true DJ — he confesses to a lack of blending abilities.

But he’d occasionally DJ or make mixtapes for school events — “for the cheerleaders’ halftime shows and stuff like that,” he says.

One day in the summer of 1998, though, his growing collection of records and equipment vanished. Harper had relocated all his musical possessions to a friend’s house. The plan was to spend the summer in the basement, listening to music and learning DJ techniques from each other. Two weeks into summer vacation, he showed up at the house — only to hear from his friend’s mom that her son had moved to Arkansas.

“I ran around, looked in the basement window, and there was nothing in the basement,” Harper says. To add insult to injury, his own mother scolded him for always giving his things to others, as he previously had done

with some of his video games. Harper didn’t lose his passion for music that day, but he did determine that rebuilding his collection would be impossible.

Until about five and a half years ago, that is. Visiting a pawnshop, Harper came across a set of turntables and a mixer and realized the idea of DJing still appealed to him. It seemed more attainable, too, with hundreds of You Tube tutorials at his disposal. Harper put the gear on layaway. Once it was paid off, he set out on a record hunt.

The internet had flattened the learning curve for figuring out how to use a crossfader, but it had also flattened record stores. Many of the shops Harper frequented in the 1990s were long gone. But a few had stuck it out, and as he began to spend more time in those that remained, he became less interested in the craft of DJing and more excited by the atmosphere and sense of community inside record stores.

Harper formed a relationship with a coowner of Zebedee’s RPM, who sold him some racks and taught him how to grade and price records. On weekly visits to Earwaxx Records, in Gladstone, he would chat with owner Gary Wilkerson and eventually started buying large tubs of LPs from him. He realized he could hold onto the records he enjoyed and sell the ones he didn’t.

Harper’s growing inventory eventually made its way to a shed behind his house. He’d put up ads on Craigslist selling his records and soon was regularly hearing from local record collectors. “I would get emails [asking], ‘Is this a home or is this a store?’” he says.

His answer was simple enough: “It’s a home store.”

The shed was home to hundreds of alphabetized records, as well as electronics. Cus-

tomers were often so bewildered by Harper’s elaborate setup that they spent their first several minutes asking how it had begun instead of perusing the wares. Pretty quickly, his regular customers began encouraging him to acquire a proper storefront. In July 2014, he found one, at 11539 Hickman Mills Drive, in Harper’s native south Kansas City. In the few years since, Got What U Like’s inventory of clean used vinyl, spanning a wide range of genres, has won it a dedicated following.

It’s also a beacon in a musically under-served part of town — a cultural resource for those unable to visit the record shops in Westport or the Crossroads with any regularity.

And in the age of Spotify and YouTube, paying rent by selling records is nothing to sneeze at. Three years in, Harper’s still taking it in stride. “Time goes by so fast when you’re doing something that you love,” he says.

After I talked with Harper about the genesis of his business, I asked him to pick from his inventory three local records that are special to him. These are a bit pricier than most of the store’s selections, but for good reasons.

Marva Whitney It’s My Thing Kansas City, Kansas–born funk singer Marva Whitney passed up chances to join the bands of Bobby Bland and Little Richard before becoming a member of the James Brown Revue in 1967. Got What U Like has a first pressing of her 1969 solo album, put out by Brown’s King Records.

Mass 187 Real Trues Paying Dues Like many KC-area acts before and since their time, Mass 187 skipped town to chase success.

The hip-hop group made connections in Texas around the time it released this album and grew a strong base in Houston. Harper says he attended Ruskin with two of its members and considered this copy of Real Trues his holy grail as a collector.

Smoke Risin’ This soul-funk record from 1976 echoes the sounds of Stevie Wonder and other Motown hitmakers. Harper says it’s a bit too uptempo for his taste — he prefers a good ballad — but the fact that his copy is still shrink-wrapped sets it apart from others on the market. He also appreciates the band’s name, the album’s title, and the suits its members wear on the cover. Harper says he met someone who has tried to reissue the album but was stonewalled by the remaining members. “Because of the … contracts or the way some artists could’ve been treated back in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, they really didn’t wanna have anything to do with reliving what they went through back then.”

Got What U Like Records, 11539 Hickman Mills Drive, gotwhatulikerecords.com november 2017 2017 | the pitch pitch.com | November

PITCH_47_MusicA GotULike.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 47 47

47

10/20/17 10/20/17 12:30 4:10 PM

music

Oral Truck Stop Love

TSL then and now (yes, now), as told by everyone who was there

by Nick Spacek

Some unsung bands get to look back nobly upon one genuine “almost made it” moment.

Then there’s Truck Stop Love.

A country-tinged rock band from Manhattan, Kansas, could expect few favors in 1990, yet odd blessings seemed to rain down on this quartet from the Sunflower State’s other college town. The first demo by bassist and singer Brad Huhmann, drummer (and, later, Pitch contributor) Eric Melin, guitarist and singer Matt Mozier, and guitarist and singer Rich Yarges was good enough for entry into an MTV competition. TSL’s second demo got the band picked up by a national label. Being on that label led to a TSL version of “You Got Lucky” placed on a tribute album to Tom Petty that saw broad distribution.

But each blessing came with a curse. That MTV competition, Dodge’s Rockin’ Campus Bash, was part of an anti–drunk driving campaign; when the four men took their turn on its stage — in Dallas in February 1992 — they’d been drinking for the better part of four hours. They did not win. The national label to which TSL signed was Scotti Bros., with a roster topped by “Weird Al” Yankovic and no knack for breaking Midwestern rock acts. The tribute disc was just one among a glut of similar crazy-quilt appreciations and is long out of print.

There would be two releases on Scotti Bros.

— a self-titled EP, in 1993, and, two years later, How I Spent My Summer Vacation — before the end came, in 1996. (Just ahead of

48

the breakup, there was also a 7-inch split with Action Man.) Truck Stop Love played a series of reunion shows in 2004, but that was seemingly it — until TSL’s latest unexpected reversal.

Kansas City’s Black Site Records announced this past summer that it would release a collection of songs from the band’s early days. Can’t Hear It: 1991-1994 features the first three songs off that 1991 demo, along with eight other lost tracks: raucous demo versions of classics like “Stagnation,” neverreleased songs such as “Tommy” and “After Hours Party.” The sound reveals a band working the right side of raw; for those familiar with the Scotti Bros. recordings, the intensity of the 11 songs on Can’t Hear It will come as a pleasant surprise. Even the cuts that don’t differ much, such as “River Mountain Love,” benefit from being unburdened of their 1990s overproduction. The result is a valentine to longtime fans that’s also a fantastic introduction for the newly curious.

To get an overview of Truck Stop Love’s history, and how Can’t Hear It came to be, I talked with Huhmann, Melin, Mozier and Yarges. I also posed questions to Jim Crego, who replaced Mozier; Black Site’s L. Ron Drunkard; engineer Ed Rose; and Kliph Scurlock, who mastered the tracks.

The Pitch: In the band’s early days, writers twisted themselves into knots to describe Truck Stop Love’s sound.

Brad Huhmann: I seem to remember a review comparing us to Pure Prairie League.

I’m sure sure they thought that was a putdown, but I liked it. Reviewers back then liked to put us down because we weren’t cool. We were from Manhattan, not Lawrence or KC, so some regional media would pull out the most far-fetched comparisons, perhaps not realizing that we did, in fact, appreciate the bands that they were hoping to use to insult us with.

Eric Melin: “As if Gomer Pyle had grown up on a steady diet of Nirvana and Mudhoney.” — The Note.

Jim Crego: I was a fan and friend first. I always thought they had a sort of Dinosaur Jr. thing happening.

The group was also fairly well known in the press for alcoholic exploits. Was it real or an act?

Melin: If only. Our first all-ages show, in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, we were first of three bands and weren’t used to the crowd being mostly kids, so we went downstairs from the venue to a bar to get warmed up. When we started the show toasty and fired up, the kids were sitting down. We played a song, and they didn’t move, so Rich introduced the next song: “This one is called ‘The Liquor Has Hardened Me.’ But you wouldn’t know anything about that cuz you’re all fuckin’ 12.”

Rich Yarges: We wanted to be the Replacements, right on down to the sloppydrunk shows — not only us, but our fans put it away as well.

Huhmann: I don’t believe we were that much different than other kids in school. Well, maybe a little.

In a 1992 Kansas State University Collegian article, writer Shawn Bruce quoted Huhmann before their performance as part of Dodge’s Rockin’ Campus Bash: “‘I can’t believe we’re getting fucked up to play on MTV,’ says Huhmann just before

losing his balance and almost falling to the ground.”

Matt Mozier: I think it was certainly more true for some of us than others. It sort of became, I think, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In our daily lives, we were pretty straight, but when we got together, we tended to feed off each other in that regard.

The band recorded more than 50 demos over the course of its existence, many of which never saw release. In retrospect, it seems kind of amazing that a local band would record so often, only to release so little in the age before limitless digital storage.

Yarges: The first two demos, we did ourselves. Brad had a 4-track reel-to-reel that we used. Although that first demo has its DIY charm, I don’t know that I would necessarily consider that “studio time.” I actually dubbed all the copies we sold on my own cassette deck.

The demo that got us signed, we recorded at Red House. That’s where we would do the rest of our demos.

Scotti Bros. paid for us to go to Red House several times to record demos for How I Spent My Summer Vacation. One visit we recorded live everything we had written. That’s where the bulk of the unreleased material is from.

Mozier: We always were lucky to have access to some kind of recording apparatus, be it cassette, reel-to-reel or whatever. We were signed to a label relatively early in the process, so they wanted previews of our new material.

That’s where some of the best unreleased stuff came in, as far as I’m concerned. The stuff we recorded at Red House with Ed in 1994 caught us at the top of our game, bandwise.

We’d been playing together constantly, and it showed.

Huhmann: Back then we had to rely on the label to release material. We always thought our songs were great, so why not put them out somehow, right? The label had a different view.

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

PITCH_48_MusicB TruckStop.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 48 48

10/23/17 10/21/17 10:47 5:14 PM AM

music

ITS A

REAM

Melin: We were crazy prolific, and we wanted to get songs down while they were fresh. The demos may be raw, but the playing is more impassioned than the major-label versions that came later. We had that DIY attitude. The first one was recorded after hours in the back of a record store, and the second one in a living room. Our first Red House recording with Ed turned out so good, we kept going back every time we had a new batch of tunes.

Ed Rose: These recordings were simply demos, with the goal being to get the songs in front of a set of ears that could lead them to the next level. If I recall correctly, most of what we did were just demos — the outliers being the Tom Petty and Micronotz covers.

The typical session format was to cut the instrumental tracks live, then fix any bad spots, then overdub vocals, solos, etc., then quickly mix. I’d guess we were spending less than an hour per song. Pretty simple.

Yarges: Can’t Hear It is more like what our live sound was: raw and a lot of energy.

Our self-titled EP was way too glossy. It sounds good but it’s not really us. Summer Vacation was much closer to capturing our sound. With Summer Vacation, we put our foot down and made the record we wanted to. We sought out the producer we wanted in Jody Stephens, drummer from Big Star, and one of our heroes, picked the songs, had say over all the arrangements and the mixing.

The collection of songs which would eventually spawn Can’t Hear It actually started life as a simple exercise to release some material online, but ended up being a nearly yearlong process.

Melin: We originally were going to just put out the first Red House demo — the one that got us signed — but there were so many other standouts from other demos, we decided that if we only got one chance to put out an LP, it should be a best-of from the early years.

Kliph Scurlock: The original project was to get all of their recordings digitized and spiffed up and mastered to be offered on Bandcamp, so I worked on those individual records over the span of two or three months as tapes were dug up, and between other projects I was working on. Once the physical LP became a thing and they had agreed on a track listing, it took me the better part of a day to master the tracks for the LP master.

Huhmann: I’m not sure why Kliph wanted to remix these songs, but he did a fabulous job of it. Then when I heard them I asked Eric if maybe we should put some of them out on vinyl. I had been helping my friends [and former bandmates] in Red Kate get the Black Site cooperative label off the ground, so I suggested maybe putting out this Truck Stop Love record, and they said yes.

L. Ron Drunkard: Putting out a record takes a long time. There are a lot of steps, and though the backlog at pressing plants is better than it was, it’s still a four-month turnaround

time, minimum. Plus, you really have to build in a one-month cushion because things can go wrong at any number of steps along the way.

Throw in the extra time it takes to coordinate with a band whose members live in different parts of the country, and it easily becomes a nine- to 10-month time frame from conception to completion.

The process of weeding out and going through the recordings brought up memories for everyone involved.

Mozier: After listening to the recordings after over 20 years — many of which I hadn’t heard since we had recorded them — I was kind of blown away by the power and tightness of some of those recordings. In my memory, we were sort of sloppy and intoxicated, but hearing them fresh, we were tight, hard and fast.

Melin: They’ve aged well: the spirit, the intensity, the playing, the sounds and tones of the guitars. Some shit is so stale-sounding these days. They [these songs] reflect well on that amazing, brief moment in time when bands who grew up listening to SST and Twin/ Tone records could be inspired to make their own music, and people would listen.

Huhmann: The songs on this LP are more the way we’d have liked them released, but we didn’t have that option back them. Scotti Bros. wanted a more polished TSL, but TSL was best with the least polish possible, I think.

Yarges: It’s nostalgic, for sure. I miss playing a lot of those songs. It definitely brings me back to the early 1990s. Pretty proud of all of this, too, and the fact that I was blessed with four other guys with the same vision to share this with.

Rose: In addition to helping with the recordings, I was at pretty much every gig they played in Lawrence, and there are a lot of happy memories attached to those shows.

The upcoming release shows for Can’t Hear It mark the band’s first appearance in 13 years, and Truck Stop Love seems just as excited to play as people are to attend.

Crego: We all love each other and are stoked to play together again! Before Matt left, there was a lot of tension in the band. It’s long gone now. We all appreciate any chance to play these great songs for everyone, and we’re very excited to see who shows up. I’d play with these guys to a crowd of zero for no money, any day of any week.

Truck Stop Love

with Red Kate and Chris Tolle Thursday, November 16, at Auntie Mae’s with Pedaljets, Red Kate and Chris Tolle Friday, November 17 at RecordBar with Red Kate, Headlight Rivals and Hannah Norris Saturday, November 18, at the Bottleneck

Live Music

KC's Friendly Neighborhood smoke shop Wed 11/1

CoCo y Christopher

Thurs 11/2 Johnny Gleason JamGrass Fri 11/3

tBa

saT 11/4

GaraGe KinGs 4pm mr. J’s Good news 8pm

Wed 11/8

Jeff & norm 7pm

STOP In fOR A $15 gIfT CARD! No purchase necessary!

Thurs 11/9 Brothers BarClay Fri 11/10

Joe ruBio

saT 11/11

the Bon ton soul aCCordion Band 4pm promise maKers 8pm

Wed 11/15 Jeff & norm 7pm Fri 11/17

allied saints

saT 11/18

roCK, paper, sCissors 5pm Better off dead w Blue 88 & the Butter Band 9pm

Wed 11/22 Jeff & norm 7pm saT 11/25

KC Blues review

Wed 11/29 Jeff & norm 7pm Fri 12/1

naCe Brothers Band

saT 12/2

GaraGe KinGs 4pm play dead 9pm

1515 Westport rd.

816-931-9417

GRATEFUL DEAD EXPERIENCE

THE SCHWAG

Black Friday Specials!!

OffERIng:

Largest selection of artist glass in MO! Vapes (Dry, Wax & Ejuice) Come see the wall of Ejuice!

Hookahs/shisha Water pipes/Rigs Hand Pipes Scales and so much more (too much to list)

Now available:

full spectrum CBD & Kratom

kCSMOkESHOP.COM ANNUAL THANKSGIVING SHOW

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2017

UPTOWN THEATER 3700 BROADWAY ROAD, KANSAS CITY, MO SHOWTIME : 8 PM • ALL AGES THESCHWAG.COM

itsadreamkc itsadreamsmokeshop

3942 Broadway in Westport 816.753.5733 pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

PITCH_48_MusicB TruckStop.indd 49 Pitch_11-17_56.indd 49

49

10/21/17 5:14 PM 10/23/17 11:26 AM

concerts events

Friday, November 3

Turnpike Troubadours, Charley Crockett Liberty Hall, 644 Massachusetts, Lawrence libertyhall.net

Descendents, Less Than Jake Uptown Theater, 3700 Broadway uptowntheater.com

Nick Offerman

Slowdive

The Truman, 801 East Truman Road thetrumankc.com

The Urge

Voodoo Lounge, Harrah’s North Kansas City, 1 Riverboat Drive voodoocafeandloungeatharrahs .boxoffice-tickets.com

Saturday, November 4 Dia de los Muertos

Chef Richard McFarlane-Clark, six-courses wine and hors d’ouevres Pop Up Art Gallery, 918 Baltimore facebook.com/events/831104373752160

Heirloom Dinner Series

Five courses, local farmers Heirloom Bakery & Hearth, 401 East 63rd Street heirloomdinner.brownpapertickets.com

Jonathan Richman

The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence. thebottlenecklive.com

Split Lip Rayfield and Sandoval Ivory Black, Calvin Arsenia, Nathan Corsi, Chris Meck and the Guilty Birds, Brandon Phillips RecordBar, 1520 Grand therecordbar.com

SuNday, November 5 Blues Traveler and Los Colognes Uptown Theater, 3700 Broadway uptowntheater.com

Gwar

Granada Theatre, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence, thegranada.com

tueSday, November 7

Photo by AnnA Selle

Saturday, November 11 Katy Guillen & the Girls Album-releASe Show, FoundAtion (1228 union)

WedNeSday, November 8

O.A.R.

Death from Above 1979

Kishi Bashi, Tall Tall Trees

The Truman, 801 East Truman Road thetrumankc.com

thurSday, November 9 Tyler, the Creator

The Truman, 801 East Truman Road thetrumankc.com

Tauren Wells Skillet, Gawvi, Colton Dixon, Britt Nicole

Silverstein Eye Centers Arena, 19100 East Valley Parkway, Independence silversteineyecenters.arenaindependence.com

Jamey Johnson

Voodoo Lounge, Harrah’s North Kansas City, 1 Riverboat Drive voodoocafeandloungeatharrahs .boxoffice-tickets.com

Brother Ali Sa-roc, Sol Messiah, and DJ Last Word The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway theriotroom.com

Peelander-Z, Drop a Grand, Westerners RecordBar, 1520 Grand, therecordbar.com

Friday, November 10 Atlas Obscura book tour and reading Historic Heim Brewery, 2800 Guinotte

The Truman, 801 East Truman Road thetrumankc.com

Saturday, November 11

Victor Wooten Trio

Westport Strong Ale Festival

Our Lady Peace, Search

Madrid Theatre, 3810 Main, madridtheatre.com

50

11 a.m.–1 p.m., sample from 70 beers with an ABV over 8 percent McCoy’s Public House, 4057 Pennsylvania eventbrite.com/e/westports-seventh-annual -strong-ale-fest-2017-tickets-38253338766

Uptown Theater, 3700 Broadway uptowntheater.com The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway, theriotroom.com

Bret Michaels

Ameristar Casino Kansas City, 3200 Ameristar Drive kansascity.ameristar.com

SuNday, November 12 Mason Jennings, Olivia Fox

The Truman, 801 East Truman Road thetrumankc.com

moNday, November 13 Beefsteak at the Rieger

Howard Hanna’s annual feast The Rieger, 1924 Main, theriegerkc.tocktix.com

WedNeSday, November 15 Lidia Bastianich

New cookbook Lidia’s Kansas City, 101 West 22nd Street lidias-kc.com

Lady Gaga

Sprint Center, 1407 Grand, sprintcenter.com

thurSday, November 16 Cut Copy

Granada Theatre, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence, thegranada.com

Jessica Lea Mayfield, Blank Range The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway, theriotroom.com

Uptown Theater, 3700 Broadway uptowntheater.com

Friday, November 17 Harvest Feast Benefit for Just Food Douglas County’s food bank gets help from some of Lawrence’s best restaurants.

Abe & Jake’s Landing, 8 East Sixth Street, Lawrence, eventbrite.com

Jai Wolf, Elohim

The Truman, 801 East Truman Road thetrumankc.com

Noname, Arima Ederra

Liberty Hall, 644 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence libertyhall.net

Saturday, November 18 Brandy Clark

RecordBar, 1520 Grand, therecordbar.com

SuNday, November 19 St. Vincent

Uptown Theater, 3700 Broadway uptowntheater.com

WedNeSday, November 22 Mac Lethal

The Truman, 801 East Truman Road thetrumankc.com

WedNeSday, November 29 The Life and Times, Giants Chair

RecordBar, 1520 Grand, therecordbar.com

thurSday, November 30 Damien Escobar

Arvest Bank Theatre at the Midland, 1228 Main midlandkc.com

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

PITCH_50_Concerts.indd Pitch_11-17_56.indd 50 50

10/23/17 10/23/17 10:47 9:27 AM

t i m i L y l i a D e h CAFE & PUB T Live Music Nov 3 - nO Band Nov 10 - thE RippERS Nov 17 - nO Band Nov 24 - alliEd SaintS DeC 1 - nO Band

523 E. REd BRidgE Rd. KCMO REd BRidgE ShOpping CEntERÂ

816.942.0400

www.theDailyLimitKC.com CheCk out our website for food speCials & upComing band dates!

Join us for the most candid discussion on Race, Place & Diversity in Kansas City.

RACE PLACE & DIVERSITY

Symposium Sessions $60

Includes lunch, breakout sessions, panel wrap-up

Panel and Town Hall Meetings with featured guests:

2017 SympoSium

Thursday November 16, 2017 18th & Vine District 11:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

The Race, Place & Diversity 2017 Symposium: Our Past, One Future is part of a series of events focusing on diversity and inclusion. Other events that week include our Town Hall and our new Race, Place & Diversity Award Dinner with inaugural honoree, Ms. Debbie Allen.

Susan B. Wilson, Ph.D. Vice Chancellor, UMKC Division of Diversity and Inclusion

Gwendolyn Grant President & CEO, Urban League of Greater Kansas City

Juan Rangel Director Gateway to College, Donnelly College

Michael Toombs Founder/CEO The Storytellers Inc., Artist Collective

Program Sponsors:

kcfaa.org/symposium pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 51

51

10/20/17 4:13 PM

• Voted KC’s Best Gentleman’s Club • Oldest Adult Club in Missouri • 70 Girls • VIP Lounge • Great Place to Watch Sporting Events • Full Service Kitchen • Cover Friday & Saturday ONLY! • Premium Bottle Service

30 seconds East of the Power & Light District 2800 East 12th St., Kansas City, MO 64127 816.231.9696 • KcShadyLady.com

Playmates or soul mates, you’ll find them on MegaMates

ARE YOU CRAFTY? NOW ACCEPTING VENDORS

Crafts & Drafts

Always FREE to listen and reply to ads!

Kansas City:

(816) 841-1521 www.megamates.com 18+

November 4

REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.

Try FREE: 816-533-0048 More Local Numbers: 1-800-926-6000

Ahora español Livelinks.com 18+

11AM-6PM | UPTOWN SHOPPING CENTER 3 6 T H & B R O A D W A Y, K A N S A S C I T Y, M O

OVER 75 CRAFT VENDORS & OVER 25 BEERS AVAILABLE FREE ALL AGES EVENT!

Girls!Girls!Girls!

30 minute Free trial 18+ 816-841-1577 // 913-279-9202 52

Visit pitch.com/pitch–eVents for more information

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 52

10/20/17 5:31 PM

MARKETPLACE NATIONAL Auto SAleS or Auto DonAtionS

Donate Your Car to Veterans Today! Help and Support our Veterans. Fast - FREE pick up. 100% tax deductible.

Call 1-800-245-0398

Auto’S WAnteD

CARS/TRUCKS WANTED!!! All Make/ Models 2000-2015! Any Condition. Running or Not. Competitive Offer!

Free Towing! We’re Nationwide! Call Now: 1-888-416-2330.

BuSineSS opportunity

$500 -$1000 Daily Returning Phone Calls!

No Selling, No Explaining, Not MLM Call 1-844-200-7300.

eDucAtion/ cAreer trAining

AIRLINE MECHANIC TRAINING - Get FAA certification to work for airlines. Financial Aid if qualified. Job placement assistance. Housing assistance. Call Aviation Institute of Maintenance 888-686-1704

eDucAtion/cAreer trAining

25 DRIVER TRAINEES NEEDED NOW! Earn $1000 per week!

Paid CDL Training!

STEVENS TRANSPORT COVERS ALL COSTS! 1-877-2091309 drive4stevens.com

employment

Make $1,000'S Weekly!

Mailing Brochures!

Easy Pleasant Work!: WWW.HomeBucks. us #### $1,000'S Weekly! Processing Mail! Send SASE: Lists/ NN, Springhouse, PA 19477-0396

FinAnciAl

Do You Owe $10K+ in IRS Tax Debt??

Take 60 seconds for a FREE Consultation to end IRS collections.

Not Valid in MN, WV & ND Call NOW

1-800-214-1903

HeAltH/meDicAl

FREE VIAGRA PILLS 48 PILLS + 4 FREE! VIAGRA 100MG/ CIALIS 20mg Free Pills! No hassle, Discreet Shipping. Save Now. Call Today 1-888-410-0514

HeAltH & FitneSS

VIAGRA 100MG and CIALIS 20mg! 50 Pills + 10 FREE. SPECIAL $99.00 100% guaranteed. FREE Shipping!

24/7 CALL: 1-888-8689758 Hablamos Espanol.

meDicAl ViAgrA & ciAliS!

60 pills for $99. 100 pills for $150 FREE shipping. NO prescriptions needed. Money back guaranteed!

1-888-278-6168

meDicAl/ miScellAneouS

DENTAL INSURANCE. Call Physicians Mutual Insurance Company for details. NOT just a discount plan, REAL coverage for 350 procedures. 888-6233036 or http://www. dental50plus.com/58 Ad# 6118

meDicAl/ miScellAneouS

OXYGEN - Anytime.

Anywhere. No tanks to refill. No deliveries.

The All-New Inogen One G4 is only 2.8 pounds! FAA approved! FREE info kit: 844-558-7482

miScellAneouS

Bathe safely and stay in the home you love with the #1 selling walkin tub in North America. For an inhome appointment, call: 888-308-5610

miScellAneouS

Lung Cancer? And 60+ Years Old? If So, You And Your Family

May Be Entitled To A Significant Cash Award.

Call 877-648-6308 To Learn More. No Risk. No Money Out Of Pocket.

miScellAneouS

SENIOR LIVING referral service, A PLACE FOR MOM. The nation's largest FREE, no obligation senior living referral service.

Contact our trusted local experts today!

1-800-217-3942

miScellAneouS

CASH FOR CARS: We Buy Any Condition Vehicle, 2000 and Newer. NationŐs Top Car Buyer! Free Towing From Anywhere! Call Now: 1-800-864-5960.

miScellAneouS

CASH PAID for unexpired, sealed DIABETIC TEST STRIPS! 1 DAY PAYMENT & PREPAID shipping.

HIGHEST PRICES! Call 1-888-776-7771. www.Cash4DiabeticSupplies.com

miScellAneouS

Social Security Disability? Up to $2,671/mo.

(Based on paid-in amount.) FREE evaluation! Call Bill Gordon & Associates. 1- 855376-6502. Mail: 2420 N St NW, Washington DC. Office: Broward Co. FL., member TX/ NM Bar.

miScellAneouS

Dish Network-Satellite Television Services.

Now Over 190 channels for ONLY $49.99/mo!

HBO-FREE for one year, FREE Installation, FREE Streaming, FREE HD. Add Internet for $14.95 a month.

1-800-718-1593

miScellAneouS

Make a Connection.

Real People, Flirty Chat.

Meet singles right now! Call LiveLinks.

Try it FREE. Call NOW: Call 1-877-737-9447 18+

miScellAneouS

NEW AUTHORS WANTED! Page Publishing will help you self-publish your own book. FREE author submission kit! Limited offer! Why wait? Call now: 866-951-7214

miScellAneouS

Select Quote is dedicated to finding a Medicare plan right for you and your wallet.

Call 844-750-4116 today and receive a free quote from one of our multiple carriers.

motorcycleS

WANTED OLD JAPANESE MOTORCYCLES KAWASAKI Z1900 (1972-75), KZ900, KZ1000 (1976-1982), Z1R, KZ 1000MK2 (1979,80), W1-650, H1500 (1969-72), H2-750 (1972-1975), S1-250, S2-350, S3-400, KH250, KH400, SUZUKI GS400, GT380, HONDA- CB750K (1969-1976), CBX1000 (1979,80) CASH!!

1-800-772-1142 1-310-721-0726 usa@ classicrunners.com

trAVel

ALL INCLUSIVE RESORT packages at Sandals, Dreams, Secrets, Riu, Barcelo, Occidental and many more. Punta Cana, Mexico, Jamaica and many of the Caribbean islands.

Search available options for 2017/2018 at www.NCPtravel.com or call 877-270-7260

844-245-4092

GIFTS FOR THE HOLIDAYS

Digital Amplified Telephone with talking caller ID & talking keys with answering machine

THE AMPLI555 HAS THE PERFECT BLEND OF FEATURES AT A REMARKABLE SAVINGS. List Price $239.99 | Sale Price $215.99 a savings of $24.00

VISIT ELDERSTORE.COM FOR MORE SAVINGS

Best of Kansas City thanK you

party

to all of the attendees & sponsors who made the 2017 Best of KC Party a success!

Brancato’s CATERING

miScellAneouS

HERO MILES - to find out more about how you can help our service members, veterans and their families in their time of need, visit the Fisher House website at www. fisherhouse.org pitch.com | NOVEMBER 2017 | THE PITCH pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 53

53 53

10/20/17 4:18 PM

LOCAL 910

NEED CASH?

2038 Health Care/Medical/ Dental

LEGALS

912

Legals

$99 DIVORCE Simple, Uncontested + Filing Fee. Don Davis.

816-531-1330

1100

3000

HOUSING/RENTALS 3046

1102 Apartments for Rent KS-KCKS | $515-$615 913-299-9748 HEAT & WATER PAID...

NO GAS BILL! KCK25 ACRE SETTING. 63rd & ANN, 5 minutes West of I-635 & I-70 One bedroom $505; Two bedroom $620. No pets please. You CANNOT BEAT this value! Don’t miss out on this limited-time offer!

Call NOW! MUCH NICER THAN THE PRICE!

VALENTINE NEIGHBORHOOD

$400-$850 Rent 1 & 2 Bedroom Apartments & 3 Bedroom HOMES.

816-753-5576

Colliers International, EHO

CALL TODAY!

2000

EMPLOYMENT

SMALL LOANS

Make a difference in the lives of children with behavioral and/or emotional diffi culties due to trauma or chronic stress.

We provide free training, 24/7 support, and $$. Dedicated and skilled parent(s) call Cornerstones of Care about Treatment Foster Care at 1-855-778-5437.

BuiLd yOuR CRedit!

WE WANT TO MAKE YOU A LOAN!

(816) 842-5336

SERVICES

LiCeNSed By tHe StAte OF MiSSOuRi

Personal Services

MERIT BROKERAGE

CREMATION $695

3607 BROAdWAy KCMO 64111 noblefinance.net

Funeral Packages starting @ $1795 Affordable, Quality Funeral Services.

Golden Gate Funeral & Cremation 816-231-GATE

NOW HIRING

BUY, SELL, TRADE, Miscellaneous

WANTS TO purchase minerals and other oil & gas interests. Send details to P.O. Box 13557, Denver, Co 80201

500 502

ADULT

Adult Employment

BACCALA’ STRIP CLUB NOW HIRING DANCERS Contact Frank 7pm-3am Mon-Sat 816-231-3150

To place a classified advertisement call Steven Suarez at 816.218.6732 or email steven.suarez@pitch.com

AUCTION DATE: 11/29/17 WEATHER PERMITTING

Housekeepers | Line Cooks servers | DisHwasHers vaLet attenDants

2007 ToyoTA CorollA 2006 MAzdA 6 2000 Buick LeSABre 2002 DoDGE rAM 2014 NiSSAN VerSA 2010 MercurY MAriNer 2007 GMc YukON 2002 LeXuS rX 2006 MErCUry MIlAN 2008 MercurY MiLAN 2008 TOYOTA SciON 2006 cHeVrOLeT cOBALT 2014 TOYOTA cOrOLLA 2006 AcurA 3.2TL 2008 HONdA AccOrd 2006 ToyoTA SCIoN TC 2010 ToyoTA CorollA 2006 KIA SorENTo 2002 cHrYSLer 300M 1998 JeeP WrANGLer 2006 PONTiAc ViBe 2014 TOYOTA cOrOLLA 2004 TOYOTA SieNNA 2004 cHrYSLer PAciFicA 2006 ForD TAUrUS 2009 MINI CooPEr 2003 cHeVrOLeT AVALANcHe 2012 HYuNdAi SONOTA 2009 HONdA crV 2009 PONTiAc G8

VIN#

JTDBr32E170103771 1YVHP80d865M51604 1G4HP54k1Yu102558 3B7KF26Z92M201713 3N1cN7AP3eL853461 4M2cN8H79AkJ11757 1GkFk63827J184956 TJHF10u420283593 3MEFM07116r609036 3MeHM07z78r663944 TcJTkde167880225851 1G1Ak15F467851938 5YFBurHe7eP000687 19uuA66216A008798 1HGcP26358A098195 JTKDE167160143716 2T1BU4EEXAC347609 KNDJC733365579443 2c3He66G52H266676 1J4FY49S0WP744982 5Y2SL65816z450150 5YFBurHe7eP000687 5TdzA23c64S176883 2c8GM68474r581407 1FAFP56U46A164034 WMWMF33559TW75277 3GNek13T63G112577 5NPeB4Ac5cH484531 3czre48559G700485 6G2er57759L235766

YR MAKE/MODEL

2006 HYuNdAi TuScON 2016 HONdA AccOrd 2015 cHeVrOLeT SPArk 2007 cHeVrOLeT iMPALA 2009 dOdGe cALiBer 2007 VOLVO S80 2009 NiSSAN VerSA 2006 FOrd MuSTANG 2014 dOdGe AVeNGer 2006 dOdGe rAM 1500 2007 HONdA PiLOT 1995 FOrd ecONOLiNe 2014 HYuNdAi VeLOSTer 2006 KIA roNDo 2011 HYuNdAi SONATA 2011 VOLkSWAGeN JeTTA 2000 ToyoTA CAMry 2003 JeeP LiBerTY 2006 PONTiAc GrANd PriX 2012 LeXuS eS 2008 PONTiAc G6 2005 dOdGe GrANd cArAVAN 2005 NiSSAN ArMAdA 2016 FOrd FOcuS 2008 FOrd FOcuS 1998 cHeVrOLeT MALiBu 2008 FOrd FOcuS 2015 NISSAN AlTIMA 2007 dOdGe cArAVAN 2003 ForD ESCorT

VIN#

kM8JM12B26u258174 1HGcr2F33GA071540 kL8cA6S94Fc794722 2G1WB58k379145940 1B3HB48A09d172134 YV1AS982971016608 3N1Bc13e19L429681 1zVFT84NX65120368 1c3cdzAB8eN175004 1d7Hu18236S678408 5FNYF28637B011222 1FTHe24Y7SHc25469 kMHTc6Ad4eu191412 KNDJC733365579443 5NPec4ABXBH294047 3VWdX7AJ0BM341165 4T1BG22KXyU739147 1J4Gk48k13W565892 2G2WP552461205870 JTHBk1eG0c2476318 1G2zH57NX84208491 2d4GP44L05r431668 5N1AA08BX5N737798 1FAdP3e25GL258098 1FAHP35N58W167151 1G1Ne52M9W6144729 1FAHP33N98W181508 1N4Al3AP4FN352296 1d4GP25B37B119971 3FAFP11393r164619

INsURANCE AUTO AUCTION 2663 sOUTH 88TH sT. KCKs, 66111 913-422-9303

Gifts & Decor Swords & More

Best Kratom Prices in Kc! Loyalty program for Kratom

mOn-Sat 10am-8pm

913.782.4244

Employment Opportunities Link to

apply:http://bit.ly/1nMCMWa FOLLOw us at LikE us at

Sun 12pm-6pm

@PhiLLiPs_JObs

123 S. mur-Len, OLathe, KS 66062

hOtEL PhiLLiPs

Chinese Massage

DON DAVIS ATTORNEY AT LAW

$99 DIVORCE $99

SIMPLE UNCONTESTED PLUS FILLING FEE TRAFFIC TICKETS & CAR WRECKS

816-531-1330 Located just West of I-35 Hwy. at 75th and Switzer 10223 W 75th St., Overland Park, KS 66204 913-789-7226 | 291674232@qq.com

Family Owned for Over 20 Years STUDIOS, 1&2 BEDROOMS

• All utilities included • Off Street Parking • Laundry Facilities 816-531-3111 • Huge Windows 1111 W. 39th St. • High Ceilings KCMO

KS/MO Injuries, KS Divorce, All Family, Juvenile & More

NEWto see& what RESALE ALL AREAS | ALL PRICES Want your Short Sales-Foreclosures-Condos Townhomes-Single Family Homes.

CALL NOW

Hydroponic, Aquaponic, & Aeroponic Systems

Something for everyone!

Mon-Sat 10aM-6pM Year-roundgarden.com

Call

home is worth?

Sharon Sigman, rE/maX STaTELinE 913-488-8300 or 913-338-8444 www.FormLS.com

Many of these vehicles run and drive. If you are looking for cheap transportation, don’t miss this auction/sale.

We welcome all buyers. Terms of auction: All sales are “as is” “where is”. No guarantees or warranties. Paper work to obtain new title will be $75.00 Per vehicle. No guarantee that paperwork will produce title.Bidding will be number only. Terms are cash or certified check. Vehicles must be paid for in full at end of auction. No exceptions. All sales are final. No returns.

54 54

CALVARY LUTHERAN EARLY EDUCATION CENTER CALVARY LUTHERAN SCHOOL 7500 OAK7500 STREETOAK • KANSAS CITY, MO 64114 STREET CALVARY LUTHERAN SCHOOL & KANSAS CITY, MO 64114 EARLY EDUCATION CENTER CALVARY LUTHERAN SCHOOL 12411 WORNALL ROAD • KANSAS CITY, MO 64145

cBD products • Smoking accessories • Metaphysical Essential Oils • Swords • Knives, Figurines

The following vehicles will be sold at public auction on Wednesday, November 29th, 2017 unless claimed by owner and all tow and storage charges are paid in full.

For information, please contact Insurance Auto Auction at 913-422-9303.

YR MAKE/MODEL

Calvary Lutheran School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. Calvary does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of our educational policies, admission policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.

12411 WORNALL RD KANSAS CITY, MO 64145

4000 4028

NON-DISCRIMINATORY POLICY FOR NON-DISCRIMINATORY POLICY FOR CALVARY SCHOOL CALVARYLUTHERAN LUTHERAN SCHOOL

117 S Mur-Len oLathe, KS 66062 913-397-0594

Attorney Since 1976

913.345.4100

Greg Bangs

for a FREE consultation

Scared? Anxious? Confused?

HELP IS HERE! DWI, Solicitation, Traffic, Internet Crimes, Hit & Run, Power & Light Violations, Domestic Assault

816-221-5900 www.The-Law.com

Attorney - David M. Lurie

THE PITCH | MONTH 2017 | pitch.com the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 54

10/20/17 4:59 PM

careful

service fi

breeze finirst online ds best will b i d WIN using

new ull rffu

WINlook

made made

pleasant pleasant

start

hope

of te n

always one interest

expected available fair expected able able available fair

easy

fun love safe

care care

now now

li an th cke i goods goods

sale

attention attention

get

like

th in gs

make

stuff

use

deals variety

definitely definitely

ed dss n neee

times times

buyers buyers rr ppee ssuu

sstt aar rss

exactly

honest honest

answer answer

ll aa onn sso err ppe

staff

wel l

ddeer onn w wo

going going anyone anyone

ce e ni v sa

s sm mo oo otth h

needed needed

exciting exciting

buys

s buy sell ng

sel

enjoyed l b much uy

Our auctions speak for themselves.

Buy. Sell. Win.

Equip-Bid.com FREE

SAMPLES

Largest seLection of cBD ProDucts in Kansas city!

Hemp Oil Tincture, Topical, Edibles, Lotion, Lip Balm and E-Juice

400 E 18th Street, KCMO, 64108 • 816-474-7400 Thecbdstores.com

d w o Cr S m e t SyS

You Belong At...

Start a career in less than 18 months.

86%

JOB PLACEMENT RATE

Programs in massage therapy, medical assisting, fitness training, nutrition & wellness.

Campuses in KC & Lawrence • 1.866.443.9140 • www.wellsping.edu

DEMASTERS I N N S S U U R R A N C E

Since 1949 MO & KS

Missouri Uber Driver insurance NOW AVAILABLE

Now hiriNg part-time eveNt Staff COnCerts, COnventiOns, and sPOrting events

Apply in person 4050 Pennsylvania ave ste 111 KCMO 64111

Auto • SR22 • Renters • Homeowners • Business Insurance

or online

KCinsurance.com • 816-531-1000 1130 Westport Rd • Kansas City, MO 64111

www.CrOwdsysteMs.COM

85%

JOB PLACEMENT RATE* Start your new career in just 9-19 months

Degree & Certificate Programs in: · Fitness Training & Nutrition · Massage Therapy · Medical Assisting *Average placement rate for all three programs.

Campuses in KC & Lawrence | 1.866.443.9140 | WellSpring.edu pitch.com | november 2017 | the pitch

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 55

55

10/20/17 4:25 PM

JAMEY JOHNSON

STORY OF THE YEAR

NOVEMBER 9

NOVEMBER 18

98.9 THE ROCK PRESENTS

ALTER BRIDGE WITH SPECIAL GUESTS ALL THAT REMAINS

TODD RUNDGREN DECEMBER 15

WALK OFF THE EARTH MARCH 14

DECEMBER 12

TICKETS ON SALE NOW

Tickets available at VooDooKC.com or Ticketmaster.com/voodookc or by phone at 1-800-745-3000.

Located minutes from Downtown Kansas City. All shows are 18 & up.

56

Know When To Stop Before You Start.® Gambling Problem? Call 1-888-BETSOFF. Subject to change or cancellation. Phone and online orders are subject to service fees. Must be 21 years or older to gamble, obtain a Total Rewards® card or enter VooDoo®. ©2017, Caesars License Company, LLC.

the pitch | November 2017 | pitch.com

Pitch_11-17_56.indd 56 8567_STA_10.75x12.5_NKC_EntAd_DMax280_V1.indd 1

10/20/17 10/11/17 4:26 3:39 PM