January 2024 THEPITCHKC.COM
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2023’s most important works of cinema were odd ducks, moonshots, horny as hell, and/or bizarre corporate shilling Every year in film is unique, but this one felt stranger than usual—2023 was a big year for Kansas City. Between the national spotlight shining on KC when it was featured in The Last Of Us and Missouri finally passing a bill that provides statewide film incentives, several local filmmakers were able to have a successful year, and that will hopefully continue in the time to come. On the larger scale, things get weird. Barbenheimer serves as a good analogy for how the rest of 2023 went, considering the number of corporate origin story films in a time of solidarity against corporations, along with a rather mixed bag of films based on games, toys, and comics. However, Barbie was the star of the show this year. They Cloned Tyrone. Courtesy Netflix
The Missouri cannabis industry is beginning to see drastic changes in regulations Cannabis consumers across the state are beginning to see many shifts as they reach the checkout line at their favorite dispensaries. Regulations from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services went into effect recently, affecting how Missouri manufacturers and cultivators can brand, package, and market their products to consumers. With the regulations, many professional cannabis producers have turned to black-and-white labeling and packaging, complying with the guidelines. On top of the loss of brand originality and creativity, taxes have seen an increase as well. After going into effect at the beginning of Oct., municipalities and counties have the right to charge an additional 3% tax to consumers, but counties have manipulated their residents into being charged double the amount that was initially intended, causing a 6% illegal tax increase. As a result, MoCann Trade, the lead advocate organization for the MO cannabis industry, filed a lawsuit against St. Louis County and the State of Missouri, claiming that the actions between the counties are a money grab and overall illegal. They believe that their lawsuit will turn out successful.
4 LETTER
Letter from the Editor Moving the goalposts BY BROCK WILBUR
6 POLITICS
Doomsday Preppers Survivalist strategies for a year of political pressure in a still-smoking battleground BY BARB SHELLY
8 Omaha’s Stakes
KC pins its violence reduction hopes on an unproven program, leaving us with a familiar pattern of platitudes in place of progress BY JOE ELLETT
9 Traitor Joes
Three years later, these 45 locals are facing the music for attempting to overthrow the government BY JOE ELLETT & ZOE STROHM
10 CULTURE
Lawncare by Day, Streetwear by Night How Joshua Riley is stitching his way in the fashion industry BY JOE ELLETT
12 FOOD & DRINK
Two Tickets to Paradise The Blue Palm is opening soon in Strawberry Hill BY JORDAN BARANOWSKI
13 Eat This Now
Breakfast at Mattie’s Foods BY SARAH SIPPLE Drink This Now Mocktails at Fuego Cantina BY SARAH SIPPLE
Caption. Adobe Stock
14 Mise en Place Sav Brady of The C Word Cakery on boredom and MILF cupcakes BY SARAH SIPPLE
16 MUSIC
Highway to Hays Band scenes boom up and down I-70 BY HAYDEN KALP
18 Her Name is Rio...
House Elite Performance. Courtesy Julia Kapros
House Elite founder and CEO Aaron Washington changes Kansas City sports culture one athlete at a time
Aaron Washington has spent years using his talents to train various Kansas City ballers, including but not limited to NBA players Ochai Agbaji and Bol Bol. His prowess as a ball player and trainer has brought great pride to the city, and he continues to forge a path for not only himself but the next generation of stars. With weight programs, training camps, and an overall carefully curated method, House Elite trains athletes of any level and firmly stands behind its program, which has proven very successful in developing highperformance individuals.
21 ADVICE
Keep Them Coming Sex-free dating BY KRISTEN THOMAS
22 KC CARES
KC Cares NourishKC delivers on a big promise BY BETH LIPOFF
Solohawk’s Til Willis and Steve Faceman turn scraps into songs BY NICK SPACEK
19 Coming Out and Back
Playboy Bunny Cassie Taylor on their musical return and embracing queerness BY NINA CHERRY
20 EVENTS
January Events Calendar BY THE PITCH STAFF Cover by Olivia Barbosa @olivesartworks
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January 2024 THEPITCHKC.COM
Wheat Kings: Why climate science may be changing the chessboard for Kansas growers Editor-in-Chief Brock Wilbur President & Chief Operating Officer Andrew Miller Director of Marketing & Promotions Jason Dockery Managing Editor Steph Castor Community Manager & Food Editor Sarah Sipple Music Editor Nick Spacek Film Editor Abby Olcese Little Village Creative Services Jordan Sellergren Art Director Cassondra Jones Contributing Writers Michael Mackie, Barb Shelly, Beth Lipoff, Kristen Thomas, Jordan Baranowski, Lauren Textor, Adrian Torres, Kate Frick, Scott Poore, Hana Kim, Nina Cherry, Brynn Winkler, Sofia Mongillo, Rachel Potucek, Emily Jacobs, Hayden Kalp, Joe Ellett, Mar’Che Boggess, Zoe Strohm Contributing Photographers Zach Bauman, Brooke Tramel, Maura Dayton, Isabella Galvan, Allison Scavo, Pilsen Photo Co-op Contributing Designers and Illustrators Alex Peak, Chloe Freeman, Jake Edmisten
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Kansas farmers may have to adjust their way of growing crops as climate science and the once-predictable weather patterns change. Just like chess, planting wheat has a myriad of possibilities, and every move affects the next. The art of planting wheat is just that—an art—and requires a vast knowledge of weather patterns from all over the country and from years past, even what seems like the best year for planting can have the worst outcome. Wheat farming is a game that farmers are forced to play, whether they want to or not.
Letter from the Editor MOVING THE GOALPOSTS By Brock Wilbur Dearest Reader, Congrats on making it to 2024. The odds were stacked heavily against us all—people, print media, folks breathing air with other people that breathe air… just the whole lot of us. By way of reward, we get to do it all again, albeit under even more challenging conditions! So, when that “new year” feeling doesn’t radiate “victory lap” energy, we do what comes naturally: make our plans for how to do this differently next time around. As you read this, you’re probably a few days into your New Year’s resolutions for 2024. Or, perhaps, if you’re following the traditional Brock Resolution Model: You have a list of things about your life you’re positive you’re about to change, but implementation will probably start (properly, this time) on MLK Day. For those already committed to a new plan, godspeed. I wish you the best and hope that any and all course corrections bring you closer to the path you wish to tread. For those of you still up in the air about how you want to frame your 2024, I’d like to suggest that this be the year we move the goalposts. Not, as one does traditionally, to make a hard thing more achievable, but instead, I am thinking of moving the goalposts the way KU football fans traditionally move them. Yes, I think you should take your New Year’s resolutions and toss them in a fucking lake. I recently got a chance to watch the upcoming documentary Your Fat Friend, which charts the rise of author and activist Aubrey Gordon. Previously, I’ve pointed to Gordon’s work in newsletters and articles, as well as the podcast she co-hosts, Maintenance Phase. If you aren’t already a listener, you probably should be. On it, alongside Michael Hobbes, Gordon tackles the history (and reprehensible present) of the diet industry—its myriad charlatans, its bunk
Courtesy photo
science, and its social stigma. While the podcast finds entertainment and outrage in digging through the data on body horror, the upcoming documentary takes more time to step back and let an audience just… be a person alongside Gordon. Your Fat Friend chronicles what it is like to exist as a fat person in modern America and how spaces are simply built—physically, emotionally, politically—to be more than unwelcoming, but actively punishing. While the work and the larger messages are important, the personal side of Gordon’s journey finds an unexpected framing here, as the film incorporates Gordon’s mother and father (now long divorced and living very different lives) as they reckon with the choices they made in raising her—everything from fad diets to how they talked about her to how they even interact with the world now. Their growth and moments of lightbulb-flickering realization make for a painful, inspirational picture but also offer a rare chance to take the 30,000-foot view of what plans, goals, and good intentions can do on a long enough timeline. There’s a lot of breathing room here for the audience to think about themselves, both as victims of this system and, in part, still actively causing harm through sheer ambition. There’s a smaller moment in the doc where Gordon’s father throws a party to celebrate the signing of her first book contract. While discussing what will eventually become What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Gordon’s father’s friends take the subject matter and almost immediately turn the celebratory dinner conversation into an evening of discussing how, just like they’ve sworn they would do every year previous, this coming year would be the year they put the work in to “finally get rid of that last 10 pounds.” To double down on what they know they can’t do and will never do. To make that the topic of discussion over the person who has made herself a specialist in the field. I saw myself in the harm there. I see myself regularly, internally, knowing what I should aim for—the goals and aspirations that life, my culture, my family, my time period, my world—have instilled in me as what I should strive for. And just like Gor-
Captain Trips goes to the park. Brock Wilbur
don’s parents reckon with in the film, I too am starting to take a step back and wonder how much harm I’ve caused in pursuit of getting “better” by unreachable, unreasonable standards. Which of the New Year’s resolutions that I pursued doggedly in years past made me act stupid or caused me to unknowingly undercut others and, therefore, eventually myself? One of my resolutions from last year was to fix my relationship with my dog, Captain Trips. He’s a rescue and has anxiety around all living things, especially men. For a few years now, he’s lived with me but has never been able to let that anxiety go, even when it’s just me in the room. I spent a lot of last year trying to push through, with sheer force, to get him to relax. I tried to exert calm upon another living being, and I wondered why I was failing. And each “failure” here only served to make me feel worse about myself. It’s only in the last few weeks, after chucking my goalposts into the lake, that I’ve started meeting him on his terms. I’ve stopped trying to log, measure, and study our relationship. I’ve stopped trying to inflict serenity upon him. In giving up by the standards of so many books and training videos, he and I are actually hanging out like family for the first time. I regret my good intentions, and I’m thankful for my good boy. I look forward to 2024 and seeing what it means for the other parts of my life where I stop trying to measure up by the metrics others set forward and, in turn, chain those relationships to someone else’s standards and instead just try my best in the moment. Pitch in, and we’ll make it through,
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POLITICS
Doomsday Preppers SURVIVALIST STRATEGIES FOR A YEAR OF POLITICAL PRESSURE IN A STILLSMOKING BATTLEGROUND By Barb Shelly As the first order of business here, I would like to file an official protest against the arrival of 2024. Must we, really? Already? Another year of Donald Trump ranting through campaign stops on his way to a rematch with Joe Biden. Josh Hawley’s sneering face popping up in ads all around Missouri as he campaigns to keep his U.S. Senate seat. The lies, the hate, the sheer exhaustion of an election year. Initially, I was going to reveal a plan to spend the next 10 months at least, pending Election Day outcomes, closeted at home with crime novels, chips and dip, and cats. But that won’t work. The stakes are too high. Have you seen the news reports about Trump’s plans to unravel American democracy should he win a second term? Are you following the governor’s race shaping up in Missouri, where Republican candidates are announcing plans to dismantle public schools in favor of educational “choice” and end physician-approved transgender health care for children and teenagers? Did you know that the current Missouri attorney general, who will be campaigning to keep his seat, is off-the-charts batshit crazy, and a guy running against him may be worse? All of which is to say, we cannot take a pass on 2024. It is upon us, and we need to get to work. But first, let’s take a quick look back at 2023.
Don’t stop the carnival As always, the year gone by produced glaring winners and losers. To avoid turning this into a lengthy tome, I’ll stay close to home. Losers first. And not for the first time, we find Jackson County government leading this parade. For the second time in four years, the process of reassessing properties was a train wreck. Owners of homes and businesses saw their assessments rise by amounts that seemed arbitrary and steep. Reporter Angie Ricono at KCTV5 found hundreds of homes in wildly different neighborhoods and conditions assessed at the same random value—$356,270. The county repeatedly copped to getting things wrong but never got everything right. There’s more. Frank White’s administration prepared an estimate on the costs of a new ballpark for the Kansas City Royals that turned out to be a transparent scare job, and erroneous at that. The county’s handling of
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THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
negotiations with both the Royals and the Chiefs on stadium leases is an exercise in posturing and chaos. Also, voters resoundingly smacked down the county’s request for a new tax on out-of-state online purchases, mostly because nobody could figure out what they were asking for. Runners up in the losers parade: Prairie Village, where voters, through their city council choices, told the world that affordable housing units and the people who would potentially live in them are not welcome in their pristine suburb; the Country Club Plaza, which loses a little more of its luster every day; and the aforementioned Kansas City Royals, who are seriously pissing people off with their location shopping for a new ballpark that may not even be needed. Fortunately, the list of winners overshadowed the losers in 2023, starting with Kansas City itself maintaining its vibe as a chill destination. In local politics, the big winner was KC Tenants Power, the political arm of the housing rights group, Kansas City Tenants. It bypassed the city’s moldy power structure and went directly to voters’ doorsteps to place its candidate, Johnathan Duncan, on the City Council. And it came within a breath of getting another member, Jenay Manley, elected as the first Black person to represent Kansas City’s Northland on the City Council. KC Tenants Power and Kansas City Tenants give a voice to people who, up until now, have been accorded no respect in this town—renters, students, immigrants, people without connections or money. Their growth as a movement is changing Kansas City for the better. Other winners: George Guastello, for his magic touch in making Union Station an integral part of the NFL Draft and nearly every other Kansas City success (has anyone thought of putting this man in charge of The Plaza?); the Kansas City Current, for putting women’s soccer on the map right here in the Heartland; the new KCI; and whoever those people are who planted a gigantic Ferris wheel in the southwest corner of downtown. I have no idea how that will work out, but the way they just went ahead and built the thing is nothing short of thrilling.
Preparation is everything It’s nice thinking about 2023. I hope we don’t remember it as the last relatively normal year before everything falls apart. There is no shortage out there of terrifying predictions about what could, or likely would, happen if Trump prevails in the deeply flawed Electoral College and takes back the presidency. I prefer for the moment not to dwell on these prophecies—or polls, either. Action beats hand-wringing by a mile, and there is a lot we can do. So, a few ideas, just for starters. Get your voting credentials in order. Yes, this is obvious, but it’s the backbone for ev-
Cassondra Jones
erything else. If you’ve moved recently or changed your name or gender marker, you may need to update your registration. This page at the Missouri Secretary of State’s office will get you started, and this site from a non-governmental group can help with trickier issues. And once you’re confident in your own ability to vote, go out and register someone else. The Republican grip on statewide offices in Missouri won’t change until more Democrats in Kansas City and Jackson County get registered and cast ballots. Wyandotte County also needs a concerted effort to pump up registration and turnout. Many groups are working on this, but if you’re looking to get started, there’s no better resource than your local League of Women Voters chapter. Lawyer up. If things go badly in November, the ACLU will be called upon to defend our legal rights to free speech, protest, and other activities that we now take for granted. This would be a good time to get familiar with the chapters in Kansas and Missouri, as well as with groups such as Legal Aid of Western Missouri and the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom, which provide pro bono assistance to people who can’t afford to pay a lawyer. Befriend a newcomer. Immigrants and refugees would bear the brunt of a second Trump presidency. He’s already said as much. Don’t wait until Trump’s agents are raiding workplaces in search of undocumented people to start standing up for new arrivals. MORE2, the social justice group, is looking for volunteers willing to get involved on a number of fronts, such as accompanying people to their check-ins with ICE, the federal immigration
service. Other nonprofits, including refugee resettlement agencies, are also looking for help. I’ve even heard of churches and families preparing safe rooms in case they need to take people in. That’s proactive.
The Missouri morass Presidential election years have become even more dreadful in these parts because they overlap with the campaigns of all Missouri statewide officeholders except the auditor. (Kansas elects its governor and others in the midterm years.) And so, alongside a poisonous presidential race, we are going to have to endure statewide primary races that will feature Republican candidates desperate to prove themselves the most MAGA of the lot. The governor’s race and the contest for attorney general will be the worst. The contest for governor features Jay Ashcroft, who has used his current job as secretary of state to intimidate librarians and delay initiative petitions through deceptive ballot language. It’s scary to think what he would do in a job where he had more executive authority. And Ashcroft isn’t even the most extreme candidate in the race. Bill Eigel, a state senator, describes medical care for transgender children as “mutilation.” And while Ashcroft wants to restrict what books can be displayed in libraries, Eigel has said he’d be happy to burn books he finds objectionable on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion. A third Republican contender, current Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe, is conservative but not crazy. For those of us who thought the state of affairs in the Missouri attorney general’s of-
POLITICS fice could not get worse after the tenures of Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, it has. And we may not even have hit bottom yet. Andrew Bailey, who was appointed to the job by Gov. Mike Parson, has pursued headlines by trying to limit transgender care and subvert the democratic initiative petition process. His most recent outrage was a ham-handed signal that he might sue Media Matters, the Washington-based journalism watchdog group, for accurately reporting on the proximity of advertising from major companies and anti-semitic content on X, Elon Musk’s social media platform. Bailey thinks the way to get elected is to establish himself as a MAGA attorney general. But his primary opponent, Will Scharf, is way ahead of him. Scharf, former policy director for disgraced ex-governor Eric Greitens, is currently working for one of Trump’s legal teams. It doesn’t get much more MAGA than that. Missouri, which had been trending Republican, plunged into a deep red morass in 2016 when voters overwhelmingly supported Trump and also elected Greitens as governor.
So what’s to be done?
Never lose hope. Democrats have a dynamite candidate, Crystal Quade, running for the nomination for governor. A legislator from Springfield, Quade is the leader of the
House Democrats. She has traveled to every corner of Missouri, stumping for candidates and raising funds for the party. She has an appealing life story and can articulate the damage the Republicans are doing to the state. Any Democrat running for a statewide office is an underdog in Missouri, but Quade has the tenacity and star power to make a race of it. Knock on doors. Democratic candidates for Missouri legislative seats have made some inroads in recent elections, flipping seats in Lee’s Summit and Parkville and holding on in tight races in eastern Jackson County and the Northland. Any Democratic seat won or kept in the heavily Republican legislature is a victory, and candidates in the suburbs, in particular, need money and willing volunteers. Stay vigilant. Campaigns have casualties. In Missouri this year, with Republican candidates trying to outdo one another in extremism, those are likely to include transgender people and their families, public school educators, immigrants, and women seeking to terminate pregnancies. It’s crucial for those of us not on that list to act as allies for those who are. We should all have poster boards and markers at the ready should we be called to the protest lines. Let’s look out for each other in 2024.
THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
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POLITICS
Omaha’s Stakes
curred in the Key Coalition neighborhood, two in Wendell Phillips, and 11 among Oak Park Northwest and Palestine West and Oak Park Northeast neighborhoods. Nine of those 11 occurred within the Oak Park Northwest neighborhood, just about a 10-minute walk south of Santa Fe. So, while homicides in the targeted neighborhood have decreased, just a couple of blocks away, they remain at an all-time high.
KC PINS ITS VIOLENCE REDUCTION HOPES ON AN UNPROVEN PROGRAM, LEAVING US WITH A FAMILIAR PATTERN OF PLATITUDES IN PLACE OF PROGRESS By Joe Ellett
Accountability of progress
Over the last 20 years, the 4.16 square miles that make up the Santa Fe neighborhood have been the core of homicides in Kansas City, making up 20.5% of total homicides that have occurred in the metro. On Tuesday, Oct. 10, KC Common Good hosted a press conference at the Linwood YMCA/James B. Nutter, Sr. Community Center to report on the Joint Violence Reduction Initiative in Kansas City’s Santa Fe neighborhood—a model that they took from Omaha, with statistics provided by KCPD at the press conference claiming overall homicides in the Santa Fe neighborhood have decreased from nine in 2022 to two as of August of this year. Statistics shared also claim non-fatal shootings have decreased from 14 in 2022 to 13 in the same time frame. While steps in the right direction, these stats are just the first of many that are touted as victories in the war on violence, despite being such a small, nebulous sampling that conclusively connecting this to any kind of actual change feels like a bridge too far. “In the past decade, the gun death rate amongst children and teens has increased by 87%. Gun violence is currently the leading cause of death for young people in the United States,” CEO of KCCG Klassie Alcine says. KC Common Good and the KC 360 Program have had $426,890 worth of taxpayer dollars to put towards these endeavors. Funds have gone into different programs such as youth internships, the removal of over 170,000 pounds of debris, construction of speed bumps, property improvements, KCPD data tracking, and more during the past year. While local leaders are at the forefront of this fight to end violence in the historic East Kansas City neighborhood, they are calling upon the community as a whole to get involved as well. “For those in the business community watching, we are very proud of the $30 million from the public sector. We want $30 million from the private sector,” Mayor Quinton Lucas says. “For those of us around here in the community who have had the opportunity to engage and volunteer, we ask you to step up and do so and to speak to all who can do it.” KCPD Chief Stacey Graves also made it clear that these violent crimes affect each and every person within Kansas City limits.
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“If a life is taken by violence in Kansas City, everyone should be concerned. Everyone should ask themselves what can they do to reduce violent crime in our city and in our neighborhoods,” Graves says. Omaha founded its version of a violence reduction system in 2008, reporting that violent crime has dropped 50% in specific neighborhoods since going into effect. Willie Barney, CEO and founder of the Empowerment Network of Omaha, was in attendance at the press conference to give remarks about Omaha’s progress and how that has correlated with how Kansas City is going about the situation. “You start with one area; you don’t try to take on all of Kansas City. Take one area and show what’s possible,” Barney says. “In Omaha, we started with one village. We now have expanded to 12.” Other work that KC Common Good has done is providing resources for individuals who refrain from speaking with law enforcement, as well as setting up success plans for individuals who are scheduled to be released from prison within six months. KC Common Good also engages in the multidisciplinary public safety task force in partnership with KCPD. This means that they find locations where crime is substantial and do an unannounced site visit on the premises to execute an ordinance check. If their premises violate ordinance policies, they inform the business or residential property owners to update their resources for safety purposes. If they do not comply, the organizations are prepared to prosecute these individuals. “Pick your poison because everybody has a part to play, even our business owners.
You must invest in the safety of your patrons, and the city of Kansas City is requiring and demanding that,” Quinton Lucas’ Director of Public Safety, Melesa Johnson says.
What’s in the stats Looking back to previous years, Santa Fe’s neighborhood had a total of two homicides in 2021, five in 2020, and three in 2019, according to reporting from The Kansas City Star. This ultimately diminishes any notion of a pattern forming from the initiative, merely marking 2022 as an unusual spike of violence in the neighborhood. On top of this, statistics from the eight neighborhoods adjacent to the city’s most crime-infested show that violence within East Kansas City still remains at an all-time high. These neighborhoods include Ingleside, Washington-Wheatley, Key Coalition, Oak Park Northwest, Palestine East, Palestine West and Oak Park Northeast, and Wendell Phillips. The data used by KC 360 to report the reduction of violent crimes within the Santa Fe neighborhood is cut off when crimes are reported outside of neighborhood boundaries. The issue is that homicides or non-fatal shootings that occurred just across the street from the boundaries are left off of any statistics reported by KC Common Good. While the Santa Fe neighborhood saw just a promising two homicides throughout 2023, a map of homicides throughout the metro tracked by Kansas City Star reporters shows that there has been a total of 15 homicides in just the surrounding neighborhoods. The data shows that two of these oc-
Public-facing information regarding the progress and statistics of KC 360’s program has been slim to none, as they recently marked a year of work. But that is all soon to change. Earlier this year, the City Council set aside $30 million to be distributed over a five-year period for crime reduction efforts, which the Missouri Department of Health is administering distribution. Of that $30 million, $1.3 million has been granted to UMKC criminal justice and criminology professor Marijana Kotlaja and her team to evaluate and track the progress of all programs that fall under KC 360. Kotlaja and her team of five Ph.D. researchers and two computer engineers are developing a centralized data hub to hold all facets of KC 360’s joint violence initiative accountable. This public-facing statistics center is long overdue for an initiative that has already been in place for over a year. “Most big cities do have a center, a justice institute that focuses on bridging the worlds of research and practice, and spreading violence prevention/intervention programs that have been determined to be effective,” Kotlaja says. “Down the road, hopefully, we can show just how important it is to have these evaluations and this research. Hopefully, as a city, we’ll be able to have a center that helps programs utilize the substantial body of research available to reduce violence.” “I’m a huge advocate for having a center, kind of like a one-stop-shop, so you don’t have to put in requests each time you need crime data because it should be readily available to the citizens,” she says. Beginning in January, the several programs that make up KC 360’s violence reduction initiative will be required to enter data regarding their progress to UMKC’s portal quarterly. As statistics roll in each quarter, Kotlaja and her team will analyze the progress made, with points such as each full year and, specifically, the fifth full year being large milestones to evaluate. “That is what my team is going to kick off in January with all of these programs hitting the city in different areas,” she says. “We will be working with funded programs throughout the five years to evaluate them to say, ‘Hey, this is working right, this is not.’” As the city continues throughout the new year, Kotlaja also plans on hosting
POLITICS lunch-in meetings with the numerous KC 360 programs to discuss their progress, hand out awards where they have been earned, and offer guidance through evidence-based literature. “Hey, these other cities are doing this. What you’ve done is great, but let’s see if we can have a bigger impact by using some evidence to back up your program. And then we’re going to track that and see what happens,” Kotlaja says. Applying these efforts today will not see a change tomorrow. But Kotlaja, as well as other city leaders, knows that there must be a foundation for the bridge to be built. “It takes a while, especially with crime. I think for us in the short term, we could possibly see something in two to three years, but we’re talking year five or ten really to see the biggest effects,” she says. With crime in the metro nearing an alltime high, there are still drastic changes that need to be made. As of right now, there have been 177 homicides in the Kansas City metro, nearing the record-setting count of 182 that was reached back in 2020. Public figures across the city continue to urge members of the community to ‘play your part’ in helping reduce violence in our municipality. “It can’t be in two to three neighborhoods; it has to be a citywide initiative. Educating the public is going to be important,” Kotlaja says. “One important long-term strategy for reducing violence will be implementing focused deterrence and urban blight abatement in communities that have been neglected in Kansas City and everyone doing their part to help those areas out.” “We know through neighborhood research that if you increase community trust and engagement and improve place-based conditions, it can be very powerful to reducing high rates of violence.” While some Kansas Citians may think that persistent crime on the Eastside does not affect them, they are vastly mistaken. “Crime generates substantial costs to society at individual and community levels. So, if you have a city that has a high crime rate, businesses are not going to want to invest or remain in that city. We have a lot of important initiatives happening in Kansas City with the World Cup, with the Chiefs doing so well,” she says. “If we don’t get our crime rate under control, it’s also going to be more difficult for investors to want to come into our community. Crime affects everyone. Unfortunately, economics is one of the big things. But also, we know that we’re all better off if we can tackle crime.” As citizens head into the new year, authoritative figures and the city as a whole are hopeful that the record set in 2020 will maintain the highest homicide rate that KC has seen to date. Work does not end there, however. The continuation of these programs and the launching of accountability will hopefully turn a tide in these trends.
Not-so-good ol’ boys. Adobe Stock
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THREE YEARS LATER, THESE 45 LOCALS ARE FACING THE MUSIC FOR ATTEMPTING TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT By Joe Ellett and Zoe Strohm Jan. 6, 2021 almost feels like yesterday. Thousands of frustrated conservatives stomped to the front of the U.S. Capitol building to ‘stop the steal.’ Out of the several thousands of people that were on Capitol grounds that day, around 1,200 have been charged. Of those 1,200, 36 are Missourians and nine are Kansans. Any of them could be your neighbor, co-worker, doctor, or even a friend. Through extensive FBI investigations and tips from third-party sources, these 45 individuals have been located and charged with offenses from their actions on that historic day. The events that occurred have left our fellow Missourians and Kansans facing serious consequences, with multiple January Sixers having served or currently serving prison time. Although former President Trump acted as the spokesperson for the Insurrection, duping these right-wing extremists into believing the election was rigged, the offenses these individuals committed do not fall on his shoulders. Yet, even after serving time, paying fines, and being placed on house arrest or probation, many of the participants from the day still fully support Trump and believe the 2020 election was stolen. A wide range of conspiracies has formed as a result of the events, causing many to believe that undercover Antifa provocateurs and federal agent provocateurs were in attendance, instigating the Trump supporters into committing crimes. Some defense attorneys have investigated the conspiracy but to no avail. One defense attorney, Greg Hunter, who has represented over a dozen individuals charged with crimes in connection to Jan. 6, says that he and others have not found any evidence of these instigators being in attendance. “Between the hundreds of people who have looked through it, none of us have come up with the Antifa provocateurs or the federal agent provocateurs that we keep hearing about,” says Hunter. “It’s because they’re not there. There are a lot of people looking, and nobody’s found it.” With the three-year anniversary of the insurrection approaching, The Pitch decided it would be fitting to do a round-up of the insurrectionists that live among us. Scan the code to find our extensive list of all Missourians and Kansans who have been (or have yet to be) sentenced in correlation with events and offenses that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021. THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
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CULTURE
Lawncare by Day, Streetwear by Night HOW JOSHUA RILEY IS STITCHING HIS WAY IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY By Joe Ellett After a heated argument with his parents back in 2020, Joshua Riley made a decision that would change the trajectory of his life. As a sophomore at Mizzou, Riley dropped out of the university, packed up his belongings, and left for Los Angeles. With 1,500 miles of asphalt ahead of him, he was completely betting on himself. All of his eggs were officially in one basket: Ojusha, a fashion brand that he has built from the ground up. As he was driving through the Great Plains of western Kansas, Riley was confident in the capability of his brand, a necessity as he was putting everything on the line. “I’m not gonna lie, that was a pretty emotional time, but I just knew,” Riley says. “The whole way there, I was getting sales on my phone, I was getting Shopify ‘chachings.’ So I’m like, ‘I know that I can make this work, and it is working right now, so what do I have to lose?’ And I just sent it.”
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Riley’s fashion footpath did not begin when he took off for the Golden State but rather when he was a student at Belton High School. Looking for a creative outlet for self-expression, he began buying Gildan hoodies, then would use fabric paint and iron on a makeshift logo that he bought from Joann Fabrics. His original brand, Lethe, was born out of this avenue of authentic self-identity. Shortly after, friends of his began asking for hoodies. Then came friends of friends. Quickly, Riley found himself selling these Gildan hoodies with a slapped-on emblem to classmates for $20. “Eventually, it got to the point where every day I would come to school and see anywhere from two to five kids wearing a Lethe hoodie,” he says. “That was just a sick feeling for me, and I just wanted to continue growing from that.” Seeing that he had successful traction among his peers, Riley remained com-
THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
Ojusha streetwear by Joshua Riley. Courtesy photos
mitted as he enrolled at the University of Missouri to pursue a college degree, but this came at a cost. Garment daydreaming quickly resulted in grades declining. “I was just tired of putting in time for classes that I didn’t really like,” he says. “At the beginning of college, I had Lethe going and just wanted to put all of my focus into that.” After skating through freshman year, Riley founded his mowing business, Evergreen Lawncare, the following summer, mowing up to six or seven yards a day. The motivation behind this business venture was to save money for branding and marketing his clothing business. Shifting from his original brand, Lethe, he got connected with a PR agent in Pennsylvania, JJ Carter, to help guide him in the right direction to grow a more curated clothing brand: Ojusha. Together, they used the money that Riley had saved up throughout the summer of 2020 to launch ads on social media. “I just grinded it out and saved up a good amount of money, and I started running Instagram and Facebook ads,” Riley says. “JJ is the one who predominantly ran the ads. I focused on designing the clothes and consistently posting content on social media.” Carter’s advertising advice was a direct streamline to growth and ultimately more profit for Ojusha. Through the advertisements that he launched, Riley met another business partner, Brock Butler, who resided
“I love the hustle, bro. I love the grind. I like seeing results and growing something.” in LA. Together, they worked collaboratively, each sewing different sweatshirts that were being sold on the Ojusha website.
Putting it All on the Line As the summer was coming to a close, Riley had to decide whether he was going all in with his business or going back to school. His parents preferred the latter. “It was at the end of summer before I would go back to college. I was telling my
CULTURE parents, ‘Oh yeah, I’m gonna go back to college and focus on that,’ but in the back of my head, I knew that I wasn’t because I had saved all this money.” Although he initially thought he wouldn’t step foot on Mizzou’s campus again, he found himself in Columbia as fall classes began. Two weeks into his sophomore year, Riley’s grades were already in the dumps due to his hyperfocus on growing the business. It was time for him to come to a verdict, knowing that he was checked out from school. Contradicting his parents’ wishes, Riley saw the opportunity to make his way out to LA on a whim, having a newly found West Coast business partner that he could lean on for the time being. “All I knew was I was 100% invested in Ojusha and the direction that it was going, so I packed my car immediately, hit up this kid who was selling my clothes in LA, and I drove to LA,” he says. At that moment, Riley and Butler were designing clothes in a Redondo Beach studio apartment while Carter was on the other side of the nation running all of their marketing campaigns. Together, they were sending out anywhere from 15 to 25 orders a day.
Mowing and Sewing Fast forward three years, and Riley is still steady at the sewing machine. The primary pieces he creates include split hoodie and infused hoodie designs. His split hoodie pieces that initially began selling in 2020 consist of a flannel or denim shirt sewn together with a vintage style, one-color hoodie to make for a 50/50 look diagonally down the middle. These designs typically cost customers around $85, although Riley is holding a sale during the holiday season. “The split hoodies are really striking. People either really love them or they really hate them,” he says. “And I think that’s super important in a product because it strikes people’s emotions. It makes people drawn to them. Either negatively or positively.” The infused sweatshirt design is a little more high-end, and it is obvious why. These custom-requested pieces take Riley about ten hours to hand-craft at his sewing machine, which does not include the time it takes for him to go source all of the materials that it takes to fabricate. By the end of his ten-hour shift, he has a one-of-one product composed of various textiles and fabrics that run customers anywhere between $200 and $450. “It takes a shit ton of my energy. What makes it really worth it is seeing people love my pieces and wear my pieces,” he says. “That just means the world to me, to be honest.” He has grown his brand substantially, reaching about 12,000 followers on Instagram and having sold his products to
NBA athletes Jaren Jackson Jr. and Justise Winslow, as well as Youtuber Jc Caylen. “It was amazing meeting somebody that you have only seen on YouTube or Instagram in person,” Riley says. “Especially just the fact that he liked my art, my clothes.” Looking back on his humble beginnings, Riley attributes a variety of social media creatives to sparking his early innovations. One in particular, Jagonte, an abstract and tattoo artist, has championed Riley’s work since he first started seeing growth. Riley ended up being the first person to get Jagonte’s artwork tattooed on him, which has now spiraled into countless others carrying his illustrations permanently on their skin. Riley ended up sending Jagonte a custom piece that he designed simply as a token of generosity for his patronage, in which Jagonte returned the favor by uploading a video of him donning his one-ofa-kind sweatshirt to his 25,000 Instagram followers, granting Riley some new clout. “Ever since I started growing a following on Instagram, Jagonte has been a really big supporter,” Riley says. As Riley moves forward, he believes that he will continue to see success within the fashion industry, although it does take time. He keeps a stable hand with side hustles such as his lawn care business and DoorDash until it’s time to scale Ojusha to the next level. Mowing lawns by day is what enables him to pursue his passion and design the industry’s next big trends by night. While it makes for long days, he understands that making his dreams a reality comes with hard work. “It’s a lot of work for not a lot of rewards upfront. But you know, long term, it’s gonna pay off,” he says. But he does not see himself merely growing in the fashion industry. After purchasing 46 clients for next year’s mowing season, Evergreen Lawncare seems to be on the upside as well. “I just love the hustle, bro, I love the grind. I like seeing results and growing something,” Riley says. Keeping his nose to the grindstone is all that Riley has in mind as he continues through the winter season, one of his busiest, considering the weather conditions, and into the new year. “You have to keep in your mind the end goal no matter what. If you do that and you stay focused on that day in and day out, then you’re eventually gonna find it,” he says. “And honestly, I still haven’t found that yet, but it’s still fresh in my mind. I know I’m gonna be good in the end.” Banking on his own confidence and vision is what put Riley in the car, ready to tackle anything, figuratively and literally, that lay in the road ahead. There is no reason for him to stop now.
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FOOD & DRINK
Two Tickets to Paradise THE BLUE PALM IS OPENING SOON IN STRAWBERRY HILL By Jordan Baranowski Strawberry Hill lost a real one a few months back when Mockingbird Lounge unexpectedly shut its doors. We were huge fans of the great patio and laid-back vibe, and many fans crossed their fingers to see if a worthy follow-up could fill the space. Luckily, we didn’t have to wait long. The Blue Palm, a Tiki bar created by a team of KC hospitality veterans, is moving in soon and aiming to bring a little slice of paradise to the KCK neighborhood. The co-owners behind The Blue Palm are Dan Doty, Roxie Danner, and Houston DeFoe. Doty has worked for decades across all facets of the service industry, and DeFoe’s most recent restaurant venture was as an owner of Shooter’s Tavern. If you’re familiar with the local bar scene, especially any Tiki comings-and-goings, you’ve prob-
ably run across Roxie Danner. Her Tiki concept, Hellfire Tiki, has run pop-ups across the city for a few years, and she’s been the lead bartender at The Brick and several other spots around town. Doty says that the three absolutely love the Strawberry Hill neighborhood and have been patronizing the businesses there for years. They had been kicking around the idea of bringing Danner’s Hellfire Tiki pop-up into a more permanent home, and they decided to go for it when Mockingbird Lounge closed. “When the opportunity presented itself, it all just worked,” Doty says. The trio hoped to open The Blue Palm’s doors by the end of 2023, but licensing and permits have pushed the date to early this year. Lucky for all of us, the process is a bit
fast-tracked: Mockingbird Lounge already had a great set-up and view, so they aren’t planning to do much major construction. They plan on using the patio as the main entrance and slightly shifting how things are set up accordingly, but will largely keep the layout similar to how it already is. That said, they still have some work to do: Tiki aesthetics are their own niche style, and Danner has pushed her brand into an even more specialized area with a bit of a classic horror slant. The Blue Palm seems to be leaning more into a traditional Tiki vibe, but it’s hard to imagine elements of Danner’s Hellfire brand won’t make their presence known. Of course, the vibes are fun, and the aesthetic is great, but it’s the Tiki drinks that will get butts in seats. “We don’t want to give too much of our menu away before we open,” Doty says. “But we are excited to show people a combination of classic Tiki offerings, some older drinks that have been lost over time, and some seasonal offerings using the best products available to us.” Tiki drinks are known for using multiple rums as a base, lots of fruit juice, and elaborate garnishes. They may not taste overly boozy, but a couple of Fog Cutters or Zombies are usually all you need to give you a headache the next day. We’ll expect to see a Mai Tai and a Jungle Bird on the menu, and hopefully some of Danner’s more outthere creations. At some of Hellfire’s previous pop-ups, she put out a dark rum cocktail with falernum, lemon, and taro coconut cream. That’s one we for sure would not mind making its way onto The Blue Palm menu. Blue Palm Tiki will be open for service from 6 p.m. to midnight Wednesday through Sunday and closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Reservations will be available, but walk-ins will be welcome. The team will work to make the patio more of an all-year offering but may not have that in place when it comes time to open the doors. As the weather warms up and the patio becomes more inviting, the team may revisit their hours to give people more time to soak up the sunshine. They’re also planning on reaching out to local food vendors to possibly have some special events since there won’t be an operating kitchen at The Blue Palm. However, the goal for the team is to get the doors open and start slinging the rum as soon as possible. Keep your eyes on The Blue Palm’s social media pages for the latest info on when they’ll officially start pouring drinks. Hopefully it won’t take them too long—nothing keeps out the winter chill like a little Navy Grog.
THE BLUE PALM 204 Orchard Street, Kansas City, KS, 66101
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Courtesy photos THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
Sarah Sipple
Breakfast at Mattie’s Foods By Sarah Sipple
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making of this filling, savory, and satisfying meal. Family-owned Mattie’s Foods serves vegan dishes to the KC metro through their restaurant in Brookside, plus catering services, a food truck, and local spots like Café Corazón and Cafe Cà Phê that carry their foods. Sisters Arvelisha and India Monique use food to honor God and their late grandmother, Mattie. They are driven to continue Mattie’s nourishing legacy of resourcefulness, love, and generosity. The Brookside restaurant is small and bursting with color. Murals and hand-drawn motifs of flowers and encouraging words cover the walls and tables. The perpetually sunny spot is a welcome respite from a bleak January. For $17, Brandy’s Breakfast Platter includes a choice of pancakes or French toast with hashbrown coins, as well as your choice of bakon or sausage. I chose French toast, plus upgraded to try both meat substitutes for an extra $3. A Berry Boost Lemonade ($3.25) made for a sweet and refreshing drink accompaniment. As a grounding carbohydrate for the meal, the French toast was pleasant and comforting. Slightly less eggy than other French toast dishes but still satisfying with a sprinkle of powdered sugar and a drizzle of thin maple syrup. I prefer a little maple syrup on my breakfast sausage, and this combo was fabulously greasy and sweet. The bakon was soft but dry and had the expected salt and fattiness as expected, with a hint of smoke. I found myself returning to it out of both curiosity and enjoyment. The small yet succinct menu focuses on handhelds like sandwiches and wraps, and the category names are sure to brighten your day if the interior isn’t your style. “It’s Too Early” titles the breakfast items, while “Starvin Like Marvin” shows off hearty options like Buffalo Mac and a nacho platter. The “Sweet Tooth” section features individually portioned vegan desserts like Cookies and Cream Cake, Mud Cake, and Banana Pudding Cake.
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A classic breakfast platter with a twist. No animal products were involved in the
For those participating in dry January or otherwise avoiding alcohol, I still see a fuego night in your future. Mocktails, or non-alcoholic cocktails, are no longer limited to Shirley Temples or Diet Coke, and nowhere is a better example of this than Fuego Cantina. In West Bottoms, restaurant veterans (& mother-daughter team) Kandi Kerns & Alexandria Snavely offer up a craft cocktail bar bursting with color, texture, and hospitality. Kerns’ goal is to create mocktails that are interesting and not too sweet, thinking specifically of people who prefer to unwind or socialize with another legal of-age substance, marijuana, and still want to order a delicious drink when they’re out for the night. At the top of my list is the Piña Fauxlada ($9) in all of its towering, tropical glory. I’ve never considered myself a piña colada girlie, but this one is a dream. The coconut cream and nutmeg pull it all together, making it feel like a complete dessert that goes down easy. Next is the Mojito ($9). This is smooth and refreshing while bringing complexity to the tongue (hint: it’s the orgeat). Other n/a mojitos would lean on the lime and call it good, but this one goes far beyond. I would order this over an alcoholic mojito any day. Last but nowhere near the end of the mocktail menu is the Espresso Mocktail ($9). Though the half-and-half is heavy-handed, a finely ground espresso topping brings out the expected coffee scent. This concoction is lightly sweetened with agave, and though it leans more towards creamy than coffee, it graciously does not feel like you’re drinking a fancy glass of dairy. Adding a couple of juices together and calling it a mocktail? We don’t know her. THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
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FOOD & DRINK
MISE EN PLACE
Mise En Place is a series of questions, answers, recommendations, and culinary wisdom from the food and drink masters that push KC flavor further. The following answers have been edited for length and clarity.
SAV BRADY OF THE C WORD CAKERY ON BOREDOM AND MILF CUPCAKES By Sarah Sipple
Sav Brady, owner of The C Word Cakery, is an artist whose medium happens to be cake. Good cake with bad words, to be specific. Brady’s intricate cakes are vegan and known for spicy, sassy, and badassy messages. One of my first C Word purchases was a pumpkin pie for Friendsgiving that said “thankful for you fuckers,” which was simply the standard pie offering that year. Brady and her partner, Mike Roy, recently sold their Midtown restaurant, The Fix, to focus solely on The C Word. With new beginnings on the brain, we dive into the world of cake: the fun, the grind, and the cursing. The Pitch: Tell us about your baking background. Sav Brady: It all started with edible painting. I was in Wyoming, working as a freelance artist– painting, graphic design, etc. A baker there suggested I try painting on cookies. It turned out that was really fun. We started collaborating with cake—me doing fondant work, sugar words, and painting. Eventually, I worked at the Upper Crust in Overland Park, and while I never tried the pie (they weren’t vegan), it was a great job, and the people were so nice. I was extremely sad to leave because I loved working there, but it only lasted two months before my side business—The C Word Cakery—took off, and I needed to focus fully on that. What was it like sharing your edgy cake designs for the first time? I think people like the idea of getting a cake for random occasions for themselves, and they can get something that is really pretty but also funny. Plus, it’s a conversation starter at a party. And I mean, everyone really likes bad words, and they really like cake. Once, at a pop-up, somebody asked me what MILF was (because it was on a set of cupcakes). That was traumatic because I’ve never had to say it out loud. Thankfully, she was like, “I gotta buy these.” She loved it. Where do you draw inspiration? Really, anything. I’m never bored, ever. I can be inspired by anything with color and being outside. Even just hearing from people. Seeing their outfits, clothes, and patterns. I like being able to keep an open mind when it
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THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
Courtesy photos
THE C WORD CAKERY thecwordcakery.com comes to making and trying new things. So you’re never bored, but what about burnout? I definitely burn out. The best way to prevent it is to value your time more. That’s something I have been trying to do more of and a huge factor in why we sold The Fix to focus solely on The C Word. I’m not the type to sit down and like complain about being bored or tired. But I will sit down and space out. Sometimes you just get burned out. Tell us about the most unique or surprising flavor combo you’ve done. The weirdest is probably my savory cake. I love when people order it because I’m like, you’re crazy. It is a cheese and polenta cake with thyme. It has a slightly sweet corn flavor, with herb cream cheese layers and a savory whipped cream. Plus, balsamic roasted grapes are insanely good. But that’s the weird one. Is there an occasion that you’ve been wanting to make a cake for, but no one has asked yet? I want to make a shockingly large cake that makes people question why they got that big of a cake. That sounds enjoyable.
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THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
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HIGHWAY TO HAYS BAND SCENES BOOM UP AND DOWN I-70 By Hayden Kalp “Back in my day, we had real music!”—a phrase that, in some capacity, we have all heard from some relative or friend at one point during our lives.
Courtesy of the artist
To some, this means smoking grass and drinking a six-pack on the lawn of a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert, Michael Jackson becoming the number one artist in the world, or The Beatles having “long hair.” Every one of these acts had a first practice, a first show with an audience of three friends, and were otherwise considered nobodies and miscreants. But they all started in that same place. When speaking about America’s great music cities, everyone and their mother talks about Los Angeles, Houston, Nashville, Memphis, and so on. Kansas has never been in the limelight, spare a few acts such as—well, Kansas. But this is the beauty of the Sunflower State’s music. It has this untapped potential, like a rare mineral that has yet to be discovered. It is diverse and ever-changing, just like all of the other “big” music scenes. “Surprisingly, there’s a lot more in Kansas than I expected there to be in terms of music. Of course, you’ve got to drive six hours to get to half of it, but I like all of it. Comparatively to anywhere else I’ve been, it’s probably a little better, if not on par,” says Tillie Hall of MellowPhobia. One great thing about moving east throughout an entire state is the people you meet along the way. I have been fortunate enough to come to Kansas City from my hometown of Wichita. Over the course of the last few years, I have shared many beers and smokes with a few of Kansas’ coolest acts, some of which are featured in this piece. Kansas is filled to the brim with talented artists. Whether it’s Hays thrash or Lawrence indie/ska-punk, there’s something for everybody.
Wichita
Hays One of the greatest spawns of garage acts and future stars would be the hometown with nothing to do. I’m not talking any shit on these cities, but you can’t get much further out there than Hays, KS. From isolation came the slamming hardcore of Billy Ks and the spacey alt of Starslinger. One of Hays’ biggest and most eclectic acts, Parl, fuses their own brand of hip-hop with fuzzed-out guitars and beats akin to Tyler, the Creator. “I would describe the Hays scene as a really tight-knit group,” says Parl. “You get this same core crowd and a handful of people who are new every single time you perform. It’s like hanging out at a family reunion with the cool cousins, if you know what I mean.” Parl started creating music around 2019 but began getting serious and releasing music at the beginning of 2022. Early on, they leaned heavily into hyperpop, taking inspiration from acts such as 100 Gecs or Charlie XCX. As time has passed, their taste has expanded, and their music reflects that. “I like exploring. My first EP was very synthesizer-heavy and funk-oriented. But my newest album, An Open Letter from Adrian Parl, I describe as secular gospel. The project I’m working on right now, Chronically Online, is all trap and heavy metal influenced. If you don’t like what I’m doing right now, then come back because you might like what I’m doing in the future,” says Parl. In some ways, modern music is not much different than it was in the early days of pop culture. Starting out, there’s no money, no following, and one big mission. To some, that mission is to sell out Arrowhead. To others, it’s to make enough money to buy another case of beer.
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THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
Quite possibly the next breakout band is Wichita’s own Social Cinema—a five-piece indie rock group touring across the country, representing the 316 with pride. “When we were coming up, it felt like we were on an island, but that island was dope as shit,” says Social Cinema drummer Logan Bush. “So I feel like there’s way more of a community vibe with Wichita, more so than you would get out of a major city. It’s small enough where you know everybody and you can hang with all the bands that you like, but it’s big enough where there’s opportunity to still move up and become a bigger band.” One of the many shared traits of Kansas music is the collaboration and camaraderie between the bands. While this isn’t unique to Kansas, it has allowed the scene to thrive further in the underground as bands support each other. Many musicians play in multiple groups, with tons of creative overlapping. “We’ve helped out other bands, and other bands have helped us out,” says Bush. “Back when we toured as a threepiece for our debut album, we hired a bunch of our friends from other groups to play guitar for us. And that was a lot of fun because they bring the energy of their band into ours. And so I think it’s cool to see other groups supporting each other without contests or anything like that. Everybody wants to see everybody doing good.” Courtesy of the artist
Kansas City Being a city with so much cultural diversity and opportunity, the Kansas City scene has continued to grow and is as diverse as ever. Bands like MellowPhobia have thrived here, and for frontwoman Tillie Hall, it comes second to none. “There’s so much good music in KC, it can be hard to navigate. If you want to see someone, there are like 10 shows a night here. And for bands, once you make that initial leap, it becomes this tight-knit community,” says Hall. MellowPhobia is part of the new guard of KC music, playing what they describe as landlocked surf rock. Formed in Pittsburgh, they moved here looking for something more. “Pittsburgh felt very one track, almost like a lot of the bands there are kind of playing very similar music to each other. I think Kansas excels in that in that we have so much music diversity. I mean, I’ve heard incredible indie rock, surf rock, hip-hop, folk, and R&B. There’s just so much of everything. I feel like Kansas and the Kansas City scene, especially, has a flair. It’s is a melting pot of all kinds of music.”
Courtesy of the artist
Courtesy of the artist
Topeka Two hours northeast of Wichita and one hour west of KC, Topeka sits in some sort of weird cultural black hole. In a city best known for its bad roads and being the governor’s home, not many would think there to be much of anything regarding a music scene. And in a way, you would be correct to assume so. However, Topeka hosts a handful of bands, rappers, and DJs like Preston Walker. Walker, aka DJ Alphabeta, is an electronica artist and venue owner. He produces his own music as well as the music of others and has become one of the strongest pillars in the Topeka scene. DJ Alphabeta draws a lot of influence from German industrial house music, but his latest projects, “Never Was Alive” and “The Fall of Babylon,” see the artist heading in a different direction sonically. “My DJing style is just noise, hard techno, and house,” says Walker. “But in terms of producing, I have really turned towards ambient, abrupt noise. Because of that, I’d say that I’m more than meets the eye. When people see me, they don’t expect me to play the music I do. You don’t really hear about many Black POC noise musicians here in the Midwest,” says Walker. For years, Walker has worked tirelessly to bring up Topeka’s scene, which struggles as it sits so close to Lawrence. However, his venue, Black Chamber DIY, is widely considered by many to be one of the best in the state, hosting well over 60 local, regional, and national acts last year alone. “The scene is growing, but it’s growing at its own pace. For so long, Topeka was kind of divided. But now we are finally starting to work together, and I’m excited to see what will happen,” says Walker.
Lawrence
Opposite Topeka, Lawrence has arguably one of the most prolific scenes in Kansas in terms of artists and iconic venues. Indie outfit Indra is one of the latest groups to form within the city. Influenced by artists such as Paramore, Indra creates ethereal music that is as dynamic as it is easy to listen to. As a group of multiple classically trained musicians, they are beginning to truly stick out in a scene that’s spoiled for choice. “Indra is a really spontaneous band,” says Indra singer Ellie Bates. “Everything we’ve done has been very much on the fly. We’re very calculated in the way we create music, but all of the ideas are on a whim.” Since the ‘70s, Lawrence has been a top choice for both touring and local bands alike. It’s home to historic venues like The Bottleneck, Replay Lounge, Liberty Hall, The Granada, and countless DIY spaces. For Bates, the legendary venues, bands, and safe spaces, coupled with Lawrence’s forward-thinking attitude is what makes it so special. “The charm within Lawrence comes within that community itself and its love for the arts. Even the school district here really emphasizes how important the arts, music-making, and creating are. I think that a lot of the musicians from Lawrence kind of get this idea instilled in them from a very young age that art is something you can do, and they’re gonna encourage you to do it,” says Bates.
THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
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MUSIC
Her Name is Rio... SOLOHAWK’S TIL WILLIS AND STEVE FACEMAN TURN SCRAPS INTO SONGS By Nick Spacek As a musician, Til Willis is nothing if not willing to go as far as possible to create his art. In November of 2014, he released two solo albums—Hackles and Tin Star—paired with a full band recording with his backing group, Erratic Cowboy, entitled Cars Etcetera. Erratic Cowboy’s 2022 album, Grinding of The Stars, was recorded in a 122-year-old barn. September 2023’s release of ox by Concrete Cedars is an improvised live recording with Willis, guitarist Bradley McKellip (the Roseline, Erratic Cowboy), and Selvedge’s Chance Dibben on synthesizers. Where do you go from there? It’s a simple answer, as in August of 2022, Willis and his musical partner, Colorado Steve Faceman, took their duo project, Solohawk, all the way to Rangley, Colorado, to record what would become their new EP, Rio Grande, at The Tank Center for Sonic Arts, a seven-story tall steel water tank. Additionally, the pair recorded the journey with video from their phones for an accompanying 15-minute documentary called Rio Grande (The Tank). It’s an awful lot to take in, but it’s an amazing sonic journey, which the documentary only makes more clear. These songs don’t simply have some reverb slapped onto them by an engineer—these are sounds crafted by the environment in which they were recorded. The whole Rio Grande project and experience came about in a dead simple fashion, says Willis over beers at the Eighth Street Taproom one December evening. “A friend of mine just shared the link on my Facebook page: ‘This seems like something you would be into,’” says Willis. “CBS Sunday Morning did a little segment on this place, and I thought, ‘Well, that’s so cool.’” Due to the reverberations and construction of The Tank Center (more on that in a bit), Willis couldn’t see doing it with the full band, so he immediately shot the link over to his Solohawk partner Faceman, who shares Willis’ love of adventurous activities. “He was like, ‘Oh, this is fucking great,’” Willis says of Faceman’s enthusiasm. “‘Let’s go ahead and make this happen somehow.’” This is not the first time Willis has recorded in a reverberatory environment. “Seed & Root,” from Grinding of The Stars, was recorded in the silo next to the barn in which the album was recorded, but this set of songs from Solohawk, Willis explains, is more than that. “This water tank is so much bigger,” he says, gesturing around the inside of the bar to indicate its size. “The story is that this tank was originally constructed for the railroad, and after it was used for a while there, it was bought by the town of Rangeley to be part of their fire defense system.” Per The Tank Center for Sonic Arts’ web-
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site, this is the story: “Constructed around 1940 as a railroad water-treatment facility, this seven-story Corten steel water tank was moved to Rangely in the mid-1960s for use as part of a fire-suppression system for the local utility company. The plan was never realized, though, as the underlying shale proved unable to support the weight of the filled tank. So it remained empty. However, the bed of gravel upon which the tank was placed bowed its floor into a gentle parabola, giving it an extraordinary internal acoustical resonance.” “And as the story goes–in the ‘70s,” says Willis. “This hippie guy was doing some acoustic research and just going around the west taking acoustic samples. And when he found out the town owned this water tank, he said, ‘Well, can I climb in it?’ and he had people bang on the outside with sticks and rocks, and he recorded it.” That “hippie guy” was sound artist Bruce Odland. Until 2013, it remained a “secret performance and recording space for a dedicated group of sound artists and musicians,” which is when the owner considered dismantling it and selling it for scrap. Said dedicated sound artists and musicians formed Friends of The Tank, and after two Kickstarter campaigns and a slew of donations, they were able to convert the Tank into a proper studio and a unique place unlike anywhere else in the world. “They keep a microphone at the apex, then they have like a stereo pair that they can float up or down, and they got another mic permanently mounted about midway down the floor,” Willis says. “And then they’ve got a binaural set that they move around, and we’ve got our close mics on the guitars and vocals.” It’s similar to a reverb chamber as one might find in the basement of Kansas City’s Element Recordings, but unlike just a reverb chamber, says Willis, he and Faceman are actually performing inside the thing. “You have to take your shoes off to go in because otherwise it would just be the whole time,” he says while shaking his hand and miming sound waves. “It’s such a long delay. I mean, it’s a full 30 seconds.” The experience of being in the Tank was such that while Willis and Faceman went in to record five songs that they’d been performing together at every show all summer long, what actually appears on Rio Grande was created there, at the studio itself. The Solowhawk pair knew they were not going to have the chance to do overdubs, so whatever they did, they needed to do live in the room. “We also knew we were only going to book one night because it’s just so remote,” says Willis. “It was all we could logistically do.”
THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
Til Willis and Steve Faceman of Solohawk. Courtesy images
So, Solohawk had the five songs they had written. After two passes of the first song and the remaining four having takes the pair felt pretty good about, they looked up and realized they still had three hours left in the space. “At that point, we’re like, ‘We’ve got to come up with something else to do,’” says Willis. “And so we stepped outside, cracked open a beer, sat down, and started going through lyrical scraps.” Thankfully, he and Faceman constantly keep a Google doc of lyric ideas. When it was all said and done, Solohawk ended up with enough songs for a full album. After the fact, Willis and Faceman realized that the songs written in the moment fit the room better, meaning none of the material on Rio Grande was the stuff the pair went there with the intention to record. The instrumental and vocal workout and the EP’s penultimate track, “Aves Raras,” proves it. The piece sees Faceman’s vocals and Willis’ guitar blend into each other courtesy of the reverberations in such a way that it feels like a spiritual experience. “That was 100% improvised on the spot,” Willis says. “One performance—that was it. We had so much fun doing that one. Steve just walked around the room, vocalizing. The engineer that was working there told
us, ‘Man, that’s probably the most successful duo performance in there, period. Most of the time, it just sounds cacophonous, and we need, like, one instrument alone.’” Because Solohawk’s two members are in two different states, there likely won’t be a release show for Rio Grande, but Willis is looking into alternate methods of promotion, like a Bandcamp listening party and the accompanying documentary, the latter of which really helps the listener get an idea of just how amazing the Tank is and what the process was like. “This was such a unique experience, we thought, ‘Might as well,’” Willis says. “And as it’s turned out, I think it really helps explain what people are hearing when they hear the EP, being able to see us walking around in this huge metal tank.” Not only that, Rio Grande (The Tank) captures the experience of getting to the extremely rural location. As Willis puts it, “It’s way the hell out there, but it’s such a cool place.” Just getting that brief, 15-minute glimpse from the documentary is enough to give a second listen a completely different perspective. After Willis and Faceman finished recording, the pair made it back to the hotel and were quiet for a moment and when they both started talking about it, Willis says that it almost felt wrong to be describing that experience, even shared as it was. “It’s like being abducted by aliens or a religious experience,” Willis says, not quite joking. “Nobody’s gonna know what that was like, and they’re not gonna believe us.” Solohawk’s Rio Grande EP is available at solohawk.bandcamp.com More information about The Tank Center for Sonic Arts is at tanksounds.org
MUSIC
Cassie Taylor on set for the “Desire” music video. Courtesy photos
Coming Out and Back PLAYBOY BUNNY CASSIE TAYLOR ON THEIR MUSICAL RETURN AND EMBRACING QUEERNESS By Nina Cherry
Editor’s Note: Cassie Taylor uses she/her and they/them pronouns. For the sake of clarity and readability, this article will use they/ them pronouns.
When Cassie Taylor came out as queer in their mid-thirties, they experienced an artistic resurgence. “I’ve never felt so uninhibited by creativity,” says Taylor. “When you figure out who you are, it just clicks.” Last month, the Blues musician dropped their first release in a decade, debuting a sultry new single, “Desire.” But before their hiatus, they spent the bulk of 12 years touring, first hitting the road at age 16. Cassie Taylor’s career was initially propelled by their father, trance Blues musician Otis Taylor, when his bass player dropped out of a national tour. They didn’t play much, but after three weeks of crash-course learning, they joined him to begin what would evolve into a five-year stint. From there, Taylor attempted to take a break from music but soon formed Girls with Guitars alongside Dani Wilde and KC’s own Samantha Fish after moving from their hometown of Boulder, Colorado, to Memphis. Following an extensive year-long tour, primarily throughout Europe, they estab-
lished their own band. Despite the acclaim, including a nod from The New Yorker on their sophomore album Out Of My Mind, Taylor faced a turning point at 28 when the relentless touring took a toll on their mental health. “It was either my music career or me,” Taylor says, confiding in their then-husband and tour manager. “And one of the things I had wanted forever was a family.” Relocating to rural Missouri and later to Overland Park, Taylor started a family and quickly found solace away from the limelight. “I thought I would never come back to music,” Taylor says.
Here and Queer Two years ago, Taylor’s music resurfaced in an unexpected way. While a friend ofTaylor’s was going down a rabbit hole of their discography, they stumbled upon a video of a pole dancer performing to their song “Spare Some Love.” Soon after, Taylor embarked on their own search and discovered that the same track was on the brink of hitting one million streams on Spotify. “That inspired me to start writing again,” Taylor says. Simultaneously, they were navigating
what they call “a period of transformation.” They realized they were queer. While they say coming out has brought freedom, confidence, and peace to their life, it’s been challenging. The journey has included a divorce, followed by what they describe as a heart-wrenching breakup with their first girlfriend, and navigating intolerance in professional settings. While many of history’s most revered blues women—including Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Lucille Bogan—openly sang about their sapphic romances, Taylor recalls a once-beloved venue branding their performance as “too loud” and “too gay.” “In order to be publicly out, you have to choose authenticity over ease,” Taylor says. Although they weren’t trying to hide who they were on stage that night, the goal wasn’t to make a bold statement. But as the parent of a non-binary child, Taylor has realized how important it is to be loud and proud. “When I was growing up, I didn’t have queer people to look up to in my inner circle or in the media,” Taylor says. “I am visible for my kid, for other queer kids, and for my own safety. There’s strength in numbers.” Taylor’s recently released single ”Desire” is a testament to their authenticity. The sapphic slow jam—an ode to the aforementioned former flame—opens with a resonant hum of a bowed bass, beginning a slow and seductive build. Embracing a more electronic soundscape, the track marks a departure from Taylor’s previous releases while remaining just as soulful. It’s magnetic, vulnerable, and unapologetically queer. And the inspiration is just as steamy as the single. This past summer, Taylor took the runway at the West 18th Street Fashion Show, modeling what they call “leather kink gear” for Red Hare Leather. “Afterwards, there was an interesting power play between the two of us,” Taylor says. “It was a very powerful, sexual exchange.”
Playboy Pursuit That evening brought more than just inspiration for Taylor’s latest single: it welcomed an unexpected opportunity to become a
Playboy Bunny. Post-catwalk, Taylor tagged along with a friend opening for drag superstar Trixie Mattel’s performance in the Power & Light District in June 2023 and soon found themselves backstage. Sporting a unique jacket patterned with a collage of vintage Playboy Bunny photos, Taylor crossed paths with Mattel. Mattel adored the jacket, and Taylor was quick to gift it, sharing a couple of photos she snapped with the drag queen on Instagram. A representative at Playboy saw the post—along with the recently shared photos from the fashion show—and asked Taylor if they wanted to become a Bunny. “I don’t really fit the bill for Playboy, but they said, ‘That’s why we want you’,” Taylor says. With experience modeling and a second career as a photographer and videographer, the prospect seemed like a natural fit. Now, they produce much of their own content for Playboy’s online platform, Centerfold. Being a Playboy Bunny has become a reclamation of power for Taylor: When they took a step back from music a decade ago, they thought they had hit an expiration date as a femme artist in the entertainment industry. And when they became a mother soon after, they felt as though their sexual identity had been ripped from them. “I didn’t think that I would be in my mid-thirties and be sexy and desirable,” Taylor says. “I thought I would be an invisible part of society. But the best is not over. We’re not getting older; we’re getting hotter.”
Next Steps Now recovered from burnout, when Taylor thinks about what’s next in their career, the focus has shifted away from external achievements and towards sustainability. And while they have plans to hit the road for a week or two this summer, there are no big tours on the horizon. “I don’t want to choke hold accolades as a gatekeeper for my happiness—my goal isn’t to be on a Billboard chart or to release a full-length album in this season in my life,” Taylor says. “I want to feel accomplished. I want to feel joy.”
THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
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THE PITCH EVENTS JANUARY CALENDAR
January 25-27
The Band That Fell To Earth
recordBar
The Band That Fell To Earth KC’s eighth annual tribute to David Bowie, featuring three nights of music at recordBar on Thursday, Jan. 25 (VIP show); Friday, Jan. 26; and Saturday, Jan. 27. A portion of proceeds will be donated to a local charity. Each night will contain a different set list, special guests, and items created by local makers. This is the metro’s premier David Bowie tribute, powered by some of the city’s most prominent musicians and community supporters. In previous years, we’ve covered the VIP events, which have been spectacular, but the other straightforward shows are equally not to be missed. If you want to see KC VIPs do a faithful flaming tribute to the Thin White Duke, get your tickets ASAP.
January 12-14
Kansas City Tattoo Expo Kansas City Marriott Downtown
Hosted by InkMasters, the Kansas City Tattoo Expo is the place to go for all your tattoo and piercing needs. One hundred award-winning tattoos and piercers will come together in one location for three days to perform live tattooing and piercing. Tickets are only available at the door. Get there before 5 p.m. on Friday for $5 off.
January 27
Sonic Symphony
Stay in the know about KC’s upcoming events on our interactive online calendar!
Kansas City Convention Center
January 27
Ira Glass Lied Center of Kansas
Ira Glass is making his way to Lawrence to speak about his experiences as an award-winning journalist. Throughout his career in radio, Glass has won seven Peabody Awards and was the first journalist to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for audio journalism. As the host and creator of This American Life, along with his numerous journalism endeavors, Glass has countless examples of great storytelling. As he steps into the Lied Center of Kansas on Jan. 27, he will share insight into life as a journalist. With an extensive career in the field, Glass is a perfect candidate for up-and-coming journalism students to get a good grasp of what being a widely successful and acclaimed journalist takes. The event begins at 7:30 p.m., and tickets currently range between $35-$50 for adults and $19-$26 for students and children.
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THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
Sonic Symphony’s world premiere took place in London this past September, and now they’re bringing their show to Kansas City Music Hall later this month. A full symphony orchestra playing songs from the iconic SEGA franchise, this is a fully immersive multimedia experience. They’ll be pulling songs from over three decades worth of awardwinning games, ranging from symphonic versions of the classic 8-bit and 16-bit jingles to EDM and rockinspired tunes that bring the franchise’s modern titles to life. Paired with colorful lights and graphics from the games, Sonic Symphony is sure to deliver an unforgettable event for fans of all ages.
January 31
Mean Girls Lied Center of Kansas
Calling all wannabe Plastics, cool moms, and people who are still trying to make ‘fetch’ happen. From the mind of Tina Fey comes a musical twist on the 2004 movie. Mean Girls will be taking the Lied Center stage on Wednesday, Jan. 31. You’ll get to see Cady adjusting to suburban life, her rivalry with Regina George, and getting through the awkwardness of high school, but this time, in song. This show is suited for ages 10 and up. Student/youth tickets are $21-31, and adult tickets are $40-60. The show starts at 7:30 p.m.
THE PITCH ADVICE KEEP THEM COMING
what narcissists do is lovebomb you, then bang your brains out. I’m not looking to get hooked on some dude who wants to rush me into a relationship before I realize what a jackass he is just because he can make me cum.” Hannah has chosen a period of abstinence for the time being until she finds a person she can’t get enough of outside the bedroom. The intent of dating without sex is to foster a deep bond that is not influenced by
navigate this: Plan non-sexual activities: Choose date activities such as hiking, museum visits, or attending cultural events. Date settings should be comfortable and conducive to conversation. Opt for quieter, more intimate locations where you can focus on getting to know each other without external distractions. As you grow closer, add activities that encourage teamwork, cooperation, and communication, such as cooking together, attending a workshop, or volunteering.
Photo by Nicole Bissey. Illustrations by Shelby Phelps
Understand that everyone has their own timeline for physical intimacy...
SEX-FREE DATING Kansas City has a dating problem. For a few years now, we’ve landed on the “Worst US Cities to Date In” list from BestPlaces. We apparently ranked the lowest among the 80 cities ranked because, per capita, we have a minimal amount of concerts and social gathering places like bowling alleys, and we buy fewer flowers as gifts. Some folks don’t plan dates, make reservations, buy advance tickets, or—how do I say this nicely—seem to know anything about wooing or seducing someone they’re interested in dating. In a world obsessed with instant connections and swipe-right romances, some daters are choosing a different approach— experiences where they don’t rush to the bedroom but, instead, focus on building an emotional connection. People may choose to refrain from intercourse or sexual contact altogether while dating due to personal values, cultural beliefs, or individual circumstances. Some modern daters have seen what comes of hook-up culture—like risky sexual behavior, lack of emotional connection, and lack of orgasms—and they are saying, mmmkay hard pass. Others have just never found a special someone, and they choose long-term single-
hood over settling. Prioritizing emotional intimacy and wanting to build a strong connection before introducing physical intimacy is not just for demisexuals. It’s also not just for those adhering to religious or cultural values emphasizing abstinence. Some daters feel more at ease taking their time to get to know their partner before becoming physically involved. F.G., a woman in her 40s, shared that she has done little more than kiss and cuddle in her dating experiences. She watched friends marry and divorce young, which led her to value assessing compatibility on various levels, such as hobbies, goals, and communication skills, before having sex and getting too attached. “No one has piqued my interest enough to choose them over my vibrator or my peace,” F.G. says. Some daters may feel pressured or rushed in relationships that quickly escalate to a physical level. “It always seemed like they [men] said the right things to get me to sleep with them, then they would lose interest, then I was left feeling all the shame as if I did something wrong,” says Hannah, 31. “I’ve also heard
sexual chemistry. Delaying sexual involvement may reduce the risk of forming attachments based on physical attraction, allowing for a more objective assessment of compatibility before getting all those extra sexy neurotransmitters involved. Couples can explore shared interests and hobbies by going out on [gasp] real dates. Dates that are outside of one of your domiciles. Dates that let you each show the other what you like and what you want to be a part of your relationship should you choose to continue towards commitment. How do you make this work when many daters are conditioned to expect that everyone has sex these days? If partners have different views on the timing of sexual involvement, it may lead to misunderstandings and conflicts. It’s best to be upfront about your need to get to know them first. “I just rip the band-aid off early, like the first convo, I tell them I don’t have sex until there is a commitment. Until then, let’s see how compatible we are in all the other ways,” says Hannah. Some might argue that waiting to engage in sexual activity might delay the discovery of physical incompatibility, which is a valid concern. Sexual chemistry is a real thing, and I am 100% a proponent of not committing to someone you don’t enjoy fucking. Abstaining during dating doesn’t mean abstaining until marriage. For one thing, marriage isn’t everyone’s goal in life. Secondly, delaying sexual activity is just that—delaying. Ultimately, the decision to date without having sex is highly personal, and you should choose a dating approach that aligns with your values, preferences, and comfort levels. Here are some suggestions on how to
Communicate your intentions: Clearly express your intentions for taking a slow approach to physical intimacy. Discuss the importance of building a strong emotional connection and getting to know each other on a deeper level. Avoid pressuring your partner or making them feel uncomfortable. Get to know each other: Focus on meaningful conversations and ask open-ended questions to learn more about your date’s values, interests, and life experiences. Understand that everyone has their own timeline for physical intimacy, and it’s essential to respect each other’s boundaries. Express affection in other ways: Show affection through gestures like holding hands, hugging, or cuddling without necessarily progressing to sexual activity. Remember that communication is key, and being open and honest about your intentions will contribute to a healthy and respectful dating experience. Each person’s comfort level is unique, so it’s important to find a pace that works for all involved. If you feel like the societal pressures to have sex have gotten to you, or you realize that you stayed in a dating situation way too long because the physical bond kept you together, this method could be the approach to help you find a better, more compatible partner than you’ve ever had. For the love of all that is holy, Kansas City—please get out there and date better, regardless of whether you choose to have sex or not. You can find Kristen @OpenTheDoorsKC on Instagram or openthedoorscoaching com. Check out her podcast Keep Them Coming.
THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
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NourishKC delivers on a big promise By Beth Lipoff
You don’t have to prove anything to get a hot meal at NourishKC. The organization, located at 750 Paseo Blvd., serves “anyone who walks through our doors.” “We are a zero-barrier facility. No questions asked. People don’t need to show I.D. or any type of need just to access a meal,” says Mandi Jean Retter, executive director of NourishKC. For years, NourishKC has been providing free lunch Monday through Friday. Now, the organization is expanding its offerings. Retter estimated that 60% of people who were having lunch with them Monday through Friday last year wouldn’t get to eat at all on Saturday and Sunday due to a lack of food options for their clientele in Jackson County. That’s all changing this month, as NourishKC has started serving lunch seven days a week. “I honestly think we’re going to double our numbers on the weekends because people won’t be beholden to being at work. They’re going to be able to drive in and pick up four meals for their family,” Retter says. Her next goal is to launch a dine-in dinner program by May 31. That will be dependent on finding the funding to have enough staff to do it. One thing that’s different about NourishKC compared to other food facilities is that meals are served restaurant style, not with a cafeteria line. “We feel that there’s a lot of dignity behind that. When you’re not standing in a line and having an awkward eye-contact moment with someone, you can sit down like you’re in a restaurant, just like a normal person, and it just so happens that your meal is free,” Retter says. Food insecurity groups from other cities have visited to study NourishKC’s restaurant model and hopefully duplicate it. “I like to say that Nourish is an unofficial community center. We have people who come every day because they feel safe. They get to see other people they know,” Retter says. “The one question we will ask is, ‘How are you?’” Retter likes to keep birthday cakes on hand so that they can have an impromptu celebration for anyone. More than that, she likes to talk with the people who come in and really get to know them. “I had a woman that was in yesterday. I haven’t seen her in two months. I was in a
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Courtesy photos
What they don’t use to make meals, they redistribute. meeting with someone, and she walked up behind me and gave me the biggest hug. I said, ‘I have been so worried about you. Are you ok?’ She goes, ‘I knew you’d be worried about me! I’m good. I got a job. I’m doing really well,’” Retter says. She feels strongly that the human connection is just as important as the food they provide at NourishKC. “Sometimes, it just takes someone to care. I can’t tell you how many conversations over the last year I’ve had with this woman where she’s come in crying and down. Giving people encouragement and connecting on a social level over a meal is something that people like you and I take for granted. That type of support just skyrockets people. It helps them feel like, ‘I’ve got somebody in my corner. I can do this,’” Retter says. Retter says that another man who comes in regularly likes that she always checks in with him about how many days he’s been able to stay sober. From last January to October, the number of meals NourishKC served on a daily basis increased dramatically, from approximately 300 to 400 meals to 600 to 900. Part of the increase is because those who come for lunch also can take home a meal for dinner. One day, they served hamburgers, which Retter says can be a rarity for those who eat with them. The meal was so popular
THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
that they ran out after an hour and a half. They made more burgers and ran out again after another 30 minutes. But because they’re committed to being open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Retter wasn’t going to close the doors due to a lack of ingredients. She and her staff quickly prepped fried chicken and chicken salad sandwiches instead. “We’re going to keep an eye on the traffic throughout the day. We’re going to keep making food. And if that door is open until 2 o’clock, we’re going to ensure that every single person who shows up gets a meal. That consistency is so important to people,” Retter says. “I know six people that jump off that bus line at Admiral and Paseo every single day at 1:55, and they run to our building so they can get their one meal of the day. If we ran out of food and we closed our doors, those six people would not have anything to eat for at least 24 hours.” NourishKC’s journey began with one parishioner at Grace & Holy Cathedral who decided to feed one houseless man. Word spread, and soon, hundreds were coming to the church for a meal. That later developed into Episcopal Community Services. Retter says NourishKC spun off from Episcopal Community Services about 15 years ago and is no longer religiously affiliated. Many of its diners aren’t necessarily
houseless. A person might have a job and a place to live but still be food insecure, and that can feel embarrassing. Retter says that once they started doing take-out meals during the pandemic, this need became a lot more apparent. “They don’t want to go somewhere and have to admit they need something as basic as food. Coming to our kitchen and being able to get a to-go meal and go back to their place and go eat in their own space has allowed us to reach a larger group of people that we didn’t know existed,” she says. The food in NourishKC’s kitchen comes from its food rescue program, a partnership with local restaurants, grocery stores, and distributors. It’s stuff that’s near its expiration date or might not look perfect. What they don’t use to make meals, they redistribute to 14 local food pantries. Volunteers are essential for them to prep ingredients, serve food, plate to-go meals, and clean dishes. They’ll also take help transporting food rescue items. You can register as an individual or as a group of up to 15 people. Kids ages 10 to 13 can volunteer, but they have to have an adult with them. Teens and adults 14 and older can volunteer on their own. For more information, visit nourishkc.org/ get-involved/volunteer.
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ReLeafMo.com | 13836 South U.S. 71 Highway Grandview, MO | (816) 597-4768 THE PITCH | January 2024 | THEPITCHKC.COM
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