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Letter from the Editor
Letter from the Editor
THIS MUST BE THE PLACE
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By Brock Wilbur
Lovebirds, welcome to the February issue of The Pitch While spirits are high and rebirth is in the air, as we ride the wave of enthusiasm for a new year, this magazine brings together our traditional (yet wildly untraditional) look at sex, love, and relationships in the City of Kansas.
Within these pages, you’ll find our approach to celebrating connectivity as an energetic bridge between people or a path between parties linking to a shared concept. 2023 is a time for celebration, but perhaps now, with the breath of fresh air after the last few years, equally a pause for introspection, re-evaluation, and re-dedication.
There are so many forms this can take. Look to our story from Kate Frick about two bakers building a beautiful corner of their kitchen as a shared space for others. Check out our Keep Them Coming about destigmatizing and cherishing who you are in Valentine’s season when you’re single. Emily Cox takes a dive into a Kemper gallery show about re-appropriating bonds to build new ideologies. Sofia Mongillo profiles a teenage activist whose investment in our collective future is fueled by the purest dedication— an outpouring for the ages and something real that will outlive us all.
We, as a publication, are invested in you finding joy and purpose in how you love because we find joy and purpose in all things bound to this city. With some regularity, our team redesigns our approach to the metro we serve by asking and answering where the love is flowing. A relationship can exist anywhere you would fight to protect someone or something with all that you have. Our work here is partially governed by our relationship to a place—a type of relationship in which culture, at large, doesn’t pay its dues during a holiday built for expensive chocolate and cringeworthy sex dice.
Since Christmas Day, I’ve been thinking about how love correlates to physical or emotional spaces and what power exists there. My grandmother has spent the last few years living in a medical facility in our hometown. Her mobility was rendered null and void a great while back, and she has needed constant support staff to keep her going. About six months back, she casually started mentioning how excited she was for this X-mas because she’d be spending it back in her old home. The offhanded remarks kept growing more frequent, and we were a little heartbroken about it all because she clearly wanted an impossible thing to occur. Getting her up the plethora of steps to a place where no one has lived for years, in the middle of a Kansas winter, when she can’t move at all? It just wasn’t in the cards. We didn’t want her making emotional plans around a situation that was simply unmanageable.
The entire family was gathered in her living room on Christmas. And Suzanne was there too, sitting in her favorite old chair. Through sheer will, she’d manifested an ambulance and a team to transport her back to her place and a family friend to handle nursing duties. We unwrapped gifts next to a tree we dug out of storage and had a holiday dinner with Wilburs from thousands of miles around.
I sat there, too, dumbfounded at the power of manifesting this—a woman who loved a place so much that she would move mountains to get there. We would’ve all been there to celebrate with her, one way or another, but this was what she wanted— love on her terms. Those terms needed this place. This must be the place.
What would you do in your relationship to love a space? How would you choose to fight for it, whether it needed you to or not? The February issue of The Pitch is here to highlight just a few of the stories we’ll be platforming all month long, via these pages or online, regarding all the ways our love of a place might take form—and cherishing that unbreakable bond just as we would celebrate the love between two people.
Thank you for sharing your love with us in the various forms that take—from simply the amount of time and attention you give us at this outlet each and every day, including all the feedback and support in our inboxes and comment sections. Thanks for building a space with us and making room for so much more.
P.S. Would you be our Valentine?
Pitch in and we’ll make it through,
