The Pitch: March 2021 by The Pitch KC

CONTENTS

THE PITCH

Publisher Stephanie Carey Editor-in-Chief Brock Wilbur Strategy Director Kelcie McKenney Music Editor Nick Spacek Film Editor Abby Olcese Contributing Writers Emily Cox, Liz Cook, Rachel Potucek, Anne Kniggendorf, Barbara Shelly, April Fleming, Deborah Hirsch, Brooke Tippin, Beth Lipoff, Riley Cowing, Dan Lybarger, Vivian Kane, Orrin Grey, Adrian Torres, Reb Valentine, Aaron Rhodes, J. M. Banks, Gail Folsom Little Village Creative Services Jordan Sellergren Contributing Photographers Zach Bauman, Joe Carey, Chase Castor, Caleb Condit, Travis Young, Jim Nimmo Contributing Designers and Illustrators Katelyn Betz, Austin Crockett, Jake Edmisten, Lacey Hawkins, Angèle Lafond, Alex Peak, Frank Myles, Jon Tinoco Director of Marketing & Promotions Jason Dockery Account Manager John Phelps Director of Operations Andrew Miller Editorial Interns Bek Shackelford, Lucie Krisman, Savannah Hawley, Sophia Misle Multimedia Intern Nicole Mitchell Design Intern Laurel Crouse Marketing Intern Khaqan Khan

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DISTRIBUTION

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4 LETTER

18 DINING

28 KC CARES

6 NEWS

20 CULTURE

30 SAVAGE LOVE

8 NEWS

24 MUSIC

Letter from the Editor The Contagion of Captain Trips and the Wilbur-Kane menagerie BY BROCK WILBUR

Block Party KC tenants’ month of activism broke the system BY J.M. BANKS

Party’s Over Port Fonda’s “cool kid” reputation masked years of sexual harassment, fear, and abuse BY LIZ COOK & NATALIE GALLAGHER

Eat This/Drink This Now Sura Noodle Bar Verdigris Bar BY APRIL FLEMING

Fashionably Late Black-owned brands are overdue for their spotlight BY J.M. BANKS

TRAVIS YOUNG

The hygiene resource hub for those in need BY BROOKE TIPPIN

Pandemic pressures BY DAN SAVAGE

Rock stars on the record Rock stars reveal the tracks that built them BY NICK SPACEK

26 FILM

Pandemic panic cinema Movies respond to our agonizing cabin fever BY ABBY OLCESE

Port Fonda

by Katelyn Betz thepitchkc.com | March 2021 | THE PITCH

LETTER

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR THE CONTAGION OF CAPTAIN TRIPS AND THE WILBUR-KANE MENAGERIE BY BROCK WILBUR

I am often surprised that Kansas City has made me host to an entire menagerie of pets. Certainly, my background did not prime me for it. My mother informed us from the start that we couldn’t have pets because she was allergic, and therefore we were allergic. [I have come to believe, after watching her cuddle with my sister’s large dogs for a decade, that these claims were perhaps overblown.] Every dog or cat I’d ever encountered leading up to adulthood was some foul creature who wanted to make sounds at me or bite me or both. I have not had the greatest of track records with animals, and once in a blue moon, I’ll worry that the old adage about them being able to sense evil somehow applied to me. In Los Angeles, my (soon to be) wife adopted a cat the week before she met me. It was an abused kitty from the streets of Santa Monica, with a broken right front paw from where kids hit it with a rock. Vivian named the cat for her favorite movie. And that’s how “Dr. Kitty Kimble From The Fugitive” became the first of our family. [She was lonely when she adopted the cat, and had she met me a week later, I could have avoided years of having all my shirts destroyed by a creature of pure chaotic rage.] Kimble made the trek to Kansas City when we moved. One pet seemed enough. Until disaster struck. A vet friend posted photos of two tiny cats, found abandoned to die in a dumpster, and rescued by a fellow vet. The brothers were clinging to each other for life, and even in rehabilitation would not let go of each other’s little paws. Within a day, we’d made plans to adopt them. That’s how Woodward and Bernstein, the progeny of two eccentric journalists, came to overhaul our lives. Kimble was unamused. Kimble remains, staunchly, non-plussed by this decision. Three cats in a household is a bit much. It is a constant reminder of a series of decisions that, while not regretted, are regretful. I would die for them, but I am also in danger of destroying them. Especially in the mornings, when they have decided my sleep is cutting into their presumed breakfast appointment. Last year, Vivian and I moved into a place with a backyard. She’d grown up with dogs and wanted a dog. I’d grown up terrified of dogs and thusly having no interest in a dog. But there was so much backyard to use, it only made sense that something should

THE PITCH | March 2021 | thepitchkc.com

benefit from it. Not liking dogs has often been perceived in society as a bit sociopathic. Who doesn’t like dogs? Well… Okay, so I never disliked dogs, per se. I simply had no interest in them existing in my vaccinity. I do not like being yelled at or bit, as I assume is the general preference of most people. I also watched as dogs seemed to destroy the mentality of friends— requiring work, financial and emotional commitments, and so forth that I felt diminished their quality of life. Why do you need to skip a vacation because the dog can’t come? Why are you spending thousands of dollars a year to keep an animal alive long past what appeared to be any reasonable quality of life? Why were you always in a position of having to discipline this animal, to prevent it from attacking strangers? In a very soulless, spreadsheet mentality manner, I simply did not get the concept of dogs. But then. Pandemic. Backyard. Boredom. Depression. “Hey should we adopt a dog?” Sure, why the fuck not? We drove up the street to the first dog rescue we could find. And we asked to see one dog we’d found on a website. Vivian bent down and pet him. I was hesitant, because petting dogs has never been my jam—obviously. Brock Wilbur was never the guy to walk up and try to scratch your pupper on the street. Brock of Old was fine without that. I did take a knee though, and I pet this new dude. A 60-pound cattle dog; all white with hints of yellow. The exact same coloring as our evil cat, Kimble. The dog seemed to like me. The rescue associate said, “He doesn’t like most male creatures. Not a big fan of men.” My wife and I looked at each other. “Good,” we replied. “No one in this house is a fan of men either.” We took the dog for a walk around the block. He seemed nice. The next day we brought him home. We aren’t great at comparison shopping. Probably should have seen more than one dog, ever, before committing to hosting it for a lifetime. We named him Captain Trips. It’s a reference to the virus in Stephen King’s *The Stand* that wipes out the planet. It seemed a pandemic dog should be named for a pandemic. [People find that bleak; we find that cute. Go name your own dog.] But also Captain Trips can barely walk without falling over his own feet, and he goes out of his way to trip us at every turn. It works on levels.

The dog absolutely hates me. Or. It’s less that he hates me, but rather he bonded with Viv in that first minute, and now if I even stand between the two of them in the kitchen, he loses his goddamned mind. This has made situations, like our bedroom arrangement, fraught with tension to say the least. It’s been a few months. We are working on it. He has bonded with the rest of the menagerie and has quickly found an ally in Kimble—especially in the face of the unyielding goblin energy of the Journalism Brothers. I love him so dearly. I cherish every small opportunity I get to scratch behind his ears. I feed him too much of my human food,

because I am not above bribing something to love me. And one day, God-willing, he will understand that he can be man’s best friend. Or at least one man’s best friend. That day is not today. But soon. Pitch in and we’ll make it through,

If you have stories about life under quarantine, concerns, or the rare moment of levity, please reach out to brock@thepitchkc.com this month.

THE P ITC H KC.C OM

NEWS

BLOCK PARTY KC TENANTS’ MONTH OF ACTIVISM BROKE THE SYSTEM BY EMILY COX

Daniel Halferty was behind on rent. “When I made a partial payment in October, [my landlord] texted me, berating me.” Halferty had been hunting for a job since April, but with a history of cancer and traumatic brain injury, he was cautious about finding a job that would be fairly safe from COVID-19. Halferty started his new job at the end of November, and made a payment plan to catch up on past-due rent. That was fine with his landlord, Ellis Real Estate, until Halferty asked to delay just 2 weeks, so he could prevent his utilities from being shut off. Then his landlord stopped communicating. “They just cut out all communication to me, and then Christmas Eve, we had the notice from the lawyer on our door that we were going to be sued for $2,925. They had 30 days to collect the payment and get the apartment back.” Evictions are still happening during the pandemic in Kansas City. Thousands of Kansas Citians have been in Halferty’s shoes in the last year: lost income due to the pandemic, a good faith effort to work with their landlord, and still, being tossed out of their home. KC Tenants declared the first month of the year Zero Eviction January. Through disruptions in person, online, and on the phone, the organization prevented 919 eviction hearings from happening in both Jackson and Clay Counties—90 percent of all those scheduled for the month. Halferty was one of the tenants whose hearing was continued to a later date, during which time he was able to borrow money to pay the landlord and find and move into a new home. Of KC Tenants, Halferty says, “Their work is lifesaving.” •

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KC Tenants was founded just two years ago, in February of 2019. They’ve wasted no time in making change: from their influence on the 2019 municipal elections, to creating the city’s Tenant Bill of Rights, to organizing tenant unions, and shutting down evictions. “In some way, we are still a very baby organization,” says Tara Raghuveer, director of KC Tenants. “And in other ways we’ve built a highly sophisticated, radical group of people who are ready to do what it takes to defend

THE PITCH | March 2021 | thepitchkc.com

their neighbors and defend themselves.” KC Tenants began interceding in eviction proceedings last summer, after the initial pandemic eviction moratorium expired at the end of May. The moratorium had been enacted by then-presiding judge of the 16th Circuit Court, which covers Jackson County, so KC Tenants pressured him to renew it. He did not rise to the occasion, and evictions returned to Jackson County last summer. So they pivoted to the strategy of “If we don’t get it, shut it down,” which also serves well as a chant at their rallies. They began interrupting eviction courts, making it impossible for dockets to be heard. “We did a oneoff disruption in July,” says Raghuveer. “We did a bigger, more orchestrated disruption in October that was extremely successful. And then we ended up seeing some results out of that in the next couple weeks.” One result of their continued disruptions in November was Judge Mary Weir ceasing to hear evictions, both online and in-person, through the end of 2020. A new presiding judge took over the 16th Circuit Court at the beginning of the year: Judge Dale Youngs. “Our posture from the beginning was this guy is not an immediate target until he proves himself to be a target,” says Raghuveer. “He could potentially do the right thing on day one and end evictions and it could be a new era for the 16th Circuit Court. Of course, he did not do that.” In December, KC Tenants had tried to get a meeting with Judge Youngs, to advocate for an eviction moratorium. “No response,” says Raghuveer. “We had people email him, no response. On Christmas, we had a small group of people go and peacefully carol at his house in the middle of day, no cameras, no news, just to see if we could talk to him and get a meeting, no response.” So after months of sporadic disruptions, with no signs that the presiding judge would halt evictions, they committed to Zero Eviction January. “We really started preparing for the fact that we have to show up for tenants and keep them in their homes,” says Jenay Manley, a leader and Black Organizing Fellow with KC Tenants. “January is one of the coldest months of the year, it’s one of the highest months of evictions in a normal year, and we’re about to have a flood because the CDC moratorium is about to end.”

Their campaign produced a month like no other. Raghuveer, who is also behind the data-driven KC Eviction Project, says, “I’ve stared at this eviction data for like eight years of my life and there’s never been a month like the last month, where the courts just literally couldn’t hear ninety percent of the evictions that they had scheduled.” Their strategy was mutli-faceted: daily calls and emails to pressure various political targets, physically blocking courthouse doors on eviction hearing days, disrupting

online and teleconference proceedings, and rallies outside judges’ homes to make their message clear. Their rallying cry throughout the month was that every eviction is an act of violence.

WEEK ONE

In the first week of January, KC Tenants’ actions forced 323 hearings to be delayed. They shut down eviction proceedings at both Jackson County courthouses with in-person

NEWS

rallies, but most of the work of interrupting court happened out of sight and online. Since early in the pandemic, many court proceedings have been done remotely, using either teleconference lines, Webex video conferencing, or both. Each judge and court may handle their proceedings differently. Evictions are heard in as many as four courtrooms, with both afternoon and evening dockets. This means KC Tenants was facilitating up to eight separate disruption crews successfully.

One of the people coordinating this work is Bonnie (who asked to be identified by first name only, due to the possible legal issues that come with interrupting court proceedings). Bonnie isn’t a Kansas Citian—she is a homeowner ally who lives about an hour outside of the metro. When a friend shared info last year about what KC Tenants was doing, and that she could help from afar, she got involved. “Once I’d done [an action] once,” says Bonnie, “I was totally hooked.” Disruptors call or log in to the court’s

hearing, often using false names, and wait for proceedings to start. As soon as the judge calls the first case on the docket, interruption begins. They use the same script, the words growing in power with repetition. Initially speakers go one at a time, but as court administrators mute speakers, disruptors jump in as they can, creating a cacophony of voices offering support to tenants and condemning the judges’ actions. “[The script] feels really powerful to say,” says Bonnie, “and the things we say in

Above and pg 8: KC Tenants gathered at the downtown Jackson County Courthouse on January 7th, blockading both of the courthouse’s main entrances demanding a cease to evictions. CHASE CASTOR

that script, they’re just as much for the tenants to hear as they are for the judge. Letting tenants know it’s not their fault. We’re here in solidarity. We also tell the judges that they have a choice and every eviction is an act of violence. So it serves that dual purpose of telling the judge what they’re doing is wrong, thepitchkc.com | March 2021 | THE PITCH

NEWS

but also telling the tenants we’re here to help, people out there do care.” “We’ve had phone calls with tenants, afterwards,” says Bonnie, “saying even though we’ve only been able to delay their hearing for three weeks, they say, ‘We didn’t know anyone cared.’ And this gives them time to figure things out.” An additional three weeks can

THE PITCH | March 2021 | thepitchkc.com

be critical for a family trying to find another place to live. “We’ve had tenants who’ve called who are like ‘I didn’t know that anyone had my back until I heard you guys on the call,’ who are now a part of KC Tenants,” says Jenay Manley. “That’s power: knowing that your neighbor has your back, not because they

said it, but because they showed up and shut down eviction courts, and now you are also committed to showing up and shutting down eviction court. That’s power.” That’s a key part of what KC Tenants does: care for neighbors is shown not just with words, but with action. “This group doesn’t just have meetings and talk about problems all day long,” says Bonnie. “They actually get out and do stuff. And it’s actually helping people.” Supporters from outside the metro, like Bonnie, were essential in KC Tenant’s success in shutting down evictions in January. Raghuveer says, “We have people from Seattle and Maine and Los Angeles shutting down eviction court in Kansas City. The online disruptions are not only a super acceptable and COVID-safe way to take a pretty radical action, it’s also a way for communities where evictions are not happening right now to show radical solidarity with us. And it’s just the embodiment to me of what solidarity means: taking action for someone you don’t even know, someone you’re not even a neighbor to, just making sure their eviction doesn’t get to happen that day.” The campaign also featured daily emails to supporters with calls to action that could

“THIS WAS VIOLENCE WHEN THEY KNOCKED ON HIS DOOR. THIS WAS VIOLENT WHEN THEY EVICTED HIM FROM HIS HOUSE. WHEN THE JUDGE DECIDED TO EVICT HIM, IT WAS VIOLENT. BUT PEOPLE ONLY SEE IT AS VIOLENCE WHEN A GUN IS SHOT AND A TENANT IS IN THE HOSPITAL.”

NEWS

be taken from anywhere. Over the course of the month, the email list for these actions grew to over 450 participants. The actions often included calling, emailing, and faxing Judge Youngs’ office. They also included calls to City Councilpeople to advocate for an eviction moratorium as well as the cancellation of rent, including rent debt. “A eviction moratorium without rent cancellation will only burden tenants with debt that will lead to evictions once the moratorium is lifted,” reads the action email. “That ain’t right.” Their mobilization to contact Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver mid-month elicited words of support from him, when he released a statement calling on Biden’s administration to strengthen the national eviction moratorium. Their demands became even more resonant when, on Friday, January 8, Civil Process Deputies shot a tenant, Eric Smith, three times as they evicted him from his home. Smith’s family had informed the court that Smith was having a mental health crisis, and requested they bring a mental health counselor with them. They did not. As this tenant went to the hospital in serious condition, KC Tenants mobilized. “So that day was actually pretty emotional,” says Jenay Manley. “We had been spending days, months naming that every eviction is an act of violence. And because this was the most brutal version of violence, it is easily seen. But this was violence before a tenant was shot. This was violence when they knocked on his door. This was violent when they evicted him from his house. When the judge decided to evict him, it was violent. But people only see it as violence when a gun is shot and a tenant is in the hospital.” “Black people are harassed every day,” says Manley. “We can’t just say that we matter after we die. We can’t just say people matter after they are shot. We have to matter from the jump—especially in a pandemic where we know the only way that people can stay safe is by staying in their house. The violence happens the moment that he was given an eviction notice.” The afternoon of the deputies’ shooting, KC Tenants put out a call to action. And with just a few hours notice, 80 supporters gathered in midtown, and marched a few blocks to Judge Dale Youngs’ house for accountability. The Civil Process Deputies are officers of the court, and ultimately answer to him. The crowd gathered outside Youngs’ home, with chants and speeches and a banner that read, “Judge Youngs, you have blood on your hands.” Judge Youngs did not answer a knock on his door, but the protestors left a letter for him, and the banner hanging behind. They were gone in less than an hour. The purpose wasn’t to get arrested—but to make their point and go home.

WEEK TWO

Their message to Youngs appeared to be ef-

fective. On Monday morning, January 11, Judge Youngs announced a two week eviction moratorium—a true moratorium: no eviction summons, no hearings, no writs of execution. The reasons cited in his administrative order included concerns about “social and political unrest” and the safety of Court staff. Jenay Manley balked at the irony of the order: “When you talk about, ‘Oh, well, for the safety of our employees we’re going to suspend evictions,’ but you don’t have that same need to keep people safe in their home—You could’ve suspended evictions for the safety of tenants. The CDC named that that’s the only way to keep people safe. But you do it for the safety of your employees because there’s protests outside. The judges were uncomfortable, not unsafe. But tenants are unsafe.” While a two week stay on evictions aided the goal of zero evictions for the month, it was a small win. “An eviction moratorium is a bandaid,” says Manley. “It is a must—we have to end all evictions right now, and I think that Judge Dale Youngs has the power to do it, and he should. I think it is only moral, it is only right. But more importantly, I think we need to cancel rent, and forgive the debt that has been accrued by tenants throughout this pandemic. I think that is the long term solution to keep tenants from falling into deep holes of depression and debt in the middle of a pandemic that we know is no fault of their own.” There is precedent and support for an eviction moratorium. The presiding judge of the 22nd Circuit Court in St. Louis, Judge Youngs’ counterpart on that side of the state, has enacted a moratorium there for the entirety of the pandemic. Other cities and states are doing the same. Mayor Quinton Lucas publicly called for the courts here to enact a moratorium in December. But Kansas

KC Tenants walk to Judge Kyndra Stockdale’s home, where they held a rally demanding Judge Stockdale end her eviction hearings. They left their demands and a banner on her front door. CHASE CASTOR

Citians are still being evicted. While the CDC order against evictions has been in effect since September, it offers only limited protection. The tenant must file a specific document stating their eligibility. It only protects tenants who are past due on rent for COVID-related reasons. Landlords can still file evictions and take them to court and argue against them. What KC Tenants, Mayor Lucas, and other tenant advocates are calling for is a stop to all filings, hearings, writs, and enforcement. “Eviction is already a fundamentally traumatic event, both a cause and a condition of poverty,” wrote Mayor Lucas in his public letter to Judge Youngs. “Evictions cause serious health and economic crises, exacerbating harms from

the pandemic itself,” continued Mayor Lucas. “Homelessness and relocation stress add another barrier for the unemployed and working class as they strive to enter the workforce. Further, landlords file evictions at disproportionate rates in Black and Brown neighborhoods, reinforcing decades of racial inequities.” A recent study in Oregon showed that the downstream cost of evictions to the government was many times greater than the cost of current rent debt in the state. That is, it would be cheaper for the government to pay tenants’ back rent, keeping them in their homes, than to pay for the additional costs of emergency housing, medical services, and more, that are caused by a mass eviction of people in crisis. thepitchkc.com | March 2021 | THE PITCH

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And the current court processes pose problems of inaccessibility and inequality. Remote hearings can be an obstacle, especially for tenants who are elderly or disabled. “The online evictions are immoral,” says Manley. “It is wrong to assume that tenants have access to conference calls or Web Ex in order to be evicted from their home. You have to have access to stable internet when you don’t have stable housing. You have to have access to stable connection on phones when you don’t have access to stable housing. That’s unacceptable.” On Tuesday, January 12, KC Tenants rallied at the Office of Civil Process for accountability for wrongs done in the process of evictions. They rallied for Eric Smith, who had been shot 4 days prior, and for Anthony Stinson, a single dad of kids aged 10 and 2. Back in December, Stinson was surprised to find an eviction notice on his door, telling him to vacate. He’d never received a court summons. Records show that it was served to a Jane Doe. “Unless they served my 10 year old daughter,” says Stinson, “there is no Jane Doe. Judge Kyndra Stockdale then issued a default eviction judgment against me in December. I should have been protected by the CDC moratorium, but how could I fight for myself if I didn’t know I was being taken to court?” He didn’t get the opportunity. In January, “the court’s deputies showed up at my door. It was pouring rain and 20 degrees. They told me to grab what I could and get out of there, so they could get out of the rain. They said I could come back to get my stuff. They lied to me. When I left that day, the landlord changed the locks. They never intended to let me back in.” He didn’t have many of his things, including his daughter’s school supplies or his medications. On the January 12 rally at the Office of Civil Process, KC Tenants stood alongside him to demand a meeting. “They refused,” says Stinson. “But we didn’t back down. We hollered at the doors till they were forced to make a deal with me. I’m getting my stuff back tomorrow.”

WEEK 3

The third week of January, with the twoweek eviction moratorium still in place, KC Tenants focused their energy on new targets: rallying at the homes of Judge Kyndra Stockdale, in Mission Hills, and Judge Mary Weir, in Brookside. KC Tenants gathered at the downtown Jackson County Courthouse on January 28th, blockading both of the courthouse’s main entrances demanding a cease to evictions. Many citizens tried to make it through the doors but were denied entrance and had to use a back entrance. Landlords, tenants, people with criminal hearings, and folks report for property tax purposes were among some of the citizens forced to use the back entrance that day. CHASE CASTOR

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NEWS

IV Hydration therapy for:

KC Tenants sought to call out judges for their complicity in a system that removes people from their homes during a pandemic, in the heart of winter, and called on the judges to use their judicial authority and discretion to halt evictions in their courtrooms. As people gathered in the parking lot of Country Club Christian Church on the evening of January 19, preparing to march to Judge Stockdale’s home, Raghuveer gave the rundown for the evening. She acknowledged that this might be out of folks’ comfort zone. Surrounded by 75 or so working class, multiracial people in one of the wealthiest areas of the metro, she said, “This is a scary part of town for most of us.” The marching crowd’s energetic chants— “Judge Stockdale, where do you stand, people are dying, you have blood on your hands!”— rang particularly loud in that quiet, spacious neighborhood that likely hasn’t seen a protest in decades. Jenay Manley’s twin children were with her at the rally, on the eve of their seventh birthday. “As we were walking on the street, [my son] said, ‘Mom, why are these houses so big?’ I told him it’s because it’s the judge’s house. He said, ‘This is the judge that evicts people from apartments?’ ...Yea, man.” Stockdale has evicted more tenants than any other judge in the 16th Circuit, according

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to KC Tenants, having heard at least 835 cases since June, with at least 361 of those receiving formal eviction judgements. The rally gathered outside Judge Stockdale’s large brick mansion—the only home on the block with its lights out, with a cluster of police watching from down the block, a helicopter lurking overhead, and neighbors peering out their front doors. Protestors held signs reading, “End Evictions” and “You have a choice.” As speakers called for an end to the violence of evictions, a huge shooting star streaked across the sky. The next day, KC Tenants expanded their court disruptions to Clay County for the first time, preventing 37 eviction hearings from happening. The next week, Clay County preemptively continued all their cases, rightly anticipating that KC Tenants planned to disrupt again.

WEEK 4

Judge Youngs’ two-week moratorium lapsed on January 24, which meant if evictions were to be halted, it would be up to KC Tenants. They did as they promised, rallying at the downtown courthouse doors on Thursday, January 28, in 25º weather for two hours. “The cavalry isn’t coming,” said KC Tenants leader Quadafi to the rally that day, “we’re the

cavalry.” Energy remained high despite the cold. The morning was launched with music booming across the courthouse’s plaza, including “Guillotine” by The Coup and its cheery chorus: “We got the guillotine! You better run!” While the blocking of courthouse doors is largely symbolic—most hearings happen online, and sheriffs were ushering people around to get access through the employee door—it was not an empty gesture. When tenants arrived at the court building and saw KC Tenants proclaiming that evictions must end, there were also KC Tenants members ready on the sidewalks to talk to them about what they were doing and offer support. In addition to impeding traffic into the courthouse, the rally was a very obvious, bright spectacle. Cars honked as they passed. A Downtown Ambassador stopped what he was doing across the street and watched, eventually crossing to take a photo, saying “I’m with y’all.” The spectacle continues the work of KC Tenants in letting people know that they are here and they care. Their presence and their action is a balm to the many Kansas Citians who are feeling beat down, especially over the last year. Even if you aren’t immediately facing eviction, it can be heartening to know

there are people showing up with their bodies, in the cold, to stand up for their neighbors. To see that the people have power and are fighting back against injustice. A man came by the courthouse to pay his taxes, and Raghuveer explained to him what was happening. She got on the mic and told the rally about the interaction: “I said ‘sir, we’re stopping evictions.’ He said, ‘the president still hasn’t signed a damn bill?!’ That’s right. So the people who are out here today, even the ones who aren’t here regarding landlord-tenant court, they know that we have tenants’ backs, and they know that we shouldn’t have to do this shit. We shouldn’t have to stand out here. Our toes shouldn’t have to be this damn cold. We shouldn’t have to shut it down. But. If they don’t fucking act, if the president doesn’t sign the damn bill, if Youngs doesn’t do the thing he has the authority to do, if Judge Youngs doesn’t end evictions, then we will shut it down!” •

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And for an entire month, they did. “The fact that they were able to stop over 900 evictions is just incredible,” says Bonnie. “When you think about how many lives that affected, how many families that affected, it’s a huge number of people that now have at least a few

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more weeks to try and figure things out and still have a safe place to call home.” After a month of intense, continuous action, KC Tenants learned what they are made of. That was part of the challenge from the beginning. Raghuveer says, “We wanted to see: Can we pull this off? Do we have enough people? What degree of organizing do we need to be able to execute on something like this? And who do we need to develop into what kind of leadership roles to pull it off?” Manley was awed by the way people showed up. “The whole team just threw down. It was—wow.” At the end of the month, they tallied it up, and found that 64 leaders took on new roles. “That’s 64 leaders in Kansas City now,” says Raghuveer, “whose lives are transformed, who have a new analysis of their own power, our collective power, and are ready to wield that power in a really radical direction. Once people feel the power of collective action, once people are politicized in public— you can’t undo that, you can’t untransform someone’s life after that transformation has occurred.” Bonnie is one of the people who stepped up this month. “I’ve never been a part of something like this before. I heard Tara one time say, ‘Charity is not liberation.’ I keep thinking of that. All the things I’d tried to do before to help make the world a better place was just charity, it wasn’t actually building power, which is what KC Tenants is all about, it’s about building people power. And that’s just been such a huge paradigm shift for me.” “My kids know,” says Manley, “they’re not going to an action for someone else, they’re not going to an action for some feeling of like ‘oh look at what we did.’ No, they’re going because they know it will be us. This is not like a volunteer thing. This is not something we show up for other people—we show up for one another, that means you and me. I think every time my kids show up to an action, they get this clear political understanding of what it means to build collectiveness.” •

•

So what’s next? This campaign built the breadth and depth of their power, and now they must decide how to wield it. During their debrief after the last eviction shutdowns, they realized, says Raghuveer, “if an action needed to occur that night at 7 p.m., we have everything we need to go pull it off, and not just pull it off, but pull it off really excellently. We have a security team, we have police liaisons, we have people running press, we have amazing powerful spokespeople, we’ve got an art team, we’ve got people who are ready to do childcare for the parents who have to bring their kids, we’ve got ride plans, we’ve got a medic team. The kind of infrastructure we’ve been able to build in the last month sets us up for success.” Their infrastructure also includes a re-

search and data team tracking what is happening in the courts. “We scrape the courts websites, multiple times a week, every week, so we have the most accurate numbers on this out of anyone.” Now that KC Tenants has a handle on how courts function and what they need to interrupt those functions, they are a welloiled machine. “It was initially a ton of work for me to figure out, and our data team to figure out,” says Raghuveer, “like how do we get all the info that we need. At this point, we’ve done this shit like fifteen times. I could set up the infrastructure for a given week in like 30 minutes.” The first week of February, with no fanfare or publicity, they decided to show up to remote hearings for Eastern Jackson County. “We noticed that 95 people were on the eviction docket in Independence, in the Eastern Jackson County courthouse,” says Raghuveer. “So we organized literally four people to go shut that down. Another 95 evictions are now delayed at least a couple weeks.” So as their group strategizes what’s next, Raghuveer says, it’s possible that Zero Eviction January becomes Zero Eviction 2021. At the same time, she says, “I think there’s a real recognition that we can’t just run ourselves into the ground doing what is, in essence, reactive organizing.” The organization had paused other projects as they dedicated all their power to blocking the month’s evictions. “So for example, we’re trying to launch a campaign to win a housing trust fund that we the people design, as opposed to nonprofits and developers,” says Raghuveer. “And we want it to be a campaign that is funded by defunding the police. That’s a whole multiyear effort that we’re about to kick off, that we actually need to kick off, if we’re ever going to be in a world where we’re not just fighting against every eviction at every turn.” They’re also working on building a network of tenant unions across the city. They spent the summer and fall dropping flyers with tenant resources at 10,000 doors. These larger-scale, power-building projects are critical to making substantial long-term change in the city. Whatever comes next, this month has strengthened them for it. “If the leaders and tenants decide that they want to keep doing this,” says Bonnie, “then me and a whole lot of other people are ready to throw down with them and make sure it stops.” “KC Tenants has been the first invitation for a lot of our people into public and political life,” says Raghuveer, “but now that they’re here, now that they’re politicized, now that they’re clear on their power and our collective power, they’re not going anywhere.” She continues, “We are growing a powerful and undeniable base of poor and working class people in Kansas City who are fed up and they are ready to do what it takes to fight for what they are owed.”

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thepitchkc.com | March 2021 | THE PITCH

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PARTY’S OVER PORT FONDA’S “COOL KID” REPUTATION MASKED YEARS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT, FEAR, AND ABUSE BY LIZ COOK & NATALIE GALLAGHER, PHOTOS BY TRAVIS YOUNG, ILLUSTRATIONS BY KATELYN BETZ

It should have been easy. Valentine’s Day 2020 was a Friday—guaranteed money for any restaurant with a shred of ambience. Port Fonda, Kansas City’s nationally lauded Mexican restaurant, was hosting a four-course dinner inspired by Laura Esquivel’s novel Like Water for Chocolate. The restaurant had put on the same themed dinner three years in a row, even re-using the same advertising. In an alternate reality, chef-owner Patrick Ryan and his staff might have been on autopilot. But in this one, everything was falling apart. Ryan was in a particularly foul mood. He’d yelled at servers and kitchen staff and driven more than one employee to tears. Before dinner service began, he’d thrown two of the restaurant’s KitchenAid stand mixers across the back hallway in a fit of rage. Nancy Wright, Port Fonda’s general manager at the time, left mid-way through the dinner, exhausted and demoralized, after she says Ryan screamed at her about not having enough wine glasses ready for the third course. After Wright left, server Megan Brigance watched Ryan toss out a chile relleno, thinking he had one too many. When he finished plating the course, he came up one short. “He

THE PITCH | March 2021 | thepitchkc.com

grabbed it out of the trash, put it on the plate, and put the sauce over it,” Brigance says. The resurrected chile relleno went out to a table in the Reserva room, the restaurant’s semi-private dining room. On the wood-paneled walls hung framed news articles and accolades for the restaurant’s award-winning chef. Beneath them, someone was eating food from the trash. Staff who had worked the dinner were shocked, and some discussed quitting. In text messages between Ryan and Wright reviewed by The Pitch, the chef acknowledged the incident. “It happened,” Ryan says. “I’m sorry. They can either quit or get over it. I’m not sure what else I can say.” For Wright, that dinner was a turning point. “Up until that point, I didn’t respect him as a business owner, but at least he was a good chef. And that all went out the window.” Since Port Fonda opened in Westport in 2012, it’s had a reputation as a hip spot for mezcal and mid-priced Mexican food. At night, the music would pulse loud enough to bury all conversation. Thin, attractive women wearing Baldwin denim (a uniform required by the restaurant and purchased at the employees’ expense) would circle the floor, delivering tequila shots and chimichangas to a

sea of young professionals. Every night felt like a party. But when COVID-19 temporarily closed the restaurant’s doors last March, the hangover started to creep in. Almost overnight, the whole city seemed to be talking about how to “save restaurants.” Some Port Fonda employees had started questioning whether there was anything worth saving. Over the past two months, The Pitch spoke to 17 former Port Fonda employees— line cooks, servers, bartenders, managers. Their complaints ranged from sexual harassment to racism to psychological and verbal abuse, primarily from Ryan and his co-owner Jamie Davila. Jamie Davila could not be reached for comment. As of early February, his LinkedIn page still lists him as “owner/operator” of Port Fonda, with the note: “While I intend to keep my ownership in Port Fonda I’m looking for a new opportunity to share me [sic] knowledge and skills.” After initially agreeing to an interview, Ryan did not return calls or emails seeking comment on specific allegations. In a state-

ment emailed to The Pitch, Ryan says, “I take accusations of this nature very seriously and personally. I feel for all the people who had a negative experience at Port Fonda and genuinely apologize for all the things that did happen. For all the things that were said that did not happen, there is nothing I can do or say or argue to make this situation better. What I can do is make sure I move forward with integrity and purpose as a person and for the industry.” Ryan did not respond to a follow-up email requesting clarification on which things did or did not happen.

“SNORT FONDA” From the early days of the restaurant, Port Fonda felt more like a nightclub than a workplace. Staff say Ryan and co-owner Jamie Davila would frequently pour staff members shots before service—sometimes, as early as 8:30 a.m. Josh Rogers, an assistant manager from 2012 to 2014, described a “party atmosphere” that superseded professionalism.

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“I would show up for my Sunday night shifts at four o’clock, and there’s ‘Rack City’ railing at full volume, and servers are like, ‘Jamie’s already shitfaced, you’ve got to go talk to these three tables.’ As soon as I walk in, it was immediate damage control.” Employees say Ryan was also frequently intoxicated while on duty. When he was working the line during brunch shifts, bartenders would pass him quarts of vodka on ice. When he was out in the restaurant, he would pound shots of Altos tequila. Some employees took it as a cue. “Staff members would get visibly intoxicated and not be able to take care of their duties or even be safe,” says Ryan Rama, a bartender who worked at the restaurant from 2017 to 2019. When Ryan and Davila weren’t drunk, they were often high on cocaine—so much so, that employees colloquially referred to the restaurant as “Snort Fonda.” Rogers remembers Davila periodically excusing himself from the expo line, emerging a few minutes later from the bathroom and wiping his nose: “Jamie would come up to me multiple times in the evening [gesture to his nose] and say, ‘Am I clear?’” Davila’s cocaine habit in particular was a frequent punchline, former server Markus Dixon noted: “One day we were cleaning up at the beginning [of a shift], and someone had dropped like an Altoid, a little white Altoid, and someone else stepped on it, and whoever saw it was like, ‘Jamie!’” Multiple employees say they were invited “upstairs,” to the condos where Davila and Ryan lived, to do cocaine in the middle of their shifts. One bartender who spoke to The Pitch on condition of anonymity says they felt pressured to participate. “I was like, if I don’t go upstairs and do this fucking cocaine, they’re going to fucking fire me.” “From my experience, it had all of the symptoms of an out-of-control cocaine problem,” says one former line cook who asked not to be named in this story. He witnessed Ryan and Davila high often and says both Davila and guests of the restaurant had offered him cocaine during shifts. But for most employees, it wasn’t the substance abuse that was the issue—it was the aftermath. When Ryan was high or drunk, the cook says, “he would go from being a very skilled, calculated, precise, very good at his job, very well-rounded chef, to just anger: spewing insults at his staff, throwing things, saying really hateful shit to people…and it was so difficult to do my job walking on eggshells waiting for the fallout.”

“I’M WORKING WITH A PSYCHOPATH.” Caitlin Corcoran, who worked as the bar manager from 2012 to 2014, says Ryan would throw plastic containers at her head when he was angry, but the abuse was more often verbal. “He called me ‘fucking stupid’ more times than I can count, in front of the whole staff—screaming at me at the top of his lungs.” Jessica Ryan (no relation to Patrick), an assistant manager who overlapped with Corcoran, says aRyan had “screaming bouts” in which he’d pepper staff with personal insults. ”I mean, completely belittling an individual in front of other people. And for the most part, these were women.” At times, the chef would get overwhelmed by tickets spitting out of the kitchen printer or angry about how they’d been rung in and start throwing them in the trash. Sometimes, he’d throw complete or nearly complete dishes—plates and all—off the pass onto the floor. Rama recalled a particularly brutal incident after the restaurant debuted a new menu. “The kitchen was having a hard time keeping up with the orders. They weren’t used to these new presentations and these new dishes, and he literally got so mad that he scooped everything that was in the window pass directly into the trash can, probably wasting close to $600 worth of food in that one sweep.”

Dixon, who worked at the restaurant for more than five years, saw those incidents as some of the biggest red flags. “We’re busy, we’re going down in flames, and here you are punishing us by throwing our guests’ food away, which is punishing them and punishing the kitchen, because they have to make it all again … That was the one big, huge moment where I was like, ‘I’m working with a psychopath.’ Who would sabotage their own business like that?” In his statement to The Pitch, Ryan acknowledged that he “spent many years as undiagnosed and unmedicated bipolar.” He says he’s since pursued medication and therapy, but “I’m still not perfect and I know that I never will be. What I do know is that I try to be better each and every day of my life— some days are easier than others, but the intention is always present.” But employees attribute the toxic culture at Port Fonda to more than Ryan’s bipolar disorder, which was well-known among staff, and substance abuse. Andrea Peterson, who worked as a server and bartender for about two and a half years, says Davila could be just as volatile at times. She remembered running a few minutes late to one of her brunch shifts: “He fucking threw a chair across the room and kicked a table, and he yelled at me, like,

in my face.” Johnny Reynolds, Ryan’s sous chef for the first three years of operation, says the restaurant cultivated a “very barbarian style of management” and that he still struggled with guilt about his role in it. “I remember one instance in particular, when we had a guy, he was going to be a kitchen manager. He wasn’t doing very well. He wasn’t managing the kitchen the way that we wanted … So I gave him an impossible task of making jambalaya in 30 minutes. And when he didn’t complete that task, I fired him. I sent him straight out, that’s it.” Reynolds attributes some of his behavior at the time to Ryan’s abuse and aggression. He says he felt physically threatened by Ryan on multiple occasions. Reynolds drank heavily during shifts to get through the stress of the job. Late in Reynolds’ tenure, his wife became pregnant, and he was working so often, he hardly saw her. That was a turning point. Two months before her due date, he put in his notice. He didn’t like the person he’d become. “Port Fonda ruined my career. Most certainly ruined my love of the career. Absolutely, absolutely destroyed it.” The atmosphere in the kitchen didn’t seem to improve after Reynolds left. Reid Smith, a kitchen manager from 2018-2019, recalls a tense atmosphere where, at best, Ryan would deliberately in-

thepitchkc.com | March 2021 | THE PITCH

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timidate his staff. At worst, he would lash out in profanity-laden tirades. “He would just go off, and that happened a lot, where one thing would trigger it and then he would just rant. And there’s nothing that you can do. It’s not a rational thing, and you just have to sit there and deal with it.” Many employees, like Reynolds, stayed at Port Fonda for years despite the stress and abuse. The money could be good. The staff leaned on each other through the challenges. And on good days, Ryan could be charismatic and fun. He had regulars who loved him. He knew how to make diners feel like the center of the universe. One server, who asked to remain anonymous, worked at Port Fonda for more than six years. She says she knew she should have left sooner, but felt bonded to her coworkers like family. “I always compare Port Fonda to a toxic relationship that I was in, where I was with this partner that treated me horribly and manipulated me on the daily and did everything that you wouldn’t want in a partner. But somehow, some way, I had Stockholm syndrome and would always come back.”

“THERE WILL NEVER BE A BLACK PERSON WORKING IN THIS RESTAURANT.” If Port Fonda was hostile to employees in general, it could be even more hostile to certain demographic groups. Multiple employ-

THE PITCH | March 2021 | thepitchkc.com

ees say they heard Ryan express anti-Black sentiments in particular during their tenure. Sometimes, the language was coded—for example, referring to tables of Black diners as “Mondays” or “Canadians.” Other times, it was overt. Reynolds says Ryan had a “massive bias” against African Americans. “A few times, and I mean, candidly, without humor involved or any even like dark humor involved, he would say: ‘There will never be a Black person working in this restaurant.’” Corcoran confirmed that racism influenced the restaurant’s hiring practices. She says she felt that she wasn’t allowed to hire Black servers: “He told me someone was the wrong color once.” Corocoran and two other employees also described seeing a large confederate flag hanging in Ryan’s condo. “There were definitely racist remarks made,” says Dixon. “It’s pretty prevalent in the restaurant industry, and definitely anti-Black statements were made. Definitely by Patrick. We would talk about it later, like, ‘Did you catch that? Was that actually said?’”

“I WANT YOU TO HIRE PEOPLE I WANT TO FUCK.” Young women had an easier time getting hired at the restaurant—but that could be its own curse. Korl Cusick, a server from July 2019 to June 2020, recalled coworkers laughing about how the restaurant would “only hire pretty people.” A glance around the floor at Port Fonda would confirm that:

The majority of servers were female, and all were young and attractive. “When I would interview people and then take applications to Jamie [Davila], the first question was, ‘Which one’s hottest?’” says Rogers. Jessica Ryan says that while she was never explicitly instructed to hire based on looks, Patrick Ryan and Davila would frequently remark on an applicant’s attractiveness, making it clear who they wanted on staff. And Corcoran recalled a large-bodied server she’d hired who Patrick Ryan fired two weeks later because she wasn’t “on brand.” “He called her ‘fat’ in a manager meeting,” she says. “I was like, ‘What can I do to stop having to rehire people?’ And he was like, ‘I want you to hire people I want to fuck.’” Looks-based discrimination is common—even tolerated—in the restaurant industry. The 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits employee discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, but not based on appearance in general (a loophole that keeps places like Hooters in business). But the looks-based hiring that took place at Port Fonda wasn’t just about staying “on brand.” Employees say they witnessed rampant sexual harassment, primarily instigated by Ryan and Davila but occasionally by other male staff. The harassment occurred both inside and outside the restaurant via social media and included sexual innuendo, offensive or crude sexual remarks, sexist comments, and unwanted physical contact. Peterson recalled a sexually charged atmosphere, where degrading

comments about women—both staff and patrons—were constant. “[Patrick and Jamie] would be like, ‘Oh, look at that hot piece of ass that walked in the door,’ just very machismo bullshit like that,” she says. Corcoran remembered Ryan saying, of an attractive 20-year-old server: “I would do coke off her asshole.” Staff recall “handsy” and “grabby” behavior, where Ryan and Davila would frequently touch female staff, kiss them on the cheeks or foreheads or caress their shoulders. Emily Overton had been training as a server and bartender for three days when she witnessed Davila grab a young female server “by her hips from the back and pulled her in and was humping her on the floor.” She quit on the spot. “The industry is always like that, you joke around and you spend a lot of time together,” Peterson says. “But there’s a huge difference between joking around and actually harassing people.” The rise of social media has blurred the line between work and personal life in many industries, but in restaurants—which typically lack HR departments—the line can seem especially hazy. Cusick, who was 21 at the time, thought it was strange when Ryan followed her on Instagram from both the Port Fonda account and his personal account. She’d never had a boss follow her on social media before. Initially, Ryan’s interactions on her posts were fairly innocuous—a “like” here, an emoji there. Then the DMs started— friendly at first. “At one point, my ex and I had broken up, and that’s when the comments started to get a bit weirder, more sexual,” Cusick says. In Instagram messages between Ryan and Cusick reviewed by The Pitch, he’d respond to her Instagram stories from both accounts, complimenting her appearance or outfits. On a throwback photo of her as a child: “I want that on a t-shirt.” On a TikTok of her dancing: “Would basically pay for more of these.” And once, not in response to anything: “Missing your smile!” Cusick didn’t see Ryan at every shift, but when she did, he would make similar comments. Once, while closing, Ryan brought a joint downstairs and offered it to Cusick while rubbing her shoulders. “I left pretty soon afterwards,” she says. “I didn’t really know what to think. I sat in my car for a minute and then went home and was like, ‘Okay, just gonna brush that one off again.’” When quarantine started in March, Ryan sent her a message, again from

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his personal account: “Lemme cook for you and some friends.” Cusick declined, saying she was going out of town. Her response was warm and polite. She usually made a point of responding—sometimes with a cursory emoji or a “like”—because he was her boss. “It made me feel like my job was at risk if I didn’t respond or engage,” she says. “It made me really uncomfortable, but I didn’t want to make it awkward and I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want my job to be at risk. At the time, getting a job at Port Fonda was a really big deal. Patrick had a lot of connections and if you worked there, you could go work for a bigger-name restaurant. It was a good networking position.” It’s not verboten for a boss to follow an employee on social media. But when the business is an independent restaurant with an influential chef-owner—and no clear protocol for reporting harassment—the balance of power is enormously tilted. In a tightly connected industry with high turnover, employees are often afraid to speak out publicly. They never know who their next boss might be. To server Shara Calandrino, the Baldwin uniforms and server training tests made the restaurant feel “very corporate.” But the restaurant never had the structure of a corporate restaurant, and employees say they felt like any complaints would lead to termination. ”There was this feeling that you could get fired at any moment,” Calandrino says, “and that’s one of the reasons why I left.” Managers at Port Fonda say they tried at various times to institute some structure—to curtail substance abuse, to fire problem employees, to minimize employees’ exposure to Ryan and Davila. Wright, who was hired as Port Fonda’s general manager in 2015, says, “I had many conversations with Patrick and Jamie about how I was the fresh start. I was the one that was going to turn it around and how I was going to put people in line.” It didn’t happen. In 2017, Ryan was nominated for a prestigious James Beard Award for Best Chef: Midwest—an accolade the restaurant frequently referenced in its adver tising. Wright says she saw a shift in the way Ryan talked about his work after the award, but his behavior didn’t really change. “He’d be like, ‘I’m a James Beard nominated chef and it’s supposed to be a professional environment,’ and he would come down[stairs], he would get everybody hammered, and then he would be mad about people drinking his booze and costing him money. And it just was never

clear what he wanted.” Still, Wright stayed at Port Fonda for five years. She helped close down the kitchen when COVID-19 restrictions forced the restaurant to shut down. After staff finished cleaning that night, Wright says she and Ryan cried together. They hugged. Then he ran both of his hands up the back of her sweater.

“IT’S BEEN NORMAL FOR WAY TOO LONG” In Westport, the blinds on Port Fonda’s windows have been drawn since June. The restaurant had offered curbside pick-up orders throughout May and had briefly reopened for patio dining in June, but within weeks, a staff member had tested positive for COVID-19. O n S u n d a y, June 21, Ryan met with three managers, including Wright, and informed them that as soon as enough staff tested negative, Port Fonda would reopen for full service, including indoor dining. Ryan delivered an ultimatum: Staff could get on board with the plan, or he would find new people that would. By Wednesday, June 24, Ryan had fired the managers via text mes-

sage and told them he’d changed the locks at Port Fonda. As of this writing, the restaurant has not yet announced an official reopening date. On January 5, in response to a customer question on the restaurant’s Instagram page, the Port Fonda account replied, “Still waiting for the right time! Spring sounds really nice.” When it does reopen, it seems likely to be Ryan’s major focus. Although the chef was contracted to develop The Town Company restaurant and accompanying “cellar saloon” El Gold for Hyatt’s Hotel Kansas City, his affiliation with both venues ended in January 2021. The hotel’s general manager, Patrick Baldwin, declined to comment on “specific personnel matters” when asked about the reason for Ryan’s departure. Ryan’s apology and his staff ’s complaints are coming during a sea-change for the restaurant industry. Over the past few years, high-profile chefs across the country have faced increased scrutiny and public backlash—Momofuku’s David Chang for his rage and violent rhetoric, the Food Network’s Mario Batali and celebrity chef John Besh for sexual assault and harassment. Even self-professed “nice guy” chef Danny Bowien, who had spoken publicly about the profession’s machismo and toxicity, failed to protect his employees from the same. Wright says she remembered hearing Ryan talk about the Mario Batali news when it broke—about how the climate in restaurants was shifting in a way that warranted more careful behavior. But if Ryan was aware of the culture shift, he didn’t seem able to locate himself within it. As the hospitality industry grapples with how to rebuild from COVID-19, many

industry workers say labor issues and restaurant culture need to be part of the conversation. “There shouldn’t be a pass on toxic behavior or misogyny or sexual harassment,” says Rama. “That shouldn’t be something that’s normal. And it’s been normal for way too long, this hyper testosterone-fueled pirate mentality.” Ryan and Davila may have kept that “pirate mentality” alive at Port Fonda, but they’re not unique among the restaurant industry in Kansas City, nor the restaurant industry in general. Most Port Fonda employees interviewed for this story described the restaurant’s culture as unusually intense, but not especially novel. Sure, it was the “weirdest,” “craziest,” “most toxic” place they’d ever worked—but they’d worked weird and toxic industry jobs before. “There are plenty of restaurants across the country whose staff could describe unwanted sexual advances, being berated to the point of tears, and witnessing plateware being thrown across a kitchen in a fit of rage,” former bar manager Milissa Crawford wrote in an email to The Pitch. “And that’s exactly the problem: We have become so complacent with, so used to seeing this in restaurants and bars that speaking out against it will instantly brand a red ‘A’ onto your chest. It is hospitality industry culture that we do not bite the hand that feeds us because we are all easily replaceable.” “Patrick Ryan is not the exception,” says Megan Brigance. She left unspoken whether he was the rule. Illustrations are an artist’s interpretation of the events and are not meant to reflect, in detail, specific people or situations. thepitchkc.com | March 2021 | THE PITCH

DINING

EAT THIS NOW WORDS AND PHOTOS BY APRIL FLEMING

Sura Eats 1707 Locust St, Kansas City, MO suraeats.com

When Sura Eats was in its infancy, its pop-ups would inspire Instagram frenzy. Chef Keeyoung Kim’s street food-inspired dishes, including bibimbap surrounded with colorful veg and pickles, crispy flash-fried dumplings, and bright orange kimchi fried rice, were beautiful and even novel in a city with distressingly few Korean options. Importantly, they were richly flavorful and decadent, which hasn’t been lost since Kim opened up a stall at Parlor Food Hall. The first several months at Parlor were feverishly busy—a reality completely halted by the pandemic. Yet many of the chefs there, including Kim, have kept their heads down in order to survive. But Kim is more than just surviving—not only is his food as good as it has ever been, he has spent the last several months innovating and testing dishes. That testing resulted in a new pop-up open at Parlor through April. Sura Noodle Bar offers Korean-style ramen, popcorn chicken, and more. Don’t sleep on that, to be sure. Our perpetual favorite, however, remains the rice cake. If you’re not familiar with Korean rice cakes, it’s more like pasta than the depressing diet food that Americans know by the same name. Thick, chewy dough made with rice flour is made into a tube shape, cut into slices, and then boiled to cook. These super chewy tubes are then tossed with spicy, sweet gochujang-drenched sliced beef, vegetables, and of course, pickles. The dish offers loads of chew, tons of flavor, and all the comfort you could ever ask for.

DRINK THIS NOW Some nights are Hamm’s Sandwich kind of nights. The Hamm’s Sandwich, we recently learned, is a special from Dodson’s Bar & Commons: two cans of Hamm’s beer, four ounces of whiskey, and a bottle of pickle juice. And sure, sometimes this is all you need (or it is the thing you didn’t know you needed?) But other nights call for something slightly finer. Leawood’s Verdigris, a sister bar to both the Monarch Bar on the Plaza and the Mercury Lounge downtown. And like the Monarch Bar, you can order bottled batched cocktails, serving from one to eight people. Some traditionals, like the Old Fashioned, follow the classic recipe. Others, like the El Cruce, offer new flavors. To make the El Cruce, dusky mezcal is mixed with sotol (another agave-based spirit), fresh-squeezed lime juice, and our favorite part, lacto-fermented Concord grapes. Undeniably smoky as any good mezcal cocktail Verdigris Bar will be, the lacto fermented grape juice adds loads of tang. This takes the edge 5245 W 116th Pl, off of mezcal’s smokiness, yet adds sweetness and a tartness that makes the Leawood, KS drink almost sessionable. This is the kind of drink that reminds us that cocktail verdigrisbar.com making almost always is best in the hands of true pros.

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thepitchkc.com | March 2021 | THE PITCH

CULTURE

FASHIONABLY LATE BLACK-OWNED BRANDS ARE OVERDUE FOR THEIR SPOTLIGHT BY J.M. BANKS, PHOTOS BY TRAVIS YOUNG

o the mainstream consciousness, style can be an abstract repres e nt at i on — r ang i ng from opulent to odd, depending on where you are looking. Fashion-wise, the urban core of Kansas City does not differ much from other inner-cities. KC’s scene has been in a constant state of metamorphosis over the past few years. Homegrown innovators and pioneers in the Black fashion community have risen up to plant their proverbial flags on the mountaintop of culture and industry. It is important to understand the relationship between the Black community, culture, style, and fashion. There is a constant cycle of creation and innovation that takes place from the inner cities of the U.S. and works its way through the American fabric. The pattern is simple: a trend is created and takes hold in the minority urban core, next it is picked up by members of the urban white community, and then makes its way to the suburbs. After the craze has been adopted by middle-aged soccer moms, the style is deemed uncool and the cycle begins anew. In this way, Black culture has stayed a vital

THE PITCH | March 2021 | thepitchkc.com

element of deciding what’s hip, while reaping very few financial gains from the marketing of fashionable clothing. In many cases, these trends move money away from the Black community—often to high-end fashion lines. This is a detriment to an already economically struggling people. In this day and age, the importance of buying Black and the Black dollar have begun to take root in the Black psyche. Kansas City’s urban core is building a community of future fashion icons to channel those funds back into much-needed areas of the city. If you grew up in the Black community in Kansas City, you would have seen a constant evolution of diverse styles creeping in from New York, Los Angeles, and other cities. For the longest time, the community was missing that spark of originality that defined KC. That is until pioneers started to take chances and embrace styles and fashions outside of the Black community. Since the 2010s, Black culture mixed with rock, anime, hippie, gamer, and other influences from traditionally off-limit intersections. This new willingness to go outside the acceptable avenues to build and add to our fashion while still creating clothing from an unapologetically Black standpoint is one of the leading factors that has ushered in this

“CLOTHING IS THE FIRST IMPRESSION YOU CAN GIVE SOMEONE. BEFORE YOU EVEN SAY A WORD TO THEM, YOUR CLOTHES HAVE ALREADY SAID A LOT.” —DEANTE HOWARD, EQURIS CLOTHING

Deante Howard wears an Equris Clothing jacket.

CULTURE Opposite: Founder Deante Howard wears an Equris Clothing watch outside of his father’s house in the Blue Hills area of Kansas City, MO.

new golden age of KC urban fashion lines. Record numbers of local clothing companies have been emerging such as Grind Addict, MADE MOBB, and Kiss My Black Azz. In addition to Black-owned stores such as Building BLACC, House of Rena, and Modish Looks Boutique giving the community unheard of options. Among those leading the charge for young Black fashion trailblazers, one name you are sure to hear is Donnell Jamison and his clothing line Deep Rooted. This selftaught Kansas City native has been creating his own original take on the clothing since 2017. “We are the culture which most influences fashion, and our roots in it runs deep,” Jamison says. The imagery of roots and growth are prevalent throughout Jamison’s designs found at the Deep Rooted storefront located in New Landing Mall, located on the corner of Troost and 63rd St. “The name Deep Rooted can also be looked at in different ways: being deeply

rooted in your community, being deeply rooted in your family, being deeply rooted in whatever life you are living,” Jamison says. Planting his own roots within the fashion scene for the Black community is a big part of the designer’s mission in regard to his company. “I didn’t know until doing research on historic stores in KC that sold Black clothing that Harold Pener wasn’t a Black-owned store,” says Jamison. Harold Pener Man of Fashion, located a few blocks east on 63rd from the New Landing Mall, stood as one of the leading clothing stores for over eight decades. Throughout the U.S., there is a long history of the absence of Black-owned clothing stores within the community. For generations, businesses situated in the urban core have catered to the Black community, though without Black-owners, at the end of business, the Black dollar leaves and ultimately enriches every other community except its own. But that—much like Kansas City’s urban fashion scene—is also changing.

Matches Boutique is a Black, female-owned boutique in the Country Club Plaza.

Tynesha Matches is the founder of Matches Boutique, a predominantly women’s clothing store that started as an online shop. After a foray in the pop-up business model, Matches settled its own roots in October of last year. Matches’s shop became

the only high-end, Black and female-owned fashion store on the Country Club Plaza. Matches says the merchandise she features are “unique, one-of-a-kind statement pieces, stuff with a lot of color.” She curates clothing from designers found locally—such

“WE ARE THE CULTURE WHICH MOST INFLUENCES FASHION, AND OUR ROOTS IN IT RUNS DEEP.” —DONNELL JAMISON, DEEP ROOTED Donnell Jamison, founder of Deep Rooted, inside the Landing Mall store. thepitchkc.com | March 2021 | THE PITCH

CULTURE

Fromlefttoright,LaRonHewitt,20,OnlineServices;IkeimBerger,CreativeDesigner;ZaireCabridge,Salesperson;TommieVego,18,Manager;KJFarmer,19,Manager;Meechie,16,Salesperson;andJerrenThronhill,ownerofOnePair.

LaRon Hewitt cleaning shoes for a customer at One Pair.

as Rhelease, a Black-owned lingerie shop, and KilaRndKiStylesss, a duo stylist team— and from others around the country. Since Black Friday last November, Kan-

THE PITCH | March 2021 | thepitchkc.com

sas City has been home to an unusual new clothing and apparel store. On 55th and Troost, next door to RevolveKC Community Bike Shop, is One Pair, a shoe and cloth-

ing store with a motto of “Everyone deserves one pair of good shoes.” The shop is created and owned by Jerren Thornhill—and a group of six kids. “I was a hustler as a kid and nobody showed me how to put it all together. All businesses are just hustles,” Thornhill says. One Pair’s innovative business model selects six youths of varying ages, all from the inner city Black community, and allows them to participate in running the shop. They help determine which clothing lines are featured in the store, how the shop is decorated, and where the direction of the company is headed. Along with the shoes sold in One Pair—ranging in price from $20 to some over $400—the shop is home to eight different Black-owned clothing lines from the metro area. Wyld Chyld is one of those brands. The clothing line was started by One Pair’s manager KJ Farmer, who named his businesses after a nickname given to his deceased uncle. His hoodies, t-shirts, and other clothing designs hang between lockers that line the walls of the front of the shop— each holding merchandise from different local vendors. Thornhill and his youth exec-

utive board provide a valuable opportunity to up-and-coming and young designers to have their work featured in a location where their brands may find new audiences within and outside the community. Another one of the freshly risen brands to the Kansas City urban fashion sphere is Deante Howard’s “modern Christian streetwear” brand Equris Clothing—pronounced like the Greek myth Icarus who flew too close to the sun. Howard’s online shop is made up of hoodies, jackets, t-shirts, sweatpants, and sneakers, each designed with “avant-garde, faith-based” images and messaging, and much of his clothing can also be found at One Pair. “Clothing is the first impression you can give someone, before you even say a word to them, your clothes have already said a lot,” Howard says. For Howard, his clothing line is meant to show that there is hope in the struggle. The bright and vivid designs share messages of optimism, with some bearing Christian scripture and religious phrases, others celebrate Kansas City. Another popular KC brand in the urban core is Material Opulence, which is also

CULTURE

found alongside Equris on the racks of One Pair. Founded by Renauld Shelton III, Material Opulence was also created with the hope for something better. “Growing up in a town infamously nicknamed ‘Killa City’ has been a struggle,” reads the ‘About’ page of Material Opulence’s website. “Imagine losing loved ones every day. Each day, worrying whether a loved one would be killed for simply being at home or going to have harmless fun. Our struggles made us stronger, our losses made us see the world differently. However, we know growing up that we wanted better for ourselves and our families. This is why we created Material Opulence.” Founder Shelton credits the brand’s growth to “our ability to take risk, or our ability to take an existing look and really innovate on it.” Shelton’s clothing is a crisp, clean string of apparel that bears the Material Opulence logo. Shelton shared that it’s not just Black shoppers purchasing from Material Opulence, but that a diverse range of clientele support his business.

Renauld Shelton III, founder of Material Opulence. Below: Shelton wears a sweatshirt from Material Opulence’s Black History Month line.

“This month we launched our Black History Month collection, which you would of course think would be more geared toward the Black community,” Shelton says. “But the first sales came in from online from out-of-town white people.” Buying Black—keeping dollars with the Black creators who have shaped fashion trends both in Kansas City and beyond—starts with the uptick and growth of Black-owned businesses, and continues with shoppers being mindful of where their dollars are spent. The changing scene of fashion is an often mysterious and ever-changing beast. But the Black style makers of Kansas City have fed off that uncertainty and grown substantially stronger. As times change, so must we. The era of white tees and Air Force 1s came to an end, and so shall the current trends. Our community’s surge of culture, identity, and business—all of which sprung from the chaos of the struggle in Kansas City—are ready to design the next.

thepitchkc.com | March 2021 | THE PITCH

MUSIC

ROCK STARS ON THE RECORD ROCK STARS REVEAL THE TRACKS THAT BUILT THEM BY NICK SPACEK

Author Eric Spitznagel’s new book, Rock Stars on the Record: The Albums That Changed Their Lives—released last month by Diversion Books—continues the writer’s exploration of how just one album or song can change the course of someone’s entire life. 2016’s Old Records Never Die: One Man’s Quest for His Vinyl and His Past saw Spitznagel tracking down the original vinyl copies of albums he’d long-ago sold off, in an effort to find “the specific records I’d given up with the scratches I remembered and my first girlfriend’s phone number written on the sleeve.” As he says when we spoke by phone ahead of his new book’s release, Old Records Never Die really got Spitznagel thinking about how “those grooves are our memories and who we became and it just started me on this weird journey,” which is now continued in Rock Stars

THE PITCH | March 2021 | thepitchkc.com

on the Record, thanks to the author’s editor at Men’s Health, Mark Weinstein. “He came up with the idea,” says Spitznagel. “He’s like, ‘The way that you talk about music—I’m sure everyone has those stories. Everyone has an origin story of the record that first mattered to them, that first busted open their skull and made them think about music in a different way.” It’s true: reading through Rock Stars on the Record, the reader discovers all kinds of surprising influences, along with the expected. The fact that Fishbone’s Angelo Moore picked Bad Brains’ The Yellow Tape, Cherie Curie of the Runaways selected both David Bowie and Suzi Quatro, or that Don McLean’s choice was The Buddy Holly Story all seems a little on-thenose. However, it’s those choices that make the really left-field selections, like Ian Mackaye talking about the soundtrack to Woodstock and being into Ted Nugent all the more eye-popping. “It makes it more perfect for me, somehow,” explains Spitznagel. “Just the idea of Chris Stein of Blondie really being into West Side Story and Lawrence of Arabia—it’s just it’s not what you imagine. We have these constructs of, ‘If you are a punk rocker, you must have started out in punk rock,’ and then to have Ian Mackaye of Fugazi be like, ‘I was really into Woodstock. Ted Nugent was the guy for me’? That just blows my brain up. I can’t fathom that.”

As the author continues on, he says that we all come from musical beginnings which don’t always reflect who we are in adulthood. As he points out, his first musical love was Billy Joel before finding his way to the Replacements and Pixies as he got older: “It was the thing I tried to hide the most—like, ‘I don’t want to talk about it’—but as I get older it’s like, ‘Yes! Oh, the beautiful-fucking-ness of Billy Joel!’ You get more accepting of who you were musically back in that time.” In addition to being surprised by the musicians with whom he spoke, who ranged from Pom Pom Squad’s 21 year-old Mia Berrin all the way up to the 78 year-old bubblegum pop singer Tommy Roe, Spitznagel also made some musical discoveries of his own along the way. He points to Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace and her selection of Crass’ The Feeding of the 5000 as having a major impact. “I never heard of them before,” admits the author of his knowledge of the anarchist punk collective. “I had no clue what Crass was all about. Since that conversation, I had to track it down and just live with it for a couple days, and it’s fucking good. The way she tells me how, just hearing that that cassette again, reminds her of the taste of cigarettes in the Florida mall? I swear: when I listen to that, I can taste cigarettes, too.” Additionally, speaking with Earth, Wind & Fire bassist Verdine White’s—and knowing that the musician’s bandmate and older

brother, Maurice, had played on many iconic recordings for Chicago’s Chess Records—saw Spitznagel going back and listening with a closer ear to Muddy Waters and Jackie Wilson, while Superchunk’s Laura Balance wanted to talk about Adam and the Ants, which led to the author discovering that the ‘80s artist was “a lot cooler” than one might expect from “Goody Two-Shoes.” Ultimately, though, for all its discussion of records and music, Rock Stars on the Record ends up being about one’s own personal identity, which Spitznagel sees as being the crux of the book, especially as it relates to these musicians and the relationship they have to their family. “How do you really find your own identity when your father or a parent is the man?” Spitznagel posits as we wrap up, saying that his favorite part of any interview is how the subject’s parents either helped them or tried to stop them. “The way family ties into all of this was really, really fascinating to me. One of my favorite interviews was with Patterson Hood because his dad [David] was the bassist in the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. You’re the son of rock royalty: how can you even look at a record? ‘Oh, this is cool. Oh, dad played bass on it? Fuck!’ You can’t rebel if your dad played on everything cool, so it was him getting drawn into punk rock because his dad—a music legend—was like, ‘That’s terrible: they can’t even fucking play!’ ‘Perfect! Yes, I found it!’”

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In addition to speaking with Eric Spiztnagel about his book, we reached out to some of our favorite local musicians to see which albums or songs really grabbed them by the ears and blew their heads open to the possibilities of music.

Glenn Robinson of The Epitome LUPE FIASCO, FOOD AND LIQUOR The album that blew my mind? That’s a tough question but I think I’m going to have to go with Lupe Fiasco’s Food and Liquor. This album is one of the most played projects ever for me. The biggest thing it expressed that touched me was that it was OK for you to be you. He was the first nerd that made it, from my point of view. One of the first mainstream artists to consistently talk about anime and comic books consistently. When I think of my development this album helped me be confident in just being myself. Plus the level of lyricism displayed inspired me. Lupe had already been in heavy rotation for me; I had the leaked version of the project plus a ton of his mixtapes. He had the nerdy edge plus was a master of storytelling and rhyme structure. Not my favorite album of all time, but this was the one that blew my mind more than any other album.

Sam Wells ISBELLS, “DREAMER” FROM ISBELLS To this day, I can’t listen to “Dreamer” without tears welling. With the first strum, Isbells makes you feel embraced, and through his first word, he assures you that you are seen and loved. Before hearing this song, you could find me listening exclusively to a mess of punk rock and 2000’s hip hop—so you might imagine my surprise when this atmospheric singer-songwriter broke my heart into beautiful stained glass pieces. In his four-minute experience, I actually saw myself. For the first time, I encountered true beauty in simplicity. 2013 was cruel to me, but this song was my reprieve. It reminded me, through the sweetest harmonies, as I listened repeatedly, that the dreams I had hidden away mattered.

READ IT

Author Eric Spitznagel

Rock Stars on the Record: The Albums That Changed Their Lives Eric Spitznagel Diversion Books

Antonio Marquez of Spine PRINCE, “DARLING NIKKI” FROM PURPLE RAIN

Megan Luttrell JOHN PRINE, “SUMMER’S END” FROM TREE OF FORGIVENESS

I was going through my Mom’s CDs one winter and came across this one. I had listened to it with her a ton when I was younger, as well as The Gold Experience, but like most things, I hadn’t really LISTENED to it. Just was in the background. After hearing the hits, I really listened to “Darling Nikki” and was so taken back by the song. The pace, the music, vocals, lyrics: it was insane to me how you could be so obviously vulgar, but also beautiful, at the same time. The music was so contagious, I remember not being able to sleep on school nights until I listened to the song several times before bed. It was all I could think about. It really made me think deeper about “pop music” beyond being a veneer for a soulless society. Not all pop music is like this, but Prince was always on another level. And he sure wasn’t surface level.

John Prine’s “Summer’s End” is a devastatingly beautiful song about loss. His simple and familiar images paint nostalgic pictures that are universal: bathing suits hanging out to dry, a harbinger of the end of summer, a symbol of the end of childhood perhaps, and the end of life in general. The song is a collection of the small, seemingly unimportant, but beautiful moments that make up life. He shows that death is just another moment, a natural end to the journey. I recently lost my mother, and I can’t help but think of her when I hear this song. It makes me remember the little moments with her, the ones in between the milestones. In a time where we are experiencing so much loss, it is a beautiful reminder to appreciate those tiny moments. I take comfort in his words, “come on home, you don’t have to be alone.” I picture my mom coming home to a place where she can access all those memories that keep her alive to me.

Brandon Phillips of Other Americans/Mensa Deathsquad/The Architects MORCHEEBA, BIG CALM Punk rock is the through-line of my life and at no time was it more clear and present than in 1998—I was doing my first real things as a musician and songwriter and I was doing them under the auspices of producers and collaborators with serious punk rock bona fides. And then one day, my coworker pops Big Calm into the jambox while we’re framing out some walls and I basically didn’t allow us to listen to anything else for about six months. We were doing fixtures and trim by the time he finally cajoled that disc out of the player. The first thing I have to say about this album is that it is the quintessence of alternative music—it’s a tasting menu of ingredients you’ve had before reimagined into a singular style. The writing and production across the entire breadth of this album are so brilliant that to this day, I still marvel over tracks like “Shoulder Holster” and “Part of the Process” as they evolve in the headphones because it’s clear that I’m not just listening to a song, I’m listening to artists at the height of their powers making incredibly inspired choices that transcend the typical NY-LANashville songwriting dogma and connect to some upper-level-ofthe-upper-level artistic energy. The coup d’ grace for me is that the lesson of Big Calm is not “Try to imitate the kind of choices Morcheeba was making” but instead, “Try to reach the place Morcheeba reached where you are mainlining your inspiration so hard that the choices just come naturally.”

thepitchkc.com | March 2021 | THE PITCH

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PANDEMIC PANIC CINEMA MOVIES RESPOND TO OUR AGONIZING CABIN FEVER BY ABBY OLCESE

The iconic singer Nina Simone once famously said that it’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times in which we live. Ms. Simone never lived through a global pandemic, but I like to think she’d still say the same thing today. If nothing else, art provides an emotional and ideological outlet to reflect a creator’s experience. Some of modern history’s toughest periods have produced excellent art. Consider Britain’s anti-Thatcher punk and post-punk explosion in the 70s and 80s, or Czech new wave movies like Closely Watched Trains or Daisies that responded to the country’s communist control, or the music of the Civil Rights era, which included the aforementioned Nina Simone. This isn’t to say that large-scale suffering is necessary to produce good stuff. Rather, difficult circumstances elicit a strong emotional response, which in turn sometimes expresses itself by way of art. So that begs the question: a year on from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, what does the artistic response look like? In terms of film, at least, the answer is, by and large, pretty terrible. To date, there have been four notable Coronavirus-centric movies released, not counting documentaries. Three are awful. One is exemplary. What gives? To find the answer, I looked at these films one by one.

The Bad Coastal Elites (HBO) Released in September 2020, Coastal Elites was the first major filmic response to the pandemic. Initially planned as a live theatrical performance at New York’s Public Theater, after the pandemic hit, director Jay Roach and writer Paul Rudnick filmed the show’s five monologues remotely, and Rudnick revised the material to include pandemic-specific elements, as well as addressing the Black Lives Matter protests that happened last summer.

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There’s really only one monologue that directly connects to COVID-19, Kaitlyn Dever’s overworked volunteer nurse, which closes things out. References to the events of 2020 are awkwardly shoehorned in throughout the other scenes. Those scenes involve each of the actors speaking directly to the camera for about 15 minutes apiece in what feels less like the “desperate confessions” promised by Coastal Elites’ subtitle, and more like a series of sermons preaching to the converted. The film is meant to be a loving-ish sat-

ire of a certain kind of liberal, someone (in many forms) who thinks of middle America as culturally backwards flyover country. It might take a bit for viewers to realize that, however, as Coastal Elites seems to sympathize deeply with these enlightened folks who escaped life in the hell of the midwest. The worst of these is Bette Midler’s Miriam, a caricature of a New York Times-loving elitist who, by the end of the show, we’re meant to feel pathos for. Dever’s Sharynn, the lone non-coastal

character (she’s from Wyoming) offers no helpful cultural counterpoint, and if anything, validates the perspectives we’ve been enduring for the last 75 minutes. She’s won over by these bold New Yorkers who speak their minds and curse with abandon. Responding to a patient’s gallows humor of just hoping her cough is cancer, Sharynn comments “We don’t say shit like that in Wyoming.” I’ve never been to Wyoming, so I won’t presume to speak for them. In Missouri, however (and Kansas, too), we say shit like that all the time.

Songbird (VOD) The Michael Bay-produced Songbird was filmed during the pandemic, imagining a future three years from now where a rapidly mutating COVID virus has turned the U.S. into a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Unless you’re certified immune (so designated by a yellow wristband), leaving your house means you’ll be shot on sight by government goons. If you fail a daily virus check, you and your household are shipped off to the Q Zone, which we’re told is a cesspit of disease, death, and despair. Making a movie that validates the baseless fears of people who believe wearing a mask impinges on their rights feels irresponsible at best. Songbird, however, is worse than irresponsible. It’s extreme scaremongering that ridicules anyone who’s been taking reasonable precautions over the last year, and laughs in the face of public health officials who have been trying like hell to do their jobs in the face of increased stress. If you want full details of the plot, check out Katey Stoetzel’s review on our website. The future depicted in Songbird is not only absurd but fully avoidable. Just wear your damn mask and get a vaccine. It’s not that hard. Locked Down (HBO Max) Expressing paranoid fantasies based on faulty logic and poor research is one end of the bad COVID movies spectrum. The other end is people grudgingly abiding by the rules and complaining about the few luxuries they’ve lost, while still living in relative comfort. For that, you can look to Locked Down, the Doug Liman-directed, Steven Knight-scripted heist rom-com. It’s a movie about wealthy people, starring wealthy people, whinging about issues neither they nor their characters seem to have a real grasp of. Paxton (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Linda (Anne Hathaway) live in London in a well-appointed modern townhouse. Their long-term relationship appears to be at an end and Paxton, a delivery driver, has just been furloughed. Linda, an executive at a company that does event coordination for high-end designers, is being forced to lay off most of her office. Because London’s on lockdown, they’re forced to stay in their house

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together, becoming increasingly sick of the sight of each other post-almost-breakup. When Paxton’s old boss offers him an under-the-table driving gig for Harrods department store—where Linda also has to pick up a priceless diamond belonging to one of her company’s clients—Linda gets the idea to steal the diamond, screwing over her employer and netting her and Paxton enough money (which they already seem to have plenty of, but whatever) to never have to work another day in their lives.

The setup has some appeal: shoot a film during lockdown while using the distance and protocol restrictions to your creative advantage. However, Locked Down falls into the same trap as Coastal Elites by whining about how hard life is now from the perspective of people who, lockdown or no, have very little to worry about. Paxton and Linda may be in unpleasant personal and professional situations, but even without jobs, they aren’t hurting for cash. Nobody they know has died. They can still access many things they

LOCKED DOWN IS AN EXCUSE FOR RICH, BORED ACTORS TO HAVE FUN, WHICH FEELS LIKE AN OUT-OF-TOUCH ARTISTIC RESPONSE WHEN OVER TWO MILLION PEOPLE HAVE DIED AND MILLIONS OF OTHERS (MOST OF WHOM DON’T LIVE IN NICE TOWNHOUSES) HAVE LOST THEIR JOBS.

enjoyed before the world fell apart. Comparatively speaking, they’re doing great. Paxton and Linda are also insufferable, and the casting doesn’t fit with the stories we’re given. Paxton is a smart guy, but has a criminal record that prevents him from getting a better job. He’s also a biker; he and Linda first met at a Sturgis rally. Hathaway looks like she wouldn’t be caught dead at such an event, particularly when she’s wearing designer silk pajamas to her Zoom meetings in a home office straight out of Architectural Digest. For his part, Ejiofor makes no attempt to give Paxton characteristics that fit the details we’re given about him. He looks and sounds like a drama school graduate, not someone with a hog and a rap sheet. Locked Down is an excuse for rich, bored actors to have fun, which feels like an out-oftouch artistic response when over two million people have died and millions of others (most of whom don’t live in nice townhouses) have lost their jobs. There are many practical reasons why Locked Down doesn’t work, but most of all it’s just completely blind to the actual struggles of normal people. The Good Host (Shudder) Rob Savage’s Host is only 68 minutes long. It takes place entirely over video chat. It’s also the only movie made during the pandemic, addressing the pandemic, that not only works but excels. Like Locked Down, Host works within the constraints of the UK’s lockdown conditions. Here, though, those restrictions and the creative opportunities they present are Host’s sole interest. Where the rest of these films focus on what’s been lost, by people who haven’t actually lost that much, Host takes a more pragmatic approach, asking “What can we do with what we’ve still got?” Host follows a video chat between friends doing an online seance to distract them from the monotony of quarantine. Ha-

ley (Haley Bishop) is the experienced one. Jemma (Jemma Moore) is the skeptic. Emma (Emma Louise Webb) and Caroline (Caroline Ward), each ensconced in their own quarantine situations, are a little nervous. Radina (Radina Drandova) is distracted by her live-in boyfriend, who she doesn’t much like. Teddy (Edward Linard) is equally distracted by his rich girlfriend Jinny (Jinny Lofthouse), and her parents’ well-stocked bar. The seance starts harmlessly, but after Jemma jokingly fakes the presence of a spirit, things go terrifyingly awry. Savage directed Host over Zoom, with the actors operating their own cameras. As the malevolent spirit they’ve unwittingly conjured becomes increasingly frisky, Savage instructed the actors in how to do their own lo-fi practical effects to make doors slam or objects fly around the room. Savage and his actors get incredible mileage out of their laptop cameras, using their limited range and framing, as well as animated Zoom backgrounds and the occasional dropped call, to deliver a steady stream of effective jump scares. Host sets up the tension early on, and doesn’t let up until its final seconds. Host is the first of this early set of artistic responses to COVID-19 that actually works, because the filmmaking operates under the same principles that help actual human beings survive day to day right now. There are, of course, plenty of reasons to feel anxiety or grief currently. It’s often easier, however, to process these feelings with a little bit of distance, and larger context. In the moment, we’ve learned over the last year that we have to take care of the needs directly in front of us. During a pandemic, that means getting creative, not wallowing. Host would be an effective horror movie in any year, but in 2020, it was a reminder that good art that responds to a current situation is still possible. All it takes is a little ingenuity, good friends, and a will to make it work. thepitchkc.com | March 2021 | THE PITCH

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Giving the Basics volunteers loading up items for delivery. COURTESY GIVING THE BASICS

tion with Police Athletic League and Big Brothers Big Sisters. Families at this event can receive hygiene products, clothing, and other essential household items during this increased time of need. There are many ways you can support Giving The Basics. Those interested in volunteering in person by sorting and packaging items can visit their website at givingthebasics.org and search under the “Get Involved” tab. A list of drop-off sites is also available on the website along with a list of products that are in high demand. You can also rally your friends and co-workers together and host a “Dignity Drive” of your own. With your help, Giving the Basics can provide the necessities of life not covered by government assistance programs that most people take for granted. Your support makes it possible to eliminate humiliation, promote learning, and offer hope to those in need.

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GIVING THE BASICS THE HYGIENE RESOURCE HUB FOR THOSE IN NEED BY BROOKE TIPPIN

In 2011, Teresa Hamilton was contacted to more than 250,000 people monthly, and it by a close friend who was newly divorced also partners with more than 140 non-profit with six children and struggling to make organizations and 350 schools to distribute ends meet. They were requesting food do- personal care items throughout the metro. nations from the local pantry, but basic ne- The services and products allow children to cessities like shampoo, toothpaste, laundry attend school and focus on friendships and detergent, diapers, and toilet paper were not learning, instead of their hygiene. available. The family was embarrassed to A student recently reached out to Givask for these items from additional sources, ing the Basics expressing how she constantly so they sadly went without. Teresa felt self-conscious: Her peers were and a group of friends decidmaking fun of her behind ed to take initiative, and her back due to her lack pooled together the of hygiene. She grew necessary resourcincreasingly isolates to help out her ed and no longer GIVING THE BASICS friend’s family unlooked forward to EXCLUSIVELY SUPPLY til they were able going to school. HYGIENE PRODUCTS to get back on After receiving their feet. Over hygiene prodAND CLEANING the course of a ucts from Giving SUPPLIES TO MORE year, Teresa’s eyes the Basics at her THAN 250,000 were opened to school, she began an under-acknowlto gain more conPEOPLE MONTHLY. edged and underfidence and started funded need throughmaking more friends out the Kansas City comat school. Her grades munity. This was certainly have also seen an improvenot the only family without access ment now that her focus is no lonto basic human essentials to survive. And ger on her personal hygiene and comfort. with that, Giving the Basics began. During the pandemic, Giving the BaGiving the Basics is a hygiene resource sics has continued to distribute products dehub for Kansas City. Personal care and hy- spite a 68 percent increase in requests. Due giene items are scarce at shelters and food to the increased requests, the organization pantries and are not covered by government is participating in a large community drive assistance. Giving the Basics exclusively sup- on May 1st, focused on bringing support ply hygiene products and cleaning supplies to more than 500 families in a collabora-

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Donation Bins you can find around town. Visit the website for more information or to request a bin at your office. COURTESY GIVING THE BASICS

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SAVAGE LOVE have to risk my baby’s life to say goodbye to a man I love with all my heart. She insists that if I don’t, I didn’t love my dad. I’m heartbroken. I keep calling his hospice and they set the phone next to his head so I can talk at him. He was so excited about my pregnancy and I know he would not want me to risk it. But now not only am I grieving my father, I feel guilty and selfish. Am I right to be angry? My aunt’s brother is dying. She’s sad. Everyone is sad. But this is not the first time she has used guilt to try and control others in moments of trauma. Crying On My Abdomen

PANDEMIC PRESSURES BY DAN SAVAGE

Dear Dan: I’m a gay guy living in New York in his late twenties. My boyfriend has really been emotionally impacted by the pandemic having been a frontline worker. I think he is suffering from some mild depression or at the very least some intense anxiety so I just want to preface this by saying I completely sympathize with what he’s going through. Before the pandemic we had a really good sex life, but lately he hasn’t been interested in sex at all besides a few assisted masturbation sessions. While I know that these aren’t usual times, I can’t help feeling rejected. Normally, I would suggest opening up the relationship, for the sake of both myself and him, and I think that he might benefit from having sex with some guys where there isn’t an emotional investment. Of course, right now that isn’t an option. I want to be there for him and we otherwise have a solid relationship, but this issue has been making me feel hurt. I’ve encouraged him to masturbate without me but I do wish he could include me more in his sexual life. Do you have any other thoughts or advice? Thanks For Reading Dear TFR: As much as I hate to give you an unsatisfactory answer—you aren’t satisfied with what you’re getting at home and you’re not going to be satisfied with what you get from me either—the only way to find out whether his loss of libido is entirely pandemic-related, TFR, is to wait out of the pandemic and see if your sexual connection doesn’t rebound and/or if opening up the relationship is the right move for you guys as a couple. But if you suspect the collapse of your boyfriend’s libido has more to do with what he’s witnessed and endured as a front-line worker than it has to do with you or your relationship, TFR, therapy will do him more good than sleeping with other guys or masturbating without you. Urge him to do that instead. Dear Dan: My dad is dying. He had a stroke two days ago and is in a coma with no brain function. My aunt (his sister) is trying to make me feel guilty for not traveling to see him. Even though I’m pregnant and high risk. I would have to take an airplane across the country and multiple public buses to see him. I would

THE PITCH | March 2021 | thepitchkc.com

Dear COMA: There has to be someone in your life who would be willing to step in and tell your aunt to go fuck herself. If there isn’t, COMA, send me your aunt’s phone and I’ll do it. P.S. I’m so sorry about your dad—who is already gone—and I’m sorry your kid won’t get to meet their grandfather. And you have every right to be furious with your aunt for giving you grief when you have all the grief you can handle right now. Don’t get on that plane. And if your aunt never speaks to you again, COMA, just think of all the guilt trips she won’t be able to drag along on in the future. Dear Dan: I am a 26-year-old heterosexual girl. After four years with my boyfriend (and with the pandemic on top of it), we started to experience sex issues. It is mainly from my side, I (almost) never get satisfaction out of sex. I’m always enthusiastic about having sex but I don’t feel “involved,” and I could literally be solving math problems in my head while we have sex. As the situation is frustrating, I talked to him and suggested that more foreplay could help me stay engaged and enjoy the sex. He was puzzled by my “need for foreplay” to reach orgasm but committed to trying. However, after minimal initial effort, he stopped trying and the limited foreplay ceased. He probably got frustrated by the amount of time I require to “warm up” and his efforts dried up and he began rebuffing me whenever I attempted to initiate sex. Recently after he turned my sexual advances down yet again, I decided to masturbate. The result was him being upset and taking offense at my “unpleasant behavior.” Should I feel guilty about masturbating when he turns me down? I am hurt and I very frustrated by this situation. Masturbation Alone Turns Harsh Dear MATH: Allow me to decipher the message your pussy is desperately trying to send you, MATH, as you lay there doing math problems while your boyfriend uses treats your body like it’s a Fleshlight: “Wouldn’t you rather masturbate alone and in peace than ever have to fuck this asshole again?” Everyone requires a little foreplay, women require more than men do, it takes women longer to get off than it takes men (five minutes on average for men, thirteen minutes on average for women), and very few women can climax from vaginal intercourse alone. Any straight guy who isn’t willing to do the work—provide the necessary foreplay and

come through with the non-PIV stimulation or concurrent-with-PIV stimulation required to get a woman off—doesn’t deserve to have a girlfriend. DTMFA. Dear Dan: I’m a 53-year-old gay man and I’ve never been hornier in my life. I really need to guzzle about a quart of jizz right now. I haven’t been dating anyone and the COVID isolation has intensified my loneliness but it’s the lack of D that’s driving me to distraction. The last time I sucked a dick was the afternoon Los Angeles began its first shutdown. Here’s the thing. I just had the first dose of the vaccine and the second is scheduled in a couple weeks. Is it safe to suck someone’s dick who has also had the vaccine? Everything I found on google only talks about how the vaccine may affect pregnant women. What about us cum whores? Got the Fever for the Flavor Dear GFF: Where have you been? I predicted at the beginning of the pandemic—based on what we little we knew about transmission at the time—that we were entering a new golden age of glory holes. Two months later the New York City Health department was recommending “barriers, like walls, that allow sexual contact while preventing close face-toface contact,” aka glory holes—and that was the harm-reduction advice given by health professionals long before vaccines became available. Seeing as you’re vaccinated, your risks are going to be lower. But to play it safe: build your own glory hole, invite a guy over, tell him to keep his mask on, and avoid close face-to-face by staying on your knees on the other side of that barrier. Dear Dan: I wanted to second something you wrote about kinks last week. You said—I’m paraphrasing here—that kinks are hard-wired but some people do manage to acquire them. My husband is into rope bondage. I gave it a try a couple of times at the very start of our relationship and for whatever reason being tied up didn’t work for me. We had great vanilla sex and he had a small stable of bondage boys on the side. A few months after the lockdowns began he started to worry about getting rusty. I offered to let him practice on me. I don’t know what changed, Dan, but when he tied me up for the first time in a decade, I was so turned on! At first I thought it was the pot edible but we’ve done it a bunch of times since, times when I wasn’t high, and I’ve enjoyed it just as much or more. Now I’m the one pestering him to go get the ropes. I somehow acquired his kink and he couldn’t be happier! Restrictions Of Pandemic Enables Development P.S. I would’ve called in to share our “pandemic sex success story” for your podcast but my mom and both sisters all listen to the show and they really don’t need to know. Question for Dan? Email him at mail@ savagelove.net. On Twitter at @fakedansavage.

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