The Pitch: May 2020

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THE PITCH | May 2020 | thepitchkc.com

CONTENTS

THE PITCH

Publisher Stephanie Carey Editor in Chief Brock Wilbur Digital Editor Kelcie McKenney Music Editor Nick Spacek Film Editor Abby Olcese Contributing Writers Emily Cox, Traci Angel, Rachel Potucek, Riley Cowing, April Fleming, Roxie Hammill, Deborah Hirsch, Aaron Rhodes, Vivian Kane, Joe Carey, Brooke Tippin, Jenn Langdon, Reece Rodgers, Kari Williams, Archana Sundar, Jen Harris, Barb Shelly, Beth Lipoff, Meghan Severance, Celeste Torrence, Ameerah Sanders, Dan Lybarger, Liz Cook Little Village Creative Services Jordan Sellergren Contributing Photographers Zach Bauman, Chase Castor, Travis Young, Beth Lipoff Graphic Designers Austin Crockett, Jake Edmisten, Lacey Hawkins, Angèle Lafond, Jennifer Larson, Katie McNeil, Danielle Moore, Gianfranco Ocampo, Kirsten Overby, Alex Peak, Jack Raybuck, Fran Sherman Director of Marketing & Promotions Jason Dockery Director of Operations Andrew Miller Editorial Intern Celia Searles Multimedia Intern Jonah Desneux Samantha Sprouse Design Intern Jack Raybuck

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Chief Executive Officer Stephanie Carey Chief Operating Officer Adam Carey

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DISTRIBUTION

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COPYRIGHT

The contents of The Pitch are Copyright 2020 by Carey Media. No portion may be reproduced in whole or in part by any means without the express written permission of the publisher.

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4 LETTER

Letter from the Editor Open up my eager eyes ‘cause I’m Mr. Brightside

BY BROCK WILBUR

6 STREETWISE

BY BROCK WILBUR

9 SPORTS

Wrestle Yr Friends is a Queer Thunderdome Hot to the touch

BY EMILY COX

12 FEATURE

KC Artists are Being Digitally Erased Instagram’s fight against female sexuality is hurting local models, photographers, and our own self-image.

BY KELCIE MCKENNY

DRINK THIS

Drink this now (Because you have to): Reject Beers

BY APRIL FLEMING

18 HISTORY

How Inventing a Pocket Fought AIDS One Kansas Citian found a way to tackle a different pandemic

BY RILEY COWING

20 MUSIC

Pandemic! At The Disco KC’s music scene is far from shut down

BY NICK SPACEK

22 Shiner’s Surprise Rebirth

The Psychedelic Pandamonium of Baby Shark Live!

Youtube brainwashing and drunken brawls—you know, for kids!

BY JOE CAREY

29 HIGHSCHOOL

My Senior Year Ghosted Me What is feels like to have prom stolen by coronavirus

BY MADDISON ROBERTSON

30 SAVAGE LOVE

Cum Tum Getting quick ‘n dirty with Dan

BY DAN SAVAGE

Finding mermaids in a periscope

BY NICK SPACEK

15 NEWS

24 PODCASTS

A Tale of Two States Responses COVID-19 hit unequally in a city that divides two states

BY RACHEL POTUCEK

Heroes Podcast Network is our Local Nerd Mafia Treating fictional caracters as real people

BY BETH LIPOFF

17 EAT THIS

26 MOVIES

Eat This Now (Because you have to): Terrible Homemade Bread

BY APRIL FLEMING

28 CULTURE

EMILY COX

Classic KC Movies & Quarantinis Our film writers and favorite bartenders pair drinks and films to ease your pain

BY ABBY OLCESE, ORRIN GREY, DAN LYBARGER, AND ADRIAN TORRES

May 2020 I FREE I THEPITCHKC.COM

“ERASED”

Illustration by Jack Raybuck, Photo by Traci Miller, Model: Dr. Amber Botrost thepitchkc.com | May 2020 | THE PITCH

3

LETTER

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR OPEN UP MY EAGER EYES ‘CAUSE I’M MR. BRIGHTSIDE

BY BROCK WILBUR

An empty Crossroads.

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Debbie and I are besties now.

My wife and I moved into our current place in November. We met our neighbors on both sides exactly once. One shouted at us about how he liked cars. The other was a woman that we wanted to endear ourselves to, but we were forced to shout our names and phone numbers to each other in a ten-second burst amidst a hellish snowstorm.

If you asked me what Debbie looks like, I couldn’t tell you.

Months later, we find ourselves here.

I realized I had Debbie’s number in my phone. I reached out just to see if she was okay. She was. I was heading out and she asked if I could get plums. I promised to get her plums. I went to two different stores and couldn’t find her plums. Plums had

ceased to exist.

Debbie began to chat regularly with my wife and I. We are of far different ages, backgrounds, and probably belief systems.

We live five feet away, but we never pursued any opportunity to communicate further than yelling “HOWDY” at each other during a snowstorm.

I help bring Debbie things now. I found plums. I was proud of that.

More importantly, we’ve become a de-facto family.

Debbie lives alone. My wife and I didn’t know anything about Debbie, except that we live next door. When we moved, we moved in winter and it was an inopportune time to meet those in close proximity.

Now, we talk to Debbie. To be clear: We talk to lots of people. I plan “Unhappy

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LETTER

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Hours” to sit and have drinks with friends around the country. Folks I haven’t caught up with in years. That said: It takes just as much effort to contact the woman that lives ten feet away from me as it takes to sip wine with Alec from 1800 miles away.

There is a general idea that, after this, all versions of friendship and communication might find a different form. Evolve into this space. That would rule. A world wherein our most beloved friends have nothing to do with our proximity is… I suppose the promise of this generation fulfilled.

What’s come from this is that Debbie has become family faster that you can imagine.

Within our first few stuck at home texts, I revealed everything to Debbie from my professional fears to my personal failings to my mental health gaps that I try to improve upon every day. I’m oversharing. I’m met by a genuine human connection. Debbie tells me about her kid who’s deemed an essential worker, who must keep showing up every day at a nuclear reactor. Debbie tells me about nonsense she’s witnessed in this neighborhood that none of us should accept. Debbie tells us about her husband’s tragic loss to cancer in 2016.

I realize how incredible it is that our friendship has blossomed because the world has told us we’re out of connections.

I celebrate the little text thread with Debbie daily. I celebrate all the relationships I have across the country that were once withering on the vine, but are now blossoming.

When this all began, I thought that I’d finally knock everything on my To Do list out of the park. I also thought my wife and I would knock out every arts-y TV show and movie we’d been meaning to take on.

I haven’t done a single home improvement project. At night, because I keep trying to cover stuff for The Pitch, all I can put on the TV is awful reality TV dating shows. That’s fine. That’s good actually. I’m not gonna write my novel right now, and no one could ever push me to do so.

I have resurrected friends. I have a new life. I have Debbie. I hope you’re sharing in these kinds of positive moments that keep bleeding out.

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

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STREETWISE

STREETWISE QUICK HITS ON ALL THE BITS IN THIS BEAUTIFUL TOWN BY BROCK WILBUR

Boulevardia has been cancelled. I know.

I’m upset about it too. It’s the right thing to do, obviously, but c’mon. Life, you gotta stop kicking us while we are down. At the same time as the announcement of the festival being pushed to next year, we got some good news from the folks at Boulevard Brewing Company. They’ve partnered with Playstation to make a beer tied to the release of the upcoming game “The Last of Us II.” Hilariously, the game’s release has been pushed back indefinitely, so we’ll get the beer long before we get to kill post-apocalyptic moss monsters.

Empty shelves on a last-minute grocery run.

6

THE PITCH | May 2020 | thepitchkc.com

PILSEN PHOTO CO-OP

Local businesses convert to COVID-19 response. From printing operations like the Trabon Group and LargePrinting.com to delivery operations like Knoq, folks around the city are completely changing their operations. This allows many of our neighbors to remain employed, while also giving much-needed assistance to the community.

Be it the production of medical masks and

hand sanitizer, or taking care of safe deliveries to those in need, there’s a growing number of incredible efforts being made across the board. Keep up the good work… and, you know, having jobs to work at.

Beignet closed abruptly. The City Market based Cajun kitchen had been in operation for seven years. The owner put up a Facebook post thanking customers for 2,514 days of wonderful patronage. No reason was given for the closure, but I think we can all guess why.

Unemployed? Here’s some options. More than 40 Kansas City companies have listed thousands of open positions on KC Career Network to help those displaced by coronavirus. TeamKC, a talent attraction initiative of the Kansas City Area Development Council (KCADC), is leveraging KC Career Network to list more than 5,000 full-time,

STREETWISE

part-time and seasonal positions available in industries including technology, professional services, and health care.

Local women were honored with business awards. Six Kansas City area women business owners have been recently chosen to receive a national “2020 Enterprising Women of the Year Award” by Enterprising Women Magazine. The publication is the nation’s only women-owned magazine publishing for female business owners. Congrats to Julie Towner, Jeanette Prenger, Jy’ Juan Maze, Martina Derra, Neelima Parasker, and Gail Worth.

First Fridays lives on. We were worried that First Fridays would be gone for the foreseeable future. Now, it’s going to be every Friday. Just online. From 6 to 9 p.m. weekly, you can catch music, art, and food (by way of cooking instruction). Purchase a ticket, which goes to the artists involved, at kccrew. com under “Friday Night Arts!”. You then get a link to the evening’s Zoom video chat.

We “went” last week, and it was a delight.

We’ve got a beer that likes us. Servaes Brewing Co. made us a 40th anniversary celebratory sour ale. The can says nice things

The weather is drunk. That’s it. That’s the whole comment. We keep bouncing from summer sun to freeze warnings, and I do not take kindly to it. I’m not a fan.

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SPORTS

WRESTLE YR FRIENDS IS A QUEER THUNDERDOME HOT TO THE TOUCH BY EMILY COX

Editor’s Note: The events covered were written before social distancing guidelines were imposed. The stories here delight us, and we cannot wait for these events to return. We realize, under current circumstances, the idea of touching people and even seeing friends almost come across as nostalgic. So perhaps read this through that lens. Let’s get stoked for when the world allows us to live in such a tactile way again.

“Next up, The Librarian!” called out the emcee, Dick Von Dyke, a drag king dressed in a red suit, with black mesh shirt and a red bow tie. I took my shoes and earrings off, and stepped onto the mat. The crowd chattered as my opponent and I set up for the match.

The referee, Woke Hogan, crouched down and asked us individually: “Do you consent to wrestle this person?” We made eye contact with her in turn, said “Yes.” Woke Hogan nodded to Dick Von Dyke. Dick led the crowd in a countdown: “3! 2! 1! Wrestle your fucking friends!” I lunged forward.

Wrestle Yr Friends has been throwing queer wrestling parties for over a year now.

“Wrestle Yr Friends itself started in my living room,” says Noah Albee. “But the legacy goes back much, much, much further.” Casual wrestling parties have lowkey been a trend in queer houses around town for over a decade. After attending these parties hosted by friends over the years, the torch was passed to Albee.

Albee hosted three wrestling parties in their third-floor apartment before outgrowing the space. “We threw Noah a surprise wrestling birthday party,” says Roya Rafiq, one of the core organizers for Wrestle Yr Friends, “and really put our hearts and souls into it, and so many people came, and people kept coming to the wrestling parties.

Then too many people started coming.”

Stray Cat, the microcinema that regularly hosts DIY events, invited Wrestle Yr Friends to hold their events there starting in April 2019.

In June, their event Stonewall Brawl featured a fundamental shift in how the collective programmed their shows. Inspired to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, organizers showed a short film on its history, connected the community with outside organizations, and incorporat-

ed performances. “We started building each one as a show, as a curated kind of art experience,” says Albee. In just six months, they went from casually scrapping on an apartment floor, to a staged, rehearsed, costumed, emceed, planned out events.

While the shows include rehearsed performances and staged brawls, any attendee can sign up and participate in wrestling.

Some participants have wrestling names and costumes, but just as many folks wear casual clothes and use their regular names.

(Some of the wrestling names are real gems, like Auntie Vaxx, Sparkle Motion, and Venus Thigh Gap.) February’s event was dubbed Valentine’s Gay. Near the entryway there was a table full of paper valentines, which you could fill out and pass off to Cupid (aka Roya Rafiq) to deliver to the object of your affection. There were glittery heart stickers; there was a poet in the corner with a typewriter, writing love poems on the spot; there were cherry pastries and an ostentatiously adorned photobooth.

It was not only super gay, but super welcoming, with an earnest sweetness about the whole thing. No one was trying to be cool by being ironic and standoffish, instead the event was cool because they’d worked hard to make it enjoyable and engaging for everyone. I’d expected unruly chaos, a pulsing thrum of a crowd, DIY dysfunction, but that wasn’t the case. Supportiveness was palpable.

Stray Cat’s theater was set up with seating around a square of thick black floor mats. Red theater lights shone. Attendees calmly filled the seats, waiting patiently for the show to begin.

Attendees also had a chance to connect with local organizations Thrive (formerly known as Good Samaritan), who had a lobby table with safer sex kits and information about their free STI testing, and Kansas City Anti-Violence Project gave a brief shout-out about their services around domestic violence and sexual assault for the LGBTQ+ community.

The opening act featured the evening’s referee, Kailee Karr as Woke Hogan, sporting a red velvet cape with plastic gems spelling out WOKE inside of a heart. Woke Hogan’s performance to a song with the lyrics “If it feels good, do it,” segued into her in-

The crowd cheers on friends, neighbors, and strangers hitting the mat together.

troduction on the rules of wrestling. “There’s nothing we love more than consent!” she said.

Indeed, Noah Albee says Wrestle Yr Friends is primarily a practice of consent.

When wrestling, “the ref will set you down on the mat before you engage in your scene, and will ask you specifically, ‘Do you consent to this match?’ ‘Do you want to tap out or is this a pin?’ There are specific and direct rules. [If the ref] notices someone is uncomfortable, they’ll break it up. You notice that you’re uncomfortable and you realize you don’t want to be there, plenty of people have tapped out.”

Rafiq chimes in, “I’ve tapped out.”

Though you may have a hundred people watching, you have explicit permission here to stop when you want.

They point to how rarely consent is discussed outside of sexual contexts. And that when much of our socializing happens in alcohol-fueled environments, consent can be messy. While some folks choose to drink at Wrestle Yr Friends events, it is not the focal point. The emphasis on consent allows participants the opportunity to exercise their own autonomy, and practice in how to com-

MAK ALLEN

municate about it.

Dick Von Dyke, who performed for 4 hours straight as emcee (as well as doing a performance to Beyonce’s “Countdown”) kept up a flirty, witty, and encouraging energy. As he called out to late arrivals lingering in the doorway that there was seating available near the front, he quipped, “I promise I won’t bite...without your consent.”

The night featured drag, burlesque, and musical performances interspersed between bouts of wrestling. The variety kept the pace brisk and never fell into monotony.

Experience varied among wrestlers.

First-timers were often tentative, kneeling across from one another on the mat, hands out and ready, but both reluctant to make the first move. Some chose to just arm wrestle. Others, whether experienced or tenacious, were fast and intense, relentless in their movements and attempts to pin the opponent. A pair of best friends with matching tattoos arm wrestled one another.

Some friends who take Krav Maga classes together sparred in a different way on the wrestling mat. Two folks about to wrestle shared, “We met last week at queer speed dating, and our first date is on Monday.” I thepitchkc.com | May 2020 | THE PITCH

9

SPORTS

wrestled a stranger.

During my match, I lunged forward, and all sound and sensation fell away aside from what was happening on the mat. I don’t remember hearing the crowd, I don’t know what song was booming through the speakers. I was fully present and awake, adrenaline pummeling through me. I had never wrestled before, but I’d been watching the matches before me, and tried to pick up some tactics. We rolled, tumbled, grasped.

Finally, I slammed their shoulders down, straddling their body. My opponent looked surprised, exhaled, ‘whoa.’ I had a moment of alarm—I’m not used to fighting, I suppose—and I froze, still pinning them, ‘Are you good?” My opponent nodded, the ref smacked the mat three times, and I’d won.

The sound of the crowd came back to me, I heard Dick Von Dyke proclaiming, “That book has been checked out!” I retook my seat, my whole body shaking, I was ecstatic, and immediately wanted to do it again.

With each event they’ve produced, the Wrestle Yr Friends team has amped up their skills and dedication to the project. They started holding weekly planning meetings.

“We don’t feel like there’s any hierarchy within the group,” says Ash Anders, another core organizer. “Everyone’s equal and listened to.”

And anyone who’s ready to put in the work is invited to come. Anders says anywhere from seven to 15 folks come to their weekly organizing meetings. They debrief and plan, but also have become a network of support. “We support other people in the group if they’re out performing in the community somewhere,” says Anders, “we help promote them, make sure a big group of us maybe are free that night we can go out and support one of their fellow members.”

Making events accessible is at the core of what they do. A $7 donation is requested at the door, but it is emphatically a paywhat-you-can situation. The funds go to pay the performers, with remaining funds going to a community member in need who is announced at each event. The organizers themselves are unpaid, though they are sometimes putting in 30 hours a week to produce the events.

When an organization is intentionally structured to be inclusive and accessible in practice, it shows. It’s why Roya Rafiq is committed to it. After showing up to events deemed inclusive, they would discover, “I was the only brown person in the room,” Rafiq says. “I was the only queer person in the room.”

“Until you can show me that you’re diverse without telling me that you are,” Rafiq continues, “if you can show me that you’re inclusive without saying that word to me, then I’ll believe it. I think Wrestle Yr Friends does a really good job with that.”

The crowd at Valentine’s Gay held a variety of genders, of races, of ages. “It’s most-

10

THE PITCH | May 2020 | thepitchkc.com

“Wrestle your fucking friends!” is the collectively shouted starting pistol for each match.

MAK ALLEN

ly AFAB [assigned female at birth] people,” says Albee, “oftentimes on the nonbinary spectrum; there’s a large age range, there’s some middle aged lesbians that come out.

Which is really cool. Those spaces don’t exist in Kansas City. Even Alter—it was a queer space, but there were a lot of men there.

There are almost no men that aren’t trans [at Wrestle Yr Friends].”

nary, genderqueer, and trans folks can be a liberatory experience. People’s guards come down; there’s an air of joy and playfulness.

But don’t call it a safe space: “I don’t believe in safe spaces, and here’s why,” says Albee. “In what context, even being a woman, let alone being a black trans woman, where are you safe? Under a police state. Under a colonized government. Under the entire

“I was someone who did karate and self-defense as a kid,” says Albee.

“I know how empowering it is to feel strong.”

“The kind of space that we’ve created is so different than what we’re used to,” says Rafiq. “Where do you go when you’re queer and you’re trying to go out and do something fun? I guess I can go to one of the three gay bars where there’s going to be a bunch of like cis white gay men.” Wrestle Yr Friends fills a need for folks who don’t fit into dominant spaces, even the gay ones. They seek to include everyone, as long as you follow the rules.

“I personally have had so many cis straight dudes message me,” adds Rafiq, “saying, like ‘am I allowed to come?’ and yea totally!”

“Just be nice,” says Albee. “If we tell you not to take pictures, don’t take pictures.”

For most of us, most public spaces we’re in are dominated by cis men. If you’re a cis man, you might not have even noticed how often this is the case. Subverting that norm, and being in a space surrounded by nonbi-

American government start to finish. Where are you safe?”

Instead, Wrestle Yr Friends embraces the idea of being a brave space. “Brave, means empowering. Means accessible, being threatening to racism, being threatening to the status quo. It’s more active, it’s more honest.”

Being a brave space also means they seek to address conflicts that arise. “Conflict is gonna happen, it will,” says Albee. “People who don’t like us, or people who don’t like someone who is attending. It’s going to happen. I don’t believe in cancel culture, we can collectively say as an organization that we don’t believe in cancel culture.”

“We’re working towards restorative justice,” says Rafiq. “It’s active, it’s a lot of constant learning, unlearning, like swallowing our pride sometimes.”

They’re currently working with Kansas City Anti-Violence Project on developing a

framework for peer mediation.

“We are trying so hard, all of us as a community, we are trying so hard to be good to one another,” says Albee, “and I think that there’s a lot of misplaced existential dread at being at the end of the world, and having complete global awareness of every single fire that’s happening around the planet, every single riot. It’s this information overload, and we don’t have an effective way to process it, because as individuals we are not built to process the world’s suffering.”

“We’re also largely marginalized,” continues Albee, “largely multiply marginalized, and don’t have power over the people that are really hurting us, like the state, and cis white men. So we take it out on each other, because ‘you hurt me, and I can do something about it.’ That is very much a trauma response, very much from a place of survival, it makes sense, I understand it, I’ve been a kill-your-local-rapist person, and I’m not any more. Because people aren’t disposable. We don’t have a list at the door of people who can’t come. We’re not going to turn you away, unless you cause a problem.”

Why wrestling though? What’s the appeal? For those who have been marginalized, reclaiming a physical power and finding a release for aggression in a healthy way is necessary—and hard to find).

“We’re not allowed in gyms half the time or don’t feel comfortable there,” says Albee. “Or don’t feel comfortable going on a run, or don’t feel comfortable in dance classes, don’t feel comfortable at a jujitsu class…”

“Or just flat out aren’t safe,” Rafiq adds.

“I had several trans women who said wrestling at Wrestle Yr Friends has been one of the most beautiful experiences they’ve had as trans women.”

“I was someone who did karate and self-defense as a kid,” says Albee. “I know how empowering it is to feel strong. Working in kitchens slinging 50 lb potato stacks feels good. To be weird and to be alternative and to be gay and to be trans—and to be powerful.”

For Wrestle Yr Friends organizers, it’s not just about releasing aggression or invoking their playful inner child, it’s also about putting in work to build meaningful community. It’s about wrestling, but it’s also much bigger than that.

“Building those strong bonds: that’s the revolution,” says Albee. “When we think about anarchy, it’s very much like ‘Smash the state! Smash smash smash!’ And that’s kind of where we’re at with conflict resolution collectively as a community, too, is ‘smash smash smash.’ But being a brave space, being a brave community, is ‘What are we going to build?’”

“You come here and we’re all working hard,” says Rafiq. “That’s what’s special. So what can we make next?”

Crossroads Community Kitchen.

ZACH BAUMAN

FEATURE

KC ARTISTS ARE BEING DIGITALLY ERASED INSTAGRAM’S FIGHT AGAINST FEMALE SEXUALITY IS HURTING LOCAL MODELS, PHOTOGRAPHERS, AND OUR OWN SELF-IMAGE. BY KELCIE MCKENNEY

In September of last year, Bella Fernandez was scrolling through her Instagram DM’s when she was booted off her account and redirected to the login page. When she tried her password, Instagram said her account didn’t exist: It was deleted. She didn’t exist.

Fernandez had been erased.

“I really felt like I wasn’t doing anything wrong, and I really was completely blindsided by it. There was no warning about it. There was no email saying, ‘Oh, you’re going to get deleted soon,’” says Fernandez, a local model who focuses on normalizing nudity through revealing, honest photography. Much of her business comes from Instagram, and before

her account was deleted, @bellatrickortreat had over 27,000 followers.

“I got this text from Bella, she was freaking out,” says Kansas City artist Peregrine Honig. “Rightfully so. It’s her income, and her body is her maker commodity. And it’s her body. It’s her choice, period.”

Honig is the owner of Birdies, a lingerie store that Fernandez has modeled for. In 2014 Honig posted a picture of a 3D-printed sculpture of her nude body taking a selfie. Titled #textme, the sculpture was photographed next to a toothbrush for scale, but Instagram flagged it and her entire account was deleted.

Huffington Post even picked up the story.

Bella Fernandez had her Instagram account deleted at 27,000 followers, with no notice or explanation.

LEFT: FOTO.KAMMER, BELOW: CAM ATREE

Tayanna Harris uses Instagram to promote her Boudoir photography business, Good Bodies, where she takes photos like these of Madee.

TAYANNA HARRIS

“All because of a little, pink, plastic nipple,” Honig notes of the sculpture that was censored.

On Instagram’s community guidelines page, it states that nudity isn’t allowed, including photos and digitally-created content “that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and closeups of fully-nude buttocks.” Female nipples can’t be shown either, unless it’s post-mastectomy scarring or a woman actively breastfeeding. So nipples have to overcome cancer or be “functioning” to be allowed? And what

even constitutes a “close-up” of a butt?

“Things needed to be censored,” Fernandez says. “And I followed those guidelines. I didn’t post anything close up; anything that I did post was heavily censored. So there wasn’t anything to be seen.” But many of her posts were deleted or shadowbanned—where Instagram keeps them up, but removes them from the feeds of your followers. Without letting the creator know.

“I think that’s the thing that’s really frustrating for a lot of people too is there are these regulations, but they’re also not fucking clear,” says Tayanna Harris, a boudoir photographer behind @goodbodieskc and a queer-focused wedding photographer who has also faced censorship. “There’s no list. So how do you know what things you shouldn’t be able to post?”

In April 2019, Facebook shared its new “integrity” plan for content at a press event.

TechCrunch reported a presentation with a slide called “Example Non-Recommendable Content.” It listed “violence,” “graphic/shocking,” and “sexually suggestive” as categories of content that would be removed or shadowbanned. The last category included a woman wearing a bra and underwear—much like a swimsuit—sitting on a bed. Literally just sitting on a bed. To Facebook, which owns Instagram, that was deemed “sexually suggestive.”

Apparently we aren’t allowed to have boobs and sit now? I’m not sure how to avoid that. But thanks for letting me know.

Instagram in the Lens of Body Positivity Let’s take a step back for a second. Instagram doesn’t allow nudity, so what? Studies show

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THE PITCH | May 2020 | thepitchkc.com

FEATURE

that 80 percent of women are dissatisfied by their appearance. According to the National Eating Disorder Association, 42 percent of first- to third-grade girls want to lose weight.

By the age of ten, 81 percent of girls are afraid of being fat. We are facing a body-image epidemic.

“When I was growing up, you did not see a woman of my size on a cover of a magazine. And now we see women like Ashley Graham, Precious Lee, and Lizzo,” says Dr. Amber Botros, a model and the owner and lead physician of Plaza Medical Spa. “But growing up as a child who was always more heavyset, I didn’t have role models like that, and I was always told by my family and others to wear longer skirts, wear longer shirts, you’re too sexy.”

Dr. Botros’s modeling promotes body positivity, self empowerment, and plussized inclusion—often done in lingerie. She’s known on instagram as @ambercurvemodel, boasting an impressive 311,000 followers, and travels to New York City, L.A., and beyond to work with national and international photographers.

“To see women who are comfortable and confident at any size and aren’t focused on diet culture or always focused on losing weight, that’s something that I think for young women is so important,” Dr. Botros adds.

Body positivity is inherently part of our sexuality and self-perception, according to Dr. Lexx Brown-James, a therapist and certified sex educator out of St. Louis.

“Body positivity actually helps us set boundaries on how we’re treated, what we allow, and how we prioritize pleasure. So this idea that self-sacrifice equals goodness is something that is bred into specifically females,” says Dr. Brown-James. “So, I worked out really hard so I deserve to eat this cupcake, or my size is super thin because I’ve worked so hard at restricting my food and now I get to feel good about myself. Versus, you get to feel good about yourself no matter what.”

If you place your worth on your body or where your body is at, how do you also believe that you deserve pleasure? Not just

There is no “normal,” Bodies vary.

Confidence comes from within.

sexual pleasure, but pleasure in the sense of what feels positive for your body. When can you feel good about feeling good?

“I think that we’re conditioned a certain way because that’s all you see,” says Traci Miller, the photographer behind Indium Boudoir. “So then when you’re on your feed, and you see anything that’s not that, at first I feel like it’s shocking. And then the more you see it, the more it normalizes, and then it’s not a big deal.”

Seeing other bodies, from size and shape to color and gender, whether it be on Instagram or the world around us, reiterates there is no “normal.” Bodies vary. Confidence comes from within.

“All those different types of pictures and images disrupt that narrative, and it makes it expansive and inclusionary of all sorts of different folks,” says Dr. Brown-James. “Body positivity is not just being happy about your body all the time. It’s accepting what your body is and not necessarily having to push it into the shoes of the world.”

Finding Self Love in Boudoir Photography One tool in the journal of self love is boudoir photography. If you’re unfamiliar with the trend, boudoir is photos taken—typically in lingerie—as a way to feel sexy and confident

and to see your body through a new lens.

“It’s typically folks with varied bodies who don’t see their bodies always represented in media. I think boudoir is an awesome tool to really fall in love with yourself and to realize you are sexy and desirable and nothing’s hotter than knowing yourself and having that confidence there,” says Dr. Brown-James, who recently treated herself to a boudoir session.

Leah Emerick, a certified professional boudoir photographer who has been shooting in Kansas City for the past two years, sees first-hand how boudoir impacts the women she photographs. Her Facebook and Google reviews are filled with stories of self-love and inspiration: She captured the beauty of who I am, which truly overshadowed any physical flaws I may have focused on. I felt beautiful inside and out by the time we finished. [...] I’d never seen myself like that. - Barb C Through the lens of her camera, she helped me see how beautiful I really am after years of self doubt and criticism. I was given the courage and confidence to go and find a wedding dress for my wedding because of my shoot with Leah. - Ashten R It caused a complete 180 change in how I view myself and how I respond to my environment and the people around me. Booking a session with Leah could be the best thing you ever do for yourself. Do not wait for a better

Dr. Botros poses in lingereie for Traci Miller’s boutique, Indium Intimates.

TRACI MILLER

thepitchkc.com | May 2020 | THE PITCH

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FEATURE

And why it’s bullshit. We agree.

Instagram’s Algorithm is Fat-Phobic

time when things are perfect. You are perfect right now, just the way you are. - Lauren N It’s not just Emerick’s reviews that are flooded with feedback, but Miller’s, Harris’s, and so many other boudoir reviews share the same message: Seeing your body this way heals. It doesn’t fix every aspect of your body image, but it’s a big step in the right direction.

“I try to just show women that side of themselves that they don’t see, that everyone else does,” says Emerick.

Model Fernandez encourages doing a boudoir shoot just for yourself: “You don’t even have to do anything with the photos.

Just do this so you can see how beautiful you are.”

But how do Facebook and Instagram feel about your newfound self love? Therein lies the issue.

If you search Instagram by hashtags (those “#” noted tags often listed at the ends of post to group similar content), #boudoir and #boudoirphotography will pull up a message that says: “Recent posts from #boudoir are currently hidden because the community has reported some content that may not meet Instagram’s community guidelines.” Those hashtags are shadow banned—meaning if included in a post, your followers won’t see that post in their feed. #curvy, #curvygirl, and #cheeky are also shadowbanned, but #fit, #skinny, #thin are all fine to use.

“There’s so many. To be honest, I can’t even keep up with it,” says Botros, who noticed last year that #lingeriemodel was still an ok tag, but #plussizelingeriemodel was banned. Since then, #lingeriemodel has been added to the shadowbanned list.

You probably see what’s happening here.

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Botros has had her entire account shadowbanned at times for up to three months.

During then she sees no growth in followers, limited requests for work, and less engagement overall. Much of that banning she attributes to fat phobia in Instagram’s algorithm.

At this year’s Curvycon—a New York City convention dedicated to celebrating plus-sized brands, bloggers, models, and more—Dr. Botros heard a panel about social media. Many plus-sized models faced similar issues: Their photos were disproportionately taken down, thanks to a skin-to-clothing ratio as part of the algorithm. If a larger woman is to wear, say, a swimsuit compared to a thinner woman, their skin-to-clothing ratio is going to be nowhere similar.

“If we wear the same clothes, my skin, I mean it’s going to quadruple their’s,” says Dr. Botros.

“It’s the same outfit,” says Dr. BrownJames, “and it speaks to the idea that we should hide fat.”

They are facing mathematical sexism.

Truly, a brave new world of misogyny.

Instagram’s algorithm isn’t consistent either. A few months ago, Dr. Botros did a photoshoot for Miller’s lingerie store Indium Intimates. Dr. Botros wore a sheer, black set that showed a bit of her nipple through the bra. In Miller’s experience, as long as a nipple was covered with something, even sheer, it would still pass. They both posted the photo on their separate accounts. Dr. Botros’s was immediately deleted. Miller’s wasn’t.

“I was really surprised,” Miller says. “She thinks it was because of her size, she’s more targeted. But she does have more followers, so it very well could have been reported.”

Fernandez has seen inconsistencies with the algorithm too. On multiple occasions, Fernandez and the photographer will post photos from a shoot. What Fernandez posts, even if it’s more censored, will get taken down, but the photographer’s post won’t. Harris has seen similar issues with her models.

We should reiterate that: The exact same photo can be taken down if posted by the model, but left standing for the photographer.

It’s hard to be more blatant than that.

“Recently I had a photo of a fat woman that I posted that I photographed in Philadelphia, and it’s a photo of her covering her breast and then the rest of her body is obscured by shadow,” Harris says. That post was taken down. Devin, the model in the photo, wasn’t surprised: “Every photo that people post of me always gets taken down,” Harris recalls her saying.

Later, Harris posted another photo of Devin, but this time with a white line through the image, covering her nipple. That post has

stayed up, since February.

“If you want to give me a clear rule to follow, I’ll follow it,” says Harris. “But me putting a little line over like a barely there nipple, just because I was concerned about it. That’s stupid, and this is the kind of thing that people want to see. People want to see people like Devin.”

“Fat women are finally able to be seen as relevant and beautiful and celebrate, feeling comfortable and confident in their skin, and that there’s nothing wrong with it, it doesn’t mean we’re unhealthy,” says Dr. Botros.

“And you know, unless you’re looking at our labs and our medical history, no one knows whether you’re healthy or not. And now we have this social media platform that sees us as over-sexualized or is trying to censor or inhibit our growth.”

POLITICIZING WOMEN’S BODIES

FOSTA-SESTA, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, were passed in 2018. Both acts hold social media accountable if there is sex trafficking going on, but are ultimately a way to harm sex workers under the guise of sex trafficking. Traffickers don’t get punished; sites that share sexually explicit content do.

Instagram’s restrictions could be a way to avoid being held liable. Before FOSTA-SESTA, hashtags like #boudoir and #lingerie were fine. But if FOSTA-SESTA is targeted at sex workers, why are boudoir photographers, models, and artists getting looped into these regulations?

“They are censoring the internet because they don’t want sex workers to get work off the internet. So the fact that they included freaking boudoir is mind blowing to me,” says Miller. “How did artists get roped into this?

I think that’s insane that it’s in fact affecting photographers and models. I just feel like it’s not the same category.”

“I don’t think that what I’m doing is necessarily something that is sexualizing people.

I think it’s an empowering thing. Not saying that they can’t be intertwined, but I think that they can be exclusive,” says Harris, who added she supports sex workers.

The censorship of boudoir photography isn’t just hurting our body image on the internet, it’s hurting local businesses, too.

Both Miller and Harris had to change their Instagram handles to protect their business after FOSTA-SESTA passed. Harris went from @heyboudie to @goodbodieskc; Miller switched from @indiumboudoir to @indiumgems. #boudoirkc was also on the list of shadowbanned hashtags.

“It’s been a struggle. It’d be easier if they weren’t banned,” says Miller. “And I feel like it hurts people looking for you too. It’s not just us wanting to reach people, how are they supposed to find us? And we’re not using the hashtags. You can’t go to them. So you just hope that either Google it or someone shares

Seeing a varity of body shapes, sizes, and colors in photos like these from Harris’s Good Bodies helps build body positvity.

TAYANNA HARRIS

you with them.”

Miller has had to get creative in promoting both her boudoir businesses and lingerie store. She uses #kcboutique on Instagram, gets clients through Google inquiries, and tries to do social media giveaways. Harris watches what she posts and gets work from word-of-mouth. After Fernandez lost her first account, she’s built a new one up to 12,600 followers and is even more careful with what she posts. Emerick doesn’t use Instagram for her boudoir at all. She finds it too risky.

So where do we go from here? We can’t force Instagram to change, try as we might.

And ultimately our problems exceed any social media platform. Women are hyper-sexualized in our society, fat-phobia runs rampant, we didn’t even begin to cover the sexism behind nipple-censorship or how these regulations impact the transgender community.

It’s a series of unfortunate social distortions that crossover to create unending No Win scenarios. What can we do?

Without an easy answer, perhaps the best place to begin is to reflect on the inherent questions: How do we see ourselves? Do you feel you deserve pleasure? Where does your worth lie? How do you see your body? If there is a barrier, what is it and how can you overcome it?

Challenge yourself to see your body in a new way. Follow an array of shapes and sizes on your social media. Schedule a boudoir session. Hell, take a sexy selfie of yourself tomorrow. Don’t even send it; just take it for yourself to feel good about you. Stare into the mirror and say out loud “I’m beautiful.”

What’s the worst that could happen?

Society isn’t going to change overnight.

If each of us sees ourselves differently—if we grow to love and respect ourselves and in turn respect others—maybe things will change. And if not? At least we leave behind a memorial pile of heroic thirst traps in our wake. Shadowban that, bitch.

NEWS

A quiet, empty Westport.

ALYSSA ORR

A TALE OF TWO STATE RESPONSES COVID-19 HIT UNEQUALLY IN A CITY THAT DIVIDES TWO STATES

BY RACHEL POTUCEK

Politics is thick in the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s staring you in the face. (And maybe coughing a little.)

Politics decides how much protective gear our front line health care workers receive. It defines our level of exposure to other people (and their viruses). It defines whether our workplaces will create safety protections.

Each of these decisions, when added up, determine our collective survival.

Health crises like COVID-19 are so critical, they’re the root of modern government.

In the 1400’s, as the black plague ravaged Europe, Italian leaders began quarantines (the word “quarantine” comes from the Italian

Like those innovative Venetians, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly, a moderate Democrat, and Missouri Governor Mike Parson, a conservative Republican, are now facing what may be the defining moments of their legacies. Based on Parson’s response to COVID-19, one wonders if far-right Republicans would argue Venice went too far.

Governor Kelly issued a Kansas statewide school closure starting on March 15.

Parson did not issue one at all, instead leaving it up to each district to make that challenging decision.

Kelly started limiting large gatherings on March 16th and initiated a stay-at-home

COVID-19 safety measures vary by zip code in the Kansas City metro area, leaving us all at risk of confusion and exposure. word quaranta—“forty”). Venetian leaders, in one of history’s first forms of institutionalized public health, ordered all plague-carrying incoming ships to dock at outlying islands for 40 days.

The medieval Venetians’ “stay at ship” orders saved lives. According to Frank M. Snowden in Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present, the act was so impactful that it helped build the concept of the modern state. As it turns out, people really like leaders who help them avoid a plague.

order on March 28th. Parson took action weeks later, after nearly every major Missouri health organization publicly pressured him. When Parson released his stay-at-home order on April 6th, he called it a “piece of paper.” It is. Unlike Kansas and most other states, Missouri doesn’t require non-essential businesses to close, nor does it require residents to stay home.

COVID-19 safety measures vary by zip code in the Kansas City metro area, leaving us all at risk of confusion and exposure. Why thepitchkc.com | May 2020 | THE PITCH

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NEWS

don’t we all have the same safety measures?

Over the past few decades, an extreme view of extraordinarily limited government has gone from fringe conservative outpost to mainstream Republican ideal. It owes its popularity to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and well-heeled think tanks like the Cato Institute, founded by Kansas’ libertarian billionaire Koch brothers.

These ideas soared into Washington D.C. with the Tea Party wave of 2010. Former Kansas Governor Sam Brownback used the same principles to create “The Great Tax Experiment” in 2012, which ultimately failed, having created what The Atlantic called an “ongoing atmosphere of fiscal crisis.”

These ideals help explain why Donald Trump refuses to order a national response, even though his health advisors urge it. It explains why Parson left school closures up to individual districts. It’s why Kansas Republican lawmaker Susan Wagle and other Republican leaders tried to push churches open for Easter, in direct violation of an executive order.

These ideals now test our nation’s survival.

By late March, the United States had overtaken China to become the world’s epicenter of COVID-19. America’s cities and states are forced to outbid one another for critical medical supplies. Sewing machine brigades are making up for masks that the federal government refused to procure.

Just two years before Coronavirus struck Wuhan, Trump dismantled our nation’s top pandemic response team. In Trump’s latest proposed budget, issued 11 days after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus an international threat, he cut the CDC’s funding by 16 percent.

A Politico investigation revealed the Trump administration failed to follow its own internal National Security Council playbook after Coronavirus hit Wuhan, delaying America’s response by as much as two months.

Unemployment has surged to more than 10 percent of the workforce, and states led by far-right policies now face disaster.

In Florida, unemployment programs were decimated so badly by the far-right GOP that when COVID-19 hit, Republicans called it a “shit sandwich.” Florida’s unemployment application site appeared to have been rigged to block applicants, and is now under investigation. Florida’s maximum unemployment check is around $275 per week, one of the lowest in the nation.

COVID-19 recast light on the heartbreaking truism “when white America gets a cold, black America gets pneumonia.” Nationwide, nearly half of African Americans report lost jobs, hours, or furlough—more than any other group.

Kansas City’s 3rd District, which is 6575 percent African American, has been hard-

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THE PITCH | May 2020 | thepitchkc.com

est hit by COVID-19. As Kansas City, Missouri Health Department Director Dr. Rex Archer told the Kansas City Star, residents have “less health insurance, less access to prevention techniques.” Stronger public health programs, it appears, could have prevented this catastrophic loss.

GOP leaders have been cutting public health programs for decades, leaving us dangerously at risk.

Ronald Reagan coined the term “welfare queen,” a now-debunked myth of social service abuse, as an excuse to slash public health programs throughout the 1980’s. Fueled by the Tea Party wave, GOP Congressional leaders forced votes to eliminate the Affordable Care Act more than twenty times.

Missouri and Kansas Republicans, the vanguard of the far-right, are among the last holdouts to expand to expand Medicaid.

Missouri’s GOP-led state legislature gutted women’s reproductive health care so badly that it caused a surge in syphilis. Missouri has the least-funded public health infrastructure in the nation.

The central mission of modern government, if we look to its first roots more than 500 years ago, is to protect us from the abject misery and early death of preventable disease. Public health programs do exactly that.

From unemployment programs to food stamps to health clinics to housing to COVID-19 response, public health isn’t wasteful spending. It’s the foundation of a vibrant society.

Cook Political Report flipped Missouri’s Governor race from “solid Republican” to “lean Republican” on April 3rd, based solely on Parson’s poor handling of COVID-19. It’s an indicator of what may come this November. A campaign platform that says “I took your job and I took your neighbor’s life because I believe government is the problem,” might itself be a problem.

COVID-19 reveals decades of far-right GOP decisions to ignore the deathly ships calling port to our own harbors. That’s not a failure of leadership. It’s a craven choice not to use it at all.

Former President and Missouri home state icon Harry Truman—widely credited for helping establish Medicare and desegregating the armed forces—kept a plaque on his desk that read, “The Buck Stops Here.” In his farewell address, he said “The President— whoever he is—has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.”

For medieval Venetians, the basic idea of accountable leadership empowered them to save themselves. It’s something Governor Parson and other far-right GOP leaders would be wise to accept. In this extraordinary era we’re stumbling through, one history will define us by, our leaders will have no one to blame but themselves.

SAVE THE DATE! JUNE 8-14 JUNE 8-14

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EAT THIS

DRINK THIS

Eat this Now

Drink this Now

Making bread at home conjures romantic images of flour-dusted aprons and satisfying bready smells wafting through the house. You have the stuff—flour, water, even a little bit of much-prized yeast that’s been sitting around for probably years since the last time you tried this. You mix, you knead (or turn the task over to a mixer), rise, and stick it into the oven. You are awesome. You are excellent at endless stay-at-home survivalism. It even looks like halfway decent bread—and you did it yourself!

Then you cut into it… oh. That’s why we don’t do this. Girl, this bread is DENSE. Gummy. Thick. Gluey. Tasteless. Gross. It is plain bad, but it will (probably) get eaten, somewhat miserably. Half will go to the dog. Gratefully, there are still bakers out there doing their thing, and that’s where you (I) will go next time. Ibis Bakery, the king of KC breadmakers, is offering curbside at Black Dog Coffee and at Messenger Cafe.

Farm to Market, also excellent, is available both at grocery stores and via their website, and if you’re so motivated, you can pick up James Beard-nominated Taylor Petrahn’s bread at 1900 Barker in Lawrence if you order online. Go with theirs. It is much better than yours. Yours sucks.

There are always those enticing, promising beers out there that once you get the six-pack home and actually try it, they immediately go to the back of the fridge. Or porch. Or garage. And the beers’ relative distance from the kitchen or your favorite drinking spot tells you everything about your likelihood of actually drinking them.

Then they sit, and sit, and sit, yearning to be imbibed. But no. They’re the no-goods, the bads, the rejects.

But now, thanks to a whole lot of time at home and our resulting booming appetites for booze, the too-sweet, too-dark, so-hoppy-they’re-itchy beers are now suddenly returning to the kitchen and are getting top billing along with literally anything else boozy you can manage to get into your house. Alongside the any-port-in-a-storm home cocktails, we’re all apparently downing like high schoolers, funky, skunky yard beers and overly precious (and gross) beers from fancy labels are a means to an end.

It’s your time now, reject beers.

Yet there is another way—as you’re able, pull up curbside at local breweries, and they’ll fix all of your weird beer problems. Torn Label is canning varieties formerly only available on tap; Boulevard is offering exciting test beers in its web store (available for pickup); Crane has its thoughtful seasonal selections available to go in the taproom. Find your favorite brewery and see what they’re up to. Maintain that home beer game.

(Because You Have to): Terrible Homemade Bread PHOTO AND WORDS BY APRIL FLEMING

(Because You Have to): Reject Beers PHOTO AND WORDS BY APRIL FLEMING

thepitchkc.com | May 2020 | THE PITCH

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TRAVIS YOUNG

HOW INVENTING A POCKET FOUGHT AIDS ONE KANSAS CITIAN FOUND A WAY TO TACKLE A DIFFERENT PANDEMIC BY RILEY COWING

Mary Dion is an 83-year-old, retired businesswoman living in Kansas City, Kansas.

Throughout her career, she held a number of jobs from selling cosmetics to selling insurance, moved between at least eight different cities, and started her own fashion business—all while raising five children on her own. Though retired, she has another plan for a business venture on the horizon, which she says will be her last.

“She never let anyone tell her no,” her grandson Jack says of her persistence.

Dion was raised in Omaha, Nebraska and credits a lot of her determination and

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THE PITCH | May 2020 | thepitchkc.com

work ethic to her environment while growing up. She attended Catholic grade school, a Catholic all-girls high school, and her father told her she could grow up to do anything and be anything she wanted. In high school, she was mindful of the prep boys next door, and “if we were going to get any attention, we had to do it as good or better than they did... and 90 percent of the time we did it better,” she says.

Her grandmother was a role model, who was “tough as nails” and raised 10 kids on her own while working as a farmer.

“She had sayings that, you know, that

rang through my head,” she recalls. “‘If you’re going to do it, do it right,’ and ‘Never stop until the job is done.’”

Her grandmother was also a seamstress, and Dion grew up wanting to become a designer.

“My grandmother could make, sew anything... She said you make clothes to last,” Dion recalls. “You make clothes to pass down. She said, ‘What the first child wears for Sunday to church, the last child plays in.’”

Dion’s dream to design became a reality in 1986 while living in Omaha, following time spent working in the insurance business and even a stint owning a trucking company.

At this time, the AIDS epidemic was rampant in the United States, and Dion was terrified.

Her youngest son was gay, and with a number of his friends affected, people dying and fear mounting—she felt passionate about finding a way to help.

“And so here I am, you know, I always wanted to do something different than everything, so I designed a garter,” she says.

That garter, referred to as Le Dion Pocket, had a pocket that could hold a condom when velcroed shut. They were intended to remind people to have safe sex. She notes that at the time, garters were a common accessory worn at weddings or the prom. They also

made the pockets available in headbands, armbands, and wristbands, for both men and women to wear.

“People were just abhorred that I would do such a terrible thing—you’re encouraging sex? And I said, ‘No, I’m encouraging people to take care,’” she says.

She assembled a small home business with six women who could sew and began making the Le Dion Pocket. Dion says she sewed about 75 percent of them herself.

Once they received sizable orders, they outgrew their home operation and moved from Omaha to Olathe, Kansas to be closer to a manufacturer named Marty, who lived in El Dorado Springs. Kansas City is where Dion’s clothing business, known at the time as Fashion Dynamics, took shape.

While the pocket didn’t gain traction the way she’d hoped, she took it to market at the Dallas Apparel Mart in the spring of 1987.

There it did get attention—from Disney.

“One of [the pockets] was in the safari print, and they thought, ‘That’s fantastic, that’s a really neat thing this pocket thing, but we don’t want to call them the condom pocket. We’d like to sell in our stores at Disney World, but we just want it so people could carry money in it while they were on the rides and stuff,’” she recalls.

HISTORY Left: Mary Dion reminiscing of when she first started her clothing company as a single mother in Texas. Right: Mary Dion shows off hand-painted jackets from her Western collections.

TRAVIS YOUNG

As part of their high-end Western wear collection, she sold other accessories, like scarves and belts, as well as a duster jacket, which she’d initially made from her grandmother’s pattern. It was one of their most popular items. Later, singer Janie Fricke wore one of their coats to the Country Western Music Awards and won best dressed. According to Dion, in the late 80s and early 90s it was on trend to have painted clothes: people wanted clothes that told a story. So she’d send the dusters to her friend Katherine in Texas who would paint different scenes on each one, like a flower garden or cowboys on horses.

Dion returned to Kansas City from that market in Dallas with about $40,000 worth of orders. But to Dion’s surprise—their manufacturer Marty was selling the finished products to her sister who had a store in Branson. Discouraged and uncertain of how to fulfill the remaining orders, Dion found a new manufacturer in June 1987—Sal from Mid-American Knitting in Kansas City. With Sal’s help, they were able to ship the Disney order in July, one day late.

“Sal, bless his soul, showed me how to get the elastic in while you’re sewing it,” she says “Oh god, he was so fantastic.”

Then, about a month later, Sal called with bad news—his brother-in-law closed the doors at Mid-American Knitting, and she had 24 hours to collect her things. Left with no sewing machines, no place, no manufacturer, Katherine referred her to a new economic development in Anson, Texas.

Dion loaded up all the dusters and fabric she had to move with her team that she assembled in Kansas City, which consisted of her lead lady (also named Mary), her bookkeeper, and one of her daughters. They settled into an old motel in Anson that September, and while Dion was en route to Kansas

When it comes to business, Dion won’t let anyone tell her no.

A scrap book of newspaper clippings holds stories written of Dion and her business.

TRAVIS YOUNG

City to close up her apartment and get the last of her belongings—the motel burned to the ground.

The only thing saved from the fire was the fabric. Dion’s business struggled, and to add to their difficulty, the economic development in Anson took a quarter million dollars worth of grant money from the government, which was intended for Dion to aid business in small towns, and put it into a theater they were renovating under Dion’s name without her knowing.

Later, someone from an economic development in Shamrock, Texas heard of their plight and came to woo Dion and her team with a building and money. Dion moved the business to Shamrock. It was the early 90s, they rebranded as Mary Dion Fashion’s, and the business took off. They finally had a factory where they could cut, sew, finish, and ship in-house. At one point, Dion was able to employ 30 seamstresses.

Then after 9/11, things changed. The expense of manufacturing plus a shift in American style made it a tough climate for their high-end Western wear line to succeed.

“The look of how the American person dressed and what they thought was dress clothes, what they thought was work clothes, what they thought was going out clothes— the whole thing sort of melted into today’s look, which is very casual,” she says. “When we were doing our first business in the 90s… everything was a lot of glitz. We did a lot of glitzing, we did a lot of rhinestone cowboy stuff. All of that, that ended. That era ended with 9/11.”

In hopes of keeping the business afloat, Dion cashed in everything she had, from insurance to retirement. They eventually stopped manufacturing in 2003 and officially

left Texas in 2005 for Creighton, Nebraska.

Something Dion consistently cared about was treating her employees well. She started her career in the 1960s, when women were not particularly welcome in the workforce, and became part of National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO).

This, in addition to her experiences growing up, taught her the importance of sticking together as women in business.

“How can we help her? How can we help her? How can we help her? We weren’t worried about how we can help him,” she says.

“But we stuck together. We started the thing that men had been doing forever, which was networking. We employed other women. We gave women that worked for us an equal salary. We gave them what we were making…

My lead lady took home more money than I did. My bookkeeper... Those people that were crucial to the business. You didn’t just think of your own pocket. And I think that’s what those organizations taught us—help others who can’t help themselves because a lot of them couldn’t.”

Today, Dion is dreaming up a new business idea with her grandchildren, Jack and Amber, who have been living in KCK together since 2013. Her grandchildren hope to channel their love of animals and permaculture to create a safe, loving space for young people who are transitioning to work.

After all, when it comes to business— Dion won’t let anyone tell her no.

“I know I’m 83 but my mother lived to be into her 90s, and she was still doing her own thing, living alone when she was 95,” she says. “So I know that I have good genetics, and I know that I can help them with the business and everything part of it, and we will get it rolling.” thepitchkc.com | May 2020 | THE PITCH

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MUSIC

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THE PITCH | May 2020 | thepitchkc.com

PANDEMIC! AT THE DISCO KC’S MUSIC SCENE IS FAR FROM SHUT DOWN

BY NICK SPACEK

Kansas City and Lawrence are shut down, physically. As I write this, I haven’t seen a live show (in person) in a month. When I decided to pop out of the house and see No Bow Tie do their acoustic interpretations of classical compositions back in mid-March, it was a last-minute decision to go grab a drink, but in retrospect, I’m glad I went. The first week of being The Pitch’s music editor consisted mainly of fielding emails from publicists as events and shows were canceled and updating our coverage spreadsheet. It was a really, really lousy start, but the memory of sitting at the Kaw Valley Public House’s bar, having a beer and laughing at John Svoboda’s jokes, helped carry me through.

After that first week, though, it became apparent that, while seeing live music up close and personal while crammed into a bar, theater, or club wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, music is not being contained by shelter-in-place orders. There are more artists than I could possibly list doing benefit livestreams, up to and including an amazing Facebook Live performance from Rex Hobart in his basement, where he managed to recreate the stage at the Ship to raise money— $1,367!—for the Midwest Music Foundation’s Covid-19 relief efforts.

That organization has been offering up “one-time emergency grants of up to $250 on a first-come, first-served basis” to musicians affected by the outbreak. It’s safe to say that’s pretty much all of them, so any assistance you can offer MMF is greatly appreciated. You can also find nearly any musician of whom you’re a fan performing via livestream and contribute to their virtual tip jar or purchase merch.

Even venues have been getting into the act. Thanks to Travis Fields and Jeff Grove of the Westport Saloon and the Kaw Valley Public House, respectively, we featured the work those venues have done to archive past performances on their stages and make them available to fans. Additionally, Editor Brock spoke with Brianna Lowden, Venue Manager of the Truman, who offered up words about her venue and ways to “safely continue supporting live music and local businesses.”

While she was speaking specifically about the Truman, her advice bears keeping in mind, regardless of where you see shows: When new show dates are announced, buy your tickets in advance if you are able. Buy a gift certificate for that person who loves concerts. And, most importantly: “When you come for your next show, buy a drink, tip your bartenders, and wash your hands—we have plenty of sinks, and I’ll call you out if I catch you not washin’ up.”

Hey, but it’s not all live-streams and trying to feel normal in a way that’s still kind of weird. Even for someone who’s very used to getting drunk on the couch while watching random things cast from my phone to my TV, screaming, “YEAH!” to a room empty of anything except my cats when I hear a song I like, it’s a little embarrassing.

Thankfully, local acts have been putting out a slew of new music. Albums of a planned nature, as well as surprise drops, have been hitting streaming services pretty solidly for the past month, and we’ve been doing our level best to keep up with the deluge. Excerpts of our reviews follow, and you can find the full rundown of each album or interview with the artist at The Pitch’s website:

Fullbloods: Soft and Virtual Touch Fullbloods’ Soft and Virtual Touch on High Dive Records shimmers. No two ways about it, this is a record which has a warbly, tremulous tones. Right from the very opening chords of the title cut, Fullbloods’ music evokes the tones of an ancient cassette unearthed from the floorboards of a ‘72 Pinto hatchback you used to drive in high school. The music has a well-loved and much listened-to quality, as if you’ve already played this album so much that the tape’s beginning to stretch and fray.

God knows we need some beauty in our lives right now, and thank goodness for Ross Brown and company for putting this record out. It hits all the right spots to turn a sunny day by yourself into a thing of beauty and calm, with just enough swing to turn this into a cathartic dance party.

Ultimate Fakebook: The Preserving Machine From Sonic Ritual, Ultimate Fakebook’s The Preserving Machine might surprise longtime fans. While this LP is, at heart, a catchy rock

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record, this is not This Will Be Laughing Week redux. If anything, Ultimate Fakebook’s new album takes elements from the more outre aspects of the band’s catalog—think the cello on Laughing Week’s “A Million Hearts” or the electronic beat that opens Before We Spark’s “Rotting on the Vine”—and expands them to album-spanning concepts.

The UFB on The Preserving Machine is the UFB I was hoping to get, because this is a band that decided to come back with new music, and actually make it new. The first proper track on the album, “We’re Sharing the Same Dream Tonight,” might have at its heart the usual guitar-bass-drums combo which has always powered the band, but there’s acoustic guitar, synthesizer, and it’s just bigger. The band’s always been Cheap Trick playing in basements, but this marks Ultimate Fakebook making a record which actually aims for the arenas, and I love it.

Godzillionaire: Negative Balance Godzillionaire’s debut full-length, Negative Balance, demonstrates that this is not a band which writes songs with ethereal concepts.

These are songs which look at the world around us, and the Midwest in particular, and lay bare the flaws and shortcomings. Shit’s fucked, and Godzillionaire uses this cycle of songs about a failing, broken relationship to show you just how bad it is.

Coming three years after the band’s first recordings, the cleverly-entitled the great dEPression, Godzillionaire makes Negative Balance an album worth the wait. When it starts, it seems as though the band’s going to stick with the dark, verging on gothic folk sounds

of their EP, but as the space rock of the first proper song, “Exit The Succubus / Bankrupt, Naked, & Void (Theme From Negative Balance),” rises, it explodes into a massive riff worthy of early Monster Magnet as Hennessy and the band shout “made the money” repeatedly.

As it all comes to an end, you kind of feel like Hennessy sings on the penultimate track, “64 Palms (Brace for Impact)”—”I ate the heart of a hurricane come close and feel it descend.” No kidding, man. The world’s a hard place to live, and maybe the problems of two people don’t amount to a hill of beans, but they certainly make for one hell of an album.

Orphans of Doom: II There’s a point about halfway through the third track on Orphans of Doom’s sophomore album from The Company, II, that really emphasizes where the band now finds itself. At the midpoint of “Swans,” the song goes from a slow pummeling into an outright barrage. It’s the auditory equivalent of a friendly sparring session turning into a beatdown, and it’s so, so good.

For their new album, the band picked up Justin Mantooth on guitar and gained a whole new sense of speed, with frontman Jeremy Isaacson switching from bass to guitar, as well. The sheer intensity of II has the feel of a band who’ve been mixing death metal with hardcore. The speed, mixed with old school hardcore’s martial stomp on a cut like “The Last of Me (The Captain),” really brings to mind a boot, endlessly kicking against an incoming horde.

It’s kind of like the way all the zombies in Night of the Living Dead are these creeping, plodding creatures of doom. They’re slow, but nevertheless, relentless. You might be able to outrun them, but they never sleep and they never stop. Your only hope is to get some distance and take them out from afar. Then, there’s Return of the Living Dead’s sprinting, chomping bringers of death.

They’re relentless, and they’re fast, and the only thing to hope for is that you die quickly. It’s “They’re coming to get you, Barbara” versus “Send more paramedics,” and Orphans of Doom are crying out, “More brains!” and chasing you through a cemetery. thepitchkc.com | May 2020 | THE PITCH

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SHINER’S SURPRISE REBIRTH FINDING MERMAIDS IN A PERISCOPE

BY NICK SPACEK

When I hopped on the phone with Allen Epley, frontman of long-running post-rock band Shiner, to talk about Schadenfreude, the band’s first new LP in nearly 20 years, I had a burning question to ask: Did all the late ‘90s area bands collectively decide to release new albums? In addition to Shiner’s new album, we’ve seen Giants Chair’s Prefabylon and The Preserving Machine from Ultimate Fakebook in a six-month period.

It’s a veritable renaissance.

“I think it’s probably just all our bodies are telling us that it’s time to do this,” Eply explains with a laugh, as I speak with him by phone from his home in Evanston, Illinois.

“At the time, you’re so invested in why you love it, why you hate these guys, or whatever’s going on, and then 10 or 15 years later, it’s like, ‘Why were we arguing again?’”

Epley continues, saying that after a decade or more, all those sharp edges from the past tend to kind of dull over, and you end up just wanting to be together with your bandmates again. He says that the reasoning behind recording Schadenfreude was the band’s series of occasional reunion shows over the past few years, as they’ve reissued their past full-lengths on vinyl—Starless in 2015, Lula Divinia in 2017, and The Egg in 2018.

“We had been doing some reunion shows and playing some really fun shows of old material—just kind of dancing the corpse across the floor,” says Epley of the last few years of Shiner performances. “That’s fun, too—for a while—but then, at a certain point, we’d been doing it for five or six years, and then we decided whether we should do it or not. It seemed right for us.”

I ask Epley how the band got back in the groove of writing songs as Shiner after over a decade and a half. While it’s not that the band’s members have been doing nothing else, with Eply a part of the Life & Times, bassist Paul Malinowski working with the Pedaljets and producing records, and guitarist Josh Newton and drummer Jason Gerken doing time in Sie Lieben Maschinen, getting the band back together to make new material is a whole other thing.

“That was a big question for us,” Epley admits. “I think it really helped that we had been getting used to each other and playing through the old songs—almost to the point to where we were like, ‘I wish we had something else to play.’ We just decided not to overthink it. I have enough of a hold on what

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THE PITCH | May 2020 | thepitchkc.com

Shiner 20 years later.

TODD ZIMMER

we do and how to do it—versus other things that I’m involved with—that I can kind of channel my writing skills towards a certain something that applies more to Shiner.”

The process of putting the new album together came about differently than the band’s past recordings, Epley explains. For the writing and recording process, the band started out with one song, written by Epley, which the rest of the band liked enough for

The Egg, because, Epley explains, it wouldn’t represent where they are now, nor would it have the necessary authenticity to make its recording worthwhile.

To start the process, the band traveled to Champaign, Illinois, where they set up in Earth Analog, the recording studio owned by Matt Talbott of Hum. While the band would record their demos there over the course of several visits in 2018, it was more of a col-

Even if everything is like, the world’s blowing up, there’s still me and you, and that should ultimately be the thing that resonates. the four members to get together and play, improvising out some more parts to it.

“Then, Josh sent me the beginning of one of his tunes—just like, a verse section— and I loved it and wrote a whole middle section,” Epley recalls with excitement. That song, “In the End,” became the first song on Schadenfreude. “That was the one that really, for me, kind of convinced me that we could do something that was fresh and cool for us and didn’t sound like less than what we could do.”

Epley laughs as he continues: “It wouldn’t have come as far as it had if it was sucking. We wouldn’t have allowed it. We wouldn’t want to be a part of it.”

The members of Shiner wanted to make a musical statement that reflects them, but one which was also new and different. They weren’t trying to make a follow-up to 2001’s

lective practice space than a recording studio.

Using old, unused songs from 1995 as “conversation starters” to get the process rolling, the band ended up writing 12 new cuts over the course of the process, from which they culled six.

“We planned to go have some writing sessions and lock in,” Epley explains. “We would go there and stay in his apartment, and go get some food, and write for two or three days. We did that three or four times and then we were able to come out with some stereo mixes of jam box recordings that we liked.”

Opening track “In The End” is the perfect cut on which to begin. It has that Shiner sound, where the music is very big and very resonant, but then the lyrical content is very dark. It’s as heavy as the band has ever been, but the melody really shines through, despite

opening with a line that says “Every living thing […] dies alone.”

Epley says that he doesn’t know why he goes there with his writing, but offers that the lyrics do give a glimmer of hope about the end of it all: “Even if everything is like, the world’s blowing up, there’s still me and you, and that should ultimately be the thing that resonates in those lyrics. I don’t like to just tread in a bunch of dark stuff.”

That said, Schadenfreude’s final song is “O Captain,” which makes a fantastic bookend to the opening cut. Whereas that first song has the big Shiner opening, “O Captain” begins in a manner that is almost indescribably sad.

“The idea of it is that there’s a captain at sea where he’s out waiting to get frozen in the ice, in order to study the frozen conditions and it’s not freezing for him, and he has this longing to go home,” Epley explains. “This combination of that stress—between your work you need to do, but can’t do, and the longing to go home and the mermaids in your periscope—it really is kind of a mishmash of stress and worry, quite honestly. It doesn’t answer any questions, for sure. It’s more like it poses more.”

Given that the album’s title is a German word from which one can take the idea of joy and sorrow combined—even if it is taking joy in the sorrow of another—it seems very timely, in terms of when it’s landing, and Epley agrees.

“I find it so relevant in the Trump era— not that we’re overly political, necessarily, in any stretch,” the frontman says. “When you tend to rejoice for your enemies falling, it is such a human response and seems super-appropriate right now.”

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HEROES PODCAST NETWORK IS OUR LOCAL NERD MAFIA TREATING FICTIONAL CHARACTERS AS REAL PEOPLE

BY BETH LIPOFF

When you want the latest news on The Flash or Spiderman or even if you like strolling down memory lane with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, one local podcasting network has the scoop, with plenty of opinions on the side.

The Heroes Podcast Network is the brainchild of Overland Park resident Derreck Mayer and covers everything from fantasy to Star Wars and a whole lot in-between. It started out as an entertainment blog, but Mayer quickly transitioned to an audio format.

“I realized that in order to have content that was consistent but of high-quality that we could keep up, podcasting was more realistic,” Mayer says.

He’d already done a cosplay podcast with his wife, Rae Stewart, and a friend.

Stewart came up with the idea for Screen Heroes, a podcast focusing on movies and TV, and the two of them host it, along with their friend, Ryan Couture.

Ian Turner, who co-hosts the Star Wars-focused podcast Echo Station, has been involved from the beginning. He credits Mayer for the network’s longevity thus far.

“He’s the one who founded this. He believes in us, and he believes in what we have to say about Star Wars and whatever,” Turner says.

Although they do have a general outline, the podcasts aren’t scripted and can easily go off on unexpected tangents.

“The great thing about podcasting is that it’s our show, so we can talk about whatever the hell we want to talk about. We talk about everything from the Disney Star Wars era that’s going on right now to the prequels to the original movies... costumes, character profiles, weapon profiles,” Turner says. “There are 40-plus years of Star Wars

history to go off of, so it’s basically throwing a dart at a board.”

As genres, science fiction and fantasy often use their fantastical settings to talk about down to earth issues, and the Heroes Podcast Network shows do the same thing.

“We cover topics of human rights and racism and classism and sexism and all these different things. A lot of it we get to talk about because of the allegories that are used in science fiction, in fantasy and the superhero genres, and we couldn’t have those conversations easily without that,” Mayer says.

In addition to figuring out the content, there’s also a technical side to producing the shows.

“I was already familiar with the editing concepts and some of the hardware involved in podcasting, but the only thing that can prepare you for getting better at podcasting is listening to yourself doing it,” Mayer says.

At the beginning, he took hours to edit the podcast, removing each breath sound from the recording.

“The return on that—it’s next to nothing, because the average person is listening in their car on their commute, and if they’re not driving, they’re listening to it on earbuds on a bus or the subway or something like that,” Mayer says. “They don’t really care about hearing the breaths, it turns out.”

But the sound quality still matters.

Their first recording area was a study room in the Johnson County Central Library.

“It was kind of a silly set-up. We had memory foam that you put on top of a mattress and put that on the table, and then we had that in the center” of the table to reduce any echo, Mayer says. “You may have great things to say, but if people don’t like

the way it sounds digitally they’re not going to give you the time of day.”

Sometimes, recordings go wrong in various ways. Sometimes they feature interviews with writers, actors, or others involved in the various genres.

“When you’re interviewing someone online, you never really know what the conditions are going to be. There was this one situation where we were interviewing this creator, and everything he did was amazing,” Mayer says. “The audio connection was so rough that we ended up having to transcribe the whole thing. We couldn’t release it as a podcast, because you couldn’t hear it.”

Recording podcasts during a time of social distancing is no trouble for Turner—he and co-host Kristina Davis always record online, because Davis lives in Lawrence. It’s more of an adjustment for Mayer, who usually records in person and livestreams the recording of the Screen Heroes podcast.

“We like giving fans something different. It’s a podcast with two LGBTQ+ hosts, so that’s something big we want to bring to the Star Wars fandom and community,” Turner says.

Mayer hopes to add even more diversity to the voices on his network in the future. The Heroes Podcast Network does have a large range in terms of the breadth fandoms it covers.

“We bring such a diverse palette to every single thing we do, whether it’s with gaming, Star Trek, fantasy—we have a bit of nerdiness for each fandom, basically,” Turner says. “I don’t know any other Kansas City group that really does that.”

The Kaiju Curry House, which focuses on film monsters such as Godzilla, is another of the wide swath of nerdy podcasts the network offers. Although most of the podcasts are recorded in the Kansas City area, Kaiju comes to the network from the United Kingdom. It still has ties to the area, as co-host Joe McIntee is a native of the metro area.

Mayer also hosts Red Shirts and Runabouts, a Star Trek-based podcast. But by far the most popular episodes on the network are when Screen Heroes takes a look at films that feature Marvel heroes.

“With very, very few exceptions, our Marvel movie discussions and reviews are the highest listened to episodes to date, because it’s incredibly mainstream,” Mayer says. “A lot of the stuff we can get into gets a little niche. Sometimes, I wish that wasn’t true, because I want the stuff I love to be very popular, but everybody went to go see Avengers Endgame, so everyone’s got an opinion on it.”

There are advantages to the podcasting format. Turner, who has also done a You-

PODCASTS

Left to right: Ryan Couture, Rae Mayer/SirynRae, and Derreck Mayer during a recording for the Heroes Podcast Network.

DERRECK MAYER

Tube show, likens it to a voice acting job.

“You don’t have to worry about what you look like when you record through a microphone,” he says Mayer doesn’t have statistics on his audience beyond location and device, but “it’s definitely more of the core nerd group. That was kind of the point. Definitely people who argue about continuity issues in the [Marvel cinematic universe], what’s canon in Star Trek—those types of people,” says Mayer, who counts himself among them.

Before the algorithms changed on Facebook, “Maybe 150 percent of the people who followed our page would see our posts, which was great. We were always being shown to new people,” Mayer says. Now, if they’re lucky, it’s closer to 10 percent, and more promotion takes money—which in the podcast world is hard to come by.

They still get good engagement via Twitter, Mayer says. He recently started a Facebook group in addition to the main page, which allows for more interaction and discussion. When they livestream the Screen Heroes recordings, podcast fans can also interact with the hosts in real-time.

“The biggest challenge is continuing to push forward when sometimes it sounds like you’re talking to a void, because it is difficult to know what the listeners are really thinking and who’s really paying atten-

tion,” Mayer says.

Turner, who hosted a panel with Davis at Planet Comicon last year, also craves that interaction.

“We got a few iTunes reviews, all positive things. That is the fire that drives us still. We do this for ourselves. We do it for fans as well, like-minded fans especially,” Turner says.

He was set to host a panel at this year’s Planet Comicon and still plans to when the convention, currently rescheduled for August, happens.

Conventions provide a unique opportunity for podcasters like Mayer and Turner to connect with their audiences.

“We purposely make most of our panels interactive,” Mayer says.

One panel he led at a previous convention was a giant discussion with the audience as to which characters from any incarnation of Star Trek would make up the ultimate crew.

“We’re not arguing about canon; we’re not arguing about the writing or the directing. We’re talking about these characters as if they were real people in a room,” Mayer says. “Who would you want on your ship?

People have some amazing points to make, and sometimes the crew that we end up with is not anywhere near what you thought it would be. And it’s never the same.”

Phone | 816-531-5900 Address | 4500 Belleview Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64111 Hours | Mon-Thur: 9am to 10pm Fri-Sat: 9am to 12am Sun: 9am to 10pm

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thepitchkc.com | May 2020 | THE PITCH

25

MOVIES

CLASSIC KC MOVIES & QUARANTINIS OUR FILM WRITERS AND FAVORITE BARTENDERS PAIR DRINKS AND FILMS TO EASE YOUR PAIN

BY ABBY OLCESE, ORRIN GREY, DAN LYBARGER, AND ADRIAN TORRES ILLUSTRATIONS BY JACK RAYBUCK

You might not believe this, but people are drinking more lately. Liquor sales are up 27 percent nationally. Wine sales are up 26 percent. Another thing that’s on the rise?

Streaming. Not that you, a socially isolated person who’s probably watching a lot of movies and consuming a lot of alcohol, need numbers to prove this, but Netflix saw its usage increase 16 percent last month. YouTube saw its increase 15 percent.

We can all agree that it’s pleasantly numbing to plop down on the couch with Tiger King and a whiskey and coke. However, I think we deserve better than mindless binging. We deserve a more elevated viewing situation, even if we’re just watching in our living rooms. We’ve been dealing with a lot lately. We deserve a party.

As The Pitch’s movie editor, and an enjoyer of responsible, quality drinking, I’m taking this opportunity to direct your viewing and instill some civic pride by exploring movies set in Kansas City and the surrounding area. You can’t leave the house, but you can still enjoy rolling plains, shots of Union Station and reminders of KC’s awesome cultural history, all of which you can enjoy in person after this is over. To make it a real viewing experience, and take full advantage of your freshly-stocked liquor cabinet, our contributors partnered with local bartenders from beloved KC drinking institutions to develop cocktails themed to each film. So, break out the remote and a cocktail shaker.

It’s party time. --AO

Ride with the Devil (1999)

Ang Lee’s Ride with the Devil sometimes feels more like a history lesson than a movie, but at least it’s a gorgeous history lesson.

Lee’s Civil War drama, based on Daniel Woodrell’s novel Woe to Live On, covers the violent clashes between Missouri Bushwhackers (pro-confederacy militants) and Kansas Jayhawkers (pro-union militants)

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THE PITCH | May 2020 | thepitchkc.com

during the “Bleeding Kansas” era, ultimately leading to the infamous Sacking of Lawrence in 1856.

Our introduction to the conflict is Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire), a Missourian who, along with his best friend Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich), joins up with the Bushwhackers after Jack Bull’s home is burned to the ground by Jayhawkers, and his father is killed. Jake starts out a firm believer in the Bushwhacker cause, but the more of the fight he experiences, and the more collateral damage he witnesses on both sides, the more he questions where he really stands.

Ride with the Devil boasts gorgeous cinematography from frequent Lee collaborator Frederick Elmes (who’s also worked often with David Lynch and Jim Jarmusch), and a suitably epic score by Mychael Danna.

Elmes’ cinematography, in particular, highlights the pastoral loveliness of the Kansas and Missouri plains, when those plains aren’t covered in blood. For anyone passionate about the history of this area, or its history on film, Ride with the Devil is a cinematic artifact worth seeking out. --AO

To Drink: Rx Julep

For this cocktail pairing, Brock Schulte of The Monarch Bar was inspired by the first cocktail book printed in the U.S., The Bartender’s Guide or How to Mix Drinks by Jerry Thomas, published in 1862. Schulte’s cocktail is an Rx Julep (or Prescription Julep), a classic from Thomas’ day. “It’s a great cocktail for this time period, because though it

packs a big punch it is easily consumed by a wide variety of palettes,” Schulte says.

Ingredients: 1 oz Rittenhouse BIB Rye Whiskey 1 oz VSOP Cognac .5-1oz Simple Syrup Mint leaves for building Mint sprigs for garnish To make it: In the bottom of a julep tin, toss a pinch (8-10 leaves) of mint, and crush with your fingers against the sides to release the aromatic oils. Add a splash of the simple syrup, followed by crushed or pebble ice to the brim, Then alternately layer the spirits and simple syrup. Use less sugar for a bigger punch, or more for a sweeter version. Re-mound crushed ice on top of the tin, and slap the mint sprigs around the lip of the tin to release their oils all around the edge. Bunch this mint in one area, and place a metal straw right next to it so you can smell the mint the whole way through as you drink.

Looper is the film that helped Johnson get The Last Jedi, which in turn made 2019’s Knives Out possible. It’s a sci-fi action film that has a bit more on its mind than just time travel. In fact, Looper would rather throw all the particularities of that genre out the window. Johnson instead cares about how we’d confront our younger self, if given the chance. For all the set pieces, Looper is a film that wants to have introspective moments and eat its futuristic cake, too. It’s really worth giving a chance, not just for the tenuous Kansas City connection, but to see Gordon-Levitt best Willis at being Bruce Willis. --AT

To Drink: The Reignmaker Looper (2012)

Usually when Kansas City gets the limelight in a major motion picture, it’s tied to historical relevance, cost appraisal, or the fact that someone in the production once called the place home. Rian Johnson’s Looper takes a different track. Here, the city is a future-set anywheresville. Sprawling skyscrapers, back alley clubs that feel like updatings of speakeasies and a major homeless problem define the metropolis. Strangely, it feels like the city and state (Kansas is one of the first images to appear on-screen) were chosen as the setting in order to move from a major city to crop fields in a short distance.

As for the film itself, in the 2040’s, crime-ridden cities like KC are home to “Loopers” like Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Joe, hired killers with a dark futuristic contract.

30 years in Joe’s future, time travel is invented, and almost as quickly made illegal.

Gangsters take hold of the tech to dispatch undesirables into the past, to be killed by the Loopers, thus erasing them from existence.

A Looper’s retirement comes when his own future self is the one to be done in (closing their “loop”). But when Joe’s older counterpart (played by Bruce Willis) appears in front of him, it sets off a chain reaction where no one is safe. Not even in Kansas.

Named for Looper’s mysterious crime boss The Rainmaker (and with a subtle nod to KC’s recent Super Bowl win!), this drink

by Parlor’s Josiah Torres is a mashup of two cocktails: a Mezcal Buzz and the Lawrence-invented Horsefeather. Torres’ cocktail combines the smoky flavors of Mezcal and Drambuie, balanced out with lemon juice and tiki bitters, and sweetened with ginger beer and honey syrup.

Ingredients: 1 1/4 oz Mezcal 1/2 oz Drambuie 1/4 oz Lemon Juice 1/4 oz Honey Syrup 2 Dashes Tiki Bitters Ginger Beer To make it: Combine all ingredients except ginger beer in a shaker tin with ice. Shake and strain over fresh ice. Top with ginger beer. Garnish with cherry.

Kansas City (1996)

“I tried to write this film like jazz,” Robert Altman said of his 1996 love letter to the Kansas City of his youth. Jazz is the lifeblood of this tragicomic gangster story in what we would now think of as the Coen Brothers vein, set against the backdrop of the Pendergast machine and the large-scale electoral

MOVIES

1/2 ounce dry vermouth 1/4–1/2 ounce olive juice (to taste) 2-3 olives To make it: Build the drink in a mixing glass and stir for 30 seconds, or shake for 10 seconds. Strain into a martini glass.

fraud of 1934.

In the fictional Hey-Hey Club of Kansas City’s famous 18th Street jazz district (named for the actual historical Hey-Hay club once located at 4th and Cherry), a who’s-who of contemporary musicians stand in as 1930s jazz greats, providing the score to the film and recreating moments like a legendary all-night “cutting contest” between Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, which is witnessed by a 14-year-old Charlie Parker.

While the plot of Altman’s Kansas City may revolve around the doomed kidnapping perpetrated by Blondie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to rescue her husband from the clutches of the Hey-Hey Club’s owner Seldom Seen (Harry Belafonte, having a blast), the movie really belongs to the music. In fact, so much jazz was shot that Altman also released a documentary the same year entitled Jazz ‘34: Remembrances of Kansas City Swing, narrated by Belafonte himself. --OG

Variation: Shaken Cucumber/Lime Martini Ingredients: 2 1/2 oz gin Cucumber slices Lime wedges To make it: Place 3 cucumber slices and 2 lime wedges in a 16 oz pint glass, or mixer tin. Muddle (Sobol recommends adding an ice cube to the fruit to help it break down).

Fill a glass 3/4 full with ice. Add gin, shake and strain into a martini glass. Garnish with another slice of cucumber.

Kansas City Confidential (1952)

To Drink: “Bathtub Gin” Martini

Robert Altman’s movie is set in the 30s, making it a perfect pairing with a prohibition-era drink, like this martini from Sean Sobol of The Drunken Worm. “Most of your ‘classic cocktails’ actually were born in this era, to mask and hide that taste of the moonshine,” Sobol says.

Ingredients: 2 1/2 ounces gin(or vodka)

As if Kansas City Confidential didn’t announce its bona fides from the name alone, this midcentury film noir gets its opening image just right with an establishing shot of the city skyline, with Union Station front and center. The action doesn’t stay in the city the whole time, but it does play a significant role throughout the events of the movie.

Kansas City Confidential tells the sordid tale of a bank robbery, and the man framed for said robbery, Joe (John Payne).

Joe heads to Mexico, where the robbers are hiding out, to clear his name and get a cut of their million dollar-plus take. While he’s there, he falls for a pretty young tourist (Coleen Gray) visiting her retired dad, an ex-Kansas City police captain who may or may not have something to do with the crime.

The movie’s biggest strength is its supporting cast. The bank robbers are played by a trio of classic Hollywood character actors—wild-eyed drifter Jack Elam, war movie staple Neville Brand, and iconic Spaghetti Western badass Lee Van Cleef in his third-ever film appearance. Van Cleef ’s over-the-top acting and fantastic sneer alone is worth the price of admission, not that you’ll have to pay anything to watch Kansas City Confidential—you can find it streaming free on Kanopy. --AO

To Drink: The Homage

Kansas City Confidential hops between Mexico and Kansas City, so Char Bar’s Tamrah Edwards created a specialty cocktail pairing with this classic film noir that brings smoke and heat to the party, courtesy of mezcal, serrano pepper, and ground cayenne pepper. It’s balanced out by the sweetness of agave nectar, lime and pineapple juice. Take a sip and you’ll feel a little pain, chased by a little pleasure, just like a tortured noir hero.

Ingredients: 3 or 4 slices fresh serrano pepper 1 1/2 oz. Reposado tequila 1/2 oz. Del Maguey Vida mezcal 1/2 oz. Cointreau 1/2 oz. fresh lime juice 1 oz. agave nectar or raw honey 2 oz. pineapple juice 2 soft dashes ground cayenne pepper

illegal betting. Their meager existence becomes even more desperate when she gets fired from a janitorial job, and he loses his job baking pizzas.

When Ruby spots a baby whose parents have what could politely be called a negligent attitude, she abducts it. When another of Gensan’s financial plans goes south, the two flee to Johnson County with the child, even though neither has any idea how to care for it.

The Pennsylvania-born Dastmalchian also wrote the script and spent most of his youth in stretches of Johnson County that weren’t littered with McMansions, and where people struggled to get by. As a result, Ruby and Gensan’s struggle is believably involving, even if it’s not hopeful. The two long for a contented, safe life, and their wishes become more remote.

Schiffli filmed most of the movie here in the KC area and, in some cases, ingeniously got portions of Johnson and Jackson County to convincingly double for L.A. Alert viewers can spot local mainstay Walter Coppage and Missouri-raised David Koechner as Gensan’s sympathetic boss. This movie is currently playing for free on Kanopy and is also available through Showtime. --DL

To make it: Toss Serrano pepper slices into pint glass and muddle them. Add Reposado Tequila and let sit for a few minutes, then add the remainder of ingredients. Pack a pint glass with ice, and grab your shaker, then shake for a solid 10 seconds, or until the shaker is cold and frosty. Strain over ice.

To Drink: Mercy & Consequence

All Creatures Here Below (2018)

When you don’t have money, any mistake could be your last. That’s the central conceit behind Collin Schiffli’s All Creatures Here Below, which concerns a Los Angeles couple named Ruby (Karen Gillan of Guardians of the Galaxy) and Gensan (David Dastmalchian, Ant-Man) whose only forms of wealth management are lottery tickets and

A scene in All Creatures Here Below was shot in front of the J. Rieger distillery, so it only made sense to have their very own Ryan Maybee create a strong cocktail to go along with this dark drama. “I made this drink to demonstrate what I’ll generously refer to as an act of mercy by David Dastmalchian’s character, Gensan, at the very end,” Maybee says. “Whew. I needed a stiff drink after that.”

Ingredients: 2 oz Rieger’s KC Whiskey 1/2 oz Plantation O.F.T.D. Overproof Rum 1 barspoon Amaretto 3-4 dashes Absinthe To make it: Stir over ice, serve over a large cube. No garnish. No chaser. thepitchkc.com | May 2020 | THE PITCH

27

CULTURE

THE PSYCHEDELIC PANDAMONIUM OF BABY SHARK LIVE! YOUTUBE BRAINWASHING AND DRUNKEN BRAWLS—YOU KNOW, FOR KIDS! BY JOE CAREY

My wife and I took our two sons to see the Baby Shark Live stage production—a real thing. That’s right folks, the impossibly popular earworm of a song has leapt from your tablets onto the big stage, and on a Sunday in early March, the titular yellow shark and a few of his land-dwelling friends (along with a troupe of dancers and puppeteers) donned the stage at Silverstein Eye Center Arena. It was an afternoon full of dancing, singing, moral lessons... and a fistfight.

As one of the few Pitch staff members with young children, I have become the proverbial “Man on the (Sesame) Street,” covering all the fun, kid-friendly goings-on here in KC. As such, it became my responsibility

Mars, asked what was going on, as my wife whisked him and our 15-month-old away to safety, and to find our seats.

As we walked in, we were bombarded with color and music. The back wall of the stage had been transformed into a giant LED screen, flashing colors and shapes across the stage creating a sort of revolving environment for the characters to play. Speaking of characters, this was Baby Shark Live, so the characters you’d expect to see would be Mommy Shark, Daddy Shark, possibly Grandma and Grandpa Shark, and of course the youngest of the Shark clan, Baby. However, the aquatic predators were nowhere to be found. Instead, the first act focused on a How many times can you listen to “Baby Shark” before going insane?

The little yellow shark did appear, and holy hell the crowd went wild. to drag my wife and two young children to the singing shark show. I’m not upset about it. [Editor’s note: We think he is.]

As my wife and I entered the arena, we were greeted by metal detectors and bag searchers. While this may seem a bit much for a children’s concert, I’m glad safety was at the forefront because not ten feet past the metal detectors a brutal fist fight broke out between two fathers as their children watched in horror. My 3-year-old son,

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THE PITCH | May 2020 | thepitchkc.com

pink fox named Pinkfong and a blue hedgehog named Hogi, and their meandering search for the little yellow shark.

The basic plot of the show, at least in the first act, loosely mirrors Samuel Beckett’s absurdist masterpiece Waiting for Godot.

Hogi and Pinkfong wait for their friend Baby Shark to arrive, whilst several other throw-away characters show up to provide time-passing skits and musical numbers.

The songs included several children’s favor-

ites; “The Wheels on the Bus,” “Five Little Monkeys,” and “Skinamarinkadink,” as well as some Pinkfong originals. In between numbers, the two would discuss where that darned shark had gone to, which would then spark a haunting, Poe-esque “Doo doo, doo doo doo doo” from off stage that would send every child in the audience into a frenzy that would be quickly squashed when they realized the shark isn’t coming yet. The end of the first act, however, the little yellow shark did appear, and holy hell the crowd went wild. This is what the people came to see.

Then came the 20 minute intermission. They had to give enough time for every single child to go potty and then buy a

JOE CAREY

stuffed shark. The second act featured Baby Shark much more than the first. The other members of his family only appeared via the giant LED screens, but the stage was filled with dancers and puppeteers controlling different aquatic puppets. The whole thing was a generally impressive spectacle that kept my kids entertained through most of it, though they were both pretty checked out by the end. To be completely honest, you could probably duck out at intermission and your kids would be none the wiser.

If and when this show comes back around, I would recommend it to anyone with young kids who still has the patience to hear the song for the 4 billionth time.

TERRY LINDSEY

HIGH SCHOOL

JULY 20-26

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MY SENIOR YEAR GHOSTED ME WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO HAVE PROM STOLEN BY CORONAVIRUS

BY MADDISON ROBERTSON

High school has always been understood, in my eyes, as a singular era in my life. Not to be taken for granted.

That being said, I hated the literal act of waking up Monday through Friday and having to bear witness to the utter helplessness and, quite frankly, cruel nature of teen angst.

These last four years have led me on a path of self-discovery and growth. One that would have—and should have—led me all the way to the finish line. Even in the darkest of times my 15-year-old self experienced, there was always a light at the end of the tunnel. A beacon of hope that got me through it. A clear reward.

Graduation.

I vividly remember sitting in my sophomore year English class, my day yet again ruined by the expectations of the suburban purgatory I fell victim to. Another day that felt like the end of the world—but alas I popped my earbuds in, typed “Graduation march” into the YouTube search bar, and let myself remember a sense of future nostalgia. A silver lining I’ve maintained my tight grasp on walking from class to class—seven times a day, five days a week, for four straight years.

As a senior at Turner High School in 2020, I am learning first hand that things don’t always go as planned. I figured by this time of year I would be anticipating the milestones that were sure to define my adolescent years; falling in love with the perfect prom dress or proudly proclaiming myself yet another victim of the infamous, “Senioritis.”

Instead of fulfilling every item on my “Before Graduation” bucket list I spent months meticulously crafting, I’ve made another in its place: “Things to do in Quarantine.” It is chock-full of nifty ideas and activities to maintain my sanity during this mourning period; curated specially to keep my emotions leveled and my optimistic, “everything happens for a reason” mindset intact.

Online schooling, or should I say the “Continuous Learning Process” isn’t so bad.

Sure, the workload is pretty hefty and the lack of routine—a bit anxiety-evoking, but at least I don’t have to wake up at six am anymore, right?

I suppose eventually I will miss the peo-

ple I met, or the things that I did. But that’s just life. I suppose one day I might wake up and reminisce on the days where I was a rebellious teen who did wild and outlandish things like hitting my Juul in bathroom stalls. Maybe I’ll miss the five minutes of freedom between classes, or I’ll regret the lessons I slept through.

I’m sure there will come a day where I will have a story to tell about the deadly virus that swept the globe.

The thing I will miss most about high school is the closure I never got. The happy ending that never came. My last memories as a high school senior are limited to the movies I watched on Netflix and the food I ate in quarantine. I am not insensitive to the fact that this is a pandemic. People are dying, our economy is in crisis mode, and I shouldn’t waste my breath complaining about missing prom.

These events, in my eyes, just go to show that even the “for sure” things in life are uncertain. I am a firm believer in “everything happens for a reason,” and I intend to stick by this way of thinking even through the worldly crisis we are in today. I’m sure there are new silver linings to be found and lessons to be learned in the end. But for now, I am left to find a new light at the end of the tunnel.

Roberston cheering for the Raisers.

COURTESY OF MADDISON ROBERSTON

thepitchkc.com | May 2020 | THE PITCH

29

SAVAGE LOVE

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CUM TUM GETTING QUICK ‘N DIRTY WITH CHEATERS, CUM-TUM, APPLE-POLISHING, DICK DREAMS, AND MORE BY DAN SAVAGE

Dear Dan: I am a super queer-presenting female who recently accepted that I have desires for men. My partner of two years is bisexual and understands the desires, but has personally dealt with those desires via masturbation, while my desires include acting. Her perspective is that the grass is greener where you water it and that my desire to act is immature, selfish, and has an unrealistic end game. What gives when you don’t feel fulfilled sexually in a monogamous relationship?

Open Or Over?

Dear OOO: Something definitely gives when a person doesn’t feel fulfilled in a monogamous relationship—sometimes it’s an ultimatum that’s given, sometimes it’s a onetime-only hall pass that’s given, sometimes it’s an agreement to open the relationship that’s given. But the relationship sometimes gives, e.g. the relationship collapses under the weight of competing and mutually exclusive needs and desires. If you want to open things up (if allowed) and she wants to keep things closed (no allowance), OOO, it’s ultimately your willpower—your commitment to honoring the commitment you’ve made— that’s likely to give.

Dear Dan: I have a close friend who’s cheating on her girlfriend. It has been going on for over a year. At first I actually supported the exploration because my friend has a really unsupportive girlfriend who has done really crappy things to her over the course of their relationship. I kept pushing for her to make a decision and use this affair as a way for her to free herself, but she is just coasting along with her girlfriend and her lover. She’s under a lot of stress, and she’s turned into a major liar, and it’s creeping me out. I’m considering either telling her girlfriend myself (though I promised my friend I wouldn’t) or maybe I just need to end this friendship. My friend’s double life upsets me. It’s just been going on too long.

Is My Friend An Asshole?

Dear IMFAA: If your friend—the one leading the double life—is asking you to run interference for her, if she’s asking you to lie to her girlfriend, or if she’s asked you to compromise your integrity in some way, she’s an asshole and you’re a sap; tell your friend you’re done covering for her and that you won’t be able to see her again until the deceit or the pandemic is over, whichever comes first. If the issue your friend expects you to ooze sympathize while she goes on and on about the mess she’s made of her life, IMFAA, simply refuse to discuss the mess that is her love life with her. Remind her that she already knows what you think needs to do— she needs to break the fuck up with her shitty

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THE PITCH | May 2020 | thepitchkc.com

girlfriend—and then change the subject.

Dear Dan: I’m a cis het woman who loves men and loves dicks. I love dicks so much that I fantasize about having one. Nothing brings me to orgasm more quickly or reliably than closing my eyes and imagining my own dick, or imagining myself as my partner, and what they’re feeling through their dick. I love being a woman, and I’m afraid to bring this up with any partner(s) of mine. Is this super weird? Am I secretly trans somehow? Am I overthinking this?

Perfect Minus Penis Dear PMP: It’s not that weird, some people are trans and you could be one of them (but fantasizing about having a dick ≠ being a male), and you’re overthinking what you should be enjoying. Buy a strap-on, tell your partners about your fantasies, and enjoy having the dick the dick you can have.

Dear Dan: I wonder if you might be able to put a label on this sex act: It has to do with overstimulation, in this case of a penis (mine).

After receiving a wonderful hand job, the giver kept stroking me purposefully. My penis was in a heightened, super-sensitive state. It was almost like being tickled, if you’re ticklish. I was being forcefully held down (consensually), and just as I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, I had a second amazing orgasm. I didn’t ejaculate again, it was more of a body orgasm. It came in waves and everything was warm. It was mind-blowing, spiritual, galactic, unique, and very similar to how I’ve heard women describe their orgasms. Ever hear of anything like this? Is this some sort of Japanese underground kink thing?

Witty Hilarious Overzealous Amateur

old girl. We love being around each other, but during sex, neither of us can come. It’s infuriating, to say the least. She has no trouble when she masturbates and I know I have no trouble when I masturbate, so why can’t we come together?

Can’t Understand Matter Dear CUM: If you can come when you masturbate and she can come when she masturbates, CUM, masturbate together and you’ll be coming together. Mutual masturbation isn’t a sad consolation prize—mutual masturbation is sex and it can be great sex. And the more often you come together through mutual masturbation, CUM, the likelier it gets that you’ll be able to come together while enjoying other things.

Dear Dan: I have a weird and terrible problem. I’ve been seeing someone new, and have just discovered that I get diarrhea every time I swallow his come. Like debilitating pee poops an hour after, every time. I know the solution to the problem would be to stop swallowing, but I was wondering if you had ever heard of this before or knew why this was.

My Sad Asshole

Dear WHOA: The act you’re describing already has a name, WHOA, and an entry on Urban Dictionary: apple-polishing. Most men find the sensation of having the head of their cock worked so overwhelming that their bodies involuntarily recoil, which makes it difficult to polish someone’s apple if the “victim” isn’t restrained in some way. But it’s not painful—it’s like being tickled; indeed, the victim usually reacts with desperate laughter and gasping pleas for it to stop. (Don’t ask me how I know.) That all-over feeling of euphoria you experienced when your apple got polished was most likely a wave of endorphins— like a runner who pushes herself past her physical limits and experiences an full-body “runner’s high,” you were pushed past your physical limits, WHOA, and experienced the same sort of high.

Dear MSA: I have heard of this before, MSA, and superstar Savage Love guest expert Dr. Debby Herbenick unpacked the cause for another reader a few years back: “Prostaglandins are substances made by the body and that the body is sensitive to. Semen contains prostaglandins—and prostaglandins can have a laxative effect on people. Related: If you’ve ever felt a little loosey-goosey right before getting your period, that’s also thanks to prostaglandins (which spike just before your period, because the prostaglandins get the uterine muscles to contract, which then helps to shed the lining of the uterus, resulting in a menstrual period). So why don’t more semen swallowers find themselves running to the bathroom post-blowjob? I don’t know why most people aren’t extra-sensitive to prostaglandins, but fortunately most of us aren’t, or there would probably be a lot less swallowing in the world.”

So, MSA, you’ll have to stop swallowing your boyfriend’s come or only swallow when you have immediate access to a toilet in a restroom with a powerful fan.

Dear Dan: I’m a 35-year-old straight guy. I recently started seeing an amazing 34-year-

Question for Dan? Email him at mail@savagelove.net. On Twitter at @fakedansavage.

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