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DRINK yourself to the bar’s signature aroma, and enjoy the hours spent sliding quarters into the tables and shooting stick. After a few games and conversations with the Clarette clientele, you might just forget that you’re in a suburban strip mall. Whether you’re a hustler or a newbie, no one will utter a disparaging word. The Clarette is free of the Los Angeles level of smog that it was once known for — smokers are now relegated to a patio, but that’s OK. The clean air just means we can spend more time in this boozy pool hall.
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1815 Wyandotte | 816-214-8921 snowandcompany.com
If you’ve been an undergrad at Mizzou, you’ve been to Trops, the alcoholic-frozenslushie joint famous for fake trees and Styrofoam cups, which routinely make it outside as open-container citations waiting to happen. Snow & Co., in KC’s Crossroads Arts District, is like Trops all graduated and moved to the city and grown-up. The booze in the concoctions here is all topshelf, the fruit all fresh (bartender Kelsey Griffith says she squeezes about 600 lemons, oranges and limes a day), the flavors well to the left of Animal House. We like the one called Purple Rain, which Griffith accurately explains as “a boozy blueberry muffin but liquefied.” Trops is jeans; Snow & Co. is trousers. Trops is past; Snow & Co. is future. Welcome to adulthood, graduates. It tastes better out here.
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UMKC keeps expanding. So where does this influx of college kids go when they want to get wasted in the middle of the week? A great many of them swarm to Ernie Biggs Dueling Piano Bar in Westport. (You might remember it as the old Have a Nice Day Café.) Why there and not, say, a dubstep party? Because it is extremely prudent from a financial perspective. On Wednesdays, a $5 cover gets you $1 domestic drafts and $1 well drinks until the place closes at 1:30 a.m. The pianists play today’s hits: Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck You,” then Fun’s “We Are Young.” A girl in a very short dress throws her hands in the air — she wants to dance to this one. Boys in pastel-colored khakis talk loudly. In the corner, a barback scoops ice into clear-plastic cups, over and over and over, like an assembly-line worker. “Five vodka tonics,” somebody shouts at
the bartender. “Five dollars,” he replies. If only life after college were so simple.
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The most New York spot in Kansas City is the stretch of Main Street between Westport Road and 39th Street. Buses hiss, bums huddle, buildings announce themselves with silver art-deco lettering. It’s a real-deal, big-city type of grit — not dangerous but not exactly safe, either. Lately, gentrification is seeping in. MainCor has installed solar beacons on the light poles, red-and-white crosswalks, customdesigned street signs. A violently hip coffee shop, Oddly Correct, is open for business. We applaud these changes, with one caveat: They must in no way affect Harling’s, the million-years-old upstairs saloon perched above all this civic progress. Harling’s, where everything costs about $2. Harling’s, where the UMKC Conservatory Jazz Band practices on Tuesdays, a pingpong league holds court on Wednesdays, and a scuzzy punk band sets up on Thursdays. Harling’s, where black iron bars shield the windows like crosses. Harling’s, where you are as likely to encounter a divorced, middleaged lawyer as you are a Kansas City Art Institute design student. Yes, bring on the new development. But leave us our city’s finest drinking institution.
BEST COMEBACK STORY *XVWR /RXQJH 504 Westport Road | thegustolounge.com
We admit that we did our share of picking on the Gusto Lounge during its stay at 38th Street and Broadway. We thought it was a shady, hipster magnet. And when we heard that the bar was moving into the seemingly cursed location between Kelly’s and America’s Pub (R.I.P. Karma, Hell Bar, Johnny Dare’s, et al.), we were all ginned up to take another round of shots. Then we dropped by the new Gusto, and we kind of dug the vibe. We especially liked the layout. People dance to DJs up in front, on the dark, intimate dance floor. But if you’re not in the mood, you can head to the back bar — a cool, rustic room so far removed from the industrial brick of the main room that you feel like you’re entering a new dimension. The Westport faithful appear to share our conclusions: Young, wild crowds teem out of the place every weekend. We underestimated you, Gusto. Please forgive us. And please continue serving $1 Pabsts on Sundays.