WELCOME TO Hello Kansas City, nice to meet you! We are Indie Fit, a new alt-press newspaper that starting this month you can find all over Kansas City and Lawrence and in the near future at indiefitmagazine.com and on our Indie Fit mobile apps. KANSAS CITY IS UNDERGOING A SEISMIC CULTURAL SHIFT
that’s almost as profound as the fall of the Pendergast machine. The KC Power and Light District, Jazz District, and Crossroads Arts Districts have spurred a downtown revival. Farmers markets, urban agriculture, and a robust farm-totable movement have proliferated across the metro. People from California, Austin, Boulder, New England, and other hipper but pricier locales are taking a detour from skyhigh house payments and rents and moving to Kansas City to create a lifestyle that allows more time for friends and family and a little more pocket change. Inspired in part by these transplants, new restaurants have launched that feature healthier faire, locally grown non-GMO vegetables, artisanal beers and local wines, and sustainable organic meats. Kansas City has one of the best bike trail networks in America. Per capita, we have more runners and bikers and more finishers of local races than any other city in the prairie belt. Whether you’re new to the area or a lifer inspired by these trends, there’s no doubt that a hip, alternative vibe of sustainability, community, healthy living, “life hacking”, and fitness is springing up everywhere you look - the whole metro area is going Indie Fit! We launched this paper to serve as a voice for this new Kansas City. I was inspired to create Indie Fit for personal reasons. Last January I found out I’d spent most of my adult life with a chronic, undiagnosed illness. For more than a decade the doctors all told me I was perfectly fine, so for years I pushed myself to keep trying new diets and exercise programs to maximize my exercise performance, but also just so
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I could feel better and deal with my unexplained weight gain and fatigue. Simply choosing foods with the “Smart Choice” label wasn’t enough to make me healthy; I had to pursue a deeper understanding of what was going on with my body. I’ve met hundreds of other people along the way with their own stories to tell. Sharing this collective, hard-earned, non-conventional, DIY wisdom is the mission of Indie Fit. After all of the lemons life has tossed our way, it’s time to make sugar-free organic lemonade and pass the punchbowl around! So if the fork is mightier than the pen or the sword, why another newspaper? Kansas City has several weekly entertainment publications and a few sports and healthoriented monthlies. What if you’ve moved on in your life, graduated from the party scene, or at least the nightly party scene? Maybe your social life has shifted from the bars and clubs to Saturday morning 5ks, farmers markets close enough to bike to, community gardens, wine clubs, and neighborhood potlucks. That’s where Indie Fit comes in. We’ll feature Kansas City’s most comprehensive calendar of local events geared towards fitness, health, and sustainability – local farmers markets, craft brew festivals, local happenings at vineyards, farm-to-table dinners, competitive fitness and weight-lifting competitions, running events, bike races, crazy canoe sprints along the
Kaw and Muddy Mo, and much more. We want Indie Fit to connect you to the vast talent and intellect here in KC and to bring you engaging narratives that uncover the story behind the story. We’ll employ thoughtful storytelling and good old fashioned journalism to take a fun, personal, and sometimes edgy look at the latest information on food, health, and fitness from a local perspective. For example in this issue we feature Kansas City’s elite running squad, the “KC Smoke,” an inspiring gang of speedsters shaking up the local running scene and helping everybody – even if you’re not fast – take their game to a new level. We have an in-depth piece about a fascinating new cooperative farm that hopes to spark a culinary “dry bean” culture in northeast Kansas. October is breast cancer awareness month, and we’ll tell you about an organization called “Surviving the Odds” that’s helping vulnerable populations in Wyandotte County get early screenings. So there you have it. We are Indie Fit. We hope you’ll pick up our paper each month and tell us what we can do to help in your own quest to live a fitter, happier, and more meaningful life right here in Kansas City.
indiefitmagazine - In our mailbox: feedback@indiefitmagazine.com - in Print: Everywhere!
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