The Pitch: March 2020

MARCH 2020 I FREE I THEPITCHKC.COM

PUSH START KC Spawns the Future of Indie Games

BY REB VALENTINE

IN MEMORIAM: CHARLES FERRUZZA

BY SCOTT WILSON

TOMAHAWK CHOP ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK

BY EMILY COX

BIG TRUCKS GO VROOM

BY LIZ COOK

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CONTENTS

THE PITCH

Publisher Stephanie Carey Editor in Chief Brock Wilbur Digital Editor Kelcie McKenney Contributing Writers Traci Angel, Liz Cook, Riley Cowing, Karen Dillon, April Fleming, Roxie Hammill, Libby Hanssen, Deborah Hirsch, Dan Lybarger, Abby Olcese, Aaron Rhodes, Barbara Shelly, Nick Spacek, Reb Valentine, Vivian Kane, Liam Mays, Scott Wilson, Brooke Tippin, Jason Kander Little Village Creative Services Jordan Sellergren Jav Ducker Contributing Photographers Zach Bauman, Chase Castor, Joe Carey, Travis Young Graphic Designers Austin Crockett, Jake Edmisten, Lacey Hawkins, Angèle Lafond, Jennifer Larson, Katie McNeil, Danielle Moore, Gianfranco Ocampo, Kirsten Overby, Alex Peak, Fran Sherman Director of Marketing & Promotions Jason Dockery Senior Multimedia Specialist Steven Suarez Multimedia Specialist Becky Losey Director of Operations Andrew Miller Multimedia Intern Jonah Desneux Samantha Sprouse Design Intern Jack Raybuck

CAREY MEDIA

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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34 SPORTS

One Foot on the Gas, One Foot in the Grave How Monster Jam fires on every cylinder and every dopamine receptor

BY LIZ COOK

36 KC HEROES 14 6 LETTER

From the Editor So. February was a lot, eh?

BY BROCK WILBUR

8 STREETWISE

Food, Politics, Real Estate The various comings and goingson about town

BY BROCK WILBUR

10 NEWS

Higher Learning The Gritty under-economy of KU students paving their pocketbooks with prescription powder

BY LIAM MAYS

13 Warren Has a Plan for Martini

Corner We talk to Elizabeth about why she’s the first candidate to set up shop in KC

BY VIVIAN KANE

15 Champions Choose Less Harm

For Many Kansas Citians, rooting for the Chiefs really isn’t an option.

How does it evolve to a place where they all feel comfortable?

BY EMILY COX

18 IN MEMORIAM

Charles Ferruzza How do you celebrate a life that was a dozen lives in one?

BY SCOTT WILSON

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THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

20 FEATURE

CHASE CASTOR

Push Start: How Kansas City Creators are Making Games the World Won’t Fly Over Innovative experiences and personal stories are finding their niche in a home grown scene

BY REB VALENTINE

26 CAFE

Blinding Ambition at Páros Estiatorio The Cate Blanchett of Metro Greek Restaurants

BY LIZ COOK

30 EAT

Eat This Now The Frenchie at Seven Swans Creperie

BY APRIL FLEMING

Ed Kander Our monthly column where different community heroes write a tribute to their own KC Hero

BY JASON KANDER

38 KC CARES

ALS Association Each Month we highlight a local charity that shows the best of KC kindness. Maybe you’ll donate to a good cause? You should donate to a good cause

BY BROOKE TIPPIN

40 SAVAGE LOVE

Thrown Bones One yank too many

BY DAN SAVAGE

42 EVENTS

March Events March Radness

BY SAMANTHA SOLMAR & JONAH DESNEUX

31 DRINK

Drink This Now The Dulce Calor at South of Summit Taqueria & Tequila

BY APRIL FLEMING

32 ARTS

Sav Rodgers is Chasing Sexuality Itself in a Hollywood Fantasy Finding a future in the ouroboros of fandom

BY JONAH DESNEUX

“INDIE KC”

By Jake Edmisten

AARON LEWIS STATE I’M IN TOUR

BEATLES VS. STONES A MUSICAL SHOWDOWN

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LETTER

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR SO… FEBRUARY WAS A LOT, EH? BY BROCK WILBUR

Quick hits on Kansas City culture, news, dining, and more thepitchkc.com/newsletters

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THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

Our editor marries the cutest couple you ever did see.

As a recent KC transplant, February was a fascinating period for me. I wasn’t here for the Royals’ major victory, so I’ve never seen an entire city spend a month in a bender. And then a collective week of hangover. You’re my kinda town. You’re my kinda people.

The Chiefs waited 50 years between Super Bowl victories; the longest period in the history of the NFL. In each game of our post-season, the team set records for coming back from historic point deficits. That included a huge chunk of the big game where it seemed like we were quite simply doomed. It struck me that this is perhaps emblematic of the best personality traits of Kansas Citians as a whole, made manifest by our motley crew of sportsboys. I think I could describe most of my friends here as the type of people who know how to fuck-up on an epic scale and then learn real fast from those mistakes—recovering to make everything work out real killer in the end. As I said: Our team seems to be a beautiful encapsulation of that type of Midwestern personality. That’s easy to rally behind. I hope we rally behind each other in a similar way, come 2020.

Some of you may have noticed that the President of the USA congratulated Kansas

for this victory. I just want to let you know that I hate absolutely every person from the national media that reached out to me to ask if the Chiefs were indeed from Kansas. Y’all had a fun celebration morning, and I spent my day letting folks know they could look at maps and use Google rather than waste my time. What an absolute dink.

The KCPD celebrated the sheer lack of arrests involved in our celebratory parade. A dude on meth did a bit of a car chase through the middle of the parade. The PIT maneuver executed by local law enforcement was peak excellence. That no one got hurt here? That doesn’t even make sense. Other than them, there was a man who surfed on a horse. Both he and the horse seem to be fine. Then there’s the dude that went viral from falling out of a tree and showing his whole ass to the world.

That gentleman accepted our request that he become our Valentine. We’ve made plans to purchase both a beer for him and a belt on behalf of the rest of us. Truly, a good sport, and an adorable adult child. We salute you, sir.

The last month contained a number of other surprises. The saddest of all was the untimely passing of Charles Ferruzza;

TRAVIS YOUNG

a longtime Pitch writer and a well-known staple of the KC scene. Just an all-around incredible dude that I will forever regret not having met. Luckily, I’ve been able to explore his work through our archives and through the people who knew him best. We have an excellent tribute later in the magazine on page 18.

The Pitch loves putting big events together. Before I took on the editor role, I felt so lucky to have an ability to participate in hosting said events. At our UnBridaled wedding event this month, I got to do the kind of thing that you don’t get to experience at other 9-to-5 jobs: I married some strangers.

Well. They weren’t strangers to each other, but we did plan a gigantic free wedding for them and their families. Our many generous vendors made sure that everyone had a topnotch event. Tomika Walker and Herb Bass said “I do” and became a new family: The Williams. After more than a decade of dating, and the highs and lows that came with it, getting to send these two in the future as one was the kind of thing that… I’m not crying, you’re crying.

This job has its perks. And this city is doing so well. No one fuck it up.

thepitchkc.com | March 2020 | THE PITCH

7

STREETWISE

The Pitch takes on the Chiefs parade. Visit page 14 for more parade photos.

TRAVIS YOUNG

STREETWISE FOOD, POLITICS, REAL ESTATE—THE VARIOUS COMINGS AND GOINGS-ON ABOUT TOWN.

BY BROCK WILBUR

McGonigle’s Market has been purchased

by Fareway Stores. There will be expansions, rebranding, and a catering arm lead by previous employees while retaining the McGonigle’s brand. The final few days of the store remaining open before the switch-over was a madhouse, and some of us may have filled our fridge with Flintstone’s style slabs of meat. It’ll be fascinating to see what this next phase of their existence looks like, but so long and thanks for all the fish!

Snooze opens in Westport. A new brunch spot is available to folks that are looking for a Corner alternative in the mornings. Snooze is part of a small chain, and this is their first Missouri location. The Bloody Mary options are out of control, and they have a solid page of benedict choices. The 50s retro interior and delightful service members are just icing on the cake.

John Tierney gets a hand from the community. Local bartender John Tierney lost his left arm to sarcoma back in December.

Thanks to a fundraiser at The Tuman, it looks like he’ll be able to afford a new arm and get back to doing what he loves best.

And, you know, cover the massive medical costs associated with a tragedy like this. The sold-out event was John’s last “safe” day in the world before entering into chemo, so keep him in your thoughts during this difficult time. We are.

Pornhub tracked our game day. Stats released by the pornographic video hub

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THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

showed that KC views plummeted during the Super Bowl (except for a brief period during the halftime show.) After the game, SF area traffic was up only 7%, but excited Chiefs fans celebrated by increasing traffic nearly 22%.

Ben’s Friends opens local chapter. After a series of overdoses and suicides, a couple of South Carolina food and beverage operators decided to open their own offshoot of AA, for folks trying to get sober while remaining working in that industry. Ben’s Friends has spread to a number of major cities where it has been welcomed with arms wide open by the local food service scenes. Meetings are at The Rieger (1924 Main Street) and will continue every Sunday at 11 a.m.

Healing Masculine podcast launches. A local host named Shym is bridging the worlds of KC and Chicago to start a conversation that builds similar bridges between heteronormative and queer spaces in the midwest. By engaging cross-cultural dialogue as central to modern spiritual and social justice practices, they affirm the masculine qualities in one another; healing the divide between learned and authentic expression.

Clark Grant is back, baby. Just last issue we were reporting about Chef Clark Grant and the end of his place Hogshead on the plaza.

Well, he’s already found new footing. Grant is the new executive chef at Plate Italiano Moderno. Can’t wait to see what he does in the Italian food world with his rich skillset.

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thepitchkc.com | March 2020 | THE PITCH

9

NEWS

Self-medicating and turning a profit.

LIAM MAYS

HIGHER LEARNING

THE GRITTY UNDER-ECONOMY OF KU STUDENTS PAVING THEIR POCKETBOOKS WITH PRESCRIPTION POWDER BY LIAM MAYS

Names in this story are changed to protect the interview subjects. Stories were vetted.

When Steven was given his prescription of 60 pills a month of Adderall for his ADHD, he quickly realized there was no way he’d consume that amount of the drug. So, when he became a freshman at the University of Kansas, he started asking his friends if they were interested in buying the extra pills.

Steven was one pill a week—not the two-per-day he had been prescribed. He started out on a different medication for ADHD, a less-common drug called Vyvanse. After hearing his doctor lecture about the high demand for Adderall, Steven says he started to think about the cost/benefit of the market for dealing says drug. He started selling the upper for $4 a piece in bulk, and his friends would, in turn, resell the drugs at a higher price. Steven conducted the transactions from the comfort of his bedroom in a KU scholarship hall—a living option that is part-dorm, part-home and reserved only

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THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

for students who maintain a high GPA and pass an academic review. He was running a state funded multi-level marketing dealership.

Truly, the American dream.

Whether it’s earning money to pay bills, supplementing a drug habit, or just capitalizing on a solid business opportunity—students across KU find drug dealing to be a fast, easy way to make untraced cash.

College kids are dealing to make ends meet? Stop faux-gasping. Of course this is a forever-collegiate move. But the structures around it are worth examining.

Steven says he got to a point where he’d have his personal bottle of Adderall to last him the semester, and every monthly prescription he got after that, he’d sell. Eventually, Steven juggled a full-load of classes, a part-time job, and his network dealing Adderall. There was never a shortage of students looking for the drug. Even though he says he was overprescribed, he still didn’t have enough to meet the demand. Turning

ONE OF THE QUICKEST WAYS TO PUSH PEOPLE TO COMMIT CRIMES TO STAY ALIVE IS TO MAKE THEIR HOUSING SITUATION UNSURE, PRECARIOUS.

down requests was a regular occurrence.

Selling Adderall wasn’t just Stephen’s side hustle. It was a second part-time job with one goal: make extra cash to help him graduate with less student debt.

“It doesn’t really take time so it’s just kind of an easy way to bring in money,” says Steven who is now in his fourth year as a student at KU. For students who struggle to make ends meet, dealing drugs might seem like a good alternative to a standard part-time job.

“You’re probably working 15 hours to 18 hours a day on school work; it’s really hard to get a part-time job,” says Dawson who primarily deals marijuana and is in his fourth year at KU. “Even when you do, you work 20 hours a week and two weeks later you get a paycheck for 350 bucks.”

These kids find college to be a perfect environment for dealing because it’s a time when more people are open to experimenting than ever. A recent survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services

NEWS

Finding ways to even out.

Administration found that more than 22 percent of full-time college students reported using an illicit drug within the past month.

A reported 50 percent of incoming freshmen at the University of Kansas take out loans averaging $6,874 per year to help pay for their education, according to College Factual. In addition, 36 percent of college students reported they were housing and food insecure—leaving many students dire for extra cash, according to CNBC. KU may have a reputation locally as a school with an affluent student base, but a 2016 survey of undergraduates showed that about 54 percent reported being “food insecure,” which is why the university started a food pantry for students called the Campus Cupboard. That same year, a group of KU students formed to lobby against rising tuition costs. As of 2015, KU’s tuition has increased nearly 200 percent since 1999.

The dealers interviewed for this story reported that a high percentage of users

were also looking to become resellers themselves. Look, some people pay more attention in business school than others. This joke works on multiple levels.

“One of the quickest ways to push people to commit crimes to stay alive is to make their housing situation unsure, precarious; make it to where they don’t know whether or not they’re going to have a place to sleep every night. That’s going to push them to those areas,” says Wesley Cudney, a sophomore political science major and the president of Against Rising Tuition at KU. “And we have the power of students to directly affect these, to directly change these because these decisions are made by students.”

With so many college students drowning in debt, and nearly a quarter of college students using drugs on a fairly regular basis, the market and business opportunities are ideal.

Several students says part of the appeal of drug dealing is that it requires a very small time commitment compared to hold-

LIAM MAYS

ing down a part-time, usually low-paying job. They says the appeal grew when they realized they wouldn’t even have to leave their apartments to deal drugs.

“Once they see how easy it is, I feel like it would definitely drive somebody to want to make money that way,” says Dawson, a KU student dealer.

Dawson usually buys from a distributor in Lawrence who grows weed in their house, not too far from the KU campus.

For him, the whole process is quick, simple, and easy because he can buy the product, sell three-fourths of it to make some extra money, and keep one-fourth for his own drug use. The primary reason he began to deal was to supplement the amount of money he spends on his own drug habits. In a good month, he’ll go even. In a bad month, he’ll lose $600-$1,200 on his own usage. This is usually a result of combining the losses of ordering excessive cocaine and weed.

But students don’t just turn to illegal distributors for their product. Some, like Steven, turn to their physicians and pharmacists. Students says it’s relatively easy to get prescribed to a drug that many people seek, such as Adderall and Xanax. The prescriptions given by doctors for benzodiazepines, which includes Xanax, doubled from 2003 to 2015 according to NPR. “A student can easily go get a prescription for Xanax when they don’t need it on their parents’ insurance,” Dawson says. “You could sell a whole script of that and make tons of money.”

Some students notice freshmen who are looking for drugs and alcohol and see a business opportunity. Jack, who is in his third year at KU, says his friend and former

roommate began selling during his first year at KU. His client base became undeniably sizable.

“I’d seen people coming in and out of their apartment and the Venmo transactions and stuff like that, and I kind of caught on and so I wanted to try,” Jack says. “I wanted to make some money.”

Jack thought of dealing as a business opportunity, but he also liked the social aspect that it entailed.

“My roommate left and he had been selling for a couple months and built some clients,” Jack says. “I knew some people that smoked, and I felt like you only needed a handful or so to make money back and not really worry about it.” The Friendship Loop.

Jack says he began hanging with his fellow dealer-friends much more frequently around this time. He started trying to increase his own marijuana tolerance because he says he didn’t want to feel like a lightweight in situations where everyone else was going harder. The pressure to go big or go home lead him to the next tier contraband.

Jack is one of the 1-in-10 college students who have experimented with MDMA, according to the Addiction Center. Because MDMA is mainly used for recreational purposes and is still considered experimental for treatments, the drug isn’t usually made in a pharmacy. Also known as molly and ecstasy, it is usually a homemade concoction, with people making versions in their homes in Lawrence. Jack claims they’ll pack and cut the drug with a mixture of caffeine, meth and, sometimes, heroin.

“If you’re doing MDMA in general, you’re probably not addicted to MDMA so much as you are addicted to drugs,” Dawthepitchkc.com | March 2020 | THE PITCH

11

NEWS

son says.

Dawson says they’ll produce the drug this way so that students will come back and feel the urge to keep taking MDMA, even though the drug itself has yet to be proven addictive, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

“These pills that college kids are buying are buying from shitty people who don’t care what’s in it,” Jack says.

In addition, Jack says they’ll pack the pills with other drugs as a way to save cost.

“I’m sure that caffeine and meth have been in the drugs I’ve snorted,” Jack admitts.

Both Jack and Dawson says that finding drugs in Lawrence is incredibly easy.

Jack says it’s well-known that you can get meth in the parking lot of a local grocery store if you hang out for long enough. Dawson says many dealers will post up around a popular bar for underage students and will sell party pills and cocaine to any unsuspecting student.

Dawson says fentanyl has also been a big scare lately within the drug usage inner-circle.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, synthetic opioids such as fentanyl have seen a 47 percent increase in fatal overdoses from 2016 to 2017. And, if students don’t know what they’re looking for

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THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

when purchasing a drug, it could be something unexpected, like fentanyl, Dawson says. According to the CDC, illegally-made fentanyl can be found in heroin, cocaine, and counterfeit pills like the MDMA many college students experiment with.

Is there a possible set of risks? Students who deal to make extra cash, whether the reason is to minimize debt or to pay for their own drug habit, are risking their ability to attend university. Repeated non-academic misconduct violations can eventually result in a suspension or expulsion for students who were trying to keep their head above water and stay out of debt.

There were 35 drug-related conduct violations in the fall of 2018 and 34 in the spring of 2019 at KU, according to the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards. The number of drug-related criminal reports in Lawrence is about three times higher. In the last year, there have been a little over 100 such reports in Lawrence, nine of those for distribution, according to the Lawrence Police Department.

Katie Treadwell, director of student conduct and community standards at KU, says that KU is unique in that there are no standard sanctions for violations. Every student is reviewed individually and has the

A puff on campus.

LIAM MAYS

option to go through a formal or informal hearing where the student makes their case.

A panel then decides if the students are responsible for the misconduct as well as potential sanctions.

However, Treadwell says that KU doesn’t consider prior history when determining responsibility. In other words, if the student makes the case that they only began dealing because they were in debt, that wouldn’t affect their determination of responsibility—but it could potentially affect their determination of which sanctions the student might receive.

Treadwell says at KU it’s rare for a stu-

dent to be suspended or expelled after the first or second case. Once there’s been three or four cases, they are more likely to seek a greater punishment.

“Know when to stop if you’re doing it, so like, don’t get caught that third time to make it a felony,” Jack says.

So. That’s that standard in Lawrence. If you’re trying to cram for finals: four strikes and you’re out.

The National Helpline for Substance Abuse and Mental Health is available 24 hours a day, in England and Spanish, at 1-800-662HELP (4357).

NEWS

WARREN HAS A PLAN FOR MARTINI CORNER WE TALK TO ELIZABETH ABOUT WHY SHE’S THE FIRST CANDIDATE TO SET UP SHOP IN KC

BY VIVIAN KANE

As the first early voting states have kicked off the 2020 Democratic primary season, Elizabeth Warren has had a slow start. In the first caucuses and primary elections, she came in near the middle of the pack of her fellow Democratic candidates. On a national scale, those results are going to be disappointing to Warren’s supporters. But in Kansas City, the buzz of excitement around her campaign remains strong.

Missouri doesn’t vote in this primary election until mid-March (and Kansas is even later, not hitting the polls until May), which means most candidates don’t bother to establish a presence here until after Super Tuesday is already a memory. A small handful of candidates have stopped by for issue-specific events: Joe Biden spoke to union workers in KCK; Pete Buttigieg came for a fundraiser and a tour of the Veterans Community Project last fall; Kirsten Gillibrand hit up St. Louis for a town hall around reproductive rights.

But Elizabeth Warren was the first Democratic candidate to set up an office in town, and she did so months before KC heads to the polls. Even now, months after Warren’s office launch, only one other candidate—Michael Bloomberg—has opened an office here, and whether his campaign had already been planning the move or not, the announcement came in the form of a joke.

After the Kansas City Chiefs’ historic Super Bowl win, Donald Trump mistakenly congratulated the “great state of Kansas” for the victory. Bloomberg used the opportunity to make the announcement.

“We’re happy to announce the opening of our two new field offices in Kansas City, home of the 2020 Super Bowl Champions, The @Chiefs,” the campaign wrote on Twitter. “We’re also happy to announce that Kansas City is in Missouri. Just in case anyone

Team Warren hits the streets.

“THE ONE THING WE DON’T GET BACK IS TIME.” SO THEY’RE PUTTING IN THE TIME.

COURTESY OF ELIZABETH WARREN FOR PRESIDENT

needs that information.”

Love to pour whatever amount of money it takes to open a presidential campaign office into landing a quick jab on Twitter.

For Warren, her presence in KC is no joke. “When I decided to run for president, I made the decision that I wouldn’t spend my time in closed-door fundraisers, sucking up to billionaires. Instead, I was going to build an organization focused on local organizing funded by grassroots donations,” Warren told The Pitch via email. “Building this campaign from the grassroots is all about making this democracy work and lifting up everyone’s voices—and that’s why I wanted our campaign to have a presence in Kansas City. Everyone should have an equal voice in our democracy.”

The campaign office—housed in Martini Corner, featuring useful amenities like a childcare room and Warren’s signature Wall of Plans—is a central hub for volunteers to join in-person phone banking and canvassing events. But there’s also an extensive online community where people can organize local action and connect with other supporters in groups based on shared interests–everything from specific policy plans to small business owners to pet lovers to “Nerds for Warren.”

The goal is for those volunteers to come in for phone banking or door-to-door canvassing, but then also to give them the tools to take their excitement and their skills back home with them, setting them up to take on a sort of grassroots leadership role in Team Warren amongst their friends and larger communities.

The decision to open an office here so far ahead of Missouri and Kansas’s primary election dates might seem like a waste of resources to other candidates. But the tradeoff means getting to establish relationships with voters on the ground here in KC. As Brooklynne Mosley, the Missouri State Director for the Warren campaign, puts it, “The one thing we don’t get back is time.” So they’re putting in the time.

Time isn’t the only issue that’s positioned to make campaigning in a place like Kansas City difficult. We’re a blue bubble in a much redder landscape, in a region with a stark urban-rural divide. (We’ve also been ground zero for some pretty weird political proposals that have failed spectacularly, a la Sam Brownback’s “Kansas experiment.” We get why some politicians might be a little trepidatious to wade into these waters.)

Still, there’s plenty that we have in common. Voters all over the state are focused on getting Trump out of office. Concerns over issues like college debt and access to healthcare aren’t limited by geography.

To Warren, her approach remains the same no matter what: “I’ve been to red states and blue states, purple states, red parts of blue states and blue parts of red states,” she told us. “I believe this is how we make our democracy work. We reach out to people, we tell them what’s in our hearts, we tell them what our vision is for this country, and we ask them to join us. That’s how we build a movement.

That’s how we make change.”

thepitchkc.com | March 2020 | THE PITCH

13

SPORTS

Photos from the Chief’s parade.

14

ZACH BAUMAN AND CHASE CASTOR

THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

SPORTS

JACK RAYBUCK

CHAMPIONS CHOOSE LESS HARM

FOR MANY KANSAS CITIANS, ROOTING FOR THE CHIEFS ISN’T REALLY AN OPTION. HOW DOES IT EVOLVE TO A PLACE WHERE THEY ALL FEEL COMFORTABLE? BY EMILY COX

We won. What do we do now? Well, we’ve got some power here to make big changes.

Long overdue changes. This is the time to make said changes.

“They use our people as mascots,” says Gayle Crouser, Executive Director of the Kansas City Indian Center, and who is Standing Rock Sioux. “They perpetuate stereotypical negative behavior.”

“People have these outdated notions of who we are as people,” says Crouser. “The dehumanizing of an entire race of people. Especially here, in Kansas City, where the only exposure people have is to these kinds of negative imagery.”

Wouldn’t it be nice to celebrate our home team’s athletic excellence without also being in the shadow of cultural appropriation?

Imagine if we had a team name, mascot, and rituals that did not harm people. Imagine if each time the grand spotlight fell upon us, we didn’t have to start from a place of apology.

The Chiefs have slipped largely under the radar in national conversations about racism and mascots, perhaps because the team’s name isn’t the most egregious slur (I’m looking at you, Washington). But with the use of things like an arrowhead symbol, drums, and the Tomahawk Chop, plus some fans choosing to adorn themselves with mock headdresses and redface, harm is still being done across the board.

This isn’t up for debate. This is the situa-

THIS IS WHERE THE DAMAGE BECOMES INCALCULABLE: THE OVERALL MESSAGE FOR THE COUNTRY IS THAT AMERICAN INDIANS DO NOT COUNT.

tion. If you’re someone who doesn’t see how this is harmful, you’re quite simply on the wrong side of history. Go read a book, dingus.

“If a NFL franchise today adopted anti-African American imagery or anti-Jewish imagery or anti-white imagery or anything as despicable as what is seen with the anti-Indigenous imagery, there would be an absolute uproar in this country,” says Julia Good Fox, Dean of the College of Natural and Social Sciences at Haskell University. Fox is Pawnee.

“This type of imagery is basically a gateway drug to devaluing American Indians,” says Good Fox. “And at what cost to those who perpetuate it? Decent folk do not treat others so callously—unless they do not see the other as a human being. And that’s what this imagery is essentially about: the continued dehumanization of Indigenous Peoples.”

When you’ve reduced entire peoples to a caricatured, jocular mascot, it is near impossible to see them in their full humanity. And in dehumanizing others, we dehumanize ourselves, too.

“At the individual level, to participate in anti-American Indianism,” says Good Fox, “one has to embrace simple denial or lazy logic or go through some sort of charade of mental gymnastics to rationalize or minimize such behavior. This is where the damage becomes incalculable: the overall message for the country is that American Indians do not count. That is, we do not count as human beings.”

The harm done by using Indian imagery and culture as a mascot is well documented.

The American Psychological Association has called for the retirement of Indian mascots since 2005, citing studies that document the negative effects such mascots have on both Indians and non-Indians. One of the major impacts is on the wellbeing of children. According to the Center for Native American Youth at the Aspen Institute, suicide is the second leading cause of death for American Indian/Alaska Native young adults, at a staggering 2.5 times the national rate.

“I’m an adult and I’ve got pretty thick

skin, but what—” Crouser pauses, her voice breaking as tears well up, “what bothers me is how it affects our kids. And their self esteem and their identity. To see this ridiculousness in their face all the time, it breaks my heart for them. It’s stuff that I could probably shrug off, and just roll my eyes, like, whatever y’all, but … but our kids. It affects them, for their whole life. How they see themselves, and how they feel the world perceives them.”

In 1963, Mayor Harold Roe Bartle persuaded Lamar Hunt to move the Dallas Texans to Kansas City, land originally inhabited by the Osage, Kaw, and Očeti Šakówiŋ (Sioux).

The new team name was selected based on a fan poll that drew over 1,000 different ideas.

The Chief was Bartle’s nickname, and not just because he was a man in a position of power: he got the nickname as the founder of Boy Scouts’ Tribe of Mic-O-Say, a fake tribe created by white men for white boys appropriating Indian customs like dance, dress, and rituals, that still continues today. That is the Chiefs’ namesake. That’s the “heritage” some of our fans are fighting to defend.

When Hunt and co. chose the name, they also reported that the team logo would be “the head of an Indian wearing a feathered war bonnet.” Games also featured a white man wearing a mock headdress riding a horse named Warpaint. After two decades, they nixed the redface and logo. Warpaint the horse has returned in recent years, ridden by a cheerleader before the game and after touchdowns.

While the Chiefs were appropriating these aspects of Indian culture for entertainment, American Indians were still fighting for their basic human rights, including the right to vote and freedom of religion. Crouser was 4 years old when the American Indian Religious Freedom Act passed in 1978.

“There’s things that were illegal that people held onto even though it could’ve got them killed. That we still have language, that we still have ceremonies, that we still have our indigenous songs—the people that saved those for us risked their lives to do it.” thepitchkc.com | March 2020 | THE PITCH

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SPORTS

At the same time that her ancestors were persecuted for their culture and identity, non-Indian people were playacting with pseudo-Indian war chants to celebrate touchdowns.

“It’s salt in the wound,” says Crouser. “It gets on my nerves when people are like, oh it’s so PC, you’re such a snowflake,” says Crouser. “You have no idea what our people have survived.”

In 2013, the Chiefs began celebrating American Indian Heritage Month each November at the stadium, featuring blessings and performances from various tribes.

Do these efforts make things any better? “No,” says Crouser. “In fact, I almost feel like it has the opposite effect, in as much as it gives the appearance that Indian people are okay with it. And they’re not.”

While teams will always find individual American Indians to say they aren’t personally offended by it, the broader consensus is that this is harmful to the community as a whole. “We have a consortium here in Kansas City of a number of Indian organizations,” says Crouser, “and collectively, the Indian organizations that are serving Indian people don’t agree with [the team using] any of it.”

As with any group of people, American Indians have a wide variety of personal opinions about team names, mascots, and the like.

By finding a few, the Chiefs give themselves a stamp of approval without making any fundamental changes to their organization. (In a similar vein, they have asked TV broadcasters to not air fans wearing redface and headdresses, but they have not actually banned fans from wearing them in the stadium.)

“Does the Hunt family sincerely believe that such participation cancels out continued anti-American Indian practices?” says Good Fox. “If anything, I suspect these events have their roots in either cynicism or arrogance.

They are offering false penance to themselves and to those who deliberately choose to engage in anti-Indigenousness activity.”

It is not a good sign that as recently as June 2019, in an Instagram photo, Chiefs owner Clark Hunt posed with his son while both wearing mock headdresses after the

younger was selected as “Cherokee Chief ” at Bible summer camp. The post was later deleted.

What would it look like to right the wrongs that have been done? “Best case scenario,” says Crouser, “they change their name and stop using a race of people as their mascot, their theme.”

“It’s not that we’re trying to be everybody’s big downer,” says Crouser. “We’re not trying to dim anybody’s shine. I can appreciate people being proud of their team and wanting to celebrate with their community. I get that, and I understand that.”

“How about the Kings?” she says. The team could continue using the Kingdom marketing that’s been popular of late. (Simply calling it the Kingdom would also soothe word nerds like me, as ‘Chiefs Kingdom’ is utter nonsense—technically the territory a chief rules over should be called a chiefdom.)

Crouser suggests they could even rebrand the arm-swinging anthem, reimagine it as a king’s sword making a knighting motion.

Or perhaps we could be the Wolves and keep beloved KC Wolf around. Another fan poll is a good option—get people excited about generating new ideas (and, obviously, eliminate entries that use a race/ethnicity as mascot or are otherwise derogatory).

A shared team anthem is an engaging communal experience, an opportunity to show your support and rattle the whole stadium. Hearing the chop ring out during the Super Bowl was impressive, but wouldn’t it be far more celebratory and powerful to have such a song that didn’t simultaneously do harm to a whole lot of people?

I say we scrap the chop altogether and collectively adopt a new fight song, one I’ve already heard played a lot in recent weeks: Tech N9ne’s “KCMO Anthem.” Its catchy “K-C-MO, ro-oll” is easy enough for thousands to sing together, and those low O tones will feel similarly dominating to the song that accompanies the chop (but like, without the racism). Plus, we’d be repping a local artist, which is more than we can say for the Chop, which originated with Florida State’s marching band.

KCMO Anthem’s hook samples the tune of March of the Winkies from Wizard of Oz, so if anyone’s nostalgic for a certain late 90s soccer team name, maybe the Chiefs could become the Wizards.

The point is: There’s a lot of ideas, infinite possibilities. We can use our imagination to create new rituals to get excited about.

It’s more inspiring to think of what we could collectively imagine as a path forward than what imaginary racist history we keep rallying behind, simply because no better idea has been presented.

The team has an opportunity to do right, to be a leader in the NFL, to be a model for actually honoring Indian people by choosing to not reduce them to a costume or mascot.

The team could be on the right side of history here. And it’s quite possible they’d gain fans doing so.

“There’d be a lot more people who could be proud of the team,” says Crouser. “They would gain fans. Ultimately some people might grumble, they might be a little mad about it, but they’re not gonna stop watching football. They’re gonna keep coming back.

Even if they’re mad for a season, they’re gonna come back. Because this is Kansas City and people love their football. I don’t see it having a tremendous downside for [the team].”

The players might be able to nudge the team in the right direction. “The NFL players have a tremendous amount of collective power,” says Good Fox. “My dream is that they will understand what I am saying, what so many others are saying, and will work within their systems to remove derogatory imagery and practices.”

Change is hard. Sports can be a sentimental thing. But change is also inevitable.

So why not do the right thing, as soon as possible? What might ease the transition? “If the team were on board with it,” says Crouser, “and asked some of their star players to say, hey, I need you to help me make this change ... People would do anything for Patrick Mahomes. They would do anything.” (If you’re reading this, Pat, it’s true: We’d do anything for you.)

For those who want to root for the

hometown football team without tacitly accepting the mascot and imagery affiliated with the team, Julia Good Fox has some suggestions on how to take action: “Start a respectful letter-writing campaign to the players, the Hunt family, and Roger Goodell. Advocating against this imagery is low-hanging fruit. It’s easy to do.

Make it a habit until the imagery is removed.”

What’s more, when you see folks protesting this imagery at the stadium or elsewhere: “Don’t look away. Please join in. It may be an eye-opener to experience what these courageous individuals go through fighting for the dignity of American Indians.”

Of course the issue runs deeper than just football teams or individuals in costumes.

Our education system and media do not offer much substance on both the history and present experiences of American Indians.

“At a fundamental level, the imagery is the result of a lack of meaningful education,” says Good Fox. “Start introducing the subjects of treaties, Tribal sovereignty and self-determination, colonialism and decolonialism in K-12, and we would see some transformative effects in this country in a generation or so.”

Good Fox also encourages self-education. There is a wealth of resources available for those who look. “Partake in more Indigenous-produced media such as news outlets, films and videos, and radio and podcasts.

Let’s all challenge ourselves to know more truth about each other’s humanity at the end of this year than we know today.”

This is an issue that should concern all Chiefs fans. “I know not everyone is going in their chicken feather headdresses and painting their faces,” says Crouser. “Not everybody that supports the team goes to the really egregious behavior, but we’re tolerating it. That says something, the things that we will tolerate as a society, of what people do to other people, speaks to our character.”

“I know we’re better than that,” continues Crouser. “I know we are. I live here. I love Kansas City. I’ve felt the love in Kansas City.

I know that, as a city, we are so much better than that.” So, Kansas City: let’s be better.

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THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

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17

IN MEMORIAM

Ferruzza at Natasha’s Mulberry & Mott in Kansas City, Mo.

IN MEMORIAM:

CHARLES FERRUZZA HOW DO YOU CELEBRATE A LIFE THAT WAS A DOZEN LIVES IN ONE? BY SCOTT WILSON

Charles Ferruzza, the writer and broadcaster whose restaurant reviews and food writing made his byline The Pitch’s marquee attraction during the paper’s fattest years, died January 28, following a short illness. He was 62.

As the editor who marshalled his work at a time when first digital publishing and then new ownership demanded copy in excess of good craft—that is, as the editor made to lay off Charles a second time in his Pitch career on the basis of spreadsheets and vague threats, having presided over assignments that would compromise anyone’s gastric health—I thought he was older.

Journalism ages even its smaller-town practitioners. The ones who treat their beats as though a global audience awaits go faster because they’ve gone harder. And Charles never presumed his readers were provincial, were limited by living here. He uniquely understood the metro’s depth and scale.

Not that Charles was a journalist. How could he have been when I never saw him eat at his desk? Everywhere else, sure. But his station was cluttered not with crumbs or coffee cups but with years of menus and printed publicists’ emails, a hopelessly unindexed almanac detailing a city forever shifting under his crooked desk chair.

He was a journalist, of course. He had a decorator’s eye for detail and an eavesdrop-

18

THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

per’s ear for the embellishable bon mot. And of course he knew how to pick up a phone and ask questions. Sometimes they were questions I wish he’d asked before deadline.

But often, the later he bothered, the better the answers he got. He was a genius at buffering tossed-off questions with small flatteries and acute perceptions so that his subjects would let through something off-brand, outside the chef ’s persona.

Charles was also a liar, and this aged us both.

He lied to me routinely about when a review would be finished, sometimes in a voicemail announcing a sick day on a due date. (Always he began as he did all of his live calls, by giving his first and last names in his lowest, most secretive timbre, a spy discovered and seeking extraction.)

And he lied to you sometimes, too.

He failed to tell you occasionally that some weird place whose beating heart sang to him simply did not make food worth paying money to eat. Instead, he extolled the strangeness of such places, leaving you to infer from a dearth of menu exploration that perhaps a drink at the bar and some cautious people-watching would suffice.

Nor did Charles typically disclose that his palate was sometimes compromised by nicotine recidivism, or that entire Yellow Pages sections of foodstuffs made him all

but retch into a garbage pail upon mention.

The man did not like pizza! Yet he was cunning in his workarounds when circumstances dictated.

In the privacy of the office, Charles’ response to many things—including the idea to do a pizza issue—was a booming, theatrical Blech!

Sometimes it came out guttural, venomous. Other times it was charming and almost polite, like the useful caution a native offers a tourist on the street. I told him once that I wanted to record it and use it for his ringtone, though he wasn’t a texter and, as I said, tended to call only with disappointing news.

In print, a classic Charles bleccccccchhhhh might come out this way: Backfire BBQ in Wyandotte County may be the only place in town whose menu potentially could be used as a deadly weapon. The two thin, brushed-steel plates that serve as a cover for this restaurant’s listing of available dishes could, with very little effort, be transformed into guillotine blades or a samurai sword.

And I think I would prefer to face the guillotine or be tossed into a fiery barbecue pit than have to eat again at Backfire BBQ. This obviously was worth whatever wait was involved that week.

Anyway, all of the above must be rec-

JULIE DENESHA AND KCUR 89.3FM

ognized as entirely fair deceptions and the economical behaviors of someone asked to be several places at once. The deadline fabulism is part of the lumbering slapstick waltz in which all editors and writers pose themselves. The rest falls under the broad license of storytelling. And Charles was a singular storyteller. If you’re reading this, it’s because you admired his ability to turn a few semi-reluctant visits to a dining establishment into a short Kansas City fable—as recalled by Truman Capote and Oscar Wilde sharing Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show couch.

Recall his 2000 review of Tuscany Manor, an unlikely Lee’s Summit Italian restaurant that failed to generate long-term likelihood even after Charles teased us with this: After a swift tour through the renovated 133-year-old farmhouse and a peek into the tidy little upstairs bathroom, you might be compelled to ask: “C’e un dottore in casa?” or “Is there a doctor in the house?”

No, the bathroom’s unexpected inhabitant is not the restaurant’s resident ghost (and there is one, according to co-owner Greg Hunsucker, who told me that the friendly poltergeist likes to shuffle around a set of cordial glasses in a locked case in the Wine Room) but the head and leg of a female mannequin lolling in the bathroom’s tub, surrounded by glass bubbles.

“It’s straight out of The Shining!” said my friend Bob, who discovered the oddball tableau and practically fell down the back staircase in his rush to report on it. Our companion, Fred, and I didn’t care — we were too busy gobbling up fat, crusty crab cakes drizzled with béarnaise ($7.50) and spooning a glorious artichoke bruschetta ($6.50), a purée of artichoke hearts and chopped tomatoes over toasted slices of bread.

“Il sole tuscana le ha cotto il cervello,” I told Bob — the Tuscan sun had cooked his brain. I didn’t believe the girl-in-the-bathtub story until I saw her for myself, but by that time, the oddball charm of Tuscany Manor had started working its magic on me.

It was one of the first pieces he wrote for The Pitch, and it established the Ferruzza template: Openly question the point of the restaurant, quote his tablemates (notably that most stalwart foil, “my friend Bob”) saying the cattiest things about which Charles himself stays discreetly mute, consider the food in a simply transactional fashion. In this case: There is a broad Italian influence on a third of the menu’s dishes, yes. But Tuscan?

No. The cuisine from the Tuscan region — the very heart of Italy — is more rustic and simple than the Neapolitan dishes offered here, such as the luscious slab of baked lasagna

IN MEMORIAM

The voice that shaped the palate of Kansas City.

JULIE DENESHA AND KCUR 89.3FM

($13) in a sea of basil-scented tomato sauce or the rich, slightly salty plate of cheese tortellini with smoked salmon ($17.50), all dappled in pesto cream sauce, fresh spinach, and bits of salty smoked salmon.

Dishes in Charles’ reviews were often dappled with sauces, by the way, just as good broths were tawny, enticing breads crusty, and shrimp worth considering brawny. I used to think of these and other of his heavily repeated descriptors as failures of imagination. Now they seem to me the loose change of that transactional approach to food, what he got back from spending his intelligence on a more cosmic assessment.

C.J. Janovy, the Pitch editor who worked longest and best with Charles, wrote in her beautiful obituary on KCUR 89.3’s website that this approach drew its share of complaints. But his restaurant reviews were conceived as alternatives to something else that’s long gone: the more reverential, self-consciously “correct” dining columns of The Kansas City Star (or, really, any other daily paper, few of which have retained full-time food critics). They were never supposed to be lapidary pronouncements of whose steak was most tender. Likewise, they predated—and then rejected—the Internet-driven boom in excitable food blogging and the ugly crowdsourcing of Yelp and the hype and anti-hype that still characterize both.

Fair to say now too that the majority of the places to which Charles devoted his efforts are gone, have been gone awhile, and few are mourned. He understood that this was the way of things, knew that part of this firmament’s order depended on his bearing witness and moving on. And his having written a more typical strain of restaurant criticism would have altered the ultimate trajectory of none of these businesses.

The lasting gift Charles gave us instead (as long as there’s a functioning archive at this URL) is an exhaustive history of what restaurateurs good, smart, bad, stupid, and points between tried to do here as the century turned over and began to mature. That is, he gave us a brilliant cross-section of our metro at a pivotal moment. Charles was a professional writer, an amateur historian, and an entirely assimilated Kansas Citian, and the value of his zillion words for this paper—as the amalgam of these things, as a kind of belletrist—is inestimable. It deserves a safe and permanent haven.

So did Charles.

Charles, the patron saint of blown deadlines. Charles, the superstitious hypochondriac.

Charles, the shoulda-been TCM host who mainlined Hollywood Babylon. Charles,

the former restaurant waiter with countless stories of rudeness, inebriation, and calamity.

Charles, the denizen of and advocate for lost worlds: steakhouses, flea markets, discos, secret drag clubs, charm schools.

Charles, the after-hours astrologer and empty-promises matchmaker. (After my divorce, more than 15 years ago, in the longest conversation we’d had to that point, he told me he had a neighbor in Brookside I had to meet. “She has very large breasts!” he said, cupping his hands under his chest as though we were in a Three’s Company episode. This left me speechless, which pleased his sense that he grasped heteronormative primitivism. The subject never arose again.)

Charles, the gunshot survivor whose own father was shot to death, both crimes random.

Charles, the Sicilian, Catholic understander of heritage and family. I once brought my late grandmother’s recipe box to work so Charles could evaluate its contents: the midcentury magazine recipes and newspaper food-section clippings, their recombinant strains of pre-Depression scratch cooking and postwar convenience foods.

He treated this prearranged event as though visiting a white-glove archive, commenting on each little laminated card and recounting certain of his own family mealtime recollections.

Charles, whom your grandma would have liked and who could have understudied her.

Charles, the brother and uncle and son.

Charles, the grudge-y Facebook user whose temporary abandonment felt like being written out of a favorite cousin’s will.

Charles, who could detect a slight from outer space and deployed a NORAD-grade defensiveness accordingly. Charles, the passive-aggressive missile.

Charles, who was capable of absurd courtliness and skid-row profanity, and whose best laugh was an unseemly bray.

Charles, the bawd.

Charles, lover of casinos and casino buffets. Charles, the estate-sale hound who brought us tchotchkes, geegaws, junk.

Charles, who understood kitsch and camp and adored good theater.

Charles, who wanted to write the definitive local guide to hating straight bachelorette parties at drag shows and gay bars but who knew that the owners and staff of such businesses were, not surprisingly, less than eager to go on the record dissing a breadand-butter revenue source.

Charles, who was the most entertaining lunch companion or dinner date any of us who had the honor will ever remember.

For what turned out to be a short list of the city’s worthwhile pancakes, he and I met at 2 a.m. in Westport, when a breakfast-all-night place briefly existed there. We ate profoundly mediocre starch and drank coffee in the middle of the night, and it is my defining Westport experience.

It’s a cliché to say that he contained multitudes, and it would also be a Charleslike inflation of the truth. But he was, as we say now, a lot. And he deserved a lot better from this business (from me, too) than he got.

I can bring no authority or special insight into Charles’ gayness or how he felt about having lived through the AIDS crisis.

I lack the depth of understanding it would

take to talk about the longtime sobriety that was conspicuous only because he happily positioned his byline well apart from fancy wine lists and what became a somewhat out-of-hand cocktail culture. Charles was a complainer, but he never bitched about these serious things, never spoke as though the wisest choices he’d made for himself, including the career he’d carved out, came with heartache or second thoughts.

Smaller things, though, were always fair game. Charles may be the last American to have referred to suffering “the trots.”

Certainly, he was the only food critic ever to have used the phrase in a review.

The week Charles died, I read poet Robert Hass’ latest book, Summer Snow. Hass turns 79 in March, and this new volume remarks often and well on death. When I got to one called “Smoking in Heaven,” which speculates about how some might fill an afterlife’s endless leisure, I thought of Charles.

If there’s a destination waiting beyond this plane, he’s there now. He is wearing tight clothes. He looks good. He is smoking. He has no deadline but is writing in a notebook.

If he likes you, he’ll tell you the juicy parts he’s going to leave out of the finished piece.

He has all the time in the world.

The online version of this article has a running set of additional stories. If you’re someone with kind memories of Charles and you’d like to have those included, please send those details to brock@thepitchkc.com and we’ll get them added. There will be an upcoming tribute to Charles Ferruzza to benefit The Writers Place at the Uptown Theater. We will update the online post with event details as they are finalized. thepitchkc.com | March 2020 | THE PITCH

19

FEATURE

At a IGDA meeting, game makers and players gather to test local creations and give feedback.

PUSH START:

BY REB VALENTINE

HOW KANSAS CITY CREATORS ARE MAKING GAMES THE WORLD WON’T FLY OVER INNOVATIVE EXPERIENCES AND PERSONAL STORIES ARE FINDING THEIR NICHE IN A HOMEGROWN SCENE BY REB VALENTINE

Charlotte Trible hates the term “flyover,” as in “flyover states.” As in how states like Kansas and Missouri are often described derisively by those who don’t live here.

So it was with great irony that several years ago, Trible and fellow game developer Joe Hanna named their small community of video and tabletop game creators collaborating in Kansas City the “Flyover Indies.”

“In this case, I wanted to embrace it,” she says. “Our group has been kind of under the radar in a lot of ways, so it felt a bit like we’re our own little group of flyover indies.

It just seemed to fit, like we were reclaiming that term a little bit. I think it suits us.”

Trible and Hanna founded the group in 2014 as Crossroads Game Lab, after (as

20

THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

Hanna describes it) the two had struggled to make their own video games in the same space together for some time. Without a larger support network, Hanna says, the process was challenging, and the two both wanted help from others, and to provide help to those just getting started.

At first, the group was just a regular Sunday meet-up at Broadway Roasting Company with Trible and Hanna sitting in the same space, working on their own games. But word spread. Eventually, Trible and Hanna had to change the name from Crossroads Game Lab to Flyover Indies. Interested parties kept sending them job applications, thinking they were a game development studio. Whoops.

Now, in 2020, Flyover Indies hosts two other regular monthly events aside from its weekly “Study Hall” at Broadway Roasting Company, and the group’s Discord [online chat platform] server now has over 100 people. On any given Sunday afternoon, you can find a group of between 10 to 20 artists, heads down over laptops, and assortments of cables in the back of Broadway Roasting Company, rapidly typing lines of code or navigating tiny virtual cars onto ramps or carefully adjusting a stray pixel on a 16-bit battle-knight. In 2018, they hosted an opento-the-public games showcase where anyone could come and play demos of games made by members of the group. In 2020, they’re doing it again.

“After we did our showcase, one of the things one of the developers said to me was how good it was to see that there were other people close by who were going through the same things they were going through,” Trible says. “Just having that validation that, ‘It’s not just me out here!’ This is kind of a weird hobby to have. Some people play golf, I guess.

“There are a lot of people who come to us who are very new to at least some aspects of this, whether it’s the first game they’ve ever made, or they’re trying to learn how to program, or how to make a board game.

We have people in our group to help answer their questions and teach them and show them, to playtest. It’s hard to get people to test your games!”

For those that may be out of the loop on current gaming trends, or who might not engage with titles more obscure than the latest Call of Duty, it is worth explaining what a renaissance the indie game world is experiencing, and how KC fits into that.

Way back in the advent of games creation, it was fairly common for a single person to program an entire game by themselves. As technology developed, you needed more folks on a team to handle the evolv-

FEATURE

ing needs of more complicated art and music and so on. The industry ballooned to the point where most games required between hundreds, if not thousands, of employees and budgets that outspent the largest Hollywood blockbusters. But a fork in the road appeared on the tech side of things. While some people were building these armies of programmers to create photo-realistic worlds, other creators were realizing that they suddenly had the tools to make games that told stories they found interesting. Personal, odd adventures. And that they could do it with only a few people.

The result is that, for the last decade, when you look at lists of the best games of the year, you’ll see bank-breaking productions like the latest Grand Theft Auto sideby-side with a game about farming made by a single person. Sure, there’s a game on that list that easily made a billion dollars, but the players also put it on equal footing to a small British game about being a terrible goose.

It’s akin to what happened in the mid2000s when home music recording became accessible to everyone. Suddenly, song of the year might be split between an Aerosmith song with a full orchestra and a banger some teenager recorded in his bedroom and put up on MySpace. People adore art that speaks to them, and the production values are no longer the gatekeepers they once were. We’re in the punk rock phase of games.

This revelation has meant that small gaming collectives have been sprouting up around the midwest for years, and young creatives in KC are finding the foothold— not just to life up their own work—but to put us on the map.

Regular attendees of Flyover Indies events say that even though for the most part, everyone is working on their own, individual project, the ability to work in the same space as other people making similar things is an enormous boon. One semi-regular attendee, Ryan Nicoletti, lives and works an hour away in Warrensburg, making it difficult for him to attend all events.

But he says that even just having the online group chat available for feedback is extremely helpful.

Flyover Indies is more than video games. Trible and Hanna say they wanted to make sure the group was open to game making of all kinds, and that philosophy stuck. So while the group’s Study Halls at Broadway Roasting Company are mostly marked by a detail of laptops lined up across the coffee shop’s back tables, piles of dice, poster board, and colorful paper squares are occasionally tossed in among the technology. Lately, the pile of pieces has belonged to Adam Sadiq, a creator who has successfully crowdfunded one game (That’s a Wrap!, a game about filmmaking) and is currently working on a follow-up.

For Sadiq, Flyover Indies has been instrumental in helping his games exist in the

Where to find Kansas City-made games: Bad Rhino Games: badrhinogames.com

Left: Jake LaCombe shows off his recent holiday game creation, Sneaky St. Nick, at a recent IGDA meeting. Right: Joe Hanna and Adam Sadiq celebrate after successfully losing a new tabletop game Sadiq is creating—a loss means Sadiq has ideas for how to make it better.

Below: A fraction of games available Pawn and Pint..

REB VALENTINE

first place. While video games can be digitally tested by people anywhere, tabletop games require in-person players to work out all the kinks. Sadiq says that in order to be successful, he needed both the local community and digital communities to provide information and valuable feedback on his process and goals.

He isn’t the only local tabletop game maker who has benefitted from both the ease of Kickstarter and the convenience of local communities. Andrew Tippin is another local creator who has successfully funded his game, Fleets of Fortune. He credits local tabletop communities such as those at board game cafe Pawn and Pint, fellow local game makers, and the ease of crowdfunding.

“Kickstarter with the catalyst,” he says.

“Exploding Kittens [another successful Kickstarter tabletop game] came out, my wife and I played it, and I thought, ‘I can do this.’ Of course, I had other prototype games before this, but I played a lot of games [at Pawn and Pint] and got a lot of inspiration on mixing and matching mechanics and putting them together.”

The game makers in Kansas City fall into two categories: those who make games as a hobby alongside a different (though often adjacent) career and those who are partor full-time creators, but rely on remote freelance and contract work with studios elsewhere. For now, Kansas City is mostly

devoid of full-time, working game companies where aspiring developers can build their skills.

But there is one exception: Bad Rhino Games.

Bad Rhino Games was established in 2015 by studio lead Ryan Manning, who had been working in the city doing a mixture of contract work for the military developing training simulations, and as a remote artist for video game studios. After 12 years, he says he hit a plateau and wanted to start his own company. It seemed like a good time for it—Google had recently selected Kansas City as the first city to receive its Fiber internet service, and the metro as a whole was beginning to develop new mechanisms to help out small, tech start-ups.

But since then, Manning says that the movement he expected to happen in tech was never quite realized, at least not in a way that helps the people who are trying to make games.

“We won Google Fiber, [the city] diversified a little bit, then stopped,” he says.

“Right now we’re extremely myopic. It’s just, ‘Can you make an app? Can you sell it to Amazon or Alibaba? And can you exit in 12 months?’ That’s great for people who want to do that. It’s lucrative, it’s awesome. But game development doesn’t fit that model.”

According to Manning, Kansas City has had an influx of tech-savvy people

Overhook Games: overhookgames.com/hillsnhollows Stitchcraft, by Ryan Nicoletti (in>D:\development): bit.ly/stichcraft Aspen, by Quinn George (Koimarina): koimarina.itch.io/aspen That’s a Wrap! The Game of Filmmaking Frenzy by Adam Sadiq (Diacritical Games): bit.ly/KickstartThatsAWrap Fleets of Fortune by Andrew Tippin (Roxie Games): roxiegames.net/fleets-of-fortune Joe Hanna’s games (JoeHasDied): joehasdied.itch.io Charlotte Trible’s games (Espion Games): espiongames.itch.io Calvin Plank’s games (SodaPOP67): sodapop67.itch.io Jake LaCombe’s games (TwistedHawk): twistedhawk.itch.io Nash High’s games and other work: nashhigh.com Clover Ross’ games and other work: cloverross.com thepitchkc.com | March 2020 | THE PITCH

21

FEATURE

From Left to right: Dragoon Drop, by Strange Spaces (with Joe Hannah). Sneaky St. Nick, by Jake LaCombe. Transmutations, by Nash High.

Flyover Indies Events Study Hall: Every Sunday from 12-5 p.m. in the back of Broadway Roasting Co. Work on a game or project in the same space as other creators in a relaxed, supportive environment.

Devs & Drinks: Third Wednesday of every month from 6-9 p.m. at Strange Days Brewing Co. A social event for local game makers to hang out, chat, meet others, and play games.

Ludology Club: First Saturday of every month, 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. at Blip Roasters on Troost Ave. Discuss game design and share resources with other game creators. Plus, new game design topics every session.

Local Gaming Spots Draftcade 7260 NW 87th St, Kansas City draftcade.com Level One Game Shop 400 Grand Blvd, Kansas City levelonegameshop.com Mission Board Games 5606 Johnson Dr, Mission missionboardgames.com Pawn & Pint 613 Walnut St, Kansas City pawnsandpints.com Table Top Game and Hobby 9156 Metcalf Ave, Overland Park tabletopgameandhobby.com Tapcade 1701 McGee, Kansas City tapcadekc.com Up-Down 101 Southwest Blvd, Kansas City updownarcadebar.com/kansas-city

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THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

show up for tech jobs over the last decade who have nowhere else to go or grow outside of the niches they were hired for. As a result, he says he’s now seeing the beginnings of an exodus to other cities with more diverse tech scenes.

That’s part of why Bad Rhino Games, which now consists of 17 people, is entirely distributed remotely. Manning acknowledges that Kansas City has plenty of budding and growing independent game talent, but by nature of having only his studio, there’s little in the way of full-time game making experience. That means the pool of midand senior-level talent with game development chops is non-existent, and unless either more studios begin to crop up or larger companies begin to invest in initiatives that use game development skills, the situation will remain the way it is.

However, Manning is hopeful. Even over just the last few months, he says he’s begun to see movement, and while there’s no tangible change yet, he says he knows, “without a shadow of a doubt, that game companies can be successful here.”

“I’m seeing some forward progress, even though it’s like looking at a track, realizing you have a mile to go, and you’ve only taken three steps,” he adds, “But those steps are in the right direction. There are a few companies I know of—I can’t say who they are—that are Kansas City-based and building capabilities within their companies to support game development, or using game technology for game development-specific stuff. They’re not just small companies.

They’re well-vested here, so I know they’re not going to build a thing and leave. It’s encouraging, but we still have a long way to go.”

“Some of the other indies who are being more vocal here are helping to drive the professional front of that. It’s something to reinforce, especially to businesses … and I think they’re starting to gather that this is something to be taken more seriously.”

At the forefront of that vocal drive is Kansas City’s own chapter of the Independent Game Developers Association, or IGDA, for which Manning is the treasurer.

Its chair, Clover Ross, is one of the city’s few full-time developers, though she still has to supplement it with a part-time, non-gaming job. Ross returned to Kansas City after

graduating college in 2019, and immediately wanted to get involved in whatever was happening around game development.

Like Manning, Ross found a lot of people who were excited about making games and who were willing to help improve the scene, but few who were able to step up and lead. So she volunteered to be the chair of the city’s (then-new) chapter of the IGDA and lead the charge to putting Kansas City game development on the map. Ross is optimistic, and thinks the key to success lies in the existing local tech scene sitting up and taking notice.

“An investor might look at this and think, ‘What is the interest? What can I gain from this?’ Well, the medical field is already using Unity [an engine primarily used for developing video games] for medicinal or therapeutic reasons. And when other industries start paying attention to the skills and technologies used in gaming, they can start using them in their industries. That’s one of the ways other businesses can start getting involved.”

The business and tech scene aren’t the only areas harboring optimism for a future professional game development scene in and around Kansas City. About an hour’s drive away, the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg has been training up the next generation of professional game developers through its bachelor’s degree in computer science, which includes a game development option as one of four specialties students can choose from.

Right now, the program has around 40 students, according to assistant professor Dr. Dabin Ding. Aside from its benefits as a way to vary the kinds of programming and software development experience the program’s students can get, Ding thinks the game development option has been a positive for the university, helping it draw new computer science majors.

“It’s a selling point to attract students,” he says. “And even if you’re not in this major, you can take some development classes. I see a lot of students who started designing a game when they were in high school or middle school, so they had created a lot of elements already before they started here. Most students [in the program] are really enthusiastic about learning how to create games.

Whenever I teach the class, compared to some of my other [non-game development] classes, I find I don’t need to emphasize attendance or finishing homework as much— they’re all excited to do it and interested in it.”

Outside of class periods, the program is growing in other ways thanks to student efforts. One student named Calvin Plank, who had been regularly attending the Flyover Indies meet-ups an hour away, decided they wanted the community feeling of those meet-ups a bit closer to class. Earlier this year, they started a Game Design Club at UCM, and after only a few meetings it appears to have the makings of success.

Around 50 students are already involved across the club’s two meetings each week, and its members are planning their first game jam (a one-to-two day event where everyone makes a game from start to finish in a limited period of time) in March.

For the students in the program and the members of the club, Plank’s vision of a collaborative community environment for game making is already panning out. Father-son pair Judd and Andrew McNeil, for example, were drawn to UCM’s game making program despite already finishing and currently working on (respectively) degrees elsewhere. Both share a love of games and a desire to make more of the kinds of games they want to see in the world, but prior to the program felt they were working in a bit of a vacuum due to a lack of other developers in the area.

Judd McNeil in particular is unphased by the perceived isolation of game creators in the middle of the US, far from Silicon Valley or game development hubs like San Francisco, though he’s grateful for UCM’s program in helping break up the solitude.

“There’s no geography to creating a game,” he says. “As long as you’ve got access to the internet, you can publish it anywhere.

The whole concept of having Silicon Valley or Texas be a center of game development is going to go away, because someone in a hut in the middle of nowhere is going to be able to upload a game. Where you’re located doesn’t matter anymore.”

Of the game developers we spoke to, most shared Judd McNeil’s sentiment of geography being beside the point. A few,

FEATURE

Ryan Nicoletti, Charlotte Trible, (back) Jake LaCombe, Joe Hanna, and Quinn George (from) try each other’s games and share feedback at a recent Devs & Drinks event at Strange Days Brewing Co. REB VALENTINE

however, felt that while they were happy to have gotten their start here, they may eventually need to look elsewhere. One example is Quinn George, who specifically got into games to make more titles that include LGBTQ+ people and themes—such as their current project, a visual novel called Aspen that stars a non-binary protagonist. While George values the Flyover Indies community, they aren’t sure if there’s a future in Kansas City for their work.

“It’s not a matter of feeling that this would be a bad town for game development in the future,” they say. “I’d just like to experience other places that would fit my niche a bit more.”

Most of the members of Flyover Indies and the other Kansas City game making communities are hopeful. One example of that hope is Overhook Games, a local five-person studio making a game called Hills and Hollows that was honored at St. Louis’s PixelPop convention last year as a PixelPop Select. Overhook isn’t a full-time studio just yet, but designer Allison Vansickle is optimistic about its future prospects amid the ongoing growth of Kansas City’s tech scene.

While Vansickle wants to eventually see initiatives like tax breaks for new game studios and better game creation spaces for groups like Flyover Indies, she thinks the

“I WANT MORE GAMES TO COME OUT OF KANSAS CITY. JUST TO BE ABLE TO SHOW THAT YOU DON’T HAVE TO GO AWAY TO DO THIS STUFF. YOU CAN DO THIS HERE. I WANT PEOPLE TO LOOK AT THE DEVELOPERS IN KANSAS CITY AND SAY, ‘I CAN DO THAT TOO.’”

culture and smaller size (relative to west coast tech hubs) of Kansas City is perfect for what she and Overhook want to do.

“I get really bad burnout when I go to events in other cities, because you get there and there’s just this big, supportive community,” she says. “Even going to St. Louis or the Game Developers Conference [in San Francisco] was just crazy, being surrounded by that many game devs. Here we have a group, but it’s not nearly as big as a lot of other places.”

“Kansas City itself is growing, and I think there’s room for more studios that can make it.”

Jake LaCombe is another developer who feels he’s a perfect fit for Kansas City’s growing development scene. LaCombe says that after working for a big tech company for six years, his experience there sold him on remaining an independent creator in a city much smaller than LA. “I’m pretty happy with the jobs I have here, and it’s nice doing this as a hobby and building my skills,” he says. “And Los Angeles? It’s so crowded there. Here, in Kansas City, you have space to live, space to breathe, and it’s a good city.”

He adds that it’s not just the local tech start-ups, cheap living, and local communities that have him optimistic about games here—the city already has a thriving com-

munity of game lovers and game players, as well. He lists local groups and event holders such as KCGameOn and GGKC, as well as local hang-out spots such as TapCade, UpDown, and Pawn and Pint.

“We do have a lot of gaming communities, and then you combine that with our tech sector—it’s not gaming related, but we do have a lot of programming and stuff. So we have two of the three, now we just need developers of games.”

Trible, too, is happy to continue growing the community she and Hanna started.

“I think to do this as a career I would need to move,” she says. “But I realized I really like Kansas City. It’s not what I expected as a kid, because I grew up here, but I don’t want to leave. So the idea of taking a job at a AAA or AA game company somewhere else just sounds terrible to me, especially with some of the crunch I hear about and other issues in the industry.

“I want more games to come out of Kansas City. Just to be able to show that you don’t have to go away to do this stuff. You can do this here. I want people to look at the developers in Kansas City and say, ‘I can do that too.’”

Please check out the online version of this piece for links to games made by these creators and other local resources for young creators. thepitchkc.com | March 2020 | THE PITCH

23

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CAFE

BLINDING AMBITION AT PÁROS ESTIATORIO THE CATE BLANCHETT OF METRO GREEK RESTAURANTS BY LIZ COOK

Grilled lamb chops plated with crisp-fried potato wedges and a whole head of roasted garlic.

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THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

ZACH BAUMAN

If you read the Greeks—the ancient ones in linen tunics—you’ll encounter the term hamartia before long. In classical drama, it suggests a fatal flaw. Sometimes hamartia is a quality—pride, obstinance, indecision.

Sometimes, it’s an innocent mistake. At Páros Estiatorio, it’s an interior window.

The high-end Greek restaurant opened in Leawood’s Mission Farms this November to high expectations. Owner Kozeta “Cozy” Kreka has operated the more casual Cozy’s Café in Overland Park for years; diners seemed primed for an upscale version of her comforting Mediterranean cooking.

Her new restaurant, a partnership with her son, Klajdi Kreka, is named after the island of Páros, a gleaming sugar cube in the heart of the Aegean sea. The décor is about as close as you can get to the island without buying a plane ticket: white tablecloths, white walls, a white tray ceiling. White vases line a white shelf behind a white bar with white backlighting. In that clean-lined, streamlined environment, even the most sedate accents play like screams. A sprig of rosemary leers from atop a napkin. Meyer lemons cling to a potted tree in gorged clusters of naked sungold.

Am I making the dining room sound intimidating? If it is, it’s intimidating in a Cate Blanchett kind of way, all glamor and cheekbones and frost. At night, the vibe is sleek and romantic, candles warming up the cool tones.

The austere interior has another benefit—allowing diners to tune out distractions and focus on Kreka’s comfort-oriented cooking. At least, it would, were it not for the restaurant’s open(ish) kitchen, which bleeds hospital-bright fluorescents into the dining room through an enormous interior window. On my first dinner visit, I was seated as far from that window as possible, and it still pulled focus like a Times Square marquee.

The resulting vibe was less “vacation island” than “zealous chaperone turning on the overhead lights just when things were getting interesting.”

This is a shame, because many of Kreka’s dishes are worth traveling for. Flambéed saganaki ($16) might seem like a tourist’s gimmick, but the fried wedge of sheep’s-milk

CAFE

g ro w n b y h a n d

made by hand

Left: Cozy Kreka also owns Cozy’s Cafe in Overland Park. Right: A dining room designed to evoke the stark white island of Páros.

cheese had a salty, nutty aroma every bit as interesting as the blue-tipped flames licking its edges.

I also liked the arnisia paidakia ($42 at dinner; $29 at lunch), salt-crusted lamb chops grilled to a precise medium-rare. They arrived with crisp patates tiganites (fried potato wedges) and a whole head of roasted garlic. I suppose you could mash the soft, sweet garlic into the meat and potatoes. But you could also squeeze the papery head like a tube of toothpaste and pop naked cloves into your mouth like candy.

The dinner menu has a small section of pastas—the tortellini ($26) with Spanish ham in a parmesan cream sauce was a worthwhile indulgence, if a bit out of step with the rest of the menu—but most of the dishes are segmented by provenance: “from the land,” “from the sea,” “from the oven.”

There’s also a small selection of sides, all of which are $7. The grilled broccolini was cold and bitter, with little else going on. I preferred the patates lemonates. The canoes of roasted potato were soft and tender, chastely but detectably lemon-ed.

Technique is rarely an issue at Páros Estiatorio; seasoning often is. The moussakas ($24)—a steaming casserole of ground beef, eggplant, and potato bound with béchamel—needed salt (and about 10 minutes to cool before serving). The same was true of the braised lamb shank ($34), which was

ZACH BAUMAN

fatty and sweet but bland. And the whole fagri ($32), a firm fish billed irresistibly as the “King of the Aegean,” had luxurious flesh but bitterly charred skin.

The pastitsio ($22) is a textural and architectural marvel, and one of your best bets at dinner. The béchamel was fragrant with nutmeg and bay, and the nest of bucatini noodles had been expertly troweled into a sturdy foundation for the Greek lasagna. Still, the dish needed a bit more zip—even some pepper—to wake up the flavors and nudge the dish from homestyle to haute.

Prices set expectations, and the two aren’t always in sync here. The “trio of spreads” ($17) felt a bit overpriced for what amounted to three small ramekins of tzatziki, taramosalata, and a grainy and tahini-timid hummus. Still, I might not have minded if all three of those spreads were the tzatziki, which was thick and creamy and dense with dill.

Where Páros excels is its cocktails, which absolutely live up to their price tag. I enjoyed the Greek Freak ($15), a smooth-sipping Metaxa-based drink with Greek mountain tea and citrus syrup. But my unreserved favorite was the Hydra Punch ($13). The drink was sweet but complex, with each element— dusky fig, Christmas-y nutmeg, tangy goats’ whey—detectable.

Wine lovers can choose from a globe-trotting list that ranges from $32 to $1200 per bottle, most with high markup (often more than three times retail). Still, there’s a good by-the-glass selection of unfussy and underrated Greek wines, and the servers are adept at describing them.

Service was attentive and thoughtful

8 1 6 .2 2 1 .7 5 5 9 | bl u e bi rdbi stro .co m 1 7 0 0 S u mmi t S tre e t

PÁROS ESTIATORIO 10561 Mission Rd 913-544-1262 parosleawood.com

Hours: Tuesday–Friday 11 AM–10 PM

Voted Best Mom & Pop restaurant in The Pitch’s Best Of KC.

Saturday 9:30 AM–10 PM Sunday 9:30 AM–9 PM

Prices: Appetizers $13–$23 Entrees: $20–$42 Cocktails: $13–$16 Brunch: $9–$16

Best bet: Come for brunch or lunch, when dishes are a little less pricey, and order the saganaki and the arnisia paidakia. In the mood for a drink? Hail (the) Hydra (Punch).

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27

CAFE

across my visits. Cozy came to our table to introduce herself warmly during a weeknight dinner; her son, Klajdi, stopped by to check on us at brunch.

Weekend brunch offers a more economical way to visit Páros. Most brunch dishes are in the $10 to $15 range, but you can also order from the regular or prix fixe lunch menus (the latter offers three courses for $26.95, which is a good value; many options are smaller portions of items available at dinner).

The ambience is more pleasant at brunch, too, when cold daylight streams through the

restaurant’s windows and softens the contrast with the kitchen’s fluorescents.

Still, I’m not sure even the staff are a fan of that kitchen window. When one brunch server caught me staring, she said, “It’s a real window! You can watch us get yelled at!” I laughed uneasily. “It’ll happen!” she chimed.

I didn’t get the sense she was joking.

The brunch menu has some classic dishes executed well—crisp hashbrowns, a hearty Croque Madame, a rustic and crusty tartine.

The novel options here are the “tiers”—threetiered platters fit for a swanky tea room. One

Left: Nutty kefalograviera cheese is flambéed for the restaurant’s saganaki. Right: The Hydra Punch (top) and baklava (bottom) round out a meal.

ZACH BAUMAN

tier has croissants and prosciutto; another Greek yogurt and fruit. I ordered the Solomos tier ($28.50), which had a base of three toasted bagels (good, though not made in-house), a middle plate of smoked salmon and capers, and a crown of garnishes: English cucumber wedges, creamy hard-boiled eggs, wan, hothouse tomato slices. The menu promised “pickled red onions,” but they weren’t on offer. “It usually looks better than this,” our

server winced when she brought it out.

I’m not sure I’ll be back to find out. I want Páros to succeed. The metro isn’t exactly swimming in high-end Greek food, and the restaurant is promising something different to diners. But the kitchen doesn’t always deliver—and when it does, it doesn’t always dazzle. At these prices, diners are going to expect some culinary jazz hands. And maybe a pair of sunglasses for that kitchen window.

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Brent Havens, guest conductor Tony Vincent, vocalist

Your Kansas City Symphony and Windborne present a full rock band with the orchestra to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Rolling Stones iconic albums, "Beggar’s Banquet" and "Let It Bleed." Hear classic hits “Gimme Shelter,” “Midnight Rambler” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” plus rock anthems “Brown Sugar,” “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” and many more!

Please note: The Rolling Stones will not be performing at this event. ©2019 ABKCO Music & Records, Inc. www.abkco.com

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BEETHOVEN’S FOURTH PIANO CONCERTO Friday, March 20 at 8 p.m.

Saturday, March 21 at 8 p.m.

Sunday, March 22 at 2 p.m.

Johannes Debus, guest conductor Eric Lu, piano (Underwritten by the Almy Legacy Fund)

BARBER Essay No. 2 BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4 R. SCHUMANN Symphony No. 3, “Rhenish” Guest conductor Johannes Debus leads the Symphony and piano prodigy Eric Lu for the extraordinary Fourth Concerto — a blend of haunting lyricism, technical finesse and musical innovation. Tickets start at $25

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Wednesday, March 25 at 7 p.m.

Jason Seber, David T. Beals III Associate Conductor

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Friday, March 27 at 8 p.m.

Saturday, March 28 at 7 p.m.

Jason Seber, David T. Beals III Associate Conductor

The world’s top ABBA tribute band joins your Kansas City Symphony to perform the iconic songs of a generation.

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29

EAT

Eat ThisNow The Frenchie at Seven Swans Crêperie WORDS AND PHOTOS BY APRIL FLEMING

There is something for everyone on the menu at Kate Bryan’s Seven Swans Crêperie, which opened earlier this year in the Westside. Diners looking for savory, hearty fare can opt for the farmer’s crêpe, loaded with heritage breed ham, fresh greens, pan-blistered tomatoes, and cheese, topped with a sunny-side up egg. If you have a sweet tooth, you can find options with house-made marshmallows, fresh fruit, and even ice cream. Vegan and gluten-free crêpes are even available in both savory and sweet styles. Our current favorite, however, is the “Frenchie.” Stuffed with sweet caramelized onions, creamy gruyère, and sprinkled with fresh parsley, the dish is unassuming yet packed with flavor. Like everything coming out of Bryan’s kitchen, this is easy on the eyes and even easier on the palette.

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705 SE MELODY LN LEE’S SUMMIT, MO 64063 816-524-5515

THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

5901 JOHNSON DR., MISSION, KS 66202 913-362-7700

3395 MAIN STREET KANSAS CITY, MO 64111 816-561-7176

OPEN 6AM – 3PM EVERYDAY

816.931.4401 | WWW.THECORNERKC.COM

DRINK

Drink This Now The Dulce Calor at South of Summit Taqueria & Tequila WORDS AND PHOTOS BY APRIL FLEMING

South of Summit turns out to be a good stopping place if you like tequila or mezcal—it’ll certainly be one of the only places in the area where you can find Cazadores, Bozal, Nuestra Soledad, or any of the dozens of other varieties of agave spirits, available in .75- or 1.5-ounce pours. (We’ll take a flight!)

The real draw is the cocktails, which feature fresh-squeezed juices and simple but well-conceived preparations. If you like strawberries—and heat—a standout is Dulce Calor. The name translates to sweet heat, and being straightforward has never led anyone wrong. It derives most of its flavor from a housemade strawberry-habanero purée, but is nicely balanced with peppery Elvelo Blanco tequila, Bittermen’s hellfire habanero shrub, and fresh-squeezed lime juice. The coupe glass it’s served in is rimmed with coarse chili-lime salt, which also complements the unabashed fruitiness of the drink. It tastes like biting into a spicy, salty, ripe strawberry, and we’ll take two more, please.

South of Summit Taqueria & Tequila. 516 W 75th St. southofsummit.com APRIL FLEMING

WE’VE BEEN DRAFTING 40 YEARS OF NEWS AND CULTURE FOR KANSAS CITY, SO FOR OUR BIRTHDAY WE’VE TEAMED UP WITH SOME OF OUR FAVORITE LOCAL BREWERIES TO CRAFT LIMITED RELEASES THROUGHOUT 2020 TO RAISE MONEY FOR LOCAL CHARITIES. STOP BY AND SIP ON SOME OF OUR STORIES TODAY.

NIGHT RANGER INSPIRED BY A LEGENDARY PITCH COLUMN, THE NIGHT RANGER, WRITTEN BY THE LATE JEN CHEN.

A SNAPPY BALANCE OF BITTERNESS AND SPICE. THIS CRISP LAGER PAIRS PERFECTLY WITH PEOPLE WATCHING AND GETTING YOU OUT OF YOUR SHELL SO YOU CAN HAVE A DAMN GOOD TIME.

thepitchkc.com | March 2020 | THE PITCH

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ARTS

Rodgers checks the camera while filming the Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Roadshow stop in Kansas City for Chasing Chasing Amy. TRAVIS YOUNG

SAV RODGERS IS CHASING SEXUALITY ITSELF IN A HOLLYWOOD FANTASY FINDING A FUTURE IN THE OUROBOROS OF FANDOM BY JONAH DESNEUX

Take a moment to think about a piece of art that makes your life better. Is it the song that played in the background if your first kiss? The painting you saw on a 6th-grade field trip that made colors look a way they never had before? The book that inspired you to get out of the house and embark on adventures of your own? No matter the reason, we all have those works of art that push a smile on our face when someone dares ask: “What’s your favorite?”

That question doesn’t often inspire the long term adventure inflamed in our guest today. Asking filmmaker Sav Rodgers what his favorite piece of art is, there is no hesitation: the 1997 Miramax film Chasing Amy. The passion Rodgers has for Chasing Amy shapes his path as a filmmaker and inspired his documentary feature Chasing Chasing Amy. We promise it makes sense in a moment. Stay with us.

“Chasing Chasing Amy is about the cultural impact Chasing Amy had on the LGBTQ community and its controversy. But

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THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

also its powerful resonance in my own life.

What we’ve been able to do so far is have these difficult conversations with people about the power of positive identification and the power of movies.” Rodgers says.

“The idea is that we talk about the power that movies have in terms of reflecting yourself.”

Chasing Amy is your typical Hollywood love story. Man falls in love with woman, Woman is a self-identified lesbian, Man obsesses over turning Woman straight, Man eventually gets Woman to proclaim her love for him, Man then ruins everything by having a meltdown when he discovers Woman has been with other men before him. That classic fairy tale trope.

Chasing Amy is inherently taboo and garnered controversy by many. The script is riddled with straight male characters saying a slew of ignorant, homophobic comments.

The film’s writer and director, Kevin Smith is a heterosexual man himself, adding to the criticism that Chasing Amy may cause more harm than good.

“A lot of people maybe feel that Chasing

Amy was used to weaponize harm against LGBTQ people by straight people after it came out. I think all those points of view are valid, but I also think that Chasing Amy is a cultural Rorschach test for how we approach sexuality,” Rodgers says.

Rodgers doesn’t shy away from the controversy around Chasing Amy. In his documentary, Rodgers interviews cast, crew, and critics who stand on both sides of the fence.

“Just because I like Chasing Amy doesn’t mean that everybody else has to,” Rodgers says. “It’s the whole reason we made this movie, to seek out discourse and then it continued to evolve into other things. We talked to plenty of people who straight-up hate Chasing Amy, and I think there’s power in that. Power of seeing people disagree about things but also recognizing multiple things can be true at once.”

Rodgers was 12 years old when he watched Chasing Amy for the first time.

With a youthful obsession with Ben Affleck, he found Chasing Amy in the midst of his Ben-bender. With the film in his VCR,

Rodgers was introduced to a world of queer visibility he hadn’t seen before in other mainstream entertainment.

“I really think that Chasing Amy shows such nuance for LGTBQ characters, especially when you consider it in the context of being made in 1997. I don’t think a lot of LGBTQ movies today capture that, especially ones made by straight filmmakers. These characters have very rich inner lives, and I really respond to that,” Rodgers says.

When watching Chasing Amy for the first time, Rodgers saw a lot of himself in those rich characters. And at 18, when he came out to his mom for the first time, he used Alyssa Jones, the film’s heroine, as an example. “I feel how Alyssa feels,” he recalls telling his mom in his 2018 New York City TED Talk.

“Chasing Amy helped me come out as queer. Making Chasing Chasing Amy helped me come out as trans. I think our documentary has helped me realize even though Chasing Amy itself hasn’t changed in the last 20-something years, it has continued to profoundly change me,” Rodgers says.

While capturing the conversations and discourse people have over the film, Rodgers also gets the chance to experience a fan’s ultimate fantasy by being so connected to the film’s production. Notably, director Kevin Smith is providing a helping hand for any of Rodgers’s needs.

“I’ve always been such an avid Chasing Amy fan, but I was never like a die-hard Kevin Smith fan as much as I really enjoyed his movies,” Rodgers says. “I told him that ‘You became my hero when I met you, not before that,’ because of the kind person he is and the generosity of his spirit. That was much more effective to me than any possible movie he could make.”

Chasing Chasing Amy is wrapping up shooting currently, with a release goal of 2021. Rodgers is eager to have people watch his film and to ignite the difficult conversations that are bound to come from it.

This March, Rodgers travels to Austin for the SXSW Film Festival where he will speak on the 90 Minute Film School panel.

While Rodgers doesn’t attempt to give filmmakers a “paint by numbers” layout of how to get their films made, he wants to emphasize the possibilities out there and the importance of telling a story that only you can tell.

“For me making Chasing Chasing Amy, I feel like I’m the only person that can make this movie given what my life experiences have been,” Rodgers says. “So I really want to convey that information to the people that are going to be listening to that panel at SXSW: When you really lean into your own voice that unlocks a lot of your power as a filmmaker.”

Currently, dispensaries are the only legal avenue to purchase cannabis seeds and clones. Your last stop is GroRoom, where Ryan and the team can help get you the right growing supplies for whichever method of growing you choose, whether it be organic soil or hydroponics.

“We’re trying to push that plant to its highest potential because that’s what gives us the best quality medicine and the biggest yield,” explains Ryan. “It’s best to have that plant in its most ideal condition from day one, and then keep it all the way through its life cycle,” says Ryan. Brandon Bailey, a frequent customer at GroRoom, is currently growing three different strains of cannabis at home.

“I was a chef for a long time, and if there’s something that I’m putting in my body, I like to be able to know where it comes from and I want to be able to touch it along the way,” says Brandon. “And GroRoom has been invaluable for information and education.”

Brandon uses a grow kit tent from GroRoom. The grow kits come fully equipped for any first-time grower, including LED light, a carbon filter and exhaust fan (to help with the smell), temperature and humidity sensors, and a timer—because light timing (photoperiod) changes throughout cannabis’s life cycle.

GroRoom also carries a wide variety of soils, soilless mediums, hydroponic systems, plant nutrients, and resources, because every strain of cannabis needs their environment to be perfect to reach its full potential.

“Some strains you can push and grow 15 feet tall,” says Ryan. “You really just have to learn the strain and know the techniques and environment to grow it in.”

The good thing is Ryan knows all of that already: “I’m here to help those beginner growers be successful that first time around,” he says.

Plus, GroRoom offers classes for anyone curious about growing cannabis at home. Around ten people can stop by the store and get their hands in the soil and start learning. Ryan uses tomato plants instead of cannabis—meaning anyone can come even if they don’t have a medical or cultivation card yet.

M

edical Cannabis is now legal in Missouri. And while you can purchase medical marijuana from dispensaries, some locals are choosing to grow their cannabis at home—thanks to GroRoom.

GroRoom, located at 3703 Main Street, is a hydroponics and gardening supplies store. Manager Ryan Van Horn, a KC native, has over 13 years experience growing cannabis using many different methods: for the last ten years he lived in Colorado, and before that, in California.

GroRoom is helping Kansas City grow cannabis at home Sponsored Content

Why grow your own cannabis at home?

“The quality that you’re growing can definitely be better than anything that comes from a store because you can put that much more time and energy into each individual plant that a warehouse doesn’t have time for,” says Ryan. “It’s a lot cheaper to grow your own at home. It may be more time consuming, but there is the satisfaction of your harvest.”

Home growers also know what exactly went into their plant— from soil or “growing medium” to knowing there were no harmful pesticides or fungicides used. It’s medicine made by you, for you.

If you want to be a home grower, there are a few steps to take.

When applying for a medical marijuana card with a doctor, also apply for a cultivation card. Your doctor should be able to help with the paperwork (GroRoom suggests working with the Relief Clinic). After that, visit a dispensary to get seeds or clones. (GroRoom recommends a fast flowering Indica strain for first-time growers, but there are a lot of options.)

“I want people at the classes to get hands-on that day. They come in here and plant some tomato seeds, take some tomato cuttings, and learn early germination and propagation of plants,” says Van Horn. “In the future, maybe their friend has a mother plant they can get cuttings off of. They’ve already taken cuttings off tomato plants, which is pretty similar to taking cuttings off cannabis.”

Check GroRoom’s Facebook page for class information. And if you’re interested in growing cannabis, now is the best time to start: If you’re growing large outdoor plants start seeds indoors as early as March and move them out to your greenhouse once the weather is nice.

“We’re here to help whether you’re a beginner grower or an experienced gardener,” says Ryan Van Horn. “We’re here to help everybody take the next step.”

GroRoom 3703 Main Street Kansas City, MO 64111 (816) 569-5828 groroomkc@gmail.com

Store Hours Monday - Saturday: 10 am to 7 pm Sunday: Noon to 6 pm

facebook.com/GroRoomkc

SPORTS

ONE FOOT ON THE GAS, ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE HOW MONSTER JAM FIRES ON EVERY CYLINDER AND EVERY DOPAMINE RECEPTOR

BY LIZ COOK Climbing into the Monster Jam speedster made me feel like a softer, clammier Danica Patrick.

COURTESY OF MONSTER JAM

It’s two years old, this video. On the White House lawn, Donald Trump clambers into the cab of a gleaming big rig, his oversized sport coat flapping uselessly around his hips. He’s pumping his fists in the air, mouth agape; he’s grabbing the wheel, tugging the horn, shimmying in excitement while a bunch of men with sycophantic smiles and a lifetime ban from Sport Clips stand around and applaud.

I watch it whenever I feel like I need to understand our nation’s biggest, wettest boy. You see, I, too, want to blow the horn.

I, too, want to make the big boy truck go vroom.

I got my chance to honk in January, when the Sprint Center hosted Monster Jam: Triple Threat, a three-vehicle motorsports extravaganza. The basics: drivers compete in individual events on ATVs, speedsters (off-road utility vehicles), and monster trucks—1500 horsepower behemoths with tires the height of an adult woman. (For reference: my 1998 Chevy Lumina has about 160 horsepower, and tires the height of an adult ferret.) As with Olympic gymnastics, it’s the all-around winner that matters most.

The day before the competition, I went to the arena to do a ride-along with a Monster Jam driver. I was ecstatic. And a little conflicted. Really Big Trucks have

34

THE PITCH | March 2020

always seemed aggressively, performatively American to me, like bald eagle t-shirts or the music of Ted Nugent. Monster Jam has some of those trappings. One of the trucks is the military-themed “Soldier Fortune,” with camo wrap and silver dog tags splashed on the side. At the merch stand, you can buy a Pepto Bismol-pink tee that says “ALL AMERICAN GIRL” in the font of a Wild West saloon.

I tamped down my reservations and tugged on a fireproof racing suit. Enter driver Kayla Blood—Kayla Blood!—jogging across the mud in a camo-patterned firesuit, helmet tucked under one arm, sheets of vibrant purple hair cascading around her. She looked like a gladiator, the yawning Sprint Center a modern Colosseum.

A technician fused me to the passenger seat of the Soldier Fortune speedster with an improbable number of straps and harnesses. Blood cracked some jokes, unbothered by the sweaty writer next to her.

She had a classic tough-girl cool, a practiced spontaneity that suggested that at any minute she might sack-tap you or quote a ‘90s SNL sketch. She didn’t do either of those things. She just took off.

The engine wailed. Specks of mud splattered my face like bugs on a windshield. We took a corner so fast I was sure

SHE DUMPED MY LIMP, DAMP BODY BACKSTAGE, WHERE THE BIG BEAUTIFUL TRUCKS WERE GETTING TUNE-UPS.

two of the wheels were hovering above the ground. It felt like we were going 90 miles per hour. We were probably going 55. Blood carved a donut into the track—a perfect pirouette—and I screamed, more out of admiration than surprise.

She dumped my limp, damp body backstage, where the Big Beautiful Trucks were getting tune-ups. Here was Alien Invasion, its gleaming silver body striped with racing green lights. There was Max-D, a chrome-spiked truck that could have inspired the flame-throwing guitar rig from Mad Max: Fury Road (the “D” in “Max-D” ostensibly stands for “destruction,” to which I say: sure, Jan). Everything smelled like spray paint; every truck was exposed. I wondered silently whether any of the driving teams had ever tried to sabotage each others’ rigs.

Then drivers Joe Urie and Bernard Lyght tore past me on skateboards, their laughter echoing down the smooth concrete corridors of Sprint Center’s backstage. And I remembered: these guys are on the road together all the time, bored together all the time. And I also remembered: some of these guys are young. Both Urie and Grave Digger driver Tyler Menninga are only 23 years old.

Urie, a native of Bolivar, Missouri, is bright-eyed and fresh-faced, with good media training and an Instagram full of pictures of his coffee-can-sized biceps. He tells me he grew up watching Monster Jam, spent some time working on the trucks.

Eventually, he went to Monster Jam University, which is a real place where real people go to learn to drive (cruelly, enrollment is invitation-only). I asked him if there were grades at Monster Jam University.

“I believe so,” he said with a smile. “I didn’t get to see mine, and I’d hate to.”

Urie drives Zombie, a blood-spattered truck with enormous prosthetic arms reaching out from where the side mirrors on an ordinary truck might be. Like Urie, Zombie is young—the truck debuted in 2013 (some of the more well-known trucks, like Grave Digger, have been on the circuit since the ‘80s).

Both truck and driver have a long career ahead of them. But when the road life gets rough—Urie was so travel-weary when we spoke, he couldn’t remember where the show was headed next—he says he remembers the fans.

“I know there’s a bunch of little kids in the crowd just as excited as I was growing up,” he says.

“So I don’t consider it work.”

SPORTS

At the Saturday night show, Urie was the obvious hometown favorite. When Zombie trundled onto the mud, half the arena started waving “zombie arms” in the air. The other half joined in once Urie throttled up a dirt mound while balancing his truck on two wheels.

As spectacles go, Monster Jam was somewhere between The Fast and the Furious and Disney On Ice. Sure, there was flying mud, crunching fiberglass, engines louder than Jesus. But there were also balletic turns and jumps flips, all interspersed with the low purr of an idling engine, so much space between the revs you could count them like thunder.

The whole evening was a series of small, bewildering miracles. During the intermission—it’s called “intermission,” because Monster Jam is a play—a bunch of techs emerged from the bowels of the Sprint Center to mist the earth with a giant hose. A hawker demoing a lime green toy called a “Digger Disc” slipped and fell on his ass in the mud. It was an absurd fall, a cartoon-character-on-a-banana-peel fall; the crowd cheered him like he was Patrick Mahomes.

Everywhere I looked there was uncomplicated delight. Two kindergarteners in matching, Monster-Jam-branded sateen zip-ups screaming “GRAVE DIGGER!” in unison. Driver Bernard Lyght breakdancing in the mud to that Justin Timberlake song from the Trolls movie, skinny dreadlocks helicoptering around his face. An announcer instructing the crowd to carefully weigh “the presentation of the donut.”

And whaddayaknow: Kayla Blood presented the hell out of her donut. She donuted so hard she cleared every last speck of mud from the Sprint Center floor, leaving a perfect disc of naked concrete behind. She won the event

handily. In the post-event interview, she grabbed the mic and shouted, “Nothing I love more than getting out there and doing some awesome cyclones for you guys!”

This was an objectively ludicrous statement. I cheered.

The dark beauty of Monster Jam is that it gives you tacit permission to be big and loud and dumb without attaching some kind of moral weight to it. Monster Jam is a place where, when someone yells into a PA system, “it’s about to get WILD,” it actually does. Monster Jam is a place where the lizard-brain energy that drives us to fight, to hurt, to drag, to posture, is repackaged and concentrated into a beam of kiddish glee. A place where our “fuck yous” get channeled into “fuck yeahs.”

It is impossible to enjoy Monster Jam ironically. You can enjoy it only for what it is: big, goofy trucks doing big, goofy stunts for an audience that’s definitely not cool to drive. In that respect, Monster Jam represents what I love about sports in general: the purity and intensity of the moment, the feeling of being surrounded by strangers who have all turned their furious attention toward the same simple thing.

Riding in that speedster with Kayla Blood felt like flying. I grinned like an idiot. I shouted “WHOOOOOOO!” like a kid on a roller coaster—look, Ma, no hands.

If I hadn’t been cradled in my seat like an egg in a high school physics experiment, I would have pumped my fist and shimmied in excitement. I would have looked for a horn to blow.

Monster Jam is coming back to Arrowhead in June. I don’t know if I can go back. I worry about burning out my id, like lab rats who’ve fried their dopamine receptors on too much sugar water and cocaine.

But would I recommend it to a friend?

Fuck, yeah.

04 . 30 . 20 www.forkscorkskc.com Thank you to our sponsors!

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35

KC HEROES

KC HEROES:

ED KANDER OUR MONTHLY COLUMN WHERE DIFFERENT COMMUNITY HEROES WRITE A TRIBUTE TO THEIR OWN KC HERO BY JASON KANDER

My grandfather, Ed Kander (known in my family as “Pop”), passed away a little over a year ago at the age of 95. Pop never demonstrated or marched, but he was quietly woke.

On May 14, 1945, from his post in North Africa, he wrote to his mother about serving with black troops and how important he thought it was for them to be treated as full citizens after the war. A few years later, his mother—my great grandmother—found herself at NAACP meetings, but Pop came home, went into business, and tried like everyone else to pick up where they’d left off before the war. He finished college, got married, went into business, started a family, and eventually hoped to buy a home in an upper-middle-class neighborhood.

When real-estate developers put Kansas City together, they created housing contracts prohibiting African Americans and Jews from buying homes in certain neighborhoods, but in 1948, the US Supreme Court ruled these “racially restrictive covenants” unconstitutional. Over the decade-plus that followed, Jewish families like the Kanders slowly started moving into these sections of town, but African American families were far less welcomed. In fact, selling a house to a black family was referred to as “breaking the block.”

Around 1960, Pop, my grandmother, my dad, and my aunt and uncle moved into one of these neighborhoods. Shortly thereafter, Pop was more or less drafted into becoming president of the neighborhood association, which his new neighbors assured him wasn’t much work.

Here’s how Pop described it: “The big-

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36

THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

Ed Kander with grandson True Kander.

JASON KANDER

gest responsibility was that the neighborhood association president was also the coach of the baseball team, which was fine by me. The team was decent and I was going to the games anyway because your dad and your uncle both played. We didn’t have a kid who could play shortstop, so hunting for a shortstop was the toughest part of being neighborhood association president.”

But later that summer one of the families down the street sold their home to a shady out-of-towner who opened a boardinghouse, which was basically just an unlicensed hotel. Everyone was up in arms over the idea of all these strangers coming and going at all hours to a house in the middle of

their peaceful residential neighborhood, so they called upon President Pop to take legal action.

Pop wasn’t a lawyer, but the law was clearly on his side, so he was able to go to court and navigate the process. Weeks later, as the case was about to be heard by a judge, the attorney for the boardinghouse owners found Pop outside the courtroom and issued a threat: “If this case goes forward, you’ll probably win, but you should know that my client has already identified a black family interested in moving into your neighborhood. If you don’t drop your case right now, my client is breaking your block.”

Even though he knew not everyone in

the neighborhood would want him to ignore the threat and press forward, Pop didn’t skip a beat. He smiled at the lawyer and said, “That’s great! We’d love to have them.”

Then Pop very earnestly asked, “Do you happen to know if this new family has a kid who can play shortstop?”

My son True, a sixth-generation Kansas Citian, is in kindergarten, but he remembers Pop well, and so we talk about him all the time. It always makes me smile.

Jason Kander is the former Missouri Secretary of State and is currently leading the national expansion of the Veterans Community Project.

MIKE GETS IT DONE

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thepitchkc.com | March 2020 | THE PITCH

37

KC CARES

KC CARES:

ALS ASSOCIATION EACH MONTH WE HIGHLIGHT A LOCAL CHARITY THAT SHOWS OFF THE BEST OF KC KINDNESS. MAYBE YOU’LL DONATE TO A GOOD CAUSE? YOU SHOULD DONATE TO A GOOD CAUSE.

BY BROOKE TIPPIN

Remember back in 2014 when your friends challenged you to pour a bucket of ice-cold water over your head, and then you challenged others to join in the fun? I am sure you can picture it now, being super awkward and asking a family member or coworker to film you, stumbling over your words because you have no idea why you are doing this and then regretting wearing a tight, white t-shirt. Don’t worry, you were not alone. More than 17 million people around the world participated in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge which raised over $200 million for ALS disease research and awareness. Oh wait, did you forget you were supposed to donate to a charity after you did it? Jerk.

Even though a significant amount of money was raised, there is still no cure for ALS. I know what you are asking me: “Lady, you keep saying ALS and I have no idea what you are talking about.”

ALS is short for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, named after the famous New York Yankee who was diagnosed in 1939. ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord, causing your neurons to break down and die. When this happens, your brain is no longer able to send messages to your muscles. Remember the Schoolhouse Rock short “Telegraph Line”? You can YouTube it now.

I’ll wait. When your brain can’t send messages, your muscles begin to atrophy. Over time, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.

The ALS Association leads the way in research, care services, public education, and public policy—giving help and hope to those facing the disease. The mission of The ALS Association is to lead the fight to treat and cure ALS through global research and nationwide advocacy, while also empowering

cause. Shame on me. However, since then one of my best friends has joined the ALS Association, and I have had the honor of volunteering at their annual gala, A Night of Hope (March 6), and their Walk to Defeat ALS (October TBD).

Maybe swanky events with dinner and cocktails don’t suit you, or maybe a brisk walk to raise awareness for a terrible disease isn’t your cup of tea. You can still give your support thanks to the invention of the internet. You can head to alsa-midamerica.org/ donate. A donation of just Raising money for a great cause.

COURTESY OF ALS $25 can provide an ALS patient with an LCD tablet, people with the disease and their families to allowing them to communicate with others. live fuller lives by providing them with com- Don’t be a jerk like me. Donate to our local Mid-America chapter and let’s help find a passionate care and support.

I was one of the aforementioned “jerks” cure.

You can still get a friend to drench you above who enjoyed watching my friends and family participate in this challenge but didn’t if you feel like that’s an important part of the pour ice water over my head or donate to the process. No one is stopping you.

WELCOME

TO CHURCH OF THE RESURRECTION With five locations spread throughout the Kansas City metro and seventeen different worship services each weekend, we have a place, time and worship style for you! Join us for worship this weekend.

Caption

LEAWOOD

DOWNTOWN

13720 Roe Avenue, Leawood, KS 66224

1601 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64108

Saturdays 5 pm Sundays 7:30, 9:15 & 11 am, 5 pm

Saturdays 5:10 pm Sundays 8, 9:30 & 11 am Sundays 5 pm (at 1522 McGee)

OVERLAND PARK

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THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

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SAVAGE LOVE

THROWN BONES ONE YANK TOO MANY. BY DAN SAVAGE

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1515 WESTPORT RD. 816-931-9417 40

THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

Dear Dan: I’m 20, straight, male, fit, and active. I masturbated prone—flat on my stomach—for years. I’ve now changed to a more traditional position (on my back or sitting upright), and I’m using my hand rather than grinding against a mattress. I can easily orgasm when I masturbate. I’ve had sex four times in my life, and I’m worried because I wasn’t able to orgasm by someone else’s hand, through oral, or during penetration. I felt more sensation with oral or by hand than I did during intercourse, but I wasn’t able to get off.

This is extremely worrying, and I am increasingly depressed. Am I broken? Is my sex life ruined?––Boy Reeling Over Kaput Equipment Dear BROKE: You’re not broken, BROKE, and your partnered sex life, which has barely begun, isn’t ruined. Even if you’re never able to come by someone else’s hand, mouth, twat, or ass—and that’s the worst-case scenario here—you can still have a rewarding and pleasurable sex life.

In the short run, BROKE, you need to be honest with your sex partners about the way your cock currently works. Let them know you’re going to be mixing some manual self-stimulation in with the vaginal/oral/ anal penetration. In other words, at some point you’re going to pull out of whatever you’re in, you’re going to jerk it until you reach the point of “orgasmic inevitability” (OI), aka that split second between the start of orgasmic contractions and the good stuff spurting out, and then you’re going to put it back in. Since most women need to mix direct clitoral stimulation with penetration (or in place of it) in order to get off—before, during, after, or instead of intercourse— your honesty about what you actually need to get off will signal to your female partners that they can be honest with you about what they actually need to get off.

Backing way the hell up: The way you used to masturbate—prone—is likely the reason you’re having difficulty climaxing now.

But lots of men who masturbated in more “traditional positions—e.g., on their backs, sitting up, standing up, etc.—have trouble transitioning to partnered sex from solo sex.

The inside of a mouth, vagina, or butt doesn’t feel like your own hand (or a long-suffering mattress, in your case), and even someone else’s hand doesn’t feel the same as your own.

While the excitement of partnered sex helps most guys get over the hump—for many men, it takes time and a little experimentation for their cocks to adapt. But men who engaged in “atypical masturbatory behaviors” as boys—and prone masturbation/humping a mattress counts—frequently have a harder transition to partnered sex.

There’s a name for what you’re experiencing: delayed ejaculation. And while de-

layed ejaculation can be frustrating, the opposite problem—premature ejaculation—is more frustrating and harder to work around.

(I get a lot more letters from guys in despair because they come too quickly and too easily than I do from guys like you, BROKE, who take too long.) And, really, when you look at it from a different angle, your problem— being able to last forever—is really kind of a superpower. Because let’s say you fuck some lucky woman for ages, and she gets off again and again because someone—you, her, a third—is stimulating her clit at the same time. Once she’s satisfied (or shortly before she’s satisfied), BROKE, you can pull out, jack yourself to OI, then put your cock back inside her and blow that load or take the condom off and blow your load—with her consent, of course—all over her ass or tits or stomach or Toyota Corolla or whatever.

But for your partner to feel like this is your superpower and she totally lucked out when she met you, BROKE, you can’t leave her in the dark about the way your dick works. If you don’t let your partner know you need to stroke yourself a little right before you come, she’s likely to interpret your staying power (your superpower) as a sign you aren’t attracted to her.

Now here’s how you might be able to fix this in the long run, BROKE: When you’re masturbating, you should… well, you should do what you’re doing. Masturbate while sitting up or lying on your back, use your hand and a little lube, but do it with a much lighter touch/grip and maybe invest in a quality (read: silicone) masturbation sleeve. Don’t use the death grip—don’t squeeze the life out of your dick—as that will make things worse.

And while cutting back on porn and using your imagination instead is fine, the real goal is to retrain your cock to respond to subtler sensations. Which brings us to the hardest part: If you can’t come after masturbating for 10, 20, or 30 minutes—using that light touch/ grip, a little lube, and maybe that sleeve— you don’t get to come. No flipping over and humping the mattress after half an hour, and no using a firmer grip. You put your dick away and go to bed or work or school. Because this is about focusing on pleasurable sensations, not blowing your load, and you want to let the pressure build in your balls between sessions.

Stick to these rules when you’re on your own for at least six months. If your dick is able to adapt, it will, and then you can take your more sensitive dick into partnered sex with more confidence. But if after six months you’re still not able to come using a lighter touch or a masturbation sleeve, you may have to accept that this—your need to get yourself to the point of OI during partnered sex—is the way your dick works. Just as some wom-

en need to use a vibrator in order to come, and that doesn’t mean they’re broken, some men—after giving and receiving a lot of pleasurable fucking—need to pull out, jack to the point of OI, and then plunge back in for the last few victory pumps. It doesn’t mean they’re broken, it doesn’t mean their dicks are broken, and it certainly doesn’t mean their sex lives are over. As sexual superpowers go, BROKE, it’s a pretty decent one to have.

Finally: I just reread a paper on traumatic masturbatory syndrome (TMS) that was published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy back in 1998—which I think was before you were born (math is hard)—and it identified prone masturbation as the primary cause of delayed ejaculation. To prevent TMS, delayed ejaculation, and other forms of erectile dysfunction that prone masturbation can lead to, the authors recommended “masturbatory instruction in the home, classroom, or pediatric clinical setting.” If their advice had been taken—if boys were advised, as one aspect of a comprehensive sex-education program, to avoid humping mattresses or placing their penises between mattresses and box springs—far fewer young men would have the problem you’re having now.

Dear Dan: I’ve been seeing a guy for two years. It was a FWB situation from the start, because he already had a girlfriend. I adore him, we quickly broke the rules (L-word spoken on both sides), but the B part has dwindled to nothing. We haven’t had PIV sex since September, and he just added a second FWB to the mix. He swears he’s attracted to me and says we aren’t having sex—with the exception of me blowing him from time to time—because he’s older. But I know for a fact the other two women are getting some. He says he’s attracted to me—so why doesn’t he want sex?

How do I make him see how much I need him without issuing ultimatums?

––Scared But Horny Dear SBH: Your FWB might come through with a little PIV if you issued that ultimatum, SBH, but it sure doesn’t sound like he’s going to fuck you short of one. You might be able to get this guy to quite literally throw you a bone, but I think your time would be better spent finding a new FWB. Question for Dan? Email him at mail@savagelove.net. On Twitter at @fakedansavage.

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thepitchkc.com | March 2020 | THE PITCH

41

EVENTS

MARCH EVENTS

OVER GIR

BY SAMANTHA SOLMAR AND JONAH DESNEUX

MARCH 1

COURTESY OF UNICORN THEATRE

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For more events, visit thepitchkc.com/calendar.

Boulevard Beer Hall Bingo, Boulevard, Free Girl Scout Cookie & Wine Pairing, KC Wine Co., $8 Opeth & Graveyard, Arvest Bank Theater, $35 - $40

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MARCH 3

MARCH 4-29

Screaming Females, White Schoolhouse, $12

American Son Unicorn Theatre

MARCH 4

American Son is a gripping new drama about a black mother’s nightmarish reality trying to find her missing teenage son, while facing the incompetence of local police. The play boldly deals with themes of race and family relations, identity, and the state of our nation. Netflix premiered a film version at the end of last year, but now you have the chance to see the captivating live production.

Fitz and the Tantrums, Uptown Theater, $29.50 - $129.50 Kansas City Poetry Slam, The Brick, $8

MARCH 5 FLOR, Uptown Theater, $17

MARCH 6 Blue Oyster Cult, Ameristar, $35 $160 Heart4Hope, The Madrid Theatre, $100 - $7,500 The Art of Kindness - First Friday, Buttonwood Art Space, Free

The J. Love Band, The Phoenix Once Upon a Mystery, Hotel Phillips, $25 - $30

MARCH 7 KC Goths Bizarre Bizarre, Westport Flea Market, Free Murder By Death, Liberty Hall, $20 - $32

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Uncorked KC Wine Festival, Union Station, $55 - $65 Yoga, Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, $18

MARCH 8 Kansas City:

816-841-1521 42

THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

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Dark Night of the Soul and Unnamable Loss, The Open Table KC, FREE

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Elevator Division, Record Bar, $10

MARCH 15:

MARCH 9

CAAMP, The Truman, $22 - $59

MARCH 16

Blue Monday Jam Session: Amber Underwood, American Jazz Museum, FREE

R.Lum.R, The Riot Room, TBD

MARCH 10

MARCH 17

Hard Candy KC with Trinity the Tuck, Missie B’s, $20 - $30

St. Patrick’s Day Parade Rooftop Watch Party, HopCat, $20

MARCH 11

St. Patrick’s Day with Loud Luxury, KC Power & Light, Free

Cal Scruby, The Riot Room, $12

MARCH 18

MARCH 13

Allen Stone, The Truman, $25 - $125

El Monstero Pink Floyd Tribute, Uptown Theater, $27 - $59

MARCH 14-15 Naka Kon, Overland Park Convention Center, $17 - $55

COURTESY OF HOT WATER MUSIC

Don’t Tell Secret Comedy, West Bottoms, $20

MARCH 19-20 TAPS ON MAIN

Hot Water Music RecordBar

MARCH 16-22 Sandwich Week The Brass Onion, Crazy Good Eats, Harvey’s, John’s Big Deck, The Levee, New London Cafe, Pressed Penny Tavern, Smitty’s Garage, Taps on Main, and The Well.

March 16-22, various local restaurants are serving up unique sandwiches at an always amazing half-off price.

Each sandwich features a special twist that will wow your taste buds and make for the perfect post on your secret foodie Instagram.

Hot Water Music are playing two shows in Kansas City along their 25th-anniversary tour.

The March 19th show features their 2002 hit album Caution and the 20th rocks their classic 1999 album No Division. The steamy punk-rock band is known for their gritty guitars and impressive vocals from Chuck Ragan and Chris Wollard, so buckle up.

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thepitchkc.com | March 2020 | THE PITCH

43

EVENTS

MARCH 20-22

MARCH 25

Planet Comicon, KC Convention Center, Free - $209

The Kansas City Symphony Presents One Hit Wonders, Kauffman Center, $32 - $37

We Banjo 3, The Truman, $15 - $18

MARCH 21 Knuckle Puck, The Rino, $20 - $23 Rosé & Namaste: Spring Edition, Pennway Place at Studio Dan Meiners, $15

MARCH 24 Wine and Crime Podcast Tour, The Truman, $35 - $75

MARCH 26 Big Gigantic 3D Experience, Arvest Bank Theatre, $35 - $38

MARCH 27 Heather Land: I Ain’t Doing It, The Truman, $27 - $99

MARCH 28 65th Annual Bacchus Ball: A Night in the Bayou, InterContinental at the Plaza, $100 - $200

ELI STACK

COURTESY OF WHOSE LIVE ANYWAY?

Blue October, The Truman, $35 - $40

MARCH 24-28 Kansas City Fashion Week Union Station For the 17th season, KC is once again getting all glammed up for Fashion Week. Models grace the runway in fall/ winter collections from local and international designers during four evenings of shows March 25-28, at Union Station.

(Plus, the week kicks off with Bubbly and Bow ties on March 24 at the Fire House Even Space.) Nashville’s Any Old Iron is back this year with more sequins (he’s dressed Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Carbi B, and Cher) along with Project Runway contestant Joshua Christensen. We’re most eager to see new lines from returning local designers Meyer, Rissa’s Artistic Design, and Devil Doll.

MARCH 28 Whose Live Anyway?

Arvest Bank Theater at The Midland The Midland hosts a night of pure comedy delight on March 28, when the current cast of Emmy-nominated TV Show Whose Line is it Anyway? take the stage. Comedians Greg Proops, Jeff B. Davis, Dave Foley, and Joel Murray will perform 90 minutes of improvisation, full of witty scenes and songs.

MARCH 31 Steve Aoki, Arvest Bank Theatre, $25 - $40

44

THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

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thepitchkc.com | March 2020 | THE PITCH

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THE PITCH | MARCH 2020 | thepitchkc.com

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