The Pitch: September 2019

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THE PITCH | SEPTEMBER 2019 | thepitchkc.com

CONTENTS

THE PITCH

Publisher Stephanie Carey Editor in Chief David Hudnall Digital Editor Kelcie McKenney Staff Writer Emily Park Contributing Writers Traci Angel, Liz Cook, Riley Cowing, Karen Dillon, April Fleming, Roxie Hammill, Libby Hanssen, Deborah Hirsch, Dan Lybarger, Eric Melin, Aaron Rhodes, Barbara Shelly, Nick Spacek Little Village Creative Services Jordan Sellergren Jav Ducker Contributing Photographers Zach Bauman, Chase Castor, Joe Carey Graphic Designers Austin Crockett, Jake Edmisten, Jennifer Larson, Katie McNeil, Danielle Moore, Gianfranco Ocampo, Kirsten Overby, Alex Peak, Vu Radley, Fran Sherman, Zachary Trover Director of Marketing & Promotions Jason Dockery Senior Multimedia Specialist Steven Suarez Multimedia Specialist Becky Losey Director of Operations Andrew Miller Editorial Intern Gina Pepitone Multimedia Intern Madeline Turner Design Intern Lacey Hawkins

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Chief Executive Officer Stephanie Carey Chief Operating Officer Adam Carey

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8 4 STREETSIDE

What’s coming and what’s going in KC retail, food, drink, and real estate.

BY DAVID HUDNALL

22 EAT

32 MUSIC

Seasonal Ravioli at 715

BY APRIL FLEMING

Acquaint yourself with Bennett Weaver, a young and restless fixture of KC’s DIY scene.

BY AARON RHODES

Eat This Now

6 NEWS

23 DRINK

Jackson County has paid John Q. Ebert $2 million over the last five years to fix its assessment problems. What exactly has he been doing?

BY BARBARA SHELLY

The Sweetearth at Luckyberry Kitchen & Cocktails

BY APRIL FLEMING

John Q. Private

8 FEATURE

Under the Influence

Everything is literally goals for the Instagrammers devouring KC’s food scene.

BY DAVID HUDNALL

14 CAFE

Il Secondo

Two popular Italian restaurants are reborn in new spaces.

BY LIZ COOK

18 FOOD

Green Card

At Pirate’s Bone Burgers, Zaid Consuegra is just trying to feed more plants to more people. Our country’s immigration policy isn’t helping.

BY APRIL FLEMING

Drink This Now

24 ARTS

Away From Home

The Living Room Theatre will leave its cherished Crossroads space following the upcoming tenth season. But then what?

BY LIZ COOK

26 New Languages

Hip-hop, Colombian rhythms, social justice, jazz—it all finds its way into Jessica Ayala’s poetry.

BY RILEY COWING

ZACH BAUMAN

Kid Fantastic

34 Choice Show

As attacks on reproductive healthcare in Missouri and Kansas surge, events like Pinkout are more important than ever.

BY EMILY PARK

36 SAVAGE LOVE Quickies

Sexsomnia and consent; “come” vs. “jizz”; bukkake precautions.

BY DAN SAVAGE

38 EVENTS

September Calendar

Get out while it’s still warm.

28 COMEDY

Renaissance Ron

The multi-talented Nick Offerman brings his freewheeling comedy show to the Music Hall this month.

BY APRIL FLEMING

“DOIN’ IT FOR THE ‘GRAM” Illustration by Levi Hoffmeier

thepitchkc.com | SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE PITCH

3

STREETSIDE

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8/16/19 3:41 PM

WHAT’S COMING AND WHAT’S GOING IN KC RETAIL, FOOD, DRINK, AND REAL ESTATE.

BY DAVID HUDNALL

Two new streetcars have been added to downtown’s 2.2-mile line since May, an expansion Kansas City Streetcar Authority executive director Tom Gerend says will “support increased service frequencies and capacity in order to respond to the existing demand.” July saw 265,000 passenger trips, the highest streetcar ridership numbers since the system opened for service in 2016.

Grad School, a diner-inspired restaurant in the former Coda space (perhaps better known as the former Jilly’s; 1744 Broadway), is now open. It’s the restaurant’s first expansion outside Springfield, where the original Grad School has been in operation for a decade.

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THE PITCH | SEPTEMBER 2019 | thepitchkc.com

The luxury brand Sotheby’s is opening a Kansas City office, citing the explosive growth of the high-end residential real estate market in the area over the last decade.

Andrew Bash, formerly of Bash Real Estate, will head up the new office, which is based in Mission Woods. “Sotheby’s does not go into just any market,” Bash told the Kansas City Business Journal. OK, then.

Leawood officially has a Shake Shack.

The upscale fast-food joint has planted its second flag in the metro at 5200 W. 119th Street—the old On the Border Mexican Cantina & Grill. The Country Club Plaza location debuted last September.

The Waldo coffeeshop One More Cup is closing. “We have decided that it is time to

explore other directions in our lives, and do what is best for our family,” owners Stacy and Jeremy Neff announced in August. “We intend for our last day of business to be Sunday, September 1, after which we will be preparing our building to sell.” The Neffs opened One More Cup at 7408 Wornall in 2009.

The Capital Grille has moved into a new building a few blocks east of its longtime Plaza home. The steakhouse is now operating at 4760 Broadway. Its former digs will become part of a new Nordstrom-anchored development on the Plaza.

The last Sears in the Kansas City area will close. Liquidation is underway at the Independence Center location, with a tentative final closing date set for October.

The Lawrence City Commission has signed off on a public-private partnership to bring 13 small homes to a 1.6 acre site in East Lawrence. The houses will range in size from 600 to 1,200 square feet, and half will be designated as affordable housing and sold below market rates. The city’s affordable housing trust is allocating $125,000 toward the project.

Tin Roof, a Nashville-based chain of restaurant-bars featuring live music, has been announced as the new tenant at 424 Westport. The space was most recently occupied by Sailor Jack’s Snack Shack, and before that, the Foundry. No firm date on the opening.

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NEWS

JOHN Q. PRIVATE JACKSON COUNTY HAS PAID JOHN Q. EBERT $2 MILLION OVER THE LAST FIVE YEARS TO FIX ITS ASSESSMENT PROBLEMS. WHAT EXACTLY HAS HE BEEN DOING? BY BARBARA SHELLY

The Jackson County reassessment debacle of 2013—the one that sent more than 15,000 angry property owners scrambling to file appeals—was supposed to be the tax bill failure to end all failures.

Turns out, it was just a tune up. This year’s reassessment notices have already generated nearly 35,000 appeals, a class action lawsuit, calls for state investigations, and a growing wrath among citizens.

“It’s just a disaster,” says Curtis Koons.

“An absolute disaster.”

He would know. As Jackson County’s assessor in 2013, Koons took the fall for that year’s problems and resigned. Since he left, two more assessors have come and gone, along with most trained appraisers.

Through five years of upheaval, the one constant in the county’s assessment department has been the presence of John Q. Ebert, consultant.

What began as a $40,000 contract to Ebert’s company in 2014 to “establish best practices and budget efficiency” has morphed into a five-year stay, nearly $2 million in contract agreements—and widespread befuddlement about what that money has paid for.

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THE PITCH | SEPTEMBER 2019 | thepitchkc.com

Certainly, results would not indicate a roaring success. The 2019 reassessment process is widely regarded as a shambles.

Notices to property owners, which normally are sent out the first week of May, arrived in mailboxes in mid-June. Thousands of homeowners were shocked to find their appraised values—and projected tax bills—had spiked by 50 percent or sometimes more. The most severe increases are in lower-income neighborhoods, where residents are frantic about losing their homes, and leaders are leveling charges that minority communities were targeted.

Values of commercial properties appear to be off, also. Grandview Mayor Leonard Jones recently sent Jackson County Executive Frank White a letter complaining that the county only assessed new growth in his city at $2,209,623—even though sales and permits show more than $19 million in new growth over the recent assessment cycle.

Opinions vary as to the degree for which Ebert is responsible for the debacle.

Supporters say he made sound recommendations, which were consistently ignored or lost in the ongoing shit show that is Jackson County government. Critics think Ebert’s

presence deterred the county from establishing a functional assessment department.

The reality, says Crosby Kemper III, executive director of the Kansas City Public Library, is probably somewhere in the middle.

“I think he is a professional. I think he more or less knows the right thing to do,” says Kemper, whose library funding comes almost solely from Jackson County property tax collections. “But to some extent he’s milking the system.”

Bringing in outside expertise made sense in 2014, after the assessment department’s failure to give enough weight to home foreclosures resulted in skewed residential values in many neighborhoods.

The state of Missouri had recently slashed the amount of money it pays to counties for assessment functions from $6 a parcel to $3. Beyond that, former Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders’ administration was peeling off funding for the assessment department to use for other functions, Koons tell The Pitch.

Koons, who had been Jackson County’s assessor since 2007, says he managed a staff of 150 when he started, including 40 seasonal employees. By the time he left, he was trying to assess Jackson County’s 300,000 parcels with a staff of 52.

On the website for John Q. Ebert and Associates, which also goes by E&A Consulting, Ebert summarizes more than 50 years in the assessment business and takes credit for a number of advances as the field has moved toward reliance on computer programs and data patterns to determine property values.

THE 2019 ASSESSMENT PROCESS, WHICH HAS SO FAR RESULTED IN 35,000 APPEALS FROM JACKSON COUNTY HOMEOWNERS, IS WIDELY REGARDED AS A SHAMBLES.

NEWS

He lists Cleveland and Boston among his clients, as well as several states.

No one disputes Ebert’s expertise with data and technology. But, in the time he has been involved in Jackson County, the assessment department has become heavily reliant on computer-assisted mass valuation of properties, former staffers say. On-theground inspections—the most accurate way to glean information—have become nearly nonexistent.

Ebert, in an email, told The Pitch he could not comment due to “pending litigation.” He remains under contract with Jackson County through August, although his company’s role in the botched 2019 assessments is unclear. Ebert reportedly told some legislators earlier this year that he wanted to be let out of his contract because no one was listening to him.

For years, though, Ebert has been collecting big paychecks from Jackson County, with few questions asked.

In October 2014, four months after he came aboard, legislators authorized an additional $60,000 to extend his stay.

They approved a much bigger payment —$270,000—in January 2015, and other hefty agreements after that.

Not until June of 2018, by which point Ebert had already received $1.5 million in consulting contracts, did legislators display much curiosity about his role.

That year, county officials approached school districts, the library, and other jurisdictions that benefit from property tax revenues and asked them to chip in money to help pay Ebert. Kemper said he told the county he would agree if library officials could get an inside look at the assessment process. That fell through and the library never gave the county money, but Kansas City Public Schools and other jurisdictions eventually ponied up a total of $285,810.

The legislature was asked to allocate additional funding to bring Ebert’s total contract to $450,000.

Several legislators questioned the expense at a meeting.

“Is our assessment department just decimated and not able to do this stuff?” Dan Tarwater asked. “What does our assessment department do?”

Ed Stoll, the county’s chief administrative officer, replied that the assessment department was consistently shorthanded because of low salaries, and Ebert’s expertise was needed for specialized work such as updating property files. “We believe it would facilitate fair and accurate assessments,” he said, adding that Ebert would hire subcontractors to help with the process.

Former Legislator Garry Baker asked if Ebert’s work would include on-site inspections. “I don’t think you can successfully do it without visiting the parcels,” he said. “I don’t think you can do it on the computer.”

Legislator Scott Burnett, who sponsored the ordinance, said he had been told that Ebert would “have three or four dozen people here. Pulling them from all over the country.”

But that apparently never happened.

A few days after legislators approved a $450,000 contract for Ebert in a unanimous vote, assessment director Robert D. Murphy resigned.

“With the approval of such a large amount of funding for Mr. Ebert, it is clear that I will be a barrier at this point…” Murphy said in his resignation letter.

Murphy was the second director of assessments to have taken the job and resigned while Ebert was involved with Jackson County. The current assessor, Gail McCann Beatty, took the job about a month after Murphy resigned.

The county had seen other changes as well. Mike Sanders, whose administration hired Ebert, resigned abruptly and is now in federal prison for crimes related to abuse of campaign funds.

Frank White, who risks becoming as legendary for incompetent leadership as for his storied career with the Kansas City Royals, replaced Sanders and was elected to a full term as county executive in 2016.

The ongoing dysfunction in the county executive’s office is mirrored in the breakdown of core functions. The Jackson County Jail has become a dangerous, terrible place, and White hasn’t yet announced a plan to fix it. And now the assessment scandal is destined to occupy the county for months to come.

Kemper shares a view with many neighborhood leaders and others that property values in Jackson County have been skewed for years, and a key reason is the county’s deference to politically connected owners of commercial properties.

Perhaps the most egregious example was a series of controversial decisions in 2017 resulting in the Country Club Plaza being assessed at $145.5 million a year after it had sold for $660 million.

“Real estate interests and development lawyers control this city,” Kemper says. “Assessments have always been politicized. No one’s ever reformed it.”

Most experts agree that Jackson County commercial and residential properties as a whole have been traditionally undervalued.

Ebert supposedly devised a plan for raising the values fairly over time. But it has never been made public, and nothing about the 2019 reassessment speaks to fairness.

With adequate funding and political courage, Jackson County leaders had an opportunity to fix their troubled assessments system after 2013. They chose instead to outsource the job to a consultant. And $2 million later, they have only furious residents and lawsuits to show for it. thepitchkc.com | SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE PITCH

7

FEATURE

UNDER THE INFLUENCE EVERYTHING IS LITERALLY GOALS FOR THE INSTAGRAMMERS DEVOURING KC’S FOOD SCENE.

BY DAVID HUDNALL

Before the opening are the openings, and the evening of Wednesday, June 26, is the “media and influencers” preview at Fox & Pearl. The earthy Westside eatery is showing off its new and, by the looks of it, rather costly digs inside a rehabbed brick building at the corner of Summit Street and Avenida Cesar E. Chavez. Luxurious brown leather banquettes, leafy monstera plants, abundant natural light, a white marble bar—it’s beautiful, #bohodecor come to life. In a few weeks, chef Vaughn Good will begin serving chermoula-rubbed quail and summer squash ravioli to an eager and ravenous public. Tonight, though, it’s mostly passed hors d’oeuvres, pinot noir, and photo opportunities. Boiled down to its essence, the objective of the evening is simple: Get people with large audiences to post photos, videos, words—whatever—about Fox & Pearl. The easiest way to accomplish this is to invite them in, serve free food and drinks, and make everybody feel important.

Publicity once flowed through relatively orderly channels, like water out of a lawn sprinkler: print, radio, TV. Then came blogs. Then Yelp. In 2019, a decade deep into this era of social media dominance, publicity sprays erratically in all directions, a thumb on a hose. It is possible, though nobody actually knows for sure, that a young man who declares himself a Kansas City foodie on his 20,000-follower Instagram page is as essential to a restaurant’s PR strategy as a writeup in the Star or the chef ’s appearance on a morning TV show.

If you’ve rather die than think about such

things, but you’ve got a new restaurant you want people to know about, you might hire a marketing and PR firm to make sense of this new, fractured media landscape. And then, one night, a few weeks before you open, you may gaze out at a crowd of supposedly influential individuals assembled in your place of business and ask yourself: Who are these people?

Well—that’s what I was wondering, anyway. Oh, some of them I recognized.

There’s Joyce Smith of the Star, a scoop factory, the steely matriarch of this scene, still alive, still kickin’. Even without the microphone or cameraman in tow, it’s hard to miss Belinda Post, the former Chiefs cheerleader and current host of KCTV5’s Better Kansas City. Is Post—bright-orange dress, heels, TV hair—here because she does a morning show, or because she has 6,000 Instagram followers? Hard to say. There’s Pete Dulin, a longtime KC food and beverage writer. He’ll go home and file a 3,000word ode to Fox & Pearl on his website, petedulin.com. Ah, Kevin Collison. A former Star reporter, Collison these days runs a site called CitySceneKC, which seems to be funded largely through advertising and sponsorships from the real estate developers he worships in his business-friendly pieces. In a different setting, Collison might be seen as a compromised peddler of journalistic fluff. Here, he’s among the more accomplished guests. After all, he actually has to go write something about the place.

Whereas most of the other piggies at this trough are influencers—an easily dazzled digital subculture armed with VSCO

@kansascityfoodiefinds, @kansascitybucketlist, @kccheeses, @kclocaleats, @miss.kc.foodie

FEATURE

Influencers lined up to document Fox & Pearl’s June opening.

apps and an abiding desire to grow their personal brands. Short-term goals include getting invited to events like these and posting photos of the food, the space, and themselves—often all three—to their Instagram pages. Longer-term aspirations vary: some hope to transition toward traditional media, some just want national brands to mail them free shit, others are purely in it for the serotonin blasts they get from Instagram likes. They have names I am embarrassed to say out loud: Kansas City Bucket List, Kansas City Foodie Finds, Miss KC Foodie. They are very nice, and very, very, very excited about The New Restaurant That Just Opened.

“I was skeptical, as a former journalist, of the influencer phenomenon when I started doing this,” Kimberly Stern, once the editor of local glossies 435 and KC Magazine, tells me. Stern + Silva, the PR outfit she recently started with ex-Star food writer Jill Silva, is the agency of record for Fox & Pearl. They organized this party. “The freebie thing [giving influencers free meals and products in exchange for them posting about it] I had to get schooled on. But when you’re developing a marketing plan, you really do have to include the influencers alongside traditional media. You can’t ignore them.”

They are indeed hard to ignore. Out on Fox & Pearl’s brick patio, I wince—actually, who am I kidding, I love to see it—as influencer after influencer poses in front of the back door, on which the restaurant’s logo is elegantly emblazoned. Their Instagram boyfriends (it’s a thing, look it up) duti-

fully snap their photos. Later that evening, the photos will hit the feed with captions like “All the feels at the @foxandpearlkc opening!” and “The fried green tomato at @foxandpearlkc is EVERYTHING.” Do not attempt to parse these words. They don’t actually mean anything. They are just there to go with the picture.

AN EASILY DAZZLED DIGITAL SUBCULTURE ARMED WITH VSCO APPS AND AN ABIDING DESIRE TO GROW THEIR PERSONAL BRANDS.

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Most of our local influencers have tidy, well-intentioned, and basically believable origin stories, often having to do with KC pride. Mindy Hargesheimer, aka Kansas City Bucket List, moved to Kansas City three years ago from Chicago and was delighted to discover it wasn’t the cultural backwater she’d left behind after graduating from the University of Kansas in 2001. Benjamin Fuentes, aka Kansas City Foodie Finds, describes his Instagram page as a way for him to highlight small businesses; he says his goal is to “raise the KC foodie scene.” The pair behind KC Local Eats—Jamie Gibson and Brittney Hunter—are running partners who mapped their outings around new restaurants and coffee shops, then started an Instagram account in tribute to it.

Others will cop to more practical motives behind their accounts. Kasim Hardaway (pronounced “like awesome with a k,” per his Instagram bio) was early to the game and is considered by many to be the most influential influencer in Kansas City’s food scene. He says he “made an intentional effort to build up a following of Kansas Citians interested in food” after

some local restaurant marketers noticed his follower count and started tossing him gift cards in exchange for posts. Stephanie Rupp, the 27-year-old behind the KC Cheeses account, says she’s always been “obsessed with cheese,” and that her father had long encouraged her to pursue this interest through a food-related book project, perhaps a recipe book.

“I was like, ‘I can’t cook or write a book,’” Rupp says. “So I started taking pictures and putting them on Instagram. It seemed like a better fit.”

A handful of KC influencers grew out of blogs or vlogs or Facebook accounts, but most are native creatures of Instagram.

By around 2015-2016, the platform had achieved sufficient popularity and scale in Kansas City that it became possible to amass large local audiences. With a big enough follower count, you could then pitch yourself to potential restaurants and brands as a channel through which their products could be advertised.

“When I first got into it, I would get home from my 8-to-5 job and work four or five hours sending cold DMs to brands, liking their photos, asking if they’d be interested in working together,” says Fuentes, who started Kansas City Foodie Finds in 2016. “I started reaching out [to potential sponsors and advertisers] once I got to about 6,000 followers, and it wasn’t until I hit 10,000 that I started to see real interest.”

He goes on: “At that time, there were only three or so of us that had decent followings in Kansas City. But pretty soon after that—2017, I’d say—you started seeing thepitchkc.com | SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE PITCH

9

FEATURE

KC Pinoy’s Nucum objects to comping influencers for posting photos of her dishes on Instagram: “My customers already do that, and they pay me for my food!”

ZACH BAUMAN

accounts popping up left and right.”

It is impossible to say how many KC food influencers—self-identifying or not— are out there today. Lee Page says his PR and marketing firm, Page Communications, is keeping tabs on about 400 different influencers, though that number includes the larger Midwest region and different genres of influencer (fitness, lifestyle, mommy). Emily Farris, who from 2017-2018 ran social media strategy for the local restaurant group Bread and Butter Concepts (Stock Hill, Gram & Dun, The Oliver), and is something of an influencer herself through her cocktails-and-homedecor website and Instagram account, The Boozy Bungalow, says, “There are so many food accounts in KC with 10,000 or 15,000, even 30,000 followers. I feel like I see a new one every week.”

The level of professionalism varies.

Hardaway and others at the top of the food chain have their own rate sheets and charge brands and restaurants actual money for

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THE PITCH | SEPTEMBER 2019 | thepitchkc.com

posts. How much?

“I’ve seen everything from $300 to $5,000,” says Maila Yang, marketing and communications coordinator for the Kansas City Kansas Convention & Visitors Bureau, which lately has been arranging more partnerships with influencers.

A restaurant operator who wanted to remain anonymous because of how often he interacts with influencers says he recently heard from someone seeking $1,200 in exchange for a series of Instagram “stories” (which disappear after 24 hours) and a 24hour grid post—meaning this influencer would post about the restaurant to her feed but then delete the post from her homepage “grid” after 24 hours.

“And this was a local person—not some national food personality or anything,” he says. “And she was literally doing nothing: The deal was that we would provide the photos and all the copy. We could have put anything we wanted on her page.

Although, of course, she also wanted to

sample our food first too.” (He declined the offer.)

But trade—comped dinners, free products, gift cards, invitations to parties— is the shape these arrangements most often take.

“Sometimes I reached out to them, and sometimes they reached out to me,” Farris says of her days wrangling influencers for Bread and Butter. “I’d say, ‘We’ll give you dinner and drinks and pay you this amount, and in exchange you have to post about these things on your page.’”

Farris adds: “I think the smart proprietors know they need to work with these people. And many [influencers] are gracious and professional, and they’re great to work with. But I think there’s also a recognition that, with some influencers, there is an inflated sense of entitlement.”

Bratty behavior abounds. It tends to manifest in subtle gestures, like the snitty face an in-demand photographer makes when presented with a check while dining at an establishment she has previously promoted on her page. Farris recalls receiving messages from aspiring influencers informing her that they were having dinner at a Bread and Butter restaurant at that very moment and were willing to post about it if she comped their meal. (“So unprofessional,” Farris says.) Cheryl Baker, who runs the Miss KC Foodie account, told me a delicious, though unconfirmed, story about an influencer pair that pulled a “Do you know who we are?” while dining with their husbands at Tavern at Mission Farms.

(The restaurant, which comped their starters and entrees, had the gall to charge them for dessert and drinks.) And in June, when a fundraiser was held for Crum’s Heirlooms—a much-adored local produce supplier whose barn and farm was destroyed by a tornado—multiple influencers contacted the organizers in hopes of snagging a free seat for the dinner. “There were three that I remember specifically,” says Bryan Sparks, one of the event’s organizers.

Then there was the Karbon incident.

Karbon is one of the vendors inside Parlor, the Crossroads food hall that opened in 2018; it serves street food with Yucatan and Turkish influences. In June, the woman running the account KC Foodies Club met some mole wings there she didn’t like.

Tagging Karbon, she called the wings “sad,” “ugly,” and “sloppy.” She went on: “What this dish said to me is that the people making it and/or the people serving it couldn’t give two f**ks less about food.”

The post was received so poorly that the influencer afterward changed her Instagram handle. (It’s now Midwest Food Scene.) A number of chefs and business owners hopped onto the thread to scold her for her comments. Food writers and assorted foodie types rushed in with comments

in support of Karbon. The post became a dumping ground for virtue signaling one’s support of the local food scene.

It was a bad take—as several people noted, Karbon is billed as street food, utilitarian and not meant to be pretty— and the influencer was rightly clobbered for it. But if you zoomed up 10,000 feet, there was a larger, more depressing dynamic at play. Defending herself, this woman wrote in her next post that “if you go back over the last 2 years of posts you’ll see that this is the only bad review,” adding that in 33 years of eating out in Kansas City, she’d only had a “handful of negative restaurant experiences.”

In other words, an influential person in the Kansas City food scene (7,000 followers) is so undiscerning about food that in three decades of eating food at restaurants she has only had a “handful” of bad meals—a preposterous thing to say, much less believe. And by sharing her one supposedly bad experience on foodie Instagram, where anything other than cloying positivity leaps out like fresh shit on a white rug, she had learned the wrong lesson. It wasn’t to think about the context of the cuisine before offering an opinion. It wasn’t to consider that food is about more than how it looks. It was to shut up, take pretty pictures, and be like the rest of the influencers.

•

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•

In early August, I drove down to the West Bottoms to meet with Chrissy Nucum, who recently turned her popular Filipino food

“How many photos of a hamburger or a donut do these people need to see?” wonders Antler Room co-owner Goellner.

ZACH BAUMAN

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truck KC Pinoy into a brick-and-mortar operation at 1623 Genessee. Nucum is bootstrapping the place; there aren’t any investors backing her, and she didn’t have money for a marketing rollout when she opened in January. Margins are tight at KC Pinoy, as are the dimensions: When I walked in, Nucum was alone, post-lunch rush, rolling silverware at one of the dining room’s 30-odd seats.

She didn’t smile when I introduced myself, which made me smile. I’d spent the previous few weeks dutifully mainlining “KC, you’re cute” and “This latte is giving me LIFE” posts. Talking with Nucum felt like stepping out of a movie and into real life.

Nucum’s first taste of the influencer trend was three years ago, when she started her food truck.

“I got a message from this person who said, ‘Hey, I noticed you only have 105 followers—I’ve got this-many-thousands of followers, and I can do a sponsored post for you that will up your social media presence,’” Nucum says. “I was like, ‘How much?’ And it was $500. I was like, ‘I think I’d rather spend that on chicken and pork and soy sauce, but thanks.’ And this person was like, ‘Well, good luck.’ And they did not mean that in a sincere way.”

“As a business owner, you hold onto that dollar as tight as you can,” Nucum continues. “I understand that some of them do wield some power with certain audiences, but when I’ve asked for ROI [return on investment] from them, they never have any numbers. I’m supposed to comp these people for coming in and eating my food and taking a couple photos? My customers already do that, and they pay me for my food!”

Count Ryan Brazeal, chef and co-own-

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THE PITCH | SEPTEMBER 2019 | thepitchkc.com

er at the acclaimed Crossroads restaurant Novel, as also skeptical of the entire enterprise. “For us, at least, why would we pay ‘foodie’ people to come eat at our restaurant if they’re going to come anyway?” he says. “The contingent of ‘foodie’ people in Kansas City is not that big.”

The Antler Room opened in the Longfellow neighborhood in 2016, and a year later Bon Appetit named it one of America’s 50 Best New Restaurants. But before that honor arrived, co-owner Leslie Goellner—a front-of-house manager with 20 years of service experience—discovered she had launched her restaurant into a world where influencers were becoming more assertive by the day.

“Right when we opened, Kasim [Hardaway] contacted us and said, ‘What are you doing for SMI [social media influencers]?’” Goellner says. “I didn’t even know what he was talking about. I had to look it up. And then I was so angry that I didn’t reply. We’re over here opening this small restaurant, no investors, working our asses off, and you’re asking me to give you something to take a photo of your dining experience? I was like, Who is this person?

It just kind of set the tone for me with these people.”

Three years in to running the Antler Room, Goellner is by now well-acquainted with the smarmy online habits of thirsty influencers hoping to snag a free meal.

“So, like, [local influencer] Anna Petrow will come in and post a photo here, and she’ll tag us, and underneath her photo some other influencer will be like, ‘Oh, I’ve always wanted to eat at Antler Room!’ And they comment back and forth and tag us in their story and say, ‘I would love to col-

LOCAL PR FIRMS ARE KEEPING TABS ON HUNDREDS OF POTENTIAL INFLUENCERS AT ANY GIVEN TIME.

laborate with you’ or something. And I’m like: I’m sorry, but I’m not gonna pay you to eat here.”

Several other restaurant operators described a similar experience of pestlike tagging. There is actually a technical term for these clusters of targeted engagement.

They’re called “Instagram pods,” and besides getting the attention of restaurants, they’re meant to outsmart Instagram’s algorithm. (The term of art is “breaking the algorithm.”) Influencers turn on post notifications for other influencers so that they can quickly like and comment on each other’s posts. Because Instagram values engagement above all else, these flurries of concentrated activity boost the organic reach of those participating.

Clear away the tedious technical mechanics, and the scene beneath is grotesque—a pack of vampires heaping effusive, insincere praise onto one another’s posts with the hope of attracting more followers to aid them in their quest for free shit. Not everybody does this, of course.

Cheryl Baker, aka Miss KC Foodie, says she’s never tried to game the platform this way, and she was surprised recently to discover that certain influencers she knows had been liking posts by her non-foodie friends in Pleasant Hill—35 miles southeast of Kansas City—where she lives.

“My friends would say to me, ‘Do you know this foodie guy named Kasim? He liked my post and followed me, but then he unfollowed me right away.’ And it’s like, ‘Oh, I get what he’s doing.’”

Baker also recalls a local influencer who enlisted a bot to automatically comment on other people’s posts. “But then somebody died,” she says, “and there was a post about it, and the bot was like, ‘Great picture!’ with a smiley face emoji.”

Instagram has reportedly begun cracking down on bots and pods, but like the rest of the social media giants, it doesn’t have muscular systems in place to enforce its rules and regulations, much less the federal laws that are broken everyday on its platform.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, “if there is a material connection between an endorser and an advertiser—in other words, a connection that might affect the weight or credibility that consumers give the endorsement—that connection should be clearly and conspicuously disclosed, unless it is already clear from the context of the communication. A material connection could be a business or family relationship, monetary payment, or the gift of a free product.”

Also influencer no-nos, according to the FTC, are insufficiently clear disclosures such as #sp (instead of #sponsored); sticking an #ad in a sea of hashtags; just

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#partner; and saying, “Thanks, [BRAND].”

But comb through your favorite local influencers’ feeds, and you will find that few of them are appropriately disclosing their conflicts.

“I honestly had no idea this was happening,” says Jonathan Justus, chef and co-owner of Black Dirt, which opened last year on the South Plaza. “I started seeing local food people I was following doing staycations at the Crossroads Hotel. And I was like, wait, that person is getting paid for that! I knew enough to know that. But does the average person know this? How would they know?”

“Only a couple of them [local influencers] disclose that it’s paid content,” Goellner says. “With clothing and makeup and other industries, they’re better at making them put #ad or #paid or #sponsored or whatever on it. I don’t know why food isn’t part of that yet, but it should be.”

Paid or sponsored content is, of course, kind of the point of this whole thing for many influencers; they want that case of free kombucha. Ironically, though, the goal of achieving sponsorships often seems to coincide with those accounts shedding any vitality they once contained. Several supposedly once-good local food feeds are now little more than collections of sponsored ads for grocery stores, regional tourism bureaus, and boring national brands. It can often seem as though the mark of influencer success is an account that has curdled into a pale, spammy mush.

Are the influencers noticing this?

Have they considered that all those clunkily sponsored posts might be undermining their accounts, even as the flow of free goods is so satisfying in the present?

Is there a golden ratio between sponsored posts and “authentic” ones?

“It’s a difficult question,” Fuentes of Kansas City Foodie Finds says. “The reality is, they start to overlap. I did a giveaway for Buns Up recently, but I was gonna go there anyway. So it’s hard to say. But if I had to put a number on it, I’d probably say I’m at 50-50 right now.”

I put the same question to Hardaway, who a few weeks before had done a sponsored post that included the sentence, “I’m happy to share that I’m helping #PeptoBismol introduce its new Pepto Diarrhea.”

“I don’t think the sponsored posts dilute the authenticity of what I’m doing,” Hardaway says. “I’m honest about my sponsored advertisements, and I try to do occasional disclosures to let people know that if I don’t like a product, I just won’t post about it. I never want to be the channel for good reviews or bad reviews.”

A few days later, in an Instagram post featuring a photo of himself eating a chicken wing, Hardaway elaborated further, say-

ing that a couple of questions I posed to him “still linger in contemplation.”

“As I grow as an influencer and partner with more brands, my goal is to always find alignments that feel natural and organic,” he wrote. “At one point my aim was to create a platform all about KC, but that has shifted to be a platform all about Kasim Hardaway: a lover of Kansas City, food, marketing (and a million other thangs like wangz) #kasimjhardaway.”

•

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To be fair, those of us in legacy media are thinking a lot lately about brand dilution, too. If we want to be where the eyeballs are, we must be on the internet. But going there means acceding to its perverse and occasionally democracy-destroying incentives.

A platform where a child is more influential than a 100-year-old newspaper is a dangerous place; it is also an easy place to lose one’s dignity. You can wake up one day to find that, by trying to compete in an economic landscape indifferent to your expertise, your media outlet has become the influencer who does too many Fit Tea posts.

“Media and influencers want different things,” says Travis Joyal, of the KC communications agency Joyal Marketing. “Influencers want content that results in high engagement, and on social media, it starts with the photo. A food and dining influencer wants the killer shot of the stylish new menu item. A fashion influencer wants a shot of them holding a pretty cocktail surrounded by the restaurant’s chic decor. Media wants a story. And media prefer not to be in the same group as influencers.”

But the future of media, if there is one,

undeniably looks much more like what influencers are doing than the magazine you’re holding or the website on which you’re reading this. And the latest industry trend—advertisers favoring “micro-influencers” with 1,000 to 10,000 followers and high levels of engagement—suggests the number of influencers will only multiply going forward.

“Daily, there is at least one email here at the office between us about a new influencer we’ve found, or a new influencer that’s interested in working with us,” Page says.

Sarah Lehman, Page Communications’ PR manager, adds that the firm recently launched a “collaborate” page where potential influencers can fill out information about themselves with the goal of working with some of Page’s clients. “We’ve had 75 responses in a week,” Lehman says.

The brands are often just as hungry as the influencers—and wouldn’t you be if you had armies of obedient messengers who expect only a six-pack of canned wine for their troubles?

“I get emails every single day,” Hargesheimer of Kansas City Bucket List says. “There are a ton of platforms now where influencers can sign up and get unpaid work where they pay you in product,” Hardaway says.

And restaurants are catering to Instagrammers (if not speciifically influencers) one way or another, be it through Instagram-friendly murals, art, and design (see: Parlor, Betty Rae’s, Novel, Messenger, so many more) or even the actual food they serve. “People know a big hamburger or an over-the-top-garnished bloody mary will get 2,000 likes, so they put it on the

menu,” Goellner says. “I think, in some ways, it contributes to a stagnancy in the food culture in this city. How many photos of a hamburger or a donut do these people need to see?”

Ultimately, the only thing likely to topple the influencer gravy train is Instagram itself; a recent report found that engagement among Instagram influencers has dipped by about half over the last three years. In its ceaseless quest for growth and ever-greater profits, Instagram’s parent company—that’d be Facebook—has loaded up its site with ads, resulting in an ongoing Facebook exodus among millennials and Gen Z. Is Instagram resigned to the same fate? And what happens if, as has been rumored, Instagram removes likes from the platform? What will that mean for influencers selling themselves based on their engagement? It’s uncertainties like these that has people like Fuentes working on launching his own website.

“I’ve built my house on someone else’s ground,” he says. “Right now, I’ve been able to monetize within Instagram, but tomorrow, who knows what they’re going to do?”

“Every media bubble bursts,” Farris says. “There’s so many accounts right now that you’re starting to see a real lack of quality in some of them, and when the bubble bursts, the ones that are posting great content are the ones that will survive.”

As for the rest, perhaps the real treasure isn’t the influence but simply the comps they got along the way.

“Honestly, my long-term goal with this account is to have free coffee everywhere in Kansas City,” says Hunter of KC Local Eats.

She was laughing. But it definitely seemed like she meant it. thepitchkc.com | SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE PITCH

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IL SECONDO TWO POPULAR ITALIAN RESTAURANTS—RAGAZZA AND PLATE—ARE REBORN IN NEW SPACES.

BY LIZ COOK

No one wants to listen to a restaurant critic complain about her job. But if there’s a drawback to this gig, it’s that even when I love a place, I rarely get to return. By the time I’ve signed the receipt, I’m already thinking about the next assignment. So I was eager to make rare repeat reservations at two beloved neighborhood restaurants—Ragazza and Plate— that recently reopened in new locations. Both restaurants focus on Italian food, but they couldn’t be more different. Ragazza has always felt like a familial Tuscan trattoria; Plate like a haute ristorante in Milan. I wanted to see how the two had reinvented themselves in bigger, brassier spaces. In a distended dining scene full of people chasing the new, I struck out looking for something else: a reason to return.

RAGAZZA FOOD & WINE Laura Norris’s Cucina della Ragazza was begging for an expansion almost as soon as it opened in 2014. This March, snagging a table became a little easier: Norris reopened the restaurant in a roomier location as “Ragazza Food & Wine.”

The new building is only a few blocks from the old, on a corner in Southmoreland that once housed Nature’s Own. But the restaurant seems to have traveled a long way from its beginnings as a cozy Westport hideaway. It has expanded, for starters, from 30 seats to almost 100. The décor has stayed true to a “refined rustic” vibe—muted colors, maps of Italy, kitschy wine-cork mobiles.

But when Ragazza is packed (and it’s usually packed), the restaurant can seem downright

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THE PITCH | SEPTEMBER 2019 | thepitchkc.com

rowdy. Intimate and quiet it ain’t.

One contributing factor: the expanded cocktail list, which favors the sweet and slurpable. My pick of the list is the lemon drop martini, a Mike’s Hard Lemonade that spent a semester abroad. The cocktail blends Ragazza’s housemade limoncello with citrus vodka, lemonade, and basil. It’s the kind of soft, sunny drink that makes you nostalgic for sticky summers while you’re still in them.

The dinner menu has expanded, too, in the care of new executive chef James Landis. Ragazza’s food has grown livelier and more inventive without sacrificing familiar comforts. The giant meatball’s still on the menu, as is Norris’s beloved lasagna Bolognese. But Landis has rounded out the

Left: Crisp breading on Ragazza’s arancini protects a gooey provolone and mushroom core. Top: The Southmoreland spot was previously a Nature’s Own grocery store. Bottom: Silky, cheesy risotto holds its own against Ragazza’s plush lamb shank.

ZACH BAUMAN

RAGAZZA FOOD & WINE 4301 Main St

ON ANY GIVEN NIGHT, YOU MIGHT SEE A HALF DOZEN LOCAL ACTORS DRINKING AND CAJOLING AND PICKING THROUGH THEIR PASTA PUTTANESCA. SOMETIMES, THEY’RE YOUR SERVERS.

816-960-4744 ragazzakc.com

Hours: Tuesday–Friday: 11 AM–10 PM Saturday: 4 PM–10 PM Sunday: 11 AM–9 PM

Prices: Appetizers: $7–18 Pastas: $12–20 Entrees: $15–28 Cocktails: $8–12

Best bet: Swig a lemon drop martini and nibble on the arancini as an app. Splurge on your entrée— braised lamb with mushroom risotto.

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Top right: The Bone & The Hare tugs Plate’s diners through a progressive symphony of flavors. Bottom right: The Cioccolato’s smooth, mysterious orb masks layers of chocolate mousse and raspberry ganache.

ZACH BAUMAN

traditional menu with creative starters and entrees likely to attract new fans.

I was underwhelmed by a starter of roasted goat cheese and tomato sauce, which never quite cohered into something greater than the sum of its parts.

But I was pleasantly surprised by a basket of chewy, well-structured focaccia served with an aromatic (and compulsory) black pepper butter.

My favorite from the “spuntino” menu (think: snacks) were the arancini: fried balls of creamy rice flecked with spinach and stuffed with provolone cheese. The delicate orbs had a satisfyingly crunchy crust and gooey innards the inky color of a mushroom bisque.

That color came courtesy of porcini mushrooms, which lent the dish a super-concentrated mushroom flavor.

To eat well at Ragazza, look beyond the classic pastas. The spaghetti cacio e pepe was oversalted, nudging the simple flavors out of balance. I preferred the bucatini all’Amatriciana, which lifted the salty pancetta with a teasing nip of crushed red pepper. Still, it wasn’t engaging enough to hold my attention through the bowl.

Order the braised lamb shank instead. When I tried, it, the lamb was plated with doll-sized Brussels sprouts and a mushroom risotto so sloppy with cheese and butter and salt that I became convinced Landis had discovered a fifth state of matter. This risotto has ruined me for all others, like a lover in a dimestore romance. I was so infatuated, I almost forgot about the braised lamb—but it, too, was suspiciously good, the meat mild and tender and sweet as a lullaby.

Also excellent: a plate of creamy polenta, swimming in broth and dressed with plump, juicy shrimp and husky bites of Italian sausage. Ditto a rich ramekin of chocolate budino, which had a dense, almost fudge-y texture and an astringent cocoa flavor.

Ragazza seems to have become a theater bar as much as a neighborhood haunt. On any given night, you might see a half dozen local actors drinking and cajoling and picking through their pasta puttanesca. Sometimes, they’re your servers. (I scored local diva Shon Ruffin on one visit—she was, as she is in all things, excellent.)

I consider that a testament to Norris’s lively, inclusive brand of hospitality. The original Ragazza felt like home.

The new Ragazza feels like a house party. Either way, you’re in the company of friends.

PLATE. Christian and Andrea Joseph’s restaurant Plate had already become a fixture in east Brookside when a fire lashed through the building in 2017. Two years later, the restaurant has finally reopened in a new east Brookside space once home to the health center of a chiropractic college.

At Plate 2.0, the Josephs have ramped up the square footage and more than doubled the seats. The resulting vibe is a little less cozy and a little more Tron: black tables, black tiles, black chairs, spit-shined concrete floors. Black-clad servers lightcycle through the dining room beneath cold, modern lighting and ceiling-mounted electronic screens.

One crucial consistency: executive chef Brian Mehl, whose inventive pastas and stylish plating made the original Plate a neighborhood hit. I don’t know what Mehl did during his two-year hiatus—transcendental meditation, peyote in a pup tent—but he seems to have emerged with an even sharper focus and feel for what he does best. The new Plate leans more confidently into the second half of the restaurant’s tagline: “Italiano Moderno.”

When I reviewed Plate’s first permutation, I quibbled a bit with the portions and the prices. This time around, Mehl has beefed up the former, offering heartier portions of his excellent scratch pastas. (The prices are still firmly in Special Occasion territory for me, but the pastas are worth celebrating).

I enjoyed the spaghetti alla bottarga, which married seaweed-speckled spaghetti with bottarga—savory, almost Parmesan-esque roe—and a moat of fragrant saffron

PLATE 701 E 63rd St., 816-775-0098, platekc.com

Hours: Monday–Thursday: 4 PM–10 PM Friday–Sunday: 11 AM–10 PM

Prices: Appetizers: $8–19 / Pastas: $21–26 / Entrees: $21–38

Best bet: Tour the menu by splitting the “Bone & the Hare” (rabbit-filled pasta dumplings) and the “Mallard? Duck? Anatra?” (duck breast and butter bean chow-chow) with a date. Show off with the Cioccolato for dessert. thepitchkc.com | SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE PITCH

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oil. But my favorite dish was a plate of rabbit-stuffed cappellacci. The dumplings were enormous, a flap of chewy pasta curling suggestively from each center like a tongue.

Topping each purse was a thin slice of black truffle, grooved with tiny striae like a circuit board.

Eating the cappellacci was an almost synesthetic experience—a reminder that a great dish can have movements like a sonata. I took a bite: the fresh, peppery-y flavor of the pasta quickly yielded to the rich, salty tang of the braised rabbit before plunging headlong into the warm spices of the bone marrow broth. Then came the truffle— musky, heady—followed by a dot of carrot-top pesto with an herby, vegetal pulse.

I loved that dish so much, I was ready to ignore its odd moniker—“Bone & The Hare.” Most of the plates here carry cutesy, if occasionally confusing, names. A dish of agnolotti with ricotta and prawns was labeled “That Shrimp Cray.” A luscious plate of duck breast and pickled butter made me order it with a question: “Mallard? Duck? Anatra?”

I said “no” out loud when I read the name of the coconut panna cotta—“Roseanne Pannadana.” (That dish also turned out to be a rare exercise in overcomplicaTender duck breast and lightly pickled butter beans make the Mallard? Duck? Anatra? imperative.

ZACH BAUMAN

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tion. A busy plate creates a kind of tension—stretch it too far and it snaps).

Still, the impulse is admirable. The staff at Plate seem determined not to take themselves too seriously. Service here is professional but colloquial; on a recent visit, a couple front-of-house employees happily joined my table to mock a man slowly circling the block in a candy-red Ferrari like he was showing a calf at the fair.

Even when the food gets fussy, it retains a sense of humor. Take the “Cioccolato”: a glossy chocolate sphere the size of a Christmas ornament plated on a bed of devil’s food crumbs. The dessert arrived with a side of theatrics. Our server gave the top of the sphere a swift crack with the bowl of a spoon, then sliced it cleanly into two halves so we could marvel at the fossil record. Layers of decadent chocolate mousse surrounded a dense, concentrated core of raspberry gel. The whole thing felt a bit precious, until I scooped up a soil-y mouthful of crumbs.

Kansas City isn’t short on checkered tablecloths and red-sauce Italian Americana. But Plate is offering diners something different—creative, energetic dishes dreamed up by a chef with a broader vision of what Italian food can be.

vibe1in Plate’s expanded dining room is Milan meets Tron.

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Zaid Consuegra has never had to work for anyone else. He’s never had a bad boss. He’s only worked hours he’s set for himself.

But Consuegra—who, in September, plans to open Pirate’s Bone Burgers in the Crossroads—has also never actually been in a position where he could work for somebody else. There’s no disappearing into an easy corporate gig, no benefits, no paid vacation. Consuegra is a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival recipient, and his legal status, like that of millions of other people brought to the United States as children, is in a perpetual state of limbo.

Born in Mexico City, Consuegra moved to Kansas with his family when he was 11 years old. He attended middle and high school in the Shawnee Mission School District. After graduation, he moved to Boston, where he got a degree in film from Emerson College. His goal was to work in entertainment, and he sent letters and applications to a variety of companies in that industry. He was open about his immigration status. “I had every single letter sent back, saying they weren’t able to hire me,” he says.

Out of options and money, Consuegra moved back to Kansas around 2013. His mother was running a struggling convenience store in Shawnee at the time. Con-

suegra didn’t know much about food, but he stepped in to manage the small kitchen in the store. They renamed it Happy Ex. He worked there for a little while and decided to take a rather bold leap of faith, opening Pirate’s Bone Coffee in a tiny storefront he rented on 59th Street and Holmes, in Brookside.

“I have always dealt with people telling me I can’t do this, or I can’t do that,” Consuegra says. “I had roasters tell me how to do a lot of things. They didn’t think I’d be able to remember or be able to duplicate what they were doing ... But no one was born knowing everything. I played around with coffee a lot, and I got better.”

As the shop started to attract regular customers, Consuegra found he needed to hire more staff. He brought on a friend, Lydia Palma—a Houston transplant who had worked in interior architecture and design.

She was burned out and looking for a different type of career. Working at Pirate’s Bone seemed like a nice break from the grind.

As it happened, both Palma and Consuegra were just beginning their transition to fully vegan diets. Consuegra decided to make Pirate’s Bone an entirely vegan shop, eliminating dairy products like milk and cream. He weathered the brief backlash—

Consuegra describes being yelled at by several customers—and discovered, to his surprise, that he was busier than ever. Sales more than tripled.

He also found himself cooking more.

Pirate’s Bone had no commercial kitchen, but Consuegra used the tools available— induction burners and George Foreman grills—to make vegan options for his customers. He made soups, charcoal waffles, “chicken” salad made with jackfruit, wasabi bagels, and even tamales. But by far the most popular dish coming out of Consuegra’s makeshift kitchen was the vegan burgers.

Soon, people were banging down the door for them.

“The weekends got crazy,” he says of the demand. “I had to hire four people, then five people. Then we’d run out of seating.”

Pirate’s Bone got busy in a way that didn’t feel healthy to Consuegra. It was chaotic, haphazard. So he closed the location.

(The space is currently occupied by Littlest Bake Shop, a vegan cupcake shop and bakery in which Consuegra is a partner alongside pastry chef Iris Green.) That was in March.

In the time since, Consuegra and Palma— now business partners—have been building their new concept, Pirate’s Bone Burgers, at 2001 Main Street, in the Crossroads.

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THE MENU INCLUDES A BEET BURGER AND A BLACK BEAN CARROT BURGER, PLUS VEGAN HOT DOGS, FRIES, FRIED PLAINTAINS, POPSICLES, AND ICE CREAM.

There, Consuegra’s star burgers, which include a beet burger as well as a black bean-carrot burger, will be featured alongside vegan hot dogs, fries, fried plantains, popsicles, and soft-serve ice cream.

Consuegra and Palma also consulted with the midtown nonprofit The Whole Person on ideas about how to make the space more inclusive to people with disabilities and people who speak different languages.

Menus will be available in several different languages, including braille. The seats are child-friendly and easily configurable for different heights.

“We want everyone to feel as welcome as the person in front of them and the person behind them,” Palma says. “It turns out that it’s not as hard as everyone makes it out to be.”

When Pirate’s Bone Burgers opens this month, Consuegra says he plans to continue telling his immigrant story and to strongly advocate for the DREAM act, which would provide stability and a future for people like him. Given the political climate, he’s also aware of the risk he’s taking by being so open about his reality.

“I don’t want people to think, Aw, this great immigrant story, so cool,” Consuegra says. “No one would have chosen this life, to be truly honest. But it’s my duty [to be public about it]. I chose to have that duty.

Even though I don’t have a big platform to speak on, I still have one, and it’s bigger than maybe the person next to me. If I want something done, it is my responsibility to talk about it and make it less taboo.” thepitchkc.com | SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE PITCH

19

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Deeply flavorful braised beef is tucked into tender pockets of fresh pasta and enveloped in a rich brown butter sauce. Then they toss fresh peas in there and top the dish with a generous scoop of crunchy pistachios and a heap of pea tendrils. It’s chewy, it’s crunchy, and it hits every part of your tongue with intense flavor.

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THE PITCH | SEPTEMBER 2019 | thepitchkc.com

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Drink This Now The Sweetearth at Luckyberry Kitchen & Cocktails

Shantal and Tim Grace of Lawrence’s Luckyberry opted to temporarily close up shop in December after being raided by the FDA for the high crime of selling wholesale unpasteurized juice, a product they weren’t aware was illegal. The couple ultimately decided to transition their business into a full-service restaurant, and they’ve since rebranded it Luckyberry Kitchen & Cocktails. There’s a brand-new kitchen and a much-expanded menu, the cocktail side of which was designed by Kate Frick, the bartender behind the instant-classic Myers Hotel Bar in Tonganoxie. Frick’s menu is based on Luckyberry’s excellent cold-press juice—which is, yes, still unpasteurized—and brims with a high concentration of vitamins, minerals, and flavor. We’re partial to the Sweetearth, made with Luckyberry’s “beetnik” (orange juice, red beet juice, kale, and cucumber), gin, Passoa passion fruit liqueur, soda water, and fresh basil. The name is entirely appropriate: the beet’s earthy flavor really bursts through, while the orange juice and passion fruit softly sweeten the blend. This is about as healthy as a cocktail gets—and it tastes wonderful.

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thepitchkc.com | SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE PITCH

23

ARTS

Sneary (left) and Journagan having been staging plays on McGee for a decade.

ZACH BAUMAN

AWAY FROM HOME THE LIVING ROOM THEATRE WILL LEAVE ITS CHERISHED CROSSROADS SPACE FOLLOWING THE UPCOMING TENTH SEASON. BUT THEN WHAT? BY LIZ COOK

Rusty Sneary and Shawnna Journagan have built a heck of a living room over the past nine years. Now, they need a home to put it in.

The co-founders of The Living Room Theatre shocked the theater community this May when they sent out a letter announcing their “tenth and final season” at 1818 McGee. “Due to soaring city taxes and rental costs in The Crossroads Arts District,” they wrote, “we can sadly no longer afford to stay.”

Among other things, the announcement added fuel to a longstanding local debate over gentrification. Artists had helped transform the Crossroads from a ghost town into a vibrant entertainment district. Now, they were being priced out.

But Sneary and Journagan say that theirs wasn’t an issue of rising rents but fading commitment from the property owner.

The Living Room had been operating out of the McGee Street building on consecu-

24

THE PITCH | SEPTEMBER 2019 | thepitchkc.com

tive three-year leases. Last year, they weren’t given the option to renew. The landlord told them the property taxes had tripled; the implication was that a potential buyer or a more lucrative tenant was preferable to extending the theater’s lease.

“They were nice about it,” Journagan says. “They said we could do month to month or feel it out. But theater doesn’t work that way. We can’t plan a season month to month.”

The announcement had an unintended consequence: a lot of audience members thought the Living Room was closing for good. Condolences rushed in—donations didn’t. It was bad news for the nonprofit company, which needed funding more than ever to cover its next move.

To Sneary, it was a symptom of a larger ill.

“The city really comes together when something sad happens or something closes,” he says. “But the community can’t come

together at the end of something. They need to come together to support it while it exists.”

With the company’s tenth season about to begin, local audiences will have plenty of opportunities to support the Living Room in its transition. It’s staying true to its mission of developing homegrown plays and mounting two world premieres in its final season in the Crossroads space. No Sleep November—a yearly 24-hour play festival—and the Writer’s Den series of new play readings will both return. And this winter, Sneary plans to produce a new short play festival for Kansas City-based playwrights only.

The first show of the Living Room’s 10th season will be a world premiere of DNR by local playwright Victor Wishna.

This isn’t Wishna’s first collaboration with the theater. The Living Room produced his first play, Shearwater, which came out of one of theater’s playwriting seminars. DNR was nurtured by the theater, too. The play, which runs through September 22, was inspired by No One Dies Alone, an organization that places volunteers at the bedside of dying individuals who have no one else to sit with them. Wishna originally wrote it as a 45-minute play, and the Living Room sponsored a reading of it in 2017. But Wishna says Sneary encouraged him to develop it into a full-length script.

Wishna doesn’t take that support for granted. A few years ago, local playwrights didn’t have many avenues for development.

Now, they have several. The Kansas City Repertory Theatre has a yearly OriginKC: New Works Festival, the Unicorn Theatre an In-Progress play reading series. New companies such as Terra Femina and the Kansas City Public Theatre are making space for homegrown works as well.

Still, Wishna feels there’s something special about the Living Room’s commitment to Kansas City playwrights.

“Whatever they’re doing, whether that’s a reading or a workshop or a full production, they give it the same attention—the same pride—when it comes to PR and marketing,” he says. “They treat it the same way they would treat a production of a wellknown work by a well-known national playwright. And they recruit and attract the best acting talent in Kansas City.”

That’s certainly true for DNR. The production stars Jen Mays, Gary Neal Johnson, and Shawna Peña Downing—three actors who have played on just about every stage in the metro. Wishna credits the theater’s reputation for drawing them in.

In some ways, that reputation feels inseparable from the dynamic space the company built at 1818 McGee. Contrary to the pervasive cultural myth of the “starving art-

ARTS

THE 27TH ANNUAL

GET OUT DNR Through September 22 at The Living Room 1818 McGee, 816-533-5857 thelivingroomkc.com

ist”—the assumption that scarcity and suffering breed better art—it’s hard to carve out the time and energy to create when you’re worried about the rent. It’s hard to plan for the future when you don’t know if you’ll have a roof over your head next week. In that respect, the McGee building was a huge artistic boon.

“When we stay in one place, it’s a lot more safe and professional,” Journagan says.

She and Sneary are talking to me in the Living Room lobby, a homey, meticulously designed space packed with overstuffed couches in retro colors, midcentury table lamps, and an intricate display of tube televisions.

The building was a blank slate when they first moved in. The stable address allowed them to build a new stage, a new light booth, new dressing rooms. It’s those tangible signs of the company’s maturation that are now the hardest to let go.

“Walking into those dressing rooms and seeing actors’ signatures and quotes up on the wall—it’s just kind of like, Aw, man, we were just getting started,” Sneary says wistfully. “I stop dead in my tracks every day, like”—he makes the sound of a camera shutter.

It’s hard to imagine starting over from scratch in a new space. But as the clock ticks down to May 2020 and the end of their lease, talk about the future is taking on an anxious tone. They’ve looked for new spaces, talked about sharing a venue with another company. They’ve debated going the nomadic

route, mounting secret shows in parks. But they don’t have any firm plans.

There will be an 11th season, they say.

They’re not done producing. But it might not be in a space of their own.

“What would be really amazing is if we could find a benefactor that was like ‘Hey, I’ve had this warehouse that’s been sitting empty for the last few years,’” Sneary says, equal parts sarcastic and hopeful. He gestures at me. “Write that down.”

No matter where they end up, Journagan says, they’re going to keep focusing on locally grown work. And they’re going to keep making weird choices. She and Sneary run through some of their more memorable experiments over the past nine seasons.

They tried a promenade production of Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig, staging each scene in a different part of the theater. They made it rain on stage—twice. In their third season, they hauled 11 tons of sand into the theater for the world premiere of Kyle Hatley’s Death of Cupid. That’s one experiment they’re not eager to repeat. (“I think we just got rid of the last of it,” Journagan says.)

They don’t intend to leave that why not? attitude with the building. “I’ll definitely take with us that we were just unapologetically original,” Journagan says. “Or unapologetically unorthodox. We were really not worried about doing it wrong.”

With that, we say our goodbyes. The pair has to get ready for a rehearsal—something unorthodox. A guy has rented out the theater for a proposal, told his girlfriend they have tickets to a play. Sneary and Journagan have a fake curtain speech to write, fake headshots to paste in the lobby, fake audience members to plant in the seats.

Those seats. Journagan hesitates. They put them in not too long ago—it was a major upgrade. Soon, they’re going to have to get rid of them.

“All those seats, they were free,” she says. She sounds practical, resigned. “But they’re hard to get, you know? It’s hard to let go of.”

“Everything’s hard to let go of,” Sneary says.

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25

ARTS

JACQUELINE AYALA

NEW LANGUAGES HIP-HOP, COLOMBIAN RHYTHMS, SOCIAL JUSTICE, JAZZ—IT ALL FINDS ITS WAY INTO JESSICA AYALA’S POETRY. BY RILEY COWING

Jessica Ayala learned how to write in English before she could speak English. Her family emigrated from Colombia to south Kansas City in 1983, when she was just three years old. And Ayala still writes before she speaks—she considers it a foundational quality of her poetry.

“I think that is my poetry,” Ayala says.

“My poetry is my personal, vulnerable message to the world before the Jessica who actually speaks in public.”

Ayala’s poetry—she has a book of poems coming out in April 2020 and her 2017 collection, “Huelga,” is being republished this month—is indeed personal and often reflective of her family’s heritage. She describes her father as a “stickler” about reminding his children of their roots; growing up, they often listened to Colombian folkloric music on records he brought back from trips back to South America. Big, festive family gatherings were common.

“They [the parties] would start late and end super early in the mornings,” Ayala re-

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THE PITCH | SEPTEMBER 2019 | thepitchkc.com

calls. “I remember having an entire living room full of nothing but my parents’ friends dancing and eating. Usually folkloric music would come on at two in the morning, and that’s when all the ancestors—my aunts and our oldest relatives—would dance. There was something about that tradition that just really pulled on me.”

Ayala began incorporating the percussions of those parties into her poetry performances in 2016, at venues like The Writer’s Place and RecordBar. At the Mutual Musicians Foundation one night that year, Ayala discovered the Kansas City Rumba Collective, which she describes as “a collaborative effort of artists passionate about preserving the spirit of the Afro Cuban and Afro Colombian drum.” They reminded her of the music she’d grown up with, and her collaboration with the group, now three years running, served as a kind of bridge between Ayala’s poetry and songwriting impulses. She has since performed as a singer and spoken-word artist with the collective at

Loose Park and Art in the Loop. (She also now performs with Arquesta Del SolSoul, the sprawling hip-hop art project led by Les Izmore.)

Fusing hip-hop, poetry, percussion, and jazz, Ayala says, “has been this fun, eclectic mix of my heritage. Finding a way where [the music] complements the poetry, and turning words into song,” she says.

Ayala’s work as a teacher and community organizer has also been finding its way into her art. She taught ESL throughout much of the 2000s and worked with immigrant youth in the Westside and Northeast communities, creating bilingual after-school programming and creating spaces to advocate for Dreamers. And the national headlines about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are hardly news to Ayala, who has been battling the agency for the last 15 years, organizing rallies and marches in protest of several anti-immigrant bills in the Missouri legislature. Nor are large-scale roundups of immigrants like the raid at a Mississippi food plant in August a shock to her. In Postville, Iowa, in 2008, she witnessed the ICE arrest of 400 people at a meatpacking plant.

“The poetry [in “Huelga”] was my love letter to my community—I want my community to remind itself just how beautiful we are and how resilient and how powerful we are in the midst of this,” Ayala says.

“That’s what ‘Huelga’ is. The word huelga in Spanish means strike, it means boycott, it

GET OUT Jessica Ayala “Huelga” reading UMKC Student Union 5100 Cherry Friday, September 27 6:30–7:30 p.m.

means resist.”

Ayala is currently working on an installation to accompany her second book of poetry, which will be released next spring.

The installation will include 10 displays of family heirlooms, a mixed media collage, and a reading with her band. The book is intended to pick up where “Huelga” left off, zooming in on her experiences as a Colombian American.

“I think what I’m starting to hear—and I pray that it continues—is, ‘I’m not afraid anymore,’” Ayala says. “That’s the conversation that I want at the table, and that’s the one that I’m going to continue to push.

We need to keep pushing the language to change. Because once language changes, our attitudes change. Once our attitudes change, our actions change.”

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thepitchkc.com | SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE PITCH

27

COMEDY

My friend Joe Posnanski wrote a great book about Buck O’Neil, which is where I learned about it.

Well, then—on behalf of KC, thanks for saying such nice things about our city.

I grew up in Illinois, and we’re just all prairie folk. When I play the Pacific Northwest or New England, I feel like I’m bringing my Midwestern mores and love of dairy products to another land. Like: Ah, you are the land of the lobster pot or the redwood forest—let me tell you about the tall grasses from which I sprung. Kansas knows about soil, so I enjoy clasping hands in a bucolic fashion.

EMILY SHUR

RENAISSANCE RON THE MULTI-TALENTED NICK OFFERMAN BRINGS HIS FREEWHEELING COMEDY SHOW TO THE MUSIC HALL THIS MONTH.

BY APRIL FLEMING

Nick Offerman is still best known as Ron Swanson, the walrus-mustachioed libertarian of Parks and Recreation, but the figure he increasingly seems to cut is that of a modern renaissance man. Offerman runs his own wood shop in Los Angeles. He’s written four books, including one with his wife, the actress Megan Mullally. He’s hosted a reality show, Making It with Amy Poehler. He starred in the 2018 indie flick Heart Beats Loud, about a single father starting a band with his teenage daughter—an endeavor

28

THE PITCH | SEPTEMBER 2019 | thepitchkc.com

that also showcased his musical chops.

And then there’s the reason Offerman will be at the Music Hall in Kansas City on September 27: as a traveling humorist spreading his own brand of darkly funny homespun Midwestern wisdom, a sort of modern Mark Twain. We recently called up Offerman for a chat.

The Pitch: Thank you so much for your time.

Offerman: No problem. I’m crazy about

Kansas City. I’ve played there a couple times.

I mainly have enjoyed a deep dive into the barbecue feud that continues to rage, and also the amazing, independent bookstore— what is it? Rainy Day Books. When a city is so charismatically placed, and has such great architecture, and then has a kickass independent bookstore, and has barbecue like that—it sticks in your mind. I just think of it so fondly. Also, I’m excited—I’ve done a lot of reading about the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and I can’t wait to check it out.

What is the difference between a comedian and a humorist? Well, it might interest you to know that I have broken down and begun to allow myself to be called a comedian. To my way of thinking, a humorist doesn’t have to be as funny as a comedian.

My favorite examples of humorists would be Garrison Keillor, or of course Mark Twain.

George Saunders is a wonderful modern humorist. Their material can be very funny, but it’s not the material of a comedian, which I feel is more a barrage of jokes. A comedian’s sole purpose is to make an audience laugh, and I think a humorist wants to make an audience think while they are laughing.

Honestly, when I started doing this seven or eight years ago, I just thought it was funny to call myself a humorist, and I was also giving myself permission to not be hilarious every minute. I was giving myself permission to pontificate a little bit. But after two tours, namely “American Ham” and “Full Bush” [laughs], it dawned on me that maybe the audience didn’t require my pontification as much as they relished my hijinks. So, I’m really excited about this new show, because I think I do a lot less flapping of my gums, and I’ve put a lot more effort into the funny side of things. It’s not to say that my first two shows weren’t ripping good times in the theater, but those were my freshman and sophomore efforts, and now that I’m taking a swing at a varsity-quality performance, it just occurred to me to try to get my points across while making everybody laugh as much as possible.

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Can you describe the format of your live show? I’m very old-fashioned. My favorite joke delivery system is with an acoustic guitar, singing funny songs I’ve written.

I have seven songs, and they vary in theme, generally making fun of us for where our society has gotten to and the incredible ire that everyone seems to be displaying these days. Everyone is shaking their fists at someone else. And if you just take a small step back from the fray, it’s easy to realize: This is all just us. We live in the country with the benefit of a government that we vote for, and we’ve allowed ourselves through human nature and sheep-like consumerism to fall into the morass where we now reside, and everyone says “Hey, this sucks! Which nation of

drums because I went to a small high school and there were only three of us who could actually carry the drums in the marching band. I dabbled in other stuff.

I’m not great at music. No one has ever asked me to play guitar or sing for them on my own merits. So once I discovered that I could get people laughing [with music], then they tended not to notice my lack of musicianship. I just love funny songs. The one that was very formative when I was a kid was Steve Martin’s album with King Tut. I came alive. It’s basically the building blocks of the phenomenon we came to know as Tenacious D, which is also deeply hilarious. Across my life in different settings, when people would play songs in the style of John Denver or

it with me, and we immediately start making stuff right when the show is over.” It’s all I can do to keep from sobbing right there in the grocery store.

And it is just such a kind and sweet show. That goes back to Amy, and her charismatic troupe of powerful lady producers.

They conceived the show, and Amy said, “I want to do a reality show, but I don’t want to be mean to anybody ever. I don’t want to capitalize on people’s failure. We can have enough drama and emotion and story without tricking people into failure.”

Can you talk about Would Works, and some of the people you have met

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“I HAVE SEVEN SONGS, AND THEY VARY IN THEME, GENERALLY MAKING FUN OF US FOR WHERE OUR SOCIETY HAS GOTTEN TO AND THE INCREDIBLE IRE THAT EVERYONE SEEMS TO BE DISPLAYING THESE DAYS.”

people voted for this?” It’s making fun of the aspects of human nature that got us to where we are.

There’s also a rousing paean to Brett Kavanaugh titled “I Like Beer.” I then like to close by tugging the heartstrings a little bit. On this show it’s called “Us Dipshits Gotta Stick Together.” That’s been a saying of mine for many years, especially in Hollywood settings, when people mistakenly try to give me the J-Lo treatment. I don’t need any fancy waters, derived from coconuts or otherwise. I’m with you—we’re all making this art project together. Invariably, people will say “Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re a normal human being. That’s crazy.” And I say, ‘It’s not crazy, us dipshits gotta stick together.”

We learned in Heart Beats Loud that you really have some musical talent.

What is your musical background? My parents put me through piano lessons for as long as I could stand it, and like so many, I regret that I did not stick with it, because I have no doubt that I’d be today’s Elton John if I had just stuck to tinkling the ivories. That was where I learned to read music and fell in love with the ability to perform. Then, from fifth grade through senior year of high school, I played the saxophone, and that was probably my musical peak. I became quite proficient on the tenor sax, and I was the lead sax in our jazz band. I also played some

Neil Young, with custom funny lyrics—it is the greatest, most delicious experience.

My husband and I both loved Making It, and we were so happy to see that it’s coming back. What surprised you most about making that show? I’m thrilled with the positive audience response to that show. I’m just thrilled to be part of an effort to encourage people with love and positivity to make things with their hands. Those are two simple things that I think will go a long way to help us face some of the things we face as a nation. We rely on the convenience and luxury of surrounding ourselves with objects and services that can be acquired at the touch of a button. That gives away your agency, and means you don’t have any control over things like where your food is coming from and who’s making your tennis shoes, what country are they in, are there child labor relations. Corporate forces have taken over the world, and we’re waking up to that.

I think Making It is a staunch rebuttal to all this. The most surprising part about working on this show, for me, is the audience reaction. I have the good fortune of people coming up to me in public and telling me that they love Parks and Recreation, but since the advent of Making It, I have people coming up to me in the airport or grocery store and saying “Hey, I love Making It, especially because my kids or grandkids watch

through the organization? Would Works is a program in Los Angeles that a couple of very smart people started, and my wood shop has become affiliated with. It’s called that because the idea is people would work if they could. It’s a program that allows people to perform simple labor on woodworking gift items—cutting boards, coasters, stuff like that. People can sign up and work a number of hours to earn items of credit for something they need in order to get their lives back under their control. So many people are the victims of some unfortunate circumstance. Homeless people aren’t just losers who have given up on life. A great percentage of them are just people who have met with misfortune, either through the opioid epidemic or because of the healthcare system in this country. People are losing their homes and their lives and families because of our terrible health care, which is insane. The important thing that happens is that they come in and work for two weeks or a month, and then afterwards they have a reference that a prospective landlord or employer can call.

We can say, “Judy worked here for a month, and she was always on time, and she’s sober,” or whatever it is. The majority of people want to work. It was a no-brainer that my wood shop became aligned with them. I’m on the board of directors, and we’re very invested in helping the program grow, and I would love to see similar programs appear across the country.

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MUSIC

KID FANTASTIC ACQUAINT YOURSELF WITH BENNETT WEAVER, A YOUNG AND RESTLESS FIXTURE OF KC’S DIY SCENE. BY AARON RHODES

Few members of Kansas City’s DIY punk scene have proven as prolific as Bennett Weaver has over the last half-decade. Since forming his first band in his final year of elementary school, Weaver has been involved with nearly 20 different acts and recording projects. Some never made it past their initial demo, others became cult internet favorites, and a handful are among the local scene’s most recognizable bands.

This summer, Weaver launched a new Bandcamp page, Big Shit Tapes, which includes releases from four of his current projects—including his latest, Champ, a power-pop demo that hits the sweet spot between his raw, sweaty punk jams and more melancholy pop output.

Below, a guide to some of the most essential releases from one of KCDIY’s brightest young performers and home-studio engineers.

KILLAKEE CAT Killakee Cat was Weaver’s first punk project where he was calling all the shots—partially because he had no choice. In 2014, after transferring to Kansas City Academy from Shawnee Mission South High School, Weaver struggled with anxiety and depression. He’d been disciplined for bringing drugs to school, and his parents were concerned about his penchant for mixing drugs that should not be mixed. With all other options exhausted, Weaver’s parents sent him briefly to a wilderness therapy program in Hawaii, then to a boarding school in New Hampshire, where he would spend the next 12 months.

Internet access at Shortridge Academy was heavily censored, but Weaver figured out how to keep in touch with his band through Spotify’s direct message system. Bandmate Jack Marsh was soon handling the arduous task of emailing Weaver individual MP3 files from the punk scene back home. “It literally felt like we were sending coded messages,” Weaver recalls. “I had to go into this room and peek out the window and make sure no one was watching me and download all these songs onto my iPod real fast.”

These low-tech transmissions contained lo-fi recordings, an aesthetic that initially puzzled Weaver. But he quickly came to appreciate it. “That kind of endeared me to the whole aspect of DIY recording,” Weaver says.

“It’s like home cooking almost—it doesn’t have to look perfect, it’s how it tastes more that matters.” The fast, gritty sounds of early 2010s Midwest punk are evident in the early recordings of Killakee Cat, which Weaver produced after gaining access to a drum kit a few months into his stay at Shortridge.

After returning home in 2015, high school diploma in hand, Weaver teamed up with Marsh and longtime friend Joe Audley to fill out Killakee Cat’s lineup and began recording as a trio. Since 2016’s Full Band Demo, the group has managed one new tape a year and continued to tighten its signature blend of Midwest hardcore punk, channeling equal amounts of inspiration from the mega-pissed and violent stylings of groups like Dirty Work

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and Nuke Cult and the more calculated material of Dark Ages and Night Moves.

THE DRIPPIES Bennett Weaver on playing guitar in the Drippies: “It was showing up to every show late, not showing up with gear, showing up fucking way too fucked up, getting invited places to play and sneaking in alcohol and getting banned from those places.” According to Weaver, that was all part of singer Noah Hayes’ pitch when they started the band, backed again by Marsh on bass and Audley on drums. If the goal was to pick up the Dead Boys’ torch, get wasted off MD 20/20, and accidentally drop that torch in the toilet, the Drippies were gold medalists. Despite frustrating promoters and fans alike for most of its roughly three-year run, the band’s late Seventies punk and power-pop prowess was still undeniable. Many of its recordings sound like they emanated from the aforementioned toilet, but check out its live session on Bandcamp or track down a cassette copy of the aborted 7-inch record to hear the best distillation of one of Kansas City’s most obnoxious punk rock bands.

KOLUMBINE KIDS “I think that’s only something you can get away with when you’re 19,” Weaver says, laughing as we discuss the name of the shortlived, surf rock-inspired punk band in which he once played. The band’s tape’s cover art shows a tatted-up punk in black jeans and a white tee kicking sand at a pair of beachgoers, which pretty much sums it up. This is summertime punk rock to slam-skank and hipcheck a normie to.

NARC PARADE If Kolumbine Kids was a little too upbeat for you, there’s always Narc Parade. Fronted by Jacob Martella and featuring—yup— Weaver, Audley, and Marsh, this ensemble was formed in tribute to hardcore of the This Is Boston, Not L.A. variety. The band churned out three short tapes of snotty, minute-long punk songs about self-loath-

AARON RHODES

ing, getting fucked up with your friends, and the freak accident that resulted in a child’s death at the Schlitterbahn waterpark in Kansas City, Kansas. Goes “Verruckt” from the band’s CS3 tape: “Verruckt / Don’t lose your head / Caleb Thomas Schwab / Son of a Kansas lawmaker.” Save your outrage for the reunion show: The band broke up in 2016.

GENE Weaver says he often feels like “a 60 yearold man in a 16 year-old’s body that’s [actually] 22.” That’s why he named one of his weirdest and most warped recording projects Gene, after two people in his life that shared the name: his grandfather and a former landlord who shut off his power without notice. Gene’s 2016 tape, America Was Never Great, features a hyperlocal love song, a jab at art school students, and a critique of our current political climate, all in the form of foot-tapping, fuzzed-out punk rock and vocals that sound like a crazed street preacher.

SPEED Weaver likes to have an outrageous vocalist on his team when he’s not writing all the

songs. Luckily, Jude Cash is happy to spit at fans (and be spit on) as Weaver drums along in Speed, a fast-paced, beer-soaked punk crew that he describes as “endlessly cathartic.”

OBSCENITY PLUGS You can’t spend all of your time being a rock and roll bad boy. Sometimes, you want to explore some emotions, and that’s what Obscenity Plugs is for. Weaver’s latest EP under this moniker, Mystic Creep, is some of his most polished material yet, offering up gloomy bedroom pop and indie-rock tunes made for rainy days in bed.

Nitecrawlers Currently Weaver’s longest-running band (behind Killakee Cat), Nitecrawlers is Kansas City’s finest purveyor of mid-paced, West Coast-style punk. The group’s live shows feature vocalist and visual artist Kayla Haubenschild donning a mask and an eye-popping outfit as she writhes about the stage, emitting ghoulish laughs. Weaver acknowledges the long wait following the band’s 2017 demo and says that wait will likely continue, though a music video may emerge sooner or later.

thepitchkc.com | SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE PITCH

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MUSIC

PLANNED PARENTHOOD GREAT PLAINS, AMBER NICHOLE THIESSEN

CHOICE SHOW AS ATTACKS ON REPRODUCTIVE HEALTHCARE IN MISSOURI AND KANSAS SURGE, EVENTS LIKE PINKOUT ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER. BY EMILY PARK

For those concerned about women’s reproductive rights in the Kansas City area, the first half of 2019 was a whirlwind on both sides of State Line.

In Kansas, the state legislature tried and failed to further restrict abortion. Governor Laura Kelly vetoed SB 67, which would have required doctors to inform abortion patients that medical abortions administered by pill could be reversed—a practice that has yet to be scientifically proven. Kelly, a Democrat, called the bill “unnecessary legislation that would interfere with the relationship between women and their physicians.” Also earlier this year, the Kansas Supreme Court decided that women in the state have a fundamental right to abortion. The 6-1 ruling overturned legislation Kansas lawmakers

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THE PITCH | SEPTEMBER 2019 | thepitchkc.com

passed in 2015 that banned dilation and evacuation abortions, a common procedure for second-trimester terminations of pregnancy. The court’s decision could also stop future legislative attempts to limit abortion access in the state. It also means that abortion will remain legal in Kansas even if Roe v. Wade is overturned nationally.

They’re singing a different tune over in Missouri. In the last few days of the legislative season, lawmakers passed HB 126, aka the Missouri Stands for the Unborn Act. Missouri’s Republican Governor Mike Parson signed the bill into law, criminalizing termination of any pregnancy after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, or after eight weeks. The ban included pregnancies resulting from rape, incest, and human trafficking.

It also outlined criminal consequences—a class B felony—for any physician that performs an abortion after detecting a heartbeat. Missouri was already down to one sole abortion provider in the state, a Planned Parenthood clinic located in St. Louis. In June, the state refused to renew the clinic’s license to perform the procedure, sparking a legal fight.

Matters are hardly settled. The next scheduled hearing for the Missouri case is set for October 28; the clinic is offering abortion services while the case is pending.

And in Kansas, Kelly’s veto was just two votes away from being overturned, and Republicans in the state have vowed to put forward a measure next year that would amend the constitution to prohibit abortions.

So: the fights will continue. Which means organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood— groups that stick up for women’s rights— need your help. That’s why, on September 6, Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes (PPGPV) is hosting PinkOut, a benefit show at RecordBar. “We are in this moment where we have seen unprecedented attacks on reproductive rights,” says Rachel Sweet, regional director of public policy and organizing at PPGPV. “And it’s just really required us to start raising

more awareness and getting more resources for our political and advocacy work.”

PinkOut is anchored this year by Katy Guillen and The Drive, the local soul-tinged indie rock act.

“We’re all women performers, and I think we have all at some point—I can’t speak for the other members of the band— but I have used Planned Parenthood services before, and it just made sense,” Guillen says. “I just hope we can raise awareness and celebrate the live music and community together.”

Proceeds from the $25 ticket sales will support the organization’s efforts to thwart ongoing and future attempts in Missouri or Kansas to limit access to reproductive healthcare, educate voters on key issues being seen on state levels, and support local, state, and national candidates who will advocate for women’s healthcare rights.

“We have one legislature that is obviously being very hostile and another where we have been able to have some successes,” Sweet says. “But the ability of people to access health care in this region depends on all of us.”

PinkOut, a benefit for Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes. Friday, September 6, at RecordBar, 9 p.m. $25.

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QUICKIES SEXSOMNIA AND CONSENT; “COME” VS. “JIZZ”; BUKKAKE PRECAUTIONS. BY DAN SAVAGE

Dear Dan: I took Molly with my best bud. We wound up cuddling and telling each other everything. We didn’t mess around—we’re both straight guys—but one of the things I told him is that I would much rather eat pussy than fuck, and one of the things he told me is that he’s not at all into eating pussy and pretty much only likes to fuck. I think we’d make a great team: We’re both good-looking, athletic dudes and we should find a woman who loves to have her pussy eaten and loves to get fucked. I would go down on her and get her going (and coming), then he steps in and dicks her down (and gets her off one last time). What say you?

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to be, HORN, since we made them up. And while the term first came into use to describe bi women who weren’t just open to having sex with an established, opposite-sex couple, but open to committing to a couple and forming a poly triad, there’s no reason men and/or nonbinary folks who are interested in the same— hooking up with and forming relationships with established couples—couldn’t identify as unicorns, too. But are you a unicorn? People began to call those bi women “unicorns” because they were hard to find and everyone, it seemed, was looking for one. People interested in simply playing with couples aren’t anywhere near as hard to find.

Dear UPD: I would say, “FUCK YES!” if I were a woman, UPD, which I’m not. And while I can’t promise you every woman will have the same reaction I did, some women most definitely will.

Dear Dan: I’ve recently begun to experiment with a few kinky friends. One of them is a voyeur who is super into bukkake. I’d be open to a group bukkake scene, but how do I avoid contracting an STI? Anonymous Assistant

Dear Dan: I’m a male in my late 50s. I went to a urologist for my erection problem, which was helped with ED medication. But orgasms are very hard to achieve, and the ED medication does not seem to make orgasms any easier to have. My girlfriend appreciates the erections, but I would also like to climax. This is very frustrating. Any advice?

Pills Inhibiting Lusty Loads Dear PILL: Tits and dicks both sag with age, which is why push-up bras and push-up pills were invented. And while ED meds do make it easier for a guy to get an erection, they can also make it more difficult for a guy to climax.

Upside: You last longer. Downside: You may sometimes have sex without climaxing. Or you can shift your perspective and try to see this downside as a secret upside: Sometimes you get to enjoy sex without climaxing—and next time, when you do climax, you’ll blow a bigger load.

Dear Dan: I am a bisexual man who’s active in the sex-positive community, and I love playing with couples. I was updating my Feeld profile to reflect this desire, but I realized there’s no consistent term for a male unicorn. So I listed “Male/ Stag/Stallion/Minotaur/Pegasus,” various terms I’ve seen people use. WTF, it shouldn’t require a whole line in my profile to run through all the terms! As the person who famously crowdsourced “pegging,” I was hoping you could work your magic and get everyone to agree on a nonbinary term that works for all sexual identities.

Having One Reliable Name Dear HORN: What’s wrong with “unicorn”?

Unicorns—the mythical beasts—can be female, male, or, I suppose, genderless or genderfluid. They can be anything we want them

Dear AA: “On me, not in me” was a safe-sex message crafted in the earliest, darkest, most terrifying days of the AIDS Crisis—and a bukkake scene, which involves multiple men ejaculating on one person, is all about “on me,” which makes it relatively safe. So long as you’re careful not to get anyone’s come in your eyes (ocular gonorrhea, syphilis, and chlamydia are all things) or on your hole(s), you won’t have anything to worry about.

Dear Dan: Is there a regional difference between people who use the word “come” versus people who use “jizz”? I personally only use the word “come” and rarely hear anyone use “jizz.”

Do people not use “jizz” or do they just not use it where I live?

Seeking Pretty Unnecessary Niche Knowledge Dear SPUNK: I’ve seen maps that track regionalisms like “soda” versus “pop,” but I’ve never seen one tracking “come” versus “jizz.”

Seems like something a sex-positive linguist might want to jump on.

Dear Dan: I’m a 46-year-old man and I recently met a 31-year-old woman. We have not had PIV sex yet, but we have enjoyed several nights of cuddling, spooning, etc. as the relationship progresses. She has made it very clear she wants our first time to be a fairy-tale evening, so we have yet to take things past mild foreplay. Plot twist: After two nights of us sleeping together, I realized she’s a sexsomniac. She had no idea until I told her, and she barely believes me. But if I put my arm around her to cuddle when she’s asleep, she immediately sexually responds to the skin-to-skin contact. On two occasions she’s performed oral on me. I’m not complaining, as this is quite possibly every guy’s dream. My question

is around consent when dealing with situations like this.

She’s My Dream Girl Dear SMPG: Unless your new girlfriend gave you permission to initiate skin-to-skin contact in the middle of the night—unless she not only didn’t have a problem with the first blowjob you accidentally triggered but explicitly gave you the go-ahead to trigger more—you have already and repeatedly violated her consent. If she doesn’t want to do more than cuddle or spoon when she’s awake, you shouldn’t be manipulating her into blowing you when she’s asleep. Most people who are partnered with sexsomniacs prefer not to have sex with their partners when they’re unconscious, but some do—with their sexsomniac partner’s prior consent. It’s a gray area, because an unconscious person can’t offer meaningful, enthusiastic, ongoing consent. But unless there are details you’ve omitted—details like your partner saying, “I blew you in my sleep? Really! Neat! I’m happy to keep doing that!”— stop initiating skin-to-skin contact when she’s asleep or stop pretending you care about consent. (You should care about consent and you should stop.)

Dear Dan: I’ve been seeing a guy. We’re not really “boyfriend and girlfriend” and we’re not exclusive. Last night, him and my best friend and I were all hanging out in his bedroom. After a while, I went to sleep on the couch in the living room and left them in the bedroom. When I woke up, they were having sex. I had told them both it was okay for them to have sex with each other, but I didn’t expect them to do it when I was just in the other room.

Unwelcome Personal Surprise Enraging Totally Dear UPSET: You’re not exclusive, UPSET, and you gave this guy and your best friend permission to fuck, and… they fucked. But you got something out of it, too: You learned an important lesson. Namely, no one can read your mind. If you give someone permission to do something with someone else sometime, and both those someones are sitting on a bed, you need to bring up any and all additional conditions before falling asleep on the couch in the next room.

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

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SEPTEMBER EVENTS For more events, visit thepitchkc.com/calendar.

SEPTEMBER 1 1001 Arabian Nights Belly Dancing Showcase, Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club In the Heights, Musical Theater Heritage ZZ Top, Starlight Theatre

SEPTEMBER 2

SEPTEMBER 4

John Mayer, Sprint Center

Kacey Musgraves, Starlight Theatre It’s rare to see modern country artists receive a Pitchfork rave and headliner status at Coachella, but then again Kacey Musgraves is an unusual type of Nashville star. Her 2018 album, Golden Hour, proudly touched upon LGBT issues, safe sex, drugs, and religion from a not-particularly-conservative point of view, earning her four Grammys, including one for Album of the Year.

Bike for the Brain (B4B), Johnson County Mental Health Center

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SEPTEMBER 3 Terror Tuesday: Creepshow,Alamo Drafthouse

SEPTEMBER 4 Kacey Musgraves, Starlight Theatre

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Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, with live orchestra, Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

SEPTEMBER 5 Miller Light Mystery Show, Kansas City Live! Block

SEPTEMBER 5, 12, 19, 26 Puppies’ Night Out, Bar K Dog Bar

--Gina Pepitone

SEPTEMBER 6 Hot Tuna Electric, Knuckleheads Clay Walker, Lonestar, Mark Wills, Providence Medical Center Amphitheater Brian Regan, Uptown Theater

SEPTEMBER 6–8 Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy, Starlight Theatre

EVENTS

SEPTEMBER 10 Boz Scaggs, Lied Center of Kansas Matthew Sweet, Knuckleheads

SEPTEMBER 11 SEPTEMBER 5 Comedy Bang! Bang!, Arvest Bank Theatre at the Midland Scott Aukerman’s hit podcast (50 million downloads and counting) has spun off a TV show of the same name (it ended in 2016) as well as a traveling show. The latter, which comes to KC this month, is a live version of the podcast—a freewheeling, improvisational performance featuring surprise guests, characters, chatter, and general comedic fun.

TICKETS

Whitney, with Hand Habits, The Truman “Master Harold” … and the Boys, Union Station City Stage Wallows, with Remo Drive, Madrid Theatre

SEPTEMBER 12 German Conversation Group, Goethe Pop Up Kansas City GUILDit Art/Biz, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art Thomas Rhett, Sprint Center

Go to thepitchkc.com/tickets to find the hottest events in KC.

ROOFTOP BEER YOGA Sat, September 14

10Am

--Gina Pepitone

SEPTEMBER 7 Backstreet Boys, Sprint Center Breaking Benjamin, Providence Medical Center Amphitheater Music on Main, Grandview Main Street Uncorked: KC Wine Festival, Union Station KC Making Movies Carnaval, Knuckleheads Crossroads Music Fest, Multiple Crossroads Venues

SEPTEMBER 8 Blink-182 and Lil Wayne, Providence Medical Center Amphitheater Car Show, Shawnee Town 1929

SEPTEMBER 9 Reignwolf, Recordbar

SEPTEMBER 11 RuPaul’s Drag Race, Arvest Bank Theatre at the Midland After ten seasons and innumerable iconic GIFs, RuPaul’s Drag Race continues to delight audiences with its unrepentant mixture of drama and camp. Tough topics like gender identity, mental illnesses, and homelessness mingle with fashion, stage performances, and impossibly large wigs. RuPaul’s tour, Werq the World, is a parade featuring some of the finest queens from the show. This year’s galacticthemed version features Asia O’Hara with Detox, Kameron Michaels, Kim Chi, Naomi Smalls, Plastique, Violet Cha chki and Yvie Oddly.

--Gina Pepitone

OCTOBER OCTOBER 33 @ @ MADRID MADRID THEATER THEATER

DO YOU NEED A TICKET PLATFORM FOR AN UPCOMING EVENT? Email us at stephanie@thepitchkc.com.

thepitchkc.com | SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE PITCH

39

EVENTS

weekdays 3pm-8pm SEPTEMBER 12

SEPTEMBER 13-15

Thomas Rhett, Sprint Center Thomas Rhett takes an exceptionally broad view of the country genre, layering R&B, EDM, and plain old pop beneath his rich twang. Rhett’s 2017 album, Life Changes, went platinum, and this year’s Center Point Road has earned him a hit with “Look What God Gave Her” as well as a spring appearance on Saturday Night Live.

The Temptations, with the KC Symphony, Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts Motown sounds with a symphony is a lovely combo, and all the better when it’s the Temptations performing hits like “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” and “My Girl.” Here, Otis Williams, the group’s founder and only surviving member, will perform alongside a new cast of vocalists.

--Gina Pepitone

SEPTEMBER 13 The SteelDrivers, Folly Theater The Truman’s 2nd Birthday Bash, The Truman

SEPTEMBER 14 Abstract Paint Your Pet, New Element The Baby Boomer Comedy Show, Ruby Theatre

Jeff Beck, Uptown Theater Strutt With Your Mutt, Brookside

SEPTEMBER 18-21 KC Fashion Week, Union Station

SEPTEMBER 18 Hot Club KC, Shawnee Town 1929

Collections Up Close at the Museum, KU Natural History Museum

SEPTEMBER 19

Independence Uncorked Wine Festival, Bingham-Waggoner Estate

Carrie Underwood, Sprint Center

Second Saturday Distillery Tours, S.D Strong Distilling Dan Savage’s HUMP! Film Festival, Screenland Armour

THE PITCH | SEPTEMBER 2019 | thepitchkc.com

SEPTEMBER 17

Chili Peppers Demonstration at the Farmhouse, Shawnee Town 1929

Rev It Up Street Festival, South Park, Downtown Lawrence

40

--Gina Pepitone

SEPTEMBER 20 Gloria Trevi, Sprint Center Kansas City Latin Jazz Orchestra presents: “Salsa en la Calle/ Salsa in the Street,” Prospero’s Books

EVENTS

SEPTEMBER 21 A Night Out, Historic George Walker House Joe Jencks, Acoustic Alcove Life Fest, Briarcliff Village Picture Frame Paper Quilling, New Element Greta Van Fleet, Starlight Theatre Troostapalooza, Troost Ave. between 30th and 31st streets Friends of Shawnee Town Craft Fair, Shawnee Town 1929

SEPTEMBER 22 Jonas Brothers, Sprint Center

SEPTEMBER 23–24 Gerald Clayton, piano, Lied Center of Kansas

SEPTEMBER 25 Fruit Bats, RecordBar Eric Johnson is Fruit Bats, and Fruit Bats is Eric Johnson: The band, formed in 1997, has undergone a variety of personnel shifts since its founding in Chicago, but Johnson’s voice and his Laurel Canyon folk-rock ethos has remained a constant throughout. After disbanding the project in 2013, Johnson started it back up again in 2015, and he signed to Merge Records last year to release Gold Past Life, Fruit Bats’ first album on the venerable indie label. Sun June opens.

--Gina Pepitone

SEPTEMBER 24 The Black Keys, Sprint Center

SEPTEMBER 28–29

2nd Annual Puppy Parade, Inclusions Connections

Bike MS: Kansas City, Garmin Headquarters

SEPTEMBER 25–29

SEPTEMBER 28

Hello, Dolly!, Starlight Theater

Slovenefest 2019, Holy Family School Grounds

SEPTEMBER 26 KU Symphony Orchestra featuring Juan-Miguel Hernandez, Lied Center of Kansas

SEPTEMBER 27

Weston Moonshiners Car Club, Downtown Weston

SEPTEMBER 29 Jamey Johnson, Voodoo Lounge

Wilder Woods, The Granada

thepitchkc.com | SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE PITCH

41

MARKETPLACE

AUCTION DATE: 10/2/19 4/3/19 WEATHER PERMITTING PERMITTING WEATHER

The following vehicles will be sold at public auction on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019 unless claimed by owner and all The following vehicles will be sold at public auction on Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019 tow and storage charges are paid in full. For information, please contact Insurance Auto Auction at 913-422-9303. unless claimed by owner and all tow and storage charges are paid in full. For information, please contact Insurance Auto Auction at 913-422-9303.

LOCAL 1000

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ATTORNEY SINCE 1976 KS/MO Injuries, KS Divorce, All Family, Juvenile & More.

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Contact Frank 7pm-3am Mon-Sat

Colliers International. EHO

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HELP IS HERE DWI, Solicitation, Traffic, Internet Crimes, Hit & Run, Power & Light Violations, Domestic Assault Criminal Defense Attorney David M. Lurie 816-221-5900 www.The-Law.com

KS-KCKS | $545-$650 913-299-9748 HEAT & WATER PAID...

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2005 2006 Acura TL Chrysler

19UUA66285A042378 PT Cruiser 3A4FY58B06T332130 2010 Lincoln MKZ 3LNHL2GC0AR615537 2010 3FAHP0JA1AR384187 2016 Ford Fusion Nissan SEL Versa 3N1CN7AP2GL819787 2010 Ford F150 Infiniti JN1CV6EK9AM103118 2006 SupercrewG37 1FTPW14VX6KD64268 2015 Chrysler 200 1C3CCCAB2FN612898 2007 Aura XR 1G8ZV57797F161800 2014 SaturnRam 1500 1C6RR7LT4ES423677 2007 Ford F250 Nissan Sentra 1FTFX27L7VKB81966 3N1AB61EX7L668478 1997 2017 Hyundai Accent KMHCT4AE1HU194141 2006 2010 Kia Sorento Chevrolet Malibu KNDJD733165524406 1G1ZD5EB1A4146851 1999 Buick Century 2G4WY52M4X1570349 2010 Scion TC JTKDE3B75A0306877 2008 ToyotaJeep Commander 1J8HG48K08C149622 2012 Hyundai Dodge Ram 1500 1C6RD6NT4CS113953 2007 Accent KMHCM36C17U006893 2014 Nissan Sentra 3N1AB7AP2EL62661 2013 Camry 2007 ToyotaKawasaki EX 250 4T1BF1FK8DU294649 JKAEXMF177DA28211 2002 Kia Soul Volkswagen New Beetle 3VWCB21C22M456543 2011 KNDJT2A20B7287194 2012 Nissan Versa 3N1CN7APXCL863871 2010 Yamaha Toyota Prius 5Y4AM06Y54A001710 JTDKN3DU7A0033412 2004 YXR660 F 2009 Nissan Versa 3N1BC13E89L369480 1997 Monte Carlo 2010 Chevrolet Chevrolet Traverse 2G1WW12M8V9314726 1GNLRFED0AJ245076 1997 ToyotaLincoln Continental 1LNLM97V7VY676778 2003 Camry 4T1BE32K43U191862

MUSIC/MUSIC ROW

Piano, Voice, and Guitar lessons

LEGAL

$400-$850 Rent 1 & 2 Bedroom Apartments & 3 Bedroom HOMES.

YR MAKE/MODEL VIN# 2008 YR Cadillac CTS MAKE/MODEL 1G6DF577980194011 VIN#

Available from professional musician and instructor. Instructor teaches in a fun and meaningful context from ages 4 to the young at heart. Sessions are 1⁄2 hour and 1 hour. Students who mention “The Pitch” will receive $5 off For more info Please call/text Kathleen 913-206-2151 or Email: klmamuric@yahoo.com

Classifieds

steven@thepitchkc.com 816-218-6732

Many Many of of these these vehicles vehicles run run and and drive. drive.IfIf you you are are looking looking for for cheap cheap transportation, transportation,don’t don’t miss miss this this auction/sale. auction/sale. We We welcome welcome all all buyers. buyers.Terms Terms of of auction: auction: All All sales sales are are “as “as is” is” “where “where is”. is”. No No guarantees guarantees or or warranties. warranties. Paper Paper work work to to obtain obtain new new title title will will be be $75.00 $75.00 Per Per vehicle. vehicle.No No guarantee guarantee that that paperwork paperwork will will produce produce title.Bidding title.Bidding will will be be number number only. only.Terms Terms are are cash cash or or certified certified check. check.Vehicles Vehicles must must be be paid paid for for in in full full at at end end of of auction. auction.No No exceptions. exceptions.

All All sales sales are are final. final.No No returns. returns.

Call NOW! MUCH NICER THAN THE PRICE!

INSURANCE INSURANCE AUTO AUTO AUCTION AUCTION 2663 2663 SOUTH SOUTH 88TH 88TH ST. ST. KCKS, KCKS, 66111 66111 || 913-422-9303 913-422-9303

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WANTS TO purchase minerals and other oil & gas interest. Send details to P.O. Box 13557, Denver, CO 80201

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42

THE PITCH | SEPTEMBER 2019 | thepitchkc.com

for a FREE consultation

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816-221-5900 www.The-Law.com

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Senior Apartments Rents Starting at $1,060/mo.

NON-DISCRIMINATORY POLICY FOR NON-DISCRIMINATORY POLICY FOR CALVARY SCHOOL CALVARYLUTHERAN LUTHERAN SCHOOL Calvary Lutheran School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. Calvary does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of our educational policies, admission policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.

CALVARY LUTHERAN EARLY EDUCATION CENTER CALVARY LUTHERAN SCHOOL 7500 OAK7500 STREETOAK • KANSAS CITY, MO 64114 STREET CALVARY LUTHERAN SCHOOL & KANSAS CITY, MO 64114 EARLY EDUCATION CENTER CALVARY LUTHERAN SCHOOL 12411 WORNALL ROAD • KANSAS CITY, MO 64145

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Free Heat, Electric, Cable, Water & Garbage Small Pets Welcome!

Close to Shopping, Restaurants, and Places of Interest

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Fitness Center Coffee Bar and Family Room/Library

19301 East Eastland Center Court | Independence, MO 64055 eastlandcourt@clovergroupinc.com thepitchkc.com | SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE PITCH

43

AL DI MEOLA

MUSIC OF DI MEOLA, PIAZZOLLA & THE BEATLES

SEPTEMBER 6

HALLOWEEN DISCO BALL

JAMEY JOHNSON SEPTEMBER 29

HANSON

FT. DISCO DICK & THE MIRRORBALLS

PLUS TAYLOR HANSON DJ SET

OCTOBER 26

NOVEMBER 9

TICKETS ON SALE NOW

Tickets available at VooDooKC.com or Ticketmaster.com/voodookc.

Located minutes from Downtown Kansas City. Unlimited Free Parking.

Know When To Stop Before You Start.® Gambling Problem? Call 1-888-BETSOFF. Subject to change or cancellation. Phone and online orders are subject to service fees. Must be 21 or older to gamble or obtain a Caesars Rewards card. ©2019, Caesars License Company, LLC.