As I wander around this town getting into different adventures, I always (try to) make sure that I have my (not so) trusty mobile phone at the ready. Believe it or not, it’s new and I usually end up grabbing a photo of my shoes when something interesting goes down in my vicinity. But while I’m mostly late with the shot when there’s a shoving match in the Quicktrip checkout line; as of late I’m getting rather good with my powerful 2 megapixel new mobile blogging device and I’ve been able to snag a few decent shots.
In fact, I’ve even managed to learn a few things about this cowtown while snagging these images.
On Monday night local band Valency played to surprisingly big crowd of at least 100 at Jardine’s. I’m NEVER out on a Monday night so I was doubly impressed. The progressive rock, blues, jazz fusion group has some rather dedicated fans and I certainly was impressed by the musical skill of the band during their performance. I’m looking forward to checking them out again.
Bill “Jazzbo” Hargrave is a beloved fixture in the local music scene but this week was the first time I was able to have a conversation with him that lasted more than a few seconds. He’s a great guy and he is now part of Kansas City history. We talked about his still busy musical schedule as he played a few low key notes at Jazz. He told me a bit about the derivation of his stage name Jazzbo and even noted a few early gigs with Kansas City’s own Whizzo The Clown. Apparently, the guy used to perform his musical act in full clown gear.
And earlier on in the week, I noticed that neither the media nor any blog picked up on the fact that The Plaza was once again set upon by African-American young folks. Of course, the news of these students congregating on The Plaza during a high security, police-state-like lock down escaped so many local newsies because they were just celebrating prom. I don’t know if you can see it but they waved to me as I snagged this pic of the revelers enjoying their night and escaping the mainstream media stereotypes because minority youth only seem to garner media coverage when they’re doing some horrible.
Meanwhile, I thought to myself: It’s clear that local media doesn’t focus at all on images of minorities partying responsibly. If I ever plan on rioting, I should dress nice so that I might escape media scrutiny.
Tony Botello
Tim
Always trying to stir the pot aren’t you? How about this….neither minority youths nor non-minority youths garner the media attention when they are not causing problems. More times than not, when there are problems, it just happens to be minority youths. I drove through the plaze a couple weeks before the incident and noticed that there were roughly 50-75 black teens hanging out outside the theatre. Sadly, my first thought was there there was going to be problems. Sure enough it happened. Please don’t make this about clothes or race, it’s about people. Inner city people ruin nice places for everyone else. It’s a fact. Bannister Mall, Ward Parkway mall. Looks like the Plaza is next.
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