Category Archives: Hearne_Christopher
Modern Family’s Cameron to Light Mayor’s Christmas Tree
This just in…
Kansas City escapee Eric Stonestreet, the dude who plays the lovable character Cameron on the hit ABC sitcom Continue reading
Rock 98.9 FM’s Johnny Dare Ventures down New Career Path as Voice Talent
Take 10,000 bikers, pack Continue reading
Optical Illusion? Nah, Think Funk Fit
The plan: Jam Paul Bunyan into a go kart and let him lead the tall timber into Crown Center…
But instead of Paul Bunyan – the mythological giant lumberjack it was to be KC mayor Mark Funkhouser – all 6 feet 9 inches of him. And instead of a go kart Funk would be conveyed inside one of those tiny, tiny smartfortwo automobiles provided by Mercedes-Benz Kansas City and smart center Kansas City.
As for the timber, it was a 100 foot tall Douglas fir trucked in from Oregon for this year’s Mayor’s Christmas Tree ceremony and fundraiser. A two year lease on a smartfortwo awaits the winning donor and/or entrant in this year’s promotion. The tree lighting ceremony – with a celebrity to be named soon – goes down the friday after Thanksgiving.
The $64 million question: would Funk fit? Continue reading
Don’t Dare Miss it: Full Throttle Saloon Tonight at Angel’s Rock Bar in P&L
It’s not often Kansas City gets treated to a Hollywood style media schmooze…
But that’s just what’s in store tonight for the fortunate few at Rock 98.9 FM morning mainstay Johnny Dare’s “Full Throttle Saloon” viewing party tonight at Angel’s Rock Bar in the Power & Light District.
What’s the show about?
Nothing less than the World’s Largest Biker bar that accommodates 10,000 bikers (and biker babes), that’s in operation just 10 days every year during the annual Sturgis South Dakota biker blowout.
Dare landed the voiceover honors for the six-episode series that premiers at 9 p.m. tonight on TruTV. Continue reading
Rockhill Tennis Club Update: Closing, Future Called into Question
Will the historic Rockhill Tennis Club live to tell the story?
The controversial booting of the 95 year-old tennis and swim club from its home by landlord the Nelson-Atkins Museum has been a sore subject. Both with current neighbors unhappy about the Nelson converting the club to offices, and people living near Nelly Don Mansion, the club’s proposed future home at 52nd and Cherry.
The latest? Continue reading
Conspiracy Realized: Party Like an Egyptian Tonight in New Uptown Digs
It’s been a long time coming…
The Uptown Theater’s long-on-the-drawing board new night club/event room experience The Conspiracy opens tonight. That’s right tonight. At long last you will be able to check out the pair of Continue reading
The Curious Closing of the Kansas City Improv Comedy Club
It just sounds fishy…
Why build a spanking new, state of the art comedy club, close it just four years later and move a couple of inches away into another space. That’s competing comedy club owner Craig Glazer’s question.
“Thank you for calling the Improv comedy club and dinner theater,” the club’s messaging system says. “We are currently closed and plan to reopen in mid January. Bigger and better things to come. Thank you for calling.”
The Improv’s Web site however offers up a different timetable: Continue reading
38 the Spot’s Heartbreaker Holly Dumps Country Crooner
Can another one of those somebody done somebody wrong songs be in the offing? More to the point,
‘Can I Get a Down Payment on a Cheeseburger?’ Screaming Jerry Conquers Big C
It ain’t over till the Grim Reaper swings…
And in the case of Kansas City’s best known panhandler Jerry Mazer, it’s far from over. That after being diagnosed with cancer last year. Over the years Mazer has been a fixture in Westport, downtown and in recent years on the Country Club Plaza. And he just happens to have one of the more memorable come on lines in panhandling; “Can I get a down payment on a cheeseburger?”
The latest?
“The cancer is still in remission,” Mazer says. “Knock on wood.I haven’t had any chemo. It’s bone marrow cancer, it’s Leukemia – just call me Lew. It’s going to kill me one day, but it really doesn’t bother me. I take it with a grain of salt, go to the doctor every four months.”
With cold weather and the holidays coming and a Plaza mindset less than friendly to the panhandlers (they’re the ones remember who pushed thru the panhandling ordinance KC police say they won’t enforce), how are things going down on the front lines? Continue reading
White Owl & Lonesome Dove: After the Lovin’s Done the Art Remains
The restraining orders are (allegedly) in place…
The fairytale May/December romance between out-there University of Kansas basketball and football yell leader – sixty something Saul “White Owl” Tucker and 20-something Lawrence artist Continue reading
No Sale: Deal for Historic Savoy Grill/Hotel Goes South, Restaurant to Remain Open
This just in…
A $25 million redevelopment plan to close and rennovate for the historic Savoy Grill and hotel Continue reading
Thanksgiving Breakfast Dance Bites the Dust: 30 year Kansas City Tradition DOA
One of Kansas City’s hippest happenings is taking a dirt nap this Thanksgiving…
The at least 33 year-old Thanksgiving Day Breakfast Dance at the National Guard Armory in Kansas City, Kansas will not be going down this, says organizer Roger Naber.
“It ain’t happening,” Naber says. “Nobody could pull it together, so we’re going to postpone it until next year. I don’t have time to do it this year. There’s too many other things going on in my life.”
Two years ago Naber described the TGDBD in my column in the the Kansas City Star. Continue reading
Hearne on the Street: I So Got Forked
Atop the slag heap of junior high rituals rests the esteemed art of forking…
Never been there, never done that? Not a problem.
The Urban Dictionary describes forking as “sticking forks into someone’s yard
– usually forms words or pictures
-yard grafitti
-can be used to laugh at a friend or to piss off an enemy
-can be used to laugh at a friend or to piss off an enemy
– We were bored last night, so we forked my ex-boyfriend “
What UD left out was it’s generally done with the plastic forks they sell at grocery stores. In some circles it replaced the time tested (albeit messier) practice of tee-peeing or launching toilet paper roll streamers into trees.
Being somewhat removed from high school – let alone junior high – I was somewhat surprised to awaken Sunday morning to the artful display of plastic forks that lined my front yard and spelled out my initials. Continue reading
Calling All Kiss Fans: Be on the Lookout for Tribute Band Posers
You must remember this – a Kiss ain’t always a Kiss Continue reading
WaterFire 2009: Smoke on the Water or Bonfire of the Vanities?
Say this about Saturday’s WaterFire misadventure at Brush Creek…
It was a recession buster. Thousands of Cowtowners flocked to or near the Plaza to sniff burning wood and listen to, what in my humble opinion, passes for New Age Muzak while watching a small cadre of fire-toting types do their thing.
Translation: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….. Continue reading
The Flip Side of Churchill Owner Sally Hilkene
Make no mistake; one of the Cowtown’s most sensational retailers is Churchill of Fairway…
But few people know much about the fun-loving side of the hard driving force to be reckoned with behind the operation, Continue reading
Scratch ‘N’ Sniff: WaterFire Three – the Big Kids Weigh In
Let’s begin again on a positive note…
At least two attendees of last weekend’s WaterFire New Age smoke out on the Plaza came up to me to tell how fragrant the smoke was coming from the allegedly 55 bonfires set ablaze on Brush Creek. I can’t smell, so I’ll take their word. Not so on a crowd estimate of 25,000. Not after actually counting heads at the Plaza’s Thanksgiving Lighting Ceremony a handful of years back. I don’t thinkWaterFire’s attendance even comes close.
Remember, the Plaza had been promulgating numbers in the 250,000 to 300,000 range. Naturally talking TV news heads totally bought it, and reported it as fact. Until that is Waldo businessman Gary Evert and a task force of UMKC statistics students did an actual count for my Kansas City Star column that came in around 23,000 and change.
The Plaza then came clean that they had never conducted a count and have been silent on the subject since. Continue reading
