KC Confidential

B.C. Christopher

In another life I’d have been at the KCBOT that last Friday for its sad send off…

I earned my first paycheck there when I volunteered to help out over the Christmas holidays in the mailroom of my family’s firm, B.C. Christopher & Company. I was 15, pretty much a geek and $1.25 an hour was a lot of dough to me then. So much so, that when I returned the following summer, my dad refused to let me to work any overtime – even though they needed me – because he didn’t want me ranging around loose with too much money.

I graduated to the elevator department a year or two later. We leased or owned and operated about 30 country grain elevators and merchandised grain purchased directly from farmers in small towns like Mayfield, Kentucky and Gideon, Missouri. We sold it to firms that either processed the grain (like Archer, Daniels, Midland) and/or exported it (like Louis Dreyfus). Continue reading →

It ain’t easy being Craig Glazer…

Truth be told, it’s a lot of work. There are hotties to bang (and put up with), wee hours radio and television shows to ferry comics to,  movie deals to be made and exotic British sports cars to be driven. And that’s just the fun stuff.

There’s also a business to be run, bills to be paid, staffers to be hired and dealt with and a looming expansion back to Midtown Kansas City in the hooper. It’s a dirty job at times, and the gentleman we lovingly call The Scribe has to do it.

Which brings us to David Hudnall‘s cover story about “the Glaze” in the Pitch.

Glazer’s from one to ten take on the journalistic mugging? Continue reading →

Don’t look now but notorious KC bad boy Craig Glazer – a KC Confidential refugee – is this week’s Pitch cover boy…

Courtesy of Pitch music and entertainment main man David Hudnall. The Scribe tells me the curtain will part sometime after 10 p.m. tonight on the alt weekly’s website – print pubs to follow tomorrow.

What to expect?

Pretty much anything and everything, since it appears Hudnall spent the better part of a month running down everybody from me to Craig’s dad, to the odd ex and however many Hollywood types.

Any shockers? Continue reading →

A moment of silence please for the festival known as Kanrocksas…

Someday in the distant future, pop culture historians will look back – in momentary lapses of trivial pursuits – and wonder at what was to have become Kansas City’s Bonnaroo or Lollapalooza. Alas, it was not to be as the ambitious music fest imploded a month before showtime, leaving 70 or so bands to fend for themselves.

Enter promoter Live Nation, which stitched together a stellar lineup of Kanrocksas bound bands that came thisclose to selling out Starlight Theatre Friday with a kick ass five band bill, headlined by rapidly rising star, Imagine Dragons. Continue reading →

What’s the matter with Kansas?

If we’re talking about the city of Lawrence and the KU Jayhawks basketball team, plenty. I live in Lawrence now and even though I still spend a ton of time in Kansas City, this town and this university isn’t all that hard to figure out.

I’ve got three words to describe how things are run here: Good Old Boy. Continue reading →

When a man makes an “Oklahoma Guarantee” it behooves him to live up to it…

To that end, help yourself to this collection of letters from a group of school kids that I conducted a tour of the Kansas City Board of Trade for in 1981 while a member.

Today’s the last day of trading for the KCBOT. May the Kansas City Wheat contract as we know it rest in peace:

“Dear Mr. Christopher,

Thank you very much for taking time off work to show us around. My favorite part of the Board of Trade was when we saw the pit. I thought it was sort of funny when all the men would hassle one man and that man would try frantically to write everything down.

Sincerely,

Beth Dolan.”

******* Continue reading →

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world…

Especially where female Chiefs fans are concerned, and it’s only going to get madder. That after savvy National Football League owners banded together to come up with a way to avert a Boston Marathon-like incident without costing them zillions or slowing fans entry into stadiums to a crawl.

Just one problem. Continue reading →

Ask and you shall…

Hold it a sec, a reader request for an update on Jennifer Eichler aka Jennifer Foley aka The Watson’s Girl seemed reasonable enough. After all, it’s been two years since last we checked in on the grrrl who broke a thousand hearts while hustling above ground pools and tanning beds alongside step dad  Andy Prefontaine.

These days Watson’s goes by Family Leisure and the buxom young woman that every red blooded Johnny Dare listener had the hots for is nowhere to be found.

She’s pretty much gone down periscope.

Just two years ago when I tracked Eichler she was on fire. Continue reading →