KC Confidential

Frankly, I’m not appalled…

Everybody hates the Internal Revenue Service and everyone who files a tax return lives with the fear of being audited or penalized for a mistake or tax transgression. Even taxpayers with no reason to be fearful.

Kinda like when you’re driving down the road, doing the speed limit and absolutely nothing wrong, but you still get a little nervous when a cop pulls up behind you.

Why is that? Continue reading →

Let there be plaudits…

Media criticism is a hard way to go. Not because it’s difficult finding fault – real or imagined – that’s the easy part. Anybody can play that game.

No, the trouble is, everyone hates you once you’ve done it. Which is why otherwise edgy bloggers like Tony mostly kiss up to local media hacks. That’s how you get Pitch cover stories and radio appearances. Trust me, Mr. T knows where his bread is buttered.

Show no mercy and you’ll get none.

And while most everybody in the media can dish it out, few can take it. Continue reading →

There’s a difference between well written and well reasoned…

Good writers love to play with words and concepts, that’s a given.They didn’t get into the journalism racket for the fat paychecks. Not 40 years ago at the height of Watergate, and certainly not in today’s low pay, high mortality news and alt weekly writing game.

Which brings us to Washington Post pop critic Chris Richards’ story today, “Are foodies quietly killing rock-and-roll?”

While Richards makes clever inroads in mounting that argument, one could easily pit the rise in popularity of cooking shows, restaurants and food trucks against any number of beleaguered industries and argue the same. Continue reading →

Things may be better down south but they’re far from perfect…

“While I said that mixed races seem to be more comfortable down here, there are some things that are worse,” says Joe Miller, a Kansas City and Pitch refugee who now teaches college English in Columbus, Georgia. “While the black population here is a majority, there are only three black City Council members out of 10. I don’t know how you can have a majority of the population but only three on the City Council. Continue reading →

Turnabout is fair play…

And seeing as how we’re from “up north,” we all know about racism “down south.” At least we thought we did.

Enter these observations by former Pitch heavweight Joe Miller.

Miller is currently an English professor in Columbus, Georgia. And reading of Kansas City’s ongoing trials and tribulations with black youth on the Plaza and in other entertainment districts about town got him thinking.

“One of the things that really struck me when I got down here is it’s not like Kansas City,” Miller begins. “You know, all the nicest restaurants and bars are on this three block stretch and there are several black nightclubs there. And on weekends and other nights there are big crowds of blacks out on the town. Regularly. And that’s something I seldom saw in Kansas City.”

That is, without a gaggle of nervous business owners, security personnel and rent-a-cops. Continue reading →

A moment of silence please for the party zone known as the Beaumont Club…

Although it closed late last year, the entertainment elves in Westport have been working quietly to revive the failed former country, dance and concert venue.

As recently as last week, hopes were high that a team of “investors” would be assembled to divide the space in two and conquer with the southern third a Stanford & Sons comedy club and the northern two thirds country with the odd live concert and a re-imagined  outdoor, beach party scene.

While that still could happen, those hopes have dimmed. Continue reading →

It’s like a bad dream that won’t go away…

It’s been months since Micah Riggs locked the doors for the last time at his business Coffee Wonk at  3535 Broadway in Midtown Kansas City. And it’s been years since he sold a now controlled substance known as K2 or synthetic marijuana.

Riggs stopped selling it the minute it became illegal in August of 2010.

Unfortunately however, he’s been up to his eyelashes in prosecutors and police ever since Coffee Wonk was robbed at gunpoint in September of 2010 and police were called to investigate. Continue reading →