KC Confidential

About last weekend’s RockFest at Liberty Memorial…

The one where an estimated 55,000 head-bangers bellied up to 15 bands for nearly a dozen hours of drunken and disorderly debauchery. A politcally correct, freelance concert review in the Star glossed over the depravity by referring to "the antics of uninhibited women" and musicians who "actively encouraged…lewd behavior."

Leaving to reader’s imaginations the question, how lewd was it?

"It was a great people watching crowd," says Westporter Bill Nigro, who worked the event. "Because you saw everybody from the beautiful people to the not-so-beautiful people. There were some stunning women there and there were some other ones that weren’t."

Diplomatically said – but let’s take it a step farther – how stunning?

"There was quite a bit of flashing," Nigro says. "I’ve never seen so many flashes. Ever."

More than in Westport on St. Patrick’s Day even?

"Uh, yeah," Nigro deadpans.  "At least 20 times more, easily, Twenty times more flashing than Westport gets on St. Patrick’s Day."

Even at the back of the bus where Nigro was trapped working?

"It was happening everywhere, not just down by the music," he says. "I mean, there were guys walking around with beads and girls were flashing them to get more beads."

Nigro’s boob count?

"I was there over 12 hours, from 8 a.m. until about 9 in the evening," he says. "And I had to have seen over 100, I guess."

Meaning 50 women or 100 pair? The latter, Nigro notes.

Forgive me for asking but, the percentage of flashing hotties to flashing notties?

"It was pretty much half and half," Nigro says. "One half USDA Choice prime boobs."

And the other half: "Oh, I’d just say large and cuddily."

In fact, Nigro set a personal record for most bare boobs beheld.

"That’s probably because it was his first RockFest, because that’s pretty normal at RockFest," says former Entercom honcho Bob Zuroweste, who’s lorded over his share of the headbanger happenings. "That’s probably why there’s 40,000 guys there and just 10,000 women – it’s part of the show."

Nigro’s advice for red-blooded dudes planning to attend next year’s RockFest?

"Bring some beads, you won’t be sorry."

What goes around comes around…

Last year Jack Poessiger and I were talking to the head of one of Kansas City’s biggest commercial real estate firms about a fancy-schmancy new retail development he was working on. One for which he’d procured Best Buy as an anchor tenant. Isn’t that a little risky, I asked. Nah, he assured me, Best Buy was blue chip. A few days later I sent him a couple links to business stories suggesting otherwise.

Now check out this graph from an Associated Press story earlier this week about an unrelated sex scandal that has cost Best Buy both its CEO and founder.

"The latest revelations are part of a scandal that couldn’t have come at a worse time for the 46-year-old retailer. The company, which has more than 1,400 U.S. locations, is struggling to regain its footing as it faces increased competition from online retailers and discounters. Customers have all but abandoned buying at so-called ‘big box’ stores like Best Buy."

"All but abandoned" Sound familiar? It should.

"What have I been telling you for the past year," says Kiefs Audio Video owner John Kiefer.

Meaning Best Buy’s days are numbered?

"Well, are they over? No, they’re not over, but the truth of it is people don’t get discounts at box stores unless they’re shopping for commodities like toilet paper," Kiefer says. "Electronics are another matter, and anything that has a model number on it could be a stock unit, a B stock unit (refurbished), gray market or counterfeit. We don’t even buy using model numbers anymore – we haven’t for 20 years. We buy by the SKU number."

Speaking of 20 years, two decades back big box stores were all the rage.

Remember CompUSA? Technically the company’s still around, but try finding one within 500 miles. Or how about Circuit City, Tweeter, Sound Advice, Ultimate Electronics – or Silo, for crying out loud.

"Big box stores are a dime a dozen," Kiefer muses.

Could Best Buy be the next Circuit City?

"I think it’s very possible," Kiefer says. "Because for 20 years they’ve never given discounts on anything good – anything of true value."

Not to mention the days of CDs and DVDs as loss leaders to build traffic are mostly in the rearview mirror.

Here’s the deal.

"They advertise big discounts but, but basically what they’re doing is ‘psychological discounting,’ " Kiefer says. "I talked to Sam Walton years ago and he told me, ‘I will never discount more than one percent of the items in my store.’ So out of 60,000 items, he would only discount 600 items. I asked him how he could get away with so little discounting and he said, ‘If you discount the items people shop for every day and move ’em around the store, you train people to think they’re in a discount store.’ You train people to think they’re gonna outsmart the store. Isn’t that why people go to Las Vegas? Because they think they’re going to win?"

All of that said, how long can Best Buy keep the game going?

"I think they’re on their demise right now," Kiefer says. "But there are an awful lot of people that still think, ‘Well, I got a good deal on a TV five years ago."

Columnist insert: I’ll still drop by the odd Best Buy when traveling to maybe see if it has a certain CD I want to listen to on the road, or to pick up the odd new release or maybe get a phone or computer part. Even just to see what the stores are featuring and/or what kind of people are still shopping there. And what I’ve noticed increasingly in recent years is that I see fewer and fewer customers in the stores.

"You’re right, there are," Kiefer says. "And the reason is, the core of Best Buy’s business was audio and video and today if you look at Best Buy, today it’s really a great big Radio Shack. They’ve got a little of everything, but they have very little audio. They still have a lot of TVs, but they don’t have the really good models."

As for ousting of Best Buy’s founder for not reporting the sex scandal with the CEO, "It’s irrelevant," Kiefer says. "His days are over. He did his thing, he convinced the American public that he was a Walmart when he never was. When the reality was he was just a hustler like me and everybody else. But I’ve always tried to be an honest hustler."

Can Best Buy make it by turning its big box success formula upside down and going with small, boutiques selling cell phones and the like?

"They’re not going to do that," Kiefer says. "That is, once again, ‘psychological marketing.’ The fact is, they’re shrinking and they’re going to open a few of those. Will it work? Who knows? I hope it works."

Kiefer’s bottom line on Best Buy:

"If you’re a stock market investor in Best Buy, my suggestion is to sell your stock. I think they’re going to be very lucky to be alive in 10 years. What do you think of K Mart? They’re still around, but in what condition? Radio Shack is still around. I wish ’em luck, but I looked at my 401K about six months ago and I called my stockbroker and said, ‘Get me out of Best Buy.’ And he said, ‘You don’t want to do that, they’re doing well.’ And I said, ‘That’s why I want to get out.

"Do yourself a favor and remember that word "psychological marketing.’ When you were selling yourself to some girl at some point in your life, what came out of your mouth? All the bullshit you could think of."

Will we ever learn?

I mean, really – we’re such suckers. It’s high time Kansas City media quit pandering to inconsequential "best of" promotions promulgated by loser magazines with little to no research credibility. Publications’s like Travel & Leisure, which twice in two months has annointed KC in one of its so-called "surveys."

Contrived surveys that are published with zero information about how they were complied, the number of participants – you know, pretty much whatever one would want or need to know to consider the survey relevant or legit.

Kinda like those Pitch ‘Best Of" issues…

So it’s not really surprising that it was the Pitch which annointed Travel & Leisure‘s latest bit of tripe by "reporting" the results:

That Kansas City is the country’s 8th best burger city.

Hey now, that’s cause for celebration. Only seven other cities in the survey have better burgers.

However instead of calling out Travel & Leisure for being trite – like it should have – the Pitch‘s Jonathan Bender rewards the rag by quoting from the results instead of questioning them. And then dropping in a lame joke line about having a permanent seat at Town Topic.

Good one.

Here’s the Pitch’s quote: "The city’s best gourmet burger option may be at Blanc Burgers Bottles, which offers watercress and truffle butter as toppings. Kids and trainspotters, however, might prefer Fritz’s Railroad Restaurant, dating back to the 1950s, where the burgers are delivered by way of miniature train."

Sound like survey results to you? The best gourmet burger "may be" this and kids "might prefer" that. You can’t get much more wishy-washy than that.

You know, Blanc does a nice job but there are a billion gourmet burger joints that have popped up around the country doing similarly well. Like Robert Krause‘s Burger Stand and Dempsy’s in Lawrence. There’s no rocket science to this game – pretty much anybody can and is playing.

FYI, last time I took my kids and their friends to Fritz’s in Crown Center the joint was as dirty as could be and the burgers tasted like – don’t take this the wrong way – dog food.

The point being that zines like Travel & Leisure put these silly, unscientific surveys out for the same reason the Pitch puts out its bloated "best of" issues, to generate publicity. Not to pass on hidden truths. And dignifying the surveys by jerking off the editors behind them does little other than to encourage them to churn out more.

Like last month’s Travel & Leisure "survey" in which we learned in the Kansas City Star that Kansas City is America’s 20th "Best City for Hipsters"

And another thing…

If the Pitch is going to revel in this clap trap, the least it can do is bring a critical eye to the gunfight.

After all, it is Kansas City’s "alternative" weekly of record.

How about pointing out how dumb the survey is by leaving out almost every single burger joint in town that actually matters. Like Winstead’s and the Westport Flea Market. And relative newcomers like Grandstand Burgers.

Come on, guys. What are you trying to do, turn yourselves into INK?

Well, they do sell quite a few more ads.

You know what they say about, if it ain’t KU basketball season in Lawrence, it ain’t happening…

And while it’s not like every single thing in Larry revolves around Allen Field House, it does seem that way at times. Take the recent student newspaper Top 20 "KU Bucket List" of stuff the kids want to do before graduating.

No. 10: "See Bill Self without his toupée: ‘That’s something I’ve always been interested in. It looks so real. I think he has the sides still, but not the top.’ — Killian Cull, a sophomore from Overland Park."

KU fans and foes have argued for years about whether the KU basketball coach wears a rug or not.

And while both sides are passionate – some even suggesting he can’t because there’s a bald spot – nobody’s ever really pinned the tail on Self’s donkey and laid down a definitive account as to the rug’s existance.

Until now.

Because for what it’s worth, I’m going to give it to you from one of the horse’s mouths and tell you Self does indeed wear a hairpiece.

How do I know for sure?

Because former Kansas City Star director of retail sales and group publishing Steve Curd told me so several years ago. Curd, who later became the publisher of the Independence and Blue Springs Examiner (he left in January), knows because he was an eye witness to Self’s hairlessness when the two attended Oklahoma State University in the early-mid 1980s.

Notice the crop on the online publicity pic of Self from his playing days at OSU?

And while it may seem silly – and let’s face it, it totally is – to dig on someone’s wig, give Self credit for having a nice enough one to divide the speculation so evenly as to have people arguing about it online.

In fact, Self’s toupée even has not one but two Twitter accounts.

"I’m the hairpiece of NCAA Championship winning basketball coach Bill Self, and I have stories to tell," reads one. 

"Bill Self doesn’t wear me. I wear Bill Self. Bill Self’s head (sometimes)," says another.

It’s one thing for the hometown paper to get scooped on a huge story like AMC Entertainment selling out to the Chinese…

Quite another to pull up short on its front page followup. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened earlier this week when the Star rolled out its version of the New York Times scoop on AMC being in talks to sell the company "or a significant stake" to China’s Wanda Group.

How serious is Wanda? Apparently very.

"The Chinese group has reportedly been eyeing an acquisition since president Wang Jianlin said in a speech at Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2011 that his company would ‘shock the world’ with an acquisition to be made within the year," the news organization Want China Times reported yesterday.

Now a little much-needed background and perspective.

Having laid off the business reporter that covered AMC four years back, the Star was forced to play news catchup by drafting into service reporters from its real estate and "human resources" beats. The net result begetting largely a rehash of old news with a couple quotes thrown in from a local AMC business associate rather than an independent third party.

"I was curious about that myself," says one local movie insider. "Why were they asking that guy? It just seemed kind of incestuous."

Also missing in the Star coverage were specifics, perspective and questions regarding the how and why of AMC having "gone private" years ao and subsequently being unable to cash back in via public stock offerings in three attempts. The most recent coming last month and leading up to the potential Chinese sale news.

So let’s take a look, starting with AMC’s going private in 2004.

"Private equity firms are notorious for taking public companies private only to sell shares to the public again down the road," explains B. Simmons of Investing Answers. "Private equity groups generally use leveraged buyouts or buyouts financed by large debt levels to fund their acquisitions, but the result is the same: The shares that are currently public will go away."

Later to return, hopefully generating enormous profits.

It may be worth noting that Bain Capital – Mitt Romney‘s old firm that shuttered a more than 100 year-old Kansas City steel mill and laid off more than 700 workers in the early 2000s – is one of AMC’s private equity partners.

In short, the practice of going private, restructuring the company and then taking it public again is often a means of cashing in and/or out on the private equity partners’ investments?

"You’re basically correct," says one close follower of AMC’s business dealings. "They took the company private and they’ve been looking for an exit strategy for the last five years."

When AMC’s owners first tried to cash back out in 2007 via a $500 million stock offering, they were heading into the current recession and the timing couldn’t have been worse. But even then there was more to that story.

"We have a significant amount of debt," AMC’s offering at the time read. "We have had significant financial losses in recent years. Prior to fiscal 2007, we had reported net losses in each of the last nine fiscal years totally approximately $512 million."

So while the Star‘s AMC-friendly business associate largely placed the blame for the company’s triple failure to take the company public again on market conditions, there appears to be far more to the story.

"The problem is all of the money they’ve been trying to rasie goes to the investors and not to invest back into the company," says the AMC watcher. "It’s a legitimate deal, it’s just not particularly appealing to investors."

In a perfect world taking a company public would raise money to position it for growth rather than to merely "retire debt."

A number of other significant details went missing from the local account of AMC’s foray into China.

For example, "The last few years have been extremely difficult for theater operators. Last year, attendance in North America fell to 1.28 billion, a 4 percent decline from 2010 and the lowest total in 16 years," the New York Times story reported. "Ticket revenue for last year totaled $10.2 billion, a 3 percent decrease."

And aside from market conditions "not being right," AMC may have pulled the plug on its IPO to focus on China "to allow the three firms to recoup an investment they made when they bought the company AMC in 2004," the LA Times reports.

The Los Angeles newspaper cited other difficulties facing AMC in another story late last month.

"It’s a tough business,” one of the paper’s sources was quoted, "citing the long-term challenges faced by the exhibition industry, especially from the threat posed by shrinking theatrical windows — the period between when a movie is released in theaters and when it can be viewed in the home."

"The biggest issue (AMC’s) facing is how to navigate the collapsing of theatrical windows," the source told the Times.

So while the movie biz is up sharply this year and headed into what hopes to be a boffo summer, there’s far more to the AMC China story than reported locally. Until now, of course.

Westport sparkplug Bill Nigro learned a very important lesson last month…

That when it comes to pot smoking, you can’t be just a little bit pregnant. If you’re going to localize and promote an annual celebration like 420 Day – the day that honors all things marijuana – you’ve got to be all in.

No pussyfooting around.

Not that Nigro’s faint-hearted first off 420 Day blowout was a, you know, bust.

"Well, we had 1,200 paying people and we had another 200 comps," Nigro says. "But I just thought it would be busier."

And well it might have been, had Niro not chickened out in promoting the event with weak-wristed quotes like, "Well, we’re not calling it 420 Day. Our event’s called the Westport Smokeout and we’re going to do some fun things."

See what I mean?

Fortunately, Nigro learned his lesson and next year’s 420 Day blowout will be a no-holds-barred, balls-to-the-wall affair – a full-blown celebration of p-o-t. No more mincing of words. No more apologies to the powers that be. The full, pure, unadultrated spirit of smoking marijuana will be right up front in anybody’s face who cares (or dares) to attend.

"Next time, we’re going to embrace it," Nigro says. "This time we kinda did it with smoke and mirrors. We downplayed the whole 420 thing. All the bars that were involved were kind of afraid of going too public with it. I think we had to just do that first one to kinda just show everybody there wasn’t anything to be over-worried about."

So mark it down potheads, April 20, 2013 – be there or be square – 420 Day in Westport, the 2nd Coming.

All of that said, far be it from Nigro to suggest (wink) that anybody come-a-tokin to the big smokeout.

"It’s really more of a recognition of what’s going on in the United States with marijuana," Nigro hedges. "It really should be a controlled substance and instead it’s the modern prohibition. And I think it’s going to be a runnaway train across the United States to legalize it. A lot of states that have medicinalized it have realized that they don’t have to condone letting it be a black market anymore. And that they can profit from the tax revenues."