Best Store to Get Lost In

Can't find Bazooka's Showgirls or the Pitch's office? Pick up a map at Gallup's, and the problem is solved. The Pitch staff enjoys having a neighbor down the block who can (authoritatively) tell us where to go. While the store carries maps from all over, it specializes in charts and atlases of Kansas City's far-flung city limits and of the innumerable barnacles that pass for suburbs on both sides of the state line. Here are globes (both regular and inflatable), banners for the Chiefs and Royals, waterproof topographical fishing maps and illustrated hiking guides to national parks (not to mention road maps to help cover the 700 miles to the Rockies). Gallup offers custom framing services as well. However, the best part is the showroom, which features a wall covered by the world and myriad framed maps of the United States, Missouri and Kansas. It's utterly absorbing and fascinating, and a delight to nerds and cartographers as well as the lost and disoriented.