Slurs From the Skybox

Depending on who you ask, Skybox restaurant and nightclub is either the best all-around schmoozeria in Kansas City or the worst buzzkill ever to hit the River Market neighborhood.

Criticisms of the club got personal a few months ago when its owners, brothers Alfie and Michael Colorado, began receiving anonymous hate mail. The Department of Burnt Ends was intrigued, so we obtained a copy of the missives to critique them.

The first letter, postmarked January 4, 2007, starts: "Listen up you slime-encrusted cum swallowing cocksucker. We are going to shut you and your sorry motherfuckingass club down. All of us ... the merchants and residents of the River Market." We give the note points for creative combinations of adjectives. But the letter descends into hyperbole, calling the club "shit-filled" and a "fucking sewer." It also loses focus, switching slurs in the middle by trading gay-bashing adjectives for racial epithets, including an all-caps n-word in reference to Skybox's clientele.

The second note, postmarked February 8, 2007, gets even more creative with the adjectives, including "corn-rowed," "tattooed," "baggy-pants," "ghetto" and "step 'n fetchit." But then it ups the hate speech, with numerous uses of the n-word and an attack on the club's owners as "camel jockeys."

"They just see the club as a hip-hop club, and they don't see everything going on with the restaurant and all the other nights we push," Alfie says.

Michael added that the racial slurs aren't even accurate. "Obviously, they haven't met up with us. We're Mexican, not Middle Eastern."