Goods & Services >>

• Best Place to Get Your Saws Sharpened
  Smith Bros. Hardware
  With the closing of Johnson Sentry Hardware on 39th, Kansas City is rapidly running out of creaky-floored, narrow-aisled competition for Home Depot and the like. But 75-year-old Smith Bros. Hardware is doing just fine, thank you. And with customers such as the Chiefs, the Royals and the grounds... More >>
• Best Bargain-Shopping Outlet
  Ward Parkway garage sales
  On any given Saturday in spring and summer, Kansas City's uniquely horizontal Snob Hill becomes a bargain hunter's dream. Just cruise the length of Ward Parkway and look for signs: At least two or three adorn stately trees' trunks in every block. At the advertised driveways you'll find... More >>
• Best Home-Grown Product
  Manhood Mold
  Believe it or not, potential do-it-yourself dildo makers have at least a half dozen different options in penis-cloning kits, but Overland Park's Morningwood Labs may offer the most entertaining instructions. The kit is contained in a giant cup -- the kind designed for a car's cup holder --... More >>
• Best Inventory of Totally Bizarre Stuff (2 Comments)
  Nate's Swap Shop
  While drive-in theaters may be a relic of the Eisenhower administration, drive-in Swap Shops are doing boffo business, though, sadly, with not so much frisky sex. Of Kansas City's two outdoor flea markets at drive-ins, Nate's has the more eclectic collection of vendors, peddling everything,... More >>
• Best Place to Get Organic Veggies
  Barstow Organic Farmer's Market
  At a farmer's market, shoppers get to know local growers and even interrogate them about how they raise their vegetables: "Of course you skipped the organophosphates, but how do you know you didn't plant GM seed?" At the Barstow Market, you won't find wilted and bruised pomes and hesperidia that... More >>
• Best Wearable Art (1 Comment)
  Teija Cheung's scarves
  For about a month now, it's been possible to get stoned (the old-fashioned, Biblical way) just for being a woman in possession of a head covering. After all, it's widely rumored that Osama bin Laden's three wives cover their heads, and they don't use Old Glory for the swaddling, by God. The... More >>
• Best Kite Maker
  David Ellis, Kite Guy
  They say Chicago is the Windy City, but every spring Kansas City makes a serious run for the title. Once the big prairie sky starts gusting, it's a good idea to forgo that expensive perm and invest in a good kite. Forget the skimpy plastic models offered at Wal-Mart and Target. It's best to get... More >>
• Best Place to Get Herb
  Planters Seed & Spice Co.
  In its 1880 brick building at 5th and Walnut, Planters Seed & Spice Company looks even older -- like it might have been an Old West emporium that offloaded a few crates of pick heads from the Arabia just before the steamboat snagged itself in the river and sank. The shelves in Planters' four... More >>
• Best Place to Relive Childhood
  Reading Reptile
  The rainbow-striped papier-mache people flying from the ceiling are the first indication that the Reading Reptile is not a store for adults; it's for kids, however old they may be. Characters from bedtime stories dot the shelves and evoke memories of Paddington Bear, his duffle coat and his... More >>
• Best Bafflingly Strong Music Selection
  Borders
  Funny how death-by-reading mega-store booksellers can pack in the good reads in shelf after shelf but find nothing more hip that U2's latest release to fill the CD bins. Next to a true record store, bookstores typically come off as lame, and their prices seem hopeful for the year 2020. Not so in... More >>
• Best Mexican Record Shop
  El Aguila Record Shop
  Each morning just before 10, Javier Gardea sets out his sidewalk sign, announcing that El Aguila Record Shop is open for the day. Although Javier speaks little English and his wife, Sara Gardea, just a little bit more, El Aguila Record Shop speaks for itself, offering a wide range of Spanish... More >>
• Best Place To Buy a Dildo
  Erotic City
  In this business, size isn't all that matters. Erotic City offers "over fifty different varieties of things," according to the nice lady behind the counter. There are fat ones, skinny ones and weird alien two-headed ones that are both fat and skinny. Some are long, some are short. They're... More >>
• Best Place to Buy Sea Monkeys
  Brookside Toy & Science
  Back in the day, what comic-book-reading baby boomer or Gen-Xer didn't yearn for his own underwater castle stocked with a grinning nuclear Sea Monkey family? Happily for those who are still wondering whether these faux primates actually wear crowns, just-add-water Sea Monkey kits adorn Brookside... More >>
• Best Store to Get Lost In
  Gallup Map Company
  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... More >>
• Best Do-It-Yourself Business
  U-Wash Puppy
  If Socks has taken to wearing a clothespin on her nose whenever Buddy is around, it's definitely time to impeach the grime from your best friend's coat. But dog washing doesn't have to mean spattering the mirror and lavatory with shaken flecks of dog water. It doesn't have to mean clogged... More >>
• Best Supply of Vintage Treasures, Cheap
  Blackwell's Thrift Store & Collectibles
  Plan no less than an hour to wander the aisles of Blackwell's. For two decades, the refined Mrs. Blackwell has sold the very best of gently used china, glassware, geegaws, housewares and assorted stuff (fishing rods, costume jewelry, old washboards, old -- but full -- bottles of Take Five... More >>
• Best Animal Therapist
  Dr. Wayne Hunthausen
  Your fearful cat skulks beneath the sofa and pees on the carpet. The shepherd mix from the pound chews the arm of your favorite chair. Take your anxious pet to Dr. Wayne Hunthausen at Animal Behavioral Consultations at Westwood Animal Hospital. Hunthausen is a nationally recognized veterinary... More >>
• Best Vietnamese Market
  Hung Vuong Market
  The Hung Vuong Market sits among the many interesting little shops in the River Market. Named after a street in Hanoi (or a very nice hotel in Hue, the Imperial City), Hung Vuong offers everything a cook needs for a dinner of grilled beef in la-lot leaves, Vietnamese spring rolls or beef noodle... More >>
• Best Socially Conscious Shopping
  10,000 Villages
  This import store, run by Mennonites, has the goal of making sure Third World artisans receive fair pay for their work. Fair-trade coffee brews for shoppers to sample as they peruse 10,000 Villages' offerings. There are pieces of pretty stone-and-silver jewelry, carved wooden giraffes and... More >>
• Best Eye Doctor (1 Comment)
  Dr. Gerard Lozada
  Dr. Gerard Lozada is a good communicator. Regardless of the optical situation -- from a simple change of eyeglass prescription to more troubling developments like pesky (and painful) vacuoles secondary to a corneal insult -- Dr. Lozada is always there with a clear explanation and, thankfully, a... More >>
• Best Free Service
  Kansas City Free Health Clinic
  Dr. Good Vibes just keeps on truckin'. Next month, he'll be in a moving van, transferring his thirty-year-old Kansas City Free Health Clinic a few blocks north of its longtime haunt at 2 East 39th Street (the east side branch clinic at 24th and Denver is staying put). At the new location (35th... More >>
• Best Place to Get Your Rocks Off
  House of Rocks
  The House of Rocks isn't a house; it's a vast, sometimes muddy, sometimes dusty field behind a chain-link-and-barbed-wire fence. On one end are pyramids of loose pebbles -- Arkansas White rock or Buffalo River Rock or Cherokee Red or the lowly pea gravel, for accenting landscaping and filling in... More >>
• Best Place to Take Your Children on a Hot Summer Afternoon
  Plaza branch of the Kansas City Public Library
  With its warped oatmeal-colored walls and humped floor covered in gray carpet, the children's section of the Plaza library is an invitation to parental neglect. Kids don't care that bookcases canter at odd angles, and such flaws are strange solace to frazzled parents who can relax in... More >>
• Best Used Music Selection
  CD Warehouse
  Used CD stores represent the toilet-flush factor in music consumerism -- something of a cross between the musical version of an island for misfit toys (Mr. Big's Mr. Big) and a purgatory for sadly underrated albums (R.E.M.'s Monster). The worth of these shops is not determined by the likelihood... More >>
• Best Way to Beat the Weeknight Doldrums
  Communiversity
  Tuesday nights in February are so intensely dreary -- even more so if a reality show flickers on the TV. The only cure is people. Not bar people. Real, live people. The kind of people who teach and attend Communiversity classes. What sounds better: Watching some fat guy eat a rat on a desert... More >>
• Best Place to Find a Mardi Gras Feather Headpiece
  Kansas City Costume
  Halloween shopping can be a stressful chore. For the creatively challenged, Kansas City Costume offers such oddities as fern bikinis and coconut-shell bras for that Survivor/Temptation Island look. The haunted haberdashery also boasts novelty hats -- from fezzes to the Davy Crockett -- so even a... More >>