People & Places >>

• Best Neighborhood Hangout
  The Franklin Center
  At the Franklin Center's bustling community cafeteria, the mostly retired volunteers smile and joke with lunchtime patrons -- who all seem to know each other -- as they serve generous portions of simple, home-cooked food like macaroni and cheese or tuna casserole. Each day the menu changes, and... More >>
• Best Crush-Worthy Local Celebrity (Male)
  Nick Garcia, Kansas City Wizards
  There's something sexy about a sport in which the players are basically on the field for ninety full minutes. For this reason, we applaud their athleticism -- as well as their soccer legs and taut, compact, muscular bodies. While it was especially hard to choose just one crush-worthy person from... More >>
• Best Mullet (Female)
  Krista Tatschl, KMBC Channel 9 News
  The mullet is a thing of glory, an art form unto itself. First wildly popular in the '80s (think Mark Gubicza), the hairstyle has enjoyed a revival thanks to many Web sites and books devoted to classifying degrees of mulletude and the 'do's having begun showing up again on runway models -- both... More >>
• Best Guilty Pleasure
  Spanish Coffee, La Bodega Tapas Bar
  There's a bumper sticker on a truck somewhere in Kansas City that reads, simply, "Fuck Guilt." La Bodega Tapas Bar should commission the driver of that truck to cruise Southwest Boulevard at night, because giving guilt the finger is about the only way that anyone's going to order La Bodega's... More >>
• Best Technophile Web Site
  www.kcgeek.com
  Last year, four area geeks decided to create a Web site for their keyboard-enslaved Kansas City brethren. Naturally, Web pages devoted to all things tech and gadget are as common as AOL households, but as one kcgeek.com mastermind points out, "none of them are necessarily oriented for... More >>
• Best Remnant of Kansas City's Glory Days
  City Hall
  It's hard to look at City Hall and not think of square-jawed cops and mob-friendly pols in black fedoras. The concrete art-deco-style building seems to have materialized right out of a 1930s gangster movie. After all, the building's concrete skin was provided by Kansas City's corrupt overlord of... More >>
• Best Community Garden
  Old Ballpark Garden
  On the corner of 21st and Brooklyn, vegetables, herbs and flowers grow where a baseball stadium once stood. That stadium was home not only to sporting events (the Negro Leagues World Series, Lou Gehrig's first game) but to concerts, including a 1964 Beatles show. When the stadium was torn down... More >>
• Best Inner-City Spiritual Sanctuary
  City Soul
  Even in a laid-back town like Kansas City, the rigors of urban life can wear down a spirit. City Soul at Westport Presbyterian Church offers respite. It's a Christian meditation group that meets at 7:15 p.m. on the first and third Wednesdays of each month. The small group gathers in a room... More >>
• Best Sustained Evangelical Campaign
  Community Christian Church's Light Steeple
  All of Kansas City's sinners -- those off painting the night with their pursuit of pleasures of the flesh in Westport and the greedy idolatry of material possessions on the Plaza -- can look into the sky and pause to meditate on Community Christian Church's Light Steeple. Rising from the earthly... More >>
• Best Place to Find Work
  Southwest Boulevard and West Pennway
  Between 8 and 9 a.m. on any morning, laborers gather near Royal Liquor Store on Southwest Boulevard and West Pennway. Some of them sit on a little wall at the gas station. Others stand in restaurant entranceways. As cars drive by slowly, one or two of the men whistle to gain attention, in effect... More >>
• Best Park for a Family Picnic
  Penguin Park
  When you drive by Penguin Park or see video of it on the news, you see only the large animal sculptures and playground equipment that generations of KC kids have played on and around. But take a hike back into this city park and you'll discover that it has some of the best walking trails and... More >>
• Best Hangout if You Have a Yellow Motorcycle With a Leather Jacket to Match
  Latte' Land Espresso
  In 1964, members of San Francisco's Hell's Angels motorcycle gang descended on Bass Lake in California for an annual party of beer, blunts and biker chicks. For the ruff-n-tuff organization, the small, isolated lake town seemed like an ideal evening-and-weekend hangout -- regardless of how the... More >>
• Best Business Wardrobe
  Taylor the Dancer
  She was 35 years old before she realized that she could make more money wearing just a see-through skirt, a G-string and a skimpy bra (then stripping down to one of the three) than she could in full corporate regalia. So Taylor shucked her power suit, ditched her high-finance coworkers,... More >>
• Best Place to Flout Kansas City's Smoking Ordinance
  Jackson County Courthouse Ninth Floor, 415 East 12th Street
  Visiting the probate court offices on the ninth floor of the Jackson County Courthouse is like going back to a more relaxed -- if smokier -- time. Women type at keyboards with cigarettes burning in ashtrays beside them. In the records department, ashtrays rest on the long counter for people who... More >>
• Best Remnant of the Dead Streetcar System
  Brookside way station
  At approximately 55th and Brookside, along the old Kansas City streetcar system's right-of-way, sits a small way station, a place where weary travelers from a bygone era could sit and wait for the Waldo streetcar to come along and pick them up for a shopping trip at Thayer's in downtown KC.... More >>
• Best Correction in the Star
  October 13, 2000
  Nothing warms up our morning coffee like a hilarious correction in The Kansas City Star. The best one of the year was last October 13. We quote: "A map in the Oct. 12 Business section incorrectly labeled Missouri as Kansas and Kansas as Missouri." More >>
• Best Place to Take Visiting In-Laws for a Day
  Independence, Missouri
  It's a generation-gap thing. Kansas City newlyweds would be fools to take the in-laws to their regular haunts -- the neighborhood bar, nightclub or, God forbid, the swingers' club. Thank heaven for Independence, which is still, and will forever be, a bastion for good old American values.... More >>
• Best Daily Newspaper Column
  Free for All
  It's a simple concept. Readers call a hotline and spout off for twenty seconds about whatever they want. Then their comments show up in University Daily Kansan's "Free for All" column. The end product is a hysterical collection of non sequitors: "Hey, I just freak-danced with my TA last week,... More >>
• Best Way to Experience Latino Life Without Leaving Kansas City
  Latino/a Voices Reader's Circle
  Learning about Latino culture takes a little more effort than going salsa dancing or walking down Southwest Boulevard. In the Latino/a Voices Reader's Circle, led by Judith Richards (a Spanish literature professor who teaches at the University of Kansas), Latinos and non-Latinos explore the... More >>
• Best Romantic Day Trip
  Chanute, Kansas
  A two-hour drive from Kansas City, Chanute is the perfect place for young lovers to while away an afternoon. It's home of the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum, which celebrates the lives of two turn-of-the-century Kansans who fell in love and took off for the adventure of a lifetime. After... More >>
• Best Reason for Goin' to Kansas City
  Because it's the heart chakra of America
  Picture the United States as a giant person lying flat on a table in an incense-laden room somewhere off in the Far East. The nation is sick. It's fighting a war against an enemy it can't even see. Its economy is spiraling downward. So America has traveled across the globe for the kind of help... More >>
• Best Temper Tantrum
  Kit Bond
  Republican Senator Kit Bond's November 7 Election Night show -- his raw fury! his spewy indignation! his legal threats! -- after a St. Louis judge allowed polls to stay open late in that heavily Democratic city was reminiscent of the 1930s, when people must have felt like voting actually... More >>
• Best Graceful/Calculating Exit
  John Ashcroft
  Just a few weeks before last November's election, Senator John Ashcroft was accusing his opponent, Governor Mel Carnahan, of ignoring laws, wasting money and running a dirty campaign. The October 16 plane crash that killed Carnahan, his eldest son and a campaign aide silenced all such rhetoric... More >>
• Best Town Meeting
  Kansas City Transit Proposal Forum, July 19
  Bothered that many residents knew little about the city's "community" light-rail plan, representatives from the Brush Creek Neighborhood Council, Midtown President's Council, Northland Neighborhoods Inc. and Southtown Neighborhood Council brought city leaders and light-rail planners to the... More >>
• Best Grassroots Organizations
  Christian/Community Organization / Wyandotte Interfaith Sponsoring Committee
  A vast network of metro churches listens for problems that need to be solved. And when the time is right, they summon the powers that be -- mayors, city councilmen, bureaucrats -- and tell them exactly what needs to be done. It works. Since forming in the mid-'80s, Kansas City's... More >>
• Best Way to Help the Kansas City, Missouri, School District
  YouthFriends
  It's no secret that the Kansas City, Missouri, School District has a lot of room for improvement. Though the district is full of hardworking teachers and students, it needs community support to thrive. YouthFriends is a way to get involved and start making a difference one child at a time. It's... More >>
• Best Peer Counseling Program
  Central High School
  Often, students at Central High School face tougher challenges outside the classroom than in it. Some struggle with broken families, onerous peer pressure, lack of financial security, addiction and the simple difficulties of being a young person in America. And those can become obstacles to a... More >>
• Best Student Activist
  Jermaine Reed
  Ladies and gentleman, allow us to introduce the next governor of Missouri: Jermaine Reed. He's only seventeen now, but he's already got a good head start. Here's a sampling of his many titles: senior class president at Northeast High, board member for the national Youth Information Network,... More >>
• Best Government Employee
  Mark Funkhouser, City Auditor
  Who's keeping an eye on all the millions of dollars that flow into developers' bank accounts courtesy of Tax Increment Financing? Mark Funkhouser, that's who. Well, not just him. His penetrating reports of civic malfunction are put together by a staff of nineteen. Every year Funkhouser's crew... More >>
• Best Government Office Building
  Environmental Protection Agency, Region VII
  Forget government qualifiers -- the Environmental Protection Agency's Region VII offices could easily win best building west of State Line. Standing in its cavernous atrium is like standing in some modern, slightly bureaucratic version of Oz's temple. From the bottom grow trees that stretch up... More >>
• Best Sign
  Ed's Dainty Corsages
  In the neighborhood around 31st and Gillham, one would expect a business owned by someone named Ed to be, well, a little more tough-sounding, like Ed's Strip Joint or Ed's Craps and Poker. Stereotypes aside, however, the building that used to house Ed's Florists is hard to miss. Painted a light... More >>
• Best Living Legend Who Didn't Play Negro Leagues Baseball
  Jay Dillingham
  There is a reason Kansas City is called a cowtown. It's because we used to have a lot of cows here. Cows and steers and bulls and heifers. They were brought in by ranchers and shipped out by train from the West Bottoms' stockyards. That's where Jay Dillingham ruled, heading up the Kansas City... More >>
• Best Crush-Worthy Local Celebrity (Female)
  Venus
  As manager of Westport's Arizona Trading Company, Venus has first pick from Kansas City's hippest assortment of traded-in clothing. But while she might show off these fashionable duds at work and on stage with her loud and scratchy trio The Stretchmarxxx, she's now best known for wearing nothing... More >>
• Best Mullet (Male)
  Danny Clinkscale, WHB 810
  As for Kansas City's best male mullet ... well, this one's more wily and elusive. Unfortunately, the Blades, one of the natural mullet gold mines in KC, is now defunct, and there's nary a mullet among the Wizards. However, we've bestowed the honor upon Danny Clinkscale of 810. While his hair... More >>
• Best Commercial
  "Kiss Me Like You Mean It"
  The Helzberg Diamonds' "Kiss Me Like You Mean It" commercial is as spare and elegant as a Herb Ritts-directed video. Filmed in black-and-white, it depicts a boy and a girl driving in the moonlight, smiling and in love, with the wind tousling their hair. However, it's the accompanying song by... More >>
• Best Celebrity Sighting
  Screech at Buzzard Beach
  When Dustin Diamond -- better known as Screech from Saved by the Bell (the hit TV show that launched a couple of careers for teen stars with three names) -- showed up at Buzzard Beach one winter night, the buzz in the air was palpable. Rumors quickly circulated (no, he isn't Neil Diamond's son,... More >>
• Best Bathrooms
  Livestock Exchange Building
  Let's face it. Cow poking is hard work, and intense. Sometimes there isn't time to stop and heed the call of nature. When that moment finally comes, wranglers could do worse than spending their "time alone" in the bathrooms of the Livestock Exchange Building. The building has been renovated, but... More >>
• Best Daily Religious Service
  Daily Prayer for Peace Community of Christ Temple (formerly RLDS)
  Halfway through each noon hour, people gather at the Community of Christ Temple for a daily prayer for peace. It's a short service. It begins with some inspiring music that flows out of the temple's massive organ. Then a prayer leader steps to the pulpit and briefly describes a part of the... More >>
• Best Place to Get Married
  The Marjorie Powell Allen Chapel at Powell Gardens
  If marriage is a symbol of humankind's convergence with nature, then the Marjorie Powell Allen Chapel is a symbol of marriage. While its high, angular shape is a testimony to Euclidean geometry -- of straight lines one finds only in the human mind, not in the wilds -- its high windows open to... More >>
• Best Small College Campus Atmosphere
  Park University
  Park University's Hedera helix-coated campus sits on a walnut bluff overlooking the Missouri River, just a short stroll down Highway 9 from downtown Parkville, Kansas City's loveliest hamlet hanger-on. Mackay Hall's imposing clock tower rises 135 feet above the autumn colors. Cozy athletic... More >>
• Best Place to Go Skinny Dipping
  Gaea Retreat Center
  Tucked away in the woods seven miles from Tonganoxie and three miles from McLouth, Kansas, Gaea Retreat Center has a twelve-acre lake, ideal for midday or moonlight frolicking. Gaea, operated by Earth Rising Inc. (P.O. Box 10442, Kansas City, MO 64111, 816-931-4443), is home of the Heartland... More >>
• Best Doorman
  Bob Smith, Tivoli at Manor Square
  Bob Smith doesn't just stand guard at the Tivoli to make sure you bought a ticket. He wants to make sure that the traffic flow in and out of the movie theater runs smoothly and that audience members end up where they need to be when they need to be there -- and no sooner. The handsome former... More >>
• Best Weekend Getaway
  Eminence, Missouri
  A float down the Jacks Fork River in a canoe or kayak is the very meaning of "weekend getaway." As it wiggles its way through the tiny Ozark hamlet of Eminence, the river's waters are diamond-clear. Even in spots that are nine feet deep, the view of rocks and fish below is perfect. The shore is... More >>
• Best Activist
  Ira Harritt
  After September 11, a wide array of local organizations became distressed as the country barreled toward war. Dissent isn't celebrated these days -- it's rebuked, which isn't a comfortable environment for the diverse community of lefties (religious groups, academics and high school kids) that... More >>
• Best Lawyer (2 Comments)
  Suzanne Gladney
  What really made the United States the greatest country on earth? Immigration. The events of September 11 stand to threaten this lifeblood for the tens of thousands of hard-working souls who come to America in search of better lives. The terrorists were foreign, and regulations are being... More >>
• Best Anthropological View of the Mating Game in Westport
  The Deck of Buzzard Beach
  The Buzzard Beach deck is a valuable research tool for budding anthropologists who want to observe various subcultures and for sociologists who are studying the science of group dynamics. Perched high above a parking lot and a well-traversed alley, the deck provides a great view of the... More >>
• Best Place to Smoke a Cigarette
  Main Street bridge over Union Station rail yard, looking west
  Wait until the moment the sun sets before walking out onto the Main Street bridge over Union Station's rail yard. Turn west and face the pink sky. Take a breath and notice how the day's last rays paint the tops of the gritty brick buildings. Wait for a train to slide out from under the bridge,... More >>
• Best Great Idea That Won't Go Anywhere
  Renaming Streets After Local Heroes
  Just before he left his job as editor of the fluffy Star Magazine to become an editor at the paper's wanna-be-Barnes & Noble book-publishing division, Doug Worgul wrote a cover feature making the preposterous -- and wonderful -- suggestion that Kansas City's generic major thoroughfares be... More >>
• Best View of the City
  Strawberry Hill Museum and Cultural Center
  Most people think that the best views are the most beautiful. Often misleadingly framed, however, these glorious fields of vision distort what we're looking at. That's why we think the best view of the city is from the porch of the Strawberry Hill Museum and Cultural Center in Kansas City,... More >>
• Best Reason to Read the Sunday Star
  Miriam Pepper's Sunday Column
  When Star readers complain, Miriam Pepper is forced to explain. While her Sunday "Readers' Representative" column is often a mundane accounting of the logic behind editors' decisions to, for example, use "foot-and-mouth disease" instead of "hoof-and-mouth disease," every once in a while she... More >>
• Best Economic Development Corporation
  ECI Development Corporation
  Most economic development projects benefit those who least need it: the rich. But ECI Development Corporation puts its money where it's needed most: into programs that help KCK's working poor have a fighting chance at success. In recent years, the organization has started a job-training program... More >>
• Best Park for an Affair
  Richard L. Berkley Riverfront Park
  Richard L. Berkley Riverfront Park has everything your affair is looking for: a close-up view of the Mighty Mo, large expanses of grass for your blanket and plenty of privacy. No one but the occasional guy on a riding lawn mower is ever seen here, because only about six people actually know how... More >>
• Best TV News Personality
  Dana Wright, KCTV Channel 5
  Dana Wright enlivens Channel 5's newscasts with her on-air intensity. She'll practically crawl under a hedge for a story about a woman with too many cats; recently, in a report on the potential of terrorist attacks on area water supplies (don't worry -- we're safe), she knelt down and put her... More >>
• Best Least-Understood Campaign Slogan
  "Challenge Inertia", Citizens for Light Rail
  Kansas City's light-rail backers assumed a lot of voters this August. They assumed those who voted for light rail in the past would do so again. They assumed the black community would rally around a plan that put a line on Troost and garnered the support of Freedom Inc. They assumed residents... More >>
• Best History Day Trip
  Amelia Earhart Museum
  For most of her early life, Amelia Earhart lived with her grandparents at 223 N. Terrace in Atchison, Kansas. Because her father, Edwin Stanton Earhart, traveled so much for his railroad job, her grandparents, Judge Alfred Otis and Amelia Harres Otis, cared for Amelia and her sister, Muriel,... More >>
• Best Response to Fred Phelps
  Topeka Symphony Orchestra
  In April, the Topeka Symphony Orchestra figured out a beautiful response to Fred Phelps' hate-filled picketing of its concerts. The orchestra decided to take pledges for any amount of money -- or time -- for every minute Phelps and his platoon of conscripted children spent parading around with... More >>
• Best Concession to Political Correctness
  Adding African-Americans to the Johnson County Courthouse
  Johnson County is not known for its diversity, but it's not Sweden either. You wouldn't have known that to look at the 96 black-and-white photographs hung in the courthouse entryway in September 1999. There were plenty of white faces in the old photos of train depots, churches and government... More >>
• Best Haunted House
  The Writers Place
  It's a fact: The Writers Place, that 98-year-old faux-Gothic stone pile of a mansion in the Valentine neighborhood, is haunted. Ask anyone who has worked there and experienced firsthand the mischief of "Clara," who likes to follow visitors noisily up and down the interior staircase. At a seance... More >>
• Best Drill Team
  Touch of Class
  Here's a solution to our next energy crisis: Plug a cord into the Touch of Class drill team. Powered by a massive rhythm section, this team is so juiced up it could fuel the entire metro area. Prancing all around its thundering core are synchronized dancers who just keep going and going -- long... More >>
• Best Performance by a Dead Man
  Mel Carnahan
  Nationally, the deceased Mel Carnahan's victory over John Ashcroft last November was overshadowed by the bizarre Gore-Bush nonelection. But even though he was no longer running for the U.S. Senate, Carnahan beat Ashcroft by nearly 49,000 votes, laying to rest dismissive rhetoric about sympathy... More >>
• Best Pissing Contest
  Troy Nash and Mary Williams-Neal
  Kansas City councilwoman Mary Williams-Neal says councilman Troy Nash didn't talk to her about his plans for redeveloping the Prospect corridor and that he certainly didn't tell her his own assistant would be getting a contract as development director. Nash says he talked to other residents... More >>