People & Places >>

• Best Local Hero (1 Comment)
  Joe Zwillenberg
  Joe Zwillenberg doesn't seem like the type to brag, so we'll do it for him. Zwillenberg is the guy who rescued the Westport Flea Market after word got out that, in a boobheaded move, longtime owner Mel Kleb II was selling the beloved burger bazaar to Hooters. Midtowners bellyached about yet... More >>
• Best New Building
  The Lawrence and Kristina Dodge Painting Building
  Walking down Oak after the Shakespeare Festival this past summer, we noticed a lit-up new sidewalk at the Kansas City Art Institute. In the dark, an ever-changing sequence of colors twinkled from the concrete (it's paved with light-emitting-diode technology) leading to the Lawrence and Kristina... More >>
• Best Construction Site
  The West Edge
  The developing West Edge has been one hell of a spectator show. Just two blocks west of the Plaza, the soon-to-be hotel, retail space, advertising museum, and office building has attracted many pedestrians to marvel at the 80-foot-deep crater. Cranes down at the bottom barely peek out from a... More >>
• Best Union
  Local 124 IBEW
  With all due respect to the old-school, muscle-flexin' firefighters in Local 42 (raises for everyone at City Hall!), we'd like to point out the good works of the Local 124 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Over the last few years, minorities and women have been left out of the... More >>
• Best Use of Tax Incentives
  Hilton President
  Under the leadership of Mayor Kay Barnes, Kansas City provides tax incentives to just about any developer who can count his toes. In many cases -- say, bringing Kohl's to the Northland -- those subsidies hardly seem justified. But every once in a while, the city helps out a worthy cause. Case in... More >>
• Best Politician
  Paul Morrison
  Call it political expedience, but Republican expatriate Paul Morrison's switcheroo made national headlines and gave the Kansas Democratic Party a much-needed shot in the arm. Perhaps Morrison sensed that he couldn't defeat incumbent Attorney General Phill Kline in blood-red Kansas' Republican... More >>
• Best Political Rumor
  Kay Barnes Wants a Third Term
  This past summer, the Kansas City, Missouri, City Council begged voters to ease term limits. The August 8 ballot contained two choices: Give a council member up to three terms, or repeal term limits completely. If either of the measures passed, council members in their second terms would have... More >>
• Best Attempt at Legislative Common Sense
  Kansas Rep. Terrie Huntington
  In late February, on the floor of the Kansas House, Rep. Brenda Landwehr dropped the A-bomb. The Wichita Republican and anti-abortion lawmaker admitted that she'd had an abortion. She still lived with the pain, she said tearfully, "because I killed a baby." Landwehr's testimony came during the... More >>
• Best Republican Blog (4 Comments)
  ... Just Cara
  Count Cara as one frustrated Republican. The former Young Republican describes herself as an ex-"Republican-votin', yippy-dog-ownin', law-practicin', Echo-drivin', RIAA-hatin', trip-hop-groovin', Fark-clickin' broad." She's a lifelong Missouri Republican who's anti-abortion and pro-gay rights.... More >>
• Best Blog About Life
  Frighteningly Uncommon Sense
  Frighteningly Uncommon Sense reads like a true tell-all. In her blog, a 32-year-old Overland Park woman who calls herself "Faith Smith" fills us in on her health scares, her sex life and her Office Space moments. We read it like voyeurs peeping through a diary, and Faith has become the... More >>
• Best Sweeps Delivery (1 Comment)
  Fox 4's Swingers Story
  Sweeps-week teases usually set us up with great expectations, only to leave us unsatisfied. But we got a rise out of last November's sex-off between KCTV Channel 5 and Fox 4 News. Last November 3, Channel 5 promised to rip back the covers on adulterous men. Meanwhile, Fox 4 hyped swingers,... More >>
• Best TV Hair
  Donna Pitman KMBC Channel 9
  We love Donna Pitman's hair for so many reasons. We love it because it grows on a hometown girl: Pitman's a native of Independence and got her journalism degree at MU. We love it because it's not overdyed blond. It's not shellacked. It's young and fresh but never too perfect. (The other day, it... More >>
• Best Cranky Sportscaster (1 Comment)
  Jack Harry KSHB Channel 41
  Jack Harry sounds as if he's sucked down a carton of Lucky Strike menthols. The buzz-cut-sporting, leather-skinned sportscaster gets a little worked up now and again, but that's when he's at his best. After more than 30 years of covering the Kansas City sports scene, you'd think Harry would be... More >>
• Best TV Host
  Nick Haines KCPT Channel 19
  Doing a good public-affairs TV show isn't easy. Kansas City Public Television's Ruckus, hosted by helmet-headed Mike Shanin, might be more aptly named Comatose. In contrast, Nick Haines, host of KCPT's Week in Review, manages the task of moderating a roundtable with aplomb. The red-haired... More >>
• Best TV Reporter (1 Comment)
  Micheal Mahoney KMBC Channel 9
  We love how KMBC Channel 9's Micheal Mahoney works like a son of a bitch. This year, Mahoney was at his best on the night of the August 8 primary, when Jackson County Prosecutor Mike Sanders was kicking the ass of Missouri Sen. Charles Wheeler. Channel 9 called the race for Sanders and went live... More >>
• Best New Job for Katheryn Shields
  Challenger to Matt Bartle
  Over the summer, hardcore anti-abortion Missouri Sen. Matt Bartle effortlessly fought off a primary challenge by pro-choice Rep. Bob Johnson. We imagined that the growing impatience of moderate Republicans with the far-right wing of their party might have made it a contest. We were so wrong.... More >>
• Best New Job for Charles Wheeler
  Transportation Czar
  It's not that we don't love Charles Wheeler. Sure, he got creamed in the primary election for Jackson County Executive. Yes, 65 percent of voters chose Mike Sanders (as opposed to the sad little 29 percent who went for Wheeler), but that just means they don't want Wheeler to be county exec. We... More >>
• Best Jackson County Employee
  Johnathon Bish
  No one expects to have fun visiting the Jackson County Courthouse to file papers for divorces, lawsuits, restraining orders, motions, continuances, subpoenas and appeals. Mercifully, Johnathon Bish makes such unpleasant tasks a little more bearable. Bish sits at the first cubicle that people see... More >>
• Best Antagonist
  Cynthia Canady
  Retired autoworker Cynthia Canady has missed only a handful of Kansas City, Missouri, Parks Board meetings in the past three years. At every meeting she attends, Canady asks about progress on the replacement for the aging Southeast Community Center on East 63rd Street. In 2004, voters approved a... More >>
• Best Duty Doer
  Brett Shirk
  The bags under Brett Shirk's eyes say enough. Shirk, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri, looks like he hasn't slept in days. Upon taking the reigns of the local chapter last November, after longtime Executive Director Dick Kurtenbach... More >>
• Best Science Non-Nerd
  Simon H. Friedman, Ph.D.
  Simon Friedman can chat for hours about pop culture, movie trivia and Kansas City politics without ever getting to the subject of light-activated RNA interference. But last year, his academic paper on that topic was among the most-viewed documents picked up by a Web service called Faculty of a... More >>
• Best Westport Character
  Potatohead
  Perhaps you've met Potatohead and his trusty puppet, Golden English, in Westport. Potatohead (who says his name is Joel M. Hinson) usually shows up on high-traffic weekend nights, cross-legged, in front of the sushi restaurant Matsu or Kelly's Irish Pub. Sometimes he has to jockey with the Jesus... More >>
• Best Place to Pick Up a Hot Soccer Mom
  Dean & Deluca
  Standing in line at Dean & Deluca one day, waiting for our soy decaf latte, we had an epiphany: It's getting harder and harder to tell teenage girls from their mothers. Moms in low-rise Rock and Republic jeans wear Juicy hoodies and have long, blond hair -- just like their Blue Valley... More >>
• Best "Granddad"
  Jim Nunnelly
  Every Saturday morning, a group of 10 or 15 teenagers gathers in the KPRS 103.3 studios at an hour earlier than most adolescents can fathom being awake. There, they produce a radio show called Generation Rap, opening it by shouting out their graduating class or school name: "It's your boy Rob... More >>
• Best Marital Spat
  Sandy and Bill Skaggs
  Here's something you don't see too often: a marital disagreement playing out in a letter to the editor in The Kansas City Star. Back on February 9, the Star quoted Kansas City, Missouri, City Councilman Bill Skaggs in an article about proposals for public art at the new Sprint Center. "I just... More >>
• Best Expression of the KU-MU Rivalry
  Quantrill Acres
  We must admit, the rivalry between Kansas and Missouri felt neutered after 2004. That's when, thanks to hypersensitive wartime political correctness, the Border War was renamed the Border Showdown. L-a-m-e. But then we heard about Quantrill Acres, a subdivision located in Lawrence -- the heart... More >>
• Best Plaza Personalities (1 Comment)
  Maurice Hayes and Shanice Hayes
  The singing duo of Maurice Hayes and his 12-year-old daughter, Shanice, have become a popular attraction at the County Club Plaza since setting up on the sidewalk outside McCormick & Schmick's last Thanksgiving. Using backing tracks, they perform two sets on Friday and Saturday nights when the... More >>