UPDATE (2:50 p.m.): The victim of the homicide at South Ninth and Homer has been identified as 21-year-old Luiz Estrada of KCK. Police are still looking for his killer.
Original Story (8:55 a.m.): Kansas City, Kansas, police are investigating a homicide at South Ninth and Homer. A man found his roommate shot to death in the driveway of a home there around 4:35 a.m. Thursday.
It's around this time of year that I begin to lament to my wife that Kansas City summers are hot. She laughs. Oh, how she laughs. And then she tells me to wait. Because then it gets really hot.
The saving grace of summer is that we've got a bevy of locally made, frozen desserts that can be tackled with spoon, straw or mouth. We've written about a ton of them in this space: the flights of freshness from Fresher Than Fresh Snow Cones, the ice-cream-and-cookie sandwich from Murray's, the paletas from Paleterias Tropicana, and the E-Crush at Hi Hat Coffee. So, how about it, who's got the cure for the summertime heat? Write quickly; it's only going to get hotter.
UPDATE (July 1): The victim of the homicide in Sanford Brown Plaza park has been officially identified as 24-year-old Paul Nelson of Kansas City, Missouri.
Original Story (June 30): A man shot to death Wednesday night in Sanford Brown Plaza park is Kansas City, Missouri's 49th homicide victim of 2011.
Food trucks, once the least glamorous form of dining in America, have become the hottest culinary innovation since commercially sliced bread (which was first sold to the public in Chillicothe, Missouri on July 7, 1928, by the way). So the opportunity to purchase a meal from a mobile-truck window has gone from fast food to fantastic food.
That's the general perception, anyway, and next weekend -- July 8 and 9 -- foodies and fun lovers alike will gather at the Back Yard at the Beaumont (4050 Pennsylvania in Westport) for the first annual Westport Food Truck Festival, presented by The Pitch and Boulevard Brewing Company. At least 15 popular, local food trucks -- including Good You, Magical Meatball Tour, CoffeeCakeKC, Los Tules and many others -- are set to sell an array of dishes while an eclectic artisan bazaar, the Westport Marketplace, features vendors selling original clothing designs, jewelry, vintage treasures, collectible recordings and much, much more.
You guys, Kanrocksas is inching ever nearer. We're just a little over a month out. Today the fest announced the lineup of Wild Bill's Local Music Showcase. It's being held out at Wild Bill's Steakhouse and Saloon at the Legends, and it features local bands and DJs every Friday and Saturday in July. Acts compete for two slots to play Kanrocksas. (The Pitch is also sponsoring the event.)
Click through to peep the lineup. It's good!
For a long while, it seemed that everyone in Renee Kelly's life knew she would be a chef before she did. When she was 8 and growing up in De Soto, Kansas, her brothers asked her to make homemade doughnuts.
"That was my first introduction to a grease fire. It was my very own kitchen nightmare," Kelly says.
The year she was set to graduate high school, her father, Randy Neighbors, gave her a floppy chef's hat. "What am I, going to be a chef or something?" she remembers telling him.
And after her first year as a premed student at Texas A&M, she was terrified to tell her parents that there wasn't going to be a doctor in the family. They just laughed and told her to come on home. And it was then that her dad asked if she would ever consider cooking.
In 2004, Missouri voters approved a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Here's an interesting question: Would voters make the same decision in 2012?
Acceptance of gay marriage has increased at a rapid pace in recent years. Polls show that a majority of Americans now favor the idea. Last week, state lawmakers in New York rewrote the marriage law to make it gender-neutral.
Two Overland Park doctors are suing Kansas in federal court over strict new regulations that abortion clinics must comply with by July 1. Dr. Traci Nauser and her father, Dr. Herbert Hodes, who run the Center for Women's Health, have filed suit arguing the new restrictions are unconstitutional.
KCUR's Alana Gordon reports that the doctors canceled their inspection by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, which must license abortion providers under new rules that the state passed in April. KDHE said none of the state's three abortion providers comply with the new regulations.
Thursday's an embarrassment of riches here in town. Elvis Costello and the Imposters are playing Crossroads KC at Grinders, and later in the evening the Meat Puppets are at RecordBar. (Read about both on our Forecast page.)
What to do? Both! Bring your Elvis Costello ticket stub to RecordBar after the show and get $5 off entry.
Waking up to news about Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church is never a good way to start the day. But, thanks to an NPR report on Morning Edition, that's what millions of Americans did today. And the news was bizarre, even by WBC standards.
Reporter Dina Temple-Raston told the story of the FBI inviting WBC members to training sessions with agents, and the resulting internal controversy. Temple-Raston's journalism-textbook-worthy nut graph explains:
Yet the FBI recently invited leaders of the fundamentalist church tothe Quantico Marine base in Virginia to talk to FBI agents as part of
the bureau's counterterrorism training program. But after four sessions
this spring, the FBI canceled the arrangement amid criticism from
inside the bureau, while church leaders claimed that they had been
misled.
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