The Pitch, Pitch

MLS All-Star Game logo being painted on side of Crossroads building

Ben Palosaari — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:44:00 -0500

It's out with the old, in with the new on the side of 1712 Main, the building that long featured a painted advertisement for Boulevard and the Roasterie. Last week, work began on whitewashing over the ad, and this week new paint started going up - advertising the 2013 MLS All-Star Game.…

Shatto's Cookies & Cream milk is still out there

Jonathan Bender — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:39:00 -0500

Summer drinks are like camp romances - you hang on to them a little too long and forget about them by the time the leaves change. I had a brief dalliance with an Oreo Cream Blast - the novelty of a cookie milkshake being sold at a movie theater seems quaint in light of the current cinema cornucopia - a decade ago that I haven't thought about until I popped the silver lid on a Shatto Cookies & Cream milk.…

Can't decide which urban farms to hit? Start here.

Jonathan Bender — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 09:00:37 -0500

We can go ahead and mark 2013 as the year when urban agriculture reached a tipping point in Kansas City. Because this is the year when it has become pretty much physically impossible to actually visit every site on Cultivate Kansas City's Urban Grown Farms & Gardens Tour.…

Alan Ashurst tracks Kansas City's illegal dumpers

Ben Palosaari — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:56:00 -0500

Code Enforcement Officer Alan Ashurst asks me if I have insurance. I chuckle.…

Pie Five looks to make its dough in Overland Park

Jonathan Bender — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 07:30:26 -0500

Pie Five Pizza Co., and its promise of a 9-inch custom pie made in just five minutes, will be opening in the former iEats location at 13366 Metcalf in Overland Park by the end of the summer. The fast-casual pizza joint serves up cookie pies alongside its cheese-laden brethren, which can be made with your choice of four crusts (gluten-free is $2 extra), 21 toppings and seven sauces.…

Jerry Rapp, CinemaKC president, answers The Pitch's questionnaire

Justin Kendall — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 06:46:42 -0500

Name: Jerry Rapp

Occupation: President, CinemaKC

Hometown: Kansas City, Missouri

Current neighborhood: The Crossroads

Who or what is your sidekick? My beagle-dachshund mix, Maddie

What career would you choose in an alternate reality? Astronomer

What was the last local restaurant you patronized? Open Fire Pizza

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Jazz Beat: Hermon Mehari Trio at the Majestic

Larry Kopitnik — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Larry Kopitnik The space is a speakeasy that has hosted jazz since politicians gathered here for drinks during Prohibition. The trumpeter is one of KC's young jazz lions, expanding the music's reach with sounds from an earlier generation: hip-hop and Michael Jackson.…

Much Ado About Nothing

Jim Ridley — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Jim Ridley In its best moments, Joss Whedon's modern-dress movie version of Much Ado About Nothing seems most like what it is: a house-party lark among old friends who have decided to perform Shakespeare rather than dust off the Twister or find the croquet mallets. That's pretty much how it seems in its worst moments, too.…

Debbie Gold opens her Red Door Grill in Leawood

Charles Ferruzza — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

Debbie Gold opens the Red Door Grill in Leawood. by Charles Ferruzza Not long after the Red Door Grill opened in Leawood last month, chef Debbie Gold — the James Beard Award winner and reality-TV star — overheard two customers talking about her in the dining room. "Debbie Gold left the American Restaurant," one woman said to her dining companion, "to make hamburgers?"…

Johnson County got a deal on King Louie. Turning it into a national suburbia museum won't be a bargain

Steve Vockrodt — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

Turning King Louie into a national museum won't be a bargain. by Steve Vockrodt Mindi Love has an encyclopedic memory of Johnson County's history. Off the top of her head, she can say what year Country Club Plaza developer J.C. Nichols completed his studies at the old Olathe High School.…

Music Forecast June 20-26: Huey Lewis and the News, Fall Out Boy, the Grisly Hand, and more

David Hudnall — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

These acts appear on KC stages this week. by David Hudnall Huey Lewis and the News Is it truly, as Huey Lewis and the News once declared, hip to be square? This event might shed some light on the matter.…

World War Z

Bilge Ebiri — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Bilge Ebiri Zombie movies are, at heart, disaster movies. The horror they exploit is not so much of the "Boo!" variety, but rather that of society in full collapse.…

Talking with the Pedaljets about the new album that may be their best

Danny Alexander — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

Talking with the Pedaljets about the new album that may be their best. by Danny Alexander It feels like a purely objective statement to say the Pedaljets' two-fisted new album, What's in Between, is the band's best. It has all the studio sophistication that the band might have wished for on its promising 1987 debut, Today Today, and it recovers the pop sensibility left behind on its self-titled 1990 follow-up, after which the group disbanded.…

The Bling Ring

Scott Wilson — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Scott Wilson By the time Harvey Levin sat down on the cultural toilet to drop TMZ on us, Sofia Coppola's career as a writer and director was well under way. But the three movies she has made since the celebrity-gossip clearinghouse's 2005 arrival, starting with the next year's Marie Antoinette, are oddly difficult to imagine in a world without TMZ — not to mention, now, Gawker and Facebook and Instagram.…

Lawrence's Blue Collar Distro: Merch table of the Internet

April Fleming — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by April Fleming Spotify, iTunes, Pandora, SoundCloud and the like have made discovering new music easy, but it wasn't so long ago that the process took real effort. You had to visit a record store, maybe pore over some music magazines.…

Monsters University

Craig D. Lindsey — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Craig D. Lindsey Monsters University is a rare cinematic creature: a prequel nobody asked for that turns out to be a summer godsend. Somebody at Disney or Pixar thought it would be a good idea to make an origin story for the characters from 2001's quirky Monsters, Inc., following the hardworking bogeymen during their college years.…

Aixois Brasserie celebrates first birthday in a spirited fashion

Charles Ferruzza — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:52:17 -0500

This weekend, chef Emmanual Langlade and his wife, Megan - as well as the entire staff of the Aixois Brasserie at 1006 Walnut - will be in celebration mode. Proving the naysayers wrong, the Aixois Brasserie will fete the first anniversary of the downtown boite this Friday and Saturday with live enterainment and a reverse happy hour from 9 p.m. to midnight featuring $5 glasses of house wine, $3 well cocktails, an array of small plates priced from $3 to $7, and the introduction of the new Parisian-inspired cocktail list.…

Boulevard and Sierra Nevada join forces for Terra Incognita, which hits shelves Wednesday

Jonathan Bender — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:31:00 -0500

Humankind can finally swallow the earth with this week's release of Terra Incognita, Boulevard Brewing Co. and Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.'s barrel-aged collaboration. The dark-brown ale is named after uncharted lands and the California Trail, which separates the breweries.…

Iron and Wine is coming to the Midland

Justin Kendall — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:35:00 -0500

Iron and Wine is coming to the Midland on Saturday, November 9.

Tickets for the 8 p.m., all-ages show cost $35.…

Jewish Family Services' food pantry now offers pet food

Charles Ferruzza — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:04:00 -0500

The food pantries in the Kansas City metro have been doing record business since the economic downturn of 2008. In fact, many of the church-based food pantries can barely keep up with the demand for staples (pasta, rice, canned fruits and vegetables) and personal hygiene products (shampoo, toothpaste, toilet paper).…

Franz Ferdinand is coming to Lawrence

David Hudnall — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 07:55:36 -0500

Scottish dance-punk act Franz Ferdinand has a new album, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action out on August 27. The group will tour the United States in support of it, with a stop in Lawrence for a show Tuesday, October 8, at the Granada.…

Aaron Sanchez and John Besh to collaborate on a restaurant named Johnny Sanchez?

Jonathan Bender — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 07:30:22 -0500

Mestizo's Aaron Sanchez and chef John Besh (author of My New Orleans and, for many, the culinary face of that city) are apparently considering opening a sit-down version of a taqueria together. Eater talked to Besh about his new book, Cooking From the Heart, and at the end of the interview, he mentioned that he and Sanchez (who based on this piece in Yahoo has a mutual crush on the New Orleans chef), the owner and chef behind the Mexican restaurant in Leawood's Park Place, are thinking about a new concept tentatively titled Johnny Sanchez.…

Infusions Grill & Bar wants you to spread 'em

Charles Ferruzza — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:47:17 -0500

Just when you thought you'd never find another restaurant in the metro that serves ham salad, we found one for you. The three-week-old Infusions Grill & Bar at 837 S.W. Lemans Lane in Lee's Summit is offering a trio of old-fashioned, tearoom-style spreads on its starter menu: curry egg salad, rosemary ham salad (a little too heavy on the rosemary) and white-cheddar pimento spread served up with toasted slices of French baguette.…

Drake is coming to Sprint Center this fall

Justin Kendall — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:52:00 -0500

Drake started from the bottom, and now he's coming here - to the Sprint Center, again. The Grammy Award winner's Would You Like a Tour?, uh, tour stops at Kansas City's big glass arena Sunday, October 6.…

McDonald's sued by employee who wants a check, not a debit card

Charles Ferruzza — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:20:00 -0500

A 27-year-old McDonald's employee in Pennsylvania was singing the old Burger King theme song last week: She wanted it her way. And she's going to sue to make her point.…