Jim Rome knock-off Nick Wright wants to be able to sit in his box at the coliseum and wave a perfumed hankie as football players, the gladiators of modern times, ferociously hurl themselves at each other.
Wright, a host at 610-AM, made callous comments after a violent weekend in the NFL. Wright talked about the most recent spate of brain-rattling hits as an occupational hazard. "My dad's a fireman," Wright said, which made him a greater risk for lung cancer.
But calling Wright's dad "a fireman" is little like referring to Barack Obama as a "prominent Hawaiian."
An East Side neighborhood group has beaten a private developer and a city agency in court for the third time.
The Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council wants to turn the old Horace Mann School at 39th Street and Bruce R. Watkins Drive into senior housing. A city agency, the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority (PIEA), tried to condemn the building so that a private developer could implement a similar plan. Ivanhoe stopped the condemnation by convincing a judge that the PIEA made an insincere offer for the property, which Ivanhoe had purchased -- a nice little strategy, as it turns out.
City officials are working hard to justify the investment in the Power & Light District in the face of a grim financial outlook, the subject of this week's column.
Councilwoman Cindy Circo put on her hard hat and described the struggling bond issue on her blog as a $150 million sewer project."The improvements above ground are just icing on the cake," she wrote. Opining in The Kansas City Star, Councilman Russ Johnson went the Downtown Comes Alive! route, touting attendance figures at the Sprint Center and Bartle Hall. Johnson noted that convention business from May through July is up 28 percent from last year. What Johnson didn't say was that 2009, his baseline for comparison, was a pretty lousy year for conventions.
Last week, two guys who used to work at the University of Kansas Athletic Department pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the ticket skimming scandal.
Their names are Brandon Simmons and Jason Jeffries, and their titles are unimportant. All you need to know is that they were functionaries, organization men lucky or skilled enough to insert themselves into the ecosystem of big-time college athletics. Their talents were immaterial to the success of KU sports -- most literate people could handle the duties necessary to work in a ticket office at a major university. But they had access to something a thousand times more rare than themselves: seats at Allen Fieldhouse. Corruption took hold.
Sensible people at City Hall have looked at the numbers and determined that the decision to build a funporium in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, will ding taxpayers for years to come.
The news/non-news in today's Kansas City Star is that the Power & Light District will require an ongoing $10 million to $15 million annual subsidy. The city issued $295 million in bonds for the project in 2006 in the hope that visitors would buy enough burgers and vodka tonics to pay off the creditors. But faulty assumptions and the economic downtown have trashed that theory.
A recent Associated Press story makes Johnson County sound like Portland with better schools.
The story outlined the vision for the National Museum of Suburban History, an idea that's being promoted by the officials at the Johnson County Museum and the Arts Council of Johnson County. The AP story began by declaring Johnson County an "economic powerhouse that has eclipsed its big-city neighbor in political influence."
A polling outfit whose work The Pitch questioned in 2008 is being labeled a fraud by a client.
On Tuesday, the liberal politics blog Daily Kos disowned the polls it had asked Research 2000 to conduct. The blog's founder, Markos Moulitsas, has concluded that Research 2000's survey results are "bunk" after reading a report by three statisticians who examined the Maryland company's work.
Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser made a populist, combative, defiant, fireworks-lacking and allusive State of the City speech on Thursday.
The Kansas City Star's coverage emphasized the position the mayor took against the "well-connected few" and the manner in which he challenged his rep for being a doofus. KMBC's account played up Funkhouser's poor relationship with the City Council. A writer at the Kansas City Business Journal highlighted the mayor's criticism of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.
What we took from the speech was Funkhouser's suggestion that running a city is like ice skating.
Newsweek has come up with a list of America's best public high schools.
The results run contrary to a half-century of migratory patterns. The area's two highest ranking buildings are located in Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas.
Tiffany Lewis helps renters and landlords find each other. Later this month, a jury in Platte County will consider the question of whether she needs a license to do the job.
Lewis is president of Kansas City Premier Apartments. Her company maintains a Web site that offers information about rental units. The apartment owners in the database pay a commission for referrals. "We don't charge the renter, ever," Lewis says.
Yea he could have been a white meth head but he was just a black…
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Had lunch there today, amazing smoked ribs. Hours later, I'm still full, but still want…
Reallly!?!? No mention of Hopfest???
Cody Rhodes keeps his family's tradition alive on WWE's Monday Night Raw
KC Pride Festival 2013? Yes, it's still on
Jim Gaffigan, Dad Is Fat author, on his way to our fat town
Big Rip Brewing Co. opens to the world Sunday
The Humdinger: Stand in line to get in, baby
The Pitch's Taste of KC is ready for eaters this Sunday
Steve Earle to play Crossroads KC at Grinders
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