• Photo by Angela C. Bond
• Amanda Crawley

Occupation: Executive director, Historic Kansas City Foundation

Hometown: Prairie Village

Current neighborhood: Brookside

Who or what is your sidekick? The two things that go to bed with me: my cairn terrier, Angus, and my iPad.

What career would you choose in an alternate reality? Emergency-medicine doctor. I love the pace and work well under pressure. Most people don't know I was pre-med for four years of college, before choosing architecture and historic preservation.

• Paul Anderson has quickly become concussion litigation expert.

"It's tough," Anderson says. "If I could pick one guy who really stuck out the most and had the biggest impression on me, it was Junior Seau. I always wore his jersey: No. 55. I felt so tough because his name was ‘Say-ow!' What cooler name could you have?"

Seau's suicide was particularly disturbing: The 43-year-old former San Diego Chargers star shot himself in the chest, the same way former Chicago Bears safety Dave Duerson ended his life in 2011. Duerson, 50, used that method so his brain could be studied for damage. It was later confirmed that Duerson suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disease that results from enduring concussions and repeated head traumas. Seau didn't leave a note explaining why he shot himself in the chest, but his family is considering donating his brain to science.
Between telling stories, Anderson, 25, sips an IPA and checks his phone roughly every 20 seconds for Twitter updates.

Seau's death carries extra meaning for him. Since January, Anderson has been writing the blog NFLConcussionLitigation.com, which tracks concussion-related lawsuits against the NFL. His project, which he initially started to get the attention of potential employers, has become the comprehensive online resource about the 74 lawsuits filed by former players. Perhaps not coincidentally, the day Seau died, Anderson's website received its most traffic - around 4,000 hits.

• Malto: The champ comes home.

A few weeks ago, security guards handcuffed Sean Malto for doing his job in the wrong place. He and his friends were detained for skateboarding in the street. They were a couple of blocks from the pro skateboarder's River Market loft.

"It was so weird," Malto says. "It was like a sting operation."

The 22-year-old pro skateboarder from Kansas City says a truckful of security guards - two in the cab and four in the bed - raced around a nearby corner. The guards jumped out of the still-moving truck and took off running.

"I thought somebody had robbed somebody," Malto says. "And then the next thing you know, they tackle my friend J-Lo [Joseph Lopez]."

Malto says another friend also got tackled and pinned to the concrete. The guards who cuffed Malto and his crew claimed that they had received a complaint about the skaters destroying property.

"We're having fun with our friends on the street," Malto says. "We're not breaking into anything or doing drugs. But whatever - that's just how it goes sometimes, I guess."

Kansas City police officers responded, but whoever lodged the complaint didn't step forward. Eventually, the cops let them go. Malto views it as a wake-up call.

"Security guards in the downtown area have all the power of a cop, but they can't take you to jail," Malto says. "So they can tackle you. They can push you. They can cuff you. They can pepper-spray you. But they have to call a cop to put you in the car and take you to jail. It's crazy that they give them that much power because some of them are insane and have something to prove.

"The problem is, people still have that image of skaters as assholes or something," he adds. "We try to be as respectful as possible, but it doesn't register, and people freak out."

Skateboarding might be the only sport whose athletes - even the ones about to headline an arena event - run the risk of being detained by security. "You don't see Dwayne Bowe getting cuffed for playing football," Malto says. "That's ridiculous."

Malto is the hometown favorite heading into this weekend's Street League DC Pro Tour, a two-day competition that kicks off at the Sprint Center Friday, May 18, at 7 p.m. (ESPN2 broadcasts the final round Saturday night.)

• Photo by Sabrina Staires
• Joe Cox

Name: Joe Cox

Occupation: Director of social media at Barkley

Hometown: Pleasant Hill, Missouri

Current neighborhood: Spring Valley, 43rd Avenue and Rainbow, the 'Dotte

Who or what is your sidekick? If you know my wife, the answer is easy. She's the best partner in crime ever. My iPhone comes in at a very distant second. Life wouldn't be worth living without Bejeweled Blitz and Instagram.

What career would you choose in an alternate reality? Hmm. Not sure. All I'm picturing is some bizzaro world out there where I'm some kind of survivalist. I'm really infatuated with all of those shows like Survivorman, for some reason, even though I'm hopelessly dependent on my tech.

Lyman was the Kansas City Chiefs' photographer for 25 years, and after he died in 2005, at age 90, his two-story Coleman Highlands home overlooking the city fell into disrepair. The basement was full of his old junk: cameras, vinyl records, shelves with liquor bottles from the 1960s. It also had a massive, solid floor-to-ceiling closet built in front of the wall.

When new owners bought the place this past winter, workers tore it down and discovered a hidden vault. When they opened it, they found some dry goods and a shelf. When they removed the shelf, they discovered a secret room. Hidden inside: 30 moonshine jugs, 16 whiskey bottles, 13 gin bottles, 10 vermouth bottles, and five ancient champagne bottles.

The trove included a rotted piece of crate stamped "GLASS" and, underneath that, the name "T.J. PENDERGAST." That would be the man called "Boss Tom," the dark prince of Jackson County politics who made Prohibition a party for the locals and something of an international joke for everybody else.

The Coleman Highlands discovery is a rarity. The speakeasy, ubiquitous in the 1920s, is slowly disappearing from Kansas City's physical history and collective memory. It has been, for instance, 20 years since Terry Sanchez (of Weird Stuff Antiques, at 901 Tracy) bought a property near 33rd Street and Troost and found a concrete-sealed stairwell leading to a secret store. "It was one of Pendergast's beer companies," says Sanchez, who didn't find booze there, just a bunch of old signs dating back to the 1920s and earlier.

Jaws first fell open in March. That's when the website for the new Parkville bed-and-breakfast became the talk of this town of 6,000. Photos of naughty nurses, vibrating paddles and candy panties dominated. The bedroom treats, the site said, were for sale in the gift shop of the Romantic Getaway Today Inn.

The inn's owner, Janet Byers, says it wasn't long before city officials were telling her that in order to sell the items pictured on her site, she would need an adult-business license - something no Parkville business holds. She toned things down, but the Romantic Getaway Today Inn, which Byers markets as an adult playground, is still far from your traditional B&B.

The property, called the Porch Swing Inn in its last incarnation (a B&B that operated for about a decade), features a sex swing, an enormous beanbag known as a sex ship, a sex stool with what's called a "love mask," video cameras, racy board games, DVDs, books and much more.

The timing of events suggests that the city made an extra effort to restrain Byers' new business. The first week of March, around the time that the inn's website hit, the Board of Aldermen added six months to an existing moratorium against licensing businesses that sell sexually explicit material - the adult-business license that the city told Byers she would need.

• Carrie Coogan

Occupation: Executive director, Literacy Kansas City

Hometown: Born in North Hollywood, California, but grew up in Denver, Colorado.

Current neighborhood: Downtown Kansas City, Missouri

Who or what is your sidekick? I have 16 nieces and nephews who range in age from 4 to 21. All so wonderful and fun!

What career would you choose in an alternate reality? Actress on Broadway or backup singer for Tina Turner - those girls are so awesome.

What was the last local restaurant you patronized? Pot Pie in Westport

Where do you drink? The Peanut on Main or Governor Stumpy's

What are your favorite charities? Literacy Kansas City, Women for Women International, March of Dimes, and Society of St. Andrew

Favorite place to spend your paycheck: Local farmers market, on fresh, organic homegrown food. I try not to miss Friday nights at the BadSeed and Laura Little's fudge shop.

• Photo by Sabrina Staires

"When Colt Cabana beat Adam Pearce, I was like, Oh, Jesus - 209," Schamberger says. "Then I saw that he'd held it before, so that was good."

The idea came, says the 32-year-old Kansas Citian, in a temporary "moment of insanity." His vision: Paint every world champion in pro-wrestling history, from Hulk Hogan to Georg Hackenschmidt to ... David Arquette? (The actor won World Championship Wrestling's world title in 2000.)

"When I announced the project, one of the first questions I got ... was, 'Are you actually going to do David Arquette?' And I'm like, 'I said I'm doing all of 'em.'"