Subject: Economic Crisis

• Breakfast Buffet: Thursday, 7/17

  July 17, 2008

• An Annotated Version of a Note from the Star's Publisher

  August 25, 2008

• Daily Briefs: David Foster Wallace Has a Posse

  September 15, 2008

• Daily Briefs: Sexy Grandpa remembers the Great Depression

  September 23, 2008

• Daily Briefs: Yom Kippur; Puppy Managerial Training; Dirty imagery in the business section

  October 8, 2008

• Starbucks as an economic indicator

  October 27, 2008

• Breakfast Buffet: Wednesday, 12/31 New Year's Eve!

  The iconic Times Square Coca-Cola billboard featuring the iconic glass of Coca-Cola is going green. The equivalent of taking 75 cars off the road for a year. [New York Post] Tips on throwing the best recession party ever! Hint: Don't let your guests know it's a recession. [AP News]You'll never look at ice cubes the same way after seeing what this artist does with them. (No, it's not naughty though that set-up makes it sound slightly so.) [Wired]What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But what if n

  December 31, 2008

• Best Barbecue

  October 19, 2000

• Best Remnant of Kansas City's Glory Days

  October 18, 2001

• Sebelius gives State of State address

  Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius just delivered her seventh State of the State address. I don't blame you if you watched 24 instead. Lots of "we" talk. It wasn't a thriller, but if you want to read the whole thing, it's after the jump.

  January 12, 2009

• Wanted: A roomie for The Pitch

  Damn, this recession is so tough, we're looking for a roommate. We don't snore. Much. We'll even give you the top bunk. Ideal candidates will have lots of good-looking sisters, spend plenty of time away on business and own a Fry Daddy. -- Justin Kendall

  January 13, 2009

• Clara Cannucciari: 93 and cooking

  I'm a little late on this one. I found Clara on Just Me and since it's right down Fat City's aisle I couldn't pass on the 93-year-old's sage advice and Great Depression recipes.Clara Cannucciari was a sprightly 91 years old when she started making videos with her great-grandson, Christopher Cannucciari, who posted them on YouTube. Each video follows the same format: Clara makes a depression-era dish like pasta and peas or egg-drop soup, and talks about what it was like living through the Great D

  January 23, 2009

• Bacon Explosion highlights slow news day at Star

  New York Times slideshowWe knew the New York Times' Bacon Explosion story was big -- that's why we blogged about it yesterday on Fat City.But two days after the Times' story, The Kansas City Star still thinks it's really, really, really big. In today's Star, the Bacon Explosion is an above-the-fold, A-1 story! Hey, I love bacon more than I love my arteries, but I still can't quite believe the sudden popularity of a couple of Kansas City barbecue bloggers is, I don't know, bigger news than the Ho

  January 29, 2009

• ¿Qué pasa Kraft?

  When you hear the words Mexican food, what images come to mind? Margaritas, fajitas, peppers. Probably not cheesecake. Yet Mexico now holds the record for largest cheesecake which was made using... Philadelphia cream cheese.Spanish news is reporting that Chef Miguel Angel Quezada of Mexico City has made a 2,000 pound strawberry cheesecake beating the record of, uh, um, well there is no record. According to the AP, "there wasn't much competition. Guinness had no previous record for cheesecakes."

  February 2, 2009

• Diddy Says Hip-Hop Is In a Recession. Doy Hickey.

  Sean "Greenspan" Combs said in an interview with MTV this week that hip-hop is in a recession. No "fucking" shit. The master of the remix -- and the obvious -- blames DJs for the industry's current nosedive. "People have figured out the formula when they make records for the radio, and DJs ain't DJs no more," Diddy told the interviewer. "They don't expose you to the newness." Hmm. The producer who brought you the caricature known as Mase laments the current lack of musical originality? Diddy c

  February 5, 2009

• Will Nature's Pride save IBC?

  The last couple of years have not been kind to the Interstate Bakeries Corporation. IBC, headquartered on east Armour Road in Kansas City, Missouri, has been in bankruptcy since 2004 and its two iconic products, Wonder Bread and Twinkies, aren't exactly en vogue among health-conscious shoppers.To celebrate its emergence from bankruptcy -- and to try and woo those aforementioned healthy shoppers -- this week IBC is soft-releasing a new line of bread called Nature's Pride. The line is a step up in

  February 11, 2009

• Post we love: "Growing up in a 'socialist' town in Kansas"

  Just read a beautiful piece of writing by Resistance is Fruitful, a new local blogger who is impressing us with his thoughtful (if not yet especially prolific) work.This February 6 post was an "Editor's Pick" on OpenSalon.com. In it, Resistance remembers his childhood in Colby, Kansas -- specifically, the parts of town built by the WPA during the Great Depression. His experience is a strong rebuke to the cranks who argue that a federal economic stimulus package is "socialist" and therefore bad.

  February 11, 2009

• REO Speedwagon, Styx and friends promise cheap tickets on next tour

  Domo arigato, Mr. Obama.Fear not, classic rock obsessives: the global economic crisis will not waylay this year's round of washed-up, amusement-park-haunting ghosts of '70s arena rock. In fact, a couple such bands are using all this talk of stimuli to their PR advantage. Behold, VH1 Classic and the video game Rock Band® present REO Speedwagon and Styx on the Can't Stop Rockin' Tour. In addition to recording a song together next month that will be called "Can't Stop Rockin'" (listen for it on a

  February 26, 2009

• Charlie Poole and Others

  May 5, 2005

• Breakfast Buffet: Monday, 3/16

  Tea time is not complete without scones. Here's how to make them so you don't end up with a dry rock in your mouth. [Simmer Till Done]Economists could be missing the easiest way to tell when the recession is over: champagne sales stop going down and start going up. [The Independent]Drinking a bottle of bourbon six nights in a row and then drawing how it makes you feel. That's art I can get behind. [Seventeen Gallery] Mexico doesn't like the whole "dolphin-friendly" label on tuna, and the fact is

  March 16, 2009

• Broke? Don't be depressed ... eat something!

  There's that inspiring lyric from a Stephen Sondheim song that goes, "In the Depression, was I depressed? Nowhere near..." Eating is always a mood-elevator (for me anyway, so pass the tuna noodle casserole this way). During the most grim days of the Great Depression, my great-grandmother (who had once run a boarding house), put terrific meals on her family's table because she was a great cook and knew how to stretch a buck. There are still cooks around, like the legendary Clara on YouTube,

  March 17, 2009

• Claire McCaskill wants to talk

  Stimulation update: Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill is in town on Wednesday to promise that help's on the way.This from her office: "As our nation faces its most serious economic crisis in decades, Congress and the President worked together in order to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This recovery package will energize and uplift our state's economy, and I want to talk to you about the many exciting opportunities for Missourians: thousands of jobs for our state, improvements to o

  April 6, 2009

• Support the LAC

  April 9, 2009

• Arguing about the stimulus, pork-producing hometown Republicans have made a ridiculous stand for austerity

  February 26, 2009

• Tantalized by economic-stimulus money, City Hall has trouble breaking bad habits

  January 29, 2009

• Yes, notable Kansas Citians really said these stupid things in 2008

  January 1, 2009

• Defiance, OH

  July 13, 2006

• Bucking the Odds

  Seabiscuit is a different breed of summer ride movie.

  July 24, 2003

• Bobby "Blue" Bland

  Thursday, July 3, at the Grand Emporium.

  July 3, 2003

• Gloryholes

  Sunday, March 16, at El Torreon.

  March 13, 2003

• Good for Everyone

  May 7, 2009

• First Friday Sneak Peek

  July 2, 2009

• Your Free (Discussion of) Lunch

  You'll find countless deals around town as people clamor for cheap eats in today's economy, but where's the nourishment for your soul? Get some free food for thought this Sunday, July 19, at the Central branch of the Kansas City Public Library (14 W. 10th Street) when Pitch restaurant critic Charles Ferruzza leads a discussion on "Dining in Kansas City: From the Depression to the Recession." His talk covers the development of Kansas City's restaurant scene during the Great Depression in the 193

  July 17, 2009

• No soup for you recession

   The conventional wisdom is that when times are tough, people turn to canned goods and generic brands in an effort to save money. But our recession diets appear to be changing according to Time magazine's "10 Big Recession Surprises." Soup feels like an indicator of hard times -- whether that's a brain ripple from classic photographs of Depression soup lines or the fact that the offerings never seem to change. And yet Campbell's Soup isn't experiencing the normal uptick in sales in connecti

  July 24, 2009

• TOME Talk

  August 13, 2009

• City Come a-Walkin'

  August 27, 2009

• The Beatbox: Moby

  October 1, 2009

• Capitalism: A Love Story

  October 1, 2009

• KC Star losing another good reporter

  Dan Margolies​The bad news at The Kansas City Star keeps coming. Business reporter Dan Margolies is leaving the Star to join Reuters' Washington bureau. Margolies' new title with Reuters: senior correspondent, financial crimes. Margolies tells us that he'll be covering the fallout of the recession and the bailouts as well as civil and criminal prosecutions and investor lawsuits.If that wasn't enough, Margolies writes in an e-mail: "I'll also be helping to lead a team of financial crime corresp

  October 8, 2009

• KC Star lays off 'about a dozen employees'

  ​Tuesday saw yet another round of layoffs at The Kansas City Star. Former business reporter Dan Margolies wasn't around to write the story (he'd left the paper in October to join Reuters' Washington bureau), an unfortunate part of his former job. The unbylined story announced that the daily had laid off "about a dozen employees" and "eliminated a similar number of unfilled positions." The names are out there, but they weren't the "big names" some were ghoulishly anticipating. The story also qu

  January 20, 2010

• Go see this: Slammed! at UMKC

  Zachary Andrews, Amy Urbina and James Taylor play real life Kansas Citians in Slammed!​Since I've learned to expect excellence from the theater department at UMKC, I felt little surprise that last night's performance of Slammed!: KC Speaks Out on the Recession was lively, engaging theater acted, designed and directed by some of this town's finest. What did surprise, however, was the depth of its reporting. Boiling over with local voices, stories and concerns, with tales of layo

  February 19, 2010

• With Slammed!, the UMKC Theatre Department hits back at the recession

  February 25, 2010