KCRag Forum

Eater mag runs through KC and discovers chicken and bbq:

http://www.eater.com/2015/5/12/8574469/ ... ed-chicken

thanks for that! my girlfriend grew up in kentucky and loves "new southern" type restaurants. awesome.

make that rain go out of the forecast now!

aside from the weird weather, i had a nice weekend in kc! the local kc pride has definitely been elevated in recent years, too! i spent a lot of time walking around the plaza and westport, and south plaza. i sort of "enjoyed" the south plaza the most - namely because it had what i wanted on demand - walkable from the hotel. cvs, restaurants, dive bar, loose park, chill. i'm sort of a champion and aficionado of secondary/tertiary urban nodes, anyway, that cater more to the neighborhoods they are in. if i had an extra day i would have biked to waldo for beers and food along the trolley trail, for sure.

definitely noticed more of a classic hippy-ish presence in kc than i remember, in addition to the formidible hipster ambiance. westport provided for interesting people watching as different kinds of folks sort of collided and crashed together. it definitely still has that party vibe - which is more annoying to me than it used to be. st. louis chads and trixies were almost everywhere i went so it sort of confused the vibes and made it hard to read some areas, and i got to play sherpa for them a few times. it just seemed like there were more suburban type folks in the city - e.g. those frat guys in the corner of daves stagecoach day drinking or an SUV trying in vain to parallel park with KS plates. all of this is good, really. it also felt like busloads of people from west county were set loose upon the city...so you know, apologies.

my girlfriend - who had never been to kc but is very familar with the sort of cincy/nashville/louisville/atlanta corridor (if there is such a thing) - was completely confused/taken by surprise by the vibe of the city and it's geography. she said that it felt like cincinnati and atlanta had a love child, instead of a more "western" vibe. we took a taxi and uber back and forth across the east side from the plaza to the K, off the highway and it does actually have an atl vibe a bit - lots of "peachtree" references. similar architecture, leafy, a bit hilly, peppered with newer suburban type development. some of the development around the plaza sort of feels like atlanta.

the game took a lot of time of course, so i didn't get to do much downtown or brookside/waldo other than hit the west bottoms for brunch and penn valley park (it's MUCH better but would be a gem if completely rehabbed and retrofitted with more pedestrian infrastructure). the city felt pretty great though, aside from the moody weather. i hope to return soonish for a part II. i tend to prefer to walk right out of the hotel and do things in the immediate area on foot - obviously next time i'll get a downtown hotel. i did check out 39th street - loved the energy over there (always did).

warwickland wrote: she said that it felt like cincinnati and atlanta had a love child, instead of a more "western" vibe. we took a taxi and uber back and forth across the east side from the plaza to the K, off the highway and it does actually have an atl vibe a bit - lots of "peachtree" references. similar architecture, leafy, a bit hilly, peppered with newer suburban type development. some of the development around the plaza sort of feels like atlanta.

Hmmm? Fascinating. Atlanta is probably the US big city I have been to/experienced the least, Cincy probably the second most after StL. I always thought KC and Cininnati had a lot in common (though most of the Cincy internet seems to vehemently disagree), but I did always notice ghetto built environment strain in Kc that I thought was very southern, like Memphis/Houston southern (though that same ghetto style exists in Indianapolis, Detroit and Cleveland too in my experience, and I guess North County as well, though I have really never been there to know). Maybe that's the ATL-ish part, maybe not (you mentioned the Plaza environs). I'm curious to know, now, having never been curious at all about Atlanta before...

the atl/cincy comparison was of course a first impression reaction, which is always interesting. sometimes they are corroborated on future visits, and sometimes they arent. but the eastside does sort of feel metro-southeast-ish, instead of more northern like the northside of st. louis or southside of chicago. it's a more relaxed feel in a good way. interestingly, residential east st. louis actually has more of this laid-back southern vibe than the missouri side over here. i've spent lots of time for work on the eastside of kc, northside of st. louis, and east st. louis and i'll take the more southern vibes of the eastside of kc and east st. louis (unless we are talking about the near northside of st. louis).

I've always thought that Parts of KC like mainly in the midtown to brookside area reminded me a lot like Minneapolis, this could pass for somewhere on 38th and Bell - http://tinyurl.com/qxw5zqj

brewcrew1000 wrote:I've always thought that Parts of KC like mainly in the midtown to brookside area reminded me a lot like Minneapolis, this could pass for somewhere on 38th and Bell - http://tinyurl.com/qxw5zqj

yes, definitely.

What does "ghetto built environment " mean?
I'm not making a valuejudgement, just wondering how you would define it?
Lowest common denominator stuff, or something different?

bbqboy wrote:What does "ghetto built environment " mean?
I'm not making a valuejudgement, just wondering how you would define it?
Lowest common denominator stuff, or something different?

The type of housing, especially - and to a lesser extent the retail buildings - in our ghettos is what I meant.

Cool