Cordish pulled the cats tail. Looks like it might require stitches.

Remember when you were little and you would do stupid shit just to tempt fate? You would do something on a dare, or if you were particularly dull witted you might stick something in an electrical outlet, maybe pull the tail of the crazy neighbor lady's cat. You did it anyway, even though you knew that mean one eyed son of a bitch would retaliate by scratching you every where except the bottom of your feet. You kind of new better, but did it anyway, only to act all shocked and shit when it blew up in your face. Well that's what happened to the corporate wobble heads who booked D.J. Jazzy Jeff to perform at the Power and Light district. The difference is that these morons should have known better, they aren't 12 year old boys.

*** I'd like to assure my readers that after this post I will never utter the words Jazzy Jeff again, I honestly feel silly just writing it.****


A little P&L District primer for those not from these parts. The P&L district is a string of over priced eateries and bars, crowned by a big turd of an arena that looks like a disco ball. If anyone was out to kill me I would hide in the P&L district as it is the last place on earth anyone would look for me. Anyway, the P&L district has been shrouded in controversy over a dress code aimed at young black guys, or more accurately , young guys who wear size triple X T shirts, baggy pants, and well, um, okay, it's aimed at young black guys. The idea being , if you keep out all of the people who look and dress a certain way, then you wont have problems from the bad element that also dress that way. Is it racist? Yea,, it probably is. At the very least it's discriminatory, but I could really not care less, as it doesn't effect me directly. In other words, it isn't my battle to fight, Gandhi I ain't. My biggest beef with the P&L district is well documented. I think it's an eyesore, a drain on the city, and they raised a section of downtown that I grew up seeing. So any problems or bad publicity that comes their way is fine by me.


So here is the rundown on the huge race fed debacle that occurred Saturday night. Depending on whose version you buy in to, and they are legion, DJ Jazzy Jeff was about to blow up the half million dollar sound system, or the Cordish dummies got their J Crews in a cashmere wad because one of the guys on stage was grabbing his junk, or because they wanted DJ JJ to play something less black, or because the Cordish guys are all racist sheet wearing hillbillies, or....... the list goes on, and the truth is probably a little of each version all rolled in to one big shit sandwich. What you can bet your FUBU or J Crew on is there will be some fallout, there will be cries of racism. There will be a whole lot of accusations and threats, and then..........nada, nothin, zilch, zero. There will be writers who try to sound all street, Holla Jenee, and compare a trivial incident to some kind of major civil rights violation. There will be writers who will take the side of the P&L district, because lets face it, ad revenue is too vital to the sustainability of our news outlets. In the end nothing will change. Racism and discrimination is in the eye of the beholder. If one beholder is sporting a gold log chain around his neck, and the other beholder is holding a big fat wad of ad dollars in his manicured mitt, guess which eye will win.


The real question to this molehill that wants to be a mountain; Why would Cordish book a Hip Hop act in the first place? That's the Fiddy thousand Cent question. Anybody? No? Well, allow me to break it down for you. Some douche bag in a power suit came up with the bright idea to book a safe Hip Hop act. I imagine the conversation going something like this.

Biff : We really need to do something to squash all the allegations that we are trying to keep black folks out of here.

Skip: Any ideas? Other than actually welcoming the coloreds?

Biff: Lets book DJ Jazzy Jeff !

Skip: Did he play with Mel Torme?

Biff: He was Will Smiths partner.

Skip: Will Smith is gay?

Biff: No, his musical partner. Fresh Prince. Everybody loves the Fresh Prince. Will Smith never curses, his clothes fit, and I don't think he has ever been pinched by the five O for splittin the wig on his ho for comin up short on his scrilla.

Skip: Huh?

Biff: Trust me, this idea is golden. Me and my frat bros loved Will and Jazzy. They are black guys, but they are like PG rated black guys. Besides most of our patrons under the age of 30 are pissed off at their parents, and go out of their way to embrace the coloreds hip hop lifestyle. They will flock like flies to honey. We cant lose.

Skip: I don't think they go by coloreds anymore. What the hell, book em.

My guess is Biff won't be booking anymore acts, at least not for the P&L district. It boggles the mind, why anyone who has gone out of their way to deny entry to a certain section of society, would turn around and invite the very people they banned, only to find themselves caught up in more racial controversy. I don't buy in to the "it's because we are black" theory, at least not in this case. Whoever booked Jazzy Jeff certainly knew he was black, a hip hop artist, and self proclaimed 25 year legend. I'm betting it was a combination of fear that they were going to screw up the sound system, and when told to turn it down, egos and posturing got in the mix, Jazzy stormed off, and created a shit storm on twitter. The problem is that even the utterance of a hint of racial discrimination is enough to create an issue.

Go look at Justin Kendalls piece , then go look at Jenee Osterheldts over wrought, melodramatic missive. Check the comments, the racial divide is as wide as Mick Jaggers mouth. That shit sells. But here's the rub, between those two articles, there are at least a couple hundred comments expressing outrage at this grave racial injustice. Now go look at any of the countless articles about some innocent bystander being killed, or any of the countless stories about some real injustice, I promise you these commentors will be nowhere to be seen. My point, people are ready to bum rush the P&L district over the accusations of some D list has been, while they remain mute over the real issues that effect their neighbors on a daily basis. A molehill that is becoming a small mountain. Somebody should have warned Biff not to pull that cats tail.

From the West Bottoms to the Power and Blight District, you can smell the smoke. pt 2

Progress and Decline, you can't have one without the other, at least not these days. While the areas around Downtown , except the City Market area, are in various stages of decline, decay, and stagnation, Downtown is a work in the name of progress. I'm just going to come out and own up to the strong bias I have against the current transformation, I don't like it, and I never will. Now in my own long winded and convoluted way here is why.

The "brains" behind this supposed revitalization have a targeted demographic. Twenty to Thirty somethings and out of towners, period, that is it. I understand the desire to attract tourists, but the other group, well that's where my preconceived notions and bias come in. This is where I get to play the curmudgeon, the out of touch middle aged prick in the mud. If the Power and Light district were a Tenderloin District strip joint, then the barker at the door, luring in the unsuspecting hayseeds, would be KC Ink. This insipid waste of ink and trees is everything that is a wrong with Urban revitalization and the hoards of Sex in the City / Abercrombie posers that they target. The Star canned a bunch of real writers and kept Muffy and company. And it is within that douche-a-graphic that the brains behind the P&l district have doubled down on. The problem with resting all of your hopes in one group is that it won't work in the long run. Half of them will move on to greener pastures, the other half will go broke buying 300 dollar shoes and 100 dollar facials, and that's just the guys. Now maybe that's an unfair stereotype, maybe I'm shooting all the pups because one has fleas. I base my judgement on the Power and Light media pimp, KC Ink. If you want to change the message, better get a different, less nauseating messenger.

Now before anyone gets their Jimmy Choos all scuffed up, let me just say that not everyone who sets foot in the P&L district is an Uber Douche. I will even concede that as a 49 year old dinosaur I may be completely out of touch. Maybe the future is 8 dollar beer, Red Bull, 16 dollar hamburgers, and tight fitting jackets with too short sleeves. Let's hope that's the case, otherwise the P&L district will turn out to be nothing more than a parasite, sucking the livelihood out of long established businesses, before it fails. I don't hope it fails, but I believe it will.

Progress isn't measured by how many overpriced venues we can cram in to a few square blocks. Progress is measured by productivity and longevity. The West Bottoms was productive for a long time. Cash flowed out of the West Bottoms. Eventually as with all things, the Bottoms finally outlived it's usefulness. Sad but it happens. Now it's the P&L district and the Downtown renaissance, that the city has put all it's hopes in. I could be wrong (not really), but I don't think this city will be better off because of the P&L district. Long established businesses are failing because of it, and that ain't exactly progress. Put simply, there aren't enough consumers to support the old and the new. Eventually, in the economy we face, the P&L district will flounder and fail to live up to the Great Expectations and hype. At least that's what I Frink.

From the West Bottoms to the Power and Blight district, you can smell the smoke.

" We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered" Tom Stoppard said that, not me, but I couldn't have said it better. Kansas City's West Bottoms is that "memory of smoke". When you drive over the 12th street viaduct, with downtown in your rear view mirror, the West Bottoms spreads out to either side of you. It's a grimy, decaying, redheaded stepchild left behind when it had outlived it's usefulness. If you just give the area a quick glance, and were asked to describe it in one word, the word would most likely be, Ugly. Kemper Arena sits mostly idle, nothing more than a once a year barn for FFA kids from Wichita or Tulsa, and a sometime giant parking lot so people can shuttle to events at the new Sprint Arena, the usurper and centerpiece of what passes for progress in this city.
(click pics to enlarge)
Kemper Arena could implode tomorrow for all I care, it never had any character or real history. The countless other buildings are a different matter. Mostly brick, some with elaborate entrances, every one with character and history, even the ones that are falling in on themselves.
The signs painted long ago, fading in the brick, are the DNA markers of this city. We helped feed the nation out of the West Bottoms, from the stockyards to the dozens of farm machinery and implement distributors. The city up the hill reaped the rewards and spent the proceeds in the name of progress. Nothing wrong with that, this city thrived, but somewhere along the line someone lost the true definition of progress. They gutted 6 or 8 blocks of history Downtown and replaced it with chain bars and restaurants that sat all but empty on the long holiday Saturday afternoon when I passed through. If you want to eat an elk steak, or ride a mechanical bull then this is nirvana, you have found your home. If it sounds like I'm saying I preferred looking at run down buildings rather than overpriced fad bars, you would be correct. But the P&L district didn't cause the deterioration of the West Bottoms, it just helped nail down the last few nails.

A commenter suggested I take my camera to the west bottoms while it was still there. He also called me a dirt bag, he arguably made a good point on both counts. He also wished me luck, so I'm taking the dirt bag reference as a term of endearment, and will fore go offering up the obligatory "Blow Me" response. But he is right, it wont be long before the majority of the old buildings are torn down, or fall down, another bit of evidence of what this city once was, erased.

There are still some businesses in the bottoms. The haunted houses that operate for a couple of months a year, a couple of Lumber Wholesale yards, and others. Ill conceived night clubs come and go, a few buildings converted to artists loft space. A Cricket cellular store, a couple of restaurants and gas stations. By and large the area doesn't produce enough revenue for the city to bother with, so it crumbles, while the wheels of progress churn up the hill. I know as sure as I write this, someone is going to tell me the West Bottoms are thriving, going through a renaissance. That's got a nice ring to it, but it ain't true. It's just a matter of time, progress.

As I was leaving after taking these shots I noticed two steel plates halfway up the 12th street bridge were sitting crooked, out of position in the middle of the bridge. I stopped rather than drive over it. There was a foot wide gap spanning the width of the bridge, you could see to the road below. Further evidence of the lack of concern from city hall. So from the Ghost of progress past, we travel to the facade of progress present...................................... to be continued