Urban Blight Tour.........The land of Cake and Steak.

Blight is all in the eye of the beholder. One mans blight is another's flight. Today's Urban Blight Tour takes us not in to the heart of darkness, but the land of blandness. There are no meth addled trailer park creatures, or thugged up gangstas to worry about where we are going. The biggest threat isn't a car jacking or stray bullet, the enemy here is a same sameness that is more frightening than anything I encounter in Midtown. Today my intrepid reader, we explore the Johnson County Subdivision, and all that comes with it. Now before some of my more thin skinned readers , who hail from JoCo, get their Tommy Hilfiger's in a bunch, let me say this. If you chuckled at the posts I have done on any number of my urban brethren, then turn about is fair play, it's your turn now.

Much of JoCo I actually like. The old sections of Prairie Village, Fairway, etc., are nice, however, 99 percent of the subdivisions developed in the last 10 or 15 years in JoCo make me want to dig my eyes out with a spoon. Listen, I have to drive around in these neighborhoods all day, 6 or 7 hours of tan, gray, and olive houses, all looking exactly like the one before it. I get Khaki Blind. By the way I just invented that term, I think. Khaki Blind is much the same as Snow Blind, but instead of being blinded by the whiteness of nothing but snow, I am blinded by the nothingness of subdued earth tones and mini vans.

People who live in these subdivisions fancy themselves different from the Boyz in da Hood, but they have more in common than they think. Lets take a look at the striking similarities. Inner city gangs mark their turf with graffiti. JoCo subdivision dwellers mark theirs with signs like , Deer run, or Cedar Ridge. While Gang Bangers wear colors to signify their set, JoCo subdivision dwellers put those little oval shaped white stickers in the rear window of the SUV, the initials of their subdivision in black. Outsiders are given the stink eye when rollin through the hood, outsiders are given the stink eye when driving through a JoCo subdivision. In the hood, gang sets are divided by streets, in JoCo subdivisions, streets don't go through from one to the other, again division by street. Gangstas favor SUV,s , BMW's, Lexus, and Mercedes, so do JoCo subdivision dwellers . The list goes on, but I wont. While the chance of getting shot, robbed, jacked , or cut down in a drive by are slim in JoCo, there are other perils one must avoid and be on the look out for at all times. There is the self important douche bag , sipping a latte, talking in to his blue tooth and looking in the mirror at his new caps, while driving 50 in a 35 down Shawnee mission parkway. There is a danger of becoming hopelessly lost if you aren't familiar with the area you are in. You cant use landmarks in JoCo. You cant tell someone to turn right at the Bed Bath and Beyond, there's one every 6 blocks. How many sheets and towels do you people need?

We all like to think we are different from one group of people or another, in the end we all share more in common than we like to let on. Since I cant bare the thought of another day of snapping pictures of tan McMansions, my next urban blight post will be focused on my beloved Midtown. After that I am going to take you to an area to see some rural blight, the likes of which, you have never witnessed. Now I'm out of here, spending a Sunday in JoCo has left me hankering for a few therapeutic bong hits and a quick game of walk the dogs while avoiding the wino's, bums, and hookers. Man it's good to be home!

MM's note**** I got some pictures mixed up from another post I'm working on and inadvertently posted it here. A reader on crime scene Kansas City caught it. So thanks to Tim for pointing it out, and the error has been corrected****

Urban Blight Tour 08..............Marlboro Blight

The Marlboro area has gone through several transformations over the past 25 or 30 years, none of them good. Inhabited in large part, by lower middle income, blue collar whites, and low to mid level blue collar type criminals during the 70's and 80's, that followed by a slow but steady integration of African American blue collar types , along with street level young black dope slingers. Don't let anyone ever tell you that the proliferation of black criminals has caused Marlboro's decline, it was in the basement before the first thug ever rolled through on his dubs. Long before the first Fiddy wanna be cooked up a piece of crack, there was a long line of whiskey tango petty thieves and stringy haired dope dealers. While I'm at it, please if you are from Marlboro, please refrain from telling me how great the street you live on is. One or two blocks of yards that get mowed twice a month, doesn't make you Mission Hills. Your neighborhood as a whole, is a shit hole, but you knew that already.

Two of the city's most notorious Motels call Marlboro home. There has been more coke rocked up, and more clandestine meth labs in the 4 Acres Motel, than an Independence trailer park. The only reason the city hasn't condemned the joint is containment, keeps the riff raff from fanning out through the city.

So Marlboro, we have a history, I lived there for a couple of years, grew up west of there by a mile or two, knew a large number of nefarious characters from Marlboro. There really isn't anything special about the area. It's just another section of the city, that is largely ignored, save the occasional drug bust, lab fire or random murder. I think that is the most troublesome thing about Marlboro, and all of the other rundown areas in the city, there's nothing special about them.

I'll let you in on a little secret, this whole Urban Blight series has been the easiest thing I've ever done. I never had to drive far or look hard to find run down, ragged neighborhoods. I never really gave it much thought, but this city really is on the skids. Sure there are still nice areas in Kansas City proper, but for every good one, I can show you an equally piss poor one. And not for nothin, but the whole thing has been a little depressing. Driving around as much as I do, looking at all of this decay eating away at the city, all bullshit aside, it saddens me. I've said it before, I really love this city, my city, even though she ain't nearly as pretty as she once was.

This is my last Urban Blight post, at least for now. I have only skimmed the surface, and in the not too distant future, I'll be back with more. The thing is, I feel like I might be typecasting myself. Writing about prison, ragged neighborhoods, crime, all negative shit. So I'm going to brighten things up around here. I'm working on a series about garden gnomes , it should be a hoot.

Just kidding about the garden gnomes, I hate those fuckin things.

One bad tooth ignored, that's how it starts. Urban Blight and Decay.

For those of you who have followed my previous Urban Blight series some of these buildings may look familiar. Every photo was taken yesterday. I revisited a couple of places just to see how much further they had deteriorated. Aside from one or two spots, the rest of the photos are new to this blog. I spent maybe an hour   yesterday searching these places out. In the span of an hour I took about 30 pics, wandered on to a police raid, and found that one of the city's most notorious apartment buildings had been boarded up again for at least the third time in the last 4 years. Unlike my last series on blight I wanted to show the progression of blight and urban decay rather than just a series of random shots taken in different neighborhoods. This series begins where I believe the decay and death of the inner city began.  As the series  progresses I'll try to follow the trail of decay as best I can in the order it's taken place.........Click the photos to enlarge them.

                      One Tooth At A Time.

That's how it starts. You neglect your teeth, ignore that occasional toothache. The decay begins. You lose one tooth. Then another. The neglected rotting tooth infects those on either side of it. The decay spreads. Soon there is nothing left. The first neighborhoods to go are the poorest. Low income, working class, plagued by poverty, gangs, and all that comes with it. Life still goes on here as does the spread of decay.  People are stuck. They can't move away. Who is going to buy a home no matter how well cared for when it sits beside one that is either falling down on itself, or being used as a dope house?  Many of these places have been handed down to sons or daughters. It's all the have. Walking away isn't an option. So they ride it out, stay put, and hope for a promised change that won't ever come.

Most of you won't wake up some lazy Sunday morning and decide " Hey let's take a drive down 31's and Jackson !"  Sure you might catch a glimpse as you drive by the outer fringes of a particular part of the city.  Give a passing glance at a few rundown store fronts, maybe see the tops of a few roofs in the process of falling in on themselves. But you can't really get a feel for the enormity of the problem until you drive up and down the streets. The decay seems to  start in the center and work it's way outward, just like that bad tooth.

Entire blocks are absent of homes, turned into dump sites. The trees and weeds taking back what was once theirs. The only signs of humans, old tires, trash, and utility poles turning gray and slowly being pulled sideways to the ground. No children play in these streets, neighbors don't stand on the sidewalks and share a minute or two of random talk.  Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and found that half the houses on your street were empty, boarded up, falling down. Imagine looking at it day after day.

You don't have to travel to New Orleans. No need to go visit Detroit. This is our Lower Ninth Ward. It didn't take a hurricane or the death of a particular industry. Just the slow erosion brought on by time, a disconnect from one another, a fucked up set of priorities. We, and by we I mean middle class folks, white, black, and any other shade you want to toss in, we moved away to safer, cleaner, newer areas. Now you don't move from one of these neighborhoods, you flee, you run for your life. Or you stay put because you have no other choice. As people leave, the storefronts go empty.

The schools shut down. Playgrounds go silent.

Theater marquees are replaced by gang tags.

The remaining people reside in a deteriorating war zone.

Meanwhile we become enraged and join together over a single building in a cleaner, sexier part of town.  The

Mayor walked the streets of the Plaza yesterday.

When was the last time he walked down Forest in the Urban core?

More to come...........................

The dog ate my homework......sort of

Yeah yeah, I know, there was supposed to be a new urban blight post today. I have a long convoluted explanation why there isn't, so you will just have to make do with that, until tomorrow.

For starters I have a new roommate. Lets call her Nurse Goodbody, since she reads this blog, my first pick, nurse Ratched probably wont win me any points. Anyway, we have known each other a long time, we were both having slightly rocky financial times, we get along, blah blah, so she moved in, and we are regrouping and stacking up some cheddar in case we reach a point where she realizes I'm much more fun in 3 hour increments than on a full time basis. Sorry if you were expecting a long love sonnet or syrupy, starry eyed, love struck, proclamation chock full of happy ever afters and the like. Nice idea, wrong blog.

So NGB and I go to the store about 6 last night. When we return, I open the door and there are three tiny dogs standing in my living room. she has two, and I have two, Max, my fearless Yorkie is not among them. I call him, nothing, I walk in to the bedroom, call again, nothing, no Max. panic begins to set in. I tell NGB to look through the apartment, I go outside and call him, still no Max. I walk/jog the 4 block path we always take on our walks, all the while calling for Max. People are just getting home from work, and I stop them asking if they have seen a small Yorkie, in a voice that is increasingly becoming more panicked and desperate. They have not. An older guy on a bicycle, a dumpster diver/can collector is pedaling by. This same guy bummed 5 bucks off of me about 6 months ago. I am about to ask him to keep an eye out for my dog, before I can get more than a couple of words out, he cuts me off, with a snippy "I ain't seen him", never slowing his shitty can laden 20 year old Schwinn. **note to self, I'm slamming the dumpster lid on that fucker next time I catch him waist deep head first in my buildings dumpster***

I get back to my place, still no sign of Max. I send NGB back inside to search the apartment again. I jog up to Broadway, all the while yelling for Max. I disturb the sidewalk diners at Cafe Trio, who are enjoying their 35 dollar Mac N Cheese. I get curious looks from the group of gay smokers standing outside of what I am fairly certain is a gay guy sports bar, not that there is anything wrong with that. I am searching through a long row of evergreen type hedges, head first, hoping one of the 3 or 4 wild cats I've seen frequenting that area, don't peel my face off and eat it. I've got these Disney movie, lost dog adventure visions rolling around in my head. I imagine Max, kidnapped by some Cruella Deville type who will chain him to a tree and put bows in his hair, or I see him trembling in the dark, far from home and alone, wondering where I am and why I have abondand him. At this point I'm seriously distraught, and it's getting darker by the minute.

Let me just say that I am not an overly sensitive type, I have had guns pointed at me, I have been beaten, stabbed, shot in the shin, indicted by a federal grand jury, thrown in jails, prisons and a litany of other unpleasant shit. and through it all, I never rattled, at least not much. So the potential loss of a 4 pound dog ,a breed favored by women and geriatrics , shouldn't really bother me much. But it did, it bothered me a whole bunch. Here is the thing about Max, and dogs in general. They don't expect much from you, they are always tickled shitless to see you, and regardless of how bad your day has been, it's hard to stay pissed off when you walk through the door to find your dog so thrilled to see you that he/she can't contain his or her self. I genuinely love both of my dogs. Call me crazy, accuse me of holding an animal up to human like status, but I would spend any amount of money or go to extreme lengths in the intrest of their welfare.

So, I'm digging through these bushes, did I mention evergreen bushes make me break out ? I hear someone calling for me, I walk through the empty lot that backs up to my building. At the top of the driveway, I see NGB and an old lady who lives across the street. Then I see Max, NGB has him but he is trying to wriggle free when he sees me. It really was a Disney moment, I got all fucking misty eyed, he licked my face, and I hardly noticed his rancid doggie breath. I ask where he was, thinking the old lady must have found him. NGB tells me,"he was in the closet". Before we left, she got something out of the closet, he went in unseen by her, she shut the door, and Max took a nap. So, that is why there is no Urban Blight post today, I burned up too much energy and daylight to get pictures taken.

The upside to all of this, is that tomorrow you will be reading a special Urban Blight edition on rural blight. I'm going to have pictures and a post that will take you to a place you may have heard of but never visited. In the meantime, I'm spending an inordinate amount of time checking to see where Max is at in the apartment.

Where's MM?

So, my plans for a scathing and sarcastic Urban Blight post on the Independence avenue/ North East area have hit a snag. To be honest, Independence Avenue has never looked so good, which is not to say it isn't a cesspool, it is, however they have come a long way baby. So I'm giving them a pass, at least temporarily. If you need to blame someone for the lack of material to poke fun at, then blame the Mexicans. The shifty bastards had the gall to clean the area up, open businesses, paint and repair the houses, and generally make the place less of an eyesore. The exception being the overabundance of bright orange and day glo lime green painted buildings.Take heart, all is not lost. Since I've got nothing ready for an Urban blight post, you all get your favorite play along game, Where's MM?. There are two pictures, same place. I tossed the dogs in as a bonus. The giant magic brown sphere that looks as if it is about to flatten Max, actually spins in place, seemingly floating atop water, like Jesus bowling ball. Play fair, and look for my next Urban Blight installment Tuesday.

Urban Blight Tour 08...........East Side

There is no way I could cover every corner of what most of us call, Kansas City's East side. East of Paseo, or Troost, or even as far as Prospect, pick your jump off point. The most bleak area in the city, is centered by Prospect Ave, and runs from 39th north to the 20's. If you live in a better area than this, and you most likely do, then spending twenty or thirty minutes driving around here will depress you, and make you feel like the love child of Donald Trump and Oprah. After spending some time driving through this war zone, I feel rich beyond measure, and trust me, if it cost a quarter to shit, I'd have to throw up.

The first thing you notice when you drive through these neighborhoods, every single person you pass, they look at you and the look says you don't belong here. Like the black guy said to Edward Norton in American History X, "Just remember, in here, you the nigga. Not me." That is true in practically every prison in the Nation, and equally true east of Troost. If you are white and prowling these streets you are either a cop, a victim, an addict, a trick, or a mildly retarded blogger. I don't mean to sound crass or insensitive, but the unicorns of Brookside, don't venture east of Holmes road. So I cant write about the East side in a sensitive and politically correct tone. It wouldnt ring true. It's a hard place, and it begs for the hard truth. Not every single home is run down, there are people who take pride , who bust their humps every day, and who live there by choice, or circumstance, doing the best they can. That said, you don't have to look far to find blight, poverty and whole lot of shit you are better off not finding. In fact you would be hard pressed to drive down any side street and not find at least a couple of boarded houses every block or two.
If you pay much attention to the News, you know that the majority of killings happen to the east, you also might see some local Politician on the news, selling the latest war on crime, or guns, or weeds, or the latest revitalization effort. Judging from these pictures, I'd say the weeds and blight are winning the battle. With a murder rate that is on target to be one of the highest in the city's history, and a city hall mired in a quagmire of bullshit and incompetence, things are going to get worse in the city's poorest area.
I stepped outside about halfway through writing this post. There was a police helicopter circling around outside, I can never resist going outside when I hear one. Around here I hear a lot of them. They fly low, all you can see is the lights, hear the trees whipping up. It's not particularly smart to stand outside in the dark when a police helicopter is searching for suspects. You could get shot by the cops, or who ever they are looking for. So when I'm standing out in my darkened driveway, watching it all unfold, I'm never totally relaxed, my eyes are always scanning my surroundings. Driving around the east side of Kansas City today, in broad daylight, is a lot like that feeling, multiplied by 50. In most every single post on urban blight I have cracked several jokes at the expense of what ever area I was writing about. But I've got to tell you, I got nothin. This shit just isn't funny, not on this level.

Everyone has their own personal opinion about why the east side of Kansas city is in the shape it's in. I think there are plenty of guilty parties, but that's not what this post is about. This just gives you a quick glance of a place. the east side is like Humpty Dumpty; And all the kings horses, and all the kings men...........well , you know the rest.

NAQ, or Never Asked Questions.

About a month or so back, Justin Kendall, a writer with The Pitch, a local Alternative rag, approached me wanting to do a story on me and this blog. Here it is. One could argue that this is either the dumbest move I've ever made or the smartest. You be the judge, either way, it's a done deal. I've listed some Never Asked Questions that might give you some insight as to why I did it. I'll be posting a link to the story when it comes out on Wednesday, and I'll be autographing copies, on Monkey Island in Westport at 3:30 A M Christmas morning, (not really). For those of you who are afraid that this little bit of attention will turn me in to a sanctimonious, self indulgent prick, you are correct, it won't change me a bit. I would be remiss if I didn't lay a good share of the blame for all of this on The JOCO SOB, who originally inspired the Urban Blight Tour, but decided to bail out on me because he didn't want to cross the state line unarmed. If my landlord throws me out over this story, you can find me living in the JOCO SOB's lawnmower shed, I hear they have electricity and cable in their utility shed's in JOCO.

Why is your eff'd up mug on the cover of The Pitch?

Well actually, it isn't, but it will be on Christmas Eve.

Why would anyone run a story on you?

Beats the shit outta me, must be my chipper personality, or maybe it's because I'm the dancing bear/ circus act/ elephant man, of the local blogging scene.

Why would you drop your anonymity?

Frankly, it's a feeble last ditch effort to turn this blogging thing in to something more, hopefully that will pay. It's no big secret I love to write, what you don't know is that in a few weeks my income is going to fizzle out. In one of the toughest job markets in recent memory, a middle aged, former career criminal, ex con, with few marketable legit skills, is not exactly a hot property. Look at it this way; you have 70 qualified applicants for one job. 69 of them have clean records, one of them has a record as long as Shaq's inseam. Who are you going to hire? Exactly, and who can blame you. So I'm putting myself out there to see if something develops. Yeah, I know it's a long shot, but whadda ya gonna do?

I thought you did all your time in a federal joint, and other shit ain't adding up to what you wrote on this shitty blog.

Early on, I made a disclaimer that I had changed names, places, etc., in order to preserve my anonymity and to keep from getting stabbed in my face. Those things aside, I have laid it out there from day one as far as that goes. In order for the story to have some legitimacy, I had to drop the anonymity. So while I did time in federal custody, the bulk of my time was spent in Missouri and Kansas prisons with brief forays in federal custody, ending in a 6 month stay in a federal halfway house. If that answer doesn't suffice, feel free to use the Liar Liar pants on Fire counter attack.

How do you justify this obvious ploy for attention, when you so often berate others for seeking the spotlight?

Here's the skinny on how this all came to be. Justin Kendall a writer for The Pitch and reader of this blog, sent me an email wanting to talk to me about my Urban Blight Tour and some of the other stuff I've posted. We got together and he asked if I'd be open to them doing a piece on me. I went back and forth with myself and finally decided to do it for the reasons listed above. I didn't seek them out they came to me, so blow me.

Don't you think the cover shot is a little demeaning, makes you look like a clown?

First of all, I'd ease up on the clown shit if I were you. More importantly, I did it because a large part of my writing consists of pointing out and poking fun of others, if I'm going to dish it out, I should be ready to take it. I was supposed to get a dwarf dressed as an elf, or at least a couple of strippers. I didn't get either.

So now what?

Beats the shit outta me.

Did you have any preconceived notions or demands?

I told him not to make me look like a douche bag. I do a good enough job on my own.

Let me get this straight, you think some roving editor or publisher is going to discover you and give you a job or a book deal, because of an article in a local Alt rag?

Listen up chuckle head, I already said it's a long shot, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Stranger shit happens on a daily basis.

Any closing remarks?

Yeah, thanks for asking. As strange as this may sound to you L7's who are kind enough, or bored enough to read me, this blog is one of the few positive things in my life that has ever really inspired me. My writing, technically, is as fucked up as the proverbial soup sandwich. I throw commas around like bullets in an east side drive by. I use words like Superfluous and Ain't in the same sentence, in short, I'm a bit of a hack. The thing that really does it for me, is when I nail one down. When readers say things like "you made my throat close up", or, "you are a fuckin idiot", then I know I wrote something that actually meant something to someone other than me. I don't care if you are a local hack blogger or a big time writer, acknowledgement, appreciation, or passion, ignited in another person, by the writers words, is what it's all about. It's the crack in my broken car antenna, the rum in my punch, I think it's what I was born to do. Now if someone else will figure that out and put me to work doing it, all will be good. If all else fails, I'll just keep doing what I've been doing, until I can't do it anymore. Thanks for putting up with me. Keep coming back. There's no telling what dumb stunt I'll pull next.

G.L.O.R.I.A. A response to Kansas City's own Godzilla

I made a vow a few months back, I swore to never write another word about our Mayor. There are several bloggers, more versed on the ins and outs of City hall than I. About a third of my readers, dont call KC home, or the Midwest for that matter, so the whole local politics thing was lost on them anyway. However after Tonys Kansas City linked this Newsletter from the real Mayor, Gloria Squittro, how could I not respond? So call me a vow breaker, or wishy washy, or attack me with the Liar Liar pants on fire defense, but I cant let this pass. So without further adieu, my response to the Earth Mutha of city hall.

Dear Co Mayor Gloria,
I read your latest missive from Funks Front Porch, and I felt compelled to point out a few inaccuracies, misleading statements, and general run of the mill bullshit. My first point of contention is over this statement in your letter.
" the Mayor was disappointed when some of his fellow council members did not come to his defense after a former mayoral staffer filed an unfounded lawsuit against him."
I feel ya Glo, loyalty is hard to come by. First sign of trouble and they scatter like roaches. Then again, calling an African American woman Mammy, regardless of how you spell it is probably not the type of thing to rally the troops around you. You go on to say ...........
"Instead of coming to his defense, councilwoman Jan Marcason chose to exact punishment before the Mayor had a chance to defend himself in court. She did this by authoring a “volunteer” ordinance,"
That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it, is that the ordinance was introduced to protect the city from future litigation. You go on to say..............
" It was clear to Funk that the real intent of the ordinance was to dictate to him how he runs his office as it only targeted his wife."
Bingo! Whooop there it is! That is exactly why the ordinance was introduced. You go on to say that this is the first time in the history of Mayordom that a first lady has been banned from City Hall. You are correct it is a first, another first is a city being sued by an employee for racial remarks made by the Mayors wife. Gee, you two really are trail blazers and innovators.

I had to get a tissue as I read the part of your letter about the mayors job taking Funk away from the family unit. How his 18 years of experience as city auditor prepared him to run the city. You go on to say that you both were naive when it came to how much time it took from your daily lives to actually be Mayor and Mayorette, a simple fact that must have eluded you during his 18 years of city auditing and bean counting. Cynics might call bullshit on ya, but not me. I believe the two of you really are that naive and ill prepared for the actual task at hand.

You go on to say ...."He also wants you to know that he is not going to let this situation stop him from making good on the olive branch that he extended to the council last Thursday"
Would that be the same branch you just used to beat them down with as you call them all traitors and back stabbers?

On a brighter note you assure us all that great changes have already taken place in Kansas City, thanks to the Mayors cracker jack skills. I'll take your word on that, I'm sure this city is better off since Funk took office. I'm not sure how we are better off. You mention revitalization of the urban core, ummm, you might check my Urban Blight series, seems you guys missed a few things in the urban core that could use attention. You also mention an education summit, which must explain a drop out rate of close to half the students in the school district, or not. You said something about youth programs , maybe you can enroll the 14 and 15 year olds who kill each other with such regularity in your revitalized urban core.

Naysayers and critics might accuse you and the mayor of being out of touch with the people of Kansas city. I say bullshit. Why it seems like only yesterday you were talking about visiting the Black part of town. Out of touch, I think not, although you might want to rephrase that bit about the black part of town.

In closing, I just want to wish you all the best in your future endeavors. Maybe now that you wont be spending all of your time at city hall you can brush up on some of the finer points of being a public figure, a role you threw yourself in to with much zeal, but little grace. Here's a short list for you, I know , lets call it Homework since you'll hopefully be spending more time there.
1. Stop adding a double ee to words as a term of endearment. some words dont sound good with a long e sounded added to them. Words like Mam, Dark, Black,...the list goes on my dear, but I think you get my point.
2. I realize you are a free spirit, but going shoeless in city hall could be considered crass and unprofessional.
3. Stop playing the victim. Seriously, the whole martyrdom thing is soooo 1500's.
4. Don't speak, it just seems to get you in trouble.
5. Make your xmas letter a little less xxx. Last years Christmas letter , you know the one about the Mayors prostate exam, too much info Glo. And not for nothin, but a little creepy.
There is much work to be done if you want to be recognized as Kansas City's first Lady, instead of the foul mouth broad who runs shoeless through the highest office in Kansas City. On second thought, it's really too late, first impressions usually stick with you.

There are people who would say Kansas City's first couple are comparable to Alice and Ralph Cramden, but not me, I think too highly of Jackie Gleason, and Jane Meadows was kind of hot. To be honest, I am afraid this letter has just been a fruitless effort, and my stellar advice will fall on deaf ears. In the end, I'm afraid that stubbornness, lack of concern for the city, petty bickering , inaction and inattentiveness will rule the day from the Mayors office, business as usual. While the Mayors of most cities focus on trivial things, like crime, infrastructure, education, etc, our mayor is preoccupied with fighting for a nonexistant right to have his wife six feet up his ass in city hall. King Nothing fiddles while Rome burns. In other words, you can put Earth Shoes on a pig, but it's still a pig.

It's that time again, let me get out my soap box.

Once upon a time in a quaint little Kansas City suburb called Grandview people felt safe and secure. That's how fairy tales often begin, but the truth is Grandview has just been a smaller version of the inner city, for the last 15 or 20 years. You need look no further than last nights shooting at the IHOP in the old Truman Corners shopping center. Four teenagers, count em, 4, where shot in the parking lot. The cops found about 40 shell casings. What was it, 3 or 4 months ago when a shooting occurred at the VFW hall, again young African Americans the victims and shooters. Grandview isn't alone in the surge of gang related violence, Raytown, Hickman, Ruskin, Independence, and the once exclusively white bread south Kansas City have slowly been inundated with urban gangstas. The last great bastion of polo shirts and overpriced cramped subdivisions, JOCO, is also starting to feel the heat.

The trickle down effect of gangs from the urban core to the once safe burbs, begs the questions, why is the problem spreading and who is responsible. Tough questions , call for tough answers. I may, no, I will piss off more than a few people with this post, but it's time people got a little pissed off, kids are dropping like flies. Young black kids, and more and more, young Hispanic kids.
White flight from the city proper, really took off in the 80's, by the 90's the problems these people ran away from, had come to roost, and bit the suburbanites in the ass. You can run, but you cant hide.

So who is to blame for the spreading violence? It's a long list.
I start first with the parents. In the Grandview shootings, this occurred at 1:30 in the morning. Why are your kids hanging out in a parking lot at 1:30 on a Monday morning? By all reports there were at least 100 kids in the parking lot. That means a couple hundred parents were allowing their children to run amok. Yeah, I know, they are young black kids, they cant find work, nobody will hire them, it's because they are black. Sound about right? To me it sounds like bullshit, and a big part of the problem. These kids need direction and guidance, it is supposed to come from the parents. The problem is, that so many parents in the African American community have given up on themselves, and infected their own children with the belief that they have no hope of succeeding because of their skin pigmentation.

Minority community leaders are another guilty party to all of this. They perpetuate the same defeatist attitude. They lay blame at the feet of government, police, society, whites, racism and a plethora of supposed guilty parties. Rarely do you hear them decry the breakdown of the family, lack of parental involvement or the absence of father figures as the culprit. When the leading cause of death for young black men, is other young black men, these leaders blame the violence on the cops lack of action. They offer up this half truth, and avoid offending the parents and black community as a whole. They tell them what they want to hear, even while they kill one another in the streets. These supposed leaders are absentee landlords, they mouth words of absolution to the very people they should be chastising.

White Kansas Citians, thought I was going to let you slide, sorry. Whites share a big chunk of the blame here. You people fled this city at the first sign of trouble. You took an us against them attitude. You only came back to the city when you absolutely had to. You built up the burbs and told yourselves it was all the black folks fault and problem. You moved to the suburbs where your biggest problem was getting little Buffy to stop throwing up after she ate, and trying to keep Timmy off the Meth. You told yourselves, Those people are animals, and you did what you thought passed for protecting your children, lives and property. You turned your back on your neighbors. Sadly you still think it's a Black problem, while your children do their best to emulate the very people you sought to isolate them from. Now you find much to your dismay, the very people you fled from have moved in across the street. I hear Harrisonville is a nice place.

The City government, the people charged and sworn to serve its residents remains mute. They focus on the pockets of mostly white, mostly middle class areas of the city. Urban blight eats away at the neighborhoods, largely ignored until election time nears. Come election time you run across the tracks and blow smoke up the ass of the poor in hopes of getting their votes. This shows how out of touch you are. Voting isn't a priority to people who are trying to avoid getting shot or are busy burying their children or visiting them in prison. When the elections are over, nothing changes.

The police. The police haven't bothered to change the way they operate. You need look no further than the city of Los Angeles for a prime example of what happens when you ignore gang violence, because it's confined to a certain section of the city. There isn't a suburb in LA that isn't touched by gangs now. We are just a smaller version of that same domino effect. Yet the police employ the same tactics that have allowed gangs to proliferate in Los Angeles. A heavy handed approach alone wont curb the violence and it wont contain the problem.

The Kansas City school district, is a major player in this mess. It is your job to help these kids, and not to fuck them up. We have a school board that lacks any concern for the children in their charge. They spend all of their time blaming the Superintendent Du Jour or fighting over money and contracts. The result is a graduation rate of under 50 percent, one of the lowest in the nation.

So, we are really, in the end, all to blame. The problem is that nobody wants to shoulder their share. The blacks blame the whites, the whites return the favor, and the people charged to serve and protect stand idly by and piss in the wind. If you were hoping to hear how to fix the problem, I'm afraid you have come to the wrong place. I honestly don't think the problem can be fixed. I think we have painted ourselves in to a corner. Putting pressure on inner city gangs just redistributes the problem. The leaders who do have influence with minority communities continue to pay lip service to them, rather than actually lay a fair share of the blame at their feet. the white middle class will just keep moving, blind to the fact that the problem only follows them.

But all is not completely hopeless. There are still kids who defy the odds. They somehow manage to excel despite the shitty conditions they are forced to endure. They have their parents to thank, for not caving in and taking the easy route.

Urban Blight Tour 08.......The Ghosts of KCK.

Finding blight in Kansas City isn't difficult, to be honest the finding is the easy part. Writing something to go with the photos, a message that fits the picture, that's the hard part. Sure, it's easy enough when I'm wisecracking on a place like the Mayfair. There is no feeling of history in the Mayfair. Kansas City Kansas, specifically the older neighborhoods that run along State Avenue, or Quindaro, are a different story. These dilapidated houses were once homes. People lived and died, raised families and flower gardens, sent their children off to college or war. Now they sit silent, falling down around themselves.Pound for pound, block for block, there isn't a more hardscrabble area in the entire metro. There are streets, some several blocks long, where there is nothing. The houses are gone, torn down after years of neglect and abandonment. I think in another post I may have compared this part of the metro with pictures I had seen of Chernobyl. When you drive through here, even where houses still exist, there is a pervasive feeling of decay, emptiness, loss of hope. Most of the people who originally lived in these homes have either died or moved on. They moved in when the houses were bright. They were full of hope, they had youth on their side. If they lived their allotted average number of years, they were witness to the slow decline of their neighborhoods. They saw their children and grandchildren succumb to drugs, gangs, prison, and a million other ills that always find the poorest of us. They probably had a defining moment, an epiphany, when they realized that their young had turned a corner and taken different paths, had become predator, prey or both.

When you come up in a time where a man leaves for work with his steel lunchbox and worn coveralls, it must be hard to relate to some young guy who leaves for work in over sized clothes and gold chains, a bag of dope in place of a lunchbox, a pistol rather than a hammer or wrench. Most of them won't ever see 70, 60, or even 30. We can all point a finger, we can blame it on society, race, poverty or politics, but at the end of the day, we all are responsible for our choices, and shifting the blame in one direction or another doesn't change that simple fact. While much of Kansas City Kansas grows and flourishes, the sections that run between State ave. and Quindaro stagnate and die at the hands of its young.

When a neighborhood begins to die, the businesses are the first to go. They might have once been a destination. A place families stayed at. When the crime chased the visitors away, the businesses had to change with the times or get left behind. Families in the 60's and 70's played in this pool, kids laughed and splashed around. With the crime and vice came the steady deterioration. Eventually, as if from a cancer, the place succumbed, now there are just ghosts, no wet footprints temporarily staining the concrete around the pool, no more blood staining the walls and floors of the rooms. There is just this.
I apologize if you were expecting me to do my usual wise ass commentary, but I just can't find much to be flippant about here. I'm not sure why, trust me I can go to a million neighborhoods , every bit as bad as this area, and a barrage of smart ass comments will spew forth. And believe me when I say, there are more than a few of those posts coming. But there is something that tugs at me when it comes to this part of KCK, for the life of me I don't know what it is, but I cant ignore or deny it. Still among all of the blight and decay of this place, there are moments. A brightly colored house, some crazy guy arguing with someone only he can see. And pictures like this, that for some reason make me smile.

Next Monday....North East.

One building in the Plaza trumps a city full of historical buildings.

Everybody get in line. No pushing, shoving, or having your doofus friend hold your spot while you make a Latte run. There will be plenty of time for all of you to tell me how fucked up and uninformed I am, so wait your turn. At least half of you are going to think I'm so far off on this one I must be high on Hippy Lettuce, and I may be, but believe me when I say I'm right. I am. And I promise if you chew on this one for a minute or two, you will  come around to my way of thinking. So, what say we get to it.

The uproar over the proposed office building on a Plaza corner has more peoples shorts in a wad than that time TKC compared the Waldo Rapist composite to the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The local news outlets have been as excited over this thing as Liberace discovering a dick tree.  Everyone has an opinion on why it would be sacrilegious to build a modern glass structure smack in the middle-ish of Spanish Architecture. I was listening to 3 or 4 clowns on Steve Kraskes show  going on and on about how The Country Club Plaza IS Kansas City. How our history as a city is entwined with a shopping district that few of us ever actually shop at. How important the Plaza is as an entertainment destination, even though most Kansas Citians don't really dine there, or drink there. Oh sure, you might take your significant udder out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory or Plaza 3 once a year. And we all like to go look at the lights around Christmas, Hanuka, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, whatever , pick your poison. And yes the streets are often crowded with posers and drunk women hoping to catch the eye of some sports figure, or spittle if it's Larry Johnson. But the Plaza isn't Kansas City, it's just a small sliver of stores most of us can't afford to buy a pair of socks at. It's like the really hot chick in high school, nice to look at, but not of much use on a day to day basis. She might bat her eyes at you, she might give you a glimpse of cleavage, but at the end of the day, she is going to go with the biggest over privileged douche bag in the school.

Anyone with an interweb connection has chimed in on what a disgrace it is  for someone to suggest  building something on property they own. They being Highwoods.  So I wasn't going to bother with throwing in my 2 nickles. However, by the end of Kraskes show, after every single caller went on and on ad nauseum over how horrible it is to even suggest tearing down  one of the old Plaza  buildings, I'd heard enough. Like a mighty trout rising to take the fly, No Seacrest, I couldn't resist the bait, the pointing out of what is either glaring hypocrisy, total ignorance, or a sense of entitlement. I'm going to go with all 3.  Here's the rub, I don't really care if they put up the building or not. I would even say I agree that the Plaza should stay  looking like it does now. I agree it is a historical part of the city. No problem with the Plaza per say.  I just have one question.

Where was all of the outrage, the face book pages, the radio, news and print soup stirring, before the Plaza conflict? The same people who are so incensed over the thought of a modern building amidst the Spanish Stucco themed Plaza, were as quiet as a group of  Deaf Mutes over the Sprint Center and the P&L district. Or they cheered it on, called it progress. Someone please explain to me how a giant mirror disco ball building lives in peace and harmony, all feng shui and shit, among a downtown that is dominated by Art Deco buildings. Where is all of the outrage over a Jazz District that is nothing more than crumbling facades with a couple of money pits thrown in for good measure.

Historic homes, buildings, places with more history in their bricks and mortar than 10 Plaza's, have been crumbling, dying a slow death in this city for decades. I've given more time and space on this blog to Urban Blight and the death of this city's history than all of the local media combined.  Let that sink in. Give it a minute. You're almost with me, despite yourself. 

In one of the greatest movies ever made, Cool Hand Luke, there is a particular scene, it's really the biggest scene in the movie. Luke gets brought back from another escape. They throw him  in the bunk house, beat up, broke down, tore up from the floor up. Some of the cons crowd around him, all carrying on about a picture he sent them while he was on the run. He is flanked by two flashy looking women in the photo. All smiles, all Cool.  He tells the cons the pic was a fake, he paid to have it taken. Tells them to stop feeding off of him, get their own lives. He tries to make it to his bunk, but he falls and can't get up. He sticks his hand out, looking for a hand up, and they all turn their backs on him. "Where are you now?"  is his money line.
See, it's like this, when Luke was all flash they loved him. Couldn't get enough of him. Then he falls, he is all dirty, beat up, not a trace of flash. They turn their backs, to a man, every last one of them. This city, the majority of it's people, they turn their backs on the dirty old bricks and mortar buildings. The old homes where lives were lived, the backbone of this city, it's reason for existing in the first place. It's just not pretty, no flash, just blood, sweat and tears. In the minds and eyes of most, the real history of this city can't hold up to the stucco , the fashion, and the fountains. 

I know what some of you are thinking, "Why not both? Can't all historical areas of the city be important? Does caring about the Plaza mean we can't care about other parts of the city?"

Good point, and I've no doubt that many of you probably do care. Sadly there are only a few hundred of you lonely rubes who regularly take time out to read this shit. The majority of the people who are raising a stink over the Plaza, the ones getting air and face time from the media, they could give a shit if some old building gets demolished downtown. They could really not care less about some stately old home on the Paseo, or some craftsman bungalow in Midtown. The majority of the people in this city have never ventured  beyond the commercial districts, the Plaza, the Power and Light district, maybe the City Market area.  So when I see the outrage, and I hear all the sanctimonious horseshit about "Saving the Plaza" from the greedy corporate types, it pisses me off.  When I get pissed off these days, I write. There was a time when if I got pissed off, I'd get in a fight. At 51 carpal tunnel is more appealing than swollen hands and the likelihood of getting my ass handed to me. So write it is.  Over the next couple of weeks, starting  Wednesday, I'll be giving you rubes a history lesson, with pictures and everything, Double M style. It's time for another Urban Blight tour with hopefully a little history thrown in.  Maybe some of the French Poodle crowd will stumble across this humble lil blog and it's humble lil writer. And maybe, just maybe, they will find out that there is more to this city than a half dozen blocks of pretentious stores and overpriced restaurants.  The Plaza doesn't define Kansas City. There are far more important parts of this city  decaying, slowly dying, and it's bigger and more important than one building, in a place most Kansas Citians rarely visit.
 Where's the outrage?
Where are you now?

The Urban Blight Tour 08

Ask anyone from Kansas City which area of the metro is the most crime ridden , blight filled part of town. Most will say the East side, or KCK. While both of these areas are definitely contenders, there are countless smaller pockets throughout the city. Over the next few weeks, I am going to take you to some of them. So lock your doors, roll up your window, and put on your best fake cop face. Here we go.

Forty Highway, maybe you drive it on your way to work, or to the Chiefs and Royals games. Unless you are completely unaware of your surroundings, which makes you an excellent target by the way, then you have probably noticed a few rundown motels and trailer parks scattered among the mostly commercial section that runs east from Van Brunt. Hopefully you have never had an urge to explore the interior of these trailer parks, and if you felt the urge you were smart enough to not act on it. Lucky for you I'm neither particularly smart or easily frightened. I really love the grit and grime that stubbornly clings to the city.

There is a mile or two stretch of 40 hwy that stand as testament to vice in its most base form. Sex and Drugs, and Rock, minus the Roll. While the hookers don't stroll through here in the same numbers as Independence Avenue or even Troost or Prospect, they are here. It is a safe assumption to say that hookers and smokers use the small No Tell Motels as their base of operations. You don't have to be Mike Hammer to figure out the appeal of cheap motels that don't require, or probably even accept credit cards. The smaller motels , I'm gonna go out on a limb here, are family owned, probably East Indian families. Some of the bigger hotels have not fared so well. The largest motel on 40 hwy, the old Stadium Inn, later named the Sunset Inn sits abandoned, and probably stripped of its copper pipes and wires. I'm willing to bet, its empty rooms are home to a few of the nocturnal inhabitants of this area. The only way to be sure is to walk inside the abandoned building, and that just ain't gonna happen. Now, crack and prostitution are just two of the three deadly sins that are a mainstay of the 40 hwy strip. In fact, as ragged and filthy as these motels and the occupants may be, they are living in the Ritz Carlton in comparison to what you are about to see. So make sure the boss isn't looking over your shoulder, put down that donut, trust me you don't want to be eating right now. Let's take a ride through Bunker Hill and Mayfair, hands down the single most filthy place this side of the landfill, where Meth is surely the drug of chioce. Bunker Hill and Mayfair trailer parks sit side by side, nestled 100 feet or so off of 40 hwy. Strangely enough this may well be the most integrated area in the city. Whites and Blacks live in harmony. Okay, that bit about harmony, was bullshit. I doubt peace and harmony have ever set foot in this rats nest that passes for a trailer court. In fact, trailer park residents everywhere may file a class action suit against me for defamation of character. These two parks are cesspools, pure and simple. When I turned in to the Mayfair, the first thing I noticed was the absence of any dogs, and thankfully, children. I should say that I heard dogs barking, several of them, but I didn't see a single one. As I idled through the park , I passed a wire thin guy in bibs with a bushy beard that clearly hadn't seen comb nor soap since it was a 5 O'clock shadow, but more about him in a minute. Here are a few of the classier places in the Mayfair. Actually, this Is hands down the cleanest looking building in the two parks. And the only one that doesn't have a hitch and wheels, I might add. As I rounded the bend on the far end of this horseshoe shaped park, I came across this airy and spacious custom painted home. Someone has really put a great deal of time and effort in to the place.

As you can clearly see there is an open area toward the rear of the home, it reminds me of the homes in Southern California and Hawaii that have entire rooms that open up to the outside environment. Now I know you are trying to figure out what the hell the spray painting on the front says. I was going to get out of the car and move that bush to make it clearer to read, unfortunately, the Princess of the Park came out of a trailer directly across from this one, and she was giving me the stink eye, no pun, so I thought I should move along. I did blow it up and here is what I came up with.

There are letters that have been changed, the two L's look like they were N's, and the S was also covering another letter. I have no idea what this means, maybe bad spelling, or perhaps a cover up by this Mark the Murderer fella. So back to the Princess, who was rubber necking the middle age white guy, with the flashing black box that steals your soul. We call it a camera, but the natives of the area don't seem to understand what it really does, you will soon see why. The princess , much like the emperor, had no clothes, well she had no shoes, and was sporting coochie cutter shorts which displayed a tattoo that looked like it was done by an epileptic in full grand Mal seizure. Her hair was died a flat black, and she could have used a bra, or else she had twin tumors poking mid torso out the front of her t shirt. Either way, it wasn't a pleasant sight. As I drove on , I passed this place Which is private property and marked accordingly. And this place which needs a little work. And I found the source of the earlier mentioned barking dogs. This RV was literally rocking back and forth and the dogs were raising hell. I was almost tempted to free them, but didn't want to end up eaten by hungry pit bulls. So, as I'm making the last turn that leads out of the Park , to my surprise, Bearded Bib Guy, Trailer Park Princess, and a black guy with a big plastic sack, are standing in front of bib guys trailer. Princess was doing the Meth inspired Ozark high Step. Meth users have this funny thing they do with their legs when they have been up too long. Like the Funky Chicken or the Jed Clampett dance. Well she is pointing at my car and then back up to the trailer, and I swear to god, she makes a sign language gesture of me taking pictures. That was my cue to leave, but how could I without one last parting shot for posterity. I stopped the car, leaned out the window zoomed to the best of my ability, and fired away. Bib guy was a whole lot smarter than the other two. He understood that if someone is snapping pictures, and you don't want to be captured on film, you move out of sight. He was smart, the other two, not so much.

Well there you have it, installment one of my bi state expose on Blight, Crime and little known corners of the Kansas City Metro area. Thursday we will journey to the Kansas City Kansas area along Quindaro Blvd. I would be remiss if I didn't give proper thanks to JOCO SOB who originally came up with the idea for a top ten list of the worst blight in the area. I thought it was a great idea, and he told me to run with it. I decided to change it from a list, and instead will do my best to give you a feel of the areas, and let you the reader draw your own conclusions as to the best of the worst. Also I'm going to set up a flicker page so you can peruse all of the pictures Ive snapped of these areas, these are just a small sampling. I'll post a link when it's ready.