There’s a chance that you’re not entirely sure where Kansas City is. If true, this may be for one of two reasons.
First, there’s its name. The Kansas City that I’m referring to is in Missouri, not Kansas—although a Kansas City, Kansas (or “KCK,” to locals) does exist, just opposite the Missouri-Kansas border. Without engaging the inevitably contentious debate over which is the superior Kansas City, it’s worth mentioning that KCMO has a population of about 490,000, compared to KCK’s more modest 153,000.
There’s also the fact that you might not really know where, exactly, Missouri is. Unless you grew up there—or, say, attended Wash U (another Missouri place with a vaguely misleading name)—its spot on a map is hardly obvious. I, for one, was pretty sure that Missouri was one of those states jammed shoulder-to-shoulder below the Mason–Dixon line, like Georgia and Alabama. (Needless to say, until earlier this month I knew nothing of its contiguity with Kansas.) I imagined my flight path to Kansas City International Airport roughly following that to Raleigh-Durham—suggesting, I think, that I had my destination confused with Mississippi.
Ignorance that vigorous is difficult to explain away, but there is something to be said about the socio-political situation in Kansas City right now. My East Coast, liberal bias can be blamed for a lot, but as one person put it to me during my visit, there’s a “culture of contradiction” enveloping Kansas City. Writer Sarah Kendzior tapped into it on Twitter shortly after the midterms, remarking, “Missouri voted for progressive ballot measures—raising the minimum wage, medical marijuana, campaign finance reform, and in August, an overwhelming vote to protect unions—and then voted for GOP candidates who want to strike these same policies down.” The difficulty for me in pinning the city down geographically is reflected in a broader ideological incertitude; a current questioning of the state’s identity and place.
Kansas City’s cultural history is, in a way, the cultural history of America itself. Where there are now hulking brick warehouses, predominantly in the Missouri River-adjacent West Bottoms neighborhood, there were once acres of stockyards; the corporatized remnants of a prairie past. Institutionalized racism has cast a long shadow there; the prominent real estate developer Jesse Clyde “J. C.” Nichols, recognized for devising entire Kansas City neighborhoods (and inspiring many more throughout the country), patently promoted racial segregation. (That his name adorns buildings and street signs citywide has become a hot-button issue.) It has that classically knotty dichotomy between the tony, well-groomed suburbs and artsy, kind of rough-around-the-edges downtown. Plus, the Hallmark company was founded in Kansas City; Walt Disney learned to draw at the Kansas City Art Institute; and the AMC chain—originally Durwood Theatres—started there in 1920, on 12th Street between Walnut and Grand.
One gets the sense that it’s a bit of an island—a lone voice in the wilderness, if you will. Its thriving arts scene and progressive politics are not par for the course throughout the state. People from KC will snub their noses at St. Louis (more than once, I was informed that as recently as 2001, the Klu Klux Klan was allowed to “adopt” a stretch of the I-55 over there); and point with pride to Sly James, their black mayor. When people leave Kansas City, they leave the entire region; an ironic effect of the low cost of living there. (The possibility to stay becomes, effectively, an opportunity to go.) They fly west to San Francisco, or east to New York; sometimes north to Chicago or south to Austin. In that way, Kansas City figures as the center of a cosmopolitan compass; looking in all directions but fixedly, complexly itself.
Still, there’s an awareness that the city is slowly expanding. Though people still mostly drive, the unveiling of a new, free cable car in 2016, along with the rampant popularity of Bird, a scooter-sharing program, suggests that that may soon change. Some say that Kansas City is having a renaissance—that people are finally taking notice of its beautiful abandoned buildings, its underutilized parks and waterfront, and its world-class art museums (including the cast of Queer Eye, who are filming there now)—but that, like everything else, comes at a cost.
On paper, Kansas City International’s $1.3 billion terminal expansion is fantastic; few things signal a vibrant economy like a shiny, new airport. Ask locals about the project, however, and they’ll probably start to grumble. As it stands, KCI’s small size makes it astonishingly easy to navigate—something that tacking on 39 new gates, spread out over 1,000,000 square feet, seems likely to impact. Try as Kansas City might to refute its characterization as a sleepy, oversized town, there is a general inclination there to keep things as they are, simple and unvarnished. It’s rather in limbo. The most heavily commercialized parts of town—the ones that can be mistaken for downtown Philadelphia at a glance—are practically abandoned by 5:00 p.m. Much preferred is the neighborhood hangout; the one reached only through an alleyway, or just beyond the overpass, or that became so popular by word of mouth that it was finally forced to get a liquor license. The places where guests have seen the owner’s kids (and pets) grow up.
The culture in Kansas City thrives on individual endeavor, which manifests itself visually in the colorful dissonance of its various painted murals and its residential neighborhoods with a hundred different architectural styles. It is a sprawling, real-time manifestation of the American experiment; the dream of establishing a niche that also helps to sustain the collective—whatever that collective ends up looking like. Here, a guide to exploring some of those niches and experiencing just some of what the city has to offer.
Where to Stay
Comprised of the former Pabst building (a one-time bottling and distribution plant for Pabst Brewing Co.) and the Pendergast Building (once leased by the political boss Tom Pendergast), the Crossroads Hotel embraces modern, boutique-hotel chic without depreciating its roots.
The hotel boasts 131 comfortable rooms and suites, three food-and-beverage concepts (including a rooftop beer garden, poised to open in the spring), various event spaces, and a 2,000-square-foot gallery, where future artists in residence will display their work. Named for the surrounding Crossroads Arts District, an area saturated with galleries and artist’s studios, Crossroads prioritizes an engagement with creatives. Hesse McGraw, a partner and principal at El Dorado, its Kansas City-based architecture firm, is not an architect by trade, but a curator, with a background in arts leadership at nonprofits.
“The big irony in my career is that I was always more interested in what artists could do beyond the gallery space,” McGraw says. “What El Dorado is really working towards is engaging artists in the city, and thinking about the kinds of impact artists can and should have in the public realm.” At Crossroads, the plan is to work primarily with locals; people “who are part of the ecology of the artists’ community in Kansas City,” McGraw says. Currently installed in the gallery are works by the painter and sculptor Rashawn Griffin, a KC native (he and McGraw went to the same high school) whose large-scale canvases and graphic colorways have traveled the world.
Signs of the hotel’s industrial history are everywhere—in the exposed bricks; the still-visible labels for Pabst’s old loading docks; the steel beams and poured concrete flooring. (El Dorado worked closely with the Simeone Deary Design Group on the interiors and decor.) “The [Pabst] building was a complete wreck before,” McGraw says. “It was totally down on its luck, and really needed some care. And it seems to me that that’s what [the hotel group] Aparium does. They find these diamonds in the rough, and take the transformation seriously.” El Dorado’s approach to refashioning the space, McGraw says, “was to strip away the layers—to try to pull it back to the original character—and then find a few opportunities to really express what’s special about the building.” Case in point, the so-called “atrium” at the hotel’s center; a kind of interior courtyard where the Pabst building’s 100-year-old floorboards were repurposed as wood cladding. On the Pendergast side of the hotel, two former vaults have been artfully converted: one, to a private dining room for Lazia, the hotel’s just-opened dinner-only Italian restaurant, and the other, as part of the 550-square-foot Vault Suite on the second floor.
Strewn with oriental rugs, clubby leather sofas, and lots of contemporary art, the Crossroads feels cool and cozy but never pretentious; perfectly suited, in short, to contemporary Kansas City. “This has been the area that El Dorado [has made] its base for 20 years,” McGraw says. “So the hotel was an important project for us, in the sense of what it signaled in the ongoing evolution of the neighborhood.” The Kansas City that everyone knows and loves “is becoming a real city,” he says. “It’s growing up.”
What to Do
“One of the values of Kansas City has always been its specific neighborhoods,” McGraw says. “So as you start to move from Crossroads to Midtown, or Crossroads to the West Bottoms, neighborhoods have their own character and spirit.” Arts lovers would do well to wander the Crossroads Arts District, where the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, the Blue Gallery, Haw Contemporary (which has another location a mile west), and the Kim Weinberger Gallery are all situated. A string of charming boutiques—places like Foxtrot Supply Co., where the small leather goods are crafted onsite; Coki Bijoux, which offers tastefully minimal fine jewelry; Kanso, a dealer in Scandinavian and Japanese home goods; and the contemporary fashion and design retailers Dear Society and Fine Folk—are also nearby; along with the effortlessly cool Green Lady Lounge and Mutual Musicians Foundation, long-standing jazz clubs. (Nota bene: Charlie Parker, Count Basie, and Ben Webster were all born in Kansas City.) Prefer to antique? Head directly to the West Bottoms, where mid-century modern furniture, vintage light fixtures, old vinyl records, and all sorts of other odds and ends crowd Restoration Emporium, Stuffology, and Good Ju Ju. (Should you need a bite to eat between shops, a fleet of food trucks tends to linger close.) On the first Friday of each month, these and other businesses across the city extend their hours, courting visitors late into the night.
A few other worthwhile stops: the stately Nelson-Atkins Museum (with its now-iconic giant shuttlecocks, sculpted by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, scattered outside); the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (the largest collection of its kind in the state) and Loose Park, the 75-acre former golf course.
Where to Eat (and Drink)
The food scene in Kansas City is remarkably nuanced. The barbecue joints, of course, are legion. According to one source, Kansas City-style barbecue is “dry rub-spiced, slow roasted hour after hour over a pit of hickory, and slathered up all around with some of the smoothest, richest, sweetly tangiest sauces in all the world. Thickest, too, for that matter”—and among the eateries said to do it best are L.C.’s Bar-B-Q and Q39 on the Missouri side, and Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que and Slap's BBQ in KCK.
Otherwise, Kansas City plays host to a number of James Beard Award-winning chefs—Colby Garrelts at Bluestem; Celina Tio at The Belfry; Michael Smith at Farina, opening in January—as well as new and emerging talents. At Novel, an intimate, El Dorado-designed spot on a nondescript corner, chef Ryan Brazeal has founded a strong reputation on modern American small plates. (If you can, try the Tomato Ceviche with watermelon, cantaloupe, and popcorn for your starter.) The same could be said of husband-and-wife pair Nicholas and Leslie Goellner, although their influences at The Antler Room are more international; the menu is refined yet approachable (an “Acorn Squash Scarpinocc” with guanciale, quince, brown butter, and sage, for example, is essentially just acorn squash ravioli, and it’s delicious), and the wine list (which includes a selection of orange wines), robust.
Where cocktails are concerned, the most anticipated new bar in Kansas City may be The Campground, which for years operated out of Christopher and Cristin Ciesiel’s back shed. (Christopher, who only recently resigned as a registered nurse, was an amateur home-brewer.) Inspired by aperitivo-style bar-slash-restaurants like Dante in Greenwich Village, The Campground will specialize in martinis and negronis, and feature a pared-down, vegetable-focused menu. (It opens early next month.) For all of its masculine sophistication—the dark walls, the gleaming copper-topped bar—the Ciesiels plan to keep it open most of the day, from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., which should attract a lively mix of people. From top to bottom, it just doesn’t get more Kansas City than this.