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Kansas City, Missouri On occasion, my work sends me out of town for seminars. Last year, I was in Savannah, Georgia and Toronto, Ontario. This year, I was sent to Kansas City, Missouri for the US-based seminar.
Kansas City (KC) is a mid-sized city straddling the state line of Missouri and Kansas. The population of the metro area is about 2 million, which is similar to my adopted hometown of Vancouver (metro area). My real home town is Kamloops, about 3.5 hrs northeast of Vancouver.
KC is headquarters for some big-name corporations, such as Sprint (telecommunications), Hallmark (gift and greeting cards), Garmin (GPS maker), and H&R Block (tax preparers). Interestingly, the spelling of “Block” is actually “Bloch,” but was changed by the founding brothers (Henry and Richard), because they felt it would be more acceptable than the original Jewish spelling. I found it curious, because I thought the original spelling was already Germanic, as in Heckler and Koch (firearms manufacturer). Henry Bloch provided financing for Kansas City’s new art gallery building, which bears his name on the front doors. KC is the City of Fountains and is widely known for its barbeque, which is of course, called Kansas City-style barbeque. I didn’t sample any barbeque until my last night in the city, which was at the restaurant chain, Jack Stack’s. While maybe not truly authentic KC barbeque, many of the locals said that Jack Stack’s offers good barbeque. I stayed at the InterContinental Hotel, which is across the street from the Country Club Plaza (the Plaza) shopping district. This area is about 50 blocks away from downtown KC.
Travel Flying into KC was uneventful, but as my two coworkers and I waited for our luggage to arrive, we were advised that one of the baggage carts did not get loaded in the transfer from Denver. Two of us lucked out and were able to retrieve our luggage, but the third member of the party did not and had to wait the next day before he could change his clothes and brush his teeth. There are no convenience stores in the Plaza to pickup some basic toiletries. On the flight back, another mishap occurred with the luggage and I thought my suitcase had been left back in Denver. As it turned out, another passenger on the flight made off with my suitcase without checking the tag to verify that she had actually retrieved hers (she said her bag is identical to mine). However, it appears that she’s still out a piece of luggage and it was either left in Denver or left unclaimed in Vancouver. Other passengers on the same flight were also missing pieces of luggage. Note to self, if possible, avoid Denver as a stopover if flying United. Second note to self, buy outlandish and garish ribbon to tie onto my baggage, so that ditzy business ladies don’t make off with it again. From these experiences with missing and mistaken luggage, I now understand why so many insist on taking their roller suitcases with them as carry-on cases. It also made me think that not all luggage mishaps are the fault of the airline. Passengers in a rush and being careless about checking can abscond with other people’s luggage. While people always complain about the security checks, no mishaps or incidents occurred and unlike Toronto in 2007, my bag was not checked over for explosives due to all the electronics inside my carry-on bag. After landing in KC, we retrieved our rental car and proceeded to make our way to the hotel. The co-worker renting the car brought his GPS and everything would have gone well if he (and we) had not missed the smooth, female voice advising us to turn left onto Ward Parkway. We, instead, turned right and promptly became confused when we found ourselves in the 7000 block of Ward Parkway instead of the 400 block that the hotel is located. Compounding the confusion was trying to figure out if we were in KC, Missouri or KC, Kansas; because we noticed we crossed into Kansas State, as we drove in from the airport. We finally figured out our mistake and drove in the correct way and as it turns out, we had already crossed the state line again, back into Missouri, before we got to Ward Parkway. The first trip took us through some side streets and avoided downtown KC. On our way back to the airport for departure, we got messed up again in trying to avoid “KCI” so that we could get to “MCI.” The GPS took us through a downtown route to get to the airport, but we kept thinking that we were headed for the downtown “KCI” airport instead of the suburban “MCI” airport. After a couple of attempts and loop-around cycles, we finally decided to listen to the GPS and trust its directions and, as expected, the damn machine was right all along. The directions just happen to coincide with getting to the downtown airport. The downtown airport is Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport, which we mistook as KCI (remember, we kept looking for MCI). It finally dawned on me that KCI is the name of the airport, but MCI is the FAA designation for KCI (similar to Vancouver International Airport designated as YVR by Transport Canada). This is what happens when three Canuck regulators are let loose in the USA. As late as we were due to our mishap, we were still able to drop off the rental car and check in on time for our flight. While the co-worker’s GPS was faultless in guiding us to our destination, being an older model, on occasion, the directions announced were given with little warning. A couple of times, as we approached a turn we were supposed to make, the GPS did not announce the turn until we were right “there,” which resulted in us driving passed the street. Photography and Other Misc Technical Geek Stuff I charged the W170’s battery once during the stay and supplemented the single 1 GB Memory Stick with two more 2 GB Memory Sticks bought at the local Costco in KC. I bought the two Memory Sticks for only USD $35, which would allow me to store over 1000 photos, if I was that snap happy (I was not, but to some observing me, I was). The W170 was dandy with its compact size that could be carried in the pocket of my cargo shorts. The ISO 3200 sensitivity allowed me to take photos that would have been impossible with my old Sony W1, but let’s not get overly enthused with this though. As most would expect, a tiny digicam sensor is not going to compare to the larger sensor of an SLR; however, better to have something resembling a photograph than not. My first review of my W170 files did not please me much, as many of my photos were taken at ISO 800 or above, including to ISO 3200. Soft, mushy, with brutal noise in the shadows were the results. At lower ISO settings the quality is much better, but I need to work with the camera and its settings some more to get the right combination of focusing ability and sharpness. The W170's auto white balance (AWB)seems fine for daylight, but has a tiny bit of a cyan cast when used indoors (with good lighting). In low light, the AWB struggles and seems incapable of rendering a neutral color cast when photographing under street or tungsten lights. Note though that even the best professional SLRs tend to do poorly in these settings too, so it's not a huge slight on the W170. The D300 and 18-200 combo performed as well as expected and is my usual travel kit when I want to try for some semblance of photographic quality. Admittedly, given my newfound respect for those that prefer not to travel with large cameras, the D300 is not what you would want for every moment. Which is why having the W170 was great to be able to choose the best camera for the moment. While I do not consider the D300 to be a big camera, there were others in the group that commented on the size and the apparent “pro” look. If you view the gallery linked at the bottom of the article, certain of you will likely notice a fair bit of barrel distortion in some of the photos. This is expected of inexpensive little digicams and while the Sony may have the Zeiss name on its lens, that don't mean much of anything for controlling distortion. The Nikon 18-200 lens is consumer-quality and while it offers fantastic convenience, you have to suffer a bit for that convenience, such as the distortion at wide angles and barrel creep. I put all the JPEGs and RAW files through Lightroom 1.4 (no, I haven't upgraded to LR 2 yet, but plan to in due course). The JPEGs taken with the Sony W170 at ISO 1600 and ISO 3200 required a bit of Black adjustment to darken away the most agregious splotches. I debated whether I should bring the D300 with me for this trip since the W170 offers such high ISO settings, but now that I've gone through all the photos, I'm very glad that I did. This is especially so for the photos taken in the World War I museum, many of which required ISO 3200 due to the low light and the use of a slow lens. For the airplane flights, I carried everything in a briefcase-style, nylon bag that is not meant for photographic gear. The D300 was wrapped in a large microfiber cloth while all the smaller accessories were stored in a padded compartment borrowed from my NGS Earth Explorer bag. The accessories included the extra battery, chargers (for iPod, Blackberry, W170), media cards, and my iPod Touch. The iPod Touch and Shure SL4 in-ear-monitors worked out quite well on the airplane. They blocked out almost all of the airplane’s noise, but still allowed just enough through that I could tell when the airplane’s intercom was on. It’s kind of weird, but I “sensed” that the intercom was on more than I actually heard it when I was listening to music with the Touch and SL4. Prior to the trip, I was feeling that I had made a dumb, impulsive purchase in buying the Touch when it first came out, but the trip made me appreciate its qualities. For everyday use, I don’t find the Touch to be all that useful. On my commutes to the office, I listen to music and don’t watch videos or play games. For music listening, the touch screen is actually annoying and I prefer the manual control of the regular iPod’s control wheel. I usually carry the iPod in my jacket pocket or bag and the control wheel is much easier to access to go forward in skipping music tracks I don’t feel like listening to (music is emotional and what you want to listen to depends on what kind of mood you’re in). The Touch’s screen requires too much visual and touch interaction for skipping music files (yah, I know, create a custom playlist instead). Another potential issue I had is that while the Touch’s screen is very nice and video quality is crisp when using Handbrake to the rip DVD movie files, it just seems so damn small for watching a Hollywood movie. I’m of the mind that a movie has to be seen big to get the full impact and I kept thinking I was being robbed of the experience when watching a movie on the tiny Touch. However, on the plane ride to Denver, I watched almost the entire Bruce Willis movie, Tears of the Sun, and came to appreciate the diminutive size. This was especially after seeing my seat neighbour go through some hassles with watching a DVD on a 15-inch MacBook Pro (MBP). The guy started off with a regular, video iPod, but that was apparently too small for him, so he goes through various contortions to access his carry-on bag and haul out the MBP. He sets it up on his tray and proceeds to watch, but a few minutes into watching his movie, the woman in front of him decides to set her seat back for a snooze, which jammed his MBP’s screen between the tray and seat. This required a forceful push ahead on the seat in front of him to loosen the MBP, which caused some consternation from the woman. Meanwhile, I’m happily watching my movie on my handheld Touch, while the guy next door has to hold his MBP at an angle to accommodate the tiny amount of space available. On the trip back to Vancouver, I noticed another passenger working with a MacBook Air, which seems much more appropriate for the cramped spacing of economy seats. Note to self, don’t travel with own MBP unless travelling first class (yah, right). Oh yes, for those have been following my comments about transitioning from PC to Mac, I finally made the plunge by telling my usual contact to order me a MBP before I departed for KC. This is the real reason why I will not be buying a Nikon D700 anytime soon; rationale being that I need a better notebook more than I need another camera (the massive Acer 9920 is gone and I'm now slumming it with my cheap Sony notebook until the MBP arrives). Audio wise, I love the Shure SL4 IEMs. Smoother and more refined than the cheaper and older Shure S2 IEMs I had been using the past couple of years. The SL4 is smaller than the S2 and the foam inserts are softer and also smaller than the inserts for the S2. The SL4 fits inside my ears much more easily and are much more comfortable than the S2, especially when using them for long periods. There’s decent bass impact from the SL4 plugged straight into an iPod; however, it is still worthwhile to use an external headphone amp to get even more quality and performance. While I did not bring my HeadRoom Portable Micro amp with me to KC, it makes for a fine combination with the SL4. I’ll have more to say in a future article about this audio kit. Kansas City Attractions A fellow regulator from Saskatchewan came along and the three of us did a quick visit to the Liberty Memorial and National World War I Museum. We also drove through downtown KC, the historic 18th and Vine, and stopped at the KC art gallery to walk through the outside grounds.
Liberty Memorial and National World War I Museum We arrived with about 40 minutes to spare before closing and did a whirlwind tour. While not a large museum, there’s a fair bit to see and read and to do it justice would require at least half a day to take it all in. Inside the museum, there is a theatre area at the centre. To the right, as you walk in, there is a section with artefacts from the Allied side and to the left, as you walk in there are artefacts from the American side.
The displays offered were various uniforms, helmets, kits, rifles, pistols, machine guns, mortars, and howitzers. A couple of biplanes hung from the ceiling and also on display were a utility truck, motorcycle, and a French tank from the era.
There were a number of cap and uniform badges from the Allies and I took interest in the Canadian badges. While I found a large Seaforths Highlander Regiment cap badge, I did not see one from my former regiment, the Canadian Scottish Regiment from Victoria. The Canadian Scottish was part of the 16th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force and has a number of battle honours from WWI. Some of the Regiment’s soldiers were distinguished with the Victoria Cross, including a notable one awarded posthumously to Piper James Richardson from Chilliwack, a town about one hour east of Vancouver.
In 1916, during the Battle of Ancre Heights, the Canadian Scottish had the task of rushing a position at Regina Trench, but came under intense enemy fire when they discovered heavy barbed wire that the prior artillery barrage had not destroyed. Piper Richardson sought permission to the give the lads some “wind” and played his bagpipes outside the wire. The playing inspired the lads to go over the top and take the position. After the battle, Piper Richardson helped to take the wounded and POWs back behind the lines, but noticed that he had left his bagpipes at the front. He went back to retrieve them and was never seen again. Some 70 years later, it was discovered that Piper Richardson’s pipes had been found by a British Army chaplain and after the war, taken to the Scottish school he taught at. After being positively identified as Piper Richardson’s pipes, they were repatriated to Canada and are now on public display in Victoria, as a symbol of bravery, courage under fire, and the ultimate sacrifice by a soldier for his King, his country, and perhaps most importantly, his lads. If ever in British Columbia and at a local pub or restaurant that serves it, order up a Piper’s Pale Ale (Vancouver Island Brewing Company) and toast Piper Richardson’s memory. After touring the inside, we took our time on the museum ground, which provides an excellent view of downtown KC. The external grounds have an Egyptian flavour with a tall, central column as a monument to the WWI soldiers. There are also two sphinx-like adornments on top of the museum along with two smaller buildings with more artefacts inside.
After returning to Vancouver, it later hit me that I could have still done the trick photo, but instead of a badminton racket, all I needed was a person standing in the right position with a finger outstretched, as if he were holding the shuttlecock on the tip of his finger. Maybe next time… I was told by our guide, Phil, that the new art gallery buildings were widely praised by various art critics from the big newspapers. My first glance and thought of them was that they were administrative offices, given how staid and boring they looked on the outside compared to the classic Roman-Greco inspired original building. At the front of the original building is a massive pool of water, which is an art piece onto its own. However, Phil is not sure if the island in the middle is actually part of the display or just something needed for maintenance work.
Later research revealed that the original is actually in Paris and 20 additional casts were made and are on display around the world, including the one in KC. For Canadian readers, there is also a cast in Barrie, Ontario. While on the topic of art and architecture, I was struck by how many classic brick buildings there are in KC. Brick is popular in most US cities while it is far less so in Canada, or rather, in the western part of Canada that I’m from. Older parts of Vancouver have brick buildings, but Vancouver is very much a city of gleaming, modern skyscrapers and the old brick buildings are generally in the run down parts of the notorious downtown Eastside. I also noticed that many homes use brick, whereas in western Canada, houses are mostly built with wood. Right across from the KC art gallery are some upscale homes made from brick and you can metaphorically smell the old money that oozes from them. When my co-workers and I first drove towards the hotel along Ward Parkway, we went through a very affluent part of KC with mansions mostly built with brick. The design and architecture is classic and my co-workers and I kept on commenting about how beautiful the homes were. I thought those KC mansions blew away the ones in the old money neighbourhood of Shaughnessy in Vancouver.
The Plaza The Plaza has apparently been around for decades and has always had a Spanish look to it. The entire area is well kept and very clean. It reminded me of Disneyland’s Main Street for how neat and tidy it looks. While there are many shops to visit and spend money in, I did not do much shopping, because I’m not much of a clothes horse or shopper (being a tech whore, you can guess what I like to spend my money on). My shopping amounted to just a few souvenirs.
Even though it was obvious that we wanted to play our own game, he grabbed a pool cue and asked if I wanted to play a game. I had seen the old man playing the table previously, so I thought it was still his table. Thinking that there was some etiquette to barroom pool, as in I had to win the table from the old guy, I proceeded to play him and he proceeded to beat me. He said we could have the table for our own game after that. We played our games and left the table alone. I noticed the old man returning to the table and just practising with the cue ball. Another couple of guys showed up and punched in their quarters to rack up the balls. The old guy looked like he was game again, but the guy setting up basically told him to buzz off, because he was playing his own game. The old guy left and then I realized that the old guy was just hanging around trying to hustle free games from people who didn’t know better. Kansas City Royals
Going to KC coincided with a home stand by the Royals against the Minnesota Twins. Saturday night’s game worked out well for our group of regulators. Six of us went to the game and we conveniently caught the Royals Express shuttle that does a loop of some of the big hotels in the Plaza before heading for the stadium. I must say, I like the public transit buses in KC. They seem cleaner than the Vancouver buses and more importantly, they have air conditioning. Even though summer is not overly long in Vancouver (pretty much July and August only), it can get warm and a bit humid and it ain’t no fun riding the 60 seat limo in 30 degree Celsius heat with 100 people packed in. You get a foul whiff of perfumes, colognes, lotions, BO, and at times, fecal matter as someone lets a silent one out. By the time we arrived at the Royal’s stadium (right beside Arrowhead, the Chief’s stadium), we could not get enough seats together in the good sections, so we ended up in the nosebleeds. Tickets were a nominal $15 with $6 off due to us using the shuttle service. Pretty cheap night’s entertainment...until the game started. Now, if you’re a baseball fan, I’ll apologize right now for what I’m about to say, but watching baseball is like watching a PC go through a hard drive defrag or virus scan. It is boring as hell and I have no desire to ever willingly watch another live Major League game again. My son’s Atom division hockey team offers more excitement in five minutes than four hours of a pro baseball game. The most exciting part of the game? When the Royals pitcher beaned a Twins player in the head with either a wild or a deliberate pitch. The Twins player immediately kissed the dirt and was in a daze for a few seconds. When he got up, he was given the signal to take his base, but he wanted to charge the mound. However, too much time had passed for him to do so and everyone was ready to pull him back. We bloodthirsty Canucks wanted a nice, old bench-clearing brawl, just like hockey games of old. Actually, I don’t think a bench-clearing brawl has occurred in NHL hockey for over 10 years, while baseball and basketball have had a few. And Americans complain hockey is violent J After eight innings, we had enough and left with the Twins winning the game handily. While I didn’t make it known, I was rooting for the Twins all the way, because their star is MVP and homerun king, Justin Morneau, who is from the Vancouver suburb of New Westminster.
KC Cuisine
The barbeque at Jack Stack’s was good. The meat on the ribs came off the bone easily and had a nice taste, but I do have to say that all the dishes seem to go heavy on the sauce. I like sauce, but I prefer to slather it on myself to suit the amount that I want. Barbeque to this dumbass Canadian does not mean the same thing as barbeque down in KC, where the meat is smoked. For me, barbeque really just means grilling, which offers up its own taste and aroma, different from KC-style barbeque. Other than the steakhouse, I found the costs for meals very reasonable in KC. A good sized platter at Jack Stack’s costs less than $20 and it’s refreshing to be able to order a pint of beer for less than $5; something unheard of in Vancouver establishments, unless you frequent places that you really should not. KC Conclusion I was able to see some of the best neighbourhoods in KC and some of the worst and while the worst certainly made me feel glad that I was seeing them during the day, I was struck by how clean KC is overall. There are parts of Vancouver that probably gave Hollywood writers inspiration for what inner city anarchy should look like (think Escape from New York), but other than some run down homes, I didn’t see much of that in KC.
KC has been around since the 1860s and its downtown shows that historic character. While having almost 2 million residents, like Vancouver, KC does not have Vancouver’s hustle and bustle. Vancouver’s streets always seem to have some activity and except for a few hours at night, has plenty of traffic every day of the week. I was struck by how KC felt more like a town than a city, traffic-wise. My only regret is that I wasted my time at the baseball game instead of meeting up with Phil earlier and getting to see and photograph more of KC. Click here to see more photos of Kansas City - some of the photos may seem duplicative, as I re-shot some subjects with the D300. |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
At the rear of the art gallery, I was blown away to see Rodin’s the Thinker sculpture on display. I wondered, my God, is this really the original sculpture? Ah…no. 
We visited a few of the local bars in the Plaza and found them to be like bars everywhere else, crowded and noisy. At one bar, a co-worker and I wanted to play a game of pool. Seeing a table free for several minutes, we popped in our quarters and had racked the balls when an old man came shuffling in.
My group prefers watching football in real football weather and not in the late summer when the NFL season begins. This means cold and sometimes rainy conditions inside Qwest Field. This also means that the Mariners have long stopped playing by the time football season gets interesting.
