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12 September, 2005
It’s a drinkin’ town.

So, the Kansas City/Lawrence trip was so much more than I expected it to be. Fun was had. In mass amounts.

It all started Friday morning at the airport when I got stopped at the security check, and got a full torso patdown and my bags fully searched. I am an idiot and carried scissors in my knitting kit. Duh. Apparently my bag also set off the explosive detectors, who knows what caused that. Getting questioned and felt up by a woman in rubber gloves was just sooo hot.

We finally got to Kansas City. Renting a car was a little scary but fun. Jimmy says I need to get a red car next time I buy one. Apparently it makes me even hotter. As if that were possible.

We explored the city Friday night and ate in a cute little diner called Winstead’s that had been around since the 40s. It reminded me of Doumar’s.

Friday night we chilled in the pool and hot tub at the hotel. Good times.

We got up early Saturday and worked out in the hotel’s gym (which had just enough exercise equipment for the two of us). We headed back to KC. Jimmy took pictures while I drove through the city.

The Broadway Bridge heading into the city from the north.

KC is full of bars. We asked our waitress what there was to do, and said that we don’t really drink. She told us, “You’re outta luck, we’re a drinkin’ town.” Ha.

Church.

One thing I noticed is that by and large, Kansas City’s graffiti sucks. Most of it looks like gang graffiti (i.e. no style whatsoever) except that it wasn’t. I saw handstyles that looked totally awful and I thought must surely have been gang stuff, but then around the corner, there would be a throwie using the same name. There were tags put up in totally prominent places that looked horrible. Haha I dunno, I’d be embarrassed. Maybe it’s a lot of young kids getting up, but somehow I doubt it. Jimmy says maybe that’s KC Style. Haha I think he is right.

A decent looking wall. But something tells me this might have been commissioned. The black background makes me think so anyway.

Union Station.

We headed through the city to Westport, which seemed to be the cooler, artsier section. There was indeed an art fair going on, with tons of local artists showing off their stuff. First though, we spotted a record store and headed in. It looked to be a normal used CD store, until the owner pointed us downstairs. It was HUGE and covered wall to wall in vinyl. It was really overwhelming.

We both bought some stuff. The lady overcharged me by $10 which I didn’t notice til later, but it was ok. The whole time we were out there, every time we turned a corner there was a record store. Seriously they have too many. But this was by far the best one.

More Westport.

Art fair booths/street.

We headed out and drove the 40-something miles to Lawrence, Kansas, which was where the show was. Oh, and if you didn’t know, the point of this trip was to go see Coalesce play their last show ever.

Anyway Lawrence wasn’t such a bad place to spend the day. They had a cute downtown with lots of locally owned stores. More and more record stores (I bought the new Death Cab for Cutie CD), a really cool antiques mall with stuff like this:

This place called the Yarn Barn which was an awesome awesome store. I bought some alpaca yarn that is soooo soft. We ate ice cream in a cute ice cream store and killed some time there (I fell asleep on the table and Jimmy played with his cell phone).

Also now, Jimmy has his own line of chips.

The marquee at the Granada.

The venue was cool. I guess about 500-600 people were there. The first two bands were not great, we were so bored. Nodes of Ranvier played third. I mean I’d heard them before so I wasn’t surprised. Regular moshy metalcore. Jimmy heckled the band as usual. No Firestorm cover upon request so they didn’t get cut any slack. Sorry, kids.

Coalesce were amazing. I am not a huge huge fan like Jimmy is but I like a couple of their songs a lot. But live they were awesome. Makes me sad they are broken up now. Their guitar player was so crazy to watch. He plays so fast that his hands were literally a blur.

Sorry, no pictures. I was not about to get close enough to the stage for my camera to cooperate with the dim lighting. People were acting too insane down there. Jimmy came out after their set with his shirt and shorts covered in blood (not his). Haha who knows what was going on down there.

We got back to the hotel and got a grand total of one hour sleep before we had to get ready to go to the airport. I was really glad to get home yesterday. Travel wears me out.

I want to definitely do more of it though. I want to go to Miami. And probably several places in California. And I want to go back to New York and really explore.

Other than the obvious (and apparently all coastal) locations, what is your favorite place to visit? I want recommendations for our next sojourn.

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