Italian guy seeking suggestions for my 4 days stay (Kansas City, St. Louis: sales, how much)

[northbound74]

As for Chiefs merchandise, I don't know if it's the best place or not, but there is a seasonal Arrowhead store on Noland Road in Independence. Noland is just a couple of exits east of the stadiums on I-70. I think there are others around town but not sure where.
Most discount stores like Wal-Mart also carry quite a bit of Chiefs stuff.

[kcmo]

That place is called arrowhead west. It's not that great.

Independence Center has a few good stores to buy Chiefs stuff like Moments in Sports, Champs, Pro Image. Tiger Town is cool if you like MIZZOU.

The Dicks Sporting goods near Indep Center has some stuff.

Also Ace Sports at Oak Park Mall and Sports Nutz at Village West, but those are far from the stadium and don't have anything that a store at Indep Center wouldn't have. There is a sports nuts very close to the stadium in a whole in the wall type building at Hwy 40 and Blue Ridge across from Dixons Chili.

Sportables in Crown Center too. (that's where I got my son's official moeaki jersey)

Don't overlook the Chiefs Store at the stadium. It can be expensive, but so can the mall stores and they have a lot of pretty cool stuff there and every jersey. (picked up some nice xmas gifts there).

Since you are coming in from KCI exit at Barry Road off I-29 just south of KCI (DO NOT TAKE I-435 FROM KCI, YOU WILL MISS THE ENTIRE CITY), at Zona Rosa and go to their two story Dicks Sporting goods. They always have a lot of Chiefs stuff and that store will have more than the others around town.

[aragx6]

Originally Posted by kcmo

well, yea, most the coastal cities are like that. I take buses and subways every day and it's nearly all professional commuters.

Even Denver, Minneapolis are like that to a lesser degree.

I guess I should have said KC and a few other cities.

For it's size (2 million), KC is probably the worst though. I know it has one of the smallest bus sytems in the nation for any metro over 1 million.

I just wanted to make sure our OP didn't take away anything about the US's transportation system in general from KC!

And, to be fair, at rush periods there are a fair number of professionals commuting via the 47 and 51 busses to downtown, butt hat's a subject for another thread on another day.

[brewcrew1000]

For a City of over 6 million people, i would have to say Dallas has a pretty awful transportation system. In the great plains we just have a lot more land to work with and can pretty much just keep building further and further outward.

[aragx6]

Originally Posted by brewcrew1000

For a City of over 6 million people, i would have to say Dallas has a pretty awful transportation system. In the great plains we just have a lot more land to work with and can pretty much just keep building further and further outward.

There are many spread out parts of Dallas that are terribly inaccessible to public transit, absolutely. But at least in Dallas, if public transportation is a priority for you, you can choose a neighborhood that has DART or trolley access and live a relatively painless car-less lifestyle (as much as one can in the Sunbelt anyway). That is far more difficult in a place like Kansas City, which is really just as spread out as Dallas (just on a smaller scale) but offers far fewer transportation offerings.

[fanfares]

If I were visiting KC, I would want to:

1. Eat BBQ (Gates is my favorite!)
2. Visit the Nelson Atkins (I love the giant shuttlecocks outside, I read somewhere that they were one of the most photographed things in Kansas City).
3. Visit the Plaza. (Although it's not one of my favorite places in Kansas City, the architecture and fountains are really nice to visitors and residents. Also, there is a sports store there that sells all of the Kansas City area sports team memorabilia called Rally House.)
4. Take a tour of the Boulevard Brewery (I've always wanted to do this, but haven't found the time. I'm biased because I pretty much only drink their beer).
5. Visit Westport. (I'm biased because I live here, but the best coffee in Kansas City is at Broadway Cafe, there's shopping and great food and bars. It's near the Museum, so you could easily make a day trip of the two)


Honorable Mentions: Negro League Baseball Museum, the Rivermarket (I love the antique mall there if you want to bring home bizarre souvenirs), the art galleries in the Crossroads.

Things I wouldn't bother seeing: the suburbs (they're not that interesting), the majority of Kansas (however, Lawrence is a fun day trip).

[kcmo]

You can get around dallas via transit a hell of lot better than KC. Dart rail has become quite extensive there in a rather short period of time.

[xenokc]

I ride the KC bus system daily and am a high income white collar professional, as are many who commute on the bus. kcmo (the user) , please only post about the burbs, you don't really know much about the city, is amazing how uninformed many of your posts are. The KC bus system is actually pretty large but does not run very often to the burbs. In the city core, it runs more often but not as often as the largest cities. Sunday service is pretty light.

The MAX bus will get you to the main areas of the city core with things to do. I use it almost every weekday and it's fine.

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by xenokc

I ride the KC bus system daily and am a high income white collar professional, as are many who commute on the bus. kcmo (the user) , you are an idiot (please only post about the burbs, you don't really know much about the city, is amazing how uninformed many of your posts are). The KC bus system is actually pretty large but does not run very often to the burbs. In the city core, it runs more often but not as often as the largest cities. Sunday service is pretty light.

The MAX bus will get you to the main areas of the city core with things to do. I use it almost every weekday and it's fine.

Really?

I'm from central KCMO. I only lived in the burbs a few years. I would bet I lived in more areas of central kcmo for far longer than you have. I grew up riding the metro and can still to this day name most of the routes and where they go. I rode the buses growing up and continued to ride them when I had $40,000 cars in my garage.

I have also worked in the transportation field for nearly 20 years and have personally worked on transit projects and studies in KC.

While KC has a respectable bus system in the Downtown to Brookside corridor along Main Street, the rest of the city is severely lacking and the city desperately needs something that is higher quality than MAX as its central spine and the demographics that use transit in KC leans much more to those that don't' have a choice than those that do, especially compared to other systems. On a percent basic, VERY FEW people commute or use the bus that have a choice of driving.

But the facts are that for the size of KC, it has a very small bus system and a very low daily ridership.

Metro KC has 2 million people and has a bus fleet of a little over 200 buses and a daily ridership that might reach 50,000 if they are lucky.

By comparison, Milwaukee is smaller than KC and has over 400 buses and a daily ridership of 140,000.

Austin is also smaller than KC by quite a bit, yet has a bus system that has over twice as many riders and vehicles, not to mention top quality modern facilities and a new light rail line.

San Antonio is about the same size of KC and has a transit system that is well known to be terrible for the size of the city, yet they have a daily ridership that is almost triple that of KC.

Omaha will have a full blown light rail line in place before Kansas City can get out of another study.

It is what it is.

[brewcrew1000]

I grew up in Milwaukee and can tell you that Milwaukee's bus system is much more vast and has more riders then KC. When i first moved here i thought the KC bus system was a joke. I usually see empty buses at peak times.