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Well downtown KC does attract a lot of people from the burbs now with all kinds of downtown activities. You can go to any cultural events in KCMO and see half JoCo plates alone. There's constant events now. But otherwise I would agree that Denver metro overall probably thinks more positively towards 'the city' than most of KC metro burbs. It is starting to change in KC as the city really is improving and more suburban people are figuring that out - but still plenty anti-urban out there.
I'm sure the new Performing Arts center and P&L district is helping a lot. Could also be that younger people aren't continuing the "downtown is a dangrous ghetto" mindset from their parents as they see things improving.
And First Fridays, more Midland/Sprint Center events and a lot of cool new bars/restaurants from downtown to Westport. It's been steadily improving over last several years but especially in the last year some new places have really raised the bar. I've been saying Xroads should be renamed to the James Beard Restaurant District as there are several places/chefs there that have won or been nominated as well as cocktail lounges that hit national lists. Westport has gone from obnoxious metro party zone with late night brawls to appealing more to upscale 30+ crowd. Adventurous suburbanites are taking notice, but you always have those who live in fear from what they see on the news about E Side, so the whole city must be bad.
And First Fridays, more Midland/Sprint Center events and a lot of cool new bars/restaurants from downtown to Westport. It's been steadily improving over last several years but especially in the last year some new places have really raised the bar. I've been saying Xroads should be renamed to the James Beard Restaurant District as there are several places/chefs there that have won or been nominated as well as cocktail lounges that hit national lists. Westport has gone from obnoxious metro party zone with late night brawls to appealing more to upscale 30+ crowd. Adventurous suburbanites are taking notice, but you always have those who live in fear from what they see on the news about E Side, so the whole city must be bad.
Momentum! Next time I'm in KC, I'll try to find time for my fun friends to show me around.
So much generalization in this thread it's laughable. Sure, things change slow in KC, it's in the midwest, where things, well generally are slower paced....duh. But to hear Menverian and Garethe spew these silly, over the top comments is annoying. According to Menverian, everybody loves going to downtown Denver, even the millions that live in the outer suburbs. I'm sure he's talked to every one of them before he states such generalizations. And according to Garethe, all 4m people that live in the Seattle area all love their downtown, not one complaint...hmmm. Then tell me Gatethe, why wouldn't the great people of Seattle approve a new arena downtown? And if they all loved downtown so much, then why was attendance at the Sonics games so low that the franchise was moved to OKC?
KC was pretty bad. It's one of the things I hated the most about KC. So many people were anti urban core.
At any event downtown like the PAC or Sprint Center, 40% of the plates will be KS (mostly JoCo). You can bet another 40% are from the Northland and other MO side suburbs and the remainder from central KCMO and outside the metro. This is normal for a city the size of KC and would basically mirror the population and demographics of the area. So lots of suburban people have always patronized downtown KC for specific events. Even so, the metro has absolutely had a terrible anti urban core attitude. It's almost part of the culture of the area for the masses in metropolitan KC to have a terrible pisspoor image of anything that's not JoCo or Lee'Summit. You couldn't carry on a conversation about central KC with most suburbanites without terrible roads, corruption, crime, bad schools, trashed areas, bums, the evil e-tax, racial slurs etc being a part of the conversation. I worked in JoCo and lived in the eastern and northern suburbs for many many years and it was not easy hearing that all the time.
Even today, I think the metro areas does have somewhat of an anti urban attitude compared to places like Denver or Seattle or Minneapolis but I know that's been changing. I mean the side effects of this are the job poaching, no regional transit etc. Look at all those that made the new Green light light rail happen in MSP. That would never happen in KC, even today. I hope it's been changing A LOT though because it was really bad there.
Seems like it is in fact starting to change. Again, KC is where Denver was 20-25 years ago even on issues such as attitude so those that have moved away more than 6-8 years ago probably only remember how negative people are about the city. I do think the younger generation has changed, even in JoCo. But the leaders in JoCo are still the same. KCMO, KCK, Independence, Northland, Lee's Summit etc seem to be ready to be one metro, but JoCo leaders continue to show that they are not ready. It will take new leadership voted in. It is what it is...
Also, I just returned from California. If you are wanting to model Kansas City's "vibrant" urban living and public transportation after someplace like San Francisco, then NO THANK YOU! San Francisco was okay, I guess, but a lot of homeless and mentally ill people everywhere. It had been suggested to take the BART instead of driving. OMG. We tried it. From what I could tell, we were on the BART with a bunch of young people who maybe didn't need or want a car, plus a lot of people who couldn't afford a car. Didn't seem to be any normal middle-aged, middle to upper middle class people on it at all. There were a lot of people reeking of pot and/or obviously under the influence of some kind of drug. We passed through areas where I would not want to get off. The BART terminals smelled like pee and there were homeless people begging for money when you got on/got off.
We had fully planned to use the BART for transportation while in San Francisco, but after taking two trips on it, we decided we'd rather drive. We had been told about the horrors of trying to drive in San Francisco, but we drove the rest of the time we were in San Francisco and had no problems. Maybe we just got lucky, but the traffic wasn't nearly as bad as we had been told, and the streets were not as hard to navigate as we had been told.
We were glad to leave San Francisco. I'm glad we saw it, but I don't ever need to go back to that "vibrant" urban area. The rest of CA was a much better experience; even LA was better than San Francisco. The people were nice enough, just not my cup of tea. And they can keep the BART. I HOPE Kansas City doesn't end up with public transportation where homeless people wait for people to disembark and the stations smell like pee and the riders are all young and/or poor. I kind of expected people from all walks of life on the BART, but that was clearly not the case.
BART is a system experiencing expansion and updating now. As you probably experienced, the train cars have not changed since the system started, which probably leads visitors to not have a great opinion of them. In my experience, I used BART growing up to go from the East Bay to SF and attend Raiders games in Oakland. As any metropolitan area, you may have some unsavory characters using public transportation and even more upper class residents (at least when I used it). I apologize for your experience at certain SF BART stations. You typically won't have those issues at the Embarcadero or Montgomery stations, yet the stations near the Civic Center have their fair share of issues. As you found out too, many people in the City drive and it's quite doable and especially since MUNI is notorious to have some problem occurring.
I too remember Hallowe'en trick-or-treat in the 1970s in Mission Hills. Crosby Kemper gave me a regular-sized chocolate bar. He was a massive man -- always seemed much taller than other adults. Mayor Berkley's parents weren't answering the bell. And H.O. Peet, scion of a founding family of Colgate-Palmolive, had gone to bed (it couldn't have been later than eight o'clock). The maid was awake, still in full, frilly regalia, and she let me into the kitchen -- institutionally sized -- to warm dinner leftovers to eat, a request which I gladly obliged.
The owners of Velvet Crème live in Prairie Village and give out popcorn balls for Halloween. I really love their house, too. They have candles burning in the all the windows.
BART is a system experiencing expansion and updating now. As you probably experienced, the train cars have not changed since the system started, which probably leads visitors to not have a great opinion of them. In my experience, I used BART growing up to go from the East Bay to SF and attend Raiders games in Oakland. As any metropolitan area, you may have some unsavory characters using public transportation and even more upper class residents (at least when I used it). I apologize for your experience at certain SF BART stations. You typically won't have those issues at the Embarcadero or Montgomery stations, yet the stations near the Civic Center have their fair share of issues. As you found out too, many people in the City drive and it's quite doable and especially since MUNI is notorious to have some problem occurring.
Actually, it was the Embarcadero station that smelled the worst. That's where we got off and we walked from there. We rode through the Civic Center, but we didn't get on or off there, so I can't comment on those stations. It was fine once we got out on the street, but smelled like urine when we got off and the smell intensified as we walked up the steps to the sidewalk. There was a homeless guy sitting at the bottom of the steps eating Chinese food with his fingers. The most aggressive homeless person I saw was close to the Ferry Building. We had walked past the Ferry Building in a northwest direction, down the street a little. There were a lot of people out and I think a lot of people were getting off work or were already off work and jogging/walking, getting dinner, etc. And the guy was following people yelling at them. But other than the BART and a few incidents it was fine.
By the way, the one thing I wish I had done is eat some Chinese food while we were there. I saw a lot of people eating Chinese food from takeout boxes and it looked really good. My husband isn't much of a fan of Chinese food so I usually only eat it when I'm with friends or alone.
I cracked up at a couple arguing at the corner of Haight and Ashbury. The man was saying "I don't want you associating with those people! You don't know who they are!" And she said "They are fine. I looked JUST LIKE THAT 20 years ago!" I was thinking more like 30 years ago. I didn't see the people they were referring to, but I imagined pot-smoking, hippie-looking people.
Geez kcmo, there is more to KC than downtown, which seems to be the only gauge you use to determine a cities lifeline. The Crossroads district along with Crown Center, Mid-Town and the Plaza are always packed with people. Downtown draws a respectable crowd for the PnL district and events at the Sprint Center and Kauffman Performing Arts Center, plus concerts at the midland theater.
There is a reason why you don't post on KCRag anymore. Guys like KCPOWERCAT, KCMax, AllthingsKC, and Fang were sick of your crap. Go over there. There's an entire thread about your pungent rants over there.
Well "dinshig", I obviously didn't mean every single person in a metro area of over 3 million loves downtown Denver. But it seems quite apparent that in Denver, there's a very different attitude toward downtown than in KC. There's a much more positive attitude toward downtown Denver than you find in KC. I hear it from coworkers who live way out in the 'burbs. They don't avoid downtown, or claim its a ghetto. They actually go there, and aren't complaining about it.
That's strange Menverian because I don't hear my friends call downtown KC ghetto and they are quite optimistic about its future. You don't even live hear, so how do you know what the "attitude" is? Oh right, you take everything kcmo writes as the scripture. Maybe your "fun" friends will show you around again and see what a City with a soul is really like versus a City of LA wannabes.
Geez kcmo, there is more to KC than downtown, which seems to be the only gauge you use to determine a cities lifeline. The Crossroads district along with Crown Center, Mid-Town and the Plaza are always packed with people. Downtown draws a respectable crowd for the PnL district and events at the Sprint Center and Kauffman Performing Arts Center, plus concerts at the midland theater.
There is a reason why you don't post on KCRag anymore. Guys like KCPOWERCAT, KCMax, AllthingsKC, and Fang were sick of your crap. Go over there. There's an entire thread about your pungent rants over there.
I've stayed away from KCRag, but I will have to go over there and take a look and see what kind of stuff kcmo's posted over there and the response to it.
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