the Plaza riot (Independence, Lee's Summit, Blue Springs: section 8, apartments, city hall)

[thriftylefty]

KCMO ,Just stay and slug it out, you got fans out here

[TabulaRasa]

Another transplant to KC who moved here with no dog in the KS vs. MO fight, or the JoCo vs. Everybody Else Who's Not JoCo fight...it is pretty annoying, and after a few years' observation as a relative outsider to all the animosity, I was perfectly able to piece together my own preferences and opinions, and remain a proud MO side resident and worker. I moved here having lived in a much larger metro that has more than its share of hoity-toity suburbs, and am no stranger to the attitudes that lie therein (or the attitudes of hardcore urban boosters, for that matter)...but there is hostility and animosity and, yes, blatant segregation in the KC metro like I have never experienced elsewhere in an urban setting.

Fact - the Plaza is and will in all likelihood remain KC's showplace.
Fact - the people who want to dismiss KC as dangerous/ghetto/lower class overall will jump at any chance to bolster their argument, even though a bunch of moron kids could put the apparently considerable time they have on their hands just as as easily toward causing the exact same type of trouble virtually anywhere...including in THEIR backyards.

[IamKateyKaboom]

Hi Guys,

When I think of everything I love about KC, I don't think of just one part of town. I'm proud to call the entire metropolitan area my hometown, including KCMO, Independence, JoCo, NKC, etc. Of course, like any city, there are some blighted areas, but I love how KCMO has so much character and culture - and I cherish my drives through Brookside, Waldo and the Plaza. I also love Lenexa, where I was raised, because it's very pretty and clean, although it's the suburbs. KCK has the Legends, which I can't wait to explore, and NKC has Zona Rosa, which I've only seen a little bit of. I like Overland Park and Leawood, but personally, I wouldn't want a gigantor mansion out past 119th Street in OP, but to each his own.

When we move back to KC, I'm not going to stop going to the Plaza because of some stupid punk kids, because their little "riot" could happen anywhere, even deep in JoCo. I wrote the KCMOPD about this issue because, like the rest of you, the Plaza means a lot to me and I want to be able to go there on a regular basis. It's a terrible, terrible thing that happened, and I hope they start to crack down because I know I'd be pretty upset/disturbed if someone pushed me/beat me/snatched my purse.

I know people are always going to have opinions about what side of KC they prefer, and that's fine; I just don't think any side is necessarily better than the other. More than likely, I will be living in Shawnee or Lenexa when I move, so I can be close to my grandfather, who lives in Shawnee and is getting older. That doesn't mean that I don't appreciate the city as a whole. I remember when I was younger, living JoCo, as a nerdy, brace-face teenager and my cousin from Liberty would visit me and we would go to Oak Park Mall. She would say, "UGH I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU LIVE HERE - I HATE IT SOOOO MUCH!", but whatever. Every living situation has its advantages and disadvantages.

When people ask me where I'm from, I say Kansas City, I don't say Johnson County. I don't think of myself as a pretentious JoCo person - maybe it's because I've lived outside of the city for so long, I don't know. I just hope people can see me for who I am, not the county that's listed on my license plate.

Sorry for the rant. Have a great day!

[Mathguy]

Oh yeah, let's not forget first fridays downtown...I will be at either the May or June one for sure....love that.

Let's also not forget the irony that without KCMO...the metro area would be horribly diminished in things to do....and without all the people (and lets face it...money) from the KC suburbs the Plaza, P&L, Zoo, sports events, concerts etc. would be vastly less attended.

We ALL support the area as a whole whether we like to admit it by drawing imaginary lines on paper or not.

[OneKC]

I agree 10000000% with the last three posts. If everyone in the metro had your attitude, there is no telling what this metro area could accomplish.

[kcmo]

So I go to the Star's website to catch up on KC news and there was a shooting in a Blue Springs QT, two people were shot and killed in Lee's Summit and some dude was shot and killed in Shawnee. I also see that NKC schools are laying off 80 teachers? That's at lot for that size of a district. I mean disctricts out here have 150,000 students in them and they are avoiding any teacher layoffs. KCMOSD is laying off 700. You know the crime in KC may have something to do with the overall low taxes there (not enough for schools) and of course the racial tension there. Not really sure what the hell is wrong with KC anymore, but I have been thinking at lot about it.

Do you know that we shop at malls out here all the time that would go out of business in a year if they were in metro KC? I go to a mall and I see Bannister Mall right before all the whites fled like cockroaches. A very diverse population racially, culturally and economically. But still a thriving shopping, dining area. Sure, you will see groups of black teens at a movie theater, but you can walk right by them as a white family and not think twice about it. Bannister Mall was fine. As a person interested in urban planning since I was in middle school, I watched what happened with Bannister Mall with far more interest and detail than the average KC person, plus I lived and worked near there. The mall DID NOT GET BAD TILL EVERYBODY QUIT GOING THERE. Once the whites left, there was not enough people to support the area and it quickly turned bad. I'm not sure you will see an example of 4 million square feet of retail going up in a growing suburban area, becoming one the nation's hottest suburban retail areas and then failing and closing all in a matter of 7-10 years anywhere in the country. All due to racial tension. The guard towers, the city buses (people in KC freak out with "bus people", god they wouldn't last 2 seconds here), the media coverage (imagine KCTV times five since Bannister Mall was much easier to destroy for sake of media revenue than the beloved Country Club Plaza), although KCTV has no such allegiance.

I think much of KC's problem goes back to race from blacks and whites. I think the whites still flee from blacks and I think the blacks resent that and generally resent whites in the KC area while at the same time, a good number of un-educated blacks in KC are stuck in a rut of "the whites keep me down". I think this creates instances where it's difficult to get 20 blacks together in KC without creating problems or having "thugs" among them. Where here, it seems like the thugs are generally replaced with teens of other races. If that makes sense. Basically here, most groups of teens you see are very racially diverse. A few blacks, a few whites, a couple of asians, a hispanic all sitting together at a Chipolte being teens.

Whatever it is, the problem is huge.

Out here, people dot not think twice about a black family moving in next door or even if an entire block became black. In KC that still causes white flight. Maybe it's because you can't just move ten miles to a white area, few areas like that exist or it may be too expensive or increase commutes too much. This may have forced better integration. I don't know.

This plaza thing for example. I understand there were thugs among the group that were getting a kick out of all the attention they get from the police state environment they create with choppers buzzing around to the mass exodus of "paying customers". But how do they know this? I have a feeling it's because in KC, if a group of 10 young blacks show up to a movie theater, they see the tension in the whites, they see the security presence increase instantly.

If these kids return to the same movie theater more than once, the theater quickly gets a reputation as "a bad area" even if the kids did nothing you wouldn't see from a dozen white kids at the Leawood Town Center theater.

As young adults, they could feed on this resentment and hostility and dumb as it is, start to mess with police and innocent people.

I don't know what the answer is but I had a huge wake up call when we first moved to DC.

We were in a suburb, an middle class to upscale suburb, but a suburb that is probably 50% black and 30% white. As we were driving near a strip mall, a half dozen or so black teens walked by my car. They actually looked like they were walking to the convenience store from school or something, some had backpacks.

My 12 year old son asked. "Are we were in the ghetto?"

From that day on, I have been somewhat relieved to get away from the Midwest because I guarantee you that I didn't teach my son that, but he picked it up from people he associates with be it friends or family.

I proceeded to tell him that those are just "normal" kids! They are just walking, maybe to get a soda, just like you do with your friends to Sonic!

DC is FAR from racial utopia, but much of it is light years ahead of places like KC. I don't know what the answer is, but we still have a long way to go to fix it. The entire country. KC is just about 20 years behind. Kind of like everything else, cough transit cough .

[OneKC]

Golly gee mister, I might agree with you but, I don't know how this darn-fangled interwebs thing works! Maybe you big city DC folk could learn us KC folk a thing or two to get us into the 20th century?

[thriftylefty]

IMO one thing that sets KC as well as the Midwest apart from other areas of the US is a person can isolate them selves from minority populations with out being very wealthy. There are not large percentages of minorities in Midwestern states. I remember Quindaro BLVD from about 13th to State Hwy 5 all the way to the next county was multi-ethnic. Maybe 435 hurt a lot of the community feel the whole area had. The preferred areas suddenly became outside on near the edge of 435. I will prolly relocate back in a year or two but I'm looking at outside of the 435 loop

[kcmo]

It has nothing to do with "big city" DC is simply a few KC's next to each other.

I honestly think out of control sprawl and political boundaries are 90% of KC's problems.

But way to take the high road with the sarcasm! That should really help!

[OneKC]

Originally Posted by kcmo

But way to take the high road with the sarcasm! That should really help!

As should the patronizing attitude by out-of-towners.