KC Confidential.com

This just in from KC Mayor Mark Funkhouser re his eyewitnessing of last weekend’s P&L brawl…

The Funk was hanging with Star editorialist Yael Abouhalkah in the post midnight hours Saturday when the reported stabbings and 20-person melee went down. It was what Funkhouser refers to jokingly as Yael & Funk’s Excellent Adventure.

“Well, I wanted to go down and see what was happening,” Funkhouser says.

The highlight of their Odd Couple Adventure went down after 2 a.m. when they were hanging at the Lucky Strike bowling alley.

“Right when we were getting ready to leave we saw some people being ushered out,” Funk says. “Including a six foot tall Aisan kid who looked like he had been punched and his girlfriend who was just sobbing profusely. I mean, she was out of control screaming and crying, and she’d been hit in the face and was bleeding from the face. And I just sort of stood there to see what was going to happen next. The Asian kid was injured and obvioulsy very angry and upset, and he couldn’t figure out whether to go back in there or stay and comfort his girlfriend. Then the Kansas City police ushered an African American kid out that seemed to be the perpetrator. And when Yael and I were leaving the parking garage there were a whole lot of emergency vehicles.”

The $64 million question: was it a bowling date, as P&L District sources claimed?

“No,” Funk says. “I’ve bowled probably 10 times in my whole life.”

Rather it was “a friendly mission” to check out the Power & Fight District’s late night action, Funkhouser says. “Nothing social.”

Is there a social relationship between the Funk and the Yael?

“Yael and I? No,” Funk says. “I mean, we’ve gotten together before. We’ve had a relationship ever since I got to town. But I mean, we’ve had a collegial relationship – but no social.”

Funk’s take on Abouhalkah’s blog posting of the night’s sights, including that “the wide diversity of the crowd was extremely noticeable,” the “bars were crowded, filled with extremely loud music, young people drinking and dirty dancing,” the mayor was extremely popular with young people and that the P&L was “draining customers from (other area businesses) and, thus, tax revenues from City Hall”:

“His write up was extremely accurate,” Funkhouser says. “I was actually surprised. You know, he could make an excellent reporter.”

BTW: Funk could not be reached late yesterday and Abouhalkah did not return a call to address if they had bowled at Lucky Strike as claimed, where the pair witnessed a portion of the night’s violence.