KC Confidential

As concert reviews go, writer Hampton Stevens coverage of Kanrocksas in The Atlantic was something of an anomaly…

"A Rock Festival, as Seen for its Trash," reads the headline.

"On a sweltering night five days ago, the thick, newly-trampled grass of the Kansas Speedway was glazed by multicolored confetti, fallen steamers, shards of popped balloons, and luminous, half-spent glow-sticks," Stevens begins. "The white stage lights were glinting off the hundreds of aluminum cans and plastic bottles that once held water, soda, sports drinks, liquor and beer.

"This was the waste of the inaugural Kanrocksas Music Festival, which boasted an impressive lineup that included Eminem, Muse, Flogging Molly, Primus, Kid Cudi, A Perfect Circle, D12, Okay Go, Cage the Elephant, and Ween."

Stevens even bestowed a Kanrocksas "prettiest trash" distinction on The Flaming Lips – a "high honor…made even more impressive by the presence on the bill of Bassnectar and Girl Talk, whose audiences also know a thing or two about popped balloons and glow sticks," Hampton quipped. "The Lips’ trash was so pretty, in fact, it was almost a shame to see the janitorial teams from City Wide Maintenance come to clean it up. But come they did, just as their crews in red tunics did after every one of the almost three-dozen performances at the two-day event."

The flip side of all that, uh, "pretty" trash: The porta potty action.

"The human waste removal process was even more elegant, especially by music festival standards," Stevens writes. "Kanrocksas fans were blessed with 441 state-of-the-art ‘Johnny On The Spot’ portable toilets, or JOTS, delivered and serviced by a 10-worker team from Deffenbaugh Industries."

Hampton’s human waste research provides a window into Kanrocksas dissapointing attendance.

Seems the number of portable toilets needed was pre-determined by calculating the festival’s expected attendance. Along with things like weather, dude to chick ratio, concession sales, etc.

However, Kanrocksas guessed high and "the underwhelming attendance—which peaked at around 35,000 fans for Slim Shady’s set—meant that anyone who did go to the festival experienced luxurious bathroom conditions," Hampton writes. "The entire weekend, in fact, the crowd produced a mere 40,000 gallons of human waste, using only 2,900 rolls of toilet paper (along with, reassuringly, 420 bags of hand-sanitizer)."

Got that?

So first rate were the johns at Kanrocksas that Hampton was able to collect testamonials from concertgoers about actually sitting down (as opposed to straddling) and being able to "actually breathe" while inside.

Nice!

Other highlights of Hampton’s waste case include anecdotes about a dude talking to and hugging a toilet and a KCK cop’s unsupported urban legend about a concertgoer ditching a large plastic bag filled with pot, coke, mushrooms, Oxycontin and heroin in one of the portas.

Like I said, you don’t read concert reviews like this every day….

We all make mistakes….

And some of you like nothing more than to document mine. Be it a lowly typo or spelling error. Fair enough. But within reason, KC Confidential has been reasonably transparent about allowing readers to have their say. Even against our/my better judgement.

That said, how lame and transparent is it, when Kansas City’s paper of record writes a story about a prickly subject – a curfew aimed at young blacks on the white-as-can-be Country Club Plaza – and puts it to bed tonight sans the ability for readers to register a comment.

Not one.

Are they afraid – in their largely white, Anglo-Saxon worlds – that someone may utter something politically incorrect while they slumber in suburban beds. Of course they are.

While they prepare to pilot their $40,000-plus Volvo Coupe convertibles to the office on Monday.

So it is tonight, as easily predicted, that everything was quiet on the Plaza. Funny, they didn’t bother to report on the other entertainment zones being curfewed; 18th and Vine, Power & Light, Westport. Speaking of which…

The word I got is, the Young Jeezy festival thingy went off without a hitch. That said, chances were, if there was to be any trouble tonight, that would have been the top candidate. The moral of the story being that every gathering of urban, black youths is not destined to end in violence.

Most of the summer-long Plaza youth gang bangs – the ones the Star and other media largely ignored – went off for the most part without a hitch. A fight maybe, some pepper spray here or there. You don’t think that happens on the Plaza, Westport, Brookside, Waldo and gosh-knows-where week in and week out anyway?

Let’s end this one a positive note, shall we?

My favorite quote line from the Star‘s puff piece tonight headlined, ‘Kids Enjoy Plaza – With Their Parents’:

"The scene bore no resemblance to the chaos of many Saturdays this summer."

A tacit admission that the newspaper had ridden out a summer of uncomfortable news about unruly black kids until shots were fired.

Nice!

We’ve got a funny news media in this town…

And I’m not just talking about the Star – Kansas City’s 800 pound gorilla – although count them in. The situation with young black kids hanging out in mostly white areas where they’re not wanted has been going on for years. More than 10.

None of this is  new. And with rare exception, It’s not about buzzwords like "flash mobs."

I covered this at the Star for years in my column. More often than not when no one else at the newspaper was covering it. So allow me to shoot from the hip for a minute to make a point.

I can’t tell you how many times over the years I reported on the problems with young, urban blacks at AMC’s Ward Parkway theaters. I haven’t been out there at night this summer, but they still have the signs posted in the mall obviously pointed directly at those problems.

I covered the exact same troubles off and on for years at AMC’s Crown Center theaters. One night I got pelted from behind by kids in the crowd just walking down the sidewalk. They didn’t know who I was, just some lanky, white loser dude. City busses were brought in to load the kids on when the movies were over and transport them back to the inner city.

Sound a little racist? Crown Center sure as heck didn’t want those kids ’em hanging out front of the mall twidlling their thumbs.

Ultimately Crown Center’s theaters were closed and only guardedly were a couple screens allowed to reopen as a Screenland playing art movies no self respecting urban teen would be caught dead at.

Remember when the problem migrated to Johnson County in 2005 to the Cinemark Merriam?

Merriam Police instituted "no loitering" rules, the theater posted signs, locked its doors and met the problem head on.

Unlike its twin sister the Cinemark Palace on the Plaza which has been at the center of the problem. And not just this year, for years. I remember the show of force, Plaza Security and KCPD that were mustered in the middle of the street just out side the mall’s entrance. The giant flood lights installed overhead to make sure there would be no shadowy hanky panky going down and to discourage the kids from hanging there.

So when a spokesman for the Kansas City Police told me on the record in late July the Plaza problem had been going on most of the summer but that the local news media hadn’t covered it, I wasn’t surprised.

Now a couple shots ring out last Saturday while the mayor was down trying to sweep things under the carpet and suddenly it’s hell-bent-for-election time to fix the problem. Once and for all.

It’s a joke….

Pretty much anybody who’s been following how this game is played knows that with summer more-or-less up, cooler temps and rain on the way, that it was unlikey there would be a problem tonight. The forecast for rain today has been out for several days and unless something unusual happens, that oughta take care of the situation.

This way though, the mayor can claim some kind of victory as though last night and tonight’s show of force actually mattered.

It didn’t…

The city and media made sure there was plenty about hoopla about last night, for example, but that was ridiculous. Hello! It’s a Saturday night problem, not a Friday night one.

Frankly I’m embarrassed for the Star reporters who got sent to the Plaza to "report" on a situation that didn’t exist as though great strides were being made because of the new curfew and show of force. Woulda looked about the same if they’d gone down last Friday.

Today’s the big day, for crying out loud.

But the end of summer, cooler temps and rain will go a helluva lot farther in keeping down tonight’s crowds than any curfew. Matter of fact, if there is a problem, despite the weather, it may well come about in the form of a protest against and because of the new curfew.

Anyway, look for more so-called news stories tomorrow from the folks who failed to report on the situation all summer long.

Forget about the so-called local sports talk radio war…

Jock sniffers have waged those for decades and will continue until the end of days, as long as know-it-alls roam the radio dial. I mean, how easily entertained are we when a sleepy, bored Jason Whitlock calling into Nick Wright‘s show on 610 Sports causes local bloggers to behave like they just witnessed the Thrilla in Manila?

Hyperbole aside, are local sports fans really that bored? Well, it is Royals season.

But what amounts to a family blood feud errupted yesterday on KMBZ host Darla Jaye’s show…

No Whitlock-like pussyfooting around, this was the real deal. Blogger and KC Confidential contributor Tony Botello was doing his weekly stint on Jaye’s show and talking about getting sued for defamation when all hell broke lose.

"Nick Wright called him – he’s the son of the guy who’s suing Tony – and Darla pretty well stayed out of it and it was just an assslapping between those two

guys," says earwitness Jack Poessiger. "It was hard hitting radio and they both did good. Tony said things like, ‘How would you know? You don’t live on the street; you were born in the uppity-up wherever and went to Barstow.’

"And Nick was sticking up for his dad more-or-less and defended his dad’s lawsuit against Tony. And Tony said he hadn’t been served yet."

How wild was it?

"They were hollaring at each other," Poessiger says. "It was a wild confrontation."

Wright’s take on the radio rumble:

"I don’t like people making up lies about me or my family, so I foolishly called the show attempting to have a discussion about the definition of defamation. It quickly turned into a rant by Tony on ‘priviledge,’ what high school I went to, and, bizarrely, the race of my girlfriend. Not surprisingly, nothing was accomplished.""

Now Tony:

"The nice thing about it was it gave me the opportunity to call Nick out for being an Eminem wannabe. You know what? I’ve been on the radio tons of times and I’ve never had anything like that reaction. That’s probably one of my best guest appearances ever."

"It went on for about 15 minutes," Poessiger concludes, "and Darla finally came in and said, ‘Nick, I’m going to say goodbye.  You’ve been on long enough.’ "

I wanted to start this off with something like, "Nobody likes a lawsuit"…

But I’d be lying.  Lawyers like ’em.  People who work at law firms must as well. It’s a paycheck. Judges probably like ’em. People who think they’re gonna win, kick somebody’s ass and / or make a boatload of money undoubtedly like ’em.

So how about this instead? People who get slapped with lawsuits don’t like em. They cost money, take lots of time and sometimes you lose. Meaning more money, more time and more stress.

When Louie Wright, president of Local 42 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, filed a defamation lawsuit against blogger / KC Confidential contributor Tony Botello this week, Botello wasn’t happy.

"I am both ill-equipped and completely unprepared to face a lawsuit of any kind…" he emailed the Pitch."This probably means the end of the blog."

Wait! The end of Tony’s Kansas City? No way! Really?

"Not anytime soon but it’s definitely a possibility and it shows people the real stakes of the game," Botello shot back.

"Well, if they do hit me with the multi-million dollar verdict, I think that makes it pretty much open season on me," he says. "So it wouldn’t be worth it."

While Wright’s legal objective remains to be learned, chances are he’s not suffering from delusions of grandeur and fantasizing about getting his fire fighting mitts on Botello’s Ferrari, his Mission Hills manse or Swiss ski chalet. Or anything else, for that matter.

Because Botello lives in a cheapie basement apartment (but not his mom’s), drives a clunker and has just enough money to keep what passes for the proverbial wolf away from his actual door.

And not much more.

So is there another motive? Some wonder if it isn’t to get Tony to give up his sources, named as John Doe’s in the suit.

Might they be firefighters, union reps, political power brokers, strippers? Don’t ask me, I have no idea.

The fact remains however that lawsuits can be very expensive and very painful. Well into five figures and if it goes to trial six-plus. Tony knows this. And what he appears to be saying is, if he takes a huge hit, chances are he won’t stick around to take another.

Unfortunately, that’s life in the big leagues…