-
Best Celebrity (1 Comment)
Sen. Claire McCaskill
David who? Some guy from Blue Springs might have won American Idol, but that doesn't make him the city's best celebrity. That honor goes to Sen. Claire McCaskill, who spent much of the year hyping Sen. Barack Obama on political talk shows, where her candid wisdom was a revelation to cynical...
More >>
-
Best Package (1 Comment)
Gary Forsee
Gary Forsee lost his job as chairman and CEO of Sprint last October, after the company's shareholders and board of directors could no longer stand the endless damage done by the Forsee-engineered merger with Nextel. (Early this year, Sprint had to write off $29 billion, putting it right up there...
More >>
-
Best Hot Governor
Kathleen Sebelius
Last year, we named Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius Best Politician. Sebelius seemed to have earned that recognition not just from us but also from the Democratic Party, which was smitten with her ability to govern a blood-red state. The establishment's love affair with her grew deeper in January,...
More >>
-
Best Campaign
Sean Tevis
Freedom isn't free. For Sean Tevis, the price of democracy is $8.34. The 39-year-old Olathan, a Democratic candidate for the Kansas House of Representatives, knew fundraising would be an obstacle — he was a political newbie. So on his campaign Web site, Tevis posted a comic featuring...
More >>
-
Best 15 Minutes of Fame
Kory McFarren
A trailer-dwelling man from Ness City, Kansas, rescued slow news weeks around the world in February. Kory McFarren called police on February 27 to advise them that his girlfriend, Pam Babcock, needed help. Babcock had reportedly spent two years in the bathroom; rescue workers discovered her...
More >>
-
Best Stereotypical Campaign Ads
Sam Graves' San Francisco Values Attack Ads
A struggling economy. Soaring gas prices. An unending war in Iraq. U.S. Rep. Sam Graves skipped the country's critical issues when he launched his first attack ad against former Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes. Instead, the Missouri congressman went for fearmongering in ads that played like Rush...
More >>
-
Best Political Smackdown — Kansas
Phill Kline vs. Republicans
Phill Kline promised that he wouldn't seek a full term as Johnson County district attorney. The Republican Party took Kline at his word and moved on, throwing its weight behind Steve Howe, a former assistant district attorney under longtime JoCo DA Paul Morrison. Without the prospect of a...
More >>
-
Best Political Smackdown — Missouri
Rep. Trent Skaggs vs. Reps. Steven Tilley and Brian Nieves
Trent Skaggs, a Democratic state rep from North Kansas City, almost brawled with Republican leaders on the floor of the Missouri House in April. The near melee erupted after Republicans attached a poison-pill amendment to a bill that would have raised teacher salaries. (The amendment called for...
More >>
-
Best Quote
Kansas City Councilman Ed Ford
In 2007, the city of Kansas City, Missouri, chose a former auditor to be its next mayor. An outsider might have guessed that the election of Mark Funkhouser would usher in a boring era of city politics. Boy, would that be wrong. Much of the excitement has stemmed from Funkhouser's decision to...
More >>
-
Best Media Spat
WHB 810 vs. The Kansas City Star
Sports-talk station WHB 810 regularly routs its main competitor, KCSP 610, in the ratings. In the spring, 810 host Kevin Kietzman complained on the air that The Kansas City Star was missing a great story by not devoting more coverage to 810's dominance. Kietzman took particular offense at a...
More >>
-
Best Reporter Tag Team
Micheal Mahoney, KMBC Channel 9, and Dave Helling, The Kansas City Star
Press conferences can be tedious affairs, with government officials leaning on the crutches of their prepared remarks while obligatory cameras roll. But even the biggest yawners can turn entertaining whenever bloodthirsty newshounds Micheal Mahoney and Dave Helling show up. Channel 9's Mahoney...
More >>
-
Best Correspondent
Whitney Terrell
For this election year, editors at The New York Times asked a few prominent writers to send periodic reports about how the campaigns were faring in their parts of the country. They wisely chose Kansas Citian Whitney Terrell (author of The Huntsman and The King of Kings County) to represent those...
More >>
-
Best Morning News Anchor
Dion Lim, KMBC Channel 9
We fell for Dion Lim the first time we switched on the KMBC Channel 9 morning news. Her bright smile, her doe eyes — we crushed hard on the weekday morning anchor (with underrated partner Jim Flink) as soon as she convinced us to turn off KCTV Channel 5 and Fox 4 and turn her on. And Lim's...
More >>
-
Best TV Personality
Shaun Broyls, KCTV Channel 5
On his bio page at the KCTV Channel 5 Web site, Shaun Broyls says his favorite thing about Kansas City is that "it's not St. Louis." If that isn't a way to a Kansas Citian's heart, we don't know what is. Making that bold statement is probably deserving of a Best Of all by itself. But Broyls, who...
More >>
-
Best Radio Personality
Donna Wolfe, KKFI 90.1
In a talk-radio world cluttered with pandering hosts and predictable outrage, someone like Donna Wolfe behind the mic is refreshing. As host of KKFI 90.1's Urban Connections (4 p.m. Saturdays) for the past four years, Wolfe has managed to avoid conjecture and hyperbole (as much as anyone on talk...
More >>
-
Best Blogger (1 Comment)
Kansas City With the Russian Accent
Kansas City With the Russian Accent, at kcmeesha.com, is the Web journal of a Russian Jewish expatriate who came to Kansas City in 1992. Meesha V. outwrites half the local native-English-speaking bloggers and outcharms most of the others with an original voice and smart, funny asides and...
More >>
-
Best Web Site
KCRag Forum
Reading the KCRag Forum is like that one drama-queen relative: sometimes infuriating but always entertaining. The site, which is devoted to discussing Kansas City development issues, draws a loyal group of anonymous commenters who share strong opinions on the direction of the city, with topics...
More >>
-
Best Activist — Kansas (2 Comments)
Richard Mabion
If Barack Obama hadn't already written the book, Richard Mabion might have called his memoir The Audacity of Hope. Here's a guy who lives in a neglected corridor of a struggling city in the poorest county in the state of Kansas. A guy who got inspired about economic and environmental activism by...
More >>
-
Best Activist — Missouri
Wick Thomas
On a Tuesday night in November, in a sleepy town 60 miles away with a population of 850, a tedious hearing on the construction of a new power plant took place. It's a rare person who can make such boring meetings seem worth the effort, and Wick Thomas is one of them. Thomas was thrown into the...
More >>
-
Best City Employee
Millie Crossland, Former City Clerk of Kansas City, Missouri
It's hard enough to get any city employee on the phone, let alone the head of a department. (Go ahead, call 816-513-3600, ask for the head of anything and see what happens.) Millie Crossland not only answered her phone but also seemed excited to take requests. When asked for documents —...
More >>
-
Best Bureaucrat
Dennis Murphey, Kansas City, Missouri, Chief Environmental Officer
Maybe Kansas City would be taking environmental issues to heart even without Chief Environmental Officer Dennis Murphey. After all, cities across the country are getting serious about going green. But other cities don't have Murphey behind the press releases to make sure that bureaucrats are...
More >>
-
Best Developer (1 Comment)
James Merrill
When James Merrill's Scoop-n-Scoot Ice Cream, Deli & More opened in February, The Kansas City Star put it on the front page, and the TV stations showed up soon afterward. Then came the cards and letters thanking him for opening a little ice cream store and also selling deli sandwiches,...
More >>
-
Best Neighborhood Leader
Margaret May
The Ivanhoe neighborhood is a city within a city. Straddling Bruce R. Watkins Drive from 31st Street to Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard, its territory includes approximately 3,300 homes. The area faced a litany of urban woes — crime, empty lots, resident flight — when Margaret May, a...
More >>
-
Best Church
All Souls Unitarian Universalist
"Because the Bible told me so" used to be an excuse to live it up at the Earth's expense. God created heaven and Earth and put people in charge, right? That line of thinking is starting to go out of style like stoning adulterers in the public square. Instead, the Sustainable Sanctuary Coalition...
More >>
-
Best Streetscape
Downtown Lee's Summit
For a year and a half, getting around downtown Lee's Summit sucked. Construction diverted traffic from main thoroughfares, and the detours made it hard to get to our favorite quaint boutiques and bars. But the temporary headache was worth it. The spring completion of a $13 million...
More >>
-
Best Public Bathroom
Kansas City Public Library, Central Branch
If two things were ever meant for each other, it's reading and bathrooms. The Central Branch of the Kansas City Public Library has both in a setting befitting royalty, or at least rich bankers, which is not surprising, given that the building was originally the headquarters of First National...
More >>
-
Best New Building
The Sprint Center
Yes, we know that the Anschutz Entertainment Group hasn't made good on its promise to lure an NBA or NHL team to play in that giant glass radial tire that opened last October. And, yes, we're still a little sore about that. We want to see Kobe Bryant eat the Kansas City...
More >>
-
Best Place to Meet Intelligent Women
The Bloch Building's Museum Café
Sunlight reflecting off the water in Walter De Maria's "One Sun/34 Moons" streams through the Bloch Building's windows and into the Museum Café. The stripped-down beauty of the Bloch Building sets the scene for small evening gatherings during Cultural Cocktails (from 6 to 8 p.m. on...
More >>
-
Best Place to Meet Intelligent Men (1 Comment)
Cosmology Theater
Down a set of stairs inside the Linda Hall Library lies a little jewel called the William N. Deramus III Cosmology Theater. Occupied by solitary people contemplating the universe, it's quiet, dark and sexy. On the screen, an ever-changing array of information glides past: updates on the Hubble...
More >>
-
Best Place to Make Out
Leafy Stone Circle
A question certain to occur to any couple tonguing each other in the leafy, secluded bower on the southeast side of the Nelson-Atkins grounds: Did the landscapers design this spot for lovers? A rustic nook of wild-looking plant life and old-world witchery, this smallish, stone-paved circle feels...
More >>