PARIS OF THE PLAINS

I flew to Kansas City two weeks after the 2016 Presidential election, feeling very much like an unwelcome “other” in large parts of my own country. I had the unsettling thought that I was leaving the welcoming energy of my Baltimore neighborhood for the unfriendly heart of red-state America. On the other hand, I had really enjoyed Kansas City on previous visits, with its pleasing combination of big city offerings and Midwestern friendliness. So, I told myself I should try to experience Kansas City free of my own East Coast bias filter. Instead, I would endeavor to see the city and its people through the prism of how I might find my own place here. This turned out to be an easy assignment.

Straddling two states and two rivers (Kansas and Missouri on both counts), Kansas City probably had to become an important city. It grew from a 19th century riverside settlement and gateway to westward expansion into a Heartland metropolis of two million people. At once easy-going and sophisticated, Kansas City is the kind of the place where your Uber driver from the airport will turn off the meter while you stop at the CVS on the way to your hotel, where you can buy a hand-stitched Italian wool suit from the very friendly owner of a stylish men’s store down near the city’s historic River Market, and where you can enjoy great company and a good meal at a friendly gay bar-restaurant in the historic Westport neighborhood. Home to the Chiefs and the Royals and several Fortune 500 companies, including HR Block, Hallmark Cards and Sprint, Kansas City has its share of big city attributes. Sometimes known as Paris of the Plains, owing to the prevalence of broad boulevards adorned with fountains and statues, there’s a world-class art museum here along with the stunning Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, one of the very few new performance spaces built during the recent Great Recession. The shopping center was stylishly born in Kansas City with the Country Club Plaza, a fantastic pedestrian zone built in the 1920s in a Spanish-Moorish style. KC’s barbeque is well known, of course, but the city’s food scene offers a whole lot more, including a place called the Rieger – the kind of restaurant that makes travel so much fun. The Rieger works with local farmers, brewers, distillers and even table artists to bring you a very delicious and uniquely Kansas City dining and drinking experience. There’s a diversity here that might surprise but one constant is the genuine friendliness of locals who really seem happy you came to visit.

On a lunch break during my recent visit, I joined some local colleagues for a walk from the office downtown to a pedestrian bridge that offers panoramic views of the broad Missouri River and out across the plains. Opportunity. That’s what came to mind as I took in this view. I also was reminded why I like this Kansas City place. I never feel unwelcome. Just the opposite.