People & Places
Whatever Happened To…Those Other Burger Places?
It was that burger place your mom took you to after you bought shoes or the stop on the way home for an after school treat. Everybody has traditions around food — a restaurant that marks a moment in time or period in your life. Flatland recently told the story of Smaks, a local burger chain…
What Comes Next?
What happens when you can no longer be who you’ve been? Flatland profiles two Kansas Citians — an X-Games champion and a war photographer — who, at a young age, must decide what comes next. — Follow @FlatlandKC on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
Whatever Happened to Smaks?
The elephant on Johnson Drive stopped traffic. “My dad [Bill Fielder] had met a zookeeper and he asked him to bring over an elephant for the opening of Smaks,” Wes Fielder said. “You’d watch the cars out front and people would slam on their brakes to try to figure out what was going on.” The…
Kansas City’s Vietnam Era
Finding Kansas City-area Vietnam veteran John Musgrave for the upcoming PBS documentary “The Vietnam War” was “the most fortuitous thing,” filmmaker Ken Burns said last week while in Kansas City. Musgrave, long known to Kansas Citians as an eloquent and thoughtful commentator and critic on the war, has been referred to as the Shelby Foote of…
Vietnam War Refugees Succeed — and Struggle — in Kansas City
When American troops made a chaotic, embarrassed withdrawal from Vietnam in April 1975, the flood of terrified Vietnamese refugees to Kansas City began. Ty Bui, who had spent seven years in the Vietnamese military, escaped his country in August that year and, after staying in a refugee camp in Arkansas, came to Kansas City in…
As Kansas City Booms And Sprawls, Trying Not To Forget Those In Between
This summer, NPR reporters are returning to their hometowns to see how they’ve changed. Sarah McCammon grew up in Kansas City – on the Missouri side of the state line. Like a lot of places, Kansas City is experiencing a couple of major trends – suburban sprawl and, more recently, a downtown revitalization. My two…
A Ledger of Names, Mine Among Them, Tell Our Vietnam Stories
All 30 of the boys listed on the Vietnam-era Selective Service ledger were born in the spring of 1948, during America’s most prolific era of mass procreation, the end of World War II. At 18 years old, the thing first and foremost on our minds was to find a way to commit the same act…
Unimagined and Reimagined Lives
During nearly two decades as a refugee in Nepal, Laxmi Ghimire could only dream of the life she now lives in Kansas City, Kansas. She was among the Nepali-speaking Bhutanese who sought refuge in eastern Nepal in 1990, after they were exiled for advocating for social and political rights. One of their major demands was…
Into the Clock Tower
You know those doors that say “Authorized Personnel Only”? Well, we’re opening them. Join Flatland as we peel back the curtain, lift the manhole cover, go in the back door, and get unfiltered access to what’s behind the scenes in Kansas City. This month, we head to Parkville, Missouri, for a behind-the-scenes look inside the iconic central…
Home Plate: Play Ball
In the fourth and final episode, rediscover the magic of sandlot baseball during a visit to Sam and Ana Beckett’s neighborhood game, and see how the Urban Youth Academy is helping revive baseball’s future in Parade Park, a place of baseball’s past. Call of The Sandlot takes you back to the time when kids played until…