Thoughts On Kansas City, Part Two

• Another difference I see between Kansas City and St. Louis: The former's suburbs are newer and cleaner.  Priceline gave me a hotel on the other side of K.C. proper, in the city of Merriam, Kan.  Very modern, although in a cookie-cutter, strip mall kind of way.  But what amenities they had around the cluster of hotels I was living in those three days: There was a Denny's within walking distance and, for some reason, a BMW dealership up the hill and across the busy cross-street.  Up the frontage road, in fact, there was a small building that houses the, get this, visitor's center.  The nondescript town of Merriam, Kan. has a visitor's center.  I never went inside, but it's a very good-looking and neat building, replete with its own sitting area and, since this is Kansas City, a small fountain, both of which were kept lit throughout the night.  If I had more time I might have just walked up there to sit late at night and think.  It was that beautiful, and the area that safe.  I did take photos.
• So that night, after taking the bus back to the airport, picking up my rental and getting to my hotel, I went to the Soundgarden concert in downtown Kansas City because I had nothing else to do and it seemed to be the perfect occasion to finally catch one of my favorite bands live for the first time.  Thank Buddha this was on a Wednesday, which meant that I found parking easily, almost half a mile away from the theater but on the same street.  Getting a ticket was even better -- a guy gave me a ticket for free!!!  But I then realized, maybe, why he gave it to me: There was this one dude who wouldn't stop hounding him.  And after I got this ticket, this fucker wouldn't stop hounding me.  He apparently was homeless and was hustling to get money he didn't earn.  "Hey man, hey man," he said, "Can I get at least some money for finding the ticket for you?"  Finding the ticket???  The guy just gave it to me, you asshole!!!  But to just leave me alone, I gave him a couple bucks.  Hey, I just got a ticket to the best fucking bad on Earth for free.  I was feeling good, and I could afford to give some shiftless punk a couple dollar bills I was going to spend on the ticket.
• After I got the ticket and I wanted to take a picture of the marquee with Soundgarden's name on it.  After that I would have then gone into the theater to see the opening act, but I wanted to dump my camera in my rental car.  When I carry my camera with me I usually keep it in a pouch that has a velcro strap so I can put it around my belt and walk around with it.  But I forgot to pack a belt, and I did not want to hold a camera throughout the concert.  So I went to throw the camera back in my car and walk all the way back, short of a mile, I believe.  And when I go in, I hear the loud rumblings of "Rhinosaur," an ass-kicking Soundgarden song.  "Wait," I said to myself, "Have they started early?"  Only later did I realize that in fact there was no opening band, they just got onstage a quarter, maybe 20 minutes past 8 (according to a fan I chatted it up with as we were waiting for the crowd to leave at the end of the show).  I missed ten, 15 minutes at the most, according to him.  I looked up the setlist; "Searching With My Good Eye Closed" and "Jesus Christ Pose" were the first two songs in the set that I missed before I got there in the middle of "Rhinosaur."  I think it was for that reason, I was late, that I didn't get a t-shirt, even though I really, really wanted to.
• Winstead's is the famous diner in Kansas City.  Sat at a table underneath a part of the ceiling with water damage.  No problem with that.  Just something I noticed.
• Got lost getting home.  No fucking surprise there.  I noticed that there were a lot of similarly named streets.  Specifically, there is a numbered "Street," and then, at least in the area where I got lost, there is the same-numbered "Terrace."  So I would see, for example, 45th Street, then, a block or so later, 45th Terrace.  I forget, but I think that numbering system was the reason why I had such a difficult finding my way back to my hotel after I realized I was lost.  That's confusing as shit, and I don't know why in the hell Kansas City would name streets like that.
• The next day I drove to a "breastaurant."  Had directions to the closest Hooters, but I wanted to go to Twin Peaks because I've never been there and I've heard -- and seen! -- great things about it.  First of all, it took me a good half-hour to find it: Even though it's in a strip mall, it's a huge fucking strip mall, and I thought I could easily see the signage from the road, but I couldn't, so I had to drive in and around and through this gigantic, extremely busy lunchtime traffic to find Twin Peaks.  Finally, well after 1, which to me is the very last time of the day to eat lunch, I found it -- a faux-log cabin which nonetheless had every space in their parking lot packed so I had to use the spillover parking from the stripmall.  I was pissed as all fuck that I wasted so much goddamn time just trying to find a parking spot ... but alas, once I saw all the waitresses wearing Daisy Dukes and lumberjack-plaid tops tied tight in the middle so it shows a lot of their bellies and is pushed up so much that the cleavages there are long enough to slip dollars in the long way (and seriously, dudes, I thought I could almost see areolas there ... my evil urges were creeping up), I was OK.  The food was nice and the beer was cold, but otherwise I didn't see much difference between Twin Peaks and Hooters.
• The difference, at least for this day, at least for the time being, were the girls.  I went to two different Hooters twice, and besides my second visit, early in the afternoon of the day I left, where I actually had a conversation with a pretty girl (not insanely hot; she had long, straight hair just like Marcia Brady but she told me all about nursing school), we're talking about stripper hot at Twin Peaks.  Actually, let me put it in Washington Park terms: If the two Hooters I visited in Kansas City were C-Mowe's, Twin Peaks is Hollywood Show Club.  We'll see if this keeps up.
• Sat at the bar because there was no other spot available.  Sat next to a guy who apparently was a regular.  He boasted that Twin Peaks is so good that they will run Hooters out of business.  He said, probably in a buzzed state, that the babes here are not stuck up and that the food is better.  Well, the food is just about the same, and the girls here are nicer probably because they flirt a lot more.  Again, we'll see if this keeps up.  He did hasten to caution that the easy-to-talk-to women doesn't mean they're whores or anything like that, but really, I think deep down he believes that he's going to be able to fuck one of them.  I mean he grabbed hugs from half a dozen girls before he took off!