Thoughts On Kansas City, Part Three

• There are two strip clubs I thought were good enough to check out -- Bonita Flats and Whispers.  Which one do I go to?  I was at a crossroads.  I was closer to Bonita Flats, but I thought that there was a better chance to get extras at Whispers and I was horny.  After going through a gameplan for the rest of my stay in Kansas City and figuring out if I could get to either place for a good long stay in the afternoon (that's what my stay at a workstation in the library close to me was for) I decided to throw out all logic and go to Whispers, the farther away of the two stripclubs.  I think I convinced myself that I should go to the farther club before afternoon rush hour.  But fuck me, when I got there (after a couple of detours), I arrived to see that the club ... does not open until the evening.  I would have been able to see this on TUSCL, but alas, I couldn't access it in a library because it's been listed as a porn site.  (You know, I remember being able to access porn in libraries around the Twin Cities a long time ago, then after an investigative report on Channel 4, I couldn't see it anymore.  Did the library porno ban happen nationwide at the same time?  Well, apparently not, at least not in San Francisco as of last year.  And you know what?  I'm OK with libraries banning porn.  I love porn, but I know that it ain't my right to just see it anywhere in public view.  Maybe I'm growing up, maybe I'm growing old.)
• Aside: I brought my laptop but I wasn't able to use it.  A couple days before my trip I plugged it in and planned on throwing it into my bag so I could use it when I got to Kansas City.  But for some reason I couldn't turn the thing on.  And by the time I realized I couldn't turn it on, I had to leave.  I was hoping that it was a momentary thing, that once I got to my hotel room I'd fiddle with it and it'd magically turn on.  But that didn't work.  Basically I brought a five-pound flat paperweight with me to Kansas City.  My plans of having idle time in my hotel room and firing up the tablet to either look up stuff -- like when is Whispers open -- or put an entry into this blog went up in smoke.  (The day after I came home I looked up what was wrong and promptly got it to work again.  Too fucking late, but at least it was working.)
• I drive all the way down past my hotel and to Bonita Flats, a small stand-alone building right in the middle of nowhere, buttressed by a train track.  Man, I love trains; one passed while I was leaving.  Great tableau, but inside was kind of boring.  Kansas City has this things where, once you step into the club, it feels like the club "assigns" you a girl to sit with you.  Once you are done with one girl, another girl is expected to take her place and continue the company-keeping.  I do not know why this is, nor do I know how this got to be an area-wide practice.  But I find it annoying that, unless you're sitting at the bar, you are expected to chat with someone whom you may not find sexy or worth a dance.  I wasn't totally into either dancer, but they were both fit and nice, and I got a couple tame dances from each.  There wasn't much else going on, so I left after less than an hour.  The only thing I like is that they display a computer screen of available songs to play on the club sound system.
• I went back to my hotel to get ready for the Royals game.  When preparing for the trip I thought I had foregone any chance of going to a baseball game.  I decided that these dates were the only ones I could vacation, and I checked the schedule and the team was in Anaheim.  But the day before I started hearing on the radio vague intimations that they were in fact playing the Angels at Kaufmann.  I spoke to the front desk of the hotel I was staying at -- excellent service, by the way -- and he knew they were playing at home ... because he was going to the game on that Friday.  I am sure I did not read the online schedule wrong.  Either Major League Baseball or the Royals screwed it up.
• So I take the hotel desk guy's advice and take a highway version of the back way to Kaufmann.  The map showed that the Truman Sports Complex, which comprises of both Kaumfann Stadium and Arrowhead Stadium, home to the Kansas City Chiefs, is in a huge area off to itself -- no downtown setting, like Target Field and the Metrodome.  What I did not know until I saw a huge line to get to parking areas, decided to bypass that line in order to find free street parking, then realized that there is no neighborhood from which to park on its streets and just walk to the ballpark, is that this complex is isolated.  So if there was a way to drive with my tail between my legs, well, I did that, going back onto a line for parking.
• After noting where I parked I hoped to get better luck by scalping a ticket.  But I couldn't.  I tried surreptitiously sticking my index finger out to single "need one," but nobody was selling a ticket.  That's when I realized there is no scalping allowed.  I thought it was a city ordinace, but it turns out that the State of Missouri does allow scalping.  (I get St. Louis Cardinals tickets on the streets leading up to Busch Stadium all the time.)  It's just not allowed on the Truman Complex.  I did not know that till just now.  And if I had this map of where K.C. scalpers are herded to, I could have saved myself a huge chunk of the $20+ for a great home plate but upper-deck ticket.  Geez, dedicated parking you have to pay for and tickets you have to get from the team at the box office.  Talk about your captive audience; once you decide you want to go, you might as well empty your pockets in front of them.  But that raises a question: With all this money they capture each gameday, why won't the Royals fucking spend some money?!
• Oh, the Royals lost, by the way.  This was before their surge into becoming a respectable team with a hope for the future that is kind of bright, unlike the Twinks.
• They had a fireworks show planned that evening.  Although fireworks aren't bad and I was sitting around good people, I wanted to rectify my mistake earlier in the day and jet off to Whispers.  Knowing that I'm imprisoned in the Truman Complex convinced me that I should skip the fireworks show and get the hell out of there so I could beat the traffic out of the bottlenecks of the gates.  Except that when I went to the part of the parking lot I for sure knew where I left my car, it wasn't there.  With the clock ticking with every boom and crack in the sky, I meandered up and down the aisles of the huge asphalt vehicle way station, pushing the lock and unlock buttons on rental key fob, hoping I'd hear the honk of my car signaling me to get in and escape before the throng of Royals fireworks watchers invaded.  But it was not to be.  The fireworks show ended a lot sooner than I had expected -- another victim of the Great Recession, I guess -- and I could here the people leaving Kaufmann.  At first they came in a trickle, but then it turned into a full-fledged storm.  People were getting into their cars and leaving because they knew where the fuck their cars were.  Why, aren't you people the shit?  Other people were hanging out, emptying the remaining bottles of beer they had tailgaiting before the game into their stomachs.  All the while I continued to walk around the parking lot, uselessly hoping to hear my car talk back to me.  It was finally when all the people who walked out minutes behind me left me in the parking lot where I could finally see my car, one of only dozens left, parking amid the red Solo cups and tipped-over bottles of liquor.  Turns out I was parked further towards the far end of the complex, on the far end of Arrowhead Stadium, where the Chiefs play, than I thought.  I knew I didn't park far away from both stadia, but I needed to walk as far away from Kaufmann and towards Arrowhead than I did to get to my car.  And so of course I not only did not get to leave early, but I left late, very, very late.