KCRag Forum

Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, The James Gang, Doc Holliday, Pony Express, wagon trains. Maybe none of those are strictly cowboy culture, but they all sure say "Old West". People don't go to P&L for a history lesson, they go for fun, right?

Yeah, not really cowboy rodeo culture, which is my point. And there wasn't country/western music produced out of KC, a clear sign not part of that culture - it was ragtime/blues/jazz. Cordish is stereotyping that KC does come from cowboy culture as do many locals who don't understand the difference. It perpetuates when not corrected or falsely accepted.

KC's identity is being a rail center most of its existence, a blue/jazz center as well as a cow/meat processing industry along with it like Chicago and Cincy. All 3 can be called cowtowns but were not truly a rodeo wrangling culture like the SW.

the American Royal brought cowboy culture here. It’s definitely a more artificial than organic identity but a part of our identity nonetheless. Just embrace it

Artificial is exactly what it is. Yet the rail industry was more real and still is. That is KC's true identity, as well as the music that came out of KC, which wasn't country/western. Playing up cowboy as a primary identity is indeed artificial, imported at best. Why embrace something as a primary KC identity that is really a SW thing?

How much cooler would it be to to have signs of a jazz band like this.....



...than of this?



I know StrangerThings' defense was that it gets photographed a lot, but honestly I think anything blown up to that size would get photographed a lot. We already have a precedent of sorts right in the same development!

The band would look pretty cool

Love trains. Love jazz. I agree with you in your wishes that Cordish had chosen one of those instead of Country.

missingkc wrote:Love trains. Love jazz. I agree with you in your wishes that Cordish had chosen one of those instead of Country.

Lets just put up a sign of jazz players in a train on the roof of our new downtown Bass Pro Shop

ldai_phs wrote:

missingkc wrote:Love trains. Love jazz. I agree with you in your wishes that Cordish had chosen one of those instead of Country.

Lets just put up a sign of jazz players in a train on the roof of our new downtown Bass Pro Shop

But then where would the oversized crappie statue go?

JBmidtown wrote:the American Royal brought cowboy culture here. It’s definitely a more artificial than organic identity but a part of our identity nonetheless. Just embrace it

Sort of. The FFA is what held the American Royal together for so many years. As soon as KC lost the FAA convention, attendance at the AR dropped like a rock. The AR just never drew very well from the metro area. KC does not even host a major rodeo event. Denver, Vegas etc are more cowtown than KC is or ever was. Dallas, Houston, OKC, especially Fort Worth are cowtowns. KC was a cattle meat packing and distribution center like Chicago, but it never really had a cowtown or any real rural/country culture.

KC was more "city" with an urban an sophisticated style back int he 20's and 30's than it is today. KC was about prohibition, the mafia, jazz and blues etc. It had one of the largest transit systems in the country, the city was building more skyscrapers than most cities in the country at the time. A large amount of passenger train traffic passed through Union Station in KC.

The Cowtown thing is totally manufactured mostly be people not from KC and Hollywood. People just assume Kansas City is a cowtown kind of place.

There is nothing wrong with embracing a cowtown heritage. Even Sacramento has done that because Sacramento is more of a true Cowtown than KC was. But when you don't really have a cowtown heritage outside of off loading cows off trains to be slaughtered, then it really just doesn't make sense to "embrace" it.

KC (mostly the suburbs) can be very blue collar. But it's not the country cowboy type stuff you see in Texas, Oklahoma etc. You rarely even see a cowboy hat in KC unless the suburbanites are wearing them to a country bar or country concert.

That's why that stupid sign cowboy sign in the P&L district is so annoying. It would be fine in Nashville or Dallas, but it just doesn't make any sense in KC.

GRID wrote:

JBmidtown wrote:the American Royal brought cowboy culture here. It’s definitely a more artificial than organic identity but a part of our identity nonetheless. Just embrace it

Sort of. The FFA is what held the American Royal together for so many years. As soon as KC lost the FAA convention, attendance at the AR dropped like a rock. The AR just never drew very well from the metro area. KC does not even host a major rodeo event. Denver, Vegas etc are more cowtown than KC is or ever was. Dallas, Houston, OKC, especially Fort Worth are cowtowns. KC was a cattle meat packing and distribution center like Chicago, but it never really had a cowtown or any real rural/country culture.

KC was more "city" with an urban an sophisticated style back int he 20's and 30's than it is today. KC was about prohibition, the mafia, jazz and blues etc. It had one of the largest transit systems in the country, the city was building more skyscrapers than most cities in the country at the time. A large amount of passenger train traffic passed through Union Station in KC.

The Cowtown thing is totally manufactured mostly be people not from KC and Hollywood. People just assume Kansas City is a cowtown kind of place.

There is nothing wrong with embracing a cowtown heritage. Even Sacramento has done that because Sacramento is more of a true Cowtown than KC was. But when you don't really have a cowtown heritage outside of off loading cows off trains to be slaughtered, then it really just doesn't make sense to "embrace" it.

KC (mostly the suburbs) can be very blue collar. But it's not the country cowboy type stuff you see in Texas, Oklahoma etc. You rarely even see a cowboy hat in KC unless the suburbanites are wearing them to a country bar or country concert.

That's why that stupid sign cowboy sign in the P&L district is so annoying. It would be fine in Nashville or Dallas, but it just doesn't make any sense in KC.

KC and Penn Station were built with the same number of tracks. We kept the head house and they kept the tracks.

I support either no sign or a jazz/baseball/cultural sign. Maybe the guy from the Spirit of Kansas City?

I support that.

TheLastGentleman wrote:I support that.

That man needs a new statue

Yeah, the sign is tacky and lame. I don’t know how anyone would argue otherwise. It also actually seems as or more authentic to me than pretending the pop culture of the past matters to anyone here or that it should.

I think STs has stated before the sign is there because of the PBR bar. And why is this being discussed in the Loews Hotel thread? I don't see what the big deal is. And btw, the roof over the Live District looks terrible. It's obviously been patched up.

KC_JAYHAWK wrote:I think STs has stated before the sign is there because of the PBR bar. And why is this being discussed in the Loews Hotel thread? I don't see what the big deal is. And btw, the roof over the Live District looks terrible. It's obviously been patched up.

If it were just a sign for the PBR bar, that's fine, but the thing is huge and is one of the largest and most visible structures in all of Downtown. It's not a big deal. I just think it's super tacky again, feeds off the image of KC, not what KC really is.

TheLastGentleman wrote:http://kcmo.gov/news/2017/kansas-city-n ... by-unesco/

Oh! An official certificate of authenticity! Bet that will settle my snark.

chingon wrote:

TheLastGentleman wrote:http://kcmo.gov/news/2017/kansas-city-n ... by-unesco/

Oh! An official certificate of authenticity! Bet that will settle my snark.

I surrender. If the United Nations itself can't silence your snark, nothing will

flyingember wrote:

Darlene wrote:I like the idea of a Bass pro Shop downtown. Would make a good addition for visitors.

I can't picture where a building that big would fit

The Bass Pro shop itself in Branson is quite small and would work in a downtown retail location. The problem would be having an area to display and service boats. Drop the boats and it works.