KCRag Forum

"You're gonna wanna get that foam dry cleaned before you let anyone else move in here."

I have a neighbor who plays drums in the garage of his SFH, and he's on the next block over. It's maddening. I mean it. There are times I want to start hurling bricks over the back fence. It's all day long on weekends sometimes, and well past 10 pm on some nights. It sounds like some kind of Latin polka music.

People who park in front of driveways.

Walking the dog off leash - this isn't your f+++ing farm!

Cleaning the car by dumping its contents on to the street.

DaveKCMO wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2019 8:23 am Do not move to my building.

Most condos and apartments aren't designed for that kind of noise isolation.

That pretty much settles it for me. I've flirted with buying a condo in KC but my wife is a professional pianist and earns her living as such. I am more of a hack but still enjoy playing guitar enough to not to want to be limited by the fear that I would become a nuisance to my neighbors.

Good to know though. I can concentrate entirely on SF dwellings yet still in the urban core.

Highlander wrote: ↑Tue Jul 09, 2019 10:48 pm

DaveKCMO wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2019 8:23 am Do not move to my building.

Most condos and apartments aren't designed for that kind of noise isolation.

That pretty much settles it for me. I've flirted with buying a condo in KC but my wife is a professional pianist and earns her living as such. I am more of a hack but still enjoy playing guitar enough to not to want to be limited by the fear that I would become a nuisance to my neighbors.

Good to know though. I can concentrate entirely on SF dwellings yet still in the urban core.

Perhaps you would consider a townhome in the downtown area? https://www.realtor.com/realestateandho ... 55?view=qv

johnmatrix wrote: ↑Tue Jul 09, 2019 10:35 am People who park in front of driveways.

driveways in urban neighborhoods period. spent a record-shattering (never have ever spent so much time in chicago looking for on-street parking) time looking for on-street parking every night in a neighborhood of los angeles i was staying in last weekend that was riddled with driveways and no-parking areas. built density was about like midtown kansas city but with a really robust commercial corridor that ate up a lot of side street parking.

^ I hate it also, in Milwaukee we never had to deal with driveways that went out to the street, most of the urban parts of the Milwaukee had alleys and garages in the back

^ I hate it also, in Milwaukee we never had to deal with driveways that went out to the street, most of the urban parts of the Milwaukee had alleys and garages in the back

Yeah, I've thought about this a lot while house hunting. Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis all developed with a robust street and alley grid, although all of them are still made up of primarily single-family homes (albeit in typically denser arrangements). For some reason KC never did, at least not nearly as extensively (outside of downtown). This applies even to the residential neighborhoods that would have developed concurrently with older cities like STL, such as Northeast, Hyde Park, Volker, (basically all of midtown) etc. Why is that?

I believe a lot of the houses in midtown had some kind of parking/path for Carriages and horse in the back of the houses, maybe this kind of design was more secure in case people stole horses/carriages. I'm just throwing it out there, i am probably wrong, just a thought that came to mind.

KC was less dense as these other cities so maybe they didn't need the alley's?

the discretion of a city engineer maintaining standards for any area? no clue. look at a city like los angeles, as already referenced, and lower beverly hills has a very strong alley system, while highland park is a giant jumble of weird lanes and driveways everywhere.

Urban Living Pet Peeves... Here's one for you. People who live in an urban area but refuse to act like it. My little brother moved to town recently and got a place only a couple blocks from mine. He went to a state university in a very suburban oriented college town and recently graduated. We grew up mostly in OP together but I went to school in NYC and lived there for 5 years, also tried out living in Portland OR and Prague for periods of time, about 6 months each. We developed very different mindsets needless to say. Got a little anecdote that I think the Rag will find hilarious and maybe kind of sad.

So last night he asks me if I want to go out and watch some basketball at a bar. Knowing it was St. Patty's day I'm kind of tempted to say no but I've put off going out with him a couple times recently so I felt guilty and said yes. I tried to suggest somewhere on 39th street (close to where we live) but he said he had other friends who were going to be in Westport and was pretty set on it.



Then after agreeing to walk he calls me and says his friend who drove from OP and parked at his apartment was going to pay for a lyft. My wife wasn't even quite finished getting dressed yet so I think he's going to beat us there but we show up and wait 10 minutes for him before he arrives. After trying my patience in Harpo's for a couple hours he wants to go to a different bar. On our way into Yard Bar my wife and I pause to share a cigarette, nasty habit I know. My brother and his friends go in with no line and in the interim like 40+ people show up all at once, apparently as a group. So the line is all of a sudden 15 minutes long and we decide to call it quits and go home so I text my brother to tell him and after like 15-20 minutes he texts to ask if I walked or Ubered.



Just SMH. Thought you'd all get a kick out of this.

FlippantCitizen wrote: ↑Fri Mar 18, 2022 12:04 pm Just SMH. Thought you'd all get a kick out of this.

It honesty baffles me how suburban Kansas-Citians are so unable to walk even 1/2 a mile. When my wife and I lived in Italy we’d have to park on the edge of town and walk at minimum a 1/2 mile to get to downtown Vicenza, and we never had complaints; however, if we go to river market with either of our families, they have a conniption if they can’t park 10 feet from the market. It’s truly an exposure thing at this point, so much of the last three generations have had limited or no exposure to living in a walkable environment, that they don’t believe walking is a viable mode of movement. Even in urban environments. It’s wild.

Yeah it's amazing. My grandfather is very active at 78 years old. He lives in Lee's Summit but comes into KC 3-4 times a week to do volunteer work and we often meet up to try out lunch spots or just explore. He'll wax poetic about the trolley-buses he road growing up in St. Joe and how he remembers just barely some of the streetcars in KC in the early 50s when he would come to visit family here. We ride the bus and streetcar together often and he is always talking about how glad he is to see streetcars make a comeback. Crazy how he's border line boomer/silent generation and is so enthusiastic about yet his daughter, my mom and a gen Xer, wouldn't even think about riding the bus in KC. Things are changing but my 23 year old brother is case in point that we still have a long, long way to go.

Anthony_Hugo98 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 18, 2022 2:33 pm

FlippantCitizen wrote: ↑Fri Mar 18, 2022 12:04 pm Just SMH. Thought you'd all get a kick out of this.

It honesty baffles me how suburban Kansas-Citians are so unable to walk even 1/2 a mile.

Oh yeah, it's insane how bad they are with it. Makes sense though since they've never had to do it before.

I've heard a couple people who live in West Plaza think it's "too far" to walk to the future Plaza streetcar stop- but in DC that distance was pretty standard walk to a metro stop. But the thing is, over time people will get used it and understand that's normal.

Kansas City Metro residents going carless.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CbTpsx7 ... _copy_link

FangKC wrote: ↑Sun Mar 20, 2022 12:40 am Kansas City Metro residents going carless.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CbTpsx7 ... _copy_link

Or this:

I still live in St. Louis (for now), but I'd like to say a few things about this subject.

Where I used to live in the city, my school was a block away from my house and I could walk there with my siblings while my mom or dad sat on the porch and watched us walk. Our friends' houses were within 1-2 blocks of my house. A City Park was about 1.5 blocks away. A Target, Grocery Store, Walgreens, and food places were all within a 5-minute walk of my house. It wasn't until my family moved out to the south suburbs that I realized just how good we had it there.

Now, if I want to go to the store, it is easier and faster to drive since a wide, trash-filled creek separates my current house from a street that takes you to the grocery store. St. Louis County never built a short 25ft road extension to link my neighborhood to that other street to cutout time by walking (and driving). Even if that connection existed, I still likely wouldn't walk since to get to the grocery store, I'd have to cross a wide, 5-lane road with no sidewalks. All other amenities that I liked are too far to walk too as well.

The active lifestyle my family once had by living in South St. Louis City was upended by our move and honestly, it sucks. We feel unsafe when trying to walk on the main road by my house (narrow sidewalks right at the curb with cars speeding by at 45mph). The pedestrian trail near my house, built on an old railway, is in disrepair and it's not uncommon to find druggies back there doing their business and chasing people away. So, few people use that. Your only option to get good and safe exercise is to either drive to a gym and work out there, drive to the dying mall to walk around inside, or drive into towns like Kirkwood, Webster Groves, Clayton, and even into the City of St. Louis to take a walk. You could walk around my neighborhood, but there are no sidewalks and people fly through our neighborhood.

Can't wait to move back into a more urban environment. I miss being able to go to Schnucks, Target, the Park, and friend's houses without a car.

So, really, I don't understand how people in the suburbs, especially younger people, can feel that this type of lifestyle is perfect. I understand that suburbs can have backyards and front yards, but cities have those things in them too. It's costly (both money and health wise) to live this way. I also remember seeing somewhere that living in a suburban style environment is worse for people who have, and can eventually have, dementia and Alzheimer's.

This is not, and should never be, about the politics of people who live in certain areas. It's about the lifestyle and making smart choices. Would you like to save money and be healthier or would you prefer to spend money to go spend some more money and trying to earn money? Your choice.

Definitely feel like one of my biggest pet peeves would be the # of reckless drivers flying up urban streets. I've lived in KC, STL, Fort Worth, Chicago, and now LA and it's felt like an issue in every one of those cities at times. People driving way to fast past the speed limit, making bad left turns, and rolling thru stop signs. Late at night there usually way more drunk driving going on then I cared to think about when I was leap frogging across River North lol.

daGOAT wrote: ↑Sun Mar 20, 2022 10:02 pm Definitely feel like one of my biggest pet peeves would be the # of reckless drivers flying up urban streets. I've lived in KC, STL, Fort Worth, Chicago, and now LA and it's felt like an issue in every one of those cities at times. People driving way to fast past the speed limit, making bad left turns, and rolling thru stop signs. Late at night there usually way more drunk driving going on then I cared to think about when I was leap frogging across River North lol.

The speed of cars has to be up there for me too. Especially after I got spoiled living in cities where things were far more reasonable than KC.