In Kansas City, a mere gunshot in a lavatory is lost in the thrill of money changing hands.
This city has a taste for both. Occasionally, one feeds the other. So where might a person find danger in pursuit of a good time? And who—or what—teaches this place which dangers to fear, and which to enjoy?
WHERE DANGER HAD ACQUIRED AN ADDRESS
The coffee was excellent and black. It arrived in paper. It was accompanied by the hiss of a busy kitchen and the bells of online orders. This – seasoned with soft Somali conversation – set a stage at Yasmeen Café which required no further music. Four security cameras kept watch, and the windows were barred on the inside. Most customers ate with their hands. Some of them ate with their cellphones. A solitary man prayed on a small mat in the corner. I was wearing a brown Lardini suit. Nobody seemed to notice.
“No Wifi. Talk to Eachother” – the only instruction in the room.
The lentil soup was gone - a surprise to no one save myself on a 100°F day. Goat was my next choice, until I saw an elderly man in another corner being served with an off-menu dish called “The Big Fish.” I followed suit.
A skinny man in turquoise Hello Kitty trousers turned up. A toothbrush was trying to escape from his left pocket. He joined the queue behind another man in a striped Ralph Lauren button-down and ironed khaki pants. They exchanged greetings.
The Big Fish was excellent. Simple, strong flavours with nothing in the room competing for attention. The man at the cash desk motioned to ask if I liked it. I gave him a thumbs up and a closed-eye nod. With a broad smile, he went back into the kitchen.
Yasmeen Café sits on Independence Avenue, in the Historic Northeast. It was not quite the introduction to danger I was anticipating. Whatever had given the area its reputation had apparently taken the afternoon off.
And it wasn’t to be found close by at Ivanhoe Park either. Blighted areas are not typically known to have well-maintained baseball fields. The surrounding homes were well kept, their lawns manicured. One of them had a speedboat in the driveway. Somewhere from above, a helicopter was looking for something. One mystery presented itself – most of a fishing rod and a smashed bottle of tequila were under one of the weathered wooden bleachers. At the foot of the park, which occupies the side of a steep hill, there was a small bar which did its best to stay hidden, camouflaged in Vietnam-era green paint. The door said “MEMBERS ONLY.”
WHERE TROUBLE PAID ITS WAY
At 3:30 PM on a Saturday, Tin Roof in Westport was where a lot of missing elements found themselves. No more than thirty people were sat inside the main part of the bar. They were watching college football. To their right, a DJ in a pulpit nodded enthusiastically, providing atmosphere nobody was asking for.
TVs covered every wall. The bass drops were killing my cold. Large ceiling fans and powerful air conditioning were giving it a fighting chance. The place had its own current, and its afternoon clients seemed to be swimming against it. A sixteen-dollar vodka over ice arrived in plastic. Leena, who had worked there for the past eighteen months, explained:
“I’m a bad decision maker.”
Another server—Talia—was a good decision maker.
She was wearing a Prince of Wales checked skirt which came down to the knee. She paired this with a white T-shirt and a patterned headscarf. She wore large plastic-rimmed glasses above two nose rings. Whilst studying for the bar exam, she hoped to get some experience as a paralegal before becoming a criminal defence attorney. She confirmed the story about the gunshot in the lavatory that had apparently interrupted nothing.
I went where I was told I’d find the evidence, and sure enough there it was. A hole in the floor next to a urinal. Perhaps a rat had been discovered—but surely one of the four-legged kind?
I spoke with a manager. They mentioned that on Saturday nights, the bar typically brought in fifty thousand dollars. Contributing to this were tight ends and cheerleaders—all undrafted. The men wore baseball caps and military sunglasses. It was a reunion for alumni of no specific university.
The DJ continued doing her best to break up their huddles around the TVs.
It was time to move on.
If Tin Roof had found a way to make trouble pay, Power and Light had industrialised the arrangement.
Power and Light is a downtown farmers’ market for all-you-can-eat entertainment.
This afternoon, it had organized itself into a Taco Festival. Twenty-five dollars got you inside, with a drink by way of welcome. Police and private security could be found everywhere in the complex. The place sold licenses to be thrilled, and checked them frequently.
After dark, this farmers’ market trades exclusively in meat. And PBR is the biggest butcher. Customers queue up to ride a mechanical bull. Waitresses in “assless chaps” and little else offer syringes of blue liquor. When they weren’t doing this, they took part in well-rehearsed line-dancing routines for the captive audience. A security guard told me that the complex had its own holding cell, where Saturday’s overly enthusiastic attendees might find themselves taking up residence until Monday morning. Here, everyone was rowing in the same direction.
Eventually, I was approached by a woman. She wore a T-shirt listing a large number of bars she might have visited.
“Hey—do you own the bar or something?”
“No—not at all. I’m just passing through.”
“Well, you’re creeping people out just walking around and all.”
“I can’t be responsible for how they feel. We’ve never even spoken.”
We both wandered off.
Amongst the mechanical bull, alcohol injections and poleless dancers, my Lardini suit and Tom Ford tie had apparently been the most dangerous things in the room.
WHO TELLS US WHAT TO FEAR?
It was time to find somewhere with a reputation even more dangerous than my own—or that of my tailor.
Thirty-fifth and Prospect was surprisingly calm. It was a simple crossroads with a gas station, a bus stop, a small grocery store and two shuttered businesses. It was cloaked in the atmosphere of a one-saloon town, two or three hours before high noon. And as well it might. An analysis of the FBI’s 2025 figures ranked Kansas City fourth for violent crime amongst America’s fifty largest cities. Thirty-fifth and Prospect took a large piece of the action.
Inside the grocery store, I discovered they sold Evian—a high-end French mineral water.
The cashier was from India. She worked behind three inches of armoured glass. She was a perceptive woman with kind eyes. She seemed to know pretty quickly that my curiosities about the area outgrew the variety of bottled water.
Outside, at my car, a man asked me for a few dollars. I declined—politely.
The danger I had come looking for had failed to appear. Its precautions had not.
Perhaps my outfit waved it off.
I returned to Westport looking for another answer. Tin Roof was across the road. Westport Café had other ideas.
Dark wood furnishings, exposed brick walls and a chessboard lino floor were holding their own against the idiotic heavy bass elsewhere. The light inside was warm and conspiratorial, and helped the dating couples show themselves off well enough to avoid scrutiny. That sort of thing comes later, of course—these were all first dates. The listening partner’s face always gives that away.
The servers inside were careful and efficient. I watched all of this from a small table behind the entrance. Elsewhere on the street, nighttime was proceeding without being slowed by good taste.
Darren had the face of a child and the sweetness of a social worker. Earnest and ambitionless, he was a wonderful waiter. He mentioned that trouble was occasionally a diner at the café. When it came, it came from nowhere in particular. That which returned to homes with high property-tax bills tended to make amends after the fact. Westport’s very worst rarely made it through the curtained door. I asked why.
“I think–I think it’s the candles.”
I returned to Tin Roof. I had to queue, pay a $5 cover charge and submit to a thorough search with a security wand. It took some time. Nevertheless, I think I can solve the mystery of how someone might still have managed to corner their rat.
The TVs were off. The tables had been swept away. A live band performed on a stage. A large neon sign said:
“DRINK! DANCE! REPEAT!”
I had walked into a prom with adult levels of resources and tackiness.
Vodka was now $6. Across the road, Darren’s candles were still holding the line.
Danger, where Kansas City told me I would find it, had gone out on the town.
The only bullet hole I found was in a bar that sold $50,000 of excitement on Saturdays alone.
Perhaps Darren was right after all.
Where Danger and Reputation are concerned, the critical element is lighting.