ROYAL FEAST

Greetings all, I know it’s been some time since Octavio’s last posting, but, well, even us bloggers can get in a rut. Sometimes a trip out of town helps clear the mind. Not just out of town, but somewhere a little different. I get a weekend jaunt out of New York just enough to not require mood stabilizers, but alas, the right medicine was a destination well beyond the reach of Metro North.

Hello Kansas.

My girlfriend and I were recently in Lawrence, Kansas for a few days seeing my brother. He moved there six months ago and we New Yorkers were actually able to zero on a commitmentless weekend and nail a decent airfare at the same time. Nice town, really nice…sort of a mini Austin where it’s OK to vote Democrat even though the surrounding red-state sea keeps Kerry-Edwards bumper stickers to the size of a Ritz Cracker. I heard there was some Bob Dole Center for This and That, but we had more pressing matters like browsing through a vintage clothing store on the main drag. For what it’s worth, I did contribute to the local economy and bought a shirt for ten bucks. OK Bob?

Saturday we took a day trip to Kansas City of which we capped off the evening at Kauffman Stadium. We had a few hours to kill beforehand. Besides a gas stop or two, my past Kansas City experiences didn’t venture much beyond I-70. All I thought about was eating. Kansas City, as most of you probably know, is known for barbecue the way, say, Philly is known for cheesesteak (or scrapple if you’re real local), and I damn near drowned on my own saliva in the anticipation of sinking my teeth into some ribs. Notice that I use the word “barbecue” in the noun form in the previous sentence. For us Yankees, barbecue is strictly a verb as in: “We’re barbecuing tonight, come on over and bring that white Belgian beer you got in New Canaan…and bring the new Norah Jones CD too.” Anyway, I did a little homework on KC barbecue joints. I was reticent about whatever Citysearch rated because I just can’t trust what transients from San Francisco say about KC barbecue. Arthur Bryant’s was listed across the board as the de facto source of the Kansas City barbecue experience, but I didn’t buy it. Figured it was just an established name well past its prime; like waiting for 45 minutes to eat at a diner on the lone fact that it’s been there since 1952. Your eggs are runny, and the service is scant and bitchy, but cognitive dissonance still says it’s better than IHOP since it survived Wal-Mart’s raping of the town fifteen years earlier. Nope, I didn’t bite on Bryant’s. But after digging a little deeper on some of those barbecue “aficionado” sites, you know, where people haul grills the size of camping trailers behind their trucks, the place consistently listed as “real” KC barbecue was a joint called LC’s. And so we went.

If you hadn’t been there before, or mapped the place out like we did, you might mistake LC’s as a place to buy carpet or floor tile. There are a few parking spots, but you just stick the car wherever you can, or on the adjacent street called Sni A Bar Road; right before the tracks. Walking in is a throwback to 1973. You kind of expect to see an El Camino or Maverick parked outside, and probably do if you hang around long enough. It’s hot and smoky, and there may be some fans blowing, but that just accelerates the barbecue smoke clinging to your clothes. You embrace the odor, maybe even try to stand closer to the grill so your clothes hold the smell for longer; like having some kind of aromatic street cred or something. Asthmatics be warned, just wait outside or make sure your pocket lung-pump thing is full and working as the smoke can get thick. Ordering is simple, like a supermarket deli, tell ‘em what you want and wait for your number to be called. Customers outnumber the available tables by about a 2:1 ratio, at least when we were there. Nobody is in a hurry, including those who run the joint, but you don’t complain ‘cause you figure that LC’s has earned the right to do things on their terms….and they have. LC’s has their own brand of sauce tucked on a little rack next to the self-serve soda fountain. They don’t make a lot of noise ‘bout their sauce because they don’t have to. There are already plenty of poser sauces sold at the airport gift shop. Perhaps the most high-tech thing at LC’s are the oversized plastic napkin dispensers loaded with perforated industrial rolls of napkins. Take as many napkins as you think you’ll ever need, then triple it, and it still won’t be enough. Then eat, eat, eat, and eat.

We took our two full slabs of LC ribs to nearby Swope Park. The ribs were packed in this thin metal box big enough to hold a pair of work boots; size 14. No handles, no shopping bag to put it in, and the thing is hot, slippery and a pain in the ass to carry (like…no pressure about dropping it in the parking lot or anything). My fingertips got slightly singed during the sixty-foot walk to the car, like carrying a hot pan of lasagna without potholders, but like I said, LC’s has earned the right to do things on their terms.

We entered Swope Park, technically. It’s a huge park, sort of like Kansas City’s version of Rock Creek Park in DC, but we somehow wound up on the outer fringe about a hundred yards from a public swimming pool soon to be filled. A police cruiser and a flock of waddling geese were our only other companions in the area. We made a B-line to the lone picnic table in this little oasis and then, two seconds after we sat on the side of the table, the damn thing nearly capsized on top of us (ha…some sick little joke for us out-of-towners perhaps?…NOT funny folks). Apparently, the ground supporting the table had sunk in, heeling us at a 45-degree angle like we’re racing in the America’s Cup. Thankfully, lunch was saved and thus we broke out a blanket and had ribs on the grass. Messy stuff; ribs the size of fire kindling saturated in a bog of LC’s sauce…yeah. There was a bit of a breeze, so we stood up and ate with our backs to the wind so we wouldn’t wear our lunch around for the rest of the day. And those ribs…OH MY GOD…succulent, luscious, taste-buds-in-ecstasy, call-your-friends-and-make-‘em -jealous good…every word in the Thesaurus for delicious times five. Worth fasting for a week good. That’s LC’s baby, 5800 Blue Parkway, Kansas City, MO 64129, 816-923-4484. Make the effort folks, and don’t worry about needing to eat for another day or two. Ten hours after lunch we were still as full as if we ate five minutes before.

Later that night we went to Kauffman Stadium for the inter-league match-up between the Royals and Cardinals. I still have a hard time calling it Kauffman Stadium as it was known as Royal Stadium for so many years. I have to say that I’ve only had a resurgent interest in baseball in the past three or four years. I’m a football guy at heart and thus have only been to a handful of ballparks around country. OK, actually, I’ve only been to four other active ballparks (well five if you really want to count RFK Stadium). And if you’re dying to know as much as I’m dying to list them, I will; they are: Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium, Camden Yards and PNC Park in Pittsburgh; of which the last two are among the onslaught of new ballparks built over the last fifteen years or so. So with that said, Kauffman Stadium seems kind of ancient despite opening in 1973. It may be dated by today’s standards, but I’ll be hard pressed to find a warmer place to see a game. We had upper deck seats just slightly to the third base side of home plate, but the seats are steeped in a way that you really don’t feel that far away from the action. Yes, I know, just about every ballpark has that same effect, but dang-it, it was still nice. Of course, what makes the place are the fountains behind the outfield and the lush green lawn between the stadium’s edge and I-70. Oh wow, you cynically say, a freeway, that’s just great Octavio…but I like watching the cars and trucks go by the same way I like watching the planes rip in and out of LaGuardia at Shea. Now if you ever see a Royals game on TV (which is unlikely since moribund small market clubs don’t get much national TV exposure) you just see water flow like a shopping mall wishing well. However, between innings when there’s a commercial break, the fountains shoot high in the sky where you can even hear the sound of the water rush. I don’t know if that’s why so many people frequently got up to go to the bathroom, but I’m still guessing it was from the beer (and wow what partiers those visiting folks from St. Louis are). Even better, as night falls, the streams of water are lit in pretty reds and lavenders from underwater lights. Sure, snicker away at my romanticism, but I like the fountains. I like ‘em a lot.

Anyway, for those of you in the camp who don’t like these inter-league match-ups, I say phooey. This game was a blast with fans from both teams poking fun at one-another, but never too seriously. Kind of like those Lite Beer ads from the 1980s where one section yells “Tastes Great” and the other yells “Less Filling.” Though this may have been the only weekend the Royals sell out all season, it was sadly amusing to see the “home” team get outnumbered by a slew of Cards fans making the four hour cross-state exodus. The “sea of red” seemed much more appropriate for Arrowhead Stadium across the lot. Now I’m an East Coast guy by most accounts. I love that edge of Madison Square Garden, the salty jeers raining down from the upper sections of Shea, and the electricity of Yankee Stadium; which at times can feel like a film premier, businessman’s lunch and bar fight rolled into one, but there is something to be said about seeing a game in the Heartland. I know, here we go, another schmaltzy, aw shucks, Norman Rockwell portrait about America’s favorite pastime. But what can I say, sometimes just some good clean fun is all you need. I didn’t have to kick someone out of my seats when I first arrived, nor deal with drunks bringing their turbulence from the ultra cheap seats to my section at the 7th inning. I didn’t have to hear multiple cell phone conversations that had nothing to do with the game and I didn’t have a busload of kids with ADD get up and crawl all over their seats like I’m at a McDonald’s play pen. And the only “f-bomb” I heard was a guy talking about his inebriated state while relieving himself in the men’s room. It was the yin-yang of baseball: energetic but not ornery. And while it may be amusing to hear fans remind Kaz Matsui what we did to his country at the end of World War II during his first At Bat, it’s gets ugly by his third.

I still love my city, but I’m so glad this is a big country. As Frederick Jackson Turner once stated, “as long as there’s a Frontier, there’s a safety valve.”