Unfettered Letters

P&L District dress code

Let’s put the dress code for Power & Light District to rest once and for all. People who have pride and esteem for themselves will automatically dress properly for any occasion. Then you have people with no pride or esteem about themselves or their homes, and they dress accordingly. They don’t care if they look like a freak from a sideshow or something the cat dragged in.

I don’t like being around these uncouth people any more than you do, but they are here to stay. Since this is a free society, we are forced to tolerate them. If these uncouth people have the money for a ticket to any public event, we have no choice but to let them go. That is the price of freedom.

J.E. Hart
Overland Park

Have you forgotten what happened at Indian Springs and Bannister malls? Certain groups took over and ran the good people away, be they white, black or brown. When there are no rules, this happens.

Leave the Power & Light District alone. They have the right to certain codes and the right to refuse service. Bans can hurt businesses. Remember smoking?

Leave the business people alone. The City Council should take care of the city — streets, sidewalks and trash pickup.

Larry Brown
Prairie Village

Praise for downtown KC

Representatives from 33 international sports medicine groups were in Kansas City Feb. 19-21 attending the annual meeting of the Joint Commission on Sports Medicine and Science. The Kansas City Convention & Visitors Association served as our host. The attendees toured many of Kansas City's best attractions and experienced the energy of Saturday night in the Power & Light District.

Thanks to our investments in downtown, these organizations will bring their meetings and conventions to Kansas City.

Frank Uryasz
President, Sports Association Management, Inc. and the National Center for Drug Free Sport
Kansas City

P&L dress code

The argument between the Cordish Co. and our dysfunctional City Council over the Power & Light District dress code has degraded to the point of ridiculous. As a business owner myself, it is my prerogative to set the standards for my business. I have a simple solution to put and end to this problem. I will call it a field trip of sorts.

The Cordish Co. should rent a bus, load the City Council on board (I would also include that other dysfunctional entity known as the school board) and take the bus and park it in front of any inner city high school - next to the patrol cars - when classes are let out in the afternoon.

Then I would pose these questions: Is this what you want the Power & Light District to look like on weekend nights? Have you forgotten why people stopped going to Westport and Bannister Mall?

Stop giving us the politically correct line about "stereotyping." The "gangsta rapper look" is permeating our society. Because the line between who is real and who is not is blurry, Cordish is entitled to err on the side of caution to protect its business model and patrons.

Ricci Ballesteros
Kansas City

Hurrah for the dress code at the Power & Light District! How nice to see everyone dressed up.

To code naysayers, it is true the style of dress prohibited by the code was popularized by black youths and gang and prison culture. But now youths and young adults of all colors have adopted this dress as their own.

Just go to any public venue with no dress code, and you'll get to see kids who can't walk without holding up their pants. And you'll be treated to a display of their boxers. And guess what? They are all races. This is a fashion trend that people of all backgrounds hope will soon run its course.

Please wear work clothes to work and play clothes to play, and dress up to go out for a night on the town. And get a belt so I don't have to see your drawers.

Greg Ewing
Lee's Summit

P&L dress code

In the article “Dress code dramatics; Meeting on a proposed law featured an official waving underwear, heated words and an abrupt end to the session”(3/5, Local), it seems plain why Kansas City is becoming a town no one wants to visit, let alone live in.

The paper’s main Local section headline is about the City Council wasting time on idiotic (and apparently uncivil) debate about whether a business’s dress code discriminates. Don’t they have bigger issues to deal with? Are these council members actually paid to waste time and further their agendas, be they race-baiting or people’s “feelings” if they know a dress code but show up to force themselves into a business anyway? Let’s call them Nero Council members instead of City, because they apparently don’t care if their city is burning.

Let’s try to kill the Power & Light District — the only real development in Kansas City in the last 10 years and one of the only reasons I visit downtown.

David Nuelle
Columbia, Mo.

Keeping people out of the Power & Light District is probably not what the Cordish Co. would want to do, being a customer-driven enterprise. I agree that proper dress does make the place look better and somewhat regulates who goes there.

The Kansas City Symphony would probably like to establish a dress code, too. However we see people in shorts, flip-flops, athletic shoes, jeans and garden work clothes going and enjoying the music. It would be sad to make them go away to get dressed better to do that. I just wish that people in the community would at least acknowledge they are in public and have some pride of self to dress appropriately for the occasion. Will they still do that when they go to the new Performing Arts Center?

Clothing does not have to be couture, but appropriate. If the baggy pants are not revealing, then knock it off with the regulations. Jewelry is a fashion statement, and innocence until a law is broken should be the rule. And what’s this about white T-shirts?

Evelyn Childers
Kansas City

P&L District dress code

Once again, I am appalled at the dress code imposed in the Kansas City Power & Light District (2/28, Local, “Cordish faults proposed law on dress code"). At least Cordish has accidentally admitted that its code is intended in part to impose its taste in clothing on its patrons, underscoring the discriminatory nature of the practice.

Cordish bans, among other things, baggy pants, untucked or oversized white T-shirts and combat boots. I’m tempted, once again, to put on my Liz Claiborne white T, leave it untucked over my Liz Claiborne baggy jeans, tucked into my Doc Martens British racing green high-top leather boots, and sashay my small, female, white Anglo-Saxon booty downtown to see if I am admitted or denied entrance.

Come on, people. You know bigotry when you see it. I don’t know if the Kansas City ordinance will pass constitutional scrutiny, but I’m convinced that the dress code it is designed to prevent would not.

Corinne Corley
Kansas City

The proposed dress code ordinance for the downtown entertainment district and last year’s law prohibiting smoking in bars and restaurants are strikingly similar in that both are good causes encased in very bad laws. The net effect is that we are gradually eroding the right of business owners to operate their businesses as they see fit.

Let’s recognize that as we create laws to attend to every need and preference in society, we are sacrificing another slice of our free enterprise system. If that’s not important to anyone, then we will steadily regulate ourselves to the point that small businesses are no longer viable and disappear. The remaining choices will be to work for the government or a large, government-subsidized corporation.

Tom Owens
Kansas City

P&L District dress code

I don’t see how a dress code in the Power & Light District can be construed as discrimination (2/26, Local, “Dress-code limits debated”). To me discrimination is excluding people due to something beyond their control, such as race, sex or a disability. Your race does not dictate how you should dress.

I live just blocks from the Power & Light District and make it down there with some regularity. I have seen people of all races making their weekend trip to our new entertainment area. None of them are in formal wear. They’re not necessarily even dressed up. They just put some decent, clean clothing on.

Go to any clothing store and they will tell you that pants are designed to be worn around the waist. They will also inform you that your waist is located nowhere near you knees. As a 24-year-old male living downtown, I don’t feel like I’m too out of touch with the youth of America. But it doesn’t matter what race you are, trashy is trashy.

In the words of so many great Americans, pull your pants up!

Kelly Roberson
Kansas City

Awestruck by refurbished Midland

Though I have lived here 6 1/2 years, many times I still feel like a visiting tourist. Last week I saw Trace Adkins at the Midland Theatre — what a way to spend Friday night. I had never seen the beautiful Midland in its refurbished state, and we sat there in awe during a wonderful concert.

Kansas City has so much to offer!

Faith Farmer
Kansas City

Power & Light District dress code

Thank goodness the Kansas City Council has decided to act on the seminal issue of our time: the dress code at the Power & Light District (2/21, Local, “Council reviews Power & Light clothing code; Proposal would prevent developers that get city subsidies from imposing many tough restrictions”). I applaud their efforts to reduce standards.

The very idea of holding high standards and expecting the public to comply discriminates against those who want to wear jeans halfway down their backsides. Think about the white T-shirt industry and all the business they’ll lose if patrons are forced to wear a shirt of a different color. Catastrophe.

Thanks again, City Council, for attacking this important issue. What’s next? Solving the city’s public school problem?

Mike Weaver
Lansing

Missing Famous Dave’s

Say it isn’t so! I was so disappointed to read that my favorite barbecue restaurant, Famous Dave’s, closed its doors after less than a year in the Power & Light District (1/14, Business). I had highly anticipated this restaurant’s downtown opening after a year of rumors that it was originally coming to City Center Square.

As a Northlander and Hospital Hill worker, I delighted in its location and relished no longer having to trek across the state line, all the way to The Legends, for tender, fall-off-the-bone ribs and catfish.

As challenging as the competition for Kansas City barbecue can be, Famous Dave’s gave the locals a run for their money in taste, variety and hospitality.

Greg Cutchall, please reconsider. If you’re looking for a new place for a Famous Dave’s, give us another chance. Or come north. We’d love to have you, and a redevelopment opportunity awaits you in the Antioch Shopping Center community.

Kathy Mussurici
Kansas City

Downtown once had great barbecue

Of course, Famous Dave’s Legendary Pit Bar-B-Que failed in the core of the city (1/16, Business, “This legend doesn’t live on”). But let’s not forget who Cordish and the city forced out of downtown to build the Power & Light District: Lil’ Jakes. “Eat it and Beat it” was a favorite of most Kansas City barbecue aficionados.

Thankfully, Danny Edwards took his excellent Q to the Boulevard. Still the best burnt ends in the city!

Richard Martin
Leawood