SATW and Kansas City

At the invitation of Diana Lambdin Meyer, with whom I've been corresponding for almost a year now, I spent Friday night and all day Saturday with the Society of American Travel Writers at their Central States conference in Kansas City. I thought I knew Kansas City reasonably well since two of my cousins went to college there. What a joke - I realized that the handful of walks I'd taken in the Plaza and University areas hadn't even allowed me to scratch the surface of the city.

I met most of the members at the College Basketball Experience, where we all dressed up in our college t-shirts (mine was a bit closer to the front of my closet than some of the others', I imagine ;)) and played an assortment of Basketball mini games, practicing our free throws, vertical jumps, and sports broadcasting skills.

Breakfast the next morning consisted of a quick awards ceremony within the society, and then, to my surprise, Yakov Smirnoff, the famous Russian comedian, appeared and spent the better part of an hour with us! He was just as good in 'real life' as he is on the show, everything he said was somehow hilarious and a lot of it had to be improv. I actually even got a picture with him!

Then I went on a tour through four of the neighborhoods of Kansas City - Brookside, Westport, the Plaza, and the Crossroads. In Brookside we shopped our way through two dozen stores including World's Window (ethnic clothing and jewelry), the Barkery (a gourmet pet treat store), the Reading Reptile (a children's bookstore), and Foo's Fabulous Frozen Custard, while in Westport we walked through almost two hundred years of American history, and in the Plaza we saw beautiful Spanish-inspired architecture and several of Kansas City's most famous fountains.

Our last stop, the Crossroads Art District, seemed less impressive than the others at first glance, with construction on the outskirts and more than it's share of rundown buildings. By the end of the tour, however, the Crossroads was my favourite district. One of the first shops we stopped in was Birdies, a tiny lingerie store filled with very unique (and very pricey) undergarments. From there we visited The Peruvian Connection and its racks of featherlight scarves, sweaters, and dresses woven from alpaca and vicuña wool. In Black Bamboo, an Asian furniture store, I fell in love with candle holders carved out of gypsum to look precisely like ice. I would have taken one of those home with me if we were only allowed candles in the residence halls!

The final stop on our tour was Christopher Elbow's Artisanal Chocolate Boutique. After sampling the Caramel with Fleur de Sel, I couldn't stop myself from buying four more of the truffles. Each one was so delicate, beautiful and delicious - almost as fun to look as it was to eat. The Strawberry Balsamic truffle, for example, had a deep burgundy sheen, and the Wildflower Honey truffle was button shaped and looked golden and molten.

In the evening we went to the American Jazz Museum and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, which share the same building. I went in the Negro Leagues side first, and spent so long in there that I had to rush through the American Jazz Museum before dinner. The Negro Leagues museum was small but densely packed with information. "This is not a black hall of fame," our tour guide told us at the beginning. "The negro leagues should never have existed." The purpose of the museum is less to showcase black athletes and more to explain the discrimination and bigotry that was rampant in all aspects of American life between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement.

In the evening I spent time getting to know the travel writers a bit better. They were all such wonderful people, and despite their experience and reputations I found them very easy to talk to and get along with. Of course it's a bit frightening still for me to look three or four years into the future and imagine myself as a professional, but this experience made me if anything more determined to follow my dream. I came home with a large collection of business cards and I fully plan on looking up some of my new friends over the next few years.