Field Notes
Reports from the Badlands
Monday, June 30, 2008
A man walked back from the Kwik Shop to his car, an old boat of an Oldsmobile with scuffed blue paint parked at pump number two. The smell of gasoline was strong. Unleaded was going for $3.82, $3.80 with a Dillons Plus card. The man swung open the driver’s side door, revealing a burgundy Holy Bible planted on the dash, and exited out the south entrance of the 19th and Massachusetts service station. An aqua green car driven by a young woman playing R&B music at a high volume quickly replaced the vacated spot. The young woman walked into the convenience store. All four pumps were occupied. Three minutes later all but one were empty. This was Lawrence.
¡VIVA LA PRINTPOP!
Local business connects unknown artists, customers through the power of the interweb
Monday, June 23, 2008
On August 25, 2003, a couple of guys from Lawrence named Devin Walker and Ladd Epp launched a small company out of Walker’s house called Printpop.com. It worked like this: Artists would upload images of their work. Orders would be placed. Using magic software that could turn a one-megabyte image into a high-resolution print as big as a building, Walker would print digital images onto posters.
Waiting for his Shot
Haskell Boxing Club star Marcus Oliveira toes the line of the big time
Monday, June 16, 2008
Where the four ropes enclosing the ring are frayed, duct tape does the job. The canvas is stained with blood and dirt. A fan blows loudly somewhere overhead. Harsh fluorescent lights shine. Mirrors on two sides of the ring broadcast Marcus Oliveira’s punches to a dozen kids sliding side to side, gloves up, honing their footwork along the red carpet of the humming Topeka gym.
Passing Permanence
Jody Wood and the power of the temporary
Monday, June 9, 2008
You can tell a little about Jody Wood’s disposition toward her art from the way she handles her air mattresses made of pig intestines. Removing one of the two brittle mattresses from a corner of her studio in KU’s Art and Design Building, she handles it not exactly gently, like most people do with a piece of art they once slaved over.
BREAKING NEWS
…Playboy edition!!!
Monday, June 9, 2008
And now, for the latest installment of the semi-regular Breaking News feature QUOTATION OF THE WEEK.
T'd Off
Uncertain days for the city’s public transit system
Monday, June 2, 2008
Sign #367 that Lawrence is a strange place: Gas prices are rising, signs of the metalocalypse are running crazy, you can hardly plug into the news without being deluged with stories like one The New York Times published last week—“Americans are giving up their gas guzzlers, making fewer trips to the mall and even riding public transportation.” Meanwhile, in Lawrence, money is tight at City Hall. And city commissioners, getting ready to plan next year’s budget over the next few weeks, say many things may get cut, including the bus system, the T.
BREAKING NEWS
...A Breaking News special report!!!
Monday, June 2, 2008
An item caught Breaking News’ attention last Tuesday, spurring an investigation, when the Lawrence Journal-World printed the following in its daily law enforcement report:
Wanderlust
Rails, roads, and wilderness: the endless search of the tramp
Monday, May 26, 2008
Two days passed in northern British Columbia. Then three. Cricket was in desolate country waiting for a freight train, stuck at one of those crossroads that most folks experience only in metaphor. The question was inevitable. Do I want to keep doing this?
Q&A with Alyssa Kelly
Monday, May 26, 2008
A couple of years ago, Alyssa Kelly left Houston, the city she grew up in, for the road. Today, she is married and living in Lawrence. In a bedroom of the Haunted Kitchen, the punk house on the corner of 19th and Louisiana streets, Kelly, 21, offered a beer, lit a cigarette and detailed her two years on the road.
BREAKING NEWS
…storm from the shelter edition!!!!
Monday, May 26, 2008
Trees shook. Rain fell. Thunder crashed. The electricity went off. It was the earliest hours of Saturday, May 24, in Lawrence, Kansas, U.S.A.
Living Proof
Our occasional reminder that not all people are bastards
Monday, May 26, 2008
Look at the photo with this story. It’s heartbreaking. It’s of Addison Whitenight, who’s now 19 months old and has been waiting to receive a liver transplant for a year.
Off the Fairway
Vinland Natural Nine takes golf from country club to country
Monday, May 19, 2008
Richard Morantz lives in an old trailer. A couple of holes have worn their way through his blue trousers, which are held up by a pair of suspenders. His curly, overgrown hair is thick with humidity. Pulling up the gravel driveway to his 80-acre spread south of town on a warm spring day, you get the feeling this would be a good place to hole up when the rapture arrives, but about the last place you would think to go for a round of golf.
Kickin’ the Truth to the Youth
Local rapper Richard “GQ” Thomas schools Lawrence High hip-hoppers
Monday, May 19, 2008
Who is that rapper poisoning the delicate minds of our youths with the hippity-hop? After searching low and high, we found that it’s none other than local rapper and BombSquad member Richard “GQ” Thomas.
BREAKING NEWS
… blasé edition!!!
Monday, May 19, 2008
Congratulations, reader! You’ve checked in at just the right time, for this is the first semi-regular installment of a new feature, WORDS OF THE DAY.
Kids in the Stall
Exploring the seedy underbelly of Lawrence: the public bathroom
Monday, May 12, 2008
I don’t wanna sound like a queer or nothin…but I think unicorns are pretty kickass!— black marker, women’s room, Replay Lounge It was nearing 10 p.m. last Wednesday night on the patio of the Replay Lounge when a woman named Al returned from the bathroom with a stencil freshly blackened by spray paint in her hand and a grin on her face.
BREAKING NEWS
…skin edition!!!
Monday, May 12, 2008
A girl and a guy sat together on a bench outside the east entrance of Oliver Hall. They stopped talking each time someone walked past. They looked unhappy.
Not a Drop to Drink
Scarce water, stagnant lives on the nearby Kickapoo Reservation
Monday, May 5, 2008
Heading east on K-20 Highway toward Horton, a sign said COMMUNITY CENTER and pointed right. Down a short gravel drive, a warehouse-like building was empty on a warm Thursday afternoon except for three women sitting around a table and smoking. “Can I help you?” one asked. I’m here to do a story on your water. “Don’t drink it!” one said, and the three women laughed.
Living Proof
Our occasional reminder that not all people are bastards
Monday, May 5, 2008
It’s a colossal mound of mud today. A big, wet dump protected by a chain-link fence. Such is the construction zone west of the long-awaited addition to KU’s Student Recreation Fitness Center.
BREAKING NEWS
…All Hail Goulet edition!!!
Monday, May 5, 2008
Big hail fell on 17th Street at 5:58 p.m. on May 1. Car alarms began sounding in the parking lot of a fraternity. A resident clothed in a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops screamed in mock agony and climbed atop a sport utility vehicle, yelling “help.” A similarly clothed fraternity boy ran across the parking lot to stop one of the alarms.
Eastside Vittles
Activists bring long-awaited market to East Lawrence
Monday, April 28, 2008
The southeast corner of 12th and Connecticut has been a busy place the past couple of months. And the six young community activists sweating and toiling in the building—holding fundraisers, painting walls, ripping up tile—have a big goal:
BREAKING NEWS
…a day in court edition!!!
Monday, April 28, 2008
A man walked into the Douglas County Clerk’s Office and requested records for Williams, Robin. “That’s not a joke,” he added.
Halfway Across America
American Indian walkers take a pit stop at Haskell in their 3,600-mile journey across the United States
Monday, April 28, 2008
Thirty years ago, a number of bills were introduced in Congress aimed at terminating tribal sovereignty, leaving native matters in the hands of the states.
Purgatory
Two best friends, 20 years of suspicion in the disappearance of Randy Leach
Monday, April 21, 2008
Note: This story is about two men, now in their late 30s, who were suspected of having something to do with the mysterious disappearance, 20 years ago this month, of Linwood teenager Randy Leach. While they are by no means the only two people who have been suspected over the years, their lives have been fundamentally altered by the “witch hunt,” as they call it, that they found themselves part of.
Dodgeball for Malaria
Hurl balls at chumps to save African children
Monday, April 21, 2008
Dodgeball for malaria. How do ya like the ring of that? Relive the glory days of your youth, or, if your gym teacher wasn’t old school enough to make you play dodgeball, taste the quintessential gym class sport you were denied.
BREAKING NEWS
…firecrotch edition!!!
Monday, April 21, 2008
The KU debate team finished its 2007-2008 season atop the National Debate Tournament varsity rankings. Whooooooo!!!! National champs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In response, the people of Lawrence poured onto Mass. Street in ordinary numbers to shop, eat, drink and stroll. The date for a downtown parade has not yet been set.
The Chic Shall Inherit the Earth
Earth Day Fashion Show 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Trivia question: When do bags upon bags crammed with neckties—enough to wear a different one every day for maybe two years—come in handy? Answer: When you’re a crazy-ass fashion designer. When you’re sewing an entire gown out of ties. When at least 150 go into the skirt alone.
BREAKING NEWS
…Mass on Mayhem Street edition!
Monday, April 14, 2008
Hey young buck, you think the recent Mass on Mayhem Street was wild?
We are No. 1!
All others are No. 2 or lower.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Dear Vanna White, I would like to purchase an adjective. Is there one left? Or were they all used up in describing the Jayhawks’ victory? A lil’ bit of the coverage, local and national, all mashed up Frankenstein style.
Who's Afraid of Peak Oil?
A local look at a global scare
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
The world’s runnin’ out of oil. While such a problem can seem too big and tangled to deal with on a local scale, Tim Hjersted, director of the Films for Action project, wants city leaders to take a serious look.
The Full Nelson
Nelson-Atkins Director Marc Wilson on all things art in K.C.
Monday, April 7, 2008
It’s springtime, reader, and what better time to go for a visit to a fine art museum?
GreenTown, Realized
The Reinvention of Greensburg
Monday, April 7, 2008
Last May, immediately after the tornado hit, talk of rebuilding Greensburg began.
BREAKING NEWS
…bedlam edition!
Monday, April 7, 2008
As Jennifer Chiaverini wrote on page 246 of her latest novel, “The Winding Ways Quilt”:
Beneath the Surface
Life Outside of Man and Woman
Monday, March 31, 2008
Matthew Blankers is scared of the men’s room. Sometimes, on the KU campus, he walks into one, and if it’s crowded, or cramped, or if he just can’t summon the nerve, he heads to the sink, turns on the water, washes his hands (la-di-dah) and walks out in search of another.
BREAKING NEWS
…Cranky Uncle Pete edition!
Monday, March 31, 2008
Former KU football standout Charles Gordon, now a cornerback for the Minnesota Vikings, once bowled a 244, he tells Breaking News. It was his high score. The next game, he bowled 244 again. He has yet to replicate the feat.
Bunker Mentality
Director Kevin Willmott takes on post-9/11 'fascism' in 'Bunker Hill'
Monday, March 24, 2008
In Kevin Willmott’s first two films, the central theme was race. In “Ninth Street,” it was the story of the small black section of Junction City, Willmott’s hometown, seen through the eyes of a pair of winos. In the Ken Burns-style mockumentary “CSA: The Confederate States of America,” race was given biting satirical treatment in an alternate U.S. history supposing the South had won the Civil War.
BREAKING NEWS
…big money money edition!
Monday, March 24, 2008
A man who said he’d recently moved out of a homeless shelter and into a co-op approached a physics student heading to a coffee shop in downtown Madison, Wis. He told him that for $5 he could tell his future, or his past. “I already know my past,” the physics student said. “So do I,” said the man, 41.
Becoming the Beast
Nick “The Beast” Scott’s rise in the world of wheelchair bodybuilding
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
It’s a Wednesday morning at Ottawa Nautilus Family Fitness Center, a furniture store-turned-gym on Main Street in Ottawa, and, like usual for a weekday morning, Nick Scott is one of the few people inside. Tomorrow, Scott is boarding a plane for the National Wheelchair Bodybuilding Championships in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
March Mustache Madness!
Fuzzy upper lip frenzy takes over the town
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
March. Mustache. Madness. Nobody knows precisely how the craze blew into Lawrence, or when. What’s known is that in the hazy recent past, in this circle or that, hair—thick and thin, coarse and fuzzy, black, brown, red and blond—has been sprouting on upper lips at bewildering rates in the month of St. Patrick.
COUGAR!
In search of the phantom Menace
Monday, March 10, 2008
It was a dark fall night one decade ago when Marilyn Horsch says she first saw a mountain lion. She was in the final stretch of her daily drive home from work in Kansas City when, near the intersection of Stull Road and E. 400 Road, the full-grown cougar sprinted across the beams of her headlights, 25 to 30 feet in front of her.
BREAKING NEWS
…archaeological edition!
Monday, March 10, 2008
A car was seen lodged on a low wall enclosing the entrance to the parking lot of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity on 17th Street between Tennessee and Ohio streets on Saturday afternoon.
Screen Sisters
With Hollywood treading in its own testosterone, female filmmakers find redemption in indie film
Monday, March 3, 2008
Six percent of the 250 top-grossing movies in the United States last year were directed by women. This means 94 percent were directed by men. And yet women make up roughly 40 percent of the film students at KU, according to the Department of Theater and Film. So what happens to all of them? It’s one of those problems that never seems to go away. This story, which is about women in film, and why so few of them occupy the most important roles behind the camera, could have been written 10, 20, 30 years ago and be virtually the same.
Living Proof
Our occasional reminder that not all people are bastards
Monday, March 3, 2008
If you dig furry creatures and groove on sounds, here’s something you may want to tune your mind to, compadre:
The Pen is Mighty
How a group of local anarchists rose to the helm of a vast network of prisoners
Monday, Feb. 25, 2008
It’s Sunday in a basement office at 14th and Massachusetts streets, and five Lawrence anarchists are doing what they do every Sunday: running a vast network of politically radical prisoners. Equipped with a copy machine, a couple computers, a printer, a fax machine and a stock of secondhand tables and filing cabinets, the small, paper-stuffed office operates as a scrupulously organized mailroom for the Allied Resistance Network.
Thoughts of a Latin King
A Q&A with Gabriel Concepción a.k.a. Jose Cruz a.k.a Blaze
Monday, Feb. 25, 2008
Gabriel Concepción, a.k.a. Jose Cruz and best known as Blaze, was a founding member of the Allied Resistance Network and has written a number of essays on prison issues and his political ideologies. He works for a delivery company and lives in the Bronx, where he grew up.
Chasing a Vision
Catching up with Lawrence golden boy Patrick Cleandenim, four years after he ditched us
Monday, Feb. 25, 2008
Four summers ago, a skinny kid with a big, Dylanesque mop of hair named Patrick Clendenin prepared to head east. “For a long time I just wanted to go to New York, without having visited,” he said at the time, “just because of its reputation for being the city of opportunities and chances for what you dream about.”
BREAKING NEWS
…3D edition!
Monday, Feb. 25, 2008
Last week, Breaking News crafted its first-ever essay contest. Readers (like you!) were asked to send essays to frank@lawrence.com or to our physical mailing address, stating, in any form, why they deserve the Special Prize.
BREAKING NEWS
…special contest, free prizes!!!
Monday, Feb. 18, 2008
Congratulations! You are reading the ninth weekly installment of Breaking News. To celebrate the continued support of readers, readers like you, Breaking News is pleased to announce its first-ever giveaway contest.
A Complicated Tissue
Life, toilet paper, and the two-plies that bind
Monday, Feb. 18, 2008
Picture this: You are in a public bathroom, wiping your ass. You might be using the air-thin toilet paper KU uses, or the silkier stuff that occupies the bathrooms of the Eldridge Hotel. It doesn’t matter. The brand, the thickness, the softness are irrelevant at this point. Just think about toilet paper. Think about whether you have thought much about toilet paper. Now come to the library, a place for thinking.
Older Newer
Archetype / Fourth of July (late show) :: Besides the obvious novelty of Fourth of July performing on the Fourth of July, tonight's twin-bill doubleheader offers a chance to celebrate our nation's birth with two Lawrence bands whose colors don't run ... More info
- Fourth of July Fireworks
- Deadman Flats / Rev. Deadeye’s No Man Gospel Band
- Big Cat KS / The Calamity Cubes
