The Plaza is perfect this time of year. Kansas City has some of the best (loyal) sports fans, great BBQ and an up and coming Downtown.

KC Missouri is a great place to live. It is the largest city in the upper midwest outside of Chicago (bigger than ST Louis, Minneapolis & St Paul). KC has unique architecture, and one of the best live music and art gallery scenes in the country.

Kansas City is a large version of Omaha. The two cities are indentitical twins, except for one is a little larger than the other. That said, Kansas City has the plaza and dumpy neighborhoods and nothing else. The people in KC are rude and have a country-accent. Downtown Kansas City has nothing except a few tall buildings and a few fast-food resurants.

The first thing a KC policeman asked me is why I wanted to move there. After I moved there, I found out why. The urban area does not have much to offer. I discovered that it was almost impossible to meet a person that had not been in prison or jail at some time. It was an absolute shocker. This is not an exageration. I was born in New York City, so I am a big city person, so this opinion was not a matter of lack of exposure to urban life. Drugs were the only prevalent item almost anywhere one went, and mind you, I am a rather liberal person. But there is not much else to do here. This means that drug dealing and the vehicles that surround it seem to be prevalant almost anywhere you go. Mafia micromanagement is apparent in the most benign of businesses. A coffee house is an opportunity to sell drugs to underage people, and the bad thing about this is that the paranoia that surrounds drug dealing extends even into simple businesses like this. Slum landlords dominate the city landscape. I have had conversations with landlords that were literally a part of the drug trade. The city is so small that rumours, most of them false, dominate conversation. It is the only city I have lived in where it seems to be common to hear stories of people that have been run out of town. I would probably attribute this partially to the fact that these people simply do not like anyone that is not completely part of this paranoid system. Most people that want to live a quality life... have moved out of the city to the suburbs. It is not a race issue, as many would like you to think. It is a quality of life issue. The level of education is low, and it is apparent that to most of the people left living here, that makes no difference at all. The pollution level is high, the cultural life is poor. The mafia is obviously still entrenched in the city government. In these days, that involves not just the Italian, but the Mexican and Cuban mafia. In fact their prescence is perhaps the stronger force here. The small entertainment areas here, Westport being almost the only area as such, are not even enjoyed much by the local people, because they are dominated by violence (shootings and such are a common part of this experience)and there are almost literally no places for people much older than in their 20's to go to meet their own peer group in this city. There is a contingent of small businesses attempting to build an artistic and creative atmosphere near the downtown area... This is a hopeful aspect of KC life, but I would not use that as an excuse to move here. In short, for the good people that are here, I think that KC offers a rather sad return on their investment, and I would never recommned this city to someone who is not living here.