Kansas City, Kansas (KCK) has alsways lived in the shadow of its much larger namesake just across the state line (Kansas City, Missouri or KCMO). It's not just that KCK (2010 population 145,786) is smaller than KCMO (2010 population 459,787). It's also that KCK has been considered a rather boring blue-collar town. There are not too many famous people from KCK--yes, Charlie Parker was born there, but his family moved to KCMO when he was a child. It once had a daily newspaper, the Kansas City Kansan but it ceased print operations in 2009.
Composer and music critic Virgil Thomson offered a typically condescending KCMO view of KCK:
“To anyone brought up there, as I was, 'Kansas City' always meant the Missouri one. When you needed to speak of the other you used its full title, Kansas-City-Kansas; and you did not speak of it often, either, or go there unless you had business. Such business was likely to be involved with stockyards or the packing house, which lay beyond the Kansas line in bottom land. The Union Depot, hotel life, banking, theaters, shopping – all the urbanites – were in Missouri.
"So was open vice. One block on State Line Avenue showed on our side nothing but saloons. And just as Memphis and St. Louis had their Blues, we had our Twelfth Street Rag proclaiming joyous low life. Indeed, as recently as the 1920s H. L. Mencken boasted for us that within the half-mile around Twelfth and Main there were 2,000 second- story hotels. We were no less proud of these than of our grand houses, stone churches, and slums, our expensive street railways and parks, and a political machine whose corruption was for nearly half a century an example to the nation.
"Kansas, the whole state, was dry. And moralistic about everything. There was even an anticigarette law. Nearly till World War II, one bought 'coffin nails' under the counter and paid five cents more per pack than in Missouri. Though Kansas had always been a Free State and supported right in Kansas-City-Kansas a Negro college, most of our colored brethren preferred Missouri, where life was more fun. The truth is that Kansas was Yankee territory, windy and dry, with blue laws on its books; and the women from there wore unbecoming clothes and funny hats...."
https://books.google.com/books?id=mDwZCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA90
Is there any way to get KCK to compete with KCMO on more equal terms? Maybe have it annex not only the rest of Wyandotte County--which has a unified government--but suburban Johnson County (the wealthiest part of the KC metro area) as well? That's pretty implausible, though, unless done very early...
Composer and music critic Virgil Thomson offered a typically condescending KCMO view of KCK:
“To anyone brought up there, as I was, 'Kansas City' always meant the Missouri one. When you needed to speak of the other you used its full title, Kansas-City-Kansas; and you did not speak of it often, either, or go there unless you had business. Such business was likely to be involved with stockyards or the packing house, which lay beyond the Kansas line in bottom land. The Union Depot, hotel life, banking, theaters, shopping – all the urbanites – were in Missouri.
"So was open vice. One block on State Line Avenue showed on our side nothing but saloons. And just as Memphis and St. Louis had their Blues, we had our Twelfth Street Rag proclaiming joyous low life. Indeed, as recently as the 1920s H. L. Mencken boasted for us that within the half-mile around Twelfth and Main there were 2,000 second- story hotels. We were no less proud of these than of our grand houses, stone churches, and slums, our expensive street railways and parks, and a political machine whose corruption was for nearly half a century an example to the nation.
"Kansas, the whole state, was dry. And moralistic about everything. There was even an anticigarette law. Nearly till World War II, one bought 'coffin nails' under the counter and paid five cents more per pack than in Missouri. Though Kansas had always been a Free State and supported right in Kansas-City-Kansas a Negro college, most of our colored brethren preferred Missouri, where life was more fun. The truth is that Kansas was Yankee territory, windy and dry, with blue laws on its books; and the women from there wore unbecoming clothes and funny hats...."
https://books.google.com/books?id=mDwZCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA90
Is there any way to get KCK to compete with KCMO on more equal terms? Maybe have it annex not only the rest of Wyandotte County--which has a unified government--but suburban Johnson County (the wealthiest part of the KC metro area) as well? That's pretty implausible, though, unless done very early...