Other stories in "Interesting towns"

• Exploring Thunder Bay
  Beauty is all around Lake Superior's largest town.
• Beer and megabytes
  In Chippewa Falls, a colorful past blends seamlessly into the present.
• Finding Embarrass
  Minnesota's cold spot is stronghold of the Finns.
• Door to the Door
  A longtime gateway, Sturgeon Bay also is a great getaway.
• Dubuque, transformed
  A shabby Mississippi port now is a tourists' playground.
• Mining for art in Mineral Point
  In southwest Wisconsin, artists and shoppers alike are drawn to a lovely village.
• Beloved Bayfield
  On Wisconsin’s north coast, the love affair between a village and its visitors goes way back.
• Cruising La Crosse
  These days, the riverfront is an even bigger draw than the bars.
• City on the bay
  In a calm corner of Lake Superior, Ashland gets a second wind.
• Cuyuna lode
  In an old mining area, friends go prospecting.
• Summer in Park Rapids
  In heart of lakes country, town is a tourist hub.
• Copper Harbor refuge
  Early fortune-seekers left their mark on a village atop Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula.
• Best little towns that charm the tourists
  Ten places have personality to spare.
• Bazaar on the prairie
  To see the world, head for Winnipeg.
• Bemidji's behemoths
  A northwoods Minnesota town changes, but faces stay the same.
• Agate Central
  In Moose Lake State Park, an interpretive center caters to rockhounds.
• Afloat in Winona
  Beneath the surface, a Minnesota river town moves fast.
• A spin down the Kinni
  From friendly River Falls, it's a wild ride on water, then roads
• A pocket of Norway
  In northeast Iowa, Decorah still is Norwegian after all these years.
• Alexandria's enigma
  Minnesota resort town has many lakes and one mysterious stone.
• Swiss at heart
  In Wisconsin’s Little Switzerland, New Glarus hangs onto a colorful heritage.
• Winter is Washburn's time to glow
  Frozen lake opens up wonders that can't be reached in summer.
• Madeline's magnetism
  The largest of the Apostle Islands has a personality rooted in an uncommon past.
• Artsy Grand Marais
  On Minnesota's North Shore, rough-hewn village is a cultural outpost.
• Languid in Lanesboro
  In summer, head for lovely Lanesboro and go with the flow.
• Where the Germans are
  In southern Minnesota, New Ulm hangs on to a colorful heritage.
• Summer in Stillwater
  Historic Minnesota river town is a favorite weekend getaway.
• Living high in Hayward
  For coddled guests, Hayward's comforts belie its reputation.
• Playtime in Ely
  At the edge of the wilderness, fun starts when the snow falls.
• Wisconsin's birthday town
  In laid-back Spring Green, any day is worth celebrating.
• Plainly Superior
  Scratch the surface of Duluth’s homely twin and see it sparkle.
• Madison for all ages
  Famous for collegians, Wisconsin's capital also fascinates children.
• Truly Amana
  The busiest of Iowa's seven Amana Colonies is both a living historic monument and a shopping heaven.
• Illustrious in Iowa
  Among the northeast bluffs, extraordinary people lived and worked.
• Winter weekend in Monticello
  Come for the swans; stay for the shopping and skiing.
• Trail mix
  For people on the go, St. Croix Falls is a crossroads.

Going to Kansas City

Blues and barbecue are just bonuses in this vibrant but easygoing town.

Aside from its barbecue and jazz, most people know little about Kansas City.

But when I went there one April, I found much more than saxophones and spare ribs. Around every corner there are beautiful fountains, sculptures and tiers of flowers. There are blues and swing and folk in clubs open till 3 a.m. There are microbreweries and boiled crawfish by the pound and Cinderella carriages clopping through streets lined by Spanish haciendas.

And if you want something really exotic, the South is just outside its borders. That’s where people still call each other "Mr.’’ and "Mrs.’’ Where millions of pounds of tobacco are harvested each year. Where the War Between the States ruined a good thing, and those long-ago interlopers are called Yankee dogs.

Not in very many places, really — but in just enough places to startle a wide-eyed Northerner.

Within its borders, Kansas City is cosmopolitan, but not overly so, which means that when you go to its clubs, restaurants and shops, you can find a table and a free place to park. Call it Big City Lite.

One of the reasons Kansas City seems so easygoing compared to other cities is that its downtown is not the center of action. The places where everyone wants to be are 30 blocks south, in historic Westport and nearby Country Club Plaza, a striking, Spanish-style retail area called "Nichols’ Folly’’ when a developer started it in 1922 as the nation’s first planned shopping center.

I stayed at the Raphael, a classy boutique hotel overlooking the plaza from across Brush Creek, where canopied boats carry tourists on narrated tours. From there, I  walked over to meet friends at KC Masterpiece Barbecue & Grill, started by the late sauce magnate Rich Davis.

The place was packed with people drinking the local Boulevard ale and eating hickory-roasted ribs, brisket and burnt ends. Barbecue is serious business in Kansas City, where residents appraise the body and character of sauce as if it were a ’45 Lafite Rothschild; the local style is a thick, tomato-based sauce that balances sweetness with spice.

From there, we drove up Main Street to the Grand Emporium, a handbill-plastered shrine to the blues in a town that was its cradle in the ’20s and ’30s, in hundreds of bars that offered live music all night, every night. Count Basie and Charlie "Bird’’ Parker were among the world-class musicians who helped create the swinging, blues-based jazz that became the Kansas City sound.

Jay McShann was another; he came to Kansas in 1937 when he was 21 and had his first national hit five years later with "Confessin’ the Blues,’’ when Parker played in his band. We were lucky to see McShann play "Confessin’ ’’ that night at the Grand Emporium, running his arthritic fingers along the keyboard and sending an occasional sly, gold-tinted grin up at the packed house. He was playing nearly until his death in 2006 at age 90.

We got to hear more of his music the next day at the American Jazz Museum, which, with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, occupies a beautiful building on a quiet block not far from downtown’s glass towers. This is the famous 18th & Vine, once the vibrant center of Kansas City’s black community.

"We didn’t have much, but man, we had a good time,’’ an elderly man tells the camera in a video shown at the museum. "Baby, you hadn’t lived until you’d gone to 18th and Vine. That was it.’’ We watched other cool old folks describe dressing to the nines for Kansas City Monarchs baseball games, dancing at mixers put on by the many social clubs and meeting at the Street Hotel, where Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and every other black celebrity would stay because, as one man remembered, "you couldn’t go someplace else.’’

Then we looked at the empty street outside and at the poignant, newly painted signs on the buildings across the street, around the newly restored Gem Theater: Sylvia’s Soul Food Restaurant; Ocee McClellan, Tailor; Lucille’s Paradise Dinette. Unfortunately, they’re just facades. The end of legal segregation in the 1950s meant that African-Americans could live and play anywhere in Kansas City and, ironically, helped hasten the end of 18th & Vine.

Now the city has brought it back with the two museums, both wonderful. The jazz museum has 15 kiosks, each on subjects from native son Charlie Parker to bebop to vocalists, and each with headphones and a slate of musical selections to punch. On one of nine mixing boards, I inserted various styles of piano into a jazz composition, and on one of four consoles I called up Billie Holiday from a vast library of CDs. Jazz fans will be like kids in a candy store at this ’’museum.’’

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum has a miniature infield, with a bronze Satchel Paige on the mound. It chronicles the story of black athletes who had been playing team baseball since 1885, if only for the guests of tony East Coast hotels, but weren’t organized until the National Association of Colored Professional Baseball Clubs was organized in 1920 at a Kansas City YMCA. There were ``clown’’ clubs, too; the Indianapolis Clowns was the first home of Hank Aaron. He didn’t have to wear a grass skirt, like some, but he and the other black players suffered many other indignities until after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947.

Since we’d covered blues and barbecue, it was time to move on. Westport, once the jumping-off spot for the Santa Fe Trail, now is a district of small shops, restaurants and clubs. McCoy’s Public House and Brew Kitchen occupies the site of the 1844 Harris House inn, around which the 1864 Battle of Westport swirled; we chose its outdoor deck to have a six-pack sampler of its beers and to watch the people and red trolley cars glide by.

Then we browsed in some of the hip little shops before heading a few blocks north to 39th Street, where Jazz, A Louisiana Kitchen, sits at the end of a two-block stretch of Mexican, Indian, Ethiopian, Vietnamese and Italian restaurants. A folk trio was playing, but the food was Cajun, and I worked my way through two pounds of spicy boiled crawfish and an order of hush puppies.

We switched gears again by heading back to the Grand Emporium, where swing lessons were under way. Soon the Inferno Swing Band came on, with a gamine in a black sheath belting out jump ’n’ jive for dancers in pompadours and ’40s dresses that didn’t hide tattoos.

The next morning we drove to City Market, just north of downtown. Near here, St. Louis trader Francois Chouteau set up a post in 1821, moving farther and farther from the muddy Missouri after each flood. Now, this former warehouse district is the site of a weekend farmers market and the Steamboat Arabia Museum, which preserves the frontier-bound goods of a boat wrecked in the Missouri in 1856.

But it was still early in the season, with vendors and delis not quite in gear, so we headed back to Country Club Plaza and sat on the terrace of the Classic Cup, consuming plates of cheese-and-garlic grits, grilled Italian sausage and quesadillas with pozole and eggs. Nearby, children sprawled over a bronze replica of the Wild Boar of Florence and played keep-away around the 17th-century Mermaid Pool. The 12 ornate towers, the best-known one patterned on the Giralda Tower of the cathedral in Seville, along with wrought-iron balconies and bullfighter mosaics, give the plaza a movie-set atmosphere, especially when the gauzy white Cinderella carriages go by.

They exist, of course, to draw shoppers to the shops — Ann Taylor, Pottery Barn, April Cornell, Polo, Abercrombie & Fitch. Between Country Club Plaza, Westport and an antiques district in cottages and Victorians just to the west, on the Kansas state line, there’s enough shopping for anyone.

The thing is, the plaza is so beautiful it’s a shame to go inside. We just walked, over to the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain, framed in red and yellow tulips, and across Main up to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, where three giant badminton shuttlecocks are kissing cousins to Minneapolis' Spoonbridge and Cherry, also sculpted by Claes Oldenburg.

Then we went back to 18th and Vine, where four young jazz musicians were playing the Blue Room, adjoining the Jazz Museum. It was good to see people frequenting the historic district, and we settled at the table next to the Jay McShann wall and let our imaginations slip back half a century.

I left town wishing I had more time. It doesn't matter if it's cow town or cosmopolis; Kansas City is just plain fun.

Trip Tips: Kansas City

When to go: Spring is beautiful. Summer is hot, but fall is mild and stretches into November. On Mondays, some places are closed.

Getting around: The airport is far from town, so if you're flying, it’s nearly as cheap for two to rent a car for the weekend as to take the airport shuttle. Driving and parking are easy.

Accommodations: The Raphael is well-located near Country Club Plaza and has handsome suites. Ask for weekend specials. (816) 756-3800, www.raphaelkc.com.

The Southmoreland is a very attractive 12-room B&B inn on a quiet street a block from Country Club Plaza. (816) 531-7979, www.southmoreland.com.

In Westport, possibilities include the Q Hotel and Spa, (800) 942-4233, www.quarteragehotel.com, and Holiday Inn Express, (816) 931-1000, www.hiexpress.com.

2008 events: May 9-11, Fiesta Kansas City. May 24-25, Jiggle Jam Family Fest. June 13-14, Rhythm & Ribs Jazz & Blues Festival at 18th & Vine. June 17-July 6, Heart of America Shakespeare Festival. Aug. 29-31, Kansas City Irish Fest. Sept. 19-21, Plaza Art Fair. Nov. 27, Country Club Plaza Lighting Ceremony.

Dining: Good dining is quite inexpensive. And as for barbecue, according to the authors of "Real Barbecue,’’ "Choosing one joint in Kansas City as 'the best’ is as pointless as looking down a row of Rockettes and worrying about who has the best knee dimples.’’

Nightlife: The Grand Emporium has music every night, usually blues on Fridays and Saturdays and often swing on Sundays, rock on Mondays and reggae on Wednesdays, (816) 531-7557. Check www.grandemporium.com.

The Blue Room is open Monday and Thursday 5-11 p.m., Friday 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. and Saturday 7 p.m.-1 a.m. 816-414-2929, www.americanjazzmuseum.org.

Museums: The American Jazz Museum, (816) 474-8463, www.americanjazzmuseum.org, and Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, 816-221-1920, www.nlbm.com, are open Tuesday-Sunday.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is open Tuesday-Sunday. Admission is free.  816-751-1278, www.nelson-atkins.org.

The Union Station science and cultural center includes a planetarium, 3D movie theater, Science City and KC Rail Experience, and you still can catch a train there. Building admission is free; attractions vary. 816-460-2020, www.unionstation.org.

Outdoor baseball: For Royals tickets, call 800-676-9257; see the schedule at www.kcroyals.com

Day trips: Within an hour are the historic towns of Weston, Independence and Lexington and Jesse James sites in Liberty and Kearney.

Information: 800-767-7700, www.visitkc.com.

Last updated on June 24, 2008