Multimedia Reporting (Adler-Noland)

Every day hundreds of students come bustling through the six levels of the Union. Some are there for group meetings, a few need a place to study and even more are employed by one of the many retailers housed within the Union.

At least one retailer, US Bank, has been at the Union since 1977, when it installed an ATM on campus. Following the ATM were a string of Travel Agencies and new Union shoppers can do everything from getting their haircut, to sending a package. While several businesses thrive however, there are an almost equal number that can’t make the cut.

“In 2001 we started liking at [leasing] opportunities and Mailbox Etc. came and went,” Director of Building Services Pat Beard said. “There was limited success. They sold stamps and had a mail service, but there’s not much profit in that. They wanted people to rent mailboxes from them, but student’s didn’t have a need. They lasted about a year and we picked it up for six months and realized the same thing. STA Travel responded and we signed a lease with them in Dec. 2001.”

STA Travel has proven to be one of the most successful businesses to rent in the Union. They are one of the companies that have rented for the longest and, according to their branch manager Stephanie Coleman their business has seen growth every fiscal year.

Other companies, such as the recently opened FedEx Kinkos, are hoping to copy the success of STA Travel by offering a valuable service to students in a location that suits them. Overland Park senior Derek Williams was pleased that such a company came to campus.

“I’m here to get more copies of my resume. It’s a convenience and definitely beneficial,” he said.
Another convenience within the Union is hair services. Salon Hawk is currently run by Joda and Friends, who also operate a salon on 6th street. Joda Doudna, owner of the company, decided two years ago to move into the space after Great Clips closed.

“Both businesses are going just fine,” Doudna said. “The one in the Union goes by student hours. There’s downtime at Christmas and there’s a lot more outside traffic at the other shop. They are both fun to run and the girls can work at both locations so they get more hours and I offer student prices at Salon Hawk.”

While Salon Hawk, FedEx Kinkos and STA Travel are seemingly successful, the restaurant location on the third floor has gone through three owners in two years and cannot turn a profit. Miltons rented the space last semester before backing out over break. Impromptu, the current title, is run by the Union.

“We got a short notice from Miltons and both Westside and Miltons said that the biggest factor [for failure] os the small seating area,” Beard said. “The space holds about 44 and there is not a quick enough turnover to turn a profit. It’s never been the quality of food.”

Beard also said that Impromptu will save money by utilizing the kitchen staff and materials already available. In addition to Impromptu, the Union is also working with Sprint to provide a campus cell phone provider. The Sprint partnership will be beneficial to international students, who otherwise would have trouble purchasing a cell phone, and some of the plans will include free texting. There are also future plans that will allow the University to better communicate with students.

“We would eventually like to have GPS on the buses so that students can tell how far away their bus is,” Bookstore Manager Tim Norris said. “There is also a software piece that, if students opt-in, we could communicate important information to them.”

The Union is run by a non-profit company and there primary objective is to bring in services that students will want to utilize, however they have not always been successful in picking the right businesses to move-in.

At the beginning of the year a new survey, done by Lawrence service providers, found that there were 413 people in Lawrence who were homeless. Fifty-six percent of that number was families with children. These figures shocked many in the community because in 2005 only 113 people were identified as homeless and according to local leaders the perception was that adults were the biggest segment of the population. The Community Commission on HomelessnessThe Community Commission on Homelessness and other groups are now working to decide how to best accommodate the families that they now know exist.

“This month [the Commission] decided to put together housing options,” said Lesley Rigney, Neighborhood Programs Specialist. “A lot of service providers said we were ignoring families. Instead of the city building huge shelters there should be smaller shelters with different options.”

Helen Hartnet, a professor at the University of Kansas and member of the Commission, agrees with the idea of several small housing options, but is worried about the condition the facilities are currently in and how that affects the children staying in them.

“It’s depressing,” she said. “It’s a rough facility. There are a lot of people in a small space. It’s not pretty. People are struggling with an array of issues and it’s not conducive to ‘I’m going to be better.’”

Eileene Miller-Green knows this firsthand. She and her seven-month-old daughter have been homeless for four months. They sleep at the Salvation Army and Miller-Green spends most of her days at the Lawrence Community Shelter, while her daughter is in day-care, subsidized by the government. Miller-Green is currently in the process of getting a divorce and her daughter has been sick for the past several months.

“I had a full-time job, but since she was sick I couldn’t do the full-time job,” Miller-Green said. “When I do get a job it’s hours when there’s no day-care assistance and the buses don’t run late enough. We sleep on the floor in the chapel with another family. The day shelter is hard for one’s with children.”

Donnell Turner, who has lived in Lawrence for seventeen years and who utilizes LCS, sympathizes with Miller-Green and says that children should not have to grow up homeless.

“Kids suffer the worst,” he said. “Little ones don’t understand. They want their own room and their own toys and their own clothes. They live out on the street.”

The Salvation Army is the only shelter in town that accepts families with children for overnight care and Lieutenant Wesley Dalberg expressed concern over the current situation and how quickly progress could be made.

“There’s a gap in our service in the community,” he said. “We don’t have anyplace to send them. There are plans to help alleviate the problem, but it’s never quick enough for those in need. Change is slow to happen.”

The Lawrence Community Shelter, Salvation Army and the Community Commission on Homelessness are the primary groups available in Lawrence to help those in need. The Commission meets every second Tuesday of the month from 8:30-10:00 a.m. in the City Commission Room of City Hall.

Jacki Becker has hung out with The Shins. She has traveled across the country to see Ben Folds. She considers The Get Up Kids part of her “extended family” and she travels almost half the year to promote concerts and bands. As founder of Up to Eleven Productions, based out of Lawrence, she’s one of the most influential people in the Lawrence and Kansas City concert scene, and yet almost none of the fans know her name. A lot of their favorite bands do though, because she helped them when they were starting out and she continues to book and work with many of them today.

“Death Cab for Cutie are some of my dear, dear friends,” Becker said. “I remember the first time they came through here, they played at Love Garden and I passed the hat and cooked them dinner. Cookies and brownies are kind of my thing.”

Despite her work booking, promoting and dealing with the set-up and tear-down of their shows, not all bands are easy to work with.

"Ninety-nine percent of the time bands are amazing,” Becker said. “But anyone that knows me knows that there are stories of Weezer. It was never ending. Whether it was the rider or Rivers’ paranoia to people following him or needing to have an hour to play piano of golf by himself.”

No matter which band it is she’s working with though, she maintains a sense of professionalism. Up to Eleven books shows in Lawrence, Kansas City, Des Moines, Iowa City, Omaha, Springfield and St, Louis. Her job frequently allows her to work with other promoters and a variety of venues.

“I’ve never had a bad experience with Jacki,” Jon Lunkwicz, Vice-President of the Beumont Club, Grand Emporium, Westport Beach Club and Karma, said. “Jacki has a good ear for new music and creates a good reputation for new bands in the Kansas City area. Their first experience is good because of Jacki and the way she runs her operation.”

According to her friends and business associates, it is largely due to her that Lawrence has such a vibrant concert calendar throughout the year.

“I can guarantee that if she wasn’t around to book shows as a promoter we would not have as many shows as we do now,” Joe Noh, a friend and musician, said. “I don’t know if there’s anyone that could replace her as a promoter. If we were to lose her, the music scene would take a pretty big blow.”

The way she runs her operation also has a positive impact on the people she works with. She often hires new interns and students to help her with shows and she teaches them about the industry.

“She’s a crusader for women in the industry,” Jenny Kratz, who has worked with Becker and is the Live Events Director for KJHK, said. “She wants to support women interested in promotions and production. For ‘Day on the Hill’ last year we went to her to help find bands and learn how to do large scale productions and on the day of the show she just stepped back and watched the show. She championed those who did the show and is a really great mentor.”

Kratz is also connected to Becker in another way. Kratz is the current host of KJHK’s local music show Plow the Fields and it was sixteen years ago this semester that Becker founded the show and was its original host. In March, KJHK held a Sweet 16 birthday party for the show to celebrate the occasion.

In addition to her start at KJHK, Becker has also run The Bottleneck, toured with bands and, for awhile, was doing production work for the House of Blues. Though she spends most of her time working, she does have a few outside hobbies, most of which she picked up from her mother.

“I do a lot of cooking, sewing and gardening,” Becker said. “I’m a mom, but not a mom. These were things that my mom taught me. I have two gardens and a huge compost pile. I’m sort of a hippie I guess. I like the Earth.”

Those are not the only skills Becker’s parents taught her and it is her background that has made her the person she is today.

“My parents taught me to work hard and that there’s nothing I can’t accomplish. They taught me to inspire others,” Becker said.

Becker continues to run Up to Eleven Productions and also owns a bar and music venue in Iowa City. Up to Eleven Productions has several upcoming shows in Lawrence. For more information, visit www.uptoeleven.com.

University of Kansas Paleontologist David Burnham has discovered, what he believes, is the origin of flight. The evolutionary concept, which is about whether creatures flew and then went to land, or vice versa, has long plagued the science community, but the discovery of a four-winged creature seems to have solved the mystery. “Current science believed that flight evolved from the ground up from terrestrial dinosaurs,” Burnham said. “This research shows that flight evolved from the trees down.” Evolution occurs when a change in environment requires a creature to take on another form and happens over thousands, and sometimes even millions, of years. This was a case for these creatures, who are microraptors, which means they existed approximately 100 million years ago. “My researcher and [research partner Larry Martin’s] says that they are birds themselves,” Burnham said. “It expands the definition of birds and places the origin of birds further back in time.” Burnham said that he hopes people will look more carefully at research before jumping to conclusions about the classification of newly discovered creatures. He also explained how it was impossible to believe that creatures came from the ground up. “Hopefully it will make people think more about how they classify dinosaurs and birds,” he said. “They are two distinct groups. How flight originated should be from the trees down. From the mid-1970’s people have been trying to create complicated theories from the ground up. It is physically impossible, according to Newtonian physics. The wings on their legs slows them down more.” Burnham and Martin traveled to Germany, France and China to collect data and investigate fossils found in the area. Martin had a history with researchers in China and focuses his studies on birds from the age of dinosaurs. “I was one of the four researchers that described Confusciusornis and helped make China the center of early bird research,” Martin said. “I have long term research programs with Chinese colleagues and I have asked Dave to join me on several projects, including our work on Microraptor.” Burnham defended his dissertation on April 17 at KU and he and his team, partially made up of students, are in the process of perfecting a model of the creature to test and display in the Natural History Museum. “We take the bones they’ve sculpted and pour the plastic into molds,” said Kenneth Bader, Geology graduate student. “We leave them inside for a couple of minutes. Each creature takes somewhere around a month to a month and a half to make.” Next month PBS program NOVA will come to KU to interview and film the Burnham, Martin and other involved with the project for an episode of the show. The team is working against time not only to have the models finished in time for the shoot, but also because the American Museum is also developing a theory.

In living rooms across the country, kids, teens and adults alike hold plastic guitars with little colored buttons and play some of the greatest tunes of all time. These people are playing the now hugely successful videogame “Guitar Hero,” but several area Lawrence bands were playing the real thing in lawrence.com’s annual Deadwood Derby competition.

The finals for this battle of the bands took place May 4 and the event was founded last year. The semifinals took place in April. Each week, several bands competed in a round of competition, with one moving onto the finale. The judges picked a wildcard, which rounded out the final group. The bands in the finale were Sterilize Stereo, The Old Black, Dead Girls Ruin Everything, Kaw Valley Project and Left on Northwood. Before these groups competed though, there was an online competition. Bands for the semifinal rounds were chosen by a fan vote.

“We wanted it to be as open as possible,” said Phil Cauthon, lawrence.com’s editor. “It’s up to the bands to get their fans on there and vote like crazy for a couple of weeks. There’s no wondering why this band gets in.”

The winner this year was Dead Girls Ruin Everything and the members walked out the door with thousands of dollars in prizes, something that the bands were pining for. The prizes included free studio time, a music video, press kit and merchandise.

“There are ridiculous prizes as far as recording goes,” said Travis Hare, singer and guitarist for Kaw Valley Project. “Last time recording cost us $800 out of pocket, so $1500 for free was just to good of an opportunity to pass up.”

In addition to the monetary prizes, the Deadwood Derby also gave the bands exposure that is often hard to get in a local music scene.

“The grand prize is great, but it’s really the exposure,” said JC Cirese, guitarist for The Old Black.

It is that exposure that Cauthon had in mind when his friend, Jay Brown, came to him with the idea. Brown is a musician and works in entertainment law.

“It’s a rock show organized into a tournament that showcases local music,” Cauthon said. “We can cross-pollinate existing fan bases with others and mix up different types of bands.”

The judges were made up of area musicians and people who work in the industry, but the scoring was set up by Lawrence.com. The judging categories were crowd reaction, musicality, song selection, appearance and stage presence. While each judge comes from a different background, they said they wanted the winning band to have similar qualities and they all expressed how important Lawrence’s local music scene is.

“[I’m looking for] a band that has a good sound, plays well together and has a good stage presence,” said Ryan Pope, former Get-Up Kid and current part owner of Black Lodge Studios. “Local music is part of the history of Lawrence.”

However, judge Steve Wilson, who manages Keifs, writes reviews for the Kansas City Star and is a musician, say a key element is the quality of the actual songs.

“Songs [are an important element.] Without songs, you don’t have anything,” Wilson said. “And, you need the musicianship to execute those songs.”

Ultimately it is the fans who make the Deadwood Derby successful, from their initial votes to their support during the finale.

“We heard about the show because our friend is in The Old Black and we’re here to support the group,” said Cassie Pahcoddy. “Local music builds character to our little town and supporting local music is like supporting family and friends. Maybe someday they’ll be a little bigger.”

Those fans and the music are what keep most of the member of these bands going. A far cry from the superstars on MTV, the member of these bands have extra job and actually pay a lot of money out of their own pocket to get their music to the public.

“We all work two to three jobs and then we play our music,” Hare said. “We work 12 hour days and then come to practice. We take it seriously. The music is what allows us to do the other stuff. We work all day and have relationships and it all builds up every single day. It’s an extremely important outlet and it’s also extremely fun.”

All of the bands received a 30-minute free legal consultation and Lawrence.com will post a compilation CD of all 16 bands that competed, which will become available as a free download.

Photos of the event are available at our flickr site.

The Competitors