Things to do in Kansas City

Culture · East of downtown, Missouri side

The historic centre of Kansas City jazz, where Charlie Parker grew up and Count Basie's band took shape, now home to the American Jazz Museum and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in one building.

Local tip: The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is the reason to come and it is one of the best small museums in America — allow two hours, not one. The Blue Room next door is a working jazz club rather than a heritage exhibit, and Mutual Musicians Foundation up the street still runs a jam session that starts after midnight on weekends.

Neighborhood · About five kilometres south of downtown

A 1922 Spanish-revival shopping district built with towers, tiled fountains and a car in mind — the first of its kind anywhere — with the leafy Brookside and Waldo neighbourhoods running south from it.

Local tip: The streetcar now runs here from downtown and it is free, which changes how the Plaza works for anyone without a car. Come the evening of Thanksgiving for the lights switch-on if you want to understand the city, and any other evening if you want to park.

Culture · Between the Plaza and UMKC

A major encyclopaedic art museum with a world-class Asian collection and a Steven Holl glass extension, sitting on a lawn with four giant badminton shuttlecocks on it. Admission to the permanent collection is free.

Local tip: The lawn is a genuine public park and people picnic on it all summer. Go into the Bloch Building at dusk when the glass lanterns light from within — it is the best twenty minutes of architecture in the region and it costs nothing.

Food · Downtown, on the Missouri River bluff

A public market trading since the 1850s at the northern end of downtown, with a large Saturday farmers' market, a permanent ring of Middle Eastern, Vietnamese and Mexican grocers, and the free streetcar at the door.

Local tip: Saturday morning is the full version and it is genuinely busy. The permanent shops on the perimeter are open all week and are where to buy spices, bread and produce you cannot get in a supermarket here.

Landmark · Liberty Memorial, just south of downtown

America's official First World War museum, under a 1926 memorial tower on a bluff, with a glass bridge over a field of nine thousand poppies and the best view of the downtown skyline in the city.

Local tip: The tower observation deck is a separate small charge and worth it. Go late in the afternoon so you get the skyline in the last light — it is the photograph everyone takes of Kansas City, and almost nobody who lives here has been up.

Nightlife · Between downtown and the state line

The old stockyards district of cast-iron warehouses below the bluff, and the gallery-and-restaurant Crossroads just south of downtown, which holds a First Fridays art walk that shuts the streets.

Local tip: First Fridays in the Crossroads is the easiest social entry point in the city for a newcomer — free, crowded, and the galleries genuinely open. The West Bottoms is quieter, mostly antique warehouses, and is best on a weekend afternoon.