I’ve barely been in Kansas City an hour and I’ve seen her everywhere. Not literally, unfortunately — there’s the small matter of a global tour taking up a lot of her time — but in shops and cafés, and even as street art. She’s on T-shirts, mugs, tote bags, keyrings (sample slogan: “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me”) and depicted as a saint on religious-style candles. Her boyfriend, who’s originally from Westlake, Ohio, but has lived in the city since he was drafted to play for the Chiefs in 2013, is almost as inescapable (I nearly buy a T-shirt proclaiming: “Here for the drinks and Travis Kelce’s butt”). Even though she was born in Pennsylvania and has homes in Nashville, New York and Los Angeles, KC — as the locals call it — is Taylor Swift’s town, and everyone else is just living in it.
“At this point, Taylor is doing 90 per cent of my job for me,” says Jenny Wilson from Visit KC, which promotes Kansas City to international markets, when I meet her for coffee in the hip former industrial area of Crossroads, where I’m staying — my hotel of the same name is in a former brewing depot for Pabst beer with original features such as steel girders and exposed brick (B&B doubles from £159, crossroadshotelkc.com). “We’ve noticed a growth in interest and bookings since she started dating Travis last September, and after the Chiefs’ Super Bowl win in February.”
Visitors come for a variety of reasons, she says, including the jazz, food and barbecue scene, and its frontier past. “It’s a low-key, friendly place,” Wilson says. “I like to describe it as a cosmopolitan city with a small-town feel.”
Most of the main attractions, including the downtown area and sporting arenas are on the eastern, Missouri side. It’s one of those American cities with plenty of room to breathe; districts and suburbs are spread out, and houses are enviably large. But it doesn’t attract the swathes of visitors of the big east and west-coast cities — after all, the modest Midwestern town with a population of about half a million is not just in one flyover state, but two — Missouri and Kansas.
It was originally settled in the 1830s by fur traders at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas rivers (about quarter of a mile north of where they meet today), at a time when America was expanding to the west. “It was the furthest westward trading post in America for a while,” Wilson says, “then, because of the river, pioneers saw opportunities for settling here permanently.” The railway arrived in the 1860s, and Kansas City kept growing until it hit an economic boom in the early 1900s as a centre for the cattle trade, with vast stockyards where herds were kept before being bought, sold and slaughtered.
The ready availability of beef is what led to Kansas City developing one of the USA’s most coveted barbecue scenes. “One of the defining features about our barbecues are the way they are prepared,” I learn from the guide Derek Byrne, who’s giving me a tour of the town. We start in the historic stockyard district, which is called West Bottoms, full of old red-brick former warehouses, some of which now house antique markets, brew pubs, art galleries and, of course, steakhouses. “Our barbecue is cooked low and slow, up to 18 hours at a very low temperature, and the sauces that go with it are very distinctive: sweet, spicy and molasses-based,” Byrne says.
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KC’s barbecue speciality is burnt ends, the crispy, juicy bits left over when cooking slabs of brisket. There are dozens of laid-back places to find these — residents revere Jack Stack (jackstackbbq.com), Arthur Bryant’s (arthurbryantsbbq.com) and Q39 (q39kc.com) — but because I’m following in Swift’s footsteps, I have it as a breakfast hash at Rye, a KC institution run by the award-winning husband and wife team Colby and Megan Garrelts (brunch dishes from £12, ryekc.com). Swift dined at their branch in Leawood, a suburb of the city on the Kansas side where Kelce lives, but Byrne wants to show me a more unexpected neighbourhood, where the Garrelts have a second branch.
Country Club Plaza is just a ten-minute drive from downtown, close to the city’s elegant museum of art, Nelson Atkins (free entry, nelson-atkins.org) and surrounded by the kind of upmarket gothic-looking apartment buildings you might find surrounding New York’s Central Park. However, the Plaza’s architecture is not what I expected to see in a Midwestern US city: it was inspired by Seville, with which it twinned in 1967. There are colourful ceramic tiles, decorative ironwork, shimmering mosaic-domed roofs, stucco façades, and a half-scale replica of Seville cathedral’s Moorish Giralda bell tower.
The neighbourhood was designed in the 1920s after the developer JC Nichols visited the Spanish city and had a (slightly surreal) vision for an upmarket retail area. It’s disconcerting to be wandering around these beautiful buildings only to find that they house things like a branch of the Cheesecake Factory. There is also a replica of Il Porcellino, the wild boar statue in Florence, and any number of gushing, classical fountains featuring mermaids, neptunes and dolphins. Byrne keeps laying weird and wonderful facts upon me, and explains these are what gave KC its nickname, the city of fountains — it’s the only city outside Rome to have more than 200 (originally they were just drinking fountains for horses).
I also didn’t know about KC’s association with jazz, but there’s a local saying that goes, “Jazz may have been born in New Orleans, but it grew up in Kansas City”. You can learn more about its history at the American Jazz Museum (£8, americanjazzmuseum.org). It’s the birthplace of Charlie “Bird” Parker and, at clubs and bars in the historic 18th and Vine district, in the east of downtown, is where other greats such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald performed in the 1920s and 1930s. They flocked here during prohibition because, after the introduction of America’s draconian anti-alcohol laws in January 1920, Kansas City just … decided to ignore them. At the time, the city was unofficially ruled by a somewhat gangster-like politician, Tom Pendergast, who had the police in his pocket so they turned a blind eye. You’ve got him to thank for the profusion of live jazz venues, such as the Blue Room (attached to the Jazz Museum) and the Green Lady Lounge (greenladylounge.com).
Music was already running through Kansas City’s veins long before Swift came for her first concert here in 2010. It was shortly after she performed Eras at the Chiefs’ Arrowhead stadium last July that she was first spotted in public with Kelce. Some are hailing the pairing as America’s Posh and Becks, so I head to GEHA Field, where the stadium is, for a tour to soak up its atmosphere (from £30pp, chiefs.com).
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My guide, Kim, has met Swift on some of her visits and tells me: “She’s a very nice, sweet, low-key girl. And she’s taller than I thought she’d be.” A few of the women on my tour go a bit gaga when we’re shown into the Chiefs’ changing room (possibly detecting leftover footballer pheromones, though it’s utterly immaculate) so Kim warns, jokingly: “No leaving your phone numbers in Travis’s locker, please.” It would be ridiculously easy to do so — Kim opens one of the (unlocked) drawers right in front of us to display his tube of toothpaste (Crest, if you’re interested).
Swift is not the only woman helping Kansas City football make global headlines. My visit coincides with the inaugural match played at the first purpose-built stadium for a professional female soccer team. The KC Current team — the name is a nod to the Missouri River — was formally established in 2021, and the CPKC Stadium sits in the still-developing Berkley Riverfront area to the north of the city centre. I’m lucky enough to watch the game — a tense and thrilling tie against the Portland Thorns, which the home team wins 5-4.
Afterwards, one of the players, defender Gabrielle Robinson, tells me how incredible it is, after suffering such indignities as having to get changed in car parks, for the team to have their own place. “It’s unreal to have a place that we are calling home. This is truly ours, we don’t have to share it.” Her team-mate Lo’eau Labonta says: “I hope young girls see this stadium and think that, when they get to my age, there’s going to be equal pay, they’re going to have their own locker room, their own stadium. That’s the goal.”
In its own low-key way, then, Kansas City has just been quietly getting on with being progressive, cool, and sometimes flouting the rules. It turns out it didn’t really need the Taylor Swift association. As Swift herself might say, KC just hits different.
Five more ways to trail Taylor in KC
Have drinks at Prime Social, a rooftop bar Swift and Kelce hired out after a Chiefs’ game last September. Time your visit for sunset, and take in panoramic views of the city. Cocktails from £12, primesocialrooftop.com.
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The Number 87 ring (Kelce’s football jersey number) from jewellery store EB and Company (£13, ebandcompany.com) has proved so popular it is currently out of stock. The owner Emily Bordner sent Kelce’s mum, Donna, some Chiefs-themed merch and the next thing she knew Swift was wearing the ring at one of his games. “I feel super-grateful that Taylor’s helping highlight my city,” she says. “It was amazing when their love story began.”
Swift and Kelce had a date night at the Argentine steak restaurant Piropos in the northern Briarcliff neighbourhood. It’s worth following their lead — empanadas are made from scratch on site, and you’ll dine in a beautiful, light-flooded room lined with contemporary art (mains from £13, piroposkc.com)
Seek out Swift-themed gifts at Shop Local KC (shoplocalkc.com). The owner Katie Mabry van Dieren stocks products by local makers, and is thrilled by the singer and footballer’s relationship, saying: “When it became obvious that Taylor and Travis were going to be more of a solid item, lots of people started creating things and I order as much of it in as possible.” Don’t miss the St Taylor Swift candle.
Have a coffee at mobile coffee cart, Wild Way Coffee (thewildwaycoffee.com). A special menu named after Swift’s songs was created for her Eras performance and the Lavender Haze (iced Earl Grey tea with a lavender-infused honey cold foam) is still available. “When Taylor and Travis started dating, the whole city grew obsessed,” the owner Christine Clutton says. “We brought the Eras menu back when the Chiefs were in the [Super Bowl] playoffs. I can’t wait for next season.”
Laura Millar was a guest of Visit Kansas City and Visit the USA. Bon Voyage has four nights’ room only at Crossroads from £1,675 pp, including flights (bon-voyage.co.uk). For more information, go to visitkc.com and visittheusa.co.uk
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