Category: Lifestyle

AAPI Heritage Month with Cafe Cà Phê: Bety Le Shackelford

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By Kelcie McKenney
Photos by Travis Young

For Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, we teamed up with Catcall magazine to highlight the AAPI team members who make Kansas City’s first Vietnamese coffee shop Cafe Cà Phê possible. Read the intro here, and stick around this week to hear their stories.

What’s your title at Cafe Cà Phê?

Director of Community Outreach

Where is your family’s country of origin? 

Vietnam

What brought you and/or your family to Kansas City?

I moved to KC at the end of 2018 with my then-fiance/now-husband, James, who is originally from here. And my mom moved here last summer when Mia was born! I love that Mia gets to grow up with her Bà Ngoại. It means the world to me that our little mango gets to experience her Vietnamese culture straight from the source. 

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The new, sexy FDA-approved way of protecting against STIs

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By Nicole Mitchell

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved latex undies brand Lorals’ Lorals for Protection underwear as STI protection devices. Lorals for Protection protects its users from STIs during oral sex while being worn similarly to underwear.

The team of designers at Loral spent three years creating the latex undies for safe (and pleasurable) sex, and spent the last two years adapting the product to make sure that it met FDA and ISO standards, according to its website.

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AAPI Heritage Month with Cafe Cà Phê: Madoka Koguchi

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By Kelcie McKenney
Photos by Travis Young

For Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, we teamed up with Catcall magazine to highlight the AAPI team members who make Kansas City’s first Vietnamese coffee shop Cafe Cà Phê possible. Read the intro here, and stick around this week to hear their stories.

What’s your title at Cafe Cà Phê?

Manager

Where is your family’s country of origin? 

Japan

What brought you and/or your family to Kansas City?

Helping my best friend Jackie open the first Vietnamese coffee shop in KCMO, Cafe Cà Phê.

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The Cafe Cà Phê team is serving up hella good coffee, culture, and AAPI inclusion.

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By Kelcie McKenney

For Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, we teamed up with The Pitch to highlight the AAPI team members who make Kansas City’s first Vietnamese coffee shop Cafe Cà Phê possible. Stick around this month to hear their stories.

Cafe Cà Phê makes a damn good cup of coffee. But mixed in with the Vietnamese drip and sweetened condensed milk is the recipe for representation.

If you’re tapped into the Kansas City coffee scene, chances are you’ve heard Jackie Nguyen’s story. But we’ll give you a quick refresher. Nguyen, a first-generation Vietnamese American, left Broadway at the start of the pandemic, moved to Kansas City, and opened Cafe Cà Phê—Kansas City’s first Vietnamese mobile coffee shop. And since then, Nguyen and her coffee shop have positioned themselves as advocates for KC’s Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.

“When I grew up, I felt so ashamed to be Asian. I thought it was so uncool, and I felt like we were always teased and looked down upon,” Nguyen said. “I do not ever want any Asian kid to feel that way because it’s so far from the truth. I hope to combat that.”

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How Photographer Jada Hester started her photography business

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By Nicole Mitchell

Jada Hester is a photographer and small business co-owner of Film and Jpegs Studio located in Olathe, Kansas. Starting early on in photography, she has had plenty of time to create a style of art that is recognizable as hers—colorful, fun, and human-centered

Hester first got into photography when she was a child, following in her dad’s footsteps. “He had a cool camera when I was kid that I would play with,” she said. But it wasn’t until high school that she really considered photography as a potential career path. After graduating high school, she went to a local community college and took her first photography class. “It was fun to be around other photographers, but the class wasn’t 100% needed,” Hester said. “I thought, ‘Why didn’t I just teach myself all of this?’”

During the beginning of the pandemic, Hester and her boyfriend talked about creating a studio out of a shed in the backyard of her boyfriend’s parents’ house. With this, the two started a small business together (her boyfriend’s idea), offering Hester’s photography as a side job. “He’s more on the business side, and I’m on the art side,” she said. “Working together has been tough—as it would be in any relationship where they work together—but I’m really proud of it.” She shares that getting the shed started and creating their business together is what she’s most proud of in regards to her art.

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