I always thought I'd be in one of the big coastal cities. I was doing a tour of "Miss Saigon" at the time, and the pandemic shut down my show. My partner, who was also in the show, was from Kansas City. So we came here temporarily to wait out the pandemic. It took a while for theater to come back. Do I want to go back to LA? But I really felt like Kansas City was popping off. I'm now 35, so I was just coming out of the end of my 20s. I started to readjust my expectations of what I need from a city.
There's just so much more opportunity for people who want to not be a small fish anymore. Now I feel like I'm a big fish in a small pond. I've never experienced that before. It's cheaper here, and I have a better quality of life. That's what I want millennials to know. There are huge opportunities in these smaller secondary cities that I didn't even know of, until I was accidentally here because of the pandemic.
It is half as expensive to live in Kansas City. I have parking, a whole basement, a front patio, a back porch, and an in-unit washer and dryer. And I'm in a great neighborhood. It's called Columbus Park, and I'm right next to the river and 10 minutes from downtown.
In New York, I was working, like, five jobs. I was a barista in the morning. I went to audition and to take a class. And then I would cater and babysit at night. Now, my life is a little slower, but I'm able to still apply my hustle.
I started a coffee-shop truck in , and we opened a brick-and-mortar location in β the first Vietnamese coffee shop here in Kansas City.
