Kansas City Royals | Sean McCormick | food rivalry | gas pumps

Photographs by Sean McCormick

But seriously, y’all, it’s hard to have a food rivalry when you’re busy wiping to-die-for sauce off your chin.

Clutching my tray, fragrant with smoky meat but top-heavy with a tumbler of sweet tea, I gingerly edge my way through an exuberant lunchtime crowd packed into Oklahoma Joe’s Barbecue and Catering, a jumping joint in Kansas City. Someone bumps me, and my tea nearly drenches a teenage girl who, blissfully unaware in cupcake pajama bottoms and a Kansas City Royals T-shirt, is plowing her way none-too-daintily through a sizable rack of pork ribs. After saving the tea from spillage, I nab the last open seat in the place, parking myself roughly two inches from the next customer at a tight counter lining the front window, where the view is of gas pumps serving Joe’s adjacent convenience store.