Southside rejoice

Half Price Books is coming to fill the void of books in South OKC. It will be going on 240 at Penn.

Rockin' Reunion in Capitol Hill

This looks really cool: The alumni groups for the four high schools on the south side, Capitol Hill, Southeast, U.S. Grant, and Mount St. Mary's, are having a huge all-southside reunion block party Capitol Hill--using all of 25th Street/Commerce between Walker and Robinson.

They're planning on having a chili cookout, a vintage car show, an art show, several bands playing music from different decades, guitar art contest, guitar hero tournament, and vintage clothing set up for sale.

It was scheduled for Saturday and Sunday of this weekend..but it was rescheduled until JUNE now. I'll mention something about it again before the event. What I really need to do is put together a calendar on here of the events I am recommending..

What MAPS tells us about north v. south

Let's pause our search at convention centers to take a real quick flashback at the MAPS 3 election results. If you previously didn't believe in a north/south dichotomy, take a look at this. It couldn't be clearer, and I think this is evidence that the rift between North OKC and South OKC is getting worse. Typically the MAPS results follow socioeconomic lines, but there are some lower-income wards in NE OKC that went pro-MAPS and some high-income wards in SW OKC that went anti-MAPS. That suggests that the north/south rift is so strong that it even bridges socioeconomic rifts.

The north side with its museums, coffee shops, art galleries, locally-owned restaurants, night clubs, locally-owned bookstores, universities, and so on.. and the southside with none of that. Consider that the southside, a huge region with hundreds of thousands of people, has ONE Starbucks (the only coffee option besides 7/11). Edmond alone had 8. North OKC has quite a collection, too. There is also not a single bookstore in South OKC, and going south from downtown, you won't reach a bookstore until you get to the southwest side of Norman.




And lastly, in honor of MAPS 3 passing, here's some music to go with it. The song is "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Last week OKC said "Yeah Yeah Yeah" to MAPS 3.

A Crossroads update

The mall that just won't die. That is Crossroads Mall. It's like a huge flying cockroach that you keep trying to kill by stepping on it, but just won't die because its damn carcass is too squish-proof. Crossroads Mall has lost every long-time anchor: Ward's, Foley/Macy's, J.C. Penney's, and Dillard's. It even lost Steve & Barry's Crappy College XXL Megastore.

Thank goodness though for that southside ingenuity, that rugged hard-headedness that won't take defeat as the last word..instead of having a completely blank sign fronting I-35, they've filled up the spots maintaining the appearance of a mall, somewhat. It announces to a hundred thousand commuters a day on I-35 that its major anchors are Bath&Body Works, Waldenbooks, and Chick fil-A, and that there is an AMC movie theater on I-240 in front of the mall. That's what I call "maintaining appearances" through hard times.

And thank goodness that ODOT did not go through with an overhaul of the I-35/I-240 intersection just because it would have blocked off the main I-240 exit to this oasis of cosmopolitan shopping that is Crossroads Mall. Nevermind that there are deadly car accidents every day here, and the constant traffic tangle during the day, because if Crossroads Mall had died, the southside would have been without its crown jewel, Crossroads Mall.