Sept 6 @ 6.30: Be there or be a square (621 of them)

Dr. Shadid is doing another town hall, and for those who haven't heard of the Good Doctor's town halls, people actually show up, and they get stuff done. There will be one on September 6th at 6:30, at OCU, that could go down in history quite possibly. I myself am trying to move up a Fall Break vacation when I would have been in OKC so that I can be in attendance, but I need a department clearance since I'd have to make up a lot of studio hours, so it seems unlikely.

The problem is that Dr. Shadid can actually shake things up and represent everyone in the city who yearns for urbanism, only as long as they make their voice heard. If people stay quiet, just mumble their complaints to themselves, and expect things to change on their own, nothing will ever happen and Dr. Shadid won't have the actual citizens backing him up that he needs in order to make a real difference. So as it stands, the least I can do is get the word out and try and get as many other people there as possible. On facebook, evidently 110 are "attending," however many that actually ends up being. The reason the venue is TBA, as I understand it, is because they can easily move this into the Bass Center if it turns out to be hundreds.

I told Dr. Shadid that he should have named the thing "Dr. Shadid's OKC Sprawl Clinic" just out of whimsy, but as it stands, he has a great name for the event already. Sprawl: OKC's Unique 621 Sq.Mi. Permutation. The premise being that all big cities have sprawl, however, OKC takes it to the N'th degree. This we know is true.

The facebook link:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=260628310616128

Shakespeare in the Park

Who doesn't love the arts in the middle of the city? For those who are looking for something to do this evening, check out Shakespeare in the Park. Tonight is closing night for the Taming of the Shrew, one of my favorite Shakespeare plays (I actually I just like the comedies). And yes, Shakespeare in the Park is still going strong despite the reconstruction of the Myriad Gardens underway. For this summer it has been moved to the plaza in front of the Civic Center steps. I personally think it might be an even better setting for the play, with the grandiose Civic Center Music Hall looming large on one end of Bicentennial Park and the best skyline view in the city on the other end.

Paseo pics

After how pleased I was with deadCENTER, I guess I might as well put up some of my pics from the Paseo Arts Festival. Took about 100, but here's some of the highlights. All can be viewed here. The Paseo district certainly looked really good. Always a great festival.

10th Annual deadCENTER Film Festival downtown

The pictures are worth a thousand words, even though I still have to preface these with mentioning the limitations of a crappy camera when the sun goes down. It was difficult to convey an en entire block full of people shoulder to shoulder.

And after tonight and running into so many old friends and seeing so many trendy people pack Broadway and revel in the story of Mat Hoffman..it was truly a celebration of Okies who honor Oklahoma by dreaming big and defying normative standards and stereotypes. I can't say it enough. There is just something cool and special that you can only get from being a part of the beginning of something. It's just that "well-kept secret" that makes Oklahoma's massive hip scene so unique. A lot of outsiders have commented on it, how here in this "new city" that nobody really hears or thinks about we've got all these quirky people and great bands and people that just hit it big.

Those of us who are a part of OKC's urban renaissance and the massive growth in local culture are part of something that is brand new and has the sense that we have already stumbled across something very big. And it will continue to get bigger. Is OKC the next "Austin"? No of course not, OKC is just the next..OKC. That will mean something soon, and it already does in a very real way to us.

Facts:
-10th year for the festival
-Will run 5 days, from June 9th to June 13th
-7 locations include the OKCMOA, IAO Gallery, Untitled Artspace, Kerr Auditorium, Norick Library, and outdoor locations.
-Attendance is expected to exceed 10,000 (after "The Birth of Big Air" tonight on Broadway, they're already well on their way.
-There will be over 100 movie screenings
-There will be 12 official deadCENTER party events as well]
-All-access pass is $125, all-screenings pass is $75, and individual screenings are $10
-Supporting this goes a LONG ways toward support the emergency of local culture and identity as well as a great event.

Before the Mat Hoffman and Spike Jonze took the stage to introduce the film at the beginning of the screening, there was actually a short-lived, albeit sweet, chant of "OKC! OKC! OKC!" OKC? Yeah. Like I said..I really feel like being here in OKC right now, we are on the verge of something big.

This post (not) brought to you by the Big 12 Conference

The Big 12 announced its new host cities for future tournaments and the results are in: OKC has officially gotten the shaft. This will be a real brief post, and as much as I would like to spend hours going through data and old news clippings pulling out attendance figures from past times OKC has hosted the basketball tournament, let me just say that OKC has never done a bad job of hosting the Big 12 basketball tournament. The event, which was a huge boon for downtown the two times we were lucky enough to host it, was perhaps the closest we will ever be to hosting big time sports tournaments because the future prognosis does not look good for OKC.

The bright news is that we have secured the Big 12 baseball tourney for 5 more years or so. Realistically though, there was no competition. Omaha, Tulsa, and Austin wanted it..but neither have the same baseball setup in Bricktown that fans from every school have absolutely loved for the last ten years or so. Nobody can come close to competing for that event which honestly is not nearly as big an event as basketball and football, and we're obviously never going to host the football championship for lack of an NFL stadium anywhere in Central Oklahoma.

But basketball is the prize we should have had our eyes on and we absolutely blew it. Because of how successful both of our ventures with the tourney were, it is a shame to settle for not hosting this event. Yes, KC was also good. But there are advantages to OKC also that should have kept us in the running and the event should have been split between the two cities. Let me emphasize: MAJOR loss. I know right now, given the general euphoria in this city, it's hard to comprehend the idea of a major loss, but this is it. Perhaps the impact is lessened by our ability to flirt with hosting an endless array of big events at once, from the Grand Prix idea, to the rowing, to other sports tourneys, and so on--but the PRIZE out of any event we could possibly host was the Big 12 Basketball Tourney and we lost out. We need to examine ourselves as a city and discover what it is that we lack and how we can better position ourselves to host major "Big League City" events like this, which would put us on a map of other cities that host conference tourneys like Seattle, Atlanta, and NYC.


But maybe it doesn't even matter and we're destined to lose relevance in hosting conference events anyway. Consider that the Big 12 is looking less and less likely to exist in a few years and the surfacing of reports today that the Pac 10 has extended invitations to 6 Big 12 teams, with another two having known (well-publicized) flirtations with the Big Ten. If the Oklahoma schools end up in the SEC, OKC isn't going to have any events to host. The SEC has anchored EVERY conference tourney in Atlanta and that won't ever change. If the Oklahoma schools end up in a "Pac 16" conference as is appearing very possible, it's going to be a hard sell for OKC to host events that fans will travel to. In fact anywhere you host a tourney in a "Pac 16" conference it's going to be difficult for fans in Texas or in California. Consider the future and the trends that appear to be emerging.. what does OKC stand to get out of all of this?

Doesn't look good in terms of hosting major events at the Ford Center. And also consider this, and this is where the impact from conference realignment could be HUGE for downtown OKC: If the primary reason for keeping the Cox Center and especially its arena in tact was the preservation of the setup with two arenas "48 steps" apart, what advantage does that extend us in the future? Is there a reason to keep that setup if we are no longer competing for men's and women's tourneys across the street from each other? That land could be prime real estate, and a huge money maker for OKC, especially if anything in MAPS 3 has cost overruns beyond $17 mil. The benefit to the general public who's not concerned with the city coffers however would be in the form of possible breaking the site back up into smaller blocks and reinstating urban infill on that site, which would much better incorporate the east edge of the Myriad Gardens.