Tech town
Oklahoma City is a “great ecosystem” for software developers, said Clevyr’s Matt Williamson. “I’ve been doing this myself in Oklahoma City since 1995, so I’ve been around and seen a lot. And I would say that the culture in Oklahoma City now is just phenomenal for developers,” Williamson said. “Almost every day, you can go…
Stable market
While prices in the Oklahoma medical cannabis market seemed to be dipping in the spring, six months later, they have held steady and, in some cases, have risen. A multitude of factors are responsible for the stagnation in sticker prices, according to dispensary owners and budtenders. Gary “Turbo” Webb manages Green Plus, 1120 S. Air…
40 years: Paper practices
Back in the ’90s, when Oklahoma Gazette’s offices were located in the pre-statehood mansion then known as Maney House, staffers adopted a mascot that doubled as a running gag. “We had a Mr. Maney,” said account executive Saundra Rinearson Godwin, who started working at Gazette in 1990. “It was this dummy somebody had put together,…
Pitter patter
The Premature E-Jack-O-Lantern Party 9 p.m. Saturday The Paramount Room 701 W. Sheridan Ave. facebook.com/theparamountroom Free In the 2017 Letterkenny episode “The Haunting of MoDean’s II,” Wayne, to much delight, references an annual pre-Halloween party called “Premature Ejacu-lantern.” Letterkenny fan and Mt. Terror synthesizer player Jeremiah Holland, who named his own event after the joke,…
Competition crowns
After years of crisscrossing the country and earning recognition from some of the most prestigious barbecue competitions in the country, last October, Lon and JoAnne Mitchell decided create a permanent home for Jo-Bawb’s Championship BBQ. Located at 7921 Northside Drive, down North Rockwell Avenue off Northwest Expressway, Jo-Bawb’s operates out of a state-of-the-art trailer with…
40 years: Retrospective Gazette
Today, almost a quarter of the Oklahoma City metro reads Oklahoma Gazette for fiercely local news and entertainment. But when it was first founded in 1979, it was a small monthly neighborhood publication only really covering historic preservation and neighborhood issues. In 1982, Randy Splaingard became the publication’s first full-time journalist after working nearly a…
Acting drills
The Wolves Oct. 25-Nov. 3 Weitzenhoffer Theatre University of Oklahoma 563 Elm Ave., Norman
40 years: Ruby headlines
Oklahoma Gazette debuted in October 1979 as a “journal of contributions to Oklahoma’s quality of life.” It was 12 pages under the guidance of publisher Bill Bleakley, editor Cynthia Emrick, managing editor Mary R. Grace and businesses manager Stephanie Emrick. Stories appeared without a byline in the first issue, but many of them dealt with…
Gazedibles: 40 strong
In honor of Oklahoma Gazette’s 40th anniversary, we’re giving a shoutout to some of the restaurants that were open in 1979 and remain open to this day. This isn’t a comprehensive list, but they do us proud. By Jacob Threadgill with Gazette / file photos Junior’s 2601 Northwest Expressway juniorsokc.com | 405-848-5597 When Junior Simon…
Dancing days
Daybreak Festival Oct. 24-26 Big Creek Events County Road 143, Byars daybreakfestival.com $20-$299 To be honest, if the organizers behind Daybreak Festival were making a playlist instead of scheduling a lineup, electronic dance music (EDM) might not be their first choice. “I don’t know that much about electronic dance music,” said Darren Bond, owner of…
Chicken-Fried News: Dog did it
Is “the dog shot me” the adult version of “my dog ate my homework”? A Grant County woman was a passenger in a vehicle while it was stopped at the train tracks in Enid when a yellow lab puppy named Molly got startled by the passing train and jumped from the backseat onto the vehicle’s…
40 years: City changes
Oklahoma City as we know it was unrecognizable 40 years ago. While physical changes — like the contemporaneous influx of entertainment and eatery options — are obvious, the attitudes of city residents were also drastically different in 1979 and in the following decades. “1979 was important for a lot of reasons,” said Bob Blackburn, executive…
Growing pains
David Donnell was one of the first Oklahomans to receive his commercial growing license but still has not been able to harvest a single crop. Euno Grow received its approval last September, and then Donnell went about getting the city of Piedmont to sign off on his remodeling permit. “We have 35 acres. It’s a…
Restorative Deli
From its etymology, the word “restaurant” literally means “that which restores.” Celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson is fond of saying the word means “to restore a community.” I think both definitions are particularly apt because when you’re hungry, there’s nothing quite as restorative as a good meal, and when you think about how many plans have…
Flower Review: GMO Cookies
Strain name: GMO Cookies Grown by: Elite Leaf Acquired from: Elite Leaf Date acquired: Oct. 4 THC/CBD percentages: 30.6/.11 (per F.A.S.T. Laboratories) Physical traits: light green with a large number of wiry stigmas and dense trichomes Bouquet: herbal and peppery Review: I had heard good things about Elite Leaf’s flower from Reddit, so I made…
Chicken-Fried News: Fuzzy Math
We here at Chicken-Fried News would calculate that Oklahomans are as good at math as just about anybody. Unfortunately, that might be because, as Oklahomans, our math scores fall below the national average, according to the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, so we have to assume our calculations might be a little faulty. Maybe…
Chicken-Fried News: Secretive Sooners
Add “Black Hole” to the list of names people call the University of Oklahoma (OU) board of regents — right next to “corrupt,” “failures” and probably a less appropriate type of hole. Freedom of Information (FOI) Oklahoma presents the Black Hole award to an organization or individual “that has most thwarted the free flow of…
To the future!
As we celebrate Oklahoma Gazette’s 40th anniversary, another milestone has recently passed that is of a more private nature. It has been just over one year since I purchased Tierra Media Group, the parent company of Oklahoma Gazette, from founder Bill Bleakley. And in many ways the journey to this place was personal and a parallel to…
