The nonprofit agency is building a $15 million, 50,000-square-foot, multipurpose facility that includes an overnight shelter, a feeding site, administrative offices, a chapel and social services offices. The new building replaces the abandoned flea market that was housed there for decades. Marilyn Blackburn, who lives north of the facility at 1101 N. Barnes Ave., complained […]
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Posted inNews
Identity crisis
Change, however, has been slow. For 50 years, the living conditions have been part of the history connected to the area generally bounded by NE 23rd Street to NE Fourth Street and from Lottie Avenue/Stonewall Avenue to Interstate 35 and long known as the John F. Kennedy district. In the 1960s, the Oklahoma City Council […]
Posted inNews
Failing forethought
Researchers contend that crushing poverty is more significant than failing public schools or bad teachers. Two years ago, a Stanford University study documented the new “income achievement gap.” The report showed family income is the “biggest determining factor in a student’s academic achievement.” The same year, writer Joanna Barkan published a report in Dissent Magazine […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Clear History
Clear History sure is, if more amusing than actually funny. Its intermittent focus is by nature of a purposely skeletal script to allow a wide berth for Curb-style improv; the feature length just magnifies those inherent faults. In 2003, marketing exec Nathan Flomm (David, sporting a downright biblical beard) gives up his 10-percent stake in […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Body Bags / Assault on Precinct 13
The opener is the best of the bunch, documenting the first — and quite possibly the last — night shift worked by a pretty young college student (Alex Datcher, Passenger 57) at a gas station. She sits locked in the cashier’s booth as a serial killer lurks close. The suspense gets to her as much as […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Samson & Delilah
Not much happens in the movie, at least initially, which I suppose is entirely the point. When he’s not huffing gasoline, teenage Samson (Rowan McNamara) ambles about his surroundings — empty fridge, dirty water, hard floors, merciless sun — and listens to music and screws around in a wheelchair. Meanwhile, his sorta-kinda girlfriend, Delilah (Marissa […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Breaking the Girls
Also drawing upon Single White Female and director Jamie Babbit’s own The Quiet, this frigid thriller stars Agnes Bruckner (now the poor man’s Abbie Cornish, after starring in Lifetime’s recent Anna Nicole Smith biopic) as Sara, a struggling college student by day and bartender by night. When she loses the gig of the latter, it […]
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Grabbers
On an Irish island, the whales and villagers alike are being attacked by an alien creature that thrives on blood and water alone. Looked like Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley, Alarm, In Her Skin) picked the wrong two weeks to sub as an officer there. Her jaded partner, the functioning alcoholic O’Shea (Richard Coyle, Prince of Persia: […]
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SEE IT: Wayne Coyne interviews Oliver Hibert for OKG
Bad Trip launches 7 p.m. Nov. 15 at Coyne’s Oklahoma City artspace, The Womb Gallery, 25 NW Ninth St. Admission is free. Tripping out During the summer of 2011, the landscape of downtown OKC changed forever when a humble building on Ninth Street transformed into a brilliantly colored and vaguely offensive landmark. For the common […]
Posted inMusic
A “Phresh” performance
Although apparently meeting expectations with crowd-pleasing hits like “Duffle Bag Boy,” “Birthday Song” and “I’m Different,” his set was little more than him shouting lyrics into the mic; yelling, “Say what?!” for no apparent reason; taking gratuitous bows; and occasionally delivering a few lines of actual rap that made the listener wonder if maybe he […]