OKC Central NewsOK.com Blogging Community

First noticed by Doug Loudenback, this item comes with plenty of art as well. And this time, no mention of the Dust Bowl!

Excerpt:

Newcomers to Oklahoma City might at first have a hard time guessing what part of the United States they’re in. A generally flat cityscape and the Chicago-style Art Deco architecture downtown, coupled with the friendly-but-not-too-friendly nods and hellos, hint at the Midwest. Jazz, blues bars and ubiquitous barbecue joints suggest the South. But the wide vistas, blast-furnace winds from the surrounding red-dirt prairie and preponderance of American Indian shops (Oklahoma has 38 sovereign tribes), pickups and cowboy hats indicate that you are indeed in the West.

And a Western kind of audacity pervades, from the 55-foot-tall glass Dale Chihuly sculpture in the Oklahoma City Museum of Art — which boasts the world’s most comprehensive collection of Chihuly’s works — to the exuberant parades and festivals that seem to be a constant. While I was in town, a nationally known local psychedelic band, the Flaming Lips, screened a homemade movie and music extravaganza, “Christmas on Mars,” to a raucous crowd at the deadCENTER Film Festival. At the same time, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum was hosting a gathering of contemporary Western artists — imagine a group of people resembling the cast of a Sam Peckinpah movie with paintbrushes. There is also a frisson in the air over the news that the city has managed to snag a National Basketball Association franchise, with the SuperSonics moving here from Seattle next season.