Oklahoma City Favorites

Favorite thing: Waking up in a cheap hotel isn't much better than falling asleep in one. We'd arrived around midnight the night before after finding slim pickings in the way of accommodation on the road from Little Rock to Oklahoma City. I had to bang on the owner's door to get this fleabag and suddenly my wife's tolerance of my penchant for brewpubs was wearing thin. It wasn't entirely the brewpubs faults however and we resigned that earlier starts would get us to our destinations earlier. Besides, this room wasn't exactly one that you would want to linger in anyway. So, we got on the road early and headed towards the last of my fifty states, Oklahoma.

Oklahoma City was the only planned stop in the state but we had a few things to see in town and surprisingly none of them involved beer. I figured maybe I better give that one a rest after last night. First up was the the Oklahoma National Memorial. It was in the National Park system and since we had a National Parks pass it would be free. That's a good word when you're on a tight budget. It was an eery experience walking around an area of recent mass destruction. Oddly, maybe more so than walking around a Nazi concentration camp. I guess you would think that time would have taught man a lesson or something. It was interesting enough walking around the memorial but found out that the museum that would explain the atrocity was not included with our Parks Pass. So, headed over to the Oklahoma Botanical Gardens as we also had a pass allowing us into selected such places around the US too. This kept us busy for another hour or so and we figured we would then walk around the downtown a bit before we hit the road. As soon as we drove into the renovated warehouse district, I saw not only the brewery I had read about and given a pass to, but a huge sign saying Happy Hour 3-7 on top of it. We parked right outside of it but took a walk around the quaint little area, snapping some photos. As chance would have it, it was just around 3:00 when we got back to the car. My wife smiled at my timing. Funnily enough, there had been no timing on my part. It just happened. Really, it did. The brewery was pretty good too. The beer was nothing super special but at $1.75 a pint, a price I hadn't seen in about a decade, it wasn't bad either. They also had some cheap food so it doubled as a dinner stop. That's the thing about wells. You don't know if they're dry unless you stop to have a drink.

Favorite thing: Mickey Mantle is one of the favorite hometown heroes of Oklahoma City, having grown up here, and going on to play a fairly long professional career with one of the most famous Baseball teams ever, the New York Yankees. Mickey was born in Spavinaw, OK and lived most of his childhood life in Commerce, OK. He also briefly attended the University of Oklahoma in nearby Norman until he began playing baseball professionally.

There are many different memorials to Mickey, including the main street in the Bricktown District, and a statue of him outside the Bricktown Ballpark.

Favorite thing: Interesting things:
Bomb Memorial,
Cowboy Hall of Fame,
OKC Museum of Art (Chihuly glass exhibit like Bellagio Hotel in Vegas)
Civic Center (art decco out and ultra-mod inside)
Skirvin Hotel (a beautiful hotel going through 45 mill. renov.)
Bricktown (still new but full of great rest. and nightlife),
Capital bldg.
Remington Park (soon to be horserace & casino)
Guthrie (hist. town 15 min. north; worth the trip)
Santa Fe Depot

- Food:
Eastwharf
Bricktown (everything to eat. Finest are Nonna's and Mickey Mantle. Funnest is Bricktown Brewery),
Cattlemen's Steak House,
La Baguette bistro,
Boulevard,
Ted's Escondido on May (best Mex.),
Western Ave. Rest such as, Metro, Sushi Neko, Deep Fork

- Nightlife:
Trendy (Lit, Rane, the Purple Bar, Skky, Electro)
Live Music (VZD's, Bricktown Brewery, Green Door)
Penny beer (club Rodeo, Wormy Dog)

-Hotels:
Renaissance dntwn
Sheraton dntwn
Waterford
Courtyard by Marriot dntwn
coming soon: the Colcord boutique hotel, the Skirvin renovation, and Embassy Suites in Bricktown

- Best Movie Theatres:
Harkins Theatres in Bricktown
Quial Springs AMC 24

- Watch out for:
Frontier City
streets that start with NE prefix
the weather... dont risk it in OK
State Fair
Tinseltown theatre

- The beer:
1% alchol different than everywhere else and it only applies to cold beer sells at stores and big name "domestics." You can still get regular beer at bars.

Sports:
triple A ball, still fun and the stadium is like small MLB stadium,
Blazers Hockey,
Yard Dawgs Arena F-ball
But... OU is just 20 min. south for coll. f-ball (a great college town and the f-ball stadium holds 85,000)
OSU is just one hr. north for coll. b-ball

Needs:
car. not the most pop. city in America but it is one of the biggest
a smile... OKC is very hospitable and full of nice people so if you suck they will not like you.

Overall:
goods and bads. For a while the bad has outweighed the good... but with all the efforts by the citizens it will be great. (young city)

Favorite thing: As entering the beautiful state of Oklahoma off of the Interstate 35 coming from Texas, I stopped at the Vistor Center, which is a very impressive building. When you enter, it feels very inviting and the folks are so friendly. They serve free coffee too, restrooms are available and, lots of traveling information. They have a really impressive decore inside with some really wonderful murals too.
580-296-2672
Vistor Center

Fondest memory: There was a couple of maintenance fellows that were teasing me by telling me that in order to take a picture I had to pay them.....I just giggled and said "right". They giggle too. Oh, it was funny also the lovely lady behind the counter kept ducking out of the way while I was trying to get her picture too, I kept telling to get back to her post....lol! She was red by the time I left there....lol!

Favorite thing: Well, one way to occupy an evening in OK city is to catch a base ball game down at bricktown...

They have a pretty nice minor league stadium down there. The night I went there was a college game between Oklahoma St and Univ of Oklahoma, so this obviously generated a bit of local interest. (Large masses of people decorated in orange and purple milling about...)

Tho' sitting thru the game would have been ok, fate would have it that it started to pour just before the game started.. So rather than watch a game in which I really didnt have any interest, we instead wandered down to one of the many local pubs in the area and got tanked up instead... (all for the better, I'd say...)

Favorite thing: While the steaks are robust in Oklahoma City, the beers unfortunately are not.

For reasons unknownst to me, it seems the only beer available is watered down 3.2 beer. This can make it somewhat challenging to find a proper beverage to wash that 40 oz porterhouse down with. (and also necessitate more than a couple visits to the rest room)

Favorite thing: Oklahoma City was born overnight on April 22, 1889 when unassigned prairie lands in the Oklahoma Territory were opened for settlement. Over 10,000 claims for homesteads were made in one afternoon. It was designated the state capital, following Guthrie, in 1910. Though the city expanded from day one, it really hit 'paydirt' on December 4, 1928 when the first oil well within the city limits struck a gusher. Not only the economy was changed after that day. The skyline changed also, with oil well derricks springing up everywhere. One of the most famous gushers was the Mary Sudik which blew for 11 days and spewed oil as far away as 15 miles. Today, there are still producing wells on the state capital grounds. Not only the oil fields contribution to the economy blossomed, but also the related fields in manufacturing.
In 1964, the downtown area of OKC, as the city is known affectionately by its residents, was scheduled for re-development. The result is a beautiful and striking area with greenhouses, lakes, water concourses, and landscaped hills among its features. .

Favorite thing: Like many cities, Oklahoma City has its share of once-glorious buildings that, while not yet decayed or decaying, have sadly fallen into oblivion. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Union Station on SW 7 has a prominent cupola that is visible from the major roads. Once part of the rail traffic to downtown, and lately considered for a hub of the bus network, the Union Station now sits proudly, but sadly, forgotten.