Some familiar faces from our election/relaunch party.
photo by Amelia McBride
This May was a perpetually exciting month. Crazy weather, elections and the annual evacuation of the town from the local college students. That’s right, Dentonites. It’s that glorious time of year! You may once again purchase your sleeve of tiny powdered-sugar donuts at 9pm at Kroger without having to wait in line for twenty minutes at the self checkout. While we’re on the topic, can we either put an age restriction on the self-checkout machines or have some classes at the local library on how to use them correctly? The elderly go to the library, right?
Anyway, May was a rather interesting month. While April was full of rather large festivals in town, May saw the first appearance from a couple of smaller fests that we hope pop up again some time in the future. Namely, we’re talking about the art and music festival that Austere Magazine put on (we even nailed an interview with the ladies behind the ‘zine prior to the show) and, of course, the skateboard/music/Mexican food festival that was Taco Fest at the burgeoning Taqueria El Picante.
Of course, the month of May also saw each of our endorsements for city council win their respective elections. We couldn’t help but throw a calm shindig in celebration. In addition to the city council, we also got to rub elbows with the likes of Euline Brock and Chris Flemmons. The former a prior mayor of Denton and the latter, the brains behind The Baptist Generals. The Baptist Generals released a new album in May; their first since 2003’s No Silver/No Gold. The album was released last week to much fanfare and was well worth the wait. You can stream below, if you haven’t already purchased it.
https://soundcloud.com/subpop/sets/the-baptist-generals-jackleg
A few days later, we saw lots of familiar faces at the 2nd Denton Creatives Mixer. Lots of people who have had success in the arts locally talked about their experiences while we listened to them and wondered where our sunglasses were. Hands were shaken, business cards were exchanged and hopefully business ideas were conceived.
Our friends over at Spiderweb Salon also had a show that highlighted the female-gendered of the collective in addition to releasing the “Collaborative Issue” of their much prized zine and sharing the work of April Murphy with us.
Glen Farris got the scuttlebutt on what’s happening in the business world around town. We learned that Lone Star Attitude will soon be serving burgers on a rooftop patio complete with musical stairs and that there is even a bonafide BBQ restaurant moving onto Hickory St. behind Gerhard’s.
Armadillo Ale Works had another launch party. This time it was for their delicious new Greenbelt Farmhouse Ale. You can grab some over at Oak St. Drafthouse. We also highlighted a few Kickstarter’s from local hopefuls. A couple of them even seem to be well on there way to becoming fully-funded. Check ‘em here out if you haven’t already.
Oh yeah! We also got a quick lesson on the history of voting from Shaun Treat of Denton Haunts, took a look into thrifting, gave the more procreative of y’all a quick rundown on summer camps that look fun and interviewed a bunch of people (namely Triple Threat Press, the forthcoming Maker Space, Chet The Daytripper, and Ken Willis of Beth Marie’s fame).
That's it for the month of May. June should see the opening of Rusty Taco, Dog Days of Denton and lots of great shows. Think we missed something important that happened in May? Let us know in the comments!