The election of county commissioners — there are three in each of Oklahoma's 77 counties — would seem to be No Big Deal. Then again, about twenty years ago it was discovered that more than half of the state's 231 commissioners had gotten their fingers into some very rich pies. The Legislature responded by requiring independent boards to oversee county budgets. Still, the position of commissioner carries considerable clout, and apparently Shirley Darrell, who used to be in charge of District 1 in Oklahoma County, would like to have her job back.

To do that, Darrell will have to beat former OKC council member Beverly Hodges, who defeated Darrell four years ago. But there's a primary next Tuesday, and Darrell is being challenged by one of her former deputies, Jim Roth, who has mounted a fairly high-dollar direct-mail campaign. How high? He's sent me seven postcards, roughly 7.5 by 10 inches, each with two-color art and a different pitch. It was the seventh of those cards in which Roth came out swinging against his old boss, complete with what purported to be a copy of a warrant for Darrell's arrest on charges of racketeering, bribery, perjury, and other Bad Things. And indeed, Darrell was charged with all these at one time or another, but as anyone this side of Bill Clinton can tell you, a charge does not equal a conviction.

Roth describes himself as a "penny-pinching Democrat", which may even be true: Oklahoma officials of both parties are renowned for parsimony, although it's seldom reflected in the local tax rates. But there's still the thought in the back of my mind that the struggling remains of the local Democratic organization is pushing Roth mainly because he doesn't have Shirley Darrell's legal baggage. And there are other suspicious types out there; last year, when the arrival of the new census figures required that the district lines be redrawn, members of the African-American community protested that the new lines were cunningly designed to put the screws to Darrell because four mostly-black precincts were reassigned from District 1 to the comparatively-whiter District 2, which doesn't hold an election for commissioner until 2004.

And it gets better. Roth, should he prevail in both the primary and the general election, would be the first openly gay officeholder in the state's history. The state GOP, which is somewhere to the right of Fred Phelps, will not take this lying down. And Beverly Hodges, the Republican incumbent, who's been known to pinch a few pennies in her time — she voted to defund Oklahoma City's Human Rights Commission back in 1995, and she turned down a statutory raise last year — doesn't have a free ride through the primary either; she's drawn three opponents, including Courtenay Caudill, daughter of Oklahoma County Clerk Carolyn Caudill, who is — get this — Jim Roth's current boss. The Executive Committee of the Oklahoma County GOP took considerable umbrage that the County Clerk, one of their own, would dare to encourage a Democrat, especially a gay Democrat.

If it sounds like an awfully big tempest for what is, after all, a fairly small teapot, remember: This is Oklahoma, where politics is a blood sport. Almost.

Something called APAC Customer Services Inc. is seeking to fill 500 call-center positions in metro Oklahoma City. If you're interested in being emotionally drained by a soul-sucking job (don't even think of calling it a career) and you think 42nd and Treadmill pays too much, this may be just the spot you've been looking for, and may God have pity on your soul.

Microsoft has given the Oklahoma City Public Schools until 14 October to rid themselves of software not complying with Microsoft license agreements, and the district has launched a major software-license audit.

In the first pass, the district found 1700 PCs with questionable licensing, each of which could theoretically generate a $500 fine from Redmond; a second pass is scheduled to begin today. "I think we're in pretty good shape," said Jerry Dimmitt, team leader for the audit, "but we have so many computers it will be difficult to catch everything." The district has a site license from Microsoft for volume purchases, but it doesn't cover software acquired before the license, and most of the offending stuff, as it happens, is installed on PCs donated to the district, many of which will have to be weeded out to pass the audit.

The district is also putting out a list of minimum standards for donated machines, which reads as follows:

So don't even think about bringing over that old 286.

Paul McCartney showed up last night at the Ford Center, the first-ever appearance of any Beatle in the Sooner State. I didn't go, reasoning that I had probably better things to do with $250 — or perhaps rationalizing my failure to pay attention to the ticket-sale schedule — but by all accounts a splendid time was guaranteed for all.

And a tip of the fedora to Gene Triplett (and if it wasn't Gene, it was Sandi Davis — gad, how I hate shared bylines) of The Daily Oklahoman, who quipped: "If they love him this much at 60, he has nothing to worry about four years down the road." Vera, Chuck and Dave are no doubt very much relieved.

I mentioned this race way back in August and apparently never followed up on it. Anyway, in case anyone was asking, Jim Roth has defeated Beverly Hodges, 55 to 45 percent, to win the Oklahoma County District 1 Commissioner position.

Kambers has sold gifts and luggage in Oklahoma City since 1922, and for half of those eighty years, their TV spots were done by Eleanor Kamber, daughter-in-law of the founding family. It's a small sort of celebrityhood, to be sure, but I suspect anyone who spent more than a few months in this part of the world would have recognized her on sight. The store has moved several times — from downtown to Penn Square to Northpark to its current location on the eastern edge of Nichols Hills — but the one thing you could always count on was Mrs. Kamber.

That is, until this week, when health problems finally caught up to her; she died late Thursday night, at the age of 92. The store will remain closed through Monday noon, following services at Temple B'nai Israel. (Yes, Virginia, there are Jews in Oklahoma.) Her advertising tag — "You'll always find the unusual at Kambers" — is a local cultural icon, alongside "Boomer Sooner" and the B. C. Clark jingle.

We used to have a Federal building in Oklahoma City, named for Alfred P. Murrah, judge of the US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit from 1940 to 1970.

After everything came crashing down in 1995, plans were drawn up for a new facility. The new building, as yet unnamed, will open next fall, and already it's full; ten Federal agencies are slated to move in.

So far, so good. But there's one minor hitch.

The new building is located at NW 6th and Hudson (400 block west).

The Oklahoma City National Memorial, erected on the site of the Murrah, is located between NW 4th and NW 6th west of Harvey (300 block west).

A lot of people with windows facing east or south are going to be able to see the memorial. And not everyone, I imagine, will be able to shrug it off.

The Oklahoma City Public Schools have been pondering moving John Marshall High School about two miles northwest of its current location. Under the current MAPS for Kids initiative, money is available for renovation and improvements, but the present school sits on a 24-acre site, about half what the state specifies for a high school. Rather than buy up nearby properties, the district proposed to move the school to a larger tract, but residents near those tracts took exception.

Later this week, a feasibility study will point the district towards its next move. The negative response to moving the school, it is believed, will make the prospect of staying put and buying adjoining property more likely. A similar study earlier this year made basically the same recommendation for U. S. Grant High School, on the other side of town. If the Marshall plan follows the Grant example, the new school will occupy the far end of the school property; once it's built, the old school will be torn down.

This sounds excessively complicated, but both the Marshall and Grant facilities are really old and fairly decrepit and bringing the existing buildings up to spec will likely cost even more.

Downtown Oklahoma City, once the sun set, used to do a passable impression of a mausoleum: the offices would empty out, and nothing remained but concrete.

The redevelopment in Bricktown, across the Santa Fe tracks just east of downtown, has brought actual nightlife to the area. And the new Oklahoma City Museum of Art, about a mile west of Bricktown, is anchoring a nascent downtown arts district. However, almost everyone coming to Bricktown or the OCMA has come from a fair distance across town: there are private residences on the edge of downtown, but not many.

In an effort to reduce that "fair distance", the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority is planning 300 residential and retail units in something called "Legacy Summit at Arts Center", a few blocks north of the Museum. It's not quite as close to Bricktown as the row of renovated lofts on Broadway, but the city fathers have an abiding faith in "If you build it, they will come." Only recently has that faith begun to pay off; still, as the success of Bricktown attests, it is paying off.

America Online announced that about 300 jobs would be cut, and locally, where AOL operates a call center, everyone was sweating bullets (and, of course, offering bullet de-sweating devices at 40 percent off). It appears, though, that only a dozen or so will be laid off from the AOL facility in the north end of Shepherd Mall, leaving more than 1300 folks to talk you out of canceling your service after the 1025-hour free trial.

After briefly flirting with the notion of expanding John Marshall High School, the board of the Oklahoma City Public Schools has decided to relocate the school to a site on the southwest corner of NW 122nd Street and Portland Avenue. The move will cost upward of $25 million.

There are still objections being raised by nearby residents, though there's always the question of whether they'd raise the same objections were it a school from, say, the adjacent Putnam City district being moved into their neighborhood.

It's called the Metro Conncourse, and no, that's not a typo: it's named for Jack Conn, chairman of the old Fidelity Bank downtown, who with Dean A. McGee led development of Oklahoma City's pedestrian tunnels. The first link, under Broadway at Park Avenue, opened in 1931; over the years, the network of tunnels has expanded to most of downtown. Recently, Bricktown, east of downtown and off the Conncourse, has gotten most of the attention, and the tunnels have been mostly neglected.

Until now. A $3 million master plan for renovation of the tunnels will attempt to make them hip once again, with improvements to both the tunnels and the sidewalk entrances, and the addition of historical galleries to brighten up the rather bland interior. With the new plan comes a new name: "The Underground". Maybe too hip for this crowd, but I've always thought that the tunnels were one of the niftier aspects of downtown, and perking them up is something that's long overdue, especially if downtown promoters expect to pick up on any of the Bricktown frenzy. It's probably not possible to extend The Underground to Bricktown — the canal might get in the way — but right now, it's more important to remind people that it exists at all.

Rep. Leonard Sullivan (R-Planet Delusional) thinks the North Canadian River, which snakes its way through the middle of Oklahoma City, should be renamed the Oklahoma River. "I can't see any good reason for Canada to get all of that publicity," says Sullivan, perhaps hoping to set off a firestorm of protest in Ottawa.

But of course. And what better name for a stream which needs mowing twice a year, whose banks overflow at the slightest provocation, than "Oklahoma"?

Why, the Beaver River, which is what the North Canadian is called above the confluence with Wolf Creek. Of course, not everyone will be happy with a name like Beaver, either.

Yeah, and a Porsche is only a car.

The Rolling Stones are here. They'll play tonight at the Ford Center in downtown Oklahoma City.

No, I'm not going. In my present emotional state, which may be best described as "insufficiently repressed", I don't believe I could handle it.

And the Stones on the same night as the State of the Union address? Obviously this isn't the situation for which they wrote "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" — but it seems to fit just the same.

About 520,000 people live in the city, about as many in the suburbs, and you could probably get close to a million different answers to the question "Why do you live here?" But surely some of them will point out that on a comparative basis, it's cheap.

The most recent cost-of-living survey by ACCRA puts Oklahoma City at 9 percent below the national average, with housing costs a startling 21 percent below the national average. In all the areas covered by the survey, only transportation carried an above-average price tag, perhaps due to the spread-out nature of the place and the limited availability of public transportation.

Those who argue that you get what you pay for — well, we'll get to that some other time.

Monday night, the Oklahoma City Public Schools board is expected to approve a plan to close seven facilities at the end of this school year. Six of the seven schools would have been closed by 2006 under the city's MAPS for Kids master plan, but closing them early is expected to save $1.9 million for the beleaguered district.

State Representative Opio Toure, complaining that the closures unfairly target poor and minority students, has suggested that parents keep their children home one day in protest. Toure's Coalition for Educational Progress and Equity will meet today to discuss possible options.

In the Oklahoma City Public Schools generally, it seems to me, almost any school closing will impact minority students: more than a third of the district's students are black, another quarter are Latino, and there are substantial Asian and Amerindian contingents as well. Still, under the MAPS for Kids plan, new schools would be in place at approximately the same time the old ones were to be closed; under this accelerated consolidation, there will be a handful of schools temporarily operating with twice as many students.

Opened in 1911, four years after statehood, Bill Skirvin's hotel in downtown Oklahoma City was the unquestioned social center of town. By 1930, with an oil boom underway, the Skirvin had grown to 14 stories and 525 rooms. Bill Skirvin died in 1944, his children decided to sell the property, and while the hotel did well for the next two decades, an ill-advised search-and-destroy urban-renewal program in the Sixties caused everything downtown to suffer, and by 1969 the Skirvin could keep only a third of its rooms filled.

Things picked up in the 1980s, as urban renewal took a new form: restoration and preservation of the remaining historic structures downtown. The Skirvin was now on the National Register of Historic Places. Still, a succession of managements could not make it profitable, and after Oklahoma City government decided that it was worth saving, the city last year acquired the property from its most recent owners for just under $3 million.

Tomorrow, the city will receive proposals for redevelopment of the Skirvin. And they're plenty serious: as the committee report says, "Saving the Skirvin is not about saving a bad real estate deal; it is about investing in the future and supporting continuing economic growth in the downtown district." With Bricktown, just to the east of downtown, still growing, those extra hotel rooms will definitely come in handy. The city is willing to entertain the idea of letting the Skirvin go condo, but will draw the line at converting it to office space: there's too much of that going begging already.

As projected here last weekend, the board of the Oklahoma City Public Schools will shut down seven schools after the completion of the school year in an attempt to save some money. Chairman Cliff Hudson said he'd rather close some buildings than lay off teachers.

It's going to be tight at some of the surviving facilities for the next couple of years.

Actually, I worked diligently at not having any thoughts on the 19th, but thunderstorms this morning immediately prompted "Geez, I wonder if this is going to affect the memorial service downtown?" and that was the end of that.

And yes, the ceremony to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was affected — it had to be moved indoors because of the weather — but there was no way it was going to be stopped.

The tradition of 168 seconds of silence at 9:02 am was observed. General Rita Aragon of the state's Air National Guard received two flags from the memorial, one of which will be delivered to General Tommy Franks at Central Command. (General Franks, you'll remember, got his commission in 1967 at Fort Sill, just down the road.)

Venomous Kate weighed in today with the thought that Timothy McVeigh, convicted of the bombing and subsequently executed, got off easy:

I'm not so sure I want capital punishment to be particularly gruesome — there have been moments when I wasn't entirely sure I wanted capital punishment at all — but were it possible to bring him back to life and execute him again, again, and yet again, once for each of his 168 victims...no, that's not enough either.

It's going to rain — if not tonight, then tomorrow, and certainly by Sunday.

It has to. This is the week of the downtown Festival of the Arts, and the Fates would like nothing better than to see 150,000 people (a reasonable daily attendance figure) soaked to the gills.

The same rule applies, incidentally, to the State Fair of Oklahoma in the fall.

On the 13th of May, Oklahoma County residents (including yours truly) will vote on a proposed 0.4 percent sales tax increase, the estimated $30-35 million proceeds to be earmarked for the office of Sheriff John Whetsel.

Among other things, the sheriff wants to hire 145 new employees (including 100 for the county jail), expand existing programs and upgrade equipment.

Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys shot the sheriff down: "It's too large," he said, "it's too loose, and it goes on for too long." The mayor also announced he would head up a campaign to defeat the measure. Should the tax pass, the combined state/county/city sales tax in OKC would rise to 8.775 percent.

So far, this morning has been notable mostly for a string of minor surprises.

I turned in early last night, so I had no idea how badly the 0.4-cent county sales tax proposal was being beaten. On the way outside, I noted that however much rain fell amid the endless rumblings last night, it still wasn't enough to get the dirt off my car. And the bottom half of my doorknob was covered with some dark, gunky substance, like a partially-chewed Tar-Bar™ (money back if you get a stone).

Oh, and more rain is on the way some time in the next half hour. Let's see how it rearranges the dirt.

As American traditions go, the Sunday drive is definitely on the wane, shunted aside by our longer workweeks — gotta husband that leisure time carefully, doncha know — and sporadic haranguing by green types in blue states (or is that blue types in green states?) who object to any use of fuel that isn't on their Approved List. All the more reason, I figure, to take one when the schedule permits, and having gotten today's chores done early for once (clean up the bathrooms, do two loads of wash, defrag four drive partitions), I packed up some suitable tunes and hit the road. (Fred will be happy to hear that today's selections were chosen from the 1963 archives.)

Central Oklahoma, laid out mostly like a waffle iron, doesn't have anything quite like L.A.'s Mullholland Drive, but getting off the beaten path doesn't require an hour down the Interstate, either. I set the northern boundary at Wilshire, which in the city proper is noted for being halfway between 63rd and Britton Road, but which offers a quirk throughout its entire discontinuous thirty-mile length: it is at Wilshire where the section lines, and therefore the major roads which follow them, are supposedly adjusted slightly to allow for the curvature of the earth. Intersections at Wilshire are therefore decidedly non-standard, though seldom as perverse as, say, New Jersey jughandles.

I picked up Wilshire on the east side at the 9000 block, on the far side of one of those discontinuities, mainly because Douglas, which was a perfectly respectable suburban boulevard a few miles ago, shrinks as it goes; at this point, it's down to 1.4 lanes and won't go any further. It wasn't entirely clear whether I was within the city limits or not, since the intersection isn't marked. Heading eastward, I set a 40-mph pace, subject to road conditions, and observed.

Oklahoma City, for reasons having to do with ancient history — "ancient" in this part of the world meaning "before 1907" — is centered, not in the middle of the county, but towards its southwest corner. So this area, which starts maybe four miles from the county center, is almost entirely rural. The roads range from not bad to fairly grungy to downright awful, and they seem to change from one category to another just about every mile. Actual farming still goes on here, though it's sort of offputting to see a farm with a street address (911 insists); I saw three tractors in use, and two of them were apparently being operated by women. There were big houses and small houses, presumably designed for form rather than function; the overdesigned monstrosities in the newer developments simply don't exist out here. Someone who lives out this way who isn't farming, I have to assume, is here to get away from the rest of the world; it's hard to happen upon this neck of the woods by accident.

Somewhere around the 19300 block, there's a four-way intersection with three dead ends. Rather than back up, I chose the right turn, and found myself on a winding (well, sort of) two-lane that, surprisingly, had two houses for sale, one of which was open for inspection. And apparently I'd misjudged my location somewhat, because the open house was on a lakefront — which explains the multiple dead ends, anyway. I wheeled around in a hurry and got out of there, lest I be smitten by the place.

Rethreading myself, I headed south on Luther Road and noticed that all of a sudden I was getting seriously strong cell signals. A couple miles later, I spied the tower, which happened to be a few yards from an electrical power plant. Probably the same one that supplies my juice, even. I've lived in the eastern half of the county for most of the last twenty years, and I had no idea it was even there. "I really must get out more," I decided.

And eventually I turned back westward, following Reno Avenue, the main drag through the east end, wondering what Serious Urban Planners would think of it, what with little crapbox country houses cheek by jowl with overwrought suburban McMansions, and, this being Oklahoma, a church every mile. I suspect they'd be appalled at the lack of stylistic unity, the mailboxes that haven't seen a coat of paint since the Korean War, the little gas stations where you can get your fishing and hunting licenses, and the mere fact that people are living way the hell out here a good fifteen miles from downtown and twenty miles from major shopping areas, thereby wasting precious fuelstuffs on the way. Why, I must have wasted a good two bucks' worth just looking at these things. (Which was still cheaper than dinner: $5.77 at Braum's.)

And, yes, I enjoyed every minute of it.

Almost a full house — and no protests — greeted the Dixie Chicks last night at the Ford Center.

Pertinent Natalie Maines quotes:

This could be just playing to the crowd — I mean, "the incident" itself involved playing to the crowd — but I'd like to think she means it.

The OkiePundit (23 May) gives his endorsement to the County Line, fabled barbecue joint half a mile west of the National Cowboy Museum, which reminds me that it's been too long since I've been up there. (And if you've driven past the back of it on Interstate 44, you realize that "up there" is exactly the correct description.)

Occasionally, someone in state government issues a whine about how life expectancy out here is lower than it is in, say, central Norway. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't, but dammit, we do know how to eat.

This has not been a great month for Sheriff John Whetsel. First his requested sales-tax increase is voted down by three-quarters of the county electorate, and now the Justice Department is investigating his jail.

Four issues are under investigation: alleged violations of inmate civil rights, jail staffing and operations, staff safety, and inmate medical attention. The investigation should take no more than four weeks, and a report is expected before the end of the year.

The sheriff has yet to say "I told you we needed more money," but give him time.

On the upside, no new snow is being reported, surely a comfort to us all.

The shuttered Skirvin Hotel, once the showplace of downtown Oklahoma City, is one step closer to becoming a working inn again. After soliciting proposals for redevelopment of the Skirvin this spring, the city, which owns the facility, has selected three finalists.

The apparent favorite, receiving the largest number of votes from the city's evaluation committee, was a proposal by former Hilton development officer John Weeman to reopen the Skirvin as a Hilton-branded hotel and conference center with 238 rooms. Weeman's track record includes the renovation of the Hilton Milwaukee City Center.

Wichita developer Jack DeBoer's proposal for an independent full-service hotel similar to his Hotel at Old Town in downtown Wichita also won support from the committee, as did the Historic Restoration Inc. offer to convert the hotel into upscale apartments.

Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys says he expects the final decision to be made within six months, and that the Skirvin, in whatever form, will be open by the time his term ends in 2006.

Two of the largest furniture retailers in Oklahoma City will be brought together under a single corporate roof.

Mathis Brothers (3434 West Reno), which already owns four stores (with four different names) in the area, is acquiring majority control of Evans (SW 3 and Portland, three blocks away) for an undisclosed sum.

No substantive changes are planned at Evans, which will retain its separate identity; for the TV viewer, this means that every ten minutes or so, if you're not seeing a commercial for one, you're seeing a commercial for the other.

The Mathises, even with this acquisition, are a long way from controlling the local furniture market, however, and the merger will not have any problems sailing through the FCC (Federal Chair Commission).

In the spring, I wrote about Atkinson Plaza, the shopping center along Southeast 29th Street in Midwest City that used to dominate commerce in this part of the county until newer and spiffier facilities started showing up.

At the time, I said this:

Well, it's doomed. The city of Midwest City will demolish Atkinson Plaza and replace it with, of course, a newer and spiffier facility. The last of the tenants has cleared out, so it's just a matter of scheduling the dozers; the proposed 800,000-square-foot complex should be completed by the beginning of 2005.

The General Motors assembly plant in Oklahoma City, severely damaged by May tornadoes, will reopen on the last day of June. GM's in a hurry, since this plant builds some high-markup vehicles: the GMC Envoy and Chevrolet TrailBlazer twins and their Isuzu Ascender cousin.

GM predicts repair costs and lost time at the plant will knock down quarterly profits by 25 to 35 cents per share, around $150 million. A crew has already come in to finish the trucks that were being built when the storms hit, and the usual two-week summer shutdown will be canceled.

Nice piece in The Daily Oklahoman today about new American citizens. The story focuses on one person — Valeria Barrett, born in Argentina, now teaching Spanish in an Oklahoma City school — but to me, the most inspiring part of the article is the last paragraph, which lists all the participants in this week's naturalization ceremony. In addition to Mrs Barrett, we welcome:

You can't get a whole lot more diverse than that.

Oklahoma City's grandest hotel, closed in the Eighties after the oil boom went bust, is now officially on the way back.

After a brief evaluation period, a city advisory committee has designated a Dallas-based group as the official developer for the remaking of the Skirvin Hotel. The group's plans include affiliation with the Hilton chain and the appointment of Marcus Hotels and Resorts as the operator of the 238-room hotel.

For years, the city's convention business has been stymied by the lack of downtown hotel space, and continued growth in the Bricktown district east of downtown has only exacerbated matters. The two major hotels downtown are booming; with the Skirvin coming back and two more hotels in the works, the Okay City may be able to compete for bigger events than ever before.

Once upon a time, an ill-fated Oklahoma City urban-renewal plan put downtown on two shifts — twelve hours business district, twelve hours mausoleum — and people wondered why. It's no secret, says Linda Stinnett of Oklahoma Main Street Center:

Simple as that. And in Oklahoma City, it's actually starting to happen; lofts have been carved out of buildings in Bricktown and along the downtown Automobile Alley, and more are coming. Lofts are in place in Norman and Cordell, and planned for other cities. The supply is coming because the demand is there, and because people have been willing to pay above-average rents for desirable locations. Were I twentysomething and on the party circuit, I probably wouldn't be able to resist the temptation myself.

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America has issued its list of Allergy Capitals, the places among the top-50 metropolitan areas where persons with "seasonal allergies" are likely to suffer the worst, and the Oklahoma City metro ranks seventh for fall sneezing and wheezing: we're up to here in ragweed and various pollens, and will be until the first fall freeze.

It's slightly better in the spring, when we check in at number 21. The worst of all? Louisville, Kentucky, which is #1 in the spring and #3 in the fall.

Today I went to the Fence.

The Fence defines a boundary of the Oklahoma City National Memorial; if you're eastbound on Northwest 5th Street going downtown, you head right toward it. Which I was, and which I did.

The Fence was installed as a routine security item. But its appearance is anything but routine: threaded through its metal links, you'll find the stuff of memories, items left by mourners, something personal to offset the starkness of the empty chairs.

The Fence is familiar to us all; we've seen it a thousand times, reduced to the size of our living rooms. But that familiarity still doesn't prepare us for the sight of the real thing.

Tomorrow there will be an observance at Ground Zero. I'm afraid that were I there, I would find the experience completely overwhelming; even now, after eight years, I find I am still affected by the Fence.

Lockdown at the Oklahoma County Jail, but it's not because of the possibility of escaping inmates; it's the annoying certainty of escaping sewage, which flooded the basement and the ground floor yesterday.

The plumbing was fixed quickly enough, but it will take time to clean up the mess. And apparently it's the fault of the inmates, says Major Russell Dear:

Sheriff John Whetsel may get his new jail yet.

Oklahoma City's downtown movie houses closed years ago; with the exception of an occasional screening at the new Oklahoma City Museum of Art, films have migrated to the suburbs.

Now the Arizona-based Harkins Theatres chain has received a permit to build a 16-screen movie house on the south edge of Bricktown, adding yet another venue to the city's entertainment district. I hope they have room for an occasional non-blockbuster.

Fox Lake covers about ten acres on Edmond's east side, and about two hundred upscale homes have been built in its general vicinity. The area is near Interstate 35, and a ridge separates the highway from the home sites.

In late July, homeowners were alarmed when a part of that ridge was cleared off to make room for a new neighbor: a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Not that anyone objects to Wal-Mart in principle, of course; they just don't want it so close at hand. Clearing off the rest of the site, they fear, will cause erosion and the eventual destruction of the lake.

Edmond's rules for development are among the toughest in the state, but Fox Lake residents fear that the city is ignoring those rules in pursuit of sales-tax revenue.

Wal-Mart's proposal includes a heavily-wooded 100-foot-wide buffer to insulate the site from the Fox Lake development and substantial measures to preserve the lake. But ultimately this isn't about Wal-Mart, but about the likelihood that other commercial properties will follow them into the I-35 corridor, increasing traffic and stretching the perceived sprawl of Oklahoma City miles to the north.

The cop in the donut shop is perhaps as indelible an image of America as exists today.

But how about a cop on a donut shop?

Friday morning, 17 October, an Oklahoma City policeman will park himself on the roof of the Krispy Kreme shop at Pennsylvania and Memorial, and will remain there three days. Meanwhile, other members of the force will be on the grounds, collecting money for the state's Special Olympics. The scene will be duplicated at other Krispy Kreme locations in Oklahoma.

Hey, whatever works.

Some lowlife shot up a convenience store on a strip of US 62 just outside the city limits, wounding the owner and killing his wife.

I don't think I'm going to miss this neighborhood at all.

With Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys on the brink of running for Don Nickles' Senate seat, candidates are positioning themselves for the top spot at City Hall.

Ward 1 Councilman and erstwhile media guy Mick Cornett is already in the ring with his own hat, and present-day media guy Cam Edwards says Cornett's a cinch to win a special election. (As noted yesterday, unless a city charter change is approved by voters, the position will be filled by the City Council upon Humphreys' resignation.)

Meanwhile, Senator Jim Inhofe announced that he would be more than happy to have Kirk Humphreys serve beside him in the Senate.

Can Hizzoner win it? I think he can, though there are plenty of people — plenty of Republicans, even — who can't stand him. The biggest problem, of course, is that he has no base outside the central part of the state, which the Inhofe endorsement presumably can help. But it's not going to be a walk, since the Democrats actually have candidates this time.

(Update, 15 October, 8 am: The charter change passed.)

For some months now, St Anthony Hospital has been making noises about moving away from its near-downtown location and relocating in the 'burbs. The city was appalled at the prospect, and started working up incentives to keep the hospital and its 4000 employees close at hand.

It appears that now they've come up with a package acceptable to both sides; among other things, the city will create a medical corridor district from St Anthony to the existing medical complex east of downtown along 10th Street, a distance of about a mile and a half, which will link all the major downtown hospitals and contribute to the city's efforts to rehabilitate the near-northwest area.

Assuming no snags, the agreement could be signed as early as tomorrow.

I've passed by the building before, but I didn't know for sure what it was.

Now I do. Premium Beers, the local Anheuser-Busch distributor, has a new facility near I-240 and Eastern, a location chosen for optimum transportation availability. I-35 is a mile away; the Burlington Northern/Santa Fe railroad is running a spur line right into the Premium warehouse.

Not that I'm a major Budweiser fiend or anything, but some of the smaller, snootier brands are either brewed or marketed by A-B, and besides, I like the idea that Premium consolidated three facilities into one and actually added a handful of jobs in the process.

It may seem crass to say so, but there it is: attendance at the Oklahoma City National Memorial, where the bombed-out Murrah Federal Building used to be, is down 22 percent since the 11th of September 2001.

The state's Congressional delegation, notably outgoing Senator Don Nickles, has responded by tucking $1.6 million in funding for the Memorial into the federal Interior Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2004. Nickles has stated that one goal for his final year in office will be to stabilize the Memorial's financial structure so it can stand on its own.

I've mentioned before that I'm moving into one of Oklahoma City's Urban Conservation Districts, and that while some of the zoning restrictions therein might seem daunting, they were enacted at the request of a majority of the property owners therein, and, well, if I found them particularly onerous, perhaps I should have bought somewhere else.

Do districts of this sort, which in effect empower individual neighborhoods, threaten the status quo? Michael Bates certainly thinks so:

There are, of course, numerous examples where individual property owners have been given the back of the municipal hand, often to expedite the plans of politically-connected developers; the right of "eminent domain" is often abused. I don't know how well our little strip of the city will serve as any sort of bulwark, but it's a good thing that Oklahoma City is, at least for now, on our side — and it's not so good that Tulsa's movers and shakers think so little of their residents.

Reprinted from Usenet's ok.general newsgroup:

Background: The city of Oklahoma City spent around $17 million to build the Bass Pro Shops facility on the fringe of Bricktown, for which Bass will be paying an annual rent of $600,000. There was some rumbling in the community when the deal was planned, but consultants to the city contented that sales at Bass would reach upward of $30 million per year, which would generate enough sales-tax revenue to cover the cost of the building and then some. A group called Citizens Against Taxpayer Abuse, in which rival Academy Sports was a participant, led the opposition; with Mayor Kirk Humphreys pushing hard, City Council eventually approved the package.

Moshe Tal, first-listed in the speakers list, is the Oklahoma City businessman who sued the city in May 2003 to quash the Bass deal; a hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

Bad Eagle.com discusses this matter in greater depth.

A not-entirely-random collection of observations from behind the wheel, nothing more.

• There's a narrow strip of park along the east side of the avenue as you head north toward my new digs, and piles of pipes are arranged parallel to the pavement. Looks like the city's planning to update the water and/or sewer lines, which is probably a good thing once the traffic headaches (I'm guessing my street will be closed at this end) subside. Oddly enough, new utility work is making it tricky to negotiate the way to my old digs.

• When I was a teenager back in the Jurassic period, I bicycled to work, and that work was on a southside street that at the time was a major thoroughfare for an area largely populated by working-class whites. Thirtysomething years later, it's still a major thoroughfare, and some of the businesses (not the one for which I worked) are still there, but the area is now largely populated by working-class Latinos. Memory, especially my memory, is incredibly fallible, but apart from the occasional sign in Spanish and a paint job here and there, to me things look just about the same now as they did then. Frozen in time? Not really; it's more likely that nobody has ever had the bucks to give any of the buildings more than a perfunctory facelift. This is not one of those "gentrified" areas by any means, and it probably won't be one anytime soon.

• The local United Way is running billboards with stark black-and-white photography of the presumably needy. One such ad shows an elderly gentleman with his brow permanently furrowed, saying "My phone never rings." For some reason, this bothered me, perhaps because there's a very real fear of being old and forgotten lurking in the back of my head. Probably why I keep blogging: my phone may not ring, but I get 3500 visitors a week, a handful of which actually say something now and then.

• The chap in the checkout line ahead of me explained: "We're having house guests, and they will not drink tap water under any conditions." Which is why he had purchased every last bottle of Fiji Water in the store, a cart and a half, about two hundred dollars' worth. Either these guests are going to be in town for an extended stay, or they sure are thirsty. (Oh, and he bought a 12-pack of Barq's Root Beer for himself.)

The respected Aaron Tatum Custom Homes is building in the ultraswank Rivendell community on the south side, and one of Tatum's offerings, on 128th west of Doriath Way, is described in an ad piece this way:

All very nice, and yours for only $359,900, though one thing gives me pause: when I hear the word "cottage," I somehow don't think of a structure enclosing 3700 (more or less) square feet.

Four Oklahoma City policemen are on administrative leave after catching a burglary suspect more or less in the act and giving him a case of taser burn.

The perp died shortly thereafter, prompting his ex-wife to observe that while he wasn't the most, um, upright of individuals, "he didn't deserve to die."

Some of us, on the other hand, are persuaded that the only good burglar is a dead burglar.

The Oklahoma RedHawks, Triple A farm club of the Texas Rangers, have been sold.

The Oklahoma Baseball Club LLC acquired the team from Gaylord Entertainment, the Oklahoma Publishing Company spinoff that operates the Opryland complex in Nashville. Majority owner is Bob Funk, who also owns the Oklahoma City Blazers of the Central Hockey League; the managing partner is E. Scott Pruitt, who represents District 54 in the Oklahoma House.

Gaylord has owned the team for ten years, during which time it changed names (from the Oklahoma City 89ers), league (from the American Association, since disbanded, to the Pacific Coast League), and home park (from All Sports Stadium at State Fair Park to the downtown SBC Bricktown Ballpark). Former owner Jeffrey Loria went on to buy the Montreal Expos of the National League and presently owns the Florida Marlins.

Last year the 'Hawks were 70-72, finishing third in the PCL East, 10½ games behind Nashville.

Scripture isn't entirely clear on that question, though I think we can safely eliminate Cinemark's Tinseltown moviehouse in Oklahoma City.

And even if the Son of Man were to grace us with an appearance, I doubt seriously that driving right into the box office would be part of the agenda.

In an effort to discourage people from leaving the car running at curbside, Will Rogers World Airport charges zero for the first hour in the Hourly Parking Lot. Which is fine unless you arrive early and the person you're supposed to pick up is late, late, LATE.

Actually, I slid by at the 60-minute mark. Sometimes the Fates (Bob and Wendy Fate of Great Neck, New York) are almost kind.

The Albertson's supermarket chain has relocated one of its stores by a whole couple of blocks, and inasmuch as I used to shop at one of their eastside stores out by the Ghastly Hovel, I figured I might as well take a peek at this new location.

Of course, the layout is utterly unfamiliar, so it took an inordinate amount of time to locate the usual items on my list, even on the second visit, and there is the requisite number of contemporary improvements — wheelchair accessibility in most aisles, an optional Self-Check which ostensibly will get you out of the store faster, and actual rest rooms labeled as such — but two things struck me as really, really different from what I'm used to.

The first is the vastly-expanded selection of kosher foods, including kosher frozen foods. (Yes, there are Jews in Oklahoma City.) I'm thinking that perhaps all their stores carry a small, corporate-mandated selection of Standard Ethnic Items, and local managers may expand this if the demand in their area warrants; there are probably a lot more Jewish customers on this side of town than where I used to dwell.

The second is what appears to be a much higher degree of personal interaction among shoppers. Back at the old eastside store, most people trudged down the aisles, dropped items into the basket, and moved on, scarcely saying a word. Now I'm seeing (and occasionally hearing, acoustics being what they are) conversations on seemingly every corner. Do all these people know each other? Or are these presumably more upscale suburbanites simply more inclined to talk to one another? I haven't figured this one out yet. Maybe I'll explore further, should it ever happen that I have something to say. (Or blurt out, inasmuch as one shopper I spotted yesterday was almost a dead ringer for She Who Is Not To Be Named.)

Prices, incidentally, are identical to those on the, um, poor side of town, though the city sales-tax rate is a fraction of a point higher, so mingling with the owners of Benzes and Lexi and 'Slades isn't adding substantially to my grocery bill.

The new Federal Building in Oklahoma City opens today, eight years after the last one was reduced to rubble by a truck bomb, one city block from where it happened.

The Small Business Administration has already started moving in. Some staff from the Department of Housing and Urban Development say they want nothing to do with the new building, claiming its proximity to the National Memorial (on the site of the old building) will bring back all the pain and sorrow from that horrible day in 1995; Washington has yet to decide what to do about them.

I admit to some puzzlement here. Surely someone must have invoked the "out of sight, out of mind" principle during the planning stages. Downtown space is admittedly limited and becoming more so; still, I think it might have been kinder, even if more expensive, to put this facility somewhere else.

HUD has informed nineteen of its Oklahoma City staffers that they will not be forced to work in the new downtown Federal Building, a block from the Oklahoma City National Memorial that stands on the site of the old downtown Federal Building, destroyed by bombers in 1995. Thirty-five people working for HUD were among the 169 killed.

The HUD staff will telecommute two days a week, and an alternative office location to be determined will be open three days a week. HUD facilities that had not been housed in the Murrah Building will presumably not be affected.

There's a place called North Pole City on Oklahoma City's south side, and while they do sell some non-Christmas stuff, I suspect passersby might be taken aback by the sight of the place as they zip down I-44 in the middle of June.

It's a sort of low-level cognitive dissonance that Patti, for instance, has noted:

I have to admit, I have enough trouble getting into Holiday Mode in December; I'd hate to have to try to do it in the spring.

The Uptowne (yeah, right) Square apartments, north of the Oklahoma City University campus, have been spammed in a low-tech sort of way: some weasels planted imitation parking tickets on every open windshield, advertising a firm which supposedly would cover real parking tickets, and asking for $3.95 for information about said firm.

The Square is occupied mostly by foreign-born students, and many of them were quite perplexed, wondering how they'd managed to violate some arcane city parking policy all of a sudden.

I don't believe the city has a rule about fake parking tickets — the ordinance about impersonating a police officer wouldn't seem to apply — but it would be nice to be able to hang these weasels for something, even if it's only littering.

Folks from 'round here will tell you that it always rains on the State Fair, and that something unpleasant will happen on Opening Night.

There's at least some truth to the former — the State Fair is scheduled in early fall, one of the wetter periods of the year — and maybe there's some to the latter as well, since Opening Night in Oklahoma City is 31 December, about the time Old Man Winter starts catching on to the fact that he's in charge again.

The rain doesn't keep people away from the Fair, though, and the downtown party that is Opening Night goes on even when the temperature is in single digits and the wind is howling from Hudson Bay and there's more ice on the sidewalks than in the drinks.

As a concept, Opening Night dates back to the Eighties, when the city and its culturemeisters observed that downtown tends to run down at sundown, and figured a New Year's Eve bash might draw some people out of the 'burbs for a change. Events were scheduled all over the place — you buy a button, you get admission to almost all of them at no extra charge — and eateries that normally closed when their business clientele went home stayed open late.

Despite spectacularly crappy weather in the early years, Opening Night did well, and when the Bricktown entertainment district began taking shape, Opening Night did even better. Forty thousand folks turned up last night and bought their buttons (six bucks); many more just came to party along the canal or in the streets. Times Square it ain't, but then we don't have to wonder if there's a picture of Dick Clark moldering away in a closet somewhere either.

Me? I came down with a bad case of the green-apple quick-step and retreated quickly. But thank you for asking.

Every year, Men's Fitness magazine rates the Top 25 Fit Cities and the Top 25 Fat Cities. Given our predilections here in the Okay City — cheap smokes, rib joints, a general dislike for the Nanny State — you'd probably expect us to be in the chub group, and you'd be right.

In fact, we're movin' on up; after the ignominy of finishing 23rd last year, we've made it up to 13th this time around. What's changed in the last twelve months? Well, I moved into the city, and...um...well, I suppose I can always question the methodology.

And after Detroit, which claims Numero Uno, four of the next five are in Texas, which surely is a sign of something.

There's a new weekly newspaper in town, and "in town" is the operative phrase.

The MidCity Advocate, published Thursdays, is your standard suburban community news/shopper with a twist: it's aimed, not at the suburbs, but at those of us who live in the 25 square miles of the central city. (Their coverage area runs from Portland to Kelley, Reno to 63rd.) This makes a certain amount of sense, since almost every other part of town is covered by a similar publication.

One pitch made by the Advocate is the diversity of its readership: "The MidCity area has over 65,000 residents that span the socio-economic spectrum. There is a broad mix of income levels, ethnic diversity and education." No doubt about that. The National Register of Historic Places records fifteen districts in the county, and twelve of them are in this area; there are also, alas, some neighborhoods which can charitably be described as "rough". Still, what's true of the 'burbs is also true here in the city: most of us are here because this is where we want to be.

I don't recognize any of the names on the masthead; evidently this is an entirely new bunch of folks. Sports Editor Jerry Spaeder admits to having roots in some place like Erie, Pennsylvania. I'm sort of hoping that the Advocate staff is here because this is where they want to be.

There is a fair amount of dissatisfaction with the proposal for the World Trade Center Memorial, and Michele points to an example of How To Do It Right.

In my back yard, more or less.

Last year, the day before 9/11, I found myself at the Fence, where hundreds of small items left by visitors pay silent tribute to the victims of April 19. It is a genuinely moving place, perhaps the most heartbreaking (because it's the simplest) part of the Oklahoma City National Memorial, and if it should inspire someone working on the WTC project, so much the better.

But I remember when I heard the bomb go off at 9:02, and while I'm always pleased to see my hometown recognized for providing a good example, I feel compelled to point out that the Fence, like the rest of the Memorial, is not for us; it's for the 168 friends and neighbors who were taken away in that frightening collision of madness and evil. The WTC planners would do well to remember that their first job is to honor the victims of 9/11, not to produce, as Michele says, "a piece of concept art."

Four men will be on next month's ballot to select a Mayor for Oklahoma City, to fill the last two years of the term vacated by Kirk Humphreys.

The presumed front-runner, at least for now, is Ward 1 Councilman Mick Cornett ("one of the rich Cornetts," Susanna might say); challenging are former Ward 1 Councilman F. O. "Frosty" Peak, bookstore owner Jim Tolbert, and Marcus Hayes, director of social services of a local senior center.

The ballot is nonpartisan; a runoff if needed will be held in April.

Bruce and I don't agree on too many things, but I definitely buy this observation:

Right. One of my justifications for moving into the city was to have fewer excuses to pass up an event because it was "too far to drive." And while my after-hours life isn't exactly scintillating these days, it's no longer nonexistent, which surely is worth something.

(There are only four Borders stores in the whole state, and it probably would have taken just as long to get to 81st and Yale; the Oklahoma City store is only about 1.4 miles from me, but Full Circle is closer, and it's locally owned, which I tend to view as a plus.)

In 1925, a 748-foot steel bridge was constructed on a road north of Oklahoma City's Lake Overholser, just in time for the official designation of US Route 66 the following year.

Old 66, while not exactly gone, isn't what it used to be; the bridge remains, carrying traffic between the two sides of the Overholser recreation area, now dubbed "Route 66 Park". And the state's Historical Preservation Office has now nominated the bridge for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, citing its unusual construction — there are only three other bridges of this design in the state — and its association with Route 66.

I think there's at least a reasonable chance the nomination will win approval; the Register already includes one section of Route 66 at the opposite end of the county (near Arcadia), and there's a lot to be said for symmetry.

The life of the Redskin Theater on Oklahoma City's south side was neither remarkably long nor especially happy. Shortly after it opened in 1941, there were fights in the parking lot, reputedly instigated by union men from downtown movie houses who objected to competition in the suburbs. Things picked up after World War II, and the Redskin did a fairly steady business for the next couple of decades, fading as attention shifted to the suburban multiplexes. The theater was sold in 1978, and sustained itself for a while by catering to the soiled-raincoat crowd, but by the early 90s it was dead.

And now it's gone; while the Redskin likely did meet the general specifications for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, it was in a neighborhood which the city tends to ignore, so no one paid a whole lot of attention when the building was razed this week to make room for yet another used-car lot. Of half a dozen old southside theaters, only the Knob Hill, later the home of the Oklahoma Opry, and the Winchester Drive-In remain.

Well, it hasn't gotten to that yet, but Oklahoma City's Metro Transit is getting ready to spend a million bucks or so on a feasibility study for a light-rail system.

This, mind you, while the city (connected to the usual conduit for federal funds) is getting ready to spend $350 million or so on a rerouting of Interstate 40 south of downtown which will trash five rail lines already in place.

I have my doubts about light rail in places as spread out as this — Oklahoma City covers over 600 square miles all by itself, and the suburbs will presumably want a piece of the action — but if we're seriously going to consider it as an option, ripping up rail lines for the sake of I-40 is utterly insane; not even Phil Hartman could sell a bill of goods that preposterous.

A few things I spotted today while wandering about town:

At 50 Penn Place, I found myself parked next to a Volkswagen Cabrio with a "Re-elect Gore 2004" sticker. Did I miss something?

Jim Tolbert, who owns, among other things, the Full Circle Bookstore at 50 Penn Place, is running for mayor of Oklahoma City — the election will be 24 February — and inasmuch as he lives around here, most of the yard signs that have sprung up in lieu of spring foliage are Tolbert signs. Curiously, he even has yard signs in Nichols Hills, which is outside the city limits; Tolbert may have friends in this old-money enclave, but he won't get any votes there.

Sign at a jewelry store on May Avenue: Valentine's Day Nomination Bracelets. Admittedly, I don't have an actual Valentine, and I have no reasonable expectation of ever getting one, but it bothered me no end that I had no idea what a Nomination Bracelet was. (Now I know.)

And for some reason, almost all the copies of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in the rack at Albertson's were turned upside down.

One of Bigwig's research projects turned up this list of Barbie dolls custom-crafted for the Oklahoma City area.

For those keeping score, I live about halfway between Nichols Hills and the Paseo. There being no specific doll for this neighborhood, I have to play with myself do without.

Rep. Ernest Istook on the condition of Oklahoma City's Northeast 23rd Street:

And those signs start at Kelley Avenue, a couple hundred yards from the entrance to the Governor's Mansion. So it's a Good Thing that our share of the federal pork distro this year will include $500,000 to help defray the expenses of cleaning up the busiest street on the east side.

The effect on Oklahoma City's African-American community, for whom 23rd is arguably the primary business thoroughfare, is less clear. On the downside, some marginal firms may be forced to move, especially if the street, as I expect, is widened. But what remains, based on what the city was able to do on Northwest 23rd, will probably look a whole lot nicer, which may spur new development in the area.

The first rule of ticket quotas is: you do not talk about ticket quotas.

The second rule — but never mind, you can see where this is going.

An Oklahoma City police officer is claiming that he has been harrassed for failure to enforce those, um, nonexistent quotas, and his attorney claims there are actual OCPD internal memos which state the precise numbers for one particular division.

The OCPD Public Information Officer issued the following statement:

This could get complicated very quickly.

(Update, 27 February, 4:45 pm: The police chief explains why it's not a quota: officers aren't told they must reach a certain level of points and aren't punished or rewarded by their point totals.)

The ubiquitous Jersey barrier does a good job of preventing crossover accidents — it's pretty darn difficult to get into the opposite set of lanes — but it's expensive to install and not exactly lovely to look at.

Enter the Brits, with a system called the Brifen Wire Rope Safety Fence, an unobtrusive four-cable guardrail system developed in the late 80s that's designed to be inexpensive to install and maintain: a Brifen installation costs roughly $200,000 per mile, less than half the price of concrete, and a post or cable damaged by impact can usually be replaced by a single worker with no heavy equipment.

The Brifen debuted in the US on a short (0.2 mile) stretch of the Lake Hefner Parkway in Oklahoma City in 2000, extended to the entire seven miles the following year. The Parkway, which runs from I-44 north to the Kilpatrick Turnpike, saw six fatalities due to crossover accidents in the three years prior to the installation of the Brifen; there have been none since. Encouraged, Brifen set up a US manufacturing facility on Oklahoma City's south side, and the system has been installed on highways in Colorado and Ohio.

The Oklahoma Gazette is reporting that the Oklahoma Department of Transportation has ordered the Brifen for 6.3 miles of I-35 through Norman. Construction will be mostly at night and on Sunday morning, and will be finished, says ODOT, by May.

Oklahoma City elects a Mayor today, and turnout seems to be heavier than I had anticipated: at 4:50 pm I was the 534th voter in the precinct. (By contrast, I was #346 at about the same time for the Presidential primary three weeks ago.)

Conventional wisdom says they'll finish in this order: Tolbert, Cornett, Peak, Hayes. I'd like to buck said wisdom, but I suspect it might actually be right this time.

(Update, 9 pm: Not this time. Mick Cornett is on top — perhaps aptly, inasmuch as his watch party is at the city's one and only revolving restaurant, on top of the United Founders Tower — and from the looks of things, he'll get enough votes to avoid a runoff with Jim Tolbert. Now comes the next question: who will fill Cornett's Ward 1 Council seat?)

If there's a lesson in yesterday's election, it's this: money doesn't buy seats anymore. Jim Tolbert spent roughly three times as much as any other candidate and pulled less than 30 percent of the vote. And on the other side of the equation, political novice Marcus Hayes spent something like twelve dollars and pulled more than seven percent, finishing above one of the old-pro pols.

More than anything else, I think, this was a contest to see who could rock the boat the least. By general agreement, the MAPS projects have awakened what had been for too long a sleepy city, and no one made any suggestions about screwing around with the process. A little fine-tuning, yes; a firm hand on the finances, certainly; but we're not going to mess with what's working for us. Mayor-elect Mick Cornett should have no problems maintaining continuity during his two-year term, and we wish him well.

The Oklahoman has an interesting exhibit this week: photos of five Oklahoma City segregation ordinances, enacted from 1916 through 1934. From the vantage point of the 21st century, these seem downright medieval, but while all of them have been stricken from the books, there are reminders of their existence in the distribution of the city's population even today.

From Ordinance Number 1824, March 1916:

Sure enough, a later paragraph defines "block," just in case there might be any doubts.

This ordinance was modified by the next ordinance, to make allowance for servants and such, and to define "white" and "colored" blocks more specifically. By the Thirties, the arbitrary 75-percent figure had been modified to an arbitrary 51-percent figure; eventually, all the rules were thrown out. Still, as late as 1970, Oklahoma City was considered 90 percent segregated — the Bureau of the Census compiles a Housing Segregation Index — improving to 68 percent in 2000. Zero is probably unattainable, given human nature; still, progress is being made. And as a practical matter, most present-day segregation tends to be economic rather than racial; someone making $12,000 a year would find it difficult to buy into my neighborhood, simply because of the prevailing prices, and I certainly can't afford something in the higher-lux areas a mile and a half from me.

I don't pretend for a moment that people in Oklahoma City, or in the United States in general, live in perfect racial harmony. But the stark reminders of what used to be should make us feel slightly better about what is.

Before the actual balloting for the election of the Mayor last Tuesday, I'd made a rough guess of how the votes would fall, and I'd decided that Jim Tolbert would rule in midtown, that Mick Cornett would sweep the newer developments farther from downtown, and that Marcus Hayes would run strongest near the Capitol and points east.

Now that the votes by precinct have been released, I see that by and large I had the right idea, but I underestimated Cornett's strength in midtown. My edge-of-midtown precinct, which I figured would be evenly split between Tolbert and Cornett, went for Cornett 54 to 38 percent. Tolbert did rule in the Historic Districts — Heritage Hills, Crown Heights, and such — but that was the extent of his dominance; he wasn't even close on the southside. Hayes did best where I thought he'd do best, but he picked up more votes on the periphery than I expected. Almost certainly he'll be back in some fashion.

Things happen in elections that aren't always predictable except in retrospect — see Mike Donovan's comments to this post for an example — but they don't seem to keep us keyboard-strained wretches from trying.

As far back as I can remember, the lot on the northeast corner of NW 59th Street and May Avenue has contained a Long John Silver's Seafood Shoppe of the old school, a little mock-clapboard building with a simulated boat hull seemingly aground on the roof, as though the flood waters had only just receded.

A couple of weeks ago, they posted a CLOSED FOR REMODELING sign. Today I watched some of that remodeling, which involved three bulldozers.

Truth be told, I have no idea what's going to happen with the now-vacant lot. Did LJS decide it was too small? Negotiating the parking area was tricky, more so when they added the drive-through.

Actually, that's not quite true. I know one thing that's going to happen: semi-severe stormage tonight and tomorrow, which should produce some nifty red mudslides. If they get past Monterey Jack's, they'll ease down the hill right into Barnes & Noble. And anyway, should I feel the need for sort-of-fast seafood, I'd just as soon drive the five miles to the nearest Captain D's.

Oklahoman columnist Don Gammill covers transportation issues, and this week he passed this reader question to the city traffic engineer:

May runs north and south; Northwest Distressway runs more or less west-by-northwest to east-by-southeast. There is no intersection: the May lanes are elevated, and there is no ramp for the narrowest turn, eastbound NWD to northbound May. (In practice, you follow NWD for one more block, take the turnaround, and catch the northbound ramp from westbound NWD.)

This is of course a pain in the neck, but as a practical matter, all the ramps are inadequate; the city engineer says basically that they'd have to redo the entire interchange, and that's probably true, but for the moment, I'm planning my trips with an eye toward never having to take any of those turns. Since I live less than a mile away, that's a lot of planning.

If you buy lots of General Electric light bulbs, be advised that GE's Home Electric Products division in Cleveland is getting out of the business.

Oh, you'll still be able to buy GE bulbs, but they'll be made in Oklahoma City by Jasco Products Co. under license. Jasco, which has been making electronic accessories for GE for the last four or five years, is adding about 120 jobs and 400,000 square feet of plant space.

What, you were expecting maybe China?

At least for now, the top-of-page photo at JMBzine.com is a spectacular shot of Oklahoma City's Overholser Mansion, on NW 15th between Hudson and Harvey, a home which dates to before statehood and which qualifies as a tourist attraction all by itself.

And you thought we all lived in little boxes made of ticky-tacky.

Rural Oklahoma changes slowly, when it changes at all; the machinery may be newer, the buildings are generally older, but the pace of life is distinctly different from what you'd experience in the city.

And you don't even need to leave the city to see this. Oklahoma City covers over 600 square miles, but barely a third of that area qualifies as urban; the city limits extend well into the country, and city services follow slowly, if at all.

I was in Canadian County yesterday, in an area the city annexed many years ago. There is a city fire station in the 11600 block of SW 15th Street (at eight blocks per mile, this is way out), and occasional fresh green city street signs can be seen, but for the most part this is an area of small farms and ranches, separated by old and indifferently-maintained roads. (I caught one of Frosty Peak's campaign signs over on Piedmont/Czech Hall Road, which promises "I will fix this road.") The sections that are within the limits of Yukon or Mustang, both of which were established long before Oklahoma City pushed into these areas, look decidedly more suburban, more contemporary.

Still, there are changes. People wanting to get away from the concrete jungle are building houses out here, and not just in Mustang or Yukon. Twenty or thirty years from now, this part of Canadian County may look just like any other suburb — but I can't imagine it happening any sooner.

Heritage Hills East is unusual among Oklahoma City Historic Districts: while it was developed at the same time as the ritzier Heritage Hills area to its west, it was platted for smaller lots and a mixture of single-family, multi-family, and commercial buildings, no doubt because it's the first block west of Broadway, a major commercial thoroughfare. And while Heritage Hills itself was given Historic District status way back in 1969, the East was not accorded this designation until 1999.

One other difference comes to mind: it's impossible to imagine Habitat for Humanity building in Heritage Hills, but they're putting up two houses in the East. These structures are so new they haven't yet been listed on the Web site of the local Habitat branch, but I took a peek at the area this morning to get a feel for what's going on.

Last year, Habitat acquired via donation two vacant lots in the 100 block of Northwest 16th Street, and applied for Certificates of Compliance with the city's preservation guidelines. Approval was granted in January, though the standard boxlike Habitat home will have to be modified somewhat to meet the guidelines. Drawings released by Habitat indicate that the new homes will look very much like the traditional Craftsman-style bungalow that dominated the lower end of the housing market in Western states in the early 20th century, a style that appears in many neighborhoods developed in the city through about 1920.

Residents of East Heritage Hills might be forgiven for asking "What will this do to our property values?" I might ask what those vacant lots had done to those values. Meanwhile, the president of the neighborhood association, interviewed by the MidCity Advocate (4 March), seems to be keeping an open mind:

In the past, Habitat for Humanity has built homes in nondescript — sometimes badly descript — neighborhoods, because that's where they could acquire low-cost sites. While the Heritage Hills East sites will cost about twenty percent more than usual to develop, mostly due to the cost of compliance with the city's preservation guidelines, a positive experience here should open up new areas for Habitat, and it might even reassure uneasy neighbors-to-be.

I'd been half-asleep for half an hour when the lights began to play high on the walls. I ignored them and rolled over; it's not like nobody ever got a traffic ticket on this street before.

A few minutes later, I looked up again, and still they were there. World's slowest cop? Maybe, but I didn't think so. And as the pattern started to seem less random, I figured it out: two light bars, minimum.

Something was going on.

I pulled myself up out of bed, fumbled for some semblance of clothing, and ambled outside, trying to look like I did this sort of thing every night about this time. Two ambulances: paramedics from the fire station around the corner in front, the usual emergency-services vehicle behind. No police; no fire engine. I thought I saw some activity behind some living-room windows. Gawkers, I thought, then realized I'd come out to do exactly that.

Four emergency personnel brought the gurney from the house. Its occupant wasn't moving, so far as I could tell, but did seem to be sitting up; I couldn't determine much of anything else. They loaded the gurney into the truck, and I started back inside, satisfied that I'd seen nothing more than some poor soul taken very, very ill.

And as I got to my door, the helicopter passed overhead, a beam of light scanning the ground below it.

Something had been going on.

But with midnight approaching, I decided that maybe I didn't want to know.

This year's Oklahoma City Orchestral League Designer Show House is one of the most distinctive homes in the entire area; I've passed it by many times and wondered what it might be like. (It's hard not to, especially now that I'm living within a couple of miles of it.)

Anyway, it looks like I may get my chance to get a peek at the inside when the Show House opens next month. And if someone hands me a winning Powerball ticket between now and the end of May — well, I can't see spending $1.4 million on a home, but truth be told, I'm thinking it's a bargain at that price.

The Oklahoma City Zoo is one of only fifteen zoos in North America with babirusa in residence, and now they have a piglet, which, given the scarcity of the species, must be considered good news; there have been only six births this century in the North American population.

This is the 100th anniversary of the Zoo, which was established in Wheeler Park in 1904 and moved to its present location in 1923 when the North Canadian River, way above flood stage, overrode the dam at Lake Overholser and cut the park literally in two.

Saturday I described a rather unusual development around town: the construction of two houses by Habitat for Humanity in a local Historic District. I suggested at the time that present residents might not be enthusiastic at the prospect, though I did predict that things would work out in the long run.

MidCity Advocate columnist Jennifer Gaines, who lives about two blocks from the new homes, sees things this way:

Only time will tell, and time has this irritating tendency to give up no secrets until the last possible minute.

There was a sign posted today at the vacant lot at NW 59th and May, once a Long John Silver's Seafood Shoppe, which explains what's going on, and as Terkish Payne suggested, it's Combination FastJunk — it's going to be an LJS/KFC hybrid.

There's a freestanding KFC eight blocks south of that location, which I assume will be closed. I'm not sure what will happen after that; the Target store just to its north could probably use that lot for extra parking, especially after its rumored upgrading to quasi-Super status, but it will take some major landscaping, since the KFC store is slightly elevated and the Target is down in the valley. More likely, some indie restaurant with modest aspirations will take over the property.

Oklahoma County's Metropolitan Library System has announced some new privacy measures.

Beginning immediately, applications for library cards will not ask for the patron's Social Security Number. (This is in keeping with state policy, which has barred the SSN from driver's licenses.) The eight-digit card number will no longer be printed on the checkout receipt, and transaction records will be deleted once the transaction is completed (material returned and any fines paid). And the library's customer list is not available for sale or rent.

I'm wondering if the deletion of transaction records isn't intended as a foil for the USA Patriot Act, Section 215 of which is supposed to override state confidentiality rules for libraries. The pertinent Oklahoma statute reads as follows:

Assuming the Department of Homeland Security isn't going after sixth-graders — pre-teen terrorists seem to be purely a Palestinian phenomenon — it looks like they're going to be requesting records that will not exist.

Unless, of course, they're tracking some indolent suspects who can't return books on time.

Along Southeast 29th Street, north of Tinker Air Force Base, there's a stretch where it looks like something used to be there, but isn't anymore. No mystery, really: development in this area was halted, and existing development actually removed, in an effort to reduce encroachment on Tinker, and to deprive the BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) folks of an excuse to close the base. ("You've got houses right along the flight path, fercryingoutloud.")

Apparently even more area is going to be cleared: the Powers Nissan dealership at 8021 SE 29th has been condemned by County Commissioners after Mr Powers balked at their $2.5-million dollar offer for the property. District 1 Commissioner Jim Roth suggests that Powers, who originally had been leasing the property, timed his acquisition to maximize the possible take; he bought the tract two years ago for $2.15 million on the same day as the bond election held to raise money to acquire properties for an expanded clearance zone.

Powers says he'd take the offer right now if he had a place to go, but he's having problems finding a suitable new location. The commissioners want the space cleared off by summer.

Disclosure: I bought a car from Powers' dealership some years ago. Nothing in the transaction suggested to me that there might be weasels in the boardroom; I've always considered them straight shooters.

In my neighborhood and a few others, the first Wednesday of the month means Big Junk: this is the day the city makes a separate run to scoop