A spinoff of Pub W, The Winston is a new addition on Main Street in Norman, Oklahoma as a more modern, contemporary version that’s bar forward as well as being more adventurous on food. Brandon Kistler, the Concept Head for The Winston of Hal Smith Restaurants, talks about this new restaurant and what guests can expect.
Personally, Leslie and I both loved the spicy duck wings. So good. It’s nice to see new things spreading out in Downtown Norman. There’s a breakfast-focused restaurant coming soon next door to The Winston called Neighborhood Jam. I haven’t been to the Edmond location yet. Getting up to drive to Edmond (about an hour drive) for breakfast is not an easy task.
Guest Host Heide Brandes returns for a chats and snacks segment with Jade Yushan Han of Wagyu Japanese BBQ in Oklahoma City. Heide and Jade discuss many of the food options as well as how to use the imported Japanese grill at the center of each table to cook your own food. Heide also tries several dishes including Mochi Ice Cream, Ahi Tuna Steak, and beef tongue.
For this video, I wanted to showcase the actual dining experience because this concept of cooking is new to people in Oklahoma. After the failed Kickstarter campaign for Colorful Escapes, one of the things Heide and I discussed in our new strategy was to make other videos together to build our team brand.
This video is about 20-minutes long as it does demonstrate the restaurant. You can also get the gist of things within the first half of it. Hope you enjoy!
Providing a workspace for aspiring commercial brewers, Brewers Union helps to turn Oklahoma brewers into breweries by helping them scale up. While for the consumer, it’s one taproom to come and taste multiple breweries under one roof. In this interview, Brad Stumph, John Elkins of Elk Valley Brewing, and Ross Harper of Angry Scotsman discuss how the union has helped them grow and what visitors can expect.
While Norman Music Festival is over, the music doesn’t have to stop. In this week’s video, I’ve edited together a montage video of eight musicians interviewing other musicians at the festival on Saturday. Featuring Jarvix, Elecktra, Don Data, Sephra, Local Man Ruins Everything, Special Thumbs, GWIZ, and Limp Wizurdz.
I came up with the video idea on Saturday morning, so this was all done on the spot. This video was edited down from 30 minutes of raw interviews to a 10-minute highlight version. The completed collection is available here on Patreon. Since this concept worked out rather well, next year I’ll schedule interviews in advance and work to represent more genres.
Two of the area’s biggest festival, the Festival of the Arts and the Norman Music Festival, have passed. Actually, last week was jammed packed with stuff. For the festivals, this year, the weather was amazing. The Festival of the Arts only got rained out on one day, while last year the weather was just awful. I even got a little sunburnt at the music festival.
I had a great time at both festivals. For the arts festival, I filmed several local artist shout-outs. I even volunteered for a few hours there on Sunday. Then for the Norman Music Festival, I filmed b-roll on Thursday and Saturday. Thursday was interesting because it was the first time they did an outdoor stage that day, so it was busier than past years. On Friday, we had a date night at the arts festival, but on Saturday I was back at the music festival from Noon to 11 pm doing my press thing. I filmed the entirety of Jarvix’s main stage set for him, which you can watch below.
Before I went to the festival on Saturday, I was taking a shower when I was like, “I should I film interviews where bands interview bands. I got the technology to do that now.” When I did my Deep Deuce Pub Crawl video, I had this sound setup that worked well in the noisy environments and it worked great at the festival, even with a stage playing in the background. Because it was a last minute idea and I was doing a man-on-the-street on the spot thing, there wasn’t as much diversity as I would’ve liked to showcase, but the interviews were still great. Watch that video on Uncovering Oklahoma. I’ve also released the uncut interviews here on Patreon.
I want to wrap this story up by talking about My Brightest Diamond, who was one of the headliners at the Norman Music Festival. She was a major source of inspiration to my first fictional book I published a few years ago, The Crashing of Heaven and Hell. She was such an inspiration, I even dedicated the book to her. So of course, I wanted to give her a copy and personally thank her. I was lucky enough to meet her and talk to her for a bit. She was so nice and I’m so thankful she took the time to hang out with me. She said she would read it while on tour, so I hope she does like it.
On the subject of meeting your heroes, my friend, Jarvix, also got to meet Tune-Yards, who was was a major inspiration for him. You can read this article in the Oklahoma Gazette about his journey.
