I posted a review of Opening Night 2005 at my blog:

http://theoklahoman.blogspot.com

If anyone else went, please let post here what you thought!

Luke, I will soon be publishing an Oklahoma City tour book, and I have plenty of photos in the book to make Oklahoma City more appealing to visitors, but you have some excellent high quality photos. If possible, and when funds become available, I would love to publish a few of your photos in my book. Please e-mail me at TStorm1117@yahoo.com so we can discuss purchasing rights to some of your photos. My book should be fully organized and put together by February or March.

Yeah, those are great B & W photos of First National, Luke. With modern styles around it, it stands out as a classic beauty. Regarding Opening Night, I know they had a big screen to show bowl games in the past; did they have it this year?

Thanks for the compliments on the photos. If they did have big TVs, they weren't at the main stage area.

Or better yet, we could start to petition for a electronic new york style billboard or lcd screen downtown

THAT would be a neat idea. It could be our next project after the walk of fame gets going.

Where would it be? Could it be as big as Times Square?

I like it!

I dunno, I'm somewhat working on the idea kind of like your project. I'll try to see what we can do. Let me know if you guys can help get this off the ground, I'm sure we will need to start passing around a petition or what not. Probably have to be in bricktown or on the Trigen energy building east of the renaissance hotel. that way it can catch all the traffic of bricktown yet still get the central business district and people from the convention center. PM me for any ideas or who you are contacting for your project.

I'll give an account of the night:

3PM -- called friends to see who could come out. Turns out one had 3 suite tickets to the Blazers game and 3 passes to downtown that he had bought or won somehow. Another friend had nothing else to do, so joined us.

7PM -- friend with tickets arrives. We walk from my apartment at Sycamore Square to the Ford Center.

7:15PM -- Friend realizes that tickets are no longer in his pocket. We decide to return to apartment, buy beer, liquor, etc.

7:20 -- Walking up Robinson, we decide to check out 1st National and their concert. Ignored a capella singing, scratched my head wondering how we as a city could possibly let the second most beautiful building interior in the state go to waste (1st = capital dome interior).

7:35PM -- find tickets on sidewalk accross the street from apartment.

7:40PM -- After much deliberation, we decide that the liquor/beer option is the appropriate course of action for the evening.

7:45 -- Drove to Byron's, arrived, looked around, realized that I am fortunate in life (at least compared to the evening crowd in Byron's parking lot).

8:00PM -- Purchased one case of beer, one bottle strong liquor.

8:15PM -- Purchased bottle of Cherry/vanilla dr. pepper at Homeland.

8:30PM -- returned to apartment with friend to consume our purchases.

10:00PM -- other friend arrives.

11:00PM -- we decide to walk back to the general area of the party.

11:15PM -- friend becomes hungry so I introduce them to the 1st national center (a mall-like interior) and the concourse. He has some kind of strange looking sandwich at Sub Stop -- looked like pulled pork and potato salad, but I'm not sure.

11:30PM -- Returned to festivities. Discussed with friends how dissatisfied I was with the band the city chose to entertain the crowd prior to the festivities (the band on the main stage). I explained to them that what this band was essentially doing was playing karaoke with instruments. I think the vocalist was semi-decent, and the guitarists had some good licks. Was a decent cover band, but why the heck would you sign a cover band for something like this?!? Smacks of total and utter cheapness. Cover bands are no-talent wannabees. This one even had some kind of karaoke backup that played all of the background music we're used to hearing behind the bands on the radio (like the claps/organ music in "Hey Ya"). If you want to show the individuality and artistic ability of Oklahoma City, next time get a good local band that plays original music to play! I played in a rock band for awhile. Sure, we did covers, but we did them "differently", most of our music, however, was original -- and it was definitely the best stuff we had. The fact that local venues demanded a lot of covers was definitely depressing. How many cover bands did you see the last time you were in Dallas? Austin? None? Okay, thanks.

Also remarked as to how crowded it was and how that type of situation always tends to bring out the jerks.

Memo to Oklahoma Citians -- it is not polite to elbow your way through crowds when just saying "excuse me" will do. People like that need to be hit by people that are bigger than they are.

12:00AM -- Countdown, ball dropping very nice. Fireworks show was cool. Recalled the last downtown fireworks show I attended in 2000. Somehow swung a pair of seats at the Petroleum club up near the top of the Bank One building so got to watch the fireworks going off below me. Decided that both viewing angles were acceptable.

12:30AM -- Walked home. Scoffed at the 59,999 other people in attendance that would have to drive home that night.

My schedule was easy to keep up with.

3:00 pm...... Finished watching football game.

3:20 pm......Left for work

3:40 pm......Arrived at work

4:00 pm.....Clocked in and went to work.

5:00 pm- midnight...work

Midnight.....Left the office and went south on Pennsylvania to avoid Opening Night traffic. Watched fireworks for two minutes while driving down Penn.

12:20 AM.....Arrived home and went to bed.

Yes, a very EXCITING evening for me.

My scheduale:

4:30 (an hour early) Left work

5:30 got home

6:30 Ate dinner

6:30-1:00AM Watched television

Might be boring, but I am not much for celebrations during New Years eve.

I always find it funny how our ball at Opening Night rises, while the one in New York drops. Hmmmm.....are we really backwards? lol! Unfortunately, sometimes people from the coasts make fun of us and call us backwards hicks because we do soem pretty weird things.

Anyways, glad to hear Opening Night went so well. And Midtowner...you're right.....First National is a treasure. If we lose her, we'll lose an entire era of our history.

Psshhh.... people from the coasts are ones to talk. Common sense has disappeared from three-fourths of the beach-front population.

I suppose having a "rising" attitude towards the new year is more optimistic than having a "falling" attitude! lol!

Instead of having some crane hoist it up, they should have a specific device that they use to lift it up every year. Make it look cool