Pour out a little booze from your cowboy boot.
We've learned via KFOR that Graham's Country Night Club – a long time staple of the metro bar scene that, if you weren't careful, could give you tetanus– is closing its doors after 36 years.
Here's the farewell promotional flyer:
Located in the heart of Oklahoma City's Furniture District, going to Graham's has been a strange rite of passage for metro alcoholics since the mid-1980s.
If you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s or even 60s, there's a very good chance you've found yourself at Graham's on a Friday night drunkenly questioning your existence while line dancing to Strokin' with some derelict from Gotebo.
It's been a few years since I've been to Graham's, but I doubt it's changed very much. One side of the venue was "Country." It featured a big dance floor surrounded by cocktail tables and a large bar. It's where most of the country and trailer folk usually hitched their wagons.
Editor's Note: While scrolling through the Graham's website for funny photos to use in this article, I stumbled across a pic of my brother and sister-in-law and other friends that was taken in 2010. Considering I was probably there with them doing a left stomp and Charlie Brown, that hit a little too close to home. Since I don't want to be disowned by me or my family, I'm not publishing it.
The other side of Graham's played Top 40 and hip hop dance music and featured a couple of giant goth dance cages. According to the Graham's website, this part of the club has a name – Zazoo. Here's a pic:
My favorite thing to do whenever I'd end up at Graham's was to suggest to my friends that we leave and go somewhere else. My second favorite thing to do was people watch. Graham's was like a meat market for those who buy frozen corn dogs. The crowd always reminded me of what you'd see at the Oklahoma State Fair midway on a typical Friday night (minus kids, the elderly and stoned teenagers).
The country side was larger, and generally filled with people in their finest Langston's garb boot scootin around the dance floor, while in Zazoo, you'd usually find guys who looked like either Eminem or Kid Rock trying to buy drunk girls shots on their tab while Kip and LaFawnduh from Napoleon Dynamite did the Humpty Dance in a cage.
As I said, it was always fun to people watch.
Anyway, I'd like to thank Graham's for all the good, fun and bad memories over the years. I also wish the staff the best of luck finding work at Incahoots or Cowboys or whatever the other country bar is called now. RIP Grahams.
