Today’s the day that Oklahoma City reopens for business.
Following the possibly disastrous lead of Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, Mayor David Holt announced that places like restaurants, stores and gun-ranges—and places that are all three, like Penn Square Mall—can open their doors to the living dead.
The two places that I frequent the most in Oklahoma City are staying temporarily closed, however: the Tower Theatre, 425 NW 23rd and Guestroom Records, 3701 N. Western Avenue. It’s a move that I applaud them for.
Believe me, I would love for them to be open and thriving, but recently both these joints have made announcements on social media that, for the sake of their patrons and employees, they are staying closed for a bit longer, the lives of their staff and customers meaning far more to them than a couple of bucks.
How weird is it that a music venue and a record store seem to care more about the people in their lives, most they don't even know, than the much bigger businesses in Oklahoma that, quite honestly, can afford to stay closed for a while longer?
It’s definitely—defiantly—a courageous move in this climate, one that instills a bit of hope in me that we will make it through this eventually and, best of all, we’ll be fucking alive to enjoy it. In this time of commercial uncertainty, we should still be shuffling our priorities and keep ordering whatever we may want or need from those brave businesses that are standing up to these diseased directives.
And, of course, you can still order records, livestreams, shirts or merchandise from Guestroom and Tower—both of them have even printed up some Covid-commemorative tees for the occasion—so give them a couple of bucks to keep them going strong until medical science says it’s alright for us all to fully live life again.
Hopefully by Record Store Day, whenever that is now.
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Follow Louis on Twitter at @LouisFowler and Instagram at @louisfowler78.
