August in Review

August drug its feet for as long as it could; sometimes it feels like summer will never end. Lo and behold, though, the students have come back to town for class, the temperatures are delightfully below the 100-degree mark (although, I probably just jinxed that), and we’ve already seen six pumpkin-spice-related things on the internet today. Fall is coming!

We relaunched our site on August 1. In the last 31 days, 23 different contributors have written and published 95 blog articles via The Dentonite. We’ve hosted ten different local artists, comedians, musicians, and community members to take over our Instagram account, as well.

Paschall Bar debuted a drink they named after us at our relaunch party on August 2. ‘The Dentonite’ is incredibly delicious and refreshing (we may be biased, though.) We recommend you try one (or three) immediately!

The weekend before we rekindled our flame on the internets, Denton saw its first annual comedy fest at J&J’s prior to the announcement of the basement closing. The pizza is still there and is as fantastic and greasy as ever. Also, Fishboy is playing an acoustic set upstairs in the lobby on Saturday, September 3.

Denton opened a new co-working space called Stoke, and it's off to a great start. We hear you cannot office from their space unless your job is directly attributed to technology, though.

Why leave the house when you can have food delivered? Two new delivery services popped up in August, one a breakfast delivery service from the creators of Seven Mile Cafe.

Benefits of leaving your house could be but are not limited to live music, art shows, and people watching. In the last 31 days, we talked a lot about music and the ever-changing scene in Denton. We were present at the first Denton Music Town Hall and even live streamed it! We’ve actually live streamed quite a bit!

Other benefits of leaving your house are delicious drinks from a myriad of local watering holes. Denton has a ton of weekly drink specials, and we are not afraid to drink our way through town to find the best cocktails, either.

Although not open yet, we are excited to see Armadillo Ale Works finally move into the old Hive building that just so happens to share a parking lot with Denton’s hottest new restaurant, Boca 31. Go now. Just go. Veggie tacos, empanadas, palentas. Tell them The Dentonite sent you! Heaven has a new location.

Denton musicians haven’t stopped creating new music, and we’ve continued to highlight that in our Monday Mixtapes and throughout the numerous album reviews and releases that have spanned across August. There are a ton of people in this community who want to help take action, and instead of complaining about being at a loss, maybe pitch in and help the people who are making a difference when you can, eh?

Want to know where those things are happening? We have a calendar that highlights every event in Denton, and we curate our staff’s weekend event picks every Thursday via our Weekend Update. We also create a shit load of indexes to help you navigate certain things like brunch in Denton, house show venues, thrift stores, and more.

More than music, Denton’s art scene is booming. There are quite a few gallery spaces in Denton, and most of the spaces feature new shows fairly frequently, so we started highlighting their offerings via our weekly Gallery Report. Two weeks ago we began our weekly Tuesday Art List where we highlight local works from a broad variety of genres.

The 48 Hour Film Race just ended, Dr. Sketchy’s returned to Denton, we experienced a performing arts show that broke the mold from a typical theater performance, people are nerding out on a regular basis, we were featured on Denton’s newest and hottest podcast, we talked to Blair Johnston about her show ‘One Perspective, Infinite Solutions,’ and so much more.

Denton loves giving back, too. From getting together to drink and raise money and awareness for our longest standing soup kitchen to straight up just laughing for a cause, Denton is a bleeding heart. Some of our dear friends lost their house and practice space earlier this week, and the community has banded together to help raise money for relief.

We hosted a free advance screening of Don’t Breathe to help get you in the mood for scary-movie season, and we will be hosting those in the future, too. You can subscribe to our events over on our Facebook page.

Since we are ringing in September, that means we are days away from the 4th annual Oaktopia festival! This year’s festival boasts a tremendous talent offering and an art experience that will stop you dead in your tracks. Taking place Thursday, September 22 - Saturday, September 24, Oaktopia 2016 promises to steal our heart, and we cannot wait.

We’ve experienced a wealth of creativity and talented contributors this past month. We were fortunate enough to join forces with some pretty damn amazing people who have helped build different teams, including creating a video team who has hit the ground running with ideas.

Our whole team loves Denton, and we look forward to continuing the coverage of the pure talent and amazingness that encompasses this enchanting little town. If you want to help by writing, advertising with us, providing your photography skills, and so on - please contact us!

Header image design by Jason Lee