HAPPY NEW YEAR, Denton, it’s another successful trip around the sun for Little D! This week in #DENTONING adventures has happenings a’plenty, so here is our top #DEN10 weekly events!
Looking at another wet weekend but never fear, there’s still a ton of fun to be had around the Lil’ D as you do your Christmas shopping! It’s also graduation weekend for UNT and TWU so expect heavy traffic and a few wrong-way-on-a-one-way surprises. This week in #DENTONING adventures also has plenty of holiday shenanigans, and Christmas Lights galore, so here is our top #DEN10 weekly events!
OMG y’all it is finally here!! It’s time for the Denton Holiday Lighting Festival and Wassail Weekend!! You should seriously start thinking about holiday shopping as the downtown showcases shopping local! This week in #DENTONING adventures also has plenty of other fun, so here is our top #DEN10 weekly events!
Thanksgiving is here, so put on your stretchy eatin’ pants! Yes, quite a few spots around town will be open in case you’re fleeing family or boredom, and there are always opportunities to help feed folks at community meals. Plenty going on in holiday weekend #Dentoning, so here’s our top #DEN10 events that you definitely shouldn’t miss.
The fall jackets are out but happenings are still hot in the Lil’ D!! This week in #DENTONING adventures also features plenty of other fun, so here is our top #DEN10 weekly events!
The fall jackets are out but happenings are still hot in the Lil’ D!! It’s also time to start thinking about holiday shopping as the downtown MSA Holiday Open House showcases shopping local! This week in #DENTONING adventures also features plenty of other fun, so here is our top #DEN10 weekly events!
November is here and so is the cool Fall weather!! It’s also the last day to Early Vote before Election day on Tuesday Nov 5 so do your civic duty, folks! This week in #DENTONING adventures also features plenty of fun, so here is our top #DEN10 weekly events!
The rain lets up and we’re promised sunshine for the weekend, so don’t waste a minute of the Halloween-flavored weekend!! This week in #DENTONING adventures also features our annual Day Of The Dead Festival but there is so much more happening in our top #DEN10 weekly events!
Stoke’s second annual Denton Startup Crawl on November 1st highlights some of the businesses putting Denton on the tech community map in North Texas. The walking tour portion ends back at Stoke, where Denton Startup Night rounds out the evening with a panel discussion, food, and drink!
Women’s History Month is the perfect time to revisit some of the amazing Denton ladies who have been town saviors, trailblazers, hellraisers, social activists, and pioneers. Heck, over at TWU is the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame and the archives for the WWII WASP Archives, so you know there are stories a’plenty to tell. Here are a few more of our local favorites, including a 1920’s newspaper publisher, a tiny songstress with a big voice, and a political crusader.
Once a year in Denton, many of our local restaurants and bars get together for a good cause and make their food and drinks available for roughly the price of a single restaurant meal. This year’s event will feature around 35 participants, including a great mix of established Denton institutions (hi, Beth Marie’s!) and places that are new to Denton.
What image pops into your head when someone uses the word “maker”?
The images that tend to appear in the mind—not to mention Google’s image search—involve wires and circuit boards. As important as those skills and the people who enjoy them are, they only represent one type of maker. Many skills can fall under the maker umbrella, whether it’s programming robots to make pancakes or turning a bicycle wheel into a musical instrument. Artists, scientists, crafters, and engineers can all be considered makers. If you can take a set of materials and transform them into something cool, you are welcome in the maker community!
One of our favorite holiday traditions, the Holiday Lighting Festival, is this weekend. The annual free event features music, food, performances, a toy drive, and various other holiday activities. Happening simultaneously to the Holiday Lighting Festival is Wassail Weekend. Dozens of local shops extend their hours and welcome patrons to sample their wassail, a hot cider-like beverage. Wassail Weekend On Friday evening the Downtown Denton square will be shut down to traffic to make way for wassail-guzzling pedestrians to walk around and enjoy all of the festivities. You'll find us circled 'round the tree like the Whos down in Whoville, holding hands and singing with joy. We're not sure who the Grinch is in this situation, though.
If you plan on coming out to sample the wassail and find the joy of the holiday in your cold, black heart, here are our tips and tricks to making sure you get to squeeze as much holiday cheer out of the event as possible.
There’s been a lot of buzz around the recent arrival of the oft-rumored Fine Arts Theater hitting the real estate market, with a hefty pricetag in the ballpark of $1.5 million. Owned by the McBride family since 1983 with high hopes of renovation, there were overtures in 2014 and then renewed interest in 2016 but alas… it has never come to pass. A recent episode of the Politically Denton podcast explored some of the backstory and future possibilities, but I figured it would be a hoot to have a look back at the history of this iconic spot from back in the day.
Ever been to a pop-up dinner? More over, ever heard of a pop-up dinner? The events are normally one-offs in which facilities become restaurants for one night only and feature special food prepared by up and coming chefs. Pop-up dinners are gaining in popularity across the country and you have a chance to check one out in Denton this week! On November 9th at Denton County Brewing Company there will be a pop-up dinner featuring the food of Chef Chad Kelley from Barley and Board that will be paired with beers selected by Seth Morgan of Denton County Brewing Company. Read on to find out more info on this great Denton dining opportunity.
Entrepreneur. It’s kind of a dumb word if you think about it, and to most people (especially students) it carries some buzzwords with it that seem very business-y. When I first heard “entrepreneur," I thought to myself, “That’s for people in the college of business.” It never really struck me as, “I’m an entrepreneur,” even though looking back on my life, I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was a kid. Everything from trading Pokémon cards, making beaded bracelets and necklaces, and burning CDs for friends before we learned we probably shouldn’t were all entrepreneurial endeavors that were abundant in my youth (as they probably were in yours).
That’s the thing, though. Being an entrepreneur isn’t about putting on a suit jacket or making apps. It’s about making a living doing something you love, while making sure other people love it too (that’s what we call customer validation). And this is one of the things I learned going through Startup Weekend.
Click through to read more about the upcoming Startup Weekend taking place in Denton, TX.
Since opening in August of 2016, Stoke, Denton’s entrepreneur center and co-working space, has provided space for local businesses, entrepreneurs, freelance workers, and remote workers. The center has also hosted a variety of educational, professional networking, and social events. There has been formal and informal mentoring for new entrepreneurs and collaboration between several of the businesses located at Stoke. All of these things have provided great benefit to Denton’s tech and business communities, allowing them to contribute more to the Denton community and economy.
It all leads up to this, All Hallows Eve and the trick-or-treat marathon of candy, costumes and cold beverages for the adults. Where can you get your ghoul on? Here’s our quick guide to Halloween Happenings around Denton this year, but feel free to add your fave in the comments. Go have some spooky fun today and tomorrow, Denton!
Looking for some spooky Halloween scares but just a bit more frightened by the prospect of having to travel too far down I-35? Look no further, we’ve put together a quick guide to Denton’s best Haunted Halloween Attractions that pairs & scares quite nicely with our list of Top 5 Haunted Places in Denton. Read on to find out how to get haunted in Denton during Halloween 2017!
Halloween season in Denton means a plethora of spooky events in town along with brisk weather, which is totally ideal conditions for sharing ghost stories with friends around a fire! Well gather around, ye Denton faithful, so I can share with you the strange spooky tale of the Hipster Haint known only as “The Dude” who is said to still wander the studios of Denton’s Grammy-winning musicians and legendary local Nuclear Punk Polka deities, BRAVE COMBO.
This Saturday is the eighth annual Handmade Harvest event put on by the fine folks at The DIME Store. This annual event is probably the single best day of shopping available in Denton. Yes, even better than that day after Thanksgiving when everyone eats leftover pie and then goes to Target to fight over discounted televisions. At the Handmade Harvest, makers from all over gather together under one roof (this year at TWU's Hubbard Hall) to sell their wares. Read on to find out why you should make sure to stop by this weekend and what to check out.
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
This has some truth to it. While the exact percentage is disputed, many job openings are never advertised through conventional channels. Even for jobs that are advertised, hiring managers are predisposed to hire people they have some previous connection with. Many companies even offer bonuses to their employees for referring new hires to the company. Read on to learn more about this year's Bootstrap Denton event happening today at East Side at 6:30pm!
SCRAP has been Denton's home for creative reuse for several years now. Heck, their "new" location off of Bell Avenue is already a couple of years old. Where else in town can you fill up bags of "yarn barf" for 25¢ per bag, buy used trophies such as "3rd place at Local Comedy Contest," enroll your child in educational classes that promote creative reuse, or find useful things such as art materials on the cheap? SCRAP does a lot of stuff, y'all. Aside from just being an awesome store and educational center, SCRAP also puts on one of our favorite events every year: the SCRAP Masquerade Ball. This year's ball is happening Saturday, October 14th from 7 - 10pm at the Denton Woman's Club. Read on to learn more about this exciting event and find out how you can get your tickets for the event
Did you know that there is a shipping container behind Maple Hall at UNT that grows 11 varieties of lettuce in a vertical hydroponic organic garden? Did you know that there is a massive bakery behind Clark Hall that bakes up bagels, croissants, and donuts from scratch? Recently, We Denton Do It had the chance to hang out in the halls of UNT, relive a little of the past, and see what the future has brought that made us a little bit jealous of the college kids down the street.
PolaCon, the annual convention dedicated to all things instant film, is slowly developing into one of our favorite Denton festivals (see what we did there?). The annual convention centered on instant film photography will take place September 29th - October 1st) in Dallas and Denton. Read on to find out more about Polacon 2017 and how you can take part in our Polawalk/workshop next Saturday morning!
Today across North Texas, charitable organizations are maximizing donations for North Texas Giving Day. Many will have challenge funds, matching funds and more as they raise the money they need to keep serving our community. All of them will be accepting online donations, so even if you can't make it to the square, you can still donate. Read on to find out a few of our favorite organizations in Denton, and how you can help give back.
Habib hopes to learn what kind of services residents want, as well as to educate them on what services are currently available that residents might not know about. An example of a project from elsewhere that Habib would like to see in Denton is real-time traffic information. Chicago and New York City are able to offer this service thanks to sensors in the roads that can report the amount of traffic at any given moment. However, most traffic-related services, such as Google Maps, currently give predictions based on past traffic patterns for that time period.
Of course, traffic data is helpful for planning where to drive, or even more importantly, where not to drive, but such data can have other uses. For example, if a person is planning to open a business, knowing the traffic patterns in the area could be extremely useful. While there are methods currently in place to estimate this information, such methods are expensive and labor-intensive and still only provide approximate answers.
Denton has a lot of festivals. And while Oaktopia is about to cause all sorts of ruckus in a few weeks, we really enjoy the smaller ones. KDB's Redbud Festival and Denton Main Street's Arts and Autos events are two of our favorite Saturday mornings in Denton year in and year out. This Saturday just so happens to be one of those Saturdays. Arts and Autos (no more antiques - more on that later) is taking over the Denton square this Saturday morning from 9am until 3pm. Yes, the downtown Denton square will be cleared of cars to make room for...tons of cars! Check out some of our favorite aspects of the event in the post below so you can make the most of your time there!
Labor Day weekend was a dark news cycle that included Hurricane Harvey footage and terrible rumors Denton's legendary LGBTQ+ haven Mable Peabody's Beauty Parlor & Chainsaw Repair was suddenly closing. Sunday was the secret finale for this Grand Dame of Denton hangouts, whose quiet passing can only be fully understood if we survey this venue's storied history from back in the day.
Mikey LaCroix is busy. You’ve probably enjoyed one of his performances under the name Kind Beats at Backyard on Bell, or listened to one of his radio shows. But, as he himself admits, he’s not the kind of performer you always notice. That’s kind of the point: As long as you’re happy, he’s doing his job.
The hip-hop head-turned-DJ has two shows, a booming SoundCloud page, and friends in every nook, corner, and cranny of DFW, but he’s still not satisfied. He’s on a mission to unite artists, unite sounds and make Denton even funkier.
We sat down with the music man to find out what drives him and his sound.
It’s that time of year again, y’all. The school doors are fresh with WD-40 and the cars are accidentally turning north onto Elm St. again. School is back in session and with it, a new crop of Dentonites have flooded our city limits. Will these fresh, young faces become lifelong Dentonites or never step foot outside of their college campus? Only time will tell, but we’ve decided to do our part to get them to become a part of the former group, by providing them with some insider knowledge. Below are a collection of precious WDDI secrets that those new to Denton (and some folks that have been living here for a while) might not yet know. It’s time for Secrets of Denton County VII. Got a Denton secret of your own? Add it to the comments!
If you missed the chance to view some talented art work by local artists and musicians this past Saturday at the Denton Music and Arts Collective Kick-off party at Dan’s Silverleaf, we have to say you missed out. DMAC is a recently-launched group looking to subsidize the cost of healthcare for local artists and much more. Luckily for Dentonites, this was only the first of a number of fundraisers that the nonprofit plans to hold. So rest assured that you will have many more chances to give back to Denton while also getting to take in some great local culture. Read on for our thoughts on Saturday's festivities
As Denton continues to grow and thrive with each passing year, various needs pop up around town. UNT grad Jacob Moses recently saw something that the Denton community was strangely still in need of: a neighborhood grocery store downtown. With a loan, a gift from his parents, and his 401K, the 25 year-old opened Blue Bag Grocery this month on S. Locust St. in downtown Denton, TX. Read on to find out more about Moses' path to opening his store and why Blue Bag should be your next grocery stop after grabbing coffee at Shift.
Do you want to expand your gaming collection to something other than Cards Against Humanity and Pokémon Go but don’t know how? Well, sweet friends, you’re welcome, because I have compiled a list of damn near every gaming store in town as well as organized them into categories of where certain games can be found and played. I originally thought this overview would be a breeze (I mean, how big can Denton’s gaming scene really be?) but the more research I did the more I realized that Denton is overflowing with incredible, nerdy gaming energy and I simply feel like it is my civic duty to give you all the 411 on how kickass Denton’s gaming scene really is.
What We Did is our weekly roundup of a few photos that have been tagged with #WDDI on Instagram. Together, they give you a great idea of what all has been going on in town over the past week.
Below are 18 photos from the past seven days of life in Denton, TX. They include scenes from Monday's eclipse, the North Texas State Fair, and much more.
If you'd like to be included in What We Did, tag your images with #WDDI on Instagram, and check back here next Monday. Search the hashtag #WDDI to check out a bunch of other great photos of stuff happening in town. You can click the images below to be led back to that photographer's Instagram page. Follow us on Instagram to see more Denton imagery.
Got a question about What We Did? Send it to will@wedentondoit.com.
“We’ve found more of a home.”
That’s what Jacki Wilson, co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Upventur had to say about the company’s relocation from Frisco to Denton. Wilson says that Denton has been welcoming and that she appreciates the great energy and vibe that Denton offers.
The tech company relocated from Frisco to Stoke, the city owned co-working space in downtown Denton, earlier this year. Read on to find out how things have been going for them since launching their platform last month!
Who knew, a beautiful, stunning and (almost) 360 degree view of our beloved town has been collecting cobwebs on the 8th top floor of the historical Wells Fargo building on the corner of Hickory St and Locust? As of the last month, the top floor has been contracted to be transformed into a restaurant dubbed Sunago Bell which should open by next summer. You may soon find yourself dining on Mediterranean-influenced cuisine and admiring Denton’s landmarks such as the courthouse and TWU towers, from on high. Read on for more details on this brand new spot!
A slender silhouette with long dark hair and a firm handshake, Melanie Little Gomez Smith greets me warmly, with her husband Des Smith just behind her as we sit down to talk at the bar in West Oak on a breezy evening. Kambucha, their drink of choice, was their one precondition for our meeting spot.
Artists at their heart, the duo have seemingly explored it all, and are still -with only slight exhaustion but still enthusiasm -exploring it all. They do a diversity of art projects and mediums including photography, sculpting, mural painting, album art, music videos and more.
Most recently, within the span of two days the couple painted a mural that is funny, dark, thought-inducing all at the same time. A porpoise, a white rhino and other endangered, majestic species sit around table at LSA restaurant, coming together to resolve and discuss their looming fate of on-coming extinction.
Local Buzz is our new quick and easy guide to the many different breweries and distilleries both in and around Denton County. Let’s be honest: When it comes to breweries, we’re a little spoiled. Sure, we may not yet have the name recognition that a lot of those Dallas gastropubs have, but the beer scene in Denton continues to flow with cool creativity thanks to a crop of longtime dedicated Denton denizens. This spring saw the arrival of two new breweries, which means it’s past time to round up all of the local spots where you can wet your whistle and sample some of the finest brew creations in and around Denton.
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For the past two years Denton has undergone an extensive writing of a development code update which was last written roughly 30 years ago. This code, along with the proposed zoning map defines what private landowners are legally allowed to do with their property. Will anything in the code update change our residential neighborhoods we care so much about?