{"id":5690,"date":"2015-03-01T19:47:15","date_gmt":"2015-03-02T02:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=5690"},"modified":"2015-03-01T20:23:19","modified_gmt":"2015-03-02T03:23:19","slug":"5690","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/03\/5690\/","title":{"rendered":"New video celebrates the best of downtown Billings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AsPYvzFo-lk\" width=\"100%\" height=\"420\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A new video celebrating the virtues of downtown Billings received its premiere Friday night and was posted to YouTube on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBelieve in Downtown Billings\u201d was produced by Jonathan Allison of Visual Lens Productions for the Downtown Billings Alliance. It was premiered Friday night at the <a href=\"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/2014\/11\/slightly-off-schedule-pub-station-throws-open-doors\/\">Pub Station<\/a> during the annual meeting of the alliance.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Lisa Harmon, director of the organization, said the video \u201cis about people falling in love with their city, or their downtown, again.\u201d She said Allison was given free rein to find people he thought would be interesting and to let them say whatever they wanted to about the downtown.<\/p>\n<p>The testimonials\u2014from downtown residents, workers and business owners\u2014touch on the art scene, food and drink, live music, the downtown\u2019s sense of community, friendliness and authenticity.<\/p>\n<p>In the words of Matt Blakeslee, owner of the soon-to-open <a href=\"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/2014\/09\/independent-movie-house-pub-coming-to-dowtown-billings\/\">Art House Cinema<\/a>, \u201cDowntown is the place where you find the kind of people that have their heads up, and they\u2019re curious what\u2019s going on in the world, what\u2019s going on in their city.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"well\"><div class=\"dfad dfad_pos_1 dfad_first\" id=\"_ad_652\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/mjhWkW\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/201703_capeair_variable.jpg\" alt=\"CapreAir_Variable\" width=\"510\" height=\"180\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-18069\" \/><\/a><\/div><\/div>Ted Kim, the owner of <a href=\"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/2014\/10\/young-blood-new-energy-fuel-downtown-renaissance\/\">Billings Open Studio<\/a>, had this take: \u201cMontana is a very good place to be. And the place to be in Montana is Billings\u2014and downtown Billings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Harmon said the staff of the downtown alliance came up with the idea of the video as a way of reassuring people after what she described as \u201ca tough 2014,\u201d in the downtown and the city at large. There were some high-profile violent crimes, lots of negative publicity and growing concerns about the number of transients in the downtown.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe really wanted 2015 to be the year we celebrate our community,\u201d Harmon said.<\/p>\n<p>She said the video was everything the alliance had hoped for.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I watch it, I still get chills because I really believe there\u2019s something happening here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new video celebrating the virtues of downtown Billings received its premiere Friday night and was posted to YouTube on Saturday. \u201cBelieve in Downtown Billings\u201d was produced by Jonathan Allison of Visual Lens Productions for the Downtown Billings Alliance. It was premiered Friday night at the Pub Station during the annual meeting of the alliance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17],"tags":[2151,2152,975,128,1349,1697,1475],"class_list":["post-5690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-billings","category-culture","tag-art-house-cinema","tag-billings-open-studio","tag-downtown-billings-alliance","tag-lisa-harmon","tag-matt-blakeslee","tag-pub-station","tag-ted-kim","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19860,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5690\/revisions\/19860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}