Jeff Berry

Where They Are Now

Jeff Berry’s career has always had the feel of a carefully assembled double feature: part reporting desk, part soundstage, part sideline, each chapter adding another layer to a story that refuses to sit still. He began with a curious, multidisciplinary sweep that took him from journalist to screenwriter to filmmaker, and even into the demanding discipline of being a graduate assistant coach at Oklahoma City University. That range gave his work a distinctly kinetic quality—one shaped by observation, performance, and the sort of instinct that comes from moving between worlds rather than staying comfortably in one. Today, that restless sensibility finds a home at Beachbum Berry's Latitude 29, where he is the owner and the guiding presence behind the name. The venue itself suggests a destination with its own atmosphere and rhythm, and Berry’s path to it feels like an evolution rather than a detour. The same eye that once tracked stories across newsroom, set, and field now seems to animate a hospitality project built on specificity and character. In Berry’s case, the through line is less about a single job title than about an enduring fascination with how culture is made, staged, and remembered.

In Their Words “I think probably because it's the whole notion of it being faux.” The line carries the unmistakable cadence of someone reflecting on form as much as substance, on the charm of artifice and the pleasure of something knowingly constructed. It suggests a mind drawn to the spaces where authenticity and performance overlap—where the surface matters precisely because it is part of the meaning. Berry’s remark feels especially revealing in light of the varied career that preceded Beachbum Berry's Latitude 29: journalism asks for clarity, screenwriting for structure, filmmaking for visual storytelling, and coaching for command, timing, and the ability to read a room. Together, they hint at a professional life that has never been content with a single register. “When we sat down to eat, my mom and dad ordered Navy Grogs.” This memory arrives with the easy, intimate detail of a family scene preserved in amber. The specificity of the drink order gives the moment its texture, placing Berry not in abstraction but at a table, watching his parents choose with a confidence that clearly stayed with him. It is the kind of recollection that can become a seed: a small domestic ritual that later blooms into a larger curiosity about place, taste, and atmosphere. In that one sentence, you can feel the beginning of an enduring attentiveness to the kinds of experiences that linger—not just what is served, but how it is remembered.

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