51. Take Me Back to Tulsa
The week in...Oklahoma.
I’m writing this on Wednesday morning1 from Dylan’s couch as I begin, grudgingly, heart-in-throat, my last day in Tulsa. I have loved it here. The city is smaller than I expected, the trees are bare in this autumnal winter, nothing is open on Mondays…and I have loved it here. My friend Elle refers to towns she’s loved but not lived as “heart places” and Tulsa may find itself one of mine. My heart feels bequeathed to it as I look at my inversed volcano (black clothes - everywhere - spewing from orange luggage) and know I have rolling and tucking to do.
We crashed a Judy Greer movie wrap party. We saw several cats being walked on leashes. We encountered a Christmas motorcycle brigade that interrupted us crossing the street for 15 minutes. We ran the Tulsa Artist Fellowship dinner like rock stars. We watched Air. We have to make a FedEx run to mail the souvenirs that don’t fit in my suitcase.
I’m going to tell you about a little of it, because this is a sharing kind of town, sharing in the wealth, sharing in the joint someone leaned out of their still-moving car to offer Dylan and I as we strolled around downtown (declined, as they were you know…already at the end of the block by the time I registered what happened).
I haven’t been on a real vacation, an airplane, a walking trip, since 2019. I won’t make that mistake again.
Let’s start with the food:
Amelia’s: the Tomahawk will haunt me…until I fly back here to order one for just me.
thank you and Luke for the rec!The Tavern: The pumpkin campanelle is *Lizzie McGuire voice* what dreams are made of2 and I am eating it in leftover format on Dylan’s couch right now (he said it was allowed). We sat underneath a picture I wish I had captured of women wrestlers, the mothers of GLOW, so we ate with a full moon over our heads. And then walked out and right into Taylor Hanson. He looks great! And feathered! An extremely feathered man! (Hanson is from Tulsa and they have a studio3 here where the Fansons can be known to camp out.) Chelsea, who I have known since I was four and was there for her entire Hanson phase, got an all caps manicpanic text. Thank you to
for suggesting!Que Gusto: I regret not trying the fig and cheese empanadas!! Someone mail me one!
Prossimo: Lovely service, lots of Sophia Loren on every wall, and a raclette Alfredo made with a tiny blowtorch right in front of you.
The sights:
The Gathering Place is a testament to charitable giving. I can not believe that such a massive and beautiful space for children and families of any type is free to the public.
The site of Black Wall Street and the Greenwood Cultural Center are invaluable monuments to this historical community and the violence that befell it:
My friend
in a moment of kismet wrote about Tulsa this week in her newest Substack4 and included this helpful primer from :
Greenwood Rising is a museum that depicts life before, during, and after the Tulsa Massacre (which I hate to admit I only learned about watching HBO’s Watchmen) that claimed the lives and businesses, and hope of incalculable Black Tulsans who found community and the promise of generational wealth on Black Wall Street, a place made by and for them to thrive. The museum is beautifully designed, presenting Greenwood then and now in truly transportive ways:
The exhibit does not gloss over the violence that incurred and that it was white people, with high-ranking institutional support, who committed this irredeemable violence. I’m glad of that. It is a necessary humbling for the city, for me as a white person, for us all.
I met a local Black writer who seemed the museum trauma porn, and felt it failed to encapsulate the Black excellence before the massacre and Black resilience in sweeping away its embers and restoring itself beyond its original glory. (Its height of success was nearly 20 years later, in 1941.) He suggested that the Cultural Center offers more in its archival materials and its calls for reparative justice.
Buck Atoms is the perfect Tulsa photo opp, but what’s around the corner is not to be missed.
The shop’s curator extraordinaire Mary Beth Babcock is a darling. I loved her and her divine sense of kitsch immediately and very much wanted the hug she leapt from her counter to give me on my way out.
Not only does she run this sweet, sweet shop, but also a vintage store tucked into a house around back called Buck’s Vintage. The house is full of Western tchotchkes, records, and so many future “This is literally just Lugosi” segments.
Thank you to Decopolis for the souvenirs I picked up for Matt and the chance to see Elizabeth Taylor’s earrings up close5! I mean, look at this place: it’s the Rainforest Cafe Gift Shop but also an Art Deco museum!!
My primary demand for this trip was the Bob Dylan Center and its only disappointment was that my bestie Jason was not there with us to enjoy it, especially when I happened upon a photo of Bob and one of Jason’s idols and stagemates6, John Sebastian7.
What a trove this is. Bob is not from Oklahoma (he’s from Minnesota) but after seeing the Woody Guthrie exhibit next door, he allowed for Tulsa to home his massive archive of handwritten lyrics, letters, photographs, and memorabilia with curation from Elvis Costello, Joy Harjo, and Roseanne Cash.
I don’t want to spoil the interactive exhibits, so I won’t, but my goodness, Tulsa knows how to design an functional, engaging, and original museum.
The Philbrook is one of my favorite art museums now.
This trip - this sacred, affirming trip full of peaceful quiet and iPhone fitness app records and joy - would not have been possible without the unofficial Mayor of Tulsa, Dylan Brodie. Thank you, Dylan. I owe you. So much.
I loved it here and can’t wait to come back.
Please support two causes that mean much to me after my week as an honorary Oklahoman: the GoFundMe for a young Lawton boy shot while looking at Christmas lights with his family, and the project Space for Us, which empowers kids young and old to learn about STEAM through space. It is an organization created by my new Tulsan pal Cheyenne and seeks to especially educate and serve Black kids in Oklahoma and beyond. I have donated to both and I hope you will consider the same.
This is literally just Simone:
This is literally just Lugosi, my empath:
Actually my babies:
Various and sundry:
On the last night of: Happy Hanukkah!
Love you bitches,
TG
My Marty McFly dreams coming true!
Fun fact: the Welcome Back, Kotter theme song makes me cry.
Hey thanks for sharing. I don't think I'll ever get to Tulsa. But I felt compelled to add a tangent. I had the good fortune to meet tunesmith Jimmy Webb at an ASCAP songwriters workshop. He said (about his song By the Time I get to Phoenix) that he had never been to Phoenix. That inspired me when I was writing a song about travel, called The Best Part of Going Away is Coming Home. I don't know why exactly, but it gave me license to put this into the chorus "I like people, I like culture, heck I even like the sushi in Tulsa", after finding out that Tulsa is apparently highly respected as a place to get great sushi. After your post, I can almost feel like I've been there too :D
My hometown, never this cool then. A place to escape. But I did drive to Okemah to see the ruin of Woody Guthrie's House. It was kept in ruin because Woody was a Red. A certain Bob Dylan had a daubed mark that he was there in the remnant of the basement overfilled with rubbish.