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Outside Trump's Tulsa Rally
My family would like to have gone to the rally, but it was too soon to want to be around 18,000 people, or to stand outside for hours in the hot sun without a good chance of getting in. Hearing about hundreds of thousands of ticket requests reinforced the...
Mapping Tulsa: historical maps on exhibit downtown
Mapping Tulsa, a diverse collection of historical maps illustrating Tulsa's history and culture, is on display at the Henry Zarrow Center gallery, at the southwest corner of Brady Street and Cincinnati Avenue in Tulsa's Bob Wills Arts District. The gallery is open noon to 6 pm on Thursdays, Fridays, and...
Tulsa Near Northside design workshop
Tulsa's Near Northside neighborhood, whose rise and demise I documented in a 2014 story for This Land Press ("Steps to Nowhere"), is part of an area that will be the subject of the Unity Heritage Neighborhoods Design Workshop, next week, September 11-15, 2017, led by urban design students from...
What I told the <em>Guardian</em> about Oklahoma's budget crisis and what the <em>Grauniad</em> published
If you're wondering why people believe the mainstream news media is more interested in pushing a narrative rather than reporting the facts, I've got a story for you. If you want to know why you shouldn't trust a mainstream news outlet to give you multiple reasoned perspectives on a complex...
OKC Spaghetti Warehouse, Bricktown pioneer, closes; Tulsa store remains open
Spaghetti Warehouse, one of the catalysts for transforming a neglected neighborhood of warehouses into Oklahoma City's Bricktown entertainment district, closed its doors today after 26 years of business, a victim of the surrounding district's success. The restaurant opened for business, with space for 425 diners, on November 12, 1989, at...
Lee Roy Chapman, RIP: "To force it on eyes that don't want to see it"
A memorial service for Lee Roy Chapman will be held Wednesday, October 14, 2015, at 4:00 p.m. at Cain's Ballroom. All are welcome. A fund for the benefit of his five-year-old son, Kasper, has been set up at GoFundMe. Friends are sharing memories on the "Remembering Lee Roy Chapman" page...
Oklahoma runoff election day 2014
Happy Election Day! Polls open across Oklahoma at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. Results should start rolling in soon after 7 p.m. The Oklahoma State Election Board website will update results as they are received from the county election boards. Although results are posted on each precinct door...
Downtown Tulsa needs demolition limits, regulatory and tax relief
Route 66 "planter" and "nature band-aid" attempt to distract from ugliness of Tulsa Community College surface parking lot. UPDATE 2019/11/29: I'm revisiting this entry years later, as Strong Towns uses Black Friday to call attention to parking minimums, zoning laws that require a minimum number of parking spaces based...
Finally: TDA to allow Wilkinses to develop across from ballpark
A proposed hotel/office/retail development in the Bob Wills District that was stymied in 2008 by Mayor Kathy Taylor and the Tulsa Development Authority now looks to move forward, five years later and after a lawsuit and settlement. The half-block west of Elgin between Archer and Brady is owned by the...
The Brady name game
The debate over purging the name Brady from Tulsa streets and landmarks has made international news. Tulsa City Council researcher Jack Blair discovered a December 24, 1907, street-naming ordinance that shows that Archer, Brady, and Haskell streets had different names in the initial draft -- Archer was Atchison, Brady was...
Bob Wills tour bus returns to Tulsa
About four years ago, Lee Roy Chapman set out on a quest to find Bob Wills's 1948 Flxible Clipper tour bus. He found Bob's bus, and a companion -- the bus of Wills's good friend, western swing bandleader Hoyle Nix -- rusting in a field near Big Spring, Texas, Nix's...
Tulsa primary election 2013
Happy Election Day! Polls open in Tulsa County and the City of Tulsa at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. Citizens of the City of Tulsa have two races on a non-partisan primary ballot: Mayor and City Auditor. There will be runoffs in November and possibly (but not likely)...
Bob Wills 108th Birthday Bash: Cain's Ballroom, March 2, 2013
Tomorrow (Saturday) night, March 2, 2013, the historic Cain's Ballroom at 423 N. Main St. in downtown Tulsa's Bob Wills District will ring with the music that made it famous. Bob Wills' Texas Playboys, led by vocalist Leon Rausch and guitarist Tommy Allsup, will headline the annual Bob Wills Birthday...
Tulsa blog roundup, 2012/12/26
Via TashaDoesTulsa, This Land Press's Do What Tulsa has a list of large-scale Christmas light displays in and around Tulsa. See them while you can. Do What also has a list of New Year's Eve events in Tulsa, ranging from casual to fancy. (The Oklahoma Swing Syndicate dance looks like...
<em>UHF</em> tonight at Guthrie Green
Weird Al Yankovic lived in the Bob Wills District before it was cool. His character in a movie did, at any rate. A two-story building at 114 S. Archer provided the interior and exterior shots of the apartment and adjoining karate studio shown near the beginning of the movie. Tonight...
Tulsa Playboys free western swing dance Thursday
In honor of their first anniversary, the Tulsa Playboys are throwing a dance this Thursday, June 14, 2012, at the legendary Cain's Ballroom at 423 N. Main St. in Tulsa's Bob Wills District. They usually have one dance a month, but this month is special -- free admission! Legendary country...
Let's call it Wills Park
The Wills boys, from left to right, youngest to oldest: Brothers Billy Jack Wills, Luther J. "Luke" Wills, Johnnie Lee Wills, and Bob Wills, and their father John Tompkins "Uncle John" Wills. From BobWills.com The George Kaiser Family Foundation is looking for public input on the name of the...
Tulsa band's Santorum song makes a splash
First Love, a local band featuring the singing and songwriting talents of Camille and Haley Harris, wrote a fight song for the Rick Santorum campaign. The song "Game On!" came together in the wee hours of this past Sunday night / Monday morning, after they heard Rick Santorum speak and...
BOK Center street closures a pointless nuisance
This has been bugging me for a while; an item on tonight's council agenda brought it to mind again. It's bad enough that the construction of the BOK Center permanently blocked 2nd Street, once part of a through pair of one-way streets (with 1st Street) connecting to Inner Dispersal Loop...
Tate Brady, the Klan, and the attack on Greenwood
I'd like to give the cover story in the new issue of This Land the attention it deserves, but at the moment I'm overwhelmed by a backlog of entries in progress about the Tulsa City Council primary, now just eight days away, so we'll make do for now with links:...
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