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Jerry Lewis in Tulsa at the Roy Clark Celebrity Golf Classic
Tulsa native and newsman Loren Cosby shared with me a couple of interesting anecdotes involving Jerry Lewis's appearance at a Tulsa golf tournament, and he gave me permission to share them with you. The Roy Clark Celebrity Golf Classic had a nine-year run at Cedar Ridge Country Club from 1975...
Elliot Nelson, Blue Dome District in the MSNBC spotlight
The gastronomic empire of prolific Tulsa restaurateur and publican Elliot Nelson, owner of McNellie's, El Guapo (loud automatic music warning), Yokozuna, Dilly Deli, Fassler Hall, the Dust Bowl Lounge and Lanes, Brady Tavern, and The Colony, was profiled Sunday on MSNBC. There doesn't seem to be a way to embed...
Cool and cranky
It's always a surprise to get a comment on an old post, usually a pleasant one. Over the last 24 hours, two old blog entries have received comments. The first, from Lisa S. of Joshua, Texas, was posted to my July 2008 entry about a visit to the pictographs at...
Rocky Frisco on downtown development; Chamber to run downtown marketing?
From Rocky Frisco's Tulsa Metro Chamber questionnaire. Nail, meet hammerhead. The more the city government has tried to "develop" the downtown, the worse it has become. I firmly believe that if had been allowed to develop naturally, without all the wild ideas for "development," it would still be an exciting,...
MedBlogged interview
I had the honor of being the first interviewee on The Chris Medlock Show podcast. Chris and I talked about my column on the history and future of Downtown Tulsa Unlimited and other downtown development issues. Visit Chris Medlock's MedBlogged to download the current podcast and catch up on earlier...
Downtown Tulsa Unlamented
An edited version of this column was published in the May 14 - 20, 2009, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Posted October 25, 2022. Cityscope By Michael D. Bates Downtown Tulsa Unlamented The departing head of Downtown Tulsa Unlimited...
IDA looks at downtown Tulsa; City seeks bids for downtown services
Last fall, Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor asked the International Downtown Association to send a team to study our downtown, and in particular to look at the city's arrangement with Tul-Center, Inc., the arm of Downtown Tulsa Unlimited (DTU) that has handled downtown services since the current business improvement district was...
DTUBAR: 1981 plan for Brady District
In preparation for an upcoming column, I spent some time last night photographing the Downtown Tulsa Unlimited vertical file at Central Library. Vertical files are newspaper clippings organized by topic, and they're often the best way to get a sense of the evolution of some aspect of the city over...
Jim Norton leaving Downtown Tulsa Unlimited?
I just received an e-mail saying that Jim Norton, president of Downtown Tulsa Unlimited, is leaving for a job in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. If I recall correctly, Norton is originally from the Tarheel State. He has been head of DTU for almost 20 years. My source says his last...
NIMBYs threaten to SLAPP homeowners
The Mental Health Association in Tulsa, an organization that is being used as a tool by the downtown NIMBYs in their (futile) efforts to clear the chronically homeless and mentally ill out of downtown, is threatening to sic Uncle Sam on homeowners who are protesting MHAT's plans to build a...
Stadium trust on tonight's Council agenda
I've been seeing e-mail traffic urging people to show up at tonight's City Council meeting in support of the Tulsa Stadium Trust. I understand that Bank of Oklahoma and other downtown employers are trying to pack the council chambers tonight. Those who show up should remember that the vote isn't...
Who are the real NIMBYs?
An edited version of this column was published in the August 14-20, 2008, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. It was a more polished version of a blog entry from the previous week (minus hyperlinks and blockquotes, which don't translate well to print). The published version is no longer available on...
The real NIMBYs
Ruth Kaiser Nelson was, for all practical purposes, my first Latin teacher. When I was an eighth-grader, our scheduled teacher, Bill Bippus, took a semester's leave of absence, and Mrs. Nelson taught us instead. Because the class occurred during the girls' PE period, it was an all-boy class, and Mrs....
Flickr the Beryl Ford Collection
If you're a Tulsa history buff, you know the Beryl Ford Collection, which includes tens of thousands of historic photos of our city, many of places that no longer exist. Thanks to the generosity of the Rotary Club of Tulsa, over 20,000 photos in the collection have been digitized and...
Drillers "80% certain" to locate downtown?
Last Tuesday I covered the Tulsa Press Club luncheon for Urban Tulsa Weekly, while UTW reporter Brian Ervin was busy covering Commissioner Randi Miller's appearance at the City Council Urban Development Committee meeting. You should see both stories in this week's issue. The speaker at TPC was Downtown Tulsa Unlimited...
Making their own cool at 3rd & Kenosha
There was a nice story in the business section of Saturday's Whirled about Micha Alexander and what he and others have been doing to renovate the area around 3rd Street and Kenosha Avenue on the eastern edge of downtown Tulsa. Though he just turned 26, he has purchased four buildings...
Notes from a visit to west Texas
My wife's dad's folks are all cotton farmers from west Texas, specifically the area around Stamford, which is just a bit north of Abilene. We drove down and spent fall break there. What follows are some disjointed notes from the trip down and back: We stopped at the Rock Cafe...
Property owners owe Tulsans downtown preservation
An edited version of this piece was published in the August 23, 2006, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The edited, published version of the piece is online in the Internet Archive. Posted on the web September 17, 2013. Property owners owe Tulsans downtown preservation By Michael D. Bates A memo...
Give IRV, and the Towerview, a chance
When I filed this week's column Monday morning, I had no way of knowing the final result, but I felt certain that whoever won the Republican nomination for Mayor would win without a majority of the vote. I thought that was the optimum time to write about the advantages of...
Lost Tulsa: The Main Mall
Over at his Lost Tulsa blog, Tom Baddley has posted a great set of photos of Bartlett Square and the Main Mall, prior to their removal over the last few years. (Be sure to notice the photos of the Tulsa Whirled's Main Street facade, a classic example of mid-century Albanian...
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