In the Loop

The visitors’ guide to downtown Tulsa, from a friendly local

It didn’t used to be, but downtown Tulsa is now a destination for concerts, sporting events, the arts, and entertainment for all! As a resident and patron of downtown, I have assembled these tips to help those who could use some pointers on how to navigate our burgeoning city’s center: 

1 // Downtown has many “one way streets.” But those only apply to weekdays … and chickens. You ain’t chicken, are ya? 

2 // Guthrie Green is a downtown park with a stage. It has a steady stream of music and outdoor activities. It is a place where everyone is welcome.

Pasty, jaw-clinched dude with fingerless, leather workout gloves on an 85-degree day? Welcome!

Woman with a way-too-small tube top and bikini bottoms? Well, hi there!

The one who dry-humps your significant other on your lawn blanket in front of a few hundred people? Sure, you future local Internet star, you!

3 // As more people find out how much fun can be had downtown, more people will come to enjoy downtown’s entertainment options. This means there will be more cars and everyone will have to park some distance away from their destination. This increases the odds you might have to try what ancient civilizations called “walking” (pronounced “jual-king”).

Walking is when you move your legs in a synchronous fashion until you arrive at your destination. The George Kaiser Family Foundation will hopefully be stationing Segways every five feet to alleviate this pending humanitarian crisis. 

4 // Downtown is no longer a one-stop destination! You can go for one thing and find several other things to do. For instance, did you know that on the Boston Bridge you can stand in a concrete circle shouting maniacally into a bizarro universe where an identical person is yelling back at you? 

5 // Tulsa has a rich cultural history, the entirety of which is chronicled in the movies “The Outsiders” and “Rumble Fish.” The first and third Wednesdays of each month downtown Tulsa celebrates these movies by either having a huge fight at Guthrie Green (see: “The Outsiders”) or by painting everything downtown black and white and having Stewart Copeland play drum solos on a bunch of buckets from Home Depot for three hours (see: “Rumble Fish.” Seriously, see it).

6 // Every Saturday morning there is a run, walk, bike ride, Christmas parade, or some other event requiring all but one of the streets into downtown to close for anywhere from one to eight hours. This helps all area residents learn about the region’s rich history of wayfinding, navigation, and  “borrowing” the property of others to get where we want to go.

7 // On Sunday, downtown is frequently lawless. At noon there is an unsanctioned muscle car race between all the downtown churches to local eateries, like “Fast and the Furious” but with more Buicks. If you are an unfortunate pedestrian hit by these crazed religious road warriors rocketing to four, maybe even five miles over the posted speed limit, it was just the spirit acting through a LaSabre’s grill. “Praise [insert the name of your religion’s mascot here]!”

8 // In order to bring more residents downtown, the City of Tulsa and the railroad created a “No Train Horn” zone through downtown. There will never, ever, not ever be any train horns heard downtown, ever. You may think you hear 145-decibel train horns while you’re trying to sleep. But you don’t.

9 // When lost or needing assistance, never ask directions from any of downtown’s residents because anyone who would live in the inner city must, according to lore and tradition, be methed out of their minds. Just stop in the middle of any one of our crowded intersections until your iOS updates and your phone restarts and you download the latest iMaps and find your location. Our continuous honking is not at you—it’s encouragement for your phone. “C’mon, phone! You can do it!”

10 // Don’t bother behaving or acting with any sense of decorum when enjoying the city’s center. Act as ridiculous as you want because Tulsa is a huge town. You will never see these people again, and no one here gossips.

11 // Per some well-intended but painfully misguided signage, all homeless are not to be given anything. Just think of them as one of the characters at Disney World: only there to take pictures with your kids. “Smile, Billy!”

12 // Since ONEOK Field and BOK Center have been completed, downtown has 15, now 16 … wait, 17 new barbecue eateries! Then there’s one bar for every man, woman, and underage high school student working for the ABLE commission; one grocery store; no gas stations; and every running automobile that is parked within 20 feet of a bar is now technically a Slovakian-Nepali fusion food truck subject to pending ordinances.

13 // Update: 20 new barbecue restaurants! Find a map on pg 21. 

Editor’s note: TTV counted only three barbecue restaurants in downtown Tulsa. If Andy does not eat barbecue at regular 45-minute intervals, he starts imagining oases of pulled pork and ribs where there are only vacant parking lots.

After spending his youth mistaken for a low-altitude weather balloon due to his largish cranium, Andy Wheeler now writes as a way of coping with the powerful energies which pull at him (a.k.a., the North American Jet Stream). Judah Friedlander reviewed Andy’s applause at his recent show in Tulsa, saying, “You are a strong clapper.”