Inside outsider

Downtown grows, downtown remembers; in the middle is Blake Ewing

Interview location: Upstairs at Legends, 514 E. Second Street
To drink: Dead Armadillo Ale
Author’s note: As a rule, the subject of “Day Drinking” gets to pick his or her favorite bar for the interview. Ewing picked the Cellar Dweller, but it is not open at 3:00 in the afternoon.

The Tulsa Voice: So, even though it wasn’t an option, why did you pick the Cellar Dweller?
 

Blake Ewing: Well, their bartenders are always fun and friendly to talk to. It’s an off-the-beaten-path kind of place that feels like you have to be a local to know about it—I’ve always loved places like that. It feels authentic. It’s a great bar for conversation.

TTV: What would you drink if we were there?

BE: It feels like a bourbon bar to me. They’ve got a Bulleit bourbon that I like, so probably that on the rocks. Simple and traditional.

TTV: Does a guy as busy as yourself get to go have a drink very often?

BE: Not as often as I want to. And I’m careful about drinking in public. Things have gotten to the place that if I am holding a beer somewhere, people are always watching me and sometimes it feels like they’re waiting for me to fail. I just don’t give them a whole lot of opportunity to delight in that experience.

TTV: Your businesses sponsor action-sports events, street-art events, etc., that seem to cater to Tulsa’s younger, more alternative crowd. Does it hurt when people who are perceived as leaders of that community take shots at you publicly [as they have on Facebook, most recently regarding one of your restaurants and proposed changes to how food trucks are allowed to operate]?

BE: I knew when I ran for City Council that I was putting myself out there for criticism. I’ve learned to deal with people voicing negative opinions about me. My skin has gotten thicker. I’ve also realized that a lot of the time people have a problem with my stance or my position on an issue, it’s because they don’t understand all aspects of the issue. I’m a registered Republican that votes like a Democrat ninety percent of the time. I think people’s reaction to labels is interesting and often misguided, so I don’t mind making fun of them.

TTV: Like the “Letter to the Hipsters” [a controversial ad published in a 2011 edition of This Land] for instance?

BE: Yeah. It was meant to be a joke. It was meant to be making fun of the labels. I thought it was stupid and silly and I wasn’t trying to insult anyone. With this group of people, I have come to feel like the kid in high school who thinks that he is sitting at the table with his friends, only to come to find out that they don’t think that I’m one of them.

TTV: Where’s the disconnect, then?

BE: Well, in speaking of the young artistic community, I don’t really feel like they accept me as one of them, but apparently I have foolishly lumped myself into that category. But I think the label they want to apply is, Entrepreneur or Businessman or Republican or City Councilor.

TTV: Wouldn’t those labels be fair?

BE: To me, all those labels are secondary. I was always an artist. I was always creative. I didn’t do well in school because I was too busy drawing on my papers. I was always kind of in that place. So, to feel like we have so much in common, to feel like I am trying to make Tulsa a better place for people like them and me, the young creative types—the only time it hurts is when I feel like the people I am working for are the ones who are most against me. I don’t always understand where that comes from, but I’ve come to terms with it.

TTV: Do you have further political aspirations?

BE: You’re never going to see me running for Senator or Governor or State Senate or whatever. I ran for the Council position because I felt like it would be good for Tulsa to have a different kind of voice at the table. I don’t fit in over there. I feel like I do that not for my interest, but for the interest of my district.

TTV: Can you give me a non-political answer as to why you ran for City Council?

BE: What it means to me to be a City Councilor is that one full day a week, when my companies are in business, I’m gone. The average business owner gets to invest his full work week into improving his businesses, I take one full day from 8 in the morning until sometimes 10 at night, where I’m sitting at City Hall doing absolutely nothing that has anything to do with my businesses. Add to that Neighborhood Association Meetings, Ribbon Cuttings and Town Hall Meetings, and all of the other stuff that goes with it, and I am taking hours away from my family and my businesses in the name of public service. I’m not engaging in any kind of practice in City Hall that is of a unique benefit to me. Now, if I’m doing something that betters Tulsa and I happen to benefit personally, then good. The question is: Am I doing things at City Council that benefit me uniquely? I can say with all honesty, hand on my heart, absolutely not.

TTV: How close were we to not having a name change in the Brady District?

BE: I believe it would have been a 5-4 “No” vote on the proposed name change.

TTV: So if that occurred, nothing would have changed? Was anyone on the Council concerned with how that would have played out—with what kind of message that would send?

BE: Here’s what the public didn’t see. We heard stories from generations of people from the Black community who were offering up testimony as to what they believed was a pattern of the City of Tulsa having no value for them. What I was hearing was a segment of our population saying, “We don’t feel cared for. We’re your neighbors, we share your air, we’re all living here together, and we feel like every time there has been an opportunity for the City to do the right thing for us, they chose not to.” They’re talking about the race riot, the laws put in place after the riot to keep them from rebuilding Greenwood, they’re talking about urban renewal plans and highway 244 being built through their neighborhood, et cetera, et cetera.  

It felt like they were describing one kick in the face after another for a century, and I believe those feelings are real. I believe that we have an issue with race in the city of Tulsa, in fact, I don’t just believe it, I know it; and I’ve got the emails to prove it. There is an underlying racial divide in this city that is maybe more pronounced than in any other place this far geographically removed from the deep south.

TTV: So there were five City Council Members who didn’t see it that way?

BE: I will say this: There were City Council Members crying in chambers because even though they wanted to vote “yes” on the name change, they had hundreds of emails from their constituents telling them that they had to vote “no.”

TTV: So, are you happy with the way it worked out? Naming the street after [Civil War photographer] Matthew Brady?

BE: I think it’s so stupid. I hate it. I don’t want it to be that and I never did. But to me, and Councilman Henderson, who worked on it with me, it was the better alternative at the time. I kind of felt like at least we’ll piss everyone off, at least we won’t pick a side, which we had clearly been doing for a century.

TTV: Well, the problem is we were going to pick the wrong side again.

BE: Yeah. So we rolled out this awful idea, but by comparison it was the best idea in the world because we weren’t going to simply ignore a segment of our population again.

TTV: Would Tulsa be a better place if a few individuals didn’t own all of the bars and restaurants downtown?

BE: You know, I’m not a kid who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. I didn’t come from money and there’s no inheritance coming to me. My family doesn’t have any money invested in my places. When I read something like that on Facebook, something to the effect that I’ve just come downtown and opened a bunch of shitty places with somebody else’s money, I want to explain to them that it is the exact opposite. I’ve opened a bunch of shitty places with hard work and ideas. [laughs] I don’t really think they’re shitty. What I think is that they all have a greater potential then where they are currently operating and that they are unique Tulsa establishments. They are businesses that you won’t see in any other town.