Is your town starting to look like every other town?

Nope, I never made the Nine of Cups. Probably should have, though.

Boomerang, the old neighborhood has indeed become more gentrified. We lived on 20th Street just north of Woodward Park for 14 years, then moved south about eight blocks a few years ago when our little 2 bedroom, Tudor ivy-covered cottage became claustrophobic. The business district along 15th Street from Peoria to Utica (some extend it to Harvard) is now called Cherry Street, a reference to its name on old plat maps. I've been working with the Cherry St. Assn. for many years, so I know most all of the businesses along there. I'd be thrilled to take you to lunch at any of the restaurants in your old neighborhood the next time you're in town. Just "pm" me when you're coming, and let me know! We'll have a grand time!

Oh my what a small world it is.

Yes, atop the refridgerator (leftover from the days as a Safeway) was where the bands played.

1972 would have been right after The Cups opened. I started working there in about 1975 and would come and go as school allowed. I could always count on F.B. to give me some work when I passed through town.

Sam, across the street at Engler's Photography, will always be one of my heros. He would cash my paychecks and hide the best used equipment for me.....

Mr. B's family all still live in Tulsa so we get back there once in a while. We've been talking about a trip this summer. I will most certainly let you know, Eva, as it would be so fun to meet you!

You must be living quite close to Philbrook these days. Philbrook was our big skip out of school haunt. I have many a happy memory of that neighborhood!

The whole Utica to Cincinnati, 15th to 31st area is really one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in America. Even before the gentrification it was really wonderful.

Here y'go, Joe.



Wow, Boomer! You know my neighborhood well! We're about five doors off Cincinnati on 27th Place. In Sunset Terrace. I bet you can just picture it!

I moved to Tulsa in 1979, have been in this part of town since '85. Missed the glory days of the Nine of Cups, I'm afraid. But oh, the stories!!!

Oh yeah. I remember it very well. My best friend lived right in that area - off Cincinatti on a street I think was called Hazel.

A few blocks down there was a giant hill that swooped down and dead ended into Cincinatti. We would post a lookout at the corner and race our bikes down and around the curve. Whoever made it down with their head intact was the winner.

Ah, Deadman's Hill! My son (age 11) loves to ride his bike down that slope! Nearly scared him to death the first time he did it. You should have seen his eyes! (Come to think of it, you can probably remember!

Every winter when the streets ice over, it's a magnet for kids on sleds and whatever those giant inverted frisbee things are called. You know, the ones you sit on. And yes, the kids still post lookouts for oncoming traffic on Cincinnati. Scares us parents half to death, but we haven't lost one yet. <crossing fingers>

Oh, and Hazel Boulevard....the only east-west street in the neighborhood not numbered. I always wondered about that. Found out recently it was the central street of the development in the '20s and was named for the developer's daughter.

Surely all neighborhoods have places like Deadman's Hill...but isn't it amazing and delightful to find out we're talking about the very same place! The wonders of the internet! Wow.

It is amazing that we can span 2000 miles and 30 years to walk around the same streets - at the touch of a few buttons!

If I listen hard I can almost hear Joe on gituar...

Sing us a song, Joe. Make it one from your Nine of Cups days......

Bookmarking, cause this be something I've grumbled about many a time too. Down by the canal we still have individual restaurants, individually owned I mean, or if not (I know there's a guy that actually owns a string of cafes around town), you cant notice cause in any case they're all different. But oh the shopping street. All the same shops, with their blaring signs and lowered ceilings. If you actually look up, you see some beautiful houses with their own fin-de-siecle or whatnot character; but if, as usual, you keep your eyes at eye-level, bored, ugly all-of-the-same is all you get, with the same shops you find in every single shopping street in the country.

I try to shop independent if I can, or at least I like to think so. I buy organic/artisanic bread and stuff - but come to think of it, that quaint, cute corner bakery also has affiliates in Amsterdam and Zoetermeer. I buy CDs at the litle alternative record store or the world music store or the dance record store, preferably not at Plato (which is everywhere). But my groceries I most always do at the supermarket (which is still open when the Moroccan shop is closed). And by now the vegetable/fruit stores that were located in the two neighbourhoods I lived in before are closed (and down here, there isnt even one around, unless you count the snobbish Italian traiteur with their rucola). And the two family-owned cheese stores downtown have closed too. Perhaps if I'd always gone there instead of picking my Emmenthaler at the supermarket and only going there for specials?

There's so many of us so unhappy about this development - its turning our cities into generic yuck. But only few go "slow food" all the way, passing by the supermarket altogether. And the thing is - I discovered Starbucks when I visited London - and I loved it. Borders, too. You think that family-owned little book stores here have comfy chairs by the bookcases to sit in and browse at will? If you hold one book in your hands too long they'll insistently inquire if "perhaps I can help you with something?" Same with Starbucks - the brownies, muffins, large coffees and comfy large chairs ... we didnt have any of that here (though lately, local stores have been learning what a latte macchiato is and all that).

It remains a dilemma ... I love the local stuff, the authentic pubs, the little shops ... and I get mighty upset whenever another one disappears. But then again luxury is nice, and if we had a Starbucks or Borders here I'm afraid I'd be there often enough, and even less in the pub where the choice of snacks is peanuts, hot peanuts or mixed nuts. Cha..

Now I know you're shuckin', blue. Area 51 is in Nevada. Roswell, your putative hometown, doesn't even have a Starbucks that I know of. It does have cute little paintings of green aliens on every plate glass window of every storefront with the cutsey-poo slogan "Aliens Welcome." That, plus the fact that it has the longest Main Street in the USA (16 miles, I believe) are the only things that make the burg unique.

My hometown of Boston, MA is still fairly unique and identifyable, although all the high-rises that have gone up in the last 30 years or so do detract from that uniqueness. Ever since they built Copley Place and connected it with a glassed-in overpass to the Prudential Center, I can't help comparing it to Minneapolis.

Some things never change



Some change a lot.

Joe(I think that's him) Nation

Awwwwww...

Nah, that can't be Joe. He's not wearing a plaid shirt. :wink:

LOVE the photo. Love, love, love it. What song are you singing?

I love that photo too! Very Dylanesque.

Or maybe I should say very Gutheriesque to keep the Oklahoma connection.

Thank you for sharing it with us.

I've seen that before -- I think under "earnest" in the dictionary.

(So sweet!)

Sweet? We're gonna make him gag, soz.

For crissakes, I hijacked my own thread! Or maybe not, watch and learn how the writer's skill is used to pull all this together.......

Eva, asks what song the folksinger is singing? I don't know for sure, but I do know that we, the folkies of the 1963-1975 era, sang a lot of songs about ... , about...., about.... about folks, people, regular standard issue members of the populace. Usually they were being put upon by something larger than themselves, a coal mine disaster, or a company fighting the union, or a soldier lost somewhere on a Civil War battlefield or his bereft left behind bride gone mad. Or three little girls praying in a church about to blown skyhigh. Or how many roads a man had to walk down before he could see the sky or how the Masters of War could crush a million souls before breakfast and how the times were changing for those of us like them who were up against something larger than ourselves.

It, the music, the stories, the folks, were my early education and it, the music, the stories, the folks, taught me to love the individual spirit and so maybe that's why when I see so much conformity, so many huge corporations lording their power over the marketplace, so precious few bursts of true independent genius (with the exception of Sting and maybe Bono) I get a little bristled.

I know the entrepreneurs are out there. I intend to feed as many as I can.

Joe(I saw Dylan in 1964 at Newport, my life changed by the second verse)
Nation

I bow to the master.

<polite curtsy>

Aha! That explains it! Joe likes me because he can so easily detect that stream of independent thought that runs through me. Okay, call it a river. I don't exactly follow the crowd around here. At any rate, in light of all the new efforts I have started (some worked, some didn't) during the past 20 years, I shall be expecting my free dinner whenever I make it to NYC. Thanks for offering to feed me, buddy! (Start saving now...I have expensive tastes, you know. :wink: And you can tell L that Olive Garden is DEFINITELY out of the question.)

Okay, boomer...

Yesterday my son and I took a drive up and down Cincinnati looking for your tree. ALL the old trees along Cincinnati have been damaged at one time or another! Give us a hint! Was it north or south of Hazel? Big tree or medium-sized tree? How far from the curb was it?

Also...will look for your combination lock. You said it was at the end of Phase I of the bridge project, but I wasn't in Tulsa when that was done, so I don't know where Phase I ended. Need help here...

Opened the day after my last post... and damn (harder than I thought).
That and I decided I wanted to be closer to my friends and family.

Come as you are, Joe and the first round is on the house! That goes for the rest of A2K's "cool people" too. No need for a reservation as long as you don't show up before 8:30ish.

It's not as hard as one might think. You just need to be willing to work 16 hours a day for no money and hope someday you get paid for it. Oh, and you have to love it.

Heeeeyyyyyy!! Look everyone, it's Bill!!!

So,
(and you know now you are going to be our guinea pig)

how's it going?

Sixteen hour days seem just about right.

How are people finding your place? Meaning what's been the marketing strategy? Word of mouth, giant highway sign, nubile girls in bikinis handing out flyers (oops, forgot you weren't in Palm Beach anymore), or did you just do some tryout nights for your family, hang some balloons over the doorway and wait?

Joe(You know we all are rooting for you.)Nation