KC Star: A Downtown Revival Has Made It ‘Tulsa Time’ Again
In midst of a downtown revival, ‘Tulsa time’ has arrived again
STORY AND PHOTOS BY STEVE PAUL, May 31
TULSA — It really does help one’s self-image to have a song. I mean, where would we in Kansas City be without that crazy little tune, ah, “Kansas City”?
And every time I hear Garth Brooks’ oddly out-of-place anthem at the Royals’ ballpark — “Friends in Low Places” — I wonder what it has to do with baseball except to celebrate self-medication at the corner tavern and then, with all the cameras moving around the stadium and all the good people singing the lyrics (it is kind of a catchy melody), I find my cold heart softening in communion with the human connections being made and in the comfortable touch of a common identity’s warm embrace.
So there I was one chilly Saturday afternoon in this revitalizing boomtown (Garth Brooks’ turf, it so happens) listening to a bunch of Oklahoma musicians and special guests launch into — what else? — “Living on Tulsa Time.” At first I felt like an outsider, but then I got swept up in the movement and joy of the moment as the climactic verse unfurled — I had no business leavin’ and nobody would be grievin’/ If I went on back to Tulsa time — and the chorus came back around.
It helped make me a believer. And it was possible to imagine that just like no one in Kansas City really gets tired of Garth at the K or of any traveling band’s concert-stage rendition of “Kansas City,” everyone here must love their anthem.