OK Day 3- Tunnels, Terror, and Tons of Banjos
Today started with a trip to Elemental Coffee in downtown Oklahoma City. It was a really sleek industro-hip space, the baristas were all really friendly, and the coffee was particularly good. also couldn't resist a St. Patrick's day themed girl scout cookie donut to go with my caffeine fix. It was a thing of beauty. I can think of no better way of celebrating the lack of snakes in the home country.
After fueling up, I decided to walk around downtown OKC. I started by backtracking toward something that had caught my eye as I was pulling up to get coffee. I had seen a strange tent and trailer in what appeared to be just an empty plot of land in the middle of the city. I decided to explore what that was, and it turned out be a traveling recording studio for an NPR project called StoryCorps. Started in 2005, they've been traveling the country doing interviews with everyday people and having them share their stories. I loved this so much. I really haven't listened to much NPR, because as you can tell if you've been reading this, I've got a lot music on my iPod I like listening to while I drive, but I thought this was a really beautiful project and I was happy to have stumbled into it. This happened to be their last day in Oklahoma City so all their interview slots had already been booked well in advance so I didn't get to share my story with them, but I feel like I already do enough talking about myself, and I was just happy to know something like this existed. If you'd like to hear some stories from their archives you can check out their website here.
I continued my walking around and went to see a place called the Womb, an art gallery established by Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, an Oklahoma City native. I never really got into their music, but I always really enjoyed their album art so I figured it would be a weird and interesting place. Unfortunately it was closed for the season, but the mural they had outside by Maya Hayuk had enough psychedelic robot and vagina imagery to fill the average art gallery so I was still happy to have visited. Plus it's always nice to see musicians do something cool in their hometowns.
After walking around Oklahoma City for a little bit, I decided to change things up by walking underneath it. One of the absolute coolest things about OKC, and one of the coolest things I've seen in any city honestly, is that they have a series of underground tunnels filled with art and history exhibits all throughout the metropolitan area. There are several entrances all over the city, with no markings to tell you what you're in store. Luckily a quick google search can tell you the best places to start. It felt a little bit like cheating, because it would have been cool to just go into a bank's basement and be in an art tunnel, but I figured in the interest of time I should actually have a game plan.
I read that a good place to start would be the Sheraton Hotel as that was essentially one end point of the tunnel network that would allow me to access all the galleries in what would essentially be a straightforward path. On the bottom floor of the hotel parking garage was a little door that opened to the first of many tunnels and it blew my mind. All the tunnels are color coded by what kind of gallery they're leading you to, with colored walls and light fixtures arranged by artists in different patterns. The effects created by these simple lights and solid colors is totally mesmerizing, disorienting, and whimsical. Some of the light patterns create optical illusions, some just highlight the space in interesting ways, but all of them kind of make you feel like you're in the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you've just entered a whole different dimension.
The first exhibit was a showcase of the paintings of Dr. Bob Palmer. The paintings all featured beautiful impressionistic skies and cityscapes of OKC intentionally obscured by highway overpasses and traffic to make something beautiful out of something normally considered an eyesore. I thought that was a such a cool way of the good doctor to show his love for his city.
Through the next tunnel was a history of downtown OKC with some really cool historical photographs. They really capture the exuberance of a bustling city suddenly flush with oil money at the turn of the century. My favorite things here were learning that the word "bar" was considered risque so they'd come up with different euphemisms for drinking establishments like "thirst station", a photo of a movie theater with a massive, multistory Marilyn Monroe standee to advertise the Seven Year Itch, and a photo of old timey bank clerks all in a row that reminded me of Jack Lemmon's office in the much better Billy Wilder movie, The Apartment. Random fun fact about the The Apartment, not related at all to Oklahoma City, but the opening shot of the massive office floor made the office look bigger than it actually was by having progressively smaller actors sitting in progressively smaller desks with the back row being children dressed like businessman. I love that fact, I love that movies, and I'm glad that photo made me think of it, even if it was a slight diversion.
While those photos showed the city at it's most bustling, the gallery through the next tunnel traced the history of the city back to it's more humble beginnings. The oldest photo was from the 1879, when the land that would become OKC was still mostly swamp and fields. Then Benjamin Harrison opened up 2 million acres of Oklahoma territory for homesteaders and the Land Rush of 1889 began. It's so cool to see photos from 1889 up past the turn of the century tracing the expansion of rag tag assortment of homesteads into a real city. It was incredible to see how much progress just exploded over such a relatively short amount of time. My favorite photos here were the intermediary ones where you had horse and buggies and art deco skyscrapers side by side. One of the most interesting facts to me was that the everyone just sort of knew that the top floor of the Majestic Building was where Orban Patterson ran a bustling criminal empire all through the 1930s. It felt like something out of a Batman comic.
In the next tunnel was one of my favorite art pieces, a sculpture by Stan Carroll called Curious Organism. It features a sculpture of a strange alien creature outside an office building with long metal tendrils representing curious sensory organs exploring a new environment as they snake well into the tunnels. It's intention is to lead curious passersby into the exciting world of the tunnel, but for anyone already in the tunnel the creature at the end of the tendrils is a really fun easter egg. It was my kind of weird and whimsical.
The next tunnel was actually a bit of a curveball offering a break from the light displays and instead showcasing murals by local artists Sean Vali and Jason Pawley. The murals were very impressive in terms of sheer scope and the surreal color combinations really made you feel like you were entering a whole new world.
The next gallery was a history of commerce and shopping in downtown OKC. A lot of the interesting history here had actually already been covered by the more general Downtown history gallery, but it was still cool to look at old photos and see how styles have changed over the years.
The other cool thing about this gallery was that across from the photos was an interesting mix of warped lights and plastic across a row of windows looking out onto a parking garage. It was very cool to see how the art disrupted the view from the window making something as mundane as a parking lot new and interesting.
The next gallery focused on the history of local law enforcement and emergency services showing historical photos of early county jails, courthouses and fire stations.
My favorite form of emergency service though was of course the county library. Initially built with funds from Andrew Carnegie, the original building was a beautiful piece of classical architecture and made for interesting before photo for the picture of the new souped up, sleek, and modern library. I really think I like the old one better, though I'm not sure if that makes me more of a hipster or an anti-hipster?
The next tunnel gallery showed the history of the federal post office, which sounds like it wouldn't be crazy interesting, but it was really fun seeing the post office go from a wooden shack to a big federal building with classical columns.
The last tunnel gallery was all about the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building. The gallery had lots of photographs of the building before the bombing and in the immediate aftermath, and the difference was striking. I think for a lot of people my age the full gravity of the Oklahoma City Bombing got really overshadowed by 9/11, so I had no concept of just how horrific it was until I saw those photos and it was really eye-opening. Luckily, there were some powerful photos of survivors, first responders, and memorials to spread a few rays of light through the overall quite dark event.
The image that struck me the most though was of a single tree that completely survived the blast in tact. It has since been dubbed the Survivor Tree and has become a symbol of hope and a gathering place for survivors, family, and visitors.
Conveniently that tunnel let out right in front of the actual site of the bombing, and the current site of the really amazing Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. The museum is in the former Record Journal Office, while the actual plot of land the Murrah building stood on has been filled with beautiful outdoor memorials. The largest memorial was a gorgeous reflecting pool the length of the original building framed by two massive arches inscribed with the time the blast off and the time after it ended to signify the gates of time and the passage through a moment of great change. While the reflecting pool is more of a general commemoration of the bombing and its impact, there are also several other smaller more specific memorials. The last surviving wall of the Murrah building has become a memorial to all the people who survived the blast with the names of over 600 survivors carved into it. Next to the reflecting pool is a field filled with 168 empty chairs carved out of marble each with the name of an office employee who had been killed on it. Across the street is a weeping angel statue and black pillars representing the daycare children who were also killed in the bombing. And of course there is the Survivor Tree still growing strong (though not exactly in bloom in early March) and around it has been planted an orchard of tree to honor and celebrate the first responders and civilians who rushed in to help save people from the rubble. It's the rare museum that brought me to tears before I even walked inside.
After the outdoor memorials, I went to the museum, which started with a brief video introduction narrated by Kristen Chenoweth. I get why they picked her, because she is an amazing and talented Oklahoman, but there was definitely a little bit of cognitive dissonance hearing such terrible news from such a perky upbeat person. I'm sure for some people that softens the blow and eases them into the rough story the museum is going to tell but I always react to such tonal mismatches by laughing which is partially why I'm a comic and partially why I'm a bit of a dick. The other interesting introductory piece provided a little info on who Alfred P. Murrah was and why they named the building after him. He had been a judge, and his story was really interesting because he had literally been an orphan who ended up in Oklahoma City after being kicked of a train for riding the rails and he worked his way all the way up to being judge from there! Frankly after reading that I think he deserves even more buildings named after him.
The next little gallery just sort of set the tone of what was happening in the world around 1995 and gave some insight into the sort of environment that gave rise to guy like Timothy McVeigh. Two major events that shaped McVeigh were the Gulf War in which he served in Operation Desert Storm and the 1993 Siege of the Branch Davidian Ranch in Waco, which McVeigh was also at to show his support for the Davidians and their gun rights. It was an odd climate in the early 90s. McVeigh had found a home post-war in really extremist gun rights groups and was known for distributing novels called Hunter and the Turner Diaries that advocate for violently overthrowing the federal government. He was a lonely mentally unstable young man who fought in a war (where he probably should have been marked for some psychiatric therapy as he was reprimanded for wearing "white power" t-shirts and also decapitating Iraqi soldiers which strike me as MASSIVE red flags about someone's mental health, but alas), came back to a country where he could not hold a job, and he felt like the Federal Government was not only not rewarding him for his service but, through Waco, actively attacking his most basic rights and the rights that mattered most to really the only people who accepted him. He planned the OKC Bombing as revenge for Waco, and the first step of a civilian overthrow of the federal government. Obviously this is the most insane leap in a series of very insane leaps, but if you squint you can at least see the rough logic that takes an already unstable person and leads them into doing something really heinous. Context cannot justify his actions, but it can explain them and hopefully show the many many points where interventions could have prevented something like this and also helped a very broken person before he crossed a terrible line. I think it's cool that the museum took the time to do that as opposed to going the easier route of just saying he was a really evil dude.
Given that McVeigh had some (very flawed) logic he was operating under, the rest of the gallery explaining more about the building really makes that logic start to fall apart. To me, the most damning thing that makes what McVeigh ended up doing really unforgivable is that there were two daycares in the Murrah building with over 70 children in attendance. Even if, in an insane alternate reality, the federal government was an evil organization who killed innocent people at Waco for no good reason and they needed to be stopped through violence, those children were not the federal government! In fact, I would even go so far as to wager that nobody in that building even had anything to do with Waco. There were postal workers, clerks, VA administrators (which was my dad's job before he retired, so that made things oddly closer to home for me) all of whom aren't even in the same spheres within the federal government that would have anything to do with what was upsetting McVeigh, but especially not those kids. It's absurdity at it's most heartbreaking.
After this introductory gallery, visitors then entered a mock up of a boardroom from a municipal building that was across the street from the Murrah Building where the only recording of the actual blast was captured. It was a less heartbreaking absurdity that this monumental moment of American history was captured in the midst of possibly the most boring dispute about water rights in the history of boring disputes about water rights. It was totally surreal, but it really was a cool bit of curation because it forced you to slow down and be lulled into a false sense of security by the boring meeting, and then the bomb goes off and suddenly the door opens into the rest of the museum. It was quite an effect.
The next room featured actual wreckage from the bombing which was makes the intensity of the event feel very real. If it wasn't an actual artifact it would seem like to on the nose a metaphor that one of the items was seal from a bank with the American Bald eagle on it, pierced by the bomb but still holding strong.
At this point in the museum, my phone died because I fell asleep before I charged it the night before and I took a lot of pictures in those tunnels, so while it isn't documented the rest of the museum was really incredible. It broke up the events of the bombing in really in depth ways, trying to tell the stories of all the dead, the survivors, the onlookers, and the rescuers. All told it captures the overwhelming sense of loss and confusion, but also the beautiful moments of unity, selflessness, and human kindness that emerged to combat the violence.
There were lots of video clips, informative displays, and artifacts from the building and people involved throughout the rest of the displays. My favorite display was of all the items in the building that were unexplainably perfectly in tact like a glass coffee pot still full of coffee surrounded by exploded debris. I liked this because the photos were amazing, and it really further highlights how random and unthinkable the whole event was but in way that is a little more light hearted and not devastating (plenty of the other displays and videos more than deliver on the emotional devastation, but it does feel important to experience that here). My favorite story from all the videos was a first responder bashfully recounting talking to a woman who was trapped under rubble, and asking her "Is your name Nancy?" "Yes" she responded. "We found your purse" he said, but then he tacked on because he wasn't sure what else to say, "So you don't have that to worry about." And then they both laughed because that was arguably not her greatest concern in that moment, but he was really trying to be comforting. It was such a sweet and funny moment, that just goes to show how much people are alway people, in all our goofy awkwardness, even in the most dire situations.
After the exhibits about the bombing itself, there was a whole floor of the building dedicated to the investigation, manhunt, and trial of Timothy McVeigh and his coconspirator Terry Nichols. It was a really fascinating interactive True-crime story with a mix of really cool police work and total luck as McVeigh was arrested before he was even identified as the bomber because he was pulled over for not having a license plate and then found to have an illegal firearm. One thing that struck me was that he funded the bombing by selling illegal guns at gun shows around the country. I feel like I've heard McVeigh used by some people as an example of how we don't need stricter gun control because people who want to do horrible things don't need to have guns, but literally common sense gun laws like making sure gun shows verify the authenticity of the firearms for sale could have prevented this tragedy without really stepping on anyone's 2nd Amendment rights. I don't like that gun control laws are so frequently portrayed as liberals wanting to take all guns away, because that is about as fringe a group of gun control advocates as dangerous gun users would be to pro-gun groups. Every pro-gun person I've talked to seems very okay with really basic background checks and improved safety training and I think that's really the bare minimum that is being asked for and we're not even getting it and people, children, are dying and it's very upsetting. Sorry for getting on the soapbox a bit there, this museum stirred up a lot of emotion in me when I was there, and writing about it now is bringing a lot of that back. Also the fact that in the two months since I was actually in Oklahoma, there's been a school shooting just about once a week. I think McVeigh's story absolutely also suggest that we need better mental health services (and veteran services as well though that's not entirely as relevant to gun control just a separate important issue he raised for me), but mental health services alone cannot be as powerful without at the very least some improvements in our gun laws.
Okay abruptly changing gears, after the museum I got some really good lunch and coffee at a nearby restaurant called Kitchen No. 324. It was a weird kind of restaurant that I actually encountered quite a bit in Oklahoma where it had a very upscale vibe (like I felt like I should have dressed nicer) but all the food was under $15. I'm not used to that, but I was pretty okay with getting to treat myself to some fancy food without breaking the bank. I got something called the farmer's market where you get to pick any three of their extra fancy sides. I got the roasted cauliflower with smoked cheddar fondue, the sweet potatoes with bacon, goat cheese, and burnt honey, and a loaded baked potato cake which was like a fluffy twice baked potato with more bacon and cheese. It was all so damn tasty, with some really interesting flavor combinations I wouldn't have thought would work so well. The sweet potatoes and burnt honey in particular jumped out as something I never would have thought to do, but now I can't stop thinking about it. The cauliflower might have been the surprise MVP though, but I guess that's what happens when you melt good cheese over anything. The meal also came with a really nice piece of toasted french bread, and I washed it all down with some house coffee which provided a much needed caffeine boost. My phone was still dead at this point so I didn't get a picture of all this good food but I did find someone online who got almost the exact same thing with Brussel sprouts instead of the potato cake so you can have some idea about what I was working with.
After lunch, I charged my phone in my car for a bit and then set sail for a much more upbeat, but nonetheless impressive, museum: The American Banjo Museum. I really love museums that focus on one specific thing, but are able to use that thing as a lens to explore a wide array of topics. On this front, I loved the Banjo museum. Through their large collection of rare and beautiful Banjos, they show not just the history of that particular instrument, but also the history of America, changing race relations, and trends in 20th century art. It was a really amazing thing to see. The museum started with a cool animatronic display introducing a brief history of the Banjo as folk instrument originally made from whatever materials were on hand to American Slaves starting in the mid-1600s including calf skin and tortoise shells. It was based on similar instruments in African and Caribbean folk traditions, but the necessity of materials eventually led to the unique shape that provides natural resonance and amplification.
From there, it was basically wall to wall banjos starting with the first professionally made banjos starting with the peghead models from the 1840s made for Minstrel shows. The history of minstrelsy is really interesting because it is objectively horrible and rooted in disgusting stereotypes, but minstrel shows are also unfortunately the origin of most American pop culture from jazz to vaudeville to my own beloved stand up comedy. It's difficult that so many beautiful things started in such an ugly place, but it's important part of our history to not ignore because we are still dealing with ripple effects in our current pop-culture. Another interesting wrinkle in the history of minstrelsy, is that eventually the demand for Black forms of entertainment outstripped the number of white performers able to shamelessly exploit it, and in a sort of weird and backwards way this paved the way for Black artists to start reclaiming their own art and having a place in white markets. Recently there's been some really interesting takes on current Black artists dealing with the continuing legacy of Minstrelsy, such as the This Is America music video by Childish Gambino (and a lot of both very good and some very misguided thinkpieces in its wake) and an amazing and chilling speech by Tessa Thompson at the end of the new season of Dear White People. The ideas that these pieces are expressing is the idea that even today mainstream America only wants to consume Black art when it fits into understandable boxes and Black art that dares to be uniquely black and not cater to white audiences tends to be viewed as lesser. It's very interesting stuff that I am beyond not an expert in, but I'd recommend watching at least those two things I mentioned.
Due to the popularity of minstrel shows, banjos started to really take off and become a part of folk music traditions all over the world, including Mexico, Ireland, and even Jewish klezmer groups. After the minstrel era, there was a push to legitimize the banjo as a classical instrument and banjo clubs and chamber groups started popping up everywhere in (predominantly white) high society. Even MIT had it's own banjo club. Banjo popularity started to wane a bit around the turn of century, but then found a new resurgence in the roaring 20s with the explosion of the jazz age. Throughout both the folk and professional banjo making traditions, a great deal of artistry went into the engraving and designing of bases and fret boards, and some of these instruments were really beautiful masterpieces.
After the jazz age, my phone died again, but there was a whole other floor tracing the bluegrass and folk scenes post WWII which was really interesting. There was also a special recreation a Your Father's Mustache, a popular nightclub chain in the 1960s where banjo music was always in the air. There was also a special exhibit about the life of Roy Clark, a banjo virtuoso, actor, comedian, and a massive TV celebrity starting in the 50s and maintaining a hot streak well through the 70s. He was a really interesting figure I didn't know a lot about, but it was amazing to see how many different hats he wore (literally and creatively). Lastly, there was a hall of fame of different extra rare or celebrity banjos. The one that excited me the most was Steve Martin's banjo, because he's been the biggest banjo player to influence me personally (except maybe Kermit the Frog). They also had some instruments that had belonged to Lester Scruggs, Bela Fleck, and Roy Smeck. As for the rare ones, the coolest one I saw was a big ol' double bass sized banjo that I would have loved to see someone play. The museum also had a special section on the bottom floor with a bunch of instruments that you could just sit and play and it was a nice way to fool around for a little bit, though I was sad to realize that I had totally forgotten how to play the beginning of the rainbow connection.
After the Banjo Museum, I went right next door to Bricktown Brewery to enjoy their happy hour. I got a flight which came with their stout, brown ale, kolsh, blueberry wheat ale, IPA, amber, and a session beer that was a hard orange soda. The biggest surprise was the hard orange soda, because I honestly thought it would be disgusting since I haven't really enjoyed a lot of hard sodas I've had before, but it was actually really well balanced and refreshing in the best kind of unexpected way. After that I'd say the stout and brown ale were my favorites, but the lighter beers were all solid. They also had a really fun Frank Zappa quote written on the bar so that made me like them even more: "You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer."
After the beer, it was just about time for the night's open mic. Today was cool because it was at a real comedy club called the Looney Bin (which is a chain around the southwest if you've been to one before that wasn't in OKC). The fact that it's a real comedy club has it's pros and cons. On the pro side, the open mic actually opens for some professional comics and you're basically guaranteed at least a decent crowd, but on the con-side they only have around five spots available for open mic-ers and basically every comic in the area is vying for them. What they do is put every comic's name in a hat, and you either draw a yes, a no, or a guaranteed spot for next week. I got lucky and got a yes for this week, but I can see that system being nerve-wracking week in and week out.
After that slightly stressful selection process though, the mic was really great. Unfortunately the club had a fairly strict no cell phones policy, so I took my notes on an actual piece of paper which I have since lost in my very messy car. Fortunately some of the comics were so funny, I still remember their jokes.
My favorite joke of the night came from the host Lawrence Rosales, really funny comic from Dallas who did a great job warming up the crowd both for the mic and for the pros. The line that really killed me was "I'm so old I owe money to businesses that don't exist anymore. Like I am never paying Circuit City back"
Other highlights from comics whose jokes remain but who's names were sadly lost to my messy messy car:
"I went on a date with a guy that didn't go well. He said some really racist things, so I left. The next morning I got a text from him that said, 'I'm sorry I was racist. I was really tired'. In what world doest that excuse fly?"
"I'm recently divorced, so I've had to start getting rid of my married habits. Like making sure no one's home before my girlfriend comes over"
My own set went really well. I made the same mistake as the last mic trying to tag a little too much onto the end of one joke, but other than that I think everything landed really well. I was pretty nervous, because they'd asked us to keep it relatively clean and I think I've said before that even if I wasn't really going to do anything dirty knowing that I can't always gives me a slight mental block. After my set, I really had to go to the bathroom and as I was leaving the main club area, an older woman stopped me to me that she thought I did a good job. I tried to thank her as politely as I could while still getting to the bathroom as quickly as I could. I later found out that she owns the club, and I felt like a real dummy for not holding it a little longer and really talking to her. So it goes sometimes.
I stayed to watch the pros and they were really good. I think I actually liked the opener Jason Cheny slightly more than the headliner Erik Myers. They both really delivered strong sets, but Jason was more laid back and Erik was more high energy, and I've found that for whatever reason my own comedy preferences tend to lean away from high energy comics even if they're really good. I'm not sure why that it is. That being said he did an extended bit, about how people need to stop hating millennial because they're not whiny they're just being decent people, which I really enjoyed. It was also refeshing to hear an older comic say that, because I would say generally it's the opposite opinion being expressed.
Jason's bit that really killed me was about tricking a friend into eating bull's penis in China, and comparing it to his own personal fear factor. He also had a really great moment where a woman in the crowd did a pretty racist impression of an Asian laugh to one of his jokes (he's Asian-american), and he did not waste a second calling that out and saying how "nobody would think it was cool to do a stereotypical impression of a black person to a black comic, why would you think something like that's okay?" I really appreciated that because I would say that in my experience for whatever reason across the country people do legitimately seem more okay saying racist things about Asians and Asian-Americans on stage and I do not understand it at all, so it was nice to see an Asian comic call it out in a way that was ultimately very funny and very tastefully done, because clearly the woman didn't think she was doing something hurtful but that still didn't make it okay. I talked to Jason after the show, and he actually felt bad about calling her out, because for him as a comic he felt like it was unprofessional and more of an emotional reaction. I do get that, because I think as comics we feel like we should have a thick skin about stuff like that, but i guarantee that this was not the first time something like that happened to him and there's really only so offense any person can be expected to just take. Plus if she's really an innocent well-intentioned person who didn't know her actions were offensive which I think she was, how's she going to know to change if nobody every says anything?
Favorite Random Sightings: A building called Jerky.com; Orthodontic Arts; Midtown Mutts; Gaylord YMCA (they had to know, right?); a little boy just moonwalking up and down the lunch restaurant
Regional Observation: It must be the rich oil history, but gas stations in OK make a really big deal about having No Ethanol Gas
Albums Listened To: Dust Bowl Blues by Woody Guthrie (I had to get it after the museum yesterday); The Police (disc 2) by the Police; Police and Thieve by Junior Murvin (Just Roots Train)
People's Favorite Jokes:
What did the sushi chef say to the bee? Wassup, bee! (wasabi)
Songs of the Day:
I’m choosing to go with a pitch perfect Police parody instead of an actual police song
