Tulsa emerges as a hub for hipsters

Punching far above their weight, starry-eyed Tulsans have tried for years to demonstrate to fellow Oklahomans and outsiders alike that the state's second-largest city was more funky and less in a funk.

With a re-energized downtown and a welcome mat for a younger generation of business owners and urban dwellers, this meat-and-potatoes Midwestern city of about 400,000 is hitting a stride.

“Seems like there’s a huge portion of people happy to have an Urban Outfitters and Fuddruckers, then there’s a small population section that’s starving for authenticity,” says Brian Franklin, owner of DoubleShot Coffee Co. and an unofficial poster boy for Tulsa's hipster revolution. Franklin's straight-up, perhaps fussy, shop rules became the model for a sketch on the comedy show “Portlandia” after actress Carrie Brownstein visited.

Brownstein wasn't available for an interview, but explained in a 2013 interview with Splitsider that she's found hidden Portlandias in places she visits, like Tulsa.

“All over Tulsa are little pockets of collectives and boutiques and artisan bakeries ... I feel like that is popping up in so many cities, especially in places like Birmingham or Tulsa, where there was a time where those downtown areas were somewhat abandoned and people moved to the suburbs,” she said.

Tulsa’s pop culture cred is a long way from where things in this city were a few years ago — a period that saw lots of soaring, big-concept ideas go awry – embarrassingly awry.

Leaders campaigned to land one of four retiring NASA space shuttles a few years ago, but lost out to larger cities. Two years ago, straight-faced boosters wanted to assemble a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, $3.5 billion price tag and all.

And, perhaps most memorably, thousands of spectators watched in 2007 as crews hoisted a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere out of its concrete tomb below the courthouse lawn, only to find that the time capsule on wheels was a rusted, muck-caked mess. The gimmick didn't take into account what 50 years of Oklahoma dirt would do.

In the time since the rust-bucket incident, Tulsa has slowly fashioned a downtown with a new arena, ballpark and epicenter of thriving nightlife called the Brady Arts District, a once-rundown swath of concrete and abandoned warehouses carpeted with weeds and syringes that was aching for a second act. Now, it seems, it’s getting its chance.

“My downtown’s an exciting place,” says Natasha Ball, whose family's lived in the Tulsa area since before statehood.

For Franklin – sipping an Americano out of a piece of Navajo pottery at his shop, which calls itself – hip isn't found by bolting to seemingly greener pastures in other places around the country, it's “stay in town and be cool and make something.”

This story was originally published March 24, 2015 at 2:52 PM with the headline "Tulsa emerges as a hub for hipsters."