I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful curious breathing laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them . . to touch any one . . . . to rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment . . . . what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight . . . . I swim in it as in a sea.
-Walt Whitman
At the 41st and Riverside Riverpark are majesties aplenty. Let’s just for a moment consider the bounty: Children and parents rushing around the tilting playground, the toned bells of those metal mushrooms sounding into the echo, an iron heron caught in mid-swivel, that spit of a peninsula that juts out into the Arkansas with its graffiti-flecked tree and its patient fishers, the cavalcade of bikes and runners under the pergola in the mid-morning’s glow. And yet, one thing is missing.
I can’t get a little coffee here.
Let me rephrase. I can’t get shit here. No sandwich, no tea, no water (but the stinging rebuke of the fountain), no chips, no hot dogs, no ice cream, zilch, nada.
That’s what you can get at the 41st and Riverside Riverpark: bubkis.
We, Tulsans, love to call ourselves a world-class city. “Tulsa is a world-class city,” I hear people say, especially when visiting cities that aren’t Tulsa, or talking to people in New York and Los Angeles, often while patting themselves eagerly on the back. And it’s hard to blame them for thinking this. After all, we’ve got a Barnes & Noble and a dark past.
But books and trauma aren’t everything. Our significant parks—and if you think 41st and Riverside is not a significant park, we can fight—deserve their own little food stands to prop up the park-going population. Tiny, unassuming food options: now that makes a city world-class.
Consider the New York dollar slice; the Chicago hot dog; the Mexico City street taco; these options exist as yin to the great cities’ yang. Large cities run on small, cheap treats. It’s a natural law.
And anyways, food along the river is lacking. Today, you could walk down the east side of the river from the Route 66 Memorial Plaza to 91st Street—approximately nine and a half miles—and encounter exactly zero food options. There’s an Outback Steakhouse just past the 96th Street Bridge, but I don’t know what a bloomin’ onion will do for your post-walk lactic acid buildup.
A food and drink option at the 41st and Riverside Riverpark wouldn’t have to be fancy or sit-down. In fact, it definitely shouldn’t be. Elwood’s, Sandbar, Blue Rose: all relics of the past, condemned by weird location, rough parking, and a too-serious approach (sit-down service) to an easily-solvable-problem (we want to eat by the river). The River Parks Authority has a Vendor Application for specific events, but I’m asking for something long-term.
And think, if you will, of the parents. Have you ever heard a parent say, "Geez, I'm so sad that this public space has a food option"? In my experience, the toddler-minders of this world need easily-accessible food for their kids when they, by virtue of circumstance and timing, become shitty hysterical monsters. Give the kids hot dogs! And parents, if you haven’t noticed, love coffee. As do I. But alas. Can’t get it.
And for the people who read this and think, “But then the homeless people will hang out there!”, please stop reading this, take a bath, call a moving company, and move to Bixby right away! You poor dear!
This world is sorely lacking in easily-accessible third spaces. The 41st and Riverside Riverpark already is one, but with a simple and affordable food and drink option, its accessibility and utility as a third space would increase dramatically. The walking audience in Brookside already exists to patronize such a place. Brookside generally enjoys the river; it’s in large part why they live there. Give them more reasons to enjoy the space that they already have.
Do you world-classers want Tulsa to be a healthy city? Do you want to enjoy the vast quantities of sunshine that it offers? Do you want your children to, in the sparse spare time that is allowed of them, connect with other children in adult-monitored, physical-play-intensive, outdoor spaces? Do you want to sit at public tables with your friends at a park and drink a coffee undisturbed by—for the most part—the punishing machinations of capital?
Then sell me a little coffee on the river. Offer easy options for people to enjoy themselves. Sew the community together using food and drink. These are not abstract ideas. They are the concrete, bread-and-butter ingredients of a community who comes together over shared enjoyments. It’s never just a little coffee on the river. Even though, sometimes, it is.
