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.