When I sidle up next to Barry Friedman in “The Barry Friedman Booth” at Mondo’s, he tells me I won’t be making any decisions in terms of food. He knows what’s good here. This is agreeable, but I also quickly order a Perrier, to head off receiving the Diet Coke with orange slices that he’s nursing. I have my dignity, at least.
Barry Friedman is a writer, comedian, and Brookside fixture; he’s the kind of guy who has a booth at an Italian restaurant and a table with his name on it at New York Bagel Cafe. I first met Barry at Mercury Lounge for a Tulsa Voice happy hour around 2018, when I moved here from Brooklyn. The first thing he told me was, “Brooklyn? I’ve been there. Big difference between Brooklyn and Tulsa: Tulsa has better parking!” Barry’s most recent book, Jack Sh*t 2: Wait for the Movie, It’s in Color, came out in 2024; Jack Sh*t 3 will come out later this summer. Jack Sh*t 4, the fourth in the trilogy (“I know,” he writes in an email), will come out next year.
The long story short is this: Barry Friedman, age 67, comedian, writer, man-about-town, is absconding from Tulsa, his home for the last 45 or so years, for Portugal. I wanted to know why the Long-Islander-turned-Oklahoman was ready to jet, so I met him at Mondo’s on an icy day. Enjoy the convo.
Z.B. Reeves: Barry Friedman, why are you leaving Tulsa?
Barry Friedman: It’s just time. Every time my wife Melissa and I thought about it, it just felt like the whole feeling of America was closing in. I mean, I’m steeped in politics, and I was getting annoyed every single day.
Then finally we had a window. My father died a couple years ago. And I’m old, but I’m not that old. I thought, this is as good a time as you’re going to get.
And one big variable is that Portugal’s pretty easy to get into, unlike a lot of European countries. Didn’t take a lot of money—didn’t have a lot of money—and just decided to find an immigration attorney and apply for it. It took about 10 months, between passports, fingerprints, all that stuff.
I was surprised by how few Americans have passports: 51%. But you know, I have family on Long Island, and they explained it this way to me: they said, “We live on Long Island.” You know? They don’t even want to go into New York City. I thought, man, people actually don’t like travel that much.