Tulsa Dead Mall Nostalgia—On Ice!

I have a revelation my third time at WeStreet Ice Center: Ice skating actually kind of sucks if you haven’t done it in a while. It’s like trying to balance on knives attached to ski boots. My first few laps feel like being constantly on the verge of face-planting, forever missing a step on a staircase and catching myself in mid-air panic.

But then, something shifts. I remember that it's okay to fall down sometimes. I relax. I start to glide. Briefly, I worry someone might steal my shoes (there are no lockers), but my shoes are fine. Everything is fine. Now I really start having fun. 

“You think of ice rinks as being cold and dingy,” Andy Scurto, owner of the WeStreet Ice Center and the Tulsa Oilers, tells me. “This was built as an entertainment center.” 

And it is. Between the ice rinks, arcade, bar, and other surprises, the WeStreet Ice Center is surreal, nostalgic, ambitious, and a little bit weird. In other words: perfect. 

It’s also a constantly cool 52 degrees, something you can’t say about many places in Tulsa in the summer. 

* * *

If you glance at Google Maps, Puck’s Sports Bar and Grill appears to be inside Promenade Mall. That’s technically true, but it’s actually on the second floor inside WeStreet Ice Center. The old Macy’s department store metamorphosed into the region’s largest ice entertainment center in 2024. Don’t worry about what goes on in the rest of the Promenade.

Despite renovations, the space still has the bones of a mall. The escalators are intact, and there’s a lingering sense of liminality. I half-expect to see the ghost of a moody Hot Topic manager or part-time piercer on her way to Claire’s. 

Puck’s spans the second floor of the Center, suspended like a skybridge between two full-sized ice rinks. On one side: adult rec league hockey. On the other: (mostly) young people skating under disco lights while a DJ plays Chappell Roan.

The bartenders wear black-and-white striped collared shirts, like a referee’s, but with plunging necklines and short black skirts. The menu is full of decent drinks and mid-American fare.¹ With so many big-screen televisions, Puck’s seems like a perfect place to watch a game. But the lighting’s a bit harsh, and the acoustics bounce around like a slapshot to the face. 

A bartender asks if I’ve seen the “sports museum” yet. She explains that the collection was amassed for Scott Carter, a 13-year-old boy who died from a rare form of bone cancer in 1993, via the Make A Wish Foundation. Some of the relics from Scott Carter's Heroes Sports Memorabilia Collection used to be displayed at the Gathering Place: jerseys, balls, bats, boxing gloves, and hockey sticks signed by star athletes like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Pete Rose, Muhammad Ali, Wayne Gretzky, and many more. According to Scurto, the collection is worth at least a million dollars, probably closer to two. It’s at WeStreet on loan, but don’t expect it to leave anytime soon.

There’s a Troy Aikman poster signed by Aikman on October 10, 1993; his message to Carter feels like a Hemingway short story in disguise: “Scotty, The 4th quarter is always the hardest—Don’t quit! I’ll play my 4th quarter for you.” Plainspoken, sad, and quietly heroic. A reminder of the tragedy that is childhood cancer is not what I expected to find here. 

Next to the memorabilia is an arcade. The tension between the two proves that the world is unfair, the human body is fragile, and the instinct to play is universal. 

WeStreet doesn’t have pinball, sadly, but you can play Skee Ball, Whac-A-Mole, Big Sea Fishing, and other ticket-redemption games. It's paperless, meaning “tokens” are loaded and reloaded on a plastic card, which also keeps a tally of your “tickets.” 

The prize shelf is similar to the ones I remember as a kid: mood rings, plastic figurines, keychains. Once, my friends and I pooled our WeStreet tickets and walked away with a small remote control helicopter. The VR roller coaster simulator and photobooth are also fun. 

With the help of WeStreet Credit Union, Scurto has invested $35 million into the Ice Center so far. This is his passion project. His goal, he says, is to make Tulsa a hockey town. 

It’s not profitable yet, but he’s optimistic that it will be within two years. Monthly operating costs are very high, he says: The monthly power bill alone is $30,000 to $40,000 in the summer. It costs $17 to rent ice skates for a few hours. “Ice rinks do not make huge profits,” he admits. “If we can operate and break even, I’m happy.”

We’ll see if WeStreet can really make Tulsa a hockey town. Stranger things have happened here, I guess. Scurto might be onto something. Ice skating is the perfect excuse to initiate hand holding on a date, and I am also intrigued by the center’s women’s and co-ed hockey leagues. At the very least, I’ll come back to Puck’s for a reasonably priced drink, friendly bartenders, and fried pickles.