Tag Archives: people watching

Hipstamatic Journal – Forgotten Treasures of Tulsa

One of my favorite photo apps is Hipstamatic. It is a photography app with a huge amount of filters, fashioned as different “lenses” and “film.” I love the all the technology that goes into dumbing down the excellent iphone camera into photos that look like cheap film cameras from my childhood. I love that look. I don’t think that anybody else does either. My Hipstamatic tagged photos score the lowest likes of any of my Instagram photos. That interests me but doesn’t bother me.

So today at lunch I went for a walk and came across a few sites.

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Pretty close to the office is the once grand “Plaza of the Americas.”  It used to be nicer with fountains and a bust of Simon Bolivar donated by Citgo before they moved their headquarters to Houston. Now the bust is at the Gilcrease Museum and the plaza is a favored place for housing challenged people to hang out.

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I walked a little further to Civic Center Plaza. Burning hot in the summer, freezing cold in the winter it is pretty useless except don’t tell the midcentury modern fans of architecture. They swoon all over the place. I like this sculpture though. As you can see it used to be part of a fountain. The fountains leaked and were too expensive to repair. So no more fountain.

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I turned around and a reflecting pool that doesn’t reflect much any more.

I don’t mean to diss Tulsa. I love Tulsa but I am fascinated how fast new ideas and memorials fade and are replaced by new ones but the ghosts of the past never quite seem to go away. It seems like we get amnesia about every five to ten years and we want something new.

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On the lighter side, near the fountains was a food truck. I love how people are ambivalent to some lines. You can see that people are wondering where else they can eat besides the food truck. I also like seeing how people regard their personal space. I confess I do little experiments in elevators such as if there three of us in an elevator and somebody gets off, the other two respace themselves. I often don’t do that  and I can tell that increases the tension of the other person. I love little things like that about people. People watching is my favorite sport.

Have a great week folks!