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I’m back in Austin, and I thought I would share a few photos and experiences from my trip. After spending the night in Norman, I decided to go to Crossroads Mall in OKC. A few months ago, I read of New York Knick Stephan Marbury’s partnership with retailer Steve and Barry’s to sell a $15 basketball shoe, which the baller would actually wear in NBA games. As I pulled up to the mall, the wellsites around the mall jumped out at me. It occurred to me that the donkey pumps weren’t an unusual sight when I lived in Oklahoma, but they stand out now. Then I thought, “Dude, you live in Texas.” Regardless, I was pretty amused by the wellsite in front of Macy’s.

Steve and Barry’s is like a downmarket Old Navy if you can imagine that. The store sold college-licensed and novelty t-shirts for three for $20. If you need to load up on OU (or for that matter, UT-Austin) apparel, this would be a good place to visit. I had forgotten to pack a winter coat, so I grabbed a warm polyester fleece sweater for five bucks.

After Christmas, I took a day trip up to Bartlesville, which is about an hour north of Tulsa. Bartlesville was until recently the headquarters of Phillips Petroleum and also home to Frank Lloyd Wright’s only skyscraper. The Price Tower was built in 1956 as the headquarters of the Price pipeline company, and it’s a strange 19-story building that rises over the prairie

Inside, the building is surprisingly small and awkward. Wright avoided the use of right angles in the building’s floorplans, and even the elevators use 30- and 60-degree angles. When I took the tour it was difficult to fit four adults into an elevator car, partially because of the strange shape. Wright originally designed the building to be used as charity housing in New York’s Lower East Side, but the plans were scotched during the Great Depression. Wright altered the plans in the 1950s for a mixed-use building in Bartlesville, which included the Price headquarters, corporate apartments, and a dress shop. Today, it serves as an upscale hotel and art center, but the high modernity of the building make it seem like little more than a conceptual building.

I’d recommend visiting the Price Tower if you’re in Tulsa for a few days. The drive up US75 is really quite enjoyable. As I watched the rolling hills of northeastern Oklahoma go by it, I thought of how in Texas that strip of highway would be covered by exurban tract housing, and how nice it is to actually see the landscape.

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