I spend too much time browsing through recently posted Life Photo Archives. I hope they will eventually improve the way it’s tagged, add all the necessary meta-data and more importantly remove what seems to be a limit of 200 results for a search. In the meantime I will post the shots I like for whatever reason.

Pres. John F. Kennedy is sitting with Mrs. Nikita S. Khrushchev.

While Mrs. John F. Kennedy is talking with Nikita S. Khrushchev.

Seems like Khrushchev knew how to entertain a lady.

P.S. If you are one of my younger readers and have no idea who these people are please click here.

If you draw a 250-mile circle around Kansas City, the choices of major metropolitan areas to visit on a leisurely road trip are slim – St.Louis, Omaha, Tulsa. There are plenty of small towns within reasonable distance worth a visit but not warranting a special trip.

I had Tulsa, OK in my sights for a long time but every time I inquired about it, hardly any answers didn’t include some combination of a word “-hole”. It was time to discover Tulsa for myself, so over a long weekend I booked a 3.5 star hotel (the highest level available on priceline) in downtown Tulsa and after detours to Iola, Coffeyville and Chanute we finally crossed the border into Oklahoma. Before leaving I thoroughly checked my wardrobe – the shirt with some Arkansas sport team was out just in case, and my Larry the Cable Guy and Toby Keith t-shirts were in. I also practiced my best Oklahoman accent in front of the mirror to unsatisfactory results.

Some things about Tulsa turned out to be true, there was hardly anything to do there on a Saturday night. There was a concert in Cain’s Ballroom, but the line to get in was so long that only an ABBA reunion would make me consider standing in it. Two football teams from Oklahoma were playing on TV. Everything else was more or less dead. I know, I know – I just didn’t know where to look, but maybe I shouldn’t be expected to look so hard. Eventually we found some guy singing and playing guitar at the Gypsy – a hipster yet pleasant hangout not too far from Cain’s, maybe just a bit farther than the end of the line to the concert. We stayed there for over two hours and my kid enjoyed every minute of it, while I didn’t feel my usual for this type of place urge to kill myself, even as the performer switched from guitar to sitar(!).

We visited some Tulsa landmarks; drove around hunting for the best view of downtown skyline; ate some of the best hamburgers ever, served without pretense and reasonably priced; checked out parts of Route 66; and overall had a good time. So if you are itching for some weekend travel, Tulsa is not a bad place to visit, there is plenty to see and maybe even something to do.

Tulsa has a great-looking downtown famous for its Art Deco architecture (view from our hotel):

I need to credit my friend and local celebrity Dave from the Kansas City Lunch Spots for this idea – to collect or catalog the unique vintage signs that still can be found in many places around town. From the iconic sign atop the Western Auto Building to the vintage sign in front of Lobito’s Steakburger these historic relics are as important to the city as buildings, streets and parks. Unfortunately they are slowly disappearing from the landscape just like the famous White Haven Motor Lodge sign that used to welcome visitors to the old motel in Overland Park.

Dave writes:

Seriously, how great is it that this business chose to keep the original sign rather than tearing it down or covering it up with a modern one? It may have been purely a matter of cost, but it was also a good business decision because I will always stop at a lunch spot with a good old fashioned sign.

I don’t think even this awesome sign would make me want to stay at the Motel Capri on Admiral and Paseo, but the fact that it’s still standing calls for a show of respect.

I had various ideas for a post about Jewish War Veterans during the Jewish American Heritage month, but none of them worked out so I just went to the Jewish Community Center and took some (low quality) photos of the displays presented by the Jewish War Veterans MO/KAN Post 605.

For a professional online exhibit on the subject please visit: Jewish Veterans of World War II.

I know even less about anime than I know about He’Brew beer; that’s why I put on my costume of a “regular overweight white guy” character and visited the Naka-Kon at the Hyatt where I proceeded to totally blend in. I was surprised by the number of visitors from kids in the colorful costumes, to weirdos in giant multi-zippered human-eating pants who walked their girlfriends on a chain, to some middle-aged child-molester-looking characters. Wide-eyed Hyatt employees where yearning for the days of their regular wrinkled-old-people conventions. My pictures didn’t turn out so great but here are a few that I liked: