In the five years since its doors have been open to the public, The Outsiders House Museum has brought fans of “The Outsiders” from across the globe to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to explore where the 1967 book was written and where the 1983 movie was filmed.
Grammy-nominated recording artist Danny Boy O’Connor re-located from Los Angeles to Tulsa after he saved the one-story bungalow northeast of downtown Tulsa from destruction in 2016, then he spent the past five years restoring the house to how it appeared when director Francis Ford Coppola turned the Crutchfield neighborhood into a movie set for filming in 1982.
Acknowledging Tulsa has a rich history, O’Connor said he’s thrilled to have had a front seat to the rebirth of the city’s art and culture scene.
“Tulsa is going through a renaissance period, it’s finding its second wind,” he said. “On the heels of the Guthrie Green and the Woody Guthrie Center opening, in the last five years I’ve seen the Gathering Place completed, Buck Atoms open on Route 66, a lot of revival along Route 66 and then last year the Bob Dylan Center and The Church Studios.”
In short: Tulsa has become an international destination for tourists. Leading the way in terms of name recognition is the center dedicated to creativity explored through the career of Bob Dylan, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
Dylan wasn’t born in Oklahoma so why is a center devoted to studying the Nobel Prize laureate for literature in Tulsa? Because the legendary singer-songwriter, now 81, chose Tulsa from among the suitors of roughly 100,000 items Dylan created or has collected throughout his seven-decade career. When a Vanity Fair writer asked why he chose the city for his archives, Dylan explained: “There’s more vibrations on the coasts, for sure. But I’m from Minnesota and I like the casual hum of the heartland.”
Here is where to explore that hum you might hear after landing at Tulsa Riverside Airport (KRVS), William R Pogue Municipal Airport (KOWP) or Tulsa International Airport (KTUL).
The Outsiders House Museum
O’Connor never forgot the connection he made when he went to see the new Coppola movie “The Outsiders” in 1983. Not much of a reader, the 13-year-old had no idea it was based on a novel and didn’t know the plot.
“I walked in the theater with no expectations and I left a changed kid,” the now 54-year-old said. “Even though the movie had a 1950s or 1960s vibe, I related to the characters in ways I’d never related to characters on the TV or movie screen before.”
Written by high schooler Susan Eloise Hinton using an initialized byline of S.E. Hinton, the 1967 book explores tension between the working class greasers and the affluent socs (pronounced soashes, as in social) through the eyes of 14-year-old narrator Ponyboy Curtis. While the book does not mention Tulsa, the author has called it realistic fiction based on her experience at the city’s Will Rogers High School. She was 15 years old when she started writing it and has said she didn’t write for publication but out of frustration with the social situation at the school as well as the unrelatable literature available for her age group.
Though set in the mid-1960s, the topics of social acceptance, family issues and teen angst still resonate with adolescent readers: the book has sold more than 15 million copies around the world and remains on many school reading lists.
For O’Connor, it was the topics that spoke to him, from family struggles to feeling like an outsider after moving from New York to California at age 6, and stuck with him well into his career as Danny Boy in the trio House of Pain, best known for the 1992 hit “Jump Around.” He’s referred to that decade as a downward spiral of alcohol and drug addiction. In 2009, sober for about four years, he was in Tulsa on tour with the supergroup La Coka Nostra. He had taken an interest in photography to keep him busy when he had a few extra days on the road between gigs. As he thought of places to photograph in Tulsa, he recalled that one of his favorite movies had been filmed there.
Not finding much information online about “The Outsiders” filming sites, he paid a cab driver to help him find a few, including the Curtis brothers’ house. He realized he was not alone in connecting with the story when a photo he took of the house and posted on social media went viral.
In 2016, he bought the house for $15,000 even though he hadn’t stepped inside. Once inside, he realized restoring the house to how it looked in the 1983 film was going to require a complete gutting. O’Connor raised money to restore it and opened it as The Outsiders House Museum in August 2019.
Bringing the museum to life became a community project and his passion. He engaged locals, fans across the globe, stars of the movie and connections he’d made through the entertainment industry to get the museum completed. Through Twitter, he connected with Hinton, who has provided her endorsement of the project, as well as supported the museum through donations of items, money and taking part in fundraisers.
The house looks like it needs a paint job, the furniture on the porch is rusted, the chain-link fence surrounding the corner lot dips in one spot – it’s just like it appears in the movie, except that there’s a new building in the lot behind the house that serves as a gift shop and additional exhibition space.
The porch and areas inside the house that were shown extensively on screen have period furnishings and faux wall treatments to match the condition of the house in the movie. There are fun details in these rooms, from autographs from the stars of the film who have visited the museum to replicas of props seen in the movie. Among the extensive memorabilia collection on display: screen worn clothing of the main characters, rare books, unpublished candid photography taken during filming and other unique items such as Coppola’s director’s chair from the set, signed production notes and scripts.
O’Connor says the museum will never be finished as he continues to add relics. Just last month he acquired the film’s continuity binder filled with hundreds of never-before-seen photos, notes and pages of the shooting script.
The house is open for tours most weekends and also hosts special events; watch Facebook for the latest. Visitors also can rent the house for a private screening of “The Outsiders” or book private tours.
Bob Dylan Center, Woody Guthrie Center and Guthrie Green
American Song Archives, a project of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, purchased the archives of Oklahoma-born folk singer Woody Guthrie in 2011, moving them from New York to Tulsa. The foundation’s first big step in Tulsa’s downtown arts district was turning an underused square block into Guthrie Green, an outdoor gathering space and hub of activity that has hosted at least 3,000 events since it opened in 2012. The next year, they opened the Woody Guthrie Center in a renovated warehouse across from the greenspace. This certainly shaped Dylan’s choice for his archives; Dylan credits Guthrie as an early influence on his music.
The Guthrie and Dylan centers share a large renovated warehouse, though each has its own entrance.
While I’d heard of Guthrie’s eminent “This Land Is Your Land” song, I needed the 15-minute introductory film to appreciate his legacy. Don’t miss the virtual reality experience just outside the theater that gives you an idea of his Dust Bowl upbringing. The remainder of the public space showcases artifacts such as instruments, writings and drawings often related to diversity, equality and justice alongside interactive exhibits connecting his life with music and world history.
The Bob Dylan Center opened in May 2022 with about half of the 29,000-square-foot space open to the public via museum exhibits on two floors. A self-guided tour starts with an 18-minute documentary on the artist. You’ll want to use one of the free audio tour guides available at the front desk for the rest of the tour. Most of the ground floor is a gallery with displays around the perimeter presenting a chronological journey through Dylan’s career and a series of six columns in the middle of the room that take you through Dylan’s creative process of writing, recording, producing and performing six different songs. These displays contain video and audio clips plus artifacts, from a coveted leather jacket worn by Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when he performed electric for the first time to notebooks showing handwritten lyrics to songs.
The highlight of the second floor is a wall of artifacts. The only Dylan-owned guitar in the Tulsa collection is displayed here, along with hundreds of other items that will rotate from among the archives. There is also a screening room that includes never-before-seen film performances.
The Church Studio
About 2 miles east of the arts district, you can tour a fully functioning recording studio inside The Church Studio, which opened in March 2022 after a five-year historic renovation. The striking 1915 stone building started as a church and was converted to a recording studio in 1972 by Oklahoma-born music legend Leon Russell, who was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2011 by Elton John for his work as a musician, songwriter and producer.
Russell had returned to Oklahoma to break away from the rigid LA studio structure and formed the boutique Shelter Records label as a creative, musical ecosystem that he operated at the church until 1976. When he left, his engineer Steve Ripley and others continued operating the studio for several more decades. The building was unused and in disrepair when Tulsan Teresa Knox bought it in 2016.
She had grown up a music fan and at a young age started collecting memorabilia, including many items related to Russell and other artists tied to the Tulsa Sound, which Knox describes as less of a music genre and more of a “period in time where artists would come to Tulsa and find camaraderie in creating amazing music just for the love of music.”
You might see artists playing and recording when you visit The Church Studio (Kenny Loggins, Dropkick Murphys, Taj Mahal and others have recorded here since it reopened). There are displays on Russell’s life and career when you enter the building and a small room showcasing some of Knox’s 5,000-item memorabilia collection. At the time of my visit there were several archive cases highlighting Russell’s work with Dylan, Willie Nelson and Tom Petty, who signed his first record deal with Shelter Records.
Cain’s Ballroom
It’s a live music venue first, but with the building turning 100 in 2024 and a long list of legendary performers, Cain’s Ballroom is a museum, too. The main room features original artwork from as far back as the 1930s when this garage-turned-ballroom was known as the “Carnegie Hall of Western Swing” with weekly dances organized by Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys.
If you’re able to get a glimpse inside the office (right behind the box office), you’ll see posters and photos from performers from the 1970s through recent years: INXS, The Police, U2, Van Halen and others performed here while on their way to stardom when music promoter/owner Larry Shaeffer helped establish Cain’s modern reputation.
It’s a bucket-list venue for musicians as well as concert-goers. Cain’s is the kind of place where Green Day requested to play in front of 1,700 fans in July 2021 before launching its world tour in four days at the 40,000-seat Globe Life Field in
Arlington, Texas.
The Rodgers family bought the venue in 2002 and completed a major renovation in 2003, including adding air conditioning, and also got Cain’s on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
“We breathed new life into a venue that had lots of music history and we’ve continued to add to that history,” said Chad Rodgers, who co-owns and runs Cain’s Ballroom with his brother Hunter. “Hopefully, we’ve made it better for many more decades to come. We want this place to live on forever.”
Can you hear that? If not, that means you’re not close enough to hear Tulsa humming. Check it out for yourself!
