by Travis Mateer

I’m writing this Road Review in a hotel room in the part of Tulsa historically known as Black Wall Street. Why is that?

On August 8th, 11 days before I left Missoula, I wrote about HBO’s adaptation of The Watchmen, which centers its narrative in Tulsa. I find it absolutely fascinating to be physically here, in person, and to then see the CITY police in Tulsa collaborating with the SHERIFF’s office to be VERY aggressive in their Friday night patrolling of drunk drivers.

This image doesn’t look like much, but it’s a DUI check-point, and the police/Sheriff operation was VERY busy on Friday night running their targets through field sobriety tests and impounding vehicles. I asked the guy at the front desk of my hotel about it later, and he said law enforcement hadn’t done a DUI check in awhile, but it was posted in the local paper.

Before Tulsa, I spent several days at the Sheraton in downtown Denver. How was my stay? Well, I ended up getting the $50 dollar a day self-parking cost waived due to them being fucking idiots and over-booking the entire parking garage, leaving me in parking hell two days in a row.

Part of that hell entailed me watching as a truck backed into a concrete beam, seriously damaging it. Does that look like a STRUCTURAL beam?

While I enjoyed using the exercise equipment, and the ability to binge-watch both seasons of Yellowjackets on Showtime, nearly $400 bucks a night was a little dumb to be spending on a hotel that was such a dumpster fire, they created a DIESEL FIRE on the morning I checked out.

No, seriously, here’s the local news story about how the over-filling of a boiler with diesel fuel led to black smoke belching from the roof of the hotel. Cool!

After Colorado I spent one night in Kansas, in Hays. Ugh. Next up, I’m heading to Dallas where I’ll spend the next few days checking things out, like book stores, coffee shops, and the spot a president was assassinated in 1963.

Will I be meeting some special people soon? Yes, I think I will be. But much of that will be for the book, which grows and grows.

Now, this post is supposed to have the links of the week, so here they are:

Dispatch From The Road: It’s Different, But It’s The Same (August 21st, 2023)

Meanwhile, Back In Missoula, City Council Has Bigger Problems Than Technology (August 22nd, 2023)

Why I Went To Empower Field After United Way In Denver (August 23rd, 2023)

Synchronicities Swim In A Soup Of Culture, But Who Makes The Culture? (August 24th, 2023)

Cleaning Abandoned Urban Camping Sites Plus The Doom Loop Walking Tour (August 25th, 2023)

And here is the ways to support my work: Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF); the donation button at my about page.

Thanks for reading!