Luxiere - Oklahoma Lifestyle & Real Estate // Edition 62 by Luxiere Magazine

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Contents P H O TO G R A P H BY J U EU N C H A N G

38 To Change a Life

Jabee Williams loves music and has earned success as a rapper … but he’s learned enough to know he’d rather be remembered for improving his community. STO RY BY MI CH A EL K INNE Y

48 Connecting With the Soul of Dining

Farm-to-table destination Living Kitchen and its founders’ delicious other projects may be keys to help Tulsa determine its culinary identity and future. STO RY BY MEG A N SHEPHER D

68 An Unheralded Legacy

For 70 years, Tulsa has had Black firefighters—though their numbers are few and their stories largely overlooked. Until new documentary Fighting More than Fire.

STO RY BY A L E X A NDR A B O H A NN O N

The Alchemy of Tradition

New Japanese concepts Little Belly and Natsukashii are among a wave of restaurants seeking to broaden Oklahoma palates by reshaping familiar flavors.

Home, Wherever They Go Home is not a place, it’s a feeling you carry with you. That’s the idea that fuels Asian American streetwear brand H1LL HOUSE, and that keeps founders Iggy Tran and Kenny Hua connected with their clientele in Japan, Vietnam, South Korea … and their home base in OKC. S TO R Y B Y A N D R E A S C H U LT Z

STO RY BY G R EG H O RTO N

82 The Building of Composition

An Irish-born composer and musician with a constellation of star collaborations, Brian Byrne’s career spans the globe from his small studio in … Purcell, Oklahoma? STO RY BY MI CH A EL K INNE Y

1 8 Design Appetit in the Spotlight | 2 4 Woman of Influence: Hollis McAllister | 3 2 Lights, Prairie, Action!: Oklahoma Film Festivals 4 2 Institutional Wisdom: Oklahoma Banking | 6 2 Raising A Glass to Reinvention: Neverstill Wines

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P H O TO G R A P H BY T H E O C O U LO M B E

Pg. 62 Luxiere's Megan Shepherd takes us inside Hudson, New York's Neverstill Wines, founded by native Oklahoman Christy Counts.

A Letter from the Editor

s I write, the seasons are beginning to change. Languid summer heat is diffusing, and a hint of a cool autumn breeze has begun to arrive. In Oklahoma, summer can certainly test our mettle, as can our ferocious winters. I sometimes wonder if our cantankerous weather is part of a necessary equation for the boundless creativity Oklahoma generates. Businesses launch at a quick clip, small companies become significant corporations. Creative ideas spark, smolder and then burn as bright as the prairie sun. Our home, our Oklahoma, is a place unlike any other—and it is my fond hope that it always remains so. In this edition, number 62, we are honored to bring you the stories of chefs, visionaries, musicians, artists and idealists. You’ll meet Sheamus Feeley and Marco Herrera, whose new Japanese restaurant in Tulsa, Little Belly, has a concept that’s delicious and welcoming, while perhaps wildly different than the typical Japanese restaurant. Another Tulsa-based creative, Keith “Sneak” Daniels, launched his second documentary this summer at Oklahoma City’s deadCenter Film Festival. Entitled Fighting More than Fire, the film chronicles the history of Black firefighters in Tulsa, beginning with the first men hired in 1956, known as The Six. Oklahoma’s emerging moviemaking industry, bolstered by the 2021 passage of the Filmed in Oklahoma Act, now boasts a full circuit of film festivals. Writer Cray Bauxmont-Flynn examines the state of the industry, and the burgeoning ancillary industries developing around it. We talked to Irish musical phenom Brian Byrne, who hails from Navan, County Meath in Ireland, about his 36-year career during which time he’s composed scores for 24 feature films and television

@ L U X I E R E M AG A Z I N E 12

productions. Where does this man find his muse? His back yard in Purcell. Michael Kinney brings us the story. There’s an event in Oklahoma City so huge it fills the convention center with a celebration of food and design, thousands of attendees and enough creative energy to dazzle all who attend. And yet, it’s almost flown under the radar these past 10 years. Of course, we’re talking about Design Appetit, which supports the mission of Focus on Home, a nonprofit which supplies disadvantaged families with essential items to create comfortable and functional homes. It’s undergone a rebrand thanks to the talented team at Cooper House, as writer Greg Horton explains. This edition is filled with so many good stories. Christy Counts, an Oklahoman, has created upstate New York winery Neverstill Wines, named for the flowing Hudson River that traverses the region. Our Woman of Influence, CEO of City Year Tulsa Hollis McAllister, is a Boston transplant who arrived in Tulsa ready to change the world, one young person at a time. And there’s more. We hope you’ll find our work in this edition as intriguing, inspirational and beautiful as we do. Until next time,

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I M AG E C O U R T E SY R O N A N M E L I A P H O TO G R A P H Y

Contributors Pg. 82 Renowned Irish composer, conductor, producer, orchestrator and pianist Brian Byrne gives Luxiere's Michael Kinney a peek into his virtually hidden state-of-the-art music studio in Purcell, Oklahoma.

EDITION 62

STACY D. JOHNSON Owner/Publisher/Editor in Chief

DESIGN nvsble.studio OUR CONTRIBUTORS

Each issue of Luxiere represents the combined efforts of an accomplished team of creative

ON THE COVER

Oklahomans. We are pleased to share their work with you, and grateful for the time and talent

A DJ and models showcase OKC-based H1ll House streetwear at H4LO in Tokyo, Japan. Photograph by Kenny Hua

each has contributed to bringing this publication into being.

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Luxiere Oklahoma is published bimonthly, direct-mailed to a curated readership and distributed at select retail locations free of charge for individual use. To request copies, please contact the publisher. For more information, visit www.luxiere.co.

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DESIGN A PPETIT in the S P O T L I G H T Ten-year kudos to a truly one-of-one fundraising event BY G R EG H O RTO N

hen talking to people inside Design Appetit, the annual fundraising event for Focus on Home, the phrase “under the radar” keeps popping up. Imagine an event so large it occupies a convention hall; features more than 40 chefs and dozens of designers and architects, along with 20 custom-built vignettes designed around the idea of a dinner table as a meeting place; and relies on a huge team of volunteers. Launched in 2016 by Joli Sanders, Design Appetit was created to support the mission of Focus on Home, the nonprofit she founded in October 2014. As far as anyone involved knows, no other city has an event like this, where creative professionals come together at three discrete events in two days to benefit a non-profit that helps the newly housed turn their space into a home. It’s fair to wonder how something that size flies under any radar. There is a partial explanation as to why it’s relatively unknown to the general public: For many years, the only two ways to participate as a guest were a luncheon and the gala, the latter of which features a table per vignette—usually about 20 total—sold as a whole, so no individual tickets were available. Two years ago, Sanders added a cocktail party the night before that is open to the public. Last year, she added a chef’s tasting with a few of the city’s best young chefs, as well as a community table at the gala. That allows up to 100 people to purchase a single ticket to taste the food of one of the gala chefs, whose number includes our most decorated and famous chefs, like Jeff Chanchaleune, Kevin Lee, Eric Smith and Kurt Fleischfresser. “In the beginning, we targeted the larger design firms,” Sanders says, “because that was the professional world I’d just left. The goal was to create a big event that matched our personality as an organization: 1818 LUXI E R E

Design and food were central, and not just a tablescape, but a whole space.” The space allocated has always been 20 feet by 20 feet, which has allowed for amazing creativity over the years … perhaps to a fault. The year Guernsey built a whole ship, Sanders realized the trajectory of the event was not sustainable, and if she wanted to attract smaller firms and solo designers, she’d need to scale down the vignettes, not in size but in scope and complexity. That change led to an influx of talented designers and architects, artists and assorted creative types— manufacturing and supply included—who wanted to be involved. As the event hit its 10-year milestone this year, Sanders decided it was time for another change, one that would propel Design Appetit forward with a new look, increased focus on the core brand and versatile components that worked with the existing brand in a timeless yet distinct way. To facilitate the change, she turned to Erin Cooper and Cooper House. Erin and Tim Cooper had partnered with Chef Gabriel Lewis in 2025 to create a vignette and dinner at the gala for the first time. They had been aware of the event from the beginning, but had never participated professionally. Erin Cooper says, “There was a huge learning experience for us because we are artists and designers, with some experiential design background, but not to the level that some of these teams have. We are definitely interior design and architecture enthusiasts, and we have a passion for branding and hospitality.” Cooper House’s role went from participant and informal recruiter of other designers to the firm tasked with designing the new look and feel for Design Appetit. Cooper described her understanding of the project, as she tends to do, from an above-the-ground perspective first.

Design Appetit installation by Focus on Home, 2016 LUXI E R E 1919

Design Appetit installation by Miller Architects, 2025

Design Appetit installation by Josselyn McSpadden, 2025 2020 LUXI E R E

Design Appetit installation by REES, 2024

Design Appetit installation by Focus on Home, 2025

“The overall goals were that people needed to know more about Design Appetit and the impact that it has,” she says. “In order for that to be true, it can’t be branded new and different every single year, because then all of the associations that people might have with Design Appetit are scraped away and need to be refreshed every year. That doesn’t allow the brand to build on itself over time. It also doesn’t communicate the prestige of the team’s collaboration. This should be something that puts our community on the map—the things I’ve seen people pull off that are under-documented and unrecognized just felt to me like a huge missed opportunity for people to see Oklahoma City culture in a new way.” Design Appetit is a cultural event. There is no other food event like it. There is also no other design event like it. In business, though, often the focus is on ROI as the primary metric. Cooper sees another angle that needs to be emphasized, and not because the event offers nothing tangible to participants. “I really do think that the benefit of getting involved is that it helps Focus on Home,” she said. “I think that’s obviously the reason why a lot of people are joining. I don’t want to undersell that, but I think part of the story that has been undersold in the past is what a unique opportunity it is for a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” One of the new participants for this year’s event is Cynjn Johnson, who, with the unrelated Ryan Johnson, owns OKC Kitchen and Bath. He’s excited about their first year in the event, and as someone who is new to the industry, he sees it as a chance to meet the stars of design and architecture. “It reminds me of a cooking show, but not just because of the chefs,” he says. “You have all these creative people in the same room with their own take on a theme, and then you also have the benefit of knowing it’s for a good cause. It’s just wild how we can pull creativity in various forms from so many avenues in the world.” • Design Appetit installation by Vicki VanStavern and Mark Taylor, 2024

The 2026 edition of Design Appetit is scheduled for Oct. 21-22 in the OKC Convention Center. For tickets or more information, visit focusonhome.org. LUXI E R E 2121

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W O M A N of I N F L U E N C E

HOLLIS McA LLISTER BY CH R IS T IN E ED D IN GTO N

ollis McAllister’s mic-drop moment came near the end of a recent conversation when she said, “I believe the world needs more idealists, and there’s no better way to grow idealism than through national service.” Those two themes, idealism and service, are the foundation of McAllister’s personal and professional ethos. Wait, there’s a third: community. Well chosen, wouldn’t you say? They’re essentially the mirepoix for creating happy, healthy people, schools and communities. McAllister, fittingly, is the senior vice president and executive director for City Year Tulsa. Founded in Boston in 1988, City Year is a brilliant educational nonprofit and AmeriCorps program operating in 29 cities across 21 states. Its goal is to help elementary and high school students improve academically, stay in school and graduate on time. To support that goal, City Year recruits AmeriCorps members, aged 17-25, who commit to serve as student-success coaches, working in schools 50 hours a week for a period of 10 months. It’s a win-win. “City Year really has a double bottom line: We are focused on providing a coach for every student and a path for every young person. What that looks like in practice is we recruit 17- to 25-year-olds to serve as near peer tutors, mentors and role models,” McAllister says. The young adults support students with their attendance, behavior and course performance, while also taking important steps in their own journeys. “Whether they’re coming to us right out of high school or after undergrad or somewhere in between, we really take that role seriously of helping them figure out what that next path is for them.” McAllister believes in addressing the challenge of disconnectedness, creating spaces of belonging, and in the power of showing up. She knows that City Year offers a safe place for people to try new things, test themselves and grow. It did that for her father, after all. “City Year

has actually been in my life since 1993 or 1994. My dad served as the facilities guy for City Year’s headquarters in Boston and ended up having a 27-year career at City Year,” she says. By the time he left the organization, he’d risen through the ranks and was vice president of employee relations. “As a kid, I was able to see my dad really be seen by his employer and invest and trust him to climb the ladder. To see my dad go from being the guy with the key to the facilities closet to a vice president was really inspiring.” Young Hollis also felt the sanctuary of City Year personally. In her hometown—Acton, Massachusetts, a town about 20 miles from Boston—she says, “I grew up in a community that didn’t necessarily reflect my identity as a biracial kid learning about herself.” Except, she said, when she tagged along to work with her dad. “City Year was always a place that was just full of people from all sorts of different backgrounds, walks of life and ideologies, and so if school was out, I was begging my dad to let me go to City Year offices with him, just because I could tell that there was something really different about how people were in community there.” The lack of representation at school affected McAllister’s confidence and grade point average. “I felt like when my classmates would learn that I’m biracial, it would invite questions that, as a kid, I wasn’t really equipped to handle, and certainly my peers didn’t know how to talk about different identities,” she says. She decided her best strategy was to “just stay quiet, don’t invite attention, just mind your own business.” She got a D in a class during her sophomore year in high school. “My dad said ‘Delightful,’ and then he said, ‘If this is truly the best you can do, then I’m okay with this, and I’m still proud of you.’” Heart-wrenching, she said, but also unconditionally loving. It was her one and only D.

Senior Vice President and Executive Director for City Year Tulsa, Hollis McAllister 25

City Year Tulsa graduation 2026 26

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Another pivotal moment in McAllister’s academic career arrived in the form of a school counselor named Aisha Brown. “She came to my school my junior year of high school and was the first adult woman of color that ever worked in any of my schools growing up.” Brown brought with her the exact brand of tough love McAllister needed. “She was the first person to really call me on where I was headed. Acton-Boxborough is one of Massachusetts’ highest performing high schools,” McAllister says, admitting that she felt like going to AB, as it’s known colloquially, was enough to get her into her top-choice college. Brown would have none of it, saying, “You want to go to UMass Amherst? You’re not going with these grades.” Nobody had ever really laid it out like that for McAllister, who got her ducks in a row and did get into UMass Amherst. “I’m so very grateful for Aisha Brown,” she says. In a sweet, full-circle moment, Brown wrote McAllister’s college letter of recommendation. In college, McAllister initially thought she wanted to become a school counselor as well and declared herself a psychology major. A required behavioral neuroendocrinology class changed her mind, and her major. Communications for the win! “I saw friends that were taking comms classes and was like, ‘That sounds like so much fun!’” After graduating from college, she knew she wanted to work at City Year. “I did not tell my dad that I was applying to serve with City Year Boston until after I had accepted the role,” she says. She spent the next two years in a fourth-grade class, where she learned an important lesson: the power of showing up. One day, a music teacher, Mrs. Foster, stopped her in the hall and said, “I just want you to know how much I look forward to seeing your smile in the hallway when I’m having a bad day, because I always know that you’re a positive influence for me and for these kids.” She also learned from her students, including one little boy who kept not doing his homework. Exasperated, McAllister finally said, “Dude, what’s going on?” Eventually he shared that he was staying with his grandma. “He wasn’t sure when his mom was going to come back, and his grandma didn’t have any pencils, and nobody at school knew that this is what was going on,” she says. No pencil is both a tiny and a huge barrier for a little boy. After her two-year stint, McAllister knew she wanted a career at City Year. She’d found her place in the universe. “Somebody asked if I was afraid to leave Boston,” she says. “The answer was yes, and that was when I realized what my relationship with fear is, because the second that I named that I was afraid, I was like, ‘Okay, well, I’m applying.’” There was a startup City Year in Tulsa. “I had no idea where Tulsa was. Two weeks later, I was moving to Tulsa to be the operations manager.” She moved up to the chief of staff position, then briefly worked for City Year’s national headquarters, leading a continuous improvement program. “Then I came back to work for the Tulsa site, where my heart is, and last November had the opportunity to step into the interim executive director role, and in January officially became the executive director, the first woman executive director of City Year Tulsa.” There’s never been a greater need for initiatives like City Year. “We know that young kids, young students, need more academic support. The data shows that that’s the case in public education in Oklahoma, and in addition to that, they really need spaces of belonging and adults who know their names, know their strengths and are going to be by their side to celebrate their successes.” •

City Year Tulsa SINCE INCEPTION: • City Year Tulsa has served 58,870 students through City Year-led Whole School events and initiatives, and 16,753 students through individualized support. • Tulsa students who received individualized support from City Year were almost twice as likely to reach the 10th grade as their peers. • Tulsa students who received individualized support from City Year for multiple years graduate at significantly higher rates than their peers—15% higher for one year served, 37% higher for two or more years served. IN 2025 AND 2026: • There were 75 AmeriCorps members in service at City Year Tulsa. • Seven Tulsa schools partner with City Year teams. • 2.45 million minutes of support were provided to students through initiatives and interventions. • 4,795 students were served through whole school initiatives. • 2,011 students received individualized support. • Key partners include Bank of Oklahoma, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, George Kaiser Family Foundation, QuikTrip and the Tulsa Area United Way.

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LIGHTS PRAIRIE Action! ,

Oklahoma’s film festival circuit is redefining the heart of American cinema B Y C R A Y B A U X M O N T - F LY N N

t begins, as all great revelations do, in the dark. The house lights dim inside a century-old theater on South Lewis Avenue in Tulsa. On screen, a Mohawk woman navigates the seductive pull of social media and the older, deeper pull of land. The audience—students, tribal members, filmmakers, the simply curious—leans forward. When the lights come up, there is no rush to leave. People stay. They talk. They recognize something. That scene, from a 2025 Indian Territory Film Festival screening of Kaniehtiio Horn’s Seeds at Circle Cinema, drew such demand that a second theater had to be opened. Programmer Colleen Thurston, a filmmaker and Choctaw Nation citizen who serves on ITFF’s board, was not surprised. “It’s become pretty well known here that there is a hunger for Indigenous storytelling,” she says. “People not only want it—they expect it. We see audiences traveling from Oklahoma City, from Tahlequah, to come to these events. That’s what really builds community.” Oklahoma has long carried a narrative not entirely of its own making—of oil derricks and borrowed mythology, of a state you leave if you want to become someone. But something is shifting, quietly and then all at once. The state has become, with startling conviction, one of America’s most compelling film destinations, not simply as a backdrop for someone else’s story, but as a place where stories are born, shown, debated and celebrated year-round. The production numbers are striking: Since the passage of the Filmed in Oklahoma Act in 2021, the state’s film and television industry has generated a $484 million economic impact, with employment growing more than 56%. But the more intimate, more culturally resonant story is unfolding in theaters, community centers and improvised screening rooms across the state—in the form of a burgeoning, deeply diverse film festival circuit that is transforming Oklahoma into a destination for filmmakers and film lovers alike.

Any serious accounting of Oklahoma’s film festival landscape begins with deadCenter. Now in its 26th year, the Oklahoma City festival is the state’s largest and only Oscar®-qualifying event, drawing roughly 1,800 submissions and curating nearly 200 films for its five-day annual run. Named one of the “20 Coolest Film Festivals in the World” by MovieMaker Magazine, deadCenter has evolved from a scrappy 2001 showcase into an institution of genuine national standing—one that has begun deliberately reaching northward, hosting satellite screenings at Tulsa’s Philbrook Museum of Art and Circle Cinema for the first time in 2026. Beyond the marquee event, deadCenter operates year-round education programs that have reached more than 67,000 students statewide, many in rural communities where arts access has historically been limited — a festival that understands the real work happens not on the red carpet but in the classroom. If deadCenter is the main stage, Circle Cinema is the spiritual anchor of the state circuit. Operating out of a building that has shown films since 1928, the Tulsa nonprofit has evolved far beyond exhibition into something more essential: a civic institution, an artists’ incubator, a year-round cultural festival unto itself. It is here that Michelle Svenson—film programmer, filmmaker and half-Korean, half-Swedish daughter of Indian Country—has returned with a vision that could transform how Tulsa experiences cinema. She calls it Kino Social: a microcinema designed not merely as a screening room, but as a shared home for the entire ecosystem of Tulsa’s film organizations. “We have some great film venues like Circle Cinema, and I’m still a champion of that,” Svenson explains. “But a lot of us film festival organizers have brought all these experiences from national and international film festivals. We want to bring something to Tulsa and share it with our community, but we have to pay for film rentals,

Tulsa's Circle Cinema 33

Rendering of Kino Social Microcinema coming soon to Tulsa

marketing and the venue. It’s not cheap.” Her solution is structural: a co-operative microcinema with a restaurant and bar generating sustainable revenue, hub space for every film organization in the city and a 100-seat theater collectively programmed by the community it serves. “I want people outside Oklahoma to ask, ‘Have you been to Tulsa?’” she says, allowing herself to dream. Svenson draws inspiration from arthouse-cinema-with-bar models in Prague and elsewhere, but her eye is always local. “The biggest message is about that support system. We need to be there to support each other.” In a state where 39 tribal nations maintain their governmentto-government relationships with the United States government, where the very land was once called Indian Territory, it would be extraordinary if Indigenous cinema did not have a home. The Indian Territory Film Festival, hosted at Circle Cinema, is ensuring that it does. Thurston, whose debut feature documentary Drowned Land— an examination of displacement and water rights in the Choctaw Nation—won Best Documentary at both the Circle Cinema Film Festival and deadCenter in 2025, brings a filmmaker’s precision to her curatorial work. She seeks out films that lack marketing budgets or major laurels but carry something more essential. “That’s the responsibility of strong programming,” she says. “Knowing what’s out there, really looking for it and having that commitment to our community.” Her eye is also trained on what’s emerging locally. At a panel copresented with Tulsa Litfest, she spotlighted three filmmakers whose work has genuinely moved her: Katie Hoffman Fox, developing her first feature Push County; Shay Vassar Gomez, whose queer 1990s-inspired short Runaway Bride signals an original and daring vision; and Paris Burris, a programmer for deadCenter who has been directing and producing shorts while working on her debut documentary. ITFF has recently reorganized under a new name, the Indian Territory Film Foundation, and is filing for federal nonprofit status that will eventually allow it to grant funds directly to Indigenous filmmakers. It is a structural leap from festival to foundation, from exhibition to infrastructure. “We have an entire community of filmmakers here,” Thurston says. “We need to make sure they are sustainably supported from within our own community.” The Foundation has already partnered with the Tulsa Film Collective and deadCenter and is in conversations with tribal nations about satellite programming on reservations, turning a destination festival into something more like a road. Kevin Lovelace did not set out to build a cultural institution. He started Twisted Arts in 2020, he says, “out of boredom during COVID.” Tulsa had not had an LGBTQ+ film festival in a decade, and the impulse was connection and community at a moment when isolation had become the dominant condition of public life. Six years later, Twisted Arts has generated approximately $600,000 in economic impact for queer artists in Oklahoma, hosted the state’s first all-trans fashion show and brought Margaret Cho to Tulsa for its fifth anniversary. It screens Icelandic trans dramas alongside films about gay rodeos, and its Drag Me to the Movies series has transformed screenings into theatrical events. “You can’t just screen a movie anymore,” Lovelace says flatly. “People want some sort of interactive experience.” Lovelace names his festival with the same defiant playfulness that characterizes its programming. “I wanted something that was a playfully queer word,” he says of the name Twisted Arts, “not necessarily 34

derogative, but still kind of fun. And I knew I wanted a logo with some sort of tornado reference.” The result is an organization distinctly, unapologetically Oklahoman. Screening a film about a gay rodeo, he points out, “would do better here than San Francisco.” His curatorial philosophy is rigorous beneath the irreverence. “First and foremost, it has to be a good film,” he says. “And then we try to find a balance of representation for everybody in the rainbow, as well as local interest, as well as showing films that people may not see—an Icelandic film, a film from Amsterdam.” He is now looking toward two-spirit stories, trans narratives, disability pride … stories that even an expanding mainstream has not yet found. For the queer teenager in Enid or Lawton who has never heard of Twisted Arts, Lovelace’s message is direct: “If it doesn’t exist in their town, they should create it. That’s the way things start.” These three organizations—ITFF, Twisted Arts, Kino Social—are not isolated initiatives. They are nodes in a constellation that also includes the Tulsa Film Collective, co-founded by filmmaker Sterlin Harjo (“Reservation Dogs”) and Cherokee Nation citizen Jessi McEver, which has brought the Sundance Institute Indigenous Film Tour to Tulsa and hosted Oklahoma premieres of films like Wildcat, with director Ethan Hawke in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. The Greenwood Film Festival, now in its sixth year, carries the weight of Black Wall Street’s legacy into the present through days of screenings and community dialogue. The Oklahoma Jewish Film Festival brings interfaith storytelling to Circle Cinema each March, and deadCenter’s growing satellite presence signals that the circuit’s ambitions are no longer confined to any single city.

THE LUXIERE LIST

Oklahoma Film Festival Calendar of Selected Events DEADCENTER FILM FESTIVAL Oklahoma City | June | Oscar®-qualifying deadcenterfilm.org CIRCLE CINEMA FILM FESTIVAL Tulsa | July | Oklahoma-centric independent cinema circlecinema.org INDIAN TERRITORY FILM FESTIVAL Tulsa | Annual | Indigenous storytelling Indian Territory Film Foundation OKLAHOMA JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Tulsa | March | Interfaith cultural dialogue jewishtulsa.org TWISTED ARTS FILM FESTIVAL Tulsa | Fall | LGBTQ+ cinema and performance twistedfest.org GREENWOOD FILM FESTIVAL Tulsa | August | Black storytelling and civic healing

Svenson, who also programs for the California Film Institute’s DocLands and Mill Valley Film Festival, has a filmmaker’s sense of what the ecosystem is collectively building. “We have a wealth of amazing film programmers here,” she says. “We’ve seen these films that are really impacting people, and we need to bring them here.” The microcinema, in her vision, becomes the place where those returns converge and shared infrastructure makes the whole circuit more than the sum of its parts. What is striking about this ecology is not any single event but the cumulative effect of the whole. Taken together, these festivals constitute a year-round alternative to mainstream cinematic culture. They’re more diverse, more locally rooted and more willing to take aesthetic risks than anything a multiplex can offer. They give exhibitions to filmmakers who might otherwise struggle to be seen, and audiences to stories that corporate distribution would never greenlight. There is a tendency, when describing Oklahoma’s film renaissance, to reach for economic superlatives: booms and revolutions, Hollywood coming to the heartland. Such language is not entirely wrong. But it risks obscuring the more interesting story that Oklahoma is not becoming a satellite of the entertainment industry. It is becoming itself. As the lights in Circle Cinema dim again, outside on South Lewis Avenue, the marquee glows against an Oklahoma sky. Inside, in the dark, something is being made that cannot be streamed, cannot be algorithmed, cannot be replicated on a phone. It is the experience of a community gathering to see itself—complicated, beautiful and entirely worth the journey. •

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LUXI E R E 37

CH A NGE A

LIFE Activist Jabee Williams’ calling to community transcends music and business BY MICHAEL KINNE Y

abee Williams loves to tour. Standing on different stages every night, with a microphone in hand as he looks out upon sold-out crowds who are rapping his lyrics along with him—that’s what he had dreamed about since he composed his first song. It’s the type of life most musicians dream of in the beginning. However, it didn’t take Williams long to realize he wanted more than that. As much as making music was his passion, he wanted his life to amount to more than dropping hits and entertaining crowds. It wasn’t until Williams took on the roles of community activist and business leader that he saw himself really making a difference for the city he grew up in. The 43-year-old has evolved into a three-time Emmy Award-winning musician, educator, proprietor, mentor and community activist. Despite all his success, Williams knows he still has a long way to go. “I still run into kids that I worked with 10 years ago, 15 years ago, that are doing great and really appreciate the time that we spend 38

together, thanking me and all that,” says Williams. “But I also had kids that I worked with that were killed.” Williams could be called the unofficial mayor of Oklahoma City. Since releasing the album Black Future in 2016, his name has been attached to many of the big events surrounding Black culture in Oklahoma City. You are just as likely to find him touring a Goodwill site as you are to see him courtside at an Oklahoma City Thunder game. This is not the life Williams envisioned for himself growing up. Until he discovered he could make money with his music, the Northwest Classen alum considered being a teacher or even a policeman. “I was at a mentoring program that I do with Live Free Oklahoma, and part of my introduction is, I kind of walk them through my life to show them I was just like you,” Williams describes. “And I start off by asking, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up? If you don’t know, that’s okay, because I didn’t know when I was young. I had no idea what I wanted to be.’”

Musician, business leader and community activist Jabee Williams 39

CONSIDER THE COMMUNITY Seeing the struggles his mother and those around him had to endure and not wanting others to have to go through losing a loved one to gun violence not only shaped Williams’ music, but it cultivated the community activist in him. “At an early age, I had a burden for the community and a burden for my generation and the generation behind me,” he says. “I think that it’s important that whatever we do, we consider the community first.” Even before Williams began growing in popularity for his music, he was finding ways to lift up the east side of Oklahoma City. But it was in 2023 when he launched Live Free Oklahoma that he really began to see his influence grow. In May, after a spate of gun violence broke out at Arcadia Lake, Williams was one of the city leaders calling for Oklahoma to invest in community violence intervention. “Live Free Oklahoma is on the frontlines of building safer, healthier communities—free from gun violence, mass incarceration and systemic injustice,” says Williams. He also created With Love OKC, which began as an arts initiative to address a critical need for artistic and educational infrastructure in Northeast Oklahoma City. Originally called With Love Project Foundation, the collective has hosted numerous art shows and events that focus on local and often underserved communities. Recent events include the Women of Color Art Show, Juneteenth on the East and Fear of the Black Art Show. “If I’m being real, I would love to see the city embrace Black culture in a better way,” Williams said. “We only think about Black culture and Black people in February and on Juneteenth. I would love to get to a point where we were a part of the conversation all the time.”

RIGHT: Willams seasons a pie before sending it out at OKC’s Eastside Pizza House 40

“At an early age, I had a burden for the community and a burden for my generation and the generation behind me. I think that it’s important that whatever we do, we consider the community first.” JABEE WILLIAMS

P H O TO G R A P H BY M I C H A E L K I N N E Y

ORIGIN STORY Leading up to this point in his life, Williams endured his share of tragedies and hardships. That includes losing his 16-year-old brother to gun violence when Williams was 18 years old and watching his mother, Monya Caraway, raise a family by herself. “We made something out of nothing. For the most part, my mom was a single parent, and we struggled a lot,” says Williams. “But my mom did a good job of making sure we had everything we needed. Even though we lacked so much, she went out of her way to make sure, especially when we started to get older, that we had the things so we could keep up, and not look like we had nothing.” Williams said his mother was working two or three jobs and at times had to pawn her jewelry to make sure the lights stayed on. But even during the times when they were homeless, Caraway kept the family together. “She was an amazing, strong person, and still is,” Williams says. “I talk a lot in music about coming up poor, and not having anything, but I feel like those things, that struggle, helped make me who I am. I don’t like to say I had a hard childhood … it was probably harder on my mom than it was on us.”

P H O T O G R A P H BY M I C H A E L K I N N E Y

BUSINESS AND BEYOND Williams has accomplished more than he ever imagined. The same year that Williams released Black Future, he unexpectedly received his first lesson in business. It was a tutorial that would help him create a small but growing portfolio. He was asked to perform at the opening of the newly renovated Tower Theater in OKC. The venue, which holds 1,500 spectators, was sold out for his show. However, Williams said, his payout was somewhere around $200, which didn’t sit right with him. “I had a lot of local homies on the show. So, I didn’t feel like we got paid what we were supposed to get paid. If I remember right, tickets were like $15. I was like, ‘The math ain’t mathing.’ My homies are probably thinking that I shorted them because I got to pay them for performing, too. I went online and just started going off on Tower.” Williams said the owners of the Tower Theater contacted him and wanted to make the situation right. And they were the ones who offered the then 32-year-old Williams a 10% stake in the theater as a mea culpa. For someone who grew up seeing the value of money only displayed in straight cash, Williams really had no idea what he was getting into when he accepted the offer. “That was my first ownership of anything. I only owned a car. I never owned a house, none of that,” he says. “I didn’t understand it at that moment. My goal has just been trying to have something that I can pass down to my children—or if something happens to me, they have ownership of something. I didn’t understand at the time. I was just going around saying, ‘I got 10%.’ But now that I’ve been doing business, I understand now what it means.” While Williams no longer has equity in the Tower Theater, the entrepreneurial seed had been planted, and he was ready to create his own opportunities. He opened the Eastside Pizza House in 2022. With pizzas named after historical giants in Black history, the eatery

instantly became part of the community. Then in 2023, he and his partner Cordell Lov opened the doors to Scrambl’d, which focuses on brunch favorites with a side of “Soul and Southern influence.” Both operations were intentionally positioned in the Clara Luper Corridor of Northeast 23rd Street, which is an area mainstream businesses have avoided in the past. Unfortunately, Williams had to make a business decision that clashed with his community activism when he felt a need to relocate Eastside Pizza House to its current Midtown location due to lack of foot traffic. “I ain’t cried in a long time, but that’s probably the last time I cried; when I told our staff it was closing,” Williams says. “Because we were a family. I feel like I’m the most to blame because I wasn’t in the space as much as I should have been.” At the time, he wanted to be back out on the road touring and making music. But his roles as a community activist and business leader had grown to the point that he could no longer be away for long stretches at a time. “If I didn’t have them, I’d be fine,” Williams says. “But I think that it’s important that we look at business, especially when it comes to the community; we look at those things not from a lens of just getting money, but how can I meet this need in the community? That’s why Scrambl’d is where it’s at. That’s why Eastside was where it was at. So, it was about meeting a need for sure.” At the end of the day, Williams is proud of what he has been able to accomplish in all areas of his professional life. However, whenever he does take his final breath, he hopes “musician” and “business owner” are far down the list of accomplishments people will remember about him. “Music is fun and cool, I love it, but I don’t want people to be at my funeral and somebody say, ‘Man, he sure could rap.’ Or ‘He sure could make a pizza.’ I want them to be, ‘Man, that dude helped change my life.’ I want it to be about the community.” • 41

Guthrie, Oklahoma, at 10 days old during the Land Run of 1889

42 P H O TO G R A P H C O U R T E S T Y O K L A H O M A H I S TO R I CA L S O C I E T Y

INSTITUTIONA L WISDOM A spotlight on the banking industry in Oklahoma BY CH R IS T IN E ED D IN GTO N

ave you ever found yourself wondering about the state of Oklahoma’s banking industry? Curious about its history, interested in what comes next and hoping to make cents of it all? (See what we did there?) Puns aside, we were too. In an effort to offer a comprehensive snapshot, Luxiere recently spoke with three men—Mel Martin, President & CEO of First National Bank of Oklahoma (FNB); Kyle Powell, CEO of Kirkpatrick Bank; and David Harlow, CEO of BancFirst Corporation—about the current and future fiduciary forecast for the banking industry in Oklahoma. Spoiler alert: It’s sunny! Before we talk about the here and now, let’s take a brisk walk down memory lane, to ask, as David Byrne might put it, “Well, how did we get here?” Before statehood, in the late 1800s, banking functions were largely undertaken in an ad hoc, fully unregulated manner by Indian Territory mercantile owners like James A. Patterson in Muskogee, or within the Choctaw Nation by the Doak and Times Mercantile Company, which served as general store and bank, as did its prime competitor, Berthelet, Heald and Company. In 1907, after the Land Runs in central and western Oklahoma, some 883 banks sprouted up from the prairie like wild indigo after a spring rain. Within days of April 22, 1889, at least nine banks opened for business, albeit in tents or shacks. Back then, anyone who could get folks to make deposits could open a bank. Early regulations

like the National Banking Act (1863) and the Organic Act (1890) only applied to national banks—most of Oklahoma’s were private. Modern, regulated banking began in Indian Territory in 1897, when a regulatory code was passed requiring all banks to be incorporated and to operate under the supervision of a bank commissioner. FNB was founded in 1917 as the First National Bank of Tonkawa. Oklahoma was less than 10 years old, and both the state and the Kay County region were enjoying an era of economic optimism. The great oil boom in Kay County had started in 1911. With its initial charter, the bank aimed to provide reliable financial services to the burgeoning population and businesses of Oklahoma, encompassing both oil and gas-related businesses and the region’s agricultural base. “The current ownership group acquired control in 2001,” Martin says. “At the time we acquired the bank, it had about $50 million in assets and two locations in Kay County: the towns of Tonkawa and Ponca City. Under our ownership group, we branched back into Oklahoma City. We opened here in 2004, we opened a Tulsa office in 2018. Today, the bank has assets of about $975 million.” Kirkpatrick Bank can trace its banking lineage to the late 1800s and Samuel Diggs Blake, a man eager to start his own businesses on the Texas frontier after the Civil War. In 1888, after ventures in wholesale clothing and groceries, he led the family’s foray into banking. He was followed by his son Mack Blake, who helped found Liberty National Bank in Oklahoma City, famously keeping it afloat during the Great 43

Depression by mortgaging his home and leveraging other personal assets. That commitment to forging deep community partnerships remains central to the bank today. “Kirkpatrick Bank has always been very relationship-driven,” Powell says. “I often talk with my younger lenders and employees about the importance of that. The most satisfying part of this job is that human component: You take a company that’s an acorn and you plant it, and over time you get to watch it grow into a strong oak.” BancFirst’s origin story began in 1962, when lead investor and Chairman H.E. “Gene” Rainbolt acquired the First American Bank in Purcell, followed by Federal National Bank in Shawnee a few years later. In 1967 he and a group of investors began buying more banks in Oklahoma, and initially called the result United Community Corporation, the state’s first multi-bank holding company. Over the years, BancFirst has grown exponentially while staying true to its hyper-local customer service. “We’re in 114 locations in 63 communities in Oklahoma, and we’re publicly traded,” says Harlow. “We’re headquartered here in Oklahoma City, but we are really a statewide organization. Normally banks our size are very centralized, but we are unique. We have 37 bank presidents across the state, and we push decision-making out to the field. We set up their lending authorities and their authority to deal with probably 90% to 95% of what happens in their market, because how you are successful in Marlow is very different than how you’re successful in Tulsa. We hire local bank presidents and give them the autonomy they need to serve their communities best.” It would be easy to yield to the siren song of technology. There’s a new app released every 45 seconds or so, and AI-driven everything seems as ubiquitous as Cosmopolitans at a 1990s happy hour. For these men, though, there’s every reason not to hop on every bandwagon that whistles by. Martin recently met with a shareholder and the conversation turned to AI: “We were talking about it a little bit, and he said, ‘You know, Mel, in technology, there’s always something that’s being rolled out. You’ve got to have this. You’ve got to do that.’ And he said, ‘You just have to sift through all of that’ … A lot of the banks that are chasing AI, in my opinion, are likely less efficient than we are, and they need to find some efficiencies. Well, we’re already hyper efficient, so we don’t feel that same pressure.” BancFirst, the largest in the group, takes yet another nuanced approach. “We’re not big enough that we’re developing our own software, but we’re big enough from a size perspective that we’re able to purchase,” Harlow says. “We let technology prove up, and then we can go buy it off the shelf and plug it in.” 44

David Harlow, CEO of BancFirst

“We have 37 bank presidents across the state, and we push decision-making out to the field. We hire local bank presidents and give them the autonomy they need to serve their communities best.” DAVID HA RLOW C E O of B A N C F I R S T

“A lot of the banks that are chasing AI, in my opinion, are likely less efficient than we are, and they need to find some efficiencies. We’re already hyper efficient, so we don’t feel that same pressure.” MEL MARTIN F I R S T N A T I O N A L B A N K of O K L A H O M A PRESIDENT & CEO

Kyle Powell, CEO of Kirkpatrick Bank

Mel Martin, President and CEO of First National Bank of Oklahoma

Powell sees it this way: “You know, at the end of the day, we’re never going to be a leader in technology, we don’t have resources to do that. Large, institutional banks are going to throw everything they can against the wall to see what sticks, and they have that as part of their strategy. For us, we watch, read the tea leaves—and when the adoption rate is there, we invest in the service.” He remembers when the industry shifted from phone banking to internet banking to mobile app banking. “Nobody knew how widely they were going to be adopted, but when it was clear that customers preferred them, you quickly go into development and get that rolled out.” While each bank’s vibe is distinct, they align in important ways. None believes they need to be on the bleeding edge of technology simply for technology’s sake. All began as Oklahoma start-up businesses. Each offers white-glove service to high net-worth clients. All take customer service—at every level—extremely seriously. And they’re all affable and people-oriented, willing to explain financial concepts to the less-savvy (such as this reporter), while making it crystal clear that they view helping clients manage their assets as an almost sacred duty. • 45

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Patrons dine and connect at Living Kitchen Farm & Dairy in Depew, Oklahoma 48

CON NECTING WITH

THE SOUL of

DINING How Living Kitchen’s creators are helping shape Tulsa as a food city BY MEG AN SHEPHERD PH OTO G R A PH Y BY VA L ER IE W EI - H A A S

alfway between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, at the end of a gravel road flanked by post oak, blackjack and pecan trees, there’s a portal disguised as a house. To the naked eye, it’s a log cabin: humble, rugged, hugged on all sides by a wrap-around porch. But for thousands of people—those who have come to dinner on its back porch; tasted the sweetness of its heirloom vegetables as cicadas sing out from the trees—it is a world unto itself. Not a restaurant, but a living, breathing kitchen. Chalk it up to the menus, the romance of the setting or the conversations that unfold between courses. We have the land to thank for the first two, but the last one requires a human touch. “We do a little bit of research on who’s coming to dinner,” admits Linda Ford, co-owner of Living Kitchen Farm & Dairy. “But mostly just enough to get a sense of who people are.” The people who come to Living Kitchen, it would seem, are the kind who crave connection, and who appreciate the work that goes into creating it. I’ve been fortunate enough to dine at Living Kitchen many times over the past decade with friends, family and lovers. No matter the company, the evening always ends in sharing stories, wine and phone numbers with the strangers around the table. That’s the magic of the place: It makes you want to lean in, linger a little longer and commune.

After my father died, still shell-shocked by the loss and wary of being ambushed by grief anywhere too public, I wasn’t ready for crowded rooms. With a loft upstairs and a forest a thousand trees deep to disappear into should a grief wave strike, an intimate dinner on the Living Kitchen porch felt like a safe place to re-enter the world. I found myself making conversation in between courses with the man across from me—a self-proclaimed “Disney Adult,” with whom I seemed to have very little in common at first blush. Remarkably, somewhere around the third course, it became clear that what this man really needed to discuss was the grief he’d been carrying from losing his own father a few years earlier. He’d booked a seat at the dinner looking for a bit of levity; something new to lift the blues. When I told him I knew the feeling, and that I’d lost my own dad just the week before, a door opened between us. Was it kismet, or the unseen work of some other steward? “It’s less about making connections,” Ford insists of her research on guests, “as much as it’s about removing the barriers that might keep us from connecting. “We trust our guests will find their way to the things they have in common.” All of Living Kitchen’s dinners are prepared with locally grown bounty, and unfold around a bespoke theme: smoked and wood-fired 49

meats one night, a 10-course ode to Oklahoma-grown tomatoes or strawberries another. Some dinners take the theme a step further with poems or art, chosen to create a true “feast for the senses.” Intimate, thought-provoking and carefully assembled, each dinner reads like a love letter to the land, and to those of us lucky enough to be on it. Despite its roots in church potlucks and backyard barbecues, communal dining still feels novel in parts of Oklahoma. It’s this that makes Living Kitchen so singular, even counter-cultural. In an era marked by automation, instant everything and hyper-individualism, Living Kitchen offers a welcome reprieve: Slow down, appreciate the harvest, break bread, talk to someone you do not understand until you begin to, take care of each other. These things aren’t just dinner theatre, but the norms that give the experience its soul. When I asked chef and co-owner Lisa Becklund about the ethos of the farm—what animates her concepts, and what inspires her team to keep pouring into these dinners season after season, she hesitated to answer. “God, I don’t know—that’s a loaded question,” she says. “I think the ethos is love, care, and respect for our craft and for our guests. We go into each dinner with those intentions, and the guests bring the magic. Linda does such a wonderful job putting the right people next to the right people. There’s such a sense of community.” The Living Kitchen operation has come a long way since starting two decades ago. What began as dinners in Becklund’s home quickly grew and moved to the farm in 2009, where her bespoke dinners developed an unusually devoted following; each season, seats regularly sell out within minutes of going on sale. With the farm bound by realities of space, time and weather, the demand posed a new question: How might we translate the spirit of Living Kitchen into something people can experience year-round? In August 2020, fresh off the restaurant industry’s COVID-era upheaval, Lisa and Linda opened FarmBar, an intimate tasting-menu restaurant tucked away in Tulsa’s South Boston neighborhood, and seemingly their first attempt at answering that question. FarmBar trades the cabin’s wraparound porch for an open concept dining room, but not its core philosophy: The harvest is the show, with seasonal menus built around locally sourced ingredients grown exclusively in the region. Oklahoma’s changing harvest also drives the menu at Il Seme— the Italian restaurant Ford and Becklund opened in 2022—but the restaurant feels more bohemian cousin than little sister to Living Kitchen and FarmBar. Known for its housemade pastas, locals love Il Seme’s “Spaghetti Western” special, when a plate of red-sauce spaghetti and meatballs with a salad is just $18 on Wednesday nights. In 2025, Ford and Becklund dug deeper into their farm roots and opened Cow & Cabbage, a specialty market in Tulsa’s former Grassroots Larder space. The market sold hyper-local meats, dairy and produce, artisan goods and grab-and-go items, with a small menu of elevated blue-plate specials, like a griddle-fried catfish and braised short rib. Cow & Cabbage seemed like it should’ve been a hit on bustling Cherry Street, where a half-mile row of retail businesses, restaurants and bars yields a steady stream of foot traffic, but the concept struggled to take root. Social media appeals to FarmBar and Il Seme fans did little to turn the tide, except perhaps siphon off business from the group’s other concepts. Guests complained on Reddit threads about its premium prices, and Cow & Cabbage ultimately closed this May after just one year of operation. “It was a combination of not having enough traffic, but that was mainly brought on by paying substantial rent because of the space,” Ford reasons. “It just didn’t happen.” 5050 LUXI E R E

“It’s less about making connections, as much as it’s about removing the barriers that might keep us from connecting. We trust our guests will find their way to the things they have in common.” LINDA FORD

Living Kitchen Chef and co-owner Lisa Becklund

“We learned a lot and will cherish that educational experience,” reasons. “The advantage is that the rent should be a little cheaper Becklund says. “We gave 100,000% and just couldn’t make it happen.” here than in those other cities. You just have to know the numbers.” “I do think there’s a need to educate and engage people around Tulsa is undeniably becoming a more ambitious food city, earning new concepts,” Ford adds. “But if you can take the ambition and growing attention from institutions like The New York Times and the innovation of a concept and marry it to a deep, abiding respect for the James Beard Awards. In 2025, Cat Cox—owner of Country Bird Bakery and the former guiding hand of Living Kitchen’s bread program— people here and what they appreciate, and find ways to help them get on board with it ... there’s plenty of room.” won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef, one of the Come September, when Oklahoma’s oppressive heat finally starts restaurant industry’s highest honors, while operating a tiny Tulsa to taper off, Living Kitchen returns with its most anticipated dinners bakery open just two days a week. of the year: the eponymous Fall Harvest dinner, celebrating the season’s Cow & Cabbage’s arrival was part of a wave of ambitious restaurant bounty; Cascadia, a new menu inspired by Lisa’s two homes in the openings signaling a new chapter for Tulsa’s dining scene. Its closure Pacific Northwest and Oklahoma; and the return of the fan-favorite comes at a moment when chefs, restaurateurs and even philanthropists Dinner for Poets, where guests feast on plates and poems throughout are investing heavily in the city’s culinary future—and is a stark the evening. reminder that opening a charming restaurant and sustaining it are The dinners continue through the fall, culminating in Feast Day two very different beasts. The latter requires consistent execution, celebrations in November and Home for the Holidays dinners in constant refinement, financial discipline, exceptional hospitality, strong December. It’s a big undertaking, and requires the kind of stewardship management ... and most importantly, a flow of diners willing to return that doesn’t leave room for much else. after the novelty wears off. “Personally, I’m not opening up another business,” Becklund insists. Both Living Kitchen and Cow & Cabbage ask something of their customers beyond money. At Living Kitchen, the ask is to slow down, “I want to throw everything we have into our three restaurants. I want to rest and be healthy, and show up for myself and the people I get to eat with a stranger and linger. Cow & Cabbage asked shoppers to work with. There’s no room for more.” pay more for things grown locally, change their habits and support “At this point in our lives,” Ford adds, “we’ve become a lot more producers who couldn’t otherwise survive without it. They ask for our invested in pouring energy into our staff and getting them ready attention, and our participation. for current and future successes. Ultimately, how we define legacy is Tulsa wants to be the kind of city where restaurants like Cow folks who move on from our place and start their own with the values & Cabbage exist. But wanting those restaurants and supporting they learned here.” them consistently are two different things. Its closure raises an Maybe that’s the growth Lisa and Linda are tending now: not uncomfortable question about the city’s culinary ambitions: Can Tulsa sustain concepts that ask this much of us? Can super-niche, hyper- more restaurants, but better ones—and more people prepared to build thoughtful tables and connections of their own. And if we’re all local restaurants commonly found in larger food capitals thrive in lucky, more people gathered around the table, sustaining it for years places like Tulsa? Or is rarity—much like Living Kitchen’s sold-out to come. appeal—part of what makes them special? “We want to be good ancestors,” Becklund says. “I kind of need to “Tulsa is a cute, beautiful city. OKC is really interesting, too. But feel like that’s enough.” • we don’t have the population density of a place like Seattle,” Becklund LUXI E R E 5151

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THEY GO OKC-based clothing brand H1ll House connects cultures B Y A N D R E A S C H U LT Z

iscovering a new brand that intersects Asian DJ culture, textile innovation and matcha pop-ups, while also building a stronger local fashion community, is a surprising find for a midwestern hub like Oklahoma City. Founded in 2024 by best friends Ignatius “Iggy” Tran and Kenny Hua, H1LL HOUSE is, in their words, a “clothing brand built around the idea that home is not a place, it is a feeling you carry with you.” They’ve carried this feeling across the globe to cities in Japan, Vietnam and South Korea, while continuing to host a series of local pop-ups in Oklahoma City and Dallas. “Whether we’re in America or Asia, we make friends everywhere and try to make it feel like it’s home wherever we go.” This “feeling of home” is a reflection of their lives in OKC, which is a laid-back pace of life that matches the rhythm of the city’s heartbeat. This chill lifestyle may seem simple, but it is one that allows them to build intentionally and create long-lasting relationships with the people around them. As said in the “About Us” section of their website, they “found ‘home’ in conversations with new friends, in late night parties, in quiet café moments, in street food stands and in the shared interests that bring people together.” 54

“At the end of the day, we’re an Asian American streetwear brand,” says Tran, “and we want people to recognize that we’re Vietnamese and are rooted in those values.” Born in New Jersey, Tran moved with his family to Oklahoma City at a young enough age so OKC is all he has considered home, while Hua was born and raised in OKC—besides a short stint in Ada where his parents owned and operated a nail salon for several years. “We think it’s cool that we’re from OKC,” says Tran. “We like to represent where we’re from all the time. We love the OKC Thunder, and overall, we really love the pace of life here.” Hua, a seasoned photographer, first traveled to Seoul in 2023 to shoot the annual Waterbomb music festival. His very first day in Korea turned out to be unforgettable—while backstage, he met headlining artist Jay Park, who was one of the few people there who also spoke English. “That first trip to Korea was probably one of the craziest first trips ever,” recalls Hua. “I met Jay Park on my very first day in Korea, and I was like, ‘Dude, I love Korea, and Korea loves me.’” This gateway into the DJ and music scene in Asia sparked a sense of belonging that became a key tenet of their brand. “It’s like the connection between the two cultures,” says Hua. “Being able to connect

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H1ll House founders Kenny Hua and Ignatius “Iggy” Tran 55

ABOVE: Model dons a H1ll House original, “Blessed is the H1ll” OPPOSITE: Iggy (left) and Hua (right) showcase their “City Tee” 56

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through entertainment, our hobbies and things that we all enjoy is really what it is about: just two communities coming together and getting people to understand the other side.” Shortly after Hua’s first trip, the two went back to Korea together. “We didn’t have our brand the first time we came to Korea, and at that time being in Asia was a new taste of life for us,” says Tran. “We got to see a music scene that you don’t see in Oklahoma. That’s something we really appreciated because we were hearing music that we listened to in our free time that you would never hear played in Oklahoma, or even the U.S.; we found a whole other sense of community that we’ve never felt before.” They began to search for an outlet to share this feeling with their community at home, and their clothing brand started taking shape. “I was really fascinated with Korea’s fashion scene for a long time, before I even knew that I wanted to make clothes—and I love how Japan’s fashion scene is so individualistic.” Hua had always been into fashion and reselling clothes. “It got to the point where I thought I should just make my own clothes and sell them rather than reselling other people’s clothes,” he laughs. Being a part of the local fashion community and creative class, their skillsets have quietly prepared them to launch a brand at the caliber of start-ups you see coming out of much larger cities with bigger teams and budgets. “It all started because it was like I was a photographer first, before this whole designing thing,” Hua explains. “I’m more of a graphic designer than a fashion designer, because my specialty is more in the visual arts such as photos, videos, media, digital media. Iggy has the vision for the brand as a whole.” Tran agrees and emphasizes, “It’s almost collaborative on every front. We listen to each other. That’s a part of having a brand and a co-founder—we bounce ideas off each other and take in feedback because we’re working toward the same thing and we want this to be our career. “Our main focus has been Asia, so that’s why we’re always out in Seoul and Tokyo. We’ve been able to build really good relationships with our friends that live out there because we want to see this brand as something that can bring a community together.” That first trip to Korea together also inspired the name H1ll House. “We would always be having our taxi take us back to Hill House Street where we were staying,” Tran says while pulling up a photo on his phone of the street located in Namsan, a popular tourist area near the Seoul Tower. “It was months, almost half a year later, when we finally were like, ‘Oh my gosh, Hill House! That would make the perfect name.’” A skyline silhouette of this house-lined hill became the “City Tee” from their first collection. “That was the first piece we ever dropped— that cityscape. So that’s our staple piece, but if you weren’t there at the beginning, you probably wouldn’t know that was the first one. “We want to bring that same vibe everywhere with our brand, and we just want to make people feel connected with our brand and the clothes they wear.”

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“Home is not a place. It is a feeling you carry with you.”

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I G N AT I U S “ I G G Y ” T R A N AND KENNY HUA

OPPOSITE: Tran and Hua photograph a model wearing a H1ll House original, “When You Pray Upon A Star” Top Right: The photo that inspired the “City Tee” by Kenny Hua Bottom Left: H1ll House’s Oklahoma City Thunder Lunar New Year Celebration t-shirt ABOVE: Tran and Hua in Korea for a pop-up

Since that first collection, they have designed the Lunar New Year Celebration t-shirt with the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2025 and 2026, have had their pieces worn by popular DJs including DJ Lex and ended up in an unboxing video by Jason Nguyen (Jason the Ween on YouTube and Twitch). “Being in the right room at the right time is crucial. That’s why we try to be out there [in Asia] so much. There are so many connections, whether it’s with models or DJs, or just the community as a whole,” says Tran. “They see that we have real love for each other’s culture. We want to create something authentic all the time, and I think if you want to make a connection with anyone, you’ve got to be yourself and just come authentic, and someone’s going to resonate with that.” One example of this, and how all roads somehow do lead back to Oklahoma: During the first pop-up they had at a coffee shop in Seoul in September of 2025, their very first customer was a middle-aged Korean woman who was passing by and stopped in to see what was going on inside. Finding out Tran and Hua were from Oklahoma was the perfect ice-breaker, because it turned out that she is an alum from the University of Oklahoma, as is Tran. “She was so sweet,” says Hua. “After we spoke, she left for a while but came back with cash exchanged into USD for us.” Just like their tagline, home really is wherever you go. Traveling between Asia and America leaves them appreciating the connections to home even more. “I love coming back to OKC,” says Tran. “I miss it whenever I leave. I have everything here … I definitely have everything here.” •

Stay connected with H1ll House on Instagram @h1llhouseclothing or online at h1llhouse.com. 59

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REINVENTION Neverstill Wines and Christy Counts’ dynamic life BY MEG AN SHEPHERD

“

an I hold her before you go?” Christy Counts looks like a vision of New York style and Oklahoma hospitality standing in the doorway of the tasting room: straw cowgirl hat, chic sneakers, a little dog circling her feet and some guest’s baby bouncing on her hip. “This is what it’s all about,” she says, playing peekaboo with the youngest patron in the room. “Everyone who walks in, I want to know them. It’s so important to me to connect with them.” I’ve only known Counts for a few days, but I immediately sense something familiar in her. Maybe it’s the warmth that comes from being raised in a place that welcomes people with open arms, and carrying that sensibility with you even after you’ve left. Like me, Counts is from Oklahoma, and she too moved to New York later in life to build something new. We both love horses; wine in the afternoon; the culty, funky magnetism of Hudson, New York. But the kindred sense between us feels deeper than that: a shared respect for reinvention, and for what happens when styles, tastes, people and places collide and converge into something new. Such is the origin story of her own new baby, Neverstill Wines, the upstate New York-based wine label Counts founded in 2024—a lifelong dream in the making, but a “second act” of sorts. Counts always imagined she’d get into wine-making someday, likely in California. She just didn’t know when, or that the opportunity would eventually lead her back to New York, of all places.

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Counts named Neverstill as an ode to the Hudson River that snakes through the region, and the Indigenous Lenape and Mohican people’s original name for it: Muhheakantuck and Mahicannituk, which roughly translates to the river that flows two ways, or waters that are never still. “The name is obviously a nod to the Hudson River,” she explains, “but it’s also a nod to reinvention, and the ability to reinvent yourself. Renewal, rebirth, hope—it’s all a reminder that this can be a dynamic life.” In a lot of ways, Counts owes Neverstill to an earlier experiment with reinvention: the fake I.D. she used to drink wine during her undergrad years at the University of Oklahoma. “I started drinking wine at Flip’s [Wine Bar],” she recalls. “I lived at Flip’s. I loved Flip’s—still love Flip’s.” And really, with its unfussy red-checkered-tablecloth Italian fare and wine list 200 bottles deep, what’s not to love? Counts credits the Oklahoma City haunt with helping her trade the boxed-wine bladders she kept in her dorm fridge for an actual education in wine, and for introducing her to varietals from around the world. Growing up in a family entrenched in OKC’s wine scene seeded an early interest in winemaking; a wine dinner with legendary Frog’s Leap winemaker John Williams later sealed the deal. She was smitten. Although she knew she wanted a future in wine, a career in animal welfare came first. A lifelong horse lover and rider, Counts founded

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Neverstill Wines founder Christy Counts LUXI E R E 6363

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the Oklahoma Humane Society in 2007 and served as its president until 2013, working to materially lower pet euthanasia rates across the state. After meeting the man who’d become her husband on a trip to Miami and dating long-distance for a year between Oklahoma and New York, talk turned toward the future. “He came to Oklahoma 27 times that year,” Counts recalls. “I said, ‘I’m never living in New York City again—I’m not a city girl.’” He countered: “‘Let me show you this place called Bedford. It’s very horsey, super casual, you’ll love it.’” She did. And as the old adage goes, love makes us do crazy things: pack up our horses, move them across the country and, somewhere along the way, open a wine label. The move brought Counts to Westchester County, where she continued her work in animal advocacy in partnership with the Arnall Family Foundation. From her new home in Bedford, she chaired horse-welfare events, rode the area’s bucolic trails and occasionally rubbed elbows with fellow horse girl Martha Stewart, Western wear and all. Then came the wine. Within two years, Counts had bought a farm and vineyard near the banks of Seneca Lake, gut-renovated a building in the artist mecca of Hudson that would become Neverstill’s tasting room, and launched the brand she’d been imagining for years. That tasting room sits on the cozy upper stretch of Warren Street— Hudson’s quirky main drag, stuffed with antique showrooms, vintage shops, high-end art galleries, former factories turned hotels and farmto-table restaurants. While Hudson isn’t known to be much of a wine region per se, it’s a tourist destination in its own right (the direct train from New York City makes it a favorite weekend getaway for artsy types and Brooklynites who want to cosplay as country folk for the weekend). Stepping inside feels a little like falling into the pages of Kinfolk Magazine: layers of textiles and rugs across every surface; hyperrealist works by internationally celebrated photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron on the walls; an airy, shotgun-style room anchored by a chandelier reminiscent of water; and beneath it, a gorgeous horsehair couch beside a wide fireplace that roars in the cold months, beckoning guests to stay for another glass. Counts deliberately chose the quieter end of Warren to set up shop. She wanted a “jewel box” of a tasting room, something intimate enough for actual conversation and one-on-one time with guests. She worked with former ABC Carpet & Home design executive Amy Ilias to make the space stylish without feeling precious, more living room than wine bar. The finished product reflects the artsy-chic spirit of Hudson—and Counts herself. As for the wine, Neverstill focuses on cool-climate wines made from Finger Lakes grapes, sustainably farmed on its 9-acre New York estate vineyard. To Napa nerds and fans of New World wines, Counts’ bottles sip a little differently: “light, racy, lighter-bodied,” as she describes them. It’s a style well suited to this moment. Long overshadowed by California, New York is the second-largest wine-producing state in the U.S., and its cool climate is an incredible asset as climate change complicates growing conditions in California and drinkers gravitate toward lighter, fresher, lower-ABV wines with bright flavors and less intervention ... the very styles New York naturally produces. “New York is a really exciting region, and a region that I can really get passionate about and advocate for,” Counts says. “That’s my background talking—I love advocating for an underdog.” In just two years, her small operation has produced limited runs of six remarkably drinkable wines. At a recent Neverstill dinner at Prossimo in Tulsa, the Chenin was zippy and racy, with bright notes of green fruit. Neverstill’s Cayuga pét-nat was crisp and surprisingly restrained, without the funk

The entryway at Neverstill Wines in Hudson, New York

commonly associated with the unfiltered bottles beloved by Brooklyn wine bars. But the Cab Franc—whose first vintage earned 92 points from wine critic James Suckling—was the star of the show. Mild and peppery, it sang alongside Prossimo’s pan-roasted duck with darkcherry salsa, with all the juicy ease of a Beaujolais. When I asked Counts over caviar in the tasting room later that weekend to choose a favorite, she demurred. “It depends on the day and how they’re acting. It’s no different than my children,” she says with a laugh. “But I’m still obsessed with our rosé.” Neverstill’s is tart and fresh, like wild strawberries squeezed dry. It begs for a dozen oysters, shrimp skewers seared on the grill or a slow backyard happy hour during one of Oklahoma’s deceptively hot fall evenings. Counts predicts the rosé will be sold out before summer ends. No matter; she’s happy to help guests taste their way toward something new to love. “One of my favorite things to do is have people taste all of our wines and talk them through with really simple descriptors,” she says. “Our pét-nat, I like to say, ‘This is Champagne’s cool little sister.’ Or our Chenin Blanc, I’ll say, ‘It’s almost like a margarita: really tart, no sweetness, super limey.’” Wine, for Counts, is less an object of connoisseurship than a conduit for connection. Back in Hudson, that idea is built into the room itself. In Oklahoma, it explains something surprising: why a tiny New York winery producing just 1,000 cases a year went to the trouble of distributing them here. Neverstill is currently available in only two states: New York and Oklahoma. “I want to build the brand in a place that I want to spend time in,” Counts reasons.

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One of the cozy tasting areas to enjoy a glass of Neverstill’s Cayuga pét-nat or whatever else the day may call for

Like so many who leave Oklahoma behind—if not for greener pastures, then perhaps bigger ones—she feels the “push and pull” of home, that tender duality of wanting to experience someplace different while remaining deeply connected to where you started. It’s why she partnered with restaurants like Prossimo and Sedalia’s to introduce Neverstill to Oklahoma, and why she’s willing to put in the work to keep it here. “I need to care less about the Oklahoma of it all,” she admits, “but I stupidly just want people in Oklahoma to have this wine, so I will get it down there. I don’t care if it’s in our best interest. I want my friends to taste this.” Thanks to a new partnership with Thirst Wine Merchants, and distribution at select wine shops and restaurants, now they can. If there’s one lesson winemaking has to teach us, it’s the certainty of beginning again. To everything, there is indeed a season. Growth, renewal and continual evolution are part of tending the land. They’re also part of tending a life. Reinvention doesn’t have to mean shedding everything that came before. If we’re lucky, the next vintage carries notes of the old one with it—home, history, instinct— all expressed in some new way. “I started this brand in my late 40s after living a whole different career,” Counts tells me, as I wonder about what my own second act might look like. “If I can do that, you can do anything. There’s always hope.” Maybe that’s the real promise of a second act: not knowing exactly when it will arrive, but allowing ourselves to hope for it anyway. To trust the instincts that tell us when to leave and what to carry with us. To embrace someplace new, then make it our own. As the wine itself proves out, there is always more to discover, more to taste, more to become. • 65

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Director Keith “Sneak” Daniels

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U NHER A LDED L EGAC Y New documentary unveils why Black firefighters are Fighting More than Fire in Tulsa BY ALE X ANDR A BOHANNON

n the eve of his second documentary’s film festival premiere, award-winning filmmaker Keith “Sneak” Daniels reflects on why the time was right for this story to be told. “This story’s personal to me; I want to tell it, and if I don’t tell it, nobody will,” says Daniels, whose feature-length documentary Fighting More than Fire premiered at deadCenter Film Festival on June 12, in downtown Oklahoma City. Fighting More than Fire aligns with Daniels’ themes of documenting untold Black history, legacy and resilience. His previous documentary, Fire in Little Africa: The Doc, captures the collaboration of over 50 Black artists as they record a hip-hop album honoring the resilience of Tulsa’s historic Greenwood District for the centennial anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Daniels, a Greenwood native, said the inspiration for his second documentary came from his friends in the Tulsa Fire Department who shared first-responder stories that clued him in on the bigger picture of the history of Black firefighters in Tulsa.

“This is when I was making my first doc, and I was like, ‘There’s a story here; I don’t know what it is yet, but you guys are telling me a lot of cool stuff,’” says Daniels. “I did some research on the origins of Black firefighters in Tulsa, and found out there wasn’t much info on it, so I was like, ‘Okay, there might be a lane here that nobody’s explored.’” But this story gets even more personal for Daniels. In 1996, Tulsa firefighter James “Big Daddy” Walker made a split-second decision that would affect Daniels and his family forever. “Big Daddy, he saved my mom’s life, which we had in the film as well,” says Daniels. While off duty, Walker rescued Daniels’ mother, Heather, from a crushed car that was on fire. Walker received Firefighter of the Year in 1997 for his actions that day. “That was one of those [situations] where he’s a family friend, so I’ve known him my whole life, but I didn’t know about that story until I was much older.” LUXI E R E 6969

BELOW: Tulsa Fire Department Lieutenant Osha Davis OPPOSITE TOP: Tulsa Fire Department Lieutenant Osha Davis on a call OPPOSITE BOTTOM: Tulsa Fire Department Lieutenant Osha Davis prepares for an emergency call

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UNTOLD STORIES Besides brief mentions on local news stations during Black History Month, there was not an in-depth chronicle of the history of Black firefighters in Tulsa. The City of Tulsa’s 35-page history of the fire department, written in 2017, details that the city hired Black firefighters in 1956 but notes no other contributions by Black individuals; the document also does not mention the fires of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Daniels’ documentary, in contrast, explores the living history and legacy of multiple generations of Black firefighters serving in the Tulsa Fire Department, beginning with those first Black firefighters in 1956. Known simply as The Six, these were the first six Black firefighters hired by the department for the newly built, segregated Station 19 at Mohawk and Peoria. “Fire Station 19 was the only fire station [The Six] could work in,” says retired Tulsa Firefighter Ronald Stephens in Fighting More than Fire. “They had to park the fire truck in the middle, and one side was for the whites and one side was for the Blacks. Whites had all real nice stuff, bathrooms and bedrooms. Blacks had a locker room with a table and a kitchen. And when they had a fire, they all got on the truck together to fight the fire.” Ronald Stephens, retired firefighter and son of Cleatus Q. Stephens, one of the original six Black firefighters at Station 19, was one of the over 20 active-duty and retired firefighters Daniels interviewed on camera. Ron and his twin Don—who was also interviewed in the film—both served in the Tulsa Fire Department for 31 years. Seeing a role model like their father in the profession had a substantial influence on Ron and Don. But without a family member in the field, many Black children don’t see Black firefighters often. “That’s the thing that was said throughout by a lot of people, like ‘growing up, I didn’t really see Black firefighters,’ and that’s why I put it in there so many times,” says Daniels. “Growing up, the only one I knew was my friend’s dad, and that was it. I didn’t know any other Black firefighters.”

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UNTOLD CHALLENGES Citing data from Deloitte’s DataUSA, the documentary states that 79% of firefighters are white and only 7% are Black. After the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, systemic barriers in fire departments across the country—including the Tulsa Fire Department—didn’t end. Cledella Evans-Stearns, the first Black female firefighter in the Tulsa Fire Department, wasn’t hired until 2001. “I was getting it bit by bit, and was beginning to piece it up,” says Daniels about hearing stories about the discrimination faced by Black individuals throughout the hiring and promotion processes, which yielded the issuance of a federal consent decree to fix the disparities. “Multiple people were saying the same thing about the consent decree and malpractice of hiring. They would do it for a few years, and then there would be these 10-year gaps where they wouldn’t hire many Black people, and then there was another wave, in like the ’80s and ’90s, so it was a pattern that I began to see.” Some of these challenges faced by Black members of the Tulsa Fire Department caused them to decline to be interviewed for the film. “Some people have a sour taste in their mouth about the department,” says Daniels. “I know a few people who did tell me no; they were just like, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to go up that tree,’ or they might have thought the film was demonizing the department more than uplifting Black firefighters.” The film spends a good amount of its runtime doing the latter. 71

Promotional poster art for Fighting More than Fire 72

Tulsa Fire Museum

UPLIFTING BLACK FIREFIGHTERS Throughout its approximately 90 minutes, audiences witness Black members of the Tulsa Fire Department teaching Black kids about fire safety and offering them career mentorship. Daniels also follows Tulsa Fire Department’s youngest Black lieutenant firefighter, Osha Davis, and fellow firefighter Walter Clark IV as they present at 100 Black Men of Tulsa, a community organization serving Black middle school and high school boys. Not only does the 100 Black Men play a deep role in the lives of many Black Tulsans, but it also plays a deep role in the production behind Fighting More than Fire. It was through the organization that Daniels was able to apply for and receive a Commemoration Fund grant from the Anne & Henry Zarrow Foundation in 2024, which was game-changing for the film’s production budget, but still placed it in the ultra-low budget range. “I had about 45 [thousand dollars] almost. For a feature, that’s really low budget, so a lot of people had to work underpaid,” says Daniels. “After the first day of following at the station, the whole crew was sold on the idea. They were like, ‘Whatever you need, let me know.’”

It was that first day of following the fire crew at the station when they got their first fire call. “We happened to be downstairs when it happened, by the fire trucks, and then they get the call, and the mood just shifts suddenly, and they were moving quickly, and I could see the look on their faces,” says Daniels. “I looked at [Director of Photography Benji Osborne]. I’m like, ‘I hope you guys are recording.’” Daniels hopes to screen the documentary in as many places as possible, particularly in schools, fire departments across the country and the Tulsa Fire Museum. Just as The Six influenced generations of Black firefighters in Tulsa, Daniels knows the power of mentorship and of seeing people from your community succeed. “I owe it to the generation before me, like I had a mentor growing up named Tyrone Wilkerson. He was an actor, a director, a playwright, and he poured into me as a kid. And if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have been in the arts,” says Daniels. “You get a chance to pay it forward, like when I see up-and-coming Black artists, I’m always a free resource to just pour into, to listen, to try to give any advice I can, because I look back and so many people did it for me.” •

Fighting More than Fire continues to play festivals throughout the country and screen in select cities across Oklahoma. Keep tabs on where the film plays next by following Keith “Sneak” Daniels on Instagram at @sneakthepoet. 73

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Natsukashii in Tulsa 76

THE

ALCHEMY of

TR A DITION Restaurants seize the moment to share culinary authenticity BY G R EG H O RTO N

heamus Feeley has a conversation like many people have a meal— appropriate for a chef and restaurateur—so that while there is a central focus (the entree), there are also the side dish equivalents of tangents, rabbit trails, the occasional contextual excursus and the information you didn’t know you needed until he said it. In discussing Little Belly, his and Chef Marco Herrera’s new Japanese concept in Brookside, he offers: “We wouldn’t have opened Little Belly or Noche, and much of the scene would not have existed—you wouldn’t be writing this story—if not for the foundation Elliot Nelson and his team created for us.” The question was whether or not Tulsa had reached a culinary inflection point, that moment when things change in a way that nothing will be the same after, for better or worse, with the opening of Little Belly and Natsukashii. They’re two very different Japanese restaurants, but both wildly different than the general Oklahoma concept of “Japanese restaurant.” To understand this moment, it’s best to start in 2022, because that’s the year McNellie’s Group and Chef Ben Alexander opened Mr. Kim’s. “I like to say that Tulsa is the most underestimated city in the country,” Feeley says, “and Ben Alexander is the most underestimated chef in the most underestimated city. What he pulled off with Mr. Kim’s couldn’t have happened without Elliot’s framework, and it was the beginning of something different.” If we can be pardoned for using an agricultural metaphor, despite many of us having experienced food primarily as a commodity obtained in grocery stores: If Mr. Kim’s was the seed (or beginning) of the inflection point, Little Belly and Natsukashii are certainly the

beginning of the harvest. It comes down to the archetypes in our heads for what things are. Colin Sato, chef and co-owner at Natsukashii and co-founder of Et Al, says, “New diners who didn’t experience the Et Al pop-ups will occasionally come in and wonder ‘Where the hell are the noodles?’ It’s because the idea of a Japanese restaurant for them is sushi, ramen or noodles, and while we have versions of two of those, that is not what we do at Natsukashii.” Sato’s take could be described as generous, as many of us can remember going to allegedly Japanese restaurants for decades and searching for the one or two sushi rolls on the menu that weren’t deep fried or stuffed with cream cheese, alongside the two sauce choices: teriyaki and soy. At Little Belly diners are introduced to a thoughtful mash-up of an American tavern and a Japanese izakaya; both are taverns in a loose sense. “We have a burger on the menu,” Feeley says. “The goal is to give people a different version of what they want, and we tell our team the learning curve is overcome plate by plate, guest by guest.” Feeley and Herrera had some practice introducing traditional versions with a modern twist of familiar things at Noche when they were still involved. The menu was full of items that would not be instantly recognizable to diners accustomed to TexMex and taquerias, even traditional taquerias. “Mexican food comes with all sorts of preconceptions,” Feeley says. “People arrive with the idea of ‘I know what a margarita is, and that’s not it.’ To overcome that, we presented what the Tulsa diner considered classics, like queso, next to cochinita and tlacoyas.” 77

Salmon Temaki Set at Natsukashii

Chirashi Royale at Little Belly

Teba Shio at Natsukashii

Little Belly in Tulsa

The dining space at Natsukashii

likely put gringo tacos on the menu once a week or a couple of times The latter two are actual classics, while queso is barely in the Venn a month, and we learned to love crunchy shells, shredded orange diagram of what constitutes Mexican food, but the archetypes are cheese and beef seasoned with McCormick’s taco seasoning. Same there, and they are impossible to argue with. So the goal is to win with Italian food: Ragu plus overcooked spaghetti, or lasagna (sub people over with quality and flavor, alongside great service and an cottage cheese). Japanese was not on very many Oklahoma tables, unintimidating approach. The analogy is pretty solid where Japanese nor were Lao, Korean or regional Chinese. We went to restaurants to and Mexican are concerned, because both have been in the state long get those. Sure, we formed preconceptions, but they weren’t deeply enough to create an entire set of expectations among diners. embedded in our nostalgia like the other dishes. For Sato at Natsukashii, making the dishes he grew up with and Neither Little Belly nor Natsukashii suffers from a dogmatic offering them to Tulsa diners is an opportunity to tell his story through approach—to borrow Feeley’s words—to the genre. Little Belly has an food and the experience of dining. He, too, thinks Tulsa has reached a turning point. “It’s not what Tulsa defined as Japanese food 10 years “okiemiyaki” on the menu, made with smoked brisket. Sato calls coowner Chef Chloe Butler’s baking program “the jewel in the crown” of ago, or even a few years ago, but our guests seem ready to try food Natsukashii. They began as Et Al, and that chef-driven diversity lives from people who are telling real stories by cooking the food they love on in the various menus, or as Feeley puts it, “Neither of us are trying and then offering it in a box the diners aren’t used to.” to do Japanese right down the center of the fairway definitionally.” That’s progress by any definition. When significant numbers of Sato sums up the moment well: “We’re an ambitious restaurant. diners set aside preconceptions—typically poorly formed ones based on non-traditional dishes that have been Americanized or Okie-ized— We’re open 14 hours a day, and we have different menus from different chefs. We’re a community of risk takers, and it seems that has finally and begin to try food for the joy of the experience, it’s safe to say the translated to the consumer side, where Tulsa diners are becoming inflection point has been passed. risk takers with their choices as well.” • Why Asian food, broadly understood, though? The answer probably emerges from our experiences eating at home growing up. Our families 79

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Composer Brian Byrne plays in his Purcell studio

THE

BUIL DI NG of

COM POSITION Irish composer Brian Byrne’s music touches the world from an unlikely place BY MICHAEL KINNE Y

t can be a surreal experience for Brian Byrne. Despite the numerous albums he has worked on and the multitude of rock and pop stars he has worked with, the Irish musician still gets giddy when he sees the effect his music has on fans. “There are shows I’ve done where you go, and you hear two hours of your music, and it’s unbelievable,” Byrne says. “When you’re working on (the music), you forget that’s what it is about. And then you sit with an audience, and they’re paying for tickets to hear this show that’s two hours of your music. That’s awesome.” Byrne is from Navan, County Meath, Ireland—the same hometown as the fourth best James Bond (Pierce Brosnan). But it has been in the United States where the 50-year-old composer, conductor, producer, orchestrator and pianist has crafted a career that has put him in the same room as the biggest musical acts in the world who came looking for the Byrne sound. From big movie scores to intimate jazz records, Byrne prides himself first and foremost on just being a piano player who loves to make music. “I always wanted to create. And playing jazz piano is instant composition. If you think about what improvisation actually is, it’s coming up with a composition on the spot,” says Byrne. “So, if you

slow it down, that’s composition. You can apply this to any genre. I studied classical, and I studied jazz. I kind of found it easy to write in different styles; as long as I loved the sound, I loved the project.” In his 36 years in the business, Byrne has built a prolific career that includes composing the scores for 24 feature films and television productions, co-writing the music for Netflix’s “The Residence,” composing and orchestrating music for DreamWorks Animation’s The Croods: A New Age and Sony Pictures’ Hotel Transylvania: Transformania. Byrne’s list of collaborations reads like an awards show. The likes of Barbra Streisand, Bono, Katy Perry, Pink, Sarah McLachlan, Sinéad O’Connor, Van Morrison, Alanis Morissette, Julian Lennon, The Corrs and Celtic Woman are just a few of the luminaries who he has worked alongside. Despite having spent 17 years working in Los Angeles, the past six years of Byrne’s livelihood have taken place in one of the most unlikely of places: His backyard in Oklahoma. After Byrne, his wife Kasey Jones and their two children (Asa and Roxy) moved to Purcell in 2018, he immediately began working to transform what had been a dilapidated auto shop into a state-of-theart music studio. 83

P H O TO G R A P H BY M I C H A E L K I N N E Y

“I saw this building and went, ‘That’s it. I can make this work.’ This was a garage. There was a lawnmower tractor in here, and there was oil spilled on the ground and dirty shelves,” Byrne says. “And so we had to gut it. We spent about a week just tearing everything down, and I’d say it probably took about eight or nine months to complete.” The 1,200-square-foot studio would be easy to miss. Nestled in the heart of a nondescript neighborhood and sitting behind a twostory home, anyone who happened to venture into the backyard might assume it’s a large tool shed or a pool house. Behind its heavy doors and soundproof walls, Byrne spends most of his days locked away with his soundboard, a baby grand piano, various other instruments and, most importantly, a coffee pot. It’s a setup he could never have afforded before taking up residence in Oklahoma. In Los Angeles, he said, it would have cost him more than $2 million. “I never really had a space in L.A. that I was proud to bring people over to,” Byrne says. “I did a movie called Albert Nobbs, which I got a Golden Globe nomination for. But to work on that movie, I had to bring the director (Rodrigo García), the producer (Bonnie Curtis) and Glenn Close (Fatal Attraction, Mars Attacks, 101 Dalmatians). And they’d come over to our tiny little two-bedroom apartment, and I’m in one of the bedrooms, and the kids are sleeping there.” Nowadays, Byrne is more than happy to have people over to work in his studio. That includes the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, with whom he has partnered on two symphony concerts and projects like “From Chinatown to La La Land.”

“I saw this building and went, ‘That’s it. I can make this work.’ This was a garage. There was a lawnmower tractor in here, and there was oil spilled on the ground and dirty shelves. And so we had to gut it.”

I M AG E C O U R T E SY R O N A N M E L I A P H O TO G R A P H Y

BRIAN BYRNE

Even its members were taken aback when they learned they would be making the short drive south on I-35 to work on their music. “The Philharmonic, they were coming down to Purcell asking questions like ‘What’s this studio? Where is it? What are we doing? Why is this Irish guy here in the middle of Purcell?’ But we did it, and it worked out great,” Byrne says. “To have the ability to record an orchestra in your backyard is unbelievable. And I love it.” Byrne doesn’t openly promote his studio, though. He knows he could make more money renting the space to others when he isn’t using it. However, in movie vernacular, it has become his Fortress of Solitude. “I spend every day in here, and I love it. I absolutely love it,” he says. “And most of the stuff I’m doing is not in Oklahoma; it’s in Ireland or Los Angeles or London or wherever. And then occasionally I’ll do some Oklahoma stuff.” Because of the composer’s ability to move from one discipline to another, it’s not hard for him to fill his time with projects. “If something wasn’t working and not paying for a while, I could switch over and be an arranger,” says Byrne. “If the arranging gigs didn’t come in, then I could be a piano player, or I could be a conductor. That old school style of being able to kind of do it all. You have to have those.” Thanks to technology, Byrne can be seated at his mixing board in Purcell and collaborate with other musicians around the world. They can create an entire symphony and never have to be in the same room. While that has made his job easier, it has also taken some of the spark out of the creative process. For someone who grew up playing jazz and knowing the importance of everyone being in the same room and riffing off each other, this new way has taken some time to get used to. Even with all the high-tech gadgetry that surrounds him, Byrne still prefers to go in person when he can. “Obviously, now there’s computers and stuff that’s made it easier, but I love that old school challenge of actually having to do it,” Byrne says. “Being able to go in there and show people exactly the sounds that you want.” Regardless of how the job gets done, he finds ways to stay busy. He is currently working on a feature film that’s set to enter pre-production, a musical that will be shot in Oklahoma and Ireland, and a film with his wife that explores his Irish and her Choctaw backgrounds. It’s a project that will take him back to his homeland, but always with the goal of returning to his studio in Purcell. “We’re working on a documentary together about the Choctaw gift to the Irish in 1847, which is an unbelievable thing,” he says. “I think it was like $178, which was about two or three grand at the time. But it was a massive donation 10 years after the Trail of Tears. They sent this money over to Ireland, not knowing the people. Just a crazy story. I’m from Ireland and Kacey’s from Oklahoma. So that kind of thing inspires me.” • 85

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Gaillardia 5616 Normandy Terrace Offered at $3,240,000 SALE PENDING Positioned within one of Oklahoma City’s most prestigious neighborhoods, this exceptional custom estate offers timeless architecture, refined craftsmanship, and resort-style living on an expansive, beautifully landscaped homesite. Recently transformed through a renovation exceeding $1.1 million, virtually every surface has been thoughtfully updated, including a reimagined kitchen, all new bathrooms, refreshed interiors, and exterior enhancements. Designed to maximize privacy and views, nearly every room overlooks the stunning outdoor oasis. Nearly $250,000 was invested in landscape and outdoor living improvements, including an outdoor kitchen, pergola, fire pit, enhanced landscaping, synthetic turf, and spaces for effortless entertaining.

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The Greiss Mansion is set upon 4 private acres in Tulsa’s most distinguished Midtown enclave, directly across from the celebrated Philbrook Museum. This extraordinary French Normandy estate stands as one of Oklahoma’s most architecturally significant residences. Designed in 1931 by renowned architect John Duncan Forsythe, the estate is a masterwork of timeless European influence, where historic grandeur and refined modern livability exist in exceptional harmony. Encompassing approximately 14,900 square feet (Court House Records), the residence has been meticulously enhanced through extensive improvements while preserving the craftmanship and character that define this remarkable home. The estate offers 5 bedrooms and a collection of formal and informal gathering spaces. Modern enhancements include a whole-home generator providing uninterrupted comfort. Framed by sweeping lawns and mature landscape, this legacy property occupies an irreplaceable setting with a rare opportunity to own one of Tulsa’s most historic homes.

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100 RUSSELL M PERRY AVE | $1,050,000

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1108 Cumberland Court, Nichols Hills

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CONTRACT PENDING / $2,150,000 / SELLER REPRESENTED

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845 NW 46th Street, Oklahoma City

1147 NW 57th Street, Oklahoma City

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1117 Cumberland Court, Nichols Hills

3012 Red Oak Road, Oklahoma City

1820 & 1822 NE 135th Street, Oklahoma City

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1106 Fenwick Place, Nichols Hills

1102 Fenwick Place, Nichols Hills

617 NW 45th Street, Oklahoma City

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