Cities: January 2020 Archives

Tulsa is getting a fancy new park that residents can feel smug about - The Lost Ogle

OKC blog rates OKC's new Scissortail Park uninspiring compared to Tulsa's The Gathering Place, but also shares a bit of childhood park nostalgia.

"I grew up in Midwest City, and the coolest thing we had at Regional Park back then was a metal rocketship that baked you like an oven and had filthy graffiti scrawled all over the inside."

I remember that rocketship fondly. It was across the street from my aunt's apartment, and it resembled the USS Enterprise, with the main saucer and two engine pods. The biggest problem with it was that it was too popular and crowded, so you couldn't really reenact Star Trek episodes in it.

A Look Into Leonard Nimoy's Time in Boston's West End | BDCWire

"Off of Cambridge Street downtown is the Charles River Plaza Shopping Center, a small complex in a compact area where medical workers from Mass General and residents of Beacon Hill can park their cars and buy groceries at Whole Foods. What they might not know, however, is that the land they are walking on was once a bustling residential neighborhood, razed in the name of urban renewal, which displaced families and residents, including actor Leonard Nimoy, known most famously as the half-Vulcan, half-Human Mr. Spock, second-in-command of the U.S.S. Enterprise." The article is full of links to other stories and videos about Nimoy's Boston childhood. Nimoy also did a two-hour oral history interview with the Yiddish Book Center about his family and his neighborhood.