Tulsa Tips

We hope that you are excited to visit Tulsa for the 2019 World of Bob Dylan Symposium. As you will soon discover, Tulsa is a wonderful music city, with a vibrant art scene downtown. This page is devoted to providing some tips for navigating our city, as well as some advice for what to anticipate concerning weather, parking, live music events, and more. Check out this article from the public radio station for just a taste of some of the musical goings-on you may find here. Or take a look at Tulsa’s hip-hop scene, which is “today’s folk protest music” according to this writer from NonDoc. Also, Tulsa has many exceptional examples of 1920’s Art Deco. If you’re interested in architecture, there is a self-guided Art Deco Landmarks Walking Tour.

To and From the Airport

The Tulsa International Airport is about 15 minutes away from Tulsa’s downtown. The Hyatt Regency offers a complimentary 24-hour-shuttle transportation service, roundtrip. If you have other hotel accommodations, we recommend downloading Lyft or taking a cab to your destination. If you are staying at either the Holiday Inn Center or the Hampton Inn, it may be worthwhile to contact them about transportation from the airport, and their phone numbers are included below in the “Parking” section.

Walking

Tulsa downtown provides a friendly, walk-able, aesthetically pleasing experience, but outside the downtown area it turns into more of a sprawl: if you’re staying outside downtown, be sure to prepare by downloading “Uber” or “Lyft” on your phone, or familiarize yourself with a local cab company. Any of these services can be provided when commuting from the airport, and it is about a 15 minute drive from the Tulsa airport to downtown. In addition to these options, we have recently begun to offer electric scooters from the companies “Lime” and “Bird,” as well as a bike sharing service called “This Machine,” all accessible via phone-apps. For shorter distances this can be a fun, cheap way to get around, but if you plan to use them, please bring a helmet!

Parking

The recommended hotels featured on our website all offer different rates for parking your vehicle there, and also offer valet services. The information for each hotel is below, as according to their websites. We have included some information, but for more details, we recommend contacting the hotel with the numbers that we provide.

Hyatt Regency: +1 (918)-234-1234

Weather

Though it is safe to assume that the weather here at the end of May will be quite hot and humid, Oklahoma weather is notoriously unpredictable, so we would recommend being prepared for anything. It will likely be in the 80’s during your stay, but could drop much lower in the evenings. You may also want to bring an umbrella in case we get one of our famous spring thunderstorms.

Other Points of Interest

Woody Guthrie Center: Tulsa is home to the fascinating Woody Guthrie Center, where you can see and hear some of Woody’s original instruments, writings and recordings. You can even experience living in the Dust Bowl with the virtual reality experience, in addition to a circulating exhibit which has featured other musical acts and genres since the center opened. The center regularly puts on events featuring Dylan and his work, including a film series last year inspired by Tarantula and featuring Eat the Document, Blonde Cobra and more.

Philbrook: Don’t miss the excellent Philbrook museum downtown, one of two locations where you can experience some of Tulsa’s engaging art scene. Exhibitions featured during the conference will include the intimate photographs of Larry Clark, and some road-tripping photography from “My Name is Earl” star Jason Lee.

Duet Jazz Club: There are concerts happening at Tulsa’s traditional Jazz venue nearly every night of the conference weekend. Check out their calendar here. 

Additionally, there will be live music events at Brady Theater, The Vanguard, Sound Pony and more!