March 9, 2026 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, since its release in 1983, Francis Ford Coppola’s film adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders has drawn generations of viewers back to Tulsa, Oklahoma. The story of Ponyboy, Johnny, and the Greasers has become part of American coming-of-age culture, and the modest house where much of the film was shot still stands in the city where it was made.
Now, in what is surely one of the most interesting pop culture intersections of all time, hip-hop artist Danny Boy O’Connor from the rap group House of Pain, best known for their iconic 1992 anthem “Jump Around,” purchased the Tulsa, Oklahoma home where much of The Outsiders film was shot. Here to tell the story is Danny Boy O’Connor himself.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue here with our American story. Since being
released in nineteen eighty three, Francis Ford Coppola's film adaptation
of S. E. Hinton's coming of age novel The Outsiders
has found continued popularity and has achieved official cult status.
And now, in what is surely one of the most
interesting pop culture intersections, hip hop artist Danny Boy O'Connor
(00:33):
from the rap group House of Pain, best known for
the iconic nineteen ninety two anthem jump Around, purchased the Tulsa,
Oklahoma home where much of The Outsider's film was shot.
Here to tell this story is the man himself. Here's
Danny Boy.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
My story really begins Los Angeles, California, nineteen eighty three
when I went unknowingly to a movie that I had
never heard of Woodland Hills, California, called The Outsiders with
my friend Steve Sakolski, who just happened to read the book.
(01:08):
I believe I was in seventh grade, and so he
was a fan of the book and he wanted to
see the movie. He said, Danny, you want to go
see a movie with me? And I thought, sure. Steve
Sakolski pretty cool junior high kid, that I knew, so
I figured, you know, if he likes it, it's probably
something I liked. But I had no idea what we
were going to go see. I didn't have any frame
of reference. And on that full Saturday afternoon, we went
(01:32):
in and saw the movie, and I came out a
changed man, and people ask me all the time what
was my fascination with the Outsiders? And the movie kind
of hit me.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
At a time where.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
I definitely felt out of place in, you know, the
San Fernando Valley in the eighties, being a native New
Yorker who was moved to California at the age of
six and kind of always had like a a strong
connection to the East Coast. So southern California in the
eighties looked a lot different than New York City did.
(02:08):
And I don't know, I just always felt, you know,
separate and apart from and I got that from the
movie as well. And I grew up my father went
to prison when I was two months old. We moved
in with my grandparents. My mother worked nights at the
Chase Manhattan Bank, and so I never really had that
foundation or that family, you know, support or love. And
(02:31):
you know, Carrie, that I carried that with me, even
though you know, I've had a pretty extraordinary life, you
know that that foundation from the beginning, it's always felt unstable.
And so when I went to see The Outsiders, the
first thing I noticed was that they were a fractured family,
(02:52):
a broken family, and that despite that that they stuck
together and had each other's backs. And I felt, at
a thirteen or fourteen year old's mindset was that if
I could just find that kind of friendship out in
the world, that maybe I wouldn't feel so bad about
my home life and the way we grew up. And
(03:14):
so that was the original hook for me for that movie.
That being said, Matt Dillon was the coolest dude on
the planet at that time. The cast was incredible, whether
it's Patrick Swayze, Ralph Machio, Tom Cruise, Darren Dalton, c
Thomas how Diane Lane, they were all. You know, this
(03:36):
was the first time I was really seeing them. Actually,
Leif Garrett was the big star in my mind looking back,
because he was a seventies star and so really was
the only notable name that I knew prior to The Outsiders.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Then Matt Dylon.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
But that being said, you know, the movie was the
coolest thing I'd ever seen, and it stuck with me.
I immediately went home and then dug out a denim
jacket that I may have had from the seventies in
New York and kind of adapted that Dallas Winston Matt
Dylan Swagger for the next few years. But as fate
would have it, I didn't really have much of a
(04:10):
game plan coming out of high school. I dropped out
in ninth grade. I hung out for the next three
year years at high school, never really went in too much,
got in a little bit of trouble with the law,
and during the time where most of my friends were
graduating high school and heading off to college or embarking
on a career, I had no idea what I was
going to do.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
And so.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
I connected reconnected with a high school friend who had
had a record out prior to me and him reconnecting,
and we started a band called House of Pain. And
at the time in hip hop, there wasn't anything on
the landscape like it. We were really, you know, kind
of the next wave of hip hop in the early nineties,
(04:55):
but at that time there wasn't any really, there wasn't
really any.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Hard white boys.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
We were like Irish American tough white kids, and that
was our stick and that our deal was is that,
you know, we were the kind of like you know, boombab,
punch you in your face type of hip hop that
was missing, you know, as as the eighties turned into
the nineties and grunge was a thing hip hop needed
to reinvent. So us in Cyprus Hill were kind of
(05:20):
like the next face of that in that moment. And
so it was very successful with that and sold a
few million records and traveled.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
All over the world and made a million bucks.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
But you know, I like to say, what goes up
must come down, and it was an only you know,
five years later that I was back to where I
started even less because you know, doing music for a
live especially as a creative director and an artist more
than I am a musician, it kind of left me
empty handed when the career was done, or the music
career was done in that moment, and I really had
(05:53):
no other life skills, and I unfortunately turned to drugs
to deal with that pain. So I spent the next
you know five six years high on methamphetamines and drinking
around the clock. And it wasn't until about year two
thousand then I got sober. I stayed sober for about
three and a half years, and you know, first year
(06:13):
was good. Second year I started getting complacent, and then
a little my attitude started to come back and my
expectations started to come back. At around three and a
half years, I decided to have a drink, and it
was pretty much the worst decision I'd ever made. It
took me one week to go back on drugs and
took me three years to get make it back to
the twelve step program. And it wasn't until two thousand
(06:36):
and five that I was able to dross another sober breath.
In two thousand and five is when I began to
put another group together called the Coca and Nostra. And
it was on that fateful tour that brought me to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
So when we got to Tulsa, Oklahoma, we were stuck
here for three days. And when I say stuck, I
mean stuck. But day two of the three days that
(06:59):
we were here, we began to get extremely bored, and
so I called down to the concierge desk in the
lobby and asked them to call us a cab. They laughed,
there was no such thing as cabs. They were able
to wrangle us up a guy in a van that
took about an hour and a half to get to
the hotel, and then when he got there, we asked
him can he take us on a proper tour of Tulsa,
(07:19):
which he proceeded to say yes, and then took us
to the Woodland Hills Mall. And I can assure you
that didn't go over so well with a bunch of
forty year olds going to what was at that point
pretty you know, the mall was kind of shuttered as well,
and so we went there for about an hour, and
(07:40):
as we were heading back to downtown Tulsa, it occurred
to me, Tulsa, Tulsa, Tulsa. Why does Tulsa sound familiar
to me? And it was at that moment I had
the epiphany and I said, excuse me, driver, He said yes.
I said, was the Outsiders filmed here? And he almost
like locked up the brakes. He was like turned around
and said yes absolutely. He says, why do you know it?
I said, I not only know it, I love it.
(08:02):
Do you know where any of the filming locations are?
And he said, I do know where the driving is.
So we proceeded to drop off the rest of the group.
I grabbed my road manager said you're coming with me.
I grabbed my laptop and at the time, even in
two thousand and nine, there wasn't much on the internet
to go on, and it's not like today. Two thousand
(08:22):
and nine, I looked up for locations for the Outsiders,
and I found a Flicker account or two, and I
found a site called Tulsa TV Memories which had a
few of the locations and.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
The addresses were given up. The address I was most.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Interested in was the Outsider's house, which was not given
on that website. But they did tell us where the
drive in was, and it did tell me where the
park in the movie was, the Crutchfield neighborhood, And so
we went to the drive in and I couldn't imagine
that this thing was going to look anything like it
did in the movie. But not only was it, it
felt like it hadn't changed a bit. And my mind
(08:57):
just started to just melt, really because it looked exactly
like it would have in nineteen eighty two when they
were filming, and exactly like it did you know, in
the sixties when they were trying to describe it.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
So it was pretty good stuff anyway.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
So yeah, we got that driver to take us around Tulsa.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
We were able to find the drive in.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
We were able to find Crutchfield Park, which was the
park that Johnny stabs the Socian and they have the
confrontation with the soshas In. And then by finding the Bark,
I was able to find the house. And by finding
the house, this is where my life starts to take
a different turn.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And when we come back, we'll continue with the story
of Danny Boy O'Connor from the rap group House of Pain,
his journey back into his life. The movie The Outsiders
filmed in this town, Tulsa in Oklahoma. The rest of
this story continues here on our American stories, and we
(10:09):
continue here with our American stories and the story of
Danny Boy O'Connor. And my goodness, what a story it's
been so far. No father, a hole he's trying to
fill because of that. Sees this movie, sees this character
in The Outsiders played by Matt Dillon of all people,
and the next thing you know, a little bit later,
(10:29):
he's in a big hit band House of pain and
then drugs. And then one day there's a stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
where The Outsiders was filmed, and the next thing you know,
there he is in front of the house where that
movie was filmed. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
At the time, it was for sale for forty thousand dollars.
I can assure you you can't buy anything in Los Angeles, California,
with the word real attached to it for forty thousand dollars.
I could not believe that this house one would be
for sale, two would be forty thousand dollars, and three
that nobody understood its true value as an American classic
(11:09):
and really a sacred hollow. Grounds that being said, I
knew that I was in no position to buy a
house Untilsa, Oklahoma, living in Beverly Hills, California, and that
I should just kind of take a photo and soak
it all in while I was here then and keep
it keep moving. So that's exactly what I did. I
(11:32):
took a photo out front. We played Caine's Ballroom the
next night, and I also found out that there was
a hole in the wall that Sid Vicious had punched
in nineteen seventy eight when the Sex Pistols played Cain's Ballroom,
and I put both of those photos on Facebook, which
was pretty much a new thing as well, and the
response I got was incredible, and in particular, everybody was
(11:55):
fascinated with the Outsiders and that the house was not
only one still on Earth, but they couldn't believe that
it was still on the Warner Brothers lot, which I
had to correct a lot of people that it is, No,
it is not on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
It is actually still here in North Tulsa.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
And I made sure I did not tell anybody that
it was for sale because I didn't want any else
buying it, never again thinking that I would end up
buying it five years later. But that's exactly what happened.
So after finding the house, we kind of I realized
that there's there's there's some really cool stuff across America,
and so it really started here for me. But I
started to urban explore and I put a group together
(12:32):
called the Delta Bravo Urban Exploration Team. And what that
is is it's a page I started on Facebook, and
I put the Outsider's House first, and I put it
before and after photo told people the basics, you know,
the Outsiders nineteen eighty two. Here's the house that the
Curtis brothers lived. Here's the address, seven thirty one North
Saint Louis Avenue, and here's a before and after photo.
(12:53):
And I found a lot of support and made a
lot of friends through this web page that we started.
And I found that there was a lot of like
minded people all over the world, but here in particular
in the US, that were at a certain age where
they were like really looking back fondly on all of
the pop culture locations and all of our collective history,
(13:15):
which is really pop history. I mean I was, if
I'm honest, I was raised by a television set in
the radio.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
I mean, this is where I got.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Most of the stuff I was after, you know, as
a kid. This is where all my information came from.
So in two thousand and nine, I used the tour
bus as my personal like pop culture location vehicle. And
I figured, if I'm going to be on this tour
bus and everybody else is going to be, you know,
doing their thing, I'm going to get highly caffeinated, walk
around every city we go to, and I'm going to
look for culturally relevant undiscovered locations, and so that was
(13:46):
the birth of the Delta Bravor Urban Expiration Team. Again,
it just was like a cool hobby that I could
do in my sobriety that really cost me nothing. And
I was also able to kind of like see all
the undiscovered locations that I had always wanted to see,
like where Mary Tyler Morris house was in Minneapolis, where
the son of Sam was arrested in Brooklyn, and stuff
(14:08):
like this. And because of the success of that on
the Internet, I got so much, you know, so many
accolades and met so many cool people.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
We started to do it like pretty We took it
pretty serious. For a while.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
We were actually getting courted by a lot of companies
in Hollywood. They were trying to turn it into a
television show. It never really kind of worked out television wise,
but the group kept growing and growing, so we started
to go on group trips.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
And meanwhile I was still touring a lot.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
So I was going back and forth across the US,
and year after year, a minimum of twice a year,
but sometimes three or four times a year, I would
come back, whether on purpose or not, to toss Oklahoma,
and I'd always make a mission or pilgrimage to see
the Outsider's house and mostly some of the other locations
(14:58):
as well. And what I started to notice is that
year after year, this house was starting to deteriorate, and
that the neighborhood was starting to fall apart, and that
the Habitat for Humanity was coming through here and they
were clearing out a lot of these streets and these
houses building new houses. I always like to qualify that
I am a fan of the Habitat for Humanities and
(15:18):
what they do, in particular making low income houses, you know,
affordable to people who wouldn't be able to afford those.
And that being said, I was worried that nobody recognized
this house for really what it was, which was an
American classic and a cinematic masterpiece, you.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Know, part of a bigger, you know picture. And so
at year five is when I got here and started
to get worried.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
I started to think, well, what if they tear this
house down, and what if nobody recognizes that? What what
what this thing really represents and what it is. And
it's on the fifth year when I started to ask
myself the question, well, why don't you do.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Something about it.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
And really I have no expertise on any of this stuff.
I was just a fan who couldn't imagine the world
without the Outsider's House. There was really never a plan
or a blueprint or any of that. But what I
did was meet a couple of people here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
They not only saw the vision that I had that
this should be some kind of like one, it shouldn't
(16:24):
it shouldn't ever be torn down. Two, maybe it could
be restored and it could be somebody's house and we
could put a little display or some homage to the
movie that was filmed here in one of the rooms.
And the idea just kept getting bigger and bigger. But
what ends up happening is we end up getting the
contact information for the owner, who her husband bought the
(16:45):
house five years before I got here, and they basically
did a quick fluff and buff in hopes to use
it as a rental property. Unfortunately, her husband died, he
gives it to her in the will, and her and
her sister moved to Florida because they were not native
to Tulsa and they've had no reason to stay here
(17:07):
once her husband was gone. I guess they were kind
of like absentee landlords. I mean, they were trying their
best to collect the rent, but the tenants weren't paying.
They were eight months behind in their rent. The house
was in terrible condition, and so by the time I
found her in two thousand and nine, she was ready
to sell. We called her. She told us she wouldn't
take a penny less than twenty thousand dollars. My buddy
(17:28):
made the call, so he said he wouldn't give her
a penny more than fifteen thousand dollars, to which she accepted.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
And at that point I thought, man, we robbed this lady.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
I mean, we bought an American treasure for fifteen thousand dollars.
I mean, where on earth can you buy a house
for fifteen thousand dollars, much less the house from the
movie The Outsiders. So yeah, so I buy the house
for fifteen thousand dollars. I buy it sight unseen. I
had never been in the house. I had peeked in
it a few times. I'd been on the outside of
The Outsider's house a few times, but never really knowing
(17:59):
that true condition of the house, and also never understanding
I'm when it comes to remodeling, homes or anything that
has anything to do with that. I have no idea
what I'm doing, So this is not something that I
would have been like predisposed to do, or something that
would have been a likely thing for me to do.
I was just a passionate fan who couldn't imagine if
they tore this house down what the world would would
(18:23):
be like without it. And so I ended up giving
the tenants, little by little, over a month to move
them out, because again they were eight months behind in rent,
and it cost me forty eight hundred dollars to get
them out. When I finally drove here a month later
from California to see my new house, I ended up
breaking in a back window because they did not leave
(18:43):
me keys. And I realized that this was the worst
mistake I had ever made.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
And you just turn it from him. The biggest mistake
he'd ever made, was it. We're going to find out
the rest of the story in a minute, But what
a story it's been so far.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
He was raised on.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
TV and a tour US and for fifteen thousand dollars
he thought he just bought a piece of the American
dream and certainly an American treasure.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
What happens next.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Danny Boy O'Connor's story continues here on our American stories,
(19:41):
and we continue with our American stories. In Danny Boy
O'Connor's story, he had just laid down fifteen grand on
a house in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a house with the Outsiders,
his favorite film, the film that had more influence on
his life than any other. And we all have that film,
or that book or that song. Let's return to Danny
(20:02):
Boy's story in Tulsa.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Clearly the owner knew a lot better than I did
the condition of the house. If there was any worry
of me underpaying for this house, it was quickly erased
when I got in here. I mean, this house was
in shambles. The only thing this house needed was a
brand new house, and it was in terrible condition. And
then the fact was that it didn't look like it
had been cleaned up in the last hundred years.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
They were hoarding in here, and it was in terrible.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Condition, and I panicked, And at that point I thought, well, basically,
I just flushed twenty thousand dollars of my twenty eight
thousand dollars life savings down the drain. I had no
work in the foreseeable future for me. We weren't touring
at that time, and so my next thought was like,
look it, I'm going to ask for help. And I
often say, you know, I'm a six foot six alpha male,
(20:48):
and it's hard to ask for help and when people
assume that you should be able to do this type
of work, but the truth is, I don't know how
to do this type of work. And it was very
it was very humbling, and I had to really humble
myself to that I didn't know what I was doing
and I was in over my head, and that perhaps
if there were a few other outsiders fans on Earth
like me, maybe they could help me find a way
(21:09):
to turn this into a museum, to help pitch in,
whether that was a gift in kind or some cash
or whatever. And so we put a GoFundMe together and
we started to raise little money, and immediately the press
got a whold of the story. And if I thought
I was one of few outsiders fans on this planet,
(21:30):
it didn't take long for me to figure out that
I was clearly wrong on that. I mean, immediately the
city council showed up to the house, the mayor of Tulsa,
showed up to the house, the press came out of
the woodworks, and it just.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Kept growing and growing and growing, and before.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Long, you know, here we were on our way to
turning this thing into a museum. Now, at first I
want to tell you it was going to be a
movie museum because I had read the book.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
But it was only a few years prior that I
read the book.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
But this book, again is it is an American classic.
It was written by a fifteen year old girl here
in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by the name of Susan Luise Hinton.
The book is fifty one years old now. It has
never been out of print. At the time when Susie
got her publishing deal, they agreed with the publishers that
(22:18):
would be best if nobody understood that she was a female,
so they called her sc Hinton to be ambiguous with that.
She was failing out of English when she wrote it
and got a D plus and creative writing. And I
think that's incredible because the hope is there, you know,
for everybody, that great things can happen despite maybe a
few bad marks and a few in a few classes.
(22:42):
And really the book is what brings most people to
the house. People love the movie without a doubt, and
that movie, you know, basically launched the brat pack, which
is all the actors we've mentioned before, you know, Tom Cruise,
Patrick Swayzey, Matt Dylan, Ralph Machio, see Thomas how Diane
directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The book seems to have
(23:04):
way more of a draw, or is equal, if not
bigger draw than the movie. And that was learning experience
for me as well, because on an average day, people
come by this house all the time to.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Stop buying.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
It's usually a fifty year old, a forty year old,
two seventeen year old, and a twelve year old, and
it's usually somebody's going to seventh grade and it's required reading.
Their older brother and sister read it five years ago
when they were in seventh grade, their parents remember reading
it when they got to junior high and they also
(23:39):
were there to see the movie or saw it on
HBO when they were kids. And it's really the whole
family tree that comes to enjoy this whole story from
the book to the movie. And now I'm told it's
being turned into a Broadway musical, which is also incredible,
so so much stuff has transpired since that first day
of me by the house. But what ended up happening
(24:02):
is that the whole community kind of just puts this
thing on their back and runs with it. Plumbers came
by and helped me, plumb roofers roofed, gardener's gardened, tile
layers tiled, and contractors contracted, and everybody just started to
do what they could do. And it looked like, you know,
people would say, hey, listen, on Sunday after my daughter's
soccer practice, I can come by and work for two
(24:22):
hours for free if you don't mind. So yeah, it
would be fantastic. And so really this is a communal project.
You know, I get thanked everywhere I go around town
and around Oklahoma for you know, saving the outsider's house.
But I feel disingenuous by accepting that praise, and I
always tell them and I think they think I'm being
you know, humble, or being you know, coy or whatever.
But the truth is that this this thing happens because
(24:45):
everybody pitched in and helped, and it was usually the
people with the least to give given the most. That
being said, we are number one supporter cash wise, is
the Authoress he Hint and herself and Jack White also,
you know, came by and told me he loved what
(25:06):
we were doing and loved the book, he loves the
movie and loves Tulsa. And he got us over the hump.
We were stuck at forty five thousand dollars on our
GoFundMe and we were looking for seventy five thousand, and
he said, I want to give you thirty thousand dollars
from last night's show and get you over the hump.
Which he did that, and it changed everything. I mean,
we were kind of we were what I thought would
(25:27):
take six to eight months to complete, It took us
three years.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Two months ago we finally were able to cut the ribbon.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
In between those last three years, we've done three events
to support the house. We're both Ralph Macho, c Thomas
how Darren Dalton, all of them in the movie had
come back one or two to three different times for
three different events to support this. And really what I
found out is this thing has become like a community
center and had a really good trickle down effect. I
(25:57):
mean when I got here, the lawn was to my
waist and trash all over the place. We cut the lawn,
got it down a size, We removed all the debris,
we cut down trees that had, you know, fallen in
upon themselves, and we basically cleaned this house up so
nice that everybody else in the neighborhood started to get
the drift and they started to clean their stuff up,
and before long it changed the face of the neighborhood
(26:18):
as well. And so if you come here in North Tulsa,
on the corner of Independent in Saint Louis, you'll definitely
you'll see what I'm talking about. And it's it's a
sight to behold. There's a lot of there's just so
many different layers to this thing. I would have been
bored a long time ago if it was just a
house from a movie. And as much as I loved
the film and loved the book, there's so much more
(26:42):
greater at work here. I love Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
I love.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
That a fifteen year old girl wrote this while she
was failing out of English and got a D plus
and creative writing was really going through a rough patch
and she wrote this masterpiece. And this masterpiece is different
than all others because it really literally is the book
that starts the young adult category. It was the first
time that a young adult ever wrote about being a
young adult for young adults, and if I'm not mistaking,
(27:10):
that is the most successful category of books now on
the market. For me, It's changed my life. I spent
the first let's call it first forty five years of
my life trying to build my career and promote my
brand and stay relevant in that way. And finally it
(27:31):
was a breath of fresh air to discover that this
thing could use somebody to champion it. And instead of
championing you know, the fragments of my shattered career or
whatever you know in music, that I was able to
parlay all that experience that I thought was like of
no use in the end and kind of pivot out
(27:51):
and put it into Susie's legacy and in particular saving
the Outsiders House. And by taking this on, it's opened
my world to a whole bunch of other areas. We're
looking to do weddings here. We bring school children through
on the Monday through Friday, so schools will read this
(28:11):
at seventh grade. They will go to the Circle Cinema,
which was also a historic movie theater here. That's ninety
one years old on the original Route sixty six, and
it was also featured in the movie. They show that
movie to those seventh graders, and then the seventh graders
come here, go dresses, greasers and socials, and they get
to experience the house, the museum, and I know that
(28:35):
they get truly inspired because they don't have a lot
of role models to look at and to say, Hey,
this person is from my school or my city or
my town and they've become successful and they they're legends.
And make no mistake, sie Hinton is there. That's their legend,
that their mentor. They look and they go, this little
girl did this here and it gives them hope. And
(28:57):
so for me, I found a whole new purpose here
inutils Oklahoma. I live here now full time. I move
from Beverly Hills and I've been here for two years
and it only gets.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Better for me.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
This town has changed tremendously in the last ten years
for the better. There's a ton of cool things here
between Root sixty six and Cane's Ballroom and the Drillers
Baseball Stadium where the Dodgers a team plays. There's good food,
good people, and affordable gas. What more can you want,
(29:30):
and you can buy a beautiful home here for one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which tell me where else
you can do that. So I'm Danny O'Connor. I'm the
owner of the Outsider's House, but I am the executive
director of the Outsiders House Museum.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
And yeah, this is my American story. And what a story.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Thanks to Danny boyo O'Connor for telling it, and thanks
to Greg Hangler for putting this together. By the way,
make sure to go to the Outsider's House dot com
to learn more.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Take a visit.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
If you're driving across the mid West, stop in Tulsa.
He took a stop in Tulsa, all right, and he
called it his home. Danny Boy O'Connor's story of finding home.
This is how American stories m
And we continue here with our American story. Since being
released in nineteen eighty three, Francis Ford Coppola's film adaptation
of S. E. Hinton's coming of age novel The Outsiders
has found continued popularity and has achieved official cult status.
And now, in what is surely one of the most
interesting pop culture intersections, hip hop artist Danny Boy O'Connor
(00:33):
from the rap group House of Pain, best known for
the iconic nineteen ninety two anthem jump Around, purchased the Tulsa,
Oklahoma home where much of The Outsider's film was shot.
Here to tell this story is the man himself. Here's
Danny Boy.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
My story really begins Los Angeles, California, nineteen eighty three
when I went unknowingly to a movie that I had
never heard of Woodland Hills, California, called The Outsiders with
my friend Steve Sakolski, who just happened to read the book.
(01:08):
I believe I was in seventh grade, and so he
was a fan of the book and he wanted to
see the movie. He said, Danny, you want to go
see a movie with me? And I thought, sure. Steve
Sakolski pretty cool junior high kid, that I knew, so
I figured, you know, if he likes it, it's probably
something I liked. But I had no idea what we
were going to go see. I didn't have any frame
of reference. And on that full Saturday afternoon, we went
(01:32):
in and saw the movie, and I came out a
changed man, and people ask me all the time what
was my fascination with the Outsiders? And the movie kind
of hit me.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
At a time where.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
I definitely felt out of place in, you know, the
San Fernando Valley in the eighties, being a native New
Yorker who was moved to California at the age of
six and kind of always had like a a strong
connection to the East Coast. So southern California in the
eighties looked a lot different than New York City did.
(02:08):
And I don't know, I just always felt, you know,
separate and apart from and I got that from the
movie as well. And I grew up my father went
to prison when I was two months old. We moved
in with my grandparents. My mother worked nights at the
Chase Manhattan Bank, and so I never really had that
foundation or that family, you know, support or love. And
(02:31):
you know, Carrie, that I carried that with me, even
though you know, I've had a pretty extraordinary life, you
know that that foundation from the beginning, it's always felt unstable.
And so when I went to see The Outsiders, the
first thing I noticed was that they were a fractured family,
(02:52):
a broken family, and that despite that that they stuck
together and had each other's backs. And I felt, at
a thirteen or fourteen year old's mindset was that if
I could just find that kind of friendship out in
the world, that maybe I wouldn't feel so bad about
my home life and the way we grew up. And
(03:14):
so that was the original hook for me for that movie.
That being said, Matt Dillon was the coolest dude on
the planet at that time. The cast was incredible, whether
it's Patrick Swayze, Ralph Machio, Tom Cruise, Darren Dalton, c
Thomas how Diane Lane, they were all. You know, this
(03:36):
was the first time I was really seeing them. Actually,
Leif Garrett was the big star in my mind looking back,
because he was a seventies star and so really was
the only notable name that I knew prior to The Outsiders.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Then Matt Dylon.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
But that being said, you know, the movie was the
coolest thing I'd ever seen, and it stuck with me.
I immediately went home and then dug out a denim
jacket that I may have had from the seventies in
New York and kind of adapted that Dallas Winston Matt
Dylan Swagger for the next few years. But as fate
would have it, I didn't really have much of a
(04:10):
game plan coming out of high school. I dropped out
in ninth grade. I hung out for the next three
year years at high school, never really went in too much,
got in a little bit of trouble with the law,
and during the time where most of my friends were
graduating high school and heading off to college or embarking
on a career, I had no idea what I was
going to do.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
And so.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
I connected reconnected with a high school friend who had
had a record out prior to me and him reconnecting,
and we started a band called House of Pain. And
at the time in hip hop, there wasn't anything on
the landscape like it. We were really, you know, kind
of the next wave of hip hop in the early nineties,
(04:55):
but at that time there wasn't any really, there wasn't
really any.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Hard white boys.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
We were like Irish American tough white kids, and that
was our stick and that our deal was is that,
you know, we were the kind of like you know, boombab,
punch you in your face type of hip hop that
was missing, you know, as as the eighties turned into
the nineties and grunge was a thing hip hop needed
to reinvent. So us in Cyprus Hill were kind of
(05:20):
like the next face of that in that moment. And
so it was very successful with that and sold a
few million records and traveled.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
All over the world and made a million bucks.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
But you know, I like to say, what goes up
must come down, and it was an only you know,
five years later that I was back to where I
started even less because you know, doing music for a
live especially as a creative director and an artist more
than I am a musician, it kind of left me
empty handed when the career was done, or the music
career was done in that moment, and I really had
(05:53):
no other life skills, and I unfortunately turned to drugs
to deal with that pain. So I spent the next
you know five six years high on methamphetamines and drinking
around the clock. And it wasn't until about year two
thousand then I got sober. I stayed sober for about
three and a half years, and you know, first year
(06:13):
was good. Second year I started getting complacent, and then
a little my attitude started to come back and my
expectations started to come back. At around three and a
half years, I decided to have a drink, and it
was pretty much the worst decision I'd ever made. It
took me one week to go back on drugs and
took me three years to get make it back to
the twelve step program. And it wasn't until two thousand
(06:36):
and five that I was able to dross another sober breath.
In two thousand and five is when I began to
put another group together called the Coca and Nostra. And
it was on that fateful tour that brought me to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
So when we got to Tulsa, Oklahoma, we were stuck
here for three days. And when I say stuck, I
mean stuck. But day two of the three days that
(06:59):
we were here, we began to get extremely bored, and
so I called down to the concierge desk in the
lobby and asked them to call us a cab. They laughed,
there was no such thing as cabs. They were able
to wrangle us up a guy in a van that
took about an hour and a half to get to
the hotel, and then when he got there, we asked
him can he take us on a proper tour of Tulsa,
(07:19):
which he proceeded to say yes, and then took us
to the Woodland Hills Mall. And I can assure you
that didn't go over so well with a bunch of
forty year olds going to what was at that point
pretty you know, the mall was kind of shuttered as well,
and so we went there for about an hour, and
(07:40):
as we were heading back to downtown Tulsa, it occurred
to me, Tulsa, Tulsa, Tulsa. Why does Tulsa sound familiar
to me? And it was at that moment I had
the epiphany and I said, excuse me, driver, He said yes.
I said, was the Outsiders filmed here? And he almost
like locked up the brakes. He was like turned around
and said yes absolutely. He says, why do you know it?
I said, I not only know it, I love it.
(08:02):
Do you know where any of the filming locations are?
And he said, I do know where the driving is.
So we proceeded to drop off the rest of the group.
I grabbed my road manager said you're coming with me.
I grabbed my laptop and at the time, even in
two thousand and nine, there wasn't much on the internet
to go on, and it's not like today. Two thousand
(08:22):
and nine, I looked up for locations for the Outsiders,
and I found a Flicker account or two, and I
found a site called Tulsa TV Memories which had a
few of the locations and.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
The addresses were given up. The address I was most.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Interested in was the Outsider's house, which was not given
on that website. But they did tell us where the
drive in was, and it did tell me where the
park in the movie was, the Crutchfield neighborhood, And so
we went to the drive in and I couldn't imagine
that this thing was going to look anything like it
did in the movie. But not only was it, it
felt like it hadn't changed a bit. And my mind
(08:57):
just started to just melt, really because it looked exactly
like it would have in nineteen eighty two when they
were filming, and exactly like it did you know, in
the sixties when they were trying to describe it.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
So it was pretty good stuff anyway.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
So yeah, we got that driver to take us around Tulsa.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
We were able to find the drive in.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
We were able to find Crutchfield Park, which was the
park that Johnny stabs the Socian and they have the
confrontation with the soshas In. And then by finding the Bark,
I was able to find the house. And by finding
the house, this is where my life starts to take
a different turn.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And when we come back, we'll continue with the story
of Danny Boy O'Connor from the rap group House of Pain,
his journey back into his life. The movie The Outsiders
filmed in this town, Tulsa in Oklahoma. The rest of
this story continues here on our American stories, and we
(10:09):
continue here with our American stories and the story of
Danny Boy O'Connor. And my goodness, what a story it's
been so far. No father, a hole he's trying to
fill because of that. Sees this movie, sees this character
in The Outsiders played by Matt Dillon of all people,
and the next thing you know, a little bit later,
(10:29):
he's in a big hit band House of pain and
then drugs. And then one day there's a stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
where The Outsiders was filmed, and the next thing you know,
there he is in front of the house where that
movie was filmed. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
At the time, it was for sale for forty thousand dollars.
I can assure you you can't buy anything in Los Angeles, California,
with the word real attached to it for forty thousand dollars.
I could not believe that this house one would be
for sale, two would be forty thousand dollars, and three
that nobody understood its true value as an American classic
(11:09):
and really a sacred hollow. Grounds that being said, I
knew that I was in no position to buy a
house Untilsa, Oklahoma, living in Beverly Hills, California, and that
I should just kind of take a photo and soak
it all in while I was here then and keep
it keep moving. So that's exactly what I did. I
(11:32):
took a photo out front. We played Caine's Ballroom the
next night, and I also found out that there was
a hole in the wall that Sid Vicious had punched
in nineteen seventy eight when the Sex Pistols played Cain's Ballroom,
and I put both of those photos on Facebook, which
was pretty much a new thing as well, and the
response I got was incredible, and in particular, everybody was
(11:55):
fascinated with the Outsiders and that the house was not
only one still on Earth, but they couldn't believe that
it was still on the Warner Brothers lot, which I
had to correct a lot of people that it is, No,
it is not on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
It is actually still here in North Tulsa.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
And I made sure I did not tell anybody that
it was for sale because I didn't want any else
buying it, never again thinking that I would end up
buying it five years later. But that's exactly what happened.
So after finding the house, we kind of I realized
that there's there's there's some really cool stuff across America,
and so it really started here for me. But I
started to urban explore and I put a group together
(12:32):
called the Delta Bravo Urban Exploration Team. And what that
is is it's a page I started on Facebook, and
I put the Outsider's House first, and I put it
before and after photo told people the basics, you know,
the Outsiders nineteen eighty two. Here's the house that the
Curtis brothers lived. Here's the address, seven thirty one North
Saint Louis Avenue, and here's a before and after photo.
(12:53):
And I found a lot of support and made a
lot of friends through this web page that we started.
And I found that there was a lot of like
minded people all over the world, but here in particular
in the US, that were at a certain age where
they were like really looking back fondly on all of
the pop culture locations and all of our collective history,
(13:15):
which is really pop history. I mean I was, if
I'm honest, I was raised by a television set in
the radio.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
I mean, this is where I got.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Most of the stuff I was after, you know, as
a kid. This is where all my information came from.
So in two thousand and nine, I used the tour
bus as my personal like pop culture location vehicle. And
I figured, if I'm going to be on this tour
bus and everybody else is going to be, you know,
doing their thing, I'm going to get highly caffeinated, walk
around every city we go to, and I'm going to
look for culturally relevant undiscovered locations, and so that was
(13:46):
the birth of the Delta Bravor Urban Expiration Team. Again,
it just was like a cool hobby that I could
do in my sobriety that really cost me nothing. And
I was also able to kind of like see all
the undiscovered locations that I had always wanted to see,
like where Mary Tyler Morris house was in Minneapolis, where
the son of Sam was arrested in Brooklyn, and stuff
(14:08):
like this. And because of the success of that on
the Internet, I got so much, you know, so many
accolades and met so many cool people.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
We started to do it like pretty We took it
pretty serious. For a while.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
We were actually getting courted by a lot of companies
in Hollywood. They were trying to turn it into a
television show. It never really kind of worked out television wise,
but the group kept growing and growing, so we started
to go on group trips.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
And meanwhile I was still touring a lot.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
So I was going back and forth across the US,
and year after year, a minimum of twice a year,
but sometimes three or four times a year, I would
come back, whether on purpose or not, to toss Oklahoma,
and I'd always make a mission or pilgrimage to see
the Outsider's house and mostly some of the other locations
(14:58):
as well. And what I started to notice is that
year after year, this house was starting to deteriorate, and
that the neighborhood was starting to fall apart, and that
the Habitat for Humanity was coming through here and they
were clearing out a lot of these streets and these
houses building new houses. I always like to qualify that
I am a fan of the Habitat for Humanities and
(15:18):
what they do, in particular making low income houses, you know,
affordable to people who wouldn't be able to afford those.
And that being said, I was worried that nobody recognized
this house for really what it was, which was an
American classic and a cinematic masterpiece, you.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Know, part of a bigger, you know picture. And so
at year five is when I got here and started
to get worried.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
I started to think, well, what if they tear this
house down, and what if nobody recognizes that? What what
what this thing really represents and what it is. And
it's on the fifth year when I started to ask
myself the question, well, why don't you do.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Something about it.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
And really I have no expertise on any of this stuff.
I was just a fan who couldn't imagine the world
without the Outsider's House. There was really never a plan
or a blueprint or any of that. But what I
did was meet a couple of people here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
They not only saw the vision that I had that
this should be some kind of like one, it shouldn't
(16:24):
it shouldn't ever be torn down. Two, maybe it could
be restored and it could be somebody's house and we
could put a little display or some homage to the
movie that was filmed here in one of the rooms.
And the idea just kept getting bigger and bigger. But
what ends up happening is we end up getting the
contact information for the owner, who her husband bought the
(16:45):
house five years before I got here, and they basically
did a quick fluff and buff in hopes to use
it as a rental property. Unfortunately, her husband died, he
gives it to her in the will, and her and
her sister moved to Florida because they were not native
to Tulsa and they've had no reason to stay here
(17:07):
once her husband was gone. I guess they were kind
of like absentee landlords. I mean, they were trying their
best to collect the rent, but the tenants weren't paying.
They were eight months behind in their rent. The house
was in terrible condition, and so by the time I
found her in two thousand and nine, she was ready
to sell. We called her. She told us she wouldn't
take a penny less than twenty thousand dollars. My buddy
(17:28):
made the call, so he said he wouldn't give her
a penny more than fifteen thousand dollars, to which she accepted.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
And at that point I thought, man, we robbed this lady.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
I mean, we bought an American treasure for fifteen thousand dollars.
I mean, where on earth can you buy a house
for fifteen thousand dollars, much less the house from the
movie The Outsiders. So yeah, so I buy the house
for fifteen thousand dollars. I buy it sight unseen. I
had never been in the house. I had peeked in
it a few times. I'd been on the outside of
The Outsider's house a few times, but never really knowing
(17:59):
that true condition of the house, and also never understanding
I'm when it comes to remodeling, homes or anything that
has anything to do with that. I have no idea
what I'm doing, So this is not something that I
would have been like predisposed to do, or something that
would have been a likely thing for me to do.
I was just a passionate fan who couldn't imagine if
they tore this house down what the world would would
(18:23):
be like without it. And so I ended up giving
the tenants, little by little, over a month to move
them out, because again they were eight months behind in rent,
and it cost me forty eight hundred dollars to get
them out. When I finally drove here a month later
from California to see my new house, I ended up
breaking in a back window because they did not leave
(18:43):
me keys. And I realized that this was the worst
mistake I had ever made.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
And you just turn it from him. The biggest mistake
he'd ever made, was it. We're going to find out
the rest of the story in a minute, But what
a story it's been so far.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
He was raised on.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
TV and a tour US and for fifteen thousand dollars
he thought he just bought a piece of the American
dream and certainly an American treasure.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
What happens next.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Danny Boy O'Connor's story continues here on our American stories,
(19:41):
and we continue with our American stories. In Danny Boy
O'Connor's story, he had just laid down fifteen grand on
a house in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a house with the Outsiders,
his favorite film, the film that had more influence on
his life than any other. And we all have that film,
or that book or that song. Let's return to Danny
(20:02):
Boy's story in Tulsa.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Clearly the owner knew a lot better than I did
the condition of the house. If there was any worry
of me underpaying for this house, it was quickly erased
when I got in here. I mean, this house was
in shambles. The only thing this house needed was a
brand new house, and it was in terrible condition. And
then the fact was that it didn't look like it
had been cleaned up in the last hundred years.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
They were hoarding in here, and it was in terrible.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Condition, and I panicked, And at that point I thought, well, basically,
I just flushed twenty thousand dollars of my twenty eight
thousand dollars life savings down the drain. I had no
work in the foreseeable future for me. We weren't touring
at that time, and so my next thought was like,
look it, I'm going to ask for help. And I
often say, you know, I'm a six foot six alpha male,
(20:48):
and it's hard to ask for help and when people
assume that you should be able to do this type
of work, but the truth is, I don't know how
to do this type of work. And it was very
it was very humbling, and I had to really humble
myself to that I didn't know what I was doing
and I was in over my head, and that perhaps
if there were a few other outsiders fans on Earth
like me, maybe they could help me find a way
(21:09):
to turn this into a museum, to help pitch in,
whether that was a gift in kind or some cash
or whatever. And so we put a GoFundMe together and
we started to raise little money, and immediately the press
got a whold of the story. And if I thought
I was one of few outsiders fans on this planet,
(21:30):
it didn't take long for me to figure out that
I was clearly wrong on that. I mean, immediately the
city council showed up to the house, the mayor of Tulsa,
showed up to the house, the press came out of
the woodworks, and it just.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Kept growing and growing and growing, and before.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Long, you know, here we were on our way to
turning this thing into a museum. Now, at first I
want to tell you it was going to be a
movie museum because I had read the book.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
But it was only a few years prior that I
read the book.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
But this book, again is it is an American classic.
It was written by a fifteen year old girl here
in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by the name of Susan Luise Hinton.
The book is fifty one years old now. It has
never been out of print. At the time when Susie
got her publishing deal, they agreed with the publishers that
(22:18):
would be best if nobody understood that she was a female,
so they called her sc Hinton to be ambiguous with that.
She was failing out of English when she wrote it
and got a D plus and creative writing. And I
think that's incredible because the hope is there, you know,
for everybody, that great things can happen despite maybe a
few bad marks and a few in a few classes.
(22:42):
And really the book is what brings most people to
the house. People love the movie without a doubt, and
that movie, you know, basically launched the brat pack, which
is all the actors we've mentioned before, you know, Tom Cruise,
Patrick Swayzey, Matt Dylan, Ralph Machio, see Thomas how Diane
directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The book seems to have
(23:04):
way more of a draw, or is equal, if not
bigger draw than the movie. And that was learning experience
for me as well, because on an average day, people
come by this house all the time to.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Stop buying.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
It's usually a fifty year old, a forty year old,
two seventeen year old, and a twelve year old, and
it's usually somebody's going to seventh grade and it's required reading.
Their older brother and sister read it five years ago
when they were in seventh grade, their parents remember reading
it when they got to junior high and they also
(23:39):
were there to see the movie or saw it on
HBO when they were kids. And it's really the whole
family tree that comes to enjoy this whole story from
the book to the movie. And now I'm told it's
being turned into a Broadway musical, which is also incredible,
so so much stuff has transpired since that first day
of me by the house. But what ended up happening
(24:02):
is that the whole community kind of just puts this
thing on their back and runs with it. Plumbers came
by and helped me, plumb roofers roofed, gardener's gardened, tile
layers tiled, and contractors contracted, and everybody just started to
do what they could do. And it looked like, you know,
people would say, hey, listen, on Sunday after my daughter's
soccer practice, I can come by and work for two
(24:22):
hours for free if you don't mind. So yeah, it
would be fantastic. And so really this is a communal project.
You know, I get thanked everywhere I go around town
and around Oklahoma for you know, saving the outsider's house.
But I feel disingenuous by accepting that praise, and I
always tell them and I think they think I'm being
you know, humble, or being you know, coy or whatever.
But the truth is that this this thing happens because
(24:45):
everybody pitched in and helped, and it was usually the
people with the least to give given the most. That
being said, we are number one supporter cash wise, is
the Authoress he Hint and herself and Jack White also,
you know, came by and told me he loved what
(25:06):
we were doing and loved the book, he loves the
movie and loves Tulsa. And he got us over the hump.
We were stuck at forty five thousand dollars on our
GoFundMe and we were looking for seventy five thousand, and
he said, I want to give you thirty thousand dollars
from last night's show and get you over the hump.
Which he did that, and it changed everything. I mean,
we were kind of we were what I thought would
(25:27):
take six to eight months to complete, It took us
three years.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Two months ago we finally were able to cut the ribbon.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
In between those last three years, we've done three events
to support the house. We're both Ralph Macho, c Thomas
how Darren Dalton, all of them in the movie had
come back one or two to three different times for
three different events to support this. And really what I
found out is this thing has become like a community
center and had a really good trickle down effect. I
(25:57):
mean when I got here, the lawn was to my
waist and trash all over the place. We cut the lawn,
got it down a size, We removed all the debris,
we cut down trees that had, you know, fallen in
upon themselves, and we basically cleaned this house up so
nice that everybody else in the neighborhood started to get
the drift and they started to clean their stuff up,
and before long it changed the face of the neighborhood
(26:18):
as well. And so if you come here in North Tulsa,
on the corner of Independent in Saint Louis, you'll definitely
you'll see what I'm talking about. And it's it's a
sight to behold. There's a lot of there's just so
many different layers to this thing. I would have been
bored a long time ago if it was just a
house from a movie. And as much as I loved
the film and loved the book, there's so much more
(26:42):
greater at work here. I love Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
I love.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
That a fifteen year old girl wrote this while she
was failing out of English and got a D plus
and creative writing was really going through a rough patch
and she wrote this masterpiece. And this masterpiece is different
than all others because it really literally is the book
that starts the young adult category. It was the first
time that a young adult ever wrote about being a
young adult for young adults, and if I'm not mistaking,
(27:10):
that is the most successful category of books now on
the market. For me, It's changed my life. I spent
the first let's call it first forty five years of
my life trying to build my career and promote my
brand and stay relevant in that way. And finally it
(27:31):
was a breath of fresh air to discover that this
thing could use somebody to champion it. And instead of
championing you know, the fragments of my shattered career or
whatever you know in music, that I was able to
parlay all that experience that I thought was like of
no use in the end and kind of pivot out
(27:51):
and put it into Susie's legacy and in particular saving
the Outsiders House. And by taking this on, it's opened
my world to a whole bunch of other areas. We're
looking to do weddings here. We bring school children through
on the Monday through Friday, so schools will read this
(28:11):
at seventh grade. They will go to the Circle Cinema,
which was also a historic movie theater here. That's ninety
one years old on the original Route sixty six, and
it was also featured in the movie. They show that
movie to those seventh graders, and then the seventh graders
come here, go dresses, greasers and socials, and they get
to experience the house, the museum, and I know that
(28:35):
they get truly inspired because they don't have a lot
of role models to look at and to say, Hey,
this person is from my school or my city or
my town and they've become successful and they they're legends.
And make no mistake, sie Hinton is there. That's their legend,
that their mentor. They look and they go, this little
girl did this here and it gives them hope. And
(28:57):
so for me, I found a whole new purpose here
inutils Oklahoma. I live here now full time. I move
from Beverly Hills and I've been here for two years
and it only gets.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Better for me.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
This town has changed tremendously in the last ten years
for the better. There's a ton of cool things here
between Root sixty six and Cane's Ballroom and the Drillers
Baseball Stadium where the Dodgers a team plays. There's good food,
good people, and affordable gas. What more can you want,
(29:30):
and you can buy a beautiful home here for one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which tell me where else
you can do that. So I'm Danny O'Connor. I'm the
owner of the Outsider's House, but I am the executive
director of the Outsiders House Museum.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
And yeah, this is my American story. And what a story.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Thanks to Danny boyo O'Connor for telling it, and thanks
to Greg Hangler for putting this together. By the way,
make sure to go to the Outsider's House dot com
to learn more.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Take a visit.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
If you're driving across the mid West, stop in Tulsa.
He took a stop in Tulsa, all right, and he
called it his home. Danny Boy O'Connor's story of finding home.
This is how American stories m
Host
Lee Habeeb
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