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Tulsa Pop Culture Expo: Bill Goldberg visits familiar eating joint, talks about pending move to Texas

Posted: Nov 2nd 2019 By: Jimmie Tramel

Did Bill Goldberg even need to look at the menu? Heck, no.

A few minutes after the actor and professional wrestler sat down for dinner (and an interview), an impressive double meat chili cheeseburger, ready to be conquered, arrived at his table.

Goldberg returned to Tulsa to be a guest at the Tulsa Pop Culture Expo, which began Saturday and continues Sunday at the former Sears location inside Woodland Hills Mall. A Saturday-only guest at the show, Goldberg was born and raised in Tulsa and is a graduate of Edison High School.

A Friday evening interview was originally expected to take place at another location, but instead he wanted to know if the interviewer could meet him at the Goldie’s Patio Grill at 5200 S. Lewis Avenue.

One of the questions was going to be “Is there any place you always go when you return to Tulsa?” It seems he answered the question when he chose the interview spot.

“I spent more time here and Coney I-Lander than I did in school,” he said, indicating that he lived right down the street.

Goldberg mentioned other eating joints he frequented: Claud’s Hamburgers, Weber’s Root Beer Stand, Braum’s, Swenson’s, Pennington’s (black bottom pie!). Jamil’s is a go-to spot also.

A big dude with presumably a big appetite, Goldberg was asked if he has ever emptied the pickle bar at Goldies, where pickles are free. He said he’s not a pickle guy. And those pickles take up room in the stomach that could be used for meat instead. (He said his brother wanted a picture of the double chili cheeseburger.)

The other reason Goldberg chose Goldie’s as an interview site is he likes to do things, interviews included, a little differently. He is his own man and he’s comfortable not only in his own skin, but in his own sweats (details a bit later).

Goldberg is built like a super hero. Because he’s in town for a comic/pop culture con, it was suggested to him that, hey, let’s get you in one of these super hero movies like Dave Bautista, who is Drax in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“I don’t give a crap what Bautista does and I base my work on what I want to do,” Goldberg said.

“I don’t want to be away from my house for six months. I just bought a beautiful piece of property right outside of San Antonio. I’m moving a week from tomorrow with my nine PODS (Portable On Demand Storage units), 28 cars and four goats and horses and dogs and kid and my wife.”

Continuing, Goldberg said he and Steve Austin (the wrestler, not the Bionic Man) are mirror images of each other.

“We have done our time. We have set our position to a point and then, you know, I don’t go out of my realm.”

Goldberg mentioned his ongoing projects (among them: the sitcom “The Goldbergs,” recurring character on “NCIS: Los Angeles,” Dodge spokesperson) and didn’t sound like someone who wanted or needed to add anything more to a full-enough plate.

Does Goldberg appear at many comic/pop culture cons? Maybe one per year. “I don’t like promoters,” he said. “They end up screwing everybody.”

He enlisted for the Tulsa Pop Culture Expo because Tulsa is his hometown and he said he can make a difference in his hometown. He likes the mission of con beneficiary Tulsa Pop Kids (which strives to enhance literacy through pop culture).

“And any time I come here I make a difference because people listen to what I say,” he said. “I got to speak to Edison today, the entire football team. I can guarantee you they haven’t heard a speech like I gave them. Spencer (Tillman) came into town and gave them one, but it wasn’t like mine because we are two different people. I just love Tulsa. I really do. I credit it a lot for making me the person that I am, along with my brothers. ... It has everything to do with who I am today.”

Asked to elaborate, he said, “I am a simple person. I don’t have to be the movie star. I just met the mayor in my sweats. I can pull it off. I am not pretentious. I am not a frivolous Christmas tree that has ornaments hanging off of it. I am the base. You are what you are. I’m that kid that grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and that will never leave me.”

Goldberg said he would have been an Oklahoman for life if the University of Oklahoma had been further from Tulsa. After high school, he wanted to go to a place where he could make a name for himself far away from family turf, so he played college football at Georgia, majored in psychology (he thinks he can read people pretty well) and made it big in professional wrestling and entertainment. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame and the Tulsa Public Schools Athletics Hall of Fame last year.

After visiting with the mayor, Goldberg said it seems like G.T. Bynum is “quite a genuine person.” Goldberg said he talked to the mayor about a number of things that “important to me and seem to be important to him.”

Continuing, he said, “The reality is life is all about treating people the way you want to be treated. Period. End of story. And that’s what I learned (growing up in Tulsa). Elsewhere, that’s not stressed. It’s not. They are too concerned with other things that aren’t important.”

In California, it’s an exception if you see somebody opening the door for somebody, according to Goldberg. “It’s an exception for people to say ‘thank you.’ It’s horrible. I can’t stand it. It’s disheartening. It makes you angry and it spreads like osmosis. And when people think that’s not the norm anymore or it doesn’t matter or you don’t care, then it doesn’t become apparent to anyone anymore and then it’s lost.”

The words came from someone who is relocating from California for the Hill Country in Texas.

“We don’t have too much rain out in California, so I like the rain,” he said. “My wife was raised on a 600-acre grain farm in Saskatchewan and had 13 kids in her graduating class, so she doesn’t need frills or ornaments. I’m at a point in my life where I have done just about everything that I ever could have imagined that I would ever do. The concentration now is on my son, who is 13 years old. We didn’t have a good high school to take him to in the area that we lived in. We didn’t have a good high school within 45 minutes, at least.”

Goldberg said there were other contributing factors in deciding to move.

“Politicians out in California are from Mars,” he said. “The way of life out there is not anything the way I want to do it, and instead of fighting it, I am just going to let them do their thing and I’m going to go and relax and be with like-minded people.”