Mark Radcliffe in front of the house he bought in Tulsa.
Courtesy of Mark Radcliffe
Mark Radcliffe spent over 12 years in NYC before moving to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in September 2020.He joined the Tulsa Remote program, which pays participants $10,000 to move there for one year.He has since purchased a home and loves his new, slower life and the community he’s built.
As the pandemic took hold in the spring of 2020, a shocking statistic ripped through the news: Over 420,000 people had left New York City.
As a New Yorker myself, I thought, “Man, this pandemic is for real.” It turned out that many of those nearly half a million had just fled to the homes of family and friends outside the city and eventually came back.
But others didn’t — I’m one of them.
When I started to consider leaving, I remember a good friend jabbing me in the chest over a drink, saying, “C’mon, man, you can’t leave New York. You ARE New York!” I got his point, but after 12 years in the city, I decided to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I had lived it up in New York for over a decade
I grew up in New England, between Maine and Vermont, and moved to New York to study acting after college. After moving to Atlanta for grad school and living in a few other cities for different advertising jobs, I moved back to New York.
As an advertising creative director, I found professional success. I also fell in love (then out of love, then rinse and repeat); knew the bartenders’ names at countless restaurants; played live music in venues around the city; took in comedy shows, Broadway musicals, and Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden; lived in the famed West Village; and crowded up to 75 people in my one-bedroom apartment for parties.
I’d had no shortage of highs in Gotham, and I told myself I would never leave.
In late 2014, my career hit its peak — I’d written the ad campaign that launched the Citi Bike program. It was all based around my tagline, “Unlock a bike, Unlock New York.”
Radcliffe with his Citi Bike campaign.
Courtesy of Mark Radcliffe
My writing was on every corner, our team was winning awards, and I even hobnobbed with Alec Baldwin when he awarded our campaign a grand prize at the One Show.
Radcliffe with Alec Baldwin.
Courtesy of Mark Radcliffe
That Halloween, I spotted a woman dressed up as a human Citi Bike. I walked over to give her props on her homemade costume and blue wig and realized it was Brooke Shields dressed up as the embodiment of my ad campaign. That was one of my best nights in New York.
Radcliffe with Brooke Shields.
Courtesy of Mark Radcliffe
NYC was a drug, and damn, was I addicted
The truth is, everyone I know in New York has their extreme lows, too. At some point, I started to wonder if there was anywhere else out there for me.
We’re all hustling as hard as we can, but in a town where drinks are $22, a steak is $68, and the one-bedroom condo you want is $2.2 million, even a six-figure salary doesn’t go that far.
A few events in my life were turning points for me. The first was that my father died rather suddenly just before Christmas in 2017. As I worked through the heartache, I imagined what else I wanted to do in my life.
Then, in 2018, I was having a hard time finding work and struggling to pay rent. I started to question if I was just another cog in the machine.
I thought about the books I’d been toiling away on that I wanted to publish. I also started considering if I ever wanted to own a home.
In February 2020, I gave notice that I was moving out of my NYC apartment
I had no plan about what would come next. Once the pandemic started the following month, it felt like it was truly time for something new.
I read about a program called Tulsa Remote that paid remote workers $10,000 to leave their cities and move to Tulsa for a year.
The $10,000 wasn’t my biggest motivation — I wanted to embark on a new adventure with like-minded risk-takers and lower my living expenses. I applied, got accepted, and moved there on Labor Day 2020. I’d never been to Tulsa, and I didn’t know anyone there.
Radcliffe leaving New York City for Tulsa.
Courtesy of Mark Radcliffe
Everything in Tulsa started going my way very quickly
I moved into a 1,000-square-foot loft that I never could’ve afforded in NYC in a half-residential building downtown that had an old Steinway piano in the lobby. I played songs on it every night, and soon, the hotel in the building hired me to perform in its penthouse bar each week.
At my shows, strangers tipped me $20 without thinking twice. This never happened in New York and convinced me I’d made the right choice.
Tulsa Remote hosted events almost every week for the few hundred participants in the program at the time, so I made countless friends who came to my shows. We traded stories about forging a brave new life in Tulsa. I felt like I’d found my new tribe.
I joined a cycling group and rode in the 100-mile Tulsa Tough race. I volunteered at an Ironman triathlon and helped an educational charity called the PencilBox.
Everywhere I turned in Tulsa, I felt welcome and wanted. In New York, I was just lucky to sneak into the party.
I also started getting more advertising work than ever using the same strategies I always had. I saved every dollar I could, and my bank account reached numbers I’d never seen before.
Soon, I had more than enough money to buy a house
Radcliffe working on his deck.
Courtesy of Mark Radcliffe
I didn’t originally plan to stay longer than one year, but I realized work was going great, I was playing more music in Tulsa than ever, and I had a ton of fantastic new friends.
I’d always wanted a custom-designed modern house of my own. While living in expensive cities, it just felt like a distant dream. Here in Tulsa, it seemed within reach.
After some relentless Zillowing and networking, I met an architect and his wife who had a modern, mountain-style home in a whimsical neighborhood that reminded me of Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles. They were looking to sell their home and build a new one. Three months later, I bought their 2,500-square-foot, three-bedroom home, with a huge deck and hilltop views.
My monthly living expenses are now about $2,000 a month. I was paying $4,000 a month for my one-bedroom in the West Village.
Tulsa made all my dreams come true, even if I wasn’t under the bright lights of New York
Radcliffe’s new living room.
Courtesy of Mark Radcliffe
I bought a used piano for the living room, started hosting music-themed cocktail parties and dinners regularly, and built a new community. Finally, I felt like I actually mattered in my city.
I do miss the energy and the ambition of New York. You can feel it just walking down the street. Tulsa has a more leisurely heartbeat, but it’s a place where you always have time to stop and connect with others.
I go back to New York about five times a year, both for work and to see friends, but I no longer open Zillow to look at condo listings there. And to me, that means I must be happy where I am.
You’d be surprised where you can find happiness, and you might just find it in the last place you’d expect.
Have you relocated and want to share your story? Email Lauryn Haas at lhaas@insider.com.