The word is a derivative from Tulsa, a mid-sized city in northeastern Oklahoma, and "attitude" that relfects a self-inflated sense of cultural relevance that Tulsa residents have regarding their city as superior to other cities in the region. This is mostly due to a limited number of mediocre museums, presence of art deco oil-boom architecture, a barrage of high-end strip malls such as Utica Square, and higher elevation than the surrounding Kansas and south Oklahoma plains.
Often describing itself as an "Eastern" city trapped in Oklahoma, Tulsa is popularly self-titled as the "Paris of the Midwest"; this pop culture reference is used in an October 3, 2002 episode from Friends where Chandler accidentally agress to relocate to Tulsa, and unsuccessfully tries to convince Monica that they would be living in the "Paris of the Midwest".

When you eat dirt for the first time and leave your family to build a shack in the woods