Tasha Does Tulsa
A new blogger is out to debunk the old palindrome: "Tulsa night life: filth, gin, a slut."
Tasha Does Tulsa is a delightful new blog aimed at challenging Tulsans to stop whining about nothing to do, to get out of the house, and to discover all the fun this city has to offer.
The opening entry introduces Natasha and her co-bloggers Chester (a goldfish) and Party Brenda. Natasha describes herself as:
...a fifth-generation Tulsan, a new downtown resident, and a girl who is willing to pay out-of-pocket to prove Tulsa is more than the sum of its histories, the “there’s nothing to do here†rhetoric, and art deco architecture....
As to the future contents of the blog:
You folks have nothing to look forward to here except proof that there is tons to do in Tulsa.
The most recent post (the only other one so far, published today) is an essay on "How You, Too, Can Do Tulsa." Natasha has nine pieces of sage advice on how to discover what the city has to offer, including getting involved in community service, a church, and (if you're young and professional) one of the young professional groups. She recommends avoiding highways and just driving around. She links to local news outlets, including a merged feed of Tulsa blogs (which includes this one). Several times she recommends reading Urban Tulsa Weekly, which she says is "by far the most definitive source on cool stuff to do in Tulsa."
I especially liked what Natasha had to say about local news -- don't watch it. With all due respect to the good people at 2, 6, 8, and 23, she has a point:
I'm pretty sure the local evening news is tailored to shock and/or scare you out of doing anything in your town, ever. It’s not that they get their thrills from scaring you. If the local evening news couldn’t tell you anything shocking or scary about your city, how would you convince advertisers to buy into those broadcasts instead of The Simpson’s and Seinfeld re-runs?
For that matter, scaring the snot out of you about going downtown is more likely to make you want to curl up on the sofa and watch Simpsons and Seinfeld reruns.
Contrary to what the evening news has to tell you to get you to watch their stations enough to attract advertisers, downtown is not a heathen hide-away. Innocent people are not getting shot all over the place, and cops aren’t hiding out in the construction zones and neighborhoods to pull you over on camera.Tulsa is a peaceful place. There are lots of fun things to do in safe places. Consult the Urban Tulsa. Live a little.
I'm looking forward to reading more of this blog. There's a place to focus on problems, but it's good to have blogs like Tasha Does Tulsa and (the slightly more established) Indie Tulsa to highlight the good and unique and interesting things that we might overlook.
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Hmmm... If she had a scanner she would have heard the "Street Crimes units" getting gang bangers downtown last month. Not everyone walking downtown at night are homeless....
Yep. Local MSM has now morphed into nothing more than cheap crime blotters. I dare say all Tulsa bloggers unite to call for a general boycott of the 6 0'clock news.
I'm glad to see somebody else out there has sense enough to realize that Tulsa is NOT a dangerous place for the average person.
Yes, we have some crime. Yes, we have some gangs. Yes, we have some obnoxious panhandlers. Guess what? It's called a city. As cities go, Tulsa is pretty safe.
I taught for a year in a rough North St. Louis County high school. I guarantee you Tulsa's "gangbangers" would wet themselves if they ran into my former students in a dark alley.
After I quit teaching, I spent two years working as a night cops reporter for an Illinois newspaper whose readership area included the garden districts of East St. Louis, Alorton, Washington Park, Centreville, Cahokia, and my personal favorite, Venice.
After covering three or four homicides a month (and sometimes more; my record was three in an afternoon), I learned that crime generally falls into four categories: Scary (e.g., random attack), Sad But Not My Problem (e.g., domestics), Victims Of Their Own Stupidity (e.g., drunk coed is raped after leaving bar with strange man), and One Less Problem (e.g., drug dealers kill each other). At least 99 percent of the stories I covered fell into those last three categories ... which is why I never felt unsafe getting groceries and running errands late at night. And still don't.
Random crime is extremely rare. If you're minding your own business and exercising some measure of common sense, you can reasonably expect to have a pleasant -- and safe -- evening out in Tulsa.