I’ve always been a huge fan of the Downtown Civic Center Plaza and found a quiet time to get some photos this past weekend. This is such a well designed facility in my opinion and it seems like such a shame to see it so underutilized. Many of these buildings are totally vacant since abandoned by the City of Tulsa.
Originally published at Modern Tulsa
So I’m trying to embrace the urban lifestyle as much as possible by Tulsa standards. A crucial step towards this is spending less time in the car. Fortunately for me I work Downtown, less than two miles from our home. Obviously, a bicycle is the ideal way of transport from both an environmental and fitness perspective, however, I’ve owned a bike since moving here and ridden it only about 20 times in total. It’s just not practical to bike with a suit on or to attend meetings or carry much of anything on a bike (I could come up with way more excuses too!). Bottom line was I continued to drive the truck to work rather than jumping on the mountain bike.
So, over the course of this bitter Oklahoma winter my interest in alternative transportation grew. I looked at LSV’s (Low Speed Vehicles), which have some pretty great tax advantages, especially in the state of Oklahoma, but are still quite costly and they look just like golf carts for the most part. I thought about a motorcycle but was always forbidden by my mother to own one (a street bike that is) and hope to keep myself alive.
It was then my father that brought to my attention that some motor scooters fall under different legal requirements than motorcycles. I read on to understand that bikes under 50cc engine size you do not need a motorcycle license to ride, which appealed to me so my wife or friends can jump on and take a ride. This in combination of a false idea that I would not need a license plate either (this is true for some states but not OK unfortunately).
In any case, I was interested and began researching different scooter options. I looked at the Honda Ruckus, the Yamaha C3 and Genuine Buddy 50 (all 50cc models) and determined that any would do and I was most interested in finding one used for a reasonable price. I began scouring Craigslist and ebay to see what I could come up with and found a pretty small inventory of used scooters in OK.
It came down to two different used options available and I pulled the trigger on a 2006 Honda Metropolitan. This model has been in production for a number of years and has a pretty big following among owners. They have their own forums and support group so there is a ton of information regarding maintenance and upgrades available.
Here are some pics of my first official ride on the new bike. It’s no speed demon but offers a comfortable, non aggressive ride and is able to reach about 35mph on the upper end.
For a years now I’ve wanted to get into photography. Yeah, you can do some decent stuff with a point and shoot but it wasn’t until I finally purchased/got for Christmas a DSLR. Just like the old school SLR’s I now have the ability to change lenses as well as have manual control over the photos I take. No excuses now!
After much research I selected the Canon Revel T1i. It seems to be a great machine out of the gate with a somewhat intuitive interface and some pretty decent semi automatic modes. This camera gives me something to grow into for sure and also shoots full 1920×1080 HD video.
With this new toy I really hope to better the websites I build, in particular moderntulsa.net. I am eager to get some good architecture shots to replace the amateur ones I am working with currently.
In any case, here are the first few acceptable shots I’ve taken with my new toy. Let me know what you think!
A much needed update on the basement. I’d been excited to get back to the basement project and finally made some time to do so. Since completing the electrical and partition walls I am finally getting the paint knocked out. I thought the “mid century orange” would give the room some life. It’s definitely bright but it makes the space seem much more enjoyable to me. I’ve still got one more light coat to go but the Behr paint I used (with primer in mix) covered amazingly well – I would highly recommend. I’d also been without water downstairs since I redid the plumbing with PEX. I had run the lines but had a very hard time figuring out the faucet situation. Being vintage cast iron built in sinks I could not find any type of faucet that would fit the pair of holes. I could have made the sinks work with hose bibs (like you see on a garden hose spigot) but I didn’t think that would be all that attractive and it would have been a hastle no doubt. I opted to craft my own faucet out of copper. This way I could convert over from PEX to copper as well as reduce down to one faucet rather than two. The head swivels to power either sink. I also built a wooden cutting board of sorts to cover one sink if not in use.
This video shows the Modern Tulsa event I put together for Modern Tulsa at Philbrook Art Museum in Tulsa. We hosted an opening night event for the Living in Design exhibit currently on display. Video by Winston Media.
