Tulsa Travel Guide - 2023 NCAAs

[flyingcement]

6 hours ago, aknipp said:

What do we think the Uber situation will be?   Hotel is about 10 mile away. Not renting a car. That may be a mistake.  Bus is about an hour. 

I think you made the right choice in terms of truly absorbing the town.  For me, I can get the best insights on a new town by: 1) riding public transportation and 2) listening to the local sports radio

[Mr. PeanutButter]

Gome threw himself to his back and pinned 

[billyhoyle]

Anybody know a good optometrist in Tulsa? 

Edited March 18, 2023 by billyhoyle

[aknipp]

5 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

Anybody know a good optometrist in Tulsa? 

No kidding.  They need to use the center jumbotron for match details.  Maybe two matches on each side and change them.  Damn hard to see across the stadium 

[Dogbone]

Thoughts on Tulsa

1) I thought they did about as good as they could and all of the locals were very nice

2) The layout of the city was tough (not a lot of big hotels downtown, most bars/restaurants were a few blocks away), which made the Uber/Lyft a small challenge.   But there were plenty of Bird/Lime scooters to get around downtown.

3) Attendance was not as high as normal.  The upper level had a lot of empty seats every session, including for the finals, which I don't recall ever.   It may have to do with OU/OSU being down, but  I think they need to do something about how Ticketmaster sells tickets.   They have gotten away from selling all session tickets to generate more fees.  I understand holding tickets for the individual schools but the allotments got released very late and with scalpers jacking up the tickets for individual session and with Tulsa not being the easiest to get to for some, it seems people stayed home. 

4) The BOK was a little worn down and concessions where subpar.   Beer was cold though.

5) Wish they would put the mat assignment scores on the jumbo-tron.   The team scores don't change enough to need to be constantly up there.

Overall, Tulsa was not my personal favorite but it was fine.   If NCAA's goes back to Oklahoma, I preferred OKC to Tulsa but I'll likely being going regardless.

[Fudge Tunnel]

The BOK Center was ok - not terrible/not great.  The food was not wonderful, the beer was plentiful but pricey.  I'm sure town of Tulsa is fine, but it was terrible for the NCAA wrestling tournament.  You need to have plenty of bars/restaurants within walking distance between sessions, and as far as I could tell there were few if any.  And the one we found that was "sorta" close was in no way prepared for the onslaught of people.  You would think a major city in Oklahoma would be prepped and ready for such an event.  OKC definitely had their sh*t together when they hosted in "06 & '14

I feel next year in KC will be much better - a far better facility, and the P&L District literally across the street with all the food/drink choices we need (as well as a covered outdoor space in which to gather and imbibe).  

[gimpeltf]

Like @Dogbone, I wasn't crazy about the venue. They video and ribbon boards weren't up to snuff. It would have been helpful to have a bout board. The ribbon boards were almost useless, They had things spread out so far that (at least from the 300 level endzone) I could only see  parts of 3 mats displayed. And at that they only showed scores and colors. The clocks were tough to see from the far half. 

And not enough restaurants near enough to be very useful. Although I didn't eat there, the fan fest seemed to be done well food wise. We drove way out one day and found a small Mexican establishment (pretty good). But then we had to pay for parking again. We took a couple of decent walks the other two days. Food wasn't bad either time but a long walk and the opposite direction from the Fan Fest so going back to that before the next session took quite a while.

Being from NJ, I was hesitant to try Oklahoma pizza but Andolini's was pretty good.