Watch with shock n awe, as the top Baristas from Green Country’s best cafés compete until one drops from a caffeine overdose. Not really, but you can catch the aromas, tastes and talent as Baristas challenge each other in a coffee contest that is a first for Tulsa and hosted by Café Topéca. Proprietor of
Café Topéca, John Gaberino III (Chip) says, “This will be an interactional event.” “Our (coffee) culture is at the right time for this (type of event)”.

So what is a “Barista”? A “barista” is a person who is a expertise in the making a espresso-based coffee drink. You know how cool those “art forms” on the top of the crème of your latte are and how quick you like your tasty beverage to be in your hands. Now is your chance to see artists at work during a day long competition against the best in Oklahoma right here in your own T-town.

The competition will be taken on by one representative from each participating café. They will get 10 minutes to perfect a espresso, cappuccino, and a personal “signature” drink (in the epitome of the Iron Chef”) for two USBC certified sensorial judges using manual grounding, dosing and tamping of the coffee beans. How serious is this? Besides the 2 sensory judges (one flying in from Nashville),
there will be 1 Technical judge and 1 head judge in the mix. The two sensory judges will judge
timeliness, consistency, cleanliness, quality, taste and presentation. 1st place gets $100, 1/2
day roasting class on a Detrich IR-12 Roaster., 2nd place-$50, 3rd place-$25 and 4th place a
can of Folders.

Participating cafés will be: Jews Coffee & Health, Coffee House on 15th Street, Café Topeca, DoubleShot, Shades of Brown, and Coffee Slingers.

All the details

Where Café Topéca, 115 West 5th Street (south-east side of the historic Mayo Hotel)
When Saturday, December 6th, 2008 at 10:00AM

A machine shop here in Tulsa is planning on adding 80+ jobs to its workforce. M&M Manufacturing Inc will be tripling the workforce with the new employees who make parts for the aerospace, automotive, medical and oil industries.

A local company, Tulsa Biofuels are recycling your old cooking oil into biodiesel. Instead of pouring it down the drain, take it to 81st & Lewis in the Wal-Mart parking lot where they’ll take it and convert it to a much cleaner burning fuel.

Abengoa Bioenergy Corporation, the North American division of a company based in Spain, soon plans to build a new biorefinery in southwestern Kansas that will be the first of its kind in the United States.

Oklahoma scientists are looking to use switchgrass as a component of ethanol at this facility. Realistically, this building wont be completed until mid 2011 right about the time this switchgrass will reach time for its full harvest. Even though this seems to be far off - time wise - it will form a sustainable form of income for the state and be a significant contribution to the biofuel industry.

Cellulose is the main ingredient in a plant’s cell walls and is “the most common organic compound in the world.” The biorefinery will use a “biochemical and thermochemical process” to convert said cellulose for its use in ethanol.

The demand for ethanol continues to outpace ethanol production which doesn’t help the transition from gasoline to ethanol. Many continue to be skeptical because of this inability to meet demand in our country.

The new refinery will be able to convert both starch-based and cellulosic products for their use in ethanol. Starch based products of course include corn, cereal grains, etc. and currently are the majority of the ethanol produced. The transition to more cullulosic products will help the demand by allowing more and more products to be used for this production.

Unfortunatly, this type of thing cant really happen quickly. This takes time. Facilities like this new biorefinery are paving the way forward for US companies.

According to the Milken Institute’s Best-Performing Cities in 2008, jobs in Tulsa and OKCity are on the rise. Tulsa is now ranked 72 up from 98 last year.

On September 25, 1958 Quiktrip opened its doors to Tulsa, Oklahoma at its first store on South Peoria. Now it’s time for the Tulsa based convenience store chain to celebrate their 50th year anniversary with live music from a variety of both local and regional acts. Quiktrip is also throwing a huge fireworks display to thank Tulsa citizens and the community for fifty years of support. The event will be held at the River West Festival Park (on the West Bank of the Arkansas River behind the Amphitheater) in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Best of all, you can get your tickets at all Tulsa area Quiktrip locations for free! 

Bands, Bands, and More Bands!

• Uche and the Crash - These guys will take Stage 2 at 12pm
• Little Chair - Stage 1 at 12:50pm
• Crooked X - Stage 2 at 1:40pm
• Rattle and Hum -  Stage 1 and 2:30pm
• Midlife Crisis - Stage 2 at 3:20pm
• South40 - Stage 1 at 4:10
• Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey - Stage 2 at 5pm
• Leon Russell - Stage 1 at 6pmHanson - Stage 1 at 7:50

What about beer, restrictions, and food?

Glad you asked! Quiktrip Mobile will be on site with concessions, the same food you have learned to enjoy from their deli sandwiches to egg rolls. Best of all, Budweiser will be on site with their beer garden, providing a nice environment to sit back and drink-up! There is a double fist limit of two beers per visit to the beer concession and the beer stops flowing at 9:30PM when the fireworks demonstration begins. Quiktrip has outlined all the details of their Tulsa festival on their website www.quiktrip.com/festival/QTfest_faq.asp.

The fireworks will pop from the 21^st Street Bridge at 9:30PM in Tulsa, Oklahoma and continue until they’re out of the magical black power and star dust. Don’t miss out, come out to the River and enjoy some FREE live music and fireworks! See you there, Tulsa!

Article image thankfully jacked from quiktrip.com/festival/. Great artwork huh?

With the sun straight overhead, blazing heat, and plenty of water to go around; volunteers began to walk up. At 3:00PM today we arranged to assemble at the Tulsa Centennial Park time capsule between Peoria and Madison on Sixth Street. Today marked the day ThisTulsa.com put into motion a group of volunteers to assist in keeping Oklahoma beautiful.

With assistance from organizations like Tulsa MET and TulsaNOW we were able to gather many citizens to help with our goal of keeping the park in pristine condition.

“The park does not seem to be too dirty,” one volunteer stated, but by the end of our day at the park, you could definitely see a difference. The garbage that had collected near the outside of the ponds and water features was no longer there; the remains of once smoked cigarettes no longer called the sidewalks home; and the debris and garbage shoved between the stones were no longer there.

“The park looks great, I’m sweaty, and I still have a smile on my face,” said volunteer Nick Switzer, “this is something that definitely deserved my attention and it got me out of bed today.” Everyone seemed to really have a great time while assisting in the objective of cleaning up the park.

We had plenty of water and Redbull™ available to keep volunteers hydrated and Michael from Tulsa Metropolitan Environmental Trust gave us plenty of bags and gloves to help out.

We had a surprise visit from KOTV - Channel 6 in Tulsa, Oklahoma who did a 30 second clip on the local 5:30PM news tonight. To quote myself, “it’s great to see people taking this project serious.” We know we’re doing something wonderful for ourselves and our community — it is awesome to meet new people and make new friends in the process.

You can see the video on newson6.com and read their article here. Both on newson6.com.

If you missed out on the opportunity to help us clean up Tulsa Centennial Park, do not worry my friends, we will be doing more around the city in upcoming months. We have many new plans and projects in the pipe and we are just working on keeping things organized.

If you want to help support us, fundable.com has our current fund-raising objective which will help us finish up some legal paperwork and get our first set of T-SHIRTS printed.

Thank you to everyone who helped!

A special thank you to everyone who came out and assisted in the clean up today and to everyone supporting our cause.

Nick Switzer, Kristin Hatfield, Brad Vernon, Amanda McConnell, Travis Quinnelly, Carlos Morena, Broc Randall, Michael Patton, Shelley Umezawa, Mark Riddle, Pamela Curtis, Ryan Boyls, Lindsey Boyls, Lou Ann Lissonnet, Jesse Scott, Justin Kerr, Shannon Carpenter, Chris Speegle, Johnathan Bartlett, and everyone else who I might have missed.

Names above in no particular order and if you were left off the list please email justin {at} thistulsa {dot- com} with your name and I will add you.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for future projects or any area of the city that could use our attention, contact us immediately.

Even before the BOK Center officially opens on August 30th, performances had already been booked.  The Eagles will be the first act to perform in the new building on September 6th and a second date has also been added for November 11th.  Just announced today, August 28th, Janet Jackson will be coming to Tulsa on October 26th for her Rock Witchu tour.

The BOK is 565,000 square-feet and will play host to a wide variety of events, including preseason NBA basketball featuring the new Oklahoma City team, men’s college basketball, Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey circus, and Cirque du Soleil’s Saltimbanco.  Also already booked are musical performances with local ties.  American Idol winner and Checotah native, Carrie Underwood is scheduled to perform on October 29th and American Idol season 10 winner David Cook, who lived and worked in Tulsa, will be there September 13 along with the rest of the top 10 contestants from that season.

For information about upcoming events and tickets, go to the BOK Center website.

Heard of U-Verse? We have! ATT officially announced the launch of their U-verse services in Tulsa today. We could elaborate on all the details of the services; but we would rather skip right to the meat and potatoes. U-verse provides residential customers with bandwidth comparable to that of Cox and Verizon’s FIOS services as well as a pretty sick collection of television networks. The content is provided over Fiber optics all the way to your house, or pretty frigg’n close!

U-verse comes as a serious competitor to Cox for digital television without requiring a goofy satellite dish on your roof. So you get the same great quality content without any eye-sores. The service also provides unlimited access at every 17,000 plus ATT wi-fi hotspots.

Prices start at about $69.00 and include internet access, television, and various other premium services that are sure to make you want it. If you can get it, let us know — it’s not available everywhere, but they’re working on getting it to as many residential customers as quickly as possible.

Want more information? Check out att’s official press-release or visit the u-verse website at uverse.att.com.

If you are like most individuals and have received a loan, opened a credit card, or financed an automobile in the past 21 years, you may qualify for free credit monitoring services from TransUnion. The free credit monitoring service is part of a settlement, TransUnion reached on a class-action lawsuit.

The settlement terms state, you may be eligible for the free services if you had an open line of credit from January 1987 until May 2008. The free monitoring service will give you unlimited access to your credit report. No more one-time a year free credit reporting, its unlimited access!

There are two kinds of service available. Under basic service, you will get six months of monitoring service for your credit report and will also be able to apply for a cash payment from the settlement fund. Under enhanced service offering, you will get nine months of monitoring services and an additional bonus mortgage stimulator service. If you select this option, you will not be eligible for a cash payment.

The deal ends a class-action lawsuit that was filed after TransUnion sold customer information in the form of marketing lists to other businesses. The company says it discontinued that practice in 2001. TransUnion denied any wrongdoing.

For more information go to www.listclassaction.com. You can also call the TransUnion settlement number at (866) 416-3470.