We regret interrupting Urbanism Week to bring you some unfortunate news: Steve Pisonero has made himself Tulsa’s main character once again.
“We are growing the PisosTulsa community with another group that focuses on the rising homeless epidemic in Tulsa,” Pisonero rather halfheartedly posted this week in the other Facebook page in which he’s an admin, Piso’sTulsa Food Review. “Those of you who have a passion about this subject, would like to contribute content or just love our community are encouraged to join” [sic]
Setting aside for a moment the sickening—though unoriginal—idea of crowdsourcing content about people living without shelter, it may be helpful to revisit Steve Pisonero’s long, mostly annoying history as one of Tulsa’s foremost trolls.
Pisonero is, for better and mostly worse, probably the city’s most prominent purveyor of food criticism, in addition to being a California transplant and restaurateur. Piso’sTulsa Food Review has grown to over 132,000 members over 13 years and boy are they active. Just as Meta and the other big tech companies have steadily captured eyeballs away from traditional media over the last 20 or so years, Pisonero’s suburban libertarian everyman approach to evaluation has pushed the discerning food critic to extinction, and in so doing, served as free marketing for him and his business.
While Piso’sTulsa occasionally produces sincere, quality recommendations and even unusual, sublime short stories, more often you’ll find frothy comments ranging from ragebait to right-wing dogwhistling to discourse over whether or not diners are obligated to tip service staff.
Pisonero’s new group is currently titled PisosTulsa - The Homeless Blight and it’s already attracted over 3,700 members, though it’s unclear how many of them joined recently. The group history shows that the group was created on March 4, 2023 and underwent a series of name changes before becoming PisosTulsa - The Homeless Blight on June 29.
“The focus of this group is to bring awareness to Tulsa's rising homeless epidemic,” reads the About section of the new group. “Members are encouraged to post news and opinions relating to the city's homeless scourge .” [sic]