What exactly *is* Crimson Safari? How can I participate? This video answers some of these deep questions of life.

Tuscaloosa Package Crisis

Recently, or maybe this has been going on longer, there has been an epidemic of package stealing in the city of Tuscaloosa. People on my street have been finding their packages torn up in their yards or their mail/packages stolen from straight from their front steps and/or out of their mailbox. The disappointed residents of Parkview Dr. seem to blame Central High School students or other residents nearby. Residents have video footage from a few different houses, but we are now aware some property owners apparently do not even have them on. In one instance, there was a video found of people with ski masks on stealing mail at 6am straight from a mailbox. They have found an opportunity and have completely taken advantage of the fact that they assume we are naive college students who order very interesting things. The police will not do anything about it and sadly, it has affected a large portion of the city. So to take matters into our own hands we have used our resources and have informed both delivery services, FedEx and UPS and they are aware and have intentionally done their best to hide and protect our precious packages. But unfortunately, we will never find my roommate's homemade cookies her grandma sent her.

Price gouging during LSU weekend?

The Scene: Tuscaloosa, Alabama Innisfree Bar. On Friday and Saturday Innisfree charged a 60-dollar cover for entrance. This so happened to be the weekend of the LSU(#2) Alabama(#3) matchup. This was a big weekend and poor college students travel from all over the country to watch people run into each other with a ball. These naive poor inebriated college students stumble to bars around Tuscaloosa only to be victims of price gauging. The google definition for price gouging is as followed "Price gouging is a term referring to when a seller spikes the prices of goods, services or commodities to a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair, and is considered exploitative, potentially to an unethical extent.". This seems to fit perfectly with what they are doing. This may be looked at with a blind eye if the Tide were to have won but since they lost for the first time in my 4 years here at home you would think the bars after making millions off of college students and their parents money that they would have some sympathy and lower prices for students looking to drown their sorrows with alcohol, BUT NO! The price stayed 60 even after the loss on Saturday this barbaric business scheme is kicking a college student while they are down (ok boomer). Besides that, who cares its college, money will not stop me from acquiring the smooth flow of a long neck brewski with the bros. Soon I will be the one swindling college students for their parents’ money when I am working. I will become what I despised.  I see an oppurtunity to open a bar that gives patrons 20 dollars in bar credit to purchase drinks on the nights Alabama loses. This will build brand loyalty and from the business should not take that much of a hit since Alabama does not lose often. The bar will have special drinks associated with iconic plays from Alabama football history. 

This blogspot was originally intended as an ongoing assignment for MGT 387 students to post observations about life on UA campus and in Tuscaloosa. For this coming game day weekend, I want you to engage in a Crimson Safari where you identify odd, interesting, perplexing, whatever situations that are worthy of further consideration or could present untapped opportunities. In particular, I want you to emphasize a new way of looking at something that we generally accept as the ordinary or mundane to frame it in a new light.

For example, I have a post where I saw a repeat parking offender who had been booted; what if that parking offender could pay her parking fine, get un-booted, and receive a 40-ounce "boot" glass of beer at the point of payment? I'd feel better about squaring up with the law peeps.

YOUR MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT
Starting RIGHT NOW and through game day weekend, use your insightful mind and camera to capture events, actions, transactions, moments and post them HERE to Crimson Safari. Add one sentence to describe what is happening. Consider also adding a sentence where you describe how this situation is an opportunity or missed opportunity to create joy or value for someone. You have authoring and posting privileges, so take the picture and post the post. Give yourself credit for your insightful eye and mind and yell randomly, "Roll Tide!"