Growing up in sunny Southern California, Oklahoma was only on Shane Fernandez’s radar for a motocross competition here or there. But life had a way of pulling him back. Fast forward a few years and an architecture degree later, he’s now the president and chairman of USA BMX, advancing Olympic athletes from the heart of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He joined Live in Oklahoma to share a few reasons he decided to move to Oklahoma and build his family in the heartland.
Hi. I’m Shane Fernandez. I am the USA BMX president and chairman. I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I’m originally from Los Angeles, California, and I’m here to tell you why I moved.
I was born and raised in Hollywood, California, and throughout my childhood, I spent much of my time on a BMX bike doing motocross and surfing. Just like you’d probably expect in Southern California.
I think when you live in California and you’re born and raised there, the nostalgia of living in that type of metropolitan megaplex can be overwhelming. But really for me, I was always trying to get out.
I was looking for adventure. I was looking for travel. I did not want to be caught in a rat race and spend a lot of my time living in a car. I was looking for more work-life balance.
My mother was Danish and my father was Spanish and Filipino, so I’ve had a chance to live in Scandinavia and Asia. When it came time to pick a college — I’m pretty adventurous and nomadic — so I decided to do something totally different. I picked the University of Oklahoma’s architecture school.
Opportunity
One of the things that I noticed, especially when I decided to do my masters in Tulsa, was the abundance of opportunities. You can see and feel when a city’s getting ready to really explode in a good way.
Tulsa is a diamond in the rough, and I felt that really for the entire state of Oklahoma. When you have time to be productive and you’re not wasting your time just trying to get from point A to point B every day, you can do things like build your own house.
I wanted my boys to be older, of course, to physically be able to help build our house with me. When COVID hit, I thought, “Okay. Well, the world’s shutting down. We can get busy doing this.” They were 14 and 16 years old at the time, and we just pulled the trigger and did it.
It kinda sucked, because it was a lot of hard work, and when your help is two teenage boys, there were a lot of father-son lessons in that. But I wouldn’t have traded that experience for the world.
Central Location
One of the things that you have to look at [when you’re thinking about moving], of course, is location, location, location.
For me, just because I’m wired for adventure, we wanted to be near the Arkansas River. We wanted to be near downtown. In 15 minutes, I can be at a motocross track, kayaking on the river, or downtown at our office.
The location of our house was perfect because it is right on the river and the new Gathering Place park, which is one of the world’s best parks. It’s literally in our backyard.
Variety of Activities
One of the big things I love about the state of Oklahoma is just that biodiversity. We’ve got sand dunes, sheer cliffs, rivers, forests, so many lakes. I’ve heard we have more shoreline than the state of California, in terms of lakes.
From an architectural standpoint, one of the things I also noticed is that Tulsa is a very boutique-type city. When I have friends come here from around the world, they’re always blown away, because it’s so rich in Art Deco architecture. It’s got a vibe that you can’t describe unless you’ve been here. It’s very artsy and has a music scene. The topography is not what you expect. It’s hilly. It’s robust. It’s very lush. A lot of big trees. A lot of historic oil mansion homes from back in the day.
But one of the things that made me stay was that Oklahoma was investing in a lot of quality place initiatives, like museums, music venues, and parks. When those types of venues are built and designed, the design standards go up because they want to compete with other cities around the world.
Oklahoman Spirit
The adjectives to describe the persona and the grit of Oklahoma include: friendly, accepting, tenacious, unapologetic, driven, wildcatters.
When you look at the history of how our state became a state, it’s no wonder so many things happen when a bunch of like-minded and passionate people get together. Once they believe in it and get hold of it, there’s nothing that will stop the community in Oklahoma, whether it’s Tulsa or Oklahoma City. They move forward.
That’s just really believing in themselves and being open-minded. That is something I have not experienced in all the places I’ve lived across the world.
I think moving to Oklahoma was one of the best surprises in my life, and I’m so glad I’m here.
