Culture Features

“There’s no pride in being a ukulele musician—you have to leave your ego at the door,” said Bob Rasmussen, founder of the Bend Ukulele Group.
And every Tuesday at the Broken Top Bottle Shop, a room full of passionate uke-heads do just that, cradling their tiny four strings to their chests, watching each other for cues and reading music from a preassembled playlist of songs that range from traditional Hawaiian ditties to Beatles’ jams.

Between the smell of freshly baked cupcakes from Ida’s and the salty bacon scent from Crazy Delicious, there aren’t too many streets in Bend that will tempt your palate or your wallet more than Galveston Avenue.
Last Friday was no exception, as the street hosted the first Galveston Street Project, an event that business owners hope will be a monthly celebration of the evolution of the street into one of Bend’s hippest locales.
Hoots and hollers could be heard as the Peddle Pub struggled up the slight hill, followed by a crew of bikers who waved jovially as they rode past the patio of 10 Barrel.

In a small shop near the Deschutes River Woods, Wade Beauchamp bends metal to his will. He cuts it, shapes it, grinds it and fuses it together with lightning. He isn’t an alchemist. Beauchamp builds bicycle frames and is the man behind Vulture Cycles, Bend’s preeminent bicycle frame builder. He’s humble, amiable, clever and just a little geeky. He can make almost anything he can dream of out of metal and magic. He’s also, appropriately, completely mad about bicycles.

Derek Sitter loves his family, excellent movies, fine microbrews and theater so powerful you have to wash off when you get home.
“I’m not going to stop until I’m under your skin,” says Sitter.
As early as 1995, his dream was to produce fringepub theater in an environment where the actors surrounded you, manifesting their art in a casual space where you can come in, grab a beer and be swept up in the moment.
When Sitter moved to Bend from Los Angeles with his wife Jeanne in 2007, he had two goals: to raise their daughter away from LA and to have the freedom to do theater on his own terms.