Zach Hancock has been a carpenter and a schoolteacher. He is an ordained Presbyterian minister and has his Masters in divinity. At 36, he's thin, energetic and tends to wax philosophical. With disheveled brown hair, thick-rimmed glasses and wearing a worn Phillies T-shirt (though he says he's not really a fan), Hancock looks and acts like a young professor – one who you could have a beer with. And he's been hired by Bob Pearson to coordinate the opening of a new restaurant whose mission goes beyond food and profits. Common Table, as the restaurant is known, opens mid-September in the old Cork space on Oregon Avenue, ushering in what could be a new era of food and philanthropy in Bend.
Culture Features
What's Your Cinderella Pint? Let our Brewfest bracketology be your drinking guide
Editor's Note: This Friday and Saturday beer drinkers from around Central Oregon and beyond will file into the Les Schwab amphitheater for the chance to sample craft beers from around Oregon and the Western United States as part of the 2010 Bend Brewfest. If you like beer, and we know that you do, this is simply The Place To Be this weekend as the hop-ified liquid goodness flows from the taps. In recognition of this great gathering of fermented malts, we're offering a different kind of guide to the event. In a nod to March Madness, we've developed our own bracketology methodology for you to rate and compare the two dozen breweries on hand. The match-ups are beyond arbitrary (they're in alphabetical order). So drink up and have fun filling out your brackets. We're all winners when beer is the game.
Bonnie and Clyde: The Musical
Innovation Theatre Works launched its first production in its new space, the Bend Performing Arts Center. Bonnie and Clyde: The Musical, directed by Brad Hills and produced by Chris Rennolds, the founders and artistic directors of Innovation Theatre Works, is a two-person play that takes us to the steamy heart of 1930s Texas as the infamous Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker meet, fall in love, and commence with a life of crime.
Married leads Jessica and Jeremy Bernard command the stage with not only their pitch-perfect singing, but also with their ability to create empathy for two lawless characters.
Best Seller
Hardcover Fiction 1. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s NestโจStieg Larsson, Knopf, $27.95 The stunning third and final novel in Larsson’s best-selling Millennium Trilogy. (*11) 2. The HelpโจKathryn Stockett, Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, $24.95. This wonderful debut set in the rural South of the 1960s is a February 2009 Indie Next List Great Read. (78)3. Star IslandโจCarl Hiaasen, Knopf, $26.95. Hiaasen’s hilarious spin on life in the celebrity fast lane. (2)
Our Picks for 8/18 – 8/26: Sunriver Music Festival, Bend Brew Fest, Budofights, Ink & Metal, Mat Kearney and more
Sunriver Music Festival
thursday 19 – saturday 21
Now in it's 33rd season, the Sunriver Music Festival still presents quality classical music in a phenomenal setting. This is the second year the festival conducted concerts in Bend, but this weekend all of the concerts take place at the historic Great Hall at Sunriver Resort. Thursday features Chinese pianist Di Wu; Friday and Saturday bring Classical Concerts III and IV, and the Saturday concert features an all-Beethoven program. 7:30pm all three nights. $30-$60, 18 and under $10. Great Hall at Sunriver Resort, 1 Center Dr, Sunriver.
The Northstar Session In-Store โจPerformance
friday 20
Los Angeles-based band The Northstar Session plays rootsy folk-rock with a neo-country feel, so all in all it's something everyone can groove to. The band has garnered comparisons to Wilco, The Black Crowes, The Wallflowers and others, playing vintage rock and roll. The band recently released a new EP, Winter Collection. Northstar plays a 21 and over show at Silver Moon later in the night, but for the U-21 crowd they'll rock out at Ranch Records. Free, 5pm. Ranch Records, 831 NW Wall St. $5, 9pm. Silver Moon Brewing Co, 24 NW Greenwood Ave.
Back to the '50s…or the '80s: Returning to Brownsville for the 25th anniversary of Stand By Me
On the evening of July 25 as we drove under the iconic green bridge and into downtown Brownsville, Oregon, we were transported onto the set of Stand By Me. Unchanged since filming in 1985, seemingly unchanged since the '50s, I asked Linda McCormick, organizer of the film's 25th anniversary celebration, what attracts fans to her quaint hometown.
“The '50s were a simple time for many people in America and coming to Brownsville is like stepping back in time,” she said.
But the Stand By Me celebration was no ordinary step-back. Sure, the buildings nestled on Main Street retained their almost overly nostalgic Norman Rockwell facades, but Brownsville swelled with tourists from all over the world. Big-city hipsters traded the obligatory glad rags for jeans, Chuck Taylors and white Ts, cigarette pack rolled up in one sleeve. Middle-aged men greased thinning hair into ducktails while teenage boys vied for a spot in the Cobras, Kiefer Sutherland's movie gang, which spent their free time playing mailbox baseball and carving tattoos into each other's arms by way of rusty knife.
The Play “Art” and Bonnie & Clyde on stage, Evil Dead: The Musical returns
Bend's been a surprise hub for theater as of late. Currently, two shows are having successful runs and another favorite is on the books for October.
Having found success on Broadway, the Tony-award-winning play Art has stormed the Greenwood Playhouse for a run that goes through next week. Originally a French-language play by Parisian Yasmina Reza, The Play “Art” asks the age-old question, is art more important than friendship? The answer may surprise you, as a piece of modern art tears apart three men's seemingly tight bond. Originally written in 1994 as an allegory about the politics and aesthetics of France, the themes hold up on this side of the pond – especially if you've had your eye on some of the Sotheby's treasures that have recently been on the auction block.
Book Signing: The Thin Black Line
Jim Lynch is no stranger to the Northwest. He grew up in the Puget Sound and while his career as a professional journalist took him around the country, he returned seven years ago to the Northwest where his two recent and critically acclaimed novels are set. The books are lyrical meditations on the geography of Northwest and the people who inhabit a landscape that is pinched between the mountains and the sea on the edge of the continent. In his most recent novel, Border Songs, Lynch focuses on the imaginary line that separates America from its hockey and health care loving neighbor to the north. It's an imaginary line that seems to be growing more hard and volatile in our age of immigrant insecurity and post 9/11 boogeymen.
wRite: Life After Facebook
You can’t really know the poppy by its photo – how the blossom holds the last of sunset, how the pollen is silky on your finger. You have walked along the shining river. You are tired and a little lonely. When you discover the poppy glowing against its dark leaves, you stop. A man walks by with his dog. “Gorgeous time to walk,” he says. The smoke from his cigarette drifts back.
I had breathed deep and imagined writing about life after Facebook, about all of it: the loneliness, the poppy, the sweetness in the stranger’s voice, the harsh scent of his smoke. I took myself off Facebook because my daughter had been exploring the privacy violations she and so many others found outrageous. But there was more. I can’t think of a time in history when it has not been dangerous for one institution to hold huge amounts of information about so many. Consolidation of data is consolidation of power.
Our Picks for 8/11 – 8/19: Franchot Tone, 4 Peaks Summer Jamboree, Robert Randolph and The Family Band and more
Show us Your Spokes – Franchot Tone
friday 13
Franchot Tone is best known around town for his sound production work at Rage Films and his collaborations with Reed Thomas Lawrence. He's also the guitarist in Culver City Dub Collective, but now he's stepping out on his own with his solo project. The sounds are poppy and sunshiney and will go nice with the setting sun in the Parrilla parking lot. $5. Benefits Commute Options. 7pm. Parrilla Grill, 635 NW 14th St.
Munch and Movies: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
friday 13
With the weather as nice as it's been in the last month, who wants to go inside to watch a movie? Um, nobody. Luckily, this event lets families throw down a blanket in a park and take in a free flick. The chosen film is the animated Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs in which, as you may have guessed, food (including meatballs) rains from the sky like rain. Film starts at dusk. 6pm. NorthWest Crossing's Compass Park.

