Culture Features

Never satisfied to just keeping cranking out the same signature brews, Deschutes is unveiling another ambitious, limited run specialty beer at the start of September, The Dissident. The Belgian style brew used a strain of wild yeast that is more commonly associated with European wines to give the beer a distinct flavor characterized by earthy undertones.

Cold beer and cool toes. Hot! It wasn't just hot at the Fifth Annual Bend Brew Fest last Friday and Saturday, it was Discovery Channel Serengeti hot. It was the type of heat that pounds you into a pancake puddle. Thankfully, those in charge had provided 80 brews, 6 marquees, and two kiddies' pools as cooling stations. Once I tossed the kiddies out of their pool, I soaked my feet and struck up a conversation with a woman in the adjacent pool.

"Water transfers heat from the body four times faster than air."

She peered over her mug and fired a warning shot. "Talk to me again and I'll call security." Okay, so she wasn't in Discovery Channel mode. It was time to slip into my sandals and hydrate with a ginger ale, an albino python, and an arrogant bastard.

Last year there were 30 brewers with a total of 60 beers. This year, that increased to 40 brewers and 80 beers. And a reliable source states they hope to have 50 brewers and 100 beers next year. Party on. Along with your official drinking mug, you got 5 tokens to start you rolling and a nifty little guide to the brews so you could grade your favorites. Maybe next year they could provide us all those little golf pencils. Not sure this beer crowd travels with writing implements. Not sure this crowd can write more than a mark anyway. For those who could read, the names of these handcrafted beers are worth the price of admission-which happily is nothing. I don't care what they taste like, you have to love beers with the names Dancing Trout, Axe Head Red (I think I dated her once.), Hazed n Infused, Sweaty Betty (I know I dated her.), Dogzilla, and my personal favorite-Rejewvenator from Shmaltz Brewing Co., the maker of He'Brew, the chosen beer.

Big wheels keep on turning. Imagine yourself as a 20-year-old college student without a care in the world, save maybe Nike's working conditions in Indonesia. You've got three months of free time before fall term and only one problem, no money.

In the post sub-prime and post-post dot.com world, what's a student to do? Pumping gas is always an option (this is Oregon after all) but there are some Karma issues and even good old unleaded is feeling the pinch as folks move to carpooling, biking, and, gasp, even walking. Restaurants have been hit hard, too. Rising food price and a downturn in customers have put the pinch on what was once a go-to industry for students.

Long time friends Peter Daucsavage and Spencer Hill started thinking early about how to turn a buck while home from school and came up with a novel idea. Brainstorming over Christmas the pair decided that they would try to cash in on Bend's summer tourism economy by offering cruiser bike tours of downtown Bend and the Old Mill. Operating with a shoestring budget the two, and a third partner Lucas Zettle, launched Bend Bike Tours. For $30 the pair offer a guided tour of the heart of Bend from Drake Park to the Bill Healy Bridge that includes fun "Did You Know" nuggets like Clark Gable once worked at the Brooks-Scanlon Mill and former Bulletin publisher George Palmer Putnam was married to Amelia Earhart.

Bra busters at 2nd street. How would you like to see a hilarious musical that ends with wily middle-aged women from the audience gathering on the stage for a Rockettes-inspired kick line? What about the live seduction of one of the male audience members or a full-on Tina Turner performance? How about a bunch of songs about having hot flashes, cellulite and going through menopause?

All right, I know you're skeptical. A musical about menopause? How weird and potentially gross, right? This was pretty much what was going through my head as I hauled my 24-year-old self over to 2nd Street Theatre to see Menopause The Musical. Having never personally experienced "The Change," I had some serious doubts. In a theater filled with the stereotypical Menopause crowd - almost all women (there were exactly seven men, 11 if you count the employees) nearly twice my age, I definitely felt a little out of place, that is until the play started.

Director Maralyn Thoma guides Lyryn Cate, Rachel Deegan, Anne Du Fresne and Jackie Johnson in a musical comedy that makes hot flashes, memory loss, overactive bladders, vision problems, mood swings and wacky libidos seem horrifically funny and fabulous.

The trend in IPA's over the past few years has been to go obnoxiously big, as evidenced by one local brewery's not so long ago makeover of its IPA. This approach is generally embraced by Northwest drinkers who gobble up malt and hops like a pre-Subway Jared at an Old Country Buffet.