Gordon Smith skipped the Republican National Convention in St. Paul this week, saying he needed to hit the campaign trail in Oregon. But he seems to have spent most of the week holed up at home in Pendleton.
So much fuss over a little leaf. Times are getting tight, at least that's what we keep hearing, especially in this part of the country. People are driving less in an attempt to spend less of their hard-earned cash on gas, they're eating out less as food costs increase, but here in Central Oregon, where we have a brewery for about every 15,000 people, it appears that people are still drinking.
We might be cutting down on our road trips, but we'll be damned if we stop drinking our locally made beer, or so say our local brew smiths. If there were ever a sign that there is confidence in the local beer industry, it is Three Creeks Brewing Co., the new craft brewery that Wade Underwood recently opened in Sisters. Underwood previously lived in Phoenix while operating an Internet-based company that he subsequently sold before settling in Sisters with the intention of opening the city's only craft brew pub.
"We're opening at an interesting time, that's for sure," says a laughing Underwood, a University of Oregon grad whose interest in brewing stems back several years to the early days of McMenamins.
"If you look at all the business models, it would tell you not to build this," Underwood says, citing models that suggest that a community needs at least 150,000 people to support a craft brewery. But he says the Northwest is an exception, and furthermore, Central Oregon is an even more substantial exception, supporting six brewing establishments before Underwood opened the seventh.
The Central Oregon real estate market passed a milestone in August, but it's not one to brag about: Notices of default (NODs) surpassed home sales in Deschutes County.
Republican state treasurer candidate Allen Alley has found another "scandal" to attack his opponent Ben Westlund with, but this one looks even less credible than the 11-year-old "sex scandal" Alley tried to revive in late July.
The Oregonian's Jeff Mapes, blogging from the Republican National Convention, writes that it was déj vu all over again when Oregon GOP Vice Chairman Russ Walker ripped into environmentalists yesterday.
Last night my 4,312-day Stone Temple Pilots concert drought came to an
end as the four men of the newly reunited STP brought their aged selves
onto the Les Schwab Amphitheater stage on a particularly brisk night
for what can be most easily and predictably described as a 1990s
nostalgia sing-along.
After waiting for a good hour after I disappointingly missing openers
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Led Zeppelin's "Good Times, Bad Times"
boomed over the largest collection of speakers I've ever seen on the
LSA stage and the lights finally went dim. Enter three-fourths of STP,
dressed for the event with bassist Robert DeLeo actually in a sport
coat variation and brother Dean in some sort of quirky-yet-classy
Western shirt. They all saddled up - but still no sight of Scott
Weiland. Instantly, my mind went a little nuts as it often does,
wondering if Weiland had again fallen off the wagon and was maybe
camped out somewhere in between Bend and Seattle (where the band played
a headlining slot at Bumbershoot) ingesting whatever substances he
could get his hands on. I imagined him sitting in a drainage ditch for
some reason - perhaps that's what my generation expects out of Weiland.
But then out of the shadows, the red glimmer of a freshly lit cigarette
glowed through the darkened stage and there was Mr. Weiland.
With a cowboy hat, scarf, sunglasses, and skin-tight designer jeans,
Weiland took one last drag, hacked a sizable chunk of saliva to the
side and got the show on the road, manhandling the microphone stand as
only Weiland can do as the band got things started with "Big Empty." It
was only a few seconds later that, just as my pubescenent eyes saw on
November 11, 1996, precisely 4,312 days prior, Weiland hopped up on the
monitor speakers and strutted around. And just as I did more than 4,000
days ago in Seattle's Mercer Arena, I, and everyone around me was
singing along, without a care of how silly a line like "her dizzy head
is conscious laden" sounds. How often do you describe one's head as
"conscious laden"? Probably not often.
But nonetheless, the sing-along continued through familiar ditties like
"Creep," "Big Bang Baby," "Lady Picture Show" and of course, of course,
of course "Plush." Weiland is still heroin-addict skinny (that's just
illustrative language and not to be taken literally, OK?) and still
arrogant as all hell, dishing out the occasional hip thrust and finger
point from his front-of-stage, monitor speaker altar. In this day of
modest indie rockers who enjoy themselves on stage, yet have no
delusions of hubris, it was strangely refreshing to see the kind of
showmanship Weiland brings to the table. Another weird thing about
Weiland…he was super tan. You don't see that in a rock star too often.
The venue included seats for the first several rows, stopping any
chance of a mosh pit, as was once the norm at an STP show. There seemed
to be more than a few testosterone overloaded fans who disagreed with
the fence keeping them from getting closer to Weiland and the guys, as
a massive contingent gathered around the entrance to the seated area.
One aforementioned man-of-men showed his disappointment by hucking a
trash can over the fan at a security guard. But for the most part, STP
fans have aged to the less aggressive, stand-and-sing-along types,
rather than mosh pit enthusiasts.
Damn, I used to love mosh pits.
Chalk up another casualty of the Central Oregon real estate bust and the Bush recession: A grandiose water park planned for Redmond has been put on hold.
After watching the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention and about a half-hour of the talking heads on CNN last night, The Eye wandered off to bed for some well-earned shuteye when …
In the modern world everybody's supposed to be entitled to 15 minutes of fame, but Jeff Merkley only got three minutes at the Democratic National Convention.
Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury is ready to move up to a bigger job - probably.
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