Butte and Ridge: two great mountain bike riding areas now even better
For years, I bored Source readers with my endless cheerleading for Gray Butte as being the best place to mountain bike in Central Oregon. My reasons then, and now, as to why Gray Butte offers the best riding are simple: great vistas out over the Cascades, superb singletrack, lots of lung busting ups and some…
City Council Race Adds Another Candidate
While most eyes are on the primary with the May 18 election fast approaching, there is already some preliminary jockeying for the three Bend City Council seats up for grabs in November. Local businessman and BendFilm board member Scott Ramsay was the latest to announce his intention to run.
Pickathon Festival Announces Final Lineup: Dr. Dog, Bonnie Prince Billy, Heartless Bastards and more
Pickathon, the indie roots festival that takes place on a farm just east of Portland and is quickly becoming one of the bigger summer music events of the summer, just announced its final lineup. And, whoa, phew, damn, it looks quite strong and if you’re free for the weekend of August 6 to 8, then…
Tony Furtado Video from Friday Night
By the time I pulled open one of the heavy wooden doors at the Old Stone Church here in Bend on Friday night, I could already hear that Tony Furtado’s acoustic guitar wizardry was well underway. Inside, a nearly full house sat rapt by the Portland multi-instrumentalist — who was going solo for this show.
Butte and Ridge: Two great mountain bike riding areas now even better
For years, I bored Source readers with my endless cheerleading for Gray Butte as being the best place to mountain bike in Central Oregon. My reasons then, and now, as to why Gray Butte offers the best riding are simple: great vistas out over the Cascades, superb singletrack, lots of lung busting ups and some…
Lingua Franca: bro/bra spoken here
In a letter to the editor in the November 2009 issue of Backcountry Magazine a reader wrote in regard to ski town living saying: “Do the people who have been living here for less than a season need to be saying buzz words like 'gnarly' and 'epic' every other sentence?” Like dude, talking in bro/bra-speak…
Lingua Franca:bro/bra spoken here
In a letter to the editor in the November 2009 issue of Backcountry Magazine (www.backcountry magazine.
Empty Space Orchestra Free MP3 in advance of their big show Saturday
Empty Space Orchestra is playing a big show Saturday night (4/24) at the Domino Room with excellent Portland indie rockers Water & Bodies. This is the first performance in Bend for ESO in quite some time, and also includes the full lineup, which now includes original member, saxophonist Graham Jacobs.
These Guys are Funny! Randy Liedtke and Kyle Kinane tonight at the Summit
It’s been a year — to the freaking day — since Redmond native and confirmed beardo Randy Liedtke played a show in Bend. But he is back home for a brief spell and once again is bringing with him a superbly funny and equally bearded fellow named Kyle Kinane.
Into Scary Territory: A customer service representative will be with you shortly
This week I did something I'd never done before. Something so frightening that it me took hours to build up the nerve to do it.
Garden Variety: Cooking your way out of the CSA box
Does the weekly CSA box make you feel like a contestant on Iron Chef? The unknown ingredients? The suspense? The following recipe looks daunting, it's not. Serve with steamed broccoli or roasted broccoli with baby garlic.
Another Showdown With Dr. No (wilderness) on the John Day
The latest Central Oregon wilderness lands bill took a step forward today clearing Sen. Ron Wyden's public lands subcommittee in a development that could set the stage for another wilderness showdown with Sen.
The Fanatical Fan: On becoming a Pilot Butte Greenwave believer
After close to 40 years of participating in, writing about and photographing individual, self-propelled sports, I recently developed a passion for a team sport. Not any team sport – girl's basketball and one team in particular: the Pilot Butte sixth grade girls park and rec basketball league team called the Greenwave. In the beginning, I…
Ring of Fire: Bringing Hawaiian values back home
It seems like half of Bend is “on island,” as they say in Hawaii. I think many of us get a little stir crazy and head to the South Pacific this time of year. You can spot the Bendites by their pasty skin and ski poles. Seriously, I saw a guy pole hiking down the…
On Earth Day… Reflecting on key environmentalists from here and beyond
In celebrating Earth Day on April 22, I would like to suggest we take Old Dame Nature by the hand and get to know her, up close and personal. That's what it usually takes to understand why it is so vital that we do all we can to keep everything going as smoothly as possible.…
When Super Humans Attack: Kick-Ass opens a can of whoop-ass!
Kick-Ass is a goofy, mixed-up movie that examines what would happen if regular people became super heroes. I don't think this movie is sure what it is: teenage angst flick, revenge crime-stopper thriller or sensitive slice-of-life indie slacker comedy. But one thing is sure: Kick-Ass has tons of spurting blood combined with more than enough…
Just Like in Bend! The Banff Mountain Festival is made especially for you… probably
There's this video being bounced between inboxes and Twitter feeds for the past couple weeks if you haven't seen it, you should watch it right now. Essentially, it's just two animated dudes talking to each other, but what they're saying is hilarious, but only if you've lived in Bend for a while. The two guys…
Stephen Hawking Gets More Tail Than Me
I get a lot of tail – we hold this truth to be self-evident. HOWEVER! It's causing me no small amount of distress that world-famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking probably gets more tail than I do. Now, I realize that “getting tail” is not a competition – except that it is a competition, and Stephen…
Hello Moto: New MotoGP fires on all cylinders
The first time I saw MotoGP racing was in San Francisco. I had been invited to the launch of the PlayStation 2, and one of the games available for the system was called MotoGP. “A motorcycle racing game,” I thought as I sat down to test it. I revved my engine and accelerated toward the…
Keeping the Meat Market Alive: Kicking it old school with Redmond Smokehouse
Confessing that you're a vegetarian among a herd of carnivores at an Angus convention won't win you any friends. Trust me. But that was a long time ago, when fewer people cared about the animal prior to its place on our plates and in our bellies. The controversy surrounding meat consumption has since taken root…
Keeping the Meat Market Alive: Kicking it old school with Redmond Smokehouse
Confessing that you're a vegetarian among a herd of carnivores at an Angus convention won't win you any friends. Trust me. But that was a long time ago, when fewer people cared about the animal prior to its place on our plates and in our bellies. The controversy surrounding meat consumption has since taken root…
Cruising: Lust for the crust
Come spring in the mountains and the time when the snowpack sets up hard at night and stays covered with a thick layer of hard crust for most of the following day. With the first signs of thick crust comes the start of the “crust cruising” season.
I Believe the Children are Our Future
There is a slow degradation of society happening that is often head through assertions that today's youngsters (as in 21, but barely so) are less healthy and less educated than preceding generations. But there is another measurement that should be taken into account and that is their drinking habits. There is a certain downward spiral…
Rock Hard, Win a Van: Why (almost) every band in Central Oregon is competing in Last Band Standing
On a rainy Wednesday afternoon, at least one member of 38 different local bands has gathered at Boondocks Bar and Grill. Yet upon entering the spacious Newport Avenue nightclub, hardly any of these musicians can be found – and that's because, quite predictably, they're all huddled around the bar. There's free beer to be had…
Guerilla Music with Larry and His Flask and Yenn
Sometimes the best shows you'll see aren't the ones for which you buy a ticket, or in some cases, even go indoors. That was the case this past Saturday, which happened to be Record Store Day, an audiophile holiday that was celebrated at Ranch Records downtown with a mostly word-of-mouth promoted slate of live music…
The Besnard Lakes: The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night
The Besnard Lakes The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night Jagjaguwar Records
The Besnard Lakes, the Montreal rock act with a constantly growing appeal, gave their record an apt title, because this album is essentially a 46-minute roar. The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night, is a record dripping in shoegaze sweetness and songs that…
Our Picks for 4/21 – 4/29: Last Band Standing, Tony Furtado, Empty Space Orchestra, Earth Day and more
Last Band Standing thursday 22 We've got a story in the Sound section about what happens when you put 38 bands in one room and then head to Boondocks for the first show of the Last Band Standing competition. This week features Capture the Flag, Tentareign, Never Heard the Shot, G String Stranglers, and Kleverkill.…
Words Can't Hurt Me: The city's tourism bureau and Bend's private convention center just can't play nice
Cyclocross Nationals, USA Cycling National Championships, Xterra Trail Running Championships, the recent governor's conference on tourism and soon the National Beard and Moustache Championships (not a misprint). It's hard to catalogue the list of accomplishments of Visit Bend, the city's publicly funded tourism promotion agency, over the past year or so. It's an impressive list…
Free the Troops: The case for professionalizing the U.S. military
The number of new U.S. Army recruits who are high-school dropouts soared during the Bush years, peaking at 29.3 percent in 2007. The economic collapse made life easier for military recruiters. “Only” 17 percent of soldiers who joined in 2008 failed to graduate from high school. But high unemployment hasn't resulted in enough new high-quality…
Election Endorsements: Dugan For D.A.
The Mirror Pond duck race, The Deschutes County Fair, The PPP and Mike Dugan. What do they all have in common? They're veritable institutions in Deschutes County. In Dugan's case, he's served as the county's “top cop” since George Bush (the original) was in the White House. Dugan hasn't faced a challenger since 1990. That's…
Seismic Sensations: A volcano erupts, SEC bombs Goldman Sachs and a puke-o-rama
The author has been sent on the road to discover a lost country formerly known as America. He is reporting from a rally against Earth Day, or immigration, maybe sunburns or whatever makes white people mad, on assignment for Or-Bust.com and The Source Weekly. Fabulous Fab's Fool's Gold(man) So you bought a “synthetic” financial product…
Win Tickets to See Tony Furtado on Friday
For the first time in more than a year, Tony Furtado is returning to Bend, this time playing a show at the Old Stone Church on Friday night. You probably want to go, don’t you? Yeah, that’s right.
