Friday Mixtape: Side Projects
Written by: Josh Gross Rivers Cuomo of Weezer once famously blew up at a reporter that asked a question about Weezer bass player’s side-project, The Rentals. A new album just dropped from The Relationship, a band made up of second-fiddle members of Weezer, U.S. Bombs, and The Bravery, which chose its name based on the idea…
Random Acts of Netflix: Heavenly Sword
Hey folks! Jared here. Every Thursday I’m going to go on Netflixroulette.com, and then watch whatever the damn thing tells me to. In case you haven’t heard of Netflix Roulette, it’s basically a silly website that allows you to SPIN a virtual wheel which then chooses a film or TV show at random out of…
Local Climbing Competition is Friendly Competition
A large crowd of parents, coaches, climbers and onlookers gather in the center of the Bend Rock Gym as Melina, a top female and overall competitor pulls, presses and grips her way up the 50-ft rock wall. She is poised to take first place at the SCS Local Competition—if she can make it to the…
Deschutes Land Trust Acquires 58-acre Aspen Hollow Preserve
Deschutes Land Trust has purchased 58 acres of land along Whychus Creek as part of a campaign launched last fall to conserve habitats in the area, the group announced today. Dubbed the Aspen Hollow Preserve, the land near Sisters includes one half-mile of creek frontage and a variety of wildlife ranging from salmon and steelhead…
Pink Martini Comes to Bend July 25
Pink Martini will perform with China Forbes Saturday, July 25, at the Les Schwab Amphitheater. Tickets for the show run $35 and $65 plus fees, and go on sale Friday at 10 am online and at the Ticket Mill in the Old Mill District. Check out Pink Martini performing with China Forbes and Storm Large…
Cascade Volcano Ski Tour – Seven Volcanoes in Nine Days
A ski touring road trip through the Cascades, from California to Washington
Another Generation, Same Issues
When Matthew Shepard was kidnapped, tortured, and bound to a fence post outside of Laramie, Wyoming, on a freezing night in October 1998, today’s teenagers were either yet unborn or still in diapers. The 21-year-old’s death and the trial that followed attracted worldwide media interest and emboldened the nation to fight bigotry and hatred. Nearly…
Simply Her Best
“Hi honey, how are you?” Each time a hiker passes by Carol Smith—better known as “The Butte Lady”—she utters that same refrain. More often than not, it is returned with smiles and hugs. She’s hard pressed to find a stranger among those out for a Monday morning hike. Petite and nearly 60 years old, Smith…
Black, White, and Read All Over
The first chapter of Welcome to Braggsville seethes with the barely-restrained energy of a young man standing on the threshold of his own life. D’Aron Davenport rattles off his many nicknames as a way of piecing together a childhood spent as a white, working class know-it-all in the quirky depths of the Georgian South. In…
Building the Big Picture
At last week’s City Council meeting, the debate over how to manage short-term rentals began to take more focus when City Council voted unanimously to support the first reading of ordinances that include a new short-term rental licensing program and changes to land use code that limit the concentration of what are frequently referred to…
Out of Town 4/8-4/15
ashland thursday 9 – monday 13 Ashland Independent Film Festival From Oscar-winning selections to shorts by first-time filmmakers, the Ashland Independent Film Festival provides an eye-popping array of engaging flicks for their 2015 lineup. Local documentaries address everything from drought conditions in Oregon (The Well) to elephant poaching (When Giants Fall). Alternative looks at prominent…
Letters 3/31-4/7
IN REPLY TO “GOTTA TRY ‘EM ALL” (1/7) Spread the word folks….Crow’s Feet Commons is searching for two food carts to operate in the Mirror Pond Plaza. Something that would accommodate their outrageously awesome cafe and tap room. Free rent, incredible views and great opportunity. Give them a call to get more information. —David Marchi…
Picks 4/8-4/15
thursday 9 Calamity Cubes! MUSIC—It is surprising that Calamity Cubes hasn’t added a jug and spoons to its lineup of self-described “thrashicana” songs—acoustic punk ditties that ponder murder and rough love with porch-sitting banjo picking, roughly harmonized crooning, and yearning harmonica chords. I’d say it’s beautiful if I didn’t think they punch me in my…
Hell on Wheels
In the ’70s, riding dirt bikes was an informal sport, jumping Huffy bikes off mounds in backyards and tearing Schwinn Sting-Rays through hiking paths (certainly a precursor to mountain biking for thousands of kids). But even though the sport had formally arrived in America in 1969, when a group of teenagers in West LA started…
Source Suggests 4/8-4/15
The Brothers Comatose Two things to know about The Brothers Comatose, based primarily on their name—the band’s guitar and banjo players, who also act as lead vocalists, are in fact brothers Ben and Alex Morrison. Second, and most importantly, despite their name, the music they play is anything but comatose. Expect to be stomping and…
Choose Your Earth Day Adventure
Celebrate Earth Events sunday 12 Kalebaugh Farm VOLUNTEER—Spend a day working on a Central Oregon farm with WWOLF (Willing Workers On Local Farms). Meet the farmers, learn how the farm operates, and help work on some projects. In return, participants will get a lunch, lively conversation, and a day spent outdoors in the countryside! Projects…
Film Events 4/8-4/15
Friday, April 10, 7 pm. Tower Theater. 835 NW Wall St. $13-$23 Lynn Harrell & Bach Film Screening Director John Forsen (Violin Masters: Two Gentlemen of Cremona) returns to Central Oregon with a screening of his newest film, Lynn Harrell Bach Cello Suites. What is really incredible here is that Harrell performs the first two…
Go Here 4/8-4/15
There are so many things about spring in Central Oregon to love. Not the least of them is the unveiling of the Deschutes Land Trust free hike schedule. For over a decade, the Deschutes Land Trust has worked tirelessly to conserve thousands of acres of vitally important lands in Central Oregon. DLT lands serve as…
A Voice Reborn
There’s something special about Fernando Viciconte’s voice. Whether delivering words of longing and heartbreak over sorrowful strums of an acoustic guitar, or painting dreamlike narratives over meaty psychedelic guitars, there’s a raw quality about his voice that cuts through style and cultural context to connect on an unmistakably human level. As he alternates between English…
The Doom and Gloom Shopping List
Survivalists aren’t only preparing for the end of the world as we know it, but are prepping for the more likely “smaller” disasters of life. From droughts and power outages to making daily adventures easier, this shopping list is designed to plan for the unexpected, or in the case of global warming, the highly expected.…
Too Little, Too Late, and Probably Not At All
The good news is they didn’t go up,” says Angus Duncan, speaking about greenhouse gas emissions. He adds, “The bad news is they don’t go down.” For the past 40 years, Duncan has been working with local and national agencies to modify energy policy, and for the past eight years has chaired the Oregon Global…
A Sign of the Apocalypse
One of the impacts of global warming is the prolonged droughts on the West Coast—and the corresponding shortage of water for growing food and flushing toilets. In California and Oregon, snow packs have traditionally been critical water sources when they melt in the springtime. But, reduced to less than one-tenth of normal levels, those resources…
It’s Not the End of the World
As climate change becomes a more pressing reality than looming threat, those still sitting pretty are starting to take note of the devastating impacts of changes in weather patterns across the globe. As close to home as Alaska, the first domestic so-called “climate refugees” are grappling with the fact that the land they’ve called home…
God Save the Sage-Grouse
Last Thursday, the Western Governors’ Association released a report detailing the efforts of 11 states to conserve sage-grouse habitat. It’s part of an attempt to prevent the bird, which makes its home in sage brush-steppe habitat across the West, from being listed under the Endangered Species Act. It’s already been established that the sage-grouse qualifies.…
Smoke Signals 4/8-4/15
Probably even a year ago, it would have been jawdropping to see a U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator standing up for marijuana. But on Thursday, April 9, Rep. Earl Blumenauer and Sen. Ron Wyden will present an idea to help make life easier for marijuana growers and retailers. Perhaps one of the most pressing and…
Nah, I’m Gonna Stay
Open for little more than a year, Sunny Yoga Kitchen is pretty much what its name promises: A restaurant that doubles as a yoga studio—or vice versa, inverse pose, yin yang. Surprisingly, though, the front room—a small and tidy space with several tables—does not have much natural light, as the name might indicate. But, walking…
Side Notes 4/8-4/15
Last week, after hours of deliberation and months of meetings, City Council voted unanimously to support the first reading of ordinances intended to stem the tide of vacation rentals encroaching on residential neighborhoods. The first ordinance will require new and existing short-term rentals owners to obtain an annual license with the City. However, new licenses…
10 Barrel Lands in Portland
When 10 Barrel Brewing’s brewpub location in Portland’s Pearl District opened on March 16, the question wasn’t whether it would attract a crowd; it was more like how long it’d be until the wait for tables extended past an hour. A recent visit to 10 Barrel’s third brewpub location found the place—a smidge bigger than…
Capacity to Overcome
On more than one occasion, singer Neko Case has claimed, “I should have been an abortion.” Her quotes typically read as a tad flippant and with a measurable distaste for the two humans who—despite clearly deficient life skills—brought her into the world and subjected her to a whirlwind of dysfunction. “My dad was mentally ill…
Art Watch 4/8-4/15
In case you didn’t already know, upcycling is quite a thing right now. Theoretically, artists have been creatively reusing objects and turning them into art for decades—Marcel Duchamp and the Dadists were doing it when they created their “ready-made” art in the early 1900s, and Robert Rauschenberg was incorporating trash into his mid-century collages way…
Whatever, Mom
Every now and then, I find myself pondering over those anti-narcotics commercials I remember seeing as a kid—you know, the ones that warned youngsters just how yolky their brains would look, all drugged up. As a mother, I’m now convinced that the campaign slogan had originally read “This is your brain on parenting” before some…
