It’s always fun to see how people from The Great Outside perceive little old Bend, Ory-gun, so The Eye decided to pass on some observations made by blogger Jim Tankersley of the Baltimore Sun, who was here to cover Barack Obama’s appearance on May 10:
“Central Oregon doesn’t see many presidential candidates, particularly Democrats, which perhaps explains why a rocking high school crowd this weekend let Barack Obama get away with a cardinal sin around these parts: Expressing a desire to move in.
“Twenty years ago, Bend was a sleepy little cowboy town that doubled as a jumping-off point for some of America’s best skiing (Mt. Bachelor), rafting (the Deschutes River) and backpacking (the Cascade Range). Then the yuppies discovered it and realized they could live a short drive away from all those things. Some came from Portland three hours north, some from California. Most brought money, which fueled a huge wave of building and sent housing prices soaring. The newcomers and some city annexations served to quadruple the town’s population over two decades.
“And so, when the Obama campaign and the national press descended on Bend this weekend and marveled at the crisp air, the sagebrush smells and the snow-capped mountain views, the general, only half-joking response from the local press was, yes, it’s a great place. But you’d hate living here. Please, please don’t move here.”
(The Eye strongly suspects it was the juniper, not the sagebrush, that Tankersley was smelling. But we couldn’t expect a Baltimore boy to know the difference.)
“Obama took multiple opportunities to admire his surroundings. ‘You guys have some pretty real estate out here,’ he said at the beginning of his speech at Summit High School, a fairly new building that serves a side of town that barely existed in the mid-1990s. ‘I’d like to stick around. Who’s going to teach me fishing?’
“The crowd cheered its approval. Somewhere, we’re sure, some native Central Oregonians grumbled.”
Maybe – but the realtors were jumping up and down with glee.
This article appears in May 22-28, 2008.
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Interestingly, Tankersly’s one-paragraph history of Bend is pretty much spot on, except that it was a logging town, not a “cowboy town.”
Well I would suggest it was the sage that they were smelling, after a visit from a relative that is a plant biologist he proved to me by bringing samples of both, the sage and the juniper berries that the punjent odor we often experience is definitely from the sage and not the Juniper.
Actually B, it was both; and a mill town once famous for potatoes to boot. Important distinction, that.
Some of the “best” in America is a long way off – the rest seems to hit the spot. Bendfornia, Bendover etc. This guys was here for how long – a few hours and hit it almost on the money.