Editor's Note: In this week's issue

Beer week may need to rebrand itself. What started three years ago, has expanded into a ten day melee. And,our beer reviewer provides some suggestions about where to go, and how to survive the many events. I also encourage you to check out our “Go Here” section which lists several beer company endeavors into the outdoors.
What is also interesting about this event, and about this Memorial Day weekend is that a pivotal summer for Bend officially kicks off this week—with estimates that the population this summer in Bend will balloon to 100,000; numbers should be on full display this weekend, with Beer Week events and also with three nights of amazing bands at Les Schwab Amphitheater.
As Bend becomes more and more a tourist town, these new dynamics will create stresses and celebrations. The thousands of additional people each weekend celebrating events like the recent Pole-Pedal-Paddle or the current Beer Week, can be an opportunity to rekindle and rediscover what makes this region so alluring. It can also be an opportunity to cuss and swear about lines and slow traffic.
This is a pivotal summer about how Bend will manage becoming a tourist town—and, within that conversation, on Tuesday, Chuck Arnold announced that he will leave his post as Executive Director of Bend Business Association. I encourage you to check out our exit interview with Arnold; for the past nine years, Arnold has been a steady force in maintaining level-heads through economic booms and busts, and his departure leaves an important position unmanned, and at a particularly “interesting” time.

This article appears in May 13-20, 2015.