There are pros and cons to situating a ski resort on National Forest land, but one of the biggest cons for Mt. Bachelor – that last call for food and alcohol coincides with the last chair at around 4 p.m. – can also be a huge pro. Since aprรจs ski up top lasts only a few minutes, local businesses all the way down the mountain and into town roll out some excellent happy hour options to lure in passers-by looking for post-play refreshments. Whether you're a vacationer or a local, a hungry winter sportsman or simply a bargain hunting day-drinker looking for a deal, there's aprรจs ski merriment to be found around every corner. Set yourself up with an appetite and a designated driver and embark on your very own aprรจs pub-crawl down the hill – a must for any winter in Bend. Here's one possible route, in geographical order:
Aprรจs Ski Pub Crawl! – Eat and drink your way down the mountain for a song
The Mighty Fine 2009
This is the week the bar manager doesn't sleep, the lead up to what is the biggest night of the year when bar records get broken. Every angle must have an exit strategy, as it is an evening where anything can happen and the impossible will. It's the only night that it wouldn't be a surprise for the electricity to go out, the sprinkler system to spray water everywhere, the refrigerators to all stop working, and to have some crazy a-hole drive his car through the front door right as the balloons drop.
The preparation for such a night is fervent with panicked last minute runs to Cash and Carry, passionate apologies because we can't accommodate anyone else, and crazed ruckus as we try to find space for triple the usual amount of ingredients. For fourteen hours we will run at full tilt under unbearably stressful conditions to make the magic of New Year's come alive.
The Best Band That Never Was: Wildwood Ave.'s first show was also their last, but it was a good one
“You have to play a show.”
“Why?”
“You just have to play a show. What's the point of having a band if you're not going to play a show?”
“Where would we play?”
“I dunno, but you have to play a show.”
This back-and-forth replayed itself on a loop for a good hour in my kitchen. It was long after 1 a.m., making it officially my birthday, which gave me license, it seemed, to blur the boundary between friend and music writer. I'd already failed in an attempt to identify Olympia, Rainier and Pabst in a blind taste test earlier in the night, so I had nothing else to lose.
Our Picks for 12/30 – 1/7: New Year’s Eve, The Rose Bowl, The Dirty Words and more
New Year's Eve Music
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Even more so than past years, this New Year's Eve offers up an enormous helping of mostly free music events. We have them catalogued for you (as we also did in last week's issue) in the On Stage column that can be found in the Sound section of the paper. Choose something that fits your fancy.
New Year's Party with Diggabeatz
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We got late word of this party, which is one of the only 18 and over offerings to be found on the entire NYE slate. This is looking to be a hell of a dance party with a gaggle of DJs, including Utah-based Diggabeatz, as well as a host of local notable acts like Harlo, Rada, Cloaked Characters and many, many others. Domino Room, 51 NW Greenwood Ave. $12 or $10/with two cans of food. 18 and over, bar with ID.
Glasses Up. Curtain Up. Why performing plays in pubs might be just what Bend's theater scene needs
This may not be an absolute truth, but the lines of Bobby Gould in Hell very well may be funnier when read by a group of beer-sipping amateur actors lounging on a couch on the bottom floor of an Awbrey Butte home than in a high-end, big city playhouse.
The David Mamet one-act play is being read by members of Volcanic Theatre, all of whom project their voices when reading from the comedic script despite the fact that the only audience in the room is a turned-off television set, some exercise equipment and a rabbit that doesn't seem all that keen on showing its face outside of its cage. The play, or at least the portion the group rehearsing on this night, is funny – sometimes crass but consistently smart – and the players and their director think that Bend will be lapping it up when they take it not to the local playhouses, but into our town's pubs and bars.
Holy Days Indeed: Underwear bombs, holy daze, smugglers blues and more!
The author has been sent on the road to discover a lost country formerly known as America. He is reporting from a TSA screening checkpoint, proudly standing naked and asking for that puffing device again, on assignment for Or-Bust.com and The Source Weekly.
So your dad walks into the American embassy and narcs on you, saying you've fallen in with a bunch of n'er do wells and acting kind of extreme – What do you do? If you're Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (already refused a visa into Britain for inventing a college he was going to attend) you strap on your special underwear with 80 grams of the explosive substance PETN sown into the crotch (you know he was determined, ouch!) then catch a Northwest flight to Detroit. Not to mock TSA screeners but this beloved reporter has a dog named Stu who is a registered service dog (“Important for emotional stability” reads the letter from my shrink) so I see the holes in the system; still the debate rages which database Umar was on – the one with 18,000 or 500,000 names of a-holes who shouldn't be flying, especially Nigerians with Al Qaeda connections in Yemen. Speaking of a-holes, Republican Peter King used a football analogy for the near catastrophic Christmas day bombing attempt of flight 253, saying, “He [Umar] got right to the 1-yard line.” As Republicans personally blame Obama for all Muslims trying to bomb us (in addition to the economy, “As the World Turns” being cancelled, and why Miley Cyrus can't pose nude, yet) evidence is emerging that this single event may not be so singular, and a payback of sorts. In addition to waging war throughout the Middle East, we're also targeting “extreme” Yemenis, online scammers in Nigeria, turd farmers in Sudan, and Juan Valdez, the Columbian coffee picker, because his beans aren't offering the white-hot-rush that other Columbian exports offer on New Year's Eve.
The City's Land Grab
While the final report is still pending, the Department of Land Conservation and Development has indicated that it is getting ready to throw the city of Bend's growth boundary expansion back in Bend's lap after finding what appear to be numerous fatal flaws with the document. Most notably the expansion is totally overblown.
Holier Than Thou
This week's letter comes from Rob Murray and marks the latest installment in our “Gay Marriage: Is it for you?” series. Thanks for the letter, Rob. You can pick up your winnings, a bag of Strictly Organic Coffee at our office. 704 NW Georgia.
I can only assume you highlighted the sermon by Rev. J.A. Matteson as your letter of the week to provoke response. It worked! Here is my response! It seems the good Reverend is yet another in a line of Christians who feel the major theme of The Bible should be 'ban gay marriage', and not 'do unto others as you would have others do unto you'. Does any thinking person need to read The Bible from Genesis to Revelation to know that is totally wrong? There is no doubt that there are passages in The Bible that condemn homosexuality, along with eating shellfish, touching a woman during her period, touching the skin of a pig, working on The Sabbath and not rotating crops. What the Reverend fails to understand is that the marriage equality movement is not asking for his or his church's blessing. The issue at stake is the rights and protection offered in the civil contract of marriage by the federal government. He challenges us to find one example where The Bible endorses gay marriage. I have one for him: find me a passage in the U.S. Constitution – the actual law of the land – that allows the government to favor one class of citizens over another. Lotsa Luck!
This Is No Reform
President Obama and the Members of the United States Congress,
Please save the eloquent speeches for those in your own small choir. Please do not continue to insult the intelligence of your fellow citizens. No matter how you all try to dress it up, you have sold us, and the hope of having affordable and accessible health care, down the road. That Dennis Kucinich and his request for a single payer, cover everyone, plan was not the plan considered shows that the true color of the Democratic and Republican parties is GREEN. Sorry, no offense meant to the “green party.”
A Christmas Hangover
Dear Christmas-philes,
I don't like Christmas. I don't like it one bit. In fact, you might even call me a Grinch. Gasp. You see, friends, I take issue with a holiday that starts in October and ends in January. I also take issue with the fact that a Long Island Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by shoppers rushing the store doors on Black Friday of 2008. Now tell me, where in the ranks of “Christmas spirit” might that horrifying crime sit? Because I'd love to know. Really, I would.
Curious how, 'round about this time of year, consumers and consumers-in-denial (we all know them – you know, those pillars of organic, green righteousness who adamantly refuse to acknowledge that, ultimately, they muck about in the glorious soup of Western materialism along with the rest of us) alike are positively gripped by holiday cheer, which, I've noticed, seems to equate to rabid consumerism.