Most every locality – be it country, state or city – has a bitch. It's that neighboring area that serves as home to the rednecks and tramps of barroom jokes, the town that makes another town's citizens feel better about themselves. Every France has a Belgium to degrade. Where would New York be without New Jersey to kick around? Londoners have their Essex girls, Beverly Hills has the Valley, even Arkansas has Mississippi. Around these parts, poor Redmond takes it in the gut from Bend at every turn. However, the most slighted of Central Oregon cities would have to be Prineville. Other than Prinetucky jokes and snickers at the town's very mention, I've heard little about the area, so I thought it was time to pay a visit.
The Pride of Prineville: Barney Prines embodies the new face of the city
Posted inMusic
They’ve Got Sauce: G. Love Drops into Bend
Thinking back to my days as a Source intern, several years ago now, one of my duties was to do the Cold Call section of the paper. I went out and asked people on the street the question of the week. Once, I asked which “Where are they now?” classic rock band would you like to see at The Amphitheater. No one really had an answer, but just about everyone I talked to wished Jack Johnson would come back. No, he's not coming back, as far as we know, but G. Love and Special Sauce, who toured with him back in 2004, is.
Posted inMusic
Welcome Back, Dean and Gene: Ween is still weird as hell after all these years
When Aaron Freeman, better known as Gene Ween, is reached by phone on a recent afternoon, he's in his native Pennsylvania and driving to rehearse with his band, Ween, and says he can't talk. Less than an hour later, Mickey Melchiondo, aka Dean Ween, answers his cell phone while at the aforementioned rehearsal. He can talk because, apparently, the practice session is already over.
As far as interviews and the arrangement thereof goes, this is strange, but for Ween, the band that made strange a career, this is probably business as usual. But still, a question remains, what happened to that rehearsal?
Posted inCulture
Our Picks for the Week 8/28-9/3
Ween
friday 28
This deliriously odd alternative rock duo that pushes beyond parody. See this week's profile. $33. 6:30pm. Les Schwab Amphitheater, 344 SW Shevlin-Hixon
Dr. Jeremy Michael Cashman
friday 28
Tuscon, Arizona-based trio Jeremy Michael Cashman has been around since 2005, but doesn't play live very often. Because of that they've got to make it good when they do plug in. The band consists of Jeremy Michael Cashman on guitar and vocals, Davey Hendrickson on bass and saxophone and Noah Thomas on moog, theremin and trumpet. Cashman is inspired by love and relationships making for troubling and personal tunes. 8:30pm-2am. Free. Astro Lounge, 147 NW Minnesota Ave.
Posted inCulture
Crossing Over: Bend's own Dirty Snowflake Apparel makes clothes for anywhere
Editor’s Note: For more Fall Style, check out this week’s special issue.
If you're like me, you don't enjoy changing your clothes more than once a day. You want to wake up, shower off if you find it necessary, dress in the outfit you've committed to for that particular day and then bike your way to work. And you don't want to change clothes, even if you want to, for example, hit up the rock climbing gym after work.
Bend's own Dirty Snowflake Apparel has focused on the idea of “crossover clothing” with its newly unveiled line of goods. Douglas Robertson, the former owner of Bluefish Bistro, and his business partner and fiancée, Dara Robson, founded the fledgling company in January of this year. Robertson says the mission of Dirty Snowflake was to combine style with casual clothing – something that's not always easy. For example, your boss probably isn't too thrilled with your Costco sweatpants by now.
Posted inNews
Turn On, Tune In and Try Not to Drop Out: The slow-developing shake up in the local TV market
It's a little after 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 25, and KOHD-TV General Manager Jerry Upham just learned of the news story that would dominate all U.S. media for the next week-or-so – the kind of story the 23-year TV news veteran wishes his station could break to Central Oregon viewers.
“Michael Jackson just died,” Upham said. “It's showing up on the New York Times web site but nowhere else just yet.” He checks the web site of KOHD's main competitor, KTVZ, the long-standing NBC affiliate owned by the News-Press & Gazette Co. of St. Joseph, Mo., to see if the story appeared on its web site yet. It had not. A couple of hours later, KOHD broadcast a man-on-the-street piece in downtown Bend with people's reaction to the news that the King of Pop was dead.
Posted inNews
Cow-free at last: A landmark agreement preserves an Oregon gem
Deep in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument of southern Oregon lies my favorite wildflower meadow. This summer I need to step carefully, to avoid the lush clumps of Jacob's Ladder blossoms and the delicate columbines, their blooms nodding in the breeze. I breathe in the scents of the wild: the spice of the conifers, the earthy aroma of the wet meadow itself.
And today, for the first time in all my visits, the breeze carries no whiff of cow. Today, the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is virtually cow-free.
Posted inOpinion
Ponderosa's Sudden Eco-Resort Conversion
When you give a three-year-old a present and he angrily stamps his feet and says he doesn't want it, then changes his mind five minutes later and demands the gift, it's predictable. But you expect somewhat different behavior from a group of grown-up businessmen.
To fill in the back story: During last winter and spring's legislative debate over a bill to protect the Metolius Basin from destination resort development, legislators offered a sort of “consolation prize” to the two would-be resort developers, Ponderosa Land & Cattle Co. and Dutch Pacific Resources.
Ponderosa, which wanted to build a vast resort including a golf course, was
Posted inOpinion
Mystery Death Solved: MJ's autopsy report, the recession report, and a call for help
MJ Murdered!
Unidentified sources with the LAPD confirmed what we all knew in our hearts, The King of Pop's death was no accident. LA's coroner has reportedly determined that Jackson's death was more than just another junkie accidentally overdosing. And make no mistake, whatever MJ once was, he was by the end of his life a junkie. The LA Times reported this week that Jackson spent the last hours of his life pleading with his personal physician Conrad Murray for his “milk” – Jackson's pet name for the powerful sedative propofol. Jackson had recently gotten hooked on the drug (with the help of Murray) as a sleep aid.
Posted inOpinion
Like Total Totalitarianism
I would like to respectfully respond to Kenneth Judkins' “respectful” presentation of his complaints against the Source's H. Bruce Miller.