Welcome to the boomtown.Deschutes County is just CRAZY in love with destination resorts.
Crazy Destination Resort Love
Posted inOpinion
WTF?: Winter Wonderings
Upfront realizes that the city of Bend catches a lot of crap from the community over its snow plowing practices. If the city isn't plowing enough, they're money-wasting morons who dumped all the city's nest egg into pet projects like bridge proclamations.
Posted inOpinion
Big, Bad, Bend: Council approves kitchen sink UGB, |Bend Living lay-offs
Bend’s next super subdivision? Most folks have lost track of how long the Bend City Council has been working to expand the city's UGB - long enough for the anachronistic term "UGB" to actually resonate with any partially informed observer of local politics. Earlier this week the city council put the finishing touches on what it hopes will be a blueprint for the next 20 years of growth in Bend - a roughly 8,500-acre expansion of the city's geographic footprint which is intended to add more land for housing and commercial development.
By a 4-2 vote councilors opted to finalize the plan known as Alternative 4A, which Upfront likes to think of as the "kitchen sink" alternative - as in it includes everything that landowners and developers wanted plus the kitchen sink for good measure.
The plan has no shortage of critics, including some skeptical state regulators that have balked at the size of the land grab, which they see as a recipe for sprawl.
Posted inNews
Reinhard’s Replacement: Center-Right or Just Right?
The Oregonian's replacement for conservative columnist David Reinhard, who left the paper last fall to become a shill for the tobacco industry, calls herself "center-right," but to The Eye's eye she looks more right than center.
Posted inNews
World’s Awesomest Winter Sports Blog!
Is here! Stay tuned for upcoming posts about backcountry romps, snow conditions, renegade tobogganning, plus the occasional Steelhead Falls slip and slide.
Posted inNews
Sign of the Times: Front Page Ads for Sale
Things are tough all over, but they must be really tough for the New York Times: The venerable daily announced today that it has begun selling display ads on its front page.
Posted inNews
The Good and Bad of the Holiday Weekend
I know of people who swear off going to the mountain during the holidays, let alone the last holiday weekend when every vacationer in the county goes up to get in runs before they go to work the next Monday.
It's usually these same people who end up complaining about not having enough good days at the hill.
Posted inNews
Barrier-Less Highway 97 Claims Another Life
Highway 97 has claimed its first life of 2009 - 16-year-old Mountain View High School cheerleader Shalae Rae Mortenson.
Posted inOpinion
A Million Lost Soles
On January 20th, Americans and the world will celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama. But perhaps equally important, because Barack's legacy has yet to be written, on January 19th George W. Bush will spend his last full day in the White House. With the brilliant act of the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at W out of shear frustration and anger, the world has been shown the way to say a fitting farewell to George the Second and his incredible Reign of Error (special thanks to Robin Williams!).
Posted inCulture
Getting Behind the Camera
Annie Leibovitz is, of course, a photographer, not a writer. That's why her new book, At Work, might surprise some who crack the 240-page hardcover and find that the vast majority of the pages are covered in black type, not the iconic images the esteemed American photographer has captured over her 40-year career.
Fear not, there are plenty of photos to behold in the book. But this isn't a coffee table book, rather a platform for Leibovitz to tell the stories behind the photographs she's taken over the years. At Work provides priceless tales of Leibovitz's work with some of the most well-known individuals in the world - ranging from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Queen Elizabeth, and damn near every major rock star you can think of.