Posted inOpinion

Don’t Block Bike Lanes

On Sunday morning May 24th 2008, I decided to go for a leisurely bike ride. With me were two young children who rode their bikes following close behind.
The route I chose would take me south on Mt. Washington past the Skyline sports park. As we approached the area near the softball fields, which were located to my right, I noticed a very common sight. However, on this morning what I witnessed was more disturbing than usual. We were forced to move from the bike lane into traffic because there were vehicles parked illegally in the bike lane ahead. Luckily, we were able to stop and navigate this detour without serious incident. We then continued on our way southbound. Some time later, we were returning home in the opposite direction. We also encountered more illegally parked vehicles directly in our path. Once again, we were forced to detour into the traffic lane to avoid these cars. I would estimate that between both southbound and northbound bike lanes, there were approximately 20 vehicles in violation of clearly posted No Parking signs.
My complaint is two-fold. First of all, you don't have to like or dislike what I choose to do for recreation. However, it is not acceptable for someone else's behavior to create an unsafe environment for me to enjoy my form of recreation. I highly doubt that parking a large number of vehicles on the softball fields would be allowed. Especially if I were to totally disregard the posted signs stating that it was illegal.

Posted inOpinion

Animal cruelty at Mt. B is no joke

As a resident of Bend and a loyal skier at your mountain (I was a season pass holder from 1999-2006 and I still ski primarily at Mt. Bachelor), I find the promotion of animal cruelty in your 2008 pond skimming "championship" video clip to be outrageous (not to mention insipid given the lack of creativity of the participant you chose to highlight).

Posted inMusic

Liner Notes: Word to the 23rd

Spoken word or tamborine? Which is it, Al?Spoken word is hard to pull off. Sometimes this genre, or subgenre, if you will, brings to mind beret-intensive poetry slams where ideological rhetoric tends to trump skill. There are some heavy spoken word elements at play with Alfred Howard and the K23 Orchestra, but it's not the sort of aforementioned dimly lit coffee house nonsense.
 
AHK23 is a San Diego-based four-piece band that serves as the anchor for the vocal avalanche that is Alfred Howard. For the most part, AHK23's sound is marked by a laundry-line tight funk assault that rises in tempo along with Howard's pristinely clear speaking/rapping/singing voice.
Some might consider the band a jazzy hip-hop act in the spirit of the Roots, but what Howard is doing isn't always hip-hop, because half the time he's more singing than rapping and at other times his flow is more like he's reading from a leather-bound collection of contemporary poetry than hyping the crowd in the true spirit of hip-hop. Those who need a local barometer, one could compare some of Howard's riffs to what Bend's own Jason Graham does when out doing his solo stuff. Where Howard and Graham differ is in the improvisational orchestra department.

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