Art in the High Desert, an annual festival in the Old Mill District, doesn’t have a beer garden. There will be no bounce houses, no music stages, no scent of kettle corn wafting through the booths and definitely no tie-dye shirts for sale. The experience that Art in the High Desert has provided in its […]
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Posted inOutside
Tasty Waves
Bend ski and surf guide reveals the best beaches within driving distance
Aaron Karitis is a can-do sort of guy. After shoveling snow and fueling planes the skier and surfer logged eight productive years as a guide with H2O Guides in Valdez, Alaska. His job was a dream: to take clients heli-skiing in the Alaskan backcountry. The Mountain View alumnus and University of Utah graduate was responsible […]
Posted inBest Of Central Oregon
Winners! Best Of Central Oregon, 2013
A complete list of the BEST, as chosen by our readers
Over the past month, a few reports have bubbled out of Utah that a new dinosaur has been discovered. A close evolutionary relative to three-horned triceratops, the so-called nasutoceratops is distinguished by a massive and garish nose. “It looks like a giant bull with a parrot beak,” one paleobiologist told an NPR reporter. “It has […]
Posted inCulture
Zero Dark and Troubling
Dirty Wars tells the real story
The common refrain is that investigative journalism is a dying industry; that the time and painstakingly meticulous detective work necessary to uncover politicians’ dark secrets are rare commodities in today’s rush-rush media world as Remington typewriters. But Jeremy Scahill, the national security correspondent for The Nation, gives hope that the likes of Nellie Bly, Bob […]
Posted inNews
Mining Rush?
Oregon hit by gold, uranium and coal proposals
Until recently, as other states, to the dismay of environmentalists, cashed in on their natural resources like coal, precious minerals and underground oil fields, Oregon seemed quietly removed from such industries and debates. But suddenly, Oregon is in the fray, with several major projects to extract and ship natural resources in the works: For the […]
Posted inNews
Bike Town USA . . . Really?
Bend could do more to encourage bike commuting. But first residents should step up.
City Councilor Victor Chudowsky always gets a prime parking spot out front of Thump Coffee in downtown Bend. That’s because parking at the popular café isn’t a problem. At least not for bike commuters. Rather than another conventional parallel car parking space, similar to those lining the rest of Minnesota Avenue, a string of fire-engine […]
Posted inCulture
Punch Drunk Love
Much Ado About Nothing is better than liquid lunch
In the first season of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” in an episode called “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date,” Buffy—a 5-foot-nothing cheerleader/superhero tasked with killing the world’s scourge of vampires without chipping her nail polish—skips out of her school library to fight a horde of martial arts proficient monsters. Before she exits she […]
Posted inOutside
No Pain, No Gain
Central Oregon forests are out of whack. Setting things straight, though, won’t be fun.
Kevin Larkin, Bend-Fort Rock District ranger, is asking community members for patience, understanding and that they “maintain the long view.” Last week, while addressing a comfortable City Club luncheon inside a St. Charles meeting hall, Larkin spoke honestly and earnestly about an uncomfortable subject: Larkin, and others who presented at the midweek event, explained how […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Little Bites: No Fear
Fearless Baking bravely goes to the delicious zone
These days, to be competitive, eateries west of the Rocky Mountains need to appear sensitive to the yawning litany of emerging food allergies and diet preferences. Made-from-scratch foods using local ingredients doesn’t cut it anymore—for the hyper-demanding, über-conscious customers of the American West, a bakery must cater to the picky/sickly/dieting/impossibly fit patrons who require gluten-free, […]
Posted inNews
Floating Toward a Solution
Steering committee closes in on a Mirror Pond solution
The long wait is over. Last week, the Mirror Pond Steering Committee rolled out seven potential solutions—much-anticipated visual representations of what could be done in regard to the silt-laden stretch of the Deschutes River as it runs past downtown Bend—and asked for public input. But don’t break out the champagne just yet. A recent meeting […]
