Every minute 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube, with 4,950,000,000 videos being viewed every day. The video sharing website is an endless land where you can explore new music, learn how to change a tire, watch bad lipreading and most importantly, take a break from the day with a laugh. We combed through some […]
Year in Review 2016
We Heart Carts
So many new food carts opened up in the C.O. over the last year we could hardly keep up. We missed some and some of the ones we tried might not have even been new; just new to us. But we did our best! And we look forward to ordering from more in 2017! The […]
Little Bites: Fresh New Eats
Central Oregon has more than its fair share of great eats, but in 2016, a handful of new places rose to the top. Immersion Brewing took Bend’s brew pub scene to the next level with a Brew-It-Yourself experience and a menu that goes beyond normal pub food, including items such as steak and frites, ahi […]
Flicks that Ripped
Whittling down to 10 top movies of the year was hard, but my #1 never changed. These might not be the “Best” movies of the year, but they are most certainly my favorite. 10 Morris From America: A romantic coming-of-age drama about a 13-year old American boy falling in love for the first time while […]
Best New Brews of 2016
The year 2016 will go down as a year where the far-out varieties of the past are now indispensable. Wild fermentation and sour farmhouse ales used to be the domain of just a few outfits; now most craft joints will have at least some kind of kettle sour. When it comes to picking the best […]
Best Outdoor Events of 2016
The year 2016 was a great time to be outside: extreme sport start-ups let Bendites bungee off a bridge or dive into the sky; rare wolves and foxes made brief cameos in the wild; Bachelor debuted a new ski lift; even Pokémon Go helped out, if only fleetingly. To help you start planning your outdoor […]
Hardest Losses
Throughout 2016, the grim reaper was busy taking some of our most beloved icons. While this section focuses on music, it’s hard not to pour one out for John Glenn, Gene Wilder, Anton Yelchin, Garry Marshall, Muhammad Ali, Garry Shandling, Larry Drake, Harper Lee, Alan Rickman, Carrie Fisher and dozens of others. Plus these people, […]
Top Cannabis Strains of 2016
As a bad year comes to a close, Smoke Signals considers the best strains of 2016. The strains making the list are both strong sellers in Bend, Portland and elsewhere in Oregon, as well as those that have increased greatly in popularity over the past year. Blue Dream Blue Dream is what’s known as a […]
Good Stuff, Not-So-Good Stuff
Every year there are films that are wonderful, yet are completely ignored by audiences, eventually attracting a cult following several years later. On the opposite end there are movies that critics and audiences alike think are giant piles of crap. Here are a couple of films misunderstood or over-loved by audiences this year. Underrated: The […]
Year in Review for Bend and National Housing
What is happening in the national housing market appears to be very true for Bend as well. According to the Beacon Report for December 2016, based on November MLS statistics, prices for Bend single family homes have increased by about 16 percent for the period of November 2015 to November 2016, but housing inventory has […]

