As If Bend Didn't Suck Hard Enough, Now We Have Hipsters

In a previous post I wrote about some of the poseurs who inhabit Bend, notably including the "elite athlete" poseurs. Unfortunately I neglected to mention one of the more obnoxious breeds of poseur that has started to infest this town in the past five or six years or so: the hipster.

Hipsters can be identified by, among other things, their tight black jeans, their Chuck Taylor sneakers, their abundant tattoos and their fondness for bicycles (single-speed, preferably) and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, or "PBR" or "Peeber," as they call it. The last item alone tells you how execrable their tastes are. When I was starting to drink beer many years ago in New Jersey, Pabst was what you drank when nothing else was available. And it hasn't gotten better.

Hipsters have no visible means of support; it's suspected that most of them are living off trust funds. They spend their days hanging out in coffee shops surfing the Web on their iPads or MacBooks (they would never dream of owning a non-Apple product) or texting other hipsters on their iPhones (or calling their parents to ask them to send more money).

How hipsters spend their nights is something I don't know and don't want to know.

Portland is hipster heaven, as anybody who's watched the excellent comedy series "Portlandia" knows. The hipsters of Bend possibly are an overflow from Portland. It is to be hoped the climate here will prove too cold for them and they'll migrate elsewhere.

Meanwhile, for your entertainment and edification, here's a video to help you understand the Evolution of the Hipster from earlier species, including the beatnik and the hippy:

The Bullshit Goes On Forever

I couldn't resist re-posting verbatim the first item from The Bulletin's "Yesterday" column, a compilation of stories and other material from 100, 50 and 25 years ago that appears every Sunday.

Why should a Bend man smile?

Because: Substantial, permanent brick and stone buildings costing more than $70,000 have been built within the last month, are under construction or will be commenced within a month.

Because: There is more home-building, more attractive residences being erected here, than in any town of Bend’s size in Oregon.

Because: Two first class railroads are operating in Bend, and Bend has the best warehouse and terminal facilities of any town east of the Cascades.

Because: The distributing business of Bend is growing every day, making this the most important railroad point in the interior.

Because: Bend has a brick yard with modern machinery and an inexhaustible supply of splendid clay, which can supply cheaply the best of building materials for a large city.

Because: Bend has a creamery making a permanent market for all farmers of this territory for their milk and cream and giving the most valuable kind of impetus to agricultural development.

Because: Bend has the only ice plant in the interior, ensuring the town the best to be had in this line and meaning that money from other towns will come here for the Bend made product.

Also, there are many, many other reasons why Bend boosters should smile.

These are just a few — if your neighbor looks glum, remind him that the next year will see even more smile-makers than have the past twelve months.

Where now are those "two first-class railroads," that brick yard, that creamery? Gone with the cat-piss-scented high desert breeze, alas.

A century later Bendites brag about our plentiful microbreweries, our many miles of mountain bike trails and the four-year university that we're going to have any decade now instead of our ice plant and our "splendid clay," but the relentless rah-rah tone has never altered. And I'm sure it never will.

The timber may be gone, the ranching may be gone, the real estate boom may be gone, but the supply of bullshit is inexhaustible.

The Blog Is Prettier But the Weather Still Sux

As you can see, I have adopted a new design template for the blog. I figure it's the only way I'm going to get to see a blue sky before the middle of June or thereabouts.

Starting on March 10, Bend has experienced 39 days of almost continuous suck. Specifically, we have seen only 11 sunny or partly sunny days during that whole period, with clouds and/or rain and/or snow and/or wind on most of the other 28 and temperatures generally reaching only the 40s to mid-50s.

Temperature-wise, March yielded only three "tolerable" days (high of 60 or above) and all of those came in the first 10 days of the month -- lending credence to the old Bend proverb: "March comes in like a lamb and goes out like a Tyrannosaurus Rex."

March Totals:
Comfortable Days: 0
Tolerable Days: 3
Cold Days: 28

YTD Totals:
Comfortable Days: 98
Tolerable Days: 63
Cold Days: 174

They'll None of Them Be Missed

Since this appears to have turned into Mikado week, here's Ko-Ko the Lord High Executioner with an updated version of "I've Got a Little List." I'm H. Bruce Miller, and I approve this message.

Here's to You, Nanki-Poo

My comrade-in-bloggery, Jack Elliott, claims I enjoy nothing but "overcast, despair, and hard bop music." While the statement about bop music is, to some extent, true, it is a base canard that I enjoy "overcast and despair." To prove it, here is a charming little ditty from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. Sing along, everybody!

March Musings

It is the last day of March, 10 days past the so-called "first day of spring." It is 45 degrees in Bend, and torrents of rain and sleet are blowing horizontally. According to the Weather Channel's records, the last mostly sunny and reasonably warm day Bend experienced was on March 9, 22 days ago.

Bend sucks.

Comments are not being accepted on this post; it is a meditation.

Bend Snobbery Totally Sucks

A Bend Eastsider relaxing at home, as envisioned by a Bend Weststider.

When we moved to Bend back in 1985, there wasn't much snobbery in this town. There were some rich people, and everybody knew who they were. But they didn't drive around in Bentleys or Maseratis or otherwise flaunt their wealth. They drove and wore pretty much the same things everybody else drove and wore.

That started to change in the early 1990s, when Bend began to promote itself not just as a place to visit for a few days for the hunting or fishing or skiing, but as an "outdoor recreation paradise" with an "upscale lifestyle" where affluent people should make their permanent residence.

I believe the watershed event was the opening of Broken Top, a snooty gated golf course community located on the northwest edge of Bend, in 1993. Contrary to widespread popular belief, Broken Top was not Bend's first gated community; Mountain High on the southwest southeast side holds that dubious distinction. But Broken Top was more expensive and had more "upscale"appeal from the get-go, and after it the floodgates of phoniness opened and the snobs poured in.

There are several kinds of snobbery operating in Bend. One, of course, is money snobbery, which is found in almost any community of any size. Another kind that's more peculiar to Bend is the snobbery of the jocks and -- mostly -- the jock poseurs.

The local media constantly tell everybody that Bend is packed wall-to-wall with "elite athletes." But bona fide "elite athletes" are pretty damn rare; there probably aren't more than about a hundred of them in Bend. But there must be at least 100 times that many Bendoids trying to pose as elite athletes.

These are the silly twits who are always wearing running shorts or bicycling tights or yoga pants (not that I have any real problem with yoga pants per se). They'e constantly posting on Facebook about how "awesome" their morning workout was, or telling you about their performance in their last triathlon and how they're going to totally kick ass in this year's Pole Pedal Paddle. They're ridiculous.

Equally ridiculous, if not more so, is the snobbery that residents of Bend's Westside display toward residents of the Eastside. As Westsiders see it, the Eastside is a forbidding, repugnant and probably dangerous place full of tumble-down shacks and rusting single-wides inhabited by drooling redneck semi-imbeciles who live on Twinkies, Dr. Pepper and methamphetamine, spend their evenings slouched in front of the TV watching NASCAR and ultimate cage fighting, and (very likely) marry their sisters.

It's a false image, but I don't mind encouraging it if it helps keep the Spandex-clad, jock-poseur, Westside hoi polloi away.