Bend = Beer Culture
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12/1/2020
I’ve lived in Bend over 15 years and it’s still a relatively small Oregon mountain town. Basically, it’s a jock town where beer is revered and the temperatures are as cold as a craft beer 5 months out of the year. Bend does have four seasons, but five months are taken over by winter, two months are sweltering hot, and fall, spring, and summer are comfortable though all the nice places are overrun by tourists then. And let’s not forget the month of Fire where the air quality is so unhealthy that you can’t go outdoors. You will live longer being in Bend though as the best way to socialize is through exercise; however, the quality of the healthcare is iffy because there is no internship program at the local hospital and, therefore, all the education for doctors is on the west side of the Cascades and the docs stay there after they finish their education. So, there is a physician shortage in Bend. It is still a bit of a cultural wasteland despite a few cultural venues and a handful of restaurants that serve a better version of pub food though most local people don’t realize this because they think Bend is Mecca and so don’t know what they’re missing. Maybe this is OK because ignorance is indeed bliss and who needs culture when you live in the middle of nowhere, but have incredible outdoor activities around you (that the tourists got to enjoy more than the locals this past year thanks to Coronavirus). The City Council and The Bulletin, the daily paper, are in the pockets of developers and realtors and people are so busy doing their sports that they hardly notice that their town is being ruined. Bend is, thus, a political wasteland. People who grew up here have an arrogance that keeps them from fighting City Hall as they have a naïve sense of trust and the newcomers don’t fight City Hall because they moved here to have a second childhood. So, basically, the politicians, City Staff, and developers do whatever they want and sometimes people complain, but they don’t really do anything about it. Everyone in power uses a lack of affordable housing as an excuse to build and build and build and destroy all the open land and create more traffic problems, but not much affordable housing. Besides, if you compare the cost of living in Bend to everywhere attractive in the West, Bend is still affordable. Bend has a reputation as being a bike friendly town, but unlike everywhere else in the country this is interpreted to mean mountain biking outside of town not actual biking in town. With few bike paths and many, many streets with no sidewalks all over town, Bend gets low scores on pedestrian friendliness too. Testosterone rules here also as reflected in the number of men with facial hair and the IPA-focused beer culture. At anyone time, probably half the drivers are tipsy on craft beer and the other half are stoned on legal pot, but, hey, this is Oregon and pedestrians can cross a street, including a highway, anywhere and anytime they want so locals need to maybe stop wondering why accidents are common. I will continue to live here until the politicians and developers destroy the town - and they will - and then I’ll move on to the next nice town in the West. Unfortunately, they are starting to be few and far between and Bend may be as good as it gets these days. How sad.
Haley | Santa Maria, CA