Friday, June 8, 2007

A quiet devastation.

I feel like I should add one more thing to my earlier post.

The bubbles I've been involved in, end much quieter than you expect them to.

The people who survive usually have a resigned response. The people who don't survive are like con-artist victims. They don't want to admit to being suckers. Occasionally, you'll get the chagrined, "I wish I sold my Nasdaq stock earlier." Or you get a forlorn, "Are you buying sports cards? I've got a really valuable collection."

Once a person drops out of a bubble, it's the past. It's embarrassing. They move on.

Most of the emotion happens just before the end, as it starts to become clear that things are changing for the worse, and the Casassandra's begin to be targeted. The sports card people spent years bemoaning how 'negative' the messengers were, and how if everyone would be 'positive' it would all be turned around. Which turned a blind eye to the problems, of course. If you can't even acknowledge that there is a problem, you sure as hell can't fix it.

Anyway, there will be a quiet desperation for the next couple years. But it will happen under the radar, to a large extent. The media will move on to the next big thing, once it becomes old news. Frankly, we bloggers are becoming a bit redundant already, (not that that will shut us up) because the things we were saying as possible are now on the front pages as news.

I was just talking to my neighbor for 20 years, Jerry Opie of the Sole Shop, and he was calling me about Sukmi's situation. (He calls me anytime there is a new victim of the downtown rent increases -- a sort of 'told you so...') But see, he's moved on. He is not motivated to indignation the way he was before he moved. Therefore you don't hear anything. He's happy where he's at.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How I learned to Love the Dog, or Bend's Keystone Cop's Find a Way to Meet the Quota

I don't have a dog, but I laughed my arse off tonight on my nightly bike-ride. I usually go up Phils-Trail in the evening, but tonight I did the river from downtown up towards the siphon upriver.

I usually stop at McKay Park on this section of the run to rest, enjoy the grass, and watch the Portage's as this is where you have to go around the little fall's at Colorado. They still have the old bridge for bicycles.

What struck me tonight is there was a cop hiding in the bushes by the sandy beach. This caused me to completely detour my ride, and watch with fascination what the cop was doing. This was no ordinary bends finest, this was the mother goose in florescent yellow.

Now before I get into extreme detail, let me say this everyone is always speeding in this town, and never stop for signs, yet I never see cops anywhere. Yet almost every friday eve they're in the bushes at Les-Schwab Amphitheature or McKay Park. You would think that on friday from 4pm to 6pm that there was police work some where in this town, but I think I have single handedly discovered the source of the entire BendCityPolice Budget.

So here I'm at McKay, there's the RV that's been parked there all week, where a bunch of homeless guys sleep, but by day they have taken over ALL the bushes below the falls on the McKay side, naw the cops weren't after them. Then there's is the constant line of boaters portaging the river, they're supposed to have life-preservers if they're under eighteen, I see them flow by and the cops don't make their move, ...

There is kids walking by with six-packs of PBR, clearly not of age, carrying their rafts, again the mounty's don't make their move. I might mention the actual rule is NO alcohol, but in this world of law-enforcement, selection is essential. You don't want to ticket a bikini, someone may think your an asshole.

Then it happens, the picture is clear here from the street comes a parent, child, and puppy. As soon as the they get near the river the leash comes off, and the stick goes in the water, and so does puppy. Then its flashing red-lights, and officer not-so-friendly T.Brown so they say jumps out. "YOUR LICENSE PLEASE", "GO SIT AT THE BENCH", then another, I think I'm watching a great fisheeman, Soon the whole picnic bench is full of folks with dogs, kids and folks screaming, and the cop turning red in the face. The basic technique seemed to have been ask for their drivers license and send them to the bench, and once it was full, to write tickets, and then repeat, ... back to the bushes...

I watch in amazement. After a little while I wander over on me bike, and wondering what's up, there is a young couple screaming at the cop, he's calling for back-up.

I inquire amongst the crowd what happened they tell me "DOG AT LARGE", now I know that Bend is the land of law enforcement, hell this is why we have NO illegals here, because in Bend NOBODY breaks the law. Bend is the town that the only place I have ever seen a cop is the donut shop. In fact I generally never see cops in Bend, with the exception of bikini-river-drive during the summer.

Now, out in the country "DOG AT LARGE" means rabies, and its time to bring out the guns. Every night that I go by McKay there are family's playing with FIDO at the park near the water. What pray tell happened tonight??

Once this cop had rounded up what appeared to be a dozen folks at the picnic bench, he started writing 'tickets', so I asked to see one from the folks so lucky, it said "5.252 DOG AT LARGE", BASE FINE $327", Now I thought to myself, there's not much more you can do on the road to get a $327 fine. The guy yesterday that caused I-5 in Portland to close for six hours, because he failed to use six tie-downs and used four, got a whopping $150 fine.

So here you have Bend Oregon, its a friday night, folks work all week long, they take the kids and wife down to the park, and play in the water, like they pretty do every eve, but NOT tonight Officer T.BROWN friendly is writing tickets.

I only watched this for little less than an hour, but I saw him write six tickets, that's almost $2,000 in revenue for the city. In my humble opinion that's $2,000/hr a cop in Bend can generate for the city all day long, all the while bikini watching, ONLY IN BEND.

The cop didn't look like a cop, he looked like a clown in a yellow rain suit. I guess this is why all the kids portaging didn't stash their beer.

It's clear that the cop was only there for BIG GAME, .e.g. PUPPY-DOG. I guess having McKAY park being a homeless camp is too dangerous for big-game cops, besides these guys in the bushes all have Pit-Bulls, and you can write tickets all day long, and never make the city a buck, as there folks don't have a nickel to their name.

This cop never once went into the bush where the homeless day-camp is and pulled out the off-leash pets down their, he just stayed near the sandy beach and waited for the typical afternoon crowd to arrive, where kids and pets cool-off everyday all summer, and its been this way for years. I noted that most of the folks he tickets were average looking middle class folk, not the kind of riff-raff you would expect a brave cop to alienate. Most cops are terrified of the homeless as they have nothing to lose, and are typically vietnam vets, who they themselves were professional killers. In this biz we call it 'professional courtesy', thus you'll not see bend's finest mess with homeless or meth-folk, only young couples with pet's & kid's.

When I got home I got on the Internet to figure what in the hell "DOG AT LARGE" meant, and what BCC 5.252 is-was, what I found is that to my surprise anyone in the CityOfBend that doesn't have a dog on a leash is subject to this law. The only exception is dog in a vehicle, within city limits, technically its not even clear to my reading the statue for Bend that you backyard is ok.


Why in the hell are cop's not on the road from 4-6 on friday? My guess is they're down there the same reason as me, its called bikini lookout.

I ride this ride a lot this time of year, and like I have mentioned, its been this way every friday from 4-6pm at either McKay or LesSchwab Amphitheature. Cops hiding looking for people that are throwing balls. They never go after the street people, e.g. homeless. It always the middle class folk. Most county's in Oregon post a priority list of what is considered BIG-GAME, but Bend has always been secret-secret.

My guess is that Mrs. Breeze has come down on city hall and said we want dat dar River-Corridor to be Condo friendly. There can be no regular k-mart working people and their spawn seen where there are condo's for sale. Of course the good cops of Bend are just following orders. Another item is that you want to sell River-Condos, you want two more things bikinis and booze, and then the ol pederasts that buy condos along the river can be sure of having entertainment all summer long. Mrs Breeze includes binoculars with every river-condo.


This T.Brown is-was a real asshole, it looked frightened, and many times called for back-up, but none ever came, a few times the local doggy prison truck drove by, so its clear that the PoundTruck is working with the cops, most likely they cruise and tell the cop where to go, I'm not sure right now that PoundTruck driving folk can write tickets, I know the city is talking about making it so that the folks that pick up trash can write tickets.

All the above was on my first pass of McKay, once I got past columbia across from the upper dirt lot where folks put in their boats, there's beer every where up there, I was some young girls that weren't 18, and they had a full bar laid out on the ground by their car while they were inflating their rafts. I never see cops up there, this is where they're supposed to make sure that kids aren't drinking on the river, this is where they're supposed to make sure that kids have life-preservers. This is where they put in.

It's a pretty twisted town that officer T.BROWN arsehole has to write $327 tickets to young familys, and there kids walking right by with beer in their hand that he doesn't see.

Makes me think that the cops in Bend are totally out of control, or someone has said "go where the money is", perhaps writing tickets to kids who drink on the river is to close to home, after all, we're all there for the bikini, word gets out that you'll get a ticket for drinking and not having a life-preserver and there goes the bikini's.

That said if they drive away all the children, and puppys, what is the point of having a park? Perhaps the point is just a place where the bikini girls have to portage.

I'm sure there is a real good explanation for this, I'm waiting.

I still say that BEND has their priority's screwed to hell, later this summer when another kid dies of drinking on the river without a life-prevserver, just remember this article, and remember that the puppy made the cop do it.

So please some of you republican law and order bastards, please explain this to me. A favorite rant here by the bend-blogger-brigade is enforce the law on the illegals, why do bends finest themselves selectively enforce the law?

Sorry for the duncan style dear-diary blog, but I just thought this was too strange to pass-up, bilbo in bend, your ace field reporter, by bike everywhere.

Lastly, in the new JuniperRidge budget, there is a request for an additional ten full time police, can you imagine how puppy's they can screw then? Its mind boggling.

It's a good racket, as the economy worsens more folks will take to simple things like hang at the river during the summer with the pets, and of course the cops will get to write lots of tickets.

In all the incidents I witnessed folks were only letting the fido and kid's play in the water, its difficult to let a dog play in water on leash. A lot of the raft folk have pets, its extremely dangerous to have a noose around a dogs neck in a boat, but NOTE that in the city of bend anytime a dog doesn't have a noose around its neck, its a DOG-AT-LARGE.

June 9, 2007 at 8:29:00 AM PDT

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