Bend Film

I'm not sure it's my place to comment on Bend Film. I don't have the slightest bit of inside knowledge. I know that it passed without much notice. I had some Hollywood types in the store a bit, but other than that, I'm not sure I would have known it was happening.

Contrast that to a few years ago. They brought in an inflatable stage that literally spanned Minnesota Street. If I remember rightly, the bubble stage was so big that it became necessary to actually move some of the street fixtures.

Handy analogy, what?

Too big to fit the actual dimensions of Bend.

Here's where I might be accused of "stomping on their dreams" as my haircutter once so memorably put it to me.

But, maybe someone has to be down to earth enough to point out that not every dream is achievable and that if you want to create a 'world class' event, you better have 'world class' facilities and infrastructure in place.

And fundraising.

That's the sticky wicket. For-profit entities, such as my store, have a hard enough time being viable, and we have all the incentive in the world. I think it's very difficult to run a non-profit organization without the profit motive. Constant fundraising can't be much fun.

It appears to me that either a festival type event is entrepreneurial, or it becomes corporate. If it's the dream of a single individual, it depends on the charisma and energy of that individual. (Who, not judging mind you, tend to be somewhat mercurial, and who tend to want to move on to the next thing.) How many times have we seen entities go immediately downhill after the first inspirational person leaves? A series of steps downward.

If it become big enough to become 'corporate'' that is, where a board of directors becomes the main power, then the whole edifice becomes subject to politics; infighting and power plays.

What I've noticed is that these type of events can go for years on auto-pilot, but one really bad year can be enough to bring them down. A couple of bad choices, or employees, of power-fights behind the scenes, and they never recover.

Because they're obviously fragile.

Here comes the 'stomping on the dreams' part. Perhaps some of these events were just too grandiose. Too dependent on the 'newness' factor, the energetic individuals, the 'dream'.

Perhaps there is just a life-span to any non-profit organization, especially artist organizations.

I don't really know enough, I'm just extrapolating from outside information. But there is a for-profit parallel universe, if you will.

Stores can also become too grandiose for the actual town.

I have an image of a store that would be the envy of all stores. I have the resources and the knowledge to pull it off -- at least, to the point of opening the store.

But to what end? To go out of business?

The store would be fabulous, and would never pay for itself.

Build it and they will come?

But from where? And how often? And how much will they spend?

It seems to me that non-profit entities, especially events that rely on fund-raising, are doubly difficult.

I think Bend is especially susceptible to these types of over-inflated entities. We attract energetic, creative people here, some with money. Bend appears to be booming, and open to the arts. We have the tourism months that give us a boost.

But fundamentally, I still believe we are a smaller town than people realize, that the money estimates are way too high, that we have very slow periods that have to be sustained, that outside of the 'growth' industry, we have tourism and retirement, which don't pay all that well, and so on.

It's not impossible to create an oversized success in Bend, but it's probably twice as hard -- and any individual who has to work that hard is going to ask himself why he's limiting himself (or herself) to a glass ceiling represented by population and isolation.

But...we keep getting those people, bless them. I thank them for making Bend such an interesting place, and wish them the best.