Batgate continues.

No, not the comic.

A couple of things. I did not know that the Fed's had paid for 80% of the buses. I had understood that this would only happen if they went through channels and bought new buses. So which is it? Did they get funding? Was this ever mentioned before, and if not, why not?

The thing that really jumped out at me is Councilor Bill Friedman's defensiveness. Quote: "Though he said he had heard about the memo, Friedman said he had not read it He could not recall how long he had known about the memo." Now's your chance, Bill, since it's publicly printed in the Bulletin, so about half of Bend now knows more than you do.

Chris Telfer seems to be the only one actually questioning what's going on, but apparently she was not given access to the memo until this week. So....at a guess, they were only showing the memo to those who wouldn't raise a stink?


On another front: The owners of Joker's accused of passing bad checks. I've said before, I think Poker is a very bad idea for our culture, and any business that encourages it is not doing us any favors. A table with 8 or 10 players, of which all but one lose all their money. Yeah, that's a great idea. Let's do more of that. Let's fleece the stupid and unwary. The lottery at the 7/11 can take what's left.

What is wrong with our city council? Does anyone have the scoop? I don't have any inside knowledge, I don't know any of them personally.

But the quality of their decision making has been pretty damn poor, lately. From the BAT fiasco, to Juniper Ridge, it seems as though the results are drawn out, defensive, uncertain and contradictory. They appear to be playing favorites on the UGB; ignoring their own guidelines in order the get the best result for their pet project.

Is the staff giving them bad advice, or are they ignoring or over-riding that advice? Is it one or two members leading the others astray? Or total group think? It seems as though they've gotten a couple of fresh members, who immediately toe the line. I don't go to city council meetings; I may catch snippets on T.V. once in awhile. I just know what I read in the paper. I'm really not qualified to give any of the answers.....

But I have the following questions.

What would happen if we actually scaled back on the grandiose plans for Juniper Ridge? Perhaps letting it go altogether? Or at least putting it on hiatus? How about spending the advertising money we're currently spending on attracting growth and tourism on something else? (Is it possible in this day and age to say what Tom McCall did? Come visit, but don't stay?) Why isn't the Bend City Council asking the voters to fund a transportation system, instead of draining the same funds that pay our police and firemen? How about sticking to the objective standards they've already outlined in picking the UGB?

I wonder. Are they aware that the monies they've been seeing over the last few years are likely to diminish?

Is it time for a real, honest to goodness, anti-growth candidate? (NOT ME!!!!! Trust me, I'm not qualified.) Someone knowledgeable, maybe even a native Bendite?

All I know is, if 9 former mayors and 450 other prominent citizens came forward and suggested that my decision making was off track, my first move wouldn't be to hire a PR firm.

Broken Top. A stalking horse, all the way.

I hope none of the residents of BT are poker players, because I think they're being bluffed, and not even a particularly good bluff. Let the SOB buy it, and try to develop it. Let the city and state shut down his plans, I wouldn't even hire a lawyer. Let him take it bankrupt, and then the good people of Broken Top can buy it for half the price. On second thought, hire a lawyer only make sure that he keeps it at "A" status, and let him stew.

Somebody tell me how he has even a 1% chance of succeeding at redeveloping, when he basically has just about everyone against him, including equally (as the Bulletin calls them this morning "Old Guard") powerful developers, the government agencies, the residents, and most of the public.? They bought it, let them lose it.

There is a blizzard of statistics out there. It's hard to see either the forest or the trees through all the snow. Certainly, anyone can data mine for the stats that most support their view. I'd like to avoid that, to try to see some truth underlying all the information.

The true situation will emerge, and it won't matter how the real estate people try to spin it. I've said before that I don't think Public Relations will keep gravity from taking hold. But that isn't completely right. I don't think PR matters, but I do think psychology matters. So, in so far as PR is able to affect psychology it can have a --- small --- impact. But, reality has a much bigger impact.

I have a friend, Mike, who helped us move into our used bookstore. He left town a few years ago, but visits once in a while. What I like is that he is older and more experienced than I, that he is well read, and that he's willing the ARGUE WITH ME! Or rather, he can hold up his end of the argument.

So he saw the brighter side of things in Bend. I still don't agree with him, but it was interesting to see a person who's opinion I respect be able to make a case that I was being too pessimistic.

But I still think it's going to be much worse than he thinks it will be.

Every year I can't wait for summer business to get here, and every year I'm more than ready to see it go.

Yes, I get a 25% boost, but I have to work at least twice as hard to get there. There last few years have been especially difficult because a large percentage of my foot traffic are young families. My store looks very alluring to them....and yet, there is little they really want. Indeed, if they don't look at the Star Wars stuff, or Pokemon, my chances of selling much are pretty low.

There is a short article in the paper today that parents are in total denial about how overweight their kids are. Well, they are also in denial about how little their kids want to read. Since my store is more than half made up with reading material, you see the problem. This is going to sound weird, but my main job with young families is to try to manage them. Most are just fine, but there are a few who feel their kids are priviledged and entitled, and I have to find ways to manage them so that don't displace or damage so much product they hurt my store. (I buy everything in the store, I can't return it, and I usually can only afford one of each item.) And a very few young families take offense if I say anything, no matter how mild or careful I phrase it.

I have always found it fascinating that the kids that most need instruction, are the same kids who have parents who take the most offense at their kids being instructed. Kind of goes together, don't it?

It's very dangerous to criticize kids in this culture. So I want to make it clear; most kids are a delight. But the few who are little brats make it hard.

So, well, I'm sort of glad when they go back to school.

I just have to budget a little tighter and lavish more attention on the fewer people coming in the door.

Linda and I went on a Labor Day drive, east of town, and we picked up flyers from houses for sale along the way. The subdivisions just kept going east and south of Highway 20, which turned into little pockets of big houses with big porches, (and refreshingly few 'faux' craftsman designs), that turned into...I'll call them "McRanches. "(James Dean in Giant would be very comfortable.) Turned back south to get on back on Highway 20 and was amazed how far out we'd gone.

Some observations; houses that were being "sold by owner" were way overpriced. There were a couple of subdivisions with bigger and nicer houses than I expected (Sandelwood?)-- still too close together, however. There is an openness, a cleanness to the terrain that is very attractive, in ways the west side of Bend doesn't have. Even the subdivisions have more of a country feel, whereas the westside seems to have more of an urban (crowded) neighborhood feel. Houses built 2o years or more ago face the road, whatever direction the road is, whereas houses built in the last few years face the mountains. There are plenty of unfinished subdivisions, and it looked to me like there was plenty of land that could be developed. Anyone who thinks there isn't land available, just hasn't driven around.

I've always wondered if there is a desert mentality and a forest mentality, and they are reflected by the two sides of Bend. My mom didn't much care for the high desert, she was a gardener who would've been happy in the valley. But growing up here, I learned to love the wide open spaces of the high desert. I spent the first 9 years of my life on East 12th, clambering up Pilot Butte on the weekends, so maybe I'm just nostalgic for the feel of it. We went hunting east of Bend, most of the time, but then went fishing west of Bend most of the time. I spent the next 9 years up on N.W.Roanoke Avenue, and a very lush garden, and so I love that too. Just not enough to pay an extra 40% for it.

We talked alot about colors, because I've never been satisfied with the tan color of our house. Someday, we are going to change it, and I'd like a kind of 'forest red' or a 'forest green' or a 'lake blue' ; colors that many houses in Central Oregon were colored 30 or 40 years ago. I think of the red color that all of Gilchrist houses were painted as a 'natural' color for this area, and there was a kind of dark green color I like as well. I don't remember much pastel, and -- strangely -- earth tones, the boring endless greens, and browns that you see on the west side, weren't the norm.

I like the juniper and rock outcroppings and yes, sage brush in the wild half of my backyard, and they are going to remain wild. The other half of my yard is going to be turned into green lawn and lush garden, so I'll have the best of both worlds.

I see no reason to soften our critique about the housing bubble now, just because we've been proved right. It's just really starting, and I see no reason to help the people who put us in this position, the developers, the real estate, the mortgage, the builders. The people who need to hear about the possible dangers and downsides are the buyers, regular people. If there are any people right now contemplating a ARM, or buying an overpriced house, and so on.

There is going to be plenty of BS over the next year, hoping the trap the unwary, the naive, the foolish. It's still important to try to point out the dangers. I predict we are going to get a PR push on the part of the real estate people that will boggle the mind.

We still have to go through the second stage of grief, anger, and I predict that's coming, and we'll hear a lot of anger toward the critics.

I'm probably more pissed off now hearing this stuff than I was a year ago, because a year ago alot of these real estate people really believed in their own line of BS. They really believed that housing prices would keep going up, that ARM's were a good idea, that Californians would just keep moving up here, and so on.....But anyone trying to spout that now is either cynical or a fool, and it is no time to let them get away with it without challenge.