They’ve taken away an on-street parking space in downtown Bend to put in a rack for 12 bicycles. The politically correct response would be to jump up and down and cheer, but pardon me if I don’t join in.

The multi-bike rack, called a “bike corral,” was installed in a parking space in front of Thump Coffee on Minnesota Avenue. It cost about $3,500, according to The Bulletin’s account, and was paid for by the Downtown Bend Business Association and individual contributors.

Kent Chapple, co-owner of Thump, said the corral was a solution to bike congestion near his shop. “It was really apparent that there just wasn’t enough capacity for all the bikes that wanted to be in this area,” he said. “If we can serve 12 people with one parking spot, that’s 11 more people down here we can serve than with that one [vehicle] parking spot.”

Thump appears to be a sort of haven for bikies. (That’s a new word I made up to identify bike enthusiasts, like “foodies” for food enthusiasts.) Chapple ride a bike to work, as do almost all of Thump’s 10 employees, according to The Bulletin.

This bike corral took away only one parking space out of about 2,000 in the downtown area. But don’t bet that it will be the last one. The Minnesota Avenue corral “could become a prototype for future bike parking structures downtown,” according to The Bulletin’s account.

Is there a legitimate need for even one on-street bike corral, let alone a bunch of them? True, many people ride bikes downtown, and more power to them. But a bike can be parked almost anywhere – chained to a tree, a signpost or a light fixture as well as a bike rack.

In 25 years of visiting Bend’s downtown I’ve never had trouble finding a parking space for a bike. Obviously I can’t say the same about a car.

The downtowners have plans to install 28 more hitching posts for bikes on the sidewalks, and I’m cool with that; it falls into the category of encouraging bicycle use. But when you take away parking spaces for cars and give them to bicycles, that’s an attempt to discourage car use – and that’s too much like trying to dictate other people’s lifestyle for me to feel comfortable with it.

It’s not hard to figure out what the bikies’ agenda is, beyond the ostensible motive of relieving alleged bicycle congestion. “We just want to promote Bend’s bike friendliness,” Chapple told The Bulletin. “We wanted to send a signal that Bend was a bike-friendly community.”

Sending such a signal is okay. But by taking away a parking space they’re also sending a signal – intentionally or not - that Bend, or at least the downtown part of it, is a car-unfriendly community.

It's September 2, 2010, which translates numerically to 9/02/10, making today the most fitting day in the history of time and space to celebrate the legacy of the soap-opera-influenced teenage drama, Beverly Hills 90210.

People are actually celebrating 90210 Day.

If you're not familiar with this show, it was an ongoing saga focused on rich teenage kids (who were inexplicably played by 28 year olds) and the insane high school and post-high school shenanigans that rich teenage kids are known to get into. It was a less funny Saved by the Bell or, to be more contemporary, a less sexy Gossip Girl. My sister was a loyal fan and from the few episodes I sat through, I recall it to be mostly about people taking high school very, very seriously.

The show -- which spawned spinoffs and a remake that's still on the air -- ran from 1990 to 2000, at which point most of the actors floated off into oblivion.

But that's not stopping fans of the show (or perhaps just fans of '90s nostalgia in general) from gathering for parties today and celebrating on Facebook. It's unknown whether or not these fans will wear  some of the ridiculously high-waisted jeans and poofy hair styles made popular by the program.

Let me beat you to it -- yes, John Mellencamp was probably better than Bob Dylan at the Les Schwab Amphitheater on Friday night. Everyone has been saying this for the past few days (during which I've been battling a print deadline and ignoring my blogging duties) and I'll begrudgingly agree.

People say that Dylan didn't even sing...which is partially true. They said he didn't play many hits...that's not necessarily true. Sure, he doesn't sound that great behind the mic, but his band is still stellar and, most importantly, he allows you to say "I just saw Bob Dylan." Check that off the "things to do in my life" list.

(Side note: Check out this article about young people's reaction to Bob Dylan.)

But judge for yourself. Here's some cheap-seats video from the show.

Twice in the past three years, I’ve opted to walk around a dangerous looking section of mountain bike trail only to end up in the ER. Call it clumsiness, call it good intentions gone awry, call it bad luck- it happened.

Three summers ago riding the river trail with local Julien Havac, we came to a tricky rock strewn section. I said: “just to be safe, let’s walk it.”

Two steps onto the rocks and I slipped and fell hard. I got up looked around and that’s when I noticed blood spurting out of my lower right leg.

Quick-thinking Havac pulled off his t-shirt, ripped it apart and created a tourniquet. Off we rode to the Westside  BMC, me tracking blood across the floor as I gimped in.

Some nine internal and countless more external stitches and I was out the door and off the bike and pretty well restricted for two weeks.

Now comes this past Saturday’s chapter in playing it safe.

On a section of the North Umpqua Trail, I was riding solo (read cautious) and got off to walk around a pretty bad section of trail. A fall here and you’d go down a steep embankment and then over a 15-foot cliff into a rock pile.

As I walked my bike through this section, I slipped and next thing I knew was cartwheeling down the embankment and then over the cliff. Luckily, small alder tress stopped my fall short of the rocks.

After checking to see if I was all there and that extremities worked, I realized I was virtually blind without my glasses, which had been torn off. A river of blood flowed down onto my face from a serious gash on my forehead.

I collected myself and started to climb out only to discover that my right thigh, left knee and left buttock were severely bruised. I crawled to where the cliff could be climbed and slowly inched my way upward.

Once back on the trail, it took me a few more minutes to retrieve my bike. It had fallen to the cliff’s edge. Hanging onto a small alder tree and using it as my lifeline, I was able to retrieve my bike.

Thus ensued a three-mile walk out followed by a five-mile ride down the highway to get my car. Car found, I drove back to where I’d exited the trail to wait for my wife who was hiking.

I was a mess and thanks several mountain bikers, hikers and fishermen who saw to it that I wasn’t in critical condition.

The rest of the story involves four hours in the ER at Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg and an array of staples in my forehead. After the staples are removed any chance of becoming a screen star are long gone, except for perhaps bits parts of a truly mean, well-scarred character.

The bruises are deep, my ability to sleep is nil, the psychological wounds apparent.

Is it time to hang it up. I mean if you keep getting hurt while playing it safe, there has to be some sort of warning in that. Perhaps a more contemplative life is in order?

I never miss one of Lars Larson’s little commentaries on the Oregon Catalyst site. They’re some of the best free entertainment on the Web.

In his most recent entry, Lars warns of a sneaky plot by the Obama administration to ban bullets.

Well, it wasn’t exactly the Obama administration that wanted to ban bullets – it was some conservationist groups. And they didn’t want to ban all bullets, only lead bullets.

The conservationists don't want to get rid of lead bullets because they’re against guns or against hunting, but because lead is very toxic stuff. Birds and mammals – including bald eagles and rare and endangered California condors – feed on the carcasses of animals killed with lead bullets and die of lead poisoning.

But Lars doesn’t mention any of this; instead he sees the effort to eliminate lead ammunition as a “backdoor” attack on Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

A lead bullet ban, he fumes, “would make all ammunition much more expensive. It will make it more expensive for folks to own guns, practice with guns, and even shoot guns. It will make it more expensive for folks to arm themselves as the Constitution guarantees.”

Fortunately, Lars goes on, this sneak attack on our precious liberties was foiled: The Environmental Protection Agency turned down the conservationists’ plea to ban lead bullets “because there was so much public outcry.”

“Another win against the Obamanation,” Lars crows. Poison a condor for freedom today!

UPDATE:  According to the right-wing Weekly Standard blog, the EPA is still considering enacting a ban on lead bullets. Well, this wouldn't be the first time Lars has gotten his facts wrong.

Would the state of Oregon be better off if it was its own banker? Ann Kramer thinks so.

Kramer, chair of the board of the Gorge Grown Food network, an organization trying to promote a regional food system in the Columbia Gorge, writes on the Blue Oregon site that having a state bank could help “recharge Oregon’s economy.”

“The State of Oregon collects and spends lots of money,” Kramer says. “Did you ever wonder where that money goes? Right now, much of it sits in the TBTF [‘Too Big to Fail’] banks and they receive the benefits. In fact, we use the TBTF banks for lots of government services — even paying them to administer the OR SNAP program (food stamps). Instead, a state bank could provide these services, saving us millions as well as interest income returning to state coffers.”

The State Bank of Oregon, she adds, also could team up with local Oregon banks to make low-cost loans to agriculture, small business, economic development and students. “This availability of credit has all but disappeared from the TBTF banks, but with a State Bank of Oregon, small businesses and farms, which are the backbone of [Oregon’s] economy, could once again get back to work!”

Kramer’s model, the Bank of North Dakota, was established in 1919 in response to a populist revolt over the high rates of interest that big out-of-state banks were charging farmers. It was given the mission of “promoting agriculture, commerce and industry” in the state.

“It was never intended for BND to compete with or replace existing banks,” the bank’s website says. “Instead, Bank of North Dakota was created to partner with other financial institutions and assist them in meeting the needs of the citizens of North Dakota.”

Eric Hardmeyer, president of BND, explained last year in an interview with Mother Jones magazine how, by being cautious in its investments, the state bank managed to avoid the disastrous impacts of the real estate bubble: “We’re a fairly conservative lot up here in the upper Midwest and we didn’t do any subprime lending, and we have the ability to get into the derivatives markets and put on swaps and callers and caps and credit default swaps and just chose not to do it, really chose a Warren Buffett mentality — if we don’t understand it, we’re not going to jump into it.”

The BND, which has about $4 billion under its management, acts as the repository for all state taxes and fees and pays back the profit it makes in the form of dividends to the state treasury. “Probably this year we’ll make somewhere north of $60 million, and we will turn over about half of our profits back to the state general fund,” Hardmeyer said. “And so over the last 10, 12 years, we’ve turned back a third of a billion dollars just to the general fund to offset taxes or to aid in funding public sector types of needs.”

When the state faces a budget shortfall it can call on the bank for help. Hardmeyer recounted how, after the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, the state fixed its $40 million deficit: “The governor just simply said all right, we’re going to turn back 1% of all general fund agencies, and the Bank of North Dakota, you will declare another dividend to make up the balance. And so we did that.”

Inspired by the success of the Bank of North Dakota, 11 other states are now looking into the idea of starting their own version, and Kramer thinks Oregon should be one of them. It’s hard for me to come up with a good reason why it shouldn’t.

Adventure Galley, the Bend-rooted band I've blogged about and wrote this feature story about, is in the finals of the Toyota Music Rock the Space contest.

The band cruised its way out of the preliminary rounds and then made it into the finals, thanks to the success of their song "Addict" -- a track that showcases the big, almost orchestral sounds of the electro rock band.

Drummer Brock Grenfell, who's here in Bend for the summer before returning to Eugene to continue class at the U of O in a few weeks, stopped by the office today and said there are still a few more days to vote for Adventure Galley in the contest. So click here and head over to vote for the band -- all you need is a MySpace account.

If they win, the band will receive some $40,000 in prizes. So yeah, help these guys out!

During his long tenure as head of the Bend Metro Parks and Recreation District, it was said of the late Vince Genna that he, “never met a ballfield he didn’t like.” But Genna was more than just a ball sports guy as he held a long term vision for a walking/biking trail that would go along the Deschutes River from south of Bend through town and then north to Tumalo.

In dedicating the part of the original River Trail section that starts at the end of the First Street in 1989, Genna spoke of his dream of a trail that would connect north-to-south and vice-versa.

This past Tuesday a key link in Genna’s dream trail was dedicated and, albeit 1,500-feet long, it’s a beauty.

The section of trail begins with a new ADA compliant ramp coming down off the sidewalk on NW Portland Avenue into Pioneer Park. From there it heads due north on pavers through the park and along the First Street Rapids to the new Davis Park and the base of the rapids.

Davis Park is being created on the yet undeveloped property donated to Parks and Rec in 2006 by the late real estate developer, Jay Audia.

Eventually, a bridge will be built from Davis Park across the river to connect with the First Street section of the River Trail.

The new trail, besides having a wonderful paver surface, except for the short dirt section in Davis Park, is interesting in how it’s constructed around the condominium units at the Riverside Motel. To get through a narrow gap between the condos and the river’s edge, the trail designers had the construction team build a cantilevered platform that extends out over the river. The result is dramatic and makes the trail more interesting to ride and walk.

And those who walk or ride along the trail will come in close contact with the condo owners who, in the spirit of civic involvement, welcomed the trail to their backyards.

In fact, Parks went out of their way to include input on the project from not only the condo owners but property owners on the west side of the First Street Rapids.

With an eye on the historical significance of Pioneer Park, the 1928 monument to the pioneers who crossed the river at that location in the 1850s has been embedded in a large chunk of lava rock and now is at eye instead of ground level.

There’s some debate on whether or not the pioneers did actually cross the river at what is now Pioneer Park. Suffice to say, research shows that pioneers did indeed cross there for a period of time, but later all crossing traffic moved upriver to what is now the Old Mill District.

Hopefully, this new portion of trail will eventually lead to the complete fulfillment of Genna’s River Trail dream.

As if he didn’t have enough headaches being behind Chris Dudley in the polls and in the race for campaign cash, John Kitzhaber has gotten involved in a scandal.

On second thought, better put quotes around “scandal.” Maybe it’s a scandal, maybe it’s something else.

The background: Cylvia Hayes is the longtime “significant other” of John Kitzhaber. She’s also the founder and CEO of 3E Strategies LLC, a Bend consulting firm that specializes in sustainable development, renewable energy and that sort of thing.

Last spring 3E was one of the bidders on a contract with the state Department of Energy for a project that was being funded with federal stimulus money. The contract ended up going to a Seattle firm, R.W. Beck. But, according to The Oregonian and other media, state officials then “encouraged” Beck to take on 3E as a subcontractor.

“At the time, some Energy Department staff members raised concerns about the way Hayes' company was promoted by the agency after losing the bid, and findings by state auditors triggered [a] criminal investigation [by the state Department of Justice and US Attorney’s Office], sources familiar with the investigation say,” The Oregonian wrote.

Hayes released a statement today saying she hasn’t been contacted by investigators and denying that she did anything wrong or that Kitzhaber had anything to do with her firm being picked as a subcontractor.

“It is … clear from the timing and leaks by anonymous sources that some people are attempting to exploit for political purposes the fact that I am in a long-term personal relationship with John Kitzhaber,” the statement said.

“Please allow me to set the record straight: John Kitzhaber has no involvement whatsoever in my company. While John Kitzhaber has sat on the board of my non-profit sustainable development organization, he has at no time had any material involvement with my small business; not as a board member, nor as an investor.  He has also never played a role in my efforts to compete for contracts, either in the private sector or the public sector.”

What to make of all this? Well, it might be worth noting that the story initially was broken Monday by Nigel Jaquiss of Willamette Week, a Portland alternative newspaper.

Jaquiss, who was a Wall Street trader before he decided to go into journalism, is Willy Week’s star muckraker, and he specializes in raking muck of a sexual nature involving Democratic politicians. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for revealing former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt’s sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl, and he broke the story of Portland Mayor Sam Adams’s relationship with a young man who may or may not have been underage when Adams first got involved with him.

There’s no evidence yet that Kitzhaber had anything to do with applying improper pressure to the Department of Energy to steer a contract to Hayes’s company – assuming any improper pressure was applied. It’s even questionable how much weight he still swings with the department, having been out of office for seven and a half years.

But the media now have a reason to put the words “Kitzhaber” and “investigation” into the same headline, and a lot of voters will subscribe to the where-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire theory.

Is it all a political hatchet job, as Hayes is claiming? To use the most shopworn of editorial writer’s clichés, time will tell. But from where I sit right now it smells a little like it.

In the past two weeks, two legends in their respective fields (photography and track and field) passed away without much notice unless you happen to read the major metro newspapers online.

For those who take or admire photos of musicians at work, Herman Leonard’s images are the cornerstone of popular music photography. His dramatic backlit black-and-white images of America’s great jazz musicians are truly iconic (www.hermanleonard.com).

Leonard was a minimalist working with two small lights and a Speed Graphic (in his early days) camera. Perhaps Leonard’s most famous image is his one of tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon. Gordon, porkpie hat on his head, dressed in a sharp zoot suit, coll-looking shirt and tie, rests with his instrument in his lap between numbers at a rehearsal. A wisp of smoke flows up from a cigarette he holds in one hand past his face forming a small cloud above his head.

It’s an image that captures the essence of the jazz era of the late forties and early fifties: hipness in black and white.

But easily his greatest photo, in terms of capturing a moment, is the one of Duke Ellington sitting at a table in a New York club watching Ella Fitzgerald on stage. Ellington’s look of admiration and love says it all.

Speaking of love, when American hammer thrower Hal Connolly fell in love with Czech discus thrower Olga Fikotova during the 1956 Melbourne summer Olympic Games (where he won the gold medal), it was a major incident. Why? Because she was from a then-Communist-Bloc country and the Cold War was still very much alive.

After months of diplomatic negotiations, Connolly and Fikotova were married in Prague in front of a throng estimated between 30 and 40 thousand well wishers.

Connolly would go on to compete in the 1960 (8^th), 1964 (6^th) and 1968 (did not qualify for the finals) Games.

Connolly’s story was even more dramatic because he was born with badly damaged left arm that was much shorter than his right arm. He overcame his apparent problem through serious weight training and went on to break the world record in the hammer six times.

After retiring from competition, Connolly became a school teacher and tireless volunteer helping potential Olympians and the Special Olympics movement.

Connolly’s love story and enduring love for track and field and Leonard’s turning music photography into an art both contributed greatly to the American scene.