Category: Local

Goodbye Juniper Cafe

First off, sorry about the lack of posting yesterday. I was in bed with a stomach virus all day. After sleeping all day, I feel much better.

As I mentioned earlier, the Juniper Cafe was to close at the end of this month. In fact, today was its last day (it’ll be official at 2:00PM today). So after 47 years, the Juniper Cafe is no more.

As is our usual Friday tradition, my father and brother-in-law went there this morning at 6:00am, and my family went there for lunch today. The waitress that is always there bought our lunch (we left her a healthy tip). A Bulletin reporter was there as we were leaving, interviewing the manager and such.

Apparently on May 10, the owners of the building are going to be coming back into town and basically giving away everything in there to the highest bidder. I’m going to see if I can get some of the wall hangings off the wall in there (I did get a postcard or two while I was in there).

The waitress that’s been there as long as I can remember is moving to Billings, Montana, with her husband. Apparently he works at the local Outback Steakhouse, and they’re opening one in Billings that he’s going to transfer to.

Good luck to them, they will be missed, as will everbody at the cafe.

April 29, 2005

Bend’s Now (in)Famous For Something Else

First, we’re a top place for people to go to die, but now Bend is full of some of a pile of debtors, more than the rest of the country, based on how people are spending their tax returns. Full, sad, story (if that link doesn’t work, go to mapinfo.com and click on their press release section).

April 27, 2005

Roger’s Back!

Roger — aka the High Desert Skeptic — joined us for our first blogger meetup many moons ago. His online activity has been limited since Kerry lost the election (he was a big Democrat supporter).

However, he’s back online. He went and spent some time Thailand after the December tsunamis, and came back with some great pictures and stories.

April 14, 2005

That’s a Lot Of Bud

A couple of Bend residents were arrested on charges of growing 85 marijuana plants in their basement. For obvious reasons, you won’t find a copy of this story on The Bulletin’s site (at least I couldn’t). Why? Because one of the folks busted was a Bulletin employee (not sure what the person does there, but I’m just quoting the story).

It was in their print edition (page C1), amazingly enough. I couldn’t find a story online at other local media (Bend.com’s search function doesn’t work, so while it might be there, it’s impossible to find anything there anymore). But if you have a copy of the paper, it’s in there.

What annoys me further, actually (as pot busts aren’t that big of a deal, though this was pretty big), is that the story cites a Deschutes County Sheriff News Release, but I can’t say that I can find the release anywhere in their news section. So while I don’t expect to find that story on the Bulletin’s site for obvious reasons, I would expect to find it on the County’s site.

April 14, 2005

City Of Bend To Start Renaming Streets

Let me tell you, this can’t happen soon enough. While I’ve lived here long enough to know where the various streets change names, trying to explain it to people from out of town is damn near impossible, especially now that the parkway has split many of them in weird spots or connected them in others.

They plan on starting off small and just dealing with Hill Street, but Bond street is a mess of names, as is the Portland-Olney-Penn-Neff-Alfalfa Market stretch of road (the Bulletin story forgot Penn in that combo), the 8th-Trenton-12th road that runs up the Butte, the Hwy. 20-Greenwood-Newport-Shevlin Park road, etc… . There are even two or three little weird ones in my neighborhood alone (Jones turns into 12th, and Jones heads off on a completely separate road, for example).

April 6, 2005

Bad Dining

This is yet another reason why I’ll miss places like the Juniper Cafe: Some of the local, high-end, trendy restaurants locally that are catering to the yuppie folks around here don’t seem to care when they treat you like crap.

Take Kanpai Bend, for example. Shannon and Simone both had horrible experiences because of wait staff that, for the most part, thought their restaurant was the coolest thing since sliced bread and that because they are popular, they didn’t need to be nice.

You’re a sushi place, folks (and a small one at that), and you’re replaceable as there are probably dozen restaurants here that have sushi as well as a few grocery stores that sell very good stuff as well (I’ve heard that the Newport Market’s is actually very good). In other words, enjoy your popularity while it lasts, as it won’t for too long. Every new restaurant here has a surge of popularity when it first opens, and only the good ones survive afterwards when the customers drop. The previous inhabitant of that space, the Brooklyn Cafe, was the same way: very full the first few months, and then fairly dead thereafter.

So good luck to you: You’re going to need it.

April 5, 2005

Juniper Cafe To Close

Did I miss this in the local media? I had heard from my father-in-law a couple weeks ago after his weekly Friday trip to Juniper Cafe that they were going to close. We went there on Wednesday before we headed out of town, and confirmed with the long-time staff there: As of May 1st, Juniper Cafe will be no more.

What’s happening to them? From what I was told, the owner of the place was looking to move on and just wanted to sell the place. The buyer wasn’t interested in keeping the place running, but to bulldoze it into a parking lot.

The buyer? The Real Estate office next door. So they’re looking to increase the size of their parking lot (which already seems like it’s fairly good size, but whatever).

Everybody knows my feelings about the Bend real estate market, as well as how all our homestyle dining establishments are shutting down. So after Pilot Butte closed down for dinner and Jake’s Diner is relocating to the worst location for a restaurant in Bend, now Juniper Cafe will be closing.

My brother and father-in-law have gone there weekly for years. I’ve gone there quite a bit, and first started going there with my family when I was little. It’s looked the same since I was a kid, and the folks there (despite going through a couple owners) have always been nice. I will miss it, that’s for sure (just like I still miss the Snow Bunny on the Westside — I went there on their last day — as they had the best damn sausage gravy on the planet).

So where to go now? I haven’t been to Sargent’s for years (but they’re on the other side of the real estate office, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that gets bought up and bulldozed as well). Palmer Cafe is good, but it’s small and crowded (though the food’s really good).

Juniper Cafe, you will be missed.

April 3, 2005

It’s The First Day Of Spring…

…and it’s snowing in Central Oregon. You can sort of tell it’s snowing by looking at our office Web cam, but it is certainly snowing. The mountain got some snow last night, too.

March 21, 2005

Band Concerts Start Tonight

As mentioned previously, the Cascade Winds Symphonic Band concerts start today at 3:00 and again tomorrow at 7:30. All the information is in my previous post. If you make it up to the show, feel free to stop by and say “Hi!”

Regular blogging to continue tomorrow, as I have to go setup for the show this afternoon. See you there!

March 13, 2005

Anybody Want A Freezer?

Remember that frosted over freezer I mentioned earlier this week? Apparently the owner of the home doesn’t want it back, so it’s free to anybody who wants to haul it away. It works great, after it defrosted and was cleaned out, so it’s free to a good home. E-mail me if you want to come down to Sunriver to get it, and I’ll mark your claim on it. First come, first serve!

March 10, 2005