Lead Stories

The Block Party is blasting off with nine stages this year, and each and every one of them is destined to keep you captivated, no matter how much Ninkasi you’ve managed to slide into your belly. The Ninkasi Patio Stage, on that note, is full of local icons — including Adventure Galley, Basin & Range and Marv Ellis, to name a few — but there’s a whole lot more to unearth this year in terms of novelty.

The beauty of the Block Party fashion show is not only the stylish clothes but also how they were made, who made them and who is wearing them. It is insular in a sense, bringing together designers, models and hair and makeup professionals within and near the Whiteaker neighborhood, but it also showcases what creativity can produce with leftover material, wherever you may hail from.

For six summers, volunteers of the Whiteaker Block Party have been hard at work adding the Block Party era to the neighborhood’s long and colorful history. The Whit has been home to indigenous people, farmers, families, hippies, anarchists, artists and small business owners — all folks who benefit from creative thinking. This thinking just might be the most continuous generational thread winding through this place that has seen many changes.

Cutest Ruby

Best Dressed Winston Churchill and Bartholomew all dressed for the Sabbath

Ugliest No name submitted

Honorable Mention Amy the Angry Reindeer

Runners Up

It happens every summer. Someone makes a quick trip to the mall and leaves her dog in the car “just for a couple minutes.” But the lines get long, the minutes drag on and before long that car sitting in the sun has gotten unbearably hot.

Urban homesteading, backyard farming — call it what you will, the movement for self sufficiency and sustainable living is booming. In Eugene neighborhoods from the South Hills to the Whiteaker it seems like every other house sports a chicken coop or custom greenhouse.

As an educator and as an architect, making the case against recommendations to improve Eugene’s schools may seem difficult. Our children deserve the very best facilities and access to the highest quality education. However, the recommendations in a recent 4J Facilities Master Plan study are so flawed that the case against them is quite easy to make. 

In terms of building type, the recommendations ignore overwhelming research on the academic value of small schools and disregard the evidence supporting neighborhood schools. In terms of process, the evaluation metrics are skewed to justify new construction, the effort failed to account for citizen input, and the naïve hope for funding misinterprets Eugene politics. 

The Oregon Country Fair is debuting a new addition: This year revelers can stroll along on the maiden voyage of a new loop that veers off through an as-yet-virginal section of the forested fairgrounds. “It’s taken a huge amount of work to put in the new loop,” OCF General Manager Charlie Ruff says. “We’ve been looking at areas to develop new paths for many years.”

In addition to alleviating congestion as visitors make their way through the Fair’s labyrinthine network of trails to areas such as the Upper River Loop and Wooten Way, the loop promises to carry a special appeal for the younger crowd. “We’re always looking for ways to improve the Fair experience for kids,” Ruff explains. He says there will be great activities for youngsters, “which gives parents a chance to see a show or have a little time for themselves.” 

Sorry folks, there’s actually no definitive evidence suggesting that Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, to whom the reversed title of this story can be credited, ever made it to the Fair, but it didn’t take more than three years — after the Fair’s beginnings in 1969 — for our annual psychedelic parade in Veneta to start taking on other famous faces.

Carlos Castaneda, peyote proponent and author of The Teachings of Don Juan, was reportedly a multiple attendee to the abstruse happenings of the Fair in the early 1970s, but he wasn’t the only icon to grace OCF grounds with his presence.

Randy Lord and Chris Leebrick rolled into town in 1992, their old Buick Park Avenue packed with the worn clothing and stratospheric expectations of young artists. They were fresh out of college and bubbling with an ambitious plan: to create a first-class theater that features only the best actors, produces timeless plays and keeps ticket prices well within the range of us mortals. 

Twenty years later and that plan is still unfolding. With another wildly successful season under its belt and on the brink of opening a new space downtown, Lord Leebrick Theatre Company is celebrating its past accomplishments, while still looking toward the future.

How do you quantify a legend? How Sasquatch is Bigfoot? How Loch Ness is Nessie? In the realm of legend, it’s nearly impossible to gauge magnitude — how golden is Eldorado and how deep is Atlantis? 

In the sports world, where myth and legend remain forever tangled by statistics and star-power, legend status is hard-earned, and just as unquantifiable. Is there a measuring stick big enough to do justice to those giants of athleticism, like Jordan or Seles, who heroically rise above all things mundane and capture our admiration? Such figures seem to transcend our speculations and enter another domain — a pantheon.