I have a friend who invented a new technique in a housing production (I won't say what, cause you might figure out who it is.)
Anyway, when I first met him, he was installing the product himself. But he wanted to jump to production and selling the material and technique to others, so he got himself a big warehouse.
Yesterday he was in the store and saying he was moving to Southern California.
"I just can't ship from here," he said. "It's inconvenient."
That, folks, in a nutshell is why is will always be difficult to lure any major production to Bend.
He also mentioned that "Let's Make a Space" was leaving.
I always wince when someone comes to Bend and goes all Hollywood on us. A local T.V. show, complete with host with foreign accent, big trucks and billboards and fancy store and ubiquitous logo's and the whole, "we're going to show you how it's done."
First of all, there is almost bound to be a backlash.
Secondly, it isn't that we all don't want nicer spaces. But we can't afford to hire someone to tell us what a nicer space should look like! That takes stupid money, extra money you can just throw away to let someone else tell us how to do the job, (much less actually do that job) and very few of afford to do that, and those of us who can, probably want to do it ourselves, thank you very much.
If I had any advice to give to people who move to Bend to open a business, it would be ---tone it down. Settle in. Show us your stuff. After a decent space of time, then you can start to brag.
Anyway, that plus the nearly empty streets made me wonder again: are people leaving?
Anyway, when I first met him, he was installing the product himself. But he wanted to jump to production and selling the material and technique to others, so he got himself a big warehouse.
Yesterday he was in the store and saying he was moving to Southern California.
"I just can't ship from here," he said. "It's inconvenient."
That, folks, in a nutshell is why is will always be difficult to lure any major production to Bend.
He also mentioned that "Let's Make a Space" was leaving.
I always wince when someone comes to Bend and goes all Hollywood on us. A local T.V. show, complete with host with foreign accent, big trucks and billboards and fancy store and ubiquitous logo's and the whole, "we're going to show you how it's done."
First of all, there is almost bound to be a backlash.
Secondly, it isn't that we all don't want nicer spaces. But we can't afford to hire someone to tell us what a nicer space should look like! That takes stupid money, extra money you can just throw away to let someone else tell us how to do the job, (much less actually do that job) and very few of afford to do that, and those of us who can, probably want to do it ourselves, thank you very much.
If I had any advice to give to people who move to Bend to open a business, it would be ---tone it down. Settle in. Show us your stuff. After a decent space of time, then you can start to brag.
Anyway, that plus the nearly empty streets made me wonder again: are people leaving?