WILL Leather Goods
I went to Hollywood to pursue my dream of becoming an actor with an audition for One Flew Over Cuckoos Nest. That didn’t happen.
Business
Dakine 2.0
A 24-year-old robert burns grabs his backpack and snowboard and throws it in the back of his truck. Ten inches of fresh powder. Hood River is at its best in March and again in summer, when he rips up the Gorge on his windsurfer. He tears a new strip of duct tape and mended the pants he’s had on life support for the past six years. A two-shot Americano at Ground Coffee will get him to the first chair at Mt. Hood for a few runs. Forty days on the mountain and, likely, a little late for work, again. Well. In a couple more years, he’ll get a real job, new board pants and maybe even a Dakine Builder’s Pack with a chainsaw pocket for trail work on Whoopdee. No hurry though, as Burns is merely a fictional character representing a key demographic of Dakine, a Hood River-based outdoor gear…
Startup Oregon
Josh Bryant looked over a fresh foot of snow blanketing his yard one winter morning and made an easy decision. He was going to be a few minutes late for work. Throwing his skis on top of his car, he headed up to Mt. Bachelor, determined to get the first chair. With the sun peeking over the Cascades, the Bay Area-transplant knocked out two quick runs and was in the office of his Bend-based startup company less than an hour later.
Ruby Gates
photo by Jan Sonnenmair Disjointed and winding is the road of entrepreneurship. For Ruby Gates, this journey took many starts and turns before bringing her to Point 97, a marine ecosystem planning software spinoff of Portland’s conservation nonprofit, Ecotrust. In August 2013, Point 97 launched a rare for-profit subsidiary of the twenty-three-year-old Ecotrust. The software behind Point 97 was developed through grants within the Marine Consulting Initiatives arm of Ecotrust. It started with fishermen documenting the number and types of fish they caught and recording that data. This would eventually be compiled for government agencies, often with long lags of time in between. “That work expanded into global demands,” Gates notes. “The spinoff of this program into a for-profit entity accelerates the speed that data are collected and published. That convenience, coupled with the ability to knit together contracts for these services, made it ready for a for-profit environment.” Behind…
Joe O’Neill
photo by Blaine Franger Tell us about your childhood. I was the definition of a “latchkey” kid. I attended eight different schools by the time I was in sixth grade, and we had moved fourteen times. Being an only child, and the new kid, I lost myself in books from a very early age. When did you start writing? I’ve been a writer since I was about 10. I developed a series called “Flash Rodgers,” a very witty combination of Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon. I did all the writing and illustration, and would present the finished product to my mother each Sunday morning. I started writing my first novel when I was 15 (an impossibly bad spy novel). I wrote during college, and in my 20s tried, unsuccessfully, to copy the styles of David Sedaris and Nick Hornby. I wrote lots of stories, and all of them were bad….
State vs Private
A bill before the Oregon Legislature is SB 1559, which would allow grocers in Oregon to sell distilled spirits. The Northwest Grocers say the bill doesn’t go far enough. The Oregon Distillers Guild says the bill will kill the Oregon craft distilling industry. Here, Oregon Liquor Control Commission chairman Rob Patridge debates Alex Duarte of Oregonians for Competition on privatizing liquor sales in Oregon. Rob Patridge OLCC Chairman illustration by Paul Harris 62 1859 OREGON’S MAGAZINE MARCH | APRIL 2014 LOCAL HABIT sound off OREGONIANS CAN walk into any of the 248 liquor stores and buy anything off the shelf, including more than 400 Oregon-made products. Oregonians have more than 2,000 choices for distilled spirits—more than almost any state in the nation because of our distribution system. If a store doesn’t have a product, they can order it. Just ask one of the more than 1,000 employees of these…
The Sharing Economy
NEIGHBORS IN A QUIET ASHLAND enclave of thirteen townhomes near Grizzly Peak share a workshop with its communal band saw and planer, a garden, a ping-pong table, a guest room, an indoor area with a kitchen and two meals a week. This is Southern Oregon’s only cohousing community, and an example of the growing sharing economy that includes homes, cars, goods, services and spans the state. Photo by Aubrie LeGault The Ashland cohousing community was designed by Melanie Mindlin, Ashland Planning Commission’s chairwoman who has neither architecture nor urban planning degree but has a vision of community. Mindlin bought the property, and did the site plan and conceptual drawings of the buildings before hiring an architect. She and other member households later formed a company, and after they secured a construction loan, Mindlin transferred title of the land to what’s now called the Ashland Cohousing Community. Mindlin, age 58, grew…
What I’m Working On: Kerry Tymchuk
It’s not a gas-lighted cave, but the Oregon Historical Society “vault” is one of the state’s best kept secrets, closely guarded by a fifth-generation Oregonian who is no less a state treasure himself.
Vehicle Mileage Tax
The growing popularity of electronic cars has government officials reconsidering Oregon’s gasoline tax structure. The Oregon legislature recently established an exploratory, voluntary vehicle mileage tax pilot program for 5,000 Oregon drivers which will take effect in 2015. A vehicle mileage tax of one-and-a-half- cents-per-mile would replace the existing gas tax. What do you think about a per-mile tax?
