Bend Bulletin Stops Publishing, Cessna Closes

With the release of January's unemployment figures, I think it's pretty safe to say we've reached the End of Days here in Bend.

It hasn't happened but a lot of things we're all accustomed to are going to go away. And Buster is pretty infamous for saying we're reverting to Olde Bend. But I think it's going to be worse than that.

Bubbles have a funny way of bursting. And the bursting doesn't seem to go according to anyone's plan.

I don't think we're going to have a local paper much longer. The economics aren't there.

So much of this place, the Bulletin included, survived, and thrived, due to RE. They were conjoined twins in an ever-escalating swell of leverage-fueled prosperity.

Now though, we're in The Great Unwind. The Big Deleveraging. The Big One.

We're in the most vicious down-spiral ever witnessed in our lifetimes, and still most people in Bend don't get it. There's still this enduring idea that We Are Near The Bottom, and things are going to turn around momentarily, thank you very much Dana Bratton.

But, of course, this is not true.

The RE/Bend media conjoined twin is on life support.

CACB, 3yrs

We only really have CACB to go from as a barometer of local financial health (OK, we have Prineville Bancorp PNVL, but it ain't exactly busting out either). And the patient is near death.

CACB officially went to penny stock status this week. 90 cents. Look at that chart, it's almost zero. Down 97% from it's peak.

Now the question isn't If it'll be shutdown, but When.

And if The Bully was a pubicly traded company, you would see something similar. A company on the verge of collapse.

Same with construction.

Same with local manufacturing. Manufacturing actually lost more jobs this past month in OR than construction.

The seemingly invulnerable combination of Bend media & the local RE juggernaut aren't just going to get slimmed down, they are dying. They will be dead in a year or so.

The whole infrastructure of this place -- the constant influx of people, the building, the new businesses... the whole freshness & zest & zeal, for lack of better terms -- is stopping.

We had 1 in 9 people unemployed in December. It's about to go to 1 in 8 for Jan. And in the month just gone, it promises to get even worse. And there's no end in sight.

Even the perma-optimist Obama, said that 2009 is going to get much worse before it gets better.

And I think it just hit me -- I think it was Tuesday -- that Bend is turning into Burns.

People do not go to Burns.

But Wait, you say. Homes will become cheap enough that people will want to stay here. Look at sales, they do seem to be bottoming out, as local RE-types have said. Right?

Homes are cheap in Burns.

The problem in Burns is Not cheap housing. It's no jobs. What jobs that are there, are low-wage, go-nowhere jobs. You cannot Build A Life in Burns.

There's something far more important than rock-bottom low prices to living somewhere: It's Building A Life.

It's doing something this year that makes you more than you were last year. It's making yourself a better person. It's seeing that you are piling up a skill set that is actually valuable out in The World. It's about some sort of legacy, a Life That Matters.

You can't build a life that matters in Burns.

And like a desert sandstorm can reclaim and consume an entire region, the desert is about to reclaim Bend.

Bend had been pushing out -- extending its prosperity oasis towards Burns, towards La Pine & Christmas Valley, towards Madras. The shoots of growth that started 30 years ago actually seemed like they had conquered the unconquerable. They had multiplied a thousand fold.

No more. The desert is pushing back and is going to reclaim this place.

I think a lot of people think (I was one of them): "Great! After prices fall far enough, I'm going to snatch up my own sweet-ass, rock-bottom foreclosure and just lord it over all my stupid friends who bought at bubble tops. Awesome!"

No. You might want to think about that. You might want to make a visit to Burns first.

Because I think I have a fairly prescient idea of what's going to happen here, in broad strokes.

The City will go broke.

Local paper will go broke.

Local banks will go broke.

Local restaurants will go broke.

Unemployment will reach Depression era levels.

This place will become a ghost town of The Walking Dead.

Like Burns. No life, no future, no human legacy, no nothing.

That just sort of hit me this past week. I'm starting to see quite a bit of empty parking, where it was once so full so constantly, it was really annoying sometimes.

They say downtown is filling up almost as fast as it is emptying out -- whatever that means -- but it is a losing battle. Downtown is emptying out nonetheless. Same thing all over town.

You can see The Walking Dead all around. It's 1 in 7 people here.

But at least Burns is functional; Burns has a grip on reality. Burns isn't pretending to be something it's not.

Burns has crappy shit-jobs, and crappy shit-houses. Both are at the ass-bottom of the money scale, whether paying or pricing.

Look at Bubble Bend: The whole West side is populated with vacant 3,500 sf McMansions. They were $850K. Now they're $550K. And of course, no one is buying.

No one gets it here. We have an Aspenesque housing market, that has just been plopped into a Burnsesque economy. Bend is so self-conflicted, so paradoxical, inconsistent and incongruous, it's mere existence is almost impossible.

What happens to a place that is Wall-To-Wall with mansions, where The Money seems to have taken on a will of it's own and fled, leaving confused and penniless humans behind?

Yes. It hit me this week.

Bank of the Cascades is going to be extinguished. And the dominoes will start falling in rapid succession after that.

The Bulletin will close. Cessna will close. Even the mighty St Charles may fall. The Old Mill will implode. Most of the restaurants, boutiques, art galleries, festivals, fairs, parades, schools, police stations, and local governments will simply fold.

That doesnt just mean "Cheap". That means Burns. That means No Life. That means Get Out As Soon As Possible.

See, people don't care about cheap, when their lifes work is in peril. Again, drive to Burns to witness the phenomenon for yourself.

I can buy a house today Cash in Burns. No going to though. My life is more important than getting a cheap house. If that's all I cared about, I'd be in Detroit right now.

A lot of people around here have been drinking the RE Kool Aid for so long that they can't imagine a life that doesn't revolve around RE, it's their lifeblood. It's pricing, the sales volume, the transacting, the ebb & flow of it, it's every movement, no matter how inconsequntial, is of riveting importance. Been like that for 30 years.

But in the end, this mindset will prove to be a phantom, fleeting.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Bend went from Safety to Self-actualization so forcefully & quickly, that it seemed like it was preordained. We are God's people, this is our fate to live life at it's pinnacle.

But actually this place is about existing at the Physiological level. It's at The Burns Level. It's in the red.

This is why I say Burns is Honest. Burns knows it sucks. Bend also sucks, but we think that we'll be OK, because we have surrounded ourselves with the edifices of Self Actualization, of that Shining Golden City on The Hill.

What happens in a place surrounded by the edifices of opulence after a monetary neutron bomb has gone off? What happens when you realize a place cannot ever sustain a Life Worth Living? What happens when you realize that Bend has essentially turned into Burns?

You leave. The desert reclaims it's own.