#bendoregongothic gothicmemes regionalgothic oregongothic

[forgotmyteawithcream]

Bend Oregon Gothic

-Everyone loves Bob Shaw. The teenagers sarcastically mimic the weather forecaster’s mannerisms, but secretly love seeing him in public. Your grandpa lives by him, your mother adores him. “Have a Sparkling day in Central Oregon!” He says with zeal every morning, every day, for as long as we will live. Bob Shaw makes every day sparkling bright, he keeps our rain at bay, behind the mountains. 

- We love our forests, we’ve all been there, following each other’s Subaru's into oblivion, out of town and into the endless trails. Tourists use maps, but locals know the way. We just know. Some say the trails never end, and maybe they don’t. They seem to lead you back to town, if you get lost long enough.

-The forests are clean here. Desert locals dread staying in the valley’s warm, moist wilderness for too long It feels old, and alive, our forests are clean, and dead. They burn every year, driving out the old things that roam the Willamette area. 

-Weather Officials joke that Bend has in fact, five seasons instead of four. Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Fire Hell-scape. The locals laugh, it is a funny joke. Everyone knows there are only three seasons here. Snow, Fire Hell-scape, and a brief enjoyable fall, when the merry Oktoberfest is held.

-There are bars on every street, on every block of city space. They aren’t there in the day time, but every adult knows of their existence. Where there was dark matter during the day, when young children roam the shops, there are crowded, alcohol buzzed lights when the sun leaves the sky. By daylight, the people are gone.

-Beer is everywhere. Tourists exclaim over our sheer amount of beer. Every shop they enter cheerily offers them a glass of locally brewed drink. It was all made right here in Bend! They exclaim, the tourists remark on it’s addicting after notes, then wander to the next shop, and repeat the process. It happens everywhere they go, they are never drunk, they are never satiated, the drink lures them to live there forever, tempted to repeat the process until they die. Only locals get drunk.

-Everyone knows it here, everyone has a cousin who lives here, or a college room mate, no one remembers Bend Oregon in daily life. Only when asked do they remember they had a cousin once, who loved to ski.

-Summers are crowded with tourists, drinking the alcohol and crowding the roads in bikes. Winters are crowded as well, with tourists drinking the alcohol, and crowding the ski resorts with their new expensive equipment. They are always here, some would call them locals, but the real locals drink their alcohol to forget.

-Some would say the beer has a special significance in Bend. It enhances the culture, it adds flavor to otherwise stressed lives. Either way, it attracts all sorts, the brewing factories use the local water in the beers, it smells sweet and clean, it makes the mind just as clean.

-The mountains are pink today, purple tomorrow. They are bright, and clear, and loom over the city as protectors, the tourists admire them, so does the coworker who jogged to work, and moved here from California. Otherwise, they go unnoticed. The mountains will always protect us, if we leave them be. 

-A pot shop across from the new Market of Choice lures you in. You’ve never been high, you still go in, just to know why it’s called that odd name. This one’s different, you’re sure of it. Meanwhile, another pops up on the opposite side of town. Soon one will reside next to you. It’s different. It knows. 

-Every valentines day thousands of felt hearts are strewn across downtown Bend. No one sees them go up, we all feel compelled to obey their message. 

-You take the complementary dog biscuit from the bakery, although you haven’t had a dog for three years. Someone may need it. Later, you feed it to the deer living with you, in hopes of making peace with them, to save your garden of witch herbs. 

-None of us knows a person who wears spandex while biking the long, winding trails. The forests makes them, they are children of the forest, not us. 

-The badlands on the edge of town have UFOs. They occasionally follow cars when the sun goes down, but no one pays any mind. There have been rumors of the projects going down out East. 

-You can’t help feeling the trees are clean and dead because of the mountains. They protect you from the valley’s alive forest, they prevent the rain from changing your town into the grey, breathing thing you saw on the other side of the pass. You thank the mountains, without them we would fall.