The Good Friction of Bend First Friday

Fostering perspective through exposure

We are half way through 2026. It is a good time to revisit what we resolved or considered at the start of the year, see if we are making progress.

For me, I wanted this year to be a year to consider what is good friction and what is bad friction.

The plan this weekend included a walk through Bend (Oregon) First Friday. My sweetie lives here and loves it. I see that Bend is …objectively worthy of appreciation. It is a smaller city but with great restaurants. It is in a beautiful part of the world. I like to recreate in a lot of the ways it does. I hike and run its trails, fish, and camp. I should be pro-Bend. And I want to be.

However, I tend to get wound around my old cultural objections to Bend; it attracts people who move here for the lifestyle. They are not of here, and it is hard for me to see a place populated by folks not connected to the earlier chapters of the Ongoing Story of Here.

I also find the people to be so suspiciously beautiful and well appointed. I get a sense of emerging women’s fashion walking around Bend First Friday.¹

We went to the grand opening of a new space for art creation. People can rent small studios there and enjoy common space. There was an area for teenagers with a coffee bar, open space to sit, and a shared guitar. I love a shared guitar.

I overheard one painter standing outside her studio space say exactly my fear, “well I work remotely and my goal is to get here to my studio by noon every day.”

I had to wrestle with the sense that she is living La Vida but has no culture. That she is adrift, seeking pleasure and ego rewards, anchored to nothing.

Maybe that remote-working painter is unmoored from culture. I can’t say. If so, I think it is very sad for her and I hope she finds some connection. But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps she has a rich faith community that gathers in worship throughout the week. Perhaps she has a close family. Perhaps she is driven to community service. All this AND she works from home AND she maintains an artistic practice? Amazing.

We continued our journey. We went to the book release celebration of a local non-fiction author. We bought stickers at a fundraiser for a high school speech and debate team. My new sticker says “Be Kind and speak your mind.”

In the late afternoon, downtown Bend was an ambient temperature such that you did not even notice the weather. People were milling about. Many were in the peak fashion I can’t help but notice. There was a well-dressed but bored looking group at a very fancy real estate office. A DJ was playing unoffensive rap over different beats.

On another corner was a funk band playing their version of Dolly Parton’s “Nine to Five.” I realized that we passed several original bands including a hardcore drum and guitar duo, a largely female band playing originals that reminded me of Siouxsie and Galaxy 500,² and an alt country outfit. The main stage by the river was also a band playing originals, where I had expected someone playing pleasing straight ahead covers.

Perhaps Bend has developed an original local music scene that even my snobbish tastes can enjoy.

I looked around and saw not just high fashion worn well. I saw people dressed like me. I saw high school age people trying on identity. I saw older people out engaging with the people around them.

My sweetie invites me along to a lot of events. Last year she brought me to a presentation by the Oregon State economist, Damon Rundberg, speaking about Bend’s economic situation. Before the talk, I had presumed that Bend was akin to Vale or Steamboat Springs. That recreation and out of town money dominated it. You can see the experience of that in the housing market here, it is definitely true that out of town money has increased housing prices.

But Rundberg (who is, by the way, one of the most engaging, affable public speakers you may ever get to see) said that the economy here is more diverse than you would think. And on reflection, I know folks who run a machine shop here. There is industry. It has problems, but Bend is not completely lost to an addiction to out of town money.

My sweetie loves it here, and she loves events like this. If she had not invited me, I would not have chosen to come to Bend First Friday. However, I am glad now for the good friction of passing into a place and seeing it in more dimension.

I was also happy to leave, to go back downstream the next day to my part of the river where it waters a thin strip of the desert to crowded green, where I am not able to discern the latest in women’s fashion.

1. Seems to be backless blouses, short skirts and cowboy boots, and pants of light cloth with wide straight legs.

2. Showing my age and high school musical tastes.