IMG_2578.jpg

It’s hard for me to believe it’s been 20 years, and that I’m the only original staffer still working on it, but The Bulletin’s arts and entertainment tabloid launched May 14, 2004, a Friday, with a cover story about Pole Pedal Paddle multi-sport race (again ahead this weekend).

That was a Friday. Like a lot of things that have changed, GO! used to come out on Fridays. In 2016, we switched to publishing GO! on Thursdays to give readers more time to plan the weekend ahead than Friday. I had to ask my editor, Jody Lawrence-Turner, one of several editors who have worked on GO!, including formerly Julie Johnson, now city editor, and Ben Salmon.

We also in the last couple of years jettisoned part of its original full name, GO! Magazine. Many stories and anecdotes are etched in my brain, a lot of forest I can’t see for the trees, or put another way, a lot of forest I can’t see despite the many trees that have been cut down to print GO!

Sorry, trees! The good news (for trees) is that these days, we’re a lot more focused on The Bulletin and GO! in digitized forms than we were 20 years ago.

However you read our stories, I like to think that because what we do is noble work, shining a light on the work of musicians, thespians, artists, writers, brewers and restauranteurs at the nexus of commerce and creativity.

Getting the GO! ahead

When I left my first alt-weekly journalism job and moved to Bend to begin working at The Bulletin in November 2001, The Bulletin had a Friday A&E page, for which I’d write two or three stories a week. About two years later, we began kicking around a separate A&E tabloid akin to those of larger daily papers. Or someone did. I was a mere, humble scribe, so I reached out to Denise Costa, who was features editor at the time. She’s now retired back East, and I reached out to her for her memories of starting GO!

“We started GO! Magazine at a time when Bend was growing fast, and the options and quality of entertainment were expanding. Our goal was to be the go-to publication to help readers find and experience all those opportunities,” she told me in an email. “The Bulletin’s features department spent many months studying other entertainment publications and talking to community members about what would make such a publication valuable to them.”

I’m glad she remembers, because I don’t. I do remember that my primary focus on GO! for its first two years was music, while a succession of other reporters held down the arts beat — Heidi Hiaasen, Andrew Moore and Eleanor Pierce, in that order. I focused on books and general features for about five years, and then after Ellie left in 2011, I once again took on the arts beat. All through those years, Ben Salmon was our staff music writer, replaced by Brian McElhiney from 2015 to 2021. And then in a weird twist, Ben came back to cover music for us as a freelancer (I practically begged him).

Probably the biggest single threat to GO! came in 2020, when the COVID-19 closures shut down the kinds of happenings we were accustomed to covering, at which point my then-colleague Makenzie Whittle — who, like Ben, I adore, and also still contributes — and I pivoted to writing more magazine-style features: fun with puppets and cooking at home, mental health issues and such, while keeping tabs on local creatives and what they were working on in their home incubators.

Dropping names

I will never forget the time, in 2007, I convinced my colleagues that we absolutely had to put Die Hunns, a punk band led by pro skateboarding legend Duane Peters, on the cover of GO! They were starting their tour with Bend as their first stop, and they were a big get for me personally, being a longtime skater and fan of Peters. And I had a lovely phone interview with him. And we put Die Hunns on the cover. And then the morning GO! published, I learned that Die Hunns’ show was canceled and that Peters and then-wife and bandmate Corey Parks were entering rehab.

Peters just scratches the surface of national talent I’ve interviewed, 100% by phone because GO! focuses on what’s ahead, and rarely are the likes of Jeff Bridges, Jack Black, Steve Martin, John Waters, Chris Isaak, Paula Poundstone, Jack Johnson or Erik Larson in town ahead of their shows and readings. There have also been legions of lesser known but no less talented touring entertainers and artists with whom I’ve chatted unseen.

But honestly, it’s been the local folks I had the honor to interview and write about who have made this job most personally rewarding. Maybe it’s because there are fewer layers of fame and PR infrastructure built up around people like Jason Graham, Paul Bennett, Marla Manning, Nicola Carpinelli, Jake Woodmansee, Christian Clark, Katy Ipock, Ellen Waterston, Teafly Peterson, Jesse Locke, Jesse Lockwood and Derek Sitter, to barely scratch the surface.

It’s people like them who keep life colorful and not just about trading your time for money and your money for food and shelter. In a world that’s increasingly expensive and stressful, where the dollar stretches less far by the seeming minute, I for one wouldn’t want any part of this society were it not for the escape and enrichment — a glimpse of the bigger picture — that music, literature and art still afford us.

Colleagues have come and gone, but they’ve always been succeeded by similarly excellent talent, such as food and features writer Janay Wright, and our calendar guru and sometimes writer, Ian Haupt. Without the two of them, I would absolutely be lost.

Read more: ‘Dropping In’ a fitting name for this skater’s column

And because editors can’t edit themselves, I have to thank my editor, Jody, both for her editing skills and her counsel whenever the stress of newspapering gets to me. Oh, and I wouldn’t have a weekly column called Dropping In — you’re soaking in it, to quote the old Palmolive ads — without Jody, either.

Looking ahead

Departures are hard on a mawkish sentimentalist such as I. Last Friday I sat down with Maestro Michael Gesme, one of the longest-running fixtures in the Bend arts community, whom I’ve known for 22 years. He talked to me about how he is in his 28th year leading Central Oregon Symphony and will very likely move on within the next five years.

After all these years of coffee and classical music talk, it’s difficult for me to envision interviewing someone besides Michael about Central Oregon Symphony — but eventually, reality being reality, it might be someone else doing that interview.

The good news: As long as there are creative endeavors afoot, and enough advertisers and loyal readers to sustain The Bulletin, GO! will endure for at least another 20 years.

That’s my hope, anyway.

Read more: Will symphony’s Spring Concert be Maestro Gesme’s last at Bend High?