All staff pick
We dream off a permanent publicly run, staffed and funded shelter for the unhoused, or series of shelters across Lane County.
We could fund it by asking businesses like local breweries to “round up” on their purchases and donate to supporting a shelter and staff.
Ted Taylor Editor
My three dreams: We will dig a trench and bury the railroad tracks through Eugene, eliminating the noise and creating parks and open space. We will revive the Emerald Canal proposal and turn Amazon Creek in town into something like San Antonio’s Riverwalk. And I imagine an overhead tube system for all-weather bicycle commuting above the car traffic.
Amy Schneider Special issues editor
My dream is not particularly noble, perhaps even frivolous. But that’s OK. I’ll leave the serious dreaming for another day.
I dream of flying in a hot air balloon, floating high above Eugene and seeing everything, from the glittering Willamette River to the craggy peak of Spencer Butte. Apart from a few sketchy websites, there doesn’t seem to be a nearby company that offers hot air balloon rides, so I dream of a place opening in Eugene that provides affordable journeys into the air for all in Lane County.
Oh, and while we’re dreaming, I want to ride in a solar-powered hot air balloon, because apparently that’s a thing now. My dream may not be practical but at least it’s planet-friendly. That counts for something, right?
Camilla Mortensen Associate editor
I dream of a warm, bright animal adoption center located downtown, where nonprofit rescues could bring their adoptable cats, dogs and bunnies to a central location for people to meet them. Let’s put it near Kesey Square so every day the square is home to people playing with puppies.
Alex V. Cipolle Arts editor
A locally owned late-night bookstore. Yes, that’s the kind of crazy, hedonistic nightlife I dream of for the Whit. We have some fantastic local bookstores in Eugene — J. Michaels Books, Tsunami Books, Black Sun Books, Smith Family Bookstore — but not one stays open past 7 pm (most close by 5:30 pm). Seattle has the Elliot Bay Bookstore and Portland has Powell’s; they stay open until 11 pm and are vibrant cultural centers. A late-night bookstore would create an alternative nightlife that doesn’t revolve around drinking culture, a contentious issue in the Whit. We have both a large recovery scene and a large literary scene in Eugene, not to mention several institutions of higher education, so let’s give them a home where they can get their cultural salon on after sundown without having to sidle up to the bar.
Rick Levin staff writer
My dream for Eugene is that a burgeoning population of wealthy neo-conservative greedheads goes to work behind the tattered veneer of Eugene’s make-believe hippie culture, hiding beneath the warm, fuzzy blanket of pointless liberal pomp and Summer of Love bullshit while secretly they turn the city into a reactionary outpost where the poor drown in meth and murder, and the smugly well-to-do string pretty Christmas lights across their castles in the hinterlands while humming about the high ideals of peace, love and understanding. My dream is that Eugene, forever believing itself free-spirited, actually becomes the smiling face of the new American fascism, where endless emotional arguments about hurt feelings and identity politics finally drown out all reason. My dream is that Eugene become Seattle, or maybe Portland — a city of commodified hipness that sells itself out to the highest bidder (with tax breaks, of course). My dream is that Eugene never wises up and peeks behind the curtain. My dream is that Eugene becomes what it is.