Eugene Weekly

Esteban Camacho weaves through the skateboard jungle that is the new WJ Skatepark + Urban Plaza, finding some smooth invisible path while I stumble after him, jumping out of the way of teens on wheels. It’s clear the artist is a seasoned veteran of the site. We sit on a bench carved into a ramp, skateboarders whirring around us. Hands leathery with green paint, Camacho points up at the murals developing on two pillars buttressing I-105.  Continue reading →

“Looking at the world today, there is tremendous uncertainty in our lives,” says Venerable Jigme Rinpoche, founder and director at the Palmo Center for Peace and Education. “We’re confronted with difficulty, crisis and challenges. We urgently need the vision and courage to find ways to handle these difficulties, both individually and globally, with deeper acceptance, insight and compassion.”  That’s where the arts come into play.  Continue reading →

By some fateful collision of time, situation and personality, certain individuals come to represent the places where they live, in such a way that the association becomes nearly mythological: Lou Reed symbolizes the junky glam of the East Village, Harvey Milk is forever Mayor of the Castro District, Saul Bellow haunts Chicago’s Humboldt Park. Continue reading →

“I was born in 1984,” says Nicole Anne Colbath. “For me that Clash show wasn’t gonna happen.” Colbath is referring to the legendary British punk band’s early ’80s concert at the UO’s McArthur Court. A flyer for that show is now safely housed by the Eugene Underground Music Archive, a nonprofit organization “dedicated to the collection of flyers and ephemera,” filed with 3,000 other Eugene-area concert flyers mostly from the late ’70s through the ’90s. “It is sort of nostalgia,” Colbath adds. “I get bummed about shows I missed.” Continue reading →