The city according to Bishoff: A nicely nutty place
■ Retired Register-Guard columnist muses on the future of
Eugene — growth, anarchy, TV news and the weather
By Jack Clifford
Oregon Daily Emerald
Don Bishoff and the newspaper
business are as synonymous as
Keanu Reeves and bad acting. Be
fore he retired from the daily grind
in 1999, Bishoff spent 40 years
playing various roles on the printed
page.
After receiving his bachelor’s
and master’s degrees in journalism
from Northwestern University, he
started at the City News Bureau in
Chicago and then worked in Rich
mond, Va. But his longest stint was
at The Register-Guard, Eugene’s
major daily newspaper. Bishoff
spent 38-plus years there as a re
porter, an assistant city editor, edi
torial writer and a drama reviewer.
His most visible chore, however,
was his final one as the paper’s bit
ing and wise-old-owl columnist.
He put his personal spin on city
leaders, local activists and Univer
sity officials. Therefore, Bishoff —
who now spends time with his wife
Mary and their three children and
two grandchildren — also knows
Eugene quite well.
The Emerald asked the old guard
of the news business to answer a
few questions about the city.
Q: What are the most pressing is
sues Eugene will face over the
year?
A: Same ones it’s faced for the
last 30 years — how to deal with
growth and its ramifications. The
town’s too damn big, is predicted to
get a lot bigger, and we’re all paying
the price. We’re sprawled all over
hell and sprawling more every day.
Developers are trying to cut down
all the trees in the South Hills to
build more expensive houses that
most of us can’t afford. Traffic’s a
mess — have you been on West
11th Avenue on Friday afternoon
or at River Road and Belt Line be
tween 4 and 5 p.m.? Schools and
city and county governments don’t
have enough money to deal with
the problems that growth brings.
And nobody, including me, has
good answers.
Q: Will the city of Eugene (mean
ing city officials and police depart
ment) and the anarchists ever
come to any sort of compromise or
will those two forces battle for eter
nity?
A: They’re doomed to eternal
conflict unless the anarchists quit
acting like jerks and the cops quit
acting heavy-handed in dealing
with them. The cops let themselves
get sucked into what the anarchists
want by always overreacting —
dousing protesters in the trees with
pepper spray on June 1,1997, was
the first wrong move. Now the cops
are trying to keep news people from
seeing what they’re up to, adding to
suspicions that it’s no good. The
city has a good police force and
smarter-than-average leadership —
all they have to do is use the smarts
to not fall into the anarchists’ trap
of making them look bad. Why not
spray the punks with whipped
cream instead of pepper spray?
Hard to take a frothed demonstra
tor seriously — and hard for him to
claim police brutality.
Q: Does the city’s form of govern
ment, with so many boards, com
missions and committees work or
get bogged down in meetings?
A: Nothing wrong with all those
Tom Patterson Emerald
Don Bishoff lends a humorous but informed synopsis on what it means to call Eugene home, with insights on bureaucracy, whipped
cream and how to prevent becoming a ‘strangled paradise.’
meetings and boards and commis
sions — we need more of 'em.
Those boards and commissions are
local citizens making local deci
sions, which is what local govern
ment's all about. The alternative is
to leave governing up to the city
manager and his staff, who are all
swell fellows but not the ones to
make our decisions for us, much as
they might like to.
Q: If any one person could be
brought back to life and appointed
as Eugene’s mayor, who do you
think the citizens would chose and
why?
A: They oughta choose Tom Mc
Call, best governor Oregon ever
had. He never lived in Eugene, but
he was the sort of guy Eugene
needs. Outrageous, courageous, vi
sionary, charismatic, progressive,
occasionally drunk and willing to
take chances to lead people into do
ing the right thing. 01’ Tom would
know what to do about those anar
chists. And probably what to do
about our growth problems, too,
come to think of it.
Q: People talk about Eugene’s
above-average livability factor. Is
that aspect real or manufactured?
A: Real. Good vibes and a nicely
nutty atmosphere. Lots of great
parks and rivers in and near the
city, not-bad air, mountains and
ocean not far away. Decent weather,
if you don’t go nuts from the rain,
which I do every year. But unless
somebody does something about
the Big G, we’re doomed to becom
ing another Seattle — a strangled
paradise.
Q: What sort of image do the var
ious local media have?
A: The TV stations do a largely
superficial, cookie-cutter job of re
Turn to Bishoff, page 5C
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