Best tattoo parlor
1. The Parlour
2. Tattoo By Design
monkey bars, call 682-4915.
3. Primal Body Piercing
Best Evidence Eugene is
Not a Democracy
Best place to get a pedicure
Gervais
The most important decision the Eugene
City Council makes is hiring a city manager,
the most powerful person in the city. The
most important decision the city manager
makes is hiring a police chief, the second
most powerful person in the city. Unlike
many other cities, in Eugene both of these
vital hiring decisions are made in secret
meetings.
Best local business product
1. Toby’s Tofu Pate
Best School Fundraiser
DR. JULIEN
★ Best Tattoo Artist
opening Broadway was supposed to create a
renaissance downtown? After millions of
dollars spent on ripping out the old pedestri-
an mall and tall trees and planting a road and
new tiny trees, much of the mall remains
vacant or underused. It would have been
cheaper paying for full UO scholarships for
the dozen or so mall rats that the bulldozer
project was aimed at.
Best Rube Goldberg Machine
The library’s new check-in machine.
Books stacked up as high as librarians after
the new library opened and the $2.2 million
system of electronic eyes, hands and belts
choked. Ten months after opening, the talk-
ing book return slots are just starting to work
right. But the contraption still chokes on chil-
dren’s puppets, leaving tikes pining for their
cuddly friends. Instead of paying for the
book terminator, the city could have hired an
army of unemployed Eugeneans at minimum
wage to sort books for years.
Best Thing to Happen
in Years
Walk into Eugene’s airy and bright new
library and it’s hard to remember the
cramped dark hole where Eugene used to
stuff its books and book lovers. The new
building has become a major city attraction
and over the years should do a lot to boost
local enlightenment. Best of all, it’s free.
Best Way to Stop Beer Riots
Declare the UO an alcohol-free institu-
tion of higher learning. To show the univer-
sity is serious, set a modest example of no
tolerance by hiring the EPD SWAT team,
backed up by a National Guard tank, to
swoop down on Autzen tailgaters with tear
gas and pepper spray to enforce open con-
tainer laws. Have LTD ready to transport
mass arrests to Mac Court for processing.
Expel any students caught and rip up any
alum’s season tickets.
Best Wheeeee! With Taxes
The city is planning two big new riverside
playgrounds in Alton Baker and Skinner Butte
Parks. The playgrounds will be the biggest in
the area and a top tot destination. Creative input
could make for some uniquely Eugene fun. To
help design the chutes, ladders, go rounds and
Whoever thought of hooking kids on caf-
feine and calorie-loaded corporate Coke in
the midst of an obesity epidemic to raise a
few bucks for schools from captive kids was
a genius! Here’s another modest proposal:
Make Starbucks the monopoly provider of
coffee and lattes to school staff and adminis-
trators. Pressure teachers to meet a weekly
quota of Starbucks for school bucks. Dawn
meetings could help here. Then, and here’s
the real genius, install pay toilets in all rest-
rooms used by school employees.
Best Birth Control for Chad
2. Burley Bikes
3. Emerald Valley Salsa
Best hardware store
1. Jerry’s Home Improvement
2. True Value
Best bike shop
Paul’s Bicycle Way of Life
Best grocery store
1. Market of Choice
2. Sundance
3. Winco
Best video store
Flicks and Pics
Best place to buy cheap duds
1. Goodwill
2. Buffalo Exchange
3. T.J. Maxx
Best auto repair
1. Sandpiper
2. Bob James
Best radio station
1. KLCC
2. KRVM
3. KWVA
Remember all the problems those preg-
nant chads caused in the 2000 presidential
election? Well, three years later, Lane County
voters are still punching hanging and pregnant
chads and trying to remember to punch num-
ber 9 for no on Measure 8. Almost every other
county in the state has moved to optical vote
scanners, which don’t rob hundreds of voters
every election of their constitutional rights.
Lane County says we’ll have to practice
unsafe voting for at least a couple more years
before they’ll bother with prophylactics.
Etc.
Best Newspaper Fluff Check
2. Make love
Go online and search The Register-Guard
archives for “duck” and then search again for
“city of Eugene.” The result shows just how
much the paper invests in covering sports
fluff over serious city issues with real
impacts on the community. As more and
more sports stories spill out of the sports sec-
tion and onto the front page and city sections,
the fluff to news ratio at the R-G now stands
at four to one.
Best local cause
FOOD for Lane County
Best local boondoggle
Changing Centennial to MLK
Boulevard
Best non-profit
1. Food for Lane County
2. Greenhill Humane Society
3. Womenspace
Best thing to do in the rain
1. See a movie
3. Smoke pot/drink beer
Best reason to live in Eugene
1. The people
2. The rain!
Best hope for Eugene
1. Anarchists
2. Conscientious growth
3. Organic food
© 2 0 0 3 W i d m e r B ro t h e r s B re w i n g, Po r t l a n d, O re g o n
KU RT AN D ROB WI DM E R.
S U C C E S S F U L LY C O N F U S I N G B U S I N E S S
AN D P L E AS U R E S I N C E 19 8 4.
The line between work and recreation can get a little blurry
for craft brewers Kurt and Rob Widmer. One minute they might
be inspecting hops and barley. Which is a lot of work. Then they
might be writing off a trip to the pub the next. Which is definitely
a pleasure. Then there are the meetings with the accounting
department. Not fun. Followed by the daily samplings of their
Rob (righ t) find s the anae robic
bottl ing mach ine funny. Kurt
, not so much .
delicious hefeweizen. Fun. You can see how this gets confusing.
w w w. w i d m e r. c o m
OCTOBER 9, 2003 21