HOOD RIVER BIZ BUZZ

According to a report on the UPI web site, the U.S. Navy has approved production of 36 unmanned aircraft systems — including five Scan Eagle drones each — by Bingen-based Insitu Inc. The 180 aircraft can be launched and recovered without the need for a runway, and provide the military portable reconnaissance.

Best Western Plus Columbia River Inn in Cascade Locks, with Char Burger beyond.

D.M. Stevenson Ranch LLC, owners of the Best Western Plus Hood River Inn, will soon add a bookend property in Cascade Locks.

Chuck Hinman, general manager of the Hood River property, jointly announced this week that Stevenson Ranch has reached agreement to buy the Best Western Plus Columbia River Inn and adjacent Char Burger restaurant in Cascade Locks. The deal is supposed to close in mid-June.

According to a news release, the Columbia River Inn is now owned by Dan and Judy Bausch, and their son Kirk and daughter-in-law Carol. Dan and Judy Bausch are also partners with their son Troy in the Char Burger.

Dan Bausch’s father, Lester Bausch, bought the Char Burger in 1963. The restaurant seats 200, and is notable for its historic memorabilia and Columbia River views.

The Best Western Plus Columbia River Inn opened in 1995. The Inn has 62 guestrooms. Both it and the Char Burger sit just to the east of the historic Bridge of the Gods.

D.M. Stevenson Ranch is a limited liability corporation based in White Salmon, Wash., made up of 28 partners from the Stevenson family.

OK, a rainy, cloudy day. So what — get out of the house, and wander up to the Heights and WAAAM, and pop in to the Hood River Rotary’s third annual Columbia Gorge Pear & Wine Fest. Lots of wine tasting, noshin’ oppies, and arts and crafts vendors. Bring a designated driver. And tour the musum while you’re there — a great collection of restored planes and autos.

So, we’re looking at the five-day weather forecast provided by Weather Underground, and this is what we read:

As if things weren’t complex enough already, along comes the Gorge Technology Alliance and speaker Melanie Mitchell to offer a program all about … complexity.

Yup, “Complexity: A Guided Tour” is the topic of Mitchell’s presentation at 7 p.m. May 22, the featured component of the GTA’s May meeting. Social networking starts at 6 p.m., all down at the Springhouse Cellar tasting room, 13 Railroad Ave. Non-GTA members pay $10 to nosh and net.

Mitchell, a professor at Portland State University and Santa Fe Institute, will talk about the interdisciplinary field of complex systems science, and show how complexity occurs in the behavior of social insects, the unexpected intricacies of the genome, the dynamics of population growth, and the self-organized structure of the World Wide Web.

Mitchell is author or editor of five books and over 70 scholarly papers in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive science and complex systems. Her most recent book, “Complexity: A Guided Tour” (Oxford, 2009), won the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award.

To learn more about the GTA, contact Executive Director Jessica Metta at 541-296-2266.

Love shows original west-facing exterior look in his plans for ProMotion Wetsuits, right, and tweaked design, left, that includes a second-floor balcony.

Dana Love, founder and owner of ProMotion Wetsuits, is getting ready to complete construction of his building at Cascade and Fifth streets.

“What?” you say.

If you thought the building was done, you’re only partly right. Love’s original plans called for an extension to Fifth Street, and a third level for condo residences. Now slightly modified from the original, that space is what comes next. He told The Buzz he hopes to start construction by the end of this summer.

As much for the wetsuits and clothing inside the building, the lot has become popular the last couple of years for the food carts that have set up shop there — Juice Bros, and Four & Twenty Blackbirds.

Love says he hopes to finish the ground level of the extension to the west of his existing building to host two or more small food vendors. He envisions it much like the hot-food zone common to most Mexican public markets.

Love, who started his business in San Diego and moved to the Hood more than 30 years ago for the windsurfing scene, originally set up shop in an old building owned by the Port of Hood River. He bought the site from the Port, and built the first phase of his current structure 13 years ago.

On the upper floors of the extension, Love says, “I’m hoping to add office space, more creative space, and bring on people in more apparel design and internet sales.”

He says he’s hoping to expand his product mix, to include “new things, along the lines of sporting goods.”

As for the food court idea, he envisions vendors having small spaces around a common seating and eating area.

He’s hoping that owners of the existing food carts will be interested in those spaces.

Others are interested, as well, to hear him tell it.

“I’ve had other people knocking on the door, looking for space to put a food cart,” he says. “There’s nowhere they can park these things downtown. Mine’s the only island where people can park.

“I have one vendor who wants to put a gelato cart there, and another party that wants to do a falafel Greek thing,” he says.

He says full project plans got city approval years ago, so he needs only to get building permits and start.

It’s all over the wires, the story about the lesbian couple that went to a Mt. Hood baker and asked for a wedding cake. She declined their business because they were gay.

Who dat crisco cracker? According to reports, the lass who segregated her customer base was Pam Regentin of Fleur Cakes in Mt. Hood.

The lesbian couple believed they loved each other and wanted to spend their life together. Regentin apparently believed there should be a male in the equation.

Comment

All I can say is, good thing my daughter and her bride didn’t ask for a cake from Regentin for their commitment ceremony last summer, a mile south of a state in which it would have been legal.

They brought cupcakes, which they made themselves, to share with their friends — straight and gay — after a lovely ceremony at the Port of Hood River’s Marina Green picnic shelter.

Still there.

Still green.

Still a shelter.

No, the world didn’t end.

But the state of “marriage” did get two new residents, who are working, paying taxes, and loving each other mightily, despite the refusal — so far — of Oregon to bless their union.

All this, despite their failure to request blessings from a baker whose recipes apparently do not … “OMG, they’re serving my cakes to lesbians!”

At the end of the day, if you’re going to refuse to make cakes for lesbians, you better be prepared to scrub the guest lists of hetero couples. Some of them (some of us) just might want to share our special day (and rights) with all our lesbian, gay, bi and transgendered friends.

And some of them (some of us) just might want to share the cake.