BEND, Ore. — The story behind a single folding chair at local DIY venue The Iron Triangle continues to baffle everyone within the underground music scene, multiple curious sources confirmed.
“Everybody knows that chair — it’s always just sort of been there. And when you’re the person lucky enough to sit on it between bands, you feel like a god,” said local punkShawn Pedrick. “My friend Jason told me it was actually left behind by Fugazi’s merch guy when they played here in 1992, but I’ve also heard this building used to be a travel agency… so there’s a chance the chair belonged to them.”
Indeed, regular Iron Triangle patrons offered varied hypotheses on the chair’s origins — none of which matched or confirmed any other backstory.
“My older brother told me he used to come here in high school, and there was no chair… but during his senior year, the town basically shut down because of mysterious green gas and flashing lights,” said venue regular Tommy Longwood. “And he swears, just a few days later, he came to a show here and sure enough, the chair was right there, leaning in a corner.”
“So… I don’t know,” Longwood concluded. “I’m not saying this chair came from aliens, but we definitely can’t rule it out, either.”
Some noted the chair’s lore will even come up in songs by local, prominent bands.
“My biggest band, The 5 Musketeers, had a song called ‘Musical Chair’ — which was about how that chair has seen so many legendary shows,” said local punk legend Gary “Gravy” Alfonse. “That chair survived when The Barn Stormers lit the curtains on fire and almost burned the place down, and that same chair was used to scare off a family of racoons living in the weird closet by the front door.”
“I heard Crazy Jerry stole it from the abandoned Chinese language school across the street way back in 1996,” Alfonse added. “But no one knows for sure.”
At press time, venue management announced a full-fledged investigation to determine how the toilet paper rolls in the bathroom are “seemingly always soaked in piss within 10 seconds of being restocked.”