Eugene, OR

Eugene is where American running and American Bach both keep a home. TrackTown USA earned its title at Hayward Field, the University of Oregon's temple of athletics, where the coach Bill Bowerman ruined his wife's waffle iron inventing the rubber sole that became Nike, and where the doomed, charismatic Steve Prefontaine made distance running a spectator passion; the rebuilt stadium hosted the World Athletics Championships in 2022, the first ever held on American soil.

The city's musical distinction is just as specific: the Oregon Bach Festival, founded in 1970 by the German conductor Helmuth Rilling and the university's Royce Saltzman, grew into one of the world's leading Bach institutions — its recording of Penderecki's Credo won a Grammy Award — and each summer it fills the Hult Center for the Performing Arts, the city's 1982 twin-hall complex and the stage documented in this archive, together with the university's halls. Around all this spreads the Eugene of legend: Ken Kesey's hometown counterculture, the Saturday Market's tie-dye and drum circles, and the Willamette running green through a city where every second citizen seems to be either jogging, cycling or rehearsing. Sport, Bach and patchouli — Eugene's trinity, entirely at peace with itself.