Gossip Should Have No Friends

[October 1st, 2008] PUDDLE-JUMPER: Oregonian columnist and best-selling author Chelsea Cain (Heartsick, Sweetheart) is off to London this week. On Friday, at the Grosvenor Hotel, Cain will join other crime novelists as well as those who pen poison prose for television and film for ITV3’s “glittering televised” Crime Thriller Awards ceremony. Cain is one of four—and the only American—nominated in the “Breakthrough Author Award.” On Monday, Cain, who was still trying to figure out what she was going to wear, told Scoop: “I’m just hoping not to trip. Or embarrass my country. Though I am planning on adopting a fake British accent.”

PRO-ROW-A-GO-GO? Although co-owner/attorney Alan Karpinski won’t confirm it, it looks like one of P-town’s venerable watering holes, Produce Row Cafe, is about to change ownership. And, oh yeah, celebrate its current owners’ 30th anniversary, too. Opened in 1974, ProRow was empire-builder Mike McMenamin’s first place, but the company Karpinski co-owns, Funhogs Inc., bought the pub on Oct. 9, 1978. In honor of the anniversary, ProRow will swing open its doors to an all-day celebration on Saturday, Oct. 18. Karpinski acknowledges that “rumors are swirling” regarding ProRow changing hands. Although he would neither confirm nor deny that the pub will have a new owner by the new year (possibly someone from Southern California ), word is that the deal to sell this longtime haunt of hippies, hipsters and hopheads is all but done.

OBAMA IS MY COPILOT: A local artist has found an eye-catching way to show his support for Sen. Barack Obama as the election approaches. Mark Lysgaard, whose studio is in Northwest Portland, painted a 6 1/2-foot-tall cardboard cutout of the presidential hopeful and placed it on display out of the sunroof of his Honda. Lysgaard has driven around with the cutout for two months, making sure to hit public gatherings like First Thursday in the Pearl, Last Thursday in Northeast and a number of street fairs and festivals. “I’m just trying to spread my enthusiasm for Obama and change for the country,” Lysgaard says. As for the responses of fellow drivers? Lysgaard says most people’s reactions to his road companion have been generally positive. “People will usually honk or clap,” he says, “but I’ll be flipped the occasional bird or two.”

MIND POWERS: Scoop just received an email from one Mary Ann Bohrer wanting us to let you, our readers, know that she is putting together a book and is on the lookout for “very gifted psychics”—the real kind, not the Miss Cleo con-artist types. We tried contacting her before press time to ask some questions, to no avail. Given her area of expertise, we can only assume she knows but is choosing not to respond. Still, we’d like to help her, so if you are a “gifted psychic” you should give her a call at (917) 941-9907 or email her at mabet@att.net. Or just open up an astral portal. Maybe she’ll respond to you.