Gossip That Did Not Go To Comic-Con

By WW Editorial Staff
  1. BETTER LATE: It’s been a running joke for months that Portland Playhouse, the city’s hottest upstart theater company, has been happily selling subscriptions to its 2010-11 season despite not having announced what the season will contain. Well, the wait’s finally over—mostly. The company will produce Kristin Newbom’s Telethon in October, Christopher Shinn’s Dying City in November, Portlander Nick Zagone’s The Missing Pieces in January, August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in April and one other, still unannounced play in February. Take your time, guys!
  2. JUICE BAR: Brewer Jeff Smith is opening Bushwhacker Cidery at the corner of Southeast Powell Boulevard and 12th Avenue. Bushwhacker will produce cider from Northwest apples and other fruit and sell ciders from other producers in its tasting room.
  3. LOW BRIDGE: The first PDX Bridge Festival lurched into being this past weekend with a confusing “Hawthorne Lift 100” bridge art installation. As cars, bikes and pedestrians moved across the bridge, multicolored lights were supposed to shine on fabric stretched between its trusses. Instead, when viewers gathered to watch the installation go live Saturday night, the bridge began to lift and traffic piled up on both ends of the bridge. That was about it. Bridge Fest managing director Jessica Klinke explained that the lift was an attempt to clear the bridge for the moment the lights went on, because part of the plan was to turn off the streetlights to make the installation more visible. However, technical difficulties kept the street lights on, which explains why nobody could see anything. Locals can see how the PDX Bridge Fest crew spent the rest of its $250,000 in grant and sponsorship money at a packed roster of tours, concerts and the “Brunch of the Bridge” event in the coming weeks.
  1. OPEN CITY: The eighth annual O’Reilly Open Source Convention returned to Portland last week with nearly 3,000 attendees, and about a quarter of them arrived bleary-eyed in the Oregon Convention Center on Friday morning to hear Sam Adams’ keynote address. “Welcome to America’s open-source city,” Adams said, before talking about “DYI” culture and telling the conference-goers they would be rewarded with a weekend free of sales tax.
  2. SUBDIVIDE: After 14 years, local heavy-drone outfit Sub-Arachnoid Space is calling it quits. The band, led by guitarist Melynda Jackson, moved to Portland from San Francisco four years ago and released its last full-length, Eight Bells, last summer. Jackson plans to work on other projects, and the split allows drummer Lauren K. Newman to focus on her other bands, LKN and Palo Verde. The band’s final show is set for Friday, Aug. 13, at Mississippi Studios with friends Thrones and Aranya.

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