Skip to main content* Anne Hughes will be packing up her aprons and oilcloth on March 30, ending a 17-year reign as proprietress of the Coffee Room at Powell's. Her lease is up at the end of the month, and Hughes decided not to bid on a new one. "Powell's thinks they can get a lot of money out of it because it's in the Pearl," she says. "I just got priced out of the market." Her business relationship with owner Michael Powell, which Hughes characterized as "not great," probably didn't help matters. She says the book baron "chastised" her a few years back when she allowed union organizers at the bookstore to pass out literature in the coffee room. "That was a big no-no," she says. Hughes plans to reopen the Kitchen Table, her other eating establishment, in May.
* State Sen. John Minnis' proposal to sell the Governor's mansion to help with the budget mess earlier this month could leave Ted Kulongoski in the same position as several thousand low-income Oregonians--homeless. That's because the guv, who may have more interest in a second term than we thought, sold his Laurelhurst home, listed at $289,950, last month.
* Murmurs hears that with opening day less than a month away, Metropolitan Sports, the successor to Portland Family Entertainment, is in disarray and that the group's revamped deal to operate city-owned PGE Park is in jeopardy. Metropolitan's principals--who include timber tycoon Peter Stott, car king Scott Thomason and Rite Aid CEO Bob Miller--recently asked their former PFE partners to make good on personal guarantees to stadium concessionaire Aramark. Those guarantees were given in exchange for a $2 million advance from Aramark, which the partners used to pay creditors. The PFE partners reportedly declined. Stott and company, in turn, are balking at demands for personal guarantees from Bank of America, which is financing the new deal.
* Seven Portlanders locked arms on Monday afternoon to shut down the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building and protest war with Iraq. "We are compelled to take action like this because our voices are not being heard," said one of the protesters from Portland Against War, a conglomeration of peace activists from around the city. Shortly after the protesters sat down and blocked the metal detector leading into the Federal Building, security guards, federal police and city cops cleared the media from the lobby. About 45 minutes later, the protesters were pried apart. The Associated Press reports they were released at about 5 pm after being cited for "failure to conform with a lawful order."
* Last week, the decadelong legal feud between legendary Ghanaian drummer Obo Addy and his 40-year-old nephew Obuama Addy ended in a pair of quotation marks and with both sides claiming victory. Obo sued his nephew, a reggae singer who goes by the traditional Ghanaian nickname OB, claiming the similarity between the two names violated trademark law. (See "Addy vs. Addy," WW, Feb. 26, 2003.) After a weeklong trial, Multnomah County District Judge Marshall L. Amiton ordered OB Addy to add quotation marks around his first name and use the name of his band, I & I, first in promotional materials. Both sides continue to spar over whether the ruling applies to OB's solo career and whether Obo is entitled to $10,000 in damages.
WWeek 2015