Scoop: Remembering Jaime Cooley

1. R.I.P.: Former longtime KNRK radio programmer and Portland music advocate Jaime Cooley died of what her family termed “a tragic accidental drowning” Saturday, Feb. 4. She was 33. Cooley began at KNRK in 1995, when she was 17, and eventually became the assistant program director and music director before being laid off in 2008. Cooley also helped launch the all-regional HD station “94.7 Too,” which she was initially responsible for programming. A memorial show will be held at Lola’s Room starting at 5 pm Friday, Feb. 10, and the family is requesting that donations be made in Cooley’s name to Pacific Pug Rescue. Cooley’s favorite song, according to her family, was the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.”

1. AERO BLESSED: Not only will the 2012 United States Barista Championships be held in Portland in April, word now comes that the World AeroPress Championships will be part of the festivities. The AeroPress is a Space Age coffee-brewing device that looks a bit like a penis pump and is popular in Europe. The competition tends to attract baristas from some of the world’s top coffee purveyors. >> In other coffee news, portlandfoodanddrink.com reports that Northwest Portland’s Sterling Coffee kiosk will close, after losing its lease. In a follow-up item on coffee gossip site Sprudge.com, owner Adam McGovern said he plans to open a “cart-type” space in Northwest and a roastery, probably in Old Town.

1. BIG-ASS STATE: Garden State, the super-popular and much-missed food cart—it once appeared on Good Morning America—is still closed. Chef Kevin Sandri is doing a guest slot from 11 am to 4 pm Wednesday, Feb. 8, at the Big-Ass Sandwiches cart (Southwest 3rd Avenue and Ash Street). Menu at gardenstatecart.com.

1. SLABTOWN SELLS: Northwest Portland pinball bar and rock club Slabtown, which went up for sale in November, has been sold to 42-year-old Doug Rogers. The bar closed Sunday night after the three-day Bender music festival, but it will reopen under the new ownership Feb. 24. Rogers, an ex-teacher who has dabbled in show-booking, says he will leave much of the business model—pinball, rock music and party vibes—untouched. “My roots go back into the DIY punk scene, and I’m really interested in the community aspect of the music,” he says. This will be Rogers’ first bar, but he says his two biggest influences are Portland’s long-defunct X-Ray Cafe and Berkeley’s 924 Gilman Street. “If anything,” Rogers says, “[Slabtown] will get a little weirder.”

1. KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION: Another Super Bowl, another PR coup for Wieden+Kennedy. By overwhelming consensus, the agency’s “Halftime in America” ad for Chrysler was the best commercial during the game. But lost in the Monday-morning hullabaloo over whether the Clint Eastwood monologue was pro-Obama is this fact: The speech was written in part by Lents poet Matthew Dickman, poetry editor for Portland literary magazine Tin House. “Halftime in America” was directed by David Gordon Green, director of All the Real Girls and Your Highness. In a year, will we be saying the Portland ad agency saved the careers of Obama and Green? 

WWeek 2015