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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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 waspro-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?
COOLEY - Image courtesy fmqb.com
