Scoop: Quite a Week, Innit?

1. FIGHTING OVER FRED: Portlandia has long been a polarizing phenomenon within the city it skewers, but some Portlanders’ distaste for the hit sketch-comedy show runs deeper than others’. One disgruntled resident is now staging a protest to run star Fred Armisen out of town. The Facebook event page created by Ian Henderson—who’s adopted the name “Ian Rubbish” on his profile page, a reference to Armisen’s fake Brit-punk character and recent WW cover boy—says the former Saturday Night Live comic’s misrepresentation of Portland has caused the city to be gentrified by “rich, white assholes.” “Plus,” Henderson writes, “he’s not even fucking funny.” The protest is planned for Armisen’s show at the Crystal Ballroom on Sept. 5 as part of MusicfestNW. This all sounds like the premise of a Portlandia sketch, but in a brief email to Scoop, Henderson says he’s serious.

1. SELECTIVE AMNESIA: Amnesia Brewing is leaving Portland for Washougal, Wash., at the end of the year, according to brewer A. Rob Lutz, who will take over the Amnesia space at 832 N Beech St. to start a new brewery called StormBreaker. According to Lutz, Amnesia owner and brewer Kevin King “let me know he wanted to sell, and it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.” King expanded his brewery to Washougal last spring and now rarely shows up at the Mississippi Avenue location. >> In other beer news, Portland-based Beer West magazine has folded; its last issue is on newsstands now.

1. FINAL CURTSY: Portland ballerina Alison Roper will retire after 18 years with Oregon Ballet Theatre. Roper, who will be 40 when she performs in her final show in April, has been with the company seven years longer than the next-longest-tenured dancers. Roper has suffered nagging injuries, and doctors have told her she should think about dancing less. At an open rehearsal in Director Park in August, she covered a tortured toenail with a burn pad before taping it. “I had kind of wanted to dance until I was 40,” she says. “For some reason that felt like a meaningful landmark.” Roper is widely known as a masterful dancer. She stayed in Portland because of her loyalty to former artistic director Christopher Stowell. Though she’d initially planned to retire this year, new artistic director Kevin Irving persuaded her to stay. She’ll then move into OBT administration. “I’m going to learn fundraising and some stuff about marketing and budgeting,” she says, “and see if that’s exciting or totally boring.”

1. BAD DOGG: As you probably heard, Snoop Dogg’s show at the Roseland Theater on Aug. 27 was a bit of a disaster. (Read our review here.) To ease anger in the wake of the veteran rapper’s late, truncated performance, promoter Mike Thrasher worked out a deal with TicketsWest to offer refunds to anyone who requested one within 48 hours of the gig. About 200 refunds were given. Asked if he’ll ever bring Snoop back to Portland after this debacle, Thrasher tells Scoop, “Never say never—though I sure don’t feel like it this week.”

WWeek 2015