Skip to main content* Years ago, as a consciousness-raising exercise, the Portland design firm Plazm Media put out a typeface created by Dutch designer Roland Henss. Dubbed Capitalis Pirata and available for free on plazm.com, it uses letters and icons stolen from corporate logos--such as the golden-arched M from a certain global hamburger chain. Four months ago, McDonald's finally noticed--and Plazm received a threatening letter from the firm's lawyers, demanding their M back. Last week Plazm announced that it had "forcibly removed" the M from its alphabet. The revised typeface now has a label over the M, saying that thanks to McDonald's, it "is no longer available."
* Portland Timbers fans are in a froth about the pro soccer club's season opener this Saturday, when the A-League club launches its fourth campaign against the hated Seattle Sounders. For the first time, the team is bringing back most of its core players, but club officials want a few new faces to stir the broth. Oregon State star Alan Gordon, picked but not signed by Major League Soccer's L.A. Galaxy, is likely to start in place of slightly injured scoring ace McKinley Tennyson. And at WW's press time, the club expected to scoop up midfielder Guillermo "Memo" Arzate and defender Edwin "Read Him His" Miranda.
* Still on the Timber trail.... With a solid corps of Hispanic players and Spanish-language broadcasts, Portland is looking to press its pitch to metro-area Spanish-speakers. "There's been a huge increase in interest," says Timbers spokesman Collin Romer. "Now it's just a matter of getting the word out. Last year, we had people thinking we played at Delta Park." For the record, the ball drops Saturday at PGE Park, 7 pm.
* Attention to those who claim to be sick of voter apathy: A nationwide coalition known as America Votes is staging National Election Action Day on Saturday, May 8, to kick off a six-month-long drive for voter registration and outreach leading up to November's elections. In Portland, the coalition (which includes ACORN, the Sierra Club and the American Federation of Teachers) has planned Get Your Feet on the Street, where the idea is, according to event organizer Kevin Looper, to "literally put feet on the street and knock on doors around Portland and register voters," as well as fire up those already registered. For more information, or to register as a volunteer, see www.americavotes.org.
* For years, Craig Rosebraugh was the spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, which took credit for arsons and vandalism across the country. Then he launched Calendula, a posh vegan restaurant on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, and activist wags on Portland.indymedia.org immediately started making cracks about torching it. Last week, according to Rosebraugh's posting on Indymedia, someone set a fire in the dumpster next to his restaurant and wrote "Craig Rosebraugh is a scab" on his store sign. Sounds like Rosebraugh, a self-described revolutionary, has a new appreciation for the establishment he wants to overthrow: "If it hadn't have been for the fire department [it] could have easily lit our entire building on fire," he writes.
* In a sense, Rosebraugh got what he's dishing out: fear in the homestead. Murmurs has learned that Mayor Vera Katz has had a cop sitting outside her house on a 24-hour basis since Saturday, when 200 marchers organized by Rosebraugh's new group, Arissa, stood on the sidewalk outside her Northwest Portland home for more than a half-hour--yelling at her through a megaphone about police accountability. Katz lay inside recuperating from a hysterectomy. Says one cop: "Personally, I think it's kind of bush-league to pick on an old lady who's just had major surgery."
WWeek 2015