Top 5 “Youth,” Beat HappeningThis 1984 ditty is a fitting prologue to the whole K story. “I thought there must be more to this world than we’re being told,” Calvin Johnson sings. “When you��   More

Music Stories “I was living in Rhode Island, at a friends’ house in the middle of the country. I was spending a lot of time at the ocean, in the morning and in the evening.” Rebecca Gates is explaining    More

Food Reviews & Stories There ain't much to this Northwest pizzeria aside from pizza, beer and its New York attitude. The slices are thin, the sauce is thick, the cheese is cheesy, the veggies are plentiful and fresh, and, for purists, the whole package is completely foldable. Oh yeah, and it's cheap, too (slices start at    More

RIFF CITY This column—my last for this newspaper—is being written on a laptop owned by Willamette Week. It was lent to me by my employer for my tenure as the music editor of the largest alternative ...   More

Music Many great moments have... shit, what's the word. I can't think of it. To tell you the truth, I can't really think at all after the wonderful farewell party Willamette Week threw for me last night at Acme. If you were there, you know what I'm talking about. If not, well, you probably still do. But what ...   More

Music I'm generally not one for the third person business, but this post required me to be in the headline and I sure as hell wasn't going to use the first person. That's just the type of music editor I am. Or, well, that's just the type of music editor I used to be, I guess. Now that it is 5 pm and the pages for th...   More

Music [FOLK] Horse Feathers singer Justin Ringle has been compared to, by this writer's count, nine different vocalists, including the king of the whisper-thin croon, Nick Drake; political soul songwriter Tracy Chapman; and the Walkmen's indecipherable Hamilton Leithauser. The only thing more remarkable than the diversity of Ringle's supposed influences is the fact that his band, Horse Feathers, has rec...   More

Food Reviews & Stories Housed in the Old Multnomah Hotel building (now an Embassy Suites Hotel), this basilica to beef makes very little room for frivolity in the practiced demeanor of its waitstaff or in the presentation of its hearty meals. With a foundation in about 20 different beef-based dishes, the dinner menu makes   More

Music Colin Meloy has come a long way from his days as a young songwriter penning fanciful songs in the Oak Street Building in Industrial Southeast Portland. At that time, around the turn of the millennium, Meloy was writing to his internal muse alone. Now Meloy is writing those songs for a lot of people, including ...   More

RIFF CITY Colin Meloy has come a long way from his days as a young songwriter penning fanciful songs in the Oak Street Building in Industrial Southeast Portland. At that time, around the turn of the millennium, ...   More