News The local arts community is throwing considerable support behind Mayor Sam Adams in the wake of revelations about his star-crossed affair with hunk-a-licious Beau Breedlove. A group of arts leaders including PICA's executive director, Victoria Frey, and Regional Arts & Culture Council Executive Director Eloise Damrosch, has circulated an open letter to the public supporting Adams. The letter ...   More

News A Portland City Auditor's report released today found that the $6.5 million Office of Neighborhood Involvement, one of the city's most unique institutions, which is charged with...what, again? Umm...Right. That's just the problem. ONI needs "clearer goals" and better performance measures, according to the report by Auditor Gary Blackmer's office. The audit depicts a bureau that's picked up a hodgepodge ...   More

News PARADE DAY UPDATE: Hope Slutski, I mean Seski, wasn't up to this when he was in my cubicle. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCYsjaEtZp8[/youtube] In honor of Oregon's Sesquicentennial (that's 150 years), a mascot called "Seski the Sasquatch" will be making an appearance on the Oregon 150 float in Saturday's Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade. But today he made an appearance in my ...   More

News So here's a tale from last night's Portland appearance by Sergei Khrushchev, and it has to do with one of the most iconic images of the Cold War: Khrushchev's father, then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, supposedly pounding his shoe at the United Nations and saying, "We will bury you." Son Sergei Khrushchev slyly asked the Portland audience how many of them remember this incident, setting off ...   More

News Courtesy of the Portland Fire Bureau's voluminous Standard of Emergency Response Coverage report, we have a breakdown of all the emergency medical dispatches handled by the city and its contract ambulance service, American Medical Response, last year. As you can see, Portlanders have a lot of problems. Compared with last year, calls about breathing trouble, chest pains and "sick"-ness increased ...   More

News Browsing through our archives from 1978 this morning, I came across this story from March of that year. It was about a year before the second oil crisis would hit the US, during the high plateau where gas prices lingered between the 1973 and 1979 shortages and long before the 20-year run of absurdly low oil prices leading up to our current situation. $0.949 in 1978 would be worth $3.15 today. Those ...   More

News OMIGAWD. The McMenamins have done it now. After turning a former funeral home into another outlet for their version of food and fun, they've gone and snatched up the building that once housed The Silverado (a notorious strip club that more often than not went by The Silver Dildo) and Club Portland (a mens-only bath house that featured glory holes, a sauna and lots of, uh, spouting fountains). First ...   More

News Guest Commentary By Alex DeLarge When I viddied these gloopy bratchnies in the gazetta today, your humble narrator just had to guff. Not because they were my droogs. No, my brothers, what surprised me was the weird slovo I'd never slooshied before. The Oregonian: "Portland police looking for suspects in 'wilding'" KGW: "Five people were beaten and robbed by a roaming band of attackers in what ...   More