News There's a transgender pastor, a gay saint and the Portland Gay Men's Chorus. No, that's not a set-up for a "walk into a bar" joke. It's the people featured in the annual Mass for St Aelred next Wednesday, Jan. 12, at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church (1432 SW 13th Ave.) in downtown Portland. The Portland chapter of Integrity USA, a national outreach and advocacy organization for gay, lesbian, ...   More

News Vancouver, Wash., at least according to The Advocate. The Advocate's 2011 annual gay and lesbian census lists the top 16 gayest U.S. cities and ranks Vancouver as number 6. So, why Vancouver and not Portland, which has an openly gay mayor? The LGBT mag's Mike Albo writes that it's because gay and lesbian Portlanders are moving across the river to settle down in Vancouver. The city of 165,000 ...   More

News Street Walkers: Would not give names, ages or occupations. Time: 11:30 pm Saturday night, Feb. 9. Place: Southwest Stark Street and 11th Avenue. Fashion Look: Disco Terrorists How they got their look: Picked up the idea from The Martha Stewart Show. Applied sparkly diamantes to a couple of ski masks. What they paired it with: tiny staches, cutoff camo-shorts, white hoodies and sneakers ...   More

News Expressions of critical ennui are themselves boring. With that in mind, feel free to skip past the next two paragraphs. Neither I nor anybody I know can seem to get very excited about the Oscars this year. Maybe I just hang out with the wrong crowd. Maybe all your friends are planning to host riotously enthusiastic Oscar parties, complete with cupcakes decorated like Ellen Page's orange-striped ...   More

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News A vacant apartment building burnt to a crisp on Sunday night. The blaze, which occurred around 10:30 pm at 031 SW Caruthers Street, provided plenty of dramatic footage for the late night news crews as well as for those zooming down I-5 and I-405. According to KGW-TV: Neighbors said when the eight-unit building was occupied last October, it caught on fire after a candle was left unattended. ...   More

News Couldn't get a ticket to see Barack Obama on Friday? Not to worry: You can instead check out another celebrity who only speaks to the Portland public a few times a year. Word on the street is that Gus Van Sant will finally make a personal appearance to promote Paranoid Park in the city where it was shot. The director, who has eschewed local media and even skipped his own Portland International ...   More

News On the March 21 edition of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said he was about to introduce legislation in Congress to make it okey-dokey to carry around small amounts of marijuana. Said Frank to Maher when pushed on how he would get it through Congress: "The notion that you lock people up for smoking marijuana is pretty silly. I'm going to call it the 'Make Room for ...   More

News UPDATE 3/26/08: I spent the morning on the set of KATU's AMNW where I co-hosted alongside the hostess with the most-ess, Helen Raptis. And the big topic today? The "pregnant man" (see below). In fact Raptis (who thinks the whole story is a hoax) shared this video with me regarding Tommy Boy's former life as a woman named Tracy LaGondino. Funny thing, as a gay activist in Hawaii LaGondino's main ...   More

News OMIGOD. CBS-TV's most incredibly audacious reality show (and one of my guilty pleasures) is having a casting call in Portland. That's right. Casting for Big Brother 10 is under way and the powers that be are in search of some interesting house guests. According to the email I just received from its casting producer this season Big Bro is looking for all types of cast members. "We want ...   More