News About three months ago, my housemates purchased three chickens, and placed them in an elaborately constructed coop in our backyard. This has had absolutely no discernible effect on my life, because these chickens are lady chickens, and thus prone to clucking quietly and (as of this week) laying small, greenish eggs. If they had been dude chickens, it would have been a different story. If they ...   More

News Remember when you first moved to Portland and people were incessantly suggesting you partake in various events? “Oh, you'll have to go crabbing with us!” “Oh, you'll have to go see the wildflowers on such-and-such mountain!” “You simply must go to this lake and go fly fishing!” There are a few assumptions hidden within those statements. The first is that ...   More

News Former WW scribe and Starbucked author Taylor Clark chimes in at Slate with a recap and analysis of the Sam Adams scandal—the best I've read so far. The killer graphs: To demonstrate the first way it's different, let's ask the obvious question: How would the Portland public react if Adams were straight and Breedlove were a teenage girl? The answer is, we'd see this as a garden variety, morally ...   More

News Graham Wiklund doesn't just want to know how many hipsters are in a given area. He wants to know exactly how much hipster funk they're giving off. Wiklund is a biochemistry student at Portland State University. And when confronted with the “most hipster-dense place in PSU” he'd ever seen, he decided to work out his frustrations with an equation that would measure the hipster concentration ...   More

News Susan Beal, pictured above, has a new book, Button It Up! (The Taunton Press, 2009). And to celebrate, the 2007 WW "cover girl" is hosting a book signing and free crafting session at Powell's Books tonight at 7:30 p.m. Folks who show up can make their own hairclips with some of the buttons from Beal's personal collection, pictured below. (Pssst: There's also a second event at Bolt Fabric ...   More

News Blogging SXSW while it's still going is like writing about a hurricane whilst still in its eye. Every moment you take to type is a moment that you should probably be making your next move. I've gotten countless texts from friends and colleagues alike while here in Austin. Usually, they say "I'm at _____, where are you?" And the ugly truth is that maybe I'm at the convention center having a soda, or ...   More

News When Oregonian movie critic Shawn Levy was writing his biography of Paul Newman, he knew that the blue-eyed star had a longstanding feud with the New York Post. Levy's book Paul Newman: A Life won't be released until May 5, but it's already landed him on Page Six as the fuel for a final, posthumous Post vs. Newman imbroglio. And it has Levy appearing on TV tabloid Inside Edition later this week ...   More