Skip to main contentOMG! This guy needs to be stopped! ["Rise of the Falcon," WW, March 20, 2013.]
He uses his own money to set up an artist's community of inexpensive studio space, but insists in choosing the artists!
He likes art that art critics don't!
He raised rents when he renovated apartment buildings!
He tried to sneak out of taking responsibility for gentrification by not raising rents until the first tenants moved out!
He owns buildings where tenants have stored things illegally, then weasled out of fines by fixing the problems promptly!
What about parking tickets?! What about…overdue library books?!
Seriously, an informative article about someone doing a lot of good with his life. I enjoyed it.
—"Mike"
Brian Wannamaker is not nearly as noble as you give him credit for. For one thing, his rents are expensive—even for the studio spaces. And then there's the commission you're required to pay him for every piece [of art] you sell. I lived in the Falcon for over five years and have seen Wannamaker's shady tactics over and over again.
—"Falconer"
RACE AND THE PRISON SYSTEM
My freshman writing professor told the class one day, "Statistics are like bikinis. They reveal a lot, but what they don't reveal is the most important part." I was reminded of this when reading "The Hard Truth About Oregon's Prisons (They Work)" [WW, March 20, 2013].
The glaring omission in an article addressing incarceration and education was any mention of race. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, describes mass incarceration as the new form of an old racial caste system. Looking at schools and prisons (and the pipeline between the two) with those numbers in the foreground re-frames the debate.
The question, then, isn't whether Oregon's prison system is working, but whether it is the system we want exercising control over our communities, cities and state. We can pat ourselves on the back for having the best suite on the Titanic, or we can support Gov. John Kitzhaber and take the first step toward a life raft.
BUNGLED DEAL DRAWS IRE
Fine, and who got fired for this? ["3rd & Choke," WW, March 20, 2013.] Someone needs to be shown the door, as high up the management chain as possible. Who signed the idiotic parking deal? Who approved tearing down the old garage without having an ironclad development deal inked? The word is "accountability."
—"ER"
CORRECTIONS
The name of Trammell Crow, a Portland real-estate development company, was misspelled in last week's story "3rd & Choke."
The name of Nichole Maher, president of Northwest Health Foundation, was misspelled in our March 13 story about fluoride, "Cavities in Their Campaign." WW regrets the errors.
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WWeek 2015