Scoop: Honestly, Almost Sick of Patio Beers.

1. NO SUSHI STRIP: Last month, Safari Showclub in Southeast Portland lost all of its exotic dancers (“It’s summer,” said the bar manager on duty. “I can’t make them come in.”) and renamed itself Sushi Bar PDX, installing fish tanks and a sushi case near the stages, which still had their poles. Sushi Bar PDX closed April 19, and Safari’s owners will move their sushi bar to Camas, Wash. “We are setting out to make our own destiny,” read the bar’s Facebook page. “After countless years making others rich we have decided to part ways.” Safari will again be a strip club, under different owners. No word on those fish tanks…or the strippers. >> Meanwhile, we’ve confirmed that downtown’s Brasserie Montmartre is closing. The French pub (“a nice place for dinner and drinks with co-workers,” our reviewer called it) opened in 1978 and has made several trips to the grave and back.

1. NO’S DEF: The headliner at this year’s Soul’d Out Music Festival ended up getting canceled just as the doors were supposed to open, and no one is sure why. On April 17, Yasiin Bey—the rapper formerly known as Mos Def—was scheduled to headline the Roseland Theater along with punk legends Bad Brains, but neither act made it to the venue. “It was a real bummer,” says festival co-founder Haytham Abdulhadi, who declined to go into detail, adding that even he is unclear what exactly happened. <<< Rising new-wave R&B artist Twin Shadow postponed an April 25 appearance at Doug Fir Lounge following a Denver tour bus accident that left a dozen people injured and singer George Lewis Jr. requiring reconstructive hand surgery. No makeup date has been scheduled, but Twin Shadow is set to appear at MusicfestNW on Aug. 22.

1. CHANGING ROLES: Spring brings fresh faces to Portland’s theater scene, and this week three prominent companies announced what’s next. Curious Comedy Theater managing director Beth Lewis will replace Anne Mueller at Hillsboro theater company Bag & Baggage when Mueller returns to her dancing roots as artistic co-director at the Portland Ballet. Meanwhile, Artists Repertory Theatre is making good on its $125,000 grant from the Oregon Community Foundation by creating a new play development program and hiring Foster & Dobbs cheese shop owner and local dramatist Luan Schooler as director. Schooler will commission four plays by writers of color, four by women and one for a young audience. And Portland Center Stage announced last week that it will get $770,000 from the Wallace Foundation to commission plays about Northwest culture. PCS’s most recent production was Lauren Weedman’s The People’s Republic of Portland, essentially a stage adaptation of Portlandia created by someone who has never lived here.

1. JUST BLAZED: The Trail Blazers began the NBA playoffs April 19 with a 100-86 trouncing at the claws of the Memphis Grizzlies, in a game that saw the team thoroughly outplayed by a guy named Beno and a point guard with one good foot. It surely can’t get worse, but if it does, Corbin Smith of Blazers blog Portland Roundball Society will help talk you off the ledge. Read his game recaps at wweek.com, for however long the campaign lasts.

WWeek 2015