Skip to main contentAnybody's who been in a relationship longer than a week knows that miscommunication is the biggest cause of collapse.
Just ask Pam & Kid Rock, Britney & K-Fed or Jennifer & Vince.
Hell, Strother Martin knew best 40 years ago as "Captain" in the 1967 classic Cool Hand Luke, when he uttered the immortal line, "What we've got here is failure to communicate."
You know, when a word means one thing to somebody and another thing to somebody else?
Before we put 2006 on the shelf, we thought we'd take 14 words that over the past year came to mean different things to different people in Oregon.
It's our addled way of characterizing the year of politics, food, music, sports, policing, theater and business, while looking ahead to 2007.
So read on while channeling the always "cheery" spirit of Jean-Paul Sartre, author of the observation about people trapped in an eternal conversation: "Hell is other people."
Blue
1) adj. Recently developed slang for a geographic area with politics that tends to be left of center. As opposed to "red," for areas populated with voters that are more conservative.
EXAMPLE: It's been some time since Oregon looked as blue as it has in the wake of the November election. Democrats took control of the state House for the first time since 1989, retained control of the Senate and kept the governor's seat despite an incumbent, Ted Kulongoski, whose first term, according to some critics, blew (that's B-L-E-W).
Oregon turned blue in part because of the debacle in Iraq and the lower-than-my-goldfish's-IQ approval ratings for George W. Bush. But other factors helped as well, including Republican House Speaker Karen Minnis, who spent more than $1 million to secure her own narrow re-election to the Oregon Legislature. Her effort hoovered up funds that might have tipped close races in other districts to Republicans.
Kulongoski was helped by the withdrawal from the race of independent state Sen. Ben Westlund, who could have eroded the guv's base. Republican candidate Ron Saxton's ability to raise money (he collected a record $9.1 million from supporters) was offset by personality deficit disorder. Here's a guy who proudly revealed to the world that he owned every episode of Green Acres!
What's next? With control of the governor's chair and the Legislature, all credit or blame for the upcoming legislative session lands on the Democrats. And let the positioning start now for Kulongoski's successor in four years. House Speaker-elect Jeff Merkley, anybody?
2) adj. (informal) Describing a depressed or sad person or mood.
EXAMPLE: In September, Intel employees were blue after the company announced that it would lay off 10,000 employees worldwide, or about 10 percent of its 100,000-person global work force (all part of the most recent bloodletting in the company's ongoing battle with chief competitor ADM).
Hundreds of the 17,200 Intel employees working in Oregon's Silicon Forest were laid off. Given that Intel is the state's largest private employer, the company's fortunes are followed with intense interest by observers who rightly see the computer-chip giant as a barometer of Oregon's economic health.
What's next? With Intel's stock down more than 20 percent for the year, one analyst says, "The stock is still caught in a major downtrend that shows no signs of letting up."
Chocolate
1) n. A food item made from cacao beans, cocoa butter, milk and sugar. Considered by some to extend life, by others to have aphrodisiac-like qualities (see second definition below) and by still others to be a conspiracy perpetuated by health clubs.
EXAMPLE: Oregon-based Dagoba Organic Chocolate recalled 40,000 pounds of its signature product in April after officials discovered lead in a batch originating at a processing plant in Ecuador, alarming local yuppies and hippies who thought their organic goods were safe from contamination.
How in the name of Willy Wonka and the golden ticket did that happen? Turns out lead solder was used to repair a piece of machinery at the plant.
Had all of that chocolate been made into 2-ounce bars, there could have been 320,000 customers with a potentially harmful "ticket" of a different metal. As is, since nobody got sick, it just meant that many deprived chocoholics.
What's next? A representative of the company, which was purchased by the Hershey Company in October, says the lead incident is an isolated case and that the Ecuadorian plant no longer processes chocolate for Dagoba.
Nonetheless, the company continues to test all of its products, says company spokeswoman Melissa Schweisguth.
2) adj. Having the color of chocolate or dark brown, deliciously irresistible.
EXAMPLE: Portland Police Chief Derrick Foxworth gave this word a boost in Google rankings when he wrote in an email to a female co-worker: "There completely exposed in front of you is my naked brown chocolate body and this huge hard on for you to take and enjoy in any way you choose."
After the co-worker, Angela Oswalt, decided she didn't want his sweetness anymore, she went public last April with the emails, accusing Foxworth of sexual misconduct and abuse of power.
Mayor Tom Potter demoted Foxworth to captain after an investigation found no wrongdoing related to the affair, but still found that Foxworth failed to meet the standard of "acceptable conduct." Put it another way—anyone stupid enough to send such an email should not be running a police force.
In October, Foxworth filed a tort claim announcing his plan to sue over his demotion.
What's next? Foxworth will be eligible to retire in October 2008 and has two years to file a lawsuit against the city.
Cool
1) v. To become less hot.
EXAMPLE: After years of a housing market that was so hot "house flipper" actually began to show up as a title on business cards, Portland's housing market is finally cooling. Single-family residential building permits dropped 6.3 percent from the highs of 2005, and existing home sales fell 17.5 percent from December 2005.
Homes still sell more quickly in Portland than elsewhere in the nation, and the median price of a home in Portland rose 12 percent to $270,000 last year.
But the supply side is well stocked with the proliferation of condos in the Pearl, the South Waterfront and just about everywhere else.
What's next? Don't look for a $100,000 home any time soon. Housing expert Jerry Johnson says home prices will continue to rise, albeit at a much lower rate than in the last year.
"It's going to be a shift to a buyer's market," Johnson told the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland in early December.
As for renters? Johnson told WW he expects area rents to rise as much as 20 percent in the next two years.
2) adj. (slang) Excellent, or fashionably attractive.
EXAMPLE: Here's a cool idea—free wireless Internet access for everyone! You mean, I can surf porn on my laptop gratis?
Yes. After three years of prodding from Portland's City Hall, the Mountain View, Calif.,-based MetroFi turned on the first stage of Portland's soon-to-be citywide wireless network on Dec. 5.
As of September 2006, 68 U.S. municipalities had citywide networks, but none besides Madison, Wis., were major cities. There are 135 cities—42 in the Silicon Valley alone—with networks in deployment, including Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Portland's ad-supported network currently covers downtown streets and a large chunk of the inner east side. It's far from perfect, with early-stage reports of difficulty in several areas of Southeast.
What's next? MetroFi is keeping mum about the dates for future network expansions. But the city's manager for the wireless project, Logan Kleier, says to look for the network to begin covering the city east of 28th Avenue in early February.
Fall
1) v. To be pushed, tackled and/or crushed.
EXAMPLE: One of the most widely felt tragedies of 2006 was the death of Portlander James Chasse Jr., who was killed in a fall on Sept. 17 in the Pearl District.
It began when police tackled or pushed Chasse. They delivered blows as he resisted arrest, and he died less than two hours later. Eyewitness accounts said Chasse was tackled; a "fact sheet" released by the city a month after Chasse's death stated that Officer Christopher Humphreys pushed, not tackled, the schizophrenic Chasse. A grand jury cleared the officers of any criminal wrongdoing.
What's next? LAW$$$$UIT! (Probably. The family's attorney says they're still "investigating.") The two Portland police officers and the Multnomah County Sheriff's deputy involved may also be subject to internal discipline.
2) v. To collapse, or lose status, dignity, position or character.
EXAMPLE: Portland's hungry gossips were shocked (and some secretly satisfied) last April by the fall of ripe, the city's most lauded—and fractious—indie food empire.
As wweek.com first reported last spring, the chicken liver ragu hit the fan when co-creator Naomi Hebberoy announced that her husband, ripe visionary and media-seducer Michael Hebberoy, had, as she put it, "kind of cracked" and skipped town. Left behind in her hands: the pieces of ripe, which included the nationally lauded Family Supper series as well as the restaurants clarklewis and the Gotham Bldg. Tavern.
The reason for the meltdown? The young pair's admittedly awful money-management skills and divorce. Only days later, another bombshell: Family Supper and Gotham would close, much to the chagrin of several unpaid vendors and pissed-off ripe investors—including clarklewis chef and co-owner Morgan Brownlow.
The couple's remaining restaurant, clarklewis, now belongs to ripe investor David Howitt and his partner, Scott Fuller. The pair bought the hemorrhaging biz, and Naomi was demoted to general manager and Brownlow to chef. And Michael? He doesn't seem to have suffered too much. He was spotted dining with Gore Vidal and is now in Seattle, showcasing a roving dinner project called One Pot, which he calls "a gentle fuck you—to the corporate little box we reside in and are supposed to dine in."
As for the diaspora of talented chefs, Gotham chef Tommy Habetz is resuscitating the once-bland menu at Meriwether's, while Gotham sous Gabriel Rucker opened Le Pigeon on East Burnside Street this past fall to rave reviews.
What's next? These days, Naomi Hebberoy (who has reclaimed her maiden name of Pomeroy) handles clarklewis' PR and marketing. But she plans to resurrect her first love, Family Supper, every Sunday at clarklewis.
She starts cooking this Sunday, Jan. 7 (request reservations by emailing supper@clarklewispdx.com).
But still, WW had to ask: After the hell of 2006, why not just leave this town?
"I don't think I would have had the same faith in humanity if I hadn't seen how people made a net for me here [after ripe collapsed]," Pomeroy explains. "They cushioned my fall.... I wouldn't have gotten to see that if I would have run off to Mexico."
Fix
1) v. To arrange to one's advantage, even or especially at the expense of others.
EXAMPLE: Portland General Electric hasn't asked for a full-blown rate increase since 2001 (although its rates remain among the highest in the region). So when the state's largest utility made its case last year to Oregon regulators for a 9 percent increase, it was important to use all possible means of persuasion.
In December, WW revealed that PGE had tried to "fix" its rate request by editing a supposedly independent analysis of the utility's fortunes written by the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's (see "The Producer," WW, Dec. 6, 2006). The New York Times followed up with a Dec. 12 story that further cast doubt on PGE and Standard & Poor's behavior. (Both PGE and S&P strenuously denied, however, that the "fix is in.")
What's next? The PUC is expected to rule on PGE's request by mid-January.
2) v. To firmly place or attach, make immovable.
EXAMPLE: Fixed-gear bicycles, or "fixies"—coast-free wonders in which the rear sprocket is fixed to the wheel's hub without a freewheel mechanism—broke into the gray area of Oregon law in 2006.
Three Multnomah County judges handed down two different rulings last year on whether fixies require brakes.
The confusion stems from a tricky definition of the word "brake" in Oregon Revised Statute 815.280(2)(a): "A bicycle must be equipped with a brake that enables the operator to make the braked wheels skid on dry, level, clean pavement."
But many fixed-gear riders can make their rear wheel skid by leaning forward and ceasing pedal motion with their legs. They argue this should count as a brake, which would protect them from being ticketed. Judges who ruled against such riders counter that's unsafe.
What's next? Cyclist and state Sen. Jason Atkinson (R-Central Point) hopes to revise the state law in the upcoming legislative session with a bill that would make sure fixed-gear bicycles aren't required to have a separate brake.
Game
1) adj. Exhibiting fighting spirit.
EXAMPLE: The Oregon State University baseball team was pretty damn game.
Hopes were high for OSU before the 2006 season, which is atypical for a Northwest school, given that college-baseball powerhouses usually come from the sunny south, where the weather lets teams practice year round.
The Beavers went to the College World Series for a second straight year, then survived must-win situations for four straight games. That put them into a best-two-out-of-three championship round that they also rallied to win.
OSU claimed the school's first national title in any sport since 1961 and became the first baseball team in NCAA history to win six games when facing elimination.
What's next? OSU baseball coach Pat Casey signed a new 10-year contract after turning down an offer from Notre Dame, and the Beavers have a top-20 recruiting class. It looks like another fun year in Corvallis.
2) v. To engage in evasive, trifling or manipulative behavior.
EXAMPLE: Trail Blazers owner and billionaire Paul Allen spent much of 2006 again gaming fans, and perhaps gaming away a once-beautiful 36-year relationship between Portland and its only major-league pro sports franchise.
First, a little background before beginning the 2006 installment of As Allen's World Turns. In the courts: Allen's Oregon Arena Corp. went into bankruptcy in 2004. He ended up handing the Rose Garden Arena over to creditors, losing millions in revenues from luxury-suite and preferred seating—including his own courtside, end-zone seat!
Allen was so torqued by the deal—and perhaps by the fact he's mismanaged the team to projected losses of $100 million over the next three years—that he put the Blazers up for sale in June 2006. Then he yanked them back off the market in August.
Off the court, he's tolerated behavior on the part of his players, like Zach Randolph, that makes the Sopranos look functional. And on the court, the once-model NBA team ended the 2005-06 season with the league's worst record.
What's next? The 2006-07 team seemed before a recent skid to be ticking upward, with a five-game December winning streak, and attendance is up slightly.
Yet many think that if the SuperSonics blow Seattle for Oklahoma City, Allen's real game is to move the Blazers north to his beloved Emerald City.
Grease
1) v. To influence by giving gobs of money.
EXAMPLE: Oregon is among the states most susceptible to grease, because it's only one of a handful that places no limits on campaign contributions.
Thus, spending in the 2006 gubernatorial race jumped 50 percent from the 2002 election, to nearly $15 million. Thus, House Speaker Karen Minnis and her challenger, Rob Brading, spent more than $1.5 million on a race in which fewer than 17,000 people voted. Thus, car dealers, tree cutters and home builders could write six-figure checks to Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron Saxton.
And public employee unions could spend hundreds of thousands supporting incumbent Gov. Ted Kulongoski, most notably a $250,000 TV ad campaign paid for by the teachers' union, and another $100,000 from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
State voters had a chance to cut the grease in November. Measures 46 and 47 were designed to amend the state constitution to allow strict limits on campaign contributions and then impose such limits, respectively.
Voters spiked the constitutional change proposed by 46 but OK'd the contribution limits of 47. The result: a conundrum that will probably be settled by the courts.
What's next? Secretary of State Bill Bradbury has declined to implement the contribution limits imposed by voter-approved Measure 47 because the enabling Measure 46 failed. Backers of both measures are suing the state to force implementation.
Meanwhile, an independent ethics commission has prepared a list of related recommendations that legislative leaders have promised to include in a sweeping review early in the upcoming session.
2) n. An oily matter or thick lubricant.
EXAMPLE: Gasoline—and its rising price—may have been the goop getting the most ink nationally this year. But it was the grease that is biodiesel that made headlines in Portland.
The enviro-friendly lube, the fastest-growing source of alternative fuel in the U.S., took a powerful hold locally.
In mid-November, TriMet started powering its entire fleet of buses with a 5 percent biodiesel blend. And City Commissioner Randy Leonard began fueling with a 99 percent biodiesel blend the city's 84 Water Bureau vehicles—the largest fleet of its kind in the nation.
Private companies also have their eye on the green. Shared Route, a biodiesel commuter bus running between Portland and Seattle on weekends, made its inaugural run in November.
And even a handful of local restaurateurs, from fine-dining spots like Castagna to local fast-food chain Burgerville, now donate their fryers' greasy leftovers to be converted into biodiesel. Now, if only the exhaust started smelling like french fries....
What's next? A Leonard ordinance passed unanimously by City Council requires that, starting July 1, all locally sold diesel must contain a minimum of 5 percent biodiesel.
Hot
1) adj. Bothered, angry, steamed.
EXAMPLE: Responding to a district attorney's scathing report lambasting the costs and safety of Multnomah County's jails in November, Sheriff Bernie Giusto was so hot he started talking jive. "This is a jailin' system," Giusto said. "We're all about being the Arkansas of the West Coast.... We be jailers."
Giusto later apologized for his remarks, which some deemed racially insensitive. The sheriff said he was objecting to the tone of the report, which he likened to a criminal indictment.
Rather than Giusto, it is taxpayers who ought to be hot. The report simply confirmed what many have known for some time: Local jails are far more expensive to run than others in the region (though the sheriff disputes those figures), and Giusto's mismanagement is deep and wide.
The report knocked the sheriff for failing to rein in overtime spending and running a jail in which an inmate snuck into another inmate's cell for a tryst (but then had to summon a guard to get back out). Meanwhile, several deputies have been the subject of high-profile sexual impropriety scandals.
What's next? Giusto is making every appearance to temper his public persona.
In the wake of the DA's report and a second one from a grand jury, Giusto's tone cooled markedly. He assigned a detective to investigate incidents in the jails, is about to launch an independent staffing study and supports a newly formed jails advisory committee.
"I think you're going to see a much more cooperative effort between [the] county Board and Sheriff's Office," says Giusto, whom voters re-elected last May to a four-year term.
2) adj. Rapidly becoming a favorite among Portland sports.
EXAMPLE: The Portland LumberJax are so hot that you could now swing a lacrosse stick in Pioneer Courthouse Square and actually hit somebody who knows there's something called professional indoor lacrosse.
In its first season, Portland's new National Lacrosse League franchise averaged more than 8,000 people for its eight-game home schedule.
On the field...er, tarp, the Jax were the first expansion team in the league's 19-year history to win their division, and their home playoff game (a loss) drew nearly 11,000 fans.
Portland's coach and general manager, Derek Keenan, won league awards for both jobs, and defenseman Brodie Merrill won Rookie of the Year.
What's Next? The team drew 8,437 people to its home opener Saturday, Dec. 30, against Buffalo (the Jax won).
And Jax owner Angela Batinovich (who is now engaged to player Adam Bysouth) hopes to raise the team's average attendance this year by 20 percent to 10,000 people. Also, the league's All-Star Game will be played March 10 at the Rose Garden.
Out
1) adj. Rendered obsolete, removed from play.
EXAMPLE: Multnomah County Chair Diane Linn, once among the most powerful women in local politics, is out—as in "finished, washed up, not in power, so long, see ya, bye-bye, don't let the door hit you" out—after the most humiliating electoral defeat anywhere in Oregon during 2006.
She received only 23 percent of the vote in May against a political newcomer, Ted Wheeler. Did she lose because of Wheeler's dynamism on the stump? Hardly.
Linn was whipsawed by her botched attempt to legalize gay marriage; building, and then failing to open, the Wapato jail; and publicly feuding with her fellow commissioners in such a sustained and immature way that even supporters began to worry about her grip on reality.
And in the last weeks of the campaign, Linn was also accused by a former staff member of falsifying public records.
What's next? Linn's not talking, but sources close to her say she's fielding several offers and will probably end up at a nonprofit or place where her longtime activism will shine. Meanwhile, an attorney general's investigation continues into the allegedly doctored records.
2) v. (slang) To expose someone's homosexuality; dragging someone out of the closet for the purpose of highlighting his or her hypocrisy.
EXAMPLE: Over the past year on his blog, PerezHilton.com, Mario Lavandeira played a high-profile role nationally in "outing," or telling everyone who will listen who's queer. He's done it to a pop singer (Lance Bass), a couple of actors (Neil Patrick Harris and T.R. Knight) and an actress who used to be on Lost and who still won't admit she's a dyke (Michelle Rodriguez). But while Lavandeira may have fertile ground striking fear in homophobic America, he wouldn't have much traction "outing" anybody in Portland.
That's because although every city has its share of queer skeletons in an increasingly spacious closet, Portland hasn't seen much need for one lately. We have an out gay city commish (Sam Adams), a queer-friendly mayor (Tom Potter) and a state Legislature that's down with the GLBTQ crowd (now that the Democrats have pried the House as well as the Senate from the Republicans' cold, dead hands).
So why write about outing? Because one of the waves that got voters to elect D's in Oregon (see "blue" entry, page 13) was prompted by the "outing" of the political hypocrisy that is the Republican Party (via the Instant Messaging of ex-U.S. Rep. Mark Foley).
The result: Oregon joined the rest of the country by electing candidates who know that closets are for shoes.
What's next? Adams sure looks like he's laying the groundwork to make a run in 2008 at being Portland's first gay mayor, which would make Portland the largest city ever to have elected an out-there queer chief exec. And, according to everyone from Basic Rights Oregon to new House Speaker-elect Jeff Merkley, the Legislature will take up civil unions during the upcoming legislative session.
Prodigal
1) adj. Spending money or resources freely—even recklessly.
EXAMPLE: We love looking at the aerial tram as we ride or drive to work, those silver bubbles floating with such determination from the riverbank to Oregon Health & Science University. There is no denying that the tram project, prodigal though it may be, will take center stage on the city's skyline.
But that doesn't diminish the textbook example of "gubmint" excess the tram became. The project's original price tag nearly quadrupled to $57 million before it was finished, with about 70 percent of that tab picked up by OHSU, 15 percent by the Portland Development Commission, and the rest by property owners and developers. But with no heat or air conditioning in the pods, at least it ain't lavish.
What's next? Expect the stories about the prodigal nature of the tram to be replaced by postcards and national magazine stories about the tram. It will become the signature piece of architecture identifying the city. Which, frankly, is an improvement over the Convention Center spires.
2) adj. Lavish; extremely generous.
EXAMPLE: Portland Center Stage, a decade ago a sleepy regional theater company with a hazy rep, made a major move last year into the imaginatively restored Armory (now the Gerding Theater at the Armory in the Pearl District). Some called the project prodigal (in the sense above) because of its enormous cost ($36.1 million), and because it employed the controversial use of federal New Market Tax Credits, which were intended to benefit poor neighborhoods but have been re-jiggered for use in wealthier places around the country.
Hardly matters at this point. With donors opening their Fendi pocketbooks and the swank Armory renovations drawing equally lavish praise, Portland is swooning over the prodigal project. Ticket sales have been brisk at the new 599-seat main stage and up-to-200-seat studio.
Major box-office increases, new community partners and extended-run shows (West Side Story and I Am My Own Wife) are all very promising, if only PCS can muster up the remaining $8.7 million for the project by 2013 and fully complete the renovation (Sliver Park, Armory Cafe and other amenities are scheduled to be completed sometime in '07).
If PCS fails to raise the remaining funds, the City of Portland could take back the Armory for its own use. But the prospects for raising the rest of the money before that happens appear bright.
What's next? Beyond working to raise the cash, the coming year should reveal whether PCS's box-office
sweeps cause headaches for the other arts orgs in town seeking their share of a smaller pie, or if there's room for all in our fair burg.
Will jealous catfights ensue among PCS's artistic director Chris Coleman and Elaine Calder (Oregon Symphony), Christopher Stowell (Oregon Ballet Theatre) and Brian Ferriso (Portland Art Museum)?
School
1) v. (slang) To educate, as in a street-smart smackdown.
EXAMPLE: Animal-rights activists schooled Schumacher Furs and its customers with weekly protests for more than a year outside the store on Southwest Morrison Street.
A loosely organized group gathered every Saturday to chant slogans, holding up enlarged photos of skinned animals and passing out literature about the fur industry's brutal practices, such as anally electrocuting foxes before harvesting their pelts. (No truth to the rumor that the S&M crowd from Spartacus Leathers came to the defense of this procedure.)
Store owner Gregg Schumacher referred to the protesters as "terrorists" and cited their demonstrations as one reason for his announcement in November that he'll be moving the store in the spring of 2007.
One of the protesters, Matt Rossell of Northwest In Defense of Animals, says he makes an effort to de-escalate when demonstrators get out of hand. But he says the protest's overall tone has been peaceful, and geared toward educating the public.
What's next? Schumacher's landlord, TMT Development, served the store with a holiday eviction notice because of signage deemed antagonistic to protesters. The eviction notice was quickly retracted without explanation. Rossell expects the Saturday protests to continue until Schumacher's leaves downtown, and Schumacher isn't saying where or exactly when it's going.
2) n. A physical building located in an identifiable neighborhood that proved in some cases last year to be a movable "community" of students, teachers, parents and administrators, not a place.
EXAMPLE: Under Portland Public Schools Superintendent Vicki Phillips' leadership, the district pushed ahead in 2006 with a plan to convert existing school buildings into K-8 models as one way of addressing declining student enrollment and a surplus of aging hulks of brick and mortar.
The move proved controversial, angering scores of parents and school-reform heavyweights like Cynthia Guyer, departing executive director of the Portland Schools Foundation. Through a relatively quick series of community meetings, a.k.a. "facilitated conversations," parents across Portland met with district representatives to readjust school attendance boundaries and plan for the continuing operation of two dozen new K-8 schools.
Those changes required a School Board vote in 2006 to shutter several school buildings, including Clarendon Elementary in North Portland, Rose City Park Elementary in Northeast, Kellogg Middle in Southeast, and possibly the Brooklyn building (which currently houses the Winterhaven School), also in Southeast.
What's next? Parents of schoolchildren affected by the changes continue to question whether they were appropriate. Among the most vocal: parents of Winterhaven School students who must move from the Brooklyn neighborhood of inner Southeast to Montavilla, several miles east on Southeast 92nd Avenue, beginning in fall 2007.
It also remains to be seen what the district will do with the empty buildings that used to be schools. At least one charter school has bid on the shuttered Smith Elementary School in Portland, which the board closed in 2005, but the school district rejected the for-profit charter school's offer to buy the building.
Share
1) v. To use or enjoy with others.
EXAMPLE: While plenty of Portland music fans spent time cheering for Storm Large (see "storm" entry, page 20) in 2006, loads of Portland musicians spent the year like good kindergarteners by practicing the art of sharing.
Local bands Horse Feathers, Loch Lomond, Blanket Music, the Village Green, Desert City Soundtrack and Pentecost Hotel all loaned players to local fuzz-folk outfit Norfolk & Western, led by Adam Selzer and ex-Decemberist Rachel Blumberg, as well as sharing players among themselves.
The Decemberists shared keyboardist Jenny Conlee with Casey Neill's Norway Rats and Pogues tribute band KMRIA while Lisa Molinaro, viola player for folk-tronic duo Talkdemonic, hopped on a tour bus with the Decemberists.
Meanwhile, Clorox Girls and the Observers (now called Red Dawn) once shared bass player (and Plan R frontman) Colin Grigson. But both punk bands now share his replacement, Daniel Sayer. And Clorox Girls leadman Justin Maurer moonlights as Red Dawn's guitarist while sharing CG with a whole new roster.
This all goes without mentioning that electro-experimental mastermind Eric Mast, a.k.a. E*Rock, shares his music- and video-making skills with artists like Jona Bechtolt of YACHT, who (along with vocalist Khaela Maricich) also makes infectious dance pop as the Blow.
What's this say about Portland? It's a city just small enough for the members of its thriving music scene to interact, but at the same time a city that attracts enough transplanted new talent to constantly grow and push its own musical limits.
What's next? Molinaro's back with Talkdemonic founder Kevin O'Connor, working on an '07 release, while N&W hopes to get back into the studio this winter.
The current incarnations (subject to change) of the Clorox Girls and Plan R are set to release new material in '07—that is, unless all the related members meld into the Red Clorox Observers, or something.
And a visit to both YACHT and the Blow's MySpace pages will loudly tell you: "New YACHT in 2007!"
2) n. One equal, fractional part or portion of a stock corporation.
EXAMPLE: Oregonians were agog as Warren Buffett's MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. snapped up PacifiCorp for $5.1 billion in March and Russian steel giant Evraz threw down a $2.3 billion takeover bid for Oregon Steel Mills in November.
Both companies are Oregon heavies, Oregon Steel Mills employing 600 in Portland and PacifiCorp providing power to 520,000 customers throughout the state. And both moves reflect the march of globalization into a state that once prided itself on its prickliness to outsiders.
What's next? PacifiCorp's new owner just pumped $69.8 million into the company that will pay for infrastructure boosts after chaining employees to their desks by refusing to pay for volunteer community service during the work day.
And as for Evraz, the Financial Times reports that federal regulators will scrutinize the proposed deal if the head of Evraz is found to be backed or directed by the Russian government.
Storm
1) n. A violent or noisy outburst.
EXAMPLE: Portland's queen of loungecore, Storm Large, had a very good year. She didn't "win" the big prize on Rock Star: Supernova—a reality TV ratings hit on CBS that went in search of a lead singer for a new "super" rock band.
But the 37-year-old singer demonstrated to a national audience that she's a force of nature. Her lungs, her looks and her attitude made her the most important Oregon export of the year. Downside? During the course of her 11-week run on the series, Large became tabloid fodder for her supposed sexual links to rocker Tommy Lee. Upside? She became a downloadable superstar.
"It only lasted for a week, but I was the queen of iTunes," Large recalls, referring to the summer release of her self-penned song "Ladylike." "[It] had 9,000 in pre-sale before it was even posted...and [it] debuted at No. 5 on Billboard's Hot Singles. It beat out Justin Timberlake and BeyoncÉ."
What's next? Not opposed to doing TV again, Large will focus for the next month on recording new music and releasing it, as she does with so many of her projects, on her own.
"It was a very busy, crazy, wonderful year," says Large. "[I have] no regrets—not a single one."
2) n. A tumultuous reaction— an uproar or controversy.
EXAMPLE: A storm is what happens when a country ignores the immigration status of 10 million to 12 million people for two decades, then decides just before the November 2006 election to transform the issue into a campaign rallying cry for candidates at every level of government.
The steamy brew of competing sentiments boiled over in Oregon when Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron Saxton accused Democratic incumbent Gov. Ted Kulongoski of not doing enough to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining driver's licenses.
Democrats responded by questioning the possible use of illegal immigrant labor at an Oregon cherry orchard Saxton once held an interest in.
Before that election frenzy, the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants estimated to be living in Oregon showed solidarity with other immigrants and sympathetic community activists across the country. Thousands marched through downtown Portland on May 1, Mexico's Labor Day, to protest federal legislation that would have imposed harsher penalties on illegal immigrants.
What's next? A Democratic-controlled Congress and their Republican allies in both the House and the Senate are working toward drafting new legislation that would pave the way for many undocumented immigrants to seek lawful status in the United States.
And in Oregon, the state's Department of Transportation is forging ahead with plans to prevent additional undocumented Oregonians from obtaining driver's licenses, while legislators in Salem are poised to debate the issue of admitting illegal immigrants to public colleges at in-state tuition rates.
Web
1) n. The product of deception or stupidity that surrounds a person or thing.
EXAMPLE: A sticky web enveloped failed Portland City Council candidate Emilie Boyles after she qualified for $150,000 in public financing, then failed to follow the rules governing the public funding of her campaign. She still owes Portlanders more than $96,000.
A grand jury last month indicted Volodymyr Golovan, a shadowy Ukrainian businessman who gathered signatures for Boyles to qualify the East County activist for taxpayers' support, on 12 counts of forgery, theft and lying to investigators.
However, only three of those counts are related to work Golovan did on behalf of Boyles; the rest relate to additional work he did for another failed City Council candidate, Lucinda Tate, who never qualified for public funding.
What's next? Boyles is now earning $8 an hour working as a newscaster in Glendive, Mont., a sleepy cow town at the eastern edge of Big Sky country. She is also—quite unavoidably—the new poster child for critics of Portland's fledgling public campaign-funding efforts.
2) n. An all-consuming technological obsession.
EXAMPLE: The best local example of the odd linkages created on the Web by this obsession: Perverted-Justice.com.
The Portland-based citizen watchdog group gives everybody the chance to snare pedophiles. In the past year, it has gained increased national recognition in its partnership with Dateline NBC (in a reported $70,000-per-broadcast-hour contract) to put cyberpedophiles behind bars.
How? The website recruits adult volunteers to pose as underage chat writers and lure perverts into meeting in person, only to catch them with their pants down, so to speak.
The "To Catch a Predator" investigations on Dateline NBC have proven a popular watch, with their recipe of cyberstings to lure men pursuing sex with children into traps where they are instead greeted by cameras and police.
Critics say the website and TV series make money from entrapment, and that the site itself (which posts transcripts of conversations between the "children" and accused pedophiles) is perverted.
What's next? Website founder Xavier Von Erck says he's doubling the 2006 goal of 100 arrests in the year ahead and also completing the process to become a nonprofit organization.
Don't Take Our Word(s) for It
Here's a Mad Lib with which you at home can play along as we glance back at 2006 and look forward to the year ahead:
The new year's going to be great! I, ________ [name of public figure] promise to ________ [verb] hard for the public good. Hopefully, I'll be able to do so more ________ [adverb] than I did in 2006.
Let's be honest, 2006 was kind of a ________ [adjective] year. It all started when ________ [Portland's best newspaper] wrote about how I ________ [past-tense verb] that ________ [noun] . At the time it seemed like a good idea to ________ [verb] all those ________ [plural noun].
Hey, at least I didn't write that email describing how I wanted to ________ [verb] myself in front of a ________ [job title]. How did it go? "There completely ________ [adjective] in front of you is my ________ [adjective] ________ [color] ________ [food] ________ [noun] and this ________ [adjective] ________ [body part] is for you to take and ________ [verb] in any way you choose."
And at least I wasn't the subject of a report by the ________ [government agency] saying that the ________ [plural noun] I ________ [past-tense verb] were ________ [adverb] ________ [adjective].
Let's face it, even I got more ________ [plural noun] in the last election than that ________ [name of public figure]. My ________ [food] didn't contain any ________ [noun] . I never ________ [past-tense verb] an inflatable ________ [noun] at ________ [event] . Byron Beck never tried to ________ [past-tense verb] me in a ________ [type of room]. And I didn't ________ [adverb] ________ [verb] that ________ [proper noun] in the Pearl District, breaking ________ [number] of ________ [possessive pronoun] ________ [plural noun].
No, 2007 is going to be a great year. And I look forward to ________ [verb] ing you all.
Stephen Marc Beaudoin, Byron Beck, Bradley Campbell, Kelly Clarke, Ian Demsky, Christian Gaston, Paul Gerald, Nigel Jaquiss, Alice Joy, Amy McCullough, Julie Sabatier, Brittany Schaeffer, Beth Slovic and Ben Waterhouse contributed to this dictionary.
WWeek 2015