On a Saturday night in January, vandals attacked the Creston-Kenilworth neighborhood in Southeast Portland with spray paint, tagging light poles, utility boxes, and blank walls. The spray painters—who were tossing up “LMV X3,” graffiti that stands for the Loco Mafia Varrio 13 gang—also took their spree a step further, tagging houses, garages, and even cars, […]
Amy Jenniges
Posted inMovies & TV
The Four-Second Fall
Chronicling 23 Golden Gate Suicides
In 2004, director Eric Steel and his team posted themselves at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge for an entire year, and with cameras running all day, every day, they filmed 23 people who jumped to their deaths. The premise of Steel’s film, The Bridge, seems unbelievable—as if no filmmaker could have gotten away with setting […]
Posted inNews
Un-Coordinated
City’s Crime Staff Missing Meetings?
Every month, over coffee in a conference room at the East Portland Neighborhood Office (EPNO), a dozen neighborhood association chairs get together to compare notes on dry topics like land use planning, neighborhood grants, and the city budget. The meeting gets interesting, though, when the city’s two East Portland crime prevention coordinators show up to […]
Posted inNews
Kids Today
Teen Panel Offers Insight into Violence
When she received word that 14-year-old Davonte Lightfoot had been shot and killed on N Killingsworth, Imani Muhammad—who taught the teen in middle school last year—knew “something had to be done.” She was getting calls from other former students, “saying that a lot of the youth who are upset about his death are retaliating, carrying […]
Posted inNews
Potter’s Pearl Necklace
Lobbying Reports Reveal Gifts for City Officials
City officials’ fourth-quarter lobbying reports—indicating any gifts received from October through December—were due on January 16. Maybe Tom Potter didn’t get the memo? His assistant was still negotiating with the city auditor’s staff on January 25 (the deadline for any report amendments) about Potter’s as-yet-unfiled report. It seems Potter’s info had to be submitted from […]
Posted inNews
Such Great Heights
Portland’s New Tram Could Be Just What Portland Needs to Grow Up
“This is huge for Portland,” says Bobby Scarbrough, standing on the lower aerial tram platform in the South Waterfront District, and gesturing at the shiny silver bubble of a car gliding down the hill toward us. Scarbrough is the tram “concierge”—he greets passengers at the station, answers tourists’ questions, and has already witnessed first hand […]
Posted inNews
Devil’s Advocate
Is the OLCC Making it Easier for Bars to Serve Liquor?
Kimberly Mark-Villela—a liquor licensing specialist with the city’s Liquor License Neighborhood Notification Program—usually alerts neighborhood associations when there’s a new liquor license application in the ‘hood. Last week, however, she sent out a different kind of notice. This one warned of a bill in the Oregon Legislature that may streamline the license process, allowing all […]
Posted inNews
Hot Corner
NoPo Neighbors Urge Street Improvements
John Thompson lives at the corner of where N Portland swoops into N Willamette, on a bluff overlooking Swan Island and the river. The intersection is treacherous, he says: Cars fly around the curve at top speed—35 mph—ignoring the signs to cut their speed to 15 mph, and often missing the turn. “I’ve had four […]
Posted inNews
Exclusive Rights
Homeless Advocates Tackle Exclusions Law
While the city council has been debating tweaks to the city’s exhaustive “prohibited conduct” in parks rules—changes that ban smoking near playgrounds, and keep sex offenders out of public pools—a small group of homeless advocates has been taking a big-picture look at the “prohibited conduct” city code chapter, especially the part that lets cops kick […]
Posted inNews
Smoking Mad
Employee Quits Over Jake’s Smoking Policy
BY January 1, most of the McCormick and Schmick’s local restaurants—which have over 60 locations around the country, with six in the Portland area—went smoke free. “Isn’t it great?” remarked the hostess at the McCormick and Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant on SW 1st and Jefferson. A hostess at the Bridgeport Village M&S Grill said the change […]
Posted inNews
19 Things Not Invited Back to 2007!
Tired of all the annoying annoyances you had to put up with in 2006? Well, instead of crying about it, we’ve come up with a simple solution: “HEY, TOP 19 ANNOYING THINGS OF 2006! YOU’RE NOT INVITED BACK!“ Non–Sexy Emails from Former Police Chief Derrick Foxworth Yeah, yeah. WE KNOW. It’s supposedly “morally repugnant” to […]
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Shop Right
NE 82nd Neighbors Fend Off Shopping Center
Dawn Tryon and other folks from the Madison South and Roseway Neighborhood Associations have been going door to door lately, alerting residents to an upcoming—and probably contentious—neighborhood battle. On NE 82nd, across from Madison High School, developers have announced plans for a huge chunk of land (the space is currently a shuttered driving range, and […]