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Do you like going to THE FAIR? If your answer is YES, then do we have a hearty recommendation for you! The Clark County Fair is a yearly exhibition that goes on for a whopping TEN DAYS in beautiful Ridgefield, Washington, just north of Vancouver. The Clark County Fair traces its origins back to 1868, […]
Welcome to Sandy, Oregon, up Highway 26 past Gresham in eastern Clackamas County, where outer Portland Metro’s sprawl is overtaken by the mountains. We are at Camp Tasty’s, an RV campsite and outdoor event center that can host thousands of people. It’s also the home of a former private plane hangar that has been converted […]
If you were strolling near the Oregon Convention Center around the first week of July, you may have seen people clad in athletic gear walking around with very tall, narrow bags. Their hoodies were emblazoned with a sword, and maybe the name of some obscure North American city. Inside the bags were full cover face […]
What follows is one of the many articles in the Mercury‘s 2026 Transportation issue. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous and want to keep these types of articles coming, support us here.—eds. It is the crown jewel of Portland DIY tales. In 1990, a group of […]
He is a miracle of the highest order, a grand eccentric, and true genius of the cosmos. A peerless 20th century composer, a poet, a brilliant pianist, a live performance visionary, one of the greatest to ever have lived. A man who may or may not have tripped to Saturn, where the doomed pettiness of […]
There’s a scene in the recent hit movie Marty Supreme in which Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet), an American table tennis champion and inveterate liar getting by on the skin of his teeth in post-WWII America, is seeking capital from a wealthy man, hoping to grow the game he loves and his own prestige. At one […]
Corbin Smith
Corbin Smith
Photo Essay: Eye on the Northwest Marine Art Works
In 1993, the Portland International Raceway—the city’s premier racing venue—installed a bunch of Christmas light displays around its track and invited people to drive through, luxuriating in the glow of holiday joy. It’s possible I was in attendance that very same year: my father, a street racer in his youth, was certainly aware of PIR […]
A busted Mario costume. An extremely old pinball machine—so simple you wonder how pinball ever took off. Fighting games… so many fighting games. Hundreds of old consoles, some of which were complete flops, hooked up to hundreds of cathode ray tube televisions for maximum retro fidelity. High level Tetris players playing the NES version of […]
On Sunday, November 9, roughly 20 people met outside Portland’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facility for an aerobics workout class. Decked out in neon leotards, the participants did grapevines to classic, upbeat ‘80s new wave tunes in front of the boarded-up ICE building, where right-wing paramilitary types were conspiring to arrest and deport people. Sunday’s […]
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