Despite turning a wizened 11 years old this year, Portland’s Annual Adult Soapbox Derby maintains three priorities: fast cars, thrills, and alcohol. Sound dangerous? Damn right! And is it fun? Double damn right! With a lawsuit still outstanding after some serious injuries last year, organizers (Mercury Promotions Director) Zach Hull and Patrick Leyshock are taking […]
Matt Davis
Matt Davis was news editor of the Mercury from 2009 to May 2010.
Posted inExtras
Saltzman’s Public Smoking Ban?
Commish Saltzman Could Put an End to Public Smoking in Pioneer Square; Rule Aimed at Scaring Off Street Kids?
Posted inUncategorized
Better than Cadbury’s
Sahagún Imports Chocolate, But Not as I Know It
Until now, if there’s one thing I really missed about English food—more even than my mum’s succulent roast beef and Yorkshire puddings—it was the chocolate. So it was in a desperate state, looking for a fix, that I recently stumbled into chocolate shop Sahagún. While they don’t sell the down-market English variety I was looking […]
Posted inBooks
Literature for Foodies
It seems that every third book that crosses our desk these days is about the growing, selling, preparation, or consumption of food. With consumers clamoring to learn more and more about this stuff that gives them nourishment, publishers are turning out book after book on the topic to keep hungry readers satisfied. We’ve rounded up […]
Posted inNews
Yells Like Teen Spirit
Angry Youth Use MySpace to Start Mini-Riots
At first, George Patterson and his wife Lynnae thought the screaming and yelling was coming from their TV. “Then I realized [the noises] were coming from the street,” Patterson says. No strangers to violence, the Pattersons moved to North Prescott, near Albina, only last month from San Francisco’s Mission District, where they say, “it wasn’t […]
Posted inNews
Rap Sheet
Is Hiphop to Blame for Last Weekend’s Shooting?
Portland Police are again mulling whether hiphop music leads to violence, after four people were shot following the Keak da Sneak concert at the Roseland Theater in the early hours of Saturday morning, August 26. The shootings happened in full view of a beefed-up police presence in a parking lot on NW 6th—one block from […]
Posted inNews
Evicting the Elderly
A Tough Summer for Portland’s Homeless Women
Alice Malacote, a woman in her 80s frequently spotted spare-changing near Powell’s and Whole Foods, will become the latest addition to Portland’s female homeless population if she is evicted, as planned, from her Park Tower apartment on SW Salmon on August 29. Sean Cruz—a legislative aide to Oregon State Senator Avel Gordly, who came across […]
Posted inNews
Bombs Away
City to Zoobombers: Move It!
In early August, the Zoobombers moved their jumbled stack of mini bikes—which they use every weekend to ride down the hill from the Oregon Zoo—from their old bike rack on SW Oak, across from Rocco’s Pizza, to a more visible one on the W Burnside traffic island across from Powell’s front door. David, a representative […]
Posted inNews
Family Values
Former Oregon Christian Coalition Leader Confesses to Molesting Relatives
Lou Beres, former executive director of the Oregon Christian Coalition and former chair of the Multnomah County Republican Party, confessed to police that he has sexually touched underage girls—including a young sister-in-law, according to a Gresham Police report dated September 13, 2005, and first obtained by gayrightswatch.com on Monday, August 14. Allegations against Beres surfaced […]
Posted inNews
Water Into Vines
Locals Substitute Plants for Prostitutes
For as long as most residents of Montavilla can remember, a strip of city-owned land at 90th and E Burnside has really been the property of hookers and drug dealers. At the moment, the strip—20 yards wide by two-and-a-half blocks long—is in bad repair, with its twice-yearly-mown grass tinder-brown from the sun and a few […]
Posted inNews
Family Values
Former Oregon Christian Coalition Leader Confesses to Molesting Relatives
Lou Beres, former executive director of the Oregon Christian Coalition and former chair of the Multnomah County Republican Party, confessed to police that he has sexually touched underage girls—including a young sister-in-law, according to a Gresham Police report dated September 13, 2005, and first obtained by gayrightswatch.com on Monday, August 14. Allegations against Beres surfaced […]
