I haven’t eaten bacon in nine years but in the past few days all anyone has been able to talk about is pig pig pig. And today swine flu struck Oregon. It’s made me feverish. Bacon feverish. Just minutes ago I stopped for lunch at Meat Cheese Bread, fully intending to deny my bacon lust […]
Sarah Shay Mirk
Sarah Shay Mirk reported on transportation, sex and gender issues, and politics at the Mercury from 2008-2013. They have gone on to make many things, including countless comics and several books.
Posted inNews
Uphill Pedal
Why Has This Year’s Bike Lobbying Failed?
The bumpy road to new bike policy is an uphill pedal.
Posted inEvents
No Shit, It’s Sherlock!
Whoa geez, big news: over 100 Portlanders skipped the Blazers’ game last night and instead crowded into Backspace for this month’s frank, fun Brewhaha about urban renewal. AND, in my opinion, the debate delivered. The most notable moment of the night (besides the part where Salem’s youngest lobbyist Henry Kraemer nearly vomited after eating seven […]
Posted inTransportation
Stop Talking About That Damn Bridge Design!!
Governor Kulongoski wants us to stop all this incessant chatter about what the Columbia River Crossing Bridge is going to look like. “We have lost sight of what the bridge is really all about — jobs, lots of jobs,” said Kulongoski this morning at a press conference staged at the Expo Center light rail stop. […]
Posted inNews
Metro’s Decision Making Process: Revealed!
Portland Planners project 301,500 new households will move into the region in the next 20 years and the hot topic of discussion right now is how to plan for those new people in a smart, dense way. Metro President David Bragdon pointed out last week at a neighborhood meeting that Portland is less dense now […]
Posted inEvents
Get a Clue About Urban Renewal Tonight!
Big, mysterious questions are afoot in Portland. How do we get funding for big projects like the Major League Soccer Stadium and the Burnside Bridgehead? Who kills these projects or gives them life? And what the hell does Matt Davis look like in a Sherlock Holmes outfit?!? Answers to these burning questions revealed tonight! At […]
Posted inNews
Hung Far Back!
Kurt Huffman, tenant of the old Hung Far Low building, says the recently-vanished iconic sign is coming back! The landlord removed the Hung Far Low sign in October when renovators discovered that the 40-foot icon was on the verge of collapse thanks to rotten anchors and a rusty frame. The last anyone saw of the […]
Posted inFood and Drink
The Fabled Chocolate Dumpster
I’m firmly in the Portland camp of the Seattle vs. Portland catfights, but I was in Seattle this weekend and laid eyes on a place I’d only heard about in rumors that trickled down the train tracks to the Rose City. In the heart of one of Seattle’s neighborhoods, there is a gourmet chocolate factory. […]
Posted inMedia
The Echo Chamber
Virginia Heffernan has a great column in the New York Times this week about Blogtown’s favorite subject: blog commenters. Heffernan tracks the comments on columns by award-laden writer Anne Applebaum and comes to the conclusion that not only do comments tend toward anti-semitism and sexism, they’re not constructive. Not exactly a novel realization, but one […]
Posted inTransportation
Behold! The Transit Mall’s $2000 Trash Cans!
The transit mall downtown is opening for genuine MAX traffic soon and it is lookin’ good. Really good. The kind of good only lots of money can buy. There’s been a lot of discussion at the city over the cost of the the “furniture elements” of the transit mall – the trashcans, bus shelters, benches […]
Posted inNews
Good Morning News!
Deadly Day: Suicide bombers strike a Shiite shrine in Baghdad, killing sixty Iraqis. Prison Pics: Obama chooses to release photos documenting American torture of detainees. Officials insightfully say the photos are “not good.” Meanwhile Dems aresplit over whether they should investigate Bush-era torture or whether they should be chickenshits. Gates Crasher: Microsoft’s profit falls for […]
Posted inBikes
Statewide Bike Funding: Possibly Doomed.
There’s been a big hubub this week over who or what killed the Idaho Stop Law, I wanted to add in two cents about some bike policy that’s maybe more important to the state and maybe also doomed. I blogged yesterday about the Bicycle Transportation Alliance-backed bill to increase state funding for bike/ped infrastructure (bike […]