“You’re going to kiss more people in your life than you’re going to fuck,” says Sarah Ruby Armstrong. A Portland-based graphic designer and dating consultant, Armstrong is also the creator of the Kissing Booth Social Club. It’s a salacious summer-long residency operating every Friday night at Nevermind, the latest in Quinn Matthewstearn’s constellation of clubby […]
Feature
Posted inDating
Strangers in the Nights
How two singles nights are changing the way Portlanders are finding love, friendship, and hookups.
“Have you ever fallen for someone you weren’t initially attracted to?” asks a large laminated flashcard in the center of a tastefully distressed wood table. The table is in the back corner of the “music room” of the SoHo House member’s club, itself located in a fashionably distressed brick building hidden away in Southeast Portland. […]
Posted inFood and Drink
Shaken, Stirred… and Make It Quick
Speed Rack is the femme-fronted, speed-bartending competition we’ve been thirsty for.
Portland has a lot of bars and a lot of bartenders. And a lot of those bartenders aren’t dudes, despite the somewhat bro-y atmosphere food service gets sometimes. Femme bartenders put up with a lot and don’t always have an opportunity to earn accolades beyond the after-shift tip pool. Enter Speed Rack, self-described as “an […]
Posted inFeature
Baseball Days, Pikachu Nights: Inside Portland’s Front Row Trading Card Show
Card collectors do commerce the fun, old-fashioned way.
An enormous stuffed Pikachu hanging from a pole—like Christ at Golgotha—lords over the Portland Ballroom at the Oregon Convention Center. With a small knowing smile on her face, she observes the action at the Front Row Card Show, a big traveling collectables show that is setting down in Portland for the first time. What does […]
Posted inFeature
The 10 Weirdest Revelations from the FBI Files on D.B. Cooper for the 50th Anniversary of His Escape
The mysterious “D.B. Cooper.” FBI Records / The Vault [This Wednesday, November 24, 2021, marks the 50th anniversary of skyjacker D.B. Cooper’s infamous crime and escape from authorities. Local historian Doug Kenck-Crispin has read all 22,277 pages (!!) of the FBI’s investigation on Cooper, and shares with Mercury readers his picks for the top ten […]
Posted inHorrors
Mercury Tales of Terror: Murder House (A Historic Tour of Portland’s Grisliest Murders—and the Homes Where They Took Place)
Tom Neely [Happy Halloween! All week long the Mercury has been publishing classic tales of local Halloween horror from our archives, as well as brand spankin’ new (and creeeeepy) pieces… in this one from 2013, Mercury writers recount some of Portland’s most infamous murders… that may have happened in a home near you. WARNING: These […]
Posted inHorrors
Mercury Tales of Terror: An Excellent Day for an Exorcism
NATALIE BEHRING [Happy pre-Halloween! All week long the Mercury has been publishing classic tales of local Halloween horror from our archives, as well as brand spankin’ new (and creeeeepy) pieces… in this one, writer Santi Elijah Holley tags along on an actual local exorcism.—eds] On an unseasonably warm Saturday morning, Archbishop James Cloud and I […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Two Southeast Portland Indie Movie Theaters Reopen Stronger Post-Pandemic
Nicholas Kuechler and Ryan Frakes are Cinemagic’s new owners. The theater will reopen permanently on July 29. Blair Stenvick 2019 was the best year the Clinton Street Theater had seen since Lani Jo Leigh bought it in 2012. The work Leigh had put into renovating the theater and fine-tuning its film and live theater programming […]
Posted inFeature
St. Johns Camera Shop Blue Moon Keeps Analog Photography Alive in Portland
Courtesy of blue moon Since 2001, Blue Moon Camera & Machine has operated out of a quaint storefront on North Lombard Street in St. John’s. Gilded lettering accents the windows of the sky-colored building, where old cameras from decades past stand atop tripods, a functional museum. I recently had the chance to learn more about […]
Posted inFood and Drink
A Tumultuous Year for Portland’s Food Scene
A PDX Free Fridge located in Southeast Portland. Alice Wolfe The onset of the pandemic followed by continuous protests after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year pushed Portland’s food industry to a tipping point. Almost a year later, the industry is approaching a comeback, perhaps wiser than before. “The sense of death […]
Posted inFood and Drink
Portland’s Urban Farmers Find Community, Remain Unified Through Pandemic
Malcolm Hoover and Mirabai Collins are husband and wife and co-directors of Black Futures Farm. The farm started in 2020 and Hoover said urban farmers are “a cool community to be a part of.” Courtesy of Black Futures Farm Urban Farmer Letty Chichitonyolotli Martinez wants to change the face of farming and herbalism in Oregon […]
Posted inFeature
How a Newly Opened, Queer-Owned Indoor Skatepark Survived the Pandemic
Owner AJ Waters skating at Stronger Skatepark in Milwaukie. Blair Stenvick AJ Waters found skateboarding as a 12-year-old living in rural Illinois, after happening upon the X Games on television. “I saw it and was just like, ‘That is amazing, and I am obsessed,’” Waters tells the Mercury on a recent Wednesday morning while sitting […]