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Good Morning, Portland: Happy Pride!—more generally, as Portland moved it's Pride Parade to mid-July.

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Speaking of Pride, some fucking g o r g e o u s news dropped yesterday: Wildfang and Darcelle XV Showplace are teaming up to try to break the Guinness World Record for longest drag show. Read everything we know about it—at this time—right here.

• And now back to the SHAME. Following swiftly on the heels of a ridiculous settlement Portland City Council approved this week—which proposes a city that can't manage a whole slew of other things can somehow create and maintain a "web-based data dashboard... accessible to the public, with information on the city’s response to complaints of obstructed sidewalks, and a 24-hour reporting system... for the public to... report when tents or related items are blocking a sidewalk"—Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office introduced a camping ban proposal, which would prohibit sleeping or placing tents within 250 feet of super special areas between super special times that are meaningless because we will never be able to enforce such a wrongheaded move in the first place.

• At least the city has abandoned its gunshot detection pilot project. "It really came down to resources: time, money, bandwidth and personnel,” Mayor Wheeler said at a press conference, ignoring that such things were also necessary for his new, ass-backward anti-homeless-people-exsisting initiative.

• Also encouraging on a Friday, Oregon lawmakers who have been engaging in the prolonged walkout that has stymied the state legislature are about to be fined for skipping class:

• A retired paper mill worker in Warrenton, Oregon told OPB that it’s not unusual to find a dozen Elk roaming his yard. "They eat his flowers and defecate on his lawn. Worse still, he’s sometimes scared to go outside to get the mail." OPB reports that the Elk population has ballooned in the area and along the Oregon coast, due to a variety of reasons, including Elk GAINING A TASTE for rhododendrons. Allegedly elks can weigh a thousand pounds, and they have been ramming cars and even attacking people. Fuck yes (tears up credit cards) I've been waiting for this. They have antlers; put them in charge!

 • Are you ever having one of those weeks where not a lot is happening, news-wise? Yeah, me neither. QUIZ YOURSELF on all the bullshit in the news recently with our Pop Quiz PDX! This week's trivia quiz includes jerky local politicos, birthday chimps, and Rose Festival shenanigans. See whether you agree with our use of shenanigans there.

• It's freakin' Friday. So you know that means: the 10 am ticketing drop. This week you can scoop tickets to Blonde Redhead. Aaaaannnnnd everything else looks boring. You know what's not boring? STRAWBERRY. FUCKING. MUSEUM. The event that led to our current love affair with quirky and so changeable Montavilla dessert cafe Zuckercreme, Strawberry Museum has a simple premise, strawberry stuff: Cakes, creams, drawings, hats—just strawberry stuff. You can't go wrong. It starts today! (It was supposed to start yesterday, but there was too much strawberry stuff and they needed to hold off until today.)

 
 
 
 
 
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IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• Yesterday President Biden tripped:

• Chaos ensued:

• But then the Senate finally passed a bill to suspend the national debt limit until 2025, preventing the federal government from defaulting on the national debt. President Biden is scheduled to address the nation tonight about the bill, which includes compromises with Republican politicians to limit government spending. 

• The New York Post and Uproxx have been reporting on a story about Tom Morello's Instagram account... 😔. Apparently the former Rage Against the Machine / Audioslave guitarist posted an unattributed quote: "If 9 people sit down at a table with 1 Nazi without protest, there are 10 Nazis at the table." The choice to report about the DOZENS (?) of people that upset tells you what those publications consider news. This isn't important, but someone will inevitably mention it to you at a party this weekend.

• In other stories that should never have been reported at. fucking. ALL, if you eat meat you don't get to talk shit on the three teens who caught, killed, and ate a swan in upstate New York. That swan had a far nicer life than anything involved in your McGriddle, including the wheat. While I'm open to having my mind changed by the impeding series of True Story: Swan Killer podcasts these events will doubtlessly spawn, at this moment I have read that the bird fed a family for a feast. The youths were keeping the cygnets to raise as pets. They have now given them back and apologized. All the reportage is coded weird against outsiders, and I don't like it.

• In conclusion, Happy Pride to people attracted to Cate Blanchett:

 
 
 
 
 
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