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Good Morning, Portland! Ooo-itty! This is some nice weather we’re having. Soon we’ll have to go back to checking for rain percentage every day. (20? Pfft! 90? Everyone in town dressed up like they know what you did last summer.) But right now we’re just breezing around in short sleeves, like Christopher Nolan intended. Let’s hit the news!
IN LOCAL NEWS:
•Today in “no more suffering for that building,” the Oregonian‘s Jonathan Bach dug into the long decline of Portland’s Centennial Mills—once a riverfront mill supplying wheat, grain, and flour to ships that carried those goods around the world. When it shuttered in 2000, Prosper Portland purchased the site and held onto it until 2024. Over the years, people put forth plenty of ideas of what to do with it, but we decided to let it decay and catch fire instead. Appreciate Bach working in mention of the the Broadway Corridor project because remember that? Lol, bye.
• Today in fossil-fuel companies say, county lawyers say, more than a dozen oil and gas companies would like to have a $52 billion lawsuit lawsuit dismissed. This is the one Multnomah County filed in 2023, arguing that the fuel companies knew their products produced greenhouse gas emissions and recklessly farted them out into the area’s ecosystem anyway. It’s more complicated than that, and Taylor Griggs is gonna be annoyed that I used the word “farted” instead of “pollution,” so just read her thoughtful piece.
• Today in juries awarding, a Portland jury awarded $550,000 to two teenage girls who were trapped upside down on Oaks Amusement Park’s “AtmosFEAR” ride in 2024. In total, 28 people faced no alternative but to hang upended for 25 minutes—until Portland Fire & Rescue arrived and an Oaks Park ride engineer was able to use a firefighter tool to force the ride to descend. Nine of the riders sued and seven have settled, but these two teens made their way to court, where they described “struggling to breathe and the fear that the shoulder harnesses bearing all their body weight might suddenly pop open, sending them plunging 100 feet to their deaths,” reports the Oregonian‘s Aimee Green/
• The Mercury would like to introduce our new music editor, Starly Lou Riggs! Starly listens to everything from queercore and screamo to free jazz and experimental noise. Once upon a time, they ran Portland’s own music publication Eleven PDX as managing editor and editor-in-chief. They also write for at The Line of Best Fit over in London and operate Noise Made By in collaboration with The Fruitslice: A Queer Quarterly out of LA. Welcome Starly!
• We’re not being contrarian when we say that Portland music icon Elliott Smith had a quick smile and good humor. A new biography, Nobody Broke Your Heart, presents a more comprehensive look at the singer-songwriter than we’ve seen before, following him from his early days playing at the X-Ray Cafe and Pine Street Theater in Portland through his moves to New York and Los Angeles, where he died by suicide at the age of 34. Author Jamie Fisher drew from over 140 interviews, along with unseen letters and photographs, to sketch a well-rounded portrait of one of indie rock’s most revered songwriters.
• Last weekend, cyclists from all over North America descended upon the city for the annual Portland Criterium—a rambunctious, speedy bike race that took place around the soon-to-be demolished Lloyd Center, attracting thousands of equally rambunctious onlookers. Cameron Crowell was there to interview the winners and losers, and explain why Portland’s criterium might be the best one of ’em all.
• Is the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) depressed? They’ve just started naming all their press releases like “Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center is latest measles exposure location.” But seriously, if you were at Sunnyside Medical Center on Monday, August 17, between 12:33 pm and 2:33 pm, I hope you are vaccinated for measles!
• A new trailer just dropped for the long-prophesied Laika adaption of Wildwood… and gosh. Why do studios think we want so much song in these things? Looks lovely though.
IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• Much like Bunny Lebowski, the United States of America owes money all over town. And the country’s debt hit S40 trillion as of Wednesday, according to the US Treasury. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent acknowledged that deficits were increasing, despite extensive and exhaustive promises from the Trump administration—in fact, many of the things Bessent blamed were created by the Trump administration, like the US war on Iran, refunds created by the tariffs that were eventually deemed unlawful, and last year’s business tax cuts. Bessent repeated the administration’s claim that those tax cuts would lead to increased revenue eventually. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—which somehow still exists, even with Elon Musk no longer being a weirdo all over it—claimed in 2025 that it would cut federal spending by $1 trillion and then proceeded to do a bunch of stuff likely to cause lawsuits. DOGE claims it has saved the country just over $200 billion, but the US Government Accountability Office was like “uhhh… probably not.”
• A Missouri judge ruled Wednesday that the state would use newly-drawn US House districts in the upcoming November election, rather than put the Republican-friendly districts before the voters first in a statewide vote. Associated Press called the move a victory for Republicans, but noted the case will likely move up the next peg to Missouri’s state Supreme Court.
• The artist formerly known as Prince Harry—who is still a prince and still goes by Prince Harry—and the duchess who once played Rachel Zane on Suits, Meghan Markle, announced Wednesday that they’re planning to move their family back to Britain. Buckingham Palace hasn’t commented on the announcement and has a policy of not commenting on speculation about “non-working” royals, according to Associated Press. Non-working is what Britain’s Royal Household calls the family members who don’t get out and do a little wave. Meghan Markle and her husband officially stopped doing little waves professionally—at least, for Britain—over six years ago when they arguably took up doing little waves for Netflix and Spotify instead.
• For your enjoyment, here’s a photo gallery of ornate belt buckles at this year’s Iowa State Fair.
• Participants in a Frida Kahlo look-a-like contest in San Antonio gathered to try to set a new world record for people dressed as Frida Kahlo. According to Getty‘s Joel Angel Juarez, organizers counted 80 Kahlo look-a-likes—nothing close to a gathering of over 1,000 participants at the Dallas Museum of Art in 2017.
• Sending you into Thursday with the energy of two aerial performers costumed as velociraptors wearing beautiful red thigh-high platform heels. They say that the first parasocial relationship was actually journalists thinking they have an idea of what the readership wants.
