UM... WE DON'T WRITE THE ADS

DEAR MERCURY—I just want to comment on last week's Mercury's 2008 Pride Guide [June 5]. This is supposed to be a weekend of fun and celebration for all people. Your guide was full of ads for sex shops, sex toys, men in underwear showing their pubic hairs, the "unleash the beast" ad, a woman wearing a huge dildo, and on and on. The way you portrayed the GLBTQ community was very distasteful and it gives the impression that all we think about is sex. You are adding fuel to the fire of anti-gay organizations such as the Christian Coalition who use this sex idea to sell their anti-gay message to the community.

 Amy J. Gauthier

TOTALLY NOT JEALOUS

DEAR MERCURY—I'll admit I applied for an internship at the Merc a few months back and didn't get it because it was determined a fanboy of the paper would be a better addition than me, an unfamiliar and somewhat critical applicant. I just want to let you bright folks at the Merc know that your food and beverage coverage is sorely lacking. With Oregon and especially Portland being such a blazing hub of culinary obsessive-ness and booze buzz, it'd be a journalistic crime to let the Merc keep publishing mediocre drivel like Patrick Coleman is producing.

Aimee T. Akwai

AGAINST HE/SHE

DEAR MERCURY—Oh Mercury, while I love your sass and bitchiness, I wish you'd add a little journalistic integrity to your repertoire. Do your damn homework, in particular on the subject of "Where He/She Belongs" [News, June 12]. Lee/Lisa Iacuzzi has been a plague on the Portland community for years, well before his/her identification as bigendered. While it's likely that Lee/Lisa may legitimately face some discrimination because of his/her gender identification, the greatest source of Lee/Lisa's problems is his/her erratic and violent behavior. 

Disappointed and Disgusted

NOT PSYCHED BY BIKES

DEAR MERCURY—Yay! Another pedal-pushing love-fest in the Mercury ["The Bike Issue," June 12]! I have nothing against bikes and would like to use one if work, school, and living arrangements made it possible, but they don't, and I'm getting really sick of the attitude of cyclists in this town. Move to Detroit or Pittsburgh or Cleveland or any other major city in this country and tell me if it's any better than the oh-so-oppressive drivers here in Portland. Just as there are a few obnoxious drivers that give everyone else trying to share the road a bad name, there are a lot of cyclists that make me want to get an '84 full-sized Bronco with a plow on the front and clear the road of their smug and inconsiderate selves.

Matt Drury

A HARDER ROAD

TO THE PORTLAND MERCURY—Reading your bike issue today, I read several hopeful articles discussing how to make Portland more bike friendly while simultaneously patting PDX on the back for being so bike friendly to begin with ["The Bike Issue," June 12]. Instead of figuring out how to make biking easier, we should be talking about how to make driving harder. To increase bicycling in Portland, we need to decrease parking. And if the city needs to make $2.7 million to build new bike lanes, charge more for parking and take it out of that.

Sarahfina

SAYING SOMETHING NICE

HELLO JOHN MOTLEY—I just wanted to drop you a quick line to thank you for the compelling review of Sparrow Lane in this week's Mercury [Arts, June 12]. You had some very insightful observations, and I [as the artist] feel as though you nailed the premise of the series with simplicity and grace. I am finding that one of the most fascinating and anxiety-provoking variables of making work for public consumption is the way critics interpret and respond to the work—of course this process for the critic is an art form of its own. Thank you for seeing my vision and writing about it so eloquently.

Holly Andres

GOSH HOLLY, that is so nice of you to say! It's good to know that a li'l bit of sunshine hasn't fried the brains of every habitually grumpy letter writer into a state of angry stupidity this week. Holly gets two tickets to the Laurelhurst Theater and lunch at No Fish! Go Fish!, where Haterade is not a drink special. The rest of you cheer the fuck up.