A group of prominent homeless and civil rights advocates is meeting this week with city commissioners and the mayor’s office to discuss a new list of oversight suggestions for the controversial downtown private security firm, Portland Patrol, Inc. (PPI). PPI contracts with the Portland Business Alliance (PBA) to carry out “order maintenance” in the downtown […]
Randy Leonard
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The Flophouse Blues
City to Buy Crumbling Rattrap
Occupying nearly a block along W Burnside at SW 4th, the Grove Hotel is a crumbling reminder of a bygone era in Old Town’s history—a building that, despite its size, has flown under the city’s radar for decades as a place where the rooms come cheap and no questions are asked. Currently, it’s home to […]
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Life After DFZs
Will Project 57 Work?
Last week, Mayor Tom Potter announced that he was letting the embattled Drug-Free Zone policy expire in the wake of a report showing that its enforcement was racially biased. Instead, he’s now moving forward on a new plan that is anything but novel—expanding the year-and-a-half-old Project 57, and giving a half million dollars for more […]
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Hall Monitor
A (Costly) Walk in the Park
Nearly a year ago, the Portland Parks and Recreation Department sent Southeast neighbors into a seething frenzy when it entered into an agreement to potentially sell off part of Mt. Tabor Park to Warner Pacific College (a Christian school!). When the poop hit the fan, Parks director Zari Santner backpedaled, and Parks Commissioner Dan Saltzman […]
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Butter Hogs XXVI!
These People Hog So Much Butter, It’s Like They’re Hogs!
FACT NUMBER ONE: Portland is a filthy pigpen of butter abusing hogs. FACT NUMBER TWO: The Mercury is the ONLY weekly paper that gives a shit about people who use more than their weekly allotment of butter. That’s why we have once again selflessly taken it upon ourselves to “out” Portland’s most flagrant butter abusers, […]
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The Scandal That Wasn’t There
Sam Adams, Bob Ball, and the Gay Witch Hunt
By the time the ink dried on the newspaper page, Bob Ball was nowhere to be found, having lobbed a grenade into the political field and then scrammed away from the spotlight. But the damage—at least some damage—was done: City Commissioner Sam Adams was accused, in an implied sort of way, of having an inappropriate […]
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Hall Monitor
Mind the Gap
When it rains, it pours. On the same day that Mayor Tom Potter announced that he wouldn’t be seeking reelection next year, news broke that the gap in Commissioner Erik Sten’s front teeth scored a 10 out of a possible 10 from international gap-rating website LuckyGap.co.uk. Sten heroically beat competitors like Maya Angelou, Elijah Wood, […]
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Welcome to Retirement, Potter
Mayor Splits; 2008 Race Begins
Four years after beginning his journey to city hall, Mayor Tom Potter has announced that after a single term in office, he’s calling it quits. Within minutes of his announcement, all eyes turned to the candidates who’ve now been handed a major opportunity to run for office. When the 67-year-old Potter returned from a two-week […]
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Hall Monitor
Finally Making sense
Could it be that, after years of unabashed Giuliani-ism, Portland’s lawmakers are finally set to embark on a public safety policy that actually makes some sense? Hold off on jerking your knee just yet, liberal, but there’s a strong chance that the city’s Drug-Free Zones (DFZ) will be on their way to extinction by September’s […]
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Hall Monitor
The Anti-Vandals
Weeks ago, Water Bureau Administrator David Shaff let the city know—through the bureau’s “Water Blog”—that he wasn’t going to take any more crap from knuckleheads dumping detergent in Keller Fountain. Apparently, it costs a poop-ton of money to drain, clean, and refill the picturesque downtown fountain. “We are working with police and the bureau’s security […]
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Twilight Zones
Will Council Sunset Drug-Free Zones?
In exactly one month, the city’s controversial Drug- and Prostitution-Free Zones will expire, forcing city council to decide whether or not to renew them. And for the second time in two years, Mayor Tom Potter’s office has broken a key promise—the creation of an oversight committee to examine the law’s fairness. Under the Drug Free […]
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Hall Monitor
What Price, Liberty?
Here’s the thing about the leaders we Portlanders elect to make decisions for us: When it comes to blue sky, hand-holding yuppie issues like recycling, planting trees, and biodiesel, they’d trample their own mothers to let TV news cameras know how liberal they are. That’s especially true for issues over which they have exactly zero […]