If youâre reading this, you probably know the value of the Mercuryâs newsreporting, arts and culture coverage, event calendar, and the bevy of events we host throughout the year. The work we do helps our city shine, but we canât do it without your support. If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us. Thanks for your support!
GOOD MORNING, PORTLAND! đ
If you've been missing the sun... well, you won't be missing it as much for the next three days as the glowing orb will be making occasional appearances (along with showers) with highs in the mid-to-low 50s. And speaking of appearances, get ready to get both holly AND jolly, because the Mercury's annual HOLIDAY GUIDE is live online and in print in more than 500 spots around the city! It's jam-packed with advice, events, gifts, and general holiday frivolity! MISS IT AT YOUR HOLIDAY PERIL. And now, let's look at some only occasionally frivolous NEWS.
IN LOCAL NEWS:
⢠Some people say I'm a bitch. And I'm not going to argue! But the good news is... I'M A BITCH. Here's a great example of what I do best; a bitchy little rant about the latest bullshit headline from the Oregonian, which went waaaaay over the line by proclaiming "Portlandâs ranked-choice debut causes voter engagement to crater." Of course, ranked choice voting did nothing of the sort, and this was just another example of the O catering to the whims of their conservative bedfellows. And while it pisses me off... I gotta admit... this bitch had fun writing it (and not-so-mysteriously the O's article has disappeared from the main page of their website đ ). Check out my bitchy little rant for yourself!
The Oregonian makes the extremely dubious claim that Ranked Choice Voting "cratered" voter engagement. đ§ Ummmm... the Mercury's Wm. Steven Humphrey would like to have a word.
⢠Here's your morning bullshit: The lame duck Portland City Council voted yesterday to not only continue the downtown Clean and Safe program for another 10 years, they expanded it and bumped up the budget from $7 million to $10 million. While Clean and Safe does keep the downtown corridor tidy, it also increases policing, engages in homeless sweeps, and (here's where it gets particularly bullshitty) pumps millions into the pockets of the Portland Metro Council (FKA Portland Business Alliance) who uses the money to line the wallets of their executives while also lobbying for conservative, pro-business policies at City Hall. Is that where you want YOUR taxpayer money to go? Welp, Commissioners Gonzalez, Mapps, and Ryan never gave a crap about your concerns in the first place, so why should they now? Get all the background here from our Courtney Vaughn.Â
[Editor's note: Read all our holly jolly HOLIDAY GUIDE articles here. Looking for a print copy? Good! You can find it in more than 500 spots across Portland with this handy map!]
With election season in the rearview, itâs time to focus on the next upcoming traumatic event: THE HOLIDAYS. (Seriously, can we just have one 10-minute break from *waves arms frantically* everything??) Letâs face it: As joyful and fun as they can be, the holidays are also exhausting and take a lot of physical and emotional effort. That said, there are ways to get through the holiday season with your sanity intact, but it does take some brain trainingâand thatâs exactly what weâre aiming to help you do with our annual Mercury holiday guide! (Pick yours up in print at more than 500 locations across Portland!)
Thatâs right, weâve got lots of solid, no-nonsense advice gathered by the Mercuryâs best writers and Portlandâs top experts. Hereâs just a sneak peek at some of the articles that can provide a lot of mental solace this holiday season:
[Editor's note: Read all our holly jolly HOLIDAY GUIDE articles here. Looking for a print copy? Good! You can find it in more than 500 spots across Portland with this handy map!]
Happy Holidays, Trash Pandas! âTis I, Elinor Jones, AKA the Ghost of Trash Past, here to guide you through 2024âa year that I could best describe as âa year that happened.â
January 8Â
I hate to break it to us, but despite anyoneâs resolutions, this is probably not going to be a year when anybody becomes better. You know how in professional sports, when a bunch of the big names have retired or left and then itâs just rookies and no-names, they call it a âRebuilding Yearâ? 2024 will be the opposite of that for us. A destroying year. All of us are going to get worse, itâs just a matter of how quickly, and how much.Â
February 12
I am all about the monoculture and I love to love things, but I am so tired of football and Taylor Swift! No more brain space; I simply cannot. I mean look: Am I glad she made it to the game in time after her Tokyo shows? Yes. Do I think this was a challenge or hardship for her when she has her own airplane and team of professionals to ensure it happens comfortably and efficiently? No. Am I impressed that her lipstick always looks so damn good? Yes. Did I like her pants? No, I hated them. Do I think itâs hilarious that Republicans hate Taylor Swift so much that theyâd rather root for the team out of San Francisco than the corn-fed midwestern one? Yes, a thousand times yes, this is incredible, put it in my veins. Will I listen to her new album? OBVIOUSLY. But thatâs it! No more thoughts!!
April 1Â
The world has gone country, and by that I mean we have all been listening to BeyoncĂŠâs latest album Cowboy Carter all weekend. Iâm a fan! Several years ago I found a pair of those magical thrift store cowboy boots that somehow both fit perfectly and are extremely cool, and I always knew there was a reason to hang on to them. Iâm excited to plan an outfit to wear to her next concert that probably wonât come anywhere near Portland anyway. A girl can dream. Thatâs country.Â
[Editor's note: Read all our holly jolly HOLIDAY GUIDE articles here. Looking for a print copy? Good! You can find it in more than 500 spots across Portland with this handy map!]
What you do with your money is nobodyâs business, but what the government does with your money is everyoneâs business.Â
At a time of year when parents across the nation get suckered into splurging on pricey, short-lived toys (sorry, but your kid is never gonna learn to play that keyboard and thereâs a good chance that Easy-Bake Oven will burn your house down), we set out to see which public agencies and city bureaus received the biggest, coolest, and most expensive toysâthanks to you and your tax dollars.Â
While these agencies may have been blessed with many of the toys on their wish lists, we know austerity measures are coming. The Portland mayorâs office recently offered a budget preview that reveals city bureaus will likely need to cut another 5 percent from their budgets in the upcoming fiscal year. If that sounds like a bone dry way of explaining the cityâs money sitch, imagine if you already had to cancel all your streaming services and lower your grocery bill last year, and now you have to cut even more expenses, to the point where youâre considering cancelling your internet service and just stealing the shoddy WiFi signal from that coffee shop down the street.
And though the government shopping sprees may be coming to an end for now, letâs take stock of some big-ticket toys, tools, and trucks that taxpayers recently bought for our public agencies. Show this to your kids to explain why âSantaâ had to scale back this year.
[Editor's note: Read all our holly jolly HOLIDAY GUIDE articles here. Looking for a print copy? Good! You can find it in more than 500 spots across Portland with this handy map!]
In October, Portlandâs first day center for unhoused queer and trans people opened in Southeast.
The Marie Equi Centerâs new Brooklyn neighborhood day shelter is intended to welcome visitors âjust coming in to regulate their nervous systems in the space and hang out, or to get connected to our peer services,â center director Katie Cox said.
âWe say that weâre a really LGBTQ-affirming city and space, but the services and the infrastructure have needed more support,â Cox said. The new funding, which comes from Metroâs Supportive Housing Services tax revenue via Multnomah County, âfeels like folks putting their money where their mouth is,â Cox added.
Peer support and community health workers are on-site to offer basic wound care, emotional support, recovery mentoring, health education, referrals, and assistance navigating social service systems. But the 13,000-square-foot Trans & Queer Service Center also has space for visitors to come in off the street to simply sit and decompress.Â
[Editor's note: Read all our holly jolly HOLIDAY GUIDE articles here. Looking for a print copy? Good! You can find it in more than 500 spots across Portland with this handy map!]
The Portland Diamond Project has been working to bring a Major League Baseball team to the Rose City for the better part of six yearsâtaking meetings, selling merchandise, and, most importantly, trying to secure a site to build a new stadium.Â
Now, however, things may be changing. In September, the group announced it had signed a letter of intent to purchase Zidell Yardsâa 33-acre former shipyard that has long sat vacant on the South Waterfront.Â
It is, in a number of ways, an ideal site. Zidell Yards is relatively centrally located, has strong transit connections to the rest of the city and beyond, and could become the nexus of a larger redevelopment of the south end of the city center.Â
In a press release announcing the letter of intent, Mayor Ted Wheeler said he believes the project is moving in the right direction.Â
âThis is a big moment for Portland,â Wheeler said. âThis is a tremendous opportunity to shape our waterfront, create new economic opportunities, and build a vibrant and sustainable neighborhood.â
Itâs not just Wheeler who is optimisticâthe outgoing Portland City Council voted unanimously in favor of a resolution supporting the Portland Diamond Projectâs efforts to land a team. Wheeler said the resolution signaled the city is âready to make commitments.â
Per its agreement with ZRZ Real Estate, a Zidell family business, Portland Diamond Project now has 42 months to complete its purchase of the property. That likely means it has just three-and-a-half years to convince Major League Baseball that it should expand to Portlandâand, in tandem, to convince Portland that it needs an MLB team.Â
[Editor's note: Read all our holly jolly HOLIDAY GUIDE articles here. Looking for a print copy? Good! You can find it in more than 500 spots across Portland with this handy map!]
In the bike-friendly cities of Northern Europe, a phrase is sometimes used to lightly chastise those who are intimidated to cycle in the rain: âYouâre not made of sugar.â That is, you can get a little wetâyou wonât melt.Â
But not all rainy cities are created equal. The âsugarâ sentiment is easier applied in places like the Netherlands and Denmark, where people on bikes dominate the streets all year long, even in the cold, wet months. The bike capitals of the world, many of which are hardly tropical paradises, were purposefully designed to treat people traveling outside of cars as worthy of quality amenities. And a lot of that comes down to the state of the pavement.Â
Here in Portland, our streetsâincluding the bike lanesâcould (surprise!) use some work. The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) has a roughly $6 billion maintenance backlog, mainly consisting of unmet pavement needs on busy and local streets, which has failed to be adequately tempered by funding sources like the gas tax. And as Portlandâs street maintenance needs have become more apparent, gripes about PBOTâs priorities have gotten louder.Â
[Editor's note: Read all our holly jolly HOLIDAY GUIDE articles here. Looking for a print copy? Good! You can find it in more than 500 spots across Portland with this handy map!]
When it comes to holiday traditions, Portland is horny as all get-out.
We love cramming as much festivity into our festivities as possibleâregardless of how tiresome or long-in-the-tooth those annual events have become. What follows is a critical examination of Portlandâs most time-honored holiday events, and my recommendations on how they can be improved. (Donât remember asking me for my opinion? Trust me, itâs never necessary⌠I have so many! In fact, when it comes to opinions, many people think Iâm âfull of it.â And thereâs a lot more where those came from, so letâs read some now!)
PEACOCK LANE
Description: Peacock Lane is a four-block stretch in Southeast Portland between Stark and Belmont, where many of the home owners go to great lengths to cram every inch of their property with lights and other Jesus and Santa-themed ephemera. During the holiday season the street is jam-packed with thousands of looky-loos on foot and in cars.
The problem: I donât get it. I mean, I get why the residents do it⌠you can tell theyâve worked their collective asses off constructing these front lawn art installations, and some (for example, the Grinch house) are goddamn masterpieces. But itâs like if the Portland Art Museum was suddenly filled with thousands of peopleâincluding their dogs, snot-nosed kids, and wildly inappropriate double strollersâhalf of whom are either stoned out of their gourds or 10 seconds away from a rage-fueled meltdown. In short, there are⌠Too. Many. People!
The solution: A zip line. Itâs a well accepted fact that zip lines improve most situations. Sure, theyâre useful for getting from one side of a canyon to another, or traversing a tree canopy in Guatemala, but they can be just as useful in an urban environment! Las Vegas is famous for having a zip line that goes from one end of the historic Fremont Street to the other, and itâs a FANTASTIC way to see the sights quickly, efficiently, and to let your vomit rain down upon spandex-wearing moms who did not get the memo that itâs FUCKING RUDE to bring their double strollers to a place where thousands of people are trying to walk. Also if you happen to be highâand SO MANY OF YOU AREâriding a zip line is AH-MAY-ZING, and will stop you from blocking the sidewalk whenever you slip into an extended Christmas light-induced trance. Trust me, install a zip line over Peacock Lane, charge $15 a ride, and the cityâs budget will be funded for lifetimes.
Peacock Lane, between SE Stark & Belmont, Dec 15-31, car-free nights Dec 15 & 16, 6 pm-11 pm, free, keep your fucking double strollers at home
WINTER WONDERLAND:â¨HOLIDAY LIGHTS AT PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY
Description: Roughly two miles of racetrack decorated with various illuminated and animated holiday figures, including reindeer, snowboarding Santas, dinosaurs, all 12 days of Christmas, a lone menorah, and much more.
The problem: Well, the most obvious problem is that you canât race. You creep around the track behind a long line of vehicles at around 10 mphâbut actually thatâs kind of nice, because you seriously do not want to miss the animated dinosaurs. All in all, itâs great⌠it just needs a couple more levels of excitement, which leads me toâŚ.
The solution: First, you could pay teenagers to dress up like the Terminator, wrap them in holiday lights, and have them chase the cars on foot. (I doubt youâd even have to pay them.) OR you could do what Iâve done every season for the past 10 years, which is LET YOUR CHILDREN DRIVE THE CAR! The moment I pay admission and enter the track, I say, âOkay⌠whoâs driving?â The first five minutes are taken up by backseat fistfights to see who gets to drive first. Once thatâs decided, they hop behind the steering wheel. Obviously if their feet canât reach the pedals, you should let them sit in your lapâbut under NO CIRCUMSTANCES do you EVER touch the steering wheel⌠because whereâs the fun in that? They have to learn to drive somehow, and if that means occasionally careening off the track and into one of the 10 lords aâleaping (for his life), then so be it. The best part? Thereâs not a cop in sight. Thatâs a true âwinter wonderland!â
Portland International Raceway, 1940 N Victory Blvd, Nov 29-Dec 31, Mon-Thurs 5 pm-10 pm, Fri-Sun 4:30 pm-11 pm, $49 per carload
THE 33rd ANNUAL TUBAâ¨CHRISTMAS CONCERT
Description: More than 200 tubas take to Pioneer Square to play an array of oompah-rific Christmas songs.
The problem: There is not a single problem with this.
The solution: Look, hearing 200 tubas blaring âSleigh Rideâ across the city is hard to beat. But anything can be improved, right? For example, what if all these tubas were playing âHolly Jolly Christmas,â when suddenly, marching up Sixth Avenue were 200 people playing Christmas songs on whatâs known as the tubaâs natural enemy⌠the saxophone? Ooooooh, tuba players HATE saxophonists, and for good reason. They tend to be morally repugnant individuals who throw their dogâs poop bags into your recycling bin, and regularly destroy any decent song with their ceaseless and unasked-for squawking (take David Bowieâs âYoung Americansâ for example). Anyway, the 200 saxophonists would call the 200 tubaists into the street for a âChristmas song smack-downâ to settle once and for all which is the superior instrument. (We all know itâs the tuba, but thereâs no convincing these detestable saxophoneys.) The winners would continue the Pioneer Square concert, as the losers marched to the Morrison Bridge to throw their instruments into the murky depths of the Willametteânever to play again! Itâs called âraising the stakesââand thereâs simply not enough of that at Christmas time.
Tuba Christmas Concert, Pioneer Courthouse Square, Sat Dec 21, 1:30 pm, free
THE HOLIDAY EXPRESS
Description: The Holiday Express is a vintage (TOOT! TOOOOOOT!) 1912 Polson #2 steam locomotive that transports kids and families from the Oregon Rail Heritage Centerâporn for train nerdsâand along the Willamette River for roughly a couple miles until returning to its starting point. Each train car is heated and decorated in lights and holiday finery, and⌠at some point⌠Santa shows up!
The problem: Mmmmm⌠other than Santa showing up, itâs kinda boring? (Unless youâre a train nerd, but youâre going to be too busy asking endless, arcane locomotive questions to the conductorâwhose soul will leave their bodyâto be concerned about Santa.)
The solution: Can we PLEASE get a gang of cowboys on horses to rob this muthafukkinâ TRAIN?? Bear with me, and picture it: The holiday train is chugga-chugga-choo-chooinâ and toot-toot-tootinâ down the track without a care in the world⌠UNTIL.Â
Out of the Oaks Bottom wetlands come a gang of ruthless, horse-riding villains who gallop down the bike path before hopping on the train, kicking the door open, and barking, âGit yer hands up, varmints!â Screams ring out from the train car as some passengers faint, and a couple of foolhardy âheroesâ get a pistol butt to the noggin for their trouble. The bandits steal wallets, watches, necklaces, and other precious family heirlooms, cackling maniacally⌠UNTIL.Â
A loud bump is heard on the roof, and seconds later, a window smashes as SANTA CLAUS comes bursting into the car! Slowly rising to his feet, Santa strikes a pose and says, âLooks like somebodyâs getting added to the naughty list!â And with a mighty swing of his red bag, Santa bowls over three of the villains, delivers a sharp uppercut to another, and sends a fifth tumbling off the train with a vicious kick to the scrabble bag⌠UNTIL.
The ringleader grabs a crying child, puts a six-shooter to its little head, and growls, âOne more step, Santy Claus, and Iâll send this liâl pecker-wood to the pearly gates!â A pause, as everyone in the train car holds their breath, tears streaming down the childâs face, and where the only sound is the repetitive clack-clack-clack of the trainâs wheels.Â
Slowly, Santa drops his bag, and says, âWell, Desperado Danââa stupid name for a stupid criminalââI guess this is my last⌠STOP!â Santa yanks the âstop requestedâ cord hanging from the window, sending the train screeching to an ear-piercing halt, as Desperado Dan stumbles and falls, dropping both child and pistol. Santa quickly pulls the kid to safety, and with a devastating right hook, sends the villain into a coma, from which he will never awaken. The children and adults cheer as Santa throws the unconscious body from the train before turning to ask, âNow who here has a hankerinâ for a candy cane?â The trainâs occupants rejoice, and for the first time since the debut of the Holiday Express, it was a train rideâand a Christmasâto remember.
Holiday Express, Oregon Rail Heritage Center, 2250 SE Water, Nov 29-January 4, various times, $25-$105, tickets and infoÂ
[Editor's note: Read all our holly jolly HOLIDAY GUIDE articles here. Looking for a print copy? Good! You can find it in more than 500 spots across Portland with this handy map!]
The days are short, the rain is acting like someone put out a casting call for a vertical river, and odds are high that you will soon be eating starchy food with people who will be asking you what it is, exactly, that youâve been doing with your life.
One way of dealing with this long dark night of the soul is to lean into it. What are you doing, exactly? Whatâs working? What isnât working? Once the holiday presents are gotten and the festivities are over, what would you like to start doing, what would you like to stop doing, and how?Â
These questions are big enough that entire categories of human philosophy and endeavor have been dedicated to answering them. To keep things simple, the Mercury decided to ask representatives of three of them: the arts, psychology, and witchcraft.Â
How to End Somethingâ¨That Isnât Working
Being miserable is, by definition, not a fun experience. But it can be a very useful signal that itâs time to try something else. âIâm pathologically incapable of doing a job I donât like,â says Sarah âShayâ Mirk, graphic novelist, former Mercury reporter, and creator of many projectsâmost recently Crucial Comix, a small press that publishes narrative nonfiction comics and offers classes on comics-making. âIf a project is filling me with dread and I hate doing it, thatâs a sign that I should either get out and have somebody else do it, or just be like, never again.âÂ
[Editor's note: Read all our holly jolly HOLIDAY GUIDE articles here. Looking for a print copy? Good! You can find it in more than 500 spots across Portland with this handy map!]
Back in the olden times, I used to host a public radio show that recorded in front of a live audience. In December of 2011, we decided to do a segment about how to survive the holidays with your family. We brought on Shelley McLendon, a therapist who is also a brilliant comedian and friend, along with my funny, tiny, holiday-elf-like mother to do a little experiment.Â
We set up a table where I could make my momâs famous chocolate peanut butter balls with my mother on one side of me and Shelley on the other. At one point, when my mother was telling me how to make the peanut butter mixture into balls (something Iâd been doing myself for years and KNEW HOW TO DO BECAUSE DUH), I asked Shelley what we could say to family members who wonât allow us to create our own versions of family traditions.Â
Shelley replied with an oft-repeated phrase among the show staff in the ensuing years: âIsnât it great that there are so many different ways to do things?âÂ
The audience laughed. I repeated the phrase to my mother.Â
âYâknow what I was just thinking, mom? That itâs really great that there are so many ways to do things.âÂ
âThere are,â my mother replied. âThereâs the right way and the wrong way.âÂ
The audience went feral on me, laughing and whooping for so long that all I could do was stand onstage as the peanut butter ball in my palm turned into a sticky puddle. My mother had roasted me like a Thanksgiving turkey on my own goddamn show and I still bear the emotional scars.Â
[Editor's note: Read all our holly jolly HOLIDAY GUIDE articles here. Looking for a print copy? Good! You can find it in more than 500 spots across Portland with this handy map!]
At 10 pm on Christmas Eve you could generally find my father at an office supply store; the chains used to stay open late (for corporate reasons) even on holidays. The next morning weâd pull thick squares of Post-it notes out of our holiday socks and know it was from Dad, even if heâd signed it âP. A. Perclip.â
Last minute gift buying is a fine tradition. Some may see the practice as thoughtless; I would argue it can be rooted in sweetness. After all, a last minute present is still a present. And now that flying has made it increasingly difficult to travel with giftsâairline luggage charges, unrelenting TSA clerksâyou may as well just grab that stuff when you arrive, if you happen to be flying into Portland.Â
Visitors may not know that our airport requires shops to maintain âstreet pricing,â so you wonât pay more for goods at PDX than you would in town.
If youâre flying out, youâre still sitting prettyâprovided theyâll let you on the plane with ten boozy advent calendars sticking precariously out of a Powellâs tote.Â
Portland airport has seen to it that even last minute presents from PDX areâby nature of the shops onhandâthoughtful, lovely, and local.
[Editor's note: Read all our holly jolly HOLIDAY GUIDE articles here. Looking for a print copy? Good! You can find it in more than 500 spots across Portland with this handy map!]
Holidays are usually meant for time with family, which is obviously why so many people elect to go to the movies on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thanks to theaters being open, you now have a ready-made excuse to avoid talking to loved ones for a solid two hours.Â
From St. Johns Twin Cinemas to Regal Division Street, every corner of Portland is thriving with film love, be it a first-run chain or local rep theater. So, to gird thy loins for the upcoming high holy days, Iâve assembled a preview of the movies you can see in theaters on Thanksgiving and/or Christmas day when conversation runs as dry as an overcooked bird.Â
Thanksgiving (November 28)
Red One
Following the box office shrug that was 2022âs Black Adam, The Rock optimistically reported from the set of Red One that his new blockbuster, co-starring Chris Evans and JK Simmons (as muscle daddy Santa Claus), is a âbig, fun, action packed [sic] and fresh new take on Christmas Lore [sic].â After The Rockâs supposed chronic lateness and âunprofessionalâ on-set behavior helped push Red One to late 2024, this ânew takeâ on the late-December holiday will finally see the overcast light of mid-November. Apparently, when Santa Claus is kidnapped, the head of North Pole security, Callum Drift (Rock), must join forces with world-class bounty hunter (come on now) Jack OâMalley (Evans, seemingly running on fumes), to save Kris Kringle. Whatever. I have no doubt this movie will be excrement, struck with surprisingly upsetting violence splayed against the most conservative values you can carve from a $250 million budget. This comes out on November 15; will it still be in theaters on Thanksgiving? Letâs hope not.
[Editor's note: Read all our holly jolly HOLIDAY GUIDE articles here. Looking for a print copy? Good! You can find it in more than 500 spots across Portland with this handy map!]
From etymonline.com: estrange (v.) late 15c., from French estrangier âto alienate,â from Vulgar Latin *extraneare âto treat as a stranger,â from Latin extraneus âforeign, from withoutâ (see strange).Â
I am strange, I am alien, I am a stranger, I am without. Or maybe my family is. Itâs difficult to say. Since 2019, Iâve been estranged from my entire family. I wonât bore (or titillate) you with the details of my decision to distance myself from them, but visualize a constellation of generational traumasânearly every type representedâand youâll have a general idea. Estrangement is, as the literature says, a last resort. Itâs the truth. I never wanted this, but now Iâm freer for it.
On most days, the peace of estrangement is one of the most powerful presences in my life. But during the chaotic final months of the year, it begins to feel like a gargantuan gaping wound that anyoneâfriends, coworkers, baristasâmight spot if Iâm not careful. People tend to flip out, or at least stare a little, when they see a gargantuan gaping wound.Â
So I donât discuss it. I listen intently as those around me describe their familyâs political beliefs and their dadâs rude comments and their brotherâs whatever-what-have-you and I share little in response. I frown. I say, âUgh, that sucks.â And I do mean it.
[Editor's note: Read all our holly jolly HOLIDAY GUIDE articles here. Looking for a print copy? Good! You can find it in more than 500 spots across Portland with this handy map!]
For your favorite home chef or local line cook, a new knife is a thing of gloryâand itâs even better when someone else pays for it.Â
Weâre here to assure you thatâfor the right personâthe idea of giving someone 12 inches of highly sharpened carbon steel in a wrapped box isnât a threat. Itâs one of the best Christmas presents ever.
âI think a knife is a great gift,â Eytan Zias, who owns Portland Knife House on Southeast Belmont and is a co-founder of Portlandâs Steelport Knife Company, which handcrafts its work in Northeast. âThere are not many things you can gift to somebody that we all use every day. I donât know anybody that goes a day without a kitchen knife. Even if someone is a knife collector, they always want another knife.â
But choosing the right knife for the right chef is a bit of an alchemy, which Zias says people often liken to how Harry Potter picks his wand. âI consider it a compliment,â he says, laughing. âWeâll filter 700 knives down to seven, and those are the ones youâll put your hands on.â
With so many options out there, we asked the experts for their advice, honed over many years in the industry, on how to pick the best knife for yourself or a lucky recipient.
[Editor's note: Read all our holly jolly HOLIDAY GUIDE articles here. Looking for a print copy? Good! You can find it in more than 500 spots across Portland with this handy map!]
It was December 25, 2013, and everyone in the gay steakhouse was getting amiably drunk.
It was one of those Portland winters that was cold and wet and absolutely miserable to be out in, and I had to work. But before that I was going to pre-spend my holiday pay on a fancy dinnerâor at least the fanciest dinner I could afford working the graveyard shift for a bit more than minimum wage. Starkyâs was what youâd affectionately call an âestablishment.â It wasnât a dive, but it was dive-adjacent: Formica tables, napkins for coasters, stately framed prints of drag queens and bodybuilders on the peach pink walls. In the summer they ran a raunchy charity car wash you could hear from blocks away. In the fall and spring, the iron-fenced patio always had a handful of elegant old swains sipping cocktails while they watched the world go by. In the winter they were open on Christmas Eve.
People who go to bars on major holidays often exist on the margins of society. Drunks, malcontents, lost souls estranged from religion or tradition, those who have no family or are burdened by what family they have. And folks who just canât afford not to work. I didnât take an inventory of my fellow travelers, but Iâm sure there was the usual mix of those usual suspects, along with the clientele of a relaxed neighborhood gay bar: pretty Midwesterners with sad eyes, pairs of middle-aged husbands who didnât want to cook, the aforementioned swains. Some were socializing like it was an office holiday party, others were lost in thought as we studied our mashed potatoes for clues to the human condition as freezing rain whipped against the windows. Iâd like to say that âFairytale of New Yorkâ came on the jukebox and we all got misty and sang along, but I suspect if anyone made a move to change the Britney Spears music video on the wall TV thereâd have been a riot. But I still left feeling better about the world.
âOld Portlandâ is a moving target, but itâs not ephemeral. It began when you found somewhere in this city that welcomed you and ended when it was torn down to make way for a condo. Townies my age wax rhapsodic about all-ages music venues like La Luna and Meow Meow, about the Church of Elvis, the terrible service at The Roxy, stiff drinks at Club 21, late night LAN parties at Backspace. We like to talk about how you could smoke in bars, even though most of us have long since quit. But previous generations had their own haunts and hollows: jazz clubs and punk houses that lived and died and exist now only in memory. Itâs not like they sold tickets to Old Portland and weâve got the stubs in a shoebox somewhere.
What I suspect weâre all nostalgic for is the feeling, however subjective, that the margins of society were a bit wider, and more people could afford to exist in them. That Portland was not a precision machine. It had looser tolerances than today. There were poorly-optimized businesses in the service of teenagers, insomniacs, artists, and eccentrics, alongside the usual cadre of office workers and serious restaurateurs that all cities need to function. When those places went away they were rarely replaced. Willamette Weekâs Aaron Mesh once wrote, âEvery generation gets the ruining of Portland it deserves,â and itâs as true today as it was in 2015 when they tore down Starkyâs to make way for the 46 modern apartment units that sit there now.
Cities change and culture shifts. Style moves from hard forms to soft, sarcasm makes way for sincerity, the rebels sell out and so on. But these cycles arenât arbitrary. They are shaped by market forces and public policy. Coffee shops used to have couches so that people would hang out in them, fill those spaces with the sounds of awkward first dates and someone scribbling the first chapter of a terrible novel. Coffee shops arenât soft anymore. Theyâre full of angular, industrial surfaces, because to make rent this month they need several hundred people to buy eight dollar macchiatos and fuck off somewhere else.
The Portland of today is shinier than the Portland of my youth. There are luxury retailers and well-moisturized influencers and futuristic cube houses with two-Cybertruck garages. Presumably this was done because the hippie granola markets and communist bookstores and neighborhood dives that were already here donât pull the property taxes needed to fund a proper 21st Century metropolis. Our city fathers promised us prosperity if weâd only sacrifice a couple of eyesores on the altar of urban renewal and mixed-use development. Itâs a bargain many willingly made, perhaps believing that for once in human history the rising tide would lift all boats. The bodies of the displaced lying in our streets seem to say otherwise.
Someday this city will be a vast and uniform sea of tasteful residential buildings named after the ugly and interesting places they replaced: the needle parks we walked past on the way to school, the cart pods where you could get a pretty good gyro, bars like Starkyâs where neighbors gathered on holidays in defiance of the shitty weather. Theyâll have large matte photos in the lobby of musicians who couldnât afford to live there and gig work security guards to shoo away any indigents who get close to the property line. Thatâs progress, I suppose.
We miss Old Portland not because it was cheaper or somehow more authentic, but because of the people it once accommodated. We miss the sense of community that animated those old, demolished buildings, that warmed them in the way that only old buildings full of people talking can be warm. Every day weâre tested, and no more so than during the holidays, by how we welcome the strangers in our midst. I was a stranger once and found welcome in a neighborhood bar thatâs not there anymore. I hope it can be found again somewhere new.