It should come as no surprise that as the weather gets better, our calendars become more full. If there wasn’t so much to be done here at the Mercury, this round-up would be double what you see here before you today! That said, these shows are the cream of the absolute crop this week, trust. And, don’t forget, if you’ve got an event coming up, submit it to our EverOut calendar to let the world know what you’re up to! 

The Mercury provides news and fun every single day—but your help is essential. 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! It’s spring. Trees are blossoming. Sunshine is hanging around. Most importantly, it’s Aries season bay-beee! Embrace new beginnings. Be bold. And while you’re at it, pony up to the IRS (did we dismantle this one yet?) because it’s tax season, too.

Here’s what’s popping off in the Rose City, and beyond. 

In Local News: 

• Tenants in affordable and transitional housing are often among the most vulnerable renters. Many of them rely on housing vouchers to help cover rent. As the region scrambles to add more affordable housing, tenants often struggle to find an apartment they can afford. For some, that means being stuck in sub-standard units with habitability issues, while landlords (property management companies) are ignoring, or slow to address pest problems, maintenance, and repair issues.  Kevin Foster delves into the problems and lack of protections for tenants with low or limited incomes in a tight rental market. 

Bed bugs. Mold. Overflowing garbage. They're just a few of the issues that highlight potential systemic problems in Portland’s affordable and transitional housing landscape, where low-income tenants often find themselves with few options and little recourse. www.portlandmercury.com/news/2025/03...

[image or embed]

— Portland Mercury (@portlandmercury.com)March 25, 2025 at 8:33 AM Continue reading »

Property management companies are facing scrutiny over living conditions at several affordable housing sites in Portland, as tenant groups have begun to push back.

The tenants union at Wimbledon Square and Gardens (WSG) in inner Southeast Portland rallied against their property manager, Prime Residential, on Saturday March 1, calling on Prime to remedy issues related to habitability, contract breaches, communication, and accessibility. Wimbledon Square isn't classified as affordable housing under state or federal standards, but the complex accepts residents using rental vouchers, and tenants say it's one of few sites that is comparatively affordable for renters.

Wimbledon Square residents say they’ve struggled with unaddressed mold and air quality issues, maintenance requests, and poor insulation leading to high utility bills.

The union sent a letter to Prime in January, laying out tenant concerns. 

“We are demanding an immediate moratorium on evictions and rent increases to address these systemic failures until habitability, safety, and contractual violations have been fully resolved,” the letter stated. “It is unacceptable for tenants to face financial penalties or risk losing their homes while living in conditions that fail to meet essential health, safety, and accessibility standards.”

Jeffrey Kim’s sashimi bowls are perhaps the least flashy in town—but for good reason.

The lunchtime bowls at his Aji Fish Butchery are composed of sliced, dry-aged sashimi topped with only maldon flake salt, simply dressed salad greens, and white rice. That’s it. And that’s all it needs to be.

Thanks to dry aging—a relatively new and rare technique—a bite of New Zealand king salmon aged for 21 days, or a 10-day aged McFarland Springs trout tastes achingly tender and packs a concentrated flavor that is far from fishy. 

“I don’t want to adulterate the fish,” Kim says. “I want it to shine for what it is, and let the fish do the talking.”

Emma Pattee’s debut novel Tilt takes place over the course of a single day, the day that the decades-overdue Cascadia earthquake rocks Portland. It unfolds via the wry inner monologue of Annie, who is a swole 37 weeks pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when it all comes down. Tilt follows her on a trek across Portland as she tries to walk home, coming across scenes both heart-warming and harrowing.

Pattee is a Mercury contributor and an environmental journalist whose climate reporting has been published by the Guardian and the New York Times, among others. Tilt’s trim, 227-page narrative reflects her dedication to research. It’s as evocative a portrait of what Portlanders can expect as anyone has published since Nathan Gilles’ “The First Four Minutes,” which Pattee noted as a major influence on the book, along with “The Really Big One” by New Yorker writer Kathryn Schultz, which won Schultz a Pulitzer.

We asked Pattee to meet us at the Cascades Station IKEA, one of her old writing haunts and the place where the novel begins. There she showed us that the cafeteria coffee is free for members, and membership is free.

We've kept an eye out for everything that should be on your radar this week and are giving you the 411 right here, with events from Alton Brown Live: Last Bite to the So True Live Tour with Caleb Hearon and from Amyl and The Sniffers: Cartoon Darkness Tour to OMSI's Sci-Fi Film Festival.

MONDAY

LIVE MUSIC

The Linda Lindas
The Linda Lindas have been hard rocking against sexism, racism, and homophobia since some of them were literal pre-teens. Now in their late teens and early 20s, the Linda Lindas are still RAT (rocking against Trump), all while continually honing their skills. Give ‘em a few years; they’re gonna be headlining stadiums and the biggest music festivals out there. Seeing them at the Crystal is the most intimate setting you’ll get from now on. Iconic mid-’00s brat-punks, Be Your Own Pet, get this rowdy party started. NOLAN PARKER
(Crystal Ballroom, West End)

Hello sweet angel baby Trash Pandas, and welcome back to the Trash Report! It's me, Portland's Best Kept Secret™, Elinor Jones. Remember in Jerry Maguire when Tom Cruise said Cuba Gooding Jr. was the NFL's best-kept secret, and then Roy Tidwell got a contract for millions of dollars and Regina King was so happy? That's gonna happen for me, I just know it. I will be rich. I will play for the NFL. I will marry Regina King. 

Anyway, days aren't exactly getting warmer, but they are getting longer, and the extra sun is making the trash extra ripe this week, so let's take a whiff!

National Trash

Okay, so you know how Trump and Elon Musk are recklessly cutting federal agencies in the name of cost savings and efficiency? These same idiots are also pursing a project called The Golden Dome, which would create a missile defense shield over the entirety of the United States, and the Department of Defense is instructed to spare no expense in making it a reality. This is modeled after Israel's Iron Dome, but called the Golden Dome, because Donald Trump is nothing if not brand-consistent, his brand being "tacky and '80s." I think this means that if we refer to his administration as "Golden Dogshit" instead of merely "dogshit" we probably won't get disappeared into a Salvadoran gulag. (Not really the point, but if you're curious if a Golden Dome would even be possible: Israel is 8,000 square miles and the United States is 3.5 million square miles.)

lol holy shit i'm reading the wiki for Bedtime for Bonzo (1951) starring Ronald Reagan and look how close a chimp came to altering the history of the entire goddamn planet

[image or embed]

— Rob Pilkington (@robpilk.com) March 12, 2025 at 11:33 PM

If you’re reading this, you probably know the value of the Mercury’s news reporting, 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 can’t 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!👋

If you're sick of all this rain—well, first of all, thank the rain for helping prevent an out-of-control wildfire season, but also celebrate because you're going to get a three-day break of partial sun and high temps... particularly on Tuesday when it's expected to reach a record breaking... 74 degrees?! (Don't worry, Portland... my booty shorts are always within grabbing distance.) And now let's grab a booty-full of NEWS.

IN LOCAL NEWS:

• Exciting news for Portland (and Willamette river) lovers: Metro has given Portland Parks & Recreation a $750,000 planning and development grant to redevelop the waterfront bowl—that big, riverfront area just south of the Hawthorne Bridge on the west side—into a “world-class, toes-in-the-water” park for recreation lovers across the city. This is EXACTLY the type of pro-Portland projects the city needs to attract tourism and locals into the downtown area. (Oh! And you should do affordable housing for artists and musicians next!) Our Taylor Griggs has the details.

• The city is also looking to make big improvements to Portland's voter engagement, particularly for people of color and those living on the east side who didn't engage as much as other districts during last year's debut of ranked choice voting. Not only do we have a new elections education supervisor, the city is also hiring an elections and community education analyst, and the program has requested an additional $420,000 to pay for mailers, advertising, and more to help ensure its success.

The rules would kick in when outdoor temperatures reach 80 degrees Fahrenheit for more. By 2036, all bedrooms in these apartments would require cooling devices.

[image or embed]

— OPB (@opb.org) March 23, 2025 at 1:00 PM

• Gov. Tina Kotek is sending out the warning that if Republicans go through with their plans to slash Medicaid—which provides health care and more to millions of Americans—it could adversely affect more than 1.4 million Oregonians, about one-third of the population, which also includes seniors and about 57% of all children in the state. Kotek says Oregon does not have the money to pick up the tab if Trump and his cronies go through with their craven plan to further pad the pockets of the wealthy.

• Speaking of Trump malfeasance, Portland's postal workers took to the streets yesterday in droves to protest the president's threats to make drastic cuts and privatize the postal service. Postal employees and supporters want to remind us that the service provides a critical lifeline to everyone, especially those in rural areas, who depend on the postal service to deliver needed mail, medication, voter ballots, and more.

It's time for another super fun POP QUIZ PDX! In this week's trivia game: local designer cocaine, Portland's Nazi past, and who would you like to be buried alive with? 🤔💀 See how well YOU score!

[image or embed]

— Portland Mercury (@portlandmercury.com) March 20, 2025 at 9:31 AM

IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS:

• Today in King Fool failures: A federal judge has indefinitely blocked Elon Musk's pack of acne-riddled DOGE lackeys from accessing troves of Americans' personal data from three federal agencies, including the departments of Education, Treasury, and Office of Personnel Management. Meanwhile the Supreme Court has dismissed a case from casino mogul Steve Wynn to overturn the decades-old precedent that has protected journalists from libel lawsuits... something that media-hating Trump has wanted for years (for obvious reasons). And in other hilarious news, Trump is demanding that the state of Colorado take down a "bad" and “purposefully distorted” portrait of the president which is currently hanging in the state's capitol. (Should you tell him that's exactly what he looks like, or shall I?)

• Today in "Trade in your Tesla": 

"A new survey of over 100,000 German respondents by T-Online about Tesla shows that a staggering 94% of its citizens say they would never purchase a Tesla car."

[image or embed]

— Judd Legum (@juddlegum.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 5:55 AM

TIL that Tesla insiders (executives, board members, etc) have sold *1.46 million* Tesla shares over the past 12 months, and bought precisely *zero* 

www.nasdaq.com/market-activ...

[image or embed]

— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper.com) March 21, 2025 at 10:23 AM

This is the eighth time Elon Musk has had to recall the Cybertruck, which has only been on roads for just over a year.

[image or embed]

— HuffPost (@huffpost.com) March 20, 2025 at 11:49 AM

• Today in even further Trump ineptitude: National security experts are sounding the alarm that Trump and Musk's vast firing of expert federal employees is opening the door to ESPIONAGE—particularly from America's adversaries who are constantly looking for new informants. According to cybersecurity expert Theresa Payton, “This information is highly valuable, and it shouldn’t be surprising that Russia and China and other organizations — criminal syndicates for instance — would be aggressively recruiting government employees.”

• Today in "okay... just... GROSS": "Tiger Woods has confirmed his relationship with the former daughter-in-law of President Donald Trump, publishing two images to social media in a post that said, 'Love is in the air'." 🤮

• The first Black Republican elected to the US House, Rep. Mia Love of Utah, has died at the age of 49 after a long struggle with brain cancer. She was famously one of the few Republican legislators who refused to vote for Trump in 2016.

• Last night, beloved comedian Conan O'Brien received the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the newly commandeered Trump/Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Despite Trump's unwanted takeover of the center, O'Brien said that he decided to attend anyway because "Twain hated bullies," and much of the laugh-filled evening was filled by comedians such as Adam Sandler, Nikki Glaser, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, and more roasting the ever-loving hell out of the orange turd-in-chief.

• And finally... since it's Monday, you probably need this video of 20 dogs saying "I love you." (Since I love you too, make that 21.)

@doralis.cornett Dog says I love you🥰 ❤️ #dog #love #dogsoftiktok #funny #doglover ♬ original sound - Funny dogs 226

GOOD MORNING, SUNDAY! It's the perfect time to catch up on some of the great reporting and stories the Mercury churned out this week! (PRO TIP: If you despise being "the last to know," then be one of the first to know by signing up for Mercury newsletters! All the latest stories shipped directly to your email's in-box... and then... YOUR HEAD.)

• After Years of Bureaucratic Pushback, Portland Street Response Finally Has a Chance at Success

Portland's Community Safety Division director says Portland Street Response is in "a rebuilding year." The mobile crisis response program has struggled to find financial and political support within City Hall, but now, with new city leadership, the program might finally be positioned for success.

• POP QUIZ PDX!

In this week's trivia game: local designer cocaine, Portland's Nazi past, and who would you like to be buried alive with? 🤔💀 See how well YOU score!

• Steel Bridge Skatepark Rolls Forward After Major Land Swap Approval

Portland's long-envisioned Steel Bridge Skatepark is closer than ever to actualization after a land swap between the city and state for the park's site. Skatepark advocates say the new spot will be an inclusive space for all skaters, and a way to revitalize a long-neglected Old Town lot.

BUBBLE TEA

Bubble N Tea
In addition to classic milk tea flavors and seasonal specials like honey lavender and strawberry matcha, this Beaverton spot offers frosty smoothies in flavors like coconut and Thai tea.
Beaverton

For years, parks and river access enthusiasts have looked at the Tom McCall Bowl and seen unrealized potential. The bowl, a strip of beach located just south of the Hawthorne Bridge at the tail end of the Tom McCall Waterfront Park, is one of the only places a person can dip their toes in the Willamette River within the Portland city limits. But most Portlanders don’t see it as much of a destination, except when attending the annual Waterfront Blues Festival and the late, great, Big Float event. 

That perception could soon change. On March 20, Metro awarded Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R) a $750,000 planning and development grant to redevelop the waterfront bowl, setting up an intergovernmental agreement between the agencies for work on the project. PP&R will also partner with the organizations Human Access Project and Portland Waterfront Pavilion, which have been working to make this project come to life for years. 

“This is something the Human Access Project has dreamed would happen since we started 15 years ago,” Willie Levenson, the organization’s ringleader, told the Mercury. “We’re hopeful other people in Portland will be excited about it too.” 

OPENINGS

Bar Nouveau
Althea Grey-Potter, the chef formerly at the helm of now-closed Oui Wine Bar + Restaurant, debuted a new residency at Gracie's Apizza this week. Bar Nouveau will operate from the space on Mondays and Tuesdays from 5–9 pm (reservations accepted via Instagram DM). Expect French-inspired, farm-driven dishes like chicken liver mousse mille-feuille with cassis-blueberry compote, leek and flageolet bean gratin, and charred kale raab alongside wines from sommelier Elizabeth Singer. 
St. Johns

The first official weekend of spring is gonna be a wet one, but don't let that keep you from Friends of Noise's Spring Breakfest '25, Found Footage Festival's 20th Anniversary Show, a Seed Swap & Garden Talk at Vivienne Culinary Books, or Leach Botanical Garden's Spring Equinox Garden Fair. For more ideas, check out our top event picks of the week.

FRIDAY

COMMUNITY

Newroz Piroz Be! Celebration of Spring
Kurdish New Year, or Newroz, is celebrated each year around the spring equinox, which was this past Thursday. Join the folks at Nomadic Vintage Rugs for their celebration featuring traditional dancing, cultural snacks, and live saz music (and no, that's not a typo of the word "sax," the saz is a long-necked lute integral to Kurdish folk music). Additional food and drink will be available for purchase alongside the gorgeous handwoven rugs the establishment is known for. SHANNON LUBETICH
(Nomadic Vintage Rugs, Buckman, free)

If you appreciate the Mercury's interesting and useful news & culture reporting, consider making a small monthly contribution to support our editorial team. Your donation is tax-deductible. 

Good Morning, Portland! Plenty of people have said this (Hannah Arendt , John Locke, Thomas Hobbes), but a major keystone of our civilization is the choice to reason with rhetoric and words, or rely on the rule of law to mitigate disputes that we once resolved with violence. If our leaders lie then they betray words. If they break laws, then they throw aside the rule of law. With this in mind, it's time to READ THE NEWS. [lololol]

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Digging into the world of Portland skatepark proposals, a promising land swap between Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) portends progress for the project to build a Steel Bridge Skatepark. Mercury reporter Taylor Griggs has the latest on a park planned for the city's westside Old Town neighborhood. While plenty have expressed hopes that a westside park could open around the time the nearby DIY Burnside Skatepark would have to close for the Burnside Bridge's earthquake-ready rebuild (aaaand that did just get pushed back another year), the Steel Bridge park is aiming for a drastically different, far less intimidating feel.

• Yesterday in the ongoing Zenith Energy saga that I have decided to spend the weekend writing a TV-style drama about:

The Portland city council voted 11-1 to call for an investigation into Zenith Energy's dealings with the city. Councilor Steve Novick was the only no vote; he said he supports an investigation but didn't like how the resolution's text cast certain city staff as "knaves and liars."

[image or embed]

— Anthony Macuk (@anthonymacuk.bsky.social) March 20, 2025 at 6:37 PM

• Contradicting existing reports from federal investigators, Oregon's forestry department is now saying that electrical utility company PacifiCorp was NOT the cause of the 2020 Santiam Canyon fires. PacifiCorp, you are NOT the father [thousands of displaced Oregonians throw chairs].

Oregon’s forestry department has concluded PacifiCorp didn’t spark any of the Santiam Canyon fires in 2020. #wildfires #santiamfire #utilities

[image or embed]

— OPB (@opb.org) March 20, 2025 at 7:30 PM