Salvage Heart

My article on small-scale winter farming ran in Tuesday's FoodDay, the Oregonian's food section. It ran in tandem with another piece, by Kathleen Bauer who writes the Good Stuff NW blog, on some of the local markets that go through winter.

Good story for me, in that I took a lot away that I didn't know before. Seems like ten degrees is the make-or-break temp for veggies outdoors, which means that some Willamette Valley crops are now broke. (I know the beet and turnip greens, mint, and other odds and ends still in my garden are pretty scroungy looking at this point).

Probably the biggest surprise to me was the prevalence of winter shares in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs...and the number of farms who have added or will add them in the next year or so. A good resource for finding what's close is the Local Harvest site.

I visited (and clumsily photographed) Shari Sirkin's Dancing Roots Farm, out at the mouth of the Columbia River Gorge, and took some pictures. She's raising greens in a couple unheated greenhouses (hoop frames), and the rest is out in the open.

Labels: agriculture, farm, farmers markets, food, journalism, Oregonian, Portland, winter

Today's "Fresh Air" interview is with Michael K. Williams, a.k.a. Omar Little on HBO's The Wire.

Going in to the fifth season, Omar has some of the series most epic moments...the showdowns with Stringer Bell, his relationship with the blind "banker," and of course the fact that this vigilante dealer-stealer is openly gay.

Well, on the show at least. In his interview with Terry Gross, he reveals his background, his shaky path to semi-success, and the fact that he actually discovered Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, the raspy voiced hitman, in a Baltimore bar.

Plenty more links at NPR, as well as self-emolation/evaluation on whether David Simon's hatchet job on the Baltimore Sun is fair, by the likes of The Atlantic, the New Yorker, The New York Times, and others. I would imagine that the spoiler moment is nigh. I'm waiting for season five on dvd. And...waiting.

But the Fresh Air interview is worth listening to. Feel me?

No doubt.

Labels: HBO, media, Michael K. Williams, NPR, Omar, The Wire

As a preview to tonight's screening of Runnin' Down a Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, I interviewed the film's director, Peter Bogdanovich.

The interview focuses on his work on this film and can be found at The Oregonian's Web site, here.

The film is part of the 25th annual Reel Music Festival sponsored by the NW Film Center, and is excellent.

Check out the trailer below--the film screens at 253 minutes (!) plus intermission.

Labels: film, interview, Oregonian, Peter Bogdanovich, Portland, review, Runnin' Down a Dream, Tom Petty

For those passing through the neighborhood who thought this was going to be some sort of reclaimed brick warehouse, wrong. The exposed brick was just getting its lead paint off. And now it's coming down.

We'll always have superheros and snack cakes though.

Here's a piece that I wrote about it, but that didn't run.

The snack cakes have outlasted the warehouse.

The one-time Hostess distribution facility at 103 N. Ivy St. gave way in
mid-January to demolition equipment, but what will replace it remains in question.

Owner Ivy Street Partners LLC, of Woodinville, Wash., had envisioned a mixed-use development blending condominiums, apartments and retail space when it purchased the site in 2006.

But with “market conditions changing,” the project has shifted to an apartment-retail model, says Brendan Lawrence, development manager for the project. Current plans call for approximately 350 units.

The grocery outlet, hailing North Vancouver Street’s morning commuters with discount powdered doughnuts, still stands for now. Hostess has the retail space leased through March 2008, after which time the new owners may tear the store down or use it for construction offices.

Lawrence says that plans could change again, depending on the market, but that the company hopes to go before the city’s Design Review board by late spring.


So anyway...favorite Hostess product? I think I've just discovered a preference for Dolly Madison...Zingers and Donut Gems. And who makes those Orange Cup Cakes (and the baseball-themed ones in summer)? Little Debbie?

Maybe we'll open a separate thread on snack crackers packs. Nekots, anyone?

Labels: Hostess, journalism, Portland, real estate

A piece on the Irvington Squire condo project ran in this week's inPortland section of The Oregonian. Good example of a project that meets code, but not (necessarily) the design hopes and dreams of (some) neighbors. Particularly next-door neighbors.

A discussion on the proposal drew over 130 people to the Irvington school cafeteria last Saturday to talk zoning.

The issue is in part a legacy of the 1993 Albina Community Plan, which called for increased density (by 10%), as the flight to the suburbs continued from north and northeast Portland.

Different times. A Bureau of Planning rep told the crowd that this tension (density...or destiny) is happening all over the city. When it comes time to re-work the comprehensive Portland Plan (and it's time is nigh), the city will likely revise the way it looks at density to accommodate a 3-D perspective (beyond just height and mass).

Meanwhile, Irvington may follow the Alphabet District's lead in NW Portland and strike out for historic status. Being a Conservation District, it turns out, doesn't carry quite as much weight as some Irvingtonists would like it to.

Labels: historic, Irvington, journalism, Oregon, Oregonian, planning, Portland, real estate

A piece on Marco Shaw that I've had simmering for awhile (on my assignment list and then in the editor's queue) finally ran today, in the inPortland section of The Oregonian.

Shaw is the owner and chef at Fife, co-owner of a relatively new take-out place called Full Plate, and has plans to open Hard Shell in the Vanport Square Development down on MLK sometime this spring...hopefully.

I'm hardly the first to write about him (Nancy Rommelmann did a really nice interview that ran on Portland Food and Drink, back in Feb '06), but I've watched that restaurant since its build-out in 2002, and have spoken with Shaw (and interviewed) a number of times. In this era of celebrity and hysteria, his solid, straightforward style paradoxically stands out.

Labels: Fife, food, Full Plate, Hard Shell, journalism, Marco Shaw, Oregon, Portland, restaurant

With the bar set admittedly low, Parade, the Sunday circular that appears in newspapers across the nation (including The Oregonian, featured a story on January 6, 2008, that must've appeared timely and insightful when first assigned, when turned in, when pasted up.

A cover profile on Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto: who she is, why she's important, and what her election might mean for the country.

The piece did omit one minor detail, however: She's dead. In fact, she's been dead since her assassination on December 27.

In its only concession, the piece did allow that there was more information available at the Parade Web site.

Sure enough, readers will find explanations from the editors that the piece went to print on Dec 19, and that they had alerted the newspapers to perhaps run a story about that. Also, that Parade posted the entire piece in advance online.

What I didn't see? A Howard Huge archive. Boy is he big!

In a telling episode (and movie) of the Family Guy, in which the megalomaniacal Baby Stewie meets his adult self, he is horrified to discover this: "You read Parade?!"

Hey, Parade? Stop the presses.

Labels: Benazir Bhutto, Family Guy, Howard the Huge, journalism, Oregonian, Parade

Spent some time this fall in the Woodlawn neighborhood, along NE Dekum west of Woodlawn Park, a fallen down commercial strip that you could drive past and almost see something happening at.

Now it's happening. A piece I wrote for The Oregonian on Dec. 6th barely scratches the surface.

I stumbled into the story while checking on a liquor license application for Good Neighbor Pizza, where they were finishing up build out and getting ready to host a neighborhood meeting. I came back a few days later to find almost 100 people packed in to try the new pizza and discuss neighborhood issues...at noon on a Saturday.

What's interesting is that much of this development is happening outside of "urban renewal" areas, at least as defined by the Portland Development Commission, although the PDC has extended its storefront improvement program to this part of the neighborhood.

What's also interesting is that no one major entity is driving it, and that the city is now coming in to support efforts already underway (mostly traffic and streetscape issues) with architect Stuart Emmons lending a hand.

I won't pretend to understand design issues here (we'll leave that for my reporting!), but the area is a conservation district, which is a sort of watered-down version of a historic district. So, buildings need to blend in...no ultra-modern condos here.

If there is a major player, it's Sakura Urban Concepts, a development company that owns a half-dozen properties along Dekum between MLK and the park. Most are mothballed until their mixed-use condo project gets going (Kadoya Lofts, see image at left). Or, succeeds.

There's a box factory nearby, a large parcel that now sits outside the conservation district (meaning that redevelopment--and the need to include 50% housing in any mixed use...I think--does not have to adhere to design guidelines such as the Western Storefront model. Worth watching to see whether someone picks that up.

Labels: development, Oregonian, Portland, real estate, restaurant, Woodlawn

A few articles piled up now that I wanted to post, but have not gotten around to getting around to yet.

But, as coffee talk continues to brew in the new year here in Stumptown, I thought I'd link to this piece on Courier Coffee Roaster's Joel Domreis, which ran in The Oregonian a few weeks back (Nov 29?). Plus pictures, which I thought were cool, but were too dark for the newsprint edition.

Labels: bike, coffee, Courier Coffee Roasters, journalism, Little Red Bike Cafe, Oregonian, Portland

My article on the return of letterpress ran in The Oregonian on December 31st, with a nice photo of Jean Sammis at Lark Press. What I submitted was too long (sometimes you roll the dice), and so a few paragraphs were cut, including an interview with Carye Bye, of Red Bat Press and the coordinator for the Independent Publishing Resource Center in downtown Portland.

The IPRC's letterpress workshops are the most popular of any it offers, and it also has open studio hours a few times a week for people to come in and press their hearts out. Some, Bye says, come in for a single invitation project. Others use it to launch a business (as she did).

Inge Bruggeman, who runs Textura Printing and teaches at the Oregon College of Art and Craft (the temptation to put an 's' on one of those words is almost too much to bear), points out that the fine arts wing is also starting to co-opt letterpress. She is co-curating an exhibit at OCAC for the end of February. In doing so, it places the work in a context, historically...letterpress signals a certain time and place. Coming to a biennial soon?

The piece I wrote was based on a personal interest in the subject, and the "Let Her Press" show at OFFICE PDX right now (thanks to Kelly for the image, which I tweaked in Preview). Since I am forbidden to bring home any more stuff (something about 27 boxes of vinyl records tipped the scales...Winston Churchill speeches anyone? Scott Joplin's Treemonisha?) I have to live vicariously.

Labels: journalism, letterpress, Oregonian, Portland, printing