The Horizon shuttle huddle

The last real Northwest men's club may just be Horizon Air's regional shuttle service. When I ventured into the Portland and Seattle airport gate areas for a recent weekday roundtrip, I felt like I was the only one who didn't know the secret handshake.

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The (political) pause that refreshes

Like everyone I know, I am spending hours watching the presidential-campaign tangos on TV, stopping only when my eyes roll back in my head. But now, when I'm getting too tired, too worried, or too angry, I know it's time to take a break and click on the one campaign ad that anyone, of any party, can appreciate.

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Fearing for a neighborhood on the brink

Seattle's Broadway demise foretells the possible fate of Portland's Hawthorne Boulevard.

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There's Green and then there's green

The rap on Oregonians: Cut us and we bleed green. Yeah, sure, when we're not indulging in public displays of affection for trees, we're recycling old Volvo parts into useful household items. Even if that's true, it doesn't mean we're swallowing green propaganda whole. Not any more, anyway. As the Portland Tribune reports, two University of Oregon profs are behind a sort of online Doubt-O-Meter that lets consumers weigh advertising claims about eco-worthy products.

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The little red engine that can, and does, blog

One of Portland's fertile bloggers is Rick Seifert, whose thoughts on all manner of things turn up in all manner of places, starting with The Red Electric. The blog is named for an inter-urban train that once provided locals with time to swap stories as they chugged from place to place.

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Catalytic-converted thieves

It seems ironic that here in God's green country (or Goddess's, if you swing that way), the heist of choice for auto-parts thieves is the catalytic converter. The Columbian of Vancouver, Wash., reports on the trend, noting that there's motivation to rip off these pricey emission-limiting parts then sell them to smelters which extract the valuable metals. If you run a smelter, this means that you can probably buy a hot catalytic converter easier than a box of Sudafed at the pharmacy.

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Portland by design

Portland's rep is growing as a place with nurturing soil for small-house snazzy designers — of clothes, furnishings, jewelry, urban spaces. An item on ULTRA, the city's heard-it-here-first design Web site, notes the latest subtle sign that players far and away from the Northwest are hip to the art-commerce mix of the Rose City.

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OHSU's self-surgery won't be pretty

News that Oregon Health & Science University is looking to lay off up to 300 of its 12,000 employees has Portlanders either aghast, steaming — or, in the case of one legal-eagle blogger, both.

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Inventions we need, Part 1

Maybe you haven't noticed, but most urban coffee shops have doors that are relatively easy to open when exiting with full hands. Most of the time they have some kind of push-bar thing you activate with a shove of your hip.

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No smoking at any speed

Back in the 1960s, Ralph Nader got rid of all the pointy instruments inside cars and nagged automakers into adding seatbelts. (Mom sold the Corvair.). Next, cops got huffy if you had one little beer open anywhere in the car. (Dad's Saturday errands took much longer.) So when I read that Washington State has two bills pushing a ban on smoking in vehicles when a child is aboard, I have two simultaneous reactions:

(1) It's about time.

(2) My parents would have quit driving completely.

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It's Coffeewinian: Starbucks survives to become the middle-aged cuppa

Nah, Howard, your Starbucks isn't a "victim" of its success, it's just feeling the downside of inevitable maturity. America's bad-boy, break-out, Maxwell-House-whuppin' coffee is — middle aged. That's the metaphor flogged in an Oregonian commentary piece, and it works nicely.

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Homelessness: Read about it, act on it

When in Seattle, I peruse Real Change; in Portland I keep up with Street Roots. Both newspapers, of course, are by and for homeless folks, and they regularly serve up readable news not found elsewhere. The Rose City version is particularly tireless in hanging on to sticky constituent issues — like badly crafted loitering laws or under-trained private rent-a-cops. The paper's terrier-like persistence is wonderful to behold.

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Fare coverage

Let's say you run a business and your front door opens 310,000 times a day to let customers inside. Many are regulars, going in and out a few times daily. They are mostly strangers to each other, and once inside they spend a lot of time crowded together in small spaces. At any given time, some are running late and very cranky; others are lonely or wasted; buried in a tattered copy of The Da Vinci Code; and/or just plain nuts.

If you had just three reports of people being hurt or harassed each day, people would think you were doing a decent job on the safety front, right? Yes, unless you're a public-transit agency.

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These slacks were made for dropping

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Portlanders are dying to drop their drawers for a cause. Well, not exactly a cause. OK, not a cause at all. But perhaps a case can be made that the "No-Pants on Max" event scheduled for Jan. 12 is a big, creative international improv event. Yeah, that's it! We're not flashers, we're artists.

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In Portland, the sheriff is in a spitball showdown

The turf war is escalating in Oregon’s Multnomah County between Sheriff Bernie Giusto, accused of big-time mismanagement and some hinky morals, and County Chairman Ted Wheeler, who aims to take over the running of the county’s jails. Most places, fists would probably be flying. Here, things remain outwardly polite, as Portland Tribune writer Nick Budnick so ably portrays in his latest article.

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603, 503, whatever, just vote

I got a call at home in Portland Monday morning, and the number on my Caller ID started with 603, which is the area code for New Hampshire, that quirky New England state where I lived more than 20 years ago. I pounced on the call, imagining some long-lost friend on the other end — the ideal distraction from actually working. Me: (excitedly): Hi! Stern Female Voice: Hello. I'm calling from the Clinton campaign. Will you be voting for Hillary Clinton tomorrow?

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Condo woes

Ah, carefree condo living.

I could tell you about the condominium building that allows two dogs per unit, a rule neatly circumvented by a guy who walks his four pit bulls one pair at a time, denying that he’s got a pack of the critters in his 600-square-foot studio. Or the woman who hangs her lingerie to dry on her balcony — which happens to be the one located smack over the building’s front door. For every proud owner of one of Portland or Seattle’s zillion new condos, there’s one with a horror story.

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That’s not a soup can, it’s a political statement!

Shopping ‘till you drop is, like, so over. Consumers with time on their hands and anarchy in their hearts prefer shopdropping, or reverse shoplifting, which entails adding bogus products or altering goods to make political statements. (Or, failing that, to mess with people’s minds.)

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Everything in its place

The traditional running-of-the-shoppers that takes place each December continues, but in Portland’s retail arenas, the atmosphere is quieter than, say, downtown Seattle. One might assume this is due to the smaller retail core of the Rose City, but I have another theory: Cameron Concierge.

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Snow in Portland: We don’t have to see it to believe

Bottled water? Check.

Flashlights? Check.

Leftover holiday candy? Check. Check. Check.

2007 in Review: You can't read in the dark

It was the largest library system closure in history. What happened when a rural county turned to (shhhh!) outsourcing for the rescue.

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'Tis the (one and only Whitman's) Sampler season

Without getting bogged down in marital details or my own spiritual evolution, let’s just say that I have experienced, first-hand, pretty much any holiday observance you could take up in the month of December.

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Have gun, will make headlines

Sometimes local government looks just like a big ol’ dog chasing its tail. In Oregon’s Multnomah County, where Portland is located, our dog often also manages to get hopelessly lost while running in circles. Witness the ongoing mess over Sheriff Bernie Giusto and his shockingly poor management of the county jail.

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Turbo-power or higher power? You decide

Seems that some mysterious force has decided to override Oregon’s wacky kicker tax that returns money to residents in flush years instead of saving it for statewide needs.

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The not-so-mad scientist

Meet Greg Craven, an over-caffeinated, obsessive-compulsive chemistry teacher from Independence, Ore., whose fresh take on global-warming cuts through all the hot air circulating about the subject.

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Is a Rose Garden by any other name as sweet?

News that Paul Allen is hot to sell naming rights for the Rose Garden—the spaceship-like home of his Portland Trailblazers—has us pondering possibilities.

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Bracelet women hang tough

The Oregonian is running a fascinating story about fallout from the feds’ June raid of Portland’s Fresh Del Monte Produce plant, which arrested 167 people in a sweep targeting illegal workers.

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Uff da! The inside skinny on Swedish people

If you can find your way out, there is much to be learned from a visit to Ikea.

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R.I.P. = Recycled In Peace

Portland, where we compete with our neighbors to see who has the largest number of recycling bins at the curb each week, is also home to the National Burial Company, an eco-friendly company that sells paper caskets, biodegradable shrouds, urns, and other "natural burial products."

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PDXpensive: The high cost of high standards

What do Portlanders want? Simple: All the good things about a city, none of the bad.

OK, that's a little harsh. After all, who doesn't want green parks, low crime rates, cheap housing, nonexistent gridlock, vanishing potholes, excellent schools, and a happenin' cultural life? The problem here is that Portland's had many of those things for a long time, and seeing them slip away makes folks panic. Knowing that urbanites elsewhere would kill for half of the goodies Portland still enjoys doesn't make us feel better.

This whole notion of lessening livability is on our minds right now, thanks to a talker of a piece by The Oregonian's Andy Dworkin, reporting on the city's annual audit of residents' opinions about life here. The survey findings Dworkin highlighted include these points:

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O Latke Night!

When a household boasts Irish-Jewish lineage, a latke is more like a ritual religious object than a potato pancake. In fact, around here, calling a latke a pancake is like calling the Superbowl a game. A latke is what an ambitious potato dreams of being.

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We don't call it P-Town for nothing

The changing of the guard at Powell’s Books, Portland’s venerated six-store empire, is under way, and worried murmuring is coming from all sorts of business experts, according to a front-page story in the Los Angeles Times. We Powell’s worshipers can’t imagine life without the place, so we’re hoping that it continues to be blessedly out of step with its industry.

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Hot-desking gets hot in Portland and Seattle

Alt-workspace by the hour, day, week, or until your client is suitably impressed.

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Katrina and lessons learned

What can Portland teach New Orleans? And what might the Big Easy pass on to the Rose City? According to a guest article in the Oregonian, plenty.

Chris Beck, a former Realtor and Oregon state representative, now a post-Katrina urban-rebuilding consultant, has spent much of the past year in New Orleans as the rebuilding process inches ahead. It’s not surprising that Portland’s strengths — healthy development, involved citizenry — would be traits Beck would like to see exported to New Orleans.

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Happy trails to you, until we meet again

Our Thanksgiving tradition: The people who have toiled through the most meal-prep over the years (my sister and mother-in-law) fly from points East and West to rendezvous at…gasp...a restaurant for the festive meal…on us.

When my husband and I first cautiously proposed this three years ago, it was met with unexpected enthusiasm. Who knew our family’s designated cooks weren’t dying to spend two days in the kitchen preparing a meal that was demolished in an hour? (Followed by washing all the good china by hand, and scrubbing red-wine stains out of the linen tablecloth.)

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The check's in the mail, and it's from the government

An oddball law that kicks money back to Oregon taxpayers results, of course, in grousing.

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Their message here: The button brigade invades Portland

A one-line job ad on Craigslist/Portland caught my eye:

You will be a soldier in the war against button-less garments and bags.

The story behind it:

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