Articles
The New Rose Parade
In anticipation of our city’s century-old spring promenade, we take some newly commissioned floats out for a test drive.
The Arlene Effect
After trying out some art classes because they fit her schedule, Arlene Schnitzer went on to exhibit, sell, and collect Portland art like no one before.
By Randy Gragg
Five Questions with... Rebecca Gates
The leader of ’90s indie-rock darlings the Spinanes talks about her first new album in a decade.
By Robert Ham
Video: Poetry Smackdown
In preparation for Portland’s first citywide poetry slam on April 25, watch several Madison High School contenders perform their poems
Bump & Rhyme
A high school librarian launches DIY literature into a citywide competition.
By Aaron Scott
Five Questions with... Radiolab
Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich bring their hit public radio program Radiolab to the stage.
By Aaron Scott
Spring Arts Date Book
Mark your calendar now for this season’s top shows to know.
By Anne Adams, John Chandler, Randy Gragg, and Martin Patail
Five Questions For... Hometapes
A wife-and-husband team’s homey approach to the record business
Edited by Zach Dundas
Video: The Lion Sings
Watch Afropop legend Thomas Mapfumo cover his hero—and occasional collaborator—Bob Marley in his Eugene studio.
Dark Star
A museum showcase channels Mark Rothko's strange radiance—and complex local roots.
By Randy Gragg
Five Questions For... David Wolman
The Portland author's new book, The End of Money, argues that cash should vanish.
By Zach Dundas
The Lion's Song
Nearly a decade ago, Afropop legend Thomas Mapfumo fled Zimbabwe for Eugene, fearing retribution for his songs blasting government repression. Now the iconic singer is reemerging with an ambitious album recorded in the heart of the Willamette Valley.
By Eric Hansen
Five Questions For...Ancient Portland
The 1,700 followers of the Twitter wit known as @ancientportland know the Rose City goes back thousands of years. For everyone else, we probed the basics.
Portlandia Abroad
Ambassadors Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein bring Rose City fashion and culture to the world.
Vox Populi: We Take the Masses’ Pulse on Crucial Topics at Facebook.Com/Portland Monthly.
Which local holiday cultural event are you most looking forward to?
Stage Cure
Modern troubadour Holcombe Waller finds catharsis in a new multimedia production.
By Aaron Scott
High Note
A genre-bending Portland-area mariachi singer becomes a Spanish-language TV sensation.
By Anne Adams
DIY Five
A Portland artist’s new book lends kids a crafty hand for the season of indoor fun.
By Zach Dundas
Vox Populi:We Take the Masses’ Pulse on Crucial Topics on Our Facebook Page
As we head for another season of rain and chill, what best describes your fall and winter recreation plans?
By Zach Dundas
Five Questions For...DJ Heatesca
The daughter of a country music star makes her mark in portland’s dance scene.
Long Gone Blonde
The Place: The grave of Mayo Methot—once Portland’s most celebrated silver-screen bad girl and wife of Humphrey Bogart.
By Brian Libby
Jump Start
How ’70s skyjacker D.B. Cooper’s leap launched our greatest (and maybe last) modern outlaw myth.
By Julian Smith
The Lost World of Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho
Twenty years later, Gus Van Sant reflects on My Own Private Idaho’s vanished city of flophouses and hustlers.
Five Questions For... Deborah Reed/Audrey Braun
Portland novelist Reed—with help from her gory-thriller-writing alter ego braun—discovered a path to self-publishing success.
Brainstorm
Explore the Genesis of Innovation: 12 Oregonians Changing Our World
Edited by Randy Gragg
Five Questions For...Craig Thompson
The Portland graphic novelist releases Habibi, the long-awaited follow-up to his acclaimed book Blankets.
By Aaron Scott
Get Versed
Portland's freshest poets take center stage at the city's most entertaining reading series.
Five Questions For... Nikki McClure
Olympia, Washinton's cut-paper chronicler of DIY life opens her first retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Craft.
By Zach Dundas
Trade Routes
Leach has made Portland part of a global marketplace. Here's a sampling of 30 works she has imported and exported to and from the Rose City.
Farm to Stage
In a St. Johns backyard, a homegrown version of Japanese dance takes root.
By Anne Adams
Press Play
While some mourn the “death of print,” e-publishing gives innovative Portland writers, publishers, and even booksellers new hope.
Home Maker
Crafter and writer Susan Beal offers two new guidebooks for a generation rediscovering the excitement of the handmade.
By Anne Adams
Five Questions For... Vanessa Veselka
The Portland author reads from Zazen, her surreal and scintillating first novel, at Powell’s on June 13.
By Zach Dundas
30 seconds with...Boaz Frankel
In a new cable TV series, the 28-year-old Portlander documents his car-free voyage across America.
Studio City
In a town where everybody’s in a band, the recording studio has become its own art form.
By Tom Colligan
The Ladies' Man
With the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, iconoclastic Portland director Todd Haynes brings his exploration of the female psyche to the small screen.
By Aaron Scott
Future History
The ailing Oregon Historical Society wants to make a fresh start. Will anyone notice?
True West
In Kelly Reichardt and Jon Raymond’s pioneering ‘road movie,’ dust and drought haunt both past and present.
By Randy Gragg
Scene & Heard
As the Bridgetown Comedy Festival (April 21–24) commences, we asked festival co-founder Matt Braunger to explain what’s really funny about his hometown.
Five Questions for Isabella Rossellini
The actor-director-model-businesswoman visits Portland to discuss her career, her new Discovery Channel special, and bedbug love (maybe).
By Zach Dundas
A Yeon Centennial
The distance between the Columbia River Gorge and the Oregon coast, centuries-old art of China, Japan, and Italy, and one of Portland’s greatest homes can be measured in miles and years—or in the connections between the eye and hand of John Yeon.
By Randy Gragg
Works of Heart Videos
Holcombe Waller, Rachel Blumberg, and Shirod Younker pay tribute to the Portland Art Museum's permantent collection.
30 Seconds With... Chelsea Cain
The Night Season, the Portland author’s fourth thriller about gruesome serial murders, hits shelves this month.
Manila Mata Hari
In the occupied Pacific, a now- forgotten Portland nightclub singer turned herself into one of World War II’s most Celebrated spies
By Brian Libby
30 Seconds With... Dave Frishberg
The veteran local jazz songwriter sings his stuff during this month’s Portland Jazz Festival
By Anne Adams
Little Big Nurse
Actress Gretchen Corbett brings Ken Kesey’s greatest character to the stage in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
State of the Game
Legal or not, Oregon gambling is an ancient tradition
By Veronica Martin, Martin Patail, and Meghan Hilliard
30 seconds with... Richard Settersten
Oregon State professor and coauthor of Not Quite Adults, on slow-starting twentysomethings.
By Zach Dundas
Room With a View
A former Southeast Portland laundry building inspires a major new arts organization.
By Randy Gragg
30 seconds with... Tex Clark
A federal public defense attorney whose 1995 feminist rockumentary, Radical Act, was just re-released.
By Zach Dundas
The Perfect Party
We raise a glass to 2010 with the year's biggest 'or-at least-most entertaining' newsmakers
30 Seconds With...Phil Stanford
Author of The Peyton-Allan Files, a true crime story about a brutal, mysterious Portland double homicide.
By Randy Gragg
Spilling the Story
After disaster, a group of Portlanders tries out a brave new media model.
By Stiv Wilson
Bye Bye Beavers
As the PGE Park diamond gives way to a full-time soccer pitch, we offer the Portland Beavers some lovely parting gifts.
By Jason Cohen
30 seconds with... Jan Haaken
Filmmaker, Portland State University professor, and clinical psychologist
By Lauren Fox
Double-Click or Nothing
One of the top online poker players in the country gives us the lowdown on how to win.
Reanimated
A year after Coraline wowed the world, Laika is pondering Oscar nominations. And the future.
By Randy Gragg
The Maestro
With waving arms and an iron grip, CARLOS KALMAR conducts the Oregon Symphony. But can he lead it into a new era?
By Bill Donahue
The Ballad of Fred and Toody
Four decades later, Portland's punk grandparents are still rocking—and still in love
By Randy Gragg
Fourth of July
What to do for Independence Day? We've scoured the town for the best way to celebrate this year.
Kitchen Ink
The only thing local chefs love more than leaving their mark on our food scene is leaving a mark on themselves.
By Liz Crain
Courting The Silver Screen
Can you say "Pollywood"? How Oregon is turning movies into big business in Portland.
By Anna Hirsh
Made In Portland
Gus Van Sant might just be the least hip local icon you’ve ever met. “I’m very uncool,” he says. He’s OK with this, and so are we.
By Randy Gragg
How'd You Get That Gig?
Ah...Life on the set on a Hollywood movie. The glitz, the glam—the sixteen-hour days, the freezing cold, the 3 a.m. call times. Making movies might be the toughest job a person could ever love, and these five Portlanders should know.
Hollywood Knights
Phil Knight famously made a fortune as a founder of Nike. Now the shoe king and his son Travis are vying for a foothold in the super-competitive world of filmmaking with a cartoon girl named Coraline.
By Tom McNichol
Master of the Universe
Official Star Wars artist Steve Anderson talks fanboy celebrity, lightsabers, and the secretive life of working for George Lucas.
By Randy Gragg
Lucky Dogs
The Dog Day of Summer dinner hosted people and pooches to benefit the DoveLewis Emergency Animal Hospital.
The Gospel of Paul
By writing the international sensation The Shack, Paul Young became either a heretic or a lifesaver, depending on which Christian you ask.
By Zach Dundas
Book Smarts
So you call yourself a Portlander? Not unless you own a dog-eared copy of every one of these classic titles.
Twilight Ours
Portland stars in what is expected to be one of the year’s biggest flicks.
By Anna Hirsh
Dancin’ on the Ceiling
On Aug 9 Start Making a Reader Today hosted its fifth annual gala fundraiser.
Hole in One
Nike’s Tiger Woods Center hosted Ronald McDonald House Charities of Oregon and Southwest Washington’s Swinging Social 2008.
Sarah Vowell
In _The Wordy Shipmates_ (Penguin Books), Vowell revisits the 17th-century Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Company, finding them to be a singular and idiosyncratic bunch.
Long Way Home
Oft-displaced artistic powerhouse Disjecta settles into more permanent digs on the edge of working-class Kenton.
Book Binders
A clerk at Powell's finds multiple loves (and other difficulties) in between the pages.
Comics 101
This month Portland State University and Dark Horse Comics open the country's first comic book archive.
Rebound Relationship
Jilted Sonics fans may well turn their adoration to the Blazers this season. Help them make the transition.
You Need Art
You're a grown-up. You live in a grown-up home, wear grown-up clothes and sit in a grown-up chair.
The Creek
This sober yet surreal coming-of-age tale got the final nod at Portland's 2007 Wordstock festival.
Calling the Shots
Before Kevin Pritchard took over as GM, the Trail Blazers were the most laughable, losingest team in the NBA.
By Jason Cohen
The Shape of Memory
As Maya Lin creates seven landscape installations retelling the Lewis and Clark story from the perspective of Columbia River tribes, the legacy she charts is partly the region's, and partly her own.
The Purist
When fellow teens were going through their punk phase, Oregon Ballet Theatre artistic director Christopher Stowell was practicing pliés.
The Player
He's ridiculously good looking. He's got a Harvard M.B.A. His father is the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. Last May, Henry Merritt Paulson III bought the Portland Timbers and the Portland Beavers. And if he has his way, one of them will be major league.
By Jim Gullo
Recovery Mission
For these Northwest soldiers, after their tour of duty ends, another battle begins.
Meet Your Makers
You saw them here first: Portland’s up-and-coming art stars.
By Randy Gragg, Martha Calhoon, and John Chandler
Motion Detector
A cohort of artists forecast the future of the South Waterfront district—and help shape a neighborhood in the making.
Speech Therapy
Teenage angst and hormonal confessions take center stage at Portland’s latest literary showcase, Mortified.
Inside Connection
Conceptual artist MK Guth and her husband bring the outdoors in with a savvy addition to their Mount Tabor cottage.
Outside the Box
With the push of a button, iTV turns tube-viewing from passive act to interactive pursuit.
Radio Free Oregon
OPB host Emily Harris discusses the new-media universe and the difference between crossing the Tigris and the Willamette.
Exit Stage Left
With Lincoln Hall undergoing a $28 million makeover, Portland’s contemporary dance scene takes to the street.
Checked Out
If you’ve looked around your school library lately, you may have noticed something missing. Namely, the librarian.
Water Wings
This month, you don’t need a pilot’s license to fly over the Willamette—just a costume, a contraption, and some courage.
By Anna Hirsh
Home Bass
Jazz superstar Esperanza Spalding returns to her Portland roots. (For one night, at least.)
Key Note
Can guitarist Terry Robb’s new label help revive Portland’s original indie music—blues?
By Tom D'Antoni
Writer's Block
We Portlanders like to call ours a literary city. The trouble is, we have a hard time putting our money where our mouths are.
By Anna Hirsh
Club Web
How do you parlay a hip-hop obsession into a business? By building a virtual buzz.
By Brett Olson
Bound for Glory
Nazraeli Press makes photography books as beautiful—and as sought-after—as the images within them.
Fly Girls
Meet tween duo Blübird: melting hearts and drawing fire with the catchiest little eco-anthem you’ve ever heard.
Jick Magnet
Rocker and literate lyricist Stephen Malkmus talks about yogic singing, fatherhood and his impending death.
By Randy Gragg
Going for Baroque
Think Baroque music isn’t hip? Then clearly you haven’t experienced Bach in the hands of Monica Huggett.
Bye-Bye, Biennial
Portland Art Museum’s regional art showcase has a new name, a new format, and a new ambition.
By Chas Bowie
Mighty Mom
American Gladiators inductee Monica Carlson talks about the fantasy—and the reality—of pummeling burly women.
