Hipster Olympics

From the Department of Regional Cuisines

There's an old hand painted sign on Alberta street above a carry out that says something about "Chicken and Jo Jos" and I thought it referred to a salty old couple who owned the store. Perhaps the mom was named Jojo and the pop liked to go as Chicken. Maybe on account of a limited career as a bantam weight boxer. Lo and behold, I found out from my lovely and talented legal assistant that Jojo is not a person, it is a food. A regional dish pictured here, which is a fried potato wedge.
And this got me thinking of other regional cuisines from here (salmon, hazelnuts and pinot noir) and from Ohio such as the hotshot from western Ohio. An open faced sandwich with gravy and mashed potato. Or sauerkraut balls, which have been immortalized on the marquee for the Hey Hey Club for years upon years. Anyways, I found out what a jojo is and I thought I'd share.

After dark at science museum

Someone at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry thought it would be funny to keep the place open until 10pm and pass out free shots of vodka. And hence a trample of grown ups crowded the Da Vinci exhibit and played all night with all the various toys and contraptions. I was there. I held little metal pie tins in one hand and a lady I did not know held my other hand, and she touched a silver globe and current passed through us and the plates flew out of my hand into the air. Science!

Wolfmother - Witchcraft

A.C. Newman - There Are Maybe 10 or 12

Two Awesome Things

1. Brunch at the Renegade Dinner Club. Billy came to visit for the weekend and as luck would have it, Colleen was making brunch at her dinner club. It's a loft space in an artist warehouse down near the river in southeast. You have to have a code to get in, and you climb up stairs through hallways that look like the set of Blade Runner. She's behind one of the many doors cooking up a storm. This morning she served gruyere toasts, a green salad with this amazing pickled carrot and allspice dressing, and eggs poached in red wine with bacon or something like that. There were a bunch of random people there and we drank strong coffee and chit chatted and generally felt incredibly lucky to be in the honey gold room on a rainy Portland morning.

2. The last time I ate at Colleen's I met an artist named Vanessa Renwick who operates as something called the Oregon Department of Kick Ass. She has a very cool installation up right now at the New American Art Union on Ankeny that goes something like this: a big room with some living room furniture on a shag rug. There's a record player with a bunch of great soul records. There's a little sign that says something to the effect of "You are welcome to play a record." Meanwhile, a large screen is playing a black and white film of a razed city block in north Portland where an old record shop used to stand called The House of Sound. The old sign from the House of Sound sits midway through the room, with votive candles spread out in front of it. Long matches are provided so that you can light a candle. I did. In addition to the sound of the soul music coming off the turntable, the house speakers broadcast a community radio program featuring two guys talking about the importance of the record shop in the black community in North Portland and reminiscing about the scene there back in the day. The whole exhibit is a touching elegy for lost space. It's going to be up through April 19.

Cymande - Brothers on the Slide

Roaring Ears

Brian Jonestown Massacre at the Crystal Ballroom on friday night. I was super psyched to get to see this band because they are notorious in Portland, in part because of the great rock documentary DiG! that came out a few years back. Anton Newcombe did not fight anyone during the show, and in fact he stood off to the side and didn't do much of the singing. Most of the singing was from the bass player, Matt Hollywood. Maybe all that hard living got the best of Anton, or at least that's the impression I got. Zia McCabe from the Dandy Warhols played tambourine with the tambourine man extraordinaire Joel Gion, begging the question by Matt of when you can have too many tambourine players at a Brian Jonestown Massacre show. And there were something like 6 guitars up on that stage going at once. Psychedelic burnout rock and roll fun.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Telegram

The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Anenome

SAD

I hurt my ankle again. During my tennis lesson. It hurts.

Most Amazing Waterfall

No path. No stairs. No people. Mud under the fingernails and moss in the hair. My daring guide had the map and we pressed onward through a clear cut, and down a prodigious, slick creek bank. After climbing across slippery rocks and rotting green pine logs along the water, after I wrongly suggested that maybe we had gone far enough, we could hear a great whoosing sound around the next bend of the creek. And there in its glory was Abiqua Falls.