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Bill McDonald is a Portland musician who makes a living writing freelance comedy for radio and television. Locally, he's had a column in the Portland Tribune and was the co-host of the legendary "Born to Slack" cable access show with the late great James Shibley. He's had scripts optioned by Hollywood, and has made one film himself. He's also written a book currently called, "William of Arabia" about growing up in the Middle East.
Are you feeling underwhelmed by the current frontrunners in the mayor’s race? If so, you are not alone. The Big Three are giving a lot of Portlanders a precognitive case of voters’ remorse. Normally, the Armchair Mayor Selection Committee would stay out of the fray, in favor of a regular citizen, but mayoral candidate Cameron Whitten delivered big time as last month’s selection, so it’s back to the pool for more...
This month, the Armchair Mayor Selection Committee poses a deeply philosophical question: Can you be an Armchair Mayor while being an actual candidate for the office? The answer turns out to be yes, but there has to be a good reason. Fortunately, with March’s Armchair Mayor, Cameron Whitten, there is. Whitten recently arrived in Portland after fleeing an abusive upbringing in Virginia marked by violence from his father as well more...
This month’s Armchair Mayor is Tony Fuentes—also our first honoree to go by the title “Chief Executive Papa.” This is in reference to the Milagros Boutique that he runs with his wife Jennifer in the Concordia neighborhood, providing baby supplies for “little miracles and their mamas.” If your child is not feeling all that miraculous that day, there is also a play area and a rocking chair. Tony more...
This year marks a renewed examination of the East Portland-West Portland divide so what better way to start than with Cora Lee Potter, a community leader from Lents. She has chaired the Lents Town Center Urban Renewal Advisory Committee (LTCURAC) and continues to advocate for the neighborhood she loves while working as a planner in regional community transportation. However, it is her other titles on LinkedIn that prove she has the more...
This month’s Armchair Mayor is author Phil Stanford, who spent more than 20 years as a columnist for The Oregonian and The Portland Tribune. Stanford lives in the Ardenwald-Johnson Creek neighborhood, where he now spends his days researching and writing books. He is two-thirds of the way through a Rose City Trilogy about the history of Portland in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ’70, and the first two, “Portland more...
Check out our interview series with Portland's mayoral candidates. We have our first real shocker of the 2012 elections here in Oregon. One of the candidates, Charlie Hales, has responded to his Washington residency issue with this statement: “I didn’t move to Washington to cut my taxes. I moved to Washington to sleep with my wife, because she lived there.” Wow, a politician openly admitting he slept with his more...
This month’s Armchair Mayor did not get shortchanged on a name, but lucky for us, she has the intriguing story to back it up. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Katrina Scotto di Carlo, the co-founder of Supportland. The last name arrived here from a small island off Naples. Her husband Michael’s father brought an ingrained entrepreneurial spirit to the New World—specifically Brooklyn—and he passed it on to his more...
Check out our interview series with Portland's mayoral candidates. Max Brumm is The Natural, but not at baseball, the game he loves most. Max Brumm, the 19-year-old candidate to replace Mayor Sam Adams, is a natural at politics, a career chosen for him by his family background and his talents. As he likes to say, it’s in his blood. His grandparents, Tom and Betsy Brumm, worked on many campaigns over the years after more...
Welcome to a new column on Neighborhood Notes called Armchair Mayor where notable Portlanders answer questions about the direction of the city. First up is Jack Bogdanski, a Lewis and Clark tax professor, who is the force behind Jack Bog’s Blog. One way to appreciate Bogdanski, is to ponder how much it would cost to walk into a tax lawyer’s office and ask for a detailed analysis of a city’s fiscal health—an more...
If you want a definition of optimism, find someone in Portland who’s installing solar panels—especially with the summer we’ve been having. Oh, and it doesn’t help when experts say that Portland gets the same amount of sunshine as an average American city. We live here. We’ve earned the right to question that. Still the promise of solar energy is intriguing. Who doesn’t dream of telling the power more...
