Scoop: Is It Basketball Season Yet?

SEEMEL'S 2007 PORTRAIT
By Pete Cottell
  1. DOING WORK: The late street musician “Working” Kirk Reeves is being honored with a mural two years after his death. The 10-by-30-foot portrait by Gwenn Seemel will be sponsored by the Regional Arts & Culture Council at the corner of Northeast Grand Avenue and Lloyd Boulevard, on the east-facing wall of the building formerly occupied by Rich’s Deli. According to RACC, the mural will portray Reeves in his signature white tuxedo, black sweater and red sequined hat, with the score for “Over the Rainbow,” a staple of his performance repertoire, in the background. Reeves, known for playing trumpet on the west side of the Hawthorne Bridge, committed suicide in 2012. Earlier this year, TriMet rejected naming the bridge now called Tilikum Crossing in his honor.
  1. PERMANENT FAVORITES: Our favorite macaron-maker, Farina Bakery, is looking to move into its own bakery and retail space on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. Farina, which won our blind taste-off of local macarons, currently sells wholesale and on its website, but has no street-facing retail space. “After [the Willamette Week] article came out,” says baker Laura Farina, “people have been stampeding the kitchen.” She hopes to open late this fall, with tentative plans to expand the bakery’s repertoire with Scandinavian pastries, muffins and rolls. >> Meanwhile, the Love Belizean food cart, a runner-up for our 2014 cart of the year, has a Kickstarter campaign to help fund a brick-and-mortar restaurant one block from its former location at Southwest 6th Avenue and Columbia Street. All carts in its former PSU-district location were evicted in July to make room for parking. In August, the cart will move to the new Tidbit pod at Southeast 28th Avenue and Division Street.
  1. BACK EAST: After one year in a former Con-Way warehouse in Northwest Portland, the late-night social hub of the Time-Based Art Festival is returning to the east side. The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, which produces the annual avant-garde arts fest, will locate the Works at 2010 SE 8th Ave., in a 30,000-square-foot warehouse last used by a window-blind manufacturer in 2012. PICA has also announced much of the globe-spanning lineup for this year’s fest, which takes place Sept. 11-21. Several performers will be familiar to TBA audiences, including Japanese theater company Chelfitsch and Toronto group Mammalian Diving Reflex, which will work with elderly Portlanders to explore “intimacy, age, youth-obsessed culture and sex.”
  1. AWARDS SEASON: Your favorite Portland newspaper took home five awards from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia conference in Nashville last weekend. Contributor Pete Cottell won first place for his Vanifest Destiny columns. Matthew Singer earned second place for his story on the 10th anniversary of Elliott Smith’s suicide, “The Last of the Sad Bastards.” Nigel Jaquiss took second place in long-form news story for “No Good Deed,” about an adoption gone awry; and former WW staffer Andrea Damewood placed third in the same category for “The Woman Behind the Bridge,” a profile of political insider Patricia McCaig. Rebecca Jacobson took third for “24-Hour Arty People,” which followed varied Portland artists for an entire day. Willamette Week competes against other large-circulation alternative newspapers like The Village Voice, LA Weekly and Chicago Reader, and won Oregon’s only awards.

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