News The fight for public access to Oswego Lake has changed venues.A lawsuit seeking to open Oswego Lake to the public tossed from federal court earlier this month was re-filed in Clackamas County Circuit Court earlier this week.As with the federal lawsuit, plaintiffs Mark Kramer and Todd Prager are demanding the city of Lake Oswego stop blocking public access to the lake in the center of Oregon’s wealthiest ...   More

News A federal judge may decide if Oswego Lake is open to the public. A lawsuit filed this morning in U.S. District Court in Portland seeks to force Lake Oswego, Oregon’s wealthiest city, to open its namesake lake for public access. (You can read the suit here.)The lake was declared open to the public by the state attorney general way back in 1959, but it's been dealt with as if it belongs to private ...   More

News Lake Oswego’s city council made it a crime to go from a public park to a public lake last week.Safety, they claimed, is the issue. Yes, there are stairs leading from Millennium Park into the water of Oswego Lake, but the average Oswegan apparently can’t be trusted to safely walk down five stairs.They could slip! They could fall!  INTO WATER!But are there are other ways onto ...   More

News All of Oregon’s navigable waterways are public, but some are more public than others. Or so it goes in Lake Oswego...   More

News Oswego Lake may only be open to the public for a few more hours.Tonight, Lake Oswego's city council will vote tonight on a resolution which would prohibit people from entering the public lake from the city-owned public parks on its shores. If passed, the rule would be effective immediately.This means an occupation of Oswego Lake, unlike the paddle I took last month, would involve breaking the ...   More

News WW Arts and Culture Editor Martin Cizmar struck a blow for the 99 percent recently by kayaking around Oswego Lake, and Occupy Portland has taken note. Spurred on by a quote from Lake O Mayor Jack Hoffman—“If there was an Occupy Oswego Lake, what would happen? I just don’t know”—its adherents have been debating following Cizmar's revolutionary paddle strokes by occupying the lake themselves, ...   More

Culture Carrying a big green kayak down the sidewalk in Lake Oswego gets attention. “You know you can’t just go in there?” “They’ll ding ya if they catch ya in there!” To hear it described by townsfolk...   More