News Vancouver, Wash., at least according to The Advocate. The Advocate's 2011 annual gay and lesbian census lists the top 16 gayest U.S. cities and ranks Vancouver as number 6. So, why Vancouver and not Portland, which has an openly gay mayor? The LGBT mag's Mike Albo writes that it's because gay and lesbian Portlanders are moving across the river to settle down in Vancouver. The city of 165,000 ...   More

News More trouble ahead potentially for Vancouver's police department. Earlier this fall, WW reported that the City of Vancouver agreed to pay a record-breaking settlement in the wrongful discrimination case of a former Vancouver police officer, Navin Sharma. In that case, the city paid Sharma $1.65 million, the largest reported employment settlement for a single plaintiff in Northwest history. ...   More

News Nobody who read WW's coverage of the Vancouver Police Department's mismanagement of former VPD officer Navin Sharma (pictured above) will be too surprised that other officers are stepping forward with complaints about being harassed. Earlier this year, former officer Chris Kershaw, who spoke up on Sharma's behalf filed [PDF] a wrongful termination lawsuit against VPD. And last month, as first ...   More

News An update today to this week's Hey, Neighbor! item on the "River Rat." The FBI says the so-called River Rat robbed Chase Bank in Vancouver by gunpoint today, marking his seventh bank robbery in the last two months on both sides of the Columbia River (hence the "River Rat" nickname). The River Rat's list of past bank robberies include: Columbia State Bank, Portland- Aug. 7 Key Bank, Vancouver- ...   More

News Since a report in last week's Oregonian looking at contributions into tomorrow's mayoral race in Vancouver, there have been a couple other notably large donations in the last week from Oregon — all to incumbent Royce Pollard in his effort to hold off challenger Tim Leavitt. Pollard collected $5,000 on Oct. 26 from Gramor Corp. CEO Barry Cain in Tualatin; and picked up $1,250 apiece on ...   More

News As the endless process grinds on around the possible development of a new bridge between Vancouver and Portland, it's sometimes hard to remember who said what to whom about the Columbia River Crossing and when they said it. In the wake of a recent letter from the governors of Oregon and Washington urging the project proceed despite a variety of concerns, David Osborn at the Stop the CRC Coalition ...   More

News About a dozen demonstrators gathered today at the Portland Expo Center to protest the first meeting of a panel appointed by the governors of Washington and Oregon to review the Columbia River Crossing . Protesters, organized by Stop the CRC Coalition, handed out sheets of paper that called the panel a “rubber stamp.” The implication of course with those handouts, which were stamped ...   More

News The Westboro Baptist Church, a Topeka, Kan.-based hate group that evangelizes against homosexuals, Jews, Catholics, and soldiers, will return to the Portland area over Memorial Day weekend and linger into the following week to picket local churches, synagogues and schools. The group's nationally notorious pickets have included the funerals of soldiers because, according to founder Fred Phelps, “Military ...   More

News Our newspaper neighbor to the north, The Columbian, has an account today of Commissioner Randy Leonard's last-ditch effort to keep the Beavers in Portland, now that PGE Park is being refashioned for Major League Soccer. Vancouver and Clark County had been mentioned before as possible new spots for the minor-league baseball team once PGE Park gets remodeled to the exclusion of baseball. But Leonard's ...   More