Scoop: Why Not Some Pretty Balloons Instead?

1. NO PLACE FOR THAT: Edgy content appears to have gotten Place Gallery kicked out of its space at Pioneer Place Mall. The gallery is one of three art spaces on the mall’s third floor, shared with Mark Woolley Gallery and the Peoples Art of Portland Gallery. According to Place director Gabe Flores, transgressive programming raised the ire of the mall’s management company, General Growth Properties. Flores says the company has terminated his lease as of March 31, due to management’s discomfort with programming such as John Dougherty’s exhibition, Shit Balloons, and Michael Reinsch’s The High Improbability of Death: A Celebration of Suicide. On Place’s website, placepdx.com, Flores has reproduced correspondence he says corroborates his contention that the mall’s general manager, Bob Buchanan, was concerned the gallery’s content could disturb mallgoers. At press time, mall management had not responded to WW’s requests for comment.

1. THE COBAIN MUSEUM: A Portland woman has launched a campaign to turn Kurt Cobain’s childhood home into a museum. Jaime Dunkle, a promotions assistant at Music Millennium, is raising money to purchase the bungalow in Aberdeen, Wash., where the Nirvana frontman lived off and on through his teenage years. Dunkle visited Aberdeen last year and discovered the city had no official monument dedicated to the songwriter, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound 20 years ago this April. (A much-maligned statue has since been put on display in a local history museum.) The idea for the museum came to Dunkle in September after reading that Cobain’s mother had put the house up for sale. “The city of Aberdeen is finally accepting Kurt Cobain’s influence,” Dunkle tells Scoop. “Knowing all that, we decided there should be something there.” Dunkle is currently raising the $500,000 asking price through the crowdfunding site GoFundMe, plus an additional $200,000 to build onsite parking and restore the house—which still contains band logos Cobain stenciled onto his bedroom wall—to precisely how it looked when Cobain was growing up.

1. BEERVILLE: Burgerville is looking to serve beer and wine at its Portland International Airport location, and has filed for a tavern license. It wouldn’t be the first Burgerville to serve beer—the Vancouver-based chain started a beer-service pilot program in White Salmon, Wash., in 2009—but it would be the first in Oregon to do so. >> The new owners of Southeast Clinton Street velveteria Dots are planning to open a 62-seat pizzeria called Atlas Pizza at 3570 SE Division St. Alongside Roman Candle, Sunshine Tavern, Cibo and Sean Coyne’s impending Pizza Maria, it would be the fifth pizza spot to open in a six-block stretch of Division in three years. Atlas brings rock-’n’-roll credibility, however: Sean Croghan (Crackerbash, Jr. High) is listed as the manager. >> The old Portland Police Athletic Association building—formerly a private club where cops and their guests smoked cigarettes and drank (“Bar Spotlight,” WW, Feb. 20, 2013)—might be put to new use soon. According to a liquor-license application, the large event space at 618 SE Alder St. could be rechristened the “Ballroom Galactica.”

WWeek 2015