Scoop: On An All-Booze Super Squishy Bender.

1. PLEASE BE SEATED: Fresh from an expansion that added two new screens, Cinema 21 has begun raising funds to install new seats in its main auditorium. The 88-year-old theater on Northwest 21st Avenue is set to launch a Kickstarter campaign this week, with the goal of raising $70,000. Manager Tom Ranieri estimates the main auditorium’s current seats are about 60 years old. “We can’t get parts, we weld the springs together, they make noise,” Ranieri says. The new seats should make Cinema 21 more competitive in acquiring films. “Distributors want to know that your theater is state of the art,” Ranieri says. “They want to make sure that places where they put their movies reach a certain level of comfort…. If I want this 88-year-old theater to reach 100—with the very real possibility that I will not be the one operating it in 12 years—then I have to equip it to be competitive and thrive.”

1. GRACED: Northwest Dance Project dancer Viktor Usov has won a 2014 Princess Grace Award. Named after Grace Kelly, it is awarded to emerging U.S. artists in dance, theater and film. Usov is among eight choreographers and dancers to win the award this year, and he’s the third NWDP member to receive the honor. Born in western Ukraine, he moved to Portland when he was 9. In applying for the award, Usov had to explain his greatest obstacle to becoming a dancer. Usov, who says he’s been called “too short and stocky,” said his was overcoming expectations. “How I found to do that,” he says, “was to try to understand why I was dancing onstage. And for me, being onstage is the most honest thing I have ever done in my life.”

1. FUTURE DRINKING: Southeast Portland dive Space Room is being bought by Genies Cafe owner Justin Johnson, with a mini-Genies moving into the bar’s Brite Spot restaurant space. Johnson plans to open in September with the new concept and hours from 8 am to 2 am, and then slowly transform the space, bring in a craft-beer selection and eventually create a massive patio “a la Rontoms or White Owl Social Club.” >> Tomas Sluiter’s Culmination Brewing, which was set to open last year in Goose Hollow, is now planning to open its beer and sake brewery and taproom in Kerns, just north of Northeast Sandy Boulevard. Sluiter plans a host of beers, including a grapefruit radler and a “forgotten” beer, Burton ale.

1. ROBBED: Atlanta garage-rock band the Coathangers were forced to cancel a date in Canada after the members’ passports were stolen from their van during a gig at Doug Fir Lounge. According to the band’s Instagram, the locks on its van were broken, forcing the trio to spend the day “drinking wine at the nearest Chevrolet dealer” while getting them repaired. It’s a familiar story for touring musicians coming through town: Last year, Brooklyn orchestral pop band San Fermin had $20,000 worth of gear stolen from its van while it was parked outside a hotel near Portland International Airport (“Audio Jacked,” WW, Feb. 26, 2014).

WWeek 2015