Gossip Should Have No Friends

[June 10th, 2009]

• BEAVERTON ROCKS: When the Smashing Pumpkins’ longtime drummer Jimmy Chamberlin left in March, lead singer and songwriter Billy Corgan took his search for a new drummer online. And it looks like he found his man (er, kid) in Beaverton. Nineteen-year-old Mike Byrne, drummer for the local band Moses, Smell the Roses, has been identified by Pumpkins blog Hipsters United as the big winner. Now if he can just get Corgan to play the hits again. WW could not reach Bryne to confirm the gig by press time.

• MATCHMAKERS: No Vacancy!, the capstone project of four PSU urban planning grad students, is helping put central eastside’s unused warehouses and storefronts to good use: by playing matchmaker between building owners and locals who’d “activate” the sites for temporary creative projects, from a circus camp for kids to a testing lab for a community composting program. According to No Vacancy!’s Briana Meier, more than a dozen eastside landowners told the crew they’d be willing to donate their spaces—or charge lower rent or sign short lease agreements—for projects that “benefited the community.” Meier and her fellow students created a nuts-’n’-bolts guide to help property owners and project makers connect. On Wednesday, June 10, they hand all their work over to the Central Eastside Industrial Council, which will maintain the program, at a public party from 7 to 10 pm at Gallery Homeland (2505 SE 11th Ave., novacancyproject.wordpress.com). Oh, FYI: the central eastside’s biggest landowners? Public entities—including ODOT and PDC’s still-empty Burnside Bridgehead space.

• HOT DIGGITY VEGGIE DOG: Portland’s PGE Park ranks third in People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ lineup of America’s top 10 vegetarian-friendly minor league ballparks. Turns out PGE Park scores well for its offerings of Gardenburgers, Gardenburger Philly-style sandwiches, Tofurky veggie dogs, Polish kielbasa and various salads. That raises one more “question” for Portland Beavers owner Merritt Paulson: Will the menu migrate with the Triple-A team to Lents?

• AND THE DRAMMY GOES TO: The big winners at Monday’s Drammy Awards for outstanding achievement in Portland theater: Tigard’s Broadway Rose Theatre Company, with nine awards including outstanding production for last summer’s Les Miserables; Portland Center Stage, with eight awards, four of them for How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found; and Storm Large, who tearfully accepted awards for both songwriting and acting for her solo show, Crazy Enough.

• FLASK IT: The OLCC still hasn’t delivered Kevin Ludwig’s liquor license for Beaker Flask—but Ludwig says he’s opening June 25, booze or no booze

• RESTAURANT APOCALYPSE: Another week, another closure: “Blame it on the ‘economic crisis,’ or the location, or what have you…the business is just not pulling in what it needs/used to, and the costs heavily outweigh the intake,” Cava co-owner Randy Montgomery wrote to his restaurant’s email list last weekend. The under-the-radar Euro boîte, which with its cozy lighting and hearty cassoulet, seemed to herald a sort of food renaissance in the underserved Foster-Powell area when it opened in late 2008, closed for good Sunday, June 7.