Gossip Should Have No Friends

[June 24th, 2009]

• Sweeping the clouds away: WW has announced the lineup for our eighth annual MusicfestNW, and it’s a doozy. Beloved ’90s emo rockers Sunny Day Real Estate headline the four-day festival, set to take place around the city Sept. 16-19. Other confirmed acts include Explosions in the Sky, Bad Brains, Girl Talk, The Get Up Kids, Beach House, Mudhoney and Monotonix, who stole last year’s festival with a wild, reckless show that saw the band march outside Satyricon with most of their clothes off. Wristbands, on sale today for $60, can be purchased directly at the WW office or at Jackpot Records, Music Millennium, the Ace Hotel and Backspace. See musicfestnw.com for information.

• NEVER rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut: Is Portland fomentingThe Sopranos 2.0? Don’t bet Pie-O-My on it, but Justin Rister’s gangland television series, Just Business, now shooting on Sandy Boulevard, did scrounge up Christopher Serrone, the former child actor who played the youngest iteration of Henry Hill in GoodFellas. (Nineteen years later, the actor resides in Eugene.) The show, unlike TNT’s larger production Leverage, is set in Portland as well as shot here. Wait: Portland’s a Mafia town? “No one writes about the mobs out here in the West, but they are here,” says Rister. “Bugsy Siegel hid out here for a long while.” The internet TV distributor KoldCast buys it—on Friday, it optioned Just Business for a two-year run on Comcast OnDemand, DirectTV and TiVo. Rister calls the deal “friggin’ outstanding.”

• RESTAURMAGEDDON CONTINUEs: Alberta Street Oyster Bar and Grill will serve its last meal Sunday, June 28, and reopen as a bar “very shortly.” Miwon BBQ at Fubonn has also closed. Former Clarklewis chef Morgan Brownlow reported Friday on his Facebook page that Cafe 401, the Northeast 28th Avenue restaurant he ran with Kevin Dorney until abruptly resigning in May, has closed: “Just got word that kevin the owner of 401 just shut the doors...it’s done for good folks. Ha ha sucker.” The windows of the restaurant are indeed papered over, but a note in the window says it will reopen July 14. Dorney could not be reached for comment, but a comment he apparently left at Portlandfoodanddrink.com acknowledges the restaurant’s closure.

• NICE NICE LINEUP: The advent of summer means one thing for fans of local music: It’s almost PDX Pop Now! time. The volunteer-driven, all-ages, nonprofit festival is back July 24-26 at Rotture, with a lineup highlighted by performances from art poppers Menomena, electronic duo Nice Nice, jangly rockers The Shaky Hands, and New Zealand’s finest exports, The Mint Chicks. See LocalCut.com for the full lineup and video highlights from past festivals.

• Opine away: WW’s Best of Portland Reader Poll is now live at wweek.com/bop. Vote for your favorite restaurants, bars and bands—it takes only five minutes. We’ll print the winner in the Best of Portland issue July 22.