Straight from the PONY's mouth

Long time no blog! I have been swamped at work getting free massages and facials for an article I'm writing on "hidden gem" spas around Portland, exploring haunted sites for a Halloween-theme article and finding out all about every single awesome event coming to town in the coming months. It's pretty freakin' sweet!

Anyway, I guess it's no surprise, then, that now that I'm working at a city-focused magazine, my posts seem to be focused on the Portland media world (the editor-in-chief leaving Portland Monthly). As many misgivings that I have about that magazine, I have to admit that I appreciated a recent PONY-style piece they did called "NY State of Mind." Some of the staffers were in the Big Apple recently and asked people they came across what they knew about Portland. The responses:

Driver: "I've only heard of Oregon."
[What do you know about it?]
"Nothing."
[Just that it's west?]
"I didn't even know that."

Product developer: "Good hospitals. OBGYN researchers in Portland. It's a good market to test new products."

Hotel doorman: "Home of Nike. That's all I know."

Bartender: "The love of my life left me and moved there, so I have mixed feelings."

Woman at lunch: "Powell's Books. Beer."

Marketing exec: "It's so lush and beautiful. My husband toured with Imago Theatre there. I'd love to get back there."

Coffee cart guy: "Isn't it somewhere in the United Kingdom?"

Cabbie: "Is that a store? I'm embarrassed to say I don't even know where it is."

Some predictable, some sad....I know when I lived in New York, most east coasters didn't know much about good ole Portland - common question, "What there?" "What's it like there?" - but everyone who has since visited me has fallen in love with it (Kristin, Brooke). Well, duh!

Oh, and by the way, they illustrated the piece by showing quote bubbles coming out of an apple half. Ugh.

Trouble in paradise?

Some interesting news on the Portland media front:

Rumor has it (thanks for the heads up, Jen!) that Louise Lague, the new editor-in-chief of Portland Monthly, has been ousted after only 2 months on the job. Yikes! I'm never sure what's going on over there anymore because the two founding editors I worked with left awhile ago (hmmm, now I wonder why...), but something's gotta be up. Check out the more informed gossip at Portland Media Watch (why didn't I know about this blog before today?!).

After only 3 days on the job at PDX Magazine, I can only imagine what all the media gossips will be saying about us in a couple weeks. I guess it's all a part of the job description, especially in such a small market as Portland (hell, even the biggest market - New York - is riddled with gossip!). Us media folks are such navel gazers! I'd apologize, but I just can't help it.

Give and Take

Sometimes my Dad is on top of some pop culture stuff before me - yes, it's painful to admit, but it's true. Yesterday, I paid him and my cat, Boo, a visit, and he was watching Al Gore's new TV channel, Current.

I'd heard of the channel, of course, because I get various media-related newsletters, but other than the name and Al Gore, I didn't really know anything about it. Well, it turns out that it's sort of a blog for TV....short segments (no more than 15-minutes), many of them produced and submitted to the channel from real people (some crazy guy base jumping off cliffs, another wacky one working random jobs, a documentary of the characters working at the fulton fish market in nyc, etc), and other regular segments like "current Google" - a (young and hip, of course) talking head making comments about Google search results based on a certain word - "current Mentor" - words of advice from people like Deepak Chopra (write in and tell them who you want to hear from) - "current Gig" - a day in the life of a certain job (it's a young female minister right now) - "The Current Parent" - chronicles a young couple becoming parents - "current Maverick" - a profile on someone breaking boundaries (a motorcross racer with lots of scars right now) - "current Culture" - currently (ha!) highlighting the urban acrobats of parkour - "current Hottie" - a, yes, very hot Abercrombie & Fitch model - and more.

My favorite is "current Style" (duh!), though I hate that it's obviously sponsored by Loreal. Still, they had this great feature on last night about La Miroiterie, an artists' co-op in Paris that includes a "store" full of stuff - if see something you want, you take it and leave something you don't want behind. Yeah, I know that it's pretty much the age-old barter/trade system, but it is freakin' BRILLIANT!

Right now, the back seat of my car is full of clothes I don't want anymore, but I'm not quite ready to just give them away. I've tried to sell them several times at Buffalo Exchange, always hoping to get a different buyer, hoping they'll be buying for a new season, but I've still got piles and piles of garments they don't want. If I could trade them for stuff that's at least new to me, I would have no problem unloading my stuff for "free." I just really love the idea that the clothes (or books or movies or music or plates or whatever) that I'm sick of could make someone else really happy, and vice versa. It's all relative. Not to mention how great it would be to just keep all this stuff in circulation, not adding to landfills and not buying new stuff to pile on top of it all. And you know me, little miss consumer, so if even I like this idea, than it must be good!

I think I should open a store (or "co-op") like this in Portland - I'll call it PDXchange. It'll be a hit....though it won't make me any money. Then again, I guess the lack of money has never really stopped me before (i.e. my low-paying journalism/magazine career)...

So, to sum it all up, check out Current TV, channel 125 on Comcast in Portland! And trade yo' stuff!