If you’re reading this, you probably know the value of the Mercury’s news reporting, arts and culture coverage, event calendar, and the bevy of events we host throughout the year. The work we do helps our city shine, but we can’t do it without your support. If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us. Thanks for your support! 

Good morning, Portland! After days of wretched heat, it’s finally set to cool down today…if the mid-80s can be considered “cool.” I have my eyes on fall weather, but this is more tolerable than we’ve experienced in recent days.

Anyway, let’s get to the news.

IN LOCAL NEWS:

• The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) quietly started work on the first phase of its I-5 Rose Quarter project earlier this week. After nearly a decade of preparation for this very moment, it’s notable that there was no ribbon-cutting or groundbreaking ceremony for the event. That’s probably because ODOT leaders read the room, and the room is a little wary of the state transportation department spending tens of millions of dollars to begin a freeway megaproject while Oregon experiences a massive transportation funding crisis. To be clear, ODOT has only started on a small portion of the Rose Quarter project, set to cost about $75 million and consisting of some kinda boring maintenance work. But the agency wants to complete the project in its entirety, including expanding the freeway and adding caps to reconnect the Albina neighborhood, and that’s going to run the state more than $2 billion. State lawmakers are set to return to Salem on Friday for a special legislative session focused on transportation funding (since they didn’t pass one during the regular session). While the legislators are unlikely to make any decisions directly pertaining to the Rose Quarter project during the special session, the mood at the Capitol may be indicative of what we can expect in larger negotiations down the line. Stay tuned. 

• Former (failed) Oregon representative and current US Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is selling her fellow Oregonians out for the possibility of approval from her god Donald Trump. At a cabinet meeting this week, Chavez-DeRemer thanked Trump for “what [he’s] doing with [his] agents on ICE” and asked him to “come to Portland, Oregon, and crack down.” Chavez-DeRemer, who apparently believes Trump is the “transformational president of the American worker” (because she doesn’t actually care about American workers), faced immediate backlash for her request. She doesn’t have the authority to command a “crack down” in Portland—and she’s from Happy Valley, BTW—but her words could indicate “local support” for deploying the National Guard in our city, against the wishes of everyone who actually lives and governs here. Bad job, Lori, as always. 

 

It’s bad enough to flatter the boss as a requirement for employment. But it’s even worse to sell out your fellow Oregonians along the way.

[image or embed]

— Senator Ron Wyden (@wyden.senate.gov) August 26, 2025 at 7:38 PM

• The Portland Book Festival is coming up in November, and festival host Literary Arts has just released the list of authors who will be in attendance. The Mercury has compiled a list of authors we’re excited to see at the fest to help you get hyped and prepare for the event. Among them: Omar El Akkad, the author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, beloved and prolific writer Susan Orlean, and local legends Lidia Yuknavitch and Jon Raymond. Find out more here. 

• And check out the Mercury‘s music picks of the week, which include Ural Thomas & the Pain and Laura Gibson at Topaz Farms, Bright Eyes at Grand Lodge, and a Fred Cole Birthday Celebration with Toody Cole/Los Hackals/The Reverberations at the Crystal Ballroom. 

IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS: 

• A mass shooter at a Minneapolis Catholic school has killed at least two children and injured dozens in a horrific shooting this morning. News from this event is just coming out as I write this, so few details are currently available, but the shooting has apparently been contained and no longer poses an active threat to Minneapolis residents. The children who survived the shooting, and the families of those who did not, will bear the scars of our murderous country and society forever. 

• On Monday, President Trump signed an executive order telling the Justice Department to start prosecuting people for burning the American flag, saying those who burn the flag “incite riots at levels we’ve never seen before.” Um, ok, Mr. Insurrection. The Supreme Court has previously ruled—multiple times—that flag burning is protected speech. But will they say something different if asked to weigh in again now? Anything’s possible in the kangaroo court. Regardless, this is another frightening overreach from the executive branch, symbolizing our country’s rapid descent into authoritarianism. Nobody’s going to save us but ourselves. 

• In more redistricting news, the Utah Legislature has been ordered to redraw its congressional map to ensure districts don’t favor any party—which may give Democrats another seat in the (relatively, compared to the rest of Utah) liberal bastion of Salt Lake City. The new map is supposed to come into play for the 2026 midterms, but Republican appeals could delay adoption until 2028. Still, it’s a tiny piece of good news amid everything else. 

• More good news from a red state, whose residents seem to be distancing themselves from Trump’s Republican Party: 

 

NEW RESULT: Democrats have flipped a state Senate in Iowa.

This was a seat Trump carried by 11%, but Democratic nominee Catherine Drey has just won it by 10.4%.

This is the second legislative flip by Dems in Iowa this year. It also means the GOP loses its supermajority in Iowa’s senate.

— Taniel (@taniel.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 6:35 PM

 

• Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are engaged. ‘Nuff said.  

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) broke ground on the first phase of the I-5 Rose Quarter project this week—an event nearly a decade in the making. But the occasion commenced without fanfare. Even after years of buildup for the project, ODOT didn’t hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark its official start, nor did the agency publicize the groundbreaking on social media. 

In January, when ODOT initially publicized its plans to begin construction on the Rose Quarter project, the agency announced plans for a “community groundbreaking celebration.” But the tone has changed since then. Rose Quarter project spokesperson Rose Gerber told the Mercury that ODOT made the decision to hold off on a groundbreaking ceremony in light of the agency’s current funding crisis, though she said the agency and its partners may “acknowledge the milestone” in a way yet to be determined. 

The groundbreaking comes amid a statewide transportation crisis, which could lead to hundreds of layoffs at ODOT, among other consequences. On Friday, August 29, state legislators will return to Salem for a special session focused on transportation funding, following their failure to pass a long-anticipated transportation package during their regular session earlier this year. 

Some lawmakers, wary of—or outright opposed to—the proposed tax increases included in the transportation funding bill, have raised concerns about ODOT’s fiscal stewardship throughout the legislative process. Public testimony about the funding proposal has reflected similar concerns, with some Oregonians targeting ODOT megaprojects, including the Rose Quarter project, as specific examples of how they believe the state is mismanaging the tax dollars it already has. 

Many people in favor of a transportation package are similarly uneasy about ODOT’s financial choices. But they say passing a funding bill is necessary in order to keep Oregon’s roads in order and our public transit systems afloat, among other priorities.

Whether or not lawmakers manage to pass a transportation funding package during the special session, it’s a tense time for the transportation department to begin work on the Rose Quarter project. Despite the agency’s financial precariousness, ODOT recently received the green light from the Oregon Transportation Commission to start initial construction on the plan. The agency is currently working on what it has dubbed phase 1A of the plan: a $75 million piece of the full, $2.1 billion Rose Quarter project puzzle. 

Phase 1A isn’t the most glamorous project, consisting of maintenance work including stormwater facility construction and seismic retrofits to two I-5 bridge structures. But ODOT says it’s necessary to complete the rest of the Rose Quarter plan, including the freeway expansion (which the agency says is necessary for congestion relief) and the cap construction (intended to reconnect the historically Black lower Albina district, which was bisected by I-5 construction in the 1960s). 

Some people have criticized ODOT for breaking ground on the project at all, considering the budget reality the agency faces. 

“It is not possible to deliver on the promise of low taxes while retaining currently planned highway expansions, most notably the Rose Quarter,” Portland resident Timothy Slevin-Vegdahl wrote in public testimony to the legislature. “Cancelling unnecessary highway expansions is the single most fiscally responsible option the state has to reduce taxation burden for Oregonians while maintaining its existing transportation system.” 

In recent months, ODOT has faced a series of immense financial challenges, putting its plan to expand and cap I-5 through Portland’s Rose Quarter in serious jeopardy. The project suffered a major blow when the federal government rescinded more than $400 million in Biden-era grant funds, which ODOT intended to use to get capital construction underway. 

Oregon’s transportation agency has also been in a general freefall since the state legislature failed to pass a transportation funding package before their regular session adjourned in June. If legislators once again fail to pass a funding package, ODOT leaders say hundreds of its workers will face imminent layoffs, and it won’t have the budget to carry out basic transportation services. 

Acknowledging the funding crisis, Gerber emphasized that the funds still allocated to the Rose Quarter project can’t be redirected to a general transportation fund, saying ODOT isn’t legally allowed to use money dedicated to the project to prevent layoffs or help with other general fund needs. 

The Oregon Legislature did allocate dedicated funding to the Rose Quarter project back in 2017, when legislators passed the state’s last major transportation bill. But lawmakers have since given ODOT the authority to reallocate Rose Quarter funds to other projects, which it did in 2021 in order to fund construction on the I-205 Abernethy Bridge project. It may also be possible for the legislature to allow ODOT to use previously allocated funds for wider use. But ODOT leaders have remained determined to start initial work on the Rose Quarter project, even with the knowledge that there’s currently no viable path forward for the big-ticket parts of the plan. 

Legislators won’t be focused on the I-5 Rose Quarter plan during the upcoming special legislative session, and the project will remain economically imperiled regardless of the outcome in Salem. Still, whether or not legislators are in the mood to approve a major spending package could signal their openness to funding the remainder of the project in the future. 

ODOT has publicized the Rose Quarter project as an opportunity to right historical wrongs against Black Portlanders who lived and worked in the Albina neighborhood prior to a series of “urban renewal” projects in the area, including the original construction of I-5. In addition to the freeway caps, which ODOT says will reconnect the surface street network and allow for the revitalization of the Albina neighborhood, the agency has promised to prioritize hiring Black contractors to work on the project. 

Throughout the project’s recent ups and downs, Albina neighborhood advocates have remained dedicated to seeing the project through. Even now, when the outlook for the project appears so grim, they want to make sure the plan stays on state leaders’ minds. 

“The I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project remains a central focus, not only of our organization, but of the central thrust of this state,” JT Flowers, director of government affairs at Albina Vision Trust, said during an August 25 hearing for the upcoming special legislative session. “As [Portland] seeks to repair our reputation nationally and re-anchor ourselves economically, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reinvigorate the economic heartbeat of Portland, Central City, and Oregon as a whole.”

Reading can be a solitary pursuit. Therefore, getting out of the house for the Portland Book Festival isn’t just a fun way to spend a Saturday in November—it’s probably good for your mental health. 

Every year, nonprofit Literary Arts brings a passel of writers, publishers, and book lovers to the Portland Art Museum and South Park Blocks to mark the start of cozy-nights-in-with-a-good-book season—on the other side of summer’s debaucherous beach read bacchanals. This year marks the 20th anniversary of what began as Wordstock—renamed in 2018—where attendees get to interact (no touching) with authors from all genres and backgrounds, hawking their words in the most enjoyable way possible: via talks and readings that’ll give you way too many good ideas of what to read next. Bring a tote, because you’re going to take home an armful of new things to stack on the nightstand. 

Hot on today’s announcement of this year’s lineup, here are eight—from the long list of authors, poets, and comics artists—we’re excited to see:

Reginald Dwayne Betts

Poet and prison reform advocate Reginald Dwayne Betts is the founder of Freedom Reads, which gives prisoners access to literature—something that changed Betts’s life when he was incarcerated as a teen. He named his latest collection of poems Doggerel, but it’s anything but: These are poems about the moments of gentle truth and beauty that come from a freedom hard won.

Omar El Akkad

The name of Omar El Akkad’s book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This comes from a 2023 tweet of El Akkad’s that went viral in the weeks after Israel’s initial assault on Gaza. The tweet has become a perfect encapsulation of the passivity of Western onlookers, growing in incisiveness as that assault has metastasized into an undeniable genocide. The Portland-based novelist and journalist—a longtime reporter for Toronto’s Globe and Mail and author of American War and What Strange Paradise—reckons with the impotence of America’s empty promises and the responsibility of fatherhood in a society where the privileged continue to dehumanize and, in some cases, destroy those they deem expendable.

Related: Author Q & A: Omar El Akkad on Gaza, Power, and the Stories Empires Steal

Angela Flournoy

Following up her acclaimed debut novel The Turner House, Angela Flournoy’s The Wilderness depicts a group of five Black women during the first two decades of their young adulthoods. Using each character as a different lens to view the social, economic, and political upheavals of the 21st century, Flournoy has attempted something you just don’t see on new-release bookshelves all that often: a modern American epic, driven by emotion, personality, and the realities of contemporary life.

Susan Orlean

Susan Orlean has no shortage of accolades, but for my money her most prestigious credit is as a writer on the excellent HBO series How To with John Wilson. That show gave investigative journalism a brilliant new form, something Orlean has done several times over her career with nonfiction books like The Orchid Thief and The Library Book. Her new one, Joyride, is a memoir about her life as a writer, exploiting her global adventures and detailing the nuts and bolts of her craft. It might be the most useful volume for aspiring authors since Stephen King’s On Writing.

Pádraig Ó Tuama

As host of the Poetry Unbound podcast, Pádraig Ó Tuama doesn’t just present some of the finest examples of contemporary poetry (delivered in his irresistible Irish accent)—his subsequent decompression and illumination of the texts provides sparkling literary analysis that conveys his joy at the power of the written word. Ó Tuama often uses an inspirational approach to his readings, delivering insights that listeners can apply to their own lives and relationships. Chances are good he’ll read from his own recent collection of poetry, Kitchen Hymns, which reckons with theology, queerness, and the undeniability of the natural world.

Jon Raymond

Updike or Mailer never dared to title a book God and Sex, but Portland author Jon Raymond did—showing sly awareness of the current state of straight-white-male-protagonist narrative fiction. Raymond’s story is about an unsuccessful woo-woo West Coast writer schtupping his buddy’s wife, but when she goes missing in a forest fire, the writer begins some serious spiritual bargaining. God and Sex packs an emotional punch even as it skewers its protagonist’s pretensions—no surprise when you remember that Raymond co-wrote several of Kelly Reichardt’s best films.

Related: God and Sex and Trees

Craig Thompson

Portland graphic novelist Craig Thompson has returned to the memoir form that made his Blankets such a breakthrough, but Ginseng Roots is much more than a recounting of Thompson’s memories of working as a child on a Wisconsin ginseng farm with his siblings. The book is also a multi-dimensional immigrant tale and a document of the ginseng industry in America, amid the shifting labor, agricultural, and immigrant policies of the United States over the past few decades. Like so many American tales that began in 20th-century optimism, this particular ginseng farm collides with 21st-century institutionalized racism and corporate greed. And yet Thompson makes it all personal and effortlessly page-turn-able; the New York Times called Ginseng Roots “a shaggy, imperfect, often beautiful almost-diary.”

Lidia Yuknavitch

Following up The Chronology of Water with her second memoir, Reading the Waves, prolific Portland author Lidia Yuknavitch explores the power of writing as not just a craft but as a method to process past trauma and reshape memories. Yuknavitch is brutally honest with her words, and Reading the Waves has received widespread accolades for the way it bursts through the boundaries of the memoir format.

Related: Reading the Waves Fucks

---

Here’s the full list:

Fiction

Stacey Abrams*, Coded Justice

Emily Adrian, Seduction Theory

Kristen Arnett, Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One

Olufunke Grace Bankole, The Edge of Water

Quan Barry, The Unveiling

Emma Donoghue, The Paris Express

Angela Flournoy, The Wilderness

Jasmine Guillory, Flirting Lessons

Adib Khorram, It Had to Be Him

Katie Kitamura, Audition

Patricia Lockwood, Will There Ever Be Another You

Cleyvis Natera, The Grand Paloma Resort

Anna North, Bog Queen

Emma Pattee, Tilt

Eliana Ramage, To The Moon and Back

Jon Raymond, God and Sex

Karen Russell, The Antidote

Souvankham Thammavongsa, Pick a Color

Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., The El

Jess Walter, So Far Gone

Daniel H. Wilson, Hole in the Sky

Rebecca Yarros*, Onyx Storm

Leni Zumas, Wolf Bells

---

Nonfiction

Nicholas Boggs, Baldwin: A Love Story

Jason De León, Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling

Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Melissa Febos, The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex

Jill Lepore, We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution

Tyler Malek, America’s Most Iconic Ice Creams: A Salt & Straw Cookbook

Joshua McFadden, Six Seasons of Pasta

Julian Brave NoiseCat, We Survived the Night

Susan Orlean, Joyride

Tara Roberts, Written in the Waters: A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging

Chyana Marie Sage, Soft as Bones

Craig Thompson, Ginseng Roots

Lidia Yuknavitch, Reading the Waves

---

Poetry

Reginald Dwayne Betts, Doggerel

Taylor Byas, Resting Bitch Face

Pádraig Ó Tuama, Kitchen Hymns

m. mick powell, Dead Girl Cameo

Patricia Smith, The Intentions of Thunder

Mai Der Vang, Primordial

---

Young Adult

Aashna Avachat, Love Craves Cardamom

Kalynn Bayron, Make Me a Monster

Alanna Bennett, The Education of Kia Greer

Alexis Castellanos, Lemons and Lies

Courtney Gould, What the Woods Took

Marissa Meyer, The House Saphir

Dustin Thao, You’ve Found Oliver

Trang Thanh Tran, They Bloom at Night

---

Middle Grade

Derrick Barnes, The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze

Michael Buckley and Forrest Burdett, The Weirdies

Nidhi Chanani, Super Boba Cafe #2: Home Sea Home

Jonathan Hill, Lizard Boy 2

Brándon Hoang, Minecraft: One Last Quest

G.T. Karber, Murdle Jr.: Sleuths on the Loose and Murdle Jr.: Ready Set Solve!

Jose Pimienta, Halfway to Somewhere

Aron Nels Steinke, Speechless

Misa Sugiura, Momo Arashima Duels the Queen of Death

Shana Targosz, River of Spirits

Renée Watson, All the Blues in the Sky

---

Picture Book

Zoey Abbott, The Kite Collector and This Year, a Witch!

Vera Ahiyya, Getting Ready for First Grade and Getting Ready for Halloween

Emily Arrow, Dear Bookstore

Derrick Barnes, I Got You

Michelle Jing Chan, Weiwei’s Winter Solstice: A Dōngzhì Story

Nora Ericson, The Bunny Ballet

Donna Barba Higuera, The Unlikely Aventuras of Ramón and El Cucuy and Xolo

Tae Keller and Rachel Wada, We Carry the Sun

Curtis Manley and Tracy Subisak, Grace Builds an Almost-Perfect Dog

Dan Santat, The Day the Books Disappeared

Carrie Tillotson, Alpacas Here, Alpacas There

Rachel Michelle Wilson, To Catch a Ghost

---

Pop-Up Authors

Karleigh Frisbie Brogan, Holding

Amanda Hawkins, When I Say the Bones I Mean the Bones

Justin Hocking, A Field Guide to the Subterranean

Sara Jaffe, Hurricane Envy

Ever Jones, Transanything

Jennifer Perrine, Beautiful Outlaw

Keith Rosson, Coffin Moon

Leah Sottile, Blazing Eye Sees All

Gabriel Urza, The Silver State

Lisa Wells, The Fire Passage and more to be announced.

---

Portland Book Festival happens at Portland Art Museum and neighboring venues in the South Park Blocks around 1219 SW Park, Sat Nov 8, 10 am–6 pm, admission $18 and up, free for youth 17 and under, along with veterans and active military, Arts for All passes available those receiving SNAP benefits, tickets at literary-arts.org, all ages. 

*Abrams and Yarros appear at ticketed headliner events at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

Long time reader! I’m a mostly straight boy in my early 20s with a new girlfriend. I say “mostly straight” because I’m into bondage and finding men who wanted to tie me up was always easier than finding women who wanted to tie me up. But I met a girl at a party early this summer and she’s beautiful and smart and really into me. But she isn’t into bondage and she’s not okay with me getting tied up outside our relationship. She says I should “stop being kinky” for her, as it makes her uncomfortable to think I have sexual needs she can’t meet. She also hates thinking about me being “abused by predators.” None of the half a dozen men and one woman who’ve tied me up since I became sexually active were “predators.” If anything, they were extremely kind to me, and I’ve had nothing but good experiences. But seeing my bondage photos deeply upset my girlfriend. (She asked to see them when we “laid our kink cards on the table,” which we did three months in, like you recommend.)

I know what you’re going to tell me — break up with her — but there aren’t lots of other girls lining up to date me. I’m tall and skinny and pretty in a twinky way that attracts male attention but seems to turn women off. (Gay men are disappointed when I tell them I’m straight, but at least they believe me. When I tell women I’m straight, they think I’m lying.) The last time I had a girlfriend was in high school, Dan, and I’ve really enjoyed having a girlfriend for the first time in my adult life. Finding another girl who is into me isn’t going to be easy.

Is this a case where I need to settle? (“Settling down requires settling for.” — Dan Savage) My very first sexual fantasies were about bondage. I don’t think I’ve ever had an orgasm when I wasn’t either thinking about being tied up or actually tied up. Do I give up my kink for now — or pretend to give it up (I’ll still be thinking about it) — in the hopes that my girlfriend gets more comfortable over time? Or do I break up with her even if it means I’ll be alone the rest of my life? I sometimes wish I wasn’t like this. It honestly feels like a curse. Finding a girl who is into me is hard enough. Finding one who is also into the kind of bondage I need feels impossible.

Thai American Bondage Boy

P.S. I’m only 24 but I count as a “long time reader” because mom told me to start reading you when she found the porn I was looking at when I was 14. I’ve been reading and listening ever since.

She’s beautiful, she’s smart, and she’s wrong for you — she wasn’t a mistake, she was right for this summer, but she’s not right for you over the long haul.

At 24, TABB, you’re too young to settle for someone who doesn’t respect your sexual needs. (Please note: I said, “doesn’t respect your sexual needs,” I didn’t say, “doesn’t meet each and every one of your sexual needs.”) But even if you were 64, you shouldn’t settle for someone who shames you for having sexual needs/interests/kinks they won’t or can’t meet.

As a long-time reader, you’re no doubt familiar with my “price of admission” concept: we don’t get everything we want from our sexual and/or romantic partners — some needs go unmet, everybody has their annoying habits, no two people are a perfect fit — and deciding you wanna be with someone means paying the price of admission. Your partner is a slob and you’re a neat freak: Is being the one who keeps things tidy without (too much) complaining the price of admission you’re willing to pay to be with them? Then pay it. You’re into anal or bondage or watersports or whatever and your partner isn’t into anal or bondage or watersports or whatever: Is going without anal or bondage or watersports or whatever the price of admission you’re willing to pay to be with them? Then pay it.

Being the one who tidies up (the price of admission I pay to be with my husband) or going without anal or bondage or watersports or whatever are reasonable prices of admission that a reasonable person might be willing to pay to be with someone who makes them happy in lots other ways. But what your girlfriend is asking — what your girlfriend is demanding — is not reasonable. She’s not asking you to go without being tied up by her, TABB, something you might be able to live with if you had other outlets, she’s asking you to reach into your erotic subconscious and rip out your kinks for her psychological comfort. She doesn’t even want you to think about it. Her demands are equal parts unreasonable, disrespectful, and impossible, TABB; it’s not only a price of admission you shouldn’t be willing to pay for her or anyone else, it’s not one you could pay (see: impossible).

That said, TABB, there are lots of happily partnered people with kinks they don’t get to act on because they fell in love with someone who doesn’t share their kinks who insists on monogamy. But there’s a difference between a loving partner who says, “You can only explore this through fantasy and solo play,” and a controlling lunatic who says, “You must cut this out like it’s some sort of tumor.” The loving partner’s ask (“I’m willing to make space for this”) demonstrates respect for your erotic autonomy. The lunatic partner’s ask (“I’m asking you to kill this part of yourself”) shows no respect for your erotic autonomy, TABB, and puts you in the impossible position of having to lie to your partner for the rest of your life. (And since there’s no chemo for kink — there’s no cure — she’s gonna catch you looking at bondage porn, TABB, and your awful girlfriend won’t be as understanding as your wonderful mother was.)

Now, you could play the long game here — you could tell your girlfriend what she wants to hear and hope she comes around — and I’ve met people at kink events (enthusiastic participants) who weren’t into kink until they fell in love with someone who was and slowly warmed to their partner’s kinks. But they tended to be the kind of vanilla people (or formerly vanilla people) who’d given their kinky partners permission to enjoy and explore their kinks on their own and not the kind of vanilla people who demanded that their partners take their kinks behind the barn and Old Yeller ‘em. (Google it.)

Finally, TABB, right now you’re telling yourself this girl was a fluke and that she’s the only pretty girl you’re ever gonna pull. There’s a different story you could be telling yourself about your experience this summer: You’ve grown into your body and/or aged into your face and you’re suddenly attracting female attention, and this girl — and the fling you had with her this summer — is the proof. But instead of telling yourself a story that builds your confidence (“Getting this girl proves I can get girls!”), TABB, you’re telling yourself a story that tears it down (“This girl is the only girl I’m ever going to get.”). Beating yourself up when you could be building yourself up is a choice, TABB, and it’s a dumb one.

P.S. You’re a grown man! Get involved in the kink scene where you live. Keep going to normie parties where you’ll meet women who may or may not be kinky — you never know — while also attending kink events where you’ll meet women who are definitely kinky. And you might wanna learn to switch, TABB, as most women into bondage are subs. A woman who’s just as turned on by bondage as you are won’t ask you to “just stop being kinky,” TABB, and she’s far likelier to be okay with you getting your submissive needs met elsewhere if she can’t meet them for you herself. (You and your subby girlfriend can go to play parties and get tied up together! Think of how much fucking fun that would be!)

P.P.S. Listening to you say you wish you weren’t kinky made my heart ache, TABB, because it reminded me of how I used to wish — when I was 14 — that I wasn’t gay. I felt that way at the time because all the bad things came immediately (disappointed parents, lost friends, crushing loneliness) while the good things took a lot longer to come. It wasn’t until I was the age you are now, TABB, that I could see how much good had come into my life because I was gay; I had gone places and done things (and people) I wouldn’t have gone and done if I weren’t gay. The experiences of a young gay boy and a kinky straight boy aren’t analogous, but the more you put yourself out there — the more people you meet, the more places you go, the more things you get tied to — the sooner you’ll be able to see all the good things/people/experiences that wouldn’t be in your life if it weren’t for your kink.  One day you’ll be with a woman who loves you — all of you — and she’ll be someone you wouldn’t have met if you weren’t at the same shibari workshop. And you’ll look at her and your life together and you’ll think, “Holy shit, I have my kink to thank for her.”

P.P.P.S. Send my love to your mother.

P.P.P.P.S. In case I wasn’t clear: dump your girlfriend.

---

Long time reader here, Dan. Cis man, happily married to a lovely woman more than twenty years. I’m probably something like a Kinsey 2-3 (and unconflicted about it), and I’ve concluded it’s high time I sucked a dick or two while I’m still hot enough for it to be fun for the other parties. I don’t really need to process any of that and understand the importance of informing my wife beforehand and working with her limits about sexual safety, etc. What I’d like to hear from you is your practical advice about the best way to have a good first time.

I live in a large city where more or less every option is possible — bars, spas, sex clubs, apps, etc. — and all of these seem like they would lead to such different experiences. I believe in the value of in-person chemistry, so identifying people in real-world spaces seems good. On the other hand, it sounds like everyone is finding each other online these days. I also like a bit of badinage and socializing, but the idea of a gay sex club or bathhouse — where I understand there isn’t a lot of chatter — seems exciting. Dicks get sucked without condoms and suspect I’m more of a swallower than a spitter, so STIs are going to be an unavoidable risk. What’s the best way to manage that risk to protect my wife’s health? Looking forward to your inside-baseball advice.

Cocksucking Rookie Asking For Tips

For dick right away, CRAFT, go to a bathhouse or a sex club or get on Sniffies, the app for pop-up sex parties in private homes. If there’s a dick you want to suck in one of those places, suck it. If there isn’t, don’t. It’s better to wait for dick you’re genuinely attracted to than to start your cocksucking career with dick you could take or leave.

And relax. Bathhouses and sex clubs are full of dudes at every imaginable level of experience and — you’re right — there’s not a lot of chitchat in bathhouses and sex clubs. So, you don’t have to announce that you’re a rookie or explain why you’re there. You just have to be clean, polite, and friendly — same as you would at any other kind of party. And if you get on Grindr to look for someone one-on-one, you might want to tell them it’s your first time, as that will definitely turn some guys on….

---

READ THE REST OF THIS WEEK’S COLUMN HERE! And this week on the Lovecast: We love questions like this: What do gay men actually do with vibrators?

Our guest is the indomitable E Jean Carroll. She is a journalist and the author of five books, including a biography of Hunter S. Thompson, and The New York Times bestselling book NOT MY TYPE: One Woman vs. a President. After Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in 1995, she notably beat him in court, twice. She and Dan have a frank, funny convo about the courage it took to face Trump and his legal team, how the assault impacted her sex life, and how most politicians are cowards. Dan and E Jean clearly love each other, and also divulge an insider advice columnist hack. E Jean Carroll is a hero and belongs on a votive candle. A little of this interview is on the Micro, and the whole thing is on the Magnum. Listen here!

For some, Labor Day Weekend is a signifier of the end of summer. And it is for those heading back to school as students, teachers, and school administrative staff (big shouts to the lunch ladies and janitors of the world). But y’all know this is the PNW (in the year of our Climate Collapsing Lord, 2025)—summer will be extending herself to October. We’ve got plenty of time for river hangs, outdoor shows, and soaking up the sun, as Sheryl Crow loves to gently remind us. 

Below is your “Honeydew List” for the week—that and supporting the liberation of Palestinians, supporting the bodily autonomy of our Trans siblings, and the supporting of Black and Indigenous reparations 🤗

Thursday, August 28
Ural Thomas & the Pain / Laura Gibson

For fans of Lee Fields, Jackie Shane, Sugar Pie DeSanto

Undeniably the King of Portland Soul, Ural Thomas has been bringing the pain since his days playing Harlem’s legendary Apollo Theater in the ’60s. But if you think the man’s slowed down in any way shape or form, you’re painfully mistaken—the 86-year-old has been greasing wheels on Rose City soul trains since the formation of his backing band the Pain, and his reentry into the world of live performance. He is one of the true greats that Portland can call its own. Folk favorite Laura Gibson opens the dreamy night under the 500-year-old oak tree on Sauvie Island. (Topaz Farms, 6 pm, more info here, all ages)

Fred Cole Birthday Celebration with Toody Cole / Los Hackals / The Reverberations 

For fans of Lollipop Shoppe, The Weeds, King Bee

The only time I was lucky enough to see Dead Moon was January 2014 at Crystal Ballroom, and it was one of the most rockin’ nights of music of my life. Everyone there knew every word to every song, no one was there by mistake. And though Fred Cole isn’t with us any more, yes he is. It’s (Dead Moon) nights like these that keep the real ones alive in our hearts. Toody Cole—Fred’s wife, and member of Dead Moon, the Rats, the Range Rats, and Pierced Arrows—helms the party, playing songs from across her and Fred’s catalog. The Jackals cover band Los Hackals, and Portland’s ’60s psyche rockers supreme, the Reverberations, are pulling opener duties on this sacred evening. 54/40 or fight! (Crystal Ballroom, 8 pm, more info here, all ages)

Related: Did you know Fred Cole fronted a short-lived ’70s band called Zipper? Their one self-titled album came out 50 years ago, read former Mercury music editor Ned Lannamann’s review.

Bright Eyes / Saintseneca 

For fans of Rilo Kiley, Belle & Sebastian, Haley Heynderickx

The opening monologue of “At the Bottom of Everything” is immediately recognizable to millions of millennials (myself included) as the first track on Bright Eyes’ monolithic 2005 album, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. Conor Oberst has never been more Conor Oberst than on this album, Bright Eyes never more bright. Self-deprecating heartache, crushing self-awareness, pre-ordained self-sabotage, et al. abound. “Happy birthday, darling. We love you very very very very very very very much.” The experimental harpist Saintseneca delivers his driving take on indie-folk music before we tuck in for a good cry with Conor. (Grand Lodge, 7 pm, more info here, all ages)

Related: Though the Bike Summer ride has already taken place, read about the newly coined Ex-Boyfriend Music genre—inspired by the devastation that is Bright Eyes. 

---

Friday, August 29

Red Pine / Dystoria / Screenshot / Lightly 

For fans of Orchid, City of Caterpillar, Portraits of Past

The booking team at High Limit Room (and Mallbrawlreds) have been doing unbelievable work since recently opening their doors in the former Analog Café space on SE Hawthorne. Case in point: Red Pine’s first show after a brief hiatus is about to destroy many eardrums, shred many a vocal cord. Formed in 2023, the Portland post-hardcore screamo outfit just put out a split EP with Trains—and if the release is anything to go by, the band isn’t anywhere near calling it quits. Cinematic pop à la Dystoria, and the noisy shoegaze of Screenshot and Lightly make for the most excellent late summer Friday night. (High Limit Room, 7 pm, more info here, all ages)

Hazel / Umbraphile / Well of Human Kindness

For fans of Elliott Smith, Hole, Quasi

Kicking around Portland in the early ’90s with the likes of Heatmiser and Team Dresch, Hazel concoct an oozing, grungy power-pop not dissimilar to what was popping off in Seattle around the time. Their 1993 debut album Toreador of Love—released on Sub Pop—remains an underappreciated Rosetta Stone of alternative music in the Pacific Northwest. If you’ve been wanting to groove on some Portland music history, but are needing a break from Wipers and the Exploding Hearts, this is the show for you. Portland jazz-pop youngsters Umbraphile are in the middle slot, with the mysterious Well of Human Kindness on opening responsibilities. (Revolution Hall, 8 pm, more info here, all ages)

---

Saturday, August 30

Sir Richard Bishop / The Modern Folk / John Swanke 

For fans of Psychic TV, Joseph Allred, Marisa Anderson 

Prolific doesn’t even begin to describe the output of Sir Richard Bishop, leader of experimental noise group Sun City Girls. Since his time in Sun City Girls, Bishop has been obsessed with making outsider music using non-traditional tuning, incorporating non-western instrumentation and themes, and not really ever paying attention to genre constraints. In the middle spot are Portland’s Modern Folk, who released the doomy folk album Mf earlier this month—the perfect warmup for SRB. The atmospheric guitar of John Swanke eases us into the evening, playing selections from his new album, Rain Country. (Turn! Turn! Turn!, 8 pm, more info here, 21+)

---

Also very worth it…

Hunx & His Punx / Samuel Globuel at Mississippi Studios – Aug 27, more info here

Whirr / Nothing / Softcult at Revolution Hall – Aug 27, more info here

Idit Shner Quartet at Wilf’s – Aug 28, more info here

Diositopes / Proqxis / Kuma at Mississippi Studios – Aug 28, more info here

The Prids / Darkswoon / The Mighty Missoula at Mississippi Studios – Aug 30, more info here

Pixies / Spoon / Fazerdaze at Edgefield – Aug 30, more info here

---

Portland Music News:

The powerhouses behind the new Powerhouse compilation are some of Portland’s busiest music heads—the band Femme Cell, the DIY punk organizers Mallbrawlreds, and the prolific tape label Pleasure Tapes. The compilation gathers nine unreleased tracks from nine of Portland’s raddest punk and indie bands: Nonbinary Girlfriend, Cereal, Hound, Emerlinda, Swinging, Femme Cell, As Above, Like St Joan, and How Strange It Is. At the time of publication, there are exactly five tapes left on Femme Cell’s Bandcamp. 

The partly Portland-based record label Freedom To Spend have a semi-regular show on NTS, and just released their latest episode (which is—duh—an “NTS Picks”).

In the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan’s Tōhoku region, a resident of the small town of Ōtsuchi opened a public telephone booth in his garden. Inside, a disconnected phone invited visitors to speak their grief aloud, carrying on the wind painful stories that would be near-impossible to let rest anywhere else. Since the installation of this “Wind Phone,” tens of thousands have made the pilgrimage to pick up the receiver and dial into the void. 

Natural reactions to disaster might be choked silence, but for the OO-Ray—Portland-based experimental cellist Ted Laderas—making sound is a way forward. On his new album Marginals, Laderas crafts his own mourning calls. Each track is an elegy referencing a specific calamity, some well known, others more obscure. With a little research, one can surmise that tracks “Vajont” and “Tunguska” respond to the 1963 Vajont Dam landslide in Italy and the Tunguska explosion of 1908 in Siberia. Whether the events are familiar or not, the feelings they stir are universal. As both a memorial and a gesture toward processing existential anxieties, the album insists on remembrance as a form of survival.

Marginals is out on Portland-based record label Beacon Sound, whose commitment to sonic experimentation includes work by Cyane (FKA Dolphin Midwives) and Crystal Quartez, and reissues of Terry Riley classics. For Laderas, the album represents a healing process. He daylights as a bioinformaticist and training director at Seattle’s Fred Hutch Cancer Center; in Marginals’ Bandcamp liner notes, he recalls battles with writer’s block and stage fright, which led him to host mental health-focused “Ambient Zoom” sessions with other Portland artists during the pandemic. Reading about these vulnerabilities, one wonders: What counts as disaster? How do we show up for ourselves while confronting crises—the genocide in Palestine, climate-driven catastrophes, fascist encroachment—that crush us daily? 

One way to investigate these anxieties is through sound. Laderas’ cello has a guttural quality, as if its timbre emerges from somewhere deep in his body—Marginals’ elegies vacillate between these groans and softer sighs. Through a style Laderas calls “shoegazer cello” and “chamber drone,” layered electronics enfold acoustic gestures in a tender, if at times chilling, atmosphere. The cello remains central to Laderas’ ethos, sometimes receding or becoming unrecognizable in ambience. Several tracks feature the instrument prominently, while others lean more heavily into electronic textures, creating a pendulum effect across the record. 

Marginals opens with “Floe,” an icecap of piercing electronic chords looping over cold cello humming beneath the surface. Atmosphere deepens on “163,” which locates a spectral, sci-fi unease through Mark Snow-esque waves of echoing electronics. A cloud of high-pitched sonics swells, and one senses the anxieties Laderas describes surfacing and somersaulting across the track.

“Luna Park” offers a cello-forward ode pulling away from strict ambient territory, though it ends somewhat abruptly, a pattern that reoccurs throughout the album. “Tunguska” twinkles, then fades in a raspy gauze that yearns for a little more resolution.

Laderas’ taste for distortion sticks out on “Erebus,” where sinewy cello notes twist into squeals. The effect is a discordant wash that immerses the ear. The pendulum then swings back to the more melodic “Halifax,” where piano and cello loop in a cyclical progression recalling Michael Nyman’s “Fish Beach.” The composition reaches for shimmery alien tones that ease to a finish. 

Laderas’ elegiac intent and electroacoustic sensibility call up many influences: Arthur Russell’s avant-pop experiments, Cocteau Twins’ drenched textures and misty atmospheres, and the Books’ collaged approach, with its emphasis on sampling the “marginal” and forgotten. In a recent interview with Foxy Digitalis, Laderas noted that in statistics, “marginals” can refer to casualties in a dataset. “We must never forget that people who died in these disasters were real people, and not just casualties or numbers,” he explains. More obvious ambient figureheads like Pauline Oliveros and her sound-as-spiritual practice loom large, too, and Laderas’ love for My Bloody Valentine is clear in his blurred textures and drone-laden veils. 

At first, the absorbing quality of Marginals evoked an auditory planetarium dome. I imagined its songs paired with wide-angle shots of melting ice and Amazon deforestation. A comparison to Philip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi score came naturally, with its hypnotic repetition and spotlight on the overwhelming state of things. But Glass mapped modernity with much more spectacle. Laderas’ distorted cello centers something less grandiose, an internal disquiet that’s difficult to articulate. Koyaanisqatsi caught an aerial shot of life out of balance; Marginals is a close-up of that grief from the ground. 

Beacon Sound’s release show for Marginals was an intimate upstairs gathering at Dream House, an Irvington venue where the clatter of the downstairs bar reverberated through the wooden floorboards. Pianist Derek Hunter Wilson opened with a set of Korg keyboard compositions layered with ambient textures; he played with dizzying dexterity, his hands not unlike hummingbirds’ wings. Hrafnamynd composer Patricia Wolf smoothed transitions with meditative DJ sets, and Amulets’ Randall Taylor conjured vaporous auras of sound with a handheld tape recorder and his electric guitar.

When Laderas took the stage, he carried a Soma Dvina, a two-stringed electroacoustic instrument resembling a cross between a zither and a painter’s easel. The mood shifted and quieted. Laughter drifting from downstairs mingled with washes of diaphanous synth and plaintive strings. In a room full of people, I sensed fragility and beauty—in Laderas’ playing, and in the disasters that surround us at all times, from the natural to the terrifyingly human-made. 

It may not be the answer to our grief, but on Marginals, Laderas reminds us that music is human, too. That counts for something.

---

The OO-Ray’s Marginals was released August 15 and can be found on Beacon Sound’s Bandcamp as a digital download or limited edition cassette.

If you’re reading this, you probably know the value of the Mercury’s news reporting, arts and culture coverage, event calendar, and the bevy of events we host throughout the year. The work we do helps our city shine, but we can’t do it without your support. If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us. Thanks for your support!

Good morning, Portland! We can expect toasty temps today, with a high of 91, but rest assured, we’re done with the triple digit heat wave for now.

Let’s get into the news.

IN LOCAL NEWS:

• Yesterday, Portland Fire, the city’s new WNBA team, announced the team’s new general manager. Vanja Černivec, who previously served as vice president of basketball operations for the Golden State Valkyries, has been tapped to lead operations for the city’s new WNBA team, which is expected to start holding games in 2026. Černivec will be responsible for recruiting a Portland Fire head coach and building a team roster.

• Speaking of announcements, we’ve got our own big news to share. Noisy Creek, the parent company of the Portland Mercury and Seattle’s The Stranger, recently added the Chicago Reader to its family of weeklies. The Reader, which has been around for more than 50 years, is a well-revered institution in the Windy City. Like the Mercury and Stranger, the alt-weekly has been churning out investigative journalism, long-form reporting, and top-notch arts and culture coverage for decades. Read more about the merger here.

• Fire crews are making progress on containing the Flat Fire, a nearly 22,000-acre blaze burning northeast of Sisters. Firefighters say threats from wind and flying embers still loom, but they’ve got more than 800 personnel assigned to the blaze. To date, four houses have been destroyed by the fire, which is burning in Deschutes County and is the largest active fire in Oregon. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

• Temperatures are falling, which means it’s a great excuse to soak up the next four weeks of summer by getting out and exploring all the food, live music, summertime fairs and drag-tastic bingo events Portland has to offer. Check out a handy list of worthy things to do with your week in the latest installment of Do This; Do That. 

Soft serve ice cream, smooth jazz, and weekend block parties fit snugly within the hellscape of this week’s heatwave. Find your stay-cool strategy with Do This, Do That.

[image or embed]

— Portland Mercury (@portlandmercury.com) August 25, 2025 at 4:16 PM

If all your plans fall through, remember to at least go outside and touch grass. Really take in the flora and fauna. 

@oliviabrock95 #pettingzoo #hookerfarmsbyterrykennedy #animals #tennessee #farmanimals #duck #rapping #fyp ♬ original sound – jxvuf

IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS:

• Remember when Trump threatened to turn the US military against Americans? After deploying National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., the Trump administration is now threatening to do the same in Chicago, in a move aimed at quelling crime and civil disturbances, despite no data to suggest crime is on the rise in any of the cities targeted for deployment. An executive order “aims to create specialized units in the National Guard” ABC7 Chicago notes, but the outlet also notes that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker say they haven’t received any communication from the White House. 

“Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here, nor needed here.” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker responds to President Trump’s threats to send National Guard troops to Chicago.

[image or embed]

— MSNBC (@msnbc.com) August 25, 2025 at 1:51 PM

• An air strike on a hospital in Gaza killed 20 people, including five journalists. Among those killed, Mariam Dagga, a 33-year-old Palestinian freelance photographer who contracted with the Associated Press on several occasions to capture starvation and suffering brought on by the war on Gaza. Dagga’s images helped bring the ongoing war’s impact into focus across the globe, even amid denial of the severe malnutrition of children by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As the AP notes, nearly 190 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli fire while covering the deadly conflict.

• ICYMI: The US government bought a 10 percent ownership stake in Intel. The tech company, which has implemented heavy layoffs at its Hillsboro facilities in the past few months, agreed to issue up to 433 million shares of stock to the government. But as some tech industry watchdogs have noted, the money used to buy part of the company will come from money set aside in the CHIPS Act, which the government was already slated to dole out to Intel. Now, it seems that instead of expanding its facilities and adding thousands of jobs as it agreed to do in exchange for CHIPS Act funds, Intel is instead just giving a share of the company to the US government. 

That’s all for today. If you need us, we’ll be self-medicating.

@joepain711 #bellabea #dogsoftiktok #old #tired #lazy ♬ original sound – Cody Winklederp