🌱 City Workers Strike Avoided+Over The Omicron Peak

It's Friday, my friends, and you know how much I love Friday. I'd love to send you off on your weekend, but I should probably tell you a little about today before I do.

First, today's weather:

Wow, the beautiful weather continues! Mostly sunny today with a high of 58.

Here are the top stories in Portland today:

1. It's clearly not an I-dill situation. Dillon T. Pickle is missing, apparently the victim of theft. The situation has left a very sour taste (or at least a half-sour taste) in the mouths of the Portland Pickles semi-pro baseball team. Dillon is the team mascot. (Portland Patch)
2. Colleen Carroll helped found Don’t Evict PDX, a renters advocacy group organized to address the confusing and ever-changing protections established for tenants during the COVID-19 pandemic. Carroll spent months watching eviction court hearings to understand the process, during which she observed a “horrifying” power imbalance. That’s why Carroll and other tenants’ rights organizations are mounting a campaign to guarantee legal counsel to anyone facing an eviction notice in Multnomah County. (Portland Mercury)
3. The District Council of Trade Unions, which represents nearly 1,200 city workers across nearly all Portland bureaus — including accountants, water maintenance workers and building inspectors— called off its threatened strike today, reaching a tentative contract with the city hours before walking off the job. (Willamette Week)
4. The City of Portland continues to tweak and update its Slow Streets Program. Launched in May 2020 as a response to COVID-induced demand for socially-distanced biking and walking, the Portland Bureau of Transportation first placed rickety signs and plastic barrels at over 100 locations citywide. Then in 2021, with a ringing endorsement from the public on its side, PBOT upgraded the fixtures to more robust concrete planters. In the past few weeks the new signs have popped up all over the city. They've been seen on residential side streets at Southeast Division and 86th, SE Lincoln and 60th, and on the Alameda Ridge. (Bike Portland)
5. We've made it through the omicron peak, according to Dr. Jennifer Vines, the health officer for Multnomah County. "It's a tall peak, so we're still gonna see plenty of disease on the way down," Vines said. The omicron surge came on fast and made a significant impact, infecting thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of Oregonians weekly. The state is finally seeing some relief, and with that, taking some steps toward normalcy. (KATU)

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Today in Portland:

• Are you experiencing health challenges or physical pain? Learn powerful ways to transform them. Learn the fundamentals and discover how to self-heal yourself using these new and ancient teachings and techniques. Master Sha Tao Center of Portland presents this 2-hour complimentary class online via Zoom. 7:00 - 9:00 PM.
• Get your country music fix at Alberta Abbey in NE Portland as it presents Lavender Country. While LAVENDER COUNTRY (1973) was little known outside the Pacific Northwest and only released one self-distributed album, it created a genuine cultural milestone; the first openly gay country album. Also performing will be Laith & The Texas Birds and Jack Habegger's Celebrity Telethon. Tickets are available online. The show starts at 7:00 PM.
• Even in a place like Portland, you can never have too much craft beer. It's with great pleasure that I announce the Grand Opening of Labyrinth Forge Brewing Company in NE Portland. After many months of construction delays and much hand wringing, it is opening the tasting room to the public! Come on by and taste available beers and take some home with you in 16oz or 32oz growlers, cans or bottles. 6:00 - 9:00 PM.
• If you're looking for a dance night, you'll want to head to the High Dive in SE Portland for I'M NOT OKAY! An Emo and Pop Punk Dance Party. This Valentine's Day, it's okay to cry! DJ Baby Van Beezly will play throwbacks from The Used, My Chemical Romance, Blink-182, Taking Back Sunday, and more to an angsty anti-Valentine crowd. Scream along; you probably remember all of the lyrics. Doors open at 8:00 PM.
• The Sïx in SE Portland presents the bands Gasp and Sleep Debts. Portland’s post-hardcore quartet Gasp aims to be "perfectly chaotic and messily melodic." Noise punks Sleep Debts add some ferocious melodrama to the mix. Doors open at 9:00 PM.

From my notebook:

• On May 26th, 2017, on the Portland MAX light rail service, a white supremacist named Jeremy Christian began threatening two teenage girls; one of the girls was black, the other in hijab. Three other men, all strangers on the same train, stood up to Christian, defending and ultimately saving the girls. Christian attacked the three men with a knife, killing 53-year-old Ricky John Best and 23-year-old Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche and injuring Micah David-Cole Fletcher. Taliesin's last words were, "Tell everyone on this train I love them." (The Guardian)
• Vodka from cheese? No whey! The inspiration for Wheyward Spirit came to founder and CEO Emily Darchuk while waiting in line at the liquor store. The young product development specialist with master’s degrees in food science and technology from Oregon State University and innovation and entrepreneurship from the University of Oregon had been contemplating possible remedies for the environmental havoc wrought by whey. Why hadn’t some entrepreneur tried distilling, say, the untapped abundance of a nutrient-rich liquid currently clogging the American ecosystem to create a versatile, delicate, creamy but never cheesy, utterly new breed of liquor? (Willamette Week)
• Do you know how Portland came to be called Portland? It goes by many names. The Rose City, Bridge City, Rip City, Stumptown, Soccer City USA and Biketown. But for more than 170 years, it's been known by one name: Portland. It was all due to a coin toss. (KGW)
• Yelp has announced its top 100 places for pizza in the United States – and one Portland restaurant made the list. The mobile app and website created the list in honor of National Pizza Day on Feb. 9. On the list, you’ll find Pinky’s Pizza at #18, located at 3990 N Interstate Ave. Celeste Kiester, who is the owner of the restaurant, said she had no idea about the mention. (KOIN)

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Now that's what I call a Friday! I hope you get to walk around outside in this great weather. Enjoy it while you can, because, knowing Portland in February, it's not going to last. But I'll take it. Have fun, Portland, and meet me back here tomorrow for more tales of Stumptown.

— Dominic Anaya

About me: Doctor, educator and now a writer/artist, I'm just chillin' in Portland, OR with my wife, our ferrets, our chickens and our goats.