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The Battle For Fair Rent — What You Need To Know About Question 1

The Battle For Fair Rent — What You Need To Know About Question 1

It's no secret that Portland is changing — and fast. Tons of development money is pouring in, and with it, a different class of people who can afford higher rents, a process that has accelerated the displacement of long-term residents and exacerbated the housing crunch in the city. On November 7, Portlanders will vote on Question 1, the ordinance proposed by the upstart citizens' group Fair Rent Portland, which aims to cap the rate of rental...

15-10-2017 Hits:835 Features Francis Flisiuk

Columns

Land Use: Coming to a Ballot Near You

You can’t fight City Hall, but you can make up a ballot referendum to throw a wrench into its works. That is the past, present and likely future history of how citizens deal with land use policies that that they do not like. Residents might remember public votes on ordinances concerning Congress Square Park and the views from Munjoy Hill. This time around, residents will be voting on a contentious rent-regulation amendment (Question #1) and an... Read more

16-10-2017 Hits:157 Urban Conditional Zack Barowitz

  • What's taking so long? Mainers…

    Hundreds gathered at last week’s 3rd Annual New England Cannabis Convention amidst stalls displaying everything from the latest lighting and trimming technology, cultivation products, and an array of the latest strains, vaporizers, edibles, and CBD topicals, to talk shop about marijuana. But…

  • Ignore the sound bites — Peopl…

    Roles of Engagement is a column concerning the actions and dimensions of allyship, looking at cultural events both locally and nationally. Sultana Khan (@YesAsInGenghis) is a Portland-based writer and has written for Gawker, Jalopnik, and Dispatch magazine. She can be reached…

  • To Skate or Watch Them Skate: …

    National Book award-nominated American poet Gail Mazur wrote these words about ice skating, describing a girl on a frozen river with her father: “... they glide arm in arm onto the blurred surface together, braced like dancers. She thinks she’ll…

News

Spose makes entire album in one day

Spose makes entire album in one day

Hot off the heels of well-received full-length album Good Luck With Your Life released last spring, Wells rapper Spose set out to accomplish a milestone as impressive as it is absurd. With the help of dozens of esteemed Maine musicians, Spose wrote and recorded a full-length album in one day. Titled Humans and recorded by Jonathan Wyman at The Halo Studio, the album features contributes from several artists in the Maine rap scene, including Cam Groves, Sarah Violette, DJ Rew... Read more

18-10-2017 Hits:45 News Phoenix Staff

  • Portland readies 1st Annual Iranian Film Festival

    Portland readies 1st Annual Iranian Film Festival Students from the University of Southern Maine’s Honors program “Cinema in Iran” course, along with instructor Reza Jalali, will present the 2017 Iranian Film Festival — a first of its kind in Maine —…

  • Taking On The Tuck: City Councilor Spencer Thibode…

    City Councilor Spencer Thibodeau appeared on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight last week to defend a measure he voted on for the city to recognize Indigenous People's Day on the second Monday of October, replacing Columbus Day. Immediately Carlson, who’s developed…

  • A Gross Way to End Your Night Coming to Portland —…

    Dessert in Portland is about to get gross, and you’re not going to want to miss it. Pastry chef Brant Dadaleares is currently working on developing Gross Confection Bar, a dessert-focused restaurant destined to create a niche of its very…

Arts

8 Days a Week: The Undead, The Timeless, and the Stone Aged

8 Days a Week: The Undead, The Timeless, and the Stone Aged

THURSDAY 19 HUMBLE BOWS | Some say the world has already been built, that its great artists have already sung their songs, its coliseums hosted their finest battles, and that we're just here to interpret and rearrange the existing cultural vocabulary into affinity groups. That's horseshit, of course. But the tradition of singing tributes to the world's favorite artists is unflappable, in Portland as it is anywhere, and tonight, several noteworthy Portland musicians and singers abandon their original... Read more

17-10-17 Hits:226 8 Days A Week Nick Schroeder

  • The Theater Project's exposes the beams in Lisa D…

    Even though neither couple’s suburban “starter home” is new, both houses feel somehow unfinished. You can see the seams in the sheetrock. Some newer construction is of bare lumber, not cut square. Even fully built parts of these houses feel low-fi…

  • All that and then some — The work of Barkley Hendr…

    Whenever I go to see a show by a black artist in a primarily white institution I find myself questioning whether I will be distracted by a white gaze and curatorial context. Will I resist an idea of blackness because…

  • Consider 'Sex With Strangers' — Good Theater mount…

    The Good Theater’s season opener is called Sex With Strangers, but don’t get the wrong kind of excited: the real intercourse behind the title is the one that happens when writers share their intimately crafted extensions of self with an…

Food & Drink

Liquid Gold — Lemon beers to treasure

Liquid Gold — Lemon beers to treasure

I'm still sipping beers that use fruits, berries and other adjuncts to achieve unusual flavors. This week, we'll try a few beers that incorporate the most familiar of the citrus fruits – the lemon! Much of the characteristic flavor of the lemon is due to the citric acid it contains, giving it a sour, biting flavor. Lemons also contain a significant quantity of vitamin C, and the peels are rich... Read more

17-10-2017 Hits:117 Drink Seth Levy

  • Cooking Channel's 'Late Night …

    Restaurateur Jordan Andino (of the Filipino taquerias Flip Sigi and 2nd City, both in Manhattan) has landed what many would call a “dream job” in hosting Cooking Channel’s Late Night Eats, a new series chronicling after-hours dining and imbibing throughout North…

  • Rose Foods brings Old-world el…

    Six months ago, I had my first experience at NYC’s Russ & Daughters — specifically, their bustling, narrow location at 179 E Houston St. in Manhattan, referred to by regulars and devotees simply as, “The Shop.” I walked in with an…

  • Passionate about Passion Fruit…

    Passion fruit is the fruit of a flowering vine, whose reportedly comes from the religious, rather than the sexual, meaning of the word passion. Apparently, Missionaries in South America named it in reference to Christ's suffering on the cross. The…

Music

Setting the bar low (and leaping) — TheWorst drops trashy, e…

Setting the bar low (and leaping) — TheWorst drops trashy, exhilarating 'Jane Doe Embryo'

It’s no slight to the three musicians of Portland rock band TheWorst, each totally capable and believably spirited with decades-long CVs making independent music, but we live in an era where stripped-down, mid-tempo fuzzed-out grungepunk holds very little purchase. (The name they’ve chosen suggests they understand this.) In 2017, it's a musical style as poached-in-history as Sinatra standards were when these musicians were young. Honestly, this makes their debut even more interesting. Whatever kind of music... Read more

17-10-2017 Hits:783 Album Reviews Nick Schroeder

  • Falls of Rauros reach peak bleakness with 'Vigilan…

    Vigilance Perennial, the new album by maine band Falls of Rauros, first saw daylight this spring. but as dusk creeps into our days and the wind recovers its fangs, it's hard not to remember them as an autumn band. The…

  • The power of 'Won' — An interview with Lina Tullgr…

    One of the highlights of this year's festival is an appearance by Lina Tullgren, the up-and-coming Boston-based songwriter who grew up in South Berwick, Maine, and who just released her first full-length album, Won, on the label Captured Tracks. Building off…

  • Contemporary Band — An Interview with Colin Newman…

    If you don't have a ticket to see Wire, the legendary English art-rock band formed in 1976 by Colin Newman, Graham Lewis, Bruce Gilbert, and Robert Gotobed, we don't know what to tell you. The show's been out since late…

Outdoors & Sports

To Skate or Watch Them Skate: That Is the Question

To Skate or Watch Them Skate: That Is the Question

National Book award-nominated American poet Gail Mazur wrote these words about ice skating, describing a girl on a frozen river with her father: “... they glide arm in arm onto the blurred surface together, braced like dancers. She thinks she’ll never be so happy, for who else will find her graceful, find her perfect, skate with her in circles outside the emptied rink forever?” In the poem, “Ice,” the girl... Read more

10-10-2017 Hits:273 Sports Gabe Gregoire

  • Exercise your awareness with P…

    It’s hard to process events like what happened in Las Vegas a few days ago. Words like ‘atrocity’ and ‘travesty’ have lost their power. The religious might use the word ‘aberration.’ But how can aberrations be happening so frequently? It’s…

  • End of Summer Warm-Down

    Last week we told you about the Freeport Trails Challenge, an easy way to get out into nature and get moving for low-impact athletes of all sizes. As it happened, Phoenix reader Jeff F. emailed to say that the prospect…

  • Time to Get Moving

    An object at rest will tend to remain at rest, and an object in motion will tend to remain in motion. The law of inertia. It’s physics, but also an apt metaphor for physical fitness. As in, “Hey, we’ve been…

Kids & Pets

Under the Sea, or Beside It?

Under the Sea, or Beside It?

It can be quite a production to get your kid(s) all geared up, in the car, into your chosen venue, and on their butts in their seats, all to show them a bit of theater, film, or dance that you are sure will open up a whole new area in their brains, specifically the appreciation-that-leads-to-cultured-adulthood part. But then, as you’re watching their reactions to the art on stage out of... Read more

09-10-2017 Hits:156 Kids Gabe Gregoire

  • This Conehead Is Gold

    ‘Oldsters’ who were born in the 70s are still too young to remember the 1968 release of the animated Beatles film Yellow Submarine. But, since many of us had hippie parents who were willing to venture out of the forest…

  • Have We Evolved?

    Back in the day, it was rumored, when a farming family had a barn cat who got pregnant and gave everybody the gift of six or seven mewling blind ones, the farmer had to balance his cat food budget with…

  • Bouncers Welcome

    Everybody remembers the excitement we felt as children when entry into the most fun place on earth was imminent. It could have been located within a state or county fair, or even in a well-off friend’s back yard. What is…