I wrote this essay about my experience co-founding and running the Sunnyside Shower Project for Portland Monthly's fall 2023 issue. ...

I did this interview with hunter/outdoorsman Billie Ritchey for Portland Monthly in 2019. I met Ritchey through our friend Wendy Temko,...

In case you hadn’t noticed, cider is having a moment. The lightly alcoholic beverage has popped up on restaurant menus in recent years....

The guy from K9 and Red Heat now sells the strain smoked on Saturday Night Live back in the 1970s in Portland. The first time Jim Belushi smoked cannabis, he was a teenager in Wheaton, Illinois. “It must’ve been really good pot because I don’t remember,” he says. He does remember being busted twice for marijuana by Wheaton cops. “One time, it was marijuana. One time it was what we called Indiana ragweed. It wasn’t even weed. It was  weeds!” What a difference 45 years makes. B

Three Portland high school students are reinventing sex ed    {A shorter version of this story appeared in the September issue of Portland Monthly .} When 18-year-old twins Milena and Sofia Ben-Zaken and their friend Tess Waxman, also 18, were at Sunnyside Environmental School, their sex ed instruction was laughably brief. "We had one day on puberty in the 5th grade," Milena recalls. “We didn’t really have sex ed in 8th grade, either, except for on the 8th grade retreat,” Sof

the sexy rooftop bar and jacuzzi at Hotel El Ganzo  I go to Cabo practically every winter, thanks to my mom and her husband who own a time share (or two!) down there. Over the years, I've noticed a welcome trend: garish bars are being replaced by stylish  boîtes that—instead of neon blue cocktails—serve wines from Valle de Guadalupe. Raucous eateries have given way to upscale restaurants set on organic farms. Indie bands play on rooftop bars. There's even a farmers' market a

If you’ve wandered into a cannabis dispensary any time since last October, when the advent of recreational sales made those visits possible, you’ve marveled at a galaxy of goodies: salted caramel chews made with organic cannabis oil, small-batch GMO-free ice cream from local milk, rosemary-and-cumin-spiced nuts, even marionberry coffee cake.  Sour Bhotz gummies, Drip ice-cream, and Laurie & MaryJane's nut mix.  But unless a doctor has issued you a medical marijuana card, you

I got to interview one of my favorite Oregon winemakers for Portland Monthly's Long Story Short column . Cameron Winery's John Paul, a longtime advocate of dry farming, isn’t worried about this summer’s heat waves. John Paul was finishing his postdoc in chemistry at UC Berkeley when he found himself drawn more to the wineries of Napa than to the lab. By 1984 he and his wife, Teri, had purchased a vineyard site in the Dundee Hills, and Cameron Winery was born. Since then, Pau

In a famous early sketch on Portlandia , Peter (Fred Armisen) and Nance (Carrie Brownstein) interrogate a server about the chicken on the menu. Who was he? (He was Colin.) Where did he come from, and how did he live? (Very nearby, free range.) What did he eat? (Sheep’s milk, soy, and hazelnuts.) Finally, Peter, still not quite convinced he can devour Colin in good conscience, asks, “Does he have a lot of friends—other chickens as friends?” A parody, the scene nonetheless capt

Dr. Karin Selva, a pediatric endocrinologist at Legacy Emanuel’s Randall Children’s Hospital, saw her first transgendered patient in 2010. A 15-year-old who was born male, the patient suffered from Type 1 diabetes and depression. After seeing a counselor, the patient revealed she identified as female. “When I first met her she was sullen, reclusive, depressed, wouldn’t make eye contact, and had dropped out of school. She was a very sad individual,” says Selva. But after cou

Tam Alemu sells 25-pound bags of teff at his Williams Street Market  {Photo by Cheryl Juetten} I've been pleased to see the re-emergence of local grain economies across the United States, including here in Oregon. Farmers are growing grains—like Red Fife, spelt, and kamut—that haven't been grown here for a long, long time, and they can't seem to produce enough for local bakers, who are creating magnificent loaves that sell out quickly. As I was doing some digging for another

Seventeen years ago, on a whim, Brian and Catherine Faris bought a farmhouse in a tiny, stone-walled town in the Italian region of...

When I heard Cory Carman speak at Ecotrust's food hub conference last spring, I knew I had to write about her. Her story, of taking over her family's ranch out in eastern Oregon and converting it to a 100% grass-fed operation, interested me for at least three reasons. First, ever since reading Michael Pollan's the Omnivore's Dilemma , I've been convinced of the environmental and nutritional superiority of grass-finished beef. (That is, beef that hasn't been fed corn for the

Last summer, I had a great adventure in the coastal forests that hug the Oregon Coast. I went on an early-morning foraging quest with chef Matt Lightner (from Portland's much-heralded Castagna restaurant) and his foraging mentor Lars Norgren. Tall with a shock of white hair, Lars reminded me of my favorite college English professor—garrulous, opinionated, and brimming with an infectious curiosity for the world. Only instead of a world populated by characters from the novels

Like many Americans, I have a pre-existing condition. And as a freelancer who bought my own health insurance plan in New York City, it turns out I had it pretty good. As I reported this article for Portland Monthly , I discovered that New York is one of just a handful of states that's known as a "guaranteed issue" state: insurance companies in these states must cover residents who have pre-existing conditions, as long as they've had continuous coverage. To my dismay, in Ore

Though I'm a native Oregonian, I'd never ventured to the wineries in the southern part of the state—until researching this 12-page story ...