Exclusive interviews and Q&As with our favorites in food, drink, travel, and culture.
![Steven Soderbergh and his Singani 63 at Expatriate. [dailyblender.com]](https://dailyblender.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/soderbergh4-330x220.jpg)
If you didn’t know who you were looking for, I’m not sure you would’ve even noticed him standing there on the sidewalk. Pacing back and forth along the curb, a phone pressed to his ear, he had a black cap pulled tightly over his head, black jacket, black shirt, black pants.
Simon Van Booy has a way with words. A way with people, really. An observation of life that builds on a page like the slow, calculated movements of new building constructs.
![Agritopia's Joe Johnston [dailyblender.com]](https://dailyblender.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/joesq-330x220.jpg)
Developed in the early 2000s, after a string of successful coffee shops made Joe Johnston a local celebrity of sorts, it is an oasis in the desert, an agricultural Utopia. A working farmland sits at the heart of the property, with Joe’s Farm Grill, a small Farmer’s Market, and a coffee shop (packed with yoga Moms and strollers at 11 am) perched on one side.
As a Midwest kid who grew up in a faith-heavy community, it almost felt a little sacrilege to read Christopher Moore’s Lamb. The story of Jesus’s teen years as told by his best friend, Biff, Lamb spins the story of the Messiah’s early life, before the healing and the leading and the fishes and the whatnot.
Bret Anthony Johnston’s outward appearance oozes fiction writer. You see his thick-rimmed glasses and often solemn photos and you think, Yup, this is what they’re all like. But Johnston (whose name sounds a little like a member of a boy band, doesn’t it?) is so much more than the scarf-wearing stereotype you might associate with the typical writer.
The truth is that Jeffrey Morgenthaler is a cocktail crusader of sorts, in the same footsteps as folks like Daniel Shoemaker of Teardrop Lounge and Lucy Brennan of Mint/820. Bartenders who have put Portland on the map of drinking destinations.
I’ll admit when Ian Karmel announced he was leaving Portland, a part of me panicked. It’s not that Portland doesn’t have other great comics – we certainly do (Sean Jordan, Curtis Cook, Jen Tam, Barbra Holm, to name a few) – but Ian was my surefire indication that a show would be funny.
San Francisco chef Richie Nakano is as widely known for his opinions as he is for his ramen. An online biography describes the cocksure chef as “the expert of kitchen trash talk”, his regularly updated Twitter feed peppered with sideswipes at everything from local regulations to “Best Of” lists.
Books that cook have really evolved over the last few years. A few – like David Chang’s tale in the Momofuku cookbook of fighting anger and shingles – plunge even deeper into the cooking/storytelling vein, revealing the heart of the kitchen where memoir and measuring cup collide.
Soulfully eclectic, musically magic, LA-based Fitz and the Tantrums has taken the music scene by storm – and singer Noelle Scaggs couldn’t be happier.
I cannot think of a better week for the Bridgetown Comedy Festival to arrive. Portland will welcome heaps of comics of all varieties this weekend, at a time when it feels as though we could all really use a good laugh.