Phil Stanford

Is it just me, or is there something a bit too precious – which may be another way of saying politically correct – about requiring the new baby elephant at the Oregon Zoo to have a proper Asian name? As my always nasty friend, blogger Jack Bogdanski suggests, what’s wrong with ...

Stephen Kessler, aka Casper the Ghost, had big plans for Portland, all right. Somewhere during the course of 12 long years – spent, it should be noted, in some of the toughest prisons in the country – he made the acquaintance of one Freddy Arellanes. Although Arellanes, who hails ...

It’s always surprising to see the passion that emerges from any debate over bicycling here in P-town – even when it’s about something as abstract as whether bikes should have license plates. If I didn’t know better, I might imagine that the emotional intensity had more to ...

In case you had any lingering doubts about who is winning the bike wars here in P-town, you might want to check out a little story in the current Willamette Week called “DIY Justice” — which, I am informed, is texting language for “Do It Yourself Justice.” The story ...

In case everybody’s forgotten, there’s a race for City Council going on here in P-town. The question, of course, is whether Charles Lewis, who squeaked into the runoff with just 13 percent of the vote in last May’s primary, can overtake Amanda Fritz, who won it with 43. As ...

It’s bad enough that Vince Capitan, aka the Ice Man, is about to get out of prison and take up where he left off in the Rose City. Steve Kessler is on the way here, too — and wherever he is, you know there’s going to be trouble. Kessler’s friends call him Casper the ...

Phil, I never promised the police a raise at a roll call or anywhere else. Anyone who told you that was being untruthful. I canceled the rest of the roll calls after I discovered Chief (Rosie) Sizer had a staff lieutenant taking notes on everything that was said. I did not want to put any of the ...

Dear Sam: Before you head out on that two-week trip — which, I’m equally confident, will lead to a long and fruitful economic partnership between Portland and the Peoples Republic of China — I’d like to thank you for apparently promising Randy Leonard the job of police ...

Don’t know how your Olympics went, but over at Salvador Molly’s, the restaurant on Southwest Sunset Boulevard that serves Jamaican food among other delicacies, they certainly had every reason to get pumped up about all those Jamaican gold medals in the sprints. … So tell me, mon, ...

Regardless of what you may have heard from Chamber of Commerce types, the City of Roses has always had its share of thorns. And that being the case, one of the sharpest and most dangerous of them would surely have been Vincent Capitan – or the Ice Man, as he liked to be called. In the ...

Phil, are you an imbecile? The secret of Frank Nudo’s hot dog sauce was – are you ready for this? – tomato sauce with lots of salt. Then he added the chili and onions, the cheese, and presto: indigestion. If you want to give Frank credit for anything, give him credit for ...

What was once Cindy’s Adult Bookstore is now a pile of rubble. Next thing we know, all the bricks and shattered boards will be tidied up – and for a while, at least, the prize piece of property at the corner of West Burnside and Fourth, may become home for some sort of open-air ...

So the César E. Chávez Boulevard folks have narrowed it down to Broadway, 39th and Grand, have they? Well, here’s a question: What happens if Broadway is selected? Does the Broadway Bridge automatically become César Chávez Bridge? … Or if we keep the name as it is, how do we explain ...

One thing for sure about the vice cops assigned to the police bureau’s Special Investigations Divisions in the late 1970s, they were on the up-and-up. They were, in fact, so diligent in the pursuit of gambling, pornography and prostitution in the Rose City that the DA’s office had to ...

So the race is on. Will it be the pre-race favorite, Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard, named after the beloved farm workers organizer? Or will it be Douglas Adams Avenue, after the fantasy and science fiction writer of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? City code says only one street-naming ...

The dog days of summer are obviously upon us. Noted dog behavior specialist Cesar Millan, star of the National Geographic Channel’s “Dog Whisperer,” was spotted eating lunch at Jake’s Famous Crawfish last week. No one seems to know if he left with a doggie bag — a ...

Shortly after Norm Reiter took over the Portland Police Bureau’s Special Investigations Division, he told his sergeants to make a case against Billy Moe. Everyone knew what Billy was up to now that he was manager of Sam’s Hideaway, the underground bar at Eighth and East Burnside: ...

As P-town settles in for its annual August siesta, the only real excitement downtown — besides recyclable shopping bags and calorie lists on menus, of course — is the public spat between commissioner Randy Leonard and Police Chief Rose Sizer. For almost a month now, the two of them ...

It’s hard enough being a blues legend under ordinary circumstances. But what happened the other night to Jim Mesi would be enough to persuade almost anyone else that it was time to get a day job. Mesi — who, in case you are from another planet, just happens to be Portland’s ...

It’s not, of course, that the Portland City Council and Multnomah County Board of Commissioners don’t have serious problems to deal with. Last anyone heard, the city’s streets were in such disrepair that it was dangerous just to be out there. Presumably, that’s why Sam ...