Archives for August 2010

Portland’s Least Popular Food Carts

August 31, 2010 by Dave Leave a Comment

Earlier today I wrote about the Battle of the Portland Food Cart Apps: proprietary Microsoft product or home grown, community maintained Portland project?.

But I didn’t mention my favorite local food cart project, which I can’t recommend enough: Portland’s Least Popular Food Carts

Some examples:

Purina Hipster Chow (SE 12th & Hawthorne)

Big-Buttocked Sandwiches (Now Family-Friendly!) (SW 3rd & Ash)

Heinrich’s Inauthentic Thai Food (SW 10th & Alder)

The list is compiled by @thatBillOakley (who you should totally be following on Twitter already – unbelievably he’s only got 112 followers as I type this!).

Battle of the Portland Food Cart Apps

August 31, 2010 by Dave 4 Comments

With much fanfare and media coverage Bing (Microsoft’s latest attempt to challenge Google) in conjunction with Portland Monthly Magazine, has launched the Bing Food Cart Finder.
This “hyperlocal” site focuses just on Portland for now, featuring directions to over 250 local food carts, along with menus and reviews.

But if you’ve been paying attention, you probably know Portlanders already have at their disposal the formidable and invaluable Food Carts Portland website, which catalogs similar information for close to every single food cart in Portland (a lot more than 250 for sure).

The Bing Food Cart Finder, however, is best viewed as a mobile app – visit www.bingfoodcarts.com in your iPhone or Android web browser to check it out. Food Carts Portland (www.FoodCartsPortland.com), on the other hand, sports a mobile theme on a smart phone, but is not optimized for easy app-like navigation.

But there’s another Portland Food Cart project in town: the Portland Food Carts Google map.

Anyone can contribute or update information, and unlike the Bing project, it’s not proprietory. The data from the Google map was recently loaded into the PDXAPI site, so it is available to mobile app builders – there’s already an iPhone app, a web interface, and an Android app is under construction.

Why does it matter? Well, the thing about open-contribution projects is that they can outlast the initial creator’s interest or ability to maintain it. Maybe the staff at Bing (and their partner, Portland Monthly) will get bored with food carts in a year or two or decide maintaining this data isn’t very profitable. What then? By contrast, the Google-hosted food cart map has outlived my own attention span several times over, but periodically someone else takes an interest and helps bring it up to date, and now another developer is actively building on top of it. The result is sometimes less glossy, but it’s there, and continues to be useful to people who live in or visit Portland.

Read and find out more at spinnerin: Why contribute to a community project when you can build your own silo?

Tuesday Timbers Tidbits (08/31/2010)

August 31, 2010 by Dave Leave a Comment

The Portland Timbers followed up last Thursday’s respectable 1-1 draw against Austin with a firecracker of a match on Sunday: a 3-0 drubbing of Crystal Palace Baltimore. Ryan Pore scored a goal in open play (as opposed to from the the penalty spot), and Bright Dike powered in a brace – his fifth and 6th goal in the last 7 games. All before the season’s third sell out crowd (15,1418) at PGE Park.

How about some highlights?

The Timbers’ next opponent is Puerto Rico, who they face on Thursday, September 2 2010 at 7pm, in the last ever USL Portland Timbers match at PGE Park – you won’t want to miss it. Timber Jim’s has a special request to fans:

Please bring a large Sunflower to this historic event.

At the 80th minute we will sing “You are my Sunshine” and display these tokens of our affection until the end of the match.

Sunflowers will be collected and given to players and coaches as the Timbers pass the Timbers Army.

In player news, Futty Danso has been called up by his national side – Gambia. Better know a Timber – Kevin Goldthwaite, at Dropping Timber. And also read Michael Orr’s Return of Goldthwaite at FC Media – Kevin Goldthwaite is one of several players in Portland Timber history to have played more than once for the Portland Timbers over his career. And Matt Pyzdrowski gives us a Clean Sheet update.

And a project, spearheaded by volunteers, to create Google map Footie Fan Guide to Portland, OR, is making progress. Check out the map to find the places and businesses that matter most to the fans and the teams of professional and college soccer in and around Portland, Oregon.

September 2: Oregon Symphony Waterfront Concert, with Fireworks!

August 30, 2010 by Dave Leave a Comment

The Oregon Symphony 2010 Waterfront Concert takes place Thursday, September 2 2010.

At 5pm the Portland Youth Philharmonic performs, followed by the Oregon Symphony at 7pm. The performance includes a scene from The Sleeping Beauty featuring dancers from the Oregon Ballet Theatre.

The traditional grand finale is a performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture with a fireworks show, which includes shots from military canons from the Oregon Army National Guard 218th Field Artillery.

The concert is free, and no tickets are required. Bring your lawn chairs and blankets to Tom McCall Waterfront Park and enjoy the show. Visit the Oregon Symphony event page for more details and program notes.

September 3: Cort and Fatboy’s Midnight Movie: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

August 30, 2010 by Dave Leave a Comment

Go back-to-school 80s style. Cort and Fatboy‘s Midnight Movie for September 3rd 2010 is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

The Back-To-School season is celebrated in a variety of ways: Parents get trashed off boxed wine after a hellish summer of rugrats knocking around the house. Kids pose and preen endlessly in front of their mirror after suckering said parents out of hundreds of dollars in ridiculous fashions that have a shelf-live about half as long as their attention spans. And while stores are advertising sales on Pee-Chees and Pencil Boxes, and Teachers are fitting themselves for hockey pads, we here at cortandfatboy.com are celebrating Back-To-School by championing one of the worst influences of the 80’s as he plays the best game of hooky ever witnessed.

The Bagdad Theater (3702 SE Hawthorne) is the spot. Admission is $3.00, doors open at 10pm. The film starts at 11pm after a short trailer reel cobbled together from DVD’s, old 80’s TV ads, and various internet detritus deemed humorous enough.