I’m sure everyone has heard by now about 28 year old Neil Finger, a coach at the Vancouver Cheer Academy, being arrested for having sex with one of the 16 year old cheerleaders. His friend David Chatman, another cheerleading coach, was arrested for the same thing four months earlier. Is this a new disturbing trend? I know in the past we’ve had our share of older teacher/younger student hookups that ended badly.

There are two things about this story that I find kind of disturbing. I think it’s just a little creepy to have a younger guy like that around 300 teenage girls wearing short skirts and doing a lot of handstands and splits. It just seems like shooting fish in a barrel as far as him eventually hooking up with one of the more adventurous cheerleaders. I’m not saying they’re all looking to get laid, but for god’s sake at least be a little realistic.

The other thing is his last name, “Finger.” How many double entendres can you come up with for this one? My first one was “Guess who got caught with his finger in the pie?” sort of Ted Casablanca style. His name just adds to the creep factor of the whole situation.

I challenge all of you to come up with your best snark on this loser.

PDX developer Ryan Williams of Web Things Considered unveiled his local news aggregator Local Signal a few weeks ago – and it’s worth a look…or two…or three.

Williams bills it as an ‘evolving project’ – but he’s pulling in a wealth of news and information sources, from local dead tree info providers (Trib, OLive, WWeek and more) to local slices of larger news providers (Google News, Topix, Newsvine and Goboz (another local site – more about them in a future post.) He’s also pulling in local blogs (yep, our headlines are there), events (via Upcoming, Eventful or Zvents), and even AskMetafilter posts tagged with Portland. Flickr pictures? YouTube videos? They’re here as well.

Short version? If it’s online and Portland-centric – it’s probably aggregated here. Or will be soon…

I foresee myself spending several more hours in front of my monitor checking it all out.

(Belated hat tip to Silicon Florist for the heads-up here…)

Interstate

Originally uploaded by dieselboi.

As you know, there is an effort going on to rename Interstate Blvd to Cesar Chavez Blvd. We have posted about the effort here a couple of times and I wanted to give you an update:

Both the Overlook and Arbor Lodge neighborhood associations resoundingly stated their opposition to the rename. In Arbor Lodge, they even had a professional facilitator who according to reports caused more problems than helped.

The Cesar Chavez Rename committee has chosen to not follow the Cities guidelines for naming streets. They instead feel they should be allowed to push the rename through just like Rosa Parks Way went through.

The Cesar Chavez Rename committee is having a fund raiser for their efforts and get this, it is in Milwaukie. On that note, the leader of the pack lives in Tigard.

Both sides have petitions on ipetition. The FOR petition currently has 192 signatures while the AGAINST has 371.

There are two public meetings coming up and the city has posted signs up and down Interstate to inform the neighborhood. The meetings are at Ockley Green Middle School @ 6031 N Montana on Oct 3 and Oct. 9 from 6:30-8pm. No one has a right to whine that they didn’t hear about the rename effort now. Go out and make yourself heard.

Lastly, if you are for or against the effort, email the city council and the mayor. Contact info after the jump.
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Brewtank

Originally uploaded by dieselboi.

On my way in this morning, I came upon the new brewtanks being installed at Widmer’s newest building down off Interstate under the Fremont bridge. I jumped off the train in order to capture this cool feat of beerness. I am not a fan of Widmer’s beer, but I am a fan of brewing and seeing the size of that tank made my beer senses tingle.

It looked like they may have already installed one tank and this was the second with a third sitting on a truck nearby. The guys doing the work were fast and efficient. Hey, time is beer…err I mean money. Good luck Widmer with the new tanks. May they be part of some great future brew. Video coming soon for the true brew fanatics.

Wow – it’s been a fun busy weekend. My parents are visiting from Kansas and we’ve been all over town. We hit the Pirate Festival on Saturday – which was awesome and I only see getting better every year – and checked out the Body Worlds exhibit at OMSI today. There are only two weeks left of the exhibit (it ends Sunday Oct. 7th) but really – if you haven’t gone and had any interest – it is well worth the expense. We’re bad sometimes at saying we want to go see something and then never getting to it – like the Rembrandt exhibit at the Portland Art Museum. So don’t be saying in a month – oh yeah – I wanted to see that and never made it. Make time!

Tomorrow – IKEA and the Tram.

I’ve seen a lot of discussion over here on our Trimet/Max/Bus/Public Transport system over here in the last few years.

My friend Christian Bullock (who provided this earlier info for us here at MB on flexcar and mall 2005) has started a new series over on the PDX PIPELINE about Trimet etiquette issues calling it “tri-tiquette”. Here is an excerpt used with his permission:

Alright folks, I’m fed up with the riding etiquette that some individuals display on TriMet’s MAX & bus services. Since I have my finger on the Trimet pulse (I do ride twice a day…), I thought I’d start a series of posts titled: TriMet Riding Etiquette. Or, as I would like to call it, a series of posts about “Tri-tiquette.”

So the first post in this series is about the priority seating area. TriMet buses have a priority seating area which is located at the front of the bus. Where is it on the MAX? Observe:
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I am constantly hearing complaints from people in Portland about the “Keep Portland Weird!” bumper stickers that seem to be on every other car in town. I can understand because it seems to be a phrase that is just trying too hard and getting a little tattered around the edges.

There’s an event coming up on Saturday, October 20th at the Central Library that will hopefully dispell some of the bad vibes about Portland and it’s weirdos. The Library Foundation is sponsoring “Keep Portland Weird! A Community Festival.” It’s an opportunity to meet some of the more unusual organizations in town, and also learn things like how to play the ukulele and how to do yoga. There’s also free entertainment including belly dancing and a performance by Sneakin’ Out. I wanted to post this early to make sure people include it in their October plans which can get kind of busy with so many Fall things going on.

Some of the groups attending include SCRAP, the Portland Robotics Society, Free Geek, City Repair, the Portland Cacophony Society, Growing Garden’s Chicken Keepers, the Portland Ukulele Society, and the Urban Berbers. The event runs from 12:00pm – 4:00pm and is free and open to the public.

Go to the Multnomah County Library’s website to find out who else is going to be there. I am looking forward to meeting the Cacophony Society folks because I have promised myself I would join in on their Santa event and help confuse shoppers doing their Christmas thing this year.

Thanks Stephanie Miller for the heads-up.

I have to believe that the commenter posting from the Comcast IP address 24.22.17.48 hasn’t just been doing anonymous drive-by’s here. But he/she has nothing good to say about us, that’s for sure! In 60 comments going back to March of this year, no less…

“Peter” has issues with our language choices here (a frequent theme), whether posting as “Ted” (who wants mature language) or “Tom.”

“Nino” has issues with our subject matter – but hey, so do “Glenn” and “Tara” and “David”. And believe me, we’re shaking in our shoes over here – especially since “Tom” and “Ken” and “David” must be really important, since they all own their own domains! (If their email addresses – tom@tom.com, ken@ken.com and david@david.com are any indication, that is, she says, tongue planted firmly in cheek. The rest of the crew seems to make do on variants of yahoo addresses – ken94327@yahoo.com, for example.)

Our drive-by artist doesn’t appear to have a favorite blogger here – we’re all either ‘idiot(s)’ or ‘stupid’ or “jokes to this world.” And he/she doesn’t think highly of Portland either: “Portland is absolutely them (sic) most pretentious city I have ever seen.”

But despite his/her obvious maturity (after all, aren’t you impressed by an anonymous artist who does nothing but take pot shots using a plethora of fake identities?), he/she isn’t exactly infallible – witness this comment from “Tom”: “I doubt that an act like the Beastie Boys would be kept quiet until leaked to some stupid blogger. Grow up.” (Guess who ended up right here (hint: it wasn’t “Tom”)?

It’s this comment in particular that has me troubled: “So please try to start posting on important things, and I do not mean Harry Potter, or we’re going to stop reading you. I’m more than halfway there already.” (emphasis mine)

We? Is the anonymous drive by commenter known as 24.22.17.48 starting to believe his/her own myth? Or are we talking split personalities here?

Just to make it clearer to our readers when there’s a troll afoot, we’re going to call it out from now on when 24.22.17.48 comments here with a note like this:

“Barbara” is actually a drive-by, brought to you by the 24.22.17.48 comment troll. Read more about it here.

After all, you’ll have no other way to know that “Keith” and “Kenny” and “Denny” and “Kerri “and “Craig” and “Mark” and “Daniel” and “Stan” and “Larry” and “Ben” and “Roger” and “Dan” and “Curtis” and “Tam” and “Henna” and “Kevin” are all, in fact, the artist known as 24.22.17.48.

Local bloggers, feel free to pick this up for your own sites if you, too, have 24.22.17.48 raising havoc in your comment threads, courtesy of your PDX MB friends…

I know it’s actually sunny today but Fall is breathing down our necks (officially it starts Sunday). Here are some cool fall things to do:

You can go get your timbers shivered (provided you’re a “hearty” or a ‘scurvy knave”, of course) at the Pirate Festival this weekend (more here).

You can go through The Maize before it gets all haunted. Even better, before it gets all soggy!

You can get all the oompah music you can stand at Oaks Park‘s Oktoberfest celebration, which actually starts today. (I called Gustav’s and they said their Oktoberfest isn’t until next weekend, so if you don’t get your fix at Oaks Park then hold on a little longer.)

So what are you waiting for? Send an email (or an instant message or a Twitter) to the usual suspects and make some plans already!