For most Americans, the first sound they noticed in 2020 was the sound of silence. On Friday the 13th of March the sounds you might have heard in any American city were indistinguishable from every Friday that came before it. Bars and restaurants were packed, the windows of dance halls and nightclubs were thrumming, and … More The Year We Heard Everything Up Close
Every weekday morning, XRAY FM provides a live news broadcast, along with discussions of current events and live interviews with community activists, politicians, journalists, and more. On January 6th, 2021, I hopped on to talk about my recent column on value pricing, which is likely to come to Portland in the next three years. My … More XRAY In The Morning Interview with Henry Miller
Electric scooters have been getting a lot of attention over the past few years thanks to e-scooter share companies like Lime, Skip, and Jump dropping thousands of scooters in city centers across the country. In the past two years, the number of cities hosting e-scooter and dockless bike shares has jumped to more than 100. … More New Research On E-Scooters Reveals It’s Actually Cars Breaking The Rules
Online shopping has changed the way we get what we want, but soon online and app-based Urban Goods Delivery services will also change how what we want is brought to our doorstep. Urban Goods Delivery (UGD) describes the industry that brings all sorts of goods- from pizza to furniture- to your doorstep. Historically this industry … More The Future of Urban Goods Delivery: Drones and Depots
(Photo by Henry Miller) Like many of America’s cites, Portland is built on a strategic joint between two geographic features. As Manhattan binds the Hudson to the Atlantic, Portland joins the rich soil of the Willamette Valley to the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean beyond. While New York built the Erie Canal to remain … More A Brief History of Portland’s Transportation System Plan
We are all entertainer/pundits with social responsibility now, Portland’s Jazz Prodigy is no exception. “It’s Esmerelda Spudding”, says Esperanza Spalding to the snappily dressed nonagenarian shuffling forward for a picture with Portland’s biggest name in Jazz since Pink Martini. It seems likely that the two-time Grammy winner knew that her joke would go over the … More Esperanza Spalding Shows Portland’s Aristocracy The Faces Of The American Dream
In the middle of one of Portland’s first beautiful Sunday afternoons in 2017, a middle-aged couple crosses downtown’s SW 3rd Avenue holding hands. “Yeah, get back on your side,” shouts a man dressed in black. He is immediately seconded by someone next to him, and then another, and another. “Are you kidding me? We are … More Portland’s Alt-Right vs. Antifa Protest: Mainly trolls, hints of a violent future and reminders of a racist past
Forty-nine people have died and 53 more are wounded following the largest mass shooting in modern American history, which happened Sunday morning between 2-5AM EST. The shooting took place at a LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The suspected shooter is Omar Mateen, an American citizen who was shot and killed in a SWAT assault after … More The Mass Murder That Hits Every American Nerve
On April 30th, 1975, North Vietnamese troops officially took control of Saigon, the capital of then-South Vietnam. The event signaled the end of one of the bloodiest proxy-wars of the Cold War era. It was also the culmination of the first war ever televised, and the archived images are a stark reminder of how close … More Aleppo Falls, With It So Does Humanity
Last weekend I visited Palestinian West Bank for the first time. I have been writing a few travel pieces and reading a lot of them since I moved to Israel. If there is one common theme that typically leads to criticism of these pieces, it’s that an outsider who does not identify with the place is inherently … More A Know-Nothing In Palestine
