I am shocked, simply shocked that there are allegations of favoritism right here in the City of Thorns.

Nice 'shop. Is that an actual Adams quote? If so, God help us get through to the end of his term.

Click on the photo -- it's an actual quote.

The quote Jack chose is the one that stood out for me. Arrogance isn't even the word for it. "Delusional". Yes, that's it. Delusional. Adams is so clearly a narcissist that it hardly seems necessary to point it out.

Of course, he could just be blindingly stupid. Either way, we lose.

The most un-Portland-like, significantly un-Portland like, renderings of what it would be.

Oh good lord. Near as I can tell, "Portland-like" is code for brand new buildings with Subways as primary tenants. Maybe if the Blazers brought Jared in, they could close the deal.

Chef Sam has a vision! Its a bubblin!

Best.Comment.EVER, for the win!

"If it's on track, it's a very strange track"

A new motto for the City of Portland.

I was surprised to read in Sam's memo that half a million people visit Memorial Coliseum each year. Yes, they are not all paying customers but that's a significant number. That's more than the Seattle Sounders drew at home last year.
One plan would be to pay the 25 million in repair costs, and let those 500,000 people go right on using MC.
But no, Sam wants to spend 120 to 140 million in a mishmash of ideas that he himself calls, "half-baked."
Could this be a ploy - a poison pill designed to make keeping MC seem too costly?
In other words, is Sam infusing this - not with ideas and vision - but with the always shovel-ready pile of BS?

I don't know, but I've now spent enough time watching these things, so they just seem funny. I love the idea of egomaniacs at the controls, especially when they're way less smart than they think they are. There are few things in life you can count on as much as this group screwing up. It almost seems reassuring.

One prediction: If Sam gets to redo MC, the project will cost way more than 140 million and way fewer than 500,000 people will be using the facility each year from then on. I've seen these people's work before.

This is called egonomics. When politicians spend other people's money to satisfy their own whims.

Bill McDonald's comment about Sam's spending addictions seems truer and truer every day.

A year later, Adams said he's staying nimble.

Nimble (adjective:)
cleverly contrived

Is Sam an only child? What a dweeb.

{This is called egonomics. When politicians spend other people's money to satisfy their own whims.}

Good one. "Egonomics" accurately describes a phenomenon that we see over and over again in public spending. It should be considered for addition to the next edition of Merriam Webster's Dictionary.

Let's not overlook the vindictive side of Sam's personality. You know - the side he showed with the Oregonian editors talking about Bob Ball.

Remember, Sam really wanted the Rose Quarter baseball park. Otherwise he could look like he got played when he gave PGE Park to the Paulson family for soccer only. (Yes, I know football will still be played there, when the Portland State Vikings get back from Hillsboro where they go every time the city council has a new PGE Park plan.)

Sam loves moving parts of Portland around. He loves creative ideas and grand visions. He even loves the temporary creative "solutions" for the steps along the way, like sending the Vikings to Hillsboro. These are small sacrifices by others while a bigger vision takes shape.

Sam loves a big idea - and it doesn't really matter if it's ridiculous. Who can forget the plan to move the Sauvie Island bridge into downtown?
Anybody seen that lately?

So when his plan to replace Memorial Coliseum with a ballpark was rebuffed, Sam must have been steamed. Remember the days of measuring to see if he could fit both in? It would have worked except the game would have had to be stopped every time an outfielder yelled, "Car!"

So how does a person with Sam's vindictive streak handle that? Just maybe he says to himself, "If they want their little Memorial Coliseum they'll get it, but it's really going to cost them."

There could be an element of revenge at work here. Not to say a combination velodrome/swimming pool isn't a terrific idea.

Sam's initial egonomics:

Install more men's rooms on all concourse levels.

Egonomics.... that's funny and for once I actually agree with something bluecollar says

"Sam wants to spend 120 to 140 million"

It's really like he doesn't even understand what money is. I feel like the city budget person should sit down with him and start from the beginning. "Now you see these different sized coins? This one is called a quarter. This is a dime...."

You Portlanders have had to grab your ankles so many times for this bugger that I wonder if you can still sit down.

Is that chair comfortable?

godfry: +3.

What we really need is a vigilante with a D-9 Caterpillar to raze this old barn.

Unfortunately for us, Sam does indeed represent a significant segment of our population here in "Weird City".

In other words, "Now that the planning doesn't jive with my delusional vision of what should happen, it is time for me to power trip everybody into letting me get my way."

Seem reasonable to me, Sam the Sham.

To the other Jimbo with a tip of the hat to Monty Python.... NO, not the comfy chair

Unfortunately for us, Sam does indeed represent a significant segment of our population here in "Weird City".

The part that he represents the best is the development community and other people who've made out like hogs on the city's dimes. It's not the tattooed, bike-riding, baristas who are making the bucks out of the deals Jack decries here like the tram, SoWhat, and Paulsen Park. Those people are getting economically screwed by bathroom dealing just as much as the rest of the citizenry.

Do we really expect much more from a City Council and mayor that celebrate the opening of a f*cking toilet as big news and progress?

Well he did win fair and square...

If Sam wants to bubble, can we put him in an actual cauldron? Heat to boiling and just let him bubble...away! as in evaporate!

The citizens of Portland have the mayor they deserve. Not the mayor they should have, the mayor they deserve.

The people of Portland wouldn't recall their mayor even if he was found guilty of kidnapping Kyron Horman.

I sure hope Sam bought some carbon credits for the "bubble" that he emitted. Or maybe it is a "sustainable" bubble.

The citizens of Portland have the mayor they deserve. Not the mayor they should have, the mayor they deserve.

How are Portlanders different from any group of citizens and the elected officials who serve them?

darrell-

Portlanders are very, very, nice. And very, very progressive.

...haven't you noticed this?

I mean, seriously, just look at the title of the article that Janie Har, aka Mona Lisa, gives her article.

"Compromise"? "Float"?

This is Portlandish for "weasel", and "connive".

If a nice big public swimming pool happens in this town, I will take it all back. I will invite the ground to swallow me up if this happens. But only if said swimming pool is actually able to be used by kids, unlike the rest of the swimming pools in Portland. During the school year, the public pools in Portland are open to schoolchildren on weekdays only after 7.30pm, when they are eating dinner, doing homework, and going to bed.
Which means pools are only open to school kids during the school year for 4 hours a day on the weekend days. The lifeguards and their masters don't want to have all that fuss and drowning risk to handle.

Besides, who cares about offering indoor exercise options to kids in this rainy climate during the winters?

Portlanders are very, very, nice. And very, very progressive.

...haven't you noticed this?

No, I haven't noticed it. That's just buying into a stereotype. Is the guy who blows past you on a sidewalk progressive because he rides his bike everywhere? Do the people who put their cans and bottles out on the street for the bums to get them on trash day instead of returning them progressive because they don't just throw them away?

And my point was that if you're going to take the position (as Pat did) that some group of people "deserves" the elected officials they get that the same rule applies to any group of people, whether it's a town, county, country, or dog-catching district. I don't think there's anything special about Portlanders that makes them deserve Sam Adams any more than people in the US deserved George W. Bush or Barack Obama (pick one or both, depending on your political leanings).

Irony, darell, irony...I find Portlanders in general to be much "nicer" on the surface than one generally finds in other cities. And much more "progressive", too. These characterisitics are masks, convenient, holier-than-thou displays; the effect of wearing them is that Portlanders, as a whole, have a larger denial complex than citizens of other burgs. Without this complex, Adams wouldn't have been elected in a virtual landslide in the first place. So in that sense, Portlanders do deserve him in their own, special, characteristic way.

Portlanders, as a whole, have a larger denial complex than citizens of other burgs.

I just don't see that. Especially considering that most Portlanders are originally from other burgs. You've got swaths of "heartland" cities who claim to be more in touch with the "real America" because they're not on the coasts when, paradoxically, most of America lives on the coasts. You've got multi-millionaire politicians running as "common people" and sucking people into believing them. I don't think Portland has any lock on denial.

Speaking of denial, the way I remember it, the two major choices for mayor were Adams and Sho Dozono, and I'd love to hear how the business and development lobby's feet would have been held to the fire under a Dozono administration in a way that Adams hasn't done. How Dozono wouldn't have let Merritt Paulsen walk over the city like Adams has. A different group of developers would have been sucking money from the city and for different projects, but it still would have sucked.

I don't think you can fault Portland's citizens for that.

Why did we come here? Maybe because Oregon is better than where we came from, in ways that were maybe more important in the first flush of our youth.

Like, being politically liberal. Being physically beautiful, to an extent that eclipses most urban areas in the country.
Like the rare exquisitely beautiful human, Oregon is startling in its beauty. Having this streak that defines it as different...the first state to try a public health insurance option..the first state to have vote by mail...the first state to have medical marijuana... the first state to give the dying some autonomy in their waning days...

So of course, the utopians flock here. And then they do things like decide its time to elect the nation's first openly gay mayor.

As a former disabused utopian disciple, I voted for Sam Adams. My liberal political older girlfriend loved him, so I decided to vote for him because I trusted her judgment. On voting day, I was tempted to vote for the underdog. As my pencil flickered sympathetically over Sho Dozono's spot, I had this distinct mental switchback, that went something like this: "Oh, Gaye, quit playing that silly game. It's time to vote for what you stand for. The country needs gay people in politics. Look at all those anti-gay marriagers with their ubiquitous depictions, reminiscent of signs on public lavatories, of one man and one woman. We need to get past all that.."

And thus I voted for Sam Adams, an act which has come full circle, to an outright rejection of identity politics and everything it entails.