That’s one of the things I love about Portland, there’s a lot of noir stuff sitting really close to the surface if you know how to read the signs. The higher-budget of the two alt-weeklies, which at this point is basically the town’s mainstream newspaper, was founded in part by a private eye who acted as the shadow hand for the former mayor-turned-governor who’s now a big state power broker.

(For example he was the go-between between him and the ex-mistress that it was a kind of semi-open secret among the city elite that he got involved with when she was his fourteen year old babysitter.)

Anyway, every now and then that paper will publish a hit piece on some local restaurant owner or something, right out of nowhere, nothing preceding it, no followup. And you just know that’s the iceberg-tip of some interesting story.