Welcome to Inkville

History in the Making

A Springfield café connects past and future

Photo by Kai Hayashi

With this article, which appeared in Eugene's Weekly's January 26 winter Chow! guide, I sadly bid a fond adieu to able editrix Molly Templeton, who has fled the charms of the Le Eug for trendy, trendy Brooklyn. Molly has been a consistent advocate for my writing, and was even supportive of me in what bordered on a quixotic campaign to interview Gail Simone. As usual, I tried sneaking some local history stuff into this non-history article.

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Downtown Springfield’s Main Street strip continues to tread the line between gentrified and generally sketchy. And the permanent closure of Ruthie B’s Antiques in a couple of weeks marks the end of one of the neighborhood’s anchoring storefronts.

But last May saw the addition of the Washburne Café, a homey breakfast and lunch place just down the street. 

“I wanted to create a place that I’d like to go, that was comfortable and welcoming,” says café owner Karen Hageman. Originally from New Jersey, Hageman says the Washburne is her first foray into restaurant ownership after stints in construction, real estate and retail. 

At breakfast time, Hageman’s new venture serves various egg dishes with cibatta toast, including a “Washburne bowl” with eggs, meat and potatoes. Lunchtime fare includes paninis on locally-baked focaccia, as well as house-made soups. The chicken salad wrap is especially tasty and includes cucumbers and cranberries in the mix. Fluffy, house-made baked goods include tropical fruit scones and peach muffins, complemented by a coffee bar ... and free Wi-Fi.

“It’s getting busier all the time as word gets out,” says Hageman.

And she seems to be right. During a recent visit at almost 2 pm on a weekday afternoon, the lunch rush had yet to abate. The crowd proved eclectic, too. Some patrons read while dining alone. A couple of parents had children in tow. A group of college students, laptops and calculators spread across a round table by the window, discussed APR and interest rates.

Continue reading "History in the Making" at Eugene Weekly.

Elastic Journalism

On Friday, the First Lady of Inkville and I checked out "Multimedia Journalism & the Landscape of News," a talk by The Daily's Gabriel Dance. It was sponsored by my old stomping grounds, the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication.

Dance was a popular act; we arrived a few minutes late, and found the room already at capacity and hotter than Hades. Good on him.

A lot of what Dance had to say really hit home, especially his strong recommendation that 21st century journalists need more than one skill set. And as I can attest both as a freelancer and as a former magazine staffer, it's hard out there for a pimp, assuming the pimp is a writer trying to support himself solely through freelance.

Dance's song-and-dance about multimedia was interesting, and he aptly demonstrated how the concept of "journalism" is elastic enough to encompass computer animators, designers, illustrators, and other creatives.

All Dance's examples stemmed from his time at The New York Times, and I'll admit I was hoping for a bit more about Dance's new gig at The Daily. But that job is new, so perhaps Dance deserves a pass for at least a few more weeks. And frankly, The Daily has thus far failed to impress me.

But what really left me scratching my head was the amount of culture shock Dance must be experiencing transferring from the Times, a supposed liberal bastion, to working for Rupert Murdoch. As I type this, Dance's personal website features a link to an article about a journalist's "battles" with Murdock, so perhaps The Daily really is enacting a separation of church and state for the purposes of doing business.

Tricks are for Kids

Graphic Novel recommendations for 2010

A month late a dollar short in cross-posting. This originally appeared in Eugene Weekly's December 16 "Winter Reading" issue.

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The year’s crop of comic books and graphic novels presents a couple of noteworthy projects that are fun for the whole family, and two that are decidedly just for grown-ups.

Juan Díaz Canales’ and Juanjo Guarnido’s lush and noirish Blacksad collection (Dark Horse, $29.99) falls into the latter category. This single-volume collection of comic albums, originally intended for the European market and now produced in translation by Oregon-based publisher Dark Horse, simultaneously celebrates and lampoons the American detective genre, using anthropomorphized animals as stand-ins for human characters in shades of Art Spiegelman’s famed Maus. These aren’t comics for kids; the adventures of titular feline detective John Blacksad feature all the sex and violence of dime-store private eye paperbacks, lushly rendered with a Disney-like eye for detail and an admirable fidelity to the craft of building a fictional world. 

Like Blacksad, Wilson (Drawn & Quarterly, $21.95), the first original graphic novel by Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, Art School Confidential), is titled after the surname of its protagonist. And like Blacksad, Wilson is an incredible and affecting work. That’s where the comparison ends, though. The title character is a middle-aged, bloviating blowhard of a loser who loves his dog (sort of), accosts unsuspecting coffee shop patrons (always) and, weirdly, gets wrapped up in a kidnapping plot. Each page is presented as a separate comic strip, with a separate episode title and a distinct art style, bricks in the single storyline house Clowes is constructing. The usual Clowes levels of ennui, disaffection and misanthropy are on full display, blended with just a slight touch of nausea. So laugh along with Wilson as he tries to grow up and get his shit together. Or not. Whatever. He’s a Dan Clowes character.

Full-color Sunday adventure comic strips are the forerunners of modern superheroes. Combine this with the fact that Wednesday is the traditional day of the week that comic book stores release new issues, and you have the handsome new hardcover Wednesday Comics compendium (DC Comics, $49.99). This thing is massive, well over 11x17 inches, and, in combining work by indie darling creators like Paul Pope and Oregon favorite son Michael Allred with superhero stalwarts like Joe Kubert and José Luis García-López, the sprawling project convincingly replicates the Sunday morning comics-reading experience. The stable of DC characters is also diverse, from headliners like Batman and Wonder Woman to niche characters like Sgt. Rock and the Metal Men. There’s a bit of innuendo and a bit of violence, de rigeur for superhero comics. The price tag is a bit steep, but DC has really hit a home run with this project, producing a meaty helping of comics that straddles that elusive middle ground between the reading (and interest) levels of the YA and adult reader. And hey, the titanic thing would look darn stylish under the Christmas tree.

But the real winner for tykes this year is The Golden Collection of Klassic Krazy Kool Kids’ Komics (IDW Publishing, $34.99), an encyclopedia volume-sized collection of comic books and comic strips reveling in their immaturity and aimed squarely at children. These comics, spanning from the 1850s to the 1990s, are Looney Tunes-style zaniness, a pure and uncut sugar high reminiscent of chugging the milk left over after a helping of your favorite chocolatey breakfast cereal. There’s not a whole lot here for adults, beyond those grown-up comics history geeks who will enjoy seeing early work by the likes of Dr. Seuss, Steve Ditko (The Amazing Spider-Man), Dan DeCarlo (Archie) and Mort Walker (Beetle Bailey). But that’s OK. Just think of the book as the printed equivalent of a secret clubhouse, and let your kids go on believing you’ve forgotten the secret handshake.