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January was a long month this year in my neck of the woods. In other years, snow sports made January a high point, but for a variety of reasons, the snowboard stayed in its bag.  The closest I got to the mountain was this:

Then, on another trip to the same vantage point (home of some entrepreneur friends) I managed to let the old Volvo slide into a ditch, something I never did in years of New England winters.

The nice guys at the Jim Fischer Volvo parts counter quoted me $212 for the part. I went for the tape-over patch kit at Schucks Auto Parts, until I can figure out why a blinker lense is worth that.

By the end of the month I was ready for something basic, warm and good. How about a nice braised chicken with aromatic vegetables? Inspired by the slow cooking chapter in Alice Waters’ recent cookbook, The Art of Simple Food, the one-pot-wonder hit the spot on a cold, rainy night at month’s end. And the bulbs are already starting to come up.

We’re invited to a Christmas Ships party tonight aboard a friend’s floating home. Chris made up a batch of these. She swears the choice had nothing to do with lit-up boaters.

Good news last week — the long planned and often stalled Portland Public Market came a step closer to finding a home…no, not in Union Station…this time the goal is to land in a rehabbed version of the ominous and gloomy 511 Broadway building across the street from the station. This site was on the short list for a long time, but expensive logistics stood in the way. Now, with Melvin Mark in the picture as developer of the site, the whole thing looks feasible. Details here from the O, WW, The Trib and other important Portland media.

Meanwhile, at Friday’s City Club meeting, a panel focused on local markets and the local food economy.

If folks were expecting some kind of a dust-up between Park Kitchen’s Scott Dolich (representing the Portland Farmers Market) and Ron Paul (the force behind the soon-to-be James Beard Portland Public Market), it didn’t happen. At one point, Dolich wondered aloud why local producers were not a part of this panel. Good question. But this is the City Club, son. We’re on the TV and we only have an hour.

Paul described the Public Market mission to provide not just locally grown food, but also responsibly produced products from beyond the province, screened and vetted by the market for “authenticity.”

[Pause: Sounds a little like what New Seasons does. Of course, New Seasons is a business. We’re talking here about a public market with small food providers housed in it. But what if all local markets did this as a matter of course? Well, the argument goes, you don’t see the grower face to face at New Seasons. Back to our story…]

Nick Fish, speaking from the audience, pointed out that Pacific Northwest College of Art had been eying the same site as a potential new base of operations in the Pearl. Basically the notion is: what a shame if one good tenant should supplant the other. Ron Paul, speaking from the stage, said that the parties are exploring various ways to work this out, including co-location in the refurbished 511 site. Each noted his personal support of the local arts.

Later that day hundreds of Public Market supporters kicked off a fund raiser with beverages atop the Smart Park garage near Union Station. Heavy rain poured down at first, keeping the $50-a-head crowd marooned one level from the roof. Then the view was beautifully lit by a setting sun. A freighter took on grain at the elevators across the river, cranes blinked over new construction, the OCC towers caught a last flash of sun, big pink glowed on cue and the Broadway bridge blinked to life. Our talk turned to the radical recent change in this neighborhood. We remembered the rail yards, the loading docks, and the cryptic murals beneath the Lovejoy ramps. It was a tax-deductable Portland moment.

Soon it was just plain cold and damp. The crowd seemed in good spirits as they shuffled over to Union Station for the food. The doors opened to rank-and-file donors at 7:30. The place was packed in minutes.

The scene was akin to a battle of the bands, featuring several of Portland’s increasingly famous chefs playing two songs each. (Earlier at the City Club, Ron Paul had called the coverage in Wednesday’s NY Times “…over the top, almost giddy.”) Caprial and John, Phillippe Boulot, Greg Higgins and Cathy Whims cranked like line cooks, prepping and passing paper plates from behind folding tables. Vitaly Paley’s crew could barely set down a single serving of his dungenous crab salad before a forearm shot out and snapped it up, leaving his table seemingly bare for the first half hour.

The food and wine was, of course, really good. But you had to get the hang of the hall. Polite folks instinctively queued up clockwise in a single file around the hall. Mostly, they stayed hungry as the line stalled. A few seasoned charity function vets employed commando grazing tactics. A nicely-dressed fiftysomething woman stood on her toes and called out as a friend approached the food tables at a right angle, “Score two of those pork things for us!”

The latest issue of Edible Portland features a piece on harvesting food in public places. Among the sources is urban edibles, a database of wild food sources in Portland, complete with maps. A little after checking this out, while scanning the Platial blog (Platial is a social mapping site, based right here in Portland. They’ve just given the site a facelift, by the way…) I noticed that a bunch of folks map this stuff. Who’d a thought?

While our minds are wandering…the same EP issue also features a piece on city commissioner Sam Adams’ garden. As all Portlanders know, his name has been all over the press for other reasons this week, but I mention this only because I swear this is the second article on Sam Adams’ garden I’ve read in the last ten days or so. I can’t for the life of me remember the other source. It is an impressive garden and all, but I can’t help getting that too much information feeling.

Your thoughts…

According to a recent post on the Oregonian Editor’s Blog, the paper’s new magazine celebrated its debut last Friday. The blog describes MIX as… “the company’s second move into slick magazines, following ULTIMATE NORTHWEST with more titles to come.” MIX, the blog continues, “...is full of classy content and elegant ads.” (Say no more!) The magazine would be “…delivered to 40,000 young adults in the area who are interested in the kind of content Mix features.” Well, I’m not a young adult and I’m not usually interested in anything that calls itself classy. But I am interested in the local food scene and I am almost unreasonably interested in local media; enough to know that the blogging editor was probably speaking more of the confusing ULTIMATE NORTHWEST than of Mix. The blog said that copies would be sold at magazine stands, so I headed to Rich’s to buy a copy. Turned out it was not in stock. It had not shipped on time to make its Friday on-sale date, according to the guy behind the counter.

On Wednesday, I checked Fred Meyer (no copies yet) and eventually bought a copy at Rich’s.

The magazine, it turns out, is very nicely done. Editor Martha Holmberg and company have produced an unusual, great looking and enjoyable magazine. Kat Topaz, a talented Portland based publication designer, is credited as Creative Director.

Mix is unusual for at least a couple of reasons. It is printed in a large format - more than 20% larger than most magazines. Despite all this real estate, the magazine follows the modern media trend towards content presented in nuggets with lots of big graphics. Mix contains few, if any, feature-length articles, and dramatically fewer words per page than published in other Portland magazines and papers. Not that it’s lacking in editorial quality; it’s not. This is good stuff, well organized and well written. Even the longer pieces are just a few pages, presented in small bites, practically inviting you to skip around and enjoy the ride rather than tuck into an article or two. Still, it’s a good read. The design is generally clean and well executed. Much of the photography is really good, although some food images are close-up clichés and a couple of them even looked a little scary. A photo essay on upcoming chefs is particularly nice.

A quote from the Topaz Design website:

“Readers have never been more savvy. They want what they want, and if you make them work for it, they will go elsewhere. It is very black and white.”

Seems to fit. Although some might substitute “have shorter attention spans than ever” in the first point. Savvy or not.

The Mix cover is, I’m guessing, a work in progress. It’s tough to nail a new magazine’s cover right out of the gate. This cover risks being lost in the confusion of the newsstand. I blogged earlier about the name challenge; the subhead could help, but it’s presented as part of a cover line mash-up that is confusing and hard to read. As is “Premiere Issue” — a potential attention-getter. The cover photo is pleasant enough in a warm, narrow-focal-plane-soft-focus Spanish food portrait kind of way, but it is not likely to catch a browser’s attention from a few feet away. The cover line messages/promises don’t jump out at you. To paraphrase the Topaz quote, you have to work for it. This time out, design subtleties do little for clarity, message and impact. OK enough, I’m getting technical here; although I’ve worked on many covers, I’m not a designer. Maybe readers will love it.

Speaking as a reader, I’ll probably read and appreciate Mix when it arrives every few months, just as I’ll read and appreciate the food coverage in Gourmet, Cooks Illustrated, the New York Times, Portland Monthly, Willamette Week, Northwest Palate, Edible Portland and (if the staff comes home) FoodDay. But I’m not going to drop one for another.

Speaking as a magazine vet and media observer, the O’s “move into slick magazines” and its investment in this crowded and tough ad niche should be interesting. But that’s another story.

Your thoughts…

In the Wednesday’s NY Times, Marian Burros wrote about the Edible Communities franchise of local food magazines. The group has editions in more than 30 locales nationwide, each with a focus on local food, particularly local food produced using organic and sustainable practices.

Portland’s version is produced by EcoTrust and is now on its seventh quarterly issue. EDIBLE PORTLAND is available by subscription or free at advertiser locations such as New Seasons.

Unlike many “magazine” give-aways, this one is very well done and worth seeking out. It’s a good idea and follows a workable business model — local content strengthened by a national network of like-minded publications.
A typical editorial challenge in this kind of business is avoiding the temptation to spread content across the network in the interest of editorial efficiency. The EDIBLE franchise rules are set up for this, allowing only 25% non-local content in each edition of the print titles. We had a hard time finding any content in EDIBLE PORTLAND not written by local writers.
In some markets advertising in EDIBLE magazines is booming. In others, the effort is a labor of love. The latest issue of eP contained around a dozen pages of paid ads, roughly $25,000-30,000 in revenue. After expenses, the net is probably half that, before salaries (if anyone takes one). And a percentage of that goes to supporting EcoTrust. You get the sense that a big profit is not the overriding goal here… and that’s part of the beauty of it.

MIX, the next attempt by the O to make a magazine, will venture into interesting territory: Portland’s food and drink scene. Launch is right around the corner, in early September. See a sample layout here, at the bottom of the page.

On the plus side, the O has built a strong FOODDAY staff. Editor Martha Holmberg, Leslie Cole and the team convey intelligence and enthusiasm in their work. Plus, the recipes are interesting and good without being wildly complicated or esoteric.

The local food magazine field is not wide open, nor is it an undiscovered goldmine. NORTHWEST PALATE serves the top end of the culinary niche very well, with a nice presentation, chef profiles, lots of wine coverage and features on high-end restaurants and getaways. EDIBLE PORTLAND is nicely done and will probably build a loyal readership in the local and sustainable food subcategory. WILLAMETTE WEEK and PORTLAND MONTHLY offer plenty of good restaurant listings and reviews in print and online. (Presumably, the O’s annual restaurant guides will be folded into the new enterprise in some way. )

Food-and-beverage is not a huge advertising category in local print (not counting supermarket pre-prints, perhaps.) Small restaurant ads can add up, as PM and the newspaper annuals have demonstrated, but that sector can be more volatile than many. From the sidelines, we guess that someone has run the projections and mapped out the growth path…

Then there’s the name. It does not pass the ok-you-have-five-seconds-to-tell-me-what-this-is-about test. It could be a magazine for audio engineers, like this, or a multi-cultural lifestyle magazine, like this. Perhaps the Portland/Food/Drink tag will be enough to squeak it in under five.

Will this be another tossed-on-the-porch freebie? A newspaper ride-along? The advance word is that newsstands will play a part in the scheme. We have to assume the O plans to buy its way (or pressure its way, assuming there is leverage there) onto checkout racks at Fred’s and elsewhere. If not, then the newsstand part of the plan will have more impact as a marketing tool than as a significant component of circulation.

Does the O, grappling with its identity like all major dailies, see this as a diversification opportunity, a preemptive necessity, or a magazine trial balloon? “Trust me boss, one of these is sure to fly. How hard can it be?”