Will the sun shine for the opening weekend of the Clark County Fair? Check the weekend forecast here.
Everybody loves the Dock Dogs at the Clark County Fair, but this year they’ll be taking a break to let a new show make a splash.
John Morrison, manager of the fair, let the dogs out and replaced them with sea lions — through a new event and fair theme called Sea Lion Splash.
“For the last five or six years right at the front gate we had the Dock Dogs,” Morrison said. “But once you have an attraction that long you need to switch things up. So they’re taking a year off. The sea lions go well with our pirate high-dive show, and they just drove the theme this year.”
The show, put on by Florida’s Squalus Inc., will have trained sea lions performing tricks, but it’s also aimed at educating the public about the animals.
“It’s designed to teach people about sea lions and how they interact with us,” Morrison said. “Squalus, they’re a really green company. They’re focused on nature, conservation. It’s about how we coexist.”
4H groups and other participants have decorated the Clark County Fairgrounds with a theme that includes sea lions and splashing water.
But there’s more to see than just sea.
Find more information about the 2014 fair and highlights at www.columbian.com/fair. And check out It’s The Fair, from blogger Toni Woodard, at http://blogs.columbian.com/its-the-fair.
A newly unveiled proposal to build a bridge across the Columbia River at Southeast 192nd Avenue doesn’t have the necessary support from the Vancouver City Council.
While Clark County Commissioner David Madore has talked about approaching Washington and Oregon transportation agencies and state legislatures with his idea should it garner public support, he hasn’t addressed the fact he needs a majority of the City Council to endorse attaching a bridge to a city street.
The council would have to take specific actions, including amending the city’s comprehensive plan. The city would also have to issue permits, said city attorney Bronson Potter.
Asked Monday whether they support Madore’s plan for a third bridge, six of the seven council members said no.
And they had some harsh words for the plan, which was revealed Friday at a special presentation at the Clark County Public Service Center. In addition to having no financing — tolls were mentioned Friday, although Madore opposes tolls — councilors said Madore has greatly oversimplified the process. The environmental impact studies to make sure the project complied with state and federal regulations, said Councilor Larry Smith, would take long enough to guarantee Madore could never deliver on his promise, made in January, that an east county bridge would be built in five years.
Read the full story here.
State officials say Mint Tea’s one-of-a-kind cannabis smoking tent in downtown Vancouver is illegal, but whether local law enforcement will do anything to shut it down is another story.
The restaurant held the city’s first public “cannabis friendly” event on Saturday night, with dozens of customers showing up to enjoy a little live music, dance in colorful costumes or smoke some marijuana in celebration of the new moon and Leo, the zodiac sign. Overall, it was a peaceful night with not a single visit from police, said Jenna Eckert, Mint Tea’s co-owner.
State liquor authorities are also weighing in on her operation, and Eckert said it might be worth giving up her liquor license to keep the smoking area open.
Vancouver Police spokeswoman Kim Kapp said officers would only get involved if they get a call about someone consuming pot on the premises in view of the general public — the only consumption-based restriction laid out in Initiative 502. And Kapp said as far as she knows, the department has had no such reports lately.
Another problem for Eckert, however, is a state Liquor Control Board rule drafted last year barring any place with a liquor license from allowing marijuana consumption on the premises, agency spokesman Brian Smith explained.
“(The) board made explicit in its rules that consuming marijuana in a liquor-licensed location is prohibited,” Smith said. “A restaurant is a public place. It’s not legal.”
Read the full story here. Get the latest marijuana news at our blog, Cannabis Chronicles.
Vancouver rental market remains tight
Jacinta Cox has been looking for a new house to rent since late May with no luck.
She and her family have lived in the same place for eight years, but the landlord wants to sell the house. The Cox family would love to stay in Camas, but Jacinta has had to widen her search.
“There’s such a flood of renters. It’s insane,” the 33-year-old mother of five said. “It’s almost like this competition lottery thing.”
She phoned the landlord of one house posted on Craigslist as soon as she saw the ad, only to be the 70th caller.
Although the rental market rate has loosened up since last fall, it remains tight. As of the last measurement this spring by Tigard, Ore.-based Multifamily NW, the vacancy rate was 3.32 percent in West Vancouver and 2.99 percent in East Vancouver.
Rents have climbed. The average rent was 93 cents per square foot on the west end of town, up from 87 cents last fall. On the east end of town, rent was 97 cents per square foot, up from 94 cents.
The Multifamily NW figures don’t capture the single-family rental market, but the experience there is similar, local landlords say.
Read the full story here.
Of all the acts performed daily at hospitals, none are done for laughs.
But one repeated several times Tuesday in Room 426 at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center was all in the name of sketch comedy, as the cast and crew of “Portlandia” filmed in the south wing of the fourth floor. The hospital closes the section when it’s not needed for medical patients, said spokeswoman Michelle Halfhill, but it has to be kept in a ready state.
That worked well for “Portlandia,” which does all of its filming on location and, per union contract, must stay within 30 miles of the Rose City.
David Cress, a producer for the IFC show, said filming was also done Tuesday at nearby Henrietta Lacks Health and Bioscience High School.
Filming resumes today at PeaceHealth.
The sketch at the medical center featured stars Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen, along with Ed Begley, Jr., a recurring “Portlandia” guest star. (Begley was playing a doctor, a familiar role given he spent much of the 1980s on “St. Elsewhere.”)
Cress said it takes approximately 4 1/2 days of filming for each 22-minute, 30-second episode.
Janet Weiss, when not performing — she and Brownstein were Sleater-Kinney bandmates — secures locations for the show to film.
Read the full story here.
