Gypsies, urban planners and thieves: history + architecture tonight, free

PDX Writer Daily has spent its share of icy nights and Sunday mornings among the echoing parking lots of the so-called South Auditorium. Therefore, it is naturally interested in what Messrs Abbott and Gragg have to say about the planning that made that weird curvy area between Broadway and the river what it is today.

Fifty years later, was the urban design that threw out all those smelly Europeans to make for office buildings a success? Well, the talk is being held over a mile away from the neighborhood they're describing, if that's any indication. PDX Writer Daily will be happy to offer its own guided tour of the South Auditorium area to anyone who meets it for happy hour at the cumbersomely-titled Rafati's Encore310 at University Place, then buys it dinner at Hot Pot City. If, on the other hand, you'd like to read up on your own, and not buy anything for PDX Writer Daily, you may be interested in Michael Munk's Portland Red Guide, published by Ooligan Press, with cover art by Portland's Best Radical Historian, Icky Apparatus (ne Ciccone).

(To take advantage of individualized tour, RSVP by 3pm.)