Slant

If you haven’t seen it already, come check out our new Suspish Fish graffiti art! Suspish is a fantastic local artist whose work we haven’t seen enough of lately, so we put it out there that Eugene Weekly’s office could use some local art from our fave painter of goggle-eyed fish and worm words. Look out for a Suspish story in EW soon!

We can’t help but to wonder: Does Eugene Weekly scare the White House? Hear us out. Our circulation — between our 30,000 print copies and our online reads — rivals KLCC’s 80,000 listeners, and as The Register-Guard’s print rate drops, ours rises. But for the second time the Weekly got left out of a Biden administration White House press junket — so sorry this is the only mention of second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s Eugene visit you will get from us. Sure, we do get a little snarky from time to time, and the RG and public radio don’t, but our loyal readers deserve to be in the loop even if it’s served with a pinch of sass!

Even if you don’t care about track and field, this is a terrific time to be in Eugene. The athletes, media and fans from all over the world are livening up our streets. We don’t love the jet and helicopter fly-overs, an incongruous display having nothing to do with the World Athletic Championships’ spirit. And we do hope that visitors start giving local businesses a little more love (see Henry Houston’s story this issue). Hoping this weekend — with the Lane County Fair adding to the excitement — continues in this fun vein!

Speaking of Oregon22, what the H E double toothpicks is “crunchy Eugene”? That’s what one of the many New York Times sportswriters covering the track and field championships has called our town. Maybe it’s about granola or Birkenstocks? What’s your guess?

And while we are speaking of sports, if you want to see millionaire pro athletes dancing around like little leaguers who just won the championship, tune in to our Pacific Northwest major league baseball team, the Seattle Mariners. Led by the best rookie in baseball, Dominican Julio Rodriguez, the Mariners have pulled themselves into playoff contention, and this team has not made the playoffs since 2001. But as excited as we are about the Mariners’ playoff chances, we are prepared for the Mariners to blow it. Great pitching is producing big wins and so maybe wacky victory celebrations will continue into October. Locally, the Eugene Emeralds made national news, or at least public radio’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me, when Ems’ general manager Allan Benavides sang the “Star Spangled Banner” while getting a prostate exam during a game.

• Not many people outside the art world know of him, but Oregon photographer Robert Adams is having his moment of national glory. American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams, a retrospective that features 175 of Adams’ moody black and white landscapes documenting the degradation of nature by human development, opened in May at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and has drawn rave reviews in both The New York Times (“a magisterial career survey”) and The Washington Post (“a great artist whose nearly seven decades of work are an essential document of the national conscience, and a thing of majesty.”). Neither paper could apparently reach the reclusive 85-year-old photographer for comment; the recipient of a 1994 MacArthur “genius” Fellowship, he has lived quietly for years in Astoria. Should you happen to be in D.C., the exhibit runs through Oct. 2.